The Conqueror Read Free Page A

very amiable. His younger brother, Alfred, who stood now in the doorway, was of the same type, but he had more purpose in his face, and he did not smile so easily. Both bore themselves proudly, as indeed they had a right to do, being the sons of the dead King Ethelred of England. One day, when Cnut, the Danish usurper, was safe under the sod, they meant to go back to England, and then Edward would be a king. Just now, as he looked up at Count Robert, he was an exile, a dependant of the Norman Court.
    ‘You shall swear to love my son well, all of you,’ Count Robert said, with a challenging yet genial look round. ‘He is little, but he will grow, I promise you.’
    Edward touched the child’s cheek with his finger. ‘Indeed, I will love him as mine own,’ he said. ‘He is very like you.’
    Count Robert beckoned up his half-brother, and made him take the child’s hand. ‘You shall honour your nephew, William,’ he said laughingly. ‘See how he grabs at your finger! He will be a mighty fellow.’
    ‘It is always so with him,’ Herleva said softly. ‘He grasps as though he would never let go.’ She would have liked to have told the Count of her dream, but in the presence of these nobles she did not care to speak of it.
    ‘A fierce boy,’ William said, jesting. ‘We shall have to look to ourselves when he is grown.’
    Count Robert pulled his great sword from its sheath. ‘A warrior, if he is a true son of mine,’ he said, and laid the sword down beside the child.
    The flash of a jewel on the hilt caught the babe’s eye, and he left stretching his hands to the necklace round Count Robert’s neck, and at once grasped the sword by the cross hilt. Duxia, who was hovering in the background, quite overcome by such a noble assembly in her house, could scarcely restrain an exclamation of horror at the sight of the gleaming steel within the child’s reach. But Herleva looked on smiling.
    The babe had one of the cross-pieces of the hilt fast in his hands, whereat there was much laughter from the watching barons.
    ‘Said I not so?’ Count Robert demanded. ‘He will be a warrior, by the Face!’
    ‘Has he been received into the Church?’ Edward asked gently.
    He had been baptized a month ago, Herleva said, in the Church of Holy Trinity.
    ‘What name is he given?’ inquired Robert of Eu.
    ‘He is called William, lord,’ Herleva answered, crossing her hands on her breast.
    ‘William the Warrior!’ laughed the Count.
    ‘William the King,’ Herleva whispered.
    ‘William the Bastard!’ muttered the Lord of Belesme beneath his breath.
    Herleva slipped her hand in my lord Count’s. They stood looking fondly at their son, William, who was called Warrior, King, and Bastard, and the child crowed with delight at his new plaything, and twined his tiny fingers about the heavy sword-hilt.

Part I
    (1047–1048)
    THE BEARDLESS YOUTH
    ‘Thus from my infancy I have been embarrassed, but by God’s mercy I have freed myself honourably.’
    Speech of William the Conqueror

One
    Hubert de Harcourt gave his youngest son a sword upon the day that he was nineteen. ‘Though I don’t know what you will do with it,’ he said in a grumbling voice.
    Raoul had worn a sword for several years, but not such an one as this, with runes on the blade, inscribed there by some forgotten Dane, and a hilt wrought with gold. He twined his fingers round the cross-pieces, and answered slowly: – ‘By God’s grace, I will put it to good use.’
    His father and his half-brothers, Gilbert, and Eudes, laughed at that, for although they were fond of Raoul they thought poorly of his fighting power, and were sure that he would end his days in a cloister.
    The first use he found for the sword was to draw it upon Gilbert, and that not a month later.
    It fell out very simply. Gilbert, always turbulent, and, since the days of his outlawry after Roger de Toeni’s rebellion, more than ever a malcontent, had picked a quarrel with a neighbour not long