The Conqueror

by Georgette Heyer

  In the bower Matilda was seated on a cushion, working at a fine altar-cloth. The Lady Judith had the other end of it, and both fair heads were bent over the embroidery. Round them were gathered several maidens, all busy with some form of stitchery or another. There was a hum of talk which broke off suddenly as the door at the end of the room was flung open. Needles were stayed in mid-air; six startled faces were turned towards the door, and six pairs of eyes grew round with wonder.

  William stood on the threshold, an incongruous figure in the scented bower. Perceiving the look in his eyes, one of the maidens clasped her neighbour with a frightened whimper.

  It seemed to Matilda that speech was impossible. Some leaping emotion choked her; it might have been fear, or it might have been triumph. She saw how the dust lay thick on the Duke’s boots and mantle, how his face was pale and lined with the fatigue of hard riding, and the shadow of a small exultant smile touched her lips.

  ‘Why, what is this?’ said Judith. Amusement quivered in her voice. She got up, and moved forward a step, glancing from the Duke to her sister’s still face.

  The Duke stalked towards Matilda. She sat like a statue, watching him. He bent (she thought he swooped) and jerked her to her feet, holding her wrists in a grip that made her catch her breath. ‘Your message reached me safe,’ he said. ‘I am come to answer you.’

  ‘Eh, heart of Christ!’ cried Judith, who guessed what was coming.

  One of the maidens saw the lash of the Duke’s whip shaken free, and began to cry. Matilda’s lips moved stiffly: ‘You dare not!’

  ‘Yea, madame, I dare,’ William said. For the first time she saw that smile he had which was like a snarl. ‘I have had men’s limbs lopped off for the very insult you cast at me, proud widow.’ He pulled her into the middle of the chamber. ‘I will spare your limbs, madame, but by God, your sides shall smart!’

  The maids were in a flutter, some staring as though they hardly understood, one sobbing for very horror, and all of them huddled together as far from this dreadful invader as was possible. The whip sang through the air; the girl who was sobbing hid her face, and winced every time she heard the wicked crack of the lash.

  The Lady Judith had recovered her composure. When William raised his whip-hand she slid quickly to the door, and set her back to it with her hands flat on the dark wood, as though she would keep it shut. The eldest of the bower-maidens, aghast at seeing her mistress so brutally flogged, would have run out to summon help, but recoiled before Judith.

  ‘Fool, do you want all the Court to know how the Lady Matilda was whipped?’ Judith said scornfully. ‘Let be, let be! she will not thank you for screeching her hurts to the world.’

  Matilda was sobbing, but she had her underlip gripped hard between her teeth, and would not allow more than a little moan to escape her. Her dress was torn, and her hair dishevelled; William’s fingers were crushing her wrists till the bones ached. His merciless arm was stayed at last; her knees gave way under her as the last blow fell. He threw his whip aside, and caught her round the waist, holding her against him breast to breast. ‘Madame, you scorned me,’ he said, ‘but by God, you will never forget me!’ His hold tightened; his left hand let go her wrists and forced up her drooping head. Before she knew what next was to come, he had kissed her full on her parted lips. She gave a little moan at that. He laughed suddenly and harshly, flung her from him, and swept round on his heel. She fell half-fainting to the ground, and lay there.

  There was an urgent beating on the door; voices were heard in agitated conference outside. ‘Open!’ William ordered.

  Judith looked at him curiously. Her slow smile dawned; she bent the knee. ‘By my faith, William of Normandy, you are a brave man,’ she said, and moved from before the door, and pulled it wide.

  An exclamation broke from the foremost of those on the threshold. Swords scraped in their scabbards; there arose a babel of indignation. The Duke showed his teeth, and stalked forward rather like a beast of prey about to make his spring. The gentleman fell back involuntarily before him. His eyes ran over them; he made no movement to come at his sword; he even set his hands carelessly on his hips. ‘Well, my masters?’ he said sardonically. ‘Well?’

  They were irresolute, but fidgeted with their daggers. They looked at one another, and lastly at Judith. Judith laughed, and said: ‘O want-wits! Stand aside: this is not for you.’

  ‘Holy God, lady … !’ one began in a stutter.

  ‘The Lady Matilda!’ another gasped out.

  A third started forward, hot words bubbling on his tongue. ‘Beau sire, you have done very ill, by the Blood! Not your Grace’s high estate, not –’

  ‘Foh!’ said William. His hand fell on the indignant gentleman’s shoulder, and twisted him out of the way. It was plain he held them all to be of no account. His look commanded; without quite knowing why they did so the gentlemen made room for him to pass, and out he went, very much the better man.

  Raoul was waiting anxiously in the bailey. He drew a sigh of relief when he saw the Duke come through the door, but a second later caught a glimpse of angry faces behind William, and wondered whether it was to be a matter for swords after all. Apparently it was not. The Duke took the bridle in his hand, and leaped into the saddle. He became aware of the men who had followed him, and suddenly laughed.

  This was not to be borne, not even from Normandy. A couple of men sprang forward to grasp at the Duke’s rein; Raoul pulled his sword half out of the scabbard.

  The Duke continued to be amused. ‘No, my friends, I think not!’ he said, and drove in his spurs. His horse plunged forward, snorting; one man jumped clear, the other was knocked sprawling. The Duke was away before anyone could move; the clatter of hooves resounded on the paved ground, and grew fainter in the distance, till it became no more than an echo.

  In the bower her ladies flew to succour Matilda, with little crooning noises, and fluttering hands. She was looking at the bruises on her wrists; they were alarmed to see her so rapt and still. Judith drove them out, slamming the door upon their protests. She came back to Matilda, and knelt by her. ‘Child, you would not be warned,’ she said.

  Matilda’s lips twisted into the semblance of a smile. ‘Do you pity me, Judith?’

  ‘Not I, sweetheart. You have come by your deserts.’

  Matilda straightened her body with a grimace of pain. ‘What did they do to him?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, what should they do to such an one as he?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Matilda. ‘But they might have slain him. I wonder, did he think of that?’ She lifted her hands and considered her bruises again. Her calm broke; she cast herself on Judith’s breast, crying piteously: ‘Ah, ah, he has hurt me, Judith!’

  Four

  There was an air of expectancy about the Norman Court for many days after the Duke’s flying visit to Lille. The tale of his doings there leaked out, and was whispered in various garbled versions from one man to another. But no man thought fit to mention it to the Duke himself. Some confidently prophesied that Count Baldwin’s cartel of war would come, but these were proved to be wrong. No one knew what Count Baldwin said or thought when he returned from that fateful day’s hawking and found his daughter bruised and prostrate, and his Court seething with impotent fury. Whatever his feelings he was not the man to allow these to thrust him unwarily into hostilities. He was a powerful prince, and no craven, but he quite definitely did not want to go to war with his Norman neighbour. ‘There is one man in the world,’ said Count Baldwin, ‘who has the art of war at his finger-ends, and that man is Duke William. I have said enough.’

  His nobles considered that he took Normandy’s daring too meekly; the Lady Matilda nursed her sore sides, and spoke no word; Count Baldwin wrote careful letters to the Duke in Rouen, and digested his answers with a thoughtful eye. He judged it politic to tell his daughter she was a ruined wo
man. She propped her chin in her hands, and looked at him without apparent dismay.

  ‘Matilda,’ said her father, ‘what prince will pick up that which Normandy has mauled? By the Saints, you were best in a nunnery, it seems to me.’

  Matilda said: ‘What prince would dare stretch a hand towards that which Normandy covets?’

  ‘You mistake the matter, girl,’ said Count Baldwin. ‘Normandy has done with you.’

  ‘Nay, he will know no peace until I lie in his bed,’ answered Matilda.

  ‘This is forward talk,’ frowned the Count, and left it at that.

  In Rouen it was thought that the Duke must have abandoned all thought of marriage with the Flemish lady, but Lanfranc was not recalled from Rome. Archbishop Mauger, eating dulcets in his palace, spent a long hour of meditation upon this, and contrived to send word to his brother, the Count of Arques, who was, by reason of the ducal garrison about him, virtually a prisoner in his own wind-swept castle. Mauger was uncertain of the Duke’s mind but he feared the tenacity of his nature.

  Upon the ride back to Eu the Duke had said with a confident ring in his voice: ‘I shall have her yet, but by God’s eyes she shall find no softness in me!’

  ‘If that is the mind you are in,’ had answered Raoul tartly, ‘it seems to me you had best look for a bride you can love, and forget the Lady Matilda.’

  The Duke said: ‘I have sworn to have Matilda, and none other. Either for love or for hatred she is mine.’

  ‘A difficult conquest, William,’ was all Raoul would say.

  ‘Trust me, I shall conquer,’ the Duke replied.

  That was the only mention he made of Matilda for many a day. He had other matters to occupy his thoughts, and upon his return to Rouen he plunged into an orgy of work, thrusting the marriage question to the back of his mind. Civil and ecclesiastical reforms held him busy for the rest of the year, drawing some groans from his hard-driven barons, and from Edgar, Thegn of Marwell, a grudging admiration. Edgar said slowly: ‘Yea, I see he is indeed a ruler. I thought him only a man of blood.’

  Gilbert d’Aufay, to whom this was addressed, laughed, and inquired what had provoked the tribute. They were seated by one of the upper windows of the palace at Rouen, which looked over the Seine to the Forest of Quévilly beyond. With his eyes on the far trees Edgar replied: ‘These new laws, the way he uses with men who are dangerous to his Duchy. He is very crafty; very politic.’

  ‘You have been watching him close, my Saxon,’ said Gilbert.

  Edgar hunched his shoulder; a shadow flitted across his blue eyes. ‘What have I to do now but watch other men’s deeds?’ he said rather bitterly.

  ‘I thought you were content enough,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Not content. Never that,’ Edgar answered. He saw that Gilbert looked a little hurt, and added: ‘Rest you, I do very well, and maybe I am no longer so grievously exiled since I have your friendship, and Raoul’s.’

  ‘And others too from what I hear. But it is always Raoul with you.’ Gilbert cocked up a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You make a brother of him, do you not? Do you understand each other so well?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edgar uncommunicatively. He lifted a corner of his mantle, and drew it across his knees. ‘I never had a brother,’ he said. ‘I have just one sister, Elfrida.’ He stifled a sigh. ‘She was a little maid when I left her, but I doubt she will have grown now.’

  ‘Maybe you will be free to return to England ere many months,’ Gilbert said, in an awkward attempt to console a homesickness he could plainly see.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Edgar, expressionless.

  But gradually the desire for England was growing less in him. It was impossible to live for so long in Normandy without beginning to feel himself at home there. He had made friends; unwillingly he was interested in the affairs of the Duchy. A little sadly he thought that he was becoming like Wlnoth, a Normanized Englishman, and when Busac’s rebellion broke upon Normandy he forgot he was a Saxon and a hostage; he only knew that he had stayed for so long in the Norman Court, and entered so often into talk that was all of the Duchy’s weal that an attempt to overset the Duke’s peace made him as indignant as his hosts. He saw the messenger arrive covered with dust, and an hour later met Raoul in one of the galleries of the great palace. Raoul said: ‘Have you heard what has chanced? William Busac has invested the Castle of Eu against the Duke.’

  ‘Who marches against him?’ Edgar asked eagerly. ‘Will it be the Lord of Longueville, or the Duke himself? I would I might go too.’

  ‘Oh, the Duke himself,’ Raoul answered, carefully ignoring the last part of Edgar’s speech.

  They walked on down the gallery together, discussing the affair, wondering which barons were likely to join Busac, and which of them would be against him, until suddenly Edgar realized that he was talking as though he too were a Norman, and broke off, feeling himself neither Norman nor Saxon, but for the moment only a young man who wanted to ride to war with this other young man, his friend.

  The Duke made short work of Busac, hotly assisted by the rebel’s brothers: Robert, who had rashly entrusted the Castle of Eu to his care, and Hugh, Abbot of Luxeuil, who journeyed expressly to Rouen to urge the Duke to take strong measures. This was superfluous advice; the Duke had already departed for Eu, where, after the shortest of sieges, he took the Castle by storm, imposed penalties upon the quaking garrison, and sent Busac into banishment. It was soon heard that Busac had sought refuge in the King of France’s Court, and had been received with kindness. That was significant enough; the King was beginning to show his hostility towards Duke William.

  Busac’s rebellion was one of many signs of unrest. With Val-es-dunes fading into a four-year-old memory Normandy began to lift up her head again. The Duchy was not wholly William’s yet, and well he knew it. The greater part of his nobles might be with him, the serfs and burghers were his to a man, since he gave them rigid justice, but there were still those who preferred the old lawless way of life. In various districts brigandage was rife, private quarrels were settled by burning and death, and grasping barons seized what they could whenever they thought the Duke’s back safely turned. His hand was heavy on those who overset his peace, but throughout the second year of Edgar’s exile tiny disturbances, like the scum bubbling in a simmering pot, occurred continually. It might be no more than the raiding of a neighbour’s land; once it was a murder at a wedding-feast; once a band of brigands who made fifty miles of country unsafe for honest men to live in, but whether it was murder or brigandage it was always a sign of unrest, skilfully and secretly fomented by the man who lay so low at Arques.

  Nearly a year after the happenings at Lille it was heard that Earl Godwine had joined forces with his son Harold. Next it was heard that King Edward had been pleased to inlaw Godwine and both his sons, and to bestow on Tostig, lately wedded to his Judith, the vacant Earldom of Northumbria. There came a new light into Edgar’s eyes; even Normanized Wlnoth boasted that King Edward dared not oppose his kindred. Duke William appeared to bestow no more than a fleeting attention on the news, but in the seclusion of his chamber he struck his hand down on the table, and said in open exasperation: ‘God’s death, was there ever so great a nithing as Edward?’ He thrust his hand in Raoul’s arm. ‘None, I am very sure, but you need not say that I said so.’

  Earl Godwine was not long to survive his reinstatement. In the spring of the New Year word came of his death, and a strange tale was brought by the merchants from England. It was said that the hand of God had struck Earl Godwine down at the King’s board. He had called to his son Harold to bring him wine at the feast which was to mark his reconciliation with Edward. As he approached, bearing the drinking-cup, Harold almost fell, with a foot caught in some obstacle. Throwing out his right leg he recovered his balance, whereupon the Earl, in great spirits, quoted an old proverb: ‘One brother helps the other.’ King Edward, not so ela
ted, said gloomily: ‘Ah, so would my brother Alfred have helped me had he lived, Earl Godwine.’

  The Earl had heard more than enough of Alfred’s death. It was not his custom to pay any heed to the charge so often flung at his head, but upon this occasion he had drunk enough to make him resent the King’s words. Breaking off a piece of wastel bread, he looked Edward angrily in the face, and said in a loud voice: ‘O King, if I had aught to do with Alfred’s death, may this morsel of bread choke me!’ With that he boldly thrust the bread into his mouth, was taken by a kind of seizure, very dreadful to behold, and fell down with foam on his lips and the bread stuck tight in his throat. An hour later he was a dead man, and King Edward was shaking his head in a way that showed he was not at all surprised.

  But all this interesting news from England, even the growing power of Harold, could not keep the Duke’s attention for long. He was busy with the breaking of his fierce colt Normandy.

  Trouble drew him to the unquiet Côtentin; while he lay once more at Valognes a messenger reached him on an all but foundered horse, tumbled from the saddle, and delivered a sealed package into his hands.

  The Duke was on the point of setting out with Saint-Sauveur upon a journey still further to the west. He was armed and cloaked; a straining squire held his horse; his knights were gathered around him. He slit the package with his dagger, and spread out the frail sheets of cotton paper.

  FitzOsbern covered two pages with his account of disaster. No sooner had the Duke crossed the Vire than the prisoner at Arques struck at the safety of Normandy. He had won over the garrison set about him, and was now master of the Castle, and was rapidly reducing the surrounding land of Tallou to a state of miserable slavery.

  The Duke’s face darkened; he let a great oath, and crumpled the letter in his hand. Néel de Saint-Sauveur asked anxiously what had befallen, and was told in a few words. The Duke tossed the crumpled letter to him; he spread out the sheets and read them, while the others gathered in the courtyard whispered together, and wondered what would come of it.