She shook from head to foot with a shudder of dread, as she threw herself upon her knees before the altar; but the tears she had so long repressed would not now come to her relief. Dry-eyed, with a dull, persistent pain at her heart that made each breath a sigh, she stretched up her arms in mute supplication to the Help of the helpless for aid. CHAPTER XIII. ST. NICHOLAS FOR GUADER! The original plan of campaign drawn out by the Earls of East Anglia and Hereford had been sadly marred by the defection of Waltheof, whose counties of Huntingdon and Northampton lay between them, so that, instead of being a bond of union, they had now become adverse territory. With Waltheof assisting them, only Worcestershire and Warwickshire would have divided them, but since he had left them in the lurch, they must needs fight half across England to effect a junction. They had this comfort, however, that Waltheof had left the country in order to make his peace with the king, and would not personally encounter them, while their positions at the extremes of east and west exposed any force attacking either of them to be itself attacked in the rear by the other. Further, the unsettled state of the Welsh border, and the readiness of the Celts to seize any excuse for invasion, rendered Hereford's movement doubly formidable for the king's lieutenants. De Guader hoped that, for this reason, the main force of the opponents might be turned towards Hereford, and that he might be upon them before they were aware that he had taken the field. The hope proved delusive. When he reached his manors at Swaffham, of which place he was lord, he found that the royal army was almost upon him, and that he must give battle there and then. Ralph had need to put forth his best powers of generalship, for the force against him was led by four of William's most brilliant officers:-- Earl William de Warrenne and Surrey, the husband of the king's stepdaughter Gundred, to whom had been given twenty-eight manors in Yorkshire, and one hundred and thirty-nine lordships in Norfolk, and who was building a fine castle at Acre near Swaffham, so that he was Ralph's neighbour, and probably no very cordial one. The Norman earl had won experience of Fenland fighting in the campaign against Hereward a few seasons previously, and had never forgiven the English for killing his brother, who was leading the king's men through the terrible quagmires of the Isle of Ely; so he ground his teeth and swore strange oaths, as was the way of the Normans, that now the time for retribution had come. Next there was Robert Malet, son of the brave old Sir William, who had helped to bear the corse of Harold Godwinsson to its first burial, and who took with him to his own grave the love and respect of Normans and English alike, leaving his son an inheritance of lands in Norfolk and Suffolk.