“Rash man,” she said to Sir Rudolph, “I warn you against committing the sin of sacrilege.  Neither the orders of Prince John nor of any other potentate can override the rights of the holy church; and should you venture to lay the hand of force upon this convent you will be placed under the anathema of the church, and its spiritual terrors will be directed against you.”

“I am prepared to risk that, holy mother,” Sir Rudolph said, with a laugh.  “So long as I am obeying the orders of my prince, I care naught for those of any foreign potentate, be he pope or be he emperor.  Three minutes of the time I gave you have elapsed, and unless within two more the Lady Margaret appears at the gate I will batter it down; and you may think yourself lucky if I do not order my men to set light to it and to smoke you out of your hole.”

The abbess closed the window, and as she did so the long row of casements in the house of Master Nicholas were opened from top to bottom, and a volley of sixty clothyard arrows was poured into the group closely standing round the gate.  Many fell, killed outright, and shouts of rage and pain were heard arising.

Furious at this unexpected attack, Sir Rudolph turned and commanded those with him to attack the house whence this volley of missiles had come.  But even while he spoke another flight of arrows, even more deadly than the last, was poured forth.  One of the knights standing by the side of Sir Rudolph fell, shot through the brain.  Very many of the common men, undefended by harness, fell shot through and through; and an arrow piercing the joint of the armor of Sir Rudolph wounded him in the shoulder.  In vain the knight stormed and raged and ordered his men to advance.  The suddenness of the attack seemed to his superstitious followers a direct answer from heaven to the words of the abbess.  Their number was already seriously lessened, and those who were in case to do so at once took flight and scattered through the city, making for the gate, which had already been seized by Sir Rudolph’s men.

Finding himself alone with only a few of his knights and principal men-at-arms remaining, while the storm of arrows continued unabated, Sir Rudolph was forced to order his men to retreat with many fierce threats of the vengeance which he would hereafter take.

CHAPTER XXII.

A dastardly stratagem.

The return of Sir Rudolph’s party to Evesham was not unmarked by incident, for as they passed along the road, from an ambush in a wood other archers, whose numbers they could not discover, shot hard upon them, and many fell there who had escaped from the square at Worcester.  When the list was called upon the arrival at the castle, it was found that no less than thirty of those who had set out were missing, while many others were grievously wounded.