Book: Harold, Book 12.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 12.




"Thine be the honour of lowering that haughty flag," cried William,
turning to one of his favourite and most famous knights, Robert de
Tessin.

Overjoyed, the knight rushed forth, to fall by the axe of that
stubborn defender.

"Sorcery," cried Fitzosborne, "sorcery. This is no man, but fiend."

"Spare him, spare the brave," cried in a breath Bruse, D'Aincourt, and
De Graville.

William turned round in wrath at the cry of mercy, and spurring over
all the corpses, with the sacred banner borne by Tonstain close behind
him, so that it shadowed his helmet,--he came to the foot of the
standard, and for one moment there was single battle between the
Knight-Duke and the Saxon hero. Nor, even then, conquered by the
Norman sword, but exhausted by a hundred wounds, that brave chief fell
[275], and the falchion vainly pierced him, falling. So, last man at
the standard, died Gurth.

The sun had set, the first star was in heaven, the "Fighting Man" was
laid low, and on that spot where now, all forlorn and shattered,
amidst stagnant water, stands the altar-stone of Battle Abbey, rose
the glittering dragon that surmounted the consecrated banner of the
Norman victor.




CHAPTER IX.


Close by his banner, amidst the piles of the dead, William the
Conqueror pitched his pavilion, and sate at meat. And over all the
plain, far and near, torches were moving like meteors on a marsh; for
the Duke had permitted the Saxon women to search for the bodies of
their lords. And as he sate, and talked, and laughed, there entered
the tent two humble monks: their lowly mien, their dejected faces,
their homely serge, in mournful contrast to the joy and the splendour
of the Victory-Feast.

They came to the Conqueror, and knelt.

"Rise up, sons of the Church," said William, mildly, "for sons of the
Church are we! Deem not that we shall invade the rights of the
religion which we have come to avenge. Nay, on this spot we have
already sworn to build an abbey that shall be the proudest in the
land, and where masses shall be sung evermore for the repose of the
brave Normans who fell in this field, and for mine and my consort's
soul."

"Doubtless," said Odo, sneering, "the holy men have heard already of
this pious intent, and come to pray for cells in the future abbey."

"Not so," said Osgood, mournfully, and in barbarous Norman; "we have
our own beloved convent at Waltham, endowed by the prince whom thine
arms have defeated. We come to ask but to bury in our sacred
cloisters the corpse of him so lately King over all England--our
benefactor, Harold."

The Duke's brow fell.

"And see," said Ailred, eagerly, as he drew out a leathern pouch, "we
have brought with us all the gold that our poor crypts contained, for
we misdoubted this day," and he poured out the glittering pieces at
the Conqueror's feet.

"No!" said William, fiercely, "we take no gold for a traitor's body;
no, not if Githa, the usurper's mother, offered us its weight in the
shining metal; unburied be the Accursed of the Church, and let the
birds of prey feed their young with his carcase!"

Two murmurs, distinct in tone and in meaning, were heard in that
assembly: the one of approval from fierce mercenaries, insolent with
triumph; the other of generous discontent and indignant amaze, from
the large majority of Norman nobles.

But William's brow was still dark, and his eye still stern; for his
policy confirmed his passions; and it was only by stigmatising, as
dishonoured and accursed, the memory and cause of the dead King, that
he could justify the sweeping spoliation of those who had fought
against himself, and confiscate the lands to which his own Quens and
warriors looked for their reward.

The murmurs had just died into a thrilling hush, when a woman, who had
followed the monks unperceived and unheeded, passed with a swift and
noiseless step to the Duke's foot-stool; and, without bending knee to
the ground, said, in a voice which, though low, was heard by all:

"Norman, in the name of the women of England, I tell thee that thou
darest not do this wrong to the hero who died in defence of their
hearths and their children!"

Before she spoke she had thrown back her hood; her hair dishevelled,
fell over her shoulders, glittering like gold, in the blaze of the
banquet-lights; and that wondrous beauty, without parallel amidst the
dames of England, shone like the vision of an accusing angel, on the
eyes of the startled Duke, and the breathless knights. But twice in
her life Edith beheld that awful man. Once, when roused from her
reverie of innocent love by the holiday pomp of his trumps and
banners, the childlike maid stood at the foot of the grassy knoll; and
once again, when in the hour of his triumph, and amidst the wrecks of
England on the field of Sanguelac, with a soul surviving the crushed
and broken heart, the faith of the lofty woman defended the Hero Dead.

There, with knee unbent, and form unquailing, with marble cheek, and
haughty eye, she faced the Conqueror; and, as she ceased, his noble
barons broke into bold applause.

"Who art thou?" said William, if not daunted at least amazed.
"Methinks I have seen thy face before; thou art not Harold's wife or
sister?"

"Dread lord," said Osgood; "she was the betrothed of Harold; but, as
within the degrees of kin, the Church forbade their union, and they
obeyed the Church."

Out from the banquet-throng stepped Mallet de Graville. "O my liege,"
said he "thou hast promised me lands and earldom; instead of these
gifts undeserved, bestow on me the right to bury and to honour the
remains of Harold; today I took from him my life, let me give all I
can in return--a grave!"

William paused, but the sentiment of the assembly, so clearly
pronounced, and, it may be, his own better nature, which, ere polluted
by plotting craft, and hardened by despotic ire, was magnanimous and
heroic, moved and won him. "Lady," said he, gently, "thou appealest
not in vain to Norman knighthood: thy rebuke was just; and I repent me
of a hasty impulse. Mallet de Graville, thy prayer is granted; to thy
choice be consigned the place of burial, to thy care the funeral rites
of him whose soul hath passed out of human judgment."

The feast was over; William the Conqueror slept on his couch, and
round him slumbered his Norman knights, dreaming of baronies to come;
and still the torches moved dismally to and fro the waste of death,
and through the hush of night was heard near and far the wail of
women.

Accompanied by the brothers of Waltham, and attended by link-bearers,
Mallet de Graville was yet engaged in the search for the royal dead--
and the search was vain. Deeper and stiller, the autumnal moon rose
to its melancholy noon, and lent its ghastly aid to the glare of the
redder lights. But, on leaving the pavilion, they had missed Edith;
she had gone from them alone, and was lost in that dreadful
wilderness. And Ailred said despondingly:

"Perchance we may already have seen the corpse we search for, and not
recognised it; for the face may be mutilated with wounds. And
therefore it is that Saxon wives and mothers haunt our battle-fields,
discovering those they search by signs not known without the
household." [276]

"Ay," said the Norman, "I comprehend thee, by the letter or device, in
which, according to your customs, your warriors impress on their own
forms some token of affection, or some fancied charm against ill."

"It is so," answered the monk; "wherefore I grieve that we have lost
the guidance of the maid."

While thus conversing, they had retraced their steps, almost in
despair, towards the Duke's pavilion.

"See," said De Graville, "how near yon lonely woman hath come to the
tent of the Duke--yea, to the foot of the holy gonfanon, which
supplanted 'the Fighting Man!' pardex, my heart bleeds to see her
striving to lift up the heavy dead!"

The monks neared the spot, and Osgood exclaimed in a voice almost
joyful:

"It is Edith the Fair! This way, the torches! hither, quick!"

The corpses had been flung in irreverent haste from either side of the
gonfanon, to make room for the banner of the conquest, and the
pavilion of the feast. Huddled together, they lay in that holy bed.
And the woman silently, and by the help of no light save the moon, was
intent on her search. She waved her hand impatiently as they
approached, as if jealous of the dead; but as she had not sought, so
neither did she oppose, their aid. Moaning low to herself, she
desisted from her task, and knelt watching them, and shaking her head
mournfully, as they removed helm after helm, and lowered the torches
upon stern and livid brows. At length the lights fell red and full on
the ghastly face of Haco--proud and sad as in life.

De Graville uttered an exclamation: "The King's nephew: be sure the
King is near!"

A shudder went over the woman's form, and the moaning ceased.

They unhelmed another corpse; and the monks and the knight, after one
glance, turned away sickened and awe-stricken at the sight: for the
face was all defeatured and mangled with wounds; and nought could they
recognise save the ravaged majesty of what had been man. But at the
sight of that face a wild shriek broke from Edith's heart.

She started to her feet--put aside the monks with a wild and angry
gesture, and bending over the face, sought with her long hair to wipe
from it the clotted blood; then with convulsive fingers, she strove to
loosen the buckler of the breast-mail. The knight knelt to assist
her. "No, no," she gasped out. "He is mine--mine now!"

Her hands bled as the mail gave way to her efforts; the tunic beneath
was all dabbled with blood. She rent the folds, and on the breast,
just above the silenced heart, were punctured in the old Saxon
letters; the word "EDITH;" and just below, in characters more fresh,
the word "ENGLAND."

"See, see!" she cried in piercing accents; and, clasping the dead in
her arms, she kissed the lips, and called aloud, in words of the
tenderest endearments, as if she addressed the living. All there knew
then that the search was ended; all knew that the eyes of love had
recognised the dead.

"Wed, wed," murmured the betrothed; "wed at last! O Harold, Harold!
the words of the Vala were true--and Heaven is kind!" and laying her
head gently on the breast of the dead, she smiled and died.

At the east end of the choir in the Abbey of Waltham, was long shown
the tomb of the Last Saxon King, inscribed with the touching words--
"Harold Infelix." But not under that stone, according to the
chronicler who should best know the truth [277], mouldered the dust of
him in whose grave was buried an epoch in human annals.

"Let his corpse," said William the Norman, "let his corpse guard the
coasts, which his life madly defended. Let the seas wail his dirge,
and girdle his grave; and his spirit protect the land which hath
passed to the Norman's sway."

And Mallet de Graville assented to the word of his chief, for his
knightly heart turned into honour the latent taunt; and well he knew,
that Harold could have chosen no burial spot so worthy his English
spirit and his Roman end.

The tomb at Waltham would have excluded the faithful ashes of the
betrothed, whose heart had broken on the bosom she had found; more
gentle was the grave in the temple of heaven, and hallowed by the
bridal death-dirge of the everlasting sea.

So, in that sentiment of poetry and love, which made half the religion
of a Norman knight, Mallet de Graville suffered death to unite those
whom life had divided. In the holy burial-ground that encircled a
small Saxon chapel, on the shore, and near the spot on which William
had leapt to land, one grave received the betrothed; and the tomb of
Waltham only honoured an empty name. [278]

Eight centuries have rolled away, and where is the Norman now? or
where is not the Saxon? The little urn that sufficed for the mighty
lord [279] is despoiled of his very dust; but the tombless shade of
the kingly freeman still guards the coasts, and rests upon the seas.
In many a noiseless field, with Thoughts for Armies, your relics, O
Saxon Heroes, have won back the victory from the bones of the Norman
saints; and whenever, with fairer fates, Freedom opposes Force, and
Justice, redeeming the old defeat, smites down the armed Frauds that
would consecrate the wrong,--smile, O soul of our Saxon Harold, smile,
appeased, on the Saxon's land!





NOTES



NOTE (A)


There are various accounts in the Chroniclers as to the stature of
William the First; some represent him as a giant, others as of just or
middle height. Considering the vulgar inclination to attribute to a
hero's stature the qualities of the mind (and putting out of all
question the arguments that rest on the pretended size of the
disburied bones--for which the authorities are really less respectable
than those on which we are called upon to believe that the skeleton of
the mythical Gawaine measured eight feet), we prefer that supposition,
as to the physical proportions, which is most in harmony with the
usual laws of Nature. It is rare, indeed, that a great intellect is
found in the form of a giant.



NOTE (B)

Game Laws before the Conquest.


Under the Saxon kings a man might, it is true, hunt in his own
grounds, but that was a privilege that could benefit few but thegns;
and over cultivated ground or shire-land there was not the same sport
to be found as in the vast wastes called forest-land, and which mainly
belonged to the kings.

Edward declares, in a law recorded in a volume of the Exchequer, "I
will that all men do abstain from hunting in my woods, and that my
will shall be obeyed under penalty of life." [280]

Edgar, the darling monarch of the monks, and, indeed, one of the most
popular of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was so rigorous in his forest-laws
that the thegns murmured as well as the lower husbandmen, who had been
accustomed to use the woods for pasturage and boscage. Canute's
forest-laws were meant as a liberal concession to public feeling on
the subject; they are more definite than Edgar's, but terribly
stringent; if a freeman killed one of the king's deer, or struck his
forester, he lost his freedom and became a penal serf (white theowe)--
that is, he ranked with felons. Nevertheless, Canute allowed bishops,
abbots, and thegns to hunt in his woods--a privilege restored by Henry
III. The nobility, after the Conquest, being excluded from the royal
chases, petitioned to enclose parks, as early even as the reign of
William I.; and by the time of his son, Henry I., parks became so
common as to be at once a ridicule and a grievance.



NOTE (C)

Belin's Gate.


Verstegan combats the Welsh antiquaries who would appropriate this
gate to the British deity Bal or Beli; and says, if so, it would not
have been called by a name half Saxon, half British, gate (geat) being
Saxon; but rather Belinsport than Belinsgate. This is no very strong
argument; for, in the Norman time, many compound words were half
Norman, half Saxon. But, in truth, Belin was a Teuton deity, whose
worship pervaded all Gaul; and the Saxons might either have continued,
therefore, the name they found, or given it themselves from their own
god. I am not inclined, however, to contend that any deity, Saxon or
British, gave the name, or that Billing is not, after all, the right
orthography. Billing, like all words ending in ing, has something
very Danish in its sound; and the name is quite as likely to have been
given by the Danes as by the Saxons.



NOTE (D)


The question whether or not real vineyards were grown, or real wine
made from them, in England has been a very vexed question among the
antiquaries. But it is scarcely possible to read Pegge's dispute with
Daines Barrington in the Archaeologia without deciding both questions
in the affirmative.--See Archaeol. vol. iii. p. 53. An engraving of
the Saxon wine-press is given in STRUTT's Horda.

Vineyards fell into disuse, either by treaty with France, or Gascony
falling into the hands of the English. But vineyards were cultivated
by private gentlemen as late as 1621. Our first wines from Bordeaux--
the true country of Bacchus--appear to have been imported about 1154,
by the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine.



NOTE (E)

Lanfranc, the first Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Canterbury.


Lanfranc was, in all respects, one of the most remarkable men of the
eleventh century. He was born in Pavia, about 1105. His family was
noble--his father ranked amongst the magistrature of Pavia, the
Lombard capital. From his earliest youth he gave himself up, with all
a scholar's zeal, to the liberal arts, and the special knowledge of
law, civil and ecclesiastical. He studied at Cologne, and afterwards
taught and practised law in his own country. "While yet extremely
young," says one of the lively chroniclers, "he triumphed over the
ablest advocates, and the torrents of his eloquence confounded the
subtlest rhetorician." His decisions were received as authorities by
the Italian jurisconsults and tribunals. His mind, to judge both by
his history and his peculiar reputation (for probably few, if any,
students of our day can pretend to more than a partial or superficial
acquaintance with his writings), was one that delighted in subtleties
and casuistical refinements; but a sense too large and commanding for
those studies which amuse but never satisfy the higher intellect,
became disgusted betimes with mere legal dialectics. Those grand and
absorbing mysteries connected with the Christian faith and the Roman
Church (grand and absorbing in proportion as their premises are taken
by religious belief as mathematical axioms already proven) seized hold
of his imagination, and tasked to the depth his inquisitive reason.
The Chronicle of Knyghton cites an interesting anecdote of his life at
this, its important, crisis. He had retired to a solitary spot,
beside the Seine, to meditate on the mysterious essence of the
Trinity, when he saw a boy ladling out the waters of the river that
ran before him into a little well. His curiosity arrested, he asked
"what the boy proposed to do?" The boy replied, "To empty yon deep
into this well." "That canst thou never do," said the scholar. "Nor
canst thou," answered the boy, "exhaust the deep on which thou dost
meditate into the well of thy reason." Therewith the speaker
vanished, and Lanfranc, resigning the hope to achieve the mighty
mystery, threw himself at once into the arms of faith, and took his
refuge in the monastery of Bec.

The tale may be a legend, but not an idle one. Perhaps he related it
himself as a parable, and by the fiction explained the process of
thought that decided his career. In the prime of his manhood, about
1042, when he was thirty-seven years old, and in the zenith of his
scholarly fame, he professed. The Convent of Bee had been lately
founded, under Herluin, the first abbot; there Lanfranc opened a
school, which became one of the most famous throughout the west of
Europe. Indeed, under the Lombard's influence, the then obscure
Convent of Bee, to which the solitude of the site and the poverty of
the endowment allured his choice, grew the Academe of the age. "It
was," says Oderic, in his charming chronicle, "it was under such a
master that the Normans received their first notions of literature;
from that school emerged the multitude of eloquent philosophers who
adorned alike divinity and science. From France, Gascony, Bretagne,
Flanders, scholars thronged to receive his lessons." [281]

At first, as superficially stated in the tale, Lanfranc had taken part
against the marriage of William with Matilda of Flanders--a marriage
clearly contrary to the formal canons of the Roman Church, and was
banished by the fiery Duke; though William's displeasure gave way at
"the decent joke" (jocus decens), recorded in the text. At Rome,
however, his influence, arguments, and eloquence were all enlisted on
the side of William: and it was to the scholar of Pavia that the great
Norman owed the ultimate sanction of his marriage, and the repeal of
the interdict that excommunicated his realm. [282]

At Rome he assisted in the council held 1059 (the year wherein the ban
of the Church was finally and formally taken from Normandy), at which
the famous Berenger, Archdeacon of Angers (against whom he had waged a
polemical controversy that did more than all else to secure his repute
at the Pontifical Court), abjured "his heresies" as to the Real
Presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

In 1062, or 1063, Duke William, against the Lombard's own will (for
Lanfranc genuinely loved the liberty of letters more than vulgar
power), raised him to the abbacy of St. Stephen of Caen. From that
time, his ascendancy over his haughty lord was absolute. The
contemporary historian (William of Poitiers), says that "William
respected him as a father, venerated him as a preceptor, and cherished
him as a brother or son." He confided to him his own designs; and
committed to him the entire superintendence of the ecclesiastical
orders throughout Normandy. Eminent no less for his practical genius
in affairs, than for his rare piety and theological learning, Lanfranc
attained indeed to the true ideal of the Scholar; to whom, of all men,
nothing that is human should be foreign; whose closet is but a
hermit's cell, unless it is the microcosm that embraces the mart and
the forum; who by the reflective part of his nature seizes the higher
region of philosophy--by the energetic, is attracted to the central
focus of action. For scholarship is but the parent of ideas; and
ideas are the parents of action.

After the conquest, as prelate of Canterbury, Lanfranc became the
second man in the kingdom--happy, perhaps, for England had he been the
first; for all the anecdotes recorded of him show a deep and genuine
sympathy with the oppressed population. But William the King of the
English escaped from the control which Lanfranc had imposed on the
Duke of the Normans. The scholar had strengthened the aspirer; he
could only imperfectly influence the conqueror.

Lanfranc was not, it is true, a faultless character. He was a priest,
a lawyer, and a man of the world--three characters hard to amalgamate
into perfection, especially in the eleventh century. But he stands in
gigantic and brilliant contrast to the rest of our priesthood in his
own day, both in the superiority of his virtues, and in his exemption
from the ordinary vices. He regarded the cruelties of Odo of Bayeux
with detestation, opposed him with firmness, and ultimately, to the
joy of all England, ruined his power. He gave a great impetus to
learning; he set a high example to his monks, in his freedom from the
mercenary sins of their order; he laid the foundations of a powerful
and splendid church, which, only because it failed in future
Lanfrancs, failed in effecting the civilisation of which he designed
it to be the instrument. He refused to crown William Rufus, until
that king had sworn to govern according to law and to right; and died,
though a Norman usurper, honoured and beloved by the Saxon people.

Scholar, and morning star of light in the dark age of force and fraud,
it is easier to praise thy life, than to track through the length of
centuries all the measureless and invisible benefits which the life of
one scholar bequeaths to the world--in the souls it awakens--in the
thoughts it suggests! [283]



NOTE (F)

Edward the Confessor's reply to Magnus of Denmark who claimed his
Crown.


On rare occasions Edward was not without touches of a brave kingly
nature.

Snorro Sturleson gives us a noble and spirited reply of the Confessor
to Magnus, who, as heir of Canute, claimed the English crown; it
concludes thus:--"Now, he (Hardicanute) died, and then it was the
resolution of all the people of the country to take me, for the king
here in England. So long as I had no kingly title I served my
superiors in all respects, like those who had no claims by birth to
land or kingdom. Now, however, I have received the kingly title, and
am consecrated king; I have established my royal dignity and
authority, as my father before me; and while I live I will not
renounce my title. If King Magnus comes here with an army, I will
gather no army against him; but he shall only get the opportunity of
taking England when he has taken my life. Tell him these words of
mine." If we may consider this reply to be authentic, it is
significant, as proof that Edward rests his title on the resolution of
the people to take him for king; and counts as nothing, in comparison,
his hereditary claims. This, together with the general tone of the
reply, particularly the passage in which he implies that he trusts his
defence not to his army but his people--makes it probable that Godwin
dictated the answer; and, indeed, Edward himself could not have
couched it, either in Saxon or Danish. But the King is equally
entitled to the credit of it, whether he composed it, or whether he
merely approved and sanctioned its gallant tone and its princely
sentiment.

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