Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/271

 if they wished the responsibility of them to be shared by a larger body, the means were easy. There was a court of peers ready at hand, before whom they might arraign the traitors.

But if there were those within Saint Cenery who were marked for punishment, there was one without its walls who claimed restitution. A son of Geroy's son Robert, bearing his father's name, had, like others of his family, served with credit in the wars of Apulia and Sicily. He was now in the Duke's army, seemingly among the warriors of Maine, ready to play his part in winning back the castle of his father from the son of the murderess of his uncle. Geoffrey of Mayenne and the rest of the Cenomannian leaders asked of the Duke that the son of the former owner of the castle, Geoffrey's own kinsman and vassal, should be restored to the inheritance of his father, the inheritance which his father held in the first instance by Geoffrey's own gift. The warfare which was now waging was waged against the son of the woman by whom one lord of Saint Cenery had been treacherously slain. The triumph of right would be complete, if the banished man were restored to his own, at the prayer of the first giver. The Duke consented; Saint Cenery was granted afresh to the representative of the house of Geroy; Geoffrey saw the castle of his own rearing once more in friendly hands. The new lord strengthened the defences of his fortress, and held it as a post to be guarded with all care against the common enemy, the son of Mabel.

Two fortresses were thus won from the revolters; and the success of the Duke at both places, his severity at