“Then here you must bide, Lady Blanche,” I answered, cutting her short.  “Cling to me and I will save you if I can, even if it costs me my life.”

Certainly she did cling to me for all the rest of that terrible day, as will be seen.

From this height we saw Hastings beginning to burn, for the Frenchmen had fired the town in sundry places, and being built of wood, it burnt furiously.  Also we saw and heard horrible scenes and sounds of rapine, such as chance in this Christian world of ours where a savage foe finds peaceful folk of another race at his mercy.  In the houses people were burnt; in the streets they were being murdered, or worse.  Yes, even children were murdered, for afterwards I saw the bodies of some of them.

Awhile later through the wreaths of smoke we perceived companies of the French advancing to attack the Castle.  There may have been three hundred of them in all, and we did not count more than fifty men, some of us ill-armed, together with a mob of aged people and many women and children.  What had become of the other men I do not know, but orders had been shouted from all quarters, and some had gone this way and some that.  Some, too, I think, had fled, lacking leaders.

The French having climbed the hill, began to attack our ill-fenced gateways, bringing up beams of timber to force them in.  Those of us who had bows shot some of them, though, their armour being good, for the most part the arrows glanced.  But few had bows.  Moreover, whenever we showed ourselves they poured such a rain of quarrels and other shafts upon us that we could not face it, lacking mail as we did, and a number of us were killed or wounded.  At last they forced the easternmost gate which was the weakest, and got in there and over a place in the wall were it was broken.  We fought them as well as we could; myself I cut down two with the sword, Wave-Flame, hewing right through the helm of one, for the steel of that sword was good.  Here, too, Jack Grieves was killed by my side by a pike thrust, and died calling to me to fight on for old England and Hastings town; after which he said something about beer and breathed his last.

The end of it was that those who were left were driven out of the Castle together with the women and children, the murdering French killing every man who fell wounded where he lay, and trying to make prisoner any women they thought young and fair enough.  Especially did they seek to capture the lady Blanche because they saw that she was beautiful and of high station.  But by good fortune more than aught else, I saved her from this fate.

As it chanced we were among the last to leave the Castle, whence, to tell the truth, I was loath to go, for by now my blood was up, and with a few others fought till I was driven out.  I prayed the lady Blanche to run forward with the other women.  But she would not, answering that she trusted no one else, but would stay to die with me, as though that would help either of us.