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Contents
Alfred Duggan 1903–1964
I. Sussex 1096.
II. Nicaea 1097.
III. Dorylaeum 1097.
IV. Anatolia 1097.
V. Outside Antioch 1097-1098.
VI. Christian Antioch 1098.
VII. Jerusalem 1099.
Alfred Duggan
Knight With Armour
Alfred Duggan
1903–1964
‘There have been few historical imaginations better informed or more gifted than Alfred Duggan’s’ (The New Criterion).
Historian, archaeologist and novelist Alfred Duggan wrote historical fiction and non-fiction about a wide range of subjects, in places and times as diverse as Julius Caesar’s Rome and the Medieval Europe of Thomas Becket.
Although he was born in Argentina, Duggan grew up in England, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. After Oxford, he travelled extensively through Greece and Turkey, visiting almost all the sites later mentioned in his books. In 1935 he helped excavate Constantine’s palace in Istanbul.
Duggan came to writing fiction quite late in his life: his first novel about the First Crusade, Knight in Armour, was published in 1950, after which he published at least a book every year until his death in 1964. His fictional works were bestselling page-turners, but thoroughly grounded in meticulous research informed by Duggan’s experience as an archaeologist and historian.
Duggan has been favourably compared to Bernard Cornwell as well as being praised in his own right as ‘an extremely gifted writer who can move into an unknown period and give it life and immediacy’ (New York Times).
I. Sussex 1096.
Osbert fitzRalph held the manor of Bodeham in Sussex from the Count of Eu. But in the winter of 1095 the Count was in the King’s prison, awaiting sentence for his unsuccessful rebellion last summer; his tenants in southern England, who had been too closely watched to dare to join in the rising, hoped they would soon hold direct from the King, after the land had been confiscated. Still, it would be blatantly unfaithful to go to the King’s court while their lord was his prisoner, so Osbert and his two sons, Ralph and Roger, kept that Christmas of 1095 at the new and half-built Abbey of Battle.
During the Octave of Christmas a monk from Fecamp preached on the acts of the council recently held at Clermont, and the duty of all Christian warriors to go to the rescue of their persecuted brethren in the East. All the congregation of local landholders and idle peasants heard the sermon in silence, and said nothing after-wards to commit themselves, the Saxons because they could not understand a word of what was preached to them, the Normans because they were members of a cautious race.
On the 7th of January Osbert rode the ten miles home with his sons, through the deep tangled woods of the Weald. Conversation was impossible on the ride, as the horses struggled in single file, girth-deep in the muddy clay track; but in the evening they crossed the Rother at Bodeham Bridge, and rode up the hill to the timber and-wattle hall that looked northwards to the endless woods of Kent. There were only servants to welcome them at the manor, for Messer Osbert’s wife had died two years before, and he had no daughters. He got stiffly off his horse and limped into the hall, for he had received a spear-wound in the thigh at the second taking of York. He was an old man, creaking with the rheumatism of the Weald, and his beard was white, though his hauberk had long since rubbed the hair from his crown. His sons followed him, and all three stood warming their hands round the fire that burnt in the middle of the room, while the servants set out the table for supper. He glared at his sons under shaggy white eyebrows, and spoke in a complaining voice:
“Well, out with it. I suppose you two young fools are burning to fight for the Christians of the East, and all you want is a large sum of money from me to take you out there. The whole idea is nonsense, and that’s flat. I very much doubt if those Easterners really want us, whatever they may have told His Holiness the Pope, and in any case we have quite enough to do here, holding down this half-conquered land. What do you think about it, Ralph?”
He sat down at the supper-table, and took a long drink of beer. His sons sat down in their places, and Ralph looked up to answer, with a nervous smile. He was a handsome youth of twenty-one, his fair hair worn long in the new fashion of the court.
“I think it is an excellent idea, father. Now that my excommunication is lifted, I mean to keep on good terms with the Church. At this end of the kingdom we have no chance of winning new lands, and I don’t want to die in Bodeham, without making any name in the world.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” his father answered. “You young men are never content to stay at home. Let me remind you that your last campaign was nothing to be proud of; going off as a soldier, and then getting excommunicated too. You remember what it cost me to get that ban lifted. But you had better stick to the King’s service. You may have to do some ugly things, as all soldiers do, yet the King will be grateful to you one day. You have arms and a horse already; go back to the King in the spring, and watch your chance to win his favour. I am an old man now, and when I die, I want a son to succeed me. Stay in England or Normandy, and you shall have Bodeham when I am gone.”
“You mean that, father?” said Ralph, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “Of course it is a long time in the future, and you mustn’t think of yourself as an old man; but could you swear before witnesses that I am to be your heir, and get a seal put to it? After all, you did not inherit this manor; it came by conquest, and you can leave it where you like. I suppose you want it to come to me undivided. You hear that, Roger?”
“Leave the boy alone,” said his father severely. “The manor must all be yours, without division, for there is not enough to support two knights, and we don’t want the family to lose its nobility. We have been knights for three generations now, and people expect us to keep it up. Roger will have to go into the Church, unless he prefers to be a merchant or a craftsman. There are some quite wellborn young men taking up citizenship in London and Winchester.’
They both looked at the younger son, who had been busily munching cold salt beef without paying much attention to the discussion.
Roger was in his eighteenth year; he was short, though his broad shoulders and large hands showed that he would be burly later on. He wore his dark hair cropped close round his skull, and there was a patch on the knee of his chausse, though he was wearing his best. He gulped to empty his mouth, and looked up frowning.
“I will never make a clerk,” he said slowly. “I am too clumsy to write well, and, besides, I want to marry some day. But I listened to those sermons and my mind is made up. Since the Pope calls us, I will live and die in the Eastern world.”
He picked up his knife, and cut another piece of salt beef, as though he was not interested in any answer he might get.
“Silly, you don’t have to write to be a priest,” said his brother, “and you can read as well as any of us; that is quite enough.”
“I still think the Church is the place for you,” said Osbert, answeri
ng him directly, and disregarding the elder brother, “but if you are set against it I won’t force you. I have seen enough of scandalous priests not to wish to add to their number. But if you won’t pray for a living you must fight for it, or work for it, that is clear. We might fix you up in service as a soldier with the captain of a band of routiers. That is how my uncle went to Italy, and I heard that he prospered out there.”
“You don’t understand, father,” Roger burst out violently. “I won’t be a clerk because I am not worthy of the calling. I shall never have the money to be a merchant, and I am too old to be apprenticed to a craft. There seemed to be nothing for it but soldiering, fighting for a wage, burning churches and priests in Wales in the course of an unjust quarrel, as Ralph did. I have always dreaded that, for it is a road that leads straight to Hell. Have you ever known an honourable soldier? This pilgrimage that we have heard preached gives me a chance of an honourable life, and Heaven after death. I tell you again that my mind is made up, and if you won’t help me I shall steal a cross-bow in the village and set out on foot.”
“This pilgrimage is a new idea,” said Ralph indignantly, “and nothing like it was ever heard of before. We don’t even know if they are proper Christians in the East, or whether they deserve our help. Now I can give you an introduction to the captain of the King’s routiers, and you may end with a castle of your own.”
“The Pope thinks these Easterners deserve our help,” his father said quietly, “and we can trust his judgement in such a matter. Roger’s idea is worth thinking over, and we can discuss it at length to-morrow. Now it is time for bed.” He rose from the table and climbed the ladder to the sleeping-loft, without another word.
The whole countryside was talking of the new pilgrimage, and so many knights said they were going that by February Osbert was brought to admit that there must be something in the idea. One Sunday they all stayed to breakfast with the parish priest of Ewhurst, on the opposite hill across the river, for Bodeham had no church of its own. Father Matthew was a Saxon of good family, a well-educated man who spoke Latin fluently, used by all the neighbouring landowners as an interpreter in the manor-courts. He was worthy of a better cure, but he would never get promotion, since he could not speak French. Roger listened to the talk, in grammatical but elementary Latin, where each speaker put the words in the order of his native tongue. He realized with a sudden thrill of joy that his father was talking about the prospect of the pilgrimage, and how to get money for it from his tenants, as though it was finally settled that he should go.
“I think I know as much of your law as you do, Messer Osbert,” the priest was saying. “I seem to spend most of my week-days in one court or another. Now you can tallage your tenants (I believe I have the right word), you can tallage them to pay for the wedding of your eldest daughter, or to fit out your eldest son, or of course to ransom their lord from captivity. We didn’t have these laws in King Edward’s time, but we obey them quietly now. But in all this there is no mention of a tallage for the arming of a younger son, who is not even going to serve his lord, and therefore his tenants also, but proposes to go in arms on pilgrimage to the ends of the earth. Your tenants pay you to protect them, but what advantage will they gain from this pilgrimage? If you ask for a tallage they will refuse, and if you threaten to harry them for it, they will complain to the King’s sheriff.”
“I agree, Father Matthew,” Osbert replied. “I can extort nothing from the villeins for the arming of my younger son, and I don’t want to set the King’s sheriff against me. But this pilgrimage has been preached all over Sussex, and I thought that some of these men, who cannot go themselves for they are useless in battle, might give money to send a knight whom they know and trust. Thus they would share in the spiritual benefits.”
“Just what I was going to propose myself,” said the priest. “They must make a spontaneous voluntary gift, and that will need a good deal of arrangement beforehand. Your court meets on the Feast of the Annunciation, doesn’t it? That’s the 25th of March, and gives us plenty of time to plan things. How shall we go about it?”
Osbert considered for a few moments; then he spoke:
“How would it be if I followed the example of the old Duke, when King Edward died and we were preparing to come over here? He called a council of his vassals, and asked us to help him in the invasion. We answered, of course, that he had no right to order us to follow him to England, merely to win new lands for his own profit, as it had nothing to do with the Duchy. Then, after we had stood up for our rights, came the bargaining. We all followed him in the end, but voluntarily, not as a matter of duty.”
“That is an excellent plan,” said Father Matthew. “Let them refuse first, and accept their refusal. That will make them see what a conscientious, law-abiding lord you are. Then, when the court is closed, but before they have time to go home, your son must get up and make an appeal for himself. I will talk to a few of the more prosperous tenants beforehand, and arrange that they give a good lead to the rest. Everyone will be eager to promise something, so long as it is really a voluntary gift, and not another tax. Now, who shall we put up to do the refusing?”
Roger was a good deal surprised at this peep into the way that manor-court business was arranged in advance; it had never entered his head that all the long-winded, formal speeches were rehearsed beforehand; but the important thing was that his father was reconciled to his going.
As they walked back towards the hall in the afternoon he began to speak his gratitude, but his father interrupted him.
“You can thank me when it is all over; and mind you, I haven’t finally decided to let you go. But there is no harm in getting you a horse and armour from the religious feelings of the tenants, and once you are armed, you can always go fighting elsewhere. The important thing is to get a good sum of money out of them.”
“I think I can manage that, with a torch to their roofs if necessary,” put in Ralph.
“Oh no. You won’t do anything like that here,” said his father, “whatever you may have burnt in Wales. You young men must learn that no matter how ruthless you are in the field, you must be respectable at home.”
“But, father,” cried Roger, “I thought you had agreed that I should go on this pilgrimage. Surely you will allow me to use my arms for that, and for no other purpose. What have you against it, anyway?”
“There is a lot to be said against it,” his father replied gravely, “and I will say it now, before you take any rash vows. In the first place, where are you going? It’s no answer to say the East, and I haven’t heard anything more definite. There are infidels from Constantinople to Spain, and you don’t know which of them you are going to fight. In the second place, who is going to be the leader? The Emperor has set up a private Pope of his own, the King of France is excommunicate, and no one can imagine our King William doing anything for God’s Church. The pilgrims will quarrel among themselves, and wander in small parties all over the infidel lands, unless you have very good luck. In the third place, do the Christians of the East really want you? That heretical Greek Emperor has fallen into a panic, and asked help from the Pope, whose authority he doesn’t acknowledge. How can you be sure that when you get there he may not have made friends with the infidels again? The real trouble is that we know nothing at all about the lands of the East, not even the best way to get there. You will be riding into the dark.”
“All that is true,” Roger answered, “but people have been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Didn’t the Count of Flanders go there a few years ago?”
“He did indeed. He was three years on the voyage, most of his followers died, and he has been a sick man himself ever since. I don’t regard that as a good omen.”
“And our ancestors under the first Duke Rollo,” Roger persisted, “did they know the way when they settled in France? Or my great-uncle, when he went to Italy? Surely we Normans can march into any strange land, and conquer it, and settle in it, no matter what the customs of the people.”
“Well,” said Osbert, “you may go if the expedition seems to have a chance of success, since you have set your heart on it. You can take a vow as soon as you like; it will make the appeal to the manor-court easier. But if the whole thing falls through, or if the first starters are massacred on the way, you will have to get your vow dispensed. The Abbot of Battle will fix that up for me. I won’t let a son of mine lose his life in a hare-brained foray with no chance of success. Now you must spend the spring learning the management of arms. I should be ashamed if you were killed in your first charge through bad lance-work or faulty horsemanship.”
The Welshman was set up in a water-meadow by the Rother. The Welshman was a stout post with a bag of straw for a head and straw padding for the shoulders; it used to be called the Saxon, but they had changed the name out of consideration for the tenants. Roger had been practising at it for more than an hour, and his right arm was beginning to feel numb; but battles lasted for many hours, and he thought he had better get used to the feeling. He wheeled Ralph’s borrowed warhorse a hundred yards from the dummy, and sent him straight at it again. He wore his own helm and sword, and his own thick leather fighting-tunic, for he could not get his broad shoulders into Ralph’s mail shirt though he had borrowed his shield and lance. He cantered briskly towards the post; about thirty yards away he stuck in his spurs and set the horse alight. This was the tricky bit. As he lifted the heavy shield, and brought his head down till his eyes were peering over the shield-rim, the broad leather reins slipped through his fingers, and hung loose from the bit to the palm of his hand. Neither could he guide with his legs, for at the same time he must push his buttocks into the back of the heavy warsaddle, and stick his feet out level with the horse’s shoulders. The lance tucked horizontal under his right elbow had only a narrow arc to move in, and the horse was in control. This particular horse knew his job, and went straight at the post, which fell flat on the ground as the lance caught the straw padding; Roger sat up straight and loose, and the warhorse checked of his own accord. A touch on the bit, and he stopped; Roger dismounted to pick up his lance, and to set the mark on its feet again. That charge had gone right, thanks to the horse, but he must work out someway to keep more control when he was in the proper jousting position. He looked at the river-mist rising all round him; soon it would be too dark to continue. He saw his father limping down the hill, and waited for him to come within speaking distance.
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