The Conqueror Read online

  Dinner followed the conference, and my lord’s lady came down from the bower with her daughters, and with Gisela, Gilbert de Harcourt’s dame, who was of kin to Roger de Beaumont, and had cajoled Gilbert into bringing her along with him this day. Gisela sat beside Raoul at the table. She was perhaps the only person present who did not want to talk about the coming war. While Gilbert de Harcourt argued pugnaciously with Edgar over the proper ordering of the campaign, and old Geoffrey de Bernay explained to his neighbours how Duke Richard Sans-Peur had managed his wars, she asked Raoul questions about my lord Robert, the infant heir to the Duchy. She had two sons herself, and was childing again in a few months, so that when Raoul admitted that my lord Robert had been troubled lately by coughs she was able at once to tell him of a remedy which the Duchess Matilda (being a foreigner) might not know.

  ‘You must pluck a sprig of mistletoe grown over a thornbush,’ she said earnestly. ‘This being soaked in the milk of a mare and given to my lord Robert to drink it, he will cough no more.’

  Raoul made a polite response. Gisela began to eat of a Lombardy leach, flourished and served with a sober-sauce, but she did not eat much of it because her quick eye had observed all manner of delicate dishes on the board, and she meant to taste of as many as she was able. She glanced round her, and wondered aloud whether the Lady Adeline would instruct her in the way to make appulmoy, and whether it were well to put a dash of cubebs in a blank desire. One of the scullions had just brought in a dish of curlews. Gisela finished up what was left on her platter in a hurry. The curlews were served with chaldron, and Gisela was occupied for some time in trying to make up her mind whether this was flavoured with canelle, or powder-douce. Raoul could not help her, but she presently decided that there must be a dash of each in it, and perhaps a few grains of Paradise, as well. She became aware of Raoul’s silence suddenly, and saw him staring down at the dregs of his hippocras in the abstracted way that had always tantalized her. He seemed to be withdrawn, guarding his thoughts. Gisela looked wistfully at him, and as though he were conscious of her regard he raised his eyes and smiled at her. Gisela had married Gilbert, who was a proper man with mighty thews and the strength of a bull, but Raoul’s smile tore at her heart. Ashamed of such thoughts, she turned her face away, aware of his remoteness. It gave her a tiny heartache, but she knew that she was really very happy with Gilbert, and understood him far better than she could ever understand Raoul. She stifled a sigh, and began to talk to Eudes, who sucked his greasy fingers and grunted occasionally in response.

  Hubert leaned across the table to ask Raoul whether he meant to rest the night at Harcourt. ‘And your friends?’ he added. Then, as Raoul nodded, he said: ‘I like that Saxon. I wish you had his shoulders.’

  ‘I had rather have my own head,’ said Raoul with something of a grin. He glanced down the table to where Edgar and Gilbert de Harcourt were still arguing, with morsels of bread and the lees of their wine to illustrate their theories of war. ‘He and Gilbert are quite sure they could order this campaign better than the Duke.’

  ‘To my mind,’ said Hubert, ‘they are talking plain sense. Now you shall tell me, Raoul, since you are so clever, what the Duke’s orders mean? What is in his mind? What does he think to do?’

  ‘Oh, to drive the French out,’ said Raoul.

  ‘A strange way to do that!’

  ‘I don’t know. William is no fool, father.’

  Edgar, hearing these words, set down his wine-cup, and said loudly: ‘No, but if a man cares for his country’s weal he doesn’t allow invaders to lay it waste.’

  ‘Edgar, you are three parts drunk,’ said Raoul. ‘If you had your way we should blunder into the King’s arms in one desperate encounter, and the end would be that Henry would lay the whole Duchy waste instead of one small corner of it.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said Edgar with the doggedness of the slightly intoxicated. ‘William’s plan may be crafty, but what has a warrior to do with craft?’

  A murmur of approbation greeted these words; under cover of it Roger de Beaumont said softly across the table: ‘Do you remember, Raoul, how at Meulan I said to you: “I fear him, our Duke”?’

  ‘Yea, well do I remember. And King Henry feared him. Didn’t we see it? And he will fear him to the day of his death – with good reason.’

  Roger said dryly: ‘Hum! As I see it, my friend, the King is stronger than William to-day.’

  Raoul stretched out his hand towards a dish of petypanel, and began to nibble a piece of it reflectively. ‘William knows he will win,’ he said.

  ‘A young man’s faith,’ Roger replied. ‘But I am no longer in my grass-time. I tell you I mislike this business. Too many stand against us.’

  ‘Yes, but we have William,’ Raoul said. ‘Don’t you see? All of us – yea, and King Henry too – think that the only way of winning is through might. But William thinks there is more to warfare than that. It is not to be our strength pitted against the French host, but William’s skill against Henry’s.’ He drank from his cup, and set it down again. ‘And Henry has no skill at all, from what I can see,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘What folly are you talking?’ demanded Hubert, who had been listening with a puzzled frown on his face. ‘In warfare it is might that wins, I can tell you that.’

  Raoul shook his head obstinately. ‘No. Not this time. You will see. William’s cunning will win the war, not the might of France, nor our chivalry.’

  ‘Well, we will hope you may be right, Raoul,’ said Roger. ‘But I should like to hear what Hugh de Gournay has to say to it all.’

  Raoul looked at him sideways. ‘He has declared for the Duke, seigneur,’ he said warily.

  ‘Yea, yea, he would do so, as I do, and all true men must. Yet I wish we had an older head to direct us.’

  An hour later Raoul left Beaumont-le-Roger, riding with his father and his brothers north to Harcourt. Edgar trotted ahead with Hubert, and as Gilbert d’Aufay chose to amble along beside Dame Gisela’s palfrey, Raoul was left to ride between his two brothers. They went in silence for some way, while Eudes thought of the dinner he had eaten, and Gilbert surreptitiously scrutinized Raoul’s profile. Gilbert found it hard to remember that he had been used to scoff at Raoul. Of course Raoul still lacked the girth a fighting-man should have, and he still looked half the time as though he were quite detached from his surroundings, but he had somehow acquired a self-possession that impressed Gilbert, and there was no denying that in spite of his squeamish ways he did astonishing things, like going to France in the guise of a pedlar, or rebuking rich seigneurs as though he were one himself. More than ever he was a stranger to Gilbert. One could not guess what he was thinking about, and he had a queer disarming smile that made his eyes dance when no one else could see anything to smile at. Pondering it in his slow way Gilbert remembered that he had never known what went on behind Raoul’s tranquillity. Only in the old days he had never considered it worth while to try to find out.

  On the other side of Raoul Eudes spoke presently. Eudes did not wonder about Raoul; Eudes never wondered about anything. ‘You’ve got a fine new destrier there,’ he remarked. ‘But I don’t know that I like a grey horse.’

  Raoul patted Blanchflower’s neck. ‘Why not?’ he inquired.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Eudes said vaguely. ‘I would sooner bestride a bay like your old Verceray. You had better ride Verceray into battle – if there is a battle,’ he added with a gloomy look.

  ‘God’s pity, of course there must be a battle!’ said Gilbert scornfully. ‘What notion have you taken into your head now?’

  ‘All this talk of cunning and retreating,’ said Eudes. ‘I heard what they were saying while I was eating the fat-puddings. Young Raoul talked of winning the war by craft, and by the way they spoke of it you would think we were going to drive the French out without striking a blow.’ He gave a loud dispara