The King listlessly opened his eyes and said that he had no stomach for such song, and from the next door came the mutter of the drums.  For on that night—­which was Candlemas—­Thursday, or as we should now call it “Friday”—­the gaolers were keeping holiday, and drinking English beer brewed in Sussex; for the beer of West England was not to their liking, as any one who has walked down the old Roman Road through Daglingworth, Brimpsfield, and Birdlip towards Cardigan on a warm summer’s day can know.  For a man may tramp that road and stop and ask for drink at an inn, and receive nothing but Imperialist whisky, and drinks that annoy rather than satisfy the great thirst of a Christian.

Outside, a little breeze had crept out of the West.  The morning star was paling over the Quantock Hills, and the King was mortally weary.  “This day three years ago,” he thought, “I was spurred and harnessed for the lists in a tunic of mail, with an emerald on my shoulder-strap, and I was tilting with my lord of Cleremont before Queen Isabella of France.  The birds were singing in Touraine, and the sun was beating on the lists; and the minstrels of Val-es-Dunes were chanting the song of the men who died for the Faith when they stormed Jerusalem.  What is the lilt of that song,” said the King, “which the singers of Val-es-Dunes sang?” And Eustace pondered, for his memory was weak and he was overwrought by nights of watching and days of vigilance; but presently he touched his strings and sang: 

     The captains came from Normandy
     In clamorous ships across the sea;
     And from the trees in Gascony
     The masts were cloven, tall and free. 
     And Turpin swung the helm and sang;
     And stars like all the bells at Brie
     From cloudy steeples rang.

     The rotten leaves are whirling down
     Dishevelled from September’s crown;
     The Emperors have left the town;
     The Weald of Sussex, burnt and brown,
     Is trampled by the kings. 
     And Harmuth gallops up the Down,
     And, as he rides, he sings.

     He sings of battles and of wine,
     Of boats that leap the bellowing brine,
     Of April eyes that smile and shine,
     Of Raymond and Lord Catiline
     And Carthage by the sea,
     Of saints, and of the Muses Nine
     That dwell in Gascony.

And to the King, as he heard this stave, came visions of his youth; of how he had galloped from Woodstock to Stonesfield on a night of June within eleven hours, with a company of minstrels, and of how during that long feast at Arundel he made a song in the vernacular in praise of St. Anselm.  And he remembered that he owed a candle to that saint.  For he had vowed that if the wife of Westermain should meet him after the tournament he would burn a tall candle at Canterbury before Michaelmas.  But this had escaped his mind, for it had been tossed hither and thither during days of conflict which had come later, and he was not loth to believe that the neglect of this service and the idle vow had been corner-stone of his misfortunes, and had helped to bring about his miserable plight.