The Conqueror Read online

  The house seemed dark after the bright sunlight in the market-place. My lord Count halted on the threshold, blinking in the smoke of the fire, and looking about him for Herleva.

  She came to him with a quick step, and at once he let go his cousin’s arm, and gripped her round the waist, lifting her off her feet in his hardy embrace. Some soft lovers’ talk passed between them, too low to be heard by the men who stood behind the Count.

  ‘Lord, you shall see your son,’ Herleva said, and she took Count Robert by the hand, and led him to the cradle in the corner where the babe lay.

  Count Robert, whom men called the Magnificent, seemed to fill the hall with his splendour. His mantle brushed the rushes into little heaps as he passed, and the jewels on his arms glittered as the firelight caught them. Still holding Herleva’s hand he stood beside the cradle and looked down at the child of his begetting. There was some eagerness in his eyes, as he bent over the cradle, and a chain which he wore round his neck slipped forward, and dangled above the child. The babe stretched out clutching hands towards the treasure, and as though wondering whence it came he lifted his eyes to Count Robert’s face, and gave him back stare for stare. It was seen that the two pairs of eyes were much alike, and that the child had the same dogged look in his face that all the Norman Dukes had had as their birthright since the time of Rollo. A kinsman of the Count, young Robert, the son of the Count of Eu, whispered as much to the black-avised man at his elbow. This was William Talvas, Lord of Belesme. Talvas, peering over the Count’s shoulder at the child, muttered something that sounded like a curse, and upon young Robert of Eu looking at him in surprise, he tried to turn it off with a laugh, saying that he read hatred in the child’s eyes, and saw therein the ultimate ruin of his house. This did not seem very likely to young Robert, and he suspected that the Lord of Belesme had drunk too deeply of the barley-mead up at the Castle, for whereas the babe before them was a landless bastard, William Talvas held lands in France and in Normandy, and was accounted an ill man to cross. He looked so blankly that Talvas coloured, and moved away, himself scarcely understanding the meaning of his sudden outburst.

  Count Robert was delighted with his son. ‘Why, this is very bone of my bone!’ he said. He turned his head, and once more addressed the man whose arm he had taken outside. ‘Edward, tell me if I have not bred a noble son!’

  The Saxon Prince moved forward, and looked smilingly down at the babe. In contrast to these Normans he was very fair, with long, blond ringlets, and a pink complexion. His eyes were of northern blue, rather weak, but very amiable. His younger brother, Alfred, who stood now in the doorway, was of the same type, but he had more purpose in his face, and he did not smile so easily. Both bore themselves proudly, as indeed they had a right to do, being the sons of the dead King Ethelred of England. One day, when Cnut, the Danish usurper, was safe under the sod, they meant to go back to England, and then Edward would be a king. Just now, as he looked up at Count Robert, he was an exile, a dependant of the Norman Court.

  ‘You shall swear to love my son well, all of you,’ Count Robert said, with a challenging yet genial look round. ‘He is little, but he will grow, I promise you.’

  Edward touched the child’s cheek with his finger. ‘Indeed, I will love him as mine own,’ he said. ‘He is very like you.’

  Count Robert beckoned up his half-brother, and made him take the child’s hand. ‘You shall honour your nephew, William,’ he said laughingly. ‘See how he grabs at your finger! He will be a mighty fellow.’

  ‘It is always so with him,’ Herleva said softly. ‘He grasps as though he would never let go.’ She would have liked to have told the Count of her dream, but in the presence of these nobles she did not care to speak of it.

  ‘A fierce boy,’ William said, jesting. ‘We shall have to look to ourselves when he is grown.’

  Count Robert pulled his great sword from its sheath. ‘A warrior, if he is a true son of mine,’ he said, and laid the sword down beside the child.

  The flash of a jewel on the hilt caught the babe’s eye, and he left stretching his hands to the necklace round Count Robert’s neck, and at once grasped the sword by the cross hilt. Duxia, who was hovering in the background, quite overcome by such a noble assembly in her house, could scarcely restrain an exclamation of horror at the sight of the gleaming steel within the child’s reach. But Herleva looked on smiling.

  The babe had one of the cross-pieces of the hilt fast in his hands, whereat there was much laughter from the watching barons.

  ‘Said I not so?’ Count Robert demanded. ‘He will be a warrior, by the Face!’

  ‘Has he been received into the Church?’ Edward asked gently.

  He had been baptized a month ago, Herleva said, in the Church of Holy Trinity.

  ‘What name is he given?’ inquired Robert of Eu.

  ‘He is called William, lord,’ Herleva answered, crossing her hands on her breast.

  ‘William the Warrior!’ laughed the Count.

  ‘William the King,’ Herleva whispered.

  ‘William the Bastard!’ muttered the Lord of Belesme beneath his breath.

  Herleva slipped her hand in my lord Count’s. They stood looking fondly at their son, William, who was called Warrior, King, and Bastard, and the child crowed with delight at his new plaything, and twined his tiny fingers about the heavy sword-hilt.

  Part I

  (1047–1048)

  THE BEARDLESS YOUTH

  ‘Thus from my infancy I have been embarrassed, but by God’s mercy I have freed myself honourably.’

  Speech of William the Conqueror

  One

  Hubert de Harcourt gave his youngest son a sword upon the day that he was nineteen. ‘Though I don’t know what you will do with it,’ he said in a grumbling voice.

  Raoul had worn a sword for several years, but not such an one as this, with runes on the blade, inscribed there by some forgotten Dane, and a hilt wrought with gold. He twined his fingers round the cross-pieces, and answered slowly: – ‘By God’s grace, I will put it to good use.’

  His father and his half-brothers, Gilbert, and Eudes, laughed at that, for although they were fond of Raoul they thought poorly of his fighting power, and were sure that he would end his days in a cloister.

  The first use he found for the sword was to draw it upon Gilbert, and that not a month later.

  It fell out very simply. Gilbert, always turbulent, and, since the days of his outlawry after Roger de Toeni’s rebellion, more than ever a malcontent, had picked a quarrel with a neighbour not long before, and between these two a rather one-sided warfare raged. Raoul was too well-accustomed to such happenings to pay much heed. Raids and pillages were everyday occurrences in Normandy, and barons and vavassours, lacking a strong hand over them, behaved very much as the old Norse fighting blood directed them. If Geoffrey of Briosne chose to come in force and ravage Harcourt lands, Raoul would put on his battle-harness to defend them, but Harcourt owed fealty to the Lord of Beaumont, a haut seigneur, and Geoffrey, who held his land of Guy, princeling of Burgundy, was disinclined to risk an engagement.

  It was hardly a month after his nineteenth birthday that Raoul rode out one afternoon on his horse Verceray to the small market-town not many leagues distant from Harcourt. His errand was to buy new spurs for himself, and it pleased him on his return to take the shorter road which led him across a corner of Geoffrey de Briosne’s land. Some thought of the enmity between Geoffrey’s house and his flitted across his mind, but it was growing late in the afternoon, and since he hardly expected to meet any of Geoffrey’s men-at-arms at this hour, he thought he might well trust to his new sword and Verceray’s swift hooves to guard him from any sudden danger. He was unattended, and wore nothing over his woollen tunic but a cloak to keep him warm in the chill spring evening, so that it would probably have gone hardly with