The Conqueror

by Georgette Heyer

  Raoul drew the leather curtain over the doorway. ‘I will go to kennel with a light heart,’ he promised.

  ‘Yea, but when?’ William’s gaze flickered to his face, and back again to the lantern. ‘I am growing out of patience. Spine of God, I have been patient too long! I will have either yea or nay. We go to Flanders.’

  ‘As you will, seigneur, but you have not learned yet to take nay for an answer,’ grinned Raoul.

  ‘I have not before had traffic with women,’ William retorted. ‘What do I know? What is the mind of that lovely sleek dame? What mean women when they smile sidelong yet speak fair cold words? Subtle work! Deep, secret! She is a citadel so fortified I lay siege in vain. Shall I wait on while the citadel is strengthened against me? I am too good a general.’ He started up from the bed, and began to pace up and down in a fret. ‘She is a still flame, remote, guarded, and desirable, Holy Sepulchre!’

  ‘A still flame,’ repeated Raoul. He looked up. ‘And you, that other flame? Not still, I think.’

  ‘Nay, I burn. White witch! Willow-witch, so slender I might break her between my hands! It will come to that yet.’

  ‘Jesu!’ Raoul was half-startled, half-amused. ‘Is that how you will use your love?’

  ‘Love!’ William caught at the word, dwelled on it, spurned it. ‘She is my love and my hate,’ he said sombrely. ‘I tell you I do not know if I love her. All I know is that she is mine. Mine, by the Rood, to hold in my arms if I will, locking my mouth to hers, or to break – yea, to hurt, to crush if that should be my will. She lures me, rebuffs me, daring my manhood. God on the Cross, but my bed has been cold to me these many days!’

  Raoul watched his restless striding to and fro. ‘What news from Lanfranc, seigneur?’

  ‘None! He writes to me of patience, and then patience. Heart of a man, I will have her in despite of them all!’

  ‘Beau sire, I think the Archbishop will never yield. You may send Lanfranc to Rome, but whom has Mauger sent to whisper in the Pope’s other ear?’

  ‘Let Mauger look to himself!’ the Duke said angrily. ‘I think I should do well to rid myself of that lecherous fox! Does he want my throne for his brother of Arques, or for Michael, his own by-blow?’

  ‘Who knows? Beware him, beau sire! I have heard already a murmur of excommunication. How then would you stand?’

  ‘By the Christ, as I stand now!’ the Duke said, his anger flaring higher. ‘If Mauger thinks to find my hand gentle on him for the sake of our kinship he will learn to know me better yet. God knows I will be gentle while I may, but if he will have me for an enemy, why, so be it!’ He unclasped his mantle, and cast it swirling from him. ‘My trust is in Lanfranc for that part of the business.’ The furious look was dispersed by a sudden smile that showed the boy still in him. ‘For the rest, my Raoul, I will trust in myself, and go to Flanders.’

  ‘Well said,’ Raoul agreed. ‘I will have a little wager with FitzOsbern on the outcome.’

  The Duke lay down on the bed again, propping his head on his hand. ‘You will certainly win, Raoul,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘As to that, beau sire, are you so sure which side I take?’ Raoul murmured.

  The Duke sat up with a jerk. ‘Now by my father’s head, if you are to doubt me – !’ he began, but broke off as he saw Raoul laughing at him. He flung himself down again on the skins. ‘Wager as you will: he who lays against me loses,’ he said, and shut his eyes for sleep. There was just enough defiance in his voice to tell one who knew him well that for once he was not certain of success.

  Two

  Of the three hostages Edgar was the most bewildered by all he saw in Rouen, and gave the least sign of it. Wlnoth, with characteristic easiness, exclaimed at every novelty and quickly accustomed himself to the new life; Hakon blinked at a strange world but was too young to speculate upon it. Only Edgar remained an exile, lonely in the midst of a shifting mass of foreigners.

  For long afterwards he was to remember how Rouen had first appeared to him, a lovely city against whose grey walls the Norman Court shone in splendour. In the Duke’s Castle, no homely building of wood, but a vast stone palace, were high vaulted halls, and many arches ornamented with chevrons carved in relief. Edgar’s home in Wessex was built all of wood; inside the walls were covered with crude paintings and curtains to hide the rough surface, so that the house seemed friendly and warm when one stepped into it. In the Duke’s palace were also hangings of woven stuff, but they were different from the Saxon wahrift. They were made of stiff tapestry, cunningly embroidered, but though they might be rich with gold thread, or glowing with red and purple silks, they were never bright with a medley of sharp colours such as a Saxon loved. They were used to cover archways or to line bed-chambers, but where the master-masons had worked mouldings on the walls no hangings hid these from sight. Edgar would walk down long echoing galleries, and think he felt the chill of the stone in his flesh.

  At table it was long before he ceased to look for the boiled meats his palate craved. He could not stay his stomach with the dishes Normans liked. He wanted to see haunches of English oxen roasted on the spits, and instead the servers displayed cranes farced with queer pungent spices; porpoises dressed with frumenty; rose-mortrews, an unsatisfying mess of powdered chicken and rose-leaves; jellies dyed with columbine flowers; unwholesome subtleties such as dolphins in foyle, marchpane garnished with figures of angels, and white leaches embellished with hawthorn leaves and red brambleberries. Even the boar’s head, which was borne in with trumpeters going before, was spiced till he could barely recognize its true flavour. He ate of peacock, a royal dish, and esteemed it less than the stubble-goose; he watched the Duke’s carvers lift swans, sauce capons, unlace conies, dismember herons, and wished that instead of serving such rare food as this they were breaking good venison, or slicing plain boiled sheep’s flesh.

  The meats were served on silver dishes; the salt-cellars were gilt within and without, standing sometimes a foot high, their covers encrusted with jewels; fine surnappes of linen out of Ypres covered the tables; wine was not poured into horns, but into gold cups, or glass vessels tinted amber and blue and red, with spidery threads laid on, or gouts blown in their smooth sides. Pages of the Diaper scurried hither and yon; seneschals, stewards, ushers, chamberlains saw to the comfort of the Court. There were chairs to sit upon, elaborately carved with griffins’ and eagles’ heads; foot-stools embroidered with lions or flowers; beds with straw mattresses, soft reindeer-skins for chalons, and curtains on rings that slid along rods. Even the palace windows were glazed with crystal or beryl. Edgar knew that in King Edward’s palace at Westminster there were such windows, and in great Earls’ houses too, but at Marwell shutters kept out too strong a wind, or panels of horn set in wooden calmes.

  In Normandy men wore long tunics of rich cloth; each one had his squire and his pages to attend him, so that the palace teemed with all these people, and servants quarrelled and fought, and fell over one another in their numbers. Splendour, wealth: Edgar’s heart cried out for the ruder life in his English home. These Normans lavished money on the ornamenting of their houses and their persons and their monasteries, but in England men set little store by stately buildings or costly plate so long as platters were piled high and drinking-horns brimmed over. From scorn at their extravagance he passed to wonder at their curious austerity. They were at once more violent and more temperate than the Saxons. A Saxon thought no ill of eating to satiation and drinking to stupor; a Norman who showed himself glutton or drunkard was regarded with contempt by his fellows. In England men were slow to anger, but in Normandy swords flashed out at a word, and enmity flared high upon small provocation. Where their hatreds and their ambitions were concerned the Normans were barbarous in their ruthlessness as no Saxon would have stooped to be, but whereas in England it was becoming less and less the fashion to love learning and give honour to the Church, in Normandy
men were strict in all religious observances, and a mere knowledge of reading and writing was no longer considered sufficient for any man of degree.

  It was all strange to Edgar, and desolatingly alien. Unlike Wlnoth, who in one week had his hair cut short and his tunic made longer in imitation of his hosts, Edgar obstinately preserved his flowing curls and his golden beard, and continued to walk abroad in a tunic that barely reached his knees. He was prepared to dislike every Norman he saw, and had no difficulty in finding many worthy of his scorn. There were those like Archbishop Mauger, licentious men, smooth-tongued, lapped in luxury; there were cruel intemperate men like the young Lord of Moulines-la-Marche, who tortured pages for his sport. But there were also men of De Gournay’s kidney, shrewd and roughly faithful, who commanded respect; there were eager impetuous men like FitzOsbern; wise politic men such as Lanfranc; friendly men like Raoul de Harcourt and Gilbert d’Aufay, whom it was hard to withstand. Like bees about a hive they swarmed before Edgar’s wondering eyes; great names echoed through the lofty palace: Tesson of Cingueliz; Saint-Sauveur; Giffard of Longueville; Robert, the Count of Mortain, half-brother to the Duke; Odo, his brother, who came now and again from Bayeux in episcopal splendour; Robert, the Count of Eu, whose gay laugh contrasted oddly with his brother Busac’s scowls; William Malet, part Norman, part Saxon; D’Albini, the sleek cup-bearer; Grantmesnil, Ferrières, Montgoméri, Montfort, Estouteville: on and on rolled the sum of names, bewildering, grandiloquent, all haut seigneurs, some with ambitions that made them dangerous, some with swords fretful in their scabbards, some arrogant, some quarrelsome, all splendid restless figures, plotting, grasping, shouldering their way through a world that seemed hardly large enough to contain them. Amid the blaze of magnificence they created the Duke stood out, a man of a hundred moods, wise as Lanfranc, or impetuous as FitzOsbern, but always sure of himself, seeing his path clear ahead of him. One could hate him, but it was not possible to despise him. Edgar, whose hands had lain between Earl Harold’s, would never render to Duke William liking, but respect was forced from him against his will. This he must give, but while he gave he knew that William cared nothing for the applause or the condemnation of any man. There was cold steel in the Duke, he thought, and at once his mind winged to Harold, his dear lord, who carried a warm heart in his breast, and drew men to him whether they would or no. Maybe the greater man stood aloof, remote from the gentler human weaknesses: Edgar’s love for Harold cried hotly No to that, but gradually as he came to know William a little chill fear stole into his loyalty. The Duke might have moods of gaiety, of unexpected kindness, but nothing would ever be allowed to stand between him and his purpose. Edgar suspected that he would go to any lengths to achieve his ends, sweeping aside all scruples, all mercy, while with a relentlessness that had in it something overwhelming, he bent or broke men to his own unbending and unbreakable will.

  Yet he commanded devotion, devotion of such men as Raoul de Harcourt, who had coaxed Edgar into friendship. In a mood of sullen homesickness Edgar said: ‘You think he cares whether you give him allegiance. I am very sure they are nothing to him, either friendship or enmity.’

  Raoul laughed at him. ‘Oho, do you know him so well? I thought you were too proud to notice any Norman.’

  ‘You are pleased to mock at me, but you know that is not so,’ said Edgar, reddening.

  ‘When you thrust your chin up under that fine beard of yours, of course I mock at you,’ Raoul answered. ‘I never knew there were such stiff-necked men in England.’

  Edgar grew redder still. ‘If I have lacked in courtesy, I crave pardon,’ he said.

  ‘O Saxon barbarian, you grow more haughty still!’

  Edgar’s fist clenched. ‘You shall not call me that – Norman shaveling!’

  ‘Shall I not? But you may call me shaveling with my good will.’

  Edgar sat down on a stool near the bench along which Raoul sprawled, and gave his head a rueful shake. ‘You seek me out to laugh at me, I believe,’ he said. ‘Or to make me lose my temper and behave like the barbarian you think me.’

  ‘Oh no, I have wagered with Gilbert d’Aufay that I will make you leave hating Normans, that is all,’ Raoul assured him.

  ‘I don’t hate Normans,’ Edgar said. ‘I told you that my mother was one. I don’t understand them, and it is not very pleasant to be an exile in a strange land, but I am not such a fool that I would hate a man for not being a Saxon.’

  ‘Nobly said,’ Raoul applauded lazily. ‘Soon you will even like us.’

  Edgar looked down at him with a lurking smile. ‘When you will be serious I do like you, as you very well know,’ he said. ‘You, and Gilbert, and many others. You have shown me much kindness; for which I thank you.’

  Raoul saw Gilbert d’Aufay crossing the hall, and hailed him. ‘Gilbert, here is Edgar giving us thanks for our kindness. He is very proud to-day.’

  ‘He is always very proud,’ said d’Aufay, strolling towards them. ‘He told me I was an idle dog because I bade him go hawking with me this morning. They do not hawk in England, Raoul.’

  ‘Nay, I said no such thing!’ protested Edgar. ‘We love sport as much as you do, and maybe more. But I was not in the humour for it.’

  Gilbert sat astride the end of Raoul’s bench. ‘Well, there is to be a welcome end,’ he said. ‘We are leaving you for the while, from what I hear. Is it so, Raoul?’

  Raoul nodded. ‘It is so. You are to be rid of us both, Edgar. The Duke is journeying into Flanders, and we go with him.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Edgar said. ‘I shall miss you. Will it be for long?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Raoul said, with a shrug of his shoulders.

  The slow smile crept into Edgar’s eyes. ‘I suppose the Duke knows, and if any other does it is you,’ he said shrewdly.

  ‘You see more than one would guess,’ chuckled Gilbert. ‘Of course he knows, but you will never prevail on him to tell.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Raoul. ‘Do you think William our Duke tells his secrets to any man?’ He glanced towards Edgar. ‘Perhaps we shall see Tostig, who, they say, is at Count Baldwin’s Court.’

  Edgar gave a snort. ‘What is that to me?’ he said. ‘I am no man of his.’

  ‘Oh?’ Raoul’s brows began to lift. ‘But you are Harold’s man, are you not?’

  ‘Harold is not Tostig,’ Edgar said curtly.

  ‘I believe you dream of this Harold of yours,’ remarked Gilbert, with a sly look. ‘He is to you what his love is to another man.’ As Edgar made no reply to this, but only coloured up in the betraying way he had, Gilbert said innocently: ‘What is he like? Is he like Wlnoth?’

  ‘Wlnoth!’ Edgar exclaimed indignantly. ‘Harold is like no other man. If ever you see him you will know why it is folly to compare him with any one of his brothers.’ As though regretting his outburst he shut his lips on further speech, and only replied to Gilbert’s teasing with a furious look under his brows. Raoul rose up from the bench in a minute or two, and moved away to the stairs, saying over his shoulder: ‘Come, Saxon, else you will be at poor Gilbert’s throat.’

  Edgar followed him up the stairway into the gallery.

  ‘You are too serious,’ Raoul said gently. ‘Gilbert means no harm.’

  ‘I know.’ Edgar leaned his big shoulders against one of the arches. His head was golden against the grey stone; his eyes very blue. ‘I am out of temper,’ he said. ‘I have seen Wlnoth habited like you Normans, and aping your manners, and it has made me angry, and sore – here.’ He touched his breast fleetingly.

  ‘Why?’ Raoul asked, looking down absently into the hall below them. ‘He is young, and he does not feel like you that we are his foes.’ He turned his head, and found Edgar’s eyes steadily fixed on his face.

  ‘Can you say that you are not our foes?’ Edgar said in a low voice.

  ‘Is that how you think
of us?’

  ‘Not you, no. Your Duke is my foe because I am Harold’s man, and England’s. I know why I am here, why Wlnoth is here, and Hakon. But you shall never hold Harold on such a rein as that.’

  Raoul did not reply. He was looking at Edgar in a rather startled way, wondering how much he knew, or guessed. Edgar had folded his arms across his massive chest; the hairs on them were pale gold, like his ringlets, and his crisp beard. ‘King Edward can will his throne away,’ he said, ‘but Duke William will only reach it across our dead.’

  His deep, rather rough voice echoed faintly round the stone gallery. A queer silence followed it, and over Raoul, like a sudden chill, stole a feeling of prescience. He saw Edgar at his feet, with his golden curls dabbled in blood, and his vigorous limbs sprawling and limp. He lifted his hand to his eyes, and covered them as though to shut out a dreadful vision.

  ‘Why, what is it?’ Edgar asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Raoul’s hand fell. ‘I am not your foe, not England’s. My desires lead not that way.’

  ‘No, but you will follow your master as I shall follow mine,’ said Edgar. ‘Perhaps you won’t want what he wants, but I think that will make small difference. We have chosen, you and I, to follow two men from whom there can be no turning back.’ He seemed to shrug. ‘What are they, our little loves and hatreds? Do you call yourself my friend? You will be swept from me to serve William’s ends when the times comes.’

  ‘But friendship may endure,’ Raoul answered.

  They walked slowly down the gallery, side by side. ‘I wish …’ said Edgar, ‘I wish… .’ He sighed, and gave his head a slight shake. ‘We don’t know what roads we may have to tread before all is done,’ he said. ‘Come back soon from Flanders: I shall miss you.’

  At the end of the week the Duke left Rouen, and entered Flanders by way of Ponthieu. His brother, the Count of Mortain; Robert of Eu; and Roger de Montgoméri accompanied him. He made all speed to Lille, where the Flemish Court then lay, and was accorded a gracious welcome by my lord Count, and his lady. The Wise Count accepted the pretext advanced for this visit without so much as a quiver of the eyelids. He ordered his people to escort the Duke to a noble set of apartments, and left nothing undone that was due to so great a prince as Normandy. He sat for an hour with William, and talked smoothly of many matters that might be supposed to interest his guest. But no word of espousals crossed his lips. William tapped an impatient foot, but curbed his tongue. They parted with ceremony, and as soon as the door had shut behind the Count William struck his hands together to summon his valet. It was not his custom to pay much heed to the clothes he wore, so that his retinue looked sideways at each other when it was heard presently that three tunics had been rejected, and the barber cuffed for having grazed the Ducal chin. At the dinner-hour William went down to the hall in state, attended by his own household, and preceded by various punctilious Flemings. He had chosen to wear a long tunic of crimson cloth embroidered with gold. Round his black head he had a plain gold circlet, and the mantle of his high degree hung from his shoulders to his heels, and was secured across his chest by a large fibula of precious stones. Gold straps bound the loose hose to his legs, and where the short sleeves of his tunic ended he wore massive gold bracelets over the sturdy flesh. This magnificent style suited him very well. The Countess Adela, a Frenchwoman, looked on him with approval, and murmured in her daughter Judith’s ear that Matilda would be a fool to pass over so splendid a prince.