But this strong-point of Burwell, north-east of Cambridge,irritated him because it was beginning to interfere with his supplylines, almost the only thing vulnerable about him. And on one ofthe hottest days of August he was riding round the offending castleto view the best possibilities for attack. Because of the heat hehad discarded his helmet and the curtain of fine chain mail thatguarded his neck. An ordinary bowman on the wall loosed a shot athim, and struck him in the head.

Geoffrey laughed at it, the wound seemed so slight; he withdrewto allow a few days for healing. And in a few days he was burningwith a fevered infection that pared the flesh from his bones andbrought him to his bed. They carried him as far as Mildenhall inSuffolk, and there awoke to the knowledge that he was dying. Thesun had done what all King Stephen’s armies could not do.

What was impossible was that he should die in peace. He was anunabsolved excommunicate; not even a priest could help him, for inthe mid-Lent council called the previous year by Henry of Blois,bishop of Winchester, the king’s brother and at that timepapal legate, it had been decreed that no man who did violence to acleric could be absolved by anyone but the Pope himself, and thatnot by any distant decree, but in the Pope’s veritablepresence. A long way from Mildenhall to Rome for a dying man interror of hellfire. For Geoffrey’s excommunication had beenearned by his seizure by violence of the abbey of Ramsey, and hisexpulsion of the monks and their abbot, to turn the convent intothe capital of his kingdom of thieves, torturers and murderers. Forhim there was no possible absolution, no hope of burial. The earthwould not have him.