The Lady for Ransom

by Alfred Duggan

  (That is called a figure of speech, and I am very proud of it. But even an illiterate laybrother picks up these tricks after hearing a great many sermons.)

  The villagers were quite pleased that the Army of Romania had perished at Manzikert; iron and salt were scarce, since they dared not descend to the plains to trade, but for the last two years they had not been taxed, and the Turks did not bother to climb up and plunder them. They welcomed us, not because we were fellow-Christians in peril from the infidel, but because we were fugitives from the wrath of the Emperor. They promised to guide us eastward in the morning, handing us over to another Galatian village at the end of the march.

  I was very tired, but the Greek-speaking headman had taken a fancy to me, and I sat by his fire while he told me all about his people, and eventually, when he had finished the wine-jar, recited an epic in his own language. When I heard it I sat up and minded my manners; if he knew by heart a long poem about the deeds of his ancestors he must be a gentleman of good birth. That is the test of breeding all the world over.

  Next day I staggered along, very sleepy and tired, by a narrow path which followed the tree-line below the naked crests, and which in consequence wound round the valleys till we had to walk four miles to gain one; but it was beaten smooth by the passage of many feet, and the women found it easier than the paved road in the baking heat of the plain. The headman told me it was the escape route they all used when tax-gatherers called; but he did not come with us, and our guides spoke only their own dialect; we could not discover how far it was to our next halting-place, but that did not matter, since mountaineers can never measure a journey so that it can be understood by plains-bred horsemen.

  At the midday halt Matilda sought me out. I was sitting among our guides, grinning and making friendly signs, because I was now a professional linguist who must do his best even with an unknown language. My lady beamed at the mountaineers, and made friends by admiring the carving on a bone knife-hilt; then she leaned across and spoke to me, casually, not to arouse their interest.

  ‘I want to discuss the future, Roger, and this is the best place for a conference. We don’t look as though we are talking secrets, yet no one can understand us. Do you think these people will really help us to Amasia? They gain nothing by it. Suppose they sell us to the Turks?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ I answered. The point had occurred to me and I had given it careful thought. ‘If they didn’t like us they might have driven us away last night, when we were too weary to resist. They can’t sell us to the Turks, because the Turks wouldn’t pay. They might deliver us to the infidel, but only to score off strangers. The Turks would seize the guides as well, if they want slaves, but usually they don’t. We must assume our guides are honest. In fact they seem very pleasant people. Why should we march farther? In these hills we are safe from raiding horse. Let us stay, and swear fealty to their rulers. I would live content as a Galatian mountaineer.’

  ‘Oh dear, Roger, do you also feel that?’ said Matilda with a sigh. ‘My lord wants to stay, and I have been trying to argue him out of it. Can you see my sons sowing their own barley, and climbing a tree to escape from their enemies? By St Michael and all the Host of Heaven, Ralph and Osbert shall ride to battle, and eat bread that others have reaped; or they shall die in the attempt. Just because you were beaten once you have given up hope of winning fortune by the sword. Am I the only warrior in the band?’

  ‘It isn’t only, Matilda, that we were beaten. It’s the knowledge that the Turks will probably beat us next time. In the camp on Mount Sophon I thought myself a knight, but it’s a difficult and dangerous trade. I shall be happy to plough my own fields.’

  She looked at me queerly. I understood; for nine years I had called her ‘my lady’ and stood until I was granted permission to sit. Here we squatted together in the greenwood, and because I thought of her as Matilda, a fellow fugitive in a band of frightened outlaws, the name had slipped out by mistake.

  ‘Little Roger Smith,’ she said after a pause, ‘you are of base blood, for all that your father made pilgrimage to St Michael. I shall tell you a secret. It will be very hard to restore my lord’s courage. I had been thinking of leaving him, to join some braver Frank. Now I see there are no brave Franks in this band. I shall march on with Messer Roussel, whether you and your base comrades stay here or not. We shall rule in Amasia, or some other castle, until a stronger takes it from us; then we shall die by the sword, as my father died in the town he ruled. Goodbye, peasant.’

  As she strode away the guides looked up in amazement. They did not understand the quarrel, and it was the compulsion not to behave foolishly before foreigners which kept me sitting with my mouth open, instead of running after my lady to seek pardon. Then the impulse passed, for I realised it was too late. My head was in a whirl. I am a peasant, the son of a smith; in a distant land I might win the arms of a knight, but I would never be the equal of Matilda de Balliol, of the Lombard stock of Benevento. Yet she had been proposing to set me up as leader in place of Messer Roussel. Perhaps she was in love with me. I puzzled over the odd situation.

  Even in my young days I was never a success with the ladies. I am shorter and darker than most Franks, and constant brain work as a linguist, for which I am not really fitted, gave me a frowning, bad-tempered expression. Besides, the man who really seduces a lady must labour all day to appear frivolous; I was not sufficiently interested to undertake the toil. Before I entered religion I would occasionally sleep with a whore, when I found my mind filled with lust to the exclusion of more profitable thoughts; now fasting and mortification provide a remedy which is really less trouble. But I never won a woman by charm alone; there was always money to be paid in the morning.

  I never regarded Matilda as desirable, and I doubt whether the thought occurred to anyone else. That was her own fault.

  She was plain, with masculine features and a great beak of a nose; but she had a strong athletic body which might have been attractive if she had employed the ordinary feminine wiles. But she was either neat and clean, and dressed as much like a groom as she could be without incurring ecclesiastical censure for wearing male attire; or she so exaggerated the Roman adornments, painted lips, dyed hair, white powder on nose and red powder on cheeks, that everyone thought she was making fun of a ridiculous foreign custom. Perhaps there was something wrong with her eyes. Even her horsemanship, the one quality in which she outshone every woman I have met, was too good to be an attraction; instead of thinking ‘that’s a brave little girl controlling such a fierce warhorse’, you merely said to yourself ‘that rider can manage without help; is there someone prettier who needs a strong hand on the bridle.’ In the Turkish camp she had shown greater courage than I had realised at the time; when Artouch asked for her maids and her face-paint, while letting her go, it must have cost her great suffering to treat the affair as an amusing adventure.

  Of course I was tempted; she had offered herself to me, I suppose because bitter experience had taught her not to aim too high; she thought’ that I, ugly and lowborn and not a good jouster, would be flattered to meet her half-way. There was still time for me to make the conquest, if I sought her out and pretended that my slow wits had only now grasped her meaning; I have seen it done often enough, and I could have repeated the usual meaningless declarations of devotion. But that particular temptation was not difficult to resist. I admired Matilda as a hero, but I had not the slightest trace of love for her as a woman; and there were the obligations of honour. Like most laymen, in those days I cared very little about the Ten Commandments; but everyone above the level of the beasts that perish has some sort of code, and mine forbade me to overthrow my leader by seducing his wife. Besides, though I could have got rid of Messer Roussel quite easily, the band might not have obeyed me afterwards.

  It is as pleasant to resist an uncongenial temptation as to yield to one that has more charms. I trudged through the woods feeling honourable and knightly, which is a great help to sore feet. When we passe
d a stretch of open moor I saw Matilda talking earnestly to her husband. Probably under that stimulus he would get back his courage in a day or two.

  We were more than a month in the hills of the Galatians, but the journey contained no hardships. The mountaineers had food to spare, and they would just as soon give it to travellers as save it for a rainy day. There were one or two rivers to cross, the only dangerous stages of the march. But the Galatians knew secret fords, or kept a hidden store of goatskin floats near placid reaches. We crossed the rivers by night, after careful scouting. Otherwise we were safe all the time, which had a very good effect on our bodies and minds. We had been in constant danger since we marched from Ancyra; not always serious danger, but a chance of being killed in the next twenty-four hours; nine months of that makes the bravest warrior sleep badly; now we lay down in the evening tired, but confident that we would eat tomorrow’s supper.

  Messer Roussel improved rapidly. Matilda was his constant companion, and though I suppose in private she told him what to do she ceased to give orders as soon as he was fit to take over. I was glad I had not helped her to get rid of her husband. Matilda was unique; if she had been false to her own standards, with my encouragement, I would have felt as mean as if I had wantonly defaced a beautiful picture.

  A few days before All Saints the headman of the village where we halted told me we had finished our journey. Amasia was ten miles away, in the plain. If we wanted to go there we must descend to the great road, for this was the limit of the mountaineers. But there was an empty valley to the north, and he would lend us ploughs and seed-corn. This was the first time the mountaineers had actually invited us to join them. I felt it my duty to pass on what he said; it might cause dissension in the band; but a linguist who does not translate fairly will one day bring worse trouble.

  Messer Roussel and his council were squatting on the floor of the large hut which in all these villages is kept for chance strangers. They had difficulty in following the broken Greek of the headman, but when I put his proposal into French several knights wished to accept it. In particular there was an elderly ruffian who had been a monk in Normandy until he was expelled from the cloister for persistent fornication; he had once heard read someone’s History of the World from the Creation to Charlemagne; he was very proud of it, and often spoke of the lessons of history and the wisdom of accepting the inevitable. Now he made a formal oration, to this effect: Romania was finished, the plains of Asia belonged to the Turks, and the walled towns would presently fall under their sway; but the mountains might remain free, because on the hillside infantry can beat horse; therefore our best plan would be to stay where we were and learn to fight on foot.

  It sounded wise and logical as he said it; we felt that if we stayed we would be conforming to the march of events like educated civilised men; it would also be safe and easy. When he finished there was a mutter of agreement. But Messer Roussel jumped to his feet; his left hand moved over his chest as though bearing a shield. ‘St Michael and Balliol!’ he shouted, ‘I am a free man and a Christian. I can choose for myself between Heaven and Hell, and in this life I can choose whether I fight the infidel or hide behind a rock! Ranulf the Monk says Romania is finished. It’s only finished if the Romans despair! Thank God I don’t know any history. All I know is that down in Amasia there are smiths who will make mail for me, and up here there are peasants who will lend me a plough. We march at dawn, and if the men of Amasia don’t open their gates I shall escalade the wall! The warriors will follow me, and the renegade monks can stay here and grow barley. I have never worked for my bread, and I would rather die fighting than begin now.’

  This was the old Messer Roussel, the gallant leader of Sicily and Zompi. Matilda had picked up all the pieces. Of course we all marched with him.

  13. Amasia Revisited

  In Amasia all went smoothly. We learned that the men of Armeniakon had continued to regard themselves as loyal vassals of Messer Roussel; they had been distressed to hear of the disaster of Mount Sophon, and obviously they would no longer feel quite safe under Frankish protection. They would be happy to have us back again, but their spokesman made it clear, in the clever Roman way which tells unpalatable truths without rudeness , that we might no longer tallage our subjects at will; instead the council of magnates, rulers of Amasia, would hire us to defend them. But that was as much as we could expect after we had lost arms, horses and prestige. We gladly accepted these terms; soon after All Souls we were safely lodged in the citadel.

  The whole Theme had kept up a version of the Frankish customs we had taught them in the spring. But Romans cannot copy any Frankish institution without giving it a characteristic twist of their own; the magnates who took the lead were not landholders and warriors, but wealthy merchants; and the courts were more frankly biased in favour of the rich than any similar body of oath-bound Normans. We fear the punishment which Heaven visits on perjury, and that keeps even litigants arguing an important suit within reasonable bounds. Romans will risk the wrath of God whenever a large sum of money is at stake; the decisions I heard in the law courts of Amasia made me understand why in normal times even free Romans prefer to have their causes decided by a professional judge.

  This injustice made the lower classes disloyal. But of course the lower classes dare not make war on their betters – at least in a walled town where they cannot flee to the waste as outlaws. The peasants were slightly more contented, because the council had come to an arrangement with the nearest Turks which gave them a chance to till some of their fields in peace. These Turkish bands were beginning to settle down in definite territories, if you can call it settling down when they moved their tents with the seasons; but each band now had a regular range of pasture which they would defend against other Turks. Those who roamed the plain near Amasia were led by one Tutach; the council paid him a fixed tribute, and in return he spared their fields. What with tribute to the Turks and pay to their Frankish garrison the council were spending more than their tallages brought in; but they could keep it up for the present by selling plate and jewels, and something might turn up before all their wealth was gone. In those days in Asia no one could plan further than that.

  The financial condition of the council, though precarious, had been slightly eased by an unexpected windfall. The Bishop, its president, told us that while we were in the mountains a messenger had arrived from the city. He brought a sack of gold and a letter from the Logothete. This explained that the money was to be spent on strengthening the defences of the town against outlaws; in other words, it was a bribe to persuade them to shut their gates against us. It seemed odd that Michael should try so much harder to finish off a defeated band of Franks than to expel the Turkish infidel; we did no permanent harm, while the Turks inflicted damage that could not be repaired for generations; but the Bishop explained. He pointed out that even Malek Shah the great King of the Turks had never marched on the city; but Messer Roussel had set up a rival Emperor, and his watchfires at Chrysopolis had frightened the Logothete. We were not serious enemies of Romania, but to the Emperor personally we were a greater menace than the infidels.

  In fact we had not been a month in our new castle when we heard he was sending an army against us. There were practically no regular Roman troops left in Asia, but that wonderful Treasury can always produce money when it is urgently needed, and he had managed to hire six thousand Alans. They were marching east, led by the Strategus Nicephorus Palaeologus. The reasons for the change of command were intricate. I have already said that all Romans are deeply interested in the politics of the city, and the Amasians were well informed of what passed at court. They told us there had been a shift in the alignment of parties. Hitherto the Emperor had reigned by playing off Comnenus against Ducas; but both these great houses had threatened to combine against Nicephoritzes the Logothete, thinking it more disgraceful to be ruled by a eunuch than by a rival; the Emperor was hard put to it to find a general he could trust.

  But these difficulties in the
city did not make things easier for us. By now we were armed in mail and mounted on good horses; yet my lord was reluctant to fight six thousand horse with the two hundred Franks who remained to him. There were anxious discussions in the citadel. If there had been a way of retreat we would have fled; but there wasn’t. East lay the lands of the infidel, the Alans were approaching from the west, and to north and south the Turks were so thick that two hundred men would be overwhelmed. We heard that Alexius Comnenus had won great fame by a march from Ancyra to the Bosphorus, during which he and his men hid on foot among some rushes and escaped a roving band of Turks; he was Domestic at the time. When we came to Romania, only four years ago, sixty thousand mailed horse followed the Domestic; two years after Manzikert he won fame by hiding in a swamp. It was not until I heard this story, related with pride by a hereditary partisan of the Comneni, that I realised what a change had been brought by the defeat of Romanus Diogenes.