ile from Jersey. His own nominees were doubtless not unwilling to
emphasise his grievance, and Fredegond found in his disappointed
ambition a soil only too ready to receive the poisonous seed she was
so anxious to implant. Among the inferior clergy was an archdeacon
whose hatred of Pretextatus was as great, and more reckless in its
expression. By him a slave was easily discovered ready to commit this
or any other crime on the promise of freedom for himself and his
family. A guarantee of favours to come was provided in some ready
money paid beforehand, and the blow was struck while Pretextatus
prayed. Romans and Franks alike were horrified at the dastardly
outrage. The former could scarcely act outside the city walls, but the
Franks felt more secure in the ancient privileges of their race, and
some of their nobles at once gave public expression to the hatred felt
by every citizen for the instigator of the crime. Led by one of their
own chiefs, a deputation of these Frankish nobles rode up to
Fredegond's palace at Rueil. They delivered a message to the effect
that justice should be done, and that the murderess must at last put a
term to all her crimes. Her reply was even more rapid and fearless
than usual. She handed the speaker a cup of honeyed wine, after the
custom of his country; he drank the poison, and fell dead upon the
spot.

A kind of panic fell upon his comrades, and extended even to the town
of Rouen itself. Like some monstrous incarnation of evil, Fredegond
seemed to have settled near their city, followed by a trail of death.
Her very breath, it was imagined, exhaled the poisons of the sorcery
and witchcraft that accompanied and rendered possible her countless
assassinations. She seemed beyond the pale of human interference, and
invested with some infernal omnipotence that baffled all pursuit or
vengeance. Every church in Rouen closed its doors, for the head of
their Church lay foully murdered, and his murderer was not yet
punished. Leudowald of Bayeux took over the sacred office in the
interval of consternation that ensued, before another successor could
be appointed, and he insisted that not another Mass should be
celebrated throughout the diocese until the criminal had been brought
to justice. Night and day he had to pay the penalty for his boldness
by being forced to keep careful guard against the hired bravos of his
unscrupulous enemy, who was now fairly started in a career of
bloodshed, that she would n