Moreover,
this had been my first taste of battle, and again and again I saw those
men falling before my sword and arrows. Very proud was I to have slain
them, wicked ravishers as they were, and very glad that from my boyhood
I had practised myself with sword and bow till I could fence with any,
and was perhaps the most skilled marksman in Hastings, having won the
silver arrow at the butts at the last meeting, and from archers of all
ages. Yet the sight of their deaths haunted me who remembered how well
their fate might have been my own, had they got in the first shot or
blow.
Where had they gone to, I wondered? To the priest's Heaven or Hell? Were
they now telling their sins to some hard-faced angel while he checked
the count from his book, reminding them of many that they had forgotten?
Or were they fast asleep for ever and ever as a shrewd thinker whom I
knew had told me secretly he was sure would be the fate of all of us,
whatever the priests might teach and believe. And where was my mother
whom I had loved and who loved me well, although outwardly she was so
stern a woman, my mother whom I had seen burned alive, singing as she
burned? Oh! it was a vile world, and it seemed strange that God should
cause men and women to be born that they might come to such cruel ends.
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