But no delivering bands ever came over the hills to reward
their watching. From the moment that he was swallowed by the outer darkness,
the messenger for Yorkshire was as lost to their sight and their knowledge as
though he had plunged into the ocean. And a week later, the man who had been
sent into Essex crept back with a dejection that foretold his ill success. The
ealdorman was taxed, might and main, to protect his own lands. He regretted
it, to his innermost vitals, but these were days when each must stand or fall
for himself. He could only send his sympathy and the counsel to hold out
unflinchingly in the hope that some fortune of war would call the besiegers
away.
When he heard that, Father Ingulph forgot his robes to indulge in a curse.
"Does he think we have possession of the widow's blessed oil-cruse? If the
larder had not been stocked for a week's feasting, we must needs have been
starved under ere this. How much longer can we endure, even at one meal a
day?" He sighed as he drew his belt in another notch.
When the beginning of the Wine Month came, the bitterest sight that the Tower
windows gave out upon was the band of foragers that every morning went forth
from the Danish camp-fires. Every noon they returned, amid a taunting racket,
with armfuls of ale-skins, back-loads of salted meats, and bags bulging with
the bread which they had forced the terrorized farm-women into baking for
them.
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