The Conqueror Read online

  He was beside Raoul before Raoul could move a step to meet him. ‘My thanks to you, Raoul de Harcourt,’ he said. He held out his hand in a gesture of friendliness, and while his gaze scrutinized Raoul’s face, his stern lips curled upward in a smile.

  Words choked in Raoul’s throat. He had dreamed often of what he would say if ever the Duke noticed him above his fellows, but now that the moment had come, he found that he could not say anything at all. He looked quickly up at William; then, letting fall his spear, he dropped on his knee, and kissed the Duke’s hand.

  William glanced over his shoulder, as though to be assured that no one was within earshot. He looked down again at Raoul’s bent head. ‘You are the knight who guards my sleep,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, beau sire,’ Raoul muttered, wondering how he knew. He rose to his feet, and spoke the thought that was foremost in his mind. ‘Seigneur, your spear – should not have snapped.’

  William gave a short laugh. ‘A fault in the shaft,’ he said.

  Raoul whispered urgently: ‘Beau sire, I pray you have a care to yourself!’

  His eyes encountered the Duke’s keen look, and for a moment the glance held. Then the Duke gave a brief nod, and walked back to join the group that watched the skinning of the bear.

  Three

  After the bear-hunt Raoul began to feel an added hostility in the air, hostility now directed towards himself. Men looked scowlingly at the marplot; he had the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the plotters – if plotters they indeed were, and he had not allowed his imagination to deceive him – considered him a danger to the safe carriage of their plans. He went abroad thereafter with ears on the prick, and his dagger loose in its sheath. When an arrow sang past his head one day at a hunting of deer he thought only that someone’s aim was badly at fault, but when he tripped at the head of the stairway in the dark, and only by the veriest chance saved himself from falling headlong down, he began to realize that some man or other had good reason for wishing him out of the way. A log of wood had been laid on the second step, and it rolled over when he trod on it. That it had been meant for him he was reasonably sure, and he guessed from it that his ill-wishers were aware of his nightly vigil. He was always the first man to descend the stairway in the morning, and if he had not paused upon the top step, warned by an intuition of danger, he must certainly have pitched down the stair, and broken, if not his neck, at least a leg or an arm.

  He was not surprised therefore when Galet whispered a warning to him one evening before the supper-hour. Galet sat cross-legged on the floor, juggling with some sheep’s bones, and as Raoul passed him he said softly without raising his head or moving his lips: ‘Do not drink tonight, cousin!’

  Raoul heard, but gave no sign. He contrived at supper to empty the contents of his drinking-horn on to the rushes under the table at a moment when all eyes were turned towards the jester, who was performing contortionist feats with his ungainly limbs. Afterwards he pretended to drink from the empty horn, and watching under down-dropped eyelids he thought that he detected satisfaction in the face of Grimbauld du Plessis. A pulse began to beat unpleasantly hard in his throat; he had a feeling of apprehension that was almost a sickness, and the palms of his hands felt damp and cold. He shivered, and blamed the chill draught that swept through the hall. The candles guttered in the sudden gusts of wind, and threw odd shadows. Men’s faces appeared sinister in the uncertain light; all at once Galet’s caperings became macabre, and his shrill voice eldritch. Raoul wished that he would stop, for calamity seemed to brood over the sombre house. He set his teeth, and forced himself to join in the talk at his table, disgusted to find that he was so little the cool intrepid man he would wish to be.

  The Duke went up to his chamber after supper with Guy’s arm thrown round his shoulders. Guy’s light laugh sent a shudder through Raoul; he stared after them, his fingers tightening unconsciously round the narrow end of his drinking-horn. Thus, surely, traitors laughed.

  His right-hand neighbour was yawning. His eyes looked heavy with sleep; he complained in a thick voice of the hard day’s hunting, and lolled over the table like a drunken man. Looking round Raoul saw others similarly mazed. His throat felt parched suddenly. Grimbauld du Plessis was watching him across the room. Raoul got up with a lurch and a stagger, and went with unsteady steps to the stair.

  Grimbauld stood in his path, smiling at him. ‘Watch well, you Friend of the Friendless,’ he mocked.

  Someone sniggered. Raoul blinked owlishly, and put up a hand to rub his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said stupidly. ‘Watch – watch well. I will – watch well, Grimbauld – du Plessis.’

  Grimbauld laughed, and stepped aside to let him pass. Raoul went stumbling up the stairs with his hands on the rope.

  At the top, and out of sight, he gave a quick look to right and left of him. No one was in the gallery, but he could hear voices in William’s chamber, and knew that Guy of Burgundy was still with the Duke. He went to the edge of the gallery and peeped down through one of the vaulted arches at the hall below. Men were gathering into small groups. Some were dicing, some talking in low voices, and others drowsing with their heads on the table. The servers were still busy clearing away the trestles, and spreading pallets; and presently the Duke’s valet came up the stairs and went into William’s chamber. From the ambry leading into the hall came a muffled clatter of patins in the wash-tub; outside in the court the men-at-arms were still moving about. Raoul wondered whether their mead had been drugged, or whether they, too, were in the pay of the conspirators. There was no sign of Galet; he must have slipped away when the Duke went upstairs.

  Guy came out of the Duke’s chamber, calling over his shoulder: ‘Sweet dreams, dear cousin.’

  ‘Judas!’ Raoul thought, hating him.

  Guy shut the door, and paused for a moment, looking about him. Raoul saw him go to the edge of the gallery, and lean over. He made a sign to someone below, and went away to his own chamber at the opposite corner of the building.

  Raoul listened to his retreating steps. Should he go to the Duke, and warn him? Warn him of what? He bit his lip, feeling himself a fool. What could he say? That he thought the wine had been drugged? That he misliked the look of Grimbauld? It was of no use to carry such vague suspicions to a young man who only gave a laugh, and seemed to look right through one. He drew his cloak closer about him, and leaned rather disconsolately against the wall. When the household slept he might be able to find Galet, and hear what he had discovered. Then, if treachery stalked abroad indeed, perhaps between them they could contrive to smuggle the Duke away.

  A stir below drew him to the side of the gallery again. Humphrey de Bohun was going out, wenching, Raoul guessed. There was nothing unusual in that, for many of the Duke’s men preferred a night spent snugly in the arms of some loose bordel-woman to one on a hard pallet in the castle. Several of the knights went out with Humphrey, and the noise in the hall died down. The valet came out of the Duke’s chamber, and quenched all but a single torch at the other end of the gallery. He went clattering down the stairs, and across the hall to the kitchens.

  Men had tumbled on to their pallets without troubling to remove their tunics or their chausses. Only Grimbauld and some half a dozen others still sat at a table that had been pushed up against the wall. They were talking in whispers, all but Grimbauld and one Godfrey of Bayeux, who seemed absorbed in a game of chess. A sleepy scullion came out of the kitchen to put out the candles. Grimbauld and Godfrey played on in the light of a horn-lantern.

  There were still faint sounds of movement in the castle, but soon these ended, and nothing broke the stillness except the stertorous breathing of the sleepers, and once, coming from the world outside the castle, the long, far-off howl of a wolf.

  There was a click of ivory as Grimbauld gathered the chessmen together. He stood up, and said something to one of the men beside him, and picking up the lant