Jack Ludlow - Conquest

‘I have come to show you my baby, Judith.’

‘It would give me great pleasure to see him, sister.’

‘Then let me enter.’ Judith hesitated, as was proper. ‘Under flag of parley.’

The creaking sound began as the double defence of the gates was removed, continuing as one great oak door swung open, allowing Sichelgaita to enter — the postern was too small. Judith was there to greet her, standing on her toes to peer into the pannier at the now sleeping child.

‘Take him, Judith, I sense you are more gentle with children than I.’

Not long after, they were inside Judith’s private apartments, chatting away like old friends while Roger’s daughters billed and cooed over their cousin. Judith, cradling baby Roger, was decorous both in appearance and manner; not even the kindest observer would gift that to Sichelgaita: she was loud, clumsy and raucous in her humour, roaring with mirth when her sister-in-law repeated the words she had used to her husband, even more tickled by the notion of him being covered in shit.

‘They are both fools, Judith,’ Sichelgaita said. ‘Too proud to admit they are wrong.’

‘I am bound to say, and not just in support of my spouse, that Robert is most at fault.’

Sichelgaita frowned, as if not in full agreement. ‘You do not see him as he truly is, Judith, you only see the bellowing man who gives of no doubts. But those he has, I assure you, and you are holding one that troubles him. What if he falls when his heir is of such tender years?’

‘Bohemund?’

‘Has been made bastard, Judith! Roger is Robert’s true son. I daresay Bohemund’s father will care for him, but my child, if the Good Lord spares him and his sire, will live to one day be Duke of Apulia.’

‘Why have you come, Sichelgaita?’

The blond eyebrows on her wide face lifted in surprise. ‘Why, to see you, Judith, to talk to you of this nonsense between our husbands.’

‘You feel they should be at peace with each other?’

‘You, surely, do not believe they are at war?’

Looking down at the slumbering child in her lap, Judith was aware of the true reason Sichelgaita had come. She wanted harmony between the husbands for the sake of the child and she wanted from Roger an assurance that, should the Guiscard expire, he would act as true guardian to his namesake and not as a usurper. Odd: she had thought of her sister-in-law as more manly than was proper, but the birth of her child had brought to the fore the true nature of her gender and such a thought was touching.

‘I am sure you have nothing to fear, Sichelgaita. The Good Lord will surely bless such a comely infant with a long and happy life.’

Their smiling eyes locked: Sichelgaita could not bring herself to ask for that which she had come, Judith’s help in gaining an assurance from Roger, and besides, much as Judith loved her husband and was sure he loved her, no words of hers would alter what he felt he needed to do in the event of his brother being killed or dying.

‘It may be a good notion, Judith, to go now and pray for such an outcome.’

‘Let us do that.’

‘If you were to ask me, Father, I would suggest that what the people of Gerace did to that woman would be best visited on your brother.’

Roger did not lose his temper, nor did he look Ralph de Boeuf or any of Robert’s men in the eye. Instead he beckoned to Jordan and led him outside the manor house he was using as his temporary home. Only then did his anger show, though he took care not to raise his voice as he admonished him.

‘Never say that about one of your name, Jordan. If your grandfather were here and heard you he would have booted you round the encampment. You are a de Hauteville, think and act like one. Never even dream of spilling the blood of your family. Now return with me inside, and make out what you said was a jest.’

Back inside, he looked at the fellow come to plead. ‘You want me to rescue him?’

‘Yes.’

‘I doubt the folk of Gerace will harm him.’

‘There are those who might, Roger, young firebrands and the like, as well as those who lost their fathers to him years ago.’

‘Am I permitted to speak?’ asked Ralph de Boeuf. ‘You cannot even contemplate leaving him in their hands, Roger, and you know it.’

Roger smiled. ‘A period of confinement might temper his pride.’

‘It is more likely to fire his irritation, and having been on the end of that only God knows where it will lead.’

In truth, much as he was deriving great pleasure from what had occurred, Roger knew he had no alternative; he would have laughed out loud if it had not been so unseemly. To leave Robert was too risky: if Jordan in his youth could be so foolish so could his contemporaries in Gerace. Good sense was not often gifted to the young, nor any thought for consequence.

‘Odo, go ahead. Ask the elders of Gerace to meet me outside the town under my personal safe conduct.’

‘Shall I tell them anything?’

‘Yes, tell them I am far from pleased. No, tell them you could not face any more of my fury.’

Robert, confined to a small chamber, was chafing at the bit, wondering what the hell was going on: surely these peasants could not be foolish enough to keep him confined? Not that he was in discomfort: he had been well fed, had slept on a decent bed and looked hard at anyone who entered, they being terrified before doing so and more so when they departed. If he had been told that his was a name they used to frighten their children, he would have been pleased.

‘Terrified’ was the word that would have equally applied to those on the way to meet with Roger, given Odo had not been gentle in his delivery. Much as they respected the younger brother, there was not one among them inclined to repose unbridled faith in a barbarian Norman, a race given to much passion, and bloody-minded with it, even if some lived amongst them. Greeks regarded such people as ruffians, with none of the subtle philosophy of their betters: they acted like spoilt brats instead of mature adults.

Roger’s hard look when they came before him did nothing to soften their anxieties and that deepened when he tongue-lashed them for holding his brother captive, though they were pleased that none of the Guiscard’s own lances appeared to be present. ‘Did you send to me to tell me, as it was your duty to do? No, one of your number with more sense, he being a Norman, was the one who saw what must be done.’

‘We were troubled as to what course to take, Lord Roger.’

‘Your course was simple,’ he yelled. ‘Your duty was to hand the Duke of Apulia over to me.’

‘Which we will happily do now,’ cried one elder, relieved to be shot of a burden with which he did not want to have to deal.

‘Then take me to him now.’

Roger deliberately set a firm pace, obliging these elders to move faster than their natural gait, so they were breathless and stumbling by the time they made the main square before the now open church. No evidence of the previous bloody murder was apparent — that had been washed clean — but a messenger of more puff had rushed ahead so that Robert was on one side of the square when Roger entered from the other, followed by Jordan and Ralph de Boeuf. The youngster glared at Robert; Ralph could not help but smile.

‘Well, Robert, I see you have made a fool of yourself.’

‘It gives me pleasure to greet a brother who has outshone me in that. I need hardly mention your first incursion into Sicily.’

‘Then it is a family trait as I told you at Enna.’

All around them stood the citizens of Gerace, wondering what was going to happen. Would the Lord Roger take this opportunity to slay his brother and if he did, how would that rebound on their town? That it made sense did not make it welcome: they were in dispute and even in such a backwater it was known what the younger of the brothers would stand to inherit — the whole of the Guiscard’s holdings.