The Last Conquest

by Berwick Coates

  Beams collapsed in showers of sparks.

  William Capra raised his voice above the crackling and roaring. ‘Do you think that will prise some silver out of him?’

  Florens mounted his rangy horse. ‘You will find that Fulk pays for work well done.’

  Capra waved a hand behind him. ‘Is that not well done?’

  Florens cast a glance about himself from the saddle.

  It was indeed well done. Not a body so much as twitched. He looked at Capra wiping his blade and smirking at brother Pomeroy. Did they have to enjoy it quite so much? Would they be so full of savage humour when they were called upon to do some proper soldiering? Could they not see that this was filthy work – more demeaning than mucking out horses? That the Duke was merely rubbing their noses in their contract?

  Florens could not bring himself to agree with the barbarian at his stirrup leering up at him. Instead he pointed towards an unburnt wagon half hidden in a small grove.

  ‘You have missed something.’

  Capra looked round in genuine curiosity. ‘Oh? Where?’

  Following the direction of Florens’ arm, he marched swiftly towards it, and began ransacking it, his jaw tight with greed. His brother followed close behind. They kicked aside two bodies in bloodstained black habits.

  Torn clothes, bundles of kindling, sacks of apples were pulled out and dumped on the ground. Teeth set, eyes glittering, they delved deeper, breaking fingernails on the lids of boxes buried at the bottom.

  Furious at what they found, they hurled books to right and left, and roared with delight as they pounced on two pewter candlesticks inlaid with coloured stones.

  They rushed to gather torches of burning sticks from the collapsing ruins of the houses. Capra stuffed the clothing into small bundles against the wheels, and Pomeroy followed him, setting light to them. As they stepped back to survey their handiwork, they trampled on open, sprawling volumes, grinding them into the mud. They twisted their necks to see what was under their feet, bent down, and began tearing leaves out to feed into the fire.

  ‘Stop!’

  They turned in surprise.

  ‘Stay exactly where you are. Do not move.’

  Fulk walked slowly towards them. As he came closer, he lowered his voice. ‘I said do not move – not a muscle.’

  In only a few hours, they had come to understand that the more quietly Fulk spoke, the more he was to be feared. Pomeroy had a great weal under his left eye to remind him.

  Fulk stooped and retrieved something from the mud. It was a broken-backed book. He picked it up as gently as if he were a nurse with a baby.

  ‘At least I am in time to save this.’

  Capra raised his voice in disbelief. ‘But, Fulk, it is only a book.’

  He gestured with a crumpled fistful of parchment.

  Fulk looked up from the page he was studying, his fingers spread across the lines of regular ink beneath the gorgeous illustrated initial.

  ‘Your ignorance is surpassed only by your invincible vulgarity and your crass stupidity.’

  Capra looked uneasily at his brother, and back at Fulk.

  ‘There is nothing valuable in the wagon, Fulk. I checked. Only these. I was going to give them to you. Just look at that. Genuine. Look at the cut of the jewels.’ He held out the two candlesticks.

  Fulk glanced at them, and spat. ‘If your taste is for coloured glass, I can not redeem you. But your disrespect for the written word will cost you your first day’s pay. Let us see if that helps you to remember next time.’

  Pomeroy stared. Capra almost hurled the candlesticks into the flames in his rage.

  When Fulk was out of earshot, they complained to Florens. ‘How were we to know he was a philosopher?’

  Florens laughed. ‘You were not. But you have learned something else of value.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Fulk has a better eye for a bargain than you.’

  Gilbert was pleased that he saw Ralph and Bruno before they saw him. They were bending over something on the ground. As he drew closer, he could see the signs of tragedy. Ralph looked up at the noise of his approaching horse.

  ‘God’s Breath, where have you been?’

  Gilbert thought furiously. ‘I – I had an accident.’

  Ralph glanced at the bandage on his head. ‘What do you mean – accident? Were you ambushed?’

  ‘No. I mean yes. That is, a kind of ambush. I thought it was an ambush. I fell.’ He put up a hand to his head. ‘But it was not serious.’

  ‘Serious enough to keep you out for a full day. Yet your horse looks in remarkably good order.’

  ‘I had the flux as well. I could not travel.’

  Ralph looked totally unconvinced. Bruno’s face was a study in disbelief.

  Gilbert began to sweat. ‘Ralph, I could not even stand, never mind ride. What with that, and my head—’

  Ralph gestured to the countryside around them. ‘And you camped out here – alone?’

  Gilbert clutched at a straw of dignity. ‘It is not the first time.’

  By now he had gained a better view of the horror around them.

  ‘God – what is this?’

  It was so awful that it drove all other thoughts from both their heads.

  The first body was sprawled right across the track. The smock was caked with dried blood from huge gashes in the back. The tonsure was just visible around the split skull. Gilbert’s jaw set hard. To kill a priest. What chance did a weak old man have, running from killers on horseback? And why crush his head with a mace when he was within a groan of death? Somebody had to dismount to do that.

  Ralph came to stand beside him. ‘Refugees. We saw them earlier. While we were looking for you.’

  Gilbert was by now in such shock that he ignored the shaft.

  The wagon was on its side, its contents strewn all around. The oxen struggled weakly in the broken yoke, their hamstrings slashed.

  Gilbert rode about, his face ashen. One young woman, half naked, was spitted with a spear against the fallen wagon. The blood on her thighs showed that death was not the only horror she had endured. One child lay nearby, its sightless eyes turned away from its groping mother. Another was stretched, disembowelled, at the edge of the trees. An old crone lay with the arm she had raised in futile suppliance still fixed in the rigor of death.

  If only they had been dispatched with a single skilful blow and laid out neatly, it would not somehow have been so bad. It was the wantonness, the obvious enjoyment of slaughter, that sickened him. It was unnatural, and it was so un-private, this gazing upon Christian souls frozen in the moment of meeting their God; it was a sight for saints and confessors, not for humble soldiers.

  Ralph answered his unspoken comment. ‘It goes on. You know it goes on.’

  Gilbert, his face still grey, thought of the family he had just left at the mill – thrown down in death like broken dolls.

  ‘But like this? Does it have to be like this?’

  ‘You can lose your long face,’ said Ralph. ‘It is the way of war. And it is the Duke’s way of war.’

  ‘Why? Kill the soldiers, yes. But to butcher old men and infants. What was their crime?’

  ‘To be in the way,’ said Bruno, as he put the oxen out of their misery.

  Gilbert spread his hands. ‘What is the sense? We shall need their labour when peace comes.’

  ‘We shall indeed. The Duke kills not to create a wilderness but to create terror. Terror creates confusion. Confusion makes weakness. Weakness leads to defeat.’

  Gilbert pointed downwards. ‘Why do they have to enjoy doing it?’

  Ralph spat. ‘There are such men in any army. They are well paid for what they do.’

  ‘They would need to be,’ said Bruno.

  ‘The Flemings.’

  Bruno nodded.

  Gilbert shuddered with loathing. ‘I should rather have such men as enemies.’

  Ralph gazed about him and sighed. A familiar image was raising itself befor
e the eyes of his memory. Burning buildings, the sightless faces of his childhood friends, private boxes raped and pillaged, his mother whispering to herself in a corner, his father clutching the stump of his arm, and weeping more with impotence than with pain.

  ‘There are no enemies, no friends – only survivors and victims, lucky and unlucky, those on whom God’s Light shines, and those on whom it does not. War is the enemy, not the other side.’

  ‘Do you feel nothing?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Sympathy for the dead? Their agony is over. Rage? Can you take revenge on war? You might as well try to wreak vengeance on the weather.’

  Hardly a word was spoken for the rest of the journey back to camp.

  On the edge of it, they passed a pack of hounds being exercised. Great Jesus! thought Gilbert. Who would bring hounds on an adventure like this? He thought of the horror they had just left behind. He heard Ralph snort with disgust and utter one word.

  ‘Beaumont.’

  A whiff of latrines and stale bodies reached them. They forded one of the two small rivers that acted as natural fortifications on either side of the main camp. For several hundred paces the ground had been cleared of all timber and cover. Groups of sweating soldiers were dragging tree trunks towards the ever-growing palisade. They looked up at the new arrivals, and complained bitterly to them, cursing in the mindless, repetitive way of all soldiers. The sergeants in charge glared at them, in the way that all sergeants glare, and resumed their own loud swearing over the bent backs of their glowering workers.

  Gilbert could see that the work was going well. The palisade was nearly up to its full height in several places, and there was already a catwalk for sentries on top of the square tower. The main building looked flimsy on its huge stilts, but the chief engineer had collected a sizeable party of Saxon prisoners. A few days of hard work with the shovel and the whip would get the gap underneath filled with earth, and it would look solid enough – as if it had grown out of its mound like a great wooden mushroom. Ranulf of Dreux was a miserable devil, but he knew his job. And for all his endless complaints about delays and shortages and other insuperable problems, he had found time to make a start on a hall for the Duke. Carpenters were carrying long planks through bare doorways to begin floors and benches.

  Everywhere stood crude thatch shelters for livestock, grain, and other supplies. Sir Baldwin had already placed sentries on each one. Several wagons belonging to the Breton contingent had been moved to make room for more horse stalls – with extra shelter for the favoured destriers. That was Sandor’s work. Two more armourers’ smithies had appeared, and were working full blast. The Duke had been quick to take advantage of the charcoal-burning in the surrounding forest. Tucked away in a bend of a river, the archers sat over their fires, held up new arrow shafts to the flickering light, and ran thoughtful thumbs over feathered flights.

  Behind the camp, on the far side, the land sloped gradually towards the sea, and the harbour, where the Duke kept his ships in constant readiness. Squads of Baldwin’s men were engaged in regular altercations with those who were impeding free movement of supplies with their shanties and bivouacs.

  The overall impression was one of bustle and purpose. Gilbert had been a soldier long enough to appreciate professionalism when he saw it. In another day or two the Duke’s camp would be ready to sustain attack by a full army. Rumours were wild about the numbers of the English, but the more Gilbert saw of Baldwin’s supplies, and Fitzosbern’s direction, and Lord Geoffrey’s training, the more reassured he felt. The more he saw of Ranulf’s building, the less he worried about the arrival of the English. He had seen engineers like Ranulf at work in Brittany, in Maine, in the Vexin, and in Pevensey too. Normans understood castles. He hoped the English did not.

  If the worst did come to the worst, the avenue of escape was assured. The ships were ready at any time, manned and victualled. If the Duke’s men were defeated – which God forbid – they would not have to turn and sell their lives dearly at the water’s edge. Valhalla glory was all very well for Vikings, but it was not the Norman way.

  Ralph and Bruno dismounted. Gilbert remained in the saddle. He did not wish Ralph to see him getting down with the bad ankle.

  ‘I am going to make my report,’ he said.

  Ralph looked up at him. ‘What do you have worth telling – the names of your nurse and groom?’

  Gilbert flushed. The gibe made him angry as well as embarrassed. ‘Damn you; you do not know everything. I have information. I go to report it.’

  ‘I shall hear about it all sooner or later,’ said Ralph.

  Gilbert nudged his horse forward. ‘But not from me,’ he said over his shoulder.

  Gilbert tethered his horse outside the tent of Sir Baldwin de Clair. He paused outside to warm his hands at the blaze, and to summon up his courage. To his surprise, Sir Baldwin was there too, sitting on a bench, munching. He spoke with his mouth full.

  ‘What do you want?’

  It sounded more like a challenge than a question.

  ‘I – I have come to deliver my report, sir.’

  ‘What – at this hour?’

  ‘You said to come at any time, sir.’

  Baldwin made a noise of annoyance. ‘Oh, very well. Come on. Just getting warm too.’

  Baldwin was so ready to grumble that it had not occurred to him to ask questions about the day’s absence. He wiped his hands, threw the towel to a servant, and led the way into a tent that seemed better provided with the comforts of life than many a senior commander’s accommodation. Sir Baldwin de Clair, like all quartermasters, seemed to spend half his time working to make himself comfortable, and the other half complaining about overwork and discomfort.

  Inside, seated at a low table, crouched against the tent’s sloping wall, a hatchet-faced monk scribbled endless lists, bent low in the guttering light of the mean candle-ends that were all that Baldwin allowed him

  Baldwin saw Gilbert screw up his eyes in the gloom.

  ‘It is all I have to spare.’ He gestured towards the bowed clerk. ‘Thinks I am as rich as Charlemagne.’

  The monk sniffed.

  Sir Baldwin could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen years his senior, but Gilbert thought of him as old.

  He grunted like a grandfather while Gilbert reported what he had seen on his reconnaissance. He asked close questions on farm sizes, barns, oxen, stores, wells and other matters to do with supply and shelter. From time to time he barked dictation at Brother Crispin, who merely sniffed and continued recording the information without looking up.

  Gilbert was impressed with Baldwin’s professionalism. No anxiety about Harold’s whereabouts showed. It was as if he treated the whole enterprise purely as an exercise in supply.

  Well, thought Gilbert, perhaps he could surprise him. He felt the time was approaching for him to produce the choicest morsel of news. He almost licked his lips in anticipation.

  Baldwin blew on his hands. ‘Show me where you have been.’ He saw Gilbert hesitate. ‘Is it any good putting a map in front of you?’

  Gilbert stammered, ‘I – I am not used to maps, sir.’

  ‘You are a scout.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I have not – I mean, I am not sure yet whether—’

  ‘What are you, boy? Whose man are you?’

  ‘I was with the Rouen garrison, sir. Before that, I served Lord Geoffrey de Montbrai – the Bishop of Coutances.’ Gilbert dropped the biggest name he could think of.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Baldwin. ‘I do know who Geoffrey de Montbrai is. What did you do when you were with him?’

  Gilbert cursed to himself. This was not how he had planned the conversation to go. ‘I – I was in charge of the hounds, sir.’

  Baldwin threw up his hands. ‘Great Jesus of Nazareth! I ask for trained scouts and they send me kennel boys. All right, all right, just tell me, and Crispin and I will make sense of it.’

  When he stopped grumbling, Baldwin asked sensible and searching questio
ns. Using known landmarks and references to the sun, he pieced together a fair picture of Gilbert’s journey. Crispin translated it into signs on the map.

  Gilbert said nothing about the mill or its people. Nor did he mention the hill with the old apple tree near its summit. He was afraid that Ralph might report later, and it would come out that he had become separated from his companions, and there would be no end of trouble and shame. Moreover, he did not want anything to spoil the effect of the prime piece of military intelligence that he had been saving up. If he produced it with the right flourish, Baldwin might let his previous career with Lord Geoffrey’s hounds slip his mind.

  Baldwin blew on his hands again. ‘First things first then. No enemy army?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Getting near.

  ‘No sign of them?’

  ‘No, sir.’ A thumping of the chest.

  ‘No information? No whispers? No rumours?’

  Now!

  ‘I think something has happened, sir.’

  Baldwin stopped blowing. ‘What do you mean? How do you know?’

  ‘I encountered a group of refugees, sir. I overheard something.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I am a scout, sir,’ said Gilbert, relieved at last to make a point. ‘It is part of my job to—’

  Baldwin waved a hand. ‘Yes, yes, all right, all right. What did you hear?’

  ‘One of them was very excited, about some news he had just heard. When he told the others, they were, I should say, impressed.’

  ‘What did he say, boy!’

  ‘He spoke English.’

  Baldwin glared. ‘Then why did you not question them?’

  ‘I have no English, sir.’

  ‘You can manage a few words, surely. One of them might have spoken French.’

  ‘There were several of them, sir.’

  ‘Armed to the teeth, I suppose.’

  Gilbert squirmed. ‘No, sir. But I thought if I used force I should get nothing from them. By staying in cover I might hear more.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Confidence was evaporating fast.

  ‘I think – only think, sir – that one of them said something about the north.’