William, Count of the Normans, sate in a fair chamber of his palace of Rouen; and on the large table before him were ample evidences of the various labours, as warrior, chief, thinker, and statesman, which filled the capacious breadth of that sleepless mind.
There lay a plan of the new port of Cherbourg, and beside it an open MS. of the Duke’s favourite book, the Commentaries of Caesar, from which, it is said, he borrowed some of the tactics of his own martial science; marked, and dotted, and interlined with his large bold handwriting, were the words of the great Roman. A score or so of long arrows, which had received some skilful improvement in feather or bolt, lay carelessly scattered over some architectural sketches of a new Abbey Church, and the proposed charter for its endowment. An open cyst, of the beautiful workmanship for which the English goldsmiths were then pre-eminently renowned, that had been among the parting gifts of Edward, contained letters from the various potentates near and far, who sought his alliance or menaced his repose.
On a perch behind him sate his favourite Norway falcon unhooded, for it had been taught the finest polish in its dainty education—viz., “to face company undisturbed.” At a kind of easel at the farther end of the hall, a dwarf, misshapen in limbs, but of a face singularly acute and intelligent, was employed in the outline of that famous action at Val des Dunes, which had been the scene of one of the most brilliant of William’s feats in arms—an outline intended to be transferred to the notable “stitchwork” of Matilda the Duchess.
Upon the floor, playing with a huge boar-hound of English breed, that seemed but ill to like the play, and every now and then snarled and showed his white teeth, was a young boy, with something of the Duke’s features, but with an expression more open and less sagacious; and something of the Duke’s broad build of chest and shoulder, but without promise of the Duke’s stately stature, which was needed to give grace and dignity to a strength otherwise cumbrous and graceless. And indeed, since William’s visit to England, his athletic shape had lost much of its youthful symmetry, though not yet deformed by that corpulence which was a disease almost as rare in the Norman as the Spartan.
Nevertheless, what is a defect in the gladiator is often but a beauty in the prince; and the Duke’s large proportions filled the eye with a sense both of regal majesty and physical power. His countenance, yet more than his form, showed the work of time; the short dark hair was worn into partial baldness at the temples by the habitual friction of the casque, and the constant indulgence of wily stratagem and ambitious craft had deepened the wrinkles round the plotting eye and the firm mouth: so that it was only by an effort like that of an actor, that his aspect regained the knightly and noble frankness it had once worn. The accomplished prince was no longer, in truth, what the bold warrior had been,—he was greater in state and less in soul. And already, despite all his grand qualities as a ruler, his imperious nature had betrayed signs of what he (whose constitutional sternness the Norman freemen, not without effort, curbed into the limits of justice) might become, if wider scope were afforded to his fiery passions and unsparing will.
Before the Duke, who was leaning his chin on his hand, stood Mallet de Graville, speaking earnestly, and his discourse seemed both to interest and please his lord.
“Eno’!” said William, “I comprehend the nature of the land and its men,—a land that, untaught by experience, and persuaded that a peace of twenty or thirty years must last till the crack of doom, neglects all its defences, and has not one fort, save Dover, between the coast and the capital,—a land which must be won or lost by a single battle, and men (here the Duke hesitated,) and men,” he resumed with a sigh, “whom it will be so hard to conquer that, pardex, I don’t wonder they neglect their fortresses. Enough I say, of them. Let us return to Harold,—thou thinkest, then, that he is worthy of his fame?”
“He is almost the only Englishman I have seen,” answered De Graville, “who hath received scholarly rearing and nurture; and all his faculties are so evenly balanced, and all accompanied by so composed a calm, that methinks, when I look at and hear him, I contemplate some artful castle,—the strength of which can never be known at the first glance, nor except by those who assail it.”
“Thou art mistaken, Sire de Graville,” said the Duke, with a shrewd and cunning twinkle of his luminous dark eyes. “For thou tellest me that he hath no thought of my pretensions to the English throne,—that he inclines willingly to thy suggestions to come himself to my court for the hostages,—that, in a word, he is not suspicious.”
“Certes, he is not suspicious,” returned Mallet.
“And thinkest thou that an artful castle were worth much without warder or sentry,—or a cultivated mind strong and safe, without its watchman,—Suspicion?”
“Truly, my lord speaks well and wisely,” said the knight, startled; “but Harold is a man thoroughly English, and the English are a gens the least suspecting of any created thing between an angel and a sheep.”
William laughed aloud. But his laugh was checked suddenly; for at that moment a fierce yell smote his ears, and looking hastily up, he saw his hound and his son rolling together on the ground, in a grapple that seemed deadly. William sprang to the spot; but the boy, who was then under the dog, cried out, “Laissez aller! Laissez aller! no rescue! I will master my own foe;” and, so saying, with a vigorous effort he gained his knee, and with both hands griped the hound’s throat, so that the beast twisted in vain, to and fro, with gnashing jaws, and in another minute would have panted out its last.
“I may save my good hound now,” said William, with the gay smile of his earlier days, and, though not without some exertion of his prodigious strength, he drew the dog from his son’s grasp.
“That was ill done, father,” said Robert, surnamed even then the Courthose, “to take part with thy son’s foe.”
“But my son’s foe is thy father’s property, my vaillant,” said the Duke; “and thou must answer to me for treason in provoking quarrel and feud with my own fourfooted vavasour.”
“It is not thy property, father; thou gavest the dog to me when a whelp.”
“Fables, Monseigneur de Courthose; I lent it to thee but for a day, when thou hadst put out thine ankle bone in jumping off the rampire; and all maimed as thou went, thou hadst still malice enow in thee to worry the poor beast into a fever.”
“Give or lent, it is the same thing, father; what I have once, that will I hold, as thou didst before me, in thy cradle.”
Then the great Duke, who in his own house was the fondest and weakest of men, was so doltish and doting as to take the boy in his arms and kiss him, nor, with all his far-sighted sagacity, deemed he that in that kiss lay the seed of the awful curse that grew up from a father’s agony; to end in a son’s misery and perdition.
Even Mallet de Graville frowned at the sight of the sire’s infirmity,—even Turold the dwarf shook his head. At that moment an officer entered, and announced that an English nobleman, apparently in great haste (for his horse had dropped down dead as he dismounted), had arrived at the palace, and craved instant audience of the Duke. William put down the boy, gave the brief order for the stranger’s admission, and, punctilious in ceremonial, beckoning De Graville to follow him, passed at once into the next chamber, and seated himself on his chair of state.
In a few moments one of the seneschals of the palace ushered in a visitor, whose long moustache at once proclaimed him Saxon, and in whom De Graville with surprise recognised his old friend, Godrith. The young thegn, with a reverence more hasty than that to which William was accustomed, advanced to the foot of the days, and, using the Norman language, said, in a voice thick with emotion:
“From Harold the Earl, greeting to thee, Monseigneur. Most foul and unchristian wrong hath been done the Earl by thy liegeman, Guy, Count of Ponthieu. Sailing hither in two barks from England, with intent to visit thy court, storm and wind drove the Earl’s vessels towards the mouth of the Somme 187; there landing, and without fear, as in no hostile country, he and his train were seized by the Count himself, and cast into prison in the castle of Belrem 188. A dungeon fit but for malefactors holds, while I speak, the first lord of England, and brother-in-law to its king. Nay, hints of famine, torture, and death itself, have been darkly thrown out by this most disloyal count, whether in earnest, or with the base view of heightening ransom. At length, wearied perhaps by the Earl’s firmness and disdain, this traitor of Ponthieu hath permitted me in the Earl’s behalf to bear the message of Harold. He came to thee as to a prince and a friend; sufferest thou thy liegeman to detain him as a thief or a foe?”
“Noble Englishman,” replied William, gravely, “this is a matter more out of my cognisance than thou seemest to think. It is true that Guy, Count of Ponthieu, holds fief under me, but I have no control over the laws of his realm. And by those laws, he hath right of life and death over all stranded and waifed on his coast. Much grieve I for the mishap of your famous Earl, and what I can do, I will; but I can only treat in this matter with Guy as prince with prince, not as lord to vassal. Meanwhile I pray you to take rest and food; and I will seek prompt counsel as to the measures to adopt.”
The Saxon’s face showed disappointment and dismay at this answer, so different from what he had expected; and he replied with the natural honest bluntness which all his younger affection of Norman manners had never eradicated:
“Food will I not touch, nor wine drink, till thou, Lord Count, hast decided what help, as noble to noble, Christian to Christian, man to man, thou givest to him who has come into this peril solely from his trust in thee.”
“Alas!” said the grand dissimulator, “heavy is the responsibility with which thine ignorance of our land, laws, and men would charge me. If I take but one false step in this matter, woe indeed to thy lord! Guy is hot and haughty, and in his droits; he is capable of sending me the Earl’s head in reply to too dure a request for his freedom. Much treasure and broad lands will it cost me, I fear, to ransom the Earl. But be cheered; half my duchy were not too high a price for thy lord’s safety. Go, then, and eat with a good heart, and drink to the Earl’s health with a hopeful prayer.”
“And it please you, my lord,” said De Graville, “I know this gentle thegn, and will beg of you the grace to see to his entertainment, and sustain his spirits.”
“Thou shalt, but later; so noble a guest none but my chief seneschal should be the first to honour.” Then turning to the officer in waiting, he bade him lead the Saxon to the chamber tenanted by William Fitzosborne (who then lodged within the palace), and committed him to that Count’s care.
As the Saxon sullenly withdrew, and as the door closed on him, William rose and strode to and fro the room exultingly.
“I have him! I have him!” he cried aloud; “not as free guest, but as ransomed captive. I have him—the Earl!—I have him! Go, Mallet, my friend, now seek this sour-looking Englishman; and, hark thee! fill his ear with all the tales thou canst think of as to Guy’s cruelty and ire. Enforce all the difficulties that lie in my way towards the Earl’s delivery. Great make the danger of the Earl’s capture, and vast all the favour of release. Comprehendest thou?”
“I am Norman, Monseigneur,” replied De Graville, with a slight smile; “and we Normans can make a short mantle cover a large space. You will not be displeased with my address.”
“Go then—go,” said William, “and send me forthwith—Lanfranc—no, hold—not Lanfranc, he is too scrupulous; Fitzosborne—no, too haughty. Go, first, to my brother, Odo of Bayeux, and pray him to seek me on the instant.”
The knight bowed and vanished, and William continued to pace the room, with sparkling eyes and murmuring lips.
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