FISHERMAN. Ay, do, do, and our great Count-crab
will make his nippers meet in thine heart; he’ll
sweat it out of thee, he’ll sweat it out of
thee. Look, he’s here! He’ll
speak for himself! Hold thine own, if thou canst!
Enter GUY, COUNT OF
PONTHIEU.
HAROLD. Guy, Count of Ponthieu?
GUY. Harold, Earl
of Wessex!
HAROLD. Thy villains with their lying lights
have wreck’d us!
GUY. Art thou not Earl of Wessex?
HAROLD. In mine earldom
A man may hang gold bracelets on a bush,
And leave them for a year, and coming back
Find them again.
GUY. Thou art a mighty man
In thine own earldom!
HAROLD. Were such murderous liars
In Wessex—if I caught them, they should
hang
Cliff-gibbeted for sea-marks; our sea-mew
Winging their only wail!
GUY. Ay, but my men
Hold that the shipwreckt are accursed of God;—
What hinders me to hold with mine own men?
HAROLD. The Christian manhood of the man who
reigns!
GUY. Ay, rave thy worst, but in our oubliettes
Thou shalt or rot or ransom. Hale him hence!
[To one of his ATTENDANTS.
Fly thou to William; tell him we have Harold.
COUNT WILLIAM and WILLIAM MALET.
WILLIAM. We hold our Saxon woodcock in the springe,
But he begins to flutter. As I think
He was thine host in England when I went
To visit Edward.
MALET. Yea, and there, my lord,
To make allowance for their rougher fashions,
I found him all a noble host should be.
WILLIAM. Thou art his friend: thou know’st
my claim on England
Thro’ Edward’s promise: we have him
in the toils.
And it were well, if thou shouldst let him feel,
How dense a fold of danger nets him round,
So that he bristle himself against my will.
MALET. What would I do, my lord, if I were you?
WILLIAM. What wouldst thou do?
MALET. My lord, he is
thy guest.
WILLIAM. Nay, by the splendour of God, no guest
of mine.
He came not to see me, had past me by
To hunt and hawk elsewhere, save for the fate
Which hunted him when that un-Saxon blast,
And bolts of thunder moulded in high heaven
To serve the Norman purpose, drave and crack’d
His boat on Ponthieu beach; where our friend Guy
Had wrung his ransom from him by the rack,
But that I slept between and purchased him,
Translating his captivity from Guy
To mine own hearth at Bayeux, where he sits
My ransom’d prisoner.
MALET. Well, if not with gold,
With golden deeds and iron strokes that brought
Thy war with Brittany to a goodlier close
Than else had been, he paid his ransom back.
