The Conqueror (20 page)

‘What are you doing?’ Matilda asked, half curious, half disdainful.

‘Reading the future, goody, to see what heritage shall be my lord Robert’s.’ He bent over the bones, and suddenly swept them together. ‘Eh, it is too great for me to read, too great for him to hold!’ he cried out, and jumped up, and began to twist his body into weird contortions, while William went on reading his despatches, and Matilda stared down at the bones in uneasiness and alarm.

Two

To the sound of tuckets and of drums, under a medley of banners, argent and or, gules and azure, King Henry brake the Norman border. He came with the flower of his chivalry, haut princes at his side, in his ears the sound of trumpets, the jingle of horse-trappings, the creak and groan of his carts and wagons.

From every corner of his dominions his vassals flocked to his standard. Thibaut the great Count of Champagne was here; Aquitaine’s young Duke; Nevers’s prince; while here fluttered the emblem of Auvergne, and there the wind spread Angoulême’s banner out against the pale spring sky. Horse and foot, lords, knights, esquires, and men-at-arms streamed over the border, wasting as they passed, with Rouen for their goal, and a Duke’s abasement for their guerdon.

The sword was out against William from Vermandois to the Pyrenees. For seven years his fellow-vassals had watched Normandy weld his Duchy to one loyal whole, wrest from Martel towns in Maine, repulse his suzerain with loss, thrusting out his Frontiers little by little. Those like Geoffrey the Count of Gascony and William of Auvergne who had sent eulogies and gifts to Normandy four years ago, to-day sent armed men. Admiration had given place to fear of William’s growing power and bitter jealousy of his success. If the Hammer of Anjou did not care to venture his person in the field there were others to fill his place: puissant Counts from far and wide, at the head of their levies, nobly mounted, splendidly beseen, flaunting their colours in Normandy’s teeth.

‘Ha, sire! where cowers the Bastard now?’ cried Renault de Nevers. ‘Heu! heu! bay the Wolf!’

Henry’s face was pinched and sallow under the shade of his helmet. ‘No sign of William yet?’ he muttered, and began to pluck at his beard. ‘Strange, by our Lady, strange! Would he not meet me on the border? And he a proud man!’

‘He has fallen back upon Rouen, sire,’ the Count of Saint-Pol said confidently. ‘How should he face our host? If Prince Eudes makes speed through Caux to Rouen we shall crush the Bastard there between our two forces.’

But there was no Norman army at Rouen, had the King but known. East of the Seine old Hugh de Gournay hovered among the hills of Drimcourt watching the fires to the south that told of Prince Eudes’ slow advance; and by the river Andelle Count Robert of Eu’s spies brought him tidings day by day, while his men of Tallou chafed and swore at his waiting policy, and kept their swords ground to a fine edge. Prince Eudes pressed on by the fords of Epte, his army in high fettle, loaded with plunder, leaving in its wake a torn and bleeding trail.

West of the Seine, as it were pacing his army step by step, Duke William harried the King’s advance. The French force was drunk already with easy success. What women they found they took, the men who had not fled from their homes were put to the sword, or worse. Small wonder that William’s barons were straining to break free from the curb-rein he held so tightly. A serf was of little account until a foreign tyrant slew him; but when that happened Norman swords flashed out, and the seigneurs made ready to protect their own to the last drop of their blood. If they chose they might oppress their villeins, but no stranger had the right to lay a finger upon slave or freeman of Normandy. The French King had dared. They would have fallen upon him then and there; even the Viscount of Côtentin, who swore he would follow his Duke into hell’s mouth, thought him mad to hold his force in check.

‘Seigneur,’ he said desperately, ‘men will call you craven!’

‘Will they so, Néel?’ the Duke said grimly. ‘But they shall not call me Rash Fool, by Death!’

‘We could scatter them, beau sire. They are hampered by plunder, their men unruly, their leaders careless already, so sure they are of victory!’

‘Chef de Faucon, what men think you we should lose in that encounter?’ asked William.

Néel gave him a blank look. ‘
Qi de ceo?
What’s that to the purpose!’ he said. ‘Men must needs fall in battle. What would any loss matter if we did but drive the King out?’

‘Fine counsel!’ William said roughly. ‘Look to the future, Viscount! What rede will you give me when the King comes with a fresh force to vanquish me, and half my strength lies buried on these plains?’ Then, as Saint-Sauveur was ruefully silent, he said: ‘Trust me, Néel: I will drive out the King, but it is he who shall lose men in that encounter, not I.’

They looked one another in the eyes. Néel raised his hand to his helmet. ‘Beau sire, whether you are right or wrong I am your man,’ he said.

Raoul Tesson of Cingueliz, riding in from an expedition to cut off French foraging parties, echoed these words later, but thought it time to strike. ‘Look you, seigneur, my men have tasted blood,’ he said, pulling off his gauntlet. ‘Can I hold them off the King’s throat, think you?’

The Duke knew his man. ‘Are they too strong for you, Tesson?’ he asked softly.

‘By God’s death they are not!’ swore the Lord of Cingueliz.

‘Nor are you too strong for me,’ said William. ‘I say you shall still hold off from Henry’s throat.’

The Lord of Cingueliz burst out into a laugh. ‘I am answered.’ He turned as Raoul came into the tent, and nodded to him. ‘Well, Messire Raoul, you see me back again. There are some three score men will not rejoin the King this night,’ he said with a swagger.

‘So I heard,’ Raoul grinned. ‘Do not eat up all Henry’s host before I get back to see you do it.’

‘Ha, are you for the east, my friend? Do you need an escort?’

Raoul shook his head. Tesson said: ‘Well, God keep you. See you bring us good tidings from Robert of Eu.’ He went out, and the tent flap fell into place behind him.

Raoul rode out of the camp at dusk, heading north and east towards the Seine. It was not the first time he had ridden between the Duke and the commanders of the eastern division, but his father, who saw him go, wished that some other man had been chosen. There was no knowing what might befall a solitary rider crossing this ravaged territory, and he could not help feeling that Raoul was just the person to blunder into the hands of the enemy. He watched Raoul until he was quite out of sight, and turned slowly away at last to find Gilbert d’Aufay at his elbow. Hubert would not have liked it to be known that he was worried about his son, so he squared his shoulders, and said in a jovial way that he hoped Raoul would not fall a-dreaming before he reached the Count of Eu’s camp.

Gilbert fell into step beside him, and said with a smile playing round his mouth: ‘What a queer creature Raoul is! He says he hates fighting, but when someone has to ride on an errand like this it is always he who wants to be the man to go. Nothing would do but that he must be the one who went to get news out of France, earlier in the year. Really, I did not think he would come safe out of that, and as for Edgar, who never can believe that anyone who lacks his own inches is good for anything, he was mourning him as dead from the day he set forth.’

‘Oh,’ said Hubert, strutting a little, ‘Raoul may have some foolish notions, but he has a head on his shoulders for all that, and I daresay he knows how to take care of himself when there’s the need.’

‘None better,’ replied Gilbert. ‘Yet one never would think it, for to hear him talk you would imagine he had never had a sword in his hand, nor done anything out of the common way in all his life.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps that’s why one likes him so much,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t boast, like the rest of us, and for all he says he hates bloodshed he can fight as well as any other man if he has to. I’ve seen him slit a man’s windpipe up as coolly as you please,’ he added, and gave a little laugh.

‘Did he so?’ said Hubert, pleased. ‘And when was that, Messire Gilbert?’

‘Oh, at St Aubin last year, when we routed the French. He and I were creeping up to see how the King’s force lay, and stumbled on a sentry in the dark. Raoul knifed him before he could let so much as a gurgle.’

Hubert was so much cheered by this tale that he went off quite happily to his own quarters, and was able to envisage Raoul deftly cutting the throats of all those who might seek to oppose him on his present journey.

Meanwhile the French still made their way ponderously northward. Grain their foraging parties could not find, and those who went after the cattle in the woods rarely came back again, but houses and monasteries and churches could yield a store of treasure, so that no fear of being cut off by the Norman soldiery could deter parties of Frenchmen from sallying out in search of such prizes.

The Norman army still kept a reasonable distance between itself and the invaders, but small detachments ranged the countryside, and harried the King rather after the manner of a swarm of gnats.

Henry’s councillors thought that they had nothing to fear from the Duke, and were not much disturbed by his troublesome raids. They were sure that their approach was driving him back, and that they had only to trap him between themselves and Prince Eudes to force him at last into an engagement. But Henry, remembering the gleam in those hawk-eyes, was wary, keeping strict watch at nights, expecting each day to have to beat off one of the sudden attacks for which the Duke was famous.

From his brother at the head of the Belgic host he had but desultory news. More than one French scout set out from Eudes’ camp never to be heard of again, and more than one French despatch found its way into Duke William’s hands.

In the Norman camp there were three anxious hearts, but King Henry knew nothing of this, and would not have thought it a matter of much importance had he been told that one Norman knight had not been heard of for five days. But when Duke William opened his eyes
to each fresh dawn the first thing he said to the men about him was always: ‘Is Raoul returned?’ When they answered: ‘Not yet, beau sire,’ he made no sign, but folded his stern lips rather closer, and plunged into the day’s business without apparently thinking any more about his favourite’s plight.

But Raoul’s father and Raoul’s friend could not so easily conceal their anxiety. Hubert went about with a long face, and resentment in his breast, and Gilbert was rather silent, and lingered about the outposts of the camp at night. Once, when Hubert went to the Duke upon some business or other, William said as the old man was leaving the tent: ‘I have sent scouts to Drimcourt.’

Hubert said: ‘What should that avail my son, seigneur?’

William did not seem to notice the surliness in Hubert’s voice. ‘I want to know what has befallen,’ he replied.

Hubert grunted. His resentful eyes met William’s across the tent; he thought he could read some shadow of anxiety behind the Duke’s cold self-possession, and remembered that William was also Raoul’s friend. He looked away, and cleared his throat, saying gruffly: ‘I daresay he is safe enough.’

‘God send it,’ said the Duke. ‘He is dear to me: I have not many friends.’

‘I am very sure he is safe, seigneur,’ said Hubert stoutly. ‘I shall not lose any sleep on Raoul’s account, for the boy is probably lying snug enough in Count Robert’s camp all the time we are thinking him slain.’

But in spite of these brave words Hubert did lose quite a lot of sleep on Raoul’s account. He would not join some of his friends that night, who meant to while away a few hours over the dice, but went away to his small tent, and lay down on the pallet with his mantle spread over him, listening to the sounds outside. They were ordinary enough: a wolf howled in the forest to the west; men sleeping under the stars moved with a cough or a grunt, or spoke one to another in low drowsy voices; the camp-fires crackled; and from time to time the horses tethered to stakes driven into the ground, stamped, and fidgeted with their headstalls. There were no other noises than these to attract Hubert’s attention until suddenly he thought that he could hear the pounding of hooves galloping towards the camp. He raised himself on his elbow, listening; the sound became unmistakable, and he scrambled up from his pallet just as a challenge rang out sharply from one of the outposts.

Hubert flung his mantle round him inside out in his agitation, and set off at a jog-trot in the direction of the sounds he had heard. He was overtaken by Gilbert d’Aufay, and young Ralph de Toeni, who had been playing chess together by the light of a horn lantern. ‘Did you hear a challenge?’ Gilbert asked. ‘Is it the French, or Raoul?’

William’s big tent loomed up before them. Feeling rather foolish, Hubert said: ‘I daresay it is neither. There is no sense in running to question the sentries.’ He looked severely at Gilbert, and Gilbert said tactfully: ‘No, but we may as well wait here to see who it was.’

The flap of William’s tent swung back; the Duke stood in the opening. ‘Who was that rider?’ he said sharply.

‘I don’t know, beau sire,’ Gilbert began, ‘but we thought –’

‘Go bring me word who came in,’ the Duke said. He saw Hubert standing in the moonlight, and beckoned to him with an imperious crook of his finger. He noticed that his mantle was all inside out, and said kindly: ‘If it is Raoul he will come straight to my tent. Wait with me, and we shall soon know.’

Hubert followed him into the tent, where the Count of Mortain was seated, and began to explain that he had not jumped up from his pallet to see if it were Raoul at all, but had chanced to be near the Duke’s quarters when the challenge sounded. He did not get very far with this explanation, for in a few minutes footsteps were heard approaching, someone dragged the tent flap aside, and Raoul lurched in, clinging with one hand to the side of the tent, and blinking at the light of the lanterns that swung from the centre pole. His face was grey with fatigue, his eyes heavy and bloodshot, and his left arm, which hung limply at his side, was rudely bound round with a stained scarf.