The Conqueror Read online

  A breathing-space, much needed, was snatched while the Breton lines were formed again, and those who had lost their destriers in the first attack mounted the fresh horses which their squires brought up. The Norman ranks were shaken and thinned. William de Vieuxpont had been slain, Tesson‚Äôs son Raoul, and many others, and their bodies lay spread-eagled on the hill. Gilbert de Harcourt had been wounded in the thigh, but he had bound his scarf tightly round his leg, and seemed little the worse for wear.

  Eudes‚Äô sorrel destrier pushed up to Raoul‚Äôs Bertolin; Eudes grunted: ‚ÄòThis is a bloody fight, by my head! I suppose you are grown used to such battles, hey?‚Äô

  ‚ÄòNo man alive has seen so stern a fight as this,‚Äô Raoul answered. He wiped the red stains from his sword; his hand shook slightly; there was a smear of blood on his cheek; and his hauberk was dinted across one shoulder.

  Messengers rode down the ranks; the trumpets sounded the signal for the second attack; again the chivalry thundered up the slope. The breastworks, already broken and sagging, were swept away, but a wall of shields met the horsemen. The line swayed; the ditch was full of limbs and shattered helmets and bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Now and then a Saxon fell amongst the Norman dead, but the shields never broke, and the axes swung as fiercely as ever.

  A Saxon in the forefront of the battle rushed straight at the Duke and struck with all his might at the big Spanish horse he rode. It fell with a scream of agony; the Duke flung himself clear, still grasping his mace, and turned, and dealt his assailant a blow that smashed through his helmet of bronze and felled him to the ground. He had a brief vision of a fair face, startling in its resemblance to Earl Harold‚Äôs; an anguished cry rose throbbingly: ‚ÄòGyrth! Gyrth!‚Äô and a young man burst from the Saxon lines, and bestrode the fallen body. A knight rode at him, shouting: ‚ÄòSaint-Marcouf! Sire Saint-Marcouf!‚Äô and was cleaved almost in twain by a terrific axe-blow. For a fleeting moment Raoul saw the young Saxon heroically defending Gyrth‚Äôs body; then the Normans closed round him, and he sank, and the horses swept over him.

  A roar of fury came from hundreds of Saxon throats; a single voice howled: ‚ÄòGyrth and Leofwine! Both, both! Out, Norman butchers! Out!‚Äô

  The Duke slipped on a repulsive bleeding tangle of horses‚Äô guts, and caught at a destrier‚Äôs bridle. A knight of Maine bestrode it; he tried to thrust past the Duke, shouting: ‚ÄòLoose my bridle! God‚Äôs eyes, let me go!‚Äô

  The muscles on the Duke‚Äôs arm stood out hard as steel. He forced the plunging destrier back. ‚ÄòSplendour of God, know your over-lord!‚Äô he said. ‚ÄòDismount! I am Normandy!‚Äô

  ‚ÄòIt is each man for himself! I will not dismount!‚Äô gasped the knight recklessly.

  The Duke‚Äôs eyes blazed suddenly. ‚ÄòHa, dog!‚Äô He seized the man by his belt and heaved him out of the saddle as though he had been a featherweight. The knight fell sprawling; the Duke vaulted on to the destrier‚Äôs back and pressed forward to the front again.

  The martlets of William Malet‚Äôs gonfanon fluttered before him; somewhere down the line the men of Cingueliz were yelling their fierce battle-cry of Turie! Closer at hand men were calling on Saint-Aubert, their patron saint. The Lord of Longueville‚Äôs voice rose above the cries. ‚ÄòA Giffard! a Giffard!‚Äô Old Walter, fighting hand to hand on foot with three Saxon warriors, was beaten to his knees, and shouted his watchword as he fell.

  The Duke forced a way through the pack, and charged down upon the Lord of Longueville‚Äôs foes. ‚ÄòUp, up, Walter, I am with you!‚Äô he called. His mace crashed down upon a wooden helmet; a man‚Äôs brains spilled on the torn ground; the Duke‚Äôs horse was plunging and snorting; he held it hard; the Saxons scattered, and Giffard struggled to his feet. ‚ÄòBack, old war-dog!‚Äô the Duke commanded above the din of the fight.

  ‚ÄòNot while I can still wield a lance!‚Äô panted Giffard, and grabbed at a riderless horse, and hoisted his bulk upon into the saddle.

  Thousands of Saxons lay dead on the field, but still the wall of shields held. It was long past noon, and the sun beat pitilessly down on the sweltering hosts. The Norman chivalry was limping and spent; they fell back a second time, and saw the Saxon lines above them broken but invincible.

  The field reeked of blood; the ground was slippery under it, and all over the slope of the hill dreadful relics were strewn: hands still rigid on spear shafts; whole arms cleaved clean away from the shoulder, here and there a gory head battered to a shapeless mass, sometimes no more than a finger, a horse‚Äôs ear, or the half of a horse‚Äôs nostril that had been velvet-smooth before and was now sticky with congealing blood.

  The weary squadrons drew up out of range of the Saxon missiles, which still continued to hurtle down at them. Men sat their horses like sacks of flour; the horses themselves stood with trembling wide-spread legs, foam at their mouths and on their bardings, their heads hanging down and their flanks torn by the riders‚Äô spurs.

  All thought of Edgar had left Raoul, even as he had prayed it might. The world contained nothing but blood: blood spurting from cut arteries, blood oozing sluggishly from flesh wounds, blood drying on the dismembered corpses that littered the field.

  He let the greasy reins fall on Bertolin‚Äôs neck, and tried to wipe his hands on his gartered hose. He wondered how many of his friends still lived; he thought he had heard FitzOsbern‚Äôs voice in the press, and he could see Grantmesnil and Saint-Sauveur now, wiping the sweat from their faces.

  Someone nudged his arm. ‚ÄòHere, drink some of this,‚Äô said Eudes in his phlegmatic way.

  Raoul looked up. His brother was pushing a costrel into his hand; he looked dirty and blood-stained, but his stolidity was unimpaired. ‚ÄòSaints bless you, Eudes!‚Äô Raoul said gratefully, and took a pull at the heady wine. ‚ÄòI was nearly spent. What now? Do you still like warfare?‚Äô

  ‚ÄòWell enough,‚Äô said Eudes placidly. ‚ÄòBut I have a grudge against some swineshead out of Caux, who jostled me into the ditch in that last skirmish, so that I was like to have foundered. When this affair is ended I shall have a score to settle with him. He bears a pennon with a stag‚Äôs head caboosed. Do you know him?‚Äô

  ‚ÄòNo,‚Äô said Raoul, beginning to laugh. ‚ÄòNot I.‚Äô

  A horseman went galloping down the line; the barons who had been conferring with William dispersed and came riding back to their posts. Word ran through the ranks: the squadrons re-formed, and stood waiting.

  The right wing now charged up the slope, and what had been done by accident on the left was repeated by the men of Boulogne under Count Eustace. After a wild exchange of blows with the English fyrd the troops wavered, and broke, and fled down the hill with all the appearance of utter rout. On the crest of the hill the thegns scattered among the peasantry sought in vain to hold them back. The serfs were mad with the lust for blood; they had not seen the disaster on their right; all they saw was a beaten foe flying from the field. They broke from their leaders uttering yells of fierce triumph, and swarmed down the hill in pursuit of the enemy. Axes, scythes, clubs, javelins waved in the air; thousands of serfs were screaming: ‚ÄòVictory! Victory! Out, out! We have conquered!‚Äô

  The Norman centre was again swung round; a deep roar of ‚ÄòDex aie!‚Äô drowned the shouts of the fyrd, and the chivalry came crashing down on to the English flank. The lower slopes of the hill were thick all at once with fallen men, writhing and struggling under the chargers‚Äô hooves; the Norman feinting-party checked, wheeled about, and rode back to attack the English front. Those on the hill-crest saw the shire-levies mowed down in their hundreds. A few escaped, a few managed to crawl back to their comrades on the hill, but thousands lay dead on the torn ground, weltering in their gore, crushed and battered by the cavalry riding over them.

  But the ruse brought disaste