Jack Ludlow - Warriors

Perhaps because William was the eldest of a large and unruly clan he had a better grasp of reality, the very quality which had led Rainulf to previously rely on him for advice. All his life, when Tancred and his parental wrath needed to be kept in the dark about some family problem, he had been required to intercede with one brother against another and, in Drogo’s case, with more than one irate father. For every time his judgement had been accepted, there had been many more where he had been obliged to ensure acceptance of the right course with a thump around the ear. That would not serve now they were all grown men. Yet he needed them on his side.

‘Right now it would break the band apart, Drogo. Not all the men would follow me and Rainulf would not let such an insult pass. A split like that would lead to bloodshed, which, I suspect, might please many people, but in the end it would resolve nothing. Rainulf would still not reinstate me as the heir to his title and I am not prepared to fight and kill my fellow Normans for something I cannot have.’

‘Go back to Prince Guaimar,’ suggested Humphrey. ‘He has the power to force Rainulf to keep his word.’

Having tried that once, and been rebuffed, William had no desire to do so again. ‘That would be to beg and, besides, you are wrong. To make Rainulf bend the knee in such an important matter would cause Prince Guaimar more trouble than he desires to have, and do not doubt for a moment he takes pleasure in our mutual dissension.’

‘So you just accept being cheated?’

‘It’s Duke Robert all over again,’ said Mauger.

That took William back to Normandy, just days before the first major battle of his life, to the great ducal pavilion hard by the hamlet of Giverny, in which he had first laid eyes on his then liege lord. Duke Robert had not been happy at the way Tancred de Hauteville, leading his sons, had forced his way into his presence, even less joyful when he had been reminded that five of those boys shared with him a bloodline through their late mother, albeit one carrying the taint of illegitimacy.

It had been a less than joyful interview for a man who liked to be styled Robert the Magnificent: Tancred was not one to show excessive respect, of the kind Robert had come to expect from fawning courtiers. Like an uncle to the family of the duke, this was a man he had known since childhood, who he had, along with his elder brother, tossed high in the air. Rumours abounded that Duke Robert had poisoned that elder brother to gain his title; those who believed such an accusation to be a literal truth called him Robert the Devil.

Tancred had raised his sons with one aim in mind: the prospect of joining the familia knights of the ducal household, the men who served their liege lord close and would die in battle to keep him safe, the reward for good service being the captaincy of a castle, maybe even lands and possibly a title of their own. Duke Robert had disabused him: he had no trust in the connection of bastard blood, even less in Tancred or his sons.

He would not allow any de Hauteville to serve him close, for fear of what they might do to his own born-out-of-wedlock son, who was now, following Robert’s death, the reigning Duke of Normandy. Rabidly ambitious himself, Robert could not be brought to even consider that these tall and sturdy boys were free of that trait, nor that the solemn vow Tancred had made to his own father would bind them to his service, a refusal which had brought them to this place and this conundrum.

‘We have no choice but to do now what we did then,’ William insisted. ‘We must look for good fortune elsewhere. I want to be sure that whatever I do I can count on your support.’

‘To whom else would we give it?’ asked Mauger, who could not hide the look in his eye, one that told all present how much he worshipped a brother many years his senior.

That brought forth a smile. ‘No one, Mauger, but I wish to remind you all we are bound together, that we are de Hautevilles, in the same way our father was wont to remind us-’

‘Endlessly,’ Humphrey interjected, champing those very prominent top teeth, he being one son who was sure he had never truly enjoyed his father’s love.

Geoffrey spoke next. ‘You are our leader by right as well as birth, William.’

‘Is it sacrilegious to puke in church?’ asked Drogo, though he grinned to make sure all understood he was joking.

‘From now on there are two worlds, that outside and ours. I will seek your support when there is no time to explain why, but know this: I will always act in all our interests, not just my own. I ask you, as our father did, to swear on the Holy Cross that you will follow me wherever that may lead us, and I ask you to renew the vow he made us all swear before we left Normandy, never to raise a weapon against each other.’

William hauled out his sword and knelt, the others following, each using hilt and pommel as a personal cross, to take the oath William had asked of them, their eyes fixed on the crucified Christ as they pledged their word.

‘You said elsewhere,’ Drogo said as they stood again. ‘Where would that be?’

‘Apulia.’

‘Why Apulia?’

That question was posed with a look of deep suspicion. William, he well knew, was capable of laying deep and long-sighted plans. He was also inclined to keep such things to himself and this time was no exception.

‘Wait and see. Now stir yourselves, it is time we ended our devotions and returned to camp.’

‘What devotions?’ Geoffrey demanded, a reasonable question since no prayers, barring the oath just taken, had been said.

William smiled. ‘The ones I told Rainulf were due today, a Mass for the soul of our late mother.’

‘But…’ Geoffrey paused before stating the obvious: this was not the day on which the mother he shared with everyone except young Mauger had passed away.

A mock tourney it might be, more a way of exercising fighting men to avoid them becoming rusty, rather than proper warfare, but today would, nevertheless, be brutal. No one should die, but none would emerge lacking a bruise and quite a few would need days in their cot to recover, added to the ministrations of their womenfolk and, perhaps, a mendicant monk from nearby Aversa. William de Hauteville, still the senior captain, had arranged the fighting contingents, several of them led by his own brothers — but if they were united by blood, they were also animated by the desire to prove their fighting worth; no sibling could expect gentility from another.

On the open agricultural plains of Campania, finding room to deploy four hundred mounted warriors presented little difficulty, and if some crops got trampled in the process, well, these were Rainulf’s own lands, the peasants his to command, the rich soil his to exploit, so they would be obliged to watch the destruction of their careful husbandry and ploughed fields in silence.

William, aware of this, and as a sop to their depleted larders, had arranged they should participate in the feast which would follow the tournament — several oxen were already roasting on spits — an act which had earned him a snort of disapproval from his chief.

‘They will not love you for it,’ Rainulf insisted, looking up at a man who towered over him by several hands, his purple-veined face censorious. ‘The Italian peasant understands only hard treatment, and if you are soft on them, your reward, one dark night, will most likely be a knife in the back.’

‘Part of the crops we destroy are theirs to live off. If we are taking the food from their mouths, it does no harm to put some back.’

‘My crops, my food! I could overrule you.’

‘You could,’ William replied, his tone as cold as his stare.