Jack Ludlow - Son of Blood

‘If you see me so, then I leave it to you to contest with Bohemund.’

‘Do not seek to fool me. I know why you do what you do and it is all in your own interest, not mine.’ With that, Roger walked out, to find Bohemund standing on the back of a cart, as if he needed to, beginning to address the assembled Normans.

‘Our Heavenly Father on Earth has called upon all good Christian knights to lay aside their differences and set out to reclaim for God the Holy Places of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus our Saviour.’

Every man present crossed himself and what followed was a list of crimes committed against the thousands of good pilgrims who had made their way to Palestine for the glory of Our Lord, and horrible they were, even if Roger, listening, suspected them to be untrue: robbery, blinding, rape, crucifixion, limbs cut off, forced conversions — all the litany that had circulated for years and grown in the telling until they had become, amongst the ignorant, suspected truth, while amongst the pious who sought a crusade, Urban included, a means to generate hatred for the adherents of the Prophet.

‘I, with my nephew Tancred, am resolved to join that host, not to seek absolution for my soul, but to serve the God who sees all in our hearts and minds. You, the men of Normandy, know my worth, know that if I go there to do battle with the infidel only doom and hellfire awaits them. I would ask who would join with me.’

The cry that went up was huge and so all-consuming it seemed every one of those lances had resolved to join him. In the end it was not them all; and if proof were needed that the restless were right about the settled, what kept many of their confreres where they were was their wives and children.

‘Gather your mounts and your weapons, pack your goods, for we leave tomorrow.’

If Borsa wept as half his lances departed to the incantations and blessing of the priests in which he stored so much of his faith, no one saw it, for he sulked in his tent. It was the Great Count Roger of Sicily who watched them depart and indeed, given his religious faith, silently prayed for them to both live and prosper. When they had gone, a very long line of the best men, he looked at what was left, and then made for the tent of his nominal suzerain.

‘The siege is over, Borsa . With those that have gone with Bohemund we lack the means to maintain it. And cease to weep, you are supposed to be a Norman.’