Page:The Sundering Flood - Morris - 1898.djvu/139

 CHAPTER XXIV. A SKIRMISH WITH THE BARON OF DEEPDALE IN THE MARSHES.

OW I have nought to do to write a chronicle of the good town of East Cheaping, or a history of this war of them of the town with the Baron of Deepdale, or else a long tale I might make of it. So here follows all that shall be told of the said war. In somewhat less than a month from their coming to East Cheaping they had sure news that the Baron was on the way to the town with a great company of knights and men-at-arms; and thereafter it was known that he was riding with a light heart and little heed. Wherefore Sir Medard turned the matter over in his mind, and, whereas if any one knew well the roads and the fields about East Cheaping, he, Sir Medard, knew them better, he deemed he might give this great lord a brush by the way. So he rode out-a-gates with but a small company of men-at-arms, five score to wit, all in white armour, and rides with them along the causeway. But early in the night, ere he set out, he had bidden a twelve score footmen make their way quietly in knots of five and ten and thereabout to a certain place fifteen miles as the highway led from East Cheaping, where the said causeway, craftily made, went high over a marish place much beset with willow and alder, an evil place for the going of heavily-laded horses. But of these same footmen,