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Updated: May 28, 2025
Therefore, with one of those rare and mighty efforts of that dissimulation which debased his character, but achieved his fortunes, he cleared his brow of its dark cloud, and said in a low voice, that was not without its pathos: "Had an angel from heaven forewarned me that William Fitzosborne would speak thus to his kinsman and brother in arms, in the hour of need and the agony of passion, I would have disbelieved him.
Let it pass " But ere the last word was out of his lips, Fitzosborne had fallen on his knees before the Duke, and, clasping his hand, exclaimed, while the tears rolled down his swarthy cheek, "Pardon, pardon, my liege! when thou speakest thus my heart melts. What thou willest, that will I! Church or Pope, no matter. Send me to Flanders; I will bring back thy bride."
"Trust me, gentle lords," said the Baron of Diggswell, "ye shall have what ye demand, when I learn that Lady Emma Darcy has not suffered from my imprudence." At this moment Lady Matilda, returning, said that her fair friend, on her recovery, had calmly and deliberately insisted that she had seen Fitzosborne before, in the most dangerous crisis of her life.
Fitzosborne, meanwhile, had sought the ex-Earl, who was closeted with Matilda; and now returning, he went boldly up to the Duke, whom no one else dared approach, and said: "Why, my liege, seek to conceal what is already known what ere the eve will be in the mouths of all? You are troubled that Edward is dead, and that Harold, violating his oath, has seized the English realm."
'I dread, said she, 'her disordered mind connects all that her eye beholds with the terrible passages that she has witnessed. 'Nay, said Fitzosborne, 'if noble Saint Clere can pardon the unauthorized interest which, with the purest and most honourable intentions, I have taken in his sister's fate, it is easy for me to explain this mysterious impression.
"Dread my lord," said Fitzosborne, desisting from his employ, and rising to his feet; "thou knowest that I am thy true friend and leal knight; thou knowest how I have aided thee in this marriage with the lady of Flanders, and how gravely I think that what pleases thy fancy will guard thy realm; but rather than brave the order of the Church, and the ban of the Pope, I would see thee wed to the poorest virgin in Normandy."
Look to it thou and thy proud barons, look to it!" "Proud may thy barons be," said Fitzosborne, reddening, and with a brow that quailed not before his lord's; "for they are the sons of those who carved out the realm of the Norman, and owned in Rou but the feudal chief of free warriors; vassals are not villeins.
Then, waving his hand, he dismissed all his attendants except Fitzosborne, and Rolf, Earl of Hereford , nephew to Edward, but French on the father's side, and thoroughly in the Duke's councils. Twice the Duke paced the chamber without vouchsafing a word to either, then paused by the round window that overlooked the Thames.
For side by side with the Pope's holy bull was the martial ban: "Good pay and broad lands to every one who will serve Count William with spear, and with sword, and with cross-bow." And the Duke said to Fitzosborne, as he parcelled out the fair fields of England into Norman fiefs: "Harold hath not the strength of mind to promise the least of those things that belong to me.
'Trust me, gentle lords, said the Baron of Diggswell, 'ye shall have what ye demand when I learn that Lady Emma Darcy has not suffered from my imprudence. At this moment Lady Matilda, returning, said that her fair friend, on her recovery, had calmly and deliberately insisted that she had seen Fitzosborne before, in the most dangerous crisis of her life.
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