“Awake!” said the voice.  “In God’s name, I conjure you, awake!”

“What is it?” he said, lifting his head sleepily, and becoming conscious of a dull pain across his forehead.

“It is that death and the devil have been here, Sir Wulf.”

“Well, they are often near together.  But I thirst.  Give me water.”

A serving-woman, pallid, dishevelled, heavy-eyed, who was stumbling to and fro, lighting torches and tapers, for it was still dark, brought it to him in a leathern jack, from which he drank deeply.

“That is better,” he said.  Then his eye fell upon the bloody sword set point downwards in the wood of the table before him, and he exclaimed, “Mother of God! what is that?  My uncle’s silver-hilted sword, red with blood, and Rosamund’s gold chain upon the hilt!  Priest, where is the lady Rosamund?”

“Gone,” answered the chaplain in a voice that sounded like a groan.  “The women woke and found her gone, and Sir Andrew lies dead or dying in the solar—­but now I have shriven him—­and oh! we have all been drugged.  Look at them!” and he waved his hand towards the recumbent forms.  “I say that the devil has been here.”

Wulf sprang to his feet with an oath.

“The devil?  Ah!  I have it now.  You mean the Cyprian chapman Georgios.  He who sold wine.”

“He who sold drugged wine,” echoed the chaplain, “and has stolen away the lady Rosamund.”

Then Wulf seemed to go mad.

“Stolen Rosamund over our sleeping carcases!  Stolen Rosamund with never a blow struck by us to save her!  O, Christ, that such a thing should be!  O, Christ, that I should live to hear it!” And he, the mighty man, the knight of skill and strength, broke down and wept like a very child.  But not for long, for presently he shouted in a voice of thunder: 

“Awake, ye drunkards!  Awake, and learn what has chanced to us.  Your lady Rosamund has been raped away while we were lost in sleep!”

At the sound of that great voice a tall form arose from the floor, and staggered towards him, holding a gold cross in its hand.

“What awful words are those my brother?” asked Godwin, who, pale and dull-eyed, rocked to and fro before him.  Then he, too, saw the red sword and stared, first at it and next at the gold cross in his hand.  “My uncle’s sword, Rosamund’s chain, Rosamund’s cross!  Where, then, is Rosamund?”

“Gone! gone! gone!” cried Wulf.  “Tell him, priest.”

So the chaplain told him all he knew.

“Thus have we kept our oaths,” went on Wulf.  “Oh, what can we do now, save die for very shame?”

“Nay,” answered Godwin, dreamingly; “we can live on to save her.  See, these are her tokens—­the cross for me, the blood-stained sword for you, and about its hilt the chain, a symbol of her slavery.  Now both of us must bear the cross; both of us must wield the sword, and both of us must cut the chain, or if we fail, then die.”