Miniatures of French history

William, the Bastard of Falaise and Lord of all Normandy, had ridden into St. Germer four days before the feast, and with him a small retinue very richly dressed.

Upon the day of the feast he stood in the ante-chamber of the presence near the chapel door with but two to serve him, which two stood behind and were humble, the one a clerk, the other a treasury man but a knight. Normandy had on the sword belt and the sheath, but not the sword. For it is not lawful to carry arms in the presence of the crown.

William the Bastard of Falaise, thus standing in the ante-chamber of the presence by the chapel door, was taller than his servitors, yet he looked short, so round and bull-like was his head, with its close-cropped dark hair, and so broad his neck and shoulders. In that close-cropped dark hair one could see already lines of grey like steel, for the man was in his fortieth year.

The two guards that stood before the curtains of the arch moved backwards. An old man, dressed in the long tunic of a civilian, which was embroidered everywhere with thread of gold, pulled back the cloth, and William, striding through, saw beyond, upon a chair that was carved and gilt for a throne, Philip, the boy who was his lord and his king, yet no older than one of his own sons. The boy’s face was heavy and not courageous, but his eyes had in them already that look of patience and of knowledge which had built up the royal line.

William, Duke of Normandy, designing to conquer England, desired from his soul to have all France behind him, and secure peace while he was abroad: therefore had he come to the court of this boy-king of France, his relative, to offer him the shadow of suzerainty over England while he should grasp the substance of power in London. But the boy-king had been warned and was old enough to understand the ruse.

William, the Duke of Normandy, knelt on the second step of the throne and took the boy’s hands between his hands and kissed his finger tips. Then he rose and spoke of his petition. England was his of right, and he would seize it as of right with his companions; but he would not hold it against his lord, he would hold it for his lord. Such things already Philip had seen in the parchment, and he, William, Lord of Normandy, had come to hear the answer from the king’s mouth. The boy shook his gold-circled head very gently, but did not open his lips. Said William the Bastard, Lord of Normandy, “You are my lord and I am your man, but, a little way from here, where there are men that are my men and a land over which, under your allegiance, I am lord, my armies are ready, and from my treasury I shall have hired others from the east and the west, and even from Touraine, and there are strangers from the south that will sail with me; and if God grants me this kingdom, I will not hold it as king—God forbid that I should make myself equal to my lord. Therefore the headship of this island (if God gives me victory) is for you to take, King Philip, as a child may pick up a toy.”

Now when Duke William used these words “as a child,” King Philip smiled with his lips drawn downwards, and nourished revenge in his heart; for he knew very well what the great vassal meant, and how he had cast a net to bring in the power of all France in aid of him, and to have peace behind him when he sailed. He knew also, by wit of his own and by councillors, that whoever sat in Westminster beyond the sea could laugh at writs from Paris, and therefore, relaxing that smile of his and looking, though not courageous, stern—almost as though he were already a man grown—Philip refused again.

William, the Bastard of Falaise, Duke of Normandy, rose from his knees and looked angrily about him, at the servitors of the Court and at the guard, as he would look at equals, and even at the king he looked as he would look at an equal, thinking, perhaps, that with others to aid him he might dethrone that boy. But saying nothing more, he bowed as a man should to his lord, and turned and strode out again beyond the curtains; his clerk and his knight of the treasury, that had stood there for witnesses, following him.

Then he got back into his own land, to Rouen upon the broad Seine, where the woods are so deep for hunting all around; but he was for hunting things that do not live in woods, and for a ride into a farther place than the domains of the Caux country. And in those woods for many a month men were felling timber and bringing the green baulks in creaking wagons to the slips of the Channel shore, to Caudebec, and to Quillebœuf, and to Honfleur, and to the river that is below Caen—to all the places where men build ships upon the sea marge of the Normans. And for three months or so he was summoning by writ his men and their men’s men, and by letters with promise of pay and of booty he was getting from off his western March the sad Bretons, and from off his eastern March the pale Picards and the Lowland men. Until at last he had in Dives mouth a very great fleet of vessels large and small, the largest so large that fifty knights with their horses and all their men could cross the sea thereon, and the smallest boats of four fathoms long, not even decked, and stowed to the bulwarks with casks and stores, and the garnered oats of that year’s harvest, and wheat and little mills for grinding.

Men came to him from over the sea telling him how Harold laughed at his claim. William, the Lord of Normandy, watching the sea from the cliffs of the Caux country, found it still angry day after day and week after week, with the cold north-east wind blowing strong upon the land, so that he could not venture, and when he did there was shipwreck; but his mariners lay apart after the mischance, waiting orders, until at last he bade them beat up the coast to the great and wide bay of the Somme, where stood his Port of St. Valery, half sheltered from the gale.

Now some days before the Feast of St. Michael, in that same year, the strong cold wind from the north that had blown so long died down at last, and the sea heaved only and did not break, and a warmer air came up from the south-west, like a piece of summer again. So that, upon St. Michael’s Eve, Duke William put all that great host on board, his fifty thousand men and his many knights, and his horses and his provisions, and in the afternoon, the tide making outward from the bay, all his hundreds of boats set sail, making a cloud together upon the sea, and all that night, under the lighter breeze, they ran for English land.

When the morning broke, which was St. Michael’s Day, they saw, high and white in the dawn, the great cliff jutting forward, behind which was their harbour; and one hour and another, as the sun rose, those miles of sails drifted forward upon the flood eastward to behind the lee of the head until, in the third hour of the day, the square walls and the bright red roofs of a town stood close before them, and inland beside them a great sheet of water, shoal, but with fairways known to mariners, and a narrow entry from the sea; and this was Pevensey Haven. Then the men, looking out from the baskets on the mastheads of the great ships, called to the helmsmen below to shift the helm by this board and by that, that they might follow the fairway in. The smaller ships were beached within, all along the level sand, until at last, what with the greater vessels lying secure at anchor, and the lesser ones drawn up in rank beyond the high-tide mark, all his fleet was still and his great host made land. This was the way in which William, the Bastard of Falaise, Duke of Normandy, came with so many thousands to the kingdom of England, which he would win.