CHAPTER Eight: The Widow Masouda.
Many months had gone by since the brethren sat upon their horses that winter morning, and from the shrine of St.
Peter's-on-the-Wall, at the mouth of the Blackwater in Essex, watched with anguished hearts the galley of Saladin sailing southwards; their love and cousin, Rosamund, standing a prisoner on the deck.

Having no ship in which to follow her--and this, indeed, it would have been too late to do--they thanked those who had come to aid them, and returned home to Steeple, where they had matters to arrange.

As they went they gathered from this man and that tidings which made the whole tale clear to them.
They learned, for instance, then and afterwards, that the galley which had been thought to be a merchantman put into the river Crouch by design, feigning an injury to her rudder, and that on Christmas eve she had moved up with the tide, and anchored in the Blackwater about three miles from its mouth.

Thence a great boat, which she towed behind her, and which was afterwards found abandoned, had rowed in the dusk, keeping along the further shore to avoid observation, to the mouth of Steeple Creek, which she descended at dark, making fast to the Staithe, unseen of any.

Her crew of thirty men or more, guided by the false palmer Nicholas, next hid themselves in the grove of trees about fifty yards from the house, where traces of them were found afterwards, waiting for the signal, and, if that were necessary, ready to attack and burn the Hall while all men feasted there.