"But," said the other prelate, "among the other clownish monks of Ely, may there not be found a----"
"Peace!" said Duke William, "that hath been thought of already, and perhaps something may come of it--that is, if ye be but silent and discreet. Ye are all too loud-tongued, and overmuch given to talking; and these walls, though raised by Norman hands, may yet have Saxon ears! Retire we to the innermost council chamber."
And William rose and withdrew to the innermost room, and those who had the right followed, and the chamberlains closed the door and kept guard on the outside, and the heavy door-curtains were drawn within so that none might approach the door, and not even the chamberlains hear what passed inside. That secret council lasted till a late hour of the evening. The words which were said be not known, but the things determined upon were made known but too soon. It was the eve of Saint Mark the Evangelist, and, before the feast of Saint Bede the Venerable, Duke William was again at Cam-Bridge, and with a far greater army and train than he had sent thither the preceding year; and at the same time a great fleet of ships and barks began to be prepared in the London river. No more witches were sent for, but William called over many more experienced warriors from France, and ordered barks to be equipped in the rivers and ports of Normandie. The traitorous Dane had told him that he must leave his war horses in their stalls, and think of ships and boats, if he would drive the amphibious Saxons out of the Fen-country.
While the banner of William floated over the Julius Tower, or Keep, on the tall mound by Cam-Bridge, country hinds and labourers of all sorts, and horses and draught oxen, and mules and asses too numerous to count, were collected within the fortified camp; and again timber and stones and burned bricks were brought from all parts of the land, and in greater abundance than before. For several weeks nothing was heard but the sawing of wood and the hewing and chipping of stone, and a loud and incessant hammering. A stranger to the history and present woes of England might have thought that the Normans were going to build a Tower of Babel, or that, penitent for the mischief they had done, they were going to rebuild the town at Cam-Bridge, in order to bring back the affrighted muses, and the houseless professors of learning, and the pining English students, to sumptuous inns and halls. In truth, there seemed work and stuff enough to furnish out a great city altogether new. But, upon a near view, a knowing eye would have seen that all this toil was for the making of engines of war, of towers to place along the causeway, of bridges to throw across the streams, and of other ponderous machines to aid the Normans in crossing the fens, and in carrying the horrors of war into the last asylum of Saxon liberty.