The Conqueror (9 page)

Troubled, the fool said: ‘Yea, but what shall this signify?’

Raoul looked at him. ‘O fool, when shall this day’s work be forgotten? It is in my mind that down the years when men speak of William our Duke they will remember this vengeance and call him Tyrant. I tell you, there is a stain upon his shield now no deed of justice, no feat of arms can ever wipe away.’

‘He is a stark man in his anger, brother, but you have seen him merciful,’ Galet said, uncomprehending.

‘I have seen the devil let loose,’ Raoul said with a short laugh.

‘Yea, he hath a devil like all of his house, but he keeps it throttled six days out of the seven.’

Raoul rose, and sheathed his sword again. ‘But the seventh is the day that shall live in men’s memories,’ he said, and went out, leaving the fool to scratch his puzzled head.

He did not come near the Duke until some hours had passed. Appalled at what they had seen, the Castle garrison sent to offer terms of surrender. They were granted freedom, and safety of life and limb. The last blood had been shed at Alençon, and without a blow the Castle capitulated. There was no plundering, no rape of women. The Duke’s passion was throttled again, and once more men saw his justice.

A squire came to Raoul at dusk with a message from William, commanding his attendance. He went slowly to the big tent, and entered to find the Duke alone, seated by the table. A lamp hung from the roof of the tent, and lit the small space. William pointed to where his sword still lay. ‘Pick up my sword,’ he said, with a straight look under his brows.

Raoul gave it to him without a word. The Duke held it across his knee, and said: ‘I ride back to Domfront tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘Do you know young Roger de Bigod – a youngling with a face of wood?’ he asked unexpectedly.

Raoul blinked, and answered: ‘If he is a vassal of the Count of Mortain I know him, lord.’

‘In his folly he spills news of a plot. The Warling Count is busy planning my ruin, and my good Uncle of Arques’ – he smiled unpleasantly – ‘withdrew from the siege of Domfront a short hour after myself.’

‘God’s death!’ Raoul said, startled. ‘Arques? What will you do, seigneur?’

‘A guard set about him at Arques should keep my uncle in check. I am sending to Mortain to bring the Warling Count before me. Him I will banish, for while I live the peace of Normandy shall never, by God’s grace, be disturbed again by such revolts as we crushed at Val-es-dunes.’ He paused, and looked at Raoul, unsmiling. ‘Shall I send you to Mortain, or do you ride with me back to Domfront?’ he asked.

Raoul returned his look gravely. ‘Why must you ask me that, my liege?’

‘If I am too stark a lord for you, leave me!’ the Duke said. ‘Think well: I shall not change for any plea of yours.’

‘I am your man,’ Raoul answered. ‘Now and always, as I swore that night when we fled from Valognes. I ride with you to Domfront.’

There was no more said. On the following day they rode back to Domfront, leaving a garrison at Alençon. The news of the happenings there was before them. Terrified, despairing of Martel’s return, Domfront surrendered, got easy terms, and thought herself fortunate. Although it stood in the county of Maine the donjon was garrisoned by Normans. The Duke marched on to Ambrières, built a stronghold there, and retired again into Normandy. He had thrust his Frontier out a little way into Maine, and that was all Anjou got by his rashness.

Away in France King Henry heard the news, and turned a very sickly colour. His hand played with his beard, and those near him saw that he plucked three hairs from it, all unaware.

Part II

(1051–1053)

THE ROUGH WOOING

‘He must be a man of great courage and high daring who could venture to come and beat me in my own father’s palace.’

Saying of Matilda of Flanders

One

As the long ship heaved on the waves one of the hostages gave a whimper, and curled his body closer, with his knees drawn up. Raoul was standing by the bulwarks, looking out over the sea. A pale moonlight turned the water coldly silver, shimmering under a night-blue sky; now and again flecks of foam glistened as though a star had dropped into the sea. From the masthead lanterns hung as beacons to show the other vessels where the Duke’s ship rode. A small cabin built in the stern had a leathern curtain across the opening, and where this fell away from the door-post a crack of yellow light shone. Amidships an awning sheltered the hostages. A lantern was secured to one of the supports; its glow illumined the faces of the three who crouched there on fur skins. Overhead a fitful wind bellied the sails, and from time to time the canvas slapped in the breeze, and the ropes creaked and whined.

Again the youngest of the hostages whimpered, and buried his face in the mantle of the man who held him. Raoul looked over his shoulder with a faint smile. The boy was so young and so unhappy. As he looked, the man holding the child raised his head, and his eyes, which were of a cold northern blue, encountered Raoul’s. After a moment of grave regard he lowered them again to the fair head upon his knee.

Raoul hesitated for a while, but presently picked his way over the men who lay sleeping in their cloaks, and came into the light of the lantern under the awning. The blue-eyed man looked up at him, but his expression did not change.

Raoul, who had been charged with the comfort of the hostages, tried in a few halting Saxon words to speak to him. The hostage interrupted with a slight smile, and said in Norman: ‘I can speak your tongue. My mother was a Norman out of Caux. What is it that you want of me?’

‘I am glad,’ Raoul said. ‘I have wished to be able to speak to you, but you see how ill I am learned in your Saxon tongue.’ He looked down at the youngest hostage. ‘The boy is sick, isn’t he? Shall I bring some wine for him? Would he drink it?’

‘It would be kind,’ Edgar replied, with an aloof courtesy that was rather chilling. He bent over the boy, and spoke to him in Saxon. The child – Hakon, son of Swegn, grandson of Godwine – only moaned, and lifted a pallid woebegone face.

‘My lord has not before been upon the sea,’ Edgar said in stiff explanation of Hakon’s tears.

The third hostage, Godwine’s youngest-born, Wlnoth, a boy hardly older than Hakon, woke from an uneasy sleep, and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Edgar said something to him; he looked curiously at Raoul, and smiled with a semi-royal graciousness.

When Raoul came back with the wine Hakon seemed to be exhausted from yet another spasm of sickness. When the drinking-horn was put to his lips he sipped a little between sobs, and raised a pair of tear-drowned eyes
to Raoul’s face. Raoul smiled at him, but he drew further back into Edgar’s hold, as though he were shy, or perhaps hostile. But he seemed better after the wine, and inclined to sleep. Edgar drew the furs more closely round him, and said curtly: ‘My thanks, Norman.’

‘My name is Raoul de Harcourt,’ Raoul said, determined to persevere in his friendly advances. He glanced down at Hakon. ‘The boy is over-young to leave his home. He will be happier in a day or two.’

Edgar made no reply to this. His silence was rather a natural taciturnity than a studied rudeness, but there seemed to be no luring him from it. After a moment Raoul rose up from his knee. ‘Maybe he will sleep now. Call on me for your needs.’

Edgar slightly inclined his head. As Raoul moved away Wlnoth said: ‘Who is he, Edgar? What did he say?’

‘He is the man we marked to ride beside Duke William,’ Edgar replied. ‘He says that he is called Raoul de Harcourt.’

‘I liked him,’ said Wlnoth decidedly. ‘He spoke kindly to Hakon. Hakon is a little fool to cry because he is sick.’

‘He cries because he does not want to go to Normandy,’ Edgar said rather grimly.

‘He is a nithing.’ Wlnoth gave a small sniff. ‘I am very well pleased to go. Duke William has promised me a noble destrier and honourable entertainment. I shall ride in the lists, and shoot deer in the forest of Quévilly, and Duke William will dub me a knight.’ Then, as Edgar made no response, he said tauntingly: ‘I think you like it as ill as Hakon does. Perhaps you would rather have been outlawed with my brother?’

Edgar looked out across the silvered water as though he would pierce the darkness that shrouded the receding coast of England, but he still said nothing. With a hunch of his shoulders Wlnoth turned away from him, and disposed himself to sleep again.

Edgar stayed awake, nursing Hakon’s head on his knee. Wlnoth’s last words had bitten near the bone of the matter. He would far rather be in Ireland now with Earl Harold, than handed over like so much lumber to Duke William of Normandy. When King Edward had told him with his benign smile that he was to go to Normandy he had known all at once that he hated the silly King. He would have been at Harold’s side then only that his father had forbidden it. He thought, now, bitterly, that a short exile with the Earl would have been preferable to his father than this far longer exile which might last for God knew how many dreary years.

The Duke had journeyed to England a few weeks ago, and his arrival had followed hard upon a commotion set up by yet another foreigner. This was no Norman, but Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had created a disturbance at Dover. He had also come to visit King Edward, and upon his departure some men of his had fallen foul of the inhabitants of Dover. This had resulted in a skirmish, and some blood-letting; Count Eustace had journeyed secretly back to London with a complaint for the King’s ear.

A scowl darkened Edgar’s brow as he thought of this. King Edward’s subjects, and especially those of Earl Godwine’s south country, had hoped that he would send the obnoxious Count away with a flea in his ear. Edgar supposed that they should have known their ruler better than to expect him to take sides against the foreigners he loved so dearly. But it still made him clench his hand when he considered how King Edward had promised Eustace redress.

It had made others clench their hands too, notably that strong man Godwine, and his sons, Harold the Earl of Wessex, and Tostig, his noisy third-born.

Now of all men King Edward most hated Earl Godwine. It was Godwine who, when Harold the Harefoot, base-born son of great Cnut, sat the throne, had cozened and then slain Edward’s brother Alfred, upon his ill-starred expedition to England. When Edward at last ascended the throne he found Godwine all-powerful, and had thought himself bound to overlook that dark deed. When Godwine broached the matter to him he had even felt himself obliged to marry the Earl’s daughter Eadgytha, which had been an arrangement not at all to his taste. The marriage had gone forward, but the lady got little good by it. It was asserted that she had never entered the King’s chaste bed, and not all her learning nor her piety could at all console her for the barrenness that was no fault of hers.

Upon the affair of Count Eustace at Dover Godwine had taken up arms in support of the injured citizens, and matters had for a while looked very ugly. The King in a hurry convened his nobles at Gloucester, but when Godwine and his sons appeared in force a few miles from the town and refused to attend the Convention without an army at their backs, Edward grew more than ever uneasy, and summoned a fresh Convention in London. London had a comfortable habit of loyalty. Thither came the nobles of the land, headed by Siward, the great Earl of Northumbria, and Leofric of Mercia, with his calm son Alfgar. These men looked on the power of Godwine’s brood with jealous eyes. With them in support King Edward pronounced sentence of banishment over the heads of Godwine and his two sons, Harold and Tostig. His eldest son, Swegn, had been banished some time before for various turbulent dealings that culminated in his abduction of no less a sacred person than an abbess. He was not felt to be a loss.

At the same time as he triumphantly outlawed Godwine and his sons, Edward bethought himself that here was at last a good opportunity for putting away his Queen. He shut her in the nunnery of Wherwell, possessed himself of her treasure, and was able to feel himself more nearly a monk than he had done for many years. The lady made no complaint; possibly she knew her kindred well enough to be sure that though they fled now, they would very soon return. Earl Godwine set sail with Tostig for Flanders; but Harold, a man of independent habit, departed into Ireland with a few followers.

Having succeeded in outlawing the two men who most troubled him, King Edward thought himself now secure. In a mood of uplifted complacency he cured a poor woman of an ulcerous sore by laying his hands upon her, and was more than ever convinced of his own miraculous powers.

It was in such a mood of mild triumph that William found him. When the Duke of Normandy had been ushered with great ceremony into the King of England’s presence Edward had come down from the High Settle and clasped the Norman in his arms, and embraced him many times. With tears in his eyes he tried to trace a resemblance in this stern, handsome man to the impetuous boy he had parted from ten years before. He wandered into a reminiscent vein, as old men will do, and recalled many incidents of William’s childhood, from his birth onwards. The Duke smiled, gave him at least half of his attention, and kept the other half busy observing all that went on around him.

At a convenient opportunity Edward related his news, not forgetting the healing of the ulcer. He was pathetically gleeful at what he conceived to have been his strong handling of the situation, and he looked with simple pride in himself at one who at the age of twenty-three had also a reputation for handling situations strongly.

Approbation was clearly expected; William gave it, but a smile hovered round his mouth. In contradiction to this there was a look in his eyes that might almost have been a frown. He said slowly: ‘So I am not to meet Harold Godwineson.’

Edward seemed to think this a matter for congratulation.

Being somewhat deep in William’s confidence Raoul had very well understood the meaning of that shadow of a frown. William wanted to see Earl Harold, a warrior as famous in England as himself was famous through Europe. Knowing of that old promise made to William by Edward that if he died childless the Duke should be heir to his throne, Raoul suspected William of a desire to measure the man who might in the future play no small part in his life. The reason of William’s visit to England he could guess, and all these imaginings he thought fairly confirmed when he learned that they were to carry back to Normandy with them two close relatives of Harold, and one thegn of importance who held lands under him. Obviously then Harold nursed pretensions to the Crown of England, and Wlnoth, Hakon, and Edgar were hostages for his good behaviour.

A rather cold feeling stole over Raoul. He peered into the future and could see only clouds veiling William’s destiny. They were thunderous, he thought, shot with swift lightning, like everything else in his life. He wished suddenly that Edward would beget an heir of his own body, for William belonged to Normandy. England was alien and unfriendly, a land of golden-haired dogged men who looked with sullen eyes upon all foreigners, and wore flowing locks and long beards like barbarians; who drank themselves to sleep at night; had little learning; lived in rude houses; and built mean towns. Raoul had heard that they were loose-living. A Norman at the Court of King Edward had told him several scandalous stories. It was said that when a noble got one of his bondwomen with child he would very often sell her into slavery to far Eastern merchants. Raoul only half-believed that, but he had not liked the Saxons, and he had been glad to see the white cliffs of Dover fading in the distance.

He was roused by a hand on his shoulder. Looking round he found that the Duke had come silently out of the cabin. ‘You are wakeful too, beau sire,’ he said.

The Duke nodded. He pulled his mantle close about him to ward off the cold breeze. ‘Very,’ he answered. His arm lay along the bulwarks, clasped by thick bracelets which shone gold in the moonlight. ‘I am for Flanders,’ he said abruptly.

Raoul smiled at that. Two years ago, after the fall of Domfront, they had journeyed into Flanders, to the Court of Count Baldwin the Wise at Brussels, and there had set eyes on the Lady Matilda, my lord Count’s daughter. A strange thing had happened then. As the lady sat beside her father, her pointed face framed in the braids of her pale hair, and her hands clasped like white petals on her gown, she had raised her eyes to the Duke’s face, and observed him in a kind of aloof thoughtfulness. Her eyes
were pools of light, hazel green. The Duke had stared back; Raoul, behind him, had seen how he stiffened, and had watched the slow closing of his hand. In one deep interchange of glances William had made up his mind. Later, in his chamber, he said: ‘I will make that lady Duchess of Normandy.’

FitzOsbern blurted out: ‘Beau sire, she is already wedded to one Gherbod, a Fleming.’

The Duke had thrown him a look of impatience, as at an irrelevancy. ‘She is the woman for me,’ he said crudely.

FitzOsbern, disturbed to see the lion bent on stalking another beast’s prey, tried to interest him in the lady’s sister Judith, who was considered the more beautiful of the two. He dwelt upon the limpid blue of her eyes, and the richer curves of her body until he saw that the Duke was not listening to him. Matilda, a white slim lady, remote and inscrutable, had captured a heart no woman had touched before. The image of her face with its secret eyes and slow-curving smile glimmered day and night before the Duke’s hot vision.