The Last Conquest (20 page)

Gilbert pulled himself together and struggled to concentrate.

The talk started quietly enough, with the question of what Harold might do when he reached London. Most of those present accepted Fitzosbern’s opinion that Harold would press on at
once.

‘He must attack our bridgehead,’ he said. ‘Just as Edwin and Morcar had to attack Hardrada. Delay can only favour us. The longer he waits in London for the midland levies to
arrive, the better equipped we become.’

‘Will he not have a problem with fatigue?’ said Montgomery.

‘Fatigue? Exhaustion, I should say,’ said Giffard. ‘Yorkshire and back in less than twenty days and a battle intervening.’

‘You forget two things,’ said Geoffrey de Montbrai. ‘One is the magic of Harold’s personality. The other is the excitement of the time. The spirit of these men is moved,
by victory and by concern for their native land.’

‘Are you expert on these – er – inspired Saxons?’ asked Giffard.

Montgomery smiled. His friend was beginning to recover.

‘No,’ said Geoffrey evenly. ‘But I am a bishop. I know something of matters concerning the spirit. I tell you, if men are sufficiently moved, they can perform miracles, and I
say these Saxons could be sufficiently moved. In normal times no army could get here so fast from Yorkshire, especially after what they have been through; but these are not normal times, and Harold
is no normal general. I say they can do it.’

‘At any rate we must be prepared for it,’ said Fitzosbern.

‘Suppose he picks up shire levies from Surrey and Sussex on the way?’ said Beaumont, anxious to show off his geography.

‘That is a chance we shall have to take,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘We can not commit our main force towards London without precise information as to his numbers and his position,
simply in the faint hope of cutting off a few hundred fyrdmen from Surrey or Kent. It would expose our base camp and put all our fortifications at risk. Everything we have done since landing would
go for nothing. Harold is no fool. At all times we must remember that. And my lord of Coutances has reminded us that Harold is a commander with great gifts of leadership. We all saw that in
Normandy and Brittany two years ago.’

‘Saints and angels, I should say so!’ said Montgomery, looking at Giffard. ‘He had
our
men eating out of his hand, never mind his own. Do you remember?’

The Duke brought them sharply to order. The infantry commanders were all for letting Harold come right up to the defences of the castle they had nearly completed. The chief engineer, Ranulf of
Dreux, was brought in. He talked at great length, in his gloomy way, about fields of fire and tensions and stresses and killing ground. Much of it went over Gilbert’s head. When Baldwin put
in his piece about supplies and reserves and siege ration planning, full of facts and figures, he found his jaw aching in the effort to suppress a yawn.

Fulk Bloodeye added his weight to the argument by suggesting that they should extend the deliberate destruction to a wider area.

‘Waste in a wider circle,’ he said. ‘Harold will be provoked and will attack us in haste. He will have to travel over ravaged land to get here and will fight us on an empty
stomach.’

Robert of Mortain was shocked out of his customary silence.

‘How much of this land do you wish to destroy, by God? We shall have none left to be worth occupying.’

‘I notice,’ added Sir Walter Giffard tartly, ‘that our captain of mercenaries sees himself once again as bandit and arsonist rather than as front-line soldier.’

‘I notice too,’ returned Fulk, ‘that one of our . . . captains of cavalry . . . has not been anxious to commit his levy of knights to the business of meeting Harold in open
battle before the castle.’

Giffard flared, and stood up.

‘I should have expected such ignorance from a paid gang-master of foot soldiers. Any other member of this council could tell you that it would be insane to try and deploy cavalry in
formation over such uneven ground bristling with tree stumps.’

‘So it will be the old story,’ sneered Fulk. ‘Send in the infantry to break their strength and break our heads. Then send in the cavalry to carve them up and carve out their
own glory.’

‘Enough!’ The Duke banged the handle of a dagger on the table, making the candlesticks jump.

Fulk shrugged again and resumed his careless lounging, Giffard glowered, until Montgomery tugged his sleeve.

‘Walter!’

Giffard allowed himself to be pulled down.

Thereafter the council tried self-consciously to argue in reasonable tones. If the cavalry could not be deployed before the castle, then suitable open ground had to be found elsewhere.

Ralph was questioned. So were several other scouts, who had been waiting patiently by the fire outside. All were agreed that the wide stretches of forest in the area did not make the task easy.
The more they discussed the advantages of various fields of battle at a greater distance, the more the cautious ones reminded them of the dangers of moving too far from the base camp and
castle.

Then Gilbert’s old master, Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances, introduced a new idea.

‘We must not forget,’ he said, ‘in all our talk of ground and of tactics, that we are dealing with a very special man.’

Fitzosbern grinned. ‘Some more talk of the spirit, Geoffrey?’

Geoffrey smiled tolerantly. ‘Spirit moves mountains faster even than your engineers, Fitz. Listen. If we are to win, we must not only outfight this man; we must out-think him.’

‘Is he so clever?’ said Odo. ‘Are we not just a little bemused by his supposed talents?’

‘I am well aware,’ replied Geoffrey, ‘that my lord of Bayeux, in his customary oblique way, means “you” when he says “we”. And I will answer the
ill-directed shaft.’

Odo glared, but said nothing.

Geoffrey continued. ‘If being bemused by his talents means having a sound appreciation of our adversary’s strength, then I am content to be called bemused. And I am sure our lord the
Duke, on those terms, is equally happy to be so called. It is one of the principles of good generalship, in which art I am willing to give my lord of Bayeux the benefit of my not inconsiderable
experience.’

‘Get to the point, Coutances,’ said the Duke. ‘And do you, brother, stay dumb.’

Odo opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again.

Geoffrey resumed. ‘It is simple to find a man’s weaknesses and use them. The trouble is that Harold does not have many. We must therefore turn not only his weaknesses against him but
his strengths.’

‘There you go again, Geoffrey,’ said Montgomery. ‘Talking in circles.’

‘Be silent,’ said the Duke sharply.

‘Consider,’ said Geoffrey. ‘One thing we all noticed about this man when he was in Normandy was his charm. If I recall, Roger,’ he said to Montgomery with a sly smile,
‘you were as much – er – affected by this as anyone.’

Montgomery made a face. ‘What if I was? As I said at the time, he—’

‘“He was quite impossible,”’ said Geoffrey. ‘Yes. I know. You may recall that Harold relied greatly on this quality of – I repeat – his charm. If he
could lead our Normans across the Couesnon under a rain of arrows, what can he not do with his own men, and in his own land?’

‘So?’ demanded Giffard.

Geoffrey, like Fitzosbern, refused to be rushed. ‘Harold will demand prodigies from his men, and he will get them. Give him further to march, and he will demand more prodigies still. It
never crosses the mind of a charming man that his charm will not work. A man who has worked one miracle will be tempted to work more. The greatest temptation placed before Our Lord was not lust, or
avarice, but power. Most men, faced with the choice of creating victory by mere preparation or victory by miracle, will choose the miracle.’

‘Geoffrey – please,’ said Montgomery. ‘What does all this mean in simple language?’

Geoffrey allowed another slight smile to appear. ‘It means this, my friend: we must allow Harold to push his men to their very limits, so that by the time they arrive they are on the verge
of exhaustion. It also means that Harold will scorn caution, and not wait for his extra levies from the central shires. It means that their elation of spirit will hide from them the fact that they
are at the end of their strength. It means that Harold will be so anxious to take us by surprise that it will not occur to him that we might take him by surprise.’

‘How do you propose to do that by staying put?’ asked Giffard.

‘I did not say stay put for ever,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Timing is all important. We wait. When he is near and hastening to attack us, we move at speed to attack him, on a field of
our own choosing. There is our true killing ground – where we can deploy cavalry, not in front of our castle ramparts.’

Walter Giffard threw a scalding glance of triumph in Fulk’s direction.

‘Our entire cavalry strategy,’ said Geoffrey, ‘has depended for months on our ability to deploy large numbers of men – safely – on open ground. It is for this that
I have been working, on his Grace’s express instructions.’

‘The cavalry are the shock troops,’ said the Duke.

‘You mean the élite,’ muttered Fulk.

William heard him.

‘I mean what I say. The cavalry are the very stomach of our plan. You and the archers are the limbs. You knew this when you agreed to serve.’

‘On the assumption, my lord, that the cavalry, in their pursuit of the greater share of glory, take the greater share of risk.’

‘Try riding with us, and find out,’ said Giffard.

Fitzosbern, sensing trouble again, interposed.

‘I have no doubt that each will do his part, and each will be eager to exploit his share of the profits.’

Before either Fulk or Giffard could reply, Fitzosbern swept on. ‘I agree with most of what my lord of Coutances says.’

Geoffrey nodded in appreciation.

‘However,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘it assumes that Harold’s line of approach will rendezvous very conveniently with the battlefield we have chosen.’

Odo, glad at last to have a chance of criticising Geoffrey, said, ‘We can hardly leave guides all over Sussex, saying, “This way to the battlefield.”’

It was Montgomery’s turn to head off Geoffrey from a dispute with Odo.

‘Will he not come by the simple and obvious way? The old Roman road?’

‘The fact that it is simple and obvious may be the very reason why he does not choose it,’ remarked Odo.

‘We must not be trapped by our own cleverness,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘or we shall waste our time guessing answers to problems we have created for ourselves.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Geoffrey, ‘I think it would be wise to choose more than one possible field, Fitz, and so do you.’

‘We can not go all over Sussex,’ said Odo, ‘marking out dozens of them just in case.’ He sniggered.

Geoffrey kept his temper.

‘We do not have to. This is where our captain of mercenaries put his finger on a possible solution, albeit without intending to.’

Fulk raised his thick eyebrows elaborately, but continued to lounge.

‘We begin to restrict our wasting activities,’ said Geoffrey. ‘We do not destroy farms merely to infuriate Harold. We also leave farms intact in order to lead him on. Any
general marches where the tracks are easiest and the land is richest. So we create a pattern. We leave avenues of untouched land leading to the pieces of ground we have chosen. Harold will be a
fool to himself if he does not follow one of them. He must make the journey easy for his men and he must provide food for them. When we know which route he is on, we prepare. When we know he is
near, we pounce.’

Gilbert had been listening with his mouth open. He pulled himself together when he and Ralph were questioned about possible avenues of approach and likely fields of engagement.

Ralph mentioned Telham Hill briefly, and let Gilbert take the questioning. Gilbert tried to sound knowledgeable about gradients and fields of vision and length of front. He wished he could
remember all the airy thoughts that had gone through his mind when he had first considered Telham and had imagined himself as the Duke.

The council did not seem impressed, and Gilbert looked disappointed. Ralph knew well that the Duke and Fitzosbern were already acquainted with it. He decided to give Gilbert a second chance.

‘There is another hill, sir. Just beyond. My partner here was the first to find it.’

Gilbert felt a glow of pride. Partner!

‘Well?’ said Fitzosbern.

Gilbert glanced at Ralph, who nodded for him to go on.

Gilbert described it as best he could, even to the detail of the old apple tree. The slopes, the field of vision, the woods on the far side, the sandy, marshy brook on the near side – all
were included. He did not mention the ravine on the north side of the summit.

‘Telham Hill we know,’ said Odo. ‘What do they call this one?’

‘Sir?’

‘This hill,’ said Odo. ‘It has a name.’

Gilbert began to flounder.

Odo pressed him. ‘You interrogated the local peasantry?’

Gilbert licked his lips. ‘Um – Sandlake, my lord,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. Sandlake.’

‘Sandlake? What is that supposed to mean?’

Odo was making Gilbert feel awkward, and knew it.

‘You remember, my lord, I – I said, at the bottom of the hill was a – a sandy—’

‘Stream, you said. Yes, I remember. You said nothing about a lake.’

Gilbert sweated. ‘Perhaps it was the Saxon accent, sir. He may have said “Sanlic” or “Senlac” – something like that – and I have translated it in
error.’ He grasped suddenly at an inspiration. ‘We could call it “Grey Appletree Hill”.’ He subsided into silence, feeling a total idiot.

Odo opened his mouth to make a sarcastic remark, but the Duke cut in.

‘A name is a name. “Senlac Hill” is the simplest. It will do as well as any other. Now – you both need food and rest. All of you will be busy tomorrow.’

‘Sir?’

‘His Grace means you are dismissed,’ said Odo. ‘Go, young Master Senlac.’

Everyone laughed – partly as a way of relieving the tension. What hurt Gilbert most was that even Ralph smiled.