The Conqueror (13 page)

She shook her head. O frailty of poor women! Setting her teeth she built up her barriers, planning the besieger’s downfall. There was food there for consideration; her chin sank to its resting-place on her bent knees again; the moonlight showed an elf-woman weaving her spells, motionless and rapt.

Hatred burned in her. Wolf of Normandy! – desperate, marauding, marking his prey. Mary Mother of God, give aid to bring him fawning to her feet!

His strong face glimmered in her mind’s eye; the blood coursed through her veins, and on her arm the bruise throbbed warningly. She pressed her hands to her side as though she would still her heart’s beating. O dread Fighting Duke, leave that yet unassailed!

So she prayed, wordlessly, but slept to dream herself a bride again.

Three

The cat and mouse work went on; the man grew bolder, the woman more incomprehensible to herself and him. What the Wise Count made of it few could guess. He preserved a bland mien, considered the Duke out of the corners of his eyes, and talked of everything in the world but marriage. As for the lady, she folded her hands in her lap and bore all with the secret smile that cloaked her mystery. The Duke might have been warned by the glimmer in her eyes, but what did he know of women? Nothing, he swore: it was too sure.

Sweeping his hand down from her neck over the swell of her breasts to her waist, he cried hotly: ‘What, is this to be denied? Fie, you mistake the matter, lady: you are for a man, by my head!’ He flung out his arms; his smile held passion that swayed her against her will. She escaped from him, but left him sure of victory. Her barriers were crumbling under a more rigorous attack than she had expected. A lesser lady at this stage would have gone tumbling into his arms; Count Baldwin’s daughter had more beside her heart to guide her. If the Duke made a breach in her walls this served to throw fuel on the fire of her pride. She was outraged: backed in the last corner she would fight the more dangerously.

Judith, wrinkling her brow, murmured: ‘This is a brand that may burn your fingers, coney.’

‘I will bring him low.’ There was no more to be got from Matilda. She would bring him low. What, he was presumptuous? He should learn what gulf lay between the noble and the base-born.

Of this the Duke had no notion. Others may have guessed; one who knew with what whip the lady lashed up her enmity was Raoul, and he was indebted for his knowledge to the Lady Judith, who dropped lazy words in his ear, and chuckled to see him change colour.

‘Madame,’ he said earnestly, ‘the Lady Matilda would do very well to beware how she touches on that matter. I speak with good advice.’

‘Well! I suppose he cannot eat her,’ Judith said comfortably. She saw that he was troubled, and considered it time to inform her sister how the hint had been received.

Raoul’s words savoured enough of warning to whet Matilda’s appetite for more. She presently became aware of him, and at a morning’s hawking contrived that her palfrey should amble alongside big Verceray. She was sufficiently adroit to lead the talk into her chosen channels; after very little preamble she said with a faint smile: ‘Surely his friends, messire, would do well to advise the Duke to abandon his new quarry.’

‘Lady, the Duke is not advised,’ Raoul told her bluntly.

She sent him an appraising look up under her lashes. ‘He is besotted.’ She paused. ‘If I wed again the groom must be of birth as noble as mine own. I speak plainly because I perceive you to be very much in the Duke’s confidence,’ she added, between haughtiness and the impulse of a girl panting to come at her goal.

He shook his head. Meeting her eyes he read something of her mind in them. He felt pity for her all at once, suspecting that she was torn between two passions, both great in her. ‘Lady, here is counsel,’ he said. ‘With respect I would say, do not use that weapon against my master. Your womanhood, your high estate would not then protect you from his anger.’

She did not leave smiling; one would have thought the warning had almost set her purring.

‘He is my liege-lord, and dear to me,’ Raoul went on, ‘but I have come to know his temper. Lady, I must say God help you if you unleash the devil in Normandy.’

He meant well, but blundered. Such talk made Matilda lick her lips. To unleash the devil in a man was an ambition very likely to appeal to her. Had he a devil? Eh, what woman could resist the temptation to see for herself?

At the end of a week the Duke withdrew to his own Frontier. From Eu he dispatched an embassage to Lille with formal proposals for Matilda’s hand. The question of affinity went by the wind; not anything his councillors could say had the power to make him delay further. He chose Raoul for his envoy and would not by any means heed his gentle dissuasions. In desperation, Raoul said: ‘Beau sire, you will have Nay for an answer, and that is what you have not yet learned to take.’

‘Yea or nay, an answer I will have,’ William answered. ‘Heart of God, this siege has lasted over-long already! Go demand the keys of that citadel in my name!’

The embassage set forth upon the following day, and came in due course to Lille, where no doubt it was expected. The noble escort was received with all courtesy, and the envoys led in due season to Count Baldwin’s audience-chamber.

Montgoméri accompanied Raoul; both went richly dressed, and as solemn as befitted the occasion.

The audience-chamber was filled by the Flemish nobles and councillors. At one end of the room the Count sat enthroned on a dais, with his lady beside him, and Matilda upon a stool at his left hand.

Raoul and Montgoméri came up the hall attended by their squires. They were accorded a suave welcome, but the Lady Matilda raised her meek eyelids for a moment and sent a straight look at Raoul that boded little good.

He came to his business at once, and recited the Duke’s proposals to the silent Court.

He ceased, and a murmur rose, and died again. The Count stroked the miniver that edged his mantle, and spoke conventional phrases. He was sensible of the honour done his daughter, he said, but this was a question not to be decided without deliberation and good advice.

‘The Duke my master, lord Count, believes you to have been aware of his mind these many days,’ Raoul said with a disarming smile.

The Count glanced towards his daughter. It was plain he was not at ease. He touched again on the problem of affinity, and seemed as though he would be glad to shelter behind it. Acting on his instructions Raoul pushed that barrier down.

‘The Duke my master has very reasonable hopes, lord Count, that this hindrance may be overcome. It must be known to your puissance that the Prior of Bec is even now in Rome, and sends us comfortable tidings.’

Count Baldwin thereupon embarked upon a speech of some length. The gist of it was that he would be pleased to ally his house with Normandy, but that his daughter, no longer a maiden to be disposed of at will, might feel some repugnance towards a second marriage, and must be allowed to give her own answer.

Perhaps only Raoul had an inkling of what she would say. Certainly the Count had none, nor his Countess, obviously taken by surprise.

The Lady Matilda rose slowly to her feet, and made a reverence to her father. Speaking in a cool, very audible voice, and with her hands clasped demurely together, she said, picking her words: ‘My liege and father, I thank you for your care of me. If it be your will that I should wed again be sure that I know my duty towards you, and will show myself obedient to your commands as befits my honour and yours.’ She paused. Watching her close, Raoul saw the smile lift the corners of her mouth, and was prepared for the worst. Veiling her eyes she said: ‘Yet let me beseech you, beau sire, that you will bestow my hand upon one whose birth can match with mine, and not, for the sake of our honour, permit the blood of a daughter of Flanders to mingle with that of one who is basely descended from a race of burghers.’ She ended as coolly as she had begun, and making a second reverence went back to her stool and sat down, looking at her hands.

A stricken silence hung heavily over the company. There were startled looks, and men wondered how the Norman envoys would stomach this insult.

Montgoméri flushed, and took a step forward. ‘Rood of God, is this to be our answer?’ he demanded.

Raoul intervened, addressing himself to Count Baldwin. ‘Lord Count, I dare not take such an answer back to my master,’ he said gravely. Surveying the Count’s shocked face he came to the conclusion that the discourteous reply had been prepared without his knowledge. Curbing Montgoméri with a frown, he said: ‘My lord, I await Flanders’s reply to my master’s proposals.’

Count Baldwin availed himself of the loophole gratefully. He rose to his feet, and made the best of a bad business. ‘Messires,’ he said, ‘Flanders is sensible of the honour done her, and if she is obliged to decline it, it is with regret, believe me. We should be glad indeed to bestow our daughter in marriage on the Duke of Normandy, were it not for the repugnance the Lady Matilda feels towards a second marriage.’ So he began, and went on at length, smoothing away the insult. The envoys withdrew, one thoughtful, the other smouldering with indignation. What Count Baldwin said to his daughter is not known, but it is certain he sent for Raoul de Harcourt late that evening and was closeted with him alone for a full hour.

‘By the Mass, Messire Raoul, this is a very ill business,’ the Count said, greatly perturbed.

‘Pray God it may not be worse mended,’ agreed Raoul dryly.

This seemed poor consolation to a harassed man. ‘I call you to witness, messire, those discomfortable words were none of mine.’

‘Count,’ said Raoul smiling, ‘for my part I judge it best to forget what women say.’

The Count was relieved, but Raoul added significantly: ‘There were others present beside myself, lord.’

‘Spine of God!’ said the Count irritably, ‘there was never trouble yet but a woman made it!’

His daughter would no doubt have been flattered. Coming away from the Count’s room presently Raoul stumbled against Matilda in the gallery. He put out his hand quickly to steady himself and her, and felt the throb of her pulse beating against his fingers. In the lantern-light her face was no more than a pale blurred oval, but he could see the green flame of her eyes. He held her wrist still, and she suffered him. She spoke in a whisper, staring up at him. ‘Carry my message safe, messire, I charge you.’

‘God aid, I shall do my best to forget it,’ answered Raoul. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Were you mad, lady, to speak such words? Is this to deal nobly? Heart of a man, you have cut a weary road for yourself.’

Low laughter broke from her, lacking mirth. ‘Let him know how I think of him. I am not for him.’

Raoul let her go. He did not understand her, but it seemed to him that something more than hatred inspired her. ‘God send your laughter change not to tears,’ he said.

He would have passed on but she slipped in front of him. ‘Bear my message,’ she repeated.

‘Lady, I wish you too well. What folly rides you? What do you look for?’

She clasped her hands round her neck. ‘Maybe I am too much a woman to know.’ Her hands fell away; she stretched them out to Raoul. ‘Tell him I am guarded yet!’ There was a note of challenge in her voice; she looked anxiously into his face.

‘Lady, are you so sure?’

The arrow was shot at random, but seemed to find a mark. She drew back, and he heard the hiss of her breath indrawn between her teeth. He went to his own quarters, wondering at her, and afraid of her.

In a cooler mood Montgoméri had sense enough to see that what they had heard was not by any means fit for the Duke’s ears. He agreed to keep silence, but harped continually on the insult all the way back to Eu. The first face Raoul saw there was that of Mabille, Montgoméri’s wife, and he could have sworn aloud from vexation. Young as she was, this lady, daughter and heiress of Talvas, the exiled Lord of Belesme, had already made a name for herself as a spinner of mischief. Raoul was very sure that she would get what news she wanted out of Montgoméri.

The Duke received his envoys with a certain formality. Raoul gave him Baldwin’s smooth answer, and watching keenly he could detect no change in William’s face. The Duke said nothing for a moment or two, but presently, raising his eyes, he asked: ‘What said the Lady Matilda?’

Roger de Montgoméri showed himself ill at ease, and began to fidget. Raoul answered serenely: ‘She bade me tell you, beau sire, that she was guarded yet.’

William gave a brief laugh. ‘Ha, brave words!’ He frowned down at his clenched hands. ‘So!’ he said thoughtfully. ‘So!’ He looked up, and dismissed the envoys with a few curt words. Raoul went off with Gilbert d’Aufay on his arm; Roger, still embarrassed, drifted out to see his lady.

It was impossible to discover what Mabille had to gain by the part she played. Those who hated her, and there were many, swore that a natural fiend possessed her. However this may have been, she certainly got all his news out of Montgoméri, and lost no time in turning it to wanton account.

She sat on one side of the Duke at supper. There was some light talk passed between them; as the meal drew to a close, and wine had mellowed the company, Mabille, looking at him with a sparkle in her eyes, complimented the Duke upon his good spirits.

‘Why not, lady?’ he retorted.

Mabille had a voice that was like honey, sweet and insinuating. She said softly, leaning towards him: ‘Beau sire, what is she like, this cruel fair who is so hard to please?’

William showed signs of a gathering frown, but answered pleasantly enough. Mabille’s hand slid along the arm of his chair; her eyes lifted slowly to his face; she whispered: ‘Dear seigneur, you bear her insults right princely.’ Her fingers brushed his sleeve: her lips were tremulous, her vision clouded; you would have sworn the woman to be all melting tenderness. ‘Ah, but how dared she?’ She reared up her head, as though in quick indignation, but then drooped it again. ‘Pardon, seigneur! it was my loyalty spoke.’

Across the table Montgoméri passed his tongue between his dry lips. He cast a glance towards Raoul, but Raoul was out of earshot.

William set down his cup with a snap. ‘Death in life, madame, what is this?’ he demanded.