The duke could barely stand. Hubert led him stumbling into his hall, sat him on a bench and asked the priest to look after him. Then he strode away, calling out to his wife. ‘Where are you, dearest? Duke William is here! He needs our help! Where are you, woman? Come here!’
His wife appeared moments later, upbraiding him for shouting at her so, then fell silent as she saw the debilitated figure of her duke sitting bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Rohaise was a practical woman, so she wasted no time on empty sympathy but began issuing orders at once. Servants were dispatched to fetch a large pitcher of water and wine, a loaf of bread and whatever cold meat was sitting in the pantry. The stable boy was sent for and told to water, feed and rub down the duke’s horse.
Hubert, meanwhile, rounded up his three sons, who ranged in age from twenty-one to fifteen. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and led them back to the hall, where William, who had drunk the watered wine in a single draught, was demolishing a great hunk of bread in one hand and a chicken leg in the other. Hubert smiled as he saw the astonishing restorative effect the food and drink were having. The speed with which young men could restore their strength never ceased to amaze him. He sighed at the thought of the years that had passed since he too had possessed such vigour, then got down to the matter in hand.
‘May I ask where you were planning to go next, fair lord?’ he asked.
William had just washed down his food with a freshly brought pitcher. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, ‘Falaise. If I can reach the castle there, I will be safe. I don’t believe my enemies have the means to take me once I’m inside its walls.’
‘Very well then, my sons will escort you. And I’ll give you a fresh horse. Yours would collapse before you got a tenth of the way there. I take it you don’t want to be seen if you can possibly help it, so this is what we’ll do . . .’
Hubert gave his sons detailed instructions of the route they had to take to Falaise. ‘The castle is at least fifteen leagues from here,’ he told William when the boys had been briefed. ‘That would normally be two days’ ride.’
‘I have already come a good fifteen leagues. If I have to ride another fifteen I will. But I’m not stopping until I’m safe in Falaise.’
‘Then you’d better be off. I wish you God speed on your journey. Boys, you’ve got the future of our duchy in your hands. Take Duke William safely to Falaise, or don’t show your faces in this house again.’
‘What about you, Hubert?’ William asked. ‘The men who are after me will be here soon. They’ll want to know where I’ve gone. I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account.’
Hubert smiled. ‘Don’t worry, my lord. I can take care of them.’
‘Then thank you.’ William took Hubert’s hand. ‘You’ve been a good Samaritan when I needed one most. And I will never, ever forget it.’
Guy of Burgundy was shattered too. Not to mention frustrated, deflated and generally in a foul, cantankerous mood. For reasons he had still to work out, his apparently flawless plan had fallen apart. Somehow William had got wind that he was in mortal danger and, even more improbably, had managed not only to escape but also to stay ahead of the hounds, the horses and the men on his trail.
Not that there were many men or horses any more, nor any hounds at all. As the leagues had gone by, first the dogs had lost their enthusiasm for the chase, then one man after another had dropped out, pleading a lame horse or their own exhaustion as an excuse. Guy himself had only been able to keep going thanks to the spare horses he had brought with them. Nigel of the Cotentin and three of the men-at-arms had also taken advantage of the fresh mounts, and the five of them, Guy was sure, would be more than enough to kill William. First, though, they had to find him.
It had been some while since Guy had been able to move at speed, safe in the knowledge that the dogs were tracking William’s scent. Instead he had been forced to ask peasants and shepherds in the fields, washerwomen doing their laundry, or the few travellers on the roads if they had seen a lone horseman passing by. For every ten he asked, only one came up with an answer, no matter how roughly he questioned them, or even on occasion whipped them. So it had been an increasingly slow, painstaking business to make his way along the coast, past Bayeux and towards a small village where he could see a man standing outside a pitifully meagre excuse for a castle – really not much more than a feebly fortified cottage, so far as Guy was concerned – talking to a shabbily dressed priest.
The moment Guy saw the man’s clothes, which bore all the signs of a wife’s repeated repairs, his sunburned skin and the amiable, almost half-witted expression on his face, he knew precisely what he was dealing with. He’d seen men like this up and down Normandy, petty barons in obscure rural backwaters who were barely more than peasants themselves. The man would know at once that Guy was far and away his social superior, and would act accordingly. That said, it never hurt to flatter the absurd pretensions of this kind of yokel.
‘Excuse me, my good sir,’ he called out. ‘Have you by any chance seen a horseman riding by? He’s a young man, bright red hair. Looking damn tired by now, I should think.’
The yokel grinned. ‘You mean the Bastard?’ he asked, and then chuckled at his own splendid wit.
Guy did his best to control the strange mixture of utter contempt for the man and huge excitement at his words that now swirled around inside his own, fatigue-fogged head. ‘I do indeed mean William of Normandy,’ he said. It pleased Guy to think that there were others, no matter how insignificant who might be ready to support his cause. ‘I can see you don’t think much of our Duke. I don’t blame you. He’s illegitimate, and his father killed his own brother to usurp his title.’
‘You don’t sound like much of a friend yourself, your lordship!’ the man said, grinning inanely. ‘Would you like me to show you where he went?’
Guy looked down the road. There was a crossroads up ahead, with forks leading off in three or four different directions. ‘That would be very kind. Perhaps you can point to the way he took.’
‘I can do better than that, my lord. I can take you after him. He told me where he was going. Didn’t mean to, but I got it out of him. Serves him right for taking me for a fool, eh?’
‘Absolutely. No one could possibly think you were foolish, sir.’
‘I should hope not. Well just you wait there a moment and I’ll go and get my old nag and we can go riding after that bastard duke. Believe me, he’ll get no mercy from me. It was a bad day for Normandy when he became duke, and if I’ve got anything to do with it, we’ll have a new one by the time I get back here. Oh, when we find him, I’ll strike the first blow all right, just see if I don’t.’
Finally the man finished his blustering and wandered off towards his miserable abode. Guy called after him, ‘Whom do I have the honour of addressing, good sir? You never told me your name.’
‘Hubert’s my name, Hubert de Ryes.’
‘Well, Hubert, there’ll be a shiny gold coin for you if we catch the duke.’
De Ryes disappeared behind his gates, only to re-emerge a short while later seated on a horse that Guy was convinced was at least a quarter donkey. ‘Right, my lords, follow me,’ he said, and cantered off to the crossroads and down one of the tracks leading from it.
Two hours later, having gone up and down hill, turning to left and right, across fields, through woods and over streams, and at least once – Guy was sure of it – returning to a point they had passed by some time before, it became clear that they were never going to find William.
‘I don’t know where that bastard’s got to, I swear I don’t,’ de Ryes said, scratching his head. ‘I know he came this way, for he told me he would, and I saw where he turned at the crossroads, too. He couldn’t have lied to me, could he? I mean, a duke wouldn’t lie, not even a bastard. I mean, he just wouldn’t.’
You’re the liar, Hubert de Ryes, Guy thought bitterly. You’ve tricked me, you filthy, pox-ridden peasant. I should whip the skin off your back, then run my sword through your guts and …
But he was too tired even to think of what he would do to de Ryes, let alone actually carry it out. William had got away from him and there was no point whining about it, or fretting about the hows and whys.
Guy had lost the first skirmish, but this was going to be a war. And by God he would win that war and get his own back on William the Bastard, or die in the attempt.
6
The royal palace at Poissy, France
‘Ah, Duke William, I was wondering how long it would be before you made your way here.’
King Henry of France, a tall, fair-haired, bearded man approaching his fortieth year, gave a little smile at the end of the sentence to indicate a degree of levity, and his courtiers all laughed at their master’s wit, and at the sight that had inspired it.
William of Normandy had ridden from Falaise to Rouen and then on to the royal palace at Poissy, which stood on the left bank of the Seine at the edge of a forest famed for its hunting, about five leagues west of Paris. He was accompanied by his uncle Mauger, who might still be the same twitching bundle of nerves he had always been, but was nonetheless an archbishop and therefore added to the status of their embassy to the French court. Not that the courtiers had seen it that way.
‘A bastard duke and a gibbering priest, marching in here without a by-your-leave,’ one eminent French nobleman had sneered to his fellow peers. ‘Really, these Normans are still just as savage as they were in Rollo’s day.’
More than a century earlier, Rollo and his Vikings had rampaged through the towns and cities of northern France and pillaged half the country between Paris and the sea. In a desperate bid to prevent him wreaking any more havoc, King Charles the Simple had offered him Flanders as a place where he and his people could settle in peace. Rollo rejected the offer on the grounds that Flanders was too wet and muddy, and was equally dismissive of Charles’s second offer of Brittany, as too rocky. He was, however, gracious enough to suggest that he would accept the old Roman province of Neustria, or Normandy as it soon became known, for it was large, fertile and could provide a man with a good living, without the need to fight for it.
Now, more than a century later, the tables had been turned, for here was Rollo’s direct descendant – his great-great-great-grandson, to be precise – coming here to plead with the Frankish king rather than the other way around. To make the moment even more delicious, William had dropped to one knee before King Henry. That was particularly satisfying, for Rollo had flatly refused to bend his knee when Charles the Simple had demanded, or perhaps begged him to do so. Rollo was not minded to obey any man, and he made no exception for Charles. William could not afford to be so bold.
‘We all heard about your flight from Valognes,’ King Henry continued. ‘Can it really be true that you rode from there to Falaise in the course of a single night and day?’
‘Yes, sire, though it was well after dark by the time I arrived in Falaise.’
‘And you were hotly pursued all the way?’
‘Half the way, sire. I met a good man near Bayeux, Hubert de Ryes, who gave me a fresh horse and ordered his sons to escort me, then led Guy of Burgundy and his men off in the wrong direction while I got away.’
‘This Hubert sounds like a good man. I trust you will reward him for his loyalty.’
‘If I ever get the chance, yes, sire, of course.’
‘And Guy of Burgundy . . . that’s Reginald’s son, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sire.’
‘Am I right in thinking he was brought up in Normandy?’
‘Yes, sire, his mother was my aunt Alice, only she died when he was just a baby.’
‘So your family took him in . . . huh! Doesn’t sound very grateful of Guy to turn around and try to kill you.’
‘He hates me, sire. He always has. He says that his claim to Normandy is stronger than mine because I’m . . .’ William paused and looked around at the courtiers, knowing that they were aware of what was coming next and would look down on him for it. Then he pulled back his shoulders, held his head high and said, ‘Because I’m illegitimate.’
‘Your father wasn’t, though, was he?’
‘No, sire.’
‘And he brought you to see me when you were just a boy. I remember it well. He declared you his heir, there was no doubt whatsoever about that, and you pledged your allegiance to me.’
‘Yes, sire, that is why I’m here now.’ William had been thinking for days about what he was going to say, and now that he had his chance, he wasn’t going to let anyone, not even the king himself, stop him before he’d made his case.
‘I remember that day too, Your Majesty. You told my father that he had given you shelter and help when you needed it, and that one day you would return the favour to me.’
‘That’s true, I said that,’ the king agreed.
‘Well, I need it now. Guy has got together with a group of barons to mount a rebellion against me. He’s promised them all land if he becomes duke. They’re already going on to my estates on the Cotentin, along the coast, down into the Hiémois, claiming them for themselves, taking property that doesn’t belong to them, running my tenants off the land. I’ve lost half the duchy, and they’ll take the rest unless you come to my aid.’
‘Why, are you completely without friends?’
‘No, I have men who are still loyal to me, and they have soldiers they can add to mine, but it’s not enough. If I’m lucky, I may be able to keep Guy and his followers at bay for a while. But in the end, they’ll be too strong.’
‘And why is this my problem?’
‘Because you gave your word, sire. And no king can afford to break a pledge that he has freely made to one of his vassals. If men know that you had turned your back on me, having promised to come to my aid if I ever needed it, they might think, “I can’t trust the king, so there’s no point in following him or giving him help, because I might not get any back.”’
There was a muted gasp from the onlookers. This young Norman was doubting the King of France’s word.
‘Be careful what you say, Duke William,’ the king said, with the tone of a man whose patience was being stretched to the limit.
‘Or you can keep your word,’ William went on, ‘and men will know that you are a man of honour who protects the vassals who look up to him for their care and safety. For if you and I fight together, Guy and his rebels cannot possibly defeat us, and when they are beaten, everyone will say, “Truly King Henry is a mighty ruler who stands by those who are loyal to him.” And all your vassals here at court and out in your kingdom will know that you will come to their aid, and their enemies will know that too, and fear your wrath.’
The king chuckled indulgently at the passion with which William had made his case. ‘So you’re saying that I should help you for my good, not yours, are you?’
‘Of course, for why would a man do anything if he did not think he would profit by it? I will also benefit, that’s obvious. But you should help me because it is in your interests to do so.’
‘What a persuasive young man you are, William of Normandy. You know, my sister Adela has a high opinion of you. She thinks you will go far. I’m beginning to understand why. So let us get down to practicalities. St Andrew’s Day falls in two weeks’ time, and the New Year a month after that. Do you think you can retain at least some of Normandy until next spring?’
William thought for a moment. Soon it would become impossible to keep soldiers in the field, for food would become scarce and the weather too cold to spend more than a few nights under canvas. Everyone would go back to their castles until the spring drew them out into the field again. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I will hold Rouen, É
vreux and all the land east of the River Toques.’
‘The eastern half of your duchy, in other words.’
‘Yes, sire. I fear the rebels will have the rest until we are, together, strong enough to take it back.’
‘Very well, then, I will keep my word.’
‘Thank you, sire, thank you with all my heart.’
‘No, you are right, it is my obligation to help you. You have my word that I will lead an army into Normandy next spring. Do I have your word that you will raise a goodly force of your own to greet it and share the burden of the fighting?’
‘You do, sire, absolutely.’
‘Then I will have our agreement written up and sealed. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to join me for dinner? Of all the obligations a king has to one of his dukes, the very least is surely the promise of a good meal, plenty of wine to drink and a bed for the night.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ said William. ‘That would be almost as welcome as your army.’
7
Rouen and Val-ès-Dunes, just south of Caen, Normandy
The weather was especially harsh in the earliest months of the year, and King Henry was too pious to put his forces in the field during the season of Lent. But when the Easter celebrations were over, he kept his promise to William and entered Normandy at the head of an army several thousand strong. For his part, William had been hard at work throughout the winter, canvassing support among the soldiers of the Norman militia and urging the nobles still loyal to him to recruit every man they could find to the ducal cause.
He sent word to the citizens of Rouen and Évreux and the farmlands all around them; to those who lived in the Pays de Caux, which stretched north along the coast from the estuary of the Seine; to the people of Calvados, Lisieux and the Lieuvin region of central Normandy. Slowly at first, but then in greater numbers, the men of the duchy answered their master’s call. And it was William who commanded their loyalty, for in the wake of his victory at Falaise, he had steadily come more and more into his own as duke. It had not been easy to wrest control from his elders on the council. Ralph de Gacé had posed a particular difficulty, for as long as he remained in control of the Norman militia, he would always have the power to impose his will on the duchy, and that power made him a very hard man to bring down.
The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2 Page 36