The Conqueror Read online

  Edgar regarded him with the flicker of a smile. ‘Go your ways then,’ he said. ‘You know what it shall signify, Raoul. I have no more to say.’

  Having wrung permission from Edgar to address Elfrida, Raoul wasted no more time. He found the lady shy, but she did not rebuff him. When he walked across a room towards her she always had a smile for him, and if his horse ranged alongside her palfrey at a morning’s hawking she would contrive to ride a little apart with him. It was not long before he spoke of love to her again: this time she did not run away. She knew that she ought not to listen to a man who had not her father’s sanction; she knew just what a modest maid would say and do, and yet she swayed ever so slightly towards him. After that who could blame him for catching her in his arms?

  Thus they plighted their troth. Holding her hands in his, Raoul said: ‘I might send letters into England, to your father, yet I like that way very ill. A cold answer should I have, think you?’

  ‘I fear it,’ she answered. ‘It is true my mother was a Norman, but my father does not in general like Normans since the King has favoured those in England so much. If Edgar would speak for us perhaps he might look more kindly on you.’

  ‘Edgar will stand my friend. I will come into England as soon as may be after your return.’ A sudden fear seized him. ‘Elfrida, there is no pledge binding you?’

  She shook her head, flushing, but began at once to explain how this had come about; for to be over twenty, unwed, un-cloistered, and not even betrothed, was a circumstance so unusual that it cast a slur upon a maid. She looked into Raoul’s smiling eyes, and said with quaint dignity: ‘Indeed, it is no fault of mine, messire.’

  The smile grew; he kissed each of her fingers separately till she reproved him, saying that at any moment someone might come along the gallery and observe them. At that he let go her hand, and put his arm round her waist instead. She did not say anything at all to that; maybe since they sat upon a bench she found the support of an arm welcome.

  ‘Tell me how it was not your fault, my heart,’ Raoul said in her ear.

  Seriously, with awe in her blue eyes, she told him how she had been betrothed when still a child to Oswine the son of Hundbert the Strong, master of eighty hides of land in the Earldom of Wessex.

  ‘Did you like him?’ Raoul interrupted.

  She had hardly known him. She had never seen him alone, she said, for in England it was not customary to be private with a man until one was bound to him in wedlock. He had been a proper youth but he had died in a dreadful manner, just as she became of marriageable age. He had a quarrel with one Eric Jarlessen, a strange fierce man who came from Danelagh to live in Wessex. Elfrida did not know why they quarrelled, but she thought Oswine had done the Dane some injury. Then, one Shrove-tide, Oswine was smitten with a wasting fever, which some said was jaundice, since his skin took on a yellow hue; but though he swallowed nine lice fasting for nine days, and though a live frog caught on St John’s Eve was placed on his wrist to draw out the fever, it was all of no avail. The fever did not abate; the man wasted away day by day until at length he died, stricken in the very prime of life.

  ‘Then,’ Elfrida went on, slipping her hand unconsciously into Raoul’s, ‘certain men made accusations against Eric, among them being Hundbert, who was Oswine’s father. It was said that Eric had been outlawed from the Danelagh because he had practised abominations there, and was thought to deal in witchcraft.’ She made the sign of the Cross quickly, shivering. ‘These men declared that they knew him to have used stacung against Oswine – you do not know that word? It is when a man makes an image of his enemy, and sticks a thorn into it, praying for his death.’

  ‘Black magic!’ Raoul said. ‘Faugh! What was done then to Eric?’

  ‘At the shire-gemot he was hailed before the shire-reeve, and denying the charge, demanded trial. So a holy priest held in his hand two billets of wood, one with the Sacred Cross drawn on it, and the other quite plain; and Eric, having prayed God to declare thus the truth, boldly drew forth one billet.’ She shrank closer to Raoul. ‘And upon the piece of wood which he pulled from the priest’s hold was nothing, so that all men knew that God had declared him to be a perjured man, and that he had slain Oswine by stacung, which is witchcraft.’

  ‘And then?’ Raoul said.

  ‘Some said that he should pay were-geld – that is the blood-wite that is placed on a man’s head if he be slain. Oswine was a King’s thegn, as my father is, so that the price of his slaying was as much as twelve hundred shillings, which perhaps Eric could not have paid. But the shire-reeve judged that the crime was too black to be wiped out with silver, and he ordered that Eric should be put to death by stoning. And this was done at Hocktide. I did not see it, but I was told. And that is why I am still unbetrothed.’

  Both her hands were folded on Raoul’s breast; his cheek brushed hers. ‘Are you sorry now, little bird?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she confessed. ‘Not now.’

  Five

  The weeks slid into months, and still Earl Harold was honourably entertained at Rouen. Every sort of diversion was offered for his amusement, and no one spoke of his departure. Nor did he attempt to escape, though some among his followers thought he had opportunities enough. Alfric, when the Earl rode out to visit Wlnoth at Roumare, devised a plan for slipping away unseen from Wlnoth’s lodge, and riding for the Frontier. Harold, aware that his every movement was watched, and being reasonably sure that all the ports and Frontier posts had been warned long since, would lend no ear to the project. He learned through Edgar, who had received letters out of England, that King Edward was in good health, and the country quiet. He could afford to wait, and if his polite captivity irked him he was not the man to show it. So good was the mask he wore that even Alfric believed him to have grown careless, and wrung his hands over it in great bitterness. But the Earl was not careless. He told Edgar that if it had done no more for him this stay in Normandy had taught him to know Duke William and his subjects as he had never hoped to know them. By the end of six months there were few men of standing whom Earl Harold had not met. He saw such war-like barons as the Viscounts of Côtentin and Avranches, and said: ‘Good fighters, these, but no more.’ He made it his business to be on friendly terms with the Duke’s advisers, FitzOsbern, Giffard, the Lord of Beaumont, and others such. ‘Leal men, those,’ he said, ‘but o’erruled in all things by their master.’ He observed the lesser barons, men like the standard-bearer, Ralph de Toeni, and the Lords of Cahagnes, Montfiquet, and L’Aigle. ‘Turbulent men, needing a strong hand over them.’ So he dismissed them. But when the Prior of Herluin at Bec, who was one Lanfranc, came on a visit to Rouen, Earl Harold spoke of him in very different terms. ‘That man is more dangerous than all,’ he said softly.

  Edgar was surprised. ‘I had thought you would like the Prior, lord,’ he said.

  Then the Earl said something that seemed incomprehensible to his thegn. ‘I would he were my councillor,’ he said.

  Edgar frowned. ‘He is very wise, I know. Men say it was he arranged the Duke’s marriage. I think he does sometimes advise William.’

  The Earl looked at him, half-smiling. ‘Amongst all the nobles of this Duchy I have sought in vain for the one who stands behind the Duke, dropping subtle counsel into his ear. Now I know where this one may be found, and I promise you I fear him.’

  ‘A councillor! Does the Duke need one?’ Edgar said.

  ‘Not for government, perhaps, nor for warfare, but for deep crafty work – yea, he needs one,’ Harold answered.

  ‘What of Anselm?’ Edgar asked. ‘He too has a name for great wisdom.’

  Harold shook his head. ‘A very holy man, that one, too holy to give the counsel Lanfranc’s subtle brain could devise.’

  He said no more, but his words remained long in Edgar’s head. Edgar said once to Gilbert d’Aufay that he supposed Lanfranc to be much i