The Conqueror Read online

  The serf had recovered his senses, and lay moaning at Raoul’s feet. The women, kneeling beside him, looked up in some alarm at the young knight. That he was nobly born they knew, and they were at once suspicious of him, finding it hard to believe that he could have intervened for them in a spirit of pure chivalry.

  Raoul pulled his purse from his belt, and let it fall beside the peasant. ‘Here is something to pay for the house,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You need not be afraid: he won’t come back, I promise you.’

  He caught Verceray’s bridle, and vaulted into the peaked saddle, and with no more than a nod to the older woman, rode off in the wake of Gilbert’s cavalcade.

  When he came in sight of the donjon of Harcourt the first stars were winking overhead, and the light had grown dim and grey. The drawbridge was still down, and the gate-keeper was on the watch for him. He rode into the bailey, and leaving Verceray to one of the grooms, went to the main building, and ran quickly up the outside stairway to the door that opened into the great hall.

  As he had expected, Gilbert was there, angrily recounting all that had befallen to his father, and to Eudes, who sat astride one of the benches, and roared with laughter. Raoul slammed the door shut behind him, and unclasped his cloak from his shoulders, tossing it into a corner. His father looked at him frowningly, but more in perplexity than in wrath. ‘Well, here is a fine piece of work!’ he said. ‘What have you to say, boy?’

  ‘This!’ said Raoul, coming into the circle of light thrown by the candles on the table. ‘I have sat at home idle too long, shutting my eyes to what I could not cure.’ He glanced at Gilbert, fuming on the other side of the table, and at Eudes, still chuckling to himself. ‘Year after year such beastliness as I chanced upon to-day happens, and men like Gilbert there, and Eudes, ravage Normandy for their lusts, caring nothing for the weal of this Duchy.’ He laughed shortly to see Eudes staring at him with dropped jaw, and turned his eyes back to his father’s puzzled face. ‘You gave me a sword, father, and I swore that I would put it to good use. By God, I will keep that oath, and wield it for Normandy, and justice! Look!’ He whipped the sword out of the scabbard as he spoke, and holding it flat between his hands, showed them the runes inscribed on the blade. The candle flame quivered in the draught, and the light flickered along the steel.

  Hubert bent to read the runes, but shook his head over the strange writing. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked. ‘I have never known.’

  ‘Brother Clerk will surely know,’ mocked Gilbert.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Raoul said. ‘In our tongue, father, it reads thus: Le bon temps viendra.’

  ‘I do not see much to that,’ said Eudes, disappointed.

  Raoul glanced across at him. ‘But I see a great deal,’ he said. He slammed the sword back into the scabbard. ‘The good time will come when men who conduct themselves like robbers are no longer allowed to go unpunished.’

  Hubert looked in a startled way at Gilbert. ‘God’s feet, is the boy mad? What sort of talk is this, my son? Come, come, you have no need to be in such a heat over a parcel of bondmen! I won’t say that Gilbert is right, but as I understand it you drew steel upon him, and that is a bad business, and gives him some cause to complain of you.’

  ‘As to that,’ Gilbert growled, ‘I am very well able to take care of myself, and I don’t bear malice against a silly stripling, believe me. I’m glad enough to see the whelp has blood in his veins, instead of the water I always thought ran there, but for the future I’ll thank him to keep his hands off my affairs.’

  ‘For the future,’ Raoul said, ‘you will keep your hands off that wench, Gilbert. Let that be understood!’

  ‘Ah, shall I indeed?’ Gilbert said, beginning to bristle again. ‘And do you think I am very like to heed your words, you eft?’

  ‘No,’ replied Raoul, with a sudden smile that was like sunshine after storm, ‘but I leave for Beaumont-le-Roger at daybreak, and mayhap you will heed my lord instead of me.’

  Gilbert’s hand flew to his knife. ‘You tale-bearing cur!’ he stuttered. ‘So you would get me outlawed, would you?’

  Hubert pushed him back. ‘Enough of that!’ he said. ‘Raoul will tell no tales, but if these raids of yours come to Roger de Beaumont’s ears you will get short shrift. There must be an end to this wild work. As for the boy, he is enflamed, and will be the better for his supper.’

  ‘But what is all this talk of justice, and of leaving Harcourt?’ demanded Eudes. ‘What did the boy mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Hubert said. ‘It is not so serious that he need leave his home, and when they have eaten, they will clasp hands and think no more of this day’s doings.’

  ‘With good will,’ said Raoul promptly. ‘But by your leave, father, I shall go to Beaumont-le-Roger to-morrow.’

  ‘To what end?’ asked Hubert. ‘What will you do there, pray?’

  Raoul did not answer for a moment, but stood looking down at the flickering candles. Presently, he raised his eyes to his father’s face, and spoke in a different voice, serious and hesitating. ‘Father, you and my brothers there have always laughed at me for being a dreamer. Perhaps you are right, and I am fit for nothing else, but my dreams are not so ill, I think. For many years I have dreamed of law in this Normandy of ours, law and justice, so that men may no longer burn and slay and pillage at will. I have thought that perhaps some day a man might rise up, with the will and the power to bring order into the Duchy. I would like to fight in his cause.’ He paused, and looked rather shyly at his brothers. ‘Once I hoped it might be our Lord of Beaumont, for he is a just man; and once I thought perhaps it would be Raoul de Gacé, because he was Governor of Normandy. But of course it could not be these. There is only one man who has power enough to curb the barons. It is his service I would enter.’

  ‘This is bookish talk,’ said Eudes, shaking his head. ‘Poor stuff.’

  ‘Holy Cross, what fancies a boy will get into his pate!’ exclaimed Hubert. ‘And who may this fine man be, my son, of your grace?’

  Raoul’s brows lifted. ‘Could it be any other than the Duke himself?’ he said.

  Gilbert burst out laughing. ‘The young bastard! A lad no older than yourself! Foh, here’s a piece of wool-gathering! If he keeps his coronet even it will be a strange thing, I can tell you that.’

  Raoul smiled a little. ‘I saw him just once in my life,’ he said. ‘He rode into Evreux at the head of his knights, with Raoul de Gacé on his right hand. I saw his face for a minute as he passed me, and the thought came to me then that here was the man I had dreamed about. I don’t think that that one will lose – anything.’

  ‘Silly talk!’ Hubert said impatiently. ‘If a base-born lad of nineteen is to work his will on Normandy it will be a more marvellous thing than anything you ever dreamed about. There has been trouble enough for him already, while he was still in ward, but if it’s true he has turned off his guardians now we shall soon see a lively state of affairs in the Duchy.’ He shook his head, and went on grumbling to himself all about the folly of making a by-blow Duke of Normandy, and the child no more than eight years at that; and how he had known from the first, when Duke Robert the Magnificent made up his mind to go on that disastrous pilgrimage, what would come of it. Normandy would not be ruled by a beardless youth, and if Raoul wanted peace – which was every honest man’s desire – he had better look for a new Duke, and one more acceptable to the barons.

  Eudes broke in on this monologue to ask Raoul whether he was fool enough to try and join the Duke’s court at Falaise. Raoul did not answer at once, but when he did he spoke so earnestly that even Gilbert forgot his anger in surprise. ‘Bastard he is,’ he said, ‘bastard and stripling, even as you have said, father, but since the day that I looked into his face I have wanted to follow him, perhaps to great glory, perhaps to death.’ The lashes veiled his eyes suddenly. ‘You don’t understand. Maybe you have
not seen him. He has that look in his face which draws me. A man might put his whole trust in him and not fear to be betrayed.’ He stopped, and seeing how they stared at him, coloured up, and said more humbly: ‘Perhaps I shan’t be allowed to serve him. I thought my lord would be able to tell me.’

  Hubert banged his fist down on the table. ‘If you want to serve a great seigneur, serve Roger de Beaumont!’ he said. ‘God knows I have nothing against young William – no, and I would not join Roger de Toeni against him, as your brother Gilbert was fool enough to do! – but it does not take a sage to know that the Bastard’s days will be short in Normandy. Why, you silly boy, from the day that Duke Robert – God rest his soul! – died on his pilgrimage there has been no peace in Normandy – and all on account of the base-born child who was set up to rule the Duchy! What has happened to his guardians? Alain of Brittany was the first, and a rare end he made of it. You were no more than a babe yourself then, but Alain died, poisoned at Vimoutiers, and the King of France marched into the Argentan, and seized the border stronghold of Tillières which he holds to this day! Was there peace then? Was there peace when Montgoméri slew the Seneschal, Osbern, in the Duke’s own chamber? Was there peace when Thorkill died, and Roger de Toeni fought the ducal troops? Will there ever be peace while a mere lad holds the reins of government? Why, you are raving to think to find glory in the service of that ill-starred boy!’

  ‘Am I so?’ Raoul retorted. ‘Yet will you say that our Duke has made so ill a beginning? You speak of his childhood, but I seem to remember that when Toustain Goz dared to hold the castle of Falaise against him not so long since my lord Duke had a short way with the rebels.’

  ‘Bah, De Gacé took the castle by storm on the Duke’s behalf!’ said Gilbert scornfully. ‘It seems to me that you have filled your head with silly imaginings, and would be the better for a sound trouncing.’

  ‘Try it!’ Raoul challenged him. ‘I am ready for you, I promise you.’

  ‘No more of that!’ Hubert interposed. ‘The boy will soon find his mistake. Let him take service with the Duke, if my lord can so arrange it for him. If I am right and he comes back disappointed – well, there will be a place for him still at my board. If he is right, and the Duke is a man even as his father was before him, why, so much the better for us all! But now you shall clasp hands, and think no more of this quarrel.’

  Hubert’s word was law at Harcourt when he spoke it in just that tone. Across the table Gilbert and Raoul clasped hands with as good a grace as they could muster. Eudes still sat pondering over the talk, with his brows knit and his gaze abstracted, until, presently, having unravelled it to his satisfaction, he looked up, and said portentously: ‘I see what it is. Raoul looked upon the Duke, and finding him comely enough, he has taken it into his head he would like to serve under his gonfanon. Boy follows boy.’

  ‘So be it,’ said Hubert. ‘I see little good, but no harm. Let boy follow boy.’

  Two

  The hall of the Castle of Falaise was rush-strewn, and hung with tapestries; at the dinner-hour trestle-tables were set up, with benches and stools for the Court to sit upon. Only the Duke used a chair with carved arms and a high back; his nobles had each a stool, but the knights and the squires crowded on to benches at the tables that ran down the length of the hall. There was a fire of logs on a pile of wood-ash, and beside this a couple of huge alaunts lay stretched out, blinking at the hot glow. The other dogs roamed among the table-legs at will, waiting for chance scraps of meat, and wrangling over the bones tossed to them by their masters.

  The hall seemed crowded to Raoul, still, after three months, unaccustomed to life at Court. The hangings shut out the draught, and the place was stuffy, with a mingled smell of dogs, smoke, and roast meats on the air. Up at the high-table the Duke sat in his great chair, and between the courses his minstrels played and sang, and Galet the Jester cut capers, and told lewd stories which made the barons about the Duke shout with laughter. The Duke smiled sometimes, and once he frowned a quick menace when Galet cracked a jest at the expense of the new King of England’s chastity. This was Edward, the son of Ethelred, until two years before a guest of Normandy, and the friend of the young Duke. But for the most part the Duke’s attention was all for his haggard, which he had taken from her perch behind his chair on to his wrist. She was a fierce bird, with talons that dug into his hand when he teased her, and bright cruel eyes above her hooked beak.

  ‘A rare hawk that, beau sire,’ Hugh de Gournay said. ‘They tell me she never misses.’

  William smoothed the hawk’s feathers with his finger. ‘Never,’ he answered, without turning his head.

  A flourish of trumpets at the end of the hall heralded the coming of the boar’s head, the same animal that had been stuck by the Duke in the Forest of Gouffers two days before. The head was carried on a great silver chargeour, and brought up to the high-table. One of the stewards began to carve it, and the servers ran with the slices on long spits to offer to the Duke’s guests.

  There was a considerable noise of talk at the far end of the hall, where the lesser people sat. The talk was all of the Duke’s projected visit to the Côtentin. He was going to Valognes to hunt bears in the forests there, and would take only a small retinue with him, since the dwelling to be set aside for his use would hardly accommodate even so meagre a Court as this held at Falaise.

  Some of his barons would go with him, and a bodyguard of knights and men-at-arms under Grimbauld du Plessis, a dark, saturnine man with a lip twisted by a scar received in some past combat. He was of the Duke’s personal retinue, and sat next to Raoul now at the table near the door. Raoul had heard of two lords only who meant to accompany the Duke, and these were Humphrey de Bohun, whose lands lay on the Côtentin border; and Guy, younger son of the House of Burgundy, who sat now at the Duke’s right hand.

  Guy was a little older than William, whose cousin he was, but he had been brought up with him at the palace of Vaudreuil. He was a handsome youth, but too much aware of his charm. Raoul thought his long-lashed eyes womanish, and found that his smile soon cloyed a man’s stomach. He was graceful and indolent, set much store by his own importance, but made it his business to be accessible to all men. Raoul preferred a sterner, less affable prince, whose favour was not so easily won. He looked away from Guy, and allowed his gaze to rest on the Duke’s face, once more pondering this silent young man to whom he had sworn allegiance.

  Although he had been in his service for three months he had scarcely come into contact with the Duke, and knew no more of him than was shown to all the world. It was impossible to guess what thoughts lurked behind William’s eyes. These were set well apart, and were not unlike the eyes of the haggard he fondled, only that they were so dark that they looked sometimes almost black. They held a hidden gleam, as though they watched even when they seemed most abstracted. Their gaze was direct, and often disconcerting. Raoul thought that whatever a man might wish to conceal from the Duke would surely be betrayed under the ordeal of that hard stare.

  Springing between the eyes the Duke’s aquiline nose was at once haughty and masterful. His mouth was clearly defined, its lips well curved, and the expression a trifle sardonic. It could smile with unexpected good humour, but in repose it had a grim look. He kept his lips firmly pressed together, as though he guarded his secrets, but in anger the corners of the mouth were observed to quiver. One saw then what passion the man had in him, curbed nearly always, but apt to leap up under provocation and sweep everything before it: kindness, justice, policy.

  In person William was sturdily built. His father’s height was curiously combined with the stockiness of his mother’s burgher blood. There was a thickness to his body which did not come from Robert the Magnificent, and his hands, although the fingers were long and tapering, were square in the palm: powerful, workman-like hands, Raoul thought.

  Already, and young as he was, he possessed great stren
gth and endurance. Fatigue never seemed to trouble him; he could out-ride the hardiest of his knights, and the shock of his charge in a mock combat had been known to unseat even Hugh de Grantmesnil, one of the finest warriors in Normandy. He was passionately fond of hunting, and hawking, and every form of knightly exercise. Raoul had seen him nock an arrow while he rode at full gallop, and it was said that no one but himself could bend his bow.

  A voice intruded upon Raoul’s wandering attention. He turned his head and found that a man seated opposite to him was inquiring whether he was to be one of the few bound for the Côtentin. He answered diffidently that he believed the Seneschal, FitzOsbern, had spoken his name as one of those to accompany the Duke.

  ‘You will have rare sport there, I dare say,’ said the other, wiping a morsel of cocket-bread round his platter.

  It seemed to Raoul that Grimbauld du Plessis looked up rather sharply at this remark. A cackle of laughter came from behind his chair, and he started round to see the jester cuddling his bauble. ‘Rare sport for the Duke’s knights,’ grinned Galet. He held his bauble to his cheek. ‘Oh, my little one, praise the saints you will be safe in Galet’s girdle!’

  Grimbauld’s face darkened; he shot out a hand to grasp the jester by one thin arm, and jerked him to his knees beside him. ‘Ha, fool, what is that you say?’ he growled.

  Galet postured and whined at him. ‘Do not harm poor Galet! Rare sport, I said; oh, rare sport at Valognes!’ He peered up into Grimbauld’s face, and gave again his silly laugh. ‘Will you hunt a noble hart, cousin, in brave company? Nay, but you will find it a cunning beast.’

  ‘Go, you are a knave!’ Grimbauld struck him aside, and he fell sprawling on the rushes. He twisted his deformed limbs grotesquely, and howled like a dog. One of the pages, hurrying down the hall, tripped over him, and came down with a crash of the silver dish he carried. Galet shook his big head at him, and groaned: ‘Why, here’s a brave company overset by the poor fool!’ He grovelled for the scraps of the boar’s head that were scattered over the floor, and went limping off to the fire at the end of the room.