Alys Clare - Mist Over the Water

He was perhaps twenty-two or three. He was broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, his hair was blond, neatly cut to the level of his chin, and he was fair skinned and clean shaven. The blond hair and light skin suggested his eyes should have been blue or grey, but they were not: they were dark brown. A thin scar cut through his right eyebrow, extending down so that it just touched the eyelid. He was suitably dressed for his night-time mission, whatever it was, for his hose were of some dark fabric and over them he wore a close-fitting black tunic. A long knife hung from his belt.

He slipped off the wall, landing soft as a cat on the far side. He held up his arms, and I jumped after him. I did not even think about it; I had known him for well under an hour, and already I trusted him not to let me fall. He was that sort of man. I felt his arms go round me as my feet hit the ground, and he grasped me close, lessening the impact.

It was only when I saw the surprise in his dark eyes that I remembered my boy disguise. My breasts may not be large, but they are there nonetheless — and, holding me to his broad chest, he must have felt them pressing against him.

He said very quietly, ‘Not a boy then, after all. Good evening to you, pretty maid.’

Then he bent his head and kissed me full on the mouth.

Perhaps it was inevitable, given the various shocks, thrills and terrors of the night, for my heart was pounding and the blood ran like fire in my veins. I kissed him back, my mouth opening to his as I wrapped my arms around him. I had kissed men before — well, to be honest, most of them had been boys — and I thought I knew all about it. That night, as I stood in the shadows of Ely abbey’s walls with my dark-eyed stranger, I realized I was wrong.

The kiss did not last long. Soon he reached up and gently unwound my arms from around his neck, pushing them down by my sides and squeezing my hands before he let me go. He smiled at me. Then he turned and walked away, his pace quickly escalating so that in no time at all he had vanished into the darkness.

I stood there still feeling the imprint of his lips, so fierce that I could feel my own swelling from the pressure. Had it not been for that very tangible proof of his presence, I might well have been left thinking that the whole thing had been a vivid dream caused by having fallen and struck my head.

Soon, realizing that I was very cold, I left the shadows of the wall and set out for the little house.

He had probably saved my life for, had Gewis’s guardians found me lying stunned in the cloister, they might well have thought I had been talking to their charge and killed me as they had killed his mother.

My saviour then. And I didn’t even know his name.

His name was Rollo Guiscard. He had been born twenty-three years ago on the island of Sicily to a Norman father and a Sicilian mother. His father belonged to the family of the great Robert Guiscard, a Norman adventurer who, with a band of like-minded men, had set out to carve himself a kingdom in the south and achieved his ambition in less than twenty years. It had been a day for celebration when, in 1059, the Pope himself had recognized the Guiscards’ right to their hard-won lands. Not that there had even been any question of quitting them had the Pope withheld his approval, for the Guiscards were a law unto themselves.

Rollo’s dark-eyed, fiery mother had not actually been wed to his father, but the Guiscards did not worry over-much about such details. Rollo had been born in a castle — Troina, on its high hilltop in the Nebrodi Mountains — and in 1070, while Robert was engaged on the campaign to capture Palermo, the two-year-old Rollo moved with his mother to the new castle at Adrano, where his father ensured that Robert Guiscard’s orders regarding its design were implemented. Robert was in the process of increasing the size of his Sicilian possessions by a considerable amount and he fully intended to hold on to what he had gained. Adrano, like all the new castles, was built tall, strong and with neither time nor money wasted on decoration. It might not have been a comfortable home but it was a safe one.

As soon as he could hold a toy sword, Rollo wanted to fight. He quickly demonstrated that he had inherited in full the rebellious, fighting spirit of his forefathers, and Robert Guiscard, spotting the boy’s potential, knew that one day he would accept the boy as a welcome and increasingly valued member of his private army. It was not long before he was put into training, and by the time he was thirteen he was already recognized as a very promising soldier. As he grew towards manhood he fought alongside his kinsmen and their supporters to consolidate the Norman hold on Sicily. The Kingdom of the South flourished; Rollo grew strong and skilled, and he feared no man.

In 1085 Roger Guiscard died and he named his son Borsa as his successor. Not many of the family were happy with the arrangement, for the love and loyalty of the fighting men was with Borsa’s brother. Christened Mark, he was a mighty man in all ways, and his great size had been evident even as he kicked and squirmed in his mother’s womb. He had been nicknamed Bohemond, after the legendary giant, even before he was born, and the name stayed with him all his life.

Bohemond did not meekly sit down and accept his fate. Typical of his bellicose line, he rose up against his brother, seizing key positions in both Sicily and Calabria from Borsa’s feeble grip. His onslaught was only stopped when he reached Bari, where his late father’s brother, the Great Count Roger, at last checked him.

Rollo had fought with Bohemond, and he knew in his heart that, had events turned out otherwise, he would have stayed with him, making his life in the hot south where he had been born. But Bohemond had suffered a temporary setback and, for now at least, was no longer the victorious, infallible, irrepressible force he had once been; another man had halted his ambitions in southern Lombardy, and now he was turning his eyes to the east.

Something changed in Rollo. His life had suddenly soured, and he wanted more than anything to get away. Besides , he thought, as he found a comfortable place on the deck of the ship that was talking him north, who wants to spend all their days on one small island when the rest of the world beckons ? The Kingdom of the South had been magnificent and would continue to be so, no matter who held the reins, but instinctively Rollo was aware that it could never be the true centre of power.

Slowly, steadily, by sea and on land, earning his bread by any means that offered, Rollo made his way across the Mediterranean and southern Europe, always travelling north and west, and eventually he arrived in Normandy. He threw in his lot with Duke Robert, the Conqueror’s son, but Robert proved all too fallible a leader of men. When his attempt on his brother’s kingdom of England failed — many said because Robert did not lead the onslaught himself but let other men do the work for him — Rollo lost faith in him. Now it was that brother of Duke Robert, King William of England, who called silently to him. One day in the early spring of 1089, he took ship from Le Havre in the guise of a merchant and landed in England.

He made his way to William’s court, where he presented himself in his true identity as a son of the house of Guiscard, of the Kingdom of the South. He appeared to arouse King William’s interest, and for some weeks the king kept Rollo close to him, asking him endless questions about everything from the new castles in Sicily to what he thought Duke Robert would do next. Rollo answered everything he was asked easily and fluently. Observation came as naturally to him as breathing, and his judgement was critical and sound.