‘Did she give you the casket?’
‘She did. That’s why I’m here – to thank you for the endowment and the gift of land, and also to seek your permission. Duke Robert is still in Cardiff Castle and no one can see him. You and I are the only members of the Brethren at liberty, and I need your sanction …’
I was aware that I didn’t have much time; I had vexed the King, who would surely be searching every shire in the land to hunt me down.
‘I have decided to leave for Constantinople and the Peloponnese as soon as the winds are favourable. My mother told me where my grandfather’s mountain eyrie is. I am going to see it, to spend some time and reflect there. I am sure he is long dead and buried, but I want to be sure he is properly in the ground. I am also going to see the Emperor, John Comnenus, to thank him for his father’s very generous legacy. My mother told me he will give me the fabled Talisman of Truth and ask me to be its guardian.’
‘You don’t need my agreement for any of that.’
‘I know, but my purpose in coming here is to tell you of a new Brotherhood …’
I recounted the oath I had sworn as a founder member of the Knights Templar, and told Prince Edgar of the men whose valour and virtue had attracted me to the Order.
‘We wear the cross of Christ and are sworn to poverty, chastity, piety and obedience in the service of God and our fellow men. We are strong supporters of the Mos Militum, the code of chivalry that all knights should follow.’
‘It sounds very worthy, but a little strict! I wish you every success.’
‘Thank you. I confess, I have some doubts about my vocation to follow the code, but I hope to resolve them soon.’
I had one last question for the Prince: he had been there when my father died, and I needed to know that he had died bravely – a noble knight, just like my grandfather.
‘He did; he took a lance intended for Duke Robert. Your father was a very brave man; it was my honour to know him.’
For about an hour, the Prince offered me his precious memories of my family, and as much wisdom from his life as he could. At the end, he gave me his blessing and one very important piece of advice.
‘Wherever your destiny takes you and whatever it leads you to do, always remember your past and the legacy you have inherited. It will not only be your guide, it will also bring meaning to your life and to the lives of those who follow you. Your grandfather once told me that that was the message he had learned from the Talisman of Truth. When the Emperor, John Comnenus, passes it on to you, I’m sure he will help you understand the wisdom of that message. Go carefully, Harold of Hereford.’
I left Prince Edgar’s remote hall feeling rejuvenated. Although I had lost my mother and was a fugitive in my homeland, I felt that I had been handed my family’s mantle of responsibility.
Eadmer was waiting patiently for me where I had left him.
‘I don’t like this place. It puts the fear of God into me.’
‘I agree, it’s not the most welcoming of places.’
‘I feel I’ve had eyes on me since we arrived. Let’s make haste to Durham.’
The sun was just cresting the hilltops as we rode downstream eastwards. Then Eadmer saw a figure silhouetted by the sun.
‘Look, there!’
Standing alone, no more than fifteen yards away, was a motionless figure. He wore a simple grey robe of wool, tied at the waist. His long grey hair and beard almost obscured a heavy silver chain and amulet around his neck, while in his right hand he held a long oak staff topped by a ram’s skull crowned by enormous horns. He stared at us, unmoving.
‘He’s a Celt; he looks like a Druid. Let’s keep moving!’
I wished him a good morning in Celtic.
‘Bore da, syr.’
After a moment, he offered us a slight nod of his head. We rode on, but when I looked back over my shoulder, he was gone.
Eadmer was relieved.
‘I really don’t like this place. They say the Celts will cut off your head and stick it on a pole.’
‘I share your unease; I’ll feel better when we’ve reached Wolsingham.’
Constantinople had to be my next port of call – and I intended wasting no time getting there.
We followed the River Wear all the way to Monkswearmouth, from where we found a succession of trading boats and worked our way down the east coast until we reached Wivenhoe in Essex. A busy port with regular trade to the Low Countries, we paid for passage on a ship bound for Antwerp.
As we had previously travelled to the south through the lands of the Franks and across the Alps, this time we decided to take a more easterly route. We journeyed through the Germanic lands of the Holy Roman Empire, a vast domain stretching from the cool North Sea to the warm Mediterranean. It contained a myriad of tribes and languages: some of its people were pale of skin and spoke tongues not unlike the Norse of my ancestors, while others were swarthy and had languages akin to the Veneto I had learned in Venice.
Rather than buy horses in Antwerp, we sailed north to the mouth of the Rhine and used its trading barges to travel upstream through Lotharingia and Swabia, joining the Neckar at Mannheim before travelling overland to Ulm, where we were able to join the Danube. Our progress was leisurely: the great cities of Vienna and Budapest alternated with remote forests and towering crags. We stopped several times to admire the different cultures and customs of the countless fiefdoms we passed through. Sometimes we stayed just a day or two, but on other occasions – in fascinating locations such as Linz, Bratislava and Belgrade – we stayed far longer.
The only constant was the boatmen – and their cargoes, an endless caravan of every conceivable form of artefact, chattel and merchandise. We saw sacks of grain and butts of wine, crates of timber and wool, tethered animals of every species, and human traffic by the score.
It was the turn of the year by the time we were disgorged into the Black Sea and another week before we were sailing through the Bosphorus, with the dome of the magnificent Hagia Sophia in sight.
17. Birthplace
Everything I had been told about Constantinople turned out to be true – except that not even the most redolent words could equal the breathtaking impact of the city’s first impressions. The mighty walls – the largest in the known world, with nine major gates – were said to be big enough to allow an entire army to be positioned on them. Its palaces and churches were larger and grander than anywhere else. Its hippodrome could hold 100,000 people in a city that was said to house half a million people.
The city’s greatest glory is the Hagia Sophia, the finest building in the world, a place where my grandmother, Torfida, had exchanged ideas with Christendom’s most learned men, and which she had described as ‘heaven on earth’. Said to be over 500 years old by the time she saw it, my mother said that the dome of the great church was a masterpiece of architecture, based on calculations Torfida understood and had explained to her, but ones that no mason she had ever met would attempt to replicate in stone.
After several days wondering at the sights of the city and enjoying its food and wine, we made our way to its north-west corner, to the Blachernae, the Emperor’s private residence hard against and high above its impregnable walls – the place where I was born.
Cooled by fresh winds from the Golden Horn, the present emperor’s father, Alexius I, had decided to move to the Blachernae during his reign to escape the heat and dust of the Great Palace in the centre of the city. Of course I had no recollection of the palace; as I stood outside its marbled entrance, an awestruck stranger from a distant land, it was hard to imagine that I had taken my first breaths inside its walls.
The entrance was guarded by two sentries who, from their appearance and armour, must have been Varangians, the le
gendary personal bodyguards to the Emperor. Exceptionally tall, the one fair and the other red-headed, they looked like battle-hardened Norse Berserkers or Saxon housecarls. Indeed, most recruits to the Guard hailed from northern Europe, including the few housecarls who had survived Senlac Ridge with King Harold. Eadmer nodded at the guards and spoke to them in English and then in Norse, but they ignored him – they were too disciplined to converse while on duty.
A bailiff and two young assistants sat under a canopy outside the gates, surrounded by a melee of supplicants trying to gain access to the palace. We stood in what vaguely resembled a queue as I practised my Greek. After half an hour, I was at the front of the line of people.
‘I am Harold of Hereford, Knight Commander of Venice. I wish to have an audience with His Majesty, the Emperor, John Comnenus.’
The Byzantine Empire was notable for many things, one of which was its labyrinthine bureaucracy. The bailiff had not looked up during the entire time we had been there – he was busy instead taking a log of the visitors – but he did when I spoke to him, and with a supercilious grin on his face.
‘You have to have a lawyer to petition here. And even then, no one has an audience with the Emperor. Go to your local lord.’
‘My grandfather was Hereward of Bourne, known here as Godwin of Ely, Captain of the Varangian Guard under the Emperor Alexius.’
The bailiff stopped grinning and everyone around us fell silent.
‘Godwin of Ely is well known here. What is your business at the Blachernae?’
‘I was born here. My mother, Estrith, Abbess of Fécamp, and her companion, Adela of Bourne, came here from the Great Crusade in the Holy Land to be cared for by the Emperor’s physicians during her confinement.’
‘And why do you need to see Emperor John?’
‘His Imperial Majesty has been caring for something that belongs to my family. I am now its guardian and I have come to collect it.’
The bailiff was now more courteous and listening closely to what I had to say.
‘And may I know what this something is?’
‘It is called the Talisman of Truth.’
‘Come back tomorrow, Sir Knight. I will speak to one of the assistants to the Papias. He runs the Palace and may be able to speak to the Nobilissimus, who has the Emperor’s ear. You are fortunate that the Emperor is here. He is fighting two wars at the moment – against the Hungarians to the north and the Serbs to the west – we hardly see him in the city.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate your kindness.’
As Eadmer and I turned to leave, one of the Varangian Guards who had been so steadfastly silent spoke to us in English.
‘Sir, did you say you were the grandson of Godwin of Ely? And that he and Hereward of Bourne, leader of the English Revolt, were one and the same?’
‘I did.’
The two Varangians beamed at one another.
‘My grandfather was at Senlac Ridge with King Harold.’
‘And my grandfather was a housecarl with Morcar, Earl of Northumbria. He fought at Stamford Bridge against the Norse. Our families have been here for two generations. There are many English families; we still speak English to one another.’
I was thrilled to meet men whose grandfathers would have known Hereward.
‘It is an honour to meet men from such noble English families.’
‘No, sir, the honour is ours. To meet the grandson of a legend – in fact, two legends! May we shake your hand? I can’t wait to tell the garrison.’
There were smiles and handshakes all round.
I suddenly realized that a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. Now that the secrecy surrounding my birth was no longer necessary – and the Norman King of England was aware of our family history – the true accounts of our deeds over three generations could be known to all and sundry, and take their rightful place in the proud story of our nation.
We were back at the gates of the Blachernae very early the next morning, but had to wait until the middle of the afternoon for an answer from the bailiff. This time, he was not only polite but he actually bowed before addressing me.
‘Sir Harold, the Nobilissimus will escort you to the Emperor’s Audience Room in one hour. The Varangians will take you into the palace.’
With that, the two Englishmen we had met yesterday appeared, thumped their chests with the closed fist of the Varangians’ salute and strode through the gates ahead of us. Their long strides made us hurry, but I wanted to linger and admire the gleaming marble. I had seen marble before – as statues and high altars – but in the Blachernae the walls and floors were solid marble, as far as the eye could see, both outside and inside its sumptuous rooms. Carpets and tapestries the length of ten men were everywhere, as were gold, ivory, jade and polished wood of every hue.
In a room decorated from floor to ceiling with mosaics of past emperors, the Nobilissimus – a slight man with a wispy beard that led me to wonder whether he was a eunuch – greeted us with a nod of acknowledgement and beckoned to us to sit on a pair of gilded chairs.
‘The Emperor will be here in a while. He leaves for the Hungarian campaign in the morning; there is much to do. He will not be able to give you more than fifteen minutes.’
With our Varangians standing guard, we were left to gaze at the astonishingly lifelike mosaics. Wine, fresh lemon juice, bowls of fruit and cool towels appeared from time to time – all brought with an unruffled reverence by young servants. They were dressed in fine silk cream-coloured smocks, pale-blue braccae trousers, tied at the waist and ankles with cords, and the delicate chamois-leather slippers worn by all the Emperor’s household.
The refreshments were welcome and helped pass the time until the Emperor appeared. The low sun of an impending dusk filled the room with a golden light when the doors to John Comnenus’ private apartments opened with a flourish.
Preceded by a pair of Varangians and followed by a host of stewards and servants, the most powerful man in Christendom drifted into the room in the long imperial purple robe of his office. With him was the other John about whom I had heard so much – John Azoukh, the handsome and beguiling Seljuk slave, adopted by the Emperor’s father to be his lifelong companion.
While Azoukh, the slave by birth, looked every inch an emperor – with a profile that would grace any noble bust or coin of the realm – Comnenus, the Emperor by birth, was short, leathery-skinned, rather portly and some way short of handsome. Both were smiling from ear to ear as Eadmer and I sprang from our chairs.
We bowed deeply to our hosts.
John Comnenus, a man revered by his subjects and already held in even greater esteem than his illustrious father, grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me upright.
‘Harold of Hereford, what a pleasure to see you. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Let me introduce Lord John Azoukh, my Grand Domestic, Commander in Chief of my armies.’
‘My Lord Emperor, it is an honour to meet you. This is Eadmer, my sergeant-at-arms. I have heard so much about you and your father from my mother.’
‘I was a little young at the time when your parents and their companions were here – a boy of eleven, perhaps twelve – but you are now the third generation of your famous family that I have met.’
‘You flatter me, sire – especially coming from a Comneni Emperor, the most respected rulers in Christendom.’
‘If I remember correctly, you were born here in the Blachernae … something about a furtive birth, because your mother had taken Holy Orders?’
‘Indeed, sire, it is a complicated story. But your father was very generous in allowing me to be born here in secret.’
‘Come sit with me. I want to talk about the noble Godwin of Ely, as we know him – your
grandfather, Hereward of Bourne. I will have to be brief, because my commanders are fretting about the readiness of the army.’
Despite the pressure on his time, John Comnenus sat for over forty minutes and described how, nine years earlier – which, bizarrely, was about the time I was setting sail for the Holy Land with the Lady Livia – he and John Azoukh had travelled to the Western Peloponnese to meet my grandfather.
‘My father, Alexius, who had been Emperor for almost forty years, was dying, slowly and painfully. I was thirty years old, but my father thought I had led a sheltered life and lacked the wisdom and courage that came from struggle and adversity. He gave me an amulet that your grandfather had given to him when they became friends.’
‘The Talisman of Truth, sire. I have heard so much about it.’
‘My father told me that Godwin of Ely, who had served as Captain of his Varangians for many years, was the most worthy man he had ever met and that I should hear his story and learn from it. So, armed with the amulet, Prince John and I went to meet him in his mountain lair, guided by the local priest. Your grandfather was very old – I think he said he was over eighty – but he still had the aura of a mighty warrior and the presence of a sage. He told us the story of his amazing life and held us enthralled for three days. He said he had been waiting for our visit and that it would draw his life to a fitting end. I was very moved by the whole experience, as was Prince John.’
‘Yes, the Emperor is right. I will never forget our time with your grandfather – he was not only the greatest warrior Byzantium has ever had, he also possessed the wisdom of a seer. Wisdom and courage run in your family, you should be very proud.’
‘My Lord Prince, you are very kind.’
The Emperor began to look at his stewards. Time was passing.
‘Forgive me, but we must be on the road to the north early in the morning. So let me complete my account; I think it will give you great comfort. After your grandfather had finished his story, he died peacefully and contentedly, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. The final words he said to me were written down and have guided me throughout my reign.’
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