All of William's biographers, however they criticise his later acts, unite in speaking of the excellences of his boyhood: of his wisdom in the choice of counsellors, and his willingness to listen to and follow their advice; of his personal goodness in an age of widespread viciousness; of his grace and skill in athletic sports and warlike exercises, and his expertness beyond all his companions in the excitements and successes of the chase.
Of this last-named pastime he was passionately fond, even from early boyhood, and few excelled him, either in the eagerness with which he followed the game, or the skill which he displayed in the hunt.
This thought came also to the two mail-clad watchers who, shielded from view by a group of large trees, looked with interest upon a youthful hunter, who, in one of the glades that broke the great stretch of forest near to beautiful Valognes, sped his cloth-yard shaft from his mighty longbow of English yew, and sent it whizzing full four hundred feet, straight to the heart of a bounding buck that dashed across the glade scarce forty yards from the ambushed watchers.
"By the mass, a wondrous hit!" exclaimed the older knight. "Why, man, he drew that shaft from nocking-point to pile.[K] I would have sworn that mortal man—let alone a lad like that—could not have drawn such a bow, or sped so true a shaft."
"There is but one lad that can do it in all Normandy, and that is yonder hunter," said the younger knight enthusiastic in spite of himself. "Hast thou not known that none but Duke William can bend Duke William's bow—a murrain on him too!"
"So, is it our quarry—is it the duke, say'st thou?" hurriedly asked the older knight. "Then the saints keep me out of range of his shaft. Draw off, he comes this way"; and grizzled Grimald de Plessis, the Saxon baron, drew still farther behind the tree-trunks as the young duke and his only companion, Golet, his merryman or fool, dashed across the glade to where the stricken stag lay dead.
But his companion, young Guy of Burgundy, fingered his light cross-bow nervously. "Ten thousand curses on this coward Truce!" he exclaimed beneath his breath as the duke, all unconscious of his danger, hurried past the ambush. "But for that I might even now speed my shaft and wing the tanner where he stoops above his game. Did'st ever see a fairer chance?"
But wary De Plessis caught the lad's uplifted arm. "Have down thy hand and bethink thee of that same Truce," he said. "'T is a wise restriction on your wayward wits, my lord count. The duke's men are much too nigh at hand to make such a bow-shot safe even for thee, and to-morrow's venture which we have in hand may be made without breaking this tyrant Truce or braving the ban of Holy Church. I would have a score of good men at my back ere I try to wing so stout a bird as he," and De Plessis and the hot-headed Guy withdrew from their dangerous ambush, while the duke, calling in his lagging followers, turned over his prize to his huntsmen and rode on to his castle.
"To-morrow's venture," of which the Saxon baron spoke, was to be the sorriest chance that had yet happened to the brave young duke. For this very Guy of Burgundy, cousin and comrade to William since his earliest days, brought up in his court, and beholden to him for many favors, and even for his knighthood, had—moved by jealousy—conspired with the foremost barons of Western Normandy to put the young duke to death. That very next night was the attempt to be made here in the duke's own castle of Valognes, away up in the north-western corner of France, some fifteen miles or so to the south of Cherbourg town—the modern naval and shipbuilding city, off which the Kearsarge and the Alabama had their famous sea-fight in the days of the American civil war—June 19, 1864.
But a well-known poet has told us that