The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  The boy was as stubborn as he was strong-willed. He was tall and strongly built for his age, with a bright thatch of ginger hair to match his fiery temper, and once he’d said no to something, wild horses couldn’t drag him to a yes. Still, Judith had to try.

  ‘Forgive me, Your Grace,’ she implored him, ‘but you must get up. It’s His Grace the archbishop’s funeral today, and before that the reading of his will.’

  Judith allowed herself occasionally to treat her charge just like any other child, for his sake as much as hers. So her next effort was more informal. ‘Come on, William, you really do have to be at the funeral. The people need to see their duke on such an important occasion, and the archbishop was your great-uncle, after all.’

  ‘Don’t care. Won’t go.’

  Judith reached down and took hold of his arm. ‘Up we get,’ she said, giving a gentle tug.

  In an instant, William wrenched his arm from her grasp, rolled his body out of her reach, cast off his bedcover and sprang to his feet. ‘How dare you touch me?’ he shouted. ‘I am the Duke of Normandy! I don’t have to go anywhere if I don’t want to! Not unless the King of France himself tells me to.’

  Judith knew she was beaten, for now at any rate. She needed reinforcements, and she had just the man in mind.

  William watched Judith walk disapprovingly out of the room. Then he fell back down on to his bed and wriggled under the covers. He had decided he was going to stay in bed all day. He didn’t know what the reading of a will even was, and he certainly wasn’t going to the funeral. His great-uncle’s body was lying in Our Lady of Rouen Cathedral for everyone to see, but that was the very last thing in the whole world that William wanted to do. He’d never seen a dead body, not close up, anyway, and certainly not someone he knew. He didn’t want to start with his own great-uncle. And there was something else too, something he couldn’t tell anyone that meant he absolutely could not bring himself to set eyes upon the archbishop’s corpse.

  William hated even thinking about it. He rolled on to his side and pulled a pillow over his head, as if it could block his thoughts as effectively as it cut out the light and sound of the outside world. Within a couple of minutes, he was dozing again.

  ‘Your Grace . . . Your Grace?’

  William opened his eyes at the sound of a familiar, male voice. Osbern Herfastsson was much, much older than William, so old that his hair was almost entirely grey. He was William’s steward, the most important man in the ducal household, having been his father’s steward before that. And he was a member of the House of Normandy, descended on his mother’s side from Duke Rollo, the founder of their dynasty. So even though he was William’s vassal, Osbern was a man who had to be treated with respect.

  ‘Yes?’ said William cautiously.

  ‘May I ask you a question?’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Osbern let the word hang teasingly in the air, ‘would you like to see a man who has a face like a donkey?’

  William hadn’t been expecting that. His surprise made him do something very unusual: he giggled. ‘What, an actual, real donkey?’

  ‘Yes, an actual donkey,’ said Osbern. ‘In fact, he looks so much like a donkey that he’s known as Ralph Donkey-Head.’

  William frowned. ‘Are you sure, Osbern? I mean, have you seen him?’

  ‘No, not yet. Ralph was raised in the country, away from everyone else. For all I know, he spends his days in a field and sleeps in a stable overnight.’

  William burst out laughing. ‘No one lives in a stable!’

  ‘A man with a donkey’s head might. Anyway, he arrived here last night, and he’ll be at the reading of the will. So if you want to see him, you have to be there too. Archbishop Robert’s widow doesn’t want him to come to the actual funeral.’

  ‘Why not?’ William asked.

  Osbern did not know how to reply. Ralph was illegitimate, the son of a long-forgotten concubine. But William was a bastard son too, and it would hardly do to tell a duke, even one so young, that there was something dishonourable about his status.

  William, however, saved Osbern’s blushes. ‘Doesn’t she want a donkey in the church?’ he sniggered, before collapsing in hysterics at his own joke.

  ‘Something like that, I should think. Come on now, get dressed and we’ll go and see if this Ralph fellow really does look like an ass.’

  This time William leapt to his feet and was dressed and breakfasted in no time. He and Osbern, accompanied by a troop of mounted guards, rode from the ducal palace in Rouen, across the city to the abbey of Saint-Ouen, where the abbot was waiting to greet him.

  He led William and Osbern to the chamber where he would soon be reading the archbishop’s will. The document’s principal beneficiaries were already there, waiting for the event to begin. Among them were the archbishop’s three sons – he had never seen any reason to practise chastity, reasoning that as well as being Normandy’s most senior prelate, he was also the Count of Évreux, and as such had a duty to produce an heir. Not everyone in Normandy, or the Vatican, come to that, agreed with his self-serving justification for ignoring the priestly vows of celibacy, and there were those who suggested that God Himself might be of the same view, for He had not blessed the archbishop with the offspring that a man of his strength, good looks, animal vigour and brilliant mind might have expected.

  His oldest son, and the heir to the title of Count of Évreux, was named Richard, after the archbishop’s father, Duke Richard I, whom the people knew as ‘Richard Fearless’. Sadly, his younger namesake was not so much fearless as desperately mediocre. There was nothing particularly wrong with him. He was healthy, decent and lacking in any apparent vices. He gave generously to a number of religious foundations, just as any proper Christian with money to spare was supposed to do. But compared to his father, he was a docile carthorse next to a rearing, snorting charger.

  The archbishop’s second son, William, had been a sickly boy, and the very fact that he had survived at all seemed the most that could be said for him.

  Then came the third, apparently even less well-favoured child, who was now nearly twenty years old. This was Ralph de Gacé, and the moment Duke William clapped eyes on him, he called out in his piping treble voice, ‘You’re right, Cousin Osbern, he does look like a donkey!’

  Ralph de Gacé winced like a man being whipped on an open wound. Though he had grown in the years since he first acquired his nickname from the taunting bullies in the village that butted up against the small, run-down castle in which he had been raised, he remained a deeply unattractive specimen. His eyes, half covered by an unkempt mass of dull brown hair, were watery and bulged from their sockets. His nose and face were long and framed on either side by a pair of oversized ears, while his lips were barely able to stretch over protruding upper and lower teeth, beneath which was a weak receding chin. There really was no denying that he did look very much like a donkey.

  His eyes narrowed for a moment as he shot a look of undiluted noxious hatred at William. The young duke did not see the venom in Ralph’s eyes, being too busy saying hello to his uncles Mauger and Talou. Though their father was Duke Richard II, William’s grandfather, they were barely a decade older than the boy duke. They were also legitimate, which William was not, and thus, as they both well knew, had reason to insist that their claim to the dukedom was at least as great as his.

  As he lay on his deathbed, the archbishop had summoned William and warned him that these two uncles of his were reaching an age when they would become ambitious for power. ‘Beware them both, my boy!’ he’d said in a weak, trembling voice that had upset William because it was so unlike the all-powerful great-uncle he had known. Now he looked at the pair of them, his face furrowed in concentration as he wondered how he was supposed to spot the signs of his uncles’ ambition. Mauger didn’t look like someone who could do him any
harm. He was thin and nervy, forever glancing around and giving little twitches of his mouth and head. Talou, on the other hand, reminded him of Osbern’s descriptions of his dead Uncle Richard, the one that people said his papa had killed. Richard had been big, strong, and warlike, but his weakness, said Osbern, was a lack of intelligence. ‘He had no kindness, either,’ the steward had added. ‘In time, perhaps, he might have earned his people’s fear and even their respect. But he would never have had the love that a truly great ruler receives.’

  Talou didn’t look like someone who was interested in being clever or kind. He was big, with a face covered in white-tipped red spots, and he walked with his shoulders hunched forward as if he was constantly searching for someone to punch.

  ‘What are you looking at, Cousin?’ Talou asked, catching William’s eye and taking a single, menacing step towards him.

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to your duke in that fashion, boy,’ Osbern Herfastsson growled, placing himself between the two of them.

  ‘And don’t you dare speak to the son of a duke in that one,’ Talou retorted. He stood there smugly, obviously pleased with his reply.

  Osbern leaned forward so that his face was up close to Talou’s. ‘You haven’t been to war, have you, boy?’

  William was fascinated. He’d always known Osbern as a friendly, even loving figure. He’d never seen this side of his character before.

  Talou shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Well I have. When you weren’t even a glimmer in your father’s eyes, I stood side by side with him in the blood and the shit, fighting the English, the Bretons, the French and anyone else who thought they could take what belonged to Normandy. I was proud to call Richard the Good my commander and my duke, and he was gracious enough to call me cousin and friend. When I see you fight – I mean, really fight, when your life could be lost at any moment God chooses – then I’ll decide whether to show you the respect you seem to think you deserve. But until then, I will address you as the boy that you are.’

  The abbot observed the whole scene with a growing sense of foreboding. He’d caught the way Ralph had looked at William. He’d seen how Mauger glanced around like a jackdaw, ever in search of something shiny to take for himself; and there had been no mistaking the resentment in Talou’s eye. Once again the abbot asked himself whether the archbishop had done the right thing in choosing to gather together the boy duke and the young men with the greatest reason to oppose him. ‘That is the whole point!’ the archbishop had insisted, as he prepared to dictate his wishes to a monk from the abbey, in the presence of the abbot and one of his chaplains. ‘My only hope is to craft a will that ties them all closely to William, that gives them the maximum reason to follow him and offers as little incentive as possible to rise up in rebellion.’

  The two men had been colleagues in the Church and friends for more years than either could count. So the abbot had felt able to be frank. ‘Honestly, Robert, do you really think this will make the slightest bit of difference? I fear that dissension and even open revolt are inevitable. When there is a weak hand on the tiller, stronger hands will seek to steer the boat.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ the archbishop replied with a sigh. ‘But if I can just distract them and keep them from making their challenges until William has grown strong enough to repel them, then I will have done as much to save my family as it could possibly expect.’

  ‘Or deserve,’ the abbot had added wryly.

  Now the archbishop was dead, and it was time to reveal the contents of his will. The abbot picked up the parchment that lay rolled and sealed on the table in front of him. ‘Your Grace, my lords, this is the final will and testament of His Grace Robert, Archbishop of Rouen,’ he began.

  ‘I can attest that what I am about to read to you represents His Grace’s true intentions, vouchsafed when he was sound in mind and body and sworn to in the sight of God. His Grace wrote as follows . . .’

  2

  Five knights mounted on mighty chargers forced their way through the crowds in Rouen’s Cathedral Square like dogs through a herd of milling, empty-headed sheep. Their wooden saddles were as high as the heads of the common folk who scurried to get out of their way, and they were followed by a troop of foot soldiers and a large uncovered horse-drawn wagon in which sat a middle-aged matriarch and her four daughters.

  At the head of the column rode a man who wore no armour, yet whose entire demeanour somehow suggested that his body alone was as impenetrably hard as the iron from which his horse’s shoes had been forged. His name was Giroie, Lord of Échauffour. He had come from a modest background in Brittany, but though he lacked the education and finesse of those with more noble blood, he possessed one very valuable, tradeable skill: he knew how to fight. He was equally competent with a sword, a lance, an axe or just his bare hands, and to this skill he added unmatched courage and fortitude, combined with raw cunning and boundless ambition.

  More than twenty years had passed since Giroie first made his name. An army from the county of Maine had crossed the border into south-east Normandy. The local Norman forces, led by the Count of Bellême, fled rather than fight the invaders, but Giroie and his small band of men stood their ground against overwhelming odds and then went on the offensive themselves, chasing the enemy right out of the duchy. A grateful Duke Richard II had given him two fine estates and the lordships that came with them. Now Giroie was part of the aristocracy, but he knew as well as anyone that he was just a parvenu, a self-made man. The favours that had been bestowed on him could be removed just as swiftly. So he had abandoned his military campaigning and devoted his energies to the creation of a dynasty.

  Giroie had been blessed in this enterprise with a wonderfully fertile wife, Gisela, who had given him seven sons and four daughters. The oldest of his boys, Arnold, was his heir and had been set aside to run the family estates. The others were being farmed off one by one to serve other, more eminent families. His daughters, meanwhile, had been groomed for the marriage market. By these means Giroie wanted to create a warrior clan linked by ties of service, marriage and eventually kinship with as many of the great houses of Normandy as possible, so that in time, they too could count themselves among the highest in the land.

  Now Giroie rode through the middle of Rouen with four of his sons, who all bore the newly minted family name of Fitzgiroie. No passer-by would need a name, however, to know that they were related. It was obvious at a glance, not just from the heavy jaws and prominent, glowering brows they shared with their father, but also from a general belligerence. No son of Giroie’s had ever turned his back on a fight, and it showed.

  All around them, however, the atmosphere was anything but combative. As sad and even shocking as the archbishop’s death might have been, his passing was rapidly turning into an impromptu feast day. Food stalls had been set up around the square, and traders were taking advantage of the mass of hungry and thirsty townsfolk to tout their wares. Minstrels and clowns competed with gipsy fortune-tellers for the attention and pennies of the crowd, and small children raced between the grown-ups playing games of tag, fighting, giggling or simply burning off their boundless energy and high spirits.

  Giroie led his column through the teeming multitudes. Those who recognised him and knew his reputation hurried to get out of his way. Anyone who, through ignorance or unwise defiance, failed to move voluntarily found that Giroie and his sons were happy to use their horses as battering rams and simply barge their way through, lashing out at those who strayed within kicking range and shouting curses and threats at any man who dared approach the wagon in which their womenfolk were riding.

  Up ahead, Giroie could see the cathedral. Much of its facade was hidden behind a web of flimsy wooden scaffolding, for the archbishop had commissioned a tremendous programme of expansion and improvement. Masons had come to the city from all over north-west France and the provinces of the Low Countries. One tower to the
left of the main entrance, which stood as tall and massive as any castle keep, had already been completed and dedicated to St Romain. Another was under way. Giroie had not visited Rouen since the first tower’s completion, but he barely gave it a second glance. He had no interest in architecture. He wanted to build a dynasty, and his materials were not bricks and mortar but flesh and blood.

  The family and their retainers made their way to a large inn that stood in a muddy street to one side of the Cathedral Square, along which ran an open, stinking drain overflowing with filthy water and thick with excrement. Their wagon, horses and men were stabled and barracked, the Giroies themselves were shown to the two rooms in which they would be staying, and large quantities of food and ale were ordered to fortify them for the funeral. The innkeeper and his servants were left in no doubt that their guests needed to be catered to at once, and as soon as the meal arrived, Giroie was ordering his wife and children to wolf it down. ‘Hurry up, we haven’t got all day! It won’t be long till the service starts, and we’ve got business to conduct before then. Wife, let me take a look at our daughters!’

  The men were left to carry on eating while Gisela lined up the four girls in ascending order of age. Giroie inspected them as if they were troops, which in a sense they were, though they would do their duty in the marital bedchamber rather than on the battlefield.