Crusade

by Stewart Binns

  It was on typically Sicilian autumn day, warm and sunny with a fresh breeze off the sea, that a messenger from Count Robert in Normandy arrived in Palermo. He brought news of dramatic developments to the north. King William was still not at peace with his neighbours, or with himself. He was still tireless in pursuit of his enemies and in his determination to establish a unique legacy in history.

  The King held sway over a huge domain that extended from the heartland of France in the south to his lordship of Malcolm Canmore’s Scotland in the far north. I had been wondering whether, like his predecessor on the English throne, Cnut the Great – King of England and most of Scandinavia, who had hankered after the title ‘Emperor of the North’ – a similar accolade should be applied to William. Even now that he was approaching sixty, his warrior spirit still burned as brightly as it had done when, as a boy-duke half a century ago, he first wielded a sword.

  The Danes were being particularly restless and threatening a huge invasion, while William was still fighting to retain control of Maine. To meet the challenge of the Danes, he had, we were told, undertaken a great audit of England to find every piece of land, each property of substance and all potential taxpayers, English or Norman, in order to fund an army the scale of which had never been seen before. The inventory was likened to the imperial levies of Rome – so exacting and methodical that every person, beast and acre in the land was counted.

  Norman bureaucrats in their hundreds were sent to every burgh and village in the realm to undertake the census: no chore was left unaccounted for, no piece of thatch (even as small as the width of a man’s arm) left unmeasured, and no crop, creature or artefact omitted from the national reckoning.

  The result of the great stocktaking, the like of which was beyond contemporary comparison, made William far richer than he had imagined – so rich, in fact, that it emboldened his avarice. Not only was he prepared to fund an immense standing army in England, of over 11,000 men, to meet the Danish threat, but he was also willing to commit 8,000 men to the defence of Maine.

  The messenger also carried a private parchment from Robert, sealed and addressed to me. It was a request for us to return to Normandy. His father’s belligerence had led him to plan an attack for the following summer in the Vexin, to Normandy’s south, where Philip of France had installed provosts in Mantes and Pontoise. William intended to root them out and had asked Robert to prepare the army and lead the attack.

  It was a typically cunning move by the King; not only was it yet another test of his son’s generalship, it was also a further test of his son’s loyalty in the face of his friend and former ally, Philip of France.

  I assumed this last point accounted for Robert’s request for me to return. I anticipated that, as I had with Malcolm Canmore, I would now play the role of mediator between Robert and Philip.

  It was another daunting task – but one, on reflection, that reinvigorated me. Life in Sicily had become too comfortable, and I was in danger of losing my sense of purpose. Not only that: Robert was a good friend, and I greatly admired Philip, so anything I could do to prevent war, and all that such a conflict would bring, represented a mission I was keen to accept.

  Adela, Edwin and I completed our tasks for Count Roger by the end of the year and departed for mainland Europe in mid-January. We decided to take the same route as Sweyn and Mahnoor so that we could visit them at St Cirq Lapopie in Aquitaine. I had heard so much about the remote idyll in the Lot, a place so precious to Hereward and his family, and now I was keen to see it for myself. I also suspected that Sweyn may well have rediscovered his passion for adventure. Given that we were soon likely to be involved in more Norman military campaigns, I was hoping to persuade him to resume his place by my side.

  St Cirq Lapopie was everything I had imagined. It was like an eagle’s nest, standing high above the gorge of the river on a rocky limestone promontory. It had had the same effect on Edwin when he first saw it, all those years ago, when he sailed up the Lot as Edith Swan-Neck’s emissary. I heard Adela whisper the word ‘home’ as she stared at the one place where she had found peace in her troubled life.

  As we disembarked from the Lot barge and made our way up the steep path to the house, the greeting was not the one we had expected. No Sweyn. No Mahnoor. Only Ingigerd and Maria, in obvious and immense distress, with a trail of locals in their wake. They rushed to embrace Edwin and Adela, but their tears were not tears of joy at the return of two members of their family. I looked around and noticed that one of the barns had recently burned to the ground, but otherwise all seemed well.

  Both women were in their early fifties, but looked fit and well. They had lived eventful lives and had, as the wives of the famous warriors Martin and Einar, often witnessed harrowing things. But the story they told us on our arrival was horrifying to the point of disbelief.

  Sweyn had been away hunting with the estate steward and most of the men of the community, a week earlier, when the attack took place. It had begun in the middle of the night when a large gang of hooded men appeared, broke into the house and ransacked the cottages of everyone on the estate. Some of the estate men who had not gone with the hunting party resisted, but any who did were mercilessly cut down. The rest were rounded up, bound hand and foot, gagged and dragged away. The women and children were all herded into the barn, except Mahnoor.

  No one could see exactly what happened next, but her suffering continued for some time. Her agonizing screams eventually turned into despairing whimpers before dwindling away to a merciful silence.

  For at least another hour, everyone in the barn trembled in silence before the sound of horses signalled the attackers’ departure – but not before they had thrown torches on to the thatched roof. Only the nimbleness of one of the older boys, who had managed to climb up to the eaves and kick a hole in the straw before clambering down the outside wall to unbar the door, saved the occupants from being burned alive.

  Mahnoor was nowhere to be found and everyone assumed she had been taken by her assailants. But the men were found, dashed on the rocks below, eleven good men of Aquitaine, husbands, sons and brothers, all innocent victims of a vicious assault.

  The most grisly discovery was made at dawn when the son of the pigman went to check on his herd. Mahnoor’s head had been impaled on a lance and stuck in the ground in one of the sties. Her luxuriant jet-black hair now fell in blood-soaked threads down her face, her jaw hung open hideously and trails of dried blood ran from her mouth, nose, ears and eye sockets. Her once captivating eyes had been gouged from her. What was left of her body was strewn around among the pigs, parts of which were still being consumed.

  Of course, being fed to swine, the creature most reviled by Muslims, was a horrifying fate to one of her faith, as was the insult daubed in her own blood on the wall of the sty – ‘infidel’.

  The most wretched part of it all was the fact that Mahnoor had just discovered she was pregnant. Sweyn’s hunting trip had been intended to put fresh meat and game on the table of a grand feast to celebrate the news.

  The hunting party returned the next day, by which time, mercifully for Sweyn, all trace of the barbarism had been removed and Mahnoor’s remains buried. He hid his immediate reaction from everyone by turning his back when Maria and Ingigerd told him what had happened and walking away to the forest, a place he always returned to in times of stress. It was, after all, the place where he had found refuge after the massacre at Bourne.

  He asked just one rhetorical question as he left, which was to say that he presumed the band of assassins had spoken Arabic? When Maria confirmed that they had, he hesitated for a moment before continuing his desolate trudge into the wilderness.

  It is impossible to imagine what thoughts went through his head in those dark minutes and hours that followed but, just before dusk, he returned and asked to spend time alone at the side of Mahnoor’s grave.

  Maria and Ingigerd took him food and a cloak later in the evening, and a fire was built nearby to warm him against
the chill of winter. He politely resisted all attempts to comfort him and spent the night huddled next to the grave of his beloved wife, the mother of his unborn child.

  The women took it in turns to check on him during the night, but on each occasion he was still in the same position, numb to all entreaties and to everything around him. Just before dawn it started to snow and, within minutes, he was covered in a shroud of snow, but still he did not move. They took him a bowl of game soup and a beaker of mulled wine at sunrise, which he consumed without seeming to taste or savour it.

  Then he smiled a mournful, weak smile; for the first time, there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘I have to go. I know who did this terrible thing. I will avenge my wife and make him pay for what he did here.’

  He said nothing more, other than to ask that one of the enclave of Arab merchants in Toulouse be paid to come and read from the Quran over Mahnoor’s grave. By the middle of the day he had loaded a small boat and was rowing himself down the Lot to Cahors.

  When Ingigerd and Maria had finished their dreadful account, we immediately began to make a plan. We knew precisely where Sweyn was going and exactly who the culprit was whom he intended to slay. We assumed he would not go to Count Roger, but would want to exact his own revenge, and thus would need all the help we could offer him. Unfortunately, he had a four-day start on us. Ironically, we had almost certainly passed him somewhere on our journey, but on the busy road from Cahors to Toulouse it was easy to pass people unnoticed.

  Adela was understandably impatient.

  ‘We must leave immediately! If we ride like the wind, we can catch him. He will want to get to Sicily as quickly as possible, but not as quickly as we want to catch up with him.’

  Adela was probably wrong; a four-day head start for a man with only a single objective in his mind was a lot to make up, but it was worth a try. And she certainly tried.

  We bought a string of horses in Cahors and rode them as hard as was humane. She did not want to stop and so, when the horses could do no more, we walked. It was the hardest task I had ever undertaken and my admiration for her grew by the minute. She never seemed to tire.

  She was counting the miles and checking them off against the formula she had worked out to measure our progress against his. By the time we got to Narbonne, she had calculated that we were only a day behind him. She was right; we reached the quayside late in the afternoon and were told that an English knight had boarded a Cypriot dhow bound for Palermo that morning. We immediately commissioned a ship of our own at an exorbitant price and just caught the evening tide. We were then only twelve hours adrift.

  Our vessel, a modified Norse knaar, rigged for speed – for whatever dubious cargo, we decided it was wise not to enquire – was owned by a Maltese merchant. Adela spent most of the crossing standing at its tall curved prow, peering expectantly out into the Mediterranean, hoping, at any moment, to see Sweyn’s ship.

  We reached our destination only two hours after Sweyn, but by then he had disappeared into the warren of markets and narrow thoroughfares of a bustling Palermo morning. We immediately went to Count Roger’s palace to alert him. He sent out patrols on to the streets to search for Sweyn, while we went to secrete ourselves close to Suleiman’s wharf – in the hope of intercepting Sweyn before he could come to harm.

  We had no intention of preventing Suleiman from meeting his fate; we just wanted to be sure that Sweyn did not throw his life away in a futile gesture.

  However, we had underestimated him.

  When we reached the pier where Suleiman traded, there was a major commotion. A large crowd of people had gathered, many of whom were clamouring to peer inside one of Suleiman’s many warehouses. A detachment of the Count’s guard was trying to restore order and, at my command, cleared the way for us.

  What we saw was a gruesome spectacle. Sweyn had his back to us, his head bowed. He was standing with his legs apart, his sword held limply in his hand with its tip resting gently on the ground. On the floor around him were three dead men, Suleiman’s henchmen, blood seeping from several wounds to their bodies. A little further away, bound by the wrists, ankles and chest to an ornately carved chair, was the corpulent frame of Sweyn’s main prey.

  Suleiman’s body sat bolt upright, but shorn of its head. His kaftan was crimson, no longer pale blue, and blood flowed copiously into the dust of the warehouse floor. The head, smeared in blood, lay in the grime some feet away, where it had rolled against a bale of silk. Sweyn would never give the details of what had transpired in that warehouse, but the fact that his victim’s turban sat neatly on a nearby sack suggested that it had been a cold and calculated execution. Whatever had taken place only moments ago, it was done very quickly and carried out without mercy. So should it have been.

  Adela added the final touch. She picked up the fat Saracen’s head, carried it through a rapidly retreating crowd with its blood splattering the dockside, and threw it as far as she could into the sea.

  ‘Let the fish gnaw at your bones, you filthy bastard!’

  She then hurried back to Sweyn, who was still standing in his mesmerized pose, and tried to pull him away. Edwin and I helped, but Sweyn was transfixed and the three of us struggled to get him to move. Eventually, he breathed more easily, let his blade fall to the floor and sank to his knees in convulsions of grief.

  The Captain of Count Roger’s guard then appeared. He arrested Sweyn, placed him into our custody and required us to deliver him to the palace early the next morning.

  ‘As you know, I insist on justice being administered according to the law in my domain.’

  Sweyn was standing before Count Roger, looking as morose as he had done the night before. He had spent the night in a foetal embrace in the arms of Adela; neither of them appeared to have had much sleep. He did not respond to Count Roger, so I tried to defend what he had done.

  ‘Roger, the crime committed in Aquitaine was truly bestial and there is no doubt that Suleiman ordered Mahnoor’s murder. The other men Sweyn killed were almost certainly part of the group who carried out the attack.’

  ‘I agree, but now we will never know.’

  Adela spoke up softly.

  ‘My Lord, the important thing is that Suleiman is dead and that Sweyn was his executioner. That’s what the man deserved.’

  ‘Yes, but if we had put him on trial we could have discovered the rest of the perpetrators and perhaps found a punishment for him that would have been much more painful and long-lasting.’

  Finally, Sweyn spoke.

  ‘Sire, I am sorry that my act of vengeance happened in your realm, but I had no choice. The others are of no consequence; Suleiman was the devil responsible for Mahnoor’s death, and I had to be the one to kill him. No other outcome would have brought this to an end. Now it is over; do with me what you must.’

  Roger had given the whole ghastly affair a great deal of thought. He too was a warrior, and he had a warrior’s instincts. He stood and put his hand on Sweyn’s shoulder.

  ‘I think, in similar circumstances, I would feel the same way and would have acted as you did. As you say, it is now at an end. You have my deepest sympathies for your loss. I wish you God’s speed to wherever you go.’

  Adela and Edwin led Sweyn away as Roger took me by the arm.

  ‘Strictly speaking, by the rules I insist on here, he should stand trial, so get him off the island as quickly as possible. I will make sure Suleiman’s crime is well known – not even the most fanatical anti-Christians will have any sympathy for him. Everyone knows what he was like. Travel well, Edgar, and look after your little band of brothers.’

  ‘Thank you. And God keep you till we meet again.’

  Count Roger of Sicily was a fine and noble man. I had learned a lot from him; his wise governance treated all the people of his island as equals before the law, a law he administered with a benign firmness. As with all powerful men, it was prudent not to cross him, but for those who accepted his demands for a peaceful and flourishing r
ealm in the interests of all, he was the ideal lord. I really hoped that we would meet him again one day.

  We left Sicily with mixed feelings. It had been a privilege to serve Roger and fascinating to meet Ibn Hamed and to enjoy an insight into the world of the noble Muslim. On the other hand, Themistius’s warning about a forthcoming religious war troubled me, a feeling exacerbated by our encounter with the loathsome Suleiman and his hateful prejudices.

  I knew only too well what can happen when hatred fills men’s hearts.

  It had occurred to me several times during those final days in Sicily that my brothers-in-arms and I had a simple choice. A comfortable, perhaps long and peaceful life was available to us in that idyllic place. Alternatively, a more precarious, probably shorter, but potentially more rewarding future awaited us by returning to the maelstrom of politics in England and Normandy.

  I knew that Sweyn and Adela would not hesitate in choosing the life of risk and reward, and that Edwin would always follow them. For me, there were still moments of doubt.

  Would I be courageous enough to meet the challenges that lay ahead?

  Would I be strong enough to overcome them?

  Although I was not certain what the answer to those questions would be, I knew I had to find out.

  PART FOUR

  Brothers at War

  17. An Ignominious Death

  Our journey back across the Mediterranean and through Aquitaine was a much less frenetic one than the journey that had brought us back to Sicily. Sweyn wanted to return to Mahnoor’s grave and carried some of Sicily’s rich volcanic soil to scatter on her resting place.

  Although the mood at St Cirq Lapopie remained sombre, we relaxed and gave Sweyn time to come to terms with the awful tragedy that had befallen him. There was some talk of selling the estate and moving away from Aquitaine – Count Roger’s Sicily was discussed, as was a new start in England. Eventually, Ingigerd and Maria decided they were too old to start a new life elsewhere. They concluded that St Cirq Lapopie was the one constant factor in the lives of several diverse people and that they would keep it as an anchor point for everyone for as long as possible. For Sweyn, St Cirq Lapopie now offered only terrible memories of Mahnoor’s death; it was time for him to resume his life as a warrior.