forth, with his followers and a host of masons and labouring men, to
build a new castle on the height by Faringdon, where good King Alfred
had carved the great white horse by tearing the turf from the gravel
hill, for an everlasting record of victory. Broadly and boldly
Gloucester had traced the outer wall and bastions, the second wall
within that, and the vast fortress which was to be thus trebly
protected. The building was to be the work of weeks, not months, and,
if it were possible, of days rather than of weeks. The whole was to be
a strong outpost for a fresh advance, and neither gold nor labour was
to be spared in the execution of the plan. Gloucester pitched his
sister's camp and his own tent upon the grassy eminence that faced the
castle. Thence he himself directed and commanded, and thence the
Empress Maud, sitting beneath the lifted awning of her imperial tent,
could see the grey stones rising, course upon course, string upon
string, block upon block, at a rate that reminded her of that Eastern
trick which she had seen at the Emperor's court, performed by a
turbaned juggler from the East, who made a tree grow from the seed to
the leafy branch and full ripe fruit while the dazed courtiers who
looked on could count fivescore.

Thither, as to a general trysting-place, the few loyal knights and
barons went up to do homage to their sovereign lady, and to grasp the
hand of the bravest and gentlest man who trod English ground; and
thither, with the rest, Raymond Warde was gone, with his only son,
Gilbert, then but eighteen years of age, whom this chronicle chiefly
concerns; and Raymond's wife, the Lady Goda, was left in the manor
house of Stoke Regis under the guard of a dozen men-at-arms, mostly
stiff-jointed veterans of King Henry's wars, and under the more
effectual protection of several hundred sturdy bondsmen and yeomen,
devoted, body and soul, to their master and ready to die for his blood