The Conqueror Read online

  Mortain grunted. ‘Silly work to take such risks for one spearman.’

  Raoul, riding on the other side of William, interrupted to ask curiously: ‘The feats you performed at Meulan, then – deeds that made men call you hero: were those done from policy?’

  The Duke laughed. ‘That was in my rash grass-time. Yea, policy for the most part.’

  He spoke no more than the truth when he said that the troops he had given Harold were now with him. If they had been discontented before at being placed under a foreign leader, they now forgot that grievance and swore he was a man to follow. Such good feeling was there in the division, that when the army crossed the border into Brittany, and marched on Dol, the Duke had no hesitation in deputing Earl Harold to relieve the town.

  He watched that skirmish from his camp upon a neighbouring hill-side, and made several observations. He said: ‘A leader of men, as I thought, and keeps a cool head while the fight is on.’ Scrutinizing Harold’s tactics, he nodded, and said: ‘Yea, thus did I before I learned a surer way.’ Later he watched Harold swing his right flank into action, and smiled. ‘He is unused to the ordering of a body of horse, and I think my archers irk him a little. Sacred Face, that axe is a weapon to beware!’

  The Saxons had gone into battle with their axes slung at the saddle. The Earl wielded a bi-pennis with both hands, to the astonishment of the Normans, and Raoul saw Edgar’s old boast made good. At one blow Harold severed a horse’s head from its neck.

  The skirmish did not last long, for Count Conan was inexperienced in war and overweighted by force of numbers. He drew off in retreat after a taste of Harold’s quality, and fled to his capital at Rennes.

  That night in camp Edgar sat in Raoul’s tent, polishing his axe with loving care. It was plain he had enjoyed the fight, and would be glad of another.

  ‘Well, you will have that,’ Raoul said lazily. ‘We shall follow Conan, you may be sure. I wish you would let a squire clean that axe.’

  ‘I had rather do it myself,’ Edgar replied. He held it up, twisting it so that it caught the light. ‘Is it not a man’s weapon? Eh, old friend, I am glad to feel you in my grip again!’

  Raoul lay on his pallet with his hands linked behind his head. He regarded Edgar with a grin. ‘If I wanted to slay an ox I might be glad of it,’ he said provocatively.

  ‘An ox!’ Edgar said indignantly. He stroked the thick handle. ‘Do you hear that, O Drinker of Men’s Blood?’

  Raoul pulled a grimace. ‘Silence, barbarian! If you are going to talk to that hideous weapon, get you gone! I do not like blood, nor warfare either.’

  ‘Raoul, you should not talk in that way,’ Edgar told him. ‘If any heard you who did not know you –’

  ‘They would no doubt think that I meant it?’ Raoul put in.

  ‘Yea, how should they not?’

  ‘I do mean it,’ said Raoul sweetly, and shut his eyes for sleep.

  Edgar was seriously disturbed by such an admission, and did his best to make Raoul see the folly of his squeamishness. It did not seem to him that his words impressed Raoul, for after twenty minutes the grey eyes opened sleepily, and Raoul said with a yawn: ‘Holà, are you still there, Edgar?’

  Whereupon Edgar rose up with dignity and stalked back to his own quarters.

  However, his faith in Raoul was restored soon enough, for the Duke marched on Dinan and took the town by fire and assault, and Edgar, himself plugging into the thick of the fighting, found that Raoul was always in the forefront of the battle, apparently unmoved by the carnage. They fought side by side through the breach in the walls. Raoul slipped on the loose stones and fell; Edgar’s axe whirled above him; he roared: ‘Out, out!’ in the Saxon tongue, and a Breton fell across Raoul and splashed his hauberk red with blood. Raoul heaved the still writhing body aside and scrambled up.

  ‘Hurt?’ Edgar shouted above the noise all round them.

  Raoul shook his head. Not until the fight was over, and the Norman troops lay in the town did the incident occur to either again. They lost each other in the battle and met again hours later in the market-place. Raoul was in charge of a body of men-at-arms who had been set to work to quench the fire in the town; it was dusk when Edgar came upon him, and he was standing in the glow of a blazing house, grimed and sweat-stained but unhurt.

  Edgar waited until Raoul had shouted an order to one of his men, and then laid a hand on his arm. ‘I have been searching high and low for you,’ he said. He added with a characteristic lack of emotion: ‘I begun to think you must have been slain.’

  ‘Néel could have told you where I was,’ said Raoul. ‘Ho, there! stand from under that wall!’

  A little boy in a scorched tunic ran barefoot across the cobbles shrieking for his mother. Raoul caught him and tossed him into Edgar’s arms. ‘Hold this babe!’ he commanded, ‘or he will run on his death. That house is doomed.’

  Edgar tucked the terrified child under one arm, inquiring mildly what he was to do with the brat. But Raoul had moved away to direct the saving of a house which the flames were barely licking on the further side of the market-place, and he did not hear the question. Edgar stayed where he was and endeavoured to stay the child’s wailing. To his relief the shrill cries brought a woman up hot-foot. She tore the boy out of Edgar’s hold, and clasping him to her breast spat forth a torrent of words. As she spoke the Breton tongue Edgar did not understand what she said, but the ferocity in her face and voice left him in no doubt of her meaning. He tried to explain that he had not harmed the child, but she understood him as little as he understood her, and took a menacing step towards him with her fingers curled as though she would claw out his eyes. He retired in haste behind a heap of charred litter, and she darted away with a final malediction just as Raoul returned to join him.

  Raoul was shaken with laughter. ‘O dauntless hero! O brave Saxon! Come forth, the foe is in retreat.’

  Edgar came out from behind the debris with a shamefaced grin. ‘Well, what could I do? The woman was a very she-devil. A murrain light on you, shaveling: it was your fault for thrusting the brat into my arms.’

  Raoul began to wipe the sweat and the dirt from his face and neck. His chuckles died away; he watched his men running up with, full buckets of water. ‘Hell’s work, this. And you like it!’ He brought his gaze back to Edgar, and said suddenly: ‘I think you saved my life, back there on the walls.’

  ‘When?’ said Edgar, wrinkling his brow.

  ‘When I stumbled, want-wit.’

  ‘Oh, then!’ Edgar considered the matter. ‘Yes, I suppose I did,’ he admitted. His eye brightened. ‘It was a rare stroke, straight down at the join of the neck to the shoulder. I have not lost all my skill in these years of my exile.’

  ‘Well, my thanks to you,’ Raoul said. ‘Praise the saints, this day’s work will end the war! Conan surrendered the town in person.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edgar. He sounded slightly regretful. ‘I’m for my supper,’ he announced. ‘Do you come with me?’

  ‘When I have seen the last spark quenched. Where is the Duke?’

  ‘Up at the Castle with the Earl and de Gournay. Conan is putting as good a face to the matter as may be, and sups at the Duke’s table this night, so FitzOsbern told me. If I were William I would put him in shackles.’ He began to walk away, but paused when he had taken no more than three paces, and said over his shoulder: ‘The Duke knights Earl Harold.’ He did not wait to hear Raoul’s answer, but walked on with long strides across the market-place.

  Raoul looked after him. ‘And you wish that Earl Harold had refused it,’ he said softly, and turned back to his work.

  The ceremony of knighthood took place the next morning. The Earl stood unarmed before William, who girded a sword that hung from a jewelled belt about his loins, placed a helmet on his head, and a lance in his hold, and laid his hand on Harold’s right