The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  For the next night and day, and into the third night, Jamila did her best to nurse Mahomet through the struggle that would determine his life or death. She gave him warm water infused with mint and ginger and even garlic, for its health-giving powers were beyond question. She made brews that were hot with spices and pepper, hoping to induce the sweating that would expel the poisons created by his festering wounds.

  Sure enough, there were times when Mahomet was so hot he felt like a glowing slab of iron on the blacksmith’s anvil, and the bedding she had placed over and around him was wet with his perspiration. Moments later he would be shivering like a man left naked in the snow, and she would have to cover him with blankets and furs until the burning began again.

  Mahomet weakened. Jamila had been unable to get him to eat any food, and he was drinking far less fluid than he was losing, so that on the very rare occasions he urinated, the liquid he produced was as brown as treacle and barely any less thick. By the morning of the fifth day, the heat and the cold seemed to have become one, so that his teeth were chattering even as his skin was roasting. Jamila sat beside him, repeating for hour after hour the simple prayers with which she could help his soul be guided to Paradise: ‘There is no God except Allah, and Muhammad, peace be upon Him, is the Messenger of Allah . . . Our Lord! Forgive us our sins and anything we may have done that transgressed our duty. Establish our feet firmly, and help us against those that resist Faith . . . There is no God except Allah . . .’

  She was so lost in the constant cycle of prayer that when Mahomet whispered her name, she did not hear it, nor did she see his eyes open or his lips move. It was only when he said, ‘Jamila, my love,’ a second time that her mouth fell silent and her gaze turned to her husband, and she knew, in that instant, that the fever had broken and Mahomet was going to survive.

  During the sixth day, Jamila filled earthenware jugs with boiled water, infusions and a sweet mead brewed from honey that would nourish Mahomet and give him strength. She placed loaves of bread beside him, and finely chopped morsels of freshly cooked chicken. She left empty jars within easy reach for him to piss into, and dug a hole nearby to act as an impromptu latrine, beside which were rags and more water vessels with which to cleanse himself.

  Throughout all the time that Mahomet had been sick, Jamila had used any spare moment when he was peacefully asleep to think about the death of Alan of Brittany. She had prepared her disguise and chosen her poison, so when she knew that her husband was safe, it remained only for her to change her clothing from that of a faithful Muslim woman to garments appropriate for a slightly built young man. She kept two horses in a clearing about a hundred paces from the house and had been pleased to discover that if de Gacé had ever come upon the place, which she doubted, he had left the animals alone. That was just as well, for she was going to need both of them in the days to come.

  She did not leave Mahomet until she had explained what she had agreed with Ralph de Gacé and received his blessing for the plan she had in mind. By the time they had finished speaking, the sun was setting on that sixth day of the ten that had been allotted her. It would take at least two more days and nights, riding hard, with barely a break for her or her horses, to reach Alan of Brittany’s advance. Ralph had told her that the Breton army was encamped outside the walled town of Vimoutiers. She prayed that she would still find them there when she arrived.

  Negotiations had dragged on for far too long for Alan’s comfort as he tried to persuade the people of Vimoutiers to come over to his side without a fight. Yet he had no choice but to parley. So far as the people of Normandy were concerned, he had invaded their land. If he wished to persuade them that his intentions were honourable, he could not afford the slaughter of innocents that would inevitably follow a full-scale assault.

  Then, on the eighth day after Jamila’s encounter with Ralph de Gacé, there was a significant development in the talks between the invading army and the local people as the latter finally seemed willing to accept Alan’s promises that both their lives and their property would be safe if they opened their gates to his army. Alan felt confident that the issue would be settled to his satisfaction the following day, and he was in fine form as he dined with his most trusted lieutenants. The men were served by young squires, most still a year or two from their first good shave, for whom this was the first taste of being with an army on campaign. Some of the squires were as pretty as girls, and even though they were all red-blooded cocksmen whose taste for female flesh was beyond dispute, still there were plenty of ribald remarks, and Alan himself could not resist slapping the arse of the lad who had been serving him wine all night.

  ‘By Christ, boy, you’ve a prettier backside than most of the women I’ve fucked!’ he exclaimed, to laughter from his guests and giggles from the boys, including the one who’d been slapped.

  Alan got to his feet, swaying somewhat, for he had drunk a very great deal of wine during the course of the evening. ‘Here’s to arses!’ he shouted. Then he raised his goblet and downed its contents in one.

  A few seconds later, he started struggling for air. ‘I can’t breathe!’ he gasped. His mouth opened, but he seemed incapable of breathing. He beat his hand against the wooden table. One of the knights dashed to his side and patted him hard on the back, in case he had choked on a particle of food, but it made no difference. His eyes bulged. His face turned puce. His lips took on a blue tinge. As his knights looked on in disbelief, Alan III, Count of Brittany, crashed forward on to the table, gave one last convulsive spasm and died.

  For the next few minutes, desperate attempts were made to revive him. He was splashed with water, slapped around the face, shaken back and forth. But there was nothing to be done. In all the chaos, no one noticed the squire with the pretty backside leave the great tent where the dinner was being held, walk calmly across the encampment to where the horses were tethered and then ride, slowly enough to attract no attention, away into the night.

  On the nineteenth day of the allotted twenty, Jamila and Mahomet drove their heavily laden cart, pulled by two mighty oxen and trailing a fine pair of horses, across the border of Normandy and into the land of the Franks.

  15

  Alan’s death hit William hard. ‘I really liked him,’ he told Osbern Herfastsson, soon after the news reached Rouen. ‘He was always smiling and telling jokes or doing tricks for me.’

  ‘Aye, he was a cheerful lad. A cheeky little beggar, too, when he was your age.’

  ‘Ralph says he wanted to march on Rouen and take Normandy for himself. Do you think that’s what he was doing?’

  Osbern looked around. He and William were both mounted, returning to the palace with the rest of the party after a day’s hunting with falcons on ducal land north of the city. Their horses were tired and a number of the men were on foot, so they’d been going at walking pace. But now Osbern kicked his horse into a canter and William followed him a short way up the track until the watchful old steward pulled hard on the reins and slowed back down to a walk.

  ‘I didn’t want us being overheard,’ he said. ‘So, you asked if Alan had designs on Normandy. To tell you the truth, I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. There’ve been plenty of fights between Normandy and Brittany over the years. Your father and Alan went to war not long before your father went off to Jerusalem. Lot of fuss about nothing, if you ask me. Archbishop Robert banged their heads together and told them to stop being so damned stupid.’

  ‘But they must have been friends after that because Papa made Alan one of my guardians,’ William pointed out. ‘And Great-Uncle Robert told me that I could trust him. He was sure of it.’

  ‘If that’s what he said, then you can believe it. The archbishop was as wise as an owl and as cunning as a fox. He didn’t get much wrong.’

  ‘Exactly. So if Alan wasn’t coming here to attack us, why was he bringing an army into Normandy?’

  ‘Well, y
ou don’t put an army into the field unless you’re going to do something with it. So if he didn’t plan to attack us, then he must have been coming to defend us. But against what, or who, I couldn’t tell you.’

  William thought for a moment, his face screwed into a frown of concentration. ‘Me neither,’ he said eventually. ‘But there’s another thing: how did he die?’

  ‘I thought you already knew. He had some kind of fit in the middle of a dinner with his officers.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but how? I mean, he was drinking wine, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And making a toast . . . to arses!’ William giggled.

  ‘Now, now, Your Grace. No need to lower the tone.’

  ‘But it is funny, you must admit.’

  ‘A little bit, maybe.’

  ‘More than a little,’ William persisted.

  Osbern shrugged. ‘A little more . . . maybe,’ though the smile playing around the corners of his mouth gave a lie to the sternness in his voice.

  ‘Anyway,’ William went on, satisfied that he’d won that little battle, ‘I think someone could have put something in his wine. Poison, or something.’

  Osbern turned away with a sigh, sudden thoughts of dead dukes and archbishops and mysterious women bearing flasks of medicine or wine filling his mind. He gave a little shake of his head to get rid of them, like a dog shaking water from its fur.

  ‘There’s been too much talk of poison,’ he said. ‘People do just die sometimes, you know. Perhaps Alan just had a fit. It happens, you know. Demons in the head. And you’re better off dropping dead that way than being half dead, half alive, drooling from the mouth, your face all seized up, hardly able to talk.’

  ‘Urgh, I’d hate that,’ William said. But, as Osbern had long since discovered, he was a persistent boy, and once he got an idea into his head, he clung on to it as fiercely as an iron trap on a poacher’s leg, and so he came right back to Alan of Brittany. ‘I don’t understand, Osbern. Why would he just fall down dead if he wasn’t poisoned?’

  ‘Look, William, it’s not for us to say why God works as He does. All we know is that He has a plan for each of us, and He will take us when He sees fit.’

  ‘So if Alan was poisoned, does that mean God wanted it to happen? That can’t be right, because murdering someone is evil, and God doesn’t do evil things.’

  ‘First you expect me to be a doctor and now a theologian!’ Osbern exclaimed. ‘I’m just a humble steward. I leave philosophy to other men.’

  ‘I think Alan was poisoned,’ said William decisively. ‘I think he was killed by someone who wanted to stop him and his army. Alan was coming to help me and the person who killed him was bad. We should find out who he was and punish him. We should chop his head off, or hang him from a tree. That’s what I think.’

  Osbern pulled his horse to a halt. ‘Look at me, William,’ he said. ‘And listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. You are the Duke of Normandy. You have countless fields of good, fertile earth where crops will always grow and flourish. You have pastures where fat cows graze. You have fish in your rivers and off your coast. You have tollbooths and customs that even now, when there’s disorder and conflict everywhere, still produce rich revenues. You have all these things, and other men will always envy them and want to take them from you. And if they can’t do that, then as long as you are a boy and cannot rule for yourself, they will try to rule in your name.’

  William said nothing, remembering the archbishop warning him of all the people he could not trust and wondering why his life had to be so full of cruel and frightening things.

  ‘So you will always have enemies,’ Osbern went on. ‘But on the other hand, you will always have friends, people who love you and care for you. And I promise you, as your cousin and your vassal, that as long as there is breath in my body, I will always be here to protect you. Anyone who wants to get to you will have to get past me first. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  They sat there in silence for a short while as the rest of the hunting party caught up with them. Then Osbern kicked his horse into a walk again and led William back to the palace.

  A few weeks later, with a vacancy having been created by the death of Alan of Brittany, Ralph de Gacé found himself promoted to take his place in the innermost circle of the guardians of the Duke of Normandy.

  Book Two:

  The Women and Their Sons

  November 1039–December 1040

  1

  Trollhättefallen, Norway, and Oxford, England

  Two monarchs met a month before Christmas on the banks of the Göta river, at the head of the Troll’s Hat falls. The river marked the border between the King of Norway’s land on the east bank and Danish territory on the west, though the matter was far from settled and the two monarchs were both backed by large armies. The terrain hereabouts was covered in a forest of pine, spruce and silver birch, so the opposing forces were obliged to pitch their tents between the trees. But at least there was wood aplenty for the campfires, and a good thing too, for there was still a thick blanket of snow on the ground. The air was cold and the wind raw, even at midday, and the sun was hidden behind thick grey cloud in the few hours of daylight before the black shroud of night descended once again.

  Both sides had cause to mistrust the other, for a state of mutual antagonism, extending often to war, invasion and even conquest, had existed between their two nations for as long as men could remember. Now, though, both had reason to seek peace. The question was: would they find it?

  Harthacnut, King of Denmark, the son of King Canute the Great from his marriage to Emma of Normandy, was standing before a line of stepping stones that stretched across the river to the Norwegian side. Beside him was his first cousin and closest adviser Sven Estridsson. Harthacnut was a strapping, strongly built man and, at the age of twenty-one, still young enough to be able to indulge his hearty appetite for food and drink without detriment to either body or wits. Though he had been born in England and spent his early boyhood there, he had arrived in Denmark when he was eight and stayed there ever since. It never even occurred to him, therefore, to think of himself as anything other than a Dane.

  ‘Is everything prepared?’ asked Harthacnut.

  ‘Exactly as you ordered,’ Estridsson replied. ‘Thirty housecarls – good men, all of them – will come with us. If anything goes wrong, they’ll close ranks around us and cover our escape. I’ve got archers ready to line up along the riverbank, too. If Magnus tries to trick us, they’ll make him pay for it.’

  ‘Then give the order for them to take up their positions and we’ll go and meet this kid, see what he has to say for himself.’

  Harthacnut maintained an air of regal confidence as he marched across the river, but inside he was tense and apprehensive. Even though he had men in front of him and behind, still he was exposed. Beneath him, the stones were slippery with water and slime, and the current foaming between them was swift as the river prepared to hurl itself over the falls. One false step would be as fatal as any Norwegian arrow.

  But his feet held their grip and no arrow came. As he stepped on to dry land again, the men ahead moved aside to let him pass, Sven Estridsson came forward to join him and they marched towards the enemy.

  ‘Has that boy even started to shave?’ Estridsson said out of the corner of his mouth as they approached King Magnus of Norway.

  The king was a lad of fifteen. He was a head shorter than Harthacnut and much more lightly built, with pale blonde hair and a pleasant enough face. There was no sword at his waist, but his hands were resting, waist high, on the handle of a battleaxe whose head was planted on the ground. It was a mighty weapon, but one too large for a boy to wield. In time, Harthacnut thought, Magnus might amount to something, and be man
enough to master that axe, but there was no need to fear him just yet.

  The men standing on either side of the king, however, were an altogether more serious proposition. Kalv Arneson and Einar ‘Strongbow’ Eindridesson were nobles who had played the role of kingmaker and, when the mood took them, king-breaker for the best part of twenty years. They had opposed Magnus’s father, King Olaf, when it suited them to do so, then masterminded another uprising that put Magnus back on the throne. At times they had supported Canute’s campaigns in Norway. At other times they had driven his appointed regents out of the country. Their allegiances were temporary. Their self-interest, however, was unchanging.

  Both men were greybeards, and each had more experience in battle, politics and every other aspect of life than all three of the younger men put together. And yet, Harthacnut noticed, Magnus did not so much as glance at them, still less seek their support or encouragement, as he looked the two Danes in the eye. He spoke in the Viking style, as one man to another, with no recourse to titles, as he said, ‘Welcome, Harthacnut, and you too, Sven Estridsson. Come . . . a table has been prepared for us. My cooks have roasted an ox and my brewers have prepared fresh mead. Let us eat and drink and talk . . . This way.’ He gestured towards the great oak table behind him. ‘We thought of putting up a fine tent, befitting a talk between kings, but it is best to do this in the open, so that nothing is hidden and there can be no suspicion of treachery.’

  The men took their places: the three Norwegians on one side of the table, the two Danes on the other. Food and drink was served and consumed. Magnus did not down as much of the sweet, deceptively potent mead as Harthacnut, but then few men did. It was the Norwegian, though, who began the negotiation.