The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘Because de Gacé won’t be having any more to do with the running of Normandy if our Count Alan has anything to do with it. My abbot is a great friend of Alan’s chaplain, and so what I’m about to say comes on very good authority. Apparently Alan has reason to believe that Ralph is in league with Archbishop Mauger and his brother Talou. They want to get rid of William and make Talou the new duke.’

  ‘He’s old Duke Richard’s legitimate son. He’s got as good a right to it as Robert’s little bastard.’

  ‘That’s not how Alan sees it. He swore to Robert that he would keep William safe. That’s what he plans to do. He’s raising an army, and as soon as he has a decent number of men marching under his banner, he’s heading into Normandy.’

  Giroie looked at Conan with an expression of rank scepticism. ‘He’s invading Normandy? Are you serious? He’d have to be mad. William’s other guardians will raise an army of their own to fight him – they’ll have no choice. So it will be one guardian against the rest. Mauger and Talou will be pissing themselves laughing. And Donkey-Head will be laughing right alongside them.’

  ‘Not if Alan gets word to William or one of the men close to him that this isn’t an invasion at all,’ said Conan. ‘He’ll make it plain that he’s marching to William’s side to support him against the plotters. As soon as he crosses the border, he plans to spread the word about his true intentions. He’s going to tell people: “Stand by me and you stand by Duke William.” He’s hoping to put on such a show of strength that no one will dare oppose him or the duke. The plotters will be beaten before they’ve even begun to rebel.’

  ‘Is that the real reason you’re going to Rouen?’

  Conan nodded. ‘Brother Thorold, the duke’s tutor and guardian, is a member of our order. I am to pass the message on to someone at the abbey of Saint-Ouen, who’ll take it to Thorold.’

  ‘Why not take the message directly to Thorold yourself?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t know me or my abbot from Adam.’

  ‘But if you belong to the same order, won’t he trust you?’

  ‘Up to a point, but with something this important he’ll trust someone he knows even more. My abbot will be believed by the abbot of Saint-Ouen, and the man he sends will be known to Thorold, so that way the information will be taken seriously.’

  ‘But why bother with this performance at all? Why not go straight to the palace and demand an audience with the boy and his guardians?’

  ‘I asked the count that myself.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘And he told me he feared for my safety. He said that if Ralph or the other plotters heard that Alan had a message for the duke, they’d go to any lengths to stop it getting through.’

  Giroie looked utterly unconvinced. ‘I’m sorry, but is this one of Alan’s jokes? He’s always had a strange sense of humour, particularly when he’s had a bit to drink.’

  ‘Well, he was stone-cold sober and deadly serious so far as I could tell.’

  ‘In that case, I wish you luck, old friend.’ Giroie got to his feet. ‘Now, you’ve got another hard day in front of you and neither of us is young enough any more to spend the whole night drinking and then be fresh as a daisy in the morning. Come with me. I’ve had a chamber prepared for you, and food set aside for you to take with you when you leave. That should keep you going on your journey.’

  Conan smiled and gave Giroie an affectionate pat on the shoulder. ‘Thank you. Just make sure you get your boy well away from de Gacé before Alan attacks. Because when that happens, anyone close to those three traitors is going to go down with them. I’m not saying your son will be killed, you understand . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Giroie assured him.

  ‘Just that his reputation will be severely damaged. And that wouldn’t be good for you or your family either. But if he’s already left de Gacé . . .’

  ‘Then we’ll all be better off. I understand completely.’

  ‘Good, then you know what you have to do.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Brother Conan retired to the chamber Giroie had provided for him. His host closed the door behind him and then returned to his own quarters. Though he had lived in Normandy for many years, he still considered himself a Breton at heart, and he felt a sense of loyalty to Count Alan. He had also pledged his allegiance to Duke William. This quarrel did not threaten the duke directly, since both sides were aiming to control the boy rather than replace him, so the only question worthy of Giroie’s consideration was: where did his best interests lie? It took him a while to decide, and when he did, he gave a wry, regretful shake of the head. It was very sad, but there really was no getting away from what had to be done. He went to the chamber where his oldest son was sleeping and shook his shoulder.

  ‘Get up,’ he whispered. ‘Come with me.’

  Arnold got out of bed, wrapped a woollen cloak over his nightshirt and followed his father back to the chamber where he had sat drinking with Conan of Saint-Briac.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you to do, boy, and it won’t be pleasant. That monk you met at dinner, Conan of Briac . . .’

  ‘Nice man,’ Arnold nodded.

  ‘Yes, very nice,’ Giroie agreed. ‘Unfortunately, however, I need you to kill him.’

  ‘Kill him? Why?’

  ‘Because I tell you to. The only thing you need to know is that this is for the good of the family. Take some men, at least half a dozen, because Conan was a damn good soldier and he can still look after himself. Dress in ordinary clothes. No armour, no shields, no emblems of any kind. He’ll be heading for the Rouen road; ambush him in the woods between here and Pomont. Make sure there are no witnesses. Got that?’

  Arnold swallowed hard, gritted his teeth and then nodded.

  ‘Good. Once he is dead, go straight on to Gacé and find Robert. Tell him to warn de Gacé that Alan of Brittany is planning to march into Normandy at the head of a bloody great army, with the specific intention of making sure that he, Talou and Archbishop Mauger never get anywhere near the ducal throne. So if he and his pals have any intention at all of seizing power, they’d better deal with Alan before he deals with them.’

  He looked at his son, who nodded again and said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘That’s good, but I need to be certain that you’ve remembered the message, exactly as I told it to you. So we’re going to go through it all until you’ve got it engraved in your head, and then you’re going to pick your best men, get them and their horses fed and watered and be out of here before dawn.’

  Conan of Saint-Briac died, as planned, the following morning, though he took two of Arnold Fitzgiroie’s best men with him as he went. The warning message got through to Ralph de Gacé, who immediately sent two of his fastest riders off to Rouen and the castle of Arques to warn Archbishop Mauger and Talou respectively. They met in Rouen a week later, gathering outside the chapel at the ducal palace one morning after mass, where anyone could see them: just three of the duchy’s most influential men having a convivial chat. De Gacé, who had long ago realised that he was far brighter than his two cousins, pointed out that their options were limited. ‘We can’t start raising an army of our own. That would only attract attention and prove Count Alan’s point.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Mauger asked, as nervous and twitchy as ever.

  ‘We’ll have to remove Alan discreetly, without anyone knowing we’ve done it.’

  ‘What do you mean, remove?’

  De Gacé gave an exasperated sigh. ‘What do you think I mean? We’ll have to kill him. Or rather I’ll have to kill him, because clearly neither of you is capable of doing it.’

  ‘How?’

  De Gacé thought for a moment. ‘There is one person I might be able to find to do the job. But if I remove this potentia
lly deadly threat to our plans, I expect some kind of reward.’

  Now Talou butted in. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  De Gacé thought for a moment. ‘I want control of the Norman militia and the complete estates of either Brionne or Herfastsson. I’m not fussy.’

  ‘But then you’d be—’

  ‘One of the largest landowners in Normandy, with an army at my beck and call, that’s right. But, Cousin Talou, you would be the duke, and of course, Mauger, you would still be archbishop.’

  ‘But you’d . . . well, you’d practically be able to tell us what to do.’

  De Gacé smiled. ‘What can I say? I’m my father’s son . . .’

  10

  Vaudreuil, Normandy and Alençon

  Her first-given name had been Finna. For her trade she called herself Jarl. But there was a secret name that her master had given her and that she held to her heart as her true name. The only other person who knew the name would not say it, for he felt he could not shape the word with the perfection that she deserved, though he could and did write it in liquid Arabic script. This name was Jamila, which meant beautiful, for so she had been as a girl and so she remained as a woman.

  Jamila was a loving and dutiful wife to Mahomet, the profoundly deaf Nubian whom she had first met on the road from Damascus to the sea. When she played the role of Jarl, Mahomet acted as her bodyguard, ever obedient to her gestured commands, never uttering a sound for fear that his attempts to articulate might leave him open to mockery and thus dissipate the effect of his presence. She accepted the necessity of this reversal of the proper order, for she was the one who was adept in the poisoner’s art while he, whose body was as mighty as his skin was black, intimidated even the most arrogant and warlike of Normans and thus protected her. Still it offended her, and whenever they returned from an encounter with a potential client, or the actual execution of a contract, she was careful to reassure her man of her obedience and respect.

  Jamila took pleasure in the simple, repetitive tasks of cooking, cleaning and laundering; tending to the gardens of flowers, herbs and fruits; minding the few animals they kept. All these things brought normality to her life, and she appreciated the moments, even hours, of boredom as the perfect antidote to the violence, fear and abuse that had scarred her early life. It was, in any case, a simple matter to relieve any tedium. All she had to do was think of Mahomet’s body lying next to hers, or on top of her, and the way he made her seem so pale and insubstantial that she hardly felt like a physical being at all, but more like a spirit, an accumulation of senses as the smell of him filled her nostrils and the taste of him her mouth, and every part of her body was alive to his slightest touch.

  She smiled now at the thought of his love, and then scolded herself for her impiety. She was rolling up the prayer mats after they had both taken part in salat, the ritual of prayer that, whenever possible, they performed five times a day. Mahomet had become deaf as the result of a disease contracted in childhood. He had by then already learned the rak’ah: the sequence of bowing before God, standing, prostrating, sitting and standing again, along with the words of the prayers that accompanied each posture. Over the years, no longer being able to hear himself, he had lost the ability to say the words clearly, yet Jamila was happy to let him lead salat, both because it was proper that he should do so and also because the Lord most high, the most praiseworthy and magnificent, would surely comprehend the sincerity of his faith and hear with perfect clarity the words he was struggling to say.

  They lived in the overgrown ruins of an ancient Roman villa, chosen for its remote location in a forest clearing and also because its shape, with the body of the house wrapped around a central courtyard, reminded them of the houses they had both known in Damascus. For many years they had shared the house and its gardens with a handful of acolytes who had assisted Jamila in the cultivation of poisonous plants and their conversion into deadly toxins. Since the death of the archbishop, however, and Jamila’s decision to retire from her trade, these followers had left her and, having agreed among themselves to avoid the possibility of direct rivalries, dispersed across the known world: to Cologne, Milan, Léon, Venice and even Byzantium. So now Jamila and Mahomet lived alone, and she no longer had to pretend to be a Christian man but could instead be her true, female, Muslim self.

  As she cleaned and tidied the house, Mahomet was elsewhere on the property, engaged in building work. Much of the ruins was still overgrown or even buried. But Mahomet had come across a structure – a floor supported on pillars over a very shallow cellar – that reminded him of the steam baths he had known in Damascus. He had decided to see if he could build a bathhouse of their own, using water diverted from a nearby stream and a fire fed by wood from the forest, for of all the infidel habits that Mahomet and Jamila found offensive, none was worse than their lack of cleanliness.

  It made Jamila content to think of Mahomet engaged in his labours while she busied herself with her own. Soon she would take him a drink of hot water infused with herbs, and later she would bring bread and cheese for his midday meal. She had made a small cake, too. There was a boy, a skinny, nimble-footed child as untamed as a forest animal, whom she’d often spotted in the woods near the house, though he had never summoned up the courage to come and talk to her. He looked as though he needed a decent meal, and so if she was ever baking for herself and Mahomet, she always added a little something for her visitor and put it out for him to find, knowing that it would vanish before the day was out.

  One of these days I’ll persuade that child to come out from the trees and say hello, she thought. It’s all a matter of patience and time, and I have plenty of both.

  Ralph de Gacé had never forgotten the discussion about the mysterious figure who undertook murders for money, but neither had he done as much as he’d intended to track the man down. There’d been no immediate need, and he’d been fully occupied building his growing status among Duke William’s guardians, who were steadily and gratifyingly coming to see him as an equal. Now, though, he recalled a conversation he’d had with his near neighbour Talvas of Bellême, whose castle at Alençon could be reached in a single day’s hard ride from his own estate.

  Over dinner in the great hall at Alençon, well over a year after the archbishop’s funeral, de Gacé had happened to mention, as no more than a passing remark, Osbern’s theory that the old man might have been murdered, possibly by the same killer who had done for Duke Richard III.

  Talvas was always entertained by the idea of violent death. ‘Now that’s an interesting notion!’ he said, with unfeigned enthusiasm. ‘But before we go any further, can I just ask you: did you kill him?’

  De Gacé was so surprised by Talvas’s question that he had swallowed some wine down the wrong way, coughing and spluttering, showering the table and several of the other guests with wine and spittle. He had required a good while and several hearty slaps on the back before he could finally answer. ‘No, of course I didn’t! I’d hardly have raised the subject if I had, would I?’

  ‘Probably not, but I had to ask,’ Talvas had replied, untroubled by the other man’s discomfort. ‘Anyone who wanted him dead must have had something to gain from it. Your brothers stood to inherit the family titles and estates, but neither of them has got the balls to kill a chicken for the pot, let alone their own father. So that leaves you, but you say you didn’t do it, and oddly enough, I believe you.’

  ‘How very kind . . .’

  ‘As for that sorry excuse for a duke, Richard, if anyone killed him, it was his brother. That pilgrimage Robert went on was the closest thing anyone’s ever going to see to a signed confession. Why the hell else would he feel he had to disappear off to Jerusalem?’

  ‘That’s true enough. So you don’t believe this story of a killer for hire?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I’ve certainly heard a few stories over the years. He’s supposed to be kno
wn as the Viper . . .’ Talvas had laughed as if at a private joke and went on, ‘I can’t remember, have you met my daughter Mabel?’

  ‘No. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘It’s just that I used to tell the children to behave themselves or the Viper would come in the middle of the night and kill them with his venom. My boy Arnulf, who’s a great disappointment I’m afraid to say, used to wet the bed with fear. His young brother Oliver wasn’t born in those days, so perhaps I should test him now. He’ll do well to match his sister, though. Bless her, Mabel is made of sterner stuff. There’s a girl a man can be proud of – she absolutely loved the idea of the Viper. She used to make me tell all sorts of tall stories about him. She even tried to poison one of my dogs with a mixture of vinegar and crushed belladonna berries. Christ, that bloody hound was sick. Covered half the castle in its vomit. But it survived, much to Mabel’s fury.’

  ‘Delightful, I’m sure,’ said de Gacé. ‘But do you actually know anything at all about this Viper?’

  Talvas had given a dismissive shrug. ‘Not much. The story goes that the only way you can get in touch with him is to go to some filthy inn down by the docks in Vaudreuil and ask the old boy who owns it to put you in touch. God knows how he does it, but apparently the Viper gets the message. He’s got some Moor, black as an ebony chess piece and bigger than any other man in Normandy, they say, who guards him. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.’ Talvas suddenly grinned. ‘Ah, speak of the devil!’

  De Gacé turned his head towards where Talvas was looking and saw a dowdy, shabbily dressed woman, who walked with her head held down, only glancing up occasionally to see where she was going, leading two children towards the high table. Only when she came much closer did he recognise her as Talvas’s wife, Hildeburg. She stepped up on to the dais and walked towards her husband’s place at the centre of the table. As she came closer, de Gacé could see that she was actually shaking with nerves. He had a sudden memory of his own boyhood as the ugly, scrawny butt of everyone’s contempt, from the couple who acted as his adoptive parents down to the lowliest servants.