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By Root 670 0

themes of deceit, dishonesty and possession, but this one he seems to have considered particularly apt, for he included it three times.1 There is surely art in this. It is hard to believe that the fable of the fox and the crow was not deliberately included as an ironic commentary on the unfolding drama, but the crucial question is this: who is the fox and who the crow? Once more the artist courts danger by teasing his public with double meaning. Norman observers, in the aftermath of the Conquest, would immediately see Harold as the fox, scheming with cunning words to take the crown of England from under the nose of its rightful heir, Duke William of Normandy. Yet if the threaded drama is more closely observed it becomes increasingly possible to interpret the fable in exactly the opposite way, with Harold the cheated one and the treacherous and deceitful fox William of Normandy. It is in the crafty guise of a rescuer, a knight, in brightly stitched chain mail, that William of Normandy will make a dramatic entrance on to the linen stage.

Harold is a prisoner on that strand of Ponthieu, but his nerves must shortly have begun to calm. It has become clear that Count Guy will treat him honourably. 'By the ancient law of my land, you are now my captive, Earl Harold, but rest assured - I will not treat you badly.' Some such words were presumably spoken to the Englishman, for they are implied by the tapestry's pictures. In this, once more, the woven story differs markedly from the written account of William of Poitiers. It seems that the latter's evocation of the dire imprisonment that awaited Harold in Ponthieu was an exaggeration, designed, no doubt, to cast Duke William'simpending intervention in the most favourable light. For its part the tapestry ennobles Guy with a certain nascent chivalry. He is intent on getting what he can from Harold, but this is an honourable captivity. Harold is neither shackled nor bound;he sits proudly on his horse as together he and Guy ride along the country paths of Picardy to one of Guy's castles [scene 7]. At the rear of the party two hunting dogs, dodging the gnarled tree which separates this scene from the last, run after their English lord, panting with canine enthusiasm, and both Harold and Guy ride with hawks at hand. Were it not for the armed guard, which discreetly follows, one might think this the picture of a friendly day's chase. There can be no doubt, however, that Harold is effectively a prisoner. The inescapable truth is underlined by a prosaic inscription. HIC APPREHENDIT WIDO HAROLDUM ET DUXIT EUM AD BELREM ET IBI EUM TENUIT (Here Guy seized Harold and led him to Beaurain and held him there).

Beaurain lies by the mellow, slow-flowing River Canche, nine miles from the Channel coast. Today it is an inconspicuous hamlet, lost amidst the fields of Picardy half way between Montreuil and Hesdin, but in those days Guy's castle at Beaurain must have been an impressive fortress. It is represented three times in the tapestry (which is more than any other structure) and if we pause to observe closely, and not ignore what is often taken to be another child-like or conventional representation, we can see how cleverly its essentials were tricked out of the threads [scene 13].2 They must have taken Harold first to an outer stone wall, with battlements and towers, and then through a great arched gate to the large enclosure (the bailey) within. Dominating the enclosure, at the back, was a steeply-sided earthen mound (the motte), rising perhaps seventy feet into the air. Now within the bailey Harold would have creaked up his neck at the impregnable centrepiece, a gleaming stone keep standing proudly on top of the mound and itself crowned by a remarkable domed roof. Today a little village still bears the name Château-Beaurain; but nothing is left of the eponymous motte-and-bailey castle or even of any later stronghold on the same site. The last of its stones were whistled away by masons in 1822 in order to be recycled in the construction of a new watercourse. Only an overgrown hillock, obscured by