Mercenaries (15 page)

Once that fact became known to the men who would be left outside, who knew that surrender was not a choice, panic set in: they broke and ran like scared deer, with the Normans stumbling along behind them slashing at their backs. That was when the stones began to rain down again, thrown with complete disregard concerning whom they might hit and maim, those trying to get to safety and the Normans pursuing them. Enough got between the two closing gates to stop those inside from forcing them shut, and William yelled for everyone to get with them, not least because under the gateway there was enough of an overhang to protect them from the falling rocks.

It was an irony only to be thought on later that the men seeking to open the gates were on both sides of the contest, both equally desperate to achieve the same result, and their combined weight was achieving that which no one entity could have done: the gate was giving. Over their heads, only because of his
height, William was able to jab his sword through the increasing gap, slashing at hands that were wrapped around the stout, metal-studded wood of the doors, as well as the heads of those foolish enough to place them in the opening.

Sliver by sliver it opened, and lances and pikes jabbed in return were killing friends not foes, for the men who had come out to fight formed the bulk of those pressed against the stout oak. William was yelling again, in French, his throat feeling as though it was full of sand, so painful was his breathing, as he sought to coordinate the heaves of his fellow Normans. Now everything was being thrust through the gap: swords, pikes, lances, knives, flaming torches that took men in the face and reduced them to screaming wrecks as they were blinded. But it was to no avail, and in another act of collective despair, realising their efforts were fruitless, the defenders inside the gates suddenly gave way and they swung wide open.

Few of those who did not run fought, many dropped their weapons and their bodies and pleaded to be spared while the rest raced to find some place where they might be safe. There was no time for quarter, and Odo had, in any case, withdrawn it when they spurned his offer of terms. William and the men he led into the castle were outnumbered, they had to be, so mercy was in short supply as those who had given up died lest they recover the will to fight. Some did
that, individually, on steps and in doorways, but it was the action of the doomed.

They died not to defend the Lord of Montesárchio, but themselves. William found him in what passed for the great hall of the castle, flanked by six of those men who would have made up his personal retainers, his body knights, lined up in front of their liege lord, swords unsheathed, ready to sell their lives. This was their sworn duty and a thing, had there been time to do so, to be admired.

Before them, once William had been joined by his confrères, stood a line of mercenaries, not one of whom was without a wound. William knew that blood was dripping from the back of his sword hand, not a great deal, but enough, just as he knew that he was not alone, the men alongside him now being in the same state as he. Their chests were heaving from the exertions they had made just to get to this point. They wore no mail and every sword they bore had the deep indents on it of having encountered other unforgiving metal.

These men they faced, these familia knights, were not only wearing mail, they were fresh and untried. Hardly able to get out the words, so breathless was he, William knew that if they fought them, perhaps he, certainly some of his companions, would die or be maimed, and for what? The final result was a foregone conclusion, and only an attachment to their sense of honour was at stake.

So he looked between them at the dark-skinned man, whose flesh was so smooth, his being so unblemished and his clothes so fine, he had to be their master. He held himself well; if he was afraid of death, there was nothing in his demeanour to say so.

‘You are the Lord of Montesárchio,’ he gasped.

There was a long pause, as if the man he addressed was unsure of his own identity.

‘I am.’

His body knights did not move, did not show any sign of preparing to engage, and that was good. ‘We come from Prince Pandulf of Capua, who demands you both acknowledge him as your true suzerain and wait upon his person.’

‘I have refused to surrender my person once.’

William knew what he meant by that; the laws of how a siege was conducted were well established and this man knew them only too well: no quarter should be given, he should be cut down and his knights with him. With his breath easing, if no less painful in his throat, William replied.

‘Then I make you the same offer now.’ He was aware that he was subject to much scrutiny from his fellow mercenaries – it was not his place to say such words – but not one of them protested or intervened. They had gifted him the power of control. ‘If you will do so, and the men who now guard you put up their weapons, you and they will be spared.’

‘Who makes this offer?’

‘William de Hauteville.’

‘You do not command the force that demanded my submission. He named himself as Odo de Jumiège.’

‘Odo is our captain,’ William replied, without being certain of the grounds he had for his confidence, ‘but in this hall I have all the authority I need.’

‘And how can I be sure that Odo de Jumiège will accede? And behind him stands Prince Pandulf.’

‘It makes little difference. You can die now, or take a chance of life. I offer you only what I can.’

The man was looking into William’s eyes over a distance of ten paces. Was he seeking reassurance or looking for a trace of reserve in his adversary, a reluctance to fight? It was because of the steadiness of his own look that William saw him accept the offer before he spoke, and he felt a deep sense of relief.

‘Put up your weapons.’

William felt the tension drain from his body, as he had them disarmed, then he addressed their master. ‘You must prepare yourself to accompany us to Capua.’

Odo had been taken back down to the house he occupied and was in a bad way, his wound too grave for him to be moved. William, since no one else in the band seemed keen to take the responsibility, had the locals send for a mendicant monk to look to his needs,
and once that Benedictine had examined the invalid and pronounced it safe to move him, he was taken up to the castle to occupy the quarters of the late owner. Only then could the monk look to the needs of the other Normans, William included. Following on from that came more burials, a common pit for those who had defended the castle, individual graves with crosses for the half-dozen dead mercenaries.

Then he called the Normans together and asked them about electing a temporary leader. That led to much shuffling and mumbling, but not to anyone putting themselves forward. For the first time in many months William felt like the elder brother he had been in Normandy. There he had faced the same desire that he should make any decisions that were not the lot of his father. Because of that, he felt no scruple in assuming command; if anything it came naturally to him.

The priest was obliged to say a mass for all the souls of the dead in the local church and two days were spent ensuring that all was secure, and counting up the value of everything the castle held, from the contents of the coffers, what arms and mail had been captured, horses, fodder, food and wine, down to the last vessel of lamp oil; Rainulf, the man to whom William would report, would want to know, so that he could claim his due reward from Pandulf.

William de Hauteville also used part of that time
to find out which citizens were respected in the town and to question them, his aim being to find out what they thought of their captured lord. The opinion was not high; though they feared the Normans and what they might bring in the way of tyranny, it was obvious that the man being taken away was not revered. What he said to them was a mixture of reassurance and threat.

Odo would have to remain, and since he was too comatose to make decisions, William made them for him, leaving ten of the remaining Normans to garrison the castle, safe in the knowledge that there were no forces left in the Montesárchio fief to attack the place, and in any case it was still well stocked for a siege.

‘But,’ he admonished them before he departed, ‘you are small in number. Do not treat the local townsfolk badly, for you will depend on them for much. The lord we have taken prisoner had a heavy hand, and he was not loved. Perhaps if he had been the men we fought would have defended his person better. Do not make the same mistake as he.’

That done, he rode off out with the remaining seven of the men who had come to this place, to take the prisoner to meet his fate.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The party had been observed from the top of Rainulf’s tower – seven Norman knights, a prisoner, and a string of several dozen packhorses, so by the time they rode into the encampment the whole of the remaining force of mercenaries were gathered to greet them. That Odo de Jumiège was missing, and William de Hauteville was riding at their head, set up a buzz of speculation, but most eyes were drawn to the downcast figure of the Lord of Montesárchio, who had been obliged to ride on a donkey so small that his feet touched the ground. William had done this so that when departing his domains, which they passed through on the old Roman road, those who owed him service, from the meanest peasant to richest artisan, should see how low he had fallen.

Rainulf was at the doorway of his tower again, the
height of that ramp enabling him to see everything over the heads of others, like Drogo greeting his brother warmly, the questions obviously pouring from his lips as to why he seemed to be in command, and just as ardently being answered. Annoyed, his voice came out as a roar that turned every head towards him.

‘I think it is proper to report to me.’

William looked up; he had been bent off his horse talking to Drogo, and he gave Rainulf that lazy, amused smile which he suspected might infuriate him, as it had so many others. Judging by the deepening purple of Rainulf’s face, he succeeded. Yet the look at that was fleeting; William dismounted, and bid the Lord of Montesárchio do the same, then, giving orders that all the contents of the numerous packhorses should be deposited safely in the tower, he led his prisoner to and up the ramp, and introduced him.

‘Where’s Odo?’ Rainulf demanded, ignoring the man.

‘In a cot, with a wound in his side that will take time to mend, if it ever does. I left him in Montesárchio with ten men to hold the place.’

‘You left him?’

‘I took command.’

‘I cannot believe Odo gifted that to you.’

William had suspected that, for all his own dislike of the de Hautevilles, in the way he had been treated
by his captain, the man might be acting on instructions from Rainulf. He was tempted to ask, just to force his leader to perhaps lie.

‘He was in no position, Rainulf, to gift anything to anyone. I must tell you he may not survive. As for my being in command, the men you engage are certainly fighters, but few of them relish the idea of being a leader.’

‘And you do?’

‘I brought the men back, and your prisoner. What happens now is for you to decide.’

‘Am I to stand here like some peasant?’

Rainulf seemed glad to turn away from a defiantlooking William and glare at the prisoner.

‘Take what treatment you get and be grateful. You will rest here tonight, and tomorrow we will ride to Capua, where you can face your prince.’ Then he turned back to William. ‘And you will accompany us.’

‘The wound is clean,’ said Drogo, sniffing at the bandage in which the mendicant monk had wrapped it. Then he gently probed around the angry cut with his fingers, making his brother wince. ‘Do you know what he used?’

‘An infusion of herbs that stung like the Devil. There was the juice of a yellow fruit that he offered me to suck too. It was hellish sharp, worse than an unripe apple.’

‘You should have asked him to give you some. It has clearly worked on your wound.’

‘These monks share their knowledge. Rainulf’s fellows will know of it. Right now, let the air do its work.’

‘So you’re going to Capua?’

The way Drogo said that did nothing to hide his envy; there had been plenty of that too when William had told him of the fight, even more when he had described the full coffers, stables and food stores of the Lord of Montesárchio, some of which must come to him.

‘I shall ask that you accompany us.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to see if Rainulf refuses. If he does, that will tell us if he intends that we should never ride out together.’

‘And?’

‘If that is the purpose, we cannot stay in his service.’

The head in the doorway was there only long enough to pass on the message that Rainulf wanted to see him. Responding to the summons, William found Rainulf at his large table with the contents of Montesárchio’s coffers spread out before him, piles of coins and valuable objects: plate, jewels and a gold crucifix that might well have been stolen from a church. Of the previous owner there was no sign.

‘I take it you think you have done well?’

William shrugged. ‘That is not for me to decide.’

‘You should have killed him.’

There was no need to ask who Rainulf was talking about. ‘Why?’

‘Look at what is here before you. If only you and I knew…’ Rainulf did not finish the sentence, because the implication of that was obvious too. ‘And having paraded him through half his lands every one of his subjects knows you spared him.’

‘So Pandulf will get to know?’

‘That’s right, and the Wolf will also find out how much he had in his coffers down to the last denier. Dead, we could have had half of this and he would never have known.’

‘He surrendered.’

‘Do you think I did not speak with him? You asked him to surrender, you allowed him to surrender, and all you did to his bonded knights was take away their weapons and send them away. Let me tell you,’ Rainulf continued, his voice rising, ‘William de Hauteville, you have not done well, you should have slaughtered every one of them!’

Given William did not reply, Drengot continued. ‘Such notions as you displayed should have been left behind in Normandy. Here we fight, not for honour, but for profit.’

‘You would cheat Prince Pandulf?’

William knew it was a feeble thing to say, and he deserved the sneering response his remark provoked.

‘I would deceive a man who would sell his own mother. He would have given to me a twentieth of that which we gave to him. As it is, we can only take a tenth of this.’ Rainulf was almost talking to himself, when he added. ‘A man like Montesárchio can be expected to lie about a sum like that, but not half.’ Then he looked hard at William. ‘Learn, de Hauteville. Money!’

To conclude that Rainulf was greedy did not take William very far, after all he had the revenues of Aversa as well, but then he did have a large band of mercenaries to feed and occupy, as well as a paymaster who was no doubt slow to meet his debts. Added to that, from what he had heard of this Pandulf, from the men he had ridden with, and the prisoner they had taken, what Rainulf said about him was an understatement.

‘I wish Drogo to accompany us to Capua.’

Rainulf did not answer for a while, playing instead with a gold coin. ‘Why?’

‘It would be of more interest to me, Rainulf, to know why not?’

The mercenary leader just shrugged. ‘So be it, we leave at first light. Make sure your equipment is clean, I will need to present you to the prince.’

William paid a visit to the scrivener, to have composed a letter to send home to Hauteville. He could read and write, having been taught the rudiments of both by his Montbray cousin, but the fellow Rainulf kept, once a monk, had a gift for composition, which transcended William’s ability to put in a missive words easy to find when speaking. Somehow the fellow seemed able to convey thoughts better than those who used his service, though William had asked him to avoid his more flowery allusions, knowing Montbray would smoke that the source was not his cousin.

There would be rewards from the spoils of Montesárchio greater than mere pay, and he wanted to have in advance the words that would tell his family not only of their progress in the fighting line, but the fact that soon there should be sufficient funds transmitted to pay for the next two brothers to join them. He had no doubt that Rainulf would accept them into his service; they were good fighters. He also urged Montbray to use the service in reverse, and let both him and Drogo know how things progressed in Normandy and, that done, he went to the hut of Odo de Jumiège, to perform a duty he would have undertaken earlier if he had not been summoned by Rainulf. Odo’s woman, the mother of two children, must be told how her man fared.

What he saw in her black Italian eyes was fear, and
the way she clutched her children to her reinforced that feeling, for William did not seek to give her false reassurance. Her man may well recover and be what he once was, but the possibility of death had to be accepted, as well as the notion of a wound so serious: Odo might never be able to return to full service. Troubled as he left her, he wondered what became of the concubines of his confrères, for it was axiomatic that when men fought, some were severely wounded or died.

Outside Drogo’s hut, he heard what had become commonplace: raised voices, as his brother sought to control a young and spirited girl, thinking it was remarkable how much, and how quickly, Drogo had mastered enough Italian to keep an argument going. Not wishing to enter, he just shouted the instruction for the next morning.

The brothers had passed through Capua on the way south, it being on the Via Appia and having the only bridge between the city and the sea, but they had not stopped, except to water their horses at the public trough. This time they rode in some splendour, William in a new red and black surcoat which, like the others, he had only donned on the limit of the city. Rainulf was more magnificent still, his garment bearing his coat of arms as Lord of Aversa. Not needing to humiliate the Lord of Montesárchio, he had been allotted a horse,
though he arrived at Pandulf’s palace covered in dust, his face growing more and more gloomy the closer he came to what could not be other than an unpleasant fate.

The gates and walls of Pandulf’s castle were guarded by Normans, and it was pleasant to find themselves greeted in French and engaged in conversation by mercenaries who, they were eager to tell, had taken direct service with the prince. William was curious: given the numerous fighting men he employed, why had Pandulf not sent his own men to bring in their prisoner? But he decided against enquiring.

Also the look on Rainulf’s face as he regarded these men was not one of fondness, and it was curious the lack of communication he had with them and they with him, given their shared birthright. It was Drogo, in his genial, chatty way, who nailed the reason: most of them had at one time served Rainulf, only to switch to a prince who paid a higher stipend and had no desire to depend on another for his protection.

In the courtyard they found the mounts of another party, the acolytes and donkeys that turned out to be those of the Abbot of Montecassino and, on entering the palace, they found that aged cleric in audience with Prince Pandulf, one that was clearly not proceeding well, given they entered a chamber in which voices were wont to echo to the sound of angry
shouts. Marching behind Rainulf, William and Drogo had an arm each on the Lord of Montesárchio, aware that behind them came some of Pandulf’s men.

‘The Pope has no say in the matter!’ Pandulf yelled.

The voice that answered was soft and emollient. ‘We are all beholden to Christ’s Vicar on Earth, and it is to him that any excess funds from our humble monastery must be commuted.’

‘What you send to Rome is a pittance compared to what you bring in.’

‘Nevertheless, we are not part of the diocese of Capua or any other.’

‘And me, Abbot, am I nothing?’

‘It is to be hoped, my Lord, that you are as much a son of the Church as you are lord of your domains. But I must say again, those domains do not include the Monastery of Montecassino.’

‘You would deny me, Theodore? Might I remind you that the archbishop of the diocese you stand in is, at this moment, in my dungeon.’

‘And he is in my prayers,’ the abbot replied, his voice somewhat firmer. ‘I do not seek to defy you, Prince. I merely seek to lay down to you the bounds of your fiefs. The monastery is church land: it is not subject to any temporal overlord, and never can be.’

Looking over the abbot’s head, Pandulf saw Rainulf and his party, and quite naturally his eye was drawn
to the man who had defied him. ‘He is in your prayers, Abbot?’

‘As is any soul in distress, and the archbishop must be.’

Pandulf walked past the elderly abbot and called to him over his shoulder. ‘Then cast your eyes on this creature, Theodore, for he is in distress now, and will be in more before the day is out.’

Pandulf was now close to Rainulf, William and Drogo, though he had eyes only for Montesárchio. He was smiling, William thought, as though he had just been presented with his favourite dish. Then he leant forward and spat full in the prisoner’s face.

‘On your knees, pig.’ Both the brothers eased their grip and the man sank to his knees. ‘Now on your belly and kiss my foot.’

‘My Lord…’

‘My foot,’ Pandulf insisted, sticking out a soft leather boot.

‘I seek forgiveness.’

‘Perhaps the abbot here will forgive you.’

Montesárchio extended his body to kiss the proffered foot, only to be kicked hard in the face. William was watching him, at the same time wondering if his brother was thinking the same as he: that for all the smiling they were looking at a man who took pleasure in base cruelty.