The King was found!
And Editha, the handmaiden, too, made her find presently, for there, over the dead Prince’s feet, their left hands still clasping each as when they had died, were her father and her two stalwart brothers.
Never did silenter courtiers than we six sit at a monarch’s feet until the day should break; and then we who lived covered the comely faces with the hems of their Saxon tunics, and were away as fast as we could go to the Norman camp, that the poor Princess-girl might beg a trophy of her victorious father.
We entered the camp without harm, but had to stand by until the Conqueror should leave his tent and enter the rough shelter that had already been erected for him. Here, while we waited, a young knight, guessing Editha’s sex through her long cloak, roughly pulled down the kerchief she was holding across her face. Whereupon I struck him so heavily with my fist that, for a minute, he reeled back against the horse he was leading, and then out came his falchion, and out came mine, and we fell upon each other most heartily.
But before a dozen passes had been made the bystanders separated us, and at the same moment the Normans set up a shout, and the brand-new English tyrant strode out of his tent, and, encircled by a glittering throng, entered the open audience-hall. Adeliza dropped her white veil as he sat himself down, and called to him, and ran to the foot of his chair, and wept and knelt, so that even the stern son of Robert the Devil was moved, and took her to him, and stroked her hair, and soothed and called her, in Norman-French, his pretty daughter, and promised her the first boon she could think of.
And that boon was the body of Harold Infelix.
Turn back the pages of history, and you will see that she had her wish, and Waltham Abbey its kingly patron.[1]
[1] Exact historians say it was Harold’s mother who found his body upon the field of battle, and offered William its weight in gold for it. But our narrator ought to know the truth better than any of them.
Meanwhile, a knight led the weeping Princess away to her father’s tent, but when I and Editha would have followed two iron-coated rogues crossed their halberds in our path.
“Not so fast there, my bulky champion!” called William the Bastard to me. “What is this I heard about your striking a Norman for glancing at yonder silly Saxon wench? By St. Denis! your girls will have to learn to be more lenient! Whence come you? What was your father’s name?”