Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/292

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Varenne, in a deep bottom girt on all sides by wooded hills, one of which, known as the Câtelier, overhanging the town to the north, seems to have been the site of the castle of Helias. His stronghold has vanished; but the church on which the height looks down, if no rival to Saint Hildebert of Gournay, still keeps considerable remains of an age but little later than that with which we have to do. The possessions of Helias, both those which he inherited and those which he received with his wife, made his resistance to the invader of no small help to the cause of his father-in-law. They barred the nearest way to Rouen, not indeed from Gournay, but from Eu and Aumale. They came right between these last fortresses and the domain of Walter Giffard at Longueville. Of the three streams which meet by Arques, while Helias himself held the upper Varenne at Saint-Saens, his wife's fortress of Bures held the middle course of the Bethune or Dieppe below Gerard's Gaillefontaine, and below Drincourt, not yet the New Castle of King Henry. The massive church, with parts dating from the days of Norman independence, rises on the left slope of the valley above an island in the stream. But the site of the castle which formed part of the marriage portion of Duke Robert's daughter is hard to trace. But lower down, nearer the point where the streams meet, the bride of Helias had brought him a noble gift indeed. Through her he was lord of Arques, with its donjon and its ditches, the mighty castle whose tale has been told in recording the history of an earlier generation. A glance at the map will show how strong a position in eastern Normandy was held by the man who commanded at once Saint-Saens, Bures, and Arques. But the son-in-law of Duke Robert deserves our notice