for seclusion in Normandy. He would not be released from captivity during the King’s lifetime. William had acted decisively against his closest ally — but it was the act of a king whose power was in rapid decline and who feared everyone around him.
‘Our boy did well, did he not, Edwin?’
‘He did, sire.’
‘Adela, you must be proud of your husband?’
‘I am, my Lord. It is a shame the King had not ordered his execution; if he had, I could have been the one to deliver the fatal blow!’
Our tour of duty of the King’s fortifications continued throughout the spring. England, as always at that time of year, was resplendent. We travelled to the south-west, to Montacute in Somerset and on to Exeter, Wells and Glastonbury. As we progressed, at every turn we witnessed a land beginning to prosper. Fields which the farmers had brought under their care were full of wheat and barley, and meadows that remained untamed were carpeted with wild flowers. There was game aplenty in the forests and the rivers teemed with fish.
It felt good to be alive.
Sweyn returned from Rouen in the summer and we continued our duties with Robert and his inspections around his father’s realm. As time went by, Robert took more and more opportunities to go hunting, taking time to explore each new forest, saying that England had the finest hunting he had ever encountered.
I was left to undertake the detail of the assessments and make regular reports to him. It was an ideal opportunity for me and for my companions to understand the meticulous attention to detail of Norman architecture and military planning, and we thus became absorbed by our work for many months.
Another major setback befell King William in November of 1083. His beloved wife, the diminutive yet formidable Matilda, died in Caen.
The King was inconsolable; he had been faithful to her throughout the entire thirty years of their marriage, while she had borne him ten children. It was Matilda who had held the family together, especially the ever-fractious Robert and Rufus.
We escorted Robert to the interment at his mother’s convent in Caen. The epitaph on her tomb was a perfect summary of what she meant to William and to Normandy:
The lofty structure of this splendid tomb
Hides great Matilda, sprung from royal stem.
Child of a Flemish duke, her mother was
Adela, a daughter of a King of France,
Sister of Henry, Robert’s royal son.
Married to William, most illustrious King,
She gave this site and raised this noble house,
With many hands and many goods endowed,
Given by her, or by her toil procured.
Comforter of the needy, duty’s friend,
Her wealth enriched the poor, left in her need.
At daybreak on November’s second day
She won her share of everlasting joy.
Throughout the entire service, William’s head remained bowed, his shoulders hunched. When he looked up, his eyes had the haunted look of a broken man.
There was much irony in the setting: where once William had towered over his acolytes, he now seemed to exist in their shadow. Their once doting eyes were insincere and, behind them, their machinations to bring about his imminent downfall and likely successor were almost palpable.
At the end, he had to be led away.
Robert announced that he would stay with his father in Rouen for the time being, so we decided that now was the time for us to undertake our journey to southern Italy.
We had become close friends — but while it was important for Robert to stay in Normandy, it was equally vital for me to seek a new challenge.
We parted like brothers.
‘Go well, Edgar. When we meet again, I expect to hear all the stories in detail and anticipate that they will include many tales of conquest — over fearsome warriors and dark, lusty maidens.’
‘I will try my best, Robert,’ I answered with a laugh, before turning to weightier matters. ‘Try and humour your father a little. The loss of your mother may make his temper even more difficult to control, but he is becoming increasingly isolated and will need your wise counsel and support.’
‘Perhaps, my friend… I’ll make the same pledge as you’ve just made to me — I’ll try my best.’
PART THREE
12. Adela’s Scars
Yet again, Robert was generous in allowing me to recruit a sturdy captain, six men-at-arms and sufficient silver for our expedition to Italy.
We travelled slowly, paying our respects along the way to all those to whom it would be an insult not to — and to many more who may, one day, be useful to us. We were treated with the greatest respect, much of it a result of understandable curiosity about the events we had lived through and witnessed.
Along the way, Sweyn and Adela repeated many times the stories they had heard about the impressive castle at Melfi in Apulia and of the worthy deeds of Hereward’s good friend Roger Guiscard, Count of Sicily.
The Guiscards were typical of the Normans of their day. Roger’s father, Tancred de Hauteville, had been a minor noble with a small estate near Coutances in the Cotentin Peninsula of western Normandy. His only real claim to fame was that, by two wives, over a period of almost thirty years, he sired a large brood of fearsome warriors and beautiful daughters — fifteen offspring in all. His daughters married well above their station in the Norman aristocracy, and no fewer than eight of his sons became counts. Roger was the youngest of them all.
Roger’s older brothers — William Iron Arm, Drogo and Humphrey — led the Norman mercenaries who gained control in southern Italy in the 1040s and, in turn, became Counts of Apulia.
Robert Guiscard, the ferocious sixth son of Tancred, still ruled in Melfi, where his reputation as an intimidating host even to his friends and allies persuaded us to continue on to Sicily, where we knew we would receive a much warmer welcome from his younger brother, Count Roger.
Sicily was unlike anything we had witnessed before. We had seen the wonders of Italy in Turin, Florence and Rome, where the ancient buildings made everything in northern Europe seem so new and brash. But Sicily had, until Robert brought it back under Christian rule only ten years earlier, been occupied by Islamic rulers for 250 years. The architecture was breathtaking, the food exotic, the languages incomprehensible and the customs mystifying.
We wallowed in it — especially Sweyn and Adela, who had during their childhood heard so much about the intoxicating world of Islam and the ancient cultures the Muslim people cherished.
Apart from Sicily’s more intriguing qualities, it was also as hot as a blacksmith’s furnace. We arrived in July 1084 with the temperatures soaring to the point where much of the middle of the day had to be spent in the shade with the necessity for minimal effort of any kind.
Roger’s court was at Palermo, a vast city of great wealth and antiquity. We had never seen so many people; it was much bigger than the great cities of Normandy and France and made Rome look like a small town. The buildings — the Ancient Greek and Roman temples and amphitheatres, the Moorish palaces and mosques of the Muslims and the new Norman fortresses and churches — were so numerous and on such a grand scale that it was impossible to count them or to appreciate their grandeur fully.
