Mercenaries

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘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 ca
me 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.

  Sick of tossing and turning, they were soon up and wandering about among the sleeping soldiers and the dying embers of their fires. There were men guarding the rim of the encampment, for the locals would look to pilfer or, indeed, recover things that had been taken from them to feed this host, but within the perimeter there was no movement save the odd fellow stumbling to the riverbank to relieve himself. The horses and donkeys were asleep on three legs, only moving when changing from one to another.

  ‘I found an anthill earlier,’ hissed Serlo.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Along the riverbank and up a track that led to a hamlet where I stole the fowl and the marrow. Big ants too, who looked to have a good bite on them when I poked the mound. What do you say, Robert?’

  No explanation was required for the kind of mischief Serlo had in mind, for his half-brother had a quick brain. ‘Can we do it in the dark?’

  ‘It’s on the edge of a clearing. Fetch your palliasse and let’s go and see.’

  ‘Why mine?’

  ‘My idea,’ Serlo insisted, ‘so your bed.’

  Accepting that was fair, Robert took the bed he no longer occupied and, having emptied it of straw, followed Serlo down to and along the riverbank until they came to the track he had found previously, well worn and obviously one the locals used to fetch water. Moving cautiously, in case this was one of the points with a guard, they crept into the darkness afforded by the trees and, once their eyes had adjusted, made their way inland. The clearing, judging by the smell, was some kind of midden and the boys could see the pile of waste in the centre. With Serlo pulling his arm, Robert was directed to the mound, which lay between two rotten tree trunks and was surrounded by leaf mould.

  ‘Find something to poke it with.’ There was always a hesitation when Serlo issued any command; with only a year between them, Robert was never willing to acknowledge the rights his elder half-sibling assumed. ‘Come on, brother, we don’t have all night.’

  A stick was found, a broken branch of which in summertime, when kindling was less required, there was ample choice. Serlo took the stick and poked hard at the mound, the result being immediate. Even in the gloom they could see the mass of glistening black ants emerge to defend their hill, rushing around, looking for something to bite. Serlo threw down Robert’s open palliasse and began to poke furiously, bringing out even more defenders, who, apart from those few who stuck to the stick, started milling around and disappearing in what was effectively a sack.

  ‘Here, you have a go,’ said Serlo, and a willing brother took the stick, not realising that it had been passed to him just as a couple of ants reached the point at which he was holding it; the first bite made him drop it quickly. He issued a muffled cry and swore at the nip, not mollified by the assurance that came from Serlo.

  ‘At least we know they do bite.’

  Picking up the stick, Serlo brushed off the ants and used it to corral those racing around on the canvas palliasse which being strange to them they had congregated in, then he grabbed the edge and closed it, trapping those inside, while a good shake dislodged those on the outside, the top being spun to ensure they stayed trapped. Back in the camp the boys crept by their slumbering companions – this jape would not be visited upon their own and, well aware of their family antipathy to Evro de Montfort, they picked the last fire glow nearest his tent, moved round to the far side, and tipped out the contents right by the sleeping soldiers.

  They were lying down when the commotion started, shouts and cries, and in the moonlight dark figures of men furiously brushing themselves. The noise was excuse enough to stand and get a better look, as other groups around the one they had attacked were awoken by the commotion, and that
included the Lord de Montfort, who could be heard querulously demanding quiet. It took an age for things to die down, for men to be sure that the nipping ants were either all dead or gone. By that time two very contented youths were sound asleep.

  They were all up with the grey dawn light, the fire relit to bake breakfast oatcakes, the watering and feeding of the horses seen to while the cooking was taking place, the seniors washing in the river once their equine chores were completed, hundreds of men whose feet churned up the muddy bottom to turn the Seine downstream brown. The packhorses were reloaded in advance of the blowing trumpets, which came from the top of the hill. A messenger came from de Montfort to tell Tancred to bring up the rear of the battaile, the place of least honour, which he knew to be a response to his jibe of the previous night.

  ‘Cover the horses’ nostrils,’ he commanded, ‘and your own. We will be eating dust this day.’

  Trumpets blew again, and the de Hautevilles saw the duke, at the head of his familia knights, lead the way east, each battaile mounting to follow in the order laid down by the Constable, leaving behind them a sloping field of flattened grass covered with dead fire pits, the bones of their food, piles of used straw, as well as heaps of dung that, along with the contents of the latrine, the locals would soon gather to use on their crops.

  The move was necessary: no army of any size could stay in one place for long – they ate up the countryside regardless of how well they were supplied by river. As well as the horses of knights and squires, the duke had along the contents of his stud. These were replacement animals for any losses those fighting in his cause might sustain, part of the bond a liege lord made with his vassals regardless of the terms of service. If a knight lost his fighting horse in battle or in any event on the march, the duke provided a substitute. William had estimated the size of the force at some five hundred lances, which meant at least fifteen hundred mounts as personal possessions; add the duke’s horses and that rose to over two thousand.