"How beautiful you are," he said in a soft, dreamy voice, deep and rich. He strained her to him. "Oh, how strange and beautiful you are, Gundruda. I would that for ever you were in my arms. There is nothing like you in the world, Gundruda. You are worth kingdoms. Oh, you beautiful girl!" She abandoned herself to his caresses, with closed eyes and quick shuddering breaths of pleasure. Suddenly the mellow notes of a horn in all their proud sweetness came floating through the wood, and this amorous business came to a sudden end. Geoffroi was starting out to the hunt. The two people in the wood went back to the castle by devious ways. They found that Lord Geoffroi with a few attendants had already left the castle and entered the forest. The castle-works were humming with activity. The weapon smiths were forging and fitting arrow heads, and making quarels and bolts. The carpenters were building hoards, or wooden pent houses, which should be run out on the top of the curtains. The crenelets, which grinned between the roof and the machicolade at the top of Outfangthef, were cleared of all obstructions. A trébuchet for slinging stones--invented in Flanders, and very effective at short range--was being fitted together on the roof of the Barbican. Hammers were tapping, metal rang on metal, the saws groaned, and a great din of preparation pervaded everything. In one corner of the bailey a man was cutting lead into strips so that it could be more easily made molten and poured upon besiegers. In another a group were hoisting pitch barrels on to the walls with a pulley and tackle. In and out of the great gateway rough carts were rattling every moment, full of apples and wheat from the farmhouses round. A row of patient oxen were stabled in a pen, hastily knocked up with beams of fir, in one corner of the bailey. In the field by the castle side, the swine shrieked horribly as a serf killed them relentlessly, and in the kitchens the women boiled, dried, and salted before glowing wood fires. Long before dawn, scouts on swift horses had been posting along the Norwich road, and messages had been sent to all the villeins proper to fulfil their pledge of service. Tongues wagged unceasing. "Come ye here, cripples, and give a hand to this beam." "Have you gotten your money safe, minter? The bastard son a letcheth after coined monies." "Aye, and after more things than coined monies. Gundruda, beauty, Roger hath a fat Turkman privy to him, and going always in his train. He will marry you to the black man!" "By the rood, then, I'd as soon wed him as you!" "Roger taketh with him always a crucet hûs, my son." "And what is that, then, Father Anselm?"