CHAPTER XII.

Young Olave, the son of Hardrada, had happily escaped the slaughter. A

strong detachment of the Norwegians had still remained with the vessels,

and amongst them some prudent old chiefs, who foreseeing the probable

results of the day, and knowing that Hardrada would never quit, save as a

conqueror or a corpse, the field on which he had planted the Ravager of

the World, had detained the prince almost by force from sharing the fate

of his father. But ere those vessels could put out to sea, the vigorous

measures of the Saxon King had already intercepted the retreat of the

vessels. And then, ranging their shields as a wall round their masts,

the bold vikings at least determined to die as men. But with the morning

came King Harold himself to the banks of the river, and behind him, with

trailed lances, a solemn procession that bore the body of the Scald King.

They halted on the margin, and a boat was launched towards the Norwegian

fleet, bearing a monk, who demanded the chief, to send a deputation,

headed by the young Prince himself, to receive the corpse of their King,

and hear the proposals of the Saxon.

The vikings, who had anticipated no preliminaries to the massacre they

awaited, did not hesitate to accept these overtures. Twelve of the most

famous chiefs still surviving, and Olave himself, entered the boat; and,

standing between his brothers, Leofwine and Gurth, Harold thus accosted

them:

“Your King invaded a people that had given him no offence; he has paid

the forfeit--we war not with the dead! Give to his remains the honours

due to the brave. Without ransom or condition, we yield to you what can

no longer harm us. And for thee, young Prince,” continued the King, with

a tone of pity in his voice, as he contemplated the stately boyhood, and

proud, but deep grief in the face of Olave; “for thee, wilt thou not live

to learn that the wars of Odin are treason to the Faith of the Cross? We

have conquered--we dare not butcher. Take such ships as ye need for

those that survive. Three-and-twenty I offer for your transport. Return

to your native shores, and guard them as we have guarded ours. Are ye

contented?” Amongst those chiefs was a stern priest--the Bishop of the

Orcades--he advanced and bent his knee to the King.

“O Lord of England,” said he, “yesterday thou didst conquer the

form--to-day, the soul. And never more may generous Norsemen invade the

coast of him who honours the dead and spares the living.”

“Amen!” cried the chiefs, and they all knelt to Harold. The young Prince

stood a moment irresolute, for his dead father was on the bier before

him, and revenge was yet a virtue in the heart of a sea-king. But lifting

his eyes to Harold’s, the mild and gentle majesty of the Saxon’s brow was

irresistible in its benign command; and stretching his right hand to the

King, he raised on high the other, and said aloud, “Faith and friendship

with thee and England evermore.”

Then all the chiefs rising, they gathered round the bier, but no hand, in

the sight of the conquering foe, lifted the cloth of gold that covered

the corpse of the famous King. The bearers of the bier moved on slowly

towards the boat; the Norwegians followed with measured funereal steps.

And not till the bier was placed on board the royal galley was there

heard the wail of woe; but then it came, loud, and deep, and dismal, and

was followed by a burst of wild song from a surviving Scald.

The Norwegian preparations for departure were soon made, and the ships

vouchsafed to their convoy raised anchor, and sailed down the stream.

Harold’s eye watched the ships from the river banks.

“And there,” said he, at last, “there glide the last sails that shall

ever bear the devastating raven to the shores of England.”

Truly, in that field had been the most signal defeat those warriors,

hitherto almost invincible, had known. On that bier lay the last son of

Berserker and sea-king: and be it, O Harold, remembered in thine honour,

that not by the Norman, but by thee, true-hearted Saxon, was trampled on

the English soil the Ravager of the World! [251]

“So be it,” said Haco, “and so, methinks, will it be. But forget not the

descendant of the Norsemen, the Count of Rouen!”

Harold started, and turned to his chiefs. “Sound trumpet, and fall in.

To York we march. There re-settle the earldom, collect the spoil, and

then back, my men, to the southern shores. Yet first kneel thou, Haco,

son of my brother Sweyn: thy deeds were done in the light of Heaven, in

the sight of warriors in the open field; so should thine honours find

thee! Not with the vain fripperies of Norman knighthood do I deck thee,

but make thee one of the elder brotherhood of Minister and Miles. I gird

round thy loins mine own baldric of pure silver; I place in thy hand mine

own sword of plain steel; and bid thee rise to take place in council and

camps amongst the Proceres of England,--Earl of Hertford and Essex.

Boy,” whispered the King, as he bent over the pale cheek of his nephew,

“thank not me. From me the thanks should come. On the day that saw

Tostig’s crime and his death, thou didst purify the name of my brother

Sweyn! On to our city of York!”

High banquet was held in York; and, according to the customs of the Saxon

monarchs, the King could not absent himself from the Victory Feast of his

thegns. He sate at the head of the board, between his brothers. Morcar,

whose departure from the city had deprived him of a share in the battle,

had arrived that day with his brother Edwin, whom he had gone to summon

to his aid. And though the young Earls envied the fame they had not

shared, the envy was noble.

Gay and boisterous was the wassail; and lively song, long neglected in

England, woke, as it wakes ever, at the breath of Joy and Fame. As if in

the days of Alfred, the harp passed from hand to hand; martial and rough

the strain beneath the touch of the Anglo-Dane, more refined and

thoughtful the lay when it chimed to the voice of the Anglo-Saxon. But

the memory of Tostig--all guilty though he was--a brother slain in war

with a brother, lay heavy on Harold’s soul. Still, so had he schooled

and trained himself to live but for England--know no joy and no woe not

hers--that by degrees and strong efforts he shook off his gloom. And

music, and song, and wine, and blazing lights, and the proud sight of

those long lines of valiant men, whose hearts had beat and whose hands

had triumphed in the same cause, all aided to link his senses with the

gladness of the hour.

And now, as night advanced, Leofwine, who was ever a favourite in the

banquet, as Gurth in the council, rose to propose the drink-hael, which

carries the most characteristic of our modern social customs to an

antiquity so remote, and the roar was hushed at the sight of the young

Earl’s winsome face. With due decorum, he uncovered his head [252],

composed his countenance, and began:

“Craving forgiveness of my lord the King, and this noble assembly,” said

Leofwine, “in which are so many from whom what I intend to propose would

come with better grace, I would remind you that William, Count of the

Normans, meditates a pleasure excursion, of the same nature as our late

visitor, Harold Hardrada’s.”

A scornful laugh ran through the hall.

“And as we English are hospitable folk, and give any man, who asks, meat

and board for one night, so one day’s welcome, methinks, will be all that

the Count of the Normans will need at our English hands.”

Flushed with the joyous insolence of wine, the wassailers roared

applause.

“Wherefore, this drink-hael to William of Rouen! And, to borrow a saying

now in every man’s lips, and which, I think, our good scops will take

care that our children’s children shall learn by heart,--since he covets

our Saxon soil, ‘seven feet of land’ in frank pledge to him for ever!”

“Drink-hael to William the Norman!” shouted the revellers; and each man,

with mocking formality, took off his cap, kissed his hand, and bowed

[253]. “Drink-hael to William the Norman!” and the shout rolled from

floor to roof--when, in the midst of the uproar, a man all bedabbled with

dust and mire, rushed into the hall, rushed through the rows of the

banqueters, rushed to the throne-chair of Harold, and cried aloud,

“William the Norman is encamped on the shores of Sussex; and with the

mightiest armament ever yet seen in England, is ravaging the land far and

near!”

BOOK XII.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

CHAPTER I.

In the heart of the forest land in which Hilda’s abode was situated, a

gloomy pool reflected upon its stagnant waters the still shadows of the

autumnal foliage. As is common in ancient forests in the neighbourhood

of men’s wants, the trees were dwarfed in height by repeated loppings,

and the boughs sprang from the hollow, gnarled boles of pollard oaks and

beeches; the trunks, vast in girth, and covered with mosses and whitening

canker-stains, or wreaths of ivy, spoke of the most remote antiquity: but

the boughs which their lingering and mutilated life put forth, were

either thin and feeble with innumerable branchlets, or were centred on

some solitary distorted limb which the woodman’s axe had spared. The

trees thus assumed all manner of crooked, deformed, fantastic shapes--all

betokening age, and all decay--all, in despite of the noiseless solitude

around, proclaiming the waste and ravages of man.

The time was that of the first watches of night, when the autumnal moon

was brightest and broadest. You might see, on the opposite side of the

pool, the antlers of the deer every now and then, moving restlessly above

the fern in which they had made their couch; and, through the nearer

glades, the hares and conies stealing forth to sport or to feed; or the

bat wheeling low, in chase of the forest moth. From the thickest part of

the copse came a slow human foot, and Hilda, emerging, paused by the

waters of the pool. That serene and stony calm habitual to her features

was gone; sorrow and passion had seized the soul of the Vala, in the

midst of its fancied security from the troubles it presumed to foresee

for others. The lines of the face were deep and care-worn--age had come

on with rapid strides--and the light of the eye was vague and unsettled,

as if the lofty reason shook, terrified in its pride, at last.

“Alone, alone!” she murmured, half aloud: “yea, evermore alone! And the

grandchild I had reared to be the mother of kings--whose fate, from the

cradle, seemed linked with royalty and love--in whom, watching and hoping

for, in whom, loving and heeding, methought I lived again the sweet human

life--hath gone from my hearth--forsaken, broken-hearted--withering down

to the grave under the shade of the barren cloister! Is mine heart,

then, all a lie? Are the gods who led Odin from the Scythian East but

the juggling fiends whom the craven Christian abhors? Lo! the Wine Month

has come; a few nights more, and the sun which all prophecy foretold

should go down on the union of the icing and the maid, shall bring round

the appointed day: yet Aldyth still lives, and Edith still withers; and

War stands side by side with the Church, between the betrothed and the

altar. Verily, verily, my spirit hath lost its power, and leaves me

bowed, in the awe of night, a feeble, aged, hopeless, childless woman!”

Tears of human weakness rolled down the Vala’s cheeks. At that moment, a

laugh came from a thing that had seemed like the fallen trunk of a tree,

or a trough in which the herdsman waters his cattle, so still, and

shapeless, and undefined it had lain amongst the rank weeds and

night-shade and trailing creepers on the marge of the pool, The laugh was

low yet fearful to hear.

Slowly, the thing moved, and rose, and took the outline of a human form;

and the Prophetess beheld the witch whose sleep she had disturbed by the

Saxon’s grave.

“Where is the banner?” said the witch, laying her hand on Hilda’s arm,

and looking into her face with bleared and rheumy eyes, “where is the

banner thy handmaids were weaving for Harold the Earl? Why didst thou

lay aside that labour of love for Harold the King? Hie thee home, and

bid thy maidens ply all night at the work; make it potent with rune and

with spell, and with gums of the seid. Take the banner to Harold the

King as a marriage-gift; for the day of his birth shall be still the day

of his nuptials with Edith the Fair!”

Hilda gazed on the hideous form before her; and so had her soul fallen

from its arrogant pride of place, that instead of the scorn with which so

foul a pretender to the Great Art had before inspired the King-born

Prophetess, her veins tingled with credulous awe.

“Art thou a mortal like myself,” she said after a pause, “or one of those

beings often seen by the shepherd in mist and rain, driving before them

their shadowy flocks? one of those of whom no man knoweth whether they

are of earth or of Helheim? whether they have ever known the lot and

conditions of flesh, or are but some dismal race between body and spirit,

hateful alike to gods and to men?”

The dreadful hag shook her head, as if refusing to answer the question,

and said:

“Sit we down, sit we down by the dead dull pool, and if thou wouldst be

wise as I am, wake up all thy wrongs, fill thyself with hate, and let thy

thoughts be curses. Nothing is strong on earth but the Will; and hate to

the will is as the iron in the hands of the war-man.”

“Ha!” answered Hilda, “then thou art indeed one of the loathsome brood

whose magic is born, not of the aspiring soul, but the fiendlike heart.

And between us there is no union. I am of the race of those whom priests

and kings reverenced and honoured as the oracles of heaven; and rather

let my lore be dimmed and weakened, in admitting the humanities of hope

and love, than be lightened by the glare of the wrath that Lok and Rana

bear the children of men.”

“What, art thou so base and so doting,” said the hag, with fierce

contempt, “as to know that another has supplanted thine Edith, that all

the schemes of thy life are undone, and yet feel no hate for the man who

hath wronged her and thee?--the man who had never been king if thou hadst

not breathed into him the ambition of rule? Think, and curse!”

“My curse would wither the heart that is entwined within his,” answered

Hilda; “and,” she added abruptly, as if eager to escape from her own

impulses, “didst thou not tell me, even now, that the wrong would be

redressed, and his betrothed yet be his bride on the appointed day?”

“Ha! home, then!--home! and weave the charmed woof of the banner, broider

it with zimmes and with gold worthy the standard of a king; for I tell

thee, that where that banner is planted, shall Edith clasp with bridal

arms her adored. And the hwata thou hast read by the bautastein, and in

the temple of the Briton’s revengeful gods, shall be fulfilled.”

“Dark daughter of Hela,” said the Prophetess, “whether demon or god hath

inspired thee, I hear in my spirit a voice that tells me thou hast

pierced to a truth that my lore could not reach. Thou art houseless and

poor; I will give wealth to thine age if thou wilt stand with me by the

altar of Thor, and let thy galdra unriddle the secrets that have baffled

mine own. All foreshown to me hath ever come to pass, but in a sense

other than that in which my soul read the rune and the dream, the leaf

and the fount, the star and the Scin-laeca. My husband slain in his

youth; my daughter maddened with woe; her lord murdered on his

hearthstone; Sweyn, whom I loved as my child,”--the Vala paused,

contending against her own emotions,--“I loved them all,” she faltered,

clasping her hands, “for them I tasked the future. The future promised

fair; I lured them to their doom, and when the doom came, lo! the promise

was kept! but how?--and now, Edith, the last of my race; Harold, the

pride of my pride!--speak, thing of Horror and Night, canst thou

disentangle the web in which my soul struggles, weak as the fly in the

spider’s mesh?”

“On the third night from this, will I stand with thee by the altar of

Thor, and unriddle the rede of my masters, unknown and unguessed, whom

thou hadst duteously served. And ere the sun rise, the greatest mystery

earth knows shall be bare to thy soul!”

As the witch spoke, a cloud passed over the moon; and before the light

broke forth again, the hag had vanished. There was only seen in the dull

pool, the water-rat swimming through the rank sedges; only in the forest,

the grey wings of the owl, fluttering heavily across the glades; only in

the grass, the red eyes of the bloated toad.

Then Hilda went slowly home, and the maids worked all night at the

charmed banner. All that night, too, the watch-dogs howled in the yard,

through the ruined peristyle--howled in rage and in fear. And under the

lattice of the room in which the maids broidered the banner, and the

Prophetess muttered her charm, there couched, muttering also, a dark,

shapeless thing, at which those dogs howled in rage and in fear.

CHAPTER II.

All within the palace of Westminster showed the confusion and dismay of

the awful time;--all, at least, save the council-chamber, in which

Harold, who had arrived the night before, conferred with his thegns. It

was evening: the courtyards and the halls were filled with armed men, and

almost with every hour came rider and bode from the Sussex shores. In

the corridors the Churchmen grouped and whispered, as they had whispered

and grouped in the day of King Edward’s death. Stigand passed among

them, pale and thoughtful. The serge gowns came rustling round the

archprelate for counsel or courage.

“Shall we go forth with the King’s army?” asked a young monk, bolder than

the rest, “to animate the host with prayer and hymn?”

“Fool!” said the miserly prelate, “fool! if we do so, and the Norman

conquer, what become of our abbacies and convent lands? The Duke wars

against Harold, not England. If he slay Harold----”

“What then?”

“The Atheling is left us yet. Stay we here and guard the last prince of

the House of Cerdic,” whispered Stigand, and he swept on.

In the chamber in which Edward had breathed his last, his widowed Queen,

with Aldyth, her successor, and Githa and some other ladies, waited the

decision of the council. By one of the windows stood, clasping each

other by the hand, the fair young bride of Gurth and the betrothed of the

gay Leofwine. Githa sate alone, bowing her face over her

hands--desolate; mourning for the fate of her traitor son; and the

wounds, that the recent and holier death of Thyra had inflicted, bled

afresh. And the holy lady of Edward attempted in vain, by pious

adjurations, to comfort Aldyth, who, scarcely heeding her, started ever

and anon with impatient terror, muttering to herself, “Shall I lose this

crown too?”

In the council-hall debate waxed warm,--which was the wiser, to meet

William at once in the battle-field, or to delay till all the forces

Harold might expect (and which he had ordered to be levied, in his rapid

march from York) could swell his host?

“If we retire before the enemy,” said Gurth, “leaving him in a strange

land, winter approaching, his forage will fail. He will scarce dare to

march upon London: if he does, we shall be better prepared to encounter

him. My voice is against resting all on a single battle.”

“Is that thy choice?” said Vebba, indignantly. “Not so, I am sure, would

have chosen thy father; not so think the Saxons of Kent. The Norman is

laying waste all the lands of thy subjects, Lord Harold; living on

plunder, as a robber, in the realm of King Alfred. Dost thou think that

men will get better heart to fight for their country by hearing that

their King shrinks from the danger?”

“Thou speakest well and wisely,” said Haco; and all eyes turned to the

young son of Sweyn, as to one who best knew the character of the hostile

army and the skill of its chief. “We have now with us a force flushed

with conquest over a foe hitherto deemed invincible. Men who have

conquered the Norwegian will not shrink from the Norman. Victory depends

upon ardour more than numbers. Every hour of delay damps the ardour.

Are we sure that it will swell the numbers? What I dread most is not the

sword of the Norman Duke, it is his craft. Rely upon it, that if we meet

him not soon, he will march straight to London. He will proclaim by the

way that he comes not to seize the throne, but to punish Harold, and

abide by the Witan, or, perchance, by the word of the Roman pontiff. The

terror of his armament, unresisted, will spread like a panic through the

land. Many will be decoyed by his false pretexts, many awed by a force

that the King dare not meet. If he come in sight of the city, think you

that merchants and cheapmen will not be daunted by the thought of pillage

and sack? They will be the first to capitulate at the first house which

is fired. The city is weak to guard against siege; its walls long

neglected; and in sieges the Normans are famous. Are we so united (the

King’s rule thus fresh) but what no cabals, no dissensions will break out

amongst ourselves? If the Duke come, as come he will, in the name of the

Church, may not the Churchmen set up some new pretender to the

crown--perchance the child Edgar? And, divided against ourselves, how

ingloriously should we fall! Besides, this land, though never before

have the links between province and province been drawn so close, hath

yet demarcations that make the people selfish. The Northumbrians, I

fear, will not stir to aid London, and Mercia will hold aloof from our

peril. Grant that William once seize London, all England is broken up

and dispirited; each shire, nay, each town, looking only to itself. Talk

of delay as wearing out the strength of the foe! No, it would wear out

our own. Little eno’, I fear, is yet left in our treasury. If William

seize London, that treasury is his, with all the wealth of our burgesses.

How should we maintain an army, except by preying on the people, and thus

discontenting them? Where guard that army? Where are our forts? where

our mountains? The war of delay suits only a land of rock and defile, or

of castle and breast-work. Thegns and warriors, ye have no castles but

your breasts of mail. Abandon these, and you are lost.”

A general murmur of applause closed this speech of Haco, which, while

wise in arguments our historians have overlooked, came home to that

noblest reason of brave men, which urges prompt resistance to foul

invasion.

Up, then, rose King Harold.

“I thank you, fellow-Englishmen, for that applause with which ye have

greeted mine own thoughts on the lips of Haco. Shall it be said that

your King rushed to chase his own brother from the soil of outraged

England, yet shrunk from the sword of the Norman stranger? Well indeed

might my brave subjects desert my banner if it floated idly over these

palace walls while the armed invader pitched his camp in the heart of

England. By delay, William’s force, whatever it might be, cannot grow

less; his cause grows more strong in our craven fears. What his armament

may be we rightly know not; the report varies with every messenger,

swelling and lessening with the rumours of every hour. Have we not

around us now our most stalwart veterans--the flower of our armies--the

most eager spirits--the vanquishers of Hardrada? Thou sayest, Gurth,

that all should not be perilled on a single battle. True. Harold should

be perilled, but wherefore England? Grant that we win the day; the

quicker our despatch, the greater our fame, the more lasting that peace

at home and abroad which rests ever its best foundation on the sense of

the power which wrong cannot provoke unchastised. Grant that we lose; a

loss can be made gain by a king’s brave death. Why should not our

example rouse and unite all who survive us? Which the nobler

example--the one best fitted to protect our country--the recreant backs

of living chiefs, or the glorious dead with their fronts to the foe?

Come what may, life or death, at least we will thin the Norman numbers,

and heap the barriers of our corpses on the Norman march. At least, we

can show to the rest of England how men should defend their native land!

And if, as I believe and pray, in every English breast beats a heart like

Harold’s, what matters though a king should fall?--Freedom is immortal.”

He spoke; and forth from his baldric he drew his sword. Every blade, at

that signal, leapt from the sheath: and, in that council-hall at least,

in every breast beat the heart of Harold.

CHAPTER III.

The chiefs dispersed to array their troops for the morrow’s march; but

Harold and his kinsmen entered the chamber where the women waited the

decision of the council, for that, in truth, was to them the parting

interview. The King had resolved, after completing all his martial

preparations, to pass the night in the Abbey of Waltham; and his brothers

lodged, with the troops they commanded, in the city or its suburbs. Haco

alone remained with that portion of the army quartered in and around the

palace.

They entered the chamber, and in a moment each heart had sought its mate;

in the mixed assembly each only conscious of the other. There, Gurth

bowed his noble head over the weeping face of the young bride that for

the last time nestled to his bosom. There, with a smiling lip, but

tremulous voice, the gay Leofwine soothed and chided in a breath the

maiden he had wooed as the partner for a life that his mirthful spirit

made one holiday; snatching kisses from a cheek no longer coy.

But cold was the kiss which Harold pressed on the brow of Aldyth; and

with something of disdain, and of bitter remembrance of a nobler love, he

comforted a terror which sprang from the thought of self.

“Oh, Harold!” sobbed Aldyth, “be not rashly brave: guard thy life for my

sake. Without thee, what am I? Is it even safe for me to rest here?

Were it not better to fly to York, or seek refuge with Malcolm the Scot?”

“Within three days at the farthest,” answered Harold, “thy brothers will

be in London. Abide by their counsel; act as they advise at the news of

my victory or my fall.”

He paused abruptly, for he heard close beside him the broken voice of

Gurth’s bride, in answer to her lord. “Think not of me, beloved; thy

whole heart now be England’s. And if--if”--her voice failed a moment,

but resumed proudly, “why even then thy wife is safe, for she survives

not her lord and her land!”

The King left his wife’s side, and kissed his brother’s bride.

“Noble heart!” he said; “with women like thee for our wives and mothers,

England could survive the slaughter of thousand kings.”

He turned, and knelt to Githa. She threw her arms over his broad breast,

and wept bitterly.

“Say--say, Harold, that I have not reproached thee for Tostig’s death. I

have obeyed the last commands of Godwin my lord. I have deemed thee ever

right and just; now let me not lose thee, too. They go with thee, all my

surviving sons, save the exile Wolnoth,--him whom now I shall never

behold again. Oh, Harold!--let not mine old age be childless!”

“Mother,--dear, dear mother, with these arms round my neck I take new

life and new heart. No! never hast thou reproached me for my brother’s

death--never for aught which man’s first duty enjoined. Murmur not that

that duty commands us still. We are the sons, through thee, of royal

heroes; through my father, of Saxon freemen. Rejoice that thou hast

three sons left, whose arms thou mayest pray God and his saints to

prosper, and over whose graves, if they fall, thou shalt shed no tears of

shame!”

Then the widow of King Edward, who (the crucifix clasped in her hands)

had listened to Harold with lips apart and marble cheeks, could keep down

no longer her human woman’s heart; she rushed to Harold as he still knelt

to Githa--knelt by his side, and clasped him in her arms with despairing

fondness:

“O brother, brother, whom I have so dearly loved when all other love

seemed forbidden me;--when he who gave me a throne refused me his heart;

when, looking at thy fair promise, listening to thy tender

comfort,--when, remembering the days of old, in which thou wert my docile

pupil, and we dreamed bright dreams together of happiness and fame to

come,--when, loving thee methought too well, too much as weak mothers may

love a mortal son, I prayed God to detach my heart from earth!--Oh,

Harold! now forgive me all my coldness. I shudder at thy resolve. I

dread that thou should meet this man, whom an oath hath bound thee to

obey. Nay, frown not--I bow to thy will, my brother and my King. I know

that thou hast chosen as thy conscience sanctions, as thy duty ordains.

But come back--Oh, come back--thou who, like me,” (her voice whispered,)

“hast sacrificed the household hearth to thy country’s altars,--and I

will never pray to Heaven to love thee less--my brother, O my brother!”

In all the room were then heard but the low sounds of sobs and broken

exclamations. All clustered to one spot-Leofwine and his

betrothed--Gurth and his bride--even the selfish Aldyth, ennobled by the

contagion of the sublime emotion,--all clustered round Githa the mother

of the three guardians of the fated land, and all knelt before her, by

the side of Harold. Suddenly, the widowed Queen, the virgin wife of the

last heir of Cerdic, rose, and holding on high the sacred rood over those

bended heads, said, with devout passion:

“O Lord of Hosts--We Children of Doubt and Time, trembling in the dark,

dare not take to ourselves to question thine unerring will. Sorrow and

death, as joy and life, are at the breath of a mercy divine, and a wisdom

all-seeing: and out of the hours of evil thou drawest, in mystic circle,

the eternity of Good. ‘Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.’

If, O Disposer of events, our human prayers are not adverse to thy

pre-judged decrees, protect these lives, the bulwarks of our homes and

altars, sons whom the land offers as a sacrifice. May thine angel turn

aside the blade--as of old from the heart of Isaac! But if, O Ruler of

Nations, in whose sight the ages are as moments, and generations but as

sands in the sea, these lives are doomed, may the death expiate their

sins, and, shrived on the battle-field, absolve and receive the souls!”

CHAPTER IV.

By the altar of the Abbey Church of Waltham, that night, knelt Edith in

prayer for Harold.

She had taken up her abode in a small convent of nuns that adjoined the

more famous monastery of Waltham; but she had promised Hilda not to enter

on the novitiate, until the birthday of Harold had passed. She herself

had no longer faith in the omens and prophecies that had deceived her

youth and darkened her life; and, in the more congenial air of our Holy

Church, the spirit, ever so chastened, grew calm and resigned. But the

tidings of the Norman’s coming, and the King’s victorious return to his

capital, had reached even that still retreat; and love, which had blent

itself with religion, led her steps to that lonely altar. And suddenly,

as she there knelt, only lighted by the moon through the high casements,

she was startled by the sound of approaching feet and murmuring voices.

She rose in alarm--the door of the church was thrown open--torches

advanced--and amongst the monks, between Osgood and Ailred, came the

King. He had come, that last night before his march, to invoke the

prayers of that pious brotherhood; and by the altar he had founded, to

pray, himself, that his one sin of faith forfeited and oath abjured,

might not palsy his arm and weigh on his soul in the hour of his

country’s need.

Edith stifled the cry that rose to her lips, as the torches fell on the

pale and hushed and melancholy face of Harold; and she crept away under

the arch of the vast Saxon columns, and into the shade of abutting walls.

The monks and the King, intent on their holy office, beheld not that

solitary and shrinking form. They approached the altar; and there the

King knelt down lowlily, and none heard the prayer. But as Osgood held

the sacred rood over the bended head of the royal suppliant, the Image on

the crucifix (which had been a gift from Alred the prelate, and was

supposed to have belonged of old to Augustine, the first founder of the

Saxon Church--so that, by the superstition of the age, it was invested

with miraculous virtues) bowed itself visibly. Visibly, the pale and

ghastly image of the suffering God bowed over the head of the kneeling

man; whether the fastenings of the rood were loosened, or from what cause

soever,--in the eyes of all the brotherhood, the Image bowed. [254]

A thrill of terror froze every heart, save Edith’s, too remote to

perceive the portent, and save the King’s, whom the omen seemed to doom,

for his face was buried in his clasped hands. Heavy was his heart, nor

needed it other warnings than its own gloom.

Long and silently prayed the King; and when at last he rose, and the

monks, though with altered and tremulous voices, began their closing

hymn, Edith passed noislessly along the wall, and, stealing through one

of the smaller doors which communicated to the nunnery annexed, gained

the solitude of her own chamber. There she stood, benumbed with the

strength of her emotions at the sight of Harold thus abruptly presented.

How had the fond human heart leapt to meet him! Twice, thus, in the

august ceremonials of Religion, secret, shrinking, unwitnessed, had she,

his betrothed, she, the partner of his soul, stood aloof to behold him.

She had seen him in the hour of his pomp, the crown upon his brow,--seen

him in the hour of his peril and agony, that anointed head bowed to the

earth. And in the pomp that she could not share, she had exulted; but,

oh, now--now,--oh now that she could have knelt beside that humbled form,

and prayed with that voiceless prayer!

The torches flashed in the court below; the church was again deserted;

the monks passed in mute procession back to their cloister; but a single

man paused, turned aside, and stopped at the gate of the humbler convent:

a knocking was heard at the great oaken door, and the watch-dog barked.

Edith started, pressed her hand on her heart and trembled. Steps

approached her door--and the abbess, entering, summoned her below, to

hear the farewell greeting of her cousin the King.

Harold stood in the simple hall of the cloister: a single taper, tall and

wan, burned on the oak board. The abbess led Edith by the hand, and at a

sign from the King, withdrew. So, once more upon earth, the betrothed

and divided were alone.

“Edith,” said the King, in a voice in which no ear but hers could have

detected the struggle, “do not think I have come to disturb thy holy

calm, or sinfully revive the memories of the irrevocable past: where once

on my breast, in the old fashion of our fathers, I wrote thy name, is

written now the name of the mistress that supplants thee. Into Eternity

melts the Past; but I could not depart to a field from which there is no

retreat--in which, against odds that men say are fearful, I have resolved

to set my crown and my life--without once more beholding thee, pure

guardian of my happier days! Thy forgiveness for all the sorrow that, in

the darkness which surrounds man’s hopes and dreams, I have brought on

thee (dread return for love so enduring, so generous and divine!)--thy

forgiveness I will not ask. Thou alone perhaps on earth knowest the soul

of Harold; and if he hath wronged thee, thou seest alike in the wronger

and the wronged, but the children of iron Duty, the servants of imperial

Heaven. Not thy forgivenness I ask--but--but--Edith, holy maid! angel

soul!--thy--thy blessing!” His voice faltered, and he inclined his lofty

head as to a saint.

“Oh that I had the power to bless!” exclaimed Edith, mastering her rush

of tears with a heroic effort; “and methinks I have the power--not from

virtues of my own, but from all that I owe to thee! The grateful have

the power to bless. For what do I not owe to thee--owe to that very love

of which even the grief is sacred? Poor child in the house of the

heathen, thy love descended upon me, and in it, the smile of God! In

that love my spirit awoke, and was baptised: every thought that has risen

from earth, and lost itself in heaven, was breathed into my heart by

thee! Thy creature and thy slave, hadst thou tempted me to sin, sin had

seemed hallowed by thy voice; but thou saidst ‘True love is virtue,’ and

so I worshipped virtue in loving thee. Strengthened, purified, by thy

bright companionship, from thee came the strength to resign thee--from

thee the refuge under the wings of God--from thee the firm assurance that

our union yet shall be--not as our poor Hilda dreams, on the perishable

earth,--but there! oh, there! yonder by the celestial altars, in the land

in which all spirits are filled with love. Yes, soul of Harold! there

are might and holiness in the blessing the soul thou hast redeemed and

reared sheds on thee!”

And so beautiful, so unlike the Beautiful of the common earth, looked the

maid as she thus spoke, and laid hands, trembling with no human passion,

on that royal head-that could a soul from paradise be made visible, such

might be the shape it would wear to a mortal’s eye! Thus, for some

moments both were silent; and in the silence the gloom vanished from the

heart of Harold, and, through a deep and sublime serenity, it rose

undaunted to front the future.

No embrace--no farewell kiss--profaned the parting of those pure and

noble spirits--parting on the threshold of the grave. It was only the

spirit that clasped the spirit, looking forth from the clay into

measureless eternity. Not till the air of night came once more on his

brow, and the moonlight rested on the roofs and fanes of the land

entrusted to his charge, was the man once more the human hero; not till

she was alone in her desolate chamber, and the terrors of the coming

battle-field chased the angel from her thoughts was the maid inspired,

once more the weeping woman.

A little after sunrise the abbess, who was distantly akin to the house of

Godwin, sought Edith, so agitated by her own fear, that she did not

remark the trouble of her visitor. The supposed miracle of the sacred

Image bowing over the kneeling King, had spread dismay through the

cloisters of both nunnery and abbey; and so intense was the disquietude

of the two brothers, Osgood and Ailred, in the simple and grateful

affection they bore their royal benefactor, that they had obeyed the

impulse of their tender credulous hearts, and left the monastery with the

dawn, intending to follow the King’s march [255], and watch and pray near

the awful battle-field. Edith listened, and made no reply; the terrors

of the abbess infected her; the example of the two monks woke the sole

thought which stirred through the nightmare dream that suspended reason

itself; and when, at noon the abbess again sought the chamber, Edith was

gone;--gone, and alone--none knew wherefore--one guessed whither.

All the pomp of the English army burst upon Harold’s view, as, in the

rising sun, he approached the bridge of the capital. Over that bridge

came the stately march,--battle-axe, and spear, and banner, glittering in

the ray. And as he drew aside, and the forces filed before him, the cry

of; “God save King Harold!” rose with loud acclaim and lusty joy, borne

over the waves of the river, startling the echoes in the ruined keape of

the Roman, heard in the halls restored by Canute, and chiming, like a

chorus, with the chaunts of the monks by the tomb of Sebba in St.

Paul’s--by the tomb of Edward at St. Peter’s.

With a brightened face, and a kindling eye, the King saluted his lines,

and then fell into the ranks towards the rear, where among the burghers

of London and the lithsmen of Middlesex, the immemorial custom of Saxon

monarchs placed the kingly banner. And, looking up, he beheld, not his

old standard with the Tiger heads and the Cross, but a banner both

strange and gorgeous. On a field of gold was the effigies of a Fighting

Warrior; and the arms were bedecked in orient pearls, and the borders

blazed in the rising sun, with ruby, amethyst, and emerald. While he

gazed, wondering, on this dazzling ensign, Haco, who rode beside the

standard-bearer, advanced, and gave him a letter.

“Last night,” said he, “after thou hadst left the palace, many recruits,

chiefly from Hertfordshire and Essex, came in; but the most gallant and

stalwart of all, in arms and in stature, were the lithsmen of Hilda.

With them came this banner, on which she has lavished the gems that have

passed to her hand through long lines of northern ancestors, from Odin,

the founder of all northern thrones. So, at least, said the bode of our

kinswoman.”

Harold had already cut the silk round the letter, and was reading its

contents. They ran thus:--

“King of England, I forgive thee the broken heart of my grandchild. They

whom the land feeds, should defend the land. I send to thee, in tribute

the best fruits that grow in the field, and the forest, round the house

which my husband took from the bounty of Canute;--stout hearts and strong

hands! Descending alike, as do Hilda and Harold (through Githa thy

mother,) from the Warrior God of the North, whose race never shall

fail--take, O defender of the Saxon children of Odin, the banner I have

broidered with the gems that the Chief of the Asas bore from the East.

Firm as love be thy foot, strong as death be thy hand, under the shade

which the banner of Hilda,--under the gleam which the jewels of

Odin,--cast on the brows of the King! So Hilda, the daughter of

monarchs, greets Harold the leader of men.”

Harold looked up from the letter, and Haco resumed:

“Thou canst guess not the cheering effect which this banner, supposed to

be charmed, and which the name of Odin alone would suffice to make holy,

at least with thy fierce Anglo-Danes, hath already produced through the

army.”

“It is well, Haco,” said Harold with a smile. “Let priest add his

blessing to Hilda’s charm, and Heaven will pardon any magic that makes

more brave the hearts that defend its altars. Now fall we back, for the

army must pass beside the hill with the crommell and gravestone; there,

be sure, Hilda will be at watch for our march, and we will linger a few

moments to thank her somewhat for her banner, yet more justly, methinks,

for her men. Are not yon stout fellows all in mail, so tall and so

orderly, in advance of the London burghers, Hilda’s aid to our Fyrd?”

“They are,” answered Haco.

The King backed his steed to accost them with his kingly greeting; and

then, with Haco, falling yet farther to the rear seemed engaged in

inspecting the numerous wains, bearing missiles and forage, that always

accompanied the march of a Saxon army, and served to strengthen its

encampment. But when they came in sight of the hillock by which the

great body of the army had preceded them, the King and the son of Sweyn

dismounted and on foot entered the large circle of the Celtic ruin.

By the side of the Teuton altar they beheld two forms, both perfectly

motionless: but one was extended on the ground as in sleep or in death;

the other sate beside it, as if watching the corpse, or guarding the

slumber. The face of the last was not visible, propped upon the arms

which rested on the knees, and bidden by the hands. But in the face of

the other, as the two men drew near, they recognised the Danish

Prophetess. Death in its dreadest characters was written on that ghastly

face; woe and terror, beyond all words to describe, spoke in the haggard

brow, the distorted lips, and the wild glazed stare of the open eyes. At

the startled cry of the intruders on that dreary silence, the living form

moved; and though still leaning its face on its hands, it raised its

head; and never countenance of Northern Vampire, cowering by the rifled

grave, was more fiendlike and appalling.

“Who and what art thou?” said the King; “and how, thus unhonored in the

air of heaven, lies the corpse of the noble Hilda? Is this the hand of

Nature? Haco, Haco, so look the eyes, so set the features, of those whom

the horror of ruthless murder slays even before the steel strikes.

Speak, hag, art thou dumb?”

“Search the body,” answered the witch, “there is no wound! Look to the

throat,--no mark of the deadly gripe! I have seen such in my day.--There

are none on this corpse, I trow; yet thou sayest rightly, horror slew

her! Ha, ha! she would know, and she hath known; she would raise the

dead and the demon; she hath raised them; she would read the riddle,--she

hath read it. Pale King and dark youth, would ye learn what Hilda saw,

eh? eh? Ask her in the Shadow-World where she awaits ye! Ha! ye too

would be wise in the future; ye too would climb to heaven through the

mysteries of hell. Worms! worms! crawl back to the clay--to the earth!

One such night as the hag ye despise enjoys as her sport and her glee,

would freeze your veins, and sear the life in your eyeballs, and leave

your corpses to terror and wonder, like the carcase that lies at your

feet!”

“Ho!” cried the King, stamping his foot. “Hence, Haco; rouse the

household; summon hither the handmaids; call henchman and ceorl to guard

this foul raven.”

Haco obeyed; but when he returned with the shuddering and amazed

attendants, the witch was gone, and the King was leaning against the

altar with downcast eyes, and a face troubled and dark with thought.

The body of the Vala was borne into the house; and the King, waking from

his reverie, bade them send for the priests and ordered masses for the

parted soul. Then kneeling, with pious hand he closed the eyes and

smoothed the features, and left his mournful kiss on the icy brow. These

offices fulfilled, he took Haco’s arm, and leaning on it, returned to the

spot on which they had left their steeds. Not evincing surprise or

awe,--emotions that seemed unknown to his gloomy, settled, impassible

nature--Haco said calmly, as they descended the knoll:

“What evil did the hag predict to thee?”

“Haco,” answered the King, “yonder, by the shores of Sussex, lies all the

future which our eyes now should scan, and our hearts should be firm to

meet. These omens and apparitions are but the ghosts of a dead Religion;

spectres sent from the grave of the fearful Heathenesse; they may appal

but to lure us from our duty. Lo, as we gaze around--the ruins of all

the creeds that have made the hearts of men quake with unsubstantial

awe--lo, the temple of the Briton!--lo, the fane of the Roman!--lo, the

mouldering altar of our ancestral Thor! Ages past lie wrecked around us

in these shattered symbols. A new age hath risen, and a new creed. Keep

we to the broad truths before us; duty here; knowledge comes alone in the

Hereafter.”

“That Hereafter!--is it not near?” murmured Haco.

They mounted in silence; and ere they regained the army paused, by a

common impulse, and looked behind. Awful in their desolation rose the

temple and the altar! And in Hilda’s mysterious death it seemed that

their last and lingering Genius,--the Genius of the dark and fierce, the

warlike and the wizard North, had expired for ever. Yet, on the outskirt

of the forest, dusk and shapeless, that witch without a name stood in the

shadow, pointing towards them, with outstretched arm, in vague and

denouncing menace;--as if, come what may, all change of creed,--be the

faith ever so simple, the truth ever so bright and clear,--there is a

SUPERSTITION native to that Border-land between the Visible and the

Unseen, which will find its priest and its votaries, till the full and

crowning splendour of Heaven shall melt every shadow from the world!

CHAPTER V.

On the broad plain between Pevensey and Hastings, Duke William had

arrayed his armaments. In the rear he had built a castle of wood, all

the framework of which he had brought with him, and which was to serve as

a refuge in case of retreat. His ships he had run into deep water, and

scuttled; so that the thought of return, without victory, might be

banished from his miscellaneous and multitudinous force. His outposts

stretched for miles, keeping watch night and day against surprise. The

ground chosen was adapted for all the manoeuvres of a cavalry never

before paralleled in England nor perhaps in the world,--almost every

horseman a knight, almost every knight fit to be a chief. And on this

space William reviewed his army, and there planned and schemed, rehearsed

and re-formed, all the stratagems the great day might call forth. But

more careful, and laborious, and minute, was he in the manoeuvre of a

feigned retreat. Not ere the acting of some modern play, does the

anxious manager more elaborately marshal each man, each look, each

gesture, that are to form a picture on which the curtain shall fall

amidst deafening plaudits than did the laborious captain appoint each

man, and each movement, in his lure to a valiant foe:--The attack of the

foot, their recoil, their affected panic, their broken exclamations of

despair;--their retreat, first partial and reluctant, next seemingly

hurried and complete,--flying, but in flight carefully confused:--then

the settled watchword, the lightning rally, the rush of the cavalry from

the ambush; the sweep and hem round the pursuing foe, the detachment of

levelled spears to cut off the Saxon return to the main force, and the

lost ground,--were all directed by the most consummate mastership in the

stage play, or upokrisis, of war, and seized by the adroitness of

practised veterans.

Not now, O Harold! hast thou to contend against the rude heroes of the

Norse, with their ancestral strategy unimproved! The civilisation of

Battle meets thee now!--and all the craft of the Roman guides the manhood

of the North.

It was in the midst of such lessons to his foot and his horsemen--spears

gleaming--pennons tossing--lines reforming--steeds backing, wheeling,

flying, circling--that William’s eye blazed, and his deep voice thundered

the thrilling word; when Mallet de Graville, who was in command at one of

the outposts, rode up to him at full speed, and said in gasps, as he drew

breath:

“King Harold and his army are advancing furiously. Their object is

clearly to come on us unawares.”

“Hold!” said the Duke, lifting his hand; and the knights around him

halted in their perfect discipline; then after a few brief but distinct

orders to Odo, Fitzosborne, and some other of his leading chiefs, he

headed a numerous cavalcade of his knights, and rode fast to the outpost

which Mallet had left,--to catch sight of the coming foe.

The horsemen cleared the plain--passed through a wood, mournfully fading

into autumnal hues--and, on emerging, they saw the gleam of the Saxon

spears rising on the brows of the gentle hills beyond. But even the

time, short as it was, that had sufficed to bring William in view of the

enemy, had sufficed also, under the orders of his generals, to give to

the wide plain of his encampment all the order of a host prepared. And

William, having now mounted on a rising ground, turned from the spears on

the hill tops, to his own fast forming lines on the plain, and said with

a stern smile:

“Methinks the Saxon usurper, if he be among those on the height of yon

hills, will vouchsafe us time to breathe! St. Michael gives his crown to

our hands, and his corpse to the crow, if he dare to descend.”

And so indeed, as the Duke with a soldier’s eye foresaw from a soldier’s

skill, so it proved. The spears rested on the summits. It soon became

evident that the English general perceived that here there was no

Hardrada to surprise; that the news brought to his ear had exaggerated

neither the numbers, nor the arms, nor the discipline of the Norman; and

that the battle was not to the bold but to the wary.

“He doth right,” said William, musingly; “nor think, O my Quens, that we

shall find a fool’s hot brain under Harold’s helmet of iron. How is this

broken ground of hillock and valley named in our chart? It is strange

that we should have overlooked its strength, and suffered it thus to fall

into the hands of the foe. How is it named? Can any of ye remember?”

“A Saxon peasant,” said De Graville, “told me that the ground was called

Senlac [256] or Sanglac, or some such name, in their musicless jargon.”

“Grammercy!” quoth Grantmesnil, “methinks the name will be familiar eno’

hereafter; no jargon seemeth the sound to my ear--a significant name and

ominous,--Sanglac, Sanguelac--the Lake of Blood.”

“Sanguelac!” said the Duke, startled; “where have I heard that name

before? it must have been between sleeping and waking.--Sanguelac,

Sanguelac!--truly sayest thou, through a lake of blood we must wade

indeed!”

“Yet,” said De Graville, “thine astrologer foretold that thou wouldst win

the realm without a battle.”

“Poor astrologer!” said William, “the ship he sailed in was lost. Ass

indeed is he who pretends to warn others, nor sees an inch before his

eyes what his own fate will be! Battle shall we have, but not yet. Hark

thee, Guillaume, thou hast been guest with this usurper; thou hast seemed

to me to have some love for him--a love natural since thou didst once

fight by his side; wilt thou go from me to the Saxon host with Hugues

Maigrot, the monk, and back the message I shall send?”

The proud and punctilious Norman thrice crossed himself ere he answered:

“There was a time, Count William, when I should have deemed it honour to

hold parle with Harold the brave Earl; but now, with the crown on his

head, I hold it shame and disgrace to barter words with a knight unleal

and a man foresworn.”

“Nathless, thou shalt do me this favour,” said William, “for” (and he

took the knight somewhat aside) “I cannot disguise from thee that I look

anxiously on the chance of battle. Yon men are flushed with new triumph

over the greatest warrior Norway ever knew, they will fight on their own

soil, and under a chief whom I have studied and read with more care than

the Comments of Caesar, and in whom the guilt of perjury cannot blind me

to the wit of a great general. If we can yet get our end without battle,

large shall be my thanks to thee, and I will hold thine astrologer a man

wise, though unhappy.”

“Certes,” said De Graville gravely, “it were discourteous to the memory

of the star-seer, not to make some effort to prove his science a just

one. And the Chaldeans----”

“Plague seize the Chaldeans!” muttered the Duke. “Ride with me back to

the camp, that I may give thee my message, and instruct also the monk.”

“De Graville,” resumed the Duke, as they rode towards the lines, “my

meaning is briefly this. I do not think that Harold will accept my offer

and resign his crown, but I design to spread dismay, and perhaps revolt

amongst his captains; I wish that they may know that the Church lays its

Curse on those who fight against my consecrated banner. I do not ask

thee, therefore, to demean thy knighthood, by seeking to cajole the

usurper; no, but rather boldly to denounce his perjury and startle his

liegemen. Perchance they may compel him to terms--perchance they may

desert his banner; at the worst they shall be daunted with full sense of

the guilt of his cause.”

“Ha, now I comprehend thee, noble Count; and trust me I will speak as

Norman and knight should speak.”

Meanwhile, Harold seeing the utter hopelessness of all sudden assault,

had seized a general’s advantage of the ground he had gained. Occupying

the line of hills, he began forthwith to entrench himself behind deep

ditches and artful palisades. It is impossible now to stand on that

spot, without recognising the military skill with which the Saxon had

taken his post, and formed his precautions. He surrounded the main body

of his troops with a perfect breastwork against the charge of the horse.

Stakes and strong hurdles interwoven with osier plaits, and protected by

deep dykes, served at once to neutralise the effect of that arm in which

William was most powerful, and in which Harold almost entirely failed;

while the possession of the ground must compel the foe to march, and to

charge, up hill, against all the missiles which the Saxons could pour

down from their entrenchments.

Aiding, animating, cheering, directing all, while the dykes were fast

hollowed, and the breastworks fast rose, the King of England rode his

palfrey from line to line, and work to work, when, looking up, he saw

Haco leading towards him up the slopes, a monk, and a warrior whom, by

the banderol on his spear and the cross on his shield, he knew to be one

of the Norman knighthood.

At that moment Gurth and Leofwine, and those thegns who commanded

counties, were thronging round their chief for instructions. The King

dismounted, and beckoning them to follow, strode towards the spot on

which had just been planted his royal standard. There halting, he said

with a grave smile:

“I perceive that the Norman Count hath sent us his bodes; it is meet that

with me, you, the defenders of England, should hear what the Norman

saith.”

“If he saith aught but prayer for his men to return to Rouen,--needless

his message, and short our answer,” said Vebba, the bluff thegn of Kent.

Meanwhile the monk and the Norman knight drew near and paused at some

short distance, while Haco, advancing, said briefly:

“These men I found at our outposts; they demand to speak with the King.”

“Under his standard the King will hear the Norman invader,” replied

Harold; “bid them speak.”

The same sallow, mournful, ominous countenance, which Harold had before

seen in the halls of Westminster, rising deathlike above the serge garb

of the Benedict of Caen, now presented itself, and the monk thus spoke:

“In the name of William, Duke of the Normans in the field, Count of Rouen

in the hall, Claimant of all the realms of Anglia, Scotland, and the

Walloons, held under Edward his cousin, I come to thee, Harold his liege

and Earl.”

“Change thy titles, or depart,” said Harold, fiercely, his brow no longer

mild in its majesty, but dark as midnight. “What says William the Count

of the Foreigners, to Harold, King of the Angles, and Basileus of

Britain?”

“Protesting against thy assumption, I answer thee thus,” said Hugues

Maigrot. “First, again he offers thee all Northumbria, up to the realm

of the Scottish sub-king, if thou wilt fulfil thy vow, and cede him the

crown.”

“Already have I answered,--the crown is not mine to give; and my people

stand round me in arms to defend the king of their choice. What next?”

“Next, offers William to withdraw his troops from the land, if thou and

thy council and chiefs will submit to the arbitrement of our most holy

Pontiff, Alexander the Second, and, abide by his decision whether thou or

my liege have the best right to the throne.”

“This, as Churchman,” said the Abbot of the great Convent of Peterboro’,

(who, with the Abbot of Hide, had joined the march of Harold, deeming as

one the cause of altar and throne), “this as Churchman, may I take leave

to answer. Never yet hath it been heard in England, that the spiritual

suzerain of Rome should give us our kings.”

“And,” said Harold, with a bitter smile, “the Pope hath already summoned

me to this trial, as if the laws of England were kept in the rolls of the

Vatican! Already, if rightly informed, the Pope hath been pleased to

decide that our Saxon land is the Norman’s. I reject a judge without a

right to decide; and I mock at a sentence that profanes heaven in its

insult to men. Is this all?”

“One last offer yet remains,” replied the monk sternly. “This knight

shall deliver its import. But ere I depart, and thou and thine are

rendered up to Vengeance Divine, I speak the words of a mightier chief

than William of Rouen. Thus saith his Holiness, with whom rests the

power to bind and to loose, to bless and to curse: ‘Harold, the Perjurer,

thou art accursed! On thee and on all who lift hand in thy cause, rests

the interdict of the Church. Thou art excommunicated from the family of

Christ. On thy land, with its peers and its people, yea, to the beast in

the field and the bird in the air, to the seed as the sower, the harvest

as the reaper, rests God’s anathema! The bull of the Vatican is in the

tent of the Norman; the gonfanon of St. Peter hallows yon armies to the

service of Heaven. March on, then: ye march as the Assyrian; and the

angel of the Lord awaits ye on the way!’”

At these words, which for the first time apprised the English leaders

that their king and kingdom were under the awful ban of excommunication,

the thegns and abbots gazed on each other aghast. A visible shudder

passed over the whole warlike conclave, save only three, Harold, and

Gurth, and Haco.

The King himself was so moved by indignation at the insolence of the

monk, and by scorn at the fulmen, which, resting not alone on his own

head, presumed to blast the liberties of a nation, that he strode towards

the speaker, and it is even said of him by the Norman chroniclers, that

he raised his hand as if to strike the denouncer to the earth.

But Gurth interposed, and with his clear eye serenely shining with

virtuous passion, he stood betwixt monk and king.

“O thou,” he exclaimed, “with the words of religion on thy lips, and the

devices of fraud in thy heart, hide thy front in thy cowl, and slink back

to thy master. Heard ye not, thegns and abbots, heard ye not this bad,

false man offer, as if for peace, and as with the desire of justice, that

the Pope should arbitrate between your King and the Norman? yet all the

while the monk knew that the Pope had already predetermined the cause;

and had ye fallen into the wile, ye would but have cowered under the

verdict of a judgment that has presumed, even before it invoked ye to the

trial, to dispose of a free people and an ancient kingdom!”

“It is true, it is true,” cried the thegns, rallying from their first

superstitious terror, and, with their plain English sense of justice,

revolted at the perfidy which the priest’s overtures had concealed. “We

will hear no more; away with the Swikebode.” [257]

The pale cheek of the monk turned yet paler, he seemed abashed by the

storm of resentment he had provoked; and in some fear, perhaps, at the

dark faces bent on him, he slunk behind his comrade the knight, who as

yet had said nothing, but, his face concealed by his helmet, stood

motionless like a steel statue. And, in fact, these two ambassadors, the

one in his monk garb, the other in his iron array, were types and

representatives of the two forces now brought to bear upon Harold and

England--Chivalry and the Church.

At the momentary discomfiture of the Priest, now stood forth the Warrior;

and, throwing back his helmet, so that the whole steel cap rested on the

nape of the neck, leaving the haughty face and half-shaven head bare,

Mallet de Graville thus spoke:

“The ban of the Church is against ye, warriors and chiefs of England, but

for the crime of one man! Remove it from yourselves: on his single head

be the curse and the consequence. Harold, called King of

England--failing the two milder offers of my comrade, thus saith from the

lips of his knight, (once thy guest, thy admirer, and friend,) thus saith

William the Norman:--‘Though sixty thousand warriors under the banner of

the Apostle wait at his beck, (and from what I see of thy force, thou

canst marshal to thy guilty side scarce a third of the number,) yet will

Count William lay aside all advantage, save what dwells in strong arm and

good cause; and here, in presence of thy thegns, I challenge thee in his

name to decide the sway of this realm by single battle. On horse and in

mail, with sword and with spear, knight to knight, man to man, wilt thou

meet William the Norman?’”

Before Harold could reply, and listen to the first impulse of a valour,

which his worst Norman maligner, in the after day of triumphant calumny,

never so lied as to impugn, the thegns themselves almost with one voice,

took up the reply.

“No strife between a man and a man shall decide the liberties of

thousands!”

“Never!” exclaimed Gurth. “It were an insult to the whole people to

regard this as a strife between two chiefs, which should wear a crown.

When the invader is in our land, the war is with a nation, not a king.

And, by the very offer, this Norman Count (who cannot even speak our

tongue) shows how little he knows of the laws, by which, under our native

kings, we have all as great an interest as a king himself in our

Fatherland.”

“Thou hast heard the answer of England from those lips, Sire de

Graville,” said Harold: “mine but repeat and sanction it. I will not

give the crown to William in lieu for disgrace and an earldom. I will

not abide by the arbitrement of a Pope who has dared to affix a curse

upon freedom. I will not so violate the principle which in these realms

knits king and people, as to arrogate to my single arm the right to

dispose of the birthright of the living, and their races unborn; nor will

I deprive the meanest soldier under my banner, of the joy and the glory

to fight for his native land. If William seek me, he shall find me,

where war is the fiercest, where the corpses of his men lie the thickest

on the plains, defending this standard, or rushing on his own. And so,

not Monk and Pope, but God in his wisdom, adjudge between us!”

“So be it,” said Mallet de Graville, solemnly, and his helmet re-closed

over his face. “Look to it, recreant knight, perjured Christian, and

usurping King! The bones of the Dead fight against thee.”

“And the fleshless hands of the Saints marshal the hosts of the living,”

said the monk.

And so the messengers turned, without obeisance or salute, and strode

silently away.

CHAPTER VI.

The rest of that day, and the whole of the next, were consumed by both

armaments in the completion of their preparations.

William was willing to delay the engagement as long as he could; for he

was not without hope that Harold might abandon his formidable position,

and become the assailing party; and, moreover, he wished to have full

time for his prelates and priests to inflame to the utmost, by their

representations of William’s moderation in his embassy, and Harold’s

presumptuous guilt in rejection, the fiery fanaticism of all enlisted

under the gonfanon of the Church.

On the other hand, every delay was of advantage to Harold, in giving him

leisure to render his entrenchments yet more effectual, and to allow time

for such reinforcements as his orders had enjoined, or the patriotism of

the country might arouse; but, alas! those reinforcements were scanty and

insignificant; a few stragglers in the immediate neighborhood arrived,

but no aid came from London, no indignant country poured forth a swarming

population. In fact, the very fame of Harold, and the good fortune that

had hitherto attended his arms, contributed to the stupid lethargy of the

people. That he who had just subdued the terrible Norsemen, with the

mighty Hardrada at their head, should succumb to those dainty

“Frenchmen,” as they chose to call the Normans; of whom, in their insular

ignorance of the continent, they knew but little, and whom they had seen

flying in all directions at the return of Godwin; was a preposterous

demand on the imagination.

Nor was this all: in London, there had already formed a cabal in favour

of the Atheling. The claims of birth can never be so wholly set aside,

but what, even for the most unworthy heir of an ancient line, some

adherents will be found. The prudent traders thought it best not to

engage actively on behalf of the reigning King, in his present combat

with the Norman pretender; a large number of would-be statesmen thought

it best for the country to remain for the present neutral. Grant the

worst--grant that Harold were defeated or slain; would it not be wise to

reserve their strength to support the Atheling? William might have some

personal cause of quarrel against Harold, but he could have none against

Edgar; he might depose the son of Godwin, but could he dare to depose the

descendant of Cerdic, the natural heir of Edward? There is reason to

think that Stigand, and a large party of the Saxon Churchmen, headed this

faction.

But the main causes for defection were not in adherence to one chief or

to another. They were to be found in selfish inertness, in stubborn

conceit, in the long peace, and the enervate superstition which had

relaxed the sinews of the old Saxon manhood; in that indifference to

things ancient, which contempt for old names and races engendered; that

timorous spirit of calculation, which the over-regard for wealth had

fostered; which made men averse to leave trade and farm for the perils of

the field, and jeopardise their possessions if the foreigner should

prevail.

Accustomed already to kings of a foreign race, and having fared well

under Canute, there were many who said, “What matters who sits on the

throne? the king must be equally bound by our laws.” Then too was heard

the favourite argument of all slothful minds: “Time enough yet! one

battle lost is not England won. Marry, we shall turn out fast eno’ if

Harold be beaten.”

Add to all these causes for apathy and desertion, the haughty jealousies

of the several populations not yet wholly fused into one empire. The

Northumbrian Danes, untaught even by their recent escape from the

Norwegian, regarded with ungrateful coldness a war limited at present to

the southern coasts; and the vast territory under Mercia was, with more

excuse, equally supine; while their two young Earls, too new in their

command to have much sway with their subject populations, had they been

in their capitals, had now arrived in London; and there lingered, making

head, doubtless, against the intrigues in favour of the Atheling;--so

little had Harold’s marriage with Aldyth brought him, at the hour of his

dreadest need, the power for which happiness had been resigned!

Nor must we put out of account, in summing the causes which at this awful

crisis weakened the arm of England, the curse of slavery amongst the

theowes, which left the lowest part of the population wholly without

interest in the defense of the land. Too late--too late for all but

unavailing slaughter, the spirit of the country rose amidst the violated

pledges, but under the iron heel, of the Norman Master! Had that spirit

put forth all its might for one day with Harold, where had been the

centuries of bondage! Oh, shame to the absent--All blessed those

present! There was no hope for England out of the scanty lines of the

immortal army encamped on the field of Hastings. There, long on earth,

and vain vaunts of poor pride, shall be kept the roll of the

robber-invaders. In what roll are your names, holy Heroes of the Soil?

Yes, may the prayer of the Virgin Queen be registered on high; and

assoiled of all sin, O ghosts of the glorious Dead, may ye rise from your

graves at the trump of the angel; and your names, lost on earth, shine

radiant and stainless amidst the Hierarchy of Heaven!

Dull came the shades of evening, and pale through the rolling clouds

glimmered the rising stars; when,--all prepared, all arrayed,--Harold sat

with Haco and Gurth, in his tent; and before them stood a man, half

French by origin, who had just returned from the Norman camp.

“So thou didst mingle with the men undiscovered?” said the King.

“No, not undiscovered, my lord. I fell in with a knight, whose name I

have since heard as that of Mallet de Graville, who wilily seemed to

believe in what I stated, and who gave me meat and drink, with debonnair

courtesy. Then said he abruptly,--‘Spy from Harold, thou hast come to

see the strength of the Norman. Thou shalt have thy will--follow me.’

Therewith he led me, all startled I own, through the lines; and, O King,

I should deem them indeed countless as the sands, and resistless as the

waves, but that, strange as it may seem to thee, I saw more monks than

warriors.”

“How! thou jestest!” said Gurth, surprised.

“No; for thousands by thousands, they were praying and kneeling; and

their heads were all shaven with the tonsure of priests.”

“Priests are they not,” cried Harold, with his calm smile, “but doughty

warriors and dauntless knights.” Then he continued his questions to the

spy; and his smile vanished at the accounts, not only of the numbers of

the force, but their vast provision of missiles, and the almost

incredible proportion of their cavalry.

As soon as the spy had been dismissed, the King turned to his kinsmen.

“What think you?” he said; “shall we judge ourselves of the foe? The

night will be dark anon--our steeds are fleet--and not shod with iron

like the Normans;--the sward noiseless--What think you?”

“A merry conceit,” cried the blithe Leofwine. “I should like much to see

the boar in his den, ere he taste of my spear-point.”

“And I,” said Gurth, “do feel so restless a fever in my veins that I

would fain cool it by the night air. Let us go: I know all the ways of

the country; for hither have I come often with hawk and hound. But let

us wait yet till the night is more hushed and deep.”

The clouds had gathered over the whole surface of the skies, and there

hung sullen; and the mists were cold and grey on the lower grounds, when

the four Saxon chiefs set forth on their secret and perilous enterprise.

“Knights and riders took they none,

Squires and varlets of foot not one;

All unarmed of weapon and weed,

Save the shield, and spear, and the sword at need.” [258]

Passing their own sentinels, they entered a wood, Gurth leading the way,

and catching glimpses, through the irregular path, of the blazing lights,

that shone red over the pause of the Norman war.

William had moved on his army to within about two miles from the farthest

outpost of the Saxon, and contracted his lines into compact space; the

reconnoiterers were thus enabled, by the light of the links and

watchfires, to form no inaccurate notion of the formidable foe whom the

morrow was to meet. The ground [259] on which they stood was high, and

in the deep shadow of the wood; with one of the large dykes common to the

Saxon boundaries in front, so that, even if discovered, a barrier not

easily passed lay between them and the foe.

In regular lines and streets extended huts of branches for the meaner

soldiers, leading up, in serried rows but broad vistas, to the tents of

the knights, and the gaudier pavilions of the counts and prelates. There,

were to be seen the flags of Bretagne and Anjou, of Burgundy, of

Flanders, even the ensign of France, which the volunteers from that

country had assumed; and right in the midst of this Capital of War, the

gorgeous pavilion of William himself, with a dragon of gold before it,

surmounting the staff, from which blazed the Papal gonfanon. In every

division they heard the anvils of the armourers, the measured tread of

the sentries, the neigh and snort of innumerable steeds. And along the

lines, between hut and tent, they saw tall shapes passing to and from the

forge and smithy, bearing mail, and swords, and shafts. No sound of

revel, no laugh of wassail was heard in the consecrated camp; all was

astir, but with the grave and earnest preparations of thoughtful men. As

the four Saxons halted silent, each might have heard, through the remoter

din, the other’s painful breathing.

At length, from two tents, placed to the right and left of the Duke’s

pavilion, there came a sweet tinkling sound, as of deep silver bells. At

that note there was an evident and universal commotion throughout the

armament. The roar of the hammers ceased; and from every green hut and

every grey tent, swarmed the host. Now, rows of living men lined the

camp-streets, leaving still a free, though narrow passage in the midst.

And, by the blaze of more than a thousand torches, the Saxons saw

processions of priests, in their robes and aubes, with censer and rood,

coming down the various avenues. As the priests paused, the warriors

knelt; and there was a low murmur as if of confession, and the sign of

lifted hands, as if in absolution and blessing. Suddenly, from the

outskirts of the camp, and full in sight, emerged, from one of the cross

lanes, Odo of Bayeux himself, in his white surplice, and the cross in his

right hand. Yea, even to the meanest and lowliest soldiers of the

armament, whether taken from honest craft and peaceful calling, or the

outpourings of Europe’s sinks and sewers, catamarans from the Alps, and

cut-throats from the Rhine,--yea, even among the vilest and the meanest,

came the anointed brother of the great Duke, the haughtiest prelate in

Christendom, whose heart even then was fixed on the Pontiff’s

throne--there he came, to absolve, and to shrive, and to bless. And the

red watchfires streamed on his proud face and spotless robes, as the

Children of Wrath knelt around the Delegate of Peace.

Harold’s hand clenched firm on the arm of Gurth, and his old scorn of the

monk broke forth in his bitter smile and his muttered words. But Gurth’s

face was sad and awed.

And now, as the huts and the canvas thus gave up the living, they could

indeed behold the enormous disparity of numbers with which it was their

doom to contend, and, over those numbers, that dread intensity of zeal,

that sublimity of fanaticism, which from one end of that war-town to the

other, consecrated injustice, gave the heroism of the martyr to ambition,

and blended the whisper of lusting avarice with the self-applauses of the

saint!

Not a word said the four Saxons. But as the priestly procession glided

to the farther quarters of the armament, as the soldiers in their

neighbourhood disappeared within their lodgments, and the torches moved

from them to the more distant vistas of the camp, like lines of

retreating stars, Gurth heaved a heavy sigh, and turned his horse’s head

from the scene.

But scarce had they gained the centre of the wood, than there rose, as

from the heart of the armament, a swell of solemn voices. For the night

had now come to the third watch [260], in which, according to the belief

of the age, angel and fiend were alike astir, and that church-division of

time was marked and hallowed by a monastic hymn.

Inexpressibly grave, solemn, and mournful came the strain through the

drooping boughs, and the heavy darkness of the air; and it continued to

thrill in the ears of the riders till they had passed the wood, and the

cheerful watchfires from their own heights broke upon them to guide their

way. They rode rapidly, but still in silence, past their sentries; and,

ascending the slopes, where the force lay thick, how different were the

sounds that smote them! Round the large fires the men grouped in great

circles, with the ale-horns and flagons passing merrily from hand to

hand; shouts of drink-hael and was-hael, bursts of gay laughter, snatches

of old songs, old as the days of Athelstan,--varying, where the

Anglo-Danes lay, into the far more animated and kindling poetry of the

Pirate North,--still spoke of the heathen time when War was a joy, and

Valhalla was the heaven.

“By my faith,” said Leofwine brightening; “these are sounds and sights

that do a man’s heart good, after those doleful ditties, and the long

faces of the shavelings. I vow by St. Alban, that I felt my veins

curdling into ice-bolts, when that dirge came through the woodholt.

Hollo, Sexwolf, my tall man, lift us up that full horn of thine, and keep

thyself within the pins, Master Wassailer; we must have steady feet and

cool heads to-morrow.”

Sexwolf, who, with a band of Harold’s veterans, was at full carousal,

started up at the young Earl’s greetings, and looked lovingly into his

smiling face as he reached him the horn.

“Heed what my brother bids thee, Sexwolf,” said Harold severely; “the

hands that draw shafts against us to-morrow will not tremble with the

night’s wassail.”

“Nor ours either, my lord the King,” said Sexwolf, boldly; “our heads can

bear both drink and blows,--and--(sinking his voice into a whisper) the

rumour runs that the odds are so against us, that I would not, for all

thy fair brother’s earldoms, have our men other than blithe tonight.”

Harold answered not, but moved on, and coming then within full sight of

the bold Saxons of Kent, the unmixed sons of the Saxon soil, and the

special favourers of the House of Godwin, so affectionate, hearty, and

cordial was their joyous shout of his name, that he felt his kingly heart

leap within him. Dismounting, he entered the circle, and with the august

frankness of a noble chief, nobly popular, gave to all cheering smile and

animating word. That done, he said more gravely: “In less than an hour,

all wassail must cease,--my bodes will come round; and then sound sleep,

my brave merry men, and lusty rising with the lark!”

“As you will, as you will, dear our King,” cried Vebba, as spokesman for

the soldiers. “Fear us not--life and death, we are yours.”

“Life and death yours, and freedom’s,” cried the Kent men.

Coming now towards the royal tent beside the standard, the discipline was

more perfect, and the hush decorous. For round that standard were both

the special body-guard of the King, and the volunteers from London and

Middlesex; men more intelligent than the bulk of the army, and more

gravely aware, therefore, of the might of the Norman sword.

Harold entered his tent, and threw himself on his couch, in deep reverie;

his brothers and Haco watched him silently. At length, Gurth approached;

and, with a reverence rare in the familiar intercourse between the two,

knelt at his brother’s side, and taking Harold’s hand in his, looked him

full in the face, his eyes moist with tears, and said thus:

“Oh, Harold! never prayer have I asked of thee, that thou hast not

granted: grant me this! sorest of all, it may be, to grant, but most

fitting of all for me to press. Think not, O beloved brother, O honoured

King, think not that it is with slighting reverence, that I lay rough

hand on the wound deepest at thy heart. But, however surprised or

compelled, sure it is that thou didst make oath to William, and upon the

relics of saints; avoid this battle, for I see that thought is now within

thy soul; that thought haunted thee in the words of the monk to-day; in

the sight of that awful camp to-night;--avoid this battle! and do not

thyself stand in arms against the man to whom the oath was pledged!”

“Gurth, Gurth!” exclaimed Harold, pale and writhing.

“We,” continued his brother, “we at least have taken no oath, no perjury

is charged against us; vainly the thunders of the Vatican are launched on

our heads. Our war is just: we but defend our country. Leave us, then,

to fight to-morrow; thou retire towards London and raise fresh armies; if

we win, the danger is past; if we lose, thou wilt avenge us. And England

is not lost while thou survivest.”

“Gurth, Gurth!” again exclaimed Harold, in a voice piercing in its pathos

of reproach.

“Gurth counsels well,” said Haco, abruptly; “there can be no doubt of the

wisdom of his words. Let the King’s kinsmen lead the troops; let the

King himself with his guard hasten to London and ravage and lay waste the

country as he retreats by the way [261]; so that even if William beat us,

all supplies will fail him; he will be in a land without forage, and

victory here will aid him nought; for you, my liege, will have a force

equal to his own, ere he can march to the gates of London.”

“Faith and troth, the young Haco speaks like a greybeard; he hath not

lived in Rouen for nought,” quoth Leofwine. “Hear him, my Harold, and

leave us to shave the Normans yet more closely than the barber hath

already shorn.”

Harold turned ear and eye to each of the speakers, and, as Leofwine

closed, he smiled.

“Ye have chid me well, kinsmen, for a thought that had entered into my

mind ere ye spake”--

Gurth interrupted the King, and said anxiously:

“To retreat with the whole army upon London, and refuse to meet the

Norman till with numbers more fairly matched!”

“That had been my thought,” said Harold, surprised.

“Such for a moment, too, was mine,” said Gurth, sadly; “but it is too

late. Such a measure, now, would have all the disgrace of flight, and

bring none of the profits of retreat. The ban of the Church would get

wind; our priests, awed and alarmed, might wield it against us; the whole

population would be damped and disheartened; rivals to the crown might

start up; the realm be divided. No, it is impossible!”

“Impossible,” said Harold, calmly. “And if the army cannot retreat, of

all men to stand firm, surely it is the captain and the King. I, Gurth,

leave others to dare the fate from which I fly! I give weight to the

impious curse of the Pope, by shrinking from its idle blast! I confirm

and ratify the oath, from which all law must absolve me, by forsaking the

cause of the land, which I purify myself when I guard! I leave to others

the agony of the martyrdom or the glory of the conquest! Gurth, thou art

more cruel than the Norman! And I, son of Sweyn, I ravage the land

committed to my charge, and despoil the fields which I cannot keep! Oh,

Haco, that indeed were to be the traitor and the recreant! No, whatever

the sin of my oath, never will I believe that Heaven can punish millions

for the error of one man. Let the bones of the dead war against us; in

life, they were men like ourselves, and no saints in the calendar so holy

as the freemen who fight for their hearths and their altars. Nor do I

see aught to alarm us even in these grave human odds. We have but to

keep fast these entrenchments; preserve, man by man, our invincible line;

and the waves will but split on our rock: ere the sun set to-morrow, we

shall see the tide ebb, leaving, as waifs, but the dead of the baffled

invader.”

“Fare ye well, loving kinsmen; kiss me, my brothers; kiss me on the

cheek, my Haco. Go now to your tents. Sleep in peace and wake with the

trumpet to the gladness of noble war!”

Slowly the Earls left the King; slowest of all the lingering Gurth; and

when all were gone, and Harold was alone, he threw round a rapid,

troubled glance, and then, hurrying to the simple imageless crucifix that

stood on its pedestal at the farther end of the tent, he fell on his

knees, and faltered out, while his breast heaved, and his frame shook

with the travail of his passion:

“If my sin be beyond a pardon, my oath without recall, on me, on me, O

Lord of Hosts, on me alone the doom. Not on them, not on them--not on

England!”

CHAPTER VII.

On the fourteenth of October, 1066, the day of St. Calixtus, the Norman

force was drawn out in battle array. Mass had been said; Odo and the

Bishop of Coutance had blessed the troops; and received their vow never

more to eat flesh on the anniversary of that day. And Odo had mounted

his snow-white charger, and already drawn up the cavalry against the

coming of his brother the Duke. The army was marshalled in three great

divisions.

Roger de Montgommeri and William Fitzosborne led the first; and with them

were the forces from Picardy and the countship of Boulogne, and the fiery

Franks; Geoffric Martel and the German Hugues (a prince of fame); Aimeri,

Lord of Thouars, and the sons of Alain Fergant, Duke of Bretagne, led the

second, which comprised the main bulk of the allies from Bretagne, and

Maine, and Poitou. But both these divisions were intermixed with

Normans, under their own special Norman chiefs.

The third section embraced the flower of martial Europe, the most

renowned of the Norman race; whether those knights bore the French titles

into which their ancestral Scandinavian names had been transformed--Sires

of Beaufou and Harcourt, Abbeville, and de Molun, Montfichet,

Grantmesnil, Lacie, D’Aincourt, and D’Asnieres;--or whether, still

preserving, amidst their daintier titles, the old names that had

scattered dismay through the seas of the Baltic; Osborne and Tonstain,

Mallet and Bulver, Brand and Bruse [262]. And over this division

presided Duke William. Here was the main body of the matchless cavalry,

to which, however, orders were given to support either of the other

sections, as need might demand. And with this body were also the

reserve. For it is curious to notice, that William’s strategy resembled

in much that of the last great Invader of Nations--relying first upon the

effect of the charge; secondly, upon a vast reserve brought to bear at

the exact moment on the weakest point of the foe.

All the horsemen were in complete link or net mail [263], armed with

spears and strong swords, and long, pear-shaped shields, with the device

either of a cross or a dragon [264]. The archers, on whom William

greatly relied, were numerous in all three of the corps [265], were armed

more lightly--helms on their heads, but with leather or quilted

breastplates, and “panels,” or gaiters, for the lower limbs.

But before the chiefs and captains rode to their several posts they

assembled round William, whom Fitzosborne had called betimes, and who had

not yet endued his heavy mail, that all men might see suspended from his

throat certain relics chosen out of those on which Harold had pledged his

fatal oath. Standing on an eminence in front of all his lines, the

consecrated banner behind him, and Bayard, his Spanish destrier, held by

his squires at his side, the Duke conversed cheerily with his barons,

often pointing to the relics. Then, in sight of all, he put on his mail,

and, by the haste of his squires, the back-piece was presented to him

first. The superstitious Normans recoiled as at an evil omen.

“Tut!” said the ready chief; “not in omens and divinations, but in God,

trust I! Yet, good omen indeed is this, and one that may give heart to

the most doubtful; for it betokens that the last shall be first--the

dukedom a kingdom--the count a king! Ho there, Rou de Terni, as

Hereditary Standard-bearer take thy right, and hold fast to yon holy

gonfanon.”

“Grant merci,” said De Terni, “not to-day shall a standard be borne by

me, for I shall have need of my right arm for my sword, and my left for

my charger’s rein and my trusty shield.”

“Thou sayest right, and we can ill spare such a warrior. Gautier

Giffart, Sire de Longueville, to thee is the gonfanon.”