The King and Richard the Roman were lodged that night at the Priory of St. Pancras, Prince Edward with De Warenne in the castle of Lewes. Nor would it have been easy to choose between St. Pancras Priory and Lewes Town in the matter of furious and indiscriminate drinking. Some said that the King’s host mustered sixty thousand men. One thing was certain, that a very great number of them were drunk that night, and that the lords and captains were no better than the men. “The King will hunt swine to-morrow.” Such was the night’s apothegm, and men flung it with variations and with a liberal garnishing of oaths into each other’s faces. The metaphor was acceptable to those who were in their cups, and much repetition piled assurance upon assurance. The great army of the King had its head full of drunken insolence. Its mouth uttered one huge oath. It would only have to show itself on the morrow, and De Montfort’s dirty burghers would take to their heels and run. Bonfires had been lit everywhere, and round them were crowds of grotesque faces that bawled, and gulped, and fed. There was no lack of food and drink, sheep and oxen were roasted whole; men gorged themselves like dogs about the carcases. Cressets flared upon the castle towers, and Prince Edward had set twenty trumpeters to blow fanfares before the gate. The Priory bells were jangling like fuddled men quarrelling with one another. There was no discipline anywhere, no sign of a high purpose, no forethought for the morrow. “The King will hunt swine!” Men bellowed it to one another, and the superstition contented them. When Denise and Marpasse came near the west gate of the town, they saw a huge fire burning there, the flames lighting the black battlements above. A great crowd had gathered about the fire, and the noise might have equalled the noise at Barnet Fair. Men were running about half naked like hairy-legged satyrs mad with wine. The platform of the town gate was crowded with a roaring, squealing mob that amused itself by emptying nature upon the equally repulsive mob below. Mounted upon a tub, a man with one eye, dressed like a Franciscan, spouted indecent skits on the clergy, pretending the while to be zealously in earnest. Elsewhere a crowd of excited and contorted figures made a ring round two women who, stripped to the waist, were wrestling, their faces smeared with the blood of a dead ox. Drunken rascals were scrambling about on all fours, and pretending to be dogs. If any mad whim came into a man’s head, he acted on it, and did not stop to think. Marpasse had taken Denise by the wrist, and they had melted back into the darkness, holding their breath over the chance of being plunged into that simmering human stew. Marpasse was no innocent, but her face went hard and ugly with the sincerity of her disgust. “Drunken swine! We will keep away from your sty, I warrant you.”