“Or search their lords among the dead!” answered Harold. “Who, Haco, if we fall, will search for us?”
As the word left his lips, he saw, under a lonely thorn-tree, and scarce out of bowshot from the entrenchments, a woman seated. The King looked hard at the bended, hooded form.
“Poor wretch!” he murmured, “her heart is in the battle!” And he shouted aloud, “Farther off! farther off?—the war rushes hitherward!”
At the sound of that voice the woman rose, stretched her arms, and sprang forward. But the Saxon chiefs had already turned their faces towards the neighbouring ingress into the ramparts, and beheld not her movement, while the tramp of rushing chargers, the shout and the roar of clashing war, drowned the wail of her feeble cry:
“I have heard him again, again!” murmured the woman, “God be praised!” and she re-seated herself quietly under the lonely thorn.
As Harold and Haco sprang to their feet within the entrenchments, the shout of “the King—the King!—Holy Crosse!” came in time to rally the force at the farther end, now undergoing the full storm of the Norman chivalry.
The willow ramparts were already rent and hewed beneath the hoofs of horses and the clash of swords; and the sharp points on the frontals of the Norman destriers were already gleaming within the entrenchments, when Harold arrived at the brunt of action. The tide was then turned; not one of those rash riders left the entrenchments they had gained; steel and horse alike went down beneath the ponderous battle-axes; and William, again foiled and baffled, drew off his cavalry with the reluctant conviction that those breastworks, so manned, were not to be won by horse. Slowly the knights retreated down the slope of the hillock, and the English, animated by that sight, would have left their stronghold to pursue, but for the warning cry of Harold. The interval in the strife thus gained was promptly and vigorously employed in repairing the palisades. And this done, Harold, turning to Haco, and the thegns round him, said joyously:
“By Heaven’s help we shall yet win this day. And know you not that it is my fortunate day—the day on which, hitherto, all hath prospered with me, in peace and in war—the day of my birth?”
“Of your birth!” echoed Haco in surprise. “Ay—did you not know it?”
“Nay!—strange!—it is also the birthday of Duke William! What would astrologers say to the meeting of such stars?” [273]