The details which Lanfranc's messenger had to give of the defeat of the Earl of East Anglia, or, as the prelate styled him, Rodulph the Count, we already know. Turning to the monk, the archbishop said, 'Regarding the base uprising favoured and headed by our lord-king's cousin, Roger, Earl of Hereford, the tidings are of like good savour. Inform our liege that the English prelates, Bishop Wulfstan and Abbot Æthelwig, in union with Urse, Sheriff of Worcestershire, have hindered the traitor from passing the Severn, and have taken the earl himself prisoner, whereon we pray our liege heartily to make known his wishes how we may best dispose of this haught prisoner. 'Forget not to repeat likewise the stratagem by which the Count Rodulph's men deceived us, so that we made not his body secure, and know not certainly if he be dead or alive.' 'I will forget no detail, good my lord Archbishop,' replied the messenger; and Lanfranc folded his letter, and fastened it with a silken cord, and sealed it with his official seal. 'Naught could be more satisfactory,' he murmured to himself, as he was performing these small offices, 'than the manner in which the Saxons have ranged themselves, in this matter, upon our liege's side. It was a bold stroke on the part of the Lady Judith to warn us of her husband's schemes, and to risk his rage and his danger. Sooth, it had been a dire struggle if the doughty son of Siward had taken his part, as the plotters did well intend. A turmoil raised for the sake of one woman, and foiled by another! Thanks to thee, Judith, the day is ours!' But not to be ended quite so speedily as the sanguine Primate supposed. A woman was to hold his best troops at bay for a space of three long months, and then to make terms quite other than a choice between imprisonment or the bottom of the sea. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong! CHAPTER XVIII. BESIEGED. 'Methinks, Emma, my foes will say that Ralph de Guader was a recreant knight, who fled from his devoir and left his lady to fight for him! Beshrew me, but it mislikes me to leave thee!' So quoth the earl, when, after a few days of rest and rehabilitation at Blauncheflour, he was making ready to go on board a Danish galley, which lay moored at Lovelly's Staithe, her brightly coloured sails flapping idly in the summer wind; the heads of the oarsmen, with their long light hair and long light moustaches, showing in even ranks along her bulwarks, and her high dragon-carved prow gleaming in the sun. Emma, upright and determined, with the keys of the castle at her girdle, and wearing her steel-cap and mail gorget, forced back the tears that sprang to her eyes, and turned proudly to the warrior beside her, who, dressed in complete mail, with his long cross-handled sword suspended from a jewelled baldric, _looked_ the perfect figure of a hero.