The Conqueror Read online

  The serf had recovered his senses, and lay moaning at Raoul’s feet. The women, kneeling beside him, looked up in some alarm at the young knight. That he was nobly born they knew, and they were at once suspicious of him, finding it hard to believe that he could have intervened for them in a spirit of pure chivalry.

  Raoul pulled his purse from his belt, and let it fall beside the peasant. ‘Here is something to pay for the house,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You need not be afraid: he won’t come back, I promise you.’

  He caught Verceray’s bridle, and vaulted into the peaked saddle, and with no more than a nod to the older woman, rode off in the wake of Gilbert’s cavalcade.

  When he came in sight of the donjon of Harcourt the first stars were winking overhead, and the light had grown dim and grey. The drawbridge was still down, and the gate-keeper was on the watch for him. He rode into the bailey, and leaving Verceray to one of the grooms, went to the main building, and ran quickly up the outside stairway to the door that opened into the great hall.

  As he had expected, Gilbert was there, angrily recounting all that had befallen to his father, and to Eudes, who sat astride one of the benches, and roared with laughter. Raoul slammed the door shut behind him, and unclasped his cloak from his shoulders, tossing it into a corner. His father looked at him frowningly, but more in perplexity than in wrath. ‘Well, here is a fine piece of work!’ he said. ‘What have you to say, boy?’

  ‘This!’ said Raoul, coming into the circle of light thrown by the candles on the table. ‘I have sat at home idle too long, shutting my eyes to what I could not cure.’ He glanced at Gilbert, fuming on the other side of the table, and at Eudes, still chuckling to himself. ‘Year after year such beastliness as I chanced upon to-day happens, and men like Gilbert there, and Eudes, ravage Normandy for their lusts, caring nothing for the weal of this Duchy.’ He laughed shortly to see Eudes staring at him with dropped jaw, and turned his eyes back to his father’s puzzled face. ‘You gave me a sword, father, and I swore that I would put it to good use. By God, I will keep that oath, and wield it for Normandy, and justice! Look!’ He whipped the sword out of the scabbard as he spoke, and holding it flat between his hands, showed them the runes inscribed on the blade. The candle flame quivered in the draught, and the light flickered along the steel.

  Hubert bent to read the runes, but shook his head over the strange writing. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked. ‘I have never known.’

  ‘Brother Clerk will surely know,’ mocked Gilbert.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Raoul said. ‘In our tongue, father, it reads thus: Le bon temps viendra.’

  ‘I do not see much to that,’ said Eudes, disappointed.

  Raoul glanced across at him. ‘But I see a great deal,’ he said. He slammed the sword back into the scabbard. ‘The good time will come when men who conduct themselves like robbers are no longer allowed to go unpunished.’

  Hubert looked in a startled way at Gilbert. ‘God’s feet, is the boy mad? What sort of talk is this, my son? Come, come, you have no need to be in such a heat over a parcel of bondmen! I won’t say that Gilbert is right, but as I understand it you drew steel upon him, and that is a bad business, and gives him some cause to complain of you.’

  ‘As to that,’ Gilbert growled, ‘I am very well able to take care of myself, and I don’t bear malice against a silly stripling, believe me. I’m glad enough to see the whelp has blood in his veins, instead of the water I always thought ran there, but for the future I’ll thank him to keep his hands off my affairs.’

  ‘For the future,’ Raoul said, ‘you will keep your hands off that wench, Gilbert. Let that be understood!’

  ‘Ah, shall I indeed?’ Gilbert said, beginning to bristle again. ‘And do you think I am very like to heed your words, you eft?’

  ‘No,’ replied Raoul, with a sudden smile that was like sunshine after storm, ‘but I leave for Beaumont-le-Roger at daybreak, and mayhap you will heed my lord instead of me.’

  Gilbert’s hand flew to his knife. ‘You tale-bearing cur!’ he stuttered. ‘So you would get me outlawed, would you?’

  Hubert pushed him back. ‘Enough of that!’ he said. ‘Raoul will tell no tales, but if these raids of yours come to Roger de Beaumont’s ears you will get short shrift. There must be an end to this wild work. As for the boy, he is enflamed, and will be the better for his supper.’

  ‘But what is all this talk of justice, and of leaving Harcourt?’ demanded Eudes. ‘What did the boy mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Hubert said. ‘It is not so serious that he need leave his home, and when they have eaten, they will clasp hands and think no more of this day’s doings.’

  ‘With good will,’ said Raoul promptly. ‘But by your leave, father, I shall go to Beaumont-le-Roger to-morrow.’

  ‘To what end?’ asked Hubert. ‘What will you do there, pray?’

  Raoul did not answer for a moment, but stood looking down at the flickering candles. Presently, he raised his eyes to his father’s face, and spoke in a different voice, serious and hesitating. ‘Father, you and my brothers there have always laughed at me for being a dreamer. Perhaps you are right, and I am fit for nothing else, but my dreams are not so ill, I think. For many years I have dreamed of law in this Normandy of ours, law and justice, so that men may no longer burn and slay and pillage at will. I have thought that perhaps some day a man might rise up, with the will and the power to bring order into the Duchy. I would like to fight in his cause.’ He paused, and looked rather shyly at his brothers. ‘Once I hoped it might be our Lord of Beaumont, for he is a just man; and once I thought perhaps it would be Raoul de Gacé, because he was Governor of Normandy. But of course it could not be these. There is only one man who has power enough to curb the barons. It is his service I would enter.’

  ‘This is bookish talk,’ said Eudes, shaking his head. ‘Poor stuff.’

  ‘Holy Cross, what fancies a boy will get into his pate!’ exclaimed Hubert. ‘And who may this fine man be, my son, of your grace?’

  Raoul’s brows lifted. ‘Could it be any other than the Duke himself?’ he said.

  Gilbert burst out laughing. ‘The young bastard! A lad no older than yourself! Foh, here’s a piece of wool-gathering! If he keeps his coronet even it will be a strange thing, I can tell you that.’

  Raoul smiled a little. ‘I saw him just once in my life,’ he said. ‘He rode into Evreux at the head of his knights, with Raoul de Gacé on his right hand. I saw his face for a minute as he passed me, and the thought came to me then that here was the man I had dreamed about. I don’t think that that one will lose – anything.’

  ‘Silly talk!’ Hubert said impatiently. ‘If a base-born lad of nineteen is to work his will on Normandy it will be a more marvellous thing than anything you ever dreamed about. There has been trouble enough for him already, while he was still in ward, but if it’s true he has turned off his guardians now we shall soon see a lively state of affairs in the Duchy.’ He shook his head, and went on grumbling to himself all about the folly of making a by-blow Duke of Normandy, and the child no more than eight years at that; and how he had known from the first, when Duke Robert the Magnificent made up his mind to go on that disastrous pilgrimage, what would come of it. Normandy would not be ruled by a beardless youth, and if Raoul wanted peace – which was every honest man’s desire – he had better look for a new Duke, and one more acceptable to the barons.

  Eudes broke in on this monologue to ask Raoul whether he was fool enough to try and join the Duke’s court at Falaise. Raoul did not answer at once, but when he did he spoke so earnestly that even Gilbert forgot his anger in surprise. ‘Bastard he is,’ he said, ‘bastard and stripling, even as you have said, father, but since the day that I looked into his face I have wanted to follow him, perhaps to great glory, perhaps to death.’ The lashes veiled his eyes suddenly. ‘You don’t understand. Maybe you have