Chapter XIX: An Interview with the Conqueror

The mighty Conqueror of England was the central figure of the age in which he lived--the greatest soldier of an age of soldiers, and not less statesman than warrior.

Born to a life of warfare, the Conquest had been but the culminating point of a career spent in the tented field--but on that one event he staked his all.

For had he been vanquished at Senlac there was no hope of flight; the English commanded the sea, while his suzerain of France, ever on the watch to regain those Norman dominions which Rollo had won, would have taken instant advantage of the loss of its military leaders to re-annex Normandy to the French crown, and must have succeeded.

Had William fallen in England the Norman name and glory would have perished at Hastings.

Doubtless, he felt how great was the stake he had placed at the hazard of the die, and having won it, he used it as his own.

Yet he was not all of stone. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler says of him--"He was mild to those good men who loved God, although stern beyond measure to those who resisted his will."

Hence the power which men like Lanfranc or Anselm had over him; and it must be added that his life was exemplary as a private individual, his honour unsullied, his purity unstained.

Stern was the race of which he was the head and the ruling spirit. Well does the old chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, say:

"God had chosen the Normans to humble the English nation, because He perceived that they were more fierce than any other people."

And we modern English must remember that we are the descendants of old English and Normans combined. They came to "high mettle" the blood of our race, and when the conquerors and the conquered were moulded into one people, the result was the Englishmen who won Crecy and Agincourt against overwhelming odds, whose very name was a terror to continental soldiery, as Froissart abundantly testifies.

Grieve as we may over the tyranny and wrong of the Conquest, England would never have been so great without it as she afterwards became.

Etienne knelt in the abbey chapel until the last worshippers had gone out, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a gentle voice said:

"The King awaits thee, my son, in the abbot's audience chamber."

In spite of his boldness, Etienne felt a strange tremor as he passed through the cloisters and approached the dreaded monarch.

But he himself belonged to the same stern race, and when the folding doors opened, and he saw the King seated in the abbot's chair, he had perfectly recovered his composure. With winning grace he bent the knee before his liege, and gazed into that face whose frown was death.

But it was not frowning now; the expression was almost paternal, for the Conqueror loved a gallant youth.

"Rise up, my son," he said; "the holy father here tells me you bear stirring news."

"My liege, he hath spoken rightly. I have to tell of rebellion and sacrilege; our English vassals have risen against us, and my brave father has fallen by their hands; our castle is in their holding, and they have driven the brethren of St. Benedict homeless from their monastery."

"And who has dared this deed?"

"Wilfred, son of the rebel who fell at Senlac."

"Wilfred of Aescendune! I remember the stripling when he sought his father's corpse on the battlefield, but had heard that he had lost his life in the fire which consumed the monastery."

"Nay, sire, he had fled to the rebels, and we doubt not now that he and the outlaws, with whom he found a home, fired the monastery, themselves, to cover his flight."

"Tell me, then, what could have driven him to so violent a course, and tell me truly; for some cause there must have been."

It must be remembered that, at this period, William had not given up all hope of reconciling the English to his rule.

"I know no cause, sire, save--"

"Save what?" said he sternly, for Etienne hesitated.

"My liege, the lad, whom your royal will made the heir to the lands my father had won by his services on the field of battle, never lost his sympathy with the rebel rout around, or all had perhaps been well; he struck me in defence of a churl whom I found stealing game, and I challenged him to fight."

"And did he shirk the contest? I should not have thought it of him."

"He ran away, sire, and was brought back; was sent to the monastery by my father for a time of penance as a punishment; the same night the building was burnt by the outlaws, as we have every reason to think by his connivance, since he joined them and became their head, while we all thought him dead."

"And how didst thou learn he yet lived?"

"By his actions; the outlaws under his command burnt our farms, slew our men in the woods, and not our common men only, whose loss might better be borne, but they murdered a noble youth, my fellow page, entrusted to my father's care, Louis de Marmontier; and finally, by the help of a false guide, they entrapped my father and his retainers into a marsh, which they set on fire, and all perished."

Etienne spoke these words with deep emotion, but still firmly and distinctly.

"Fear not, my son, thy father's death shall be avenged, or my sword has lost its power. Weep not for the dead--women weep, men avenge wrongs on the wrongdoer; but tell me, art thou certain of these facts? didst thou or any one else see this Wilfred at the head of the outlaws?"

"My liege, I saw him myself; I penetrated their fastnesses in the forest, and but narrowly escaped with life."

"And saw Wilfred of Aescendune?"

"Distinctly, my liege, almost face to face, in command of the rebels."

"And then, what happened after the death of thy father?"

"They issued from the woods, seized the castle--the few defenders left had fled to Warwick--and then summoned the whole neighbourhood to arms. The bale fires were blazing on every hill. The Count of Warwick bid me tell you, my liege, that he will hold his castle till aid arrives, but that he is powerless to check the wave of insurrection which is spreading over the country far and wide."

"It is well; our banner shall be unfurled and these English shall feel the lion's wrath, which they have provoked. Tomorrow is Ascension Day--the truce of God--on Friday we march. Meanwhile I commend thee to the abbot's hospitality; he will bring thee to the banquet tomorrow after the High Mass. Remember, a true warrior should be as devout in church as fearless in the field."

Etienne left the presence, assured that the death of his father would be speedily avenged, and slept more soundly that night than he had since the fatal fire in the marshes. He loved his father, and it must be remembered that he knew not that father's crimes. Not for one moment did he suspect that he had been concerned in the burning of the monastery, nor did he dream that there had been aught in the death of the Lady of Aescendune save the hand of nature.

The one absorbing passion of his life at this moment was hatred of his successful rival--not so much as his rival, but as the murderer of his father.

All the Norman inhabitants of the neighbourhood crowded the abbey church on the morrow, and were present at the Mass of the day; the poor English were there in small numbers; they could not worship devoutly in company with their oppressors, but frequented little village sanctuaries, too poverty stricken to invite Norman cupidity, where, on that very account, the poor clerics of English race might still minister to their scattered flocks, and preach to them in the language Alfred had dignified by his writings, but which the Normans compared to the "grunting of swine."

And the service in the church over, how grand was the company which met in the banqueting hall of the palace on the island!

The Conqueror sat at the head of the board; on his right hand the Count d'Harcourt, head of an old Norman family, which still retained many traces of its Danish descent, and was as little French-like as Normans of that date could be; De le Pole, progenitor of a fated house, well-known in English history; De la Vere, the ancestor of future Earls of Oxford; Arundel, who bequeathed his name to a town on the Sussex coast, where his descendants yet flourish; Clyfford, unknowing of the fate which awaited his descendants in days of roseate hue; FitzMaurice, a name to become renowned in Irish story; Gascoyne, ancestor of a judge whose daring justice should immortalise his name; Hastings, whose descendant fell the victim of the Boar of Gloucester in later days; Maltravers, whose name was destined to be defiled at Berkeley Castle in Plantagenet times; Peverel, a name now familiar through the magic pen of Scott; Talbot, whose progeny, in times when the Normans' children had become the English of the English, burnt the ill-fated "Maid" at Rouen {xx}.

There was a bishop present who blessed the meats, but Etienne could have spared the presence of Geoffrey of Coutances, whom he knew as the friend of Wilfred, and the author of many inconvenient (and, as Etienne thought, impertinent) inquiries about that young unfortunate, after the burning of the old priory.

Who shall describe the splendour of that feast? We will not attempt it, nor will we try to analyse the feelings of the country youth so suddenly introduced into so brilliant an assembly.

But amidst the intoxication of the scene his mind continually wandered to the sombre forests, the blackened marsh, the Dismal Swamp, and his desolated home; and he would almost have given his very soul to stand face to face, foot to foot, with his youthful rival, sword in hand, with none to interfere between them, and so to end the long suspense.

While some such dream was floating before his imagination, and its details were painted vivid as life upon the retina of the mind, a quiet voice, but one not without some authority, whispered in his ears:

"My son, I would fain ask thee of a youth in whom I am somewhat interested, and who is, I am told, yet alive, risen, as it were, from the dead--Wilfred of Aescendune."

Etienne's face would have made a fine study for a painter, as he encountered the gaze of Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances.

The bishop drew the youth gently into a deep embrasure, where a curtain before the opening veiled a window seat, for the feast was now over, and the guests were mingling in general conversation.

"Father," said Etienne "am I, whom he has made an orphan, a fit witness?"

"My son," said Geoffrey, "I respect an orphan's feelings, yet in justice to the lad whom, as thou sayest, I once befriended, I must ask a few questions. He appeared to me naturally affectionate and ingenuous--one who would love those who treated him well, but who would grievously resent scorn and contempt; tell me honestly, didst thou receive him as a brother, as thou wert bound to do, considering the alliance between thy father and his mother, or didst thou regard him simply as thy rival?"

Etienne hesitated.

"My son, thou cravest knighthood; the true knight is bound to speak the truth."

"I own, father, that I felt him my rival."

"And never thought of him as a brother?"

"Never."

"Then, naturally, this led to injurious words and contemptuous deeds?"

"I cannot deny it; nor do I now regret it, knowing what he is."

"Perchance, my son, thou hast had much to do with making him what he is. One more thing: of course Wilfred would naturally sympathise with the old retainers of his father. Tell me, didst thou ever ill-use them in his sight?"

"I may have done so sometimes. But, my lord, you, who at the head of an army, recently sanctioned the mutilation of the rebels in Dorsetshire--"

"My child, peace and war are different things, and in the latter, men are compelled to do that, from which in days of peace they would shrink, only that timely severity may prevent further bloodshed, and so save many Christian lives. But I am speaking of what thou didst to thine own father's vassals in time of peace--didst thou ill-treat them before thy English brother?"

"I may have been sharp sometimes, and used the ashen twig freely."

"Only the ashen twig? My son, tell me all the story about the 'young poaching churl' who was the cause of such deadly enmity between you."

Etienne told it with reluctance.

"Pray was the lad in any manner dear to Wilfred?"

"He was his foster brother," said Etienne, covering his face as conscience smote him, for he remembered the death of Eadwin, and the way in which the mother of the murdered boy had returned good for evil.

"Then, my son, thou canst not acquit thyself of blame."

"But even if I were in fault so far, father, the terrible events which have occurred since do not lie at my door--the burning of the monastery, the death of my poor father."

"Only so far as this, that all might have been prevented hadst thou received Wilfred as a brother, for thou didst drive him to the woods--according to thine own account. But depend upon it, there is more behind. A brave youth like Wilfred would not have fled simply for fear of the combat, nor would one who loved his own people, as your story proves, have connived at the burning of an English monastery--monks and all. Nay, my son, the mystery is not solved yet; in God's own time it will be, and depend upon it, there will be much to forgive on both sides. Think of this when thou repeatest thy paternoster tonight; for the present we will close this conference."