I Serve Read Online Free PDF Page A

box was bare besides this, no effigy, no scrollwork, no evidence of his greatness besides this simple listing of his titles and achievements.
    “ He is as alone now as at his burial,” said I. “A pity his lady could not be buried nearby so that at least his tomb might have company.”
    “ Ah, but she is!” said the prince. “This whole abbey is his tomb, and the sister abbey, the Abbaye-aux-Dames that lies across the way, is the tomb of his lady Matilda. They were cousins, you know, on his father’s side. Some say he bullied her into marrying him, and threw her to the ground by her hair until she consented. But others say she chose him of her own accord, and it was her father who disliked the match.”
    “ Cousins?” said I. “I wonder that the pope did not forbid it. If they had lived now, ‘Consanguinity!’ would be all the cry in Avignon and a king’s ransom required before the ban could be lifted and the banns pronounced.”
    “ It was the same in William’s day,” said the prince, “though at that time Peter still ruled from Rome instead of Avignon. The pope tried to negate the nuptials, but William was a determined man. He would have whom he would have, be she cousin or no. When the pope insisted on the mortality of such a sin, he paid the pope a princely price. You are standing in the portals of his penance. This abbey for him, that abbey for her. And with these two edifices their sin of marriage was effectually effaced. If we step over yonder to l’Abbaye-aux-Dames , you may see where she lies buried.”
    Before we could pursue this course, however, a messenger strode swiftly in and fell on one knee before the prince. “His Majesty is encamped outside the town, your highness, and bids you attend him at a council of war.”
    “ Send him my compliments and assure him of my prompt arrival,” replied the prince, and almost before the messenger had departed, the prince disappeared as noiselessly as he had entered leaving me alone in the great vaulted tomb of Guillelmus Conquestor . I did not stay long by myself in the church. There was still a battle to be fought and a city to be taken. And when Caen had capitulated, there was the rest of France. King William might lie at peace in this church, but King Edward and all his men would remain at war until France finally yielded to her rightful king and lord.
     
    *****
     
    The inhabitants on our side of the Orne had fled, but the Caen on the easterly side of the river showed no signs of yielding. Word trickled over that the Comte d’Eu had recruited militia from the surrounding countryside. These raw locals along with a small company of knights were prepared to wage bitter resistance against our troops. As Constable of France, the Comte d’Eu was a powerful noble, second-in-command only to the king. Philip of Valois had finally taken our invasion seriously enough to raise something of a defense, for Caen was too rich a plum to let fall into English hands undisputed.
    The attack was slated for sunrise. I had spent the evening furbishing Chandos’s harness and inspecting the gear for ourselves and our mounts. The blackness passed anxiously, for myself and others in the camp, and it was still night when we rose to meet the day. The king and all his nobles heard mass before the sun showed its florid face, and the army, which had encamped in the fields outside Caen, drew up in marching order. Our greatest impediment was the river, and we expected to struggle hard to gain the crossing points before we could engage the enemy within Caen.
    To our surprise, however, the enemy was not in Caen, but had come over the bridge to meet us. Ranged in battle formation on the western side of the Orne, there stood nearly four thousand men; no more than a thousand looked to be knights or trained men at arms. Our men numbered four times their total force, and as we saw their motley band, our formation grew tighter, our pennants waved higher, and our spirits rose.
    We were