Mercenaries E-Book

Jack Ludlow

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Conquest
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 448

Beschreibung

1033, the Norman/French border. Six brothers, the sons of Tancred de Hauteville, prepare to experience their first taste of battle. They have been trained since birth to become great warriors, following in their father's footsteps. As knights, they have but one true purpose: to fight. Nothing matters more to a Norman of noble birth than the ability to engage in battle; nothing has greater importance than skilful swordsmanship and winning a fight - and the de Hautevilles are used to winning. Victory and defeat, betrayal and revenge combine as the desperation to rule becomes an intense battle, testing even the strongest of ties. But through it all shines the loyalty of blood that binds families - and warriors - together.

Leseprobe

MERCENARIES

JACK LUDLOW

To Donald Grazebrook

Not least for being the only person, when I mentioned the subject of this book,

Contents

Title PageDedicationMapsPROLOGUECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYEPILOGUEAUTHOR’S NOTEAbout the AuthorBy the Same AuthorCopyright 

PROLOGUE

For the funeral rites of a man once so powerful, this interment was a muted affair. The monks of the monastery chanted their plainsong while the Archbishop of Salerno read the service in a tone close to a whisper. The mourners were few, the two most important being the dead man’s son and daughter. In the belfry, where no bell could be tolled for fear of disclosure, a servant, mallet in hand, stood guard to watch the road to the city, hidden behind the hills to the north.

His task was to warn of the approach of danger, given this was no ordinary service, but one fraught with risk both for those attending and those performing the rites. The horses on which the archbishop and his retinue had arrived were out of sight at the rear of the buildings and to a passing eye nothing unusual was taking place in the abbey church.

Guaimar, once the powerful Lombard, Duke of Salerno, was being buried in the Latin rite with the simplicity which had come to be the measure of his reign, and those who knew him well in life were aware that in part he had died of a fractured heart, deposed from his lands and titles by an act of the most diabolical treachery. The monks with whom he had shared his final years were burying a brother – no greater nor lesser a man in the sight of God than they themselves. To the archbishop the service was that which he owed to a one-time generous benefactor, who had given much to the diocese and protected church property from despoliation by such endemic raiders of the shores of Italy as the Saracens of North Africa and Sicily.

The young man bearing the same name, Guaimar – just turned sixteen – and his sister, Berengara, two years his junior, were performing a duty they owed to a loving and revered parent, a man of reasonable disposition in a world that had required steely resolve. Raised in the ducal palace, the towering fortress of the Castello de Arechi, they too had found themselves torn from all that had been present in their lives. Yet if they had lost a home and a way of life, their father had lost a fiefdom his family had held, not without difficulty, but continuously, for three hundred years. Now he was to be laid to rest, not with his ancestors in the family vault, but close to that of his eldest daughter, whom he had loved greatly while she lived.

The single soft hammer blow on a resonant bell was enough of an alert: there were horsemen on the road, armed and coming at speed. The sound made the bishop turn as white as the plain surplice he wore; to avoid raising suspicions he had left his mitre and his glittering episcopal garments in the vestry of Salerno Cathedral. Suddenly he was gabbling the service, for he wished to be away from this place. Pandulf, Prince of Capua, called the Wolf of the Abruzzi, who had usurped the dukedom from the man he was burying, professed to be a Christian, but he was a man who never feared the wrath of God when it came to laying hands on his vicars on Earth. The Archbishop of Capua languished in Pandulf’s own dungeons and his counterpart of Salerno had no desire to share his fate.

‘Normans.’

That one word was enough to send the bishop and his attendants scurrying away to find their hidden mounts. In the belfry the sentinel watched the approach of the horsemen, mailed knights bearing lances from which fluttered the red and black colours of their leader, Rainulf Drengot, the man who had broken the heart of the deceased. Once the duke’s son-in-law and his military support, Rainulf had married his late daughter, gaining as her dowry the valuable Lordship of Aversa. Upon her death, and purely out of naked greed, he had transferred his allegiance from Salerno to Capua, and it was a measure of how powerful this Norman mercenary had become in Campania that one such act of treachery had been enough to alter completely the balance of forces in the region.

‘Now we’ll see who truly believes in an afterlife,’ said young Guaimar, his eyes fixed on the departing archbishop. That cleric was not alone: the elderly abbot, too, saw good reason to absent himself and so did some of his monks. Yet there were others whose belief in Christ, or their love of their late brother, was proof against fear and one monk stepped forward to finish the liturgy as the body was lowered, while others stood by to slide the covering stone over the grave which had been dug, as a mark of respect, before the altar of the church.

That flat block of marble, already with the name and titles of the deceased carved upon it, was pushed into place as the banging commenced on the church door: the hilt, no doubt, of a Norman sword. The dead man’s son, as chief mourner, pressed into the hands of one monk a contribution to the funds of the establishment, a small purse of gold, for he was no longer wealthy; none of what their father had once owned – land, castles, coffers full of coins from the dues of the trading port, jewels and family heirlooms – would come to him. They were now the property of the Wolf.

‘Let them enter,’ Guaimar said.

‘Your safety, my Lord, and that of your sister.’

‘Do they make war on children?’

‘The Normans, my Lord, make war as they please.’

‘Yet they are Christians. I cannot believe they would despoil the sanctity of the church.’

The look on the face of the monk was one of doubt; in his cloistered life he had never met one of these devils from the far north, now banging furiously on the great double doors, but what he had heard left him in no doubt that they were as bloody and profane as the Saracens who had, many times, defiled this very building. Guaimar indicated with a nod that the monk should proceed, then he took station behind the grave of his father, Berengara holding his hand.

‘Do not worry, sister. If Prince Pandulf had wanted us dead, we would have been in the grave before our father.’

Looking at her with a forced, confident smile, hoping he had the right of it, he took in the pale, long face, the dark almond eyes in flawless skin and a figure, though yet to be fully formed, which promised much. She was set to be a beauty, and for that she might have more to fear from these barbarian Normans than she did from her bloodline.

They came in with arrogant purpose, half a dozen big men in hauberks and conical helmets, while outside, through the now open doors, Guaimar could see a whole troop of mounted support, couched lances proud. The leader of the band, taller than Guaimar, had his sword unsheathed, a heavy weapon that the more willowy youngster thought he himself might struggle to wield. His boots, studded with metal, sent up sparks from the flagstones as he approached.

Guaimar knew this man just by his build and his walk; he had been at one time captain of the men who served closely his father, his personal guards, always present at his side. There was little to see of the face, no hope of reading the expression, though below the nose guard and the eyes at either side the lips were turned down in disapproval. He marched up to the opposite side of the gravestone and looked down, then used the tip of his weapon to trace the Latin inscription on the tomb. The snort he emitted had in it a fair measure of derision.

‘He was too soft, this man.’

‘He was too good, Osmond,’ replied Guaimar, ‘too trusting. He did not know that loyalty was, in you people, only the higher price any prince was prepared to pay.’

‘Did your father not once pay Rainulf to turn against Pandulf?’

‘He did, but he did not just pay him in money. He believed that he had formed a bond of family, only to see that crumble when my sister died. How does your treacherous Lord, Rainulf, like his new bride? If she is anything like her uncle, Pandulf, I would scarce feel safe to sleep at night.’

The tip of Osmond de Vertin’s sword was suddenly pointed at Guaimar but, young as he was, he did not flinch, and his eyes held those of the Norman mercenary. Unable to stare the boy down, that tip moved to point at Berengara, and her brother squeezed hard on her hand to make sure she did not react. It came forward, as if to touch her chin and lift it. Guaimar, with his free hand, pushed it away, gently to be sure, but firmly.

‘You have grown, young lady,’ said the Norman. ‘I used to bear you on my shoulders.’

‘I have grown to hate,’ she replied, in a firm voice.

‘This milksop you have just interred has sired perhaps a brood made of sterner material than he.’

‘We will not bow to you, Osmond.’

‘No.’

The great broadsword was suddenly above Osmond de Vertin’s head, and Guaimar wondered if, even in a place of such inviolability, he was going to die for his defiance. The only act he could think of was to pull his sister to stand behind him. But the Norman was not even looking at him. The sword swept down on the slab covering their father, to slice at the words inscribed there, words that named his line and inherited titles. They may have been taken away from him in life; they should surely be his in death.

The one-time captain of the ducal guard reversed the sword for greater effect, holding it in two hands and stabbing downwards. Chips of marble began to fly from the slab, as Osmond de Vertin hacked away, breaking up the newly engraved inscription, turning it into meaningless gibberish. All the titles the family had ever held were there, like a roll call of the duplicitous cauldron that was South Italian politics.

Principalities, duchies and counties won and lost, but never surrendered, for no claim to a fief once held by these Lombard magnates had ever been relinquished: Prince of Benevento, Duke of Salerno, Amalfi and Sorrento, Count of Puglia, Calabria and even, at one time, long ago, of Capua itself, all were destroyed by a man who lacked the knowledge to read them. After dozens of strokes, the sounds of which were amplified by the bare stone walls of the church into something more baleful than the act, a heavily breathing Osmond stopped and looked at Guaimar once more. Behind her brother, Berengara was weeping.

‘There. He is no more, not in life, nor in posterity.’ Guaimar said nothing; he merely laid his hand on his heart, itself an eloquent enough message, which Osmond understood. ‘I should let that sentiment rest, boy, or you may find yourself with a slab of marble over your own head.’

‘I do not fear to die.’

‘I will remember that, should I ever receive orders to kill you.’

Osmond de Vertin was unaware of how those words impacted on the youngster, for his brave face had concealed one thing: he doubted the Norman would commit sacrilege by killing him here in the church, but that did not mean his life was not to be forfeit once he stepped outside. Osmond had just told him he would survive this visitation, and if he could do that he could begin to work towards the day when all the lands and property of his family would be restored and these barbarian Normans could either be evicted from Italy, or brought under some kind of control.

Fifteen years had passed since the first Normans had arrived in Salerno, a band of warriors returning from a pilgrimage seventeen years into the new millennium who, merely because they were present and possessed of both swords and bottomless courage, had taken up arms to repel a Saracen raid on the city, an enterprise so successful that it had seemed natural to beg them to remain.

That they had not done, but they had gone north and spread the word, in a land awash with fighting men of their kind, who had, if you excluded internal squabbling, too little warfare to occupy them. South they came as mercenaries, welcome for their military prowess, eager to aid the Lombards in throwing off the yoke of Byzantium, a dream as yet unrealised. But their presence had turned into a curse, then grew into a plague, until no Lombard lord south of the Papal States could hope to safely hold his fief against his neighbours without their paid help.

Osmond de Vertin, typical of the breed, spun on his heel and departed the abbey church with the same air of arrogance as he had when he entered, leaving behind a youth and a young girl to wonder not only if they would ever come into their inheritance, but if they would ever see the back of these damned Normans.

CHAPTER ONE

THE NORMAN/FRENCH BORDER 1033

William de Hauteville could smell their destination a long time before it came into view, though he was at a loss to fully explain it. He pushed himself up on his stirrups to better test the air, away from the odour of his own sweating mount. The familiar stink of dung and horse piss was there, that mingled with woodsmoke and the strong odour of roasting meat, yet paramount was a powerful latrine smell that was damned unpleasant.

‘That, boy,’ growled his father, when he called ahead to ask for explanation, ‘is the smell of an army too long in one place.’

Tancred de Hauteville had taken part in many a campaign in his forty years, so it was, to him, familiar – the stench of too many fighting men and their animals in too confined a space. It would be strange to all his sons and the companions of like age who rode with them – they had never seen or been part of a host of the size gathering in the Norman borderlands of the Vexin, a ducal army gathered in one place, preparing for battle. Suddenly Tancred pulled up his mount, hauling the head round to face those following.

‘Remember what I have said,’ he barked. ‘Behave yourselves.’

Forced to halt their own horses, the half of the party not of his blood nodded attentively, for he was their lord and master. His sons, a half-dozen in number, regardless of age, adopted the blank expression of those hearing a familiar parental admonishment, delivered too often.

‘None of your pranks and japes,’ their father continued; he knew his sons to be much given to mischief. ‘You will be among grown men, fighting men, quick to the knife and careful of their honour, who will not take kindly to your stupid jests. Do you heed what I say?’ The last words being shouted demanded an eager response, albeit a false one in the family members. ‘William, I look to you in this.’

‘Yes, Father,’ William replied, with the weary sigh of an elder brother often employed as a surrogate parent.

‘Now hold your heads up high,’ Tancred concluded, as he turned his horse again and kicked it into a trot. ‘Let them know you are of the house of de Hauteville.’

That did produce a common response, for if these young men were proud of anything, it was their bloodline.

Having passed the picket set to ensure the encampment was not pilfered, the band stopped at the top of the rise overlooking the assembled force. The River Seine, a supply lifeline their duke would hug as long as possible, ran twisted and silver along the floor of the valley to where it was joined by the tributary of the Epte, hard by the hamlet of Giverny; here the land of the Normans bordered that of the Capetian Franks.

The north bank was now bare of the trees that had been cut down for firewood, which also allowed clear passage for the hundreds of horses to be brought, in turns, to drink their fill. Boats, some empty, others still laden with wheat, meat, hay and oats, were drawn up on another stretch of cleared riverbank with labouring serfs toiling to unload them. On the mound that overlooked the encampment stood the large double pavilion of their liege lord, the commander of this force, Robert, Duke of Normandy, armorial pennants fluttering from each corner, knights of his familia, in full mail and helmets, in plain view standing guard at the entrance where hung the tasselled gonfalon denoting the ducal title.

‘Christ in heaven!’ cried William as he took in the size of what lay before them.

Tancred looked askance at that exclamation, which bordered on blasphemy, not something of which he was tolerant. His children transgressed in that area often – as they did in many other ways – and just as often he was obliged to box their ears. Yet he let it pass this once; had he not himself felt much the same when he first became part of such a multitude and very much around the same age serving the present duke’s father? Then he had fought against the Capetian Franks, the very people to whom the Norman host was about to be allied.

In a blink, Tancred was back in his own youth, stirrup to stirrup with his own father, his uncle of Montbray on his other side, part of a line of Norman cavalry, ahead of them a Frankish host, their shields and fighting metal glinting in a low dawn sun. He could recall clearly the mixture of thrill and fear, the need to avoid the kind of fidget that would alert his elders to his anxieties, the snorts and tossing heads of the horses, the pennants on the lances of those leading the attack fluttering in a zephyr of a breeze.

The shouted command came eventually to have the horses move forward, slowly, holding their line, the point at which the command came to break into a trot that signified the commitment to the attack, followed by the sense of the world narrowing down to that which lay right before you and immediately to left and right, his father raising his lance for jabbing or throwing and he doing likewise, the line of shields which looked like an unbreakable wall coming closer and closer. But break it did, faced with the charging horses of the finest mounted warriors in the known world.

‘I have never seen such a sight, Father!’

Those words brought Tancred back to the present, and to the knowledge that, with God’s Good Grace, his sons would ride with him in a like contest and win their spurs, as would his vassals, who included his fiery Montbray nephew, a doughty and eager fighter, even if the lad was an ordained priest.

‘None of you have, but perhaps if chance favours you, you will see it often.’

Serlo and Robert, mere boys, along as squires to their elder siblings, had kicked their donkeys to get alongside him, eager for explanation. Their brothers shared the curiosity, but affected an air of indifference, which they thought befitted their greater age, causing their father to smile at their posturing, given they were just either side of eighteen. With pointed finger, and in a voice that was inclusive to all, he identified the ducal pavilion, as well as the lesser posts of the Constable and the Master Marshall, set slightly lower on the slope.

From there to near the riverbank stood the various contingents who had set out their fire pits and cloak-covered bedding around the small round tents of the lords to whom they were vassals. Close to the water’s edge and in the shade of some still-standing oaks, the blacksmith had set up a temporary forge, fire aglow, his hammer already employed. Likewise the armourer was at work with his vice and stone wheel, sparks flying as swords were sharpened, pommels roped with twine and hand guards bent in sword practice made square. Next to him the saddler toiled on the stout, newly constructed, rough wood bench, on which he would carry out repairs to harness and saddles.

‘The de Montfort pennant, Father,’ exclaimed Drogo, son number two, pointing to a far-off flag close to the river.

‘I see it, boy, but I think as cousins and relations to our Lord Duke we can present ourselves there first.’

‘Which will not please the Sire de Montfort,’ Drogo responded, with the kind of smirk that indicated the certainty that the response would be angry; he was not disappointed.

‘No, it will not,’ Tancred snapped, adding a touch of hypocrisy in the blasphemy line, ‘but he can go to the Devil.’

Unseen by his father, Drogo exchanged an amused glance with William who, too close to the parental temper, could not respond. Count Evro de Montfort, richer by far in both land and goods, and their nearest powerful neighbour, claimed that the de Hautevilles were vassals to him. Tancred was adamant that he held his demesne and title direct from the duke; mention of the de Montfort claim was one sure way for his sons to rile him, though not the only one, given he had a touchy nature.

Spurring his mount, Tancred led his party along the ridge, turning inwards when they were abreast of the ducal pavilion to ride between squatting groups of the duke’s own knights, few of whom spared them a glance. He dismounted by the large open flap at the front, followed by his sons. The other six lances did likewise, but they knew their duty: they would stay with the animals until their master had completed his business.

‘Tancred, Lord of Hauteville, with his sons, to see his cousin, Duke Robert.’

One of the familia knights standing guard turned a head to look at him, eyes at either side of his nose guard showing no sign of welcome. The man before him had shouted that request, clearly desiring to be heard inside the canvas, in the forepart of the double pavilion, where the scribes laboured and the servants toiled. One of them would certainly scurry through to the duke’s quarters to tell him who sought audience, and if this grizzled fellow was a relative it was unlikely he could be denied.

Habit dictates that no fighting man can be in proximity to another without assessment. Before Tancred stood a fellow of a height not much less than his own, in mailed hauberk and a helmet bearing the colours of his duke, hands resting on the long sword centred before him, the point in the ground. As a familia knight he was part of the personal contingent of warriors who would fight alongside their Lord and, if necessary, die to protect him. From what could be seen of his face it was lean and hard, his body too, as befitted his station and duty.

The summing up of the supplicant Lord of Hauteville started with the grey hair, tinged at the tip with a residue of the golden colour it had once been. The ruddy, weather-beaten face, much lined, showed numerous scars that looked as though they might come from hard warfare, wounds to cheek as well as one dent to skin and bone that had been inflicted under the line where a helmet would be worn. The blue eyes were as hard as the jaw was firm, and as if to add to the feeling of hazard that emanated from this old man, two of those sons who stood immediately behind him helped form a trinity of impressive size and girth, for both exceeded him in height.

The hurrying figure that emerged from the gloom of the tent had the hunched body, tonsured head and ink-stained fingers of a monkish scribe, and his voice, when he spoke, was silky enough to match his appearance. ‘His Grace, the noble Duke Robert, will receive you.’

‘Good.’ Tancred turned to his two eldest sons and said softly, ‘He knows I would wait till Doomsday if he refused.’

‘But he bids your sons wait outside,’ the monk added.

‘Nonsense,’ Tancred snarled, ‘they are his blood relations.’

As Tancred moved forward, indicating that his offspring should follow, there was a visible twitch in the shoulders of the guard, as if he was about to intervene, but the older man had already passed by and, faced with William and Drogo de Hauteville, that gave him pause. The two that followed were younger but well on the way to sharing the looks as well as the imposing build: even the boys that brought up the rear, hands firmly grasping the knives at their waist to go with an arrogant stare, had a lot of height for what looked like tender years. Their father led the way past the open mouth of the silently protesting monk and made straight for the inner sanctum that lay through a second open flap.

The voice, strong and irritated, spoke before the eyes of any of those just entered had adjusted enough to identify this liege lord or any of the numerous folk attending upon him, all stood in silhouette against the strong sunlight shining through the rolled-up rear canvas of the pavilion.

‘I said your sons were to stay outside.’

‘You would not slight your nephews, cousin?’

Tall enough to look over his father’s head, as his eyes adjusted, William saw the speaker was a man of decent height, though less than his own, fair of hair and beard, and richly clad in bright mail covered by a fine red surcoat bearing the ducal device of his two golden and recumbent lions.

Those attending him varied from a hunchbacked fellow who looked like a jester, a clutch of richly clad knights in fine garb, to a stout man in the clothing of a high-ranking prelate. But they all shared one thing, a look of plain distaste at this intrusion by a bunch of sweat-stained, leather jerkin-wearing ruffians. To each and every one, as he took up station alongside his father, William gave an engaging smile.

‘Cousin?’ the duke replied, in a piqued voice, looking Tancred up and down, taking in that he alone was wearing mail and a surcoat, albeit a threadbare overgarment that had seen many better days. ‘Do you not find that to be an outmoded form of address with which to approach your liege lord?’

‘We share a great ancestor in Count Rollo, sire, do we not?’

‘Of such long standing that it is no longer appropriate. The consanguinity has lapsed, Tancred. Count Rollo has been dead near a hundred years.’

‘But he is well remembered in my humble demesne, as are his deeds. I tell my sons of them often. However, if it displeases you I shall be content to address you as brother-in-law.’

‘To a half-sister fourteen years deceased?’

The tone of Tancred’s voice, which had been playful, hardened immediately, and William, the only one who could observe any part of his features, saw his jaw tense. ‘She lives on in her sons. To slight them is to slight her memory.’

Duke Robert’s face showed the frustration such a reminder had engendered, which clearly pleased Tancred, who had regaled his offspring more than they cared to hear of how he had known this man since he was a mewling child, had even held him as a baby, chucked his cheeks as a boy and playfully fought with him as he grew up. He had related to the youthful Robert and his elder brother Richard the great Norse sagas that he had learnt at his own grandfather’s knee. There had been a time, Tancred informed them all, when what shone from those deep-set green eyes was respect for a noted warrior. It was plain to William – if that esteem had ever existed – it was now no more.

His father saw the same lack: Robert, Duke of Normandy, who these days liked to be called the Magnificent, was probably unaccustomed now to anything other than flattery and agreement, so malleable, so Frankish, to Tancred’s way of thinking, had his court become. The older man came from a generation that did not fear to tell a liege lord to his face that he was in error. His own father had spoken to the late Count Richard, even after he had elevated himself into a duke, as an equal, never forgetting their shared heritage as Viking warriors and the rights that went with it; there could be no vassalage that did not rest on respect.

The duke was now looking beyond Tancred at this troop of sons: he would be aware there were even more of this tribe back in the Contentin, another five boys and a trio of daughters. Truly their father had the loins of a goat, and had found both in his late half-sister and his second wife a fecundity to match his carnal exertions: the only years in which his wives had not been brought to bed with child had been those when he was away fighting.

The one standing next to Tancred, who would be the eldest, was damned impressive, taller by half a hand than his father and his other brothers, with a look in his eye and a lazy smile that was not one that could be associated with respect. If anything he looked amused, as if what was happening bordered on an absurdity that might at any moment cause him to laugh out loud.

‘Name them to me,’ he said, relenting.

Tancred named William as his heir, then brought the others forward one by one and by age, each to execute an awkward bow that would not be seen as too obsequious. ‘Drogo, Humphrey, Geoffrey, your sister’s youngest Serlo and, though not a true nephew, my first born by my second wife, whom I named after you.’

That obliged the duke to fix his namesake, and call the thirteen-year-old Robert de Hauteville forward. What he saw was as affecting to the eye as the sight of his brothers, for his namesake was big for his age, even bigger than the year-older Serlo, and that boy was no dwarf: Tancred bred sturdy sons.

‘It is a good name, Robert; wear it well, boy, in respect for me.’

The voice that responded was newly broken and slightly rasping. ‘I shall endeavour to do so, sire, upon my honour.’

‘Now that I have named my sons,’ said Tancred, ‘and they have seen the duke they are eager to serve, I would ask to speak with you in private.’

‘On the matter of?’

‘That which I have sent word to you before, the obligations of family.’

The pause was long, the silence of it oppressive, as the two men, liege lord and vassal, locked eyes, both seeking to hide a deep and mutual repugnance. To the duke, who clearly now forgot how he had enjoyed listening to those tales of heroism and fickle Norse gods, Tancred, with his nostalgic adherence to the old ways, represented a relic of a bygone age and was given to haughtiness with it. The Normans were no more Viking now than those indigenes of the Neustrian March whom they had conquered, intermingled with and married, no more Norsemen than the Angevins, Carolingian Franks or Bretons whose lands neighboured his. The older man lived in a dead past and had no gaze for a different future.

‘Your late brother was aware of such an obligation, my Lord.’

The sudden rigidity of the duke’s bearing was evidence enough of the way he took that last remark; his dead brother was a subject no one in his entourage dared to mention, and few outside that circle, even his most powerful vassals, would do so either, likely as it was to produce a towering rage. The accusation was that Robert had murdered, in fact poisoned, his elder brother Richard, to gain the dukedom, hence the other name by which he was called, albeit out of his hearing: not Robert the Magnificent, but Robert the Devil.

The men around him, courtiers all, waited for the eruption, but they waited in vain, though a sharp eye would have detected the effort involved in containing it.

‘Leave us,’ Robert commanded, standing stock-still until the pavilion had emptied of courtiers. ‘Your brood too, Tancred.’

Tancred laid a hand on William’s arm. ‘I ask that my heir be allowed to stay.’

‘He may if he undertakes to remain silent. I am not given to discoursing with boys.’

William knew those words were meant to anger and diminish him; he had in his own mind long ceased to be a boy by many years, so the amused expression he wore broke immediately into a full smile which, gratifyingly, seemed to nonplus the speaker.

‘The rest of you, leave us,’ said Tancred.

They obeyed, but the last sound Tancred heard was of Serlo de Hauteville mimicking his younger half-brother, his voice high and mocking. ‘I’ll endeavour to do so, sire, upon my honour. Shall I lick your arse, sire?’ That was followed by the sound of a scuffle, then the bellowing voice of Drogo.

‘Stop scrapping, you two, or I’ll sling you both in the river.’

‘An unruly lot, your sons,’ the duke said softly. Then he wrinkled his nose, for they had left behind them a strong odour of unwashed travel. ‘Rustic too.’

‘They are fighters, sire, as I have raised them to be and they have proved their worth many times against any who would trouble my lands. They ride well, handle both sword and lance as they should. Manners, if you think it something they lack, can be acquired.’

Duke Robert was looking at William as he replied. ‘And what is it that you want for them?’

‘If I mention your late brother, sire, I do so out of the respect I had for him.’

The response came as a hiss. ‘My relationship was more of the kind we have just overheard outside this tent.’

‘It was always understood that when my boys came of age, they would become part of his familia and serve him as knights of his body. That he died before that came to pass…’

The interruption was sharp. ‘I know from your repeated correspondence you would like me to do the same!’

‘They are your blood relatives and would serve you well.’

‘You have great faith, Tancred, in the connection wished upon us by blood.’

‘To me it is a sacred bond which surpasses all others, outside the grace of God.’

‘Not a view with which I agree. Why are we here gathered on this riverbank, if not to support one brother, the King of the Franks, against another, not to mention the King’s own mother who sees the wrong one of her sons as the ruler of Paris?’

There was bitterness in that last part: Robert’s own mother was not fond of him.

‘The Franks do not share our ways,’ protested Tancred.

The reply was almost weary. ‘Your ways, Tancred, and long gone they are. I doubt even your own sons share them.’

‘They would never fight each other!’

‘Are my ears mistaken? Did I not just hear that very thing.’

‘I mean with weapons. William here would tell you no different. Certainly they come to blows and will wrestle, what brood does not, but no son of mine will ever raise a sword against his own brother. To do so is to invite the mark of Cain.’

The duke looked as if he had been slapped, but William also detected his determination to avoid a loss of control. ‘On pain of your wrath?’

‘Yes.’

‘You will die one day, Tancred, and then maybe your wrath will be meaningless.’

‘God’s forgiveness will still be necessary.’

‘God,’ Duke Robert said, almost sighing. ‘There are ways to gain his forgiveness.’

William felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I wish you to take them into your familia. Let them serve close to you and prove their worth. I count each one of my children as a blessing, but my patrimony is too small to support them all. Let them win both their spurs and some reward in your service, let them earn their own demesne from you.’

William de Hauteville knew that the duke was going to refuse, even though he did not speak: it was in his eyes and the ghost of a smirk that made the corners of his lips twitch.

‘Perhaps they may come into more than that,’ the older man said, which made his son suspect he had come to the same conclusion.

‘More?’

‘William, leave us,’ Tancred said. ‘What I have to say now is not for your ears.’

‘Father,’ William replied, executing a slight bow. Once he had gone Tancred spoke softly. ‘You are unwed and childless, sire…’

For the first time Robert of Normandy really raised his voice. ‘I have a son and a daughter.’

‘Born out of wedlock.’

‘As was your late wife,’ the duke snapped.

‘Your brother died without issue, which places my eldest son, William, your nephew, as one of your near blood relatives.’

‘There are others, not least the child of my father’s sister.’

‘Edward of England, that milksop! He is a man who fights on his knees. I fought on behalf of his father and he was a dolt. If you have family around you, at least have those with warrior blood, men who do not fear to lay down their lives.’

‘Do you think me a fool, Tancred?’ Robert asked softly.

The negative shake of the head he got in reply lacked conviction.

‘My own William, not yours, is my nearest blood relative, and given the love I have for him, I would not surround him with a tribe who might see, as blood relations, advantage in doing him harm. Do you really think I am mad enough to invite into my household your brood, all of whom, no doubt, thanks to your prattling, think they have some right to my title?’

‘Marry, have sons. Mine do not seek your title, they seek your respect.’

‘Even if I do marry, I would name William as my heir.’

‘Then stay alive, Robert,’ Tancred growled, ‘for there will be men in the hundreds who seek to do him harm, men to whom your dukedom is a glittering prize, though I swear on the grave of your sister not one of them will bear my name. I see the men you consort with and I can smell their measure. You surround yourself with silken tongues and see loyalty where there is only self-interest. The men you asked to leave our presence will not dare dispute with you, as I will and as they should, but this I will tell you straight. They are not going to respect a bastard boy regardless of how much you love him.’

‘Dispute with me! What has a bare-arsed baron from the Contentin got to tell me that I should take heed of?’

‘This bare-arsed baron has fought the Franks, the English and the Moors and he would tell you this campaign on which you are engaged is folly. A new Capetian King mounts his throne in Paris and his brother disputes his right? He calls on you to aid him and you oblige, and that is an error. We should let these Frankish brothers fight each other as much as they wish, for there is more advantage in that than there is in aiding one against the other.’

‘You know nothing, old man.’

‘I know your father would have stood aside. No doubt you have received promises of reward, of land and castles, but they are only as good as the strength you can put in the field in the years to come. Let your Frankish King Henry become powerful enough, which he will surely do with no one to contain him, and he will take them back and more besides.’

‘Yet you came to fight?’

‘It is moneyed service. The King of the Franks will pay for every lance you put in the field and I have mouths to feed, but I would gladly forgo it to let the Capets stew in their own fratricidal juice.’

Like a bursting damn the fury of the Duke spilt over, and he shouted in a voice that no canvas would contain, so loud that it was very likely audible on the bank of the Seine.

‘I think you came to beard me, Tancred, not for the silver you will be paid. You ask that I respect your sons? Well I will do so by not having you and them slung into the pit of the nearest donjon. I will do so by letting you join the battaile of the Sire de Montfort, as I say you are obliged to do, even if you dispute it. But when we fight, if we fight, make sure you are not in my sight when it is over, for I may forget that you married my sister, forget that you loyally served my father, and have that head of yours off your shoulders and, to protect myself and mine own from vengeance, take those of your sons as well down to the youngest babe in arms, as well as rip out anything carried in the womb of your wife. Now get out.’

‘Sire.’

CHAPTER TWO

It was a chastened Tancred de Hauteville who emerged from the ducal pavilion, and there was no need for him to tell anyone, sons or supporters, that he had failed in the task he had set himself. His grim visage was evidence enough, even if they had not heard the shouts emanating through the canvas. It fell to William to ask the obvious question.

‘Do we stay?’

‘What choice do we have?’ Tancred replied. ‘By the time we got back home we would be paupers with barely a fit horse left to ride.’

‘Then let us hope there is a battle,’ Drogo said. ‘It would be shameful to have ridden all this way just for some pieces of silver.’

‘Don’t go despising silver, my lad, it helps you eat when times are lean.’

‘When are they ever anything else, Father?’

‘Come, while I bend the knee to a swine so that you may fill your bellies, and on the direct command of our noble duke.’

Tancred was careful to call upon the Master Marshall before he approached the tent of his designated leader, first to register his arrival and second to indent for sustenance as well as monies owed to twelve lances in travelling from their home of Hauteville-le-Guichard to the River Epte. It was another monk who entered the details on a scroll, a clever sod who disputed the distance Tancred claimed to have travelled and thus the amount of time he had been en route, calculated at seven leagues a day plus fodder for mounts. After a long and acrimonious dispute, the Lord of Hauteville was forced to accept the clerical reckoning or risk being denied any payment at all.

‘Make your mark,’ the monk said, proffering an inked quill and a small piece of linen. When Tancred had done so, he added, ‘You may collect your payment when this has been passed by my master.’

‘The Devil awaits these scribblers,’ he swore as he emerged, which earned him a frown from his priestly nephew, who was holding the reins of his horse, though he refused to be cowed. ‘How can a man who swears to love God enough to renounce the common life treat a simple soul as if every word he utters is a lie?’

‘Would it be too much to say, uncle, that it might be based on a familiarity with simple souls?’

There was really no response Tancred could make to that, given that Geoffrey was his confessor and, though he would never breach the sanctity of the booth, he knew only too well that he had been obliged to request from his uncle much penitence for that particular transgression. Tancred was not more dishonest than the average, just human, and Geoffrey represented a deity who knew the need to forgive that failing.

The old knight threw several shaped pieces of wood to his eldest sons. ‘Tokens to draw supplies for our animals and us. We shall have meat to roast and bread to eat it off. Serlo, Robert, get some wood and a fire started, the rest of you see to the horses while I beard our pouter pigeon of a leader.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Geoffrey, ‘you had best give me safekeeping of your weapons.’

Tancred smiled at that. ‘No, it is my fist you must worry for. I long to box Evro de Montfort’s ears. He is not worth the price drawing blood would carry.’

‘Might I suggest, uncle, that I accompany you anyway. De Montfort may produce edicts and the like with which you will not be familiar.’

Which was a tactful way of saying that, unlike his sons, tutored by Geoffrey in the basics of education, Tancred could not read. ‘You will also restrain me from violence, will you not?’

Geoffrey grinned. ‘That too, my lord.’

The party split up, Tancred and his nephew to go to the de Montfort pavilion, while the others led their horses through the lanes of tethered mounts, makeshift tents and fires that filled the air with woodsmoke, each with its band of lances sat around, strangers until they came close to the men from their own part of Normandy, fellows they had met at local assemblies, or at the main religious festivals in the half-built cathedral in Coutances. Many a call came from recumbent figures, some asking for news of home, even if they had only left it days before the de Hautevilles.

There was still clear space next to the river, the least desirable part of the meadowland, being plagued as it was by biting insects. Soon axes were being employed to lop off tree branches of the right sort to serve as sharpened stakes that, driven into the ground and strung with a rope, served as a line to which the animals could be tethered, the horses hobbled for extra security. Before that saddles and harness had been removed, and once the mounts were watered, fed the last of the oats and linseed they had brought with them, and given a pile of hay on which to munch, they needed to be groomed: coats brushed, hooves picked clean and oiled, noses cleared, tails and manes untangled, genitalia swabbed on stallion and mare and their arses washed clean of any left-over dung.

The youngsters, having dug a shallow pit and got a main blaze started, lit smaller fires in a circle round the area in which they would eat and sleep, covering them with dampened grass once they were well alight to create a curtain of smoke that would deter the flying pests that infested the riverbank. From the bundles carried by the packhorses came the means, in the form of two metal triangles and a spit, to roast the cuts of pig as well as a hanging griddle on which bread could be baked, the whole to be washed down by skins of apple wine.

Robert was left to look after the fires while everyone else cleaned harness as well as their own equipment and Serlo went off down the riverbank in search of figs, pears and herbs. When he came back with a couple of fowl birds, necks wrung, and a sizeable marrow, none of his seniors asked from where he had acquired them: the youngster was known as an accomplished pilferer.

While all this was taking place, Tancred, or to be more accurate, Geoffrey, was in dispute with a man who claimed, with written texts he was inclined to wave with gusto, that he had rights of vassalage over the Hauteville demesne, an obligation the owner of the land hotly disputed. The whole of the Contentin, the most western part of Normandy, bordering the great ocean, was in a state of flux when it came to land tenure and an increasing attempt by the greater lords, not least the duke himself, to impose feudal obligations. Much ink and more blood had been spilt in claim and counterclaim.

Count Rollo of blessed memory, more of a convert to Christianity for convenience than belief, had gleefully acted like the Viking he was, suppressing and robbing the ancient monasteries and churches, stripping them of their plate and jewels. He had taken their land as well, which had been parcelled out to his fighting supporters, men like Tancred’s grandfather. His great-grandson Robert, a more committed believer, was attempting to put right what he saw as the sins of the past as well as impose feudal obligations on a warrior race that felt them alien and Frankish. Naturally, avaricious sods like de Montfort had weighed in with claims that, if accepted, would further increase their wealth and power, while turning most of the local lords into mere vassals.

‘If my Lord owes fealty to anyone it is to the Bishopric of Coutances,’ Geoffrey insisted, in a voice as calm as his interlocutor’s was agitated. ‘They owned the land before it was appropriated by Count Rollo.’

‘Of which there is no bishop,’ spluttered de Montfort.

Nor will there be, Tancred thought, while my like and I draw breath. The families who had profited from Rollo’s seizures knew very well that a bishop in situ in Coutances could bring matters to a head and not to their advantage if bribed by the likes of de Montfort, men who had the means to get their way. They had therefore chased out of Western Normandy any cleric who attempted to take up the post, and no bishop had any power who could not occupy his see.

‘But that surely underlines the point, my Lord,’ Geoffrey continued, ‘that this case cannot be progressed until the matter is decided upon in a consistory court, and that court has to be convened in Coutances and overseen by the holder of the office of bishop. The edict you have presented to my Lord of Hauteville has no validity until that court has pronounced upon it.’

Realising the cleverness of his nephew’s ploy, Tancred was content just to glare at Evro de Montfort, a man he hated with a passion. More than once he and his sons had sent packing lances sent by this man to impose his will, many with blood still dripping from de Hauteville wounds when they made their return; others had been less ambulant, and had obliged Tancred to employ a horse and cart.

It was not just the fellow’s attempts to increase his power locally; he was richer than all of his neighbours, with larger lands and holdings amassed not through military service, but by the slippery route of marriage. He also hated him because he had one possession for which Tancred longed, a proper stone donjon from which he could dominate the locality; this while his neighbours, the de Hautevilles included, still occupied simple stone manor houses adjoining a motte-and-bailey castle constructed of mud and wood.

De Montfort looked up at Tancred, being a good deal shorter and overfed with it. ‘Then I am forced to ask my Lord of Hauteville why he is prepared to fight under my banner. If that does not imply vassalage, what does?’

‘I am here at the express command of my liege lord, who no doubt fears that the men you command require stiffening with a better class of knight.’

‘What my Lord of Hauteville means…’ said Geoffrey de Montbray.

‘I know what he means, priest, and to show I am given to believing what I hear, maybe I will put the de Hauteville knights in the forefront of the battle.’

‘If you will promise me a battle,’ growled Tancred, ‘I accept the station.’

‘We move to La Roche-Guyon in the morning, to rendezvous with the King of the Franks.’

The way de Montfort said that, puffed as he was with his own conceit, created the impression that the King of the Franks would be attending upon him.

Darkness was upon them by the time they had eaten, and they bedded down on palliasses stuffed with fresh straw, covered by cloaks stretched between upended lances to ward off the chill of the night, and chill it would be with a clear, star-filled sky and a bright moon. Tancred was first to slumber, assuring, by his stentorian snoring, that everyone else took longer to achieve the same. The two who could not sleep, being too excited, were the boys Serlo and Robert; indeed their endless whispering to each other had been another bar to rest amongst their elders and they had been told more than once to shut up.