household, the men who served their liege lord close and would die in battle to keep him safe, the reward for good service being the captaincy of a castle, maybe even lands and possibly a title of their own. Duke Robert had disabused him: he had no trust in the connection of bastard blood, even less in Tancred or his sons.
He would not allow any de Hauteville to serve him close, for fear of what they might do to his own born-out- of-wedlock son, who was now, following Robert’s death, the reigning Duke of Normandy. Rabidly ambitious himself, Robert could not be brought to even consider that these tall and sturdy boys were free of that trait, nor that the solemn vow Tancred had made to his own father would bind them to his service, a refusal which had brought them to this place and this conundrum.
‘We have no choice but to do now what we did then,’ William insisted. ‘We must look for good fortune elsewhere. I want to be sure that whatever I do I can count on your support.’
‘To whom else would we give it?’ asked Mauger, who could not hide the look in his eye, one that told all present how much he worshipped a brother many years his senior.
That brought forth a smile. ‘No one, Mauger, but I wish to remind you all we are bound together, that we are de Hautevilles, in the same way our father was wont to remind us-’
‘Endlessly,’ Humphrey interjected, champing those very prominent top teeth, he being one son who was sure he had never truly enjoyed his father’s love.
Geoffrey spoke next. ‘You are our leader by right as well as birth, William.’
‘Is it sacrilegious to puke in church?’ asked Drogo, though he grinned to make sure all understood he was joking.
‘From now on there are two worlds, that outside and ours. I will seek your support when there is no time to explain why, but know this: I will always act in all our interests, not just my own. I ask you, as our father did, to swear on the Holy Cross that you will follow me wherever that may lead us, and I ask you to renew the vow he made us all swear before we left Normandy, never to raise a weapon against each other.’
William hauled out his sword and knelt, the others following, each using hilt and pommel as a personal cross, to take the oath William had asked of them, their eyes fixed on the crucified Christ as they pledged their word.
‘You said elsewhere,’ Drogo said as they stood again. ‘Where would that be?’
‘Apulia.’
‘Why Apulia?’
That question was posed with a look of deep suspicion. William, he well knew, was capable of laying deep and long-sighted plans. He was also inclined to keep such things to himself and this time was no exception.
‘Wait and see. Now stir yourselves, it is time we ended our devotions and returned to camp.’
‘What devotions?’ Geoffrey demanded, a reasonable question since no prayers, barring the oath just taken, had been said.
William smiled. ‘The ones I told Rainulf were due today, a Mass for the soul of our late mother.’
‘But…’ Geoffrey paused before stating the obvious: this was not the day on which the mother he shared with everyone except young Mauger had passed away.
CHAPTER TWO
A mock tourney it might be, more a way of exercising fighting men to avoid them becoming rusty, rather than proper warfare, but today would, nevertheless, be brutal. No one should die, but none would emerge lacking a bruise and quite a few would need days in their cot to recover, added to the ministrations of their womenfolk and, perhaps, a mendicant monk from nearby Aversa. William de Hauteville, still the senior captain, had arranged the fighting contingents, several of them led by his own brothers — but if they were united by blood, they were also animated by the desire to prove their fighting worth; no sibling could expect gentility from another.
On the open agricultural plains of Campania, finding room to deploy four hundred mounted warriors presented little difficulty, and if some crops got trampled in the process, well, these were Rainulf’s own lands, the peasants his to command, the rich soil his to exploit, so they would be obliged to watch the destruction of their careful husbandry and ploughed fields in silence.
William, aware of this, and as a sop to their depleted larders, had arranged they should participate in the feast which would follow the tournament — several oxen were already roasting on spits — an act which had earned him a snort of disapproval from his chief.
‘They will not love you for it,’ Rainulf insisted, looking up at a man who towered over him by several hands, his purple-veined face censorious. ‘The Italian peasant understands only hard treatment, and if you are soft on them, your reward, one dark night, will most likely be a knife in the back.’
‘Part of the crops we destroy are theirs to live off. If we are taking the food from their mouths, it does no harm to put some back.’
‘My crops, my food! I could overrule you.’
‘You could,’ William replied, his tone as cold as his stare.
The locked eyes and stony expressions, which followed that exchange, underlined how things had altered between these men in the last two and a half years. At one time Rainulf would have welcomed the suggestion from a man he trusted absolutely; now there was some doubt if he could tolerate the speaker’s presence.
‘It is time and Prince Guaimar is waiting,’ William said, indicating with a finger that the powerful Italian sun was well past its zenith, that the day was cooling and so it was time to commence the tourney.
Mention of his titular overlord had Rainulf looking to the elevated, shaded pavilion he had erected so the party from Salerno could watch the tourney in comfort. Prince Guaimar, at a mere twenty years still looking too young for his title, was seated next to his wife and young son, she holding a newly born daughter still at the suckling stage, while his sister, Berengara, her radiant beauty evident even at a distance, sat on their left. On the right of the prince sat another Lombard called Arduin of Fassano, a fellow known to William but not to Rainulf. Behind the prince, alongside the various officials from Guaimar’s court, sat Rainulf’s slender young concubine, his new bedmate, holding his restless child, Hermann.
‘Odd,’ Rainulf observed, with no attempt to disguise a degree of contempt. ‘Guaimar is a prince who has never led men, never seen a real battle, yet I, who have seen and spilt much blood, must bow to his title.’
William was about to reply that the prince had in his veins the blood of his forbears, but he checked himself: to mention such a lineage was to raise the spectre of Rainulf’s bastard son, a subject best avoided.
‘He has the good sense to let we Normans do his fighting.’
‘The other fellow, Arduin, you know him from Sicily?’
‘I do.’
‘And?’ Rainulf said querulously, not happy at having to drag out information.
‘A good soldier, he commanded the contingent of pikemen from Apulia, and given they were reluctant to serve, he trained and led them well.’
‘Trustworthy?’
‘He’s a Lombard, Rainulf.’
The squat older Norman nodded, which made the spare flesh under his chin more pronounced; that remark required no further clarification for a man who knew the Lombards better than most and shared with them a history of conspiracy.
‘Any notion of why he is here?’
William knew very well why he was here: realising that Rainulf was intent on breaking his word regarding the succession, he had gone to see Prince Guaimar in Salerno, and, in a disappointing interview, in which he had tried and failed to get him to remind his vassal of his promise, the prince had told him about Arduin and his appointment as the topoterites of Melfi. He had also told him of the plan to betray his new master, Michael Doukeianos. It was telling that Guaimar had yet to inform Rainulf.
‘My guess is he will be looking for lances.’
‘To fight where?’
William just shrugged.
‘Then it is time we showed him of what we are made.’
Rainulf was now too long in the tooth to spend much time in the saddle; he would watch with Guaimar, and
