“I never was there in the north,” said Cadfael, with a glint inhis eye and a stirring in his blood that he had much ado to subdue. His days inarms were over, forsworn long since, but he could not help prickling to thesting of battle, when his friends were still venturing. “It’s ahill city, Lincoln, so they say. And the garrison penned close. It should havebeen easy to hold the town, Robert or no Robert. What went astray?”

“Why, granted we under-valued Robert, as always, but that need nothave been fatal. The rains there’d been up there, the river round thesouth and west of the town was up in flood, the bridge guarded, and the fordimpassable. But Robert passed it, whether or no! Into the flood with him, andwhat could they do but come after? “A way forward, but no wayback!” he says—so one of our prisoners told us. And what with thesolid wall of them, they got across with barely a man swept away. Oh, surelythey still had the uphill way, out of that drowned plain to ourhilltop—if Stephen were not Stephen! With the mass of them camped belowin the wet fields and all the omens at Mass against him—you know hehalf-regards such warnings—what say you he’ll do? Why, with thatmad chivalry of his, for which God knows I love him though I curse him, heorders his array down from the height into the plain, to meet his enemy onequal terms.”

Hugh heaved his shoulders back against the solid brace of the wall, hoistedhis agile brows and grinned, torn between admiration and exasperation.

They’d drawn up on the highest and driest bit of land they could find,in what was a half-frozen marsh. Robert had all the disinherited, Maud’sliegemen who had lost lands eastward for her sake, drawn up in the first line,