The Conqueror Read Free Page B

before, and between these two a rather one-sided warfare raged. Raoul was too well-accustomed to such happenings to pay much heed. Raids and pillages were everyday occurrences in Normandy, and barons and vavassours, lacking a strong hand over them, behaved very much as the old Norse fighting blood directed them. If Geoffrey of Briosne chose to come in force and ravage Harcourt lands, Raoul would put on his battle-harness to defend them, but Harcourt owed fealty to the Lord of Beaumont, a haut seigneur, and Geoffrey, who held his land of Guy, princeling of Burgundy, was disinclined to risk an engagement.
    It was hardly a month after his nineteenth birthday that Raoul rode out one afternoon on his horse Verceray to the small market-town not many leagues distant from Harcourt. His errand was to buy new spurs for himself, and it pleased him on his return to take the shorter road which led him across a corner of Geoffrey de Briosne’s land. Some thought of the enmity between Geoffrey’s house and his flitted across his mind, but it was growing late in the afternoon, and since he hardly expected to meet any of Geoffrey’s men-at-arms at this hour, he thought he might well trust to his new sword and Verceray’s swift hooves to guard him from any sudden danger. He was unattended, and wore nothing over his woollen tunic but a cloak to keep him warm in the chill spring evening, so that it would probably have gone hardly with him had he chanced on any of his enemies. But it was not an enemy whom he was destined to meet.
    The sun was setting when he turned aside from the rough track to follow a footpath that ran beside some freshly ploughed fields on Geoffrey’s land, and the level rays made the curves of sod glow redly. An evening quiet had fallen, and now that the town had been left behind, everything was very silent. To the west the river Risle ran between sloping banks, and to the east the ground stretched undulating to some low hills in the distance that were now fading in the blue evening mist.
    Raoul rode along at a gentle pace, picking his way. As he rode he whistled between his teeth, and mused on this pleasant country of the Evrecin, thinking it would be a good place for a man to live in and cultivate, if only he might be sure that his harvest would not be seized by a hungry neighbour, or his house burned by pillaging soldiery. This thought was in his mind when his attention was caught by a red glow a little way to the east of him, behind some trees that grew in a dell beyond the ploughed lands. There was a smell of burning carried on the light wind, and as he looked more closely he saw the quick leap of flames, and thought that he heard someone scream.
    He reined Verceray in, hesitating, for he was not upon his own ground, and it was no concern of his if a serf’s hut caught fire. Then it flashed across his mind that perhaps some men of Harcourt might be responsible, and impulsively he set Verceray at a canter across the fields that separated him from the vale behind the trees.
    As he drew nearer he heard again, and this time unmistakably, that tortured scream. It was followed by a confused sound of laughter which made Raoul fold his lips tightly together. He knew that brutal laughter; he had heard it many times in his life, for men laughed thus wildly when they were drunk with bloodshed. He spurred Verceray on, never pausing in his indignation to consider what he should do if he were to find himself suddenly in the midst of foes.
    The flames were roaring fiercely as Verceray thundered down the slope, and in the hellish light Raoul saw a cottage burning, and men in leather tunics brandishing torches. A pig ran squealing from out the burning house into the garth; one of the soldiers rushed after it shouting a hunting cry, and drove his lance through its back. Tied to a sapling by his wrists was a peasant, obviously the owner of the ruined cottage. His tunic was slit from neck to girdle, and his back was bleeding. His head