The Conqueror Read online

  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