Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete by Lytton (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

his old acquaintance, Godrith. Doffing his helm with its long nose-piece, he caught the thegn’s hand, and exclaimed:

“Well met, ventre de Guillaume! well met, O Godree the debonnair! Thou rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on foot, and with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus, thou beholdest that much-suffering man!”

“Welcome indeed,” returned Godrith, with some embarrassment; “but how camest thou hither, and whom seekest thou?”

“Harold, thy Count, man—and I trust he is here.”

“Not so, but not far distant—at a place by the mouth of the river called Caer Gyffin 158. Thou shalt take boat, and be there ere the sunset.”

“Is a battle at hand? Yon churl disappointed and tricked me; he promised me danger, and not a soul have we met.”

“Harold’s besom sweeps clean,” answered Godrith, smiling. “But thou art like, perhaps, to be in at the death. We have driven this Welch lion to bay at last. He is ours, or grim Famine’s. Look yonder;” and Godrith pointed to the heights of Penmaen-mawr. “Even at this distance, you may yet descry something grey and dim against the sky.”

“Deemest thou my eye so ill practised in siege, as not to see towers? Tall and massive they are, though they seem here as airy as roasts, and as dwarfish as landmarks.”

“On that hill-top, and in those towers, is Gryffyth, the Welch king, with the last of his force. He cannot escape us; our ships guard all the coasts of the shore; our troops, as here, surround every pass. Spies, night and day, keep watch. The Welch moels (or beacon-rocks) are manned by our warders. And, were the Welch King to descend, signals would blaze from post to post, and gird him with fire and sword. From land to land, from hill to hill, from Hereford to Caerleon, from Caerleon to Milford, from Milford to Snowdon, through Snowdon to yonder fort, built, they say, by the fiends or the giants,—through defile and through forest, over rock, through morass, we have pressed on his heels. Battle and foray alike have drawn the blood from his heart; and thou wilt have seen the drops yet red on the way, where the stone tells that Harold was victor.”

“A brave man and true king, then, this Gryffyth,” said the Norman, with some admiration; “but,” he added in a colder tone, “I confess, for my own part, that though I pity the valiant man beaten, I honour the brave man who wins; and though I have seen but little of this rough land as yet, I can well judge from what I have seen, that no captain, not of patience unwearied, and skill most consummate, could conquer a bold enemy in a country where every rock is a fort.”

“So I fear,” answered Godrith, “that thy countryman Rolf found; for the Welch beat him sadly, and the reason was plain. He insisted on using horses where no horses could climb, and attiring men in full armour to fight against men light and nimble as swallows, that skim the earth, then are lost in clouds. Harold, more wise, turned our Saxons into Welchmen, flying as they flew, climbing where they climbed; it has been as a war of the birds. And now there rests but the eagle, in his last lonely eyrie.”

“Thy battles have improved thy eloquence much, Messire Godree,” said the Norman, condescendingly. “Nevertheless, I cannot but think a few light horse——”

“Could scale yon mountain-brow?” said Godrith, laughing, and pointing to Penmaen-mawr.

The Norman looked and was silent, though he thought to himself, “That Sexwolf was no such dolt after all!”