The Conqueror Read Online Free PDF Page A

that!’ he said. ‘Raoul will tell no tales, but if these raids of yours come to Roger de Beaumont’s ears you will get short shrift. There must be an end to this wild work. As for the boy, he is enflamed, and will be the better for his supper.’
    ‘But what is all this talk of justice, and of leaving Harcourt?’ demanded Eudes. ‘What did the boy mean by that?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Hubert said. ‘It is not so serious that he need leave his home, and when they have eaten, they will clasp hands and think no more of this day’s doings.’
    ‘With good will,’ said Raoul promptly. ‘But by your leave, father, I shall go to Beaumont-le-Roger to-morrow.’
    ‘To what end?’ asked Hubert. ‘What will you do there, pray?’
    Raoul did not answer for a moment, but stood looking down at the flickering candles. Presently, he raised his eyes to his father’s face, and spoke in a different voice, serious and hesitating. ‘Father, you and my brothers there have always laughed at me for being a dreamer. Perhaps you are right, and I am fit for nothing else, but my dreams are not so ill, I think. For many years I have dreamed of law in this Normandy of ours, law and justice, so that men may no longer burn and slay and pillage at will. I have thought that perhaps some day a man might rise up, with the will and the power to bring order into the Duchy. I would like to fight in his cause.’ He paused, and looked rather shyly at his brothers. ‘Once I hoped it might be our Lord of Beaumont, for he is a just man; and once I thought perhaps it would be Raoul de Gacé, because he was Governor of Normandy. But of course it could not be these. There is only one man who has power enough to curb the barons. It is his service I would enter.’
    ‘This is bookish talk,’ said Eudes, shaking his head. ‘Poor stuff.’
    ‘Holy Cross, what fancies a boy will get into his pate!’ exclaimed Hubert. ‘And who may this fine man be, my son, of your grace?’
    Raoul’s brows lifted. ‘Could it be any other than the Duke himself?’ he said.
    Gilbert burst out laughing. ‘The young bastard! A lad no older than yourself! Foh, here’s a piece of wool-gathering! If he keeps his coronet even it will be a strange thing, I can tell you that.’
    Raoul smiled a little. ‘I saw him just once in my life,’ he said. ‘He rode into Evreux at the head of his knights, with Raoul de Gacé on his right hand. I saw his face for a minute as he passed me, and the thought came to me then that here was the man I had dreamed about. I don’t think that that one will lose – anything.’
    ‘Silly talk!’ Hubert said impatiently. ‘If a base-born lad of nineteen is to work his will on Normandy it will be a more marvellous thing than anything you ever dreamed about. There has been trouble enough for him already, while he was still in ward, but if it’s true he has turned off his guardians now we shall soon see a lively state of affairs in the Duchy.’ He shook his head, and went on grumbling to himself all about the folly of making a by-blow Duke of Normandy, and the child no more than eight years at that; and how he had known from the first, when Duke Robert the Magnificent made up his mind to go on that disastrous pilgrimage, what would come of it. Normandy would not be ruled by a beardless youth, and if Raoul wanted peace – which was every honest man’s desire – he had better look for a new Duke, and one more acceptable to the barons.
    Eudes broke in on this monologue to ask Raoul whether he was fool enough to try and join the Duke’s court at Falaise. Raoul did not answer at once, but when he did he spoke so earnestly that even Gilbert forgot his anger in surprise. ‘Bastard he is,’ he said, ‘bastard and stripling, even as you have said, father, but since the day that I looked into his face I have wanted to follow him, perhaps to great glory, perhaps to death.’ The lashes veiled his eyes suddenly. ‘You don’t understand. Maybe you have