Booths had been set up inside the precinct wall, and there were clowns who kept the crowd a-laughing, and minstrels who sang songs fit for the lowest ear. Women in bright-coloured clothes went to and fro between the bonfires, fierce, hawk-faced women who knew how to take care of their own concerns. Marpasse and Denise kept in the shadow, though there were things to stumble over in the darkness, as Marpasse found when she trod on something that kicked out at her and cursed. They wandered into the cloisters, and through the dark passage-ways and slypes; all doors were open, and no one hindered them, for no one seemed to boast any authority that night. Sometimes they stood in dark corners, and listened to what was said by those who passed. St. Pancras might have stood with his fingers in his ears, for the humour was very broad, and the language primitive. “The King will hunt swine to-morrow.” The same snatch served here as in Lewes town, and Marpasse understood the significance thereof. The King meant to attack De Montfort on the morrow, and was letting his men debauch themselves into reckless good humour. The great church was full of tawny light, all the doors stood open, and Marpasse and Denise gliding from buttress to buttress, looked in through the door of the north transept. Torches had been stuck about the walls, the smoke pouring up, and filling the dim distance of the vaulting with drifting vapour. The church was full of men and women in cloths and silks of the brightest colours, men and women who danced and drank, and sprawled about the flagged floors. Nor were the men from the common crowd of the King’s army; they were the lords, the knights, and the esquires, wild captains of free-lances who held a debauch before to-morrow’s battle. The high altar was like a rostrum in old Rome, seized upon by a drunken crowd, and covered with creatures that laughed and howled, and clung to one another. Some of the women had put on the men’s helmets, others wore garlands of half-withered flowers. A party of young nobles had broken open the sacristy, and dressed themselves in precious embroidered vestments. The scene was a scramble of colour, a scene of perpetual movement, of flux and reflux, of strong sensual life throbbing in and out of half-darkened sanctuaries. Marpasse had seen enough, and Denise too much. They were moving away, when Marpasse started aside and drew Denise into the shadow of a buttress. A blur of movement disentangled itself from the darkness, and took shape in a knot of figures that approached the transept door. The party halted, and the two women saw a man wearing a cloak of sables, and a surcoat of some golden stuff, come forward alone and stand looking into the church.