and advanced, and we were driven back. I stopped as long as I dared,
and drawing the sword, Wave-Flame, fought with a Frenchman who was in
advance of the others. What is more, making a great blow at his head
which I missed, I struck him on the arm and cut it off, for I saw it
fall to the ground. Then others rushed up at me and I fled to save my
life.

Somehow I found myself being pressed up the steep Castle Hill with a
number of Hastings folk, followed by the French. We reached the Castle
and got into it, but the old portcullis would not close, and in sundry
places the walls were broken down. Here we found a number of women who
had climbed for refuge, thinking that the place would be safe. Among
these was a beautiful and high-born maiden whom I knew by sight. Her
father was Sir Robert Aleys who, I believe, was then the Warden of the
Castle of Pevensey, and she was named the lady Blanche. Once, indeed, I
had spoken with her on an occasion too long to tell. Then her large blue
eyes, which she knew well how to use, had left me with a swimming head,
for she was very fair and very sweet and gracious, with a most soft
voice, and quite unlike any other woman I had ever seen, nor did she
seem at all proud. Soon her father, an old knight, who had no name for
gentleness in the countryside, but was said to be a great lover of gold,
had come up and swept her away, asking her what she did, talking with a
common fishing churl. This had happened some months before.

Well, there I found her in the Castle, alone it seemed, and knowing me
again, which I thought strange, she ran to me, praying me to protect
her. More, she began to tell me some long tale, to which I had not time
to listen, of how she had come to Hastings with her father, Sir Robert,
and a young lord named Deleroy, who, I understood, was some kinsman of
hers, and slept there. How, too, she had been separated from them in the