The Conqueror Read online

  ‘The fool lacks a whipping,’ Grimbauld said, and turned back to pick over the meat on his platter with his thick, short fingers.

  Raoul’s eyes had followed the jester to the fire, watching curiously how Galet threw himself down beside one of the hounds, and murmured his nonsense into a cocked ear. Galet shook the bells in his cap, and muttered, and glanced about him with many odd grimaces, and a hunching of his crooked shoulders. When he saw Raoul looking at him he grinned his sad, half-witted grin, and began to rock himself about, hugging his body in his arms. Raoul wondered what clouded thoughts troubled the fool’s brain. He tossed a scrap of meat to him, and jester and hound fell on it together, wrangling each one alike with growls and bared teeth.

  A stir at the high-table made them all look round. The Duke had risen, and was on his way to the twisting stair that led to the gallery and the rooms above. He had paused to listen to his cousin of Burgundy, who had intercepted him with a hand on his shoulder in the familiar way he always used. He still held his haggard on his wrist, and still absently smoothed her plumage with his finger, but his glance was on Guy’s face, impassive and unsmiling. A shaft of sunlight slanting down through a window set high up in the wall touched with gold his crisp black locks, and glinted on a ring he wore upon the stroking finger. His uncle Walter, a solid man of middle years, stood a little on one side, waiting for him to finish with Guy.

  ‘See the noble tanner’s son!’

  The softly spoken words just reached Raoul’s ears. They had been uttered by Grimbauld, and as Raoul looked quickly round at him he saw the scarred lip twisted into a sneer. It was of no use to pay any heed to such whisperings. Ever since he had come to Court Raoul had heard them, covert jibes directed at the Duke’s base kindred: Walter, the tanner Fulbert’s son; Walter’s son William; and, not less, the Duke’s own half-brothers, Robert and Odo, children born to Herleva by her marriage with Herluin, knight of Conteville. They were both present now: Robert a few years younger than the Duke, a heavy boy with a dogged, open face; and Odo, his junior, brighter-eyed, and readier of tongue. They waited beside their father at the bottom of the table, but the Duke had spoken with them on their way to the stair, and again Raoul had caught a vague murmur of dissatisfaction, so faint that he could not locate whence it came.

  Still standing by the bench he watched the Duke walk to the stairway, and go up it, with Walter following him. Guy of Burgundy lounged back to his place at the table, and called to a server to fill up his cup.

  There had been silence while the Duke was on his way out, a puzzling silence fraught with some emotion Raoul could not understand. Up at the Duke’s table two barons exchanged fleeting glances as they resumed their seats. Again Raoul knew an instant’s feeling of unrest, as though in that quick enigmatic look he had seen danger. A gleam in Grimbauld’s narrowed eyes that were fixed so intently on the Duke made him catch his breath. Something in the concentration of Grimbauld’s gaze made him feel uneasy, afraid of a danger he could not see.

  Two days later the hunting-party was on the road, the Duke riding at the head of his cavalcade, with the Burgundian beside him. He had business at Bayeux, so that the first day’s ride was to the north, and short. They swept into Bayeux at the dinner hour, and were received by the Bishop, by Ranulf de Bricassart, Viscount of Bressin, and by several other lords of the district. Once more a disquieting feeling stole over Raoul. As he slid down from Verceray’s back, and saw the Duke walk forward between strangers to the door of the palace, he could have sworn that danger lurked in the air. So acute was this premonition that he was almost uncontrollably urged to run after the Duke with an absurd warning to him not to stop in this grey town with its twisted streets, and furtive corners. He fought back the impulse, and just as he had satisfactorily argued away his fears, there was Galet bestriding his mule, and grinning at him as though he knew what suspicious thoughts had crossed his mind.

  ‘Fool, you haunt my footsteps,’ he said irritably.

  Galet slid down from the mule’s back. ‘Why then, I am as good as your conscience, cousin, and thereafter more fool than I knew. Where is my brother William?’ He saw the Duke in the doorway of the palace, and laughed shrilly. ‘Propound me this riddle, Cousin Raoul: which is the wolf, and which the sheep of those yonder?’ He pointed to the group about the Duke, and twisted his face into a leer.

  Raoul looked where Galet pointed. ‘Truly, you are right,’ he said. ‘They have a very wolfish look, those men.’

  ‘“Oh what a clever boy is mine!” cried your mother when you tried to grasp the candle-flame. Brother Raoul, Brother Raoul, did you ever hear the tale of the wolf that put a sheepskin over his shoulders?’ He poked his bauble at Raoul’s ribs, and went off after the Duke with another of his empty crows of laughter.

  At Bayeux the Duke’s retinue was quartered in the palace for the one night they were to stay in the town. When supper was over, and the trestles were cleared away, pallets were spread on the floor, and all but the nobler lords lay down to sleep there. The horn-lantern at the foot of the stairs cast a feeble glimmer of light over the bottom steps; where Raoul lay the red glow of a dying fire lit the floor of the hall.

  Waking from an uneasy sleep in the quiet of the night he saw a shadow on the stairs, and jerked himself up on his elbow. In the dim light he could see the hump of a man’s shoulder, the outline of the head laid on a folded cloak. Someone at the far end of the hall was snoring; the man next to Raoul shifted on his pallet with a grunt and a sigh. The shadow on the stairs moved again, and the lantern-glow faintly illumined the face of the jester. He sat huddled against the wall, and as he moved his head into the light Raoul caught the gleam in eyes that were very wide awake.

  Raoul threw back the cloak that covered him, and rose up cautiously in his shirt and hose. He had to grope with his foot to save himself from treading on sleeping forms as he crossed the hall, but he made no sound, and woke no one in his stealthy progress towards the stairway.

  Galet hailed him in a whisper. ‘Do you find your pallet hard, brother?’

  Raoul stood with one foot upon the stair, gravely looking down at him. ‘Why do you watch?’ he asked. ‘Is your pallet so hard you cannot sleep?’

  ‘Nay, nay, Galet is a good dog,’ the fool answered. He clasped his body in his long arms and looked up at Raoul with an expression half sad, half roguish.

  Raoul glanced over his shoulder, as though he expected to see someone standing there. He dropped down on to his knee on the stair, and brought his lips close to the fool’s ear. ‘Speak! What is it you fear?’ he whispered.

  Galet smiled, and rocked himself sideways. ‘Not you, brother.’ He put out his hand and touched Raoul’s knee with his bauble. ‘Take my bauble, fool. “I will not be afraid of shadows,” quoth the goat when he saw a wolf lurking in the thicket.’

  Raoul grasped at his shoulder, and shook him. ‘Speak out, fool! What danger threatens?’

  The fool rolled his eyes, and lolled out his tongue. ‘Nay, do not shake poor Galet’s wits out of him. Go and sleep, brother: what danger should threaten such a lusty calf as you?’

  ‘None. But you know something. Who means ill towards the Duke?’

  The fool gave a mocking laugh under his breath. ‘There was once a peacock, brother, lived in a noble lord’s park, and when men exclaimed continually at the beauty of his plumage he grew vain, and fancied himself greater than the lord who fed him, and imagined, in his folly, that he could drive out the noble lord and rule over the park in his stead.’

  Raoul nodded rather impatiently. ‘Stale talk, fool. All Normandy knows that the Burgundian grows large in his own mind. No more?’

  Galet threw him a sidelong look. ‘Plots, plots, brother: dark deeds,’ he said.

  Raoul glanced up the stairway. ‘Can you speak no word of warning, you who sit at his feet?’

  The fool showed his big teeth in a mirthle