The Lion of Justice Read Online Free Page A

of the right stuff. Still, the people could rallyto the Atheling if they hated the Norman enough, and he must face the truth: there had always been animosity towards the Normans.
    Yet they could be persuaded, or could they? He had persuaded them once. That was when Robert had tried to take the crown from him. He had expected it. Naturally the eldest son wanted the greater prize.
    But their father had nominated him, William Rufus, as his successor. What had he said to him on his deathbed, stern as ever? ‘What are you doing here? Why are you not claiming your kingdom?’
    Rufus laughed. One had to admire the old man. He was the greatest they would ever know, and if he was without humour he was the finest soldier of his day, and for most of that which was his and his family’s today they had to thank William the Conqueror, who had given it to them.
    They could never be like him – any one of them. And did they want to? Not Rufus. He knew how to enjoy life – which he was sure his-father had not – and he intended to go on doing it.
    But now his mind was straying from Edgar Atheling because that fellow’s being in the country reminded him of the early days of his reign when Robert had come against him. Robert was a fool; he could be relied upon to fail in any military exercise.
    Rufus laughed to think of those days when the Norman barons who owned estates in England had declared that they would not accept Rufus as the King of England, and prepared to set up Robert in his place.
    Their uncle Odo had been Robert’s general. Odo! That Bishop who had been in disgrace with the Conqueror because he had passed over much English treasure to Rome. The old fool had had a fancy to become Pope and believed that by bribing the Cardinals he could persuade them to elect him. Fortunately William had discovered this, and sent him back to Normandy, where he had languished in a dungeon until his brother Robert of Mortain (like Odo, the son of their grandmother’s marriage after their grandfather’s death, to Herlwin de Conteville) misguidedly persuaded the Conqueror, on the latter’s deathbed, to set him free.
    Free to come against the King whom William himself had chosen!
    Rufus had been in danger then and he prided himself that he had acted with extreme astuteness. He had asked the people of England whether they wished to put their necks in the Norman yoke. This amused Rufus for it struck him as highly amusing that he, the Norman son of a Norman father, should be pleading thus. But there was some truth in it, for while Robert had remained entirely Norman, he, Rufus, had to some extent become Anglicized.
    â€˜My good people,’ he had declared, ‘rally to my banner; I swear to you that if you will stand beside me and thrust out the unwanted Norman, there shall be no more unjust taxation, every man shall enjoy his own hunts and chases in his own woods and wolds, and all abuses of the law shall be abolished.’
    How they had cheered him! How they had rallied to his banner. And when Odo arrived he was set upon and taken prisoner, and it was not until Rufus had won the day that Robert, characteristically, put in an appearance. How typical of Robert! How had he ever thought he could outwit their father? That had been just another of his miscalculations, of course.
    Rufus could not be hard on his captives. How could he be . . . on Normans? Moreover many of them had been friends with whom he had played in his childhood. More important was the fact that he might need their support in the future, for he knew that he would not be able to keep the promises he had made to the people; the taxation which the people called unjust, could certainly not be abolished; nor would he change the forestry laws, for nothing was going to be allowed to interfere with his pleasure in the chase.
    So he and Robert made a pact. If death should overtake either of them, that one would pass over all his possessions to