“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as if in wonder toward his nobles; “hear to the Saxon slave, that dares to speak of consecrated earth, and of interment for the accursed body of that most perjured, excommunicated liar! Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog, whom you have dared to style your king, that for the interdicted and accursed dead the sands of the seashore are but too good a sepulchre!”
“She bade me proffer humbly to your acceptance the weight of Harold’s body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified and cringing messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”
“Proffer us gold! what gold, or whose? Know, villain, all the gold throughout this conquered realm is ours. Hence, dog and outcast, hence! nor presume e’er again to come, insulting us by proffering, as a boon to our acceptance, that which we own already, by the most indefeasible and ancient right of conquest!—Said I not well, knights, vavasours, and nobles?”
“Well! well and nobly!” answered they, one and all. “The land is ours, and all that therein is: their dwellings, their demesnes, their wealth, whether of gold, or silver, or of cattle—yea, they themselves are ours! themselves, their sons, their daughters, and their wives—our portion and inheritance, to be our slaves for ever!”
“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the duke, spurning him with his foot; “and hark ye, arbalast-men and archers, if any Saxon more approach us on like errand, see if his coat of skin be proof against the quarrel of the shaft!”
And once again the feast went on; and louder rang the revelry, and faster flew the wine-cup, round the tumultuous board. All day the banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on that fatal field, watered sufficiently already by the rich gore of many a noble heart. All day the banquet lasted, and far was it prolonged into the watches of the night; when, rising with the wine-cup in his hand—“Nobles and barons,” cried the duke, “friends, comrades, conquerors, bear witness to my vow! Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory, and where our last foe fell—there will I raise an abbey to his eternal praise and glory. Richly endowed, it shall be, from the first fruits of this our land. Battle, it shall be called, to send the memory of this, the great and singular achievement of our race, to far posterity; and, by the splendor of our God, wine shall be plentier among the monks of Battle, than water in the noblest and richest cloister else, search the world over! This do I swear: so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted us for our renown, and will not now deny his help, when it be asked for his own glory!”
The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a Saxon had presumed, since the intolerant message of the duke, to come to look upon his dead. But now the ground was needed whereon to lay the first stone of the abbey William had vowed to God. The ground was needed; and, moreover, the foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential on the winds of heaven. And now, by trumpet-sound, and proclamation through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain of death, to come and seek their dead, lest the health of the conquerors should suffer from the pollution they themselves had wrought. Scarce had the blast sounded, and the glad tidings been announced once only, ere from their miserable shelters, where they had herded with the wild beasts of the forest—from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might escape the Norman spear—forth crept the relics of that persecuted race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and steps that tottered no less from the effect of terror than of age—maidens, and youths, and infants—too happy to obtain permission to search amid those festering heaps, dabbling their hands in the corrupt and pestilential gore which filled each nook and hollow of the dinted soil, so they might bear away, and water with their tears, and yield to consecrated ground, the relics of those brave ones, once loved so fondly, and now so bitterly lamented. It was toward the afternoon of that same day, when a long train was seen approaching, with crucifix, and cross, and censer—the monks of Waltham abbey, coming to offer homage for themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals, to him whom they acknowledged as their king; expressing their submission to the high will of the Norman pontiff—justified, as they said, and proved by the assertion of God’s judgment upon the hill of Hastings. Highly delighted by this absolute submission, the first he had received from any English tongue, the conqueror received the monks with courtesy and favor, granting them high immunities, and promising them free protection, and the unquestioned tenor of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he had answered their address, he detained two of their number—men of intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he instantly discovered—from whom to derive information as to the nature of his newly-acquired country and newly-conquered subjects. Osgad and Ailric, the deputed messengers from the respected principal of their community, had yet a further and higher object than to tender their submission to the conqueror. Their orders were, at all and every risk, to gain permission to consign the corpse of their late king and founder to the earth previously denied to him. And soon, emboldened by the courtesy and kindness of the much-dreaded Norman, they took courage to approach the subject, knowing it interdicted, even on pain of death; and, to their wonder and delight, it was unhesitatingly granted.
Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled defeat and slaughter, those old men might be seen toiling among the naked carcasses, disfigured, maimed, and festering in the sun, toiling to find the object of their devoted veneration. But vain were all their labors—vain was their search, even when they called in the aid of his most intimate attendants, ay, of the mother that had borne him! The corpses of his brethren, Leofwyn and Gurth, were soon discovered; but not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him, could now distinguish the maimed features of the king.
At last, when hope itself was now almost extinct, some one named Edith—Edith the Swan-necked! She had been the mistress—years ere he had been, or dreamed of being, king—to the brave son of Godwin. She had beloved him in her youth with that one, single-minded, constant, never-ending love, which but few, even of her devoted sex, can feel, and they but once, and for one cherished object. Deserted and dishonored when he she loved was elevated to the throne, she had not ceased from her true adoration; but, quitting her now-joyless home, had shared her heart between her memories and her God, in the sequestered cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland. More days elapsed ere she could reach the fatal spot, and the increased corruption denied the smallest hope of his discovery: yet, from the moment when the mission was named to her, she expressed her full and confident conviction that she could recognise that loved one so long as but one hair remained on that head she had once so cherished! It was night when she arrived on the fatal field, and by the light of torches once more they set out on their awful duty. “Show me the spot,” she said, “where the last warrior fell;” and she was led to the place where had been found the corpses of his gallant brethren: and, with an instinct that nothing could deceive, she went straight to the corpse of Harold! It had been turned already to and fro many times by those who sought it; his mother had looked on it, and pronounced it not her son’s: but that devoted heart knew it at once—and broke! Whom rank, and wealth, and honors had divided, defeat and death made one!—and the same grave contained the cold remains of Edith the Swan-necked and the last scion of the Saxon kings of England.