Mercenaries

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘So you are not running from your neighbours.’

  ‘It is our neighbours who fear us,’ William replied, ‘not the other way round. But when you have carried a lance in battle, to return to husbandry is disagreeable.’

  ‘A good enough reason,’ Rainulf agreed. ‘There is no other?’

  Both brothers allowed themselves a small shake of the head. The other reason, which had to do with the bloodline of their mother, both William and Drogo would keep to themselves.

  ‘The country we passed through seemed quiet,’ said Drogo, the enquiry muffled by his full mouth.

  ‘For the moment there is peace.’ Seeing Drogo’s face register disappointment, Rainulf laughed out loud. ‘But it never stays long like that. Eighteen summers I have been here and not one has gone by without a quarrel from which I have been able to prosper. And if it is too quiet, we have ways to ensure we do not go without.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked William.

  The question seemed to annoy Rainulf; his face went a deeper shade of purple and the eyes, already hard to see, seemed to slip deeper into the fold of the flesh surrounding them.

  ‘You will discover that in time,’ he rasped, holding out his goblet for a fourth refill. ‘Now, tell me about Bessancourt.’

  ‘William will do that,’ Drogo insisted.

  Which his brother did, for he was a good storyteller and he had, many times, told his tale coming south to willing listeners in the various pilgrims’ hospices in which they had found a place to lay their heads. Rainulf interrupted occasionally to ask a pointed question or two, mostly about how the Frankish milites had performed, never without supping from his goblet, and he forced William to be quite exact in his description of how they had first retreated, then were able to reverse that and resume the attack.

  ‘They must have been well led.’

  ‘They were beaten,’ William insisted, as the servants lit candles, mildly distracting him as he came to the end of his tale: candles cost money and he was more accustomed to smoky tallow. Whatever else Rainulf was short of – like company – it was not money.

  ‘The enemy horse were broken and suddenly with them in flight it was clear that we had the power of decision. Duke Robert did not rush; he ensured an organised line before calling for the advance, so that the King of the Franks could be in no doubt as to the person to whom he owed his triumph. A number of the enemy pikemen formed up to defend themselves, but for all their bravery the battle was lost. We hit their line like a great rolling rock smashing a haystack.’

  ‘That, brother, is too poetic.’

  William smiled at Drogo. ‘Is it? Almost the whole of those who stood to defend themselves paid with their lifeblood. Behind them panic took over as each man sought to save himself, and that included the King’s rebel brother.’

  ‘I hope he flayed him alive,’ said Rainulf.

  ‘No,’ Drogo hooted, ‘he made him Duke of Burgundy. He gave the Frankish half of the Vexin to Normandy for a battle that he did not need to fight.’

  ‘Some men will forgive their brothers much.’

  The look in Rainulf’s hooded eyes then was a curious one, which was not helped by the way his gaze was fixed on William. ‘You describe the battle well.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Let us hope you get a chance to do for me what you did for Duke Robert.’

  Over the days that followed the brothers discovered how well organised Rainulf was: there was accommodation for up to four hundred knights, the great barn for communal eating and feasts, a proper stud to provide a steady supply of mounts, mendicant monks from the monastery at Aversa to see to the ailments of men and horses, a nursemaid equally versed in remedies to care for the women and children.

  The balance of mares to stallions and good animal husbandry ensured a steady supply of foals, and extensive ditch work and careful attention to paddock numbers, fed by windmills, gave all the mounts good pasture, while the fecund fields of the Aversan plain provided fodder in abundance, the peasants taking away as rich fertiliser the dung that littered the fields.

  There was a blacksmith who doubled as an armourer to maintain weapons and keep the fighting mounts shod while the Norman leader had even engaged the services of a scrivener so that anyone unlettered, wishing to send written word back to Normandy, could do so, through the auspices of a Jewish trader, who would also commute money through mysterious channels, this gained from both normal service and plunder.

  Guaimar had grown to manhood in some luxury, but he had never seen anything like that which attended the family of Pierleoni. They lived in a villa that had once been the property of a wealthy Roman senator, a haven of arboreal peace in the teeming city which surrounded it. There were fountains set in mature gardens, cool, tiled and colonnaded courtyards from which to stay out of the sun, endless rooms in which to take repose and a whole tribe of hosts who could not let their legions of servants do enough for these two young unfortunates from the south. Yet the walls that faced the city of Rome had been fortified and armed retainers made sure that no one could breach the peace of this fabulously wealthy family. It was such a relief to come to this after their journey.

  Sailing in a boat normally used for limited coastal trading had been damned uncomfortable out in deep waters. It had taken every wave in full measure, the bow lifting and dropping, the vessel pitching from side to side at the same time as the single sail reacted to the unsteady wind. Guaimar had been sick the first day, but had recovered; not so Berengara, who had lain below the deck the entire journey in a state of wretched distress, in the now fetid space, while her brother had sucked in fresh sea air and tried to hold conversations with the trio of taciturn Italian sailors who had helped them escape. Initially he had been fearful of them, for they looked like a bunch of cut-throats, until it finally dawned on him that the reverse was true: they were in some dread of him.

  Even in clothes that had suffered from his previous confinement, he had still looked, with his build and features, like authority to these fellows, the kind of person, in Salerno, they would have avoided like the pestilence. He had assumed the Jew had paid them well for the service, and he had extracted from them the reason why they were out of sight of land – the need to avoid curiosity from boatmen from places like Naples and the various offshore islands by which, in the distance, they took their bearings.

  The young man did not think it wise to point out that the mere knowledge of such places as Ponza and Palmerola, the last small island now a smudge over the stern, was telling evidence, in a boat this size, of the occupation they followed. What did they smuggle? It was not a question he could ask.

  It had been a shock to find they had no possessions, not so much as a change of clothes, something Guaimar had kept from his sister; she was suffering enough. He had to assume that Ephraim had seen the necessity of using those as a blind. The purse he had been handed was far from heavy and, standing in the prow, looking north, he had worried as to how they were to clothe themselves for the onward journey to Bamberg and he had felt like a vagabond when a velvet-clad and scented representative of the Pierleoni came to the synagogue in Ostia to fetch them. His sister felt that more than he; since the age of ten she had been fastidious about her appearance.

  Now, as they prepared to depart from Rome after a stay of two months, they were better dressed than they had been at home. It seemed there could be no service to which they were not privileged: clothing of the very best run up by tailors and shoemakers brought into the villa for the purpose, servants to dress their hair and attend to their skin and nails, any amount of scents with which to grace their bodies and travelling chests provided, with the ducal crest of Salerno picked out in proper colours, for their onward journey.

  They had enjoyed sumptuous meals as well, and the last of these before they departed was attended by the whole extended family, including one son newly introduced, Ascletin, who would accompany them. He was only a year older than Guaimar, but already a bishop with a very high opin
ion of himself, loudly delivered. Toasts were proposed both to their prospects and to future prosperity. Well-mannered, Guaimar was bound to respond and thank them, and say that if the House of Salerno could ever be of use to the House of Pierleoni, then it must be taken as a given that whatever aid was requested would be provided.

  ‘Most comforting to know, young friend,’ replied the head of the house, Francisco Pierleoni. Then he turned to Berengara. ‘And can I say how pleasant it has been to have a lady of your beauty grace our table.’

  Berengara was maiden enough to blush at the compliment, but very slightly, for she took it as her due, and it had come from a man old enough to be her great-grandfather. The murmur of approval for the remark, from the younger males, sons, cousins and well-born adherents at the table, was more pleasing.

  Francisco Pierleoni was a man of whom they had seen little, his absences explained by the very busy life he led. Guaimar had been tempted to enquire what business he had been about, but his first tentative foray had met with such a sharp rebuff that he had since desisted. He guessed that the family was deeply involved in the affairs of the City of Rome and even Guaimar knew that to be a tangled affair. There were other families in the Holy City equally rich, some more powerful than their hosts, and they were, as a matter of course, at one another’s throat.

  All had bands of heavily armed retainers; each one had a section of Rome, one of the hills usually, that they considered their fiefdom, populated by mobs which, for the distribution of money, would emerge from their slums to attack another rabble rioting at the behest of a rival family. Rome was a place into which flowed money from all over the Christian world. It was the home of the Papacy, that fount of enormous wealth provided by tithes, as well as splendid offerings so that masses could be said for the rich of Christendom. It was also a place rife with simony, where ecclesiastical offices were bought and sold. Inconvenient marriages could be dissolved if the payment was high enough, indulgences granted for the most terrible of sins.

  So, to the great families of Rome, the holder of the office of pontiff and thus the key to the coffers was a matter of great import, the easiest way to profit – in commissions, offices and downright theft – being to have a member of your own tribe on the throne of St Peter. Opposing that were not only the other families but the cardinals and archbishops who staffed the Curia, as well as the abbots of the great monasteries.

  They would wish to place in the position a man who would meet their needs, which were not always those of the flocks they claimed to represent. Finally, in that mass of conflicting interests came the Emperor of the West and no Pope could maintain an office that he did not support: try as they might, and they had tried very hard indeed, the Roman families and the high church clerics had not been able to wrest from that source of power the right of appointing whomsoever they wished.

  Guaimar had been granted an audience with the present incumbent, Pope Benedict, ninth of that name, in the great Castle of St Angelo, which overlooked the Tiber. A stout fortress and well protected by the Pope’s own guards, it was the only place in the city where the Pontiff could feel safe. From the noble, if impecunious, Roman family of the Tusculam, he rarely ventured out of St Angelo, for when he did so he risked being attacked by the paid mobs of the other great magnates.

  The rumours surrounding Benedict were those that attached to any pope; he had not taken Holy Orders before his accession: he suffered from every carnal excess, from pederasty, through multiple concubinage, to dabbling in alchemy and black arts that involved communing with the Devil, the only certainty being that he was not a woman, given that every incumbent since the scandalous Pope Joan had been obliged to be carried head high over his cardinals to ensure his genitalia were external.

  Given all these supposed sins, Benedict had turned out to be a surprisingly gentle man. He blessed Guaimar’s purpose but refused to accept that the Bishopric of Salerno could not meet its obligation to the Holy See. Indeed money, or the lack of it from the duchy, had dominated the conversation. Pandulf was damned not because he was a rabid despoiler of other people’s property, but because his incarceration of the Archbishop of Capua had stopped the flow of tithes from the whole of that diocese, and seriously impeded money from others.

  This Pope had seemed to Guaimar a nervous fellow but, of course, having been elected, he had been subsequently deposed, twice and violently, by families who opposed his elevation, which had seen him a prisoner in his own castle. And it was obvious to Guaimar that while he presently occupied the Holy See, his grip was yet tenuous: it was quite common for the Pope, any pope, to be besieged in St Angelo or chased out of the city altogether if two or more of the Roman clans combined against a choice sanctioned by a distant emperor. Benedict might have the power of the Almighty himself at his disposal, but he had no real force he could depend on apart from his papal guards unless the great families of Rome chose to support him.

  Perhaps Guaimar’s Pierleoni host had been party to that! It was hard to equate this lined, benign-looking old patriarch, with his heavily lidded eyes and large Levantine nose which showed his racial antecedents, with the kind of mayhem that was endemic in the streets beyond the walls. But one only had to see him prepare to depart the villa, through heavily studded gates that would not have disgraced a stone castle, to know that he took much care for his person.

  His carriage was heavy and made of thick timber; crossbowmen sat with the driver and hung on to the postillion. Armed riders went ahead with their swords unsheathed while more brought up the rear, making Guaimar wonder if he was, in this peaceful domestic setting, actually in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

  ‘My son, Ascletin, is, as you know, to accompany you to Bamberg. I have no doubt you will be given audience with Conrad Augustus, and I also have confidence that he will listen to what you say.’

  ‘I require him to act, sir.’

  Francisco Pierleoni nodded at that, but Guaimar thought it was less than wholehearted. Conrad could not march an army south without passing through Rome. Was that a welcome prospect for his host, given the Western Emperor was the final arbiter of who sat on the throne of St Peter?

  ‘In your discussions with him he may ask you for your impression of my family.’

  ‘They will, sir, be wholly approving.’

  ‘I would particularly ask you to recommend to Conrad my son. He will, of course, meet with Augustus himself, on family and other business, but a word of praise from a Duke of Salerno…’

  ‘I am not yet that.’

  The response was quite sharp; there was steel beneath that benevolent exterior.

  ‘You are, young man, despite the actions of the usurper. In short, you are the legitimate holder of the title, the holder of an imperial fief, which makes you the equal of those who have raised Conrad Augustus to his pre-eminence. He will listen to what you say. Your words, for all you are a young man, will carry weight.’

  The old man stood, and everyone else did likewise. ‘You depart in the morning, and I will not see you after this. May God speed your journey and attend your purpose.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Guaimar, as the Patriarch Pierleoni smiled at Berengara’s curtsy.

  ‘And, when you return to Salerno, you will say, for me, a welcome to an old friend who has brought you to my house.’

  Was it part of their religion, Guaimar wondered, to keep secret everything? The old man would not even use the name of Kasa Ephraim in his own house, and to a guest who knew him well.

  The convoy of coaches that departed next morning was in itself impressive. Berengara had been allotted a conveyance of her own, with two maids to attend to her needs. In front of that, Guaimar and Ascletin travelled in the kind of coach used by the Pierleoni father, and it was just as well protected for between them sat a small chest full of money. Before them those mounted men were there to clear a route through the teeming streets, while at the rear, in front of the armed retainers who rode guard, was a heavily laden cart bearing al
l they now possessed, plus the son’s baggage, as well as gifts for the Emperor and the various court officials that attended upon Conrad Augustus.

  As they made their way through the streets leading to one of the great gates that would take them north, they passed ancient temples now dedicated as churches, and buildings falling into ruin as the stones were stolen by the populace; Ascletin was busy distributing small coins to an endless series of grasping hands, the owners of which, out of sight, called out a blessing and a hope that he would one day occupy the office of the Bishop of Rome.

  If Guaimar was in any doubt as to what he was supposed to ask Conrad Augustus, these outpourings of pious anticipation in return for money, accompanied by the look Ascletin gave him, dispelled it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A little more than a week passed before William de Hauteville’s fellow mercenaries began to avoid him in one-on-one fights in the training area. He was there first every morning, working with a pair of heavy rocks he had found to rebuild his strength to that which it had been when he had left the family home, and that was formidable. Drogo was hard to beat, his brother near to impossible, susceptible only to a piece of clever guile, and even then his opponent had to be lucky. For such a big man, half a hand taller than anyone else in Rainulf’s band, he moved with grace and speed on foot, and with deadly control mounted; his destrier having also been put endlessly through its paces so that it, too, had been brought back to peak performance.

  Drogo had caused a different set of problems, and since unsupervised fighting with weapons was forbidden in a society of high-tempered young men, it was his fists of which they came to be cautious. Usually jolly and full of tart good humour, he was nevertheless easily slighted, this younger brother, ever ready to take umbrage and throw a telling punch without warning. But it was his attitude to the womenfolk in the camp that touched many a raw nerve: he saw them as common property; his confrères did not!