The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  The king stepped forward. ‘Behold the body of Harold Harefoot, my father’s bastard son and former King of England.’

  A gasp went up from the crowd, and people started backing away from the stage.

  ‘He stands accused of the murder of my brother, Alfred the Atheling, prince of England, son of King Ethelred and my own mother Queen Emma. Let it be known that when Alfred came in peace to England, with the sole purpose of visiting the mother he had not seen in twenty years, he was seized, without due cause, by Godwin of Wessex and taken in chains to Harold, who, with his own hands, holding his own knife, cut out his eyes and commanded him to be taken to the marshes of Ely, there to be left so that his body would never be found again.’

  There were murmurs of assent in the crowd, for many knew of Alfred’s murder and some even saw him as a sort of martyr.

  ‘Dunno why he’s suddenly so fond of Alfred,’ one cynic announced to his neighbours. ‘He never even met him. Harold was much more his brother than Alfred. They were both Canute’s lads, weren’t they?’

  But he was told to shut up: the king was still talking.

  ‘Monks from the abbey of Ely, out fishing in the marshes, found Alfred, still alive, but on the point of death, and took him back to the abbey. There they cared for him with kindness and mercy. Yet God Almighty saw fit to release Alfred from his suffering and called on him to join the company of angels in heaven.

  ‘And thus, by his death, was Harold Harefoot made a murderer. And though he escaped justice in life, he will not do so in death. For no man, not even a king, is so mighty that he is above the law. The law demands that just as Harold mutilated my brother, so he too must be broken. And so I sentence him to be beheaded before you all, so that it may be seen that as long as I am king, no wrongdoer will escape justice, whoever he may be.’

  The soldiers dragged the body across the platform and laid it down with its head on the block.

  Thrond took his place, his legs set apart to give himself the strongest foundation as he lifted his axe and swung it over his shoulder so that it lay vertically, pointing downwards against his spine. Then he heaved his shoulders and pulled the axe up, its blade catching the sun for an instant as it described a perfect arc through the air, over Thrond’s head and down towards the block.

  The axe cut through Harold Harefoot’s decomposed neck as if it were nothing more than a twig. The force of the impact was so great that Harold’s head was propelled forward off the block and on to the platform, where it bounced across the wooden boards until it came to rest at Harthacnut’s feet.

  Any normal execution was greeted with a great cheer when the moment of death came, for there was nothing that a great mass of people enjoyed more than the sensation of staying alive when another member of mankind was not. But this time the silence persisted, so that the repeated impact of the skull against the boards could quite clearly be heard.

  Harthacnut kicked the head in the direction of his soldiers. ‘Take it away, and the body too,’ he ordered, his voice loud and his diction clear. ‘Throw them in the nearest sewer. He was filth, and to filth he should return.’

  Still the silence persisted, though Godwin could feel the tension and anger that underpinned it.

  Then a single voice called out, ‘Booooo!’ And suddenly the call was taken up, and from every corner of the crowd, the sound of jeering and catcalls rang forth, so that when Harthacnut descended the platform, it was as if all the people of England were joining together in a single, overpowering chorus of disdain.

  As Godwin followed his monarch down the steps, his mind was seized by a question that might once have seemed absurd, but now was all too potent: have I just replaced a bad king with one who is even worse?

  9

  Normandy

  Roger de Tosny fought because he had long since forgotten how to live in peace. He drank because he no longer knew what it was to be sober. Had his wife lived long enough to welcome him home, he might have settled down with her to a quiet, contented old age, but she had died, and besides, who could find contentment or calm with Normandy the way it was now?

  So now Roger would die, for it was clear that his adversaries were not about to offer him quarter. And his sons, Helbert and Heliband, would die with him, for they had gone into battle beside him and could expect no more mercy than him at its conclusion. Roger looked at them now, both of them bloodied; Helbert’s face battered and swollen, one eye closed and his nose smashed; Heliband with his right arm hanging broken and useless, trying to get used to the feel of his sword in his left hand, his reins tied to his wooden saddle for he had no other way to hold them. He remembered them as boys, running around the farmyard; their squeals of delight and the indignant squawks of the chickens they were chasing. He saw them as youngsters getting their first taste of battle in skirmishes with the Moors on the parched farmlands north of Zamora, where the sweat turned the dust into mud on their faces – mud that cracked as they grinned with the sheer exhilaration that comes with a battle fought, and won, and survived. And now he saw them as they were: two men in their thirties who looked old and tired beyond their years, their eyes dulled, the certainty of death hanging over them like the shrouds in which he and they would soon be wrapped.

  Tosny had set out two weeks ago with a simple plan. He and his men would ride west from his wooden castle, which stood by the banks of the Seine downstream from Rouen. They would fight and steal and burn and rape until they had amassed enough booty to help pay for his castle keep to be rebuilt in stone – the one idea in Tosny’s life that came even close to a long-term ambition – and then they’d turn round and go back home again. It wasn’t an original or even an unusual plan. The absence of an adult Duke of Normandy, strong in mind and body alike and willing to make an example of anyone who crossed him, had led to a period of near anarchy that the murder of Alan of Brittany six months earlier had only deepened. Some lords felt free to take whatever they wanted, whether they had a right to it or not. Others, knowing that they could expect no protection from the duke, took the law into their own hands and fought back. And that was what had happened here. Two other barons, Roger de Beaumont and Hugh de Grandesmil, had pooled their manpower and raced to cut Tosny off before he could reach the safety of his stockade. He and his men had been outnumbered. Just as significantly, they had also been exhausted, hung-over and beset with fevers, bruises and festering sores. The result could be seen in the dead bodies of their own men strewn around Tosny and his sons, and the bloodied swords of their opponents.

  The light was failing now, for it was November, a time when darkness fell all too soon, yet there was time enough for matters to be settled before the day’s end, and no chance of escape under cover of night. A cold drizzle had begun to fall, and Tosny had to wipe the water away from his eyes with the back of his hand. He shivered, and told himself it was just the damp and the chill.

  By Christ, I’d give anything for one last skinful of wine, he thought. But the last of the wine had long since been drunk, and now his throat was as parched as his head was sore. And none of it mattered in any case.

  Tosny and his sons were trapped with their backs to a hillock whose slope was steep enough to block their way and make flight impossible. Their enemies were now arrayed in a semicircle around them, completing the trap.

  There were about thirty of them, he reckoned: far too many to kill. He had one chance in a thousand of escaping with his life, and that only if he could somehow get to Beaumont and Grandesmil and kill them. That might be enough to make their followers turn and run. It would have been a tough enough ask if his sons were in full fighting fettle. In their current state, it was virtually impossible. But perhaps he could turn that to his advantage. His position was so obviously hopeless, there was one thing no one would expect him to do.

  Tosny dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks, and as the beast shot forward, he shouted out, ‘Charge,
my boys, charge!’

  Muddy clods of earth flew from the ground as the charger galloped into battle. Tosny did not wait to see if his lead was followed, but rode directly at Grandesmil, a greater warrior by far than Beaumont and thus the one to target first. Two men stood in his way. One fell beneath his horse, screaming as his bones snapped under the iron-shod hooves, and the second was cut down with a single scything blow from Tosny’s sword. Their deaths, however, had bought Grandesmil the few seconds he needed to draw his sword and pull his own horse out of the direct line of the charge.

  To stop himself riding beyond Grandesmil, Tosny had to pull hard on the reins, slowing his mount to barely walking pace before turning to face his opponent. He cursed under his breath. He had hoped to smash into Grandesmil before he could react and cut him down as quickly as the men defending him. Now it would be an even fight, and that would make a difficult task well-nigh impossible, for Grandesmil had men to help him, men who could swarm all over Tosny like rats over a corpse.

  In desperation, he put all his energy into one frantic, reckless assault, caring nothing for self-defence, thinking only of plunging his sword into Grandesmil’s body.

  And he succeeded. With his arm fully outstretched, he broke through Grandesmil’s guard and jabbed the point of his blade into the other man’s body, striking between the waist and the ribs and cutting deep into his defenceless belly.

  As he withdrew his blade so that he could strike again, Grandesmil cried out in pain and dropped his sword. But before Tosny could deliver the killing blow, he felt rough hands grabbing his legs and heard his horse whinny in pain as it was attacked by half a dozen swords and axes. As the animal fell, Tosny tried to keep his balance, but now there were men pulling at his arms and body, dragging him from his saddle. He cast one last look around him, searching for his sons. He caught a brief glimpse of Heliband’s riderless horse, and saw a knot of men clustered around a single opponent whom he realised must be Helbert.

  He gasped with the shock of the pain as the first blade cut into him. Then there came another, and another: so many that it became impossible to distinguish one wound from another as the agony deepened.

  And then, in the stopped beat of a sundered heart, it was over.

  The anarchy and violence that poisoned relations between houses wormed its way within them too. In Alençon, William Talvas of Bêlleme came to the conclusion that he was tired of oppressing, bullying and humiliating his wife Hildeburg. He felt the need to kill her, too, and ordered William Fitzgiroie to do the job.

  Fitzgiroie refused.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Talvas asked. ‘I’m telling you to kill that useless bitch. I have no further need of her.’

  ‘Then divorce her. Send her to a nunnery. Do whatever you want, but don’t ask me to murder her.’

  ‘Why not? You’ve killed plenty of men in your time.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’ve killed fighting men, who could look after themselves. But killing a defenceless woman is a sin against God. It means damnation for eternity. I won’t do it.’

  Fitzgiroie tensed as he waited for Talvas’s response. He looked around to see how many other men there were who could be ordered to seize him. He did not care. Better to die now and have at least a hope of redemption than live to a hundred and face burning and torture without end. But Talvas just nodded thoughtfully, said, ‘I see,’ and walked away to find someone else with fewer scruples.

  Hildeburg died that Sunday, killed by three armed men as she walked to Sunday mass. They carried out the attack on the steps beneath the open door of the largest church in Alençon, in full view of the other members of the congregation. The killers’ faces were not covered and their identities were well known, but Talvas was in charge of administering justice in Bellême, and he was hardly going to arrest his own men.

  As a vassal of the Duke of Normandy, Talvas should have felt the force of ducal retribution for his lawlessness. But the duke was still a boy, and the man in charge of the Norman militia, the only force powerful enough to march on Alençon and arrest Talvas, was Ralph de Gacé, who was both a neighbour and a close friend of the accused, and had no interest in bringing him to justice. So Hildeburg’s death went unpunished and unavenged, and Normandy slipped that little bit further towards the abyss.

  For his part, Talvas found that his children took very different views of their mother’s slaughter. His son Arnulf was furious, cursing his father, lashing out at him with his fists – surprisingly powerfully, Talvas noted, as the lad’s punches connected with the arms he had raised to protect his face. Arnulf was so indignant, and so insistent that he would see his father rot in hell for what he had done, that Talvas seriously considered killing him too, before making do with thrashing him to within an inch of his life.

  Mabel, however, took a very different line. She was fascinated by the murder, listening with a look of feline contentment on her face as Talvas told her why he had decided that her mother had to die, how he had planned the attack and whom he had chosen to carry it out. Above all, she revelled in every detail of the actual violence itself, and when her father had given his first account, she made it plain that it had been lacking in one essential detail.

  ‘Tell me about the blood, Father,’ she said, in a purring voice that another girl her age might use to persuade her doting parent to give her more pocket money or a dress she particularly craved. And then she repeated, for emphasis, ‘Tell me about the blood.’

  10

  Rouen

  Osbern Herfastsson slammed his fist into the council table. ‘This has got to stop!’ he shouted. News of the deaths of Tosny and his two sons had just reached the ducal palace in Rouen. Grandesmil, too, had died of his wounds. ‘Tosny was a good man,’ Osbern went on, as much to himself as to Duke William sitting next to him, the other councillors on either side of them, and the man who sat opposite, his wrists and ankles chained, looking at the others with stony, narrow-eyed malevolence. ‘He shouldn’t have gone like that. Killed by the Moors, that would have been an honourable death. But this way? Fighting Normans, men from good families he’d known all his life . . . We have to put an end to it.’

  ‘But how?’ asked William. ‘If men want to kill each other, what can we do to stop them?’

  Good question, thought Osbern, looking at William. A couple of months had passed since his thirteenth birthday. He seemed to grow a little taller every day, and a dusting of ginger hair was appearing on his chin and top lip. Yet the journey to manhood was still a long way from completion. His voice, for example, had not yet broken. He spoke at a lower pitch, but it was only by a conscious effort, and when he laughed – not often enough for a lad his age – he still emitted a high-pitched girlish giggle. Still, he had a sharp enough mind and he wasn’t too far away from having the physical presence to go with it. If only Osbern could keep the duchy together long enough for William to reach an age when he could impose his will upon it, then all might yet be well.

  To do that, however, he had to deal with men like the one who sat chained before the council today. Roger Montgomery was a baron whose wanton disorder had been so egregious that it could not be ignored or excused. As commander of the Norman militia, Ralph de Gacé had been sent to arrest him. He had avoided a direct confrontation with Montgomery and his considerable private army, preferring to use spies to uncover the wanted man’s personal indiscretions and take him unawares when he was in bed with a concubine. It was not the most honourable of arrests, but, as de Gacé had pointed out, ‘Not a drop of blood was spilled. Semen, perhaps, but not blood.’

  ‘Roger Montgomery,’ Osbern said, addressing the prisoner in a voice still simmering with anger. ‘You owe everything you have to the good favour of our late, lamented Duke Robert. He made you Viscount of the Hiémois, a title that had once been his own, did he not?’

  Montgomery shrugged dismissively.

  ‘Did
he?’ asked William. ‘Did my father give you that title?’

  ‘Yes, what of it?’

  ‘You were more than just a loyal subject to Robert. He considered you a friend,’ Osbern continued. ‘He gave you a place on his council. You signed your name as witness to his charters. More than that, the duke was a cousin to your wife Josseline. You were family.’

  ‘Everyone in the duchy who matters is family if you go back far enough,’ Montgomery said. ‘Doesn’t stop them fighting one another.’ Now he looked at William. ‘Did your dad ever tell you how he fought his own brother. Killed him, too, some said.’

  ‘He did not!’ William said, jumping to his feet, his voice rising with furious indignation. ‘Take that back, right now!’

  ‘Or what?’ Montgomery sneered.

  ‘Or I’ll kill you.’

  This time William’s voice was low and steady, and every man who heard it knew that he meant what he said. His hand was on his sword.

  Montgomery’s face lost all its arrogance. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I take it back. Your father did not kill his brother.’

  William said nothing. He looked at Montgomery, who edged backwards, sitting deeper in his chair as if put on the defensive by the sheer force of the boy’s personality.

  Finally the duke sat down. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Osbern, continue with your questions.’

  ‘We have established that you had no cause to feel anything but loyalty and gratitude to Duke Robert. If you had any decency in you at all, you would have honoured his memory by supporting his son. Instead, you have spent the past five years engaged in larceny, violence and insurrection.’

  ‘I reject that accusation. Your Grace.’ Montgomery looked at William. ‘It is just gossip and slander.’

  ‘Really?’ Osbern placed both his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘Do you deny that you seized woodland belonging to the abbey of Jumièges and took the revenues from a market held by the abbey?’