The sun was sinking gracefully to the horizon, a red, glowing orb that glinted for one last incredible moment of bursting joy against the two golden crosses adorning the shingled roof of the church. If this was Divinity made real among the squalor of life, then God was indeed immense and wonderful.
‘You like it?’ Duke William asked, coming to stand beside the English Earl. ‘The building of the monastery is not yet complete – there have been tremendous difficulties encountered, for all the rules of known architecture are having to be adapted. Almost daily some quandary is uncovered and a new technique must be explored.’ William looked with pride at the magnificent structure. ‘My grandfather married my grandmother, Judith of Brittany, on the Mount. ’Tis her kindred, Conan, the second of that name, we go to subdue. I will not allow ruffians such as he to terrorise my vassals. How dare he think he can lay siege to Dol and be allowed to get away with it? Hah, he will soon realise he has made a fatal mistake!’
‘Is Dol far, once we cross this boundary river?’ Harold turned his head slightly, looking away from the marvel that was Saint Michel, and studied the river.
The Couesnon was a wide stretch of slumbering water meandering through the wind-rustling marsh and barren salt flats. Riding with his Englishmen in the van, Harold had said little but listened well to the idle talk of the Normans – to the cheerful boasts of the brave-hearted and the misgivings of the doubtful. The river crossing had been the subject most discussed. Looking at its placid, shallow width, there appeared nothing sinister. A river estuary, safe to ford as long as the tide was low.
‘ Pas du tout,’ William answered. ‘Dol is not far, but first, as you say, we must cross this river that makes the border between Normandy and Brittany.’ He regarded Harold with half-closed shrewd eyes. What kind of man was this Earl Harold from England, apart from a flatterer of women and a charmer of children? What merit had he, William wondered, as a leader of men?
Instinctively, before this bold venture into Brittany had been suggested, Harold had realised that his worth was being assessed and did not much appreciate it. He had no need to prove himself to any man – duke, king, soldier or peasant – but William was playing some secretive game. He had his suspicions of why, but was not yet certain. For now, he was content to let this conceited duke watch him, to play the amiable mild-mannered underling. For now.
Pulling at his moustache, Harold walked nearer the gently sloping river bank and studied the ground beneath his boots. Firm here and solid, the grass short and tough; he could taste salt on his lips. He stopped a few feet short of the running water, gazing at its sandy blue calm. It did not appear deep and, with the banks sloping on this and the far side, there would be no difficulty in taking the horses and pack mules across. Would the baggage carts churn the river bed? It appeared firm, able to take weight, but it was sand and mud, not gravel or rock. No, this river would be soft and yielding, the worst kind of crossing for heavy wagons.
Movement out in the bay caught Harold’s attention. He frowned, squinting into the gathering evening. What was it? A line of white, moving fast towards them.
‘What is that, out on the flats?’ he asked William, who stood with both thumbs tucked through his sword belt, his piercing eyes never leaving Harold.
‘La mer. The sea, returning.’
Unconsciously, Harold found his hand gripping his sword pommel. This was indeed a strange, mystical place! Before his very eyes that faint line was becoming clearer, bolder. He could see that, aye, it was the foaming churn of breakers tumbling and swirling as the sea rushed in across that wide, flat bay. Moving so fast! Almost, Harold could fancy that those white-capped waves were the mythical horses of the sea, manes tossing, hooves drumming, galloping . . . galloping shoreward.
‘The sea here at Mont Saint-Michel’, William explained, his eyes, too, going to watch the rapid approach of the flood tide, ‘runs faster than the legs of a man. Within the span of a single minute the sea will travel more than one half of a mile. On days when the wind carries their sound, you can hear the desperate cries of the souls of those drowned by tide. Those who live by the shore keep watch for the white foam and listen well to the chanson de la mer – the song of the sea.’
Harold watched, incredulous, as the bay flooded before his eyes. Soon the island of Saint Michel would, in very truth, became an island. Already, the water was beginning to encroach on either side, like two arms twining around. Within a few more minutes the river would be rising as the salt water overcame the fresh. The river water was clouding as the mud and sand and salt swirled and eddied.
‘I am thinking’, Harold said slowly, ‘that to the unwary, this river Couesnon appears unimposing. At first sight there seems no reason why I could not ride my horse straight across. It looks as though the water would come no higher than his hocks – that a man might easily wade from this side to the other.’
William said nothing, merely raised one eyebrow. He had noted those words, the unwary, appears and at first sight. Was this English earl, then, more astute than William had given him credit for?
‘I am thinking, however,’ Harold continued, ‘that this river is not the benign waterway it pretends to be. The banks are soft, as is the bed. This is a land of marsh and sea; it is hard to judge where one ends and the other begins.’ He took a breath, regarded the Duke with a long, calm gaze. ‘This river is deceptive. I would wager that if care is not taking in its crossing, men and horses could be lost either to the gallop of the flood or to unsuspected quicksands.’
Duke William allowed a wry smile to curve one side of his mouth. Ah, oui, this earl did, then, know his business. He nodded, slowly. ‘We will cross quickly and with care when the light is good, on the morrow. If you notice, I have brought with me more pack mules than baggage carts. Lumbering wheels are not good in this devious river. An animal, or a man, can feel the shift of sand beneath the feet. A wagon cannot.
‘Come, let us return to camp, the day has been long. Soon we will arrive unannounced at Dol and send that whoreson Conan running.’
The infantry crossed first, wading with ease across the azure-blue river, and then half of the cavalry with scouts riding ahead of those first few who crossed over. Unlike Henry of France, William was not a leader to be caught with his army split and vulnerable on both sides of a dividing river.
With a cloudless sky and beaming sun beating on their backs there would be no difficulty in drying wet clothing. Harold crossed on his spirited grey stallion, then stood watching the gruelling task of bringing the wagons over. Mules were always so stubborn.
The entire army of several thousand men was crossing in disciplined formation, alert for enemy attack and, more uneasily, for the return of the sea. Soon the tide would be racing inwards again. No man would risk being in that river when la mer traître came to claim more bones to fill her deep grave.
A wagon was stuck, its wheels sinking in the softened sand bed. The mules were straining, with the assistance of an additional team, but the vehicle was as stubborn as the animals, was not going to move. Men pushed from behind, whipped the animals, hauled on ropes. Nothing, no movement, save for a precarious tilt to the highpiled, heavy cart. Other vehicles were having to skirt around it, which made their route that much longer, heightening the men’s anxiety. Then the last was over, to be followed at a canter by the rest of the mounted men, a further three, four hundred. Agitation stuttered through the ranks still waiting to cross, echoed by their brethren on the far side. More men splashed into the water to help push and to dig at the firm-stuck wheels.
Bored of the performance, Harold turned for a final look at Saint Michel. Soon they would be making way again. He would have liked to have crossed the causeway, to pray within the chapel of Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. To have taken a quiet moment in the tranquillity of God’s House to think of Edyth and the children back home in England.
All this – this openness – was beautiful, but it was also thoughtprovoking. The nothingness of the vaulted sky and the vast f
lat plain stirred the slumbering caverns of the soul and the mind. The Mont, rising so majestically, soared into the void like a shout of passion. Beyond the island the returning sea. And beyond the sea, England.
He would see this campaign through, for the sake of adventure and to gain valuable experience of the Duke’s army. Then, after William had done with Brittany – and with luck and God’s blessing gained an easy victory – he would try once again to raise the subject of the two boys and take ship for home. Normandy had its charms, but England held better. Norman women were fair, but not so handsome as Saxon lasses across that sea . . . the sea! God’s mercy, the tide was almost upon them and that wagon remained caught fast in the mud.
Several men noticed that imminent danger at almost the same moment, for they rushed forward to add their weight to the frantic pushing and pulling. The last of them were beginning to cross now, the footing made all the more difficult by the churned bed and the heavier suck of the shifting undercurrents. Suddenly and with no warning the wagon lurched forward and lumbered up the shallow bank, the mules sweating and shaking with effort. One brayed, the noise intermingling with the back-slapping and shouts of triumph from the men.
The sudden burst of noise startled those horses still in midcrossing; a grey squealed and lashed out with a hind leg, catching a bay square on the knee. The animal lurched violently to the right, crashing into a chestnut, sending it staggering off balance, pitching its rider into the water. The chestnut, legs thrashing, plunged to its feet and fled riderless after the other bolting horses; a hind hoof had slammed against the rider’s head, leaving the man dazed and disorientated. Someone else nearby was crying out, the words indistinct, then a second hoof caught the unseated rider’s shoulder and, screaming with pain, the soldier went down in an openmouthed hand-grasping flurry beneath the water.
It all happened so quickly. On the bank, most of the men were looking towards the freed wagon, congratulating those who had rescued it; few heard the cries from the river or saw what was happening. The bay horse, its leg obviously broken, was struggling to rise. Its rider, with a foot wedged in the stirrup, was being dragged and trampled, his gurgling, water-choked voice calling desperately for help.
Harold had cheered along with the rest of them as the wagon had come free, but his attention had been more directed at the incoming tide and the level of the river – on those last horses to cross. He was one of the few to witness what had happened and he responded instinctively without thought for his own safety. He leapt down the bank and waded into the current, his arms pummelling his body forward. As he neared the terrified bay, he pulled out his dagger with one hand and with the other grasped the bridle. He brought the blade quick and deep through the animal’s throat and the river ran red, the stain flooding upstream with the inrush of the tide. Then Harold was hacking at the leather of the stirrup, severed it and the man floated free, his face ashen, the pain of his own broken bones shuddering through his body as his chattering teeth attempted to thank his rescuer. Harold reached out a hand, grabbed at the man’s shoulder and began towing him to where the second man floated, face down.
‘Set your arms about my neck!’ Harold urged the one with the broken leg. ‘I need my hands free!’ The current was growing stronger, the swell and pull of mud and sucking sand around Harold’s legs and feet making it so difficult to wade, to push forward, but he was nearly there . . . he reached out, caught hold of the second man’s hair, dragged him nearer and managed to clamp his strong grip around the other’s wrist, started back to shore . . . Three other hands grasped hold of the two almost drowned unfortunates, took their weight from Harold’s aching shoulders, dragged them – and the gasping, spluttering earl – out from the water. Harold stumbled as his feet touched dry land; he sat, legs crumpled beneath him, air pumping into his lungs as he struggled to steady his breathing.
Conscious of a shadow across him, shielding the heat of the afternoon, Harold opened his eyes, lifted his gaze to stare up at William’s tall, dominating height.
‘That’, Duke William said, ‘was either an act of bravery or wretched foolery.’
Harold laughed, held out his hand for the Duke to haul him upright. ‘Well, I am not especially brave, so I must, then, be the fool.’
William slapped his hand, once, in a gesture of respect on Harold’s upper arm. ‘I think you are not the fool you masquerade to be. I think, my Lord Harold of Wessex, that perhaps you are a man who ought be courted as ally, rather than opposed as enemy?’
24
Dinan The breaking of the Breton army besieging Dol was a disappointment to Harold. With siege warfare being an uncommon practice in England, he was eager to observe the strategy of dislodging an encamped force. Conan apparently held no similar interest, nor the stomach for a direct fight. With the might of the Norman army rapidly approaching, he fled west, leaving Dol to celebrate its liberation. Harold would have left things at that: Dol was secure and Conan taught the lesson that it was unwise to challenge his duke.
‘In England, we would have offered a treaty,’ Harold observed as, after a single short day spent in Dol, William ordered pursuit of the rebels. ‘Negotiation is preferable to bloodshed, surely?’
‘Talk’, William answered disparagingly, pausing before lifting his foot into the stirrup to mount, ‘is for women and monks.’
Harold said nothing as he swung himself into the saddle. It did not particularly matter to him what path William took, but it seemed, to his mind, ludicrous to initiate a bloody confrontation if disagreement could be settled amicably. The insult to English manhood he ignored. Already he was learning that to take umbrage at every contemptuous remark aimed at the Saxon way of doing things would have left him in a state of permanent rage.
‘I have no intention of ending it here at Dol,’ William announced gruffly to Harold’s silence. ‘Conan must not be permitted to mock my authority. If he wishes to challenge me, then he can do so on the battlefield.’
Harold half raised his hand in salute as acceptance of the Duke’s explanation. He would be the first to concede that authority must be maintained, but was this determination to fight not an indication of a possible weakness? To subdue an enemy by agreeing peace terms required a superior strength of character rather than the raw muscle of conflict. Skill in oratory and diplomacy could be as powerful as the honed blade of a sword, especially when one was backed by the other. William’s determination to fight at all costs showed Harold a crack in his defences. The Duke could only retain his command by strength of arms, but no man could fight for ever.
‘Perhaps’, William said scornfully to Harold as he nudged his stallion forward into a walk, ‘the king of your country would not have been so long in exile in mine, had there been more of an effort to fight against the invader Cnut when first he went into England.’
‘Or perhaps,’ Harold answered amiably, ‘had the royal household fought the harder against Cnut, our king would not have survived long enough to reach exile in the first place.’
Duke William shrugged and kicked his horse into a canter, ironshod hooves sending sparks flying from the rough-cobbled streets of Dol.
He marched after the rebels into Brittany, to Conan’s own-held town of Dinan, encircling the city and threatening reprisal without quarter if Conan was not immediately handed into his charge. The citizens of Dinan, resenting the invasion of a Norman force, duly refused and Harold was at last to witness, first hand, Norman siege tactics.
William’s army, entrenching their encampment beyond arrow range of the town’s walls, began ransacking the surrounding countryside, looting what they could carry, destroying what they could not. Men were slaughtered – peasantry many of them, scratching a hand-to-mouth living from the soil. Cattle, crops, grain butchered or burnt. The younger women were useful for a soldier’s pleasure, the elder ones and the babes were butchered along with their menfolk. For two weeks, black curls of smoke darkened the landscape, and the smell of burning flesh tainted the prevailing wind.
Listening to the rampage of unfettered vengeance, hearing the screams, watching the pall of smoke, smelling the blood-scent of death, Harold felt sickened. This was not warfare, a warrior matching his skill against an opponent of equal worth. Where was the battle honour in the slaughter of innocents?
While murder ran bloodily through the narrow streets of Dinan, Duke William took his ease within his command tent, enjoying a meal of lamb delicately flavoured with herbs and garlic, roasted wildfowl, baked rabbit, fruits and strong goat’s cheese. Rabbit was a dish Harold normally enjoyed, for the animal was barely known in England. Once or twice their meat had been served at Bosham, brought by incoming traders, but the English preferred the taste of their native hare. The animal had little potential value for the English, but for Normans living within fortified walls or facing the possibility of a prolonged siege, the coneys, so prolific in breeding and needing only the limited space of a warren, provided a ready supply of fresh meat.
Harold had half considered taking a breeding pair back with him to his Waltham Abbey manor – the younger children might enjoy making pets of them – but henceforth, they would always remind him of what was happening on the far side of those fortified walls. He would never eat rabbit again without hearing the screams of women and children.
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