A breathing-space, much needed, was snatched while the Breton lines were formed again, and those who had lost their destriers in the first attack mounted the fresh horses which their squires brought up. The Norman ranks were shaken and thinned. William de Vieuxpont had been slain, Tesson’s son Raoul, and many others, and their bodies lay spread-eagled on the hill. Gilbert de Harcourt had been wounded in the thigh, but he had bound his scarf tightly round his leg, and seemed little the worse for wear.
Eudes’ sorrel destrier pushed up to Raoul’s Bertolin; Eudes grunted: ‘This is a bloody fight, by my head! I suppose you are grown used to such battles, hey?’
‘No man alive has seen so stern a fight as this,’ Raoul answered. He wiped the red stains from his sword; his hand shook slightly; there was a smear of blood on his cheek; and his hauberk was dinted across one shoulder.
Messengers rode down the ranks; the trumpets sounded the signal for the second attack; again the chivalry thundered up the slope. The breastworks, already broken and sagging, were swept away, but a wall of shields met the horsemen. The line swayed; the ditch was full of limbs and shattered helmets and bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Now and then a Saxon fell amongst the Norman dead, but the shields never broke, and the axes swung as fiercely as ever.
A Saxon in the forefront of the battle rushed straight at the Duke and struck with all his might at the big Spanish horse he rode. It fell with a scream of agony; the Duke flung himself clear, still grasping his mace, and turned, and dealt his assailant a blow that smashed through his helmet of bronze and felled him to the ground. He had a brief vision of a fair face, startling in its resemblance to Earl Harold’s; an anguished cry rose throbbingly: ‘Gyrth! Gyrth!’ and a young man burst from the Saxon lines, and bestrode the fallen body. A knight rode at him, shouting: ‘Saint-Marcouf! Sire Saint-Marcouf!’ and was cleaved almost in twain by a terrific axe-blow. For a fleeting moment Raoul saw the young Saxon heroically defending Gyrth’s body; then the Normans closed round him, and he sank, and the horses swept over him.
A roar of fury came from hundreds of Saxon throats; a single voice howled: ‘Gyrth and Leofwine! Both, both! Out, Norman butchers! Out!’
The Duke slipped on a repulsive bleeding tangle of horses’ guts, and caught at a destrier’s bridle. A knight of Maine bestrode it; he tried to thrust past the Duke, shouting: ‘Loose my bridle! God’s eyes, let me go!’
The muscles on the Duke’s arm stood out hard as steel. He forced the plunging destrier back. ‘Splendour of God, know your over-lord!’ he said. ‘Dismount! I am Normandy!’
‘It is each man for himself! I will not dismount!’ gasped the knight recklessly.
The Duke’s eyes blazed suddenly. ‘Ha, dog!’ He seized the man by his belt and heaved him out of the saddle as though he had been a featherweight. The knight fell sprawling; the Duke vaulted on to the destrier’s back and pressed forward to the front again.
The martlets of William Malet’s gonfanon fluttered before him; somewhere down the line the men of Cingueliz were yelling their fierce battle-cry of Turie! Closer at hand men were calling on Saint-Aubert, their patron saint. The Lord of Longueville’s voice rose above the cries. ‘A Giffard! a Giffard!’ Old Walter, fighting hand to hand on foot with three Saxon warriors, was beaten to his knees, and shouted his watchword as he fell.
The Duke forced a way through the pack, and charged down upon the Lord of Longueville’s foes. ‘Up, up, Walter, I am with you!’ he called. His mace crashed down upon a wooden helmet; a man’s brains spilled on the torn ground; the Duke’s horse was plunging and snorting; he held it hard; the Saxons scattered, and Giffard struggled to his feet. ‘Back, old war-dog!’ the Duke commanded above the din of the fight.
‘Not while I can still wield a lance!’ panted Giffard, and grabbed at a riderless horse, and hoisted his bulk upon into the saddle.
Thousands of Saxons lay dead on the field, but still the wall of shields held. It was long past noon, and the sun beat pitilessly down on the sweltering hosts. The Norman chivalry was limping and spent; they fell back a second time, and saw the Saxon lines above them broken but invincible.
The field reeked of blood; the ground was slippery under it, and all over the slope of the hill dreadful relics were strewn: hands still rigid on spear shafts; whole arms cleaved clean away from the shoulder, here and there a gory head battered to a shapeless mass, sometimes no more than a finger, a horse’s ear, or the half of a horse’s nostril that had been velvet-smooth before and was now sticky with congealing blood.
The weary squadrons drew up out of range of the Saxon missiles, which still continued to hurtle down at them. Men sat their horses like sacks of flour; the horses themselves stood with trembling wide-spread legs, foam at their mouths and on their bardings, their heads hanging down and their flanks torn by the riders’ spurs.
All thought of Edgar had left Raoul, even as he had prayed it might. The world contained nothing but blood: blood spurting from cut arteries, blood oozing sluggishly from flesh wounds, blood drying on the dismembered corpses that littered the field.
He let the greasy reins fall on Bertolin’s neck, and tried to wipe his hands on his gartered hose. He wondered how many of his friends still lived; he thought he had heard FitzOsbern’s voice in the press, and he could see Grantmesnil and Saint-Sauveur now, wiping the sweat from their faces.
Someone nudged his arm. ‘Here, drink some of this,’ said Eudes in his phlegmatic way.
Raoul looked up. His brother was pushing a costrel into his hand; he looked dirty and blood-stained, but his stolidity was unimpaired. ‘Saints bless you, Eudes!’ Raoul said gratefully, and took a pull at the heady wine. ‘I was nearly spent. What now? Do you still like warfare?’
‘Well enough,’ said Eudes placidly. ‘But I have a grudge against some swineshead out of Caux, who jostled me into the ditch in that last skirmish, so that I was like to have foundered. When this affair is ended I shall have a score to settle with him. He bears a pennon with a stag’s head caboosed. Do you know him?’
‘No,’ said Raoul, beginning to laugh. ‘Not I.’
A horseman went galloping down the line; the barons who had been conferring with William dispersed and came riding back to their posts. Word ran through the ranks: the squadrons re-formed, and stood waiting.
The right wing now charged up the slope, and what had been done by accident on the left was repeated by the men of Boulogne under Count Eustace. After a wild exchange of blows with the English fyrd the troops wavered, and broke, and fled down the hill with all the appearance of utter rout. On the crest of the hill the thegns scattered among the peasantry sought in vain to hold them back. The serfs were mad with the lust for blood; they had not seen the disaster on their right; all they saw was a beaten foe flying from the field. They broke from their leaders uttering yells of fierce triumph, and swarmed down the hill in pursuit of the enemy. Axes, scythes, clubs, javelins waved in the air; thousands of serfs were screaming: ‘Victory! Victory! Out, out! We have conquered!’
The Norman centre was again swung round; a deep roar of ‘Dex aie!’ drowned the shouts of the fyrd, and the chivalry came crashing down on to the English flank. The lower slopes of the hill were thick all at once with fallen men, writhing and struggling under the chargers’ hooves; the Norman feinting-party checked, wheeled about, and rode back to attack the English front. Those on the hill-crest saw the shire-levies mowed down in their hundreds. A few escaped, a few managed to crawl back to their comrades on the hill, but thousands lay dead on the torn ground, weltering in their gore, crushed and battered by the cavalry riding over them.
But the ruse brought disaste
r upon the Norman right. The foremost of those who had feigned flight, hurtled down the slope in an assumed disorder that soon became real. A deep fosse dug at the foot of the hill and concealed by brushwood and clods of turf lay in their path; they blundered into it, man after man, till the pit was full of living bodies struggling and heaving in one smothered mass. The horsemen behind, unable to check the impetus of their rush, rode over them in scores. Backbones were smashed, heads beaten in, limbs broken, and those at the bottom of the pit perished from asphyxiation, and their bodies were flattened to shapelessness by the weight of men above.
A cheer rose from the Saxon ranks. These were terribly thinned, but round the standards a solid core stood fast. The ditch was filled with dead, the breastworks were beaten underfoot, but a wall of shields confronted the Norman host.
A series of attacks was now made upon the English front. Charge after charge was led; the Norman horse plunged and trampled over the filled ditch; lance and sword strove against the axes; the Saxon line gave under the sheer force of the impacts, but each time the gain was only temporary, and the chivalry was thrown back with heavy loss.
William’s second horse was slain under him; Count Eustace, swept from his post on the right, was beside him, and offered his own destrier. ‘Take mine, Normandy,’ he puffed, heaving his bulk from the saddle. ‘If the host see you not the day is lost. Holy Face, these Saxons are made of iron! Will they never break?’
The Saxon shields danced before Norman eyes, barbaric colours glaring in the sunlight; the ranks stood firm; the axes, red with blood, swung and fell with a force that cleaved hauberk and bone in one murderous blow. The Duke’s helmet had been smashed in; a lance-thrust almost unseated him; his third horse was slain by a Saxon seax ripping up its belly, and fell with a squeal of agony, nearly pinning him beneath it. He managed to fling himself clear; a destrier reared up suddenly above him, and was wrenched round with violence that came near to pulling it over backwards.
‘God on the Cross, beau sire!’ Raoul was out of the saddle, even as the Duke reached his feet. ‘I had nigh ridden you down! Up! Take my bridle!’ He thrust it into the Duke’s hand, and ran back, dodging and ducking between the riders.
The chivalry fell back again; the Duke ordered his archers up and volleys of arrows were loosed into the Saxon ranks. A fresh storm of missiles drove off the bowmen; they retreated to the rear, and the chivalry charged up the slope again.
For over an hour the cavalry attacks alternated with the volleys of the archers. The store of Saxon missiles was running out; while the archers loosed their bolts the English ranks stood motionless and silent, and the chivalry at the foot of the hill drew up for the next attack.
The sun was setting in a red ball of fire behind the trees to the west. All day the desperate fight had raged, and still showed no sign of abating. The Saxons were holding on till nightfall or until the long overdue levies of Edwine and Morkere should come to their relief. Their lines were maimed and crippled; the flanks were swept away, but the standards flaunted obdurately on the highest point of the hill, and the thegnhood formed an unbreakable wall round them.
Ralph de Toeni looked towards the sun, and said: ‘It will be dusk in an hour, and we are nigh spent. They are devils, these Saxons!’
‘Their axes dismay our men,’ Grantmesnil said, binding his scarf tight about a flesh wound on his arm. ‘The Duke is wasting his arrows: they stick in the Saxon shields, and do little harm.’
The Duke was spurring towards the archers; their captains ran to meet him, and stood at his stirrup listening to what he said. He made a gesture, snatched a bow, and bent it to show the archers what he needed; FitzOsbern rode up to him, anxiously questioning, the captains ran down the line of bowmen, explaining and exhorting.
The archers now aimed their arrows high in the air. The shafts shot upward, over the heads of the front ranks of the Saxons, and fell in a sharp rain right in the heart of the thegnhood.
The Saxons had no more missiles to throw; they could do nothing but stand passive, gritting their teeth, while the dropping arrows thinned their ranks. When the archers’ supply of shafts was exhausted they fell back to refill their quivers, and the chivalry charged up the slope to attack the shaken line. Again steel rang on steel, again the ranks surged back, recovered, and stood firm. The chivalry flung itself against the wall; the English were a solid mass through which it was impossible to break, but they were becoming wedged so tightly that it was difficult any longer for them to wield their weapons. The chivalry drew off again; more arrows dropped, carrying noiseless death.
The pauses between the attacks were nerve-racking to the helpless host. Below them the Saxons could see the Norman horse drawn up behind the archers, standing motionless while the arrows weakened the enemy lines. Harder to bear than the shattering cavalry charges were these periods of tense silent waiting. Hardly a movement stirred the Saxon ranks. From under the shade of helmets haggard faces looked out, worn with endurance, and eyes stared westward to where the last glow of the departed sun was fading. A thousand brains dulled by fatigue drummed with the thought: only a little while longer: only a little while till darkness.
Over the marshes in the valley dank mists were rising; a grey shadow stole over the battlefield, and an evening chill spread through the patient ranks. The arrow-shower ceased; a sigh rose from the English lines; men grasped their shields tighter, and dug their heels into the churned earth in readiness to withstand the attack that would come.
The chivalry thundered up the slope; the whole mass of the Saxons shuddered under the crash of meeting; almost the only movement in the host was the dropping of the dead.
The Normans were nearly as exhausted as the English. Some still fought with the old dash, notably the Duke himself; his Seneschal; the Lord of Moulines, who was spattered from head to foot with the blood of the scores he had slain; and Robert de Beaumont, whose energy and courage seemed invincible; but the greater part of the army fought like men in a dream, mechanically hacking, cutting, guarding.
Raoul had no longer strength to force his way beside the Duke; Mortain still held his post, the Watcher was swept away down the line, hardly caring, having in his head only one fixed thought: I must kill or be killed. A kind of dull rage possessed him, and lent new strength to his arm. His sword was dripping, the hilt sticky in his hold, and the runes on the blade hidden under the blood that had dried over them. A Saxon, breaking out of the pack, dashed at him; he saw the gleam of the seax thrusting up at his horse’s belly, and slashed downwards with a snarl of fury, and rode over the still-breathing body. His horse was sliding and plunging on a heap of slain, snorting in terror, with wide nostrils and dilated eyes; Raoul drove it on to the locked shields ahead, shouting: ‘Harcourt! Harcourt!’
A shield was flung up; a face drawn with weariness swam before his blurred vision; eyes he knew were looking steadily into his. His sword-arm dropped. ‘Edgar! Edgar!’
A horse jostled his; he was forced on down the line, white as death and shaking. The fight raged about him; a spear glanced along his shield; he parried it mechanically.
The Count of Eu’s voice sounded, shouting above the din: ‘Normandy! Normandy! Smite for Normandy!’
‘Yes,’ Raoul echoed stupidly. ‘For Normandy! I am a Norman … a Norman …’
He gripped his sword-hilt tighter; his arm felt heavy as lead. He struck at a hazy figure, and saw it go down.
A scuffle drew his eyes to the right. He saw Roger FitzErneis, flinging his lance away, take sword and shield and ride like a maniac at the Saxon front. He burst through; Raoul saw the flash of his sword, hacking, thrusting. He was up to the standard, his blade slashed at the shaft. A dozen spears surrounded him, and he fell.
His heroic attempt whipped up the flagging spirits of the No
rmans; again they charged, and the Saxon mass was borne backwards under the fury of the assault, until the ranks were wedged so tightly that the wounded and the dead could not fall to earth, but stayed, jammed between their living comrades in the pack.
Raoul’s horse stumbled over the carcass of a destrier, and came down, pitching him over its head. He was all but trampled under the hooves of the Lord of Bohun’s horse, but managed to rise and stagger clear of the danger. He heard the trumpets sounding; the chivalry fell back; he found that he was shaking from head to foot and reeling like a drunken man.
He made his way down the hill, stumbling over the debris that littered the slope. A head lay cupped in a hollow in the ground as though it had grown there; the glassy eyes stared dreadfully, the lips were drawn back from the teeth in a kind of macabre grin. Raoul began to laugh in lunatic gusts. Someone caught at his arm and tried to drag him on; Gilbert d’Aufay’s voice reached him. ‘Raoul! Raoul, stop, for God’s pity!’
‘But I know him!’ Raoul said. He pointed a trembling finger at the gruesome head. ‘I know him, I tell you, and there he lies. Look, it is Ives de Bellomont!’
Gilbert shook him. ‘Stop! Stop, you fool! Come away!’ He forced him on down the hill.
The archers were moving forward, and again the shafts shot upwards into the air and fell in the midst of the thegnhood. The light was now very faint and uncertain and the painted shields had become dark barriers still held against the enemy. Of the twenty thousand men Harold had led into battle very few remained. The fyrd was almost wiped out; more than half the thegns lay stretched on the ground, wounded and dead and dying; and round the standards the remnant of the host made their last gallant stand.
It was not the Norman chivalry that at last broke the shields, but one chance arrow. A bitter cry arose from the Saxon ranks: Harold the King had fallen at the foot of his standard.
Men dropped on their knees beside him, frantically calling his name. He was quite dead, must have died instantly. An arrow dropping through the dusk had pierced through one eye to the brain. They raised him in their arms; they could not believe that he was dead. They pulled out the arrow and tried to staunch the oozing blood; they chafed his hands, imploring him to speak. And all the time the arrows were falling.