The Siege of Norwich Castle Part 23

'A Guader! a Guader!'

The cry resounded in the court with vigour even surpa.s.sing that of a few days before, when their Castellan's eloquence had moved them so deeply.

Ralph de Guader caught his wife's outstretched arms in his own, and looked down into the fair face he had feared never to see again; and then--not the gentle lady, but the mailed warrior swooned.

Worn out with the terrible fatigues he had undergone, while yet unhealed of his wounds, the earl reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen, if the tender arms of his wife had not caught him in their clasp.

His head sank on Emma's shoulder. The fiery Oliver turned his intelligent head and caressed her arm softly with his velvet nose, but stood without moving a limb, gazing at her with his full, bright eyes.

He seemed to understand. Had he moved, the countess would have fared ill.

Emma was quickly eased of her beloved burden by the retainers around, and the insensible earl was borne within the sheltering walls of the keep, and laid upon his own broidered, carved oak bed, in his own s.p.a.cious and luxurious room.

Ah! how Emma wept and prayed and joyed over him, and laughed lowly for delight that in very truth she had her warrior once more.

How she burnt sweet essences, and bathed his lips with perfumed waters, and shuddered at the print of Odo's mace that still marked his brow with a black and sullen scar.

Ralph, opening his steel-grey eyes upon that eager face, lost all fear lest his gauntness and humiliation and defeat should lessen wifely love.

'Sweetheart!' he sighed. 'Sweetheart! G.o.d be praised that I see thee again!' The memory of his desolation on the battlefield came over him with resistless force. His breast heaved with a mighty sob as he took his wife's hands again in his own and pressed them to his lips.

'They brought me news of thy death, Ralph. But I knew better,'

whispered Emma, as she bent over him, her quick tears falling on his face. 'I knew better! Thou couldst not have died but I had known it. My heart had been rent in twain.'

Then Ralph told her the history of his struggle, and of the long dreadful hours when he lay 'twixt life and death upon the field; and how Grillonne had schemed and saved him; and of the refuge in the Fens.

A murmured story, told in a voice faint and weak with suffering, and received with many an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of sympathy and love.

'I had planned to steal away privily by Wells on the sea, and there take s.h.i.+p for Denmark,' De Guader said. 'But, sweetheart, the thought of thee was to me as the thought of water to the pilgrim in the desert.

Thee I must see, or perish for longing. And I see thee.' He drew her to him and feasted his eyes on her face.

'And for that thou didst confront danger and difficulty and the pain of thy sore wounds?' said Emma proudly.

'In sooth the wounds were sore, but of danger there was little,'

answered the earl. Then he sprang up from the couch into a sitting posture with a suddenness that startled his gentle leech. 'They deem me crushed,' he said. 'So flushed are they by their victory that they are careless to pursue it further. I found no trace of their troops as I dragged wearily to Norwich. They have gone west, I deem it, to deal with thy brother.'

'Alas, my poor Roger! I would we had news of him,' said the countess, her face drawn with pain. De Guader caught the change in her face with jealous quickness. The old haunting fear came back lest she should scorn the broken man.

'Emma, my defeat is dire! Dost thou credit how I have come back to thee,--hiding behind bush and briar, beaten, poverty-stricken, all but alone? I, who left thee at the head of a n.o.ble army, now scattered like chaff before the winds! Dost thou not spurn me?'

The daughter of William Fitzosbern looked in the face of the man she had chosen for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse.

'My knight,' she said, 'hadst thou come maimed of a hand and foot, with thy visage marred for ever and a day by the cruel daggers of thy foes, as hath happened to thy favourite squire, Stephen le Hareau, I had but loved thee the better.'

'By the Holy Rood! has Stephen le Hareau been so foully entreated?'

'Alack, yes! Moreover, he bore a message from the king's men, that every prisoner, of whatever rank and whatever nation, they might take in this struggle, should lose his right foot.'

The earl raised himself from the couch and smote his knee with his balled fist.

'By the bones of St. Nicholas, I will avenge them! I will yet prevail.'

He turned to Emma, fiercely seizing her hands again in his, this time with no very tender grip. 'Hast thou courage? Wilt thou help me now in my sore need, or is thine heart half with William? Say me sooth!'

'It is with thee!--all with thee!'

'G.o.d bless thee for that answer!' He pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, and then held his brow as if in pain. 'That accursed shaveling's mace!

Sith he cracked my poor head with it, whenever I try to think I get a pang instead of a notion.'

'Strive not to think, mine own. Rest awhile. Where shouldst thou rest if not here in thine home, or when, if not after dire fatigue?'

'No, Emma! no rest for me till I have retrieved mine honour! Stephen le Hareau, thou saidest? He fought like a Paladin beside me. The smartest squire in my following, and the best born. I so loved the lad that I would have had him squire to mine own body, but that Sir Guy de Landerneau was as a father to him, and had formed him in all fitting a man-at-arms. Sir Guy dead too! Yet death is But the soldier's portion, it irks me not. 'Tis that the fiends should mutilate one of Le Hareau's gentle blood. It beggars credence! Their own leader is of such proud lineage. Ha, ha!'

Emma had moved softly to his side, and had enlaced her slender fingers round his mailed arm, striving to soothe him with mute sympathy.

'Seest thou not the menace in the insult, Emma? They spare not rank.

Had I been taken, my fate had been even as Le Hareau's.'

Emma shuddered, recalling Le Hareau's awful face as she had seen it on the day of his return. 'It bears not to think of,' she said.

'Sweet, I must go forth! I must seek Sweyn Ulfsson of Denmark in mine own person; he dallies with my messengers. I must go to him and demand fulfilment of his pledges. I must go to Wader and Montfort and a.s.semble my va.s.salage. Hast thou courage to hold Blauncheflour till my return?'

'I have courage for aught that profits thee.'

Ralph gazed in her face, his eyes aflame with joyous pride. He took her fair cheeks between his palms, and bent down and kissed her brow and lips.

'Methinks there is but little risk, my Falcon!' he said. 'They cannot turn from west to east, as the sun does, in a night. That gives me time. They will scarce attempt Blauncheflour and I not in it. If they do, it is impregnable. Ere six weeks I shall relieve thee with a fair force at my back.'

Emma looked wistfully in his eyes. Her heart ached at the thought of losing him again.

'Courage, m'amie!' he said, mistaking the cause of her hesitation.

'My courage fails not, Ralph,' she answered. 'I had held thy castle while a man would obey my orders and stand to the walls, even hadst thou been dead, as they tried to make me believe. How then should I quail to hold it for thee living? I do but mourn that we must part again.'

And again Ralph took her face between his palms and kissed it.

Meanwhile Lanfranc, the Primate, sat writing in his closet; a satisfied smile hovered round the corners of his mobile lips and lighted up the depths of his gleaming Southern eyes. A monk stood waiting to receive the letter.

It ran thus:--

'To his lord, William, King of the English, his faithful Lanfranc sends his faithful service and faithful prayers. Gladly would we see you, as an angel of G.o.d, but we are unwilling that you should take the trouble of crossing the sea at this particular juncture. For if you were to come to put down these traitors and robbers, you would do us dishonour.

Rodulph the Count, or rather the traitor, and his whole army have been routed, and ours, with a great body of Normans and Saxons, are in pursuit. Our leaders inform me that in a few days they will drive these perjured wretches into the sea, or capture them dead or alive. The details I send you by this monk, who may be trusted, as he has done fealty to me. May G.o.d Almighty bless you.'[6]

[6] Lanfranc, _Opp._ i. 56, translated by Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_, vol. ii. p. 136.

The details which Lanfranc's messenger had to give of the defeat of the Earl of East Anglia, or, as the prelate styled him, Rodulph the Count, we already know.

Turning to the monk, the archbishop said, 'Regarding the base uprising favoured and headed by our lord-king's cousin, Roger, Earl of Hereford, the tidings are of like good savour. Inform our liege that the English prelates, Bishop Wulfstan and Abbot aethelwig, in union with Urse, Sheriff of Worcesters.h.i.+re, have hindered the traitor from pa.s.sing the Severn, and have taken the earl himself prisoner, whereon we pray our liege heartily to make known his wishes how we may best dispose of this haught prisoner.