The Conqueror Read online

  Raoul gave a slight start, and glanced fleetingly towards him. ‘Yes.’ He drew a long breath. ‘It did burn quickly.’

  ‘But what then?’ Hubert asked, nudging him. ‘Were they all roasted alive, or did they fight?’

  ‘Some – those who were too drunk to move – were burned. Most escaped from the town. Robert’s men guarded the streets, but the French fought like men possessed. But they had no time to rally to their leaders: we cut them down as they tried to break out. Waleran of Ponthieu was slain: I saw him go down; Count Guy himself was taken, and Montdidier. Eudes escaped; I think Renault de Clermont too: I’m not sure. Mortemer was only ashes by noon, with charred bodies, and the reek of burned flesh –’ He got up suddenly. ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk of it!’ he cried angrily.

  ‘Holy Face, one would think you didn’t want the French to be slain,’ said Hubert, gaping at him.

  ‘Of course I wanted it!’ Raoul flung over his shoulder. ‘I would have fired the town with my own hands! But they did fight like heroes, and I suppose I need not enjoy hearing the screams of men roasted to death, need I?’

  ‘Go to bed, Raoul,’ the Duke said. ‘We all know that you fight like a wood-fiend during the battle, and turn sick as soon as it is done.’

  ‘God’s death, I am not sick!’ Raoul said sharply. ‘We have scattered the French, and I don’t care a stiver for aught else.’ On his way to the opening of the tent he paused, and said over his shoulder: ‘I slew two myself, very nastily. Those who dealt me this.’ He touched his wounded arm, and his rueful grin crept up into his eyes.

  ‘Slit their windpipes?’ inquired Hubert hopefully.

  Raoul looked surprised. ‘No, ripped up the guts of one, and rode Blanchflower over the other. Gilbert, I’m so tired I can’t stand without reeling like a drunk Frenchman. Give me your arm, lest I be shamed before the whole camp.’ He went out, leaning on Gilbert’s shoulder, and not until they were in their own small tent, and he had stretched himself out on his pallet did he speak again. ‘It’s a pity Edgar could not have been there,’ he remarked sleepily. ‘He would have liked it much better than I did.’

  ‘I expect you liked it well enough while it was doing,’ remarked Gilbert matter-of-factly.

  Raoul’s eyes had closed, but he opened them again, and looked up at Gilbert in a doubtful considering way. ‘Yes, I did – part of it. But some of it was horrible. Many of the Frenchmen had no time to put on their hauberks, and they had lost their weapons, so they were just hacked to pieces, and some thrust into the flames to perish. You wouldn’t have liked that. You wouldn’t have liked to hear the women screaming either. And there was one little child ran naked out of a house … Oh well! It is war. But I wish the child had not been one of our people.’

  ‘If the French had conquered there would have been more than one Norman brat slain,’ Gilbert pointed out.

  ‘Of course. I’m glad we have avenged ourselves. The French sacked and burned all they could lay their hands to on their march to Mortemer.’ His eyelids drooped wearily. ‘One hates them. Yet when you see them die like that you can’t help being a little sorry.’ He opened his eyes again, and they were twinkling. ‘I expect my brothers were right, and I ought to be in a cloister after all,’ he remarked, and, turning on his side, was asleep almost at once.

  He was the only man to sleep any more that night. As the dawn stole above the horizon the French were awakened in their camp by a horn winding eerily through the stillness. The guards grasped their gavelocs more tightly, listening and wondering. The horn sounded again, and a third time. It was close at hand, but the morning mists shrouded the trumpeter from view. Heads were raised; men scrambled up asking what was the matter, whether the Normans were upon them? and the Count of Nevers, disturbed by the sudden commotion, came out of his tent with a mantle thrown over his thin tunic.

  ‘A horn, lord,’ one of the guards told him. ‘Someone is without our lines. Ah! ah! what is that?’

  Fulk of Angoulême came up with his rolling gait, and his hose all unbound. ‘What’s this?’ he snapped, but was checked by Nevers’s upflung hand.

  Once more the sennet sounded, ending its call on a triumphant flourish.

  ‘Whoever it is must be upon that hillock,’ muttered Nevers, peering to where they could perceive the shoulder of a slight hill rearing up through the mist.

  Across the intervening space a shrill voice flung its message. ‘My name is Ralph de Toeni,’ it cried. ‘I bring ye tidings!’

  A murmur rose amongst the Frenchmen; Nevers strode forward, straining his eyes to pierce the dim light. The wind was blowing the mist in wreaths across the hill, and through it they could just distinguish the figure of a mounted man silhouetted in the faint light. Clearly his voice floated to their ears. ‘Hasten with your carts and carriages to Mortemer, and carry off your dead!’ he called. ‘The French have braved our chivalry; let them deplore the venture! Eudes the King’s brother is fled; Guy of Ponthieu is captive; the rest are slain or prisoned or dispersed. It is the Duke of Normandy who tells this to the King of France!’ A mocking laugh ended his speech; something fluttered on the end of his lance: it might have been a gonfanon. He wheeled his horse about, and disappeared into the mist, and the sound of the charger’s hooves was quickly muffled in the fog.

  Several of the French soldiers rushed forward in the vain hope of catching the herald; their figures became shadowy in the mist, and one among them cried out suddenly in a voice of alarm.

  Nevers leaped after them. ‘What is it?’ he shouted, dreading he scarcely knew what hidden peril.

  The man who had cried out was pale with fright. ‘A hare jumped up almost under my feet, lord, and ran across the path. Ill-omen! Ill-omen!’ He crossed himself, shivering, and his companions drew close together in awed silence.

  The sun was riding high when Raoul emerged from his tent, and there seemed to be a bustle of preparation on hand. He yawned, and went off to the Duke’s tent to hear what fresh tidings had been brought. He found William with his chief barons, and from the dust on his clothes it was evident that one of them, Hugh de Montfort, had just come in with news.

  ‘What now?’ asked Raoul of Grantmesnil, who was standing near the entrance.

  ‘The King is in retreat already,’ Grantmesnil whispered back. ‘Ralph de Toeni took the tidings to him, and De Montfort says the French have broken their camp, and are marching south.’

  ‘Brave King!’ chuckled Raoul. He made his way through the group about William in time to hear Tesson of Cingueliz say eagerly: ‘Let us fall upon his rear, beau sire! We will make a speedy end, I promise you.’

  ‘Let him go; he has enough to trouble him,’ the Duke replied. Then, as disappointed faces were turned towards him, he said: ‘What, am I to set all Christendom against me by striking down my suzerain? We will attend him to the border, Tesson, and cut off his stragglers, but there shall be no blows exchanged between Henry and me.’ He saw Raoul, and picked up a packet from the table. ‘Raoul, are you well enough to ride for me once more?’

  ‘Be sure, seigneur.’

  There was a laugh in the Duke’s eyes. He looked significantly at Raoul, and said: ‘Then bear these to Rouen, and tell the Duchess Matilda that not one tithe of land, not one border-fortress have I let the King filch from Robert’s heritage!’

  Three

  Past Conches, the hold of Ralph de Toeni, hastened King Henry by forced marches, pressing south in dreadful dismay. When a sweat-stained scout had staggered into his presence with the confirmation of the Norman herald’s tidings, he had fallen down in a kind of seizure, with a thin line of froth on his lips, but he recovered as his physician laboured over him, and in a voice that made the princes round him fear for his reason he whispered a terrible malediction on Eudes who had failed him, and on William who had triumphed over him. He lay silent then while the princes murmured amongst