The Conqueror Read online

  Raoul drew the leather curtain over the doorway. ‘I will go to kennel with a light heart,’ he promised.

  ‘Yea, but when?’ William’s gaze flickered to his face, and back again to the lantern. ‘I am growing out of patience. Spine of God, I have been patient too long! I will have either yea or nay. We go to Flanders.’

  ‘As you will, seigneur, but you have not learned yet to take nay for an answer,’ grinned Raoul.

  ‘I have not before had traffic with women,’ William retorted. ‘What do I know? What is the mind of that lovely sleek dame? What mean women when they smile sidelong yet speak fair cold words? Subtle work! Deep, secret! She is a citadel so fortified I lay siege in vain. Shall I wait on while the citadel is strengthened against me? I am too good a general.’ He started up from the bed, and began to pace up and down in a fret. ‘She is a still flame, remote, guarded, and desirable, Holy Sepulchre!’

  ‘A still flame,’ repeated Raoul. He looked up. ‘And you, that other flame? Not still, I think.’

  ‘Nay, I burn. White witch! Willow-witch, so slender I might break her between my hands! It will come to that yet.’

  ‘Jesu!’ Raoul was half-startled, half-amused. ‘Is that how you will use your love?’

  ‘Love!’ William caught at the word, dwelled on it, spurned it. ‘She is my love and my hate,’ he said sombrely. ‘I tell you I do not know if I love her. All I know is that she is mine. Mine, by the Rood, to hold in my arms if I will, locking my mouth to hers, or to break – yea, to hurt, to crush if that should be my will. She lures me, rebuffs me, daring my manhood. God on the Cross, but my bed has been cold to me these many days!’

  Raoul watched his restless striding to and fro. ‘What news from Lanfranc, seigneur?’

  ‘None! He writes to me of patience, and then patience. Heart of a man, I will have her in despite of them all!’

  ‘Beau sire, I think the Archbishop will never yield. You may send Lanfranc to Rome, but whom has Mauger sent to whisper in the Pope’s other ear?’

  ‘Let Mauger look to himself!’ the Duke said angrily. ‘I think I should do well to rid myself of that lecherous fox! Does he want my throne for his brother of Arques, or for Michael, his own by-blow?’

  ‘Who knows? Beware him, beau sire! I have heard already a murmur of excommunication. How then would you stand?’

  ‘By the Christ, as I stand now!’ the Duke said, his anger flaring higher. ‘If Mauger thinks to find my hand gentle on him for the sake of our kinship he will learn to know me better yet. God knows I will be gentle while I may, but if he will have me for an enemy, why, so be it!’ He unclasped his mantle, and cast it swirling from him. ‘My trust is in Lanfranc for that part of the business.’ The furious look was dispersed by a sudden smile that showed the boy still in him. ‘For the rest, my Raoul, I will trust in myself, and go to Flanders.’

  ‘Well said,’ Raoul agreed. ‘I will have a little wager with FitzOsbern on the outcome.’

  The Duke lay down on the bed again, propping his head on his hand. ‘You will certainly win, Raoul,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘As to that, beau sire, are you so sure which side I take?’ Raoul murmured.

  The Duke sat up with a jerk. ‘Now by my father’s head, if you are to doubt me – !’ he began, but broke off as he saw Raoul laughing at him. He flung himself down again on the skins. ‘Wager as you will: he who lays against me loses,’ he said, and shut his eyes for sleep. There was just enough defiance in his voice to tell one who knew him well that for once he was not certain of success.

  Two

  Of the three hostages Edgar was the most bewildered by all he saw in Rouen, and gave the least sign of it. Wlnoth, with characteristic easiness, exclaimed at every novelty and quickly accustomed himself to the new life; Hakon blinked at a strange world but was too young to speculate upon it. Only Edgar remained an exile, lonely in the midst of a shifting mass of foreigners.

  For long afterwards he was to remember how Rouen had first appeared to him, a lovely city against whose grey walls the Norman Court shone in splendour. In the Duke’s Castle, no homely building of wood, but a vast stone palace, were high vaulted halls, and many arches ornamented with chevrons carved in relief. Edgar’s home in Wessex was built all of wood; inside the walls were covered with crude paintings and curtains to hide the rough surface, so that the house seemed friendly and warm when one stepped into it. In the Duke’s palace were also hangings of woven stuff, but they were different from the Saxon wahrift. They were made of stiff tapestry, cunningly embroidered, but though they might be rich with gold thread, or glowing with red and purple silks, they were never bright with a medley of sharp colours such as a Saxon loved. They were used to cover archways or to line bed-chambers, but where the master-masons had worked mouldings on the walls no hangings hid these from sight. Edgar would walk down long echoing galleries, and think he felt the chill of the stone in his flesh.

  At table it was long before he ceased to look for the boiled meats his palate craved. He could not stay his stomach with the dishes Normans liked. He wanted to see haunches of English oxen roasted on the spits, and instead the servers displayed cranes farced with queer pungent spices; porpoises dressed with frumenty; rose-mortrews, an unsatisfying mess of powdered chicken and rose-leaves; jellies dyed with columbine flowers; unwholesome subtleties such as dolphins in foyle, marchpane garnished with figures of angels, and white leaches embellished with hawthorn leaves and red brambleberries. Even the boar’s head, which was borne in with trumpeters going before, was spiced till he could barely recognize its true flavour. He ate of peacock, a royal dish, and esteemed it less than the stubble-goose; he watched the Duke’s carvers lift swans, sauce capons, unlace conies, dismember herons, and wished that instead of serving such rare food as this they were breaking good venison, or slicing plain boiled sheep’s flesh.

  The meats were served on silver dishes; the salt-cellars were gilt within and without, standing sometimes a foot high, their covers encrusted with jewels; fine surnappes of linen out of Ypres covered the tables; wine was not poured into horns, but into gold cups, or glass vessels tinted amber and blue and red, with spidery threads laid on, or gouts blown in their smooth sides. Pages of the Diaper scurried hither and yon; seneschals, stewards, ushers, chamberlains saw to the comfort of the Court. There were chairs to sit upon, elaborately carved with griffins’ and eagles’ heads; foot-stools embroidered with lions or flowers; beds with straw mattresses, soft reindeer-skins for chalons, and curtains on rings that slid along rods. Even the palace windows were glazed with crystal or beryl. Edgar knew that in King Edward’s palace at Westminster there were such windows, and in great Earls’ houses too, but at Marwell shutters kept out too strong a wind, or panels of horn set in wooden calmes.

  In Normandy men wore long tunics of rich cloth; each one had his squire and his pages to attend him, so that the palace teemed with all these people, and servants quarrelled and fought, and fell over one another in their numbers. Splendour, wealth: Edgar’s heart cried out for the ruder life in his English home. These Normans lavished money on the ornamenting of their houses and their persons and their monasteries, but in England men set little store by stately buildings or costly plate so long as platters were piled high and drinking-horns brimmed over. From scorn at their extravagance he passed to wonder at their curious austerity. They were at once more violent and more temperate than the Saxons. A Saxon thought no ill of eating to satiation and drinking to stupor; a Norman who showed himself glutton or drunkard was regarded with contempt by his fellows. In England men were slow to anger, but in Normandy swords flashed out at a word, and enmity flared high upon small provocation. Where their hatreds and their ambitions were concerned the Normans were barbarous in their ruthlessness as no Saxon would have stooped to be, but whereas in England it was becoming less and less the fashion to love learning and give honour to the Church, in Normandy