Blood of the South

SIX

The South, autumn 1093

Rollo Guiscard felt as if he’d been travelling for ever.

In the year since he had left England, he had crossed the mainland of Europe and finished up on the island of Sicily; his birthplace, and the area where his kin still lived. He had sailed on eastwards across the Mediterranean, planning to go to Constantinople. A violent storm had interfered with his plans. When at last the savage winds died down, his ship made landfall far to the south, and, rather than head back to Constantinople, he amended his plans and spent a couple of months travelling through Syria, making his way south to Palestine and his ultimate goal: Jerusalem.

He had kept out of sight of any but the poor and the powerless while he made his assessment of the land in which he found himself. Very soon it became clear that, unless you were an important lord, a wealthy merchant or a Christian pilgrim, you attracted little notice and people left you alone. Rollo adopted local dress and proceeded, unchallenged, on his way.

He had been unprepared for the sheer power and the beauty of Jerusalem. He spent several days simply looking. Dressed as he was as a humble rural Turk making the longed-for visit to the Holy City, it was easy to blend in with the hundreds of men, women and children, all doing likewise and all overcome with the same awe. Rollo was moved almost to tears at his first sight of the Dome of the Rock, and his heart went out to the many whose emotions overcame them.

It was a populous city, its narrow streets humming with activity. Since the Turks had captured it in 1065 they had made its character their own, and the place was thriving. The necessities of life were readily available; food and drink were abundant and cheap, and hospitals tended to the sick and the injured. Craftsmen flourished, each trade having its own market. Men’s souls were looked after too, both by the mosques, beautifully decorated with marble and brilliant mosaic, and by the many institutions dedicated to teaching. Intellectual activity was enthusiastically encouraged, and available to everyone.

But there was also a dark side to Jerusalem. Keeping to the shadows and avoiding confrontation, Rollo witnessed the city’s ugly face. He observed with his own eyes the treatment meted out to those whose faith did not accord with that of the majority. That majority had newly adopted Islam, and they had the zeal of new converts. Some of them – the minority, Rollo hoped – were brutal in their mindless violence, and targeted anyone who was not of the same faith, whether or not they had the ability to fight back. There was, it appeared, only one god, and only one approach was deemed permissible.

When he felt he had seen enough, Rollo packed up his few belongings and left. As he set out on the long journey north, he found himself conducting an inner debate: overall, bearing in mind the undoubted benefits and the terrible penalties, was religion, as men currently chose to practise it, beneficial to the world or not?

Now, at last, he was on his way to Constantinople. Although he still had immeasurable miles to go before his mission would finally be completed, nevertheless it felt good to be nearly at the end of the first leg of the long journey.

As he crossed Anatolia and the distance to Constantinople steadily lessened, he fought to suppress his impatience. The late summer sun shone brilliantly out of a clear sky, illuminating the wooded slopes around him. He had been happy to leave the burning temperatures of Syria behind; during all his time in the south, he had been uncomfortably hot. It had helped that the necessity for disguise had forced him to adopt local dress; the long, loose-fitting, pale-coloured robes allowed the air to circulate, keeping his skin relatively cool. The cloth wound round and round his head protected him from the sun, and it had been useful to be able to draw the loose end over his nose and mouth when, as so often happened, the wind suddenly howled and the hot air filled with tiny particles of sand. When, at last, he had brushed off the last of the desert dust as he began to climb up on to the Anatolian plateau, the relief had been enormous.

Rollo was weary, with a fatigue that went far beyond his tired body.

Now, as the long day of travelling neared its end, he was at the northern edge of the plateau, and the steep slopes leading down to the Black Sea were ahead. He looked up into the sky, noting the position of the sun. He could not hope to reach Constantinople today; he would not risk arriving after dark. The city was edgy, and all too aware of the aggressively warlike neighbours who dwelt to the south across the Bosphorus. The tough men who manned the walls were more likely to greet a solitary wanderer tapping on the gates by throwing him into a dungeon than by inviting him into some cosy guardroom to take food and drink, and soak his weary body in a scented bath.

When it was too dark to travel any further, Rollo would do as he had done on countless nights before: get off the road, find a safe place to shelter, eat, and, at last, sleep.

As he lay relaxed in his bed roll, staring up at the dazzling stars overhead, he thought about what he had found out; the answers to the questions which his king, all those long miles away in England, had sent him to investigate. He smiled, reflecting that, as usual, so much of King William’s reasoning had been absolutely right. It was going to give Rollo some pleasure in eventually telling him so.

William Rufus, his agile and capable mind ever on the lookout for ways in which to advance both his own fortunes and those of his kingdom, had noted with interest the way in which the Christians of the north had steadily managed to reverse the Muslim conquests of the preceding century. The Byzantines had taken Cyprus and Crete, and then the Normans, following eagerly and ruthlessly in their footsteps, had taken Malta and Sicily; the latter prize had fallen to Rollo’s own kinsmen, the Guiscards.

William had wondered what other lands might be ripe for conquest by the apparently unstoppable forces of the west. As rumour began to filter northwards of a fierce nation of new converts, the Seljuk Turks, word spread of atrocities, particularly against Christians. For centuries, pilgrims had taken it for granted that they could visit the places where Jesus once walked the earth; now, William had been told, these precious sites were barred to them. And, moreover, barred with ferocious cruelty: Christian pilgrims, or so they said, were being attacked, beaten and tortured.

William had observed that it was impossible to say where the truth ended and the wild exaggeration of propaganda began. Not that this troubled him: as Rollo well knew, the king’s interest in the matter was purely pragmatic. The rich and extensive lands that lay on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean were, in his mind, the natural successors to the long list of Christian conquests, and what a prize they would make for the land-grabbing lords of the north.

Nowhere in the king’s planning was there any scheme to join in such a conquest himself. For one thing, he had not the necessary devotion to suffer the myriad hardships, expenses and dangers of a campaign whose sole aim was to free the Holy City from the infidel; he was far too realistic about its chances of success, and he just didn’t care enough. His interest in the matter was for another reason: his brother and rival, Robert, Duke of Normandy, was just the sort of man who would respond to a call to free the Holy Land. Robert, however, was chronically and perpetually short of funds; if the moment came when his soul filled with religious zeal, he would instantly look round for someone from whom to borrow the necessary cash, and his eyes would light on his brother William, across the narrow seas. And what had he to offer as collateral on the loan? Only one thing: his dukedom.

If events were to roll out as King William suspected they might, then his brother, with his eyes shining and his heart high, would set off on the long and perilous road to Jerusalem. If he failed to return – and surely that was so likely as to be almost a certainty? – then Normandy would fall like a sweet, ripe fruit right into William’s hands. He would have won the dukedom he wanted so badly without even having to lift his sword.

Rollo had been the king’s eyes and ears in the Holy Land. He had observed, considered, judged, memorized; names, locations, strengths, weaknesses. He had ventured into dark and dangerous places, and paid dearly for information meant to be kept hidden. He had crawled under men’s defences, winkled out their secrets. He had misled people, lied to them, bribed them, persuaded them to act against their conscience and bent them to his will. He was too good at his job; what he had learned went far beyond his king’s remit. He had, he sensed, left behind in the Holy Land a part of his soul.

He knew exactly what he would say to his king; how he would summarize, in the succinct, brief statements which the chronically impatient king demanded, all that he had seen. Now, though, before he could set out for England, he must find a way to make some sort of contact with the mighty ruler of Constantinople.

His mind leapt ahead to what he must do when he arrived in the city. His prime mission was to discover how Alexius Comnenus viewed the enemy on his doorstep and what he proposed to do about his perilous situation. Besieged as he was by the Seljuk Turks, this race of ferociously devout men who, it appeared, would stop at nothing until the entire world believed exactly as they did, how was Alexius going to react? Would he, as William believed, send out to the kings and the great lords of the west, asking for their help in the inevitable confrontation that was coming? Once Rollo had found out all he could – and, so far, he had only the sketchiest notion of how he was to go about it – he must find the fastest ship heading back to north-west Europe. With luck, he might find a swift craft sailing all the way to England, although that was surely too much to ask.

It was going to be tricky, worming his way into a place where he could have some sort of open exchange with those who ruled the huge Byzantine Empire, but he had something with which to bargain. So recently arrived from the turbulent lands where the Turks were flexing their muscles, he was in possession of certain facts of which Alexius Comnenus was possibly unaware.

One fact in particular stood out; something Rollo knew to be more important than virtually anything else. He hoped it was going to be enough …

In the middle of the following morning, he stood on an elevation on the southern side of the Bosphorus, his eyes fixed on the Queen of Cities across the azure water. It was fortified by thick walls, interspersed at intervals by narrow gates manned with guards. Beyond the walls, on a series of steep hills, rose the buildings of Constantinople. Rollo had an impression of graceful towers and gilded domes, the bright morning light dazzling off stone, metal and paint so that the entire city shimmered.

The waterway dividing the Greek and Turkish halves of the city was hectic with traffic, and he watched ferries darting from north to south and back again, weaving a path among the slow, heavy merchant ships making their way up or down the Bosphorus. To his right, the narrow strait stretched on north-eastwards, towards its meeting with the Black Sea. Almost opposite to where he stood, the Golden Horn flowed out, its quays thick with vessels loading, unloading or waiting their turn to tie up. To his left, the Sea of Marmara opened up, and along its northern shore he saw the life of the city spread out.

He stood in silent thought for some time, then, with a decisive step, made his way down the steep track to the settlement spread out below.

He had at last made up his mind how best to make the approach to Alexius’s inner circle that would enable him to find out what he needed to know. He had concluded that, as he was a foreigner in the city, the logical conduit to Alexius’s ear was via other foreigners. These particular foreigners, indeed, had the additional bonus of being closer to the emperor than any men outside his own kin, for they formed his elite personal bodyguard.

They were men of the north: big, broad, brawny and blond, in a land where men were habitually lean, dark, short and slight. Their loyalty and warrior prowess were beyond question, and far in excess of anything the emperor found among local recruits. The first look at them was enough to terrify lesser opponents, huge and well-equipped as they were, and they attacked with a rage so reckless that even the prospect of bloodshed and agonizing wounds did not appear to hold them back. They were, the whispered, horrified rumours said, the berserkergang, and they fought in a trance state that gave superhuman strength and the ability to be wounded and feel no pain.

They were known as the Varangian Guard, and Rollo knew quite a lot about them, for his Guiscard kin in Sicily had encountered them in force as these ferocious northern warriors fought to repel the Normans’ advance and ultimate capture of the island. The Varangians might have lost that battle, but they had been more successful in the lower Balkans, where the Guiscards had definitely come off second best. Rollo detected a note of grudging admiration among his kinsmen; as his cousin, Count Roger Guiscard, had remarked, the Varangians were Northmen like themselves, and you knew where you were with a northerner.

Nevertheless, Rollo was aware that he should be cautious. Fellow Northmen the Varangians were, but they had been his kinsmen’s enemy not many years ago, and, when it came to offering the hand of friendship to someone they had once battled against, undoubtedly they would have the long memories of fighting men.

As he stood on the deck of the ferry, watching the Greek half of Constantinople rise up before him, Rollo realized that it was time to change his appearance. The guise of a hard-working, impoverished Turkish merchant was not the way to gain admittance to the emperor’s bodyguard. He needed a bath, haircut, shave, clean linen, fresh clothes. Then, presenting himself not as Rollo Guiscard, Norman adventurer, but instead simply as a lonely and homesick English traveller, he would try his luck in the huge barracks close to the Bucoleon Palace where the Varangian Guard were housed.

Rollo had not imagined he could simply walk into the Varangians’ stronghold. Approaching its massive outer defences, he gazed up at the crenellated walls rising high above. Their solidity was broken by one single opening, where sturdy iron-bound gates were guarded by at least a dozen men.

When he was still some distance away, he stopped and took in his first sight of the emperor’s personal guards. Everything he had heard concerning them was accurate; indeed, reality exceeded rumour. If these gate guards were typical, then the Varangians richly deserved their fearsome reputation. They were exceptionally tall, broad-shouldered, giants of men. They wore their hair long, some sporting elaborate plaits banded with cord and even small coins; in colouring, they were fair or red-headed. Beards appeared to be the norm, and, again, some of the men had woven their facial hair into thick, wiry braids. They were clad in short sleeveless corselets made of iron rings, under which they wore brightly coloured tunics. Perhaps in acknowledgement of local dress customs, some wore baggy, loose-fitting striped trousers tucked into their high boots.

All were armed. They carried the huge, heavy, long-handled axe; the terrifying weapon which was largely responsible for the Varangians’ fame. Rollo stared at the axes. They were, he had been told, capable of splitting a man’s head in two. If the death stroke was made by a particularly strong and skilled man and the axe was sufficiently sharp, the bisection of the victim had been known to extend right down to his breast bone.

As if the axe was not enough, each guard also wore a long sword and carried various knives and daggers attached to his belt. The men were watchful, clearly on high alert. Had something happened, to make them suspect an enemy at the gate?

I am not their enemy, Rollo told himself firmly.

Enemy or not, a brazen demand for admittance to the stronghold did not seem wise. Instead, Rollo found a place in the shade from which he could observe without it being too noticeable that he was doing so. Then he settled himself as comfortably as he could for a long wait.

It was not until late afternoon that he spotted what he was looking for. A group of six guards, talking loudly and laughing uproariously, were heading for the formidable gates. They had clearly been drinking, and were, presumably, going back to their barracks to sleep it off. Hurrying to catch them up, hoping desperately that alcohol would have increased their sense of bonhomie and lessened their suspicions, Rollo called out a greeting and, when the huge men turned round, said quite truthfully, in the language of the cold north, that he was a traveller from England and, finding himself in Constantinople, had decided to seek out fellow countrymen in the emperor’s guard. Several of the Varangians immediately responded, greeting him like a long-lost brother, enveloping him in vast hugs and slapping him on the back. Then, without Rollo understanding exactly how it happened, he found himself being escorted inside the fortress, up a narrow stone stair and into a crowded guardroom.

‘This man’s from England!’ bellowed one of the guards who had dragged him inside. ‘He brings news from the north, and he’s thirsty! Get him a mug of ale, Sibert!’

The guards greeted him enthusiastically, many leaping up to shake his hand or give him a slap on the shoulder, and the promised huge mug of ale was thrust into his fist. Questions were hurled at him, but, since all the guard were speaking at once, he could make out little of what they said. With a grin, he shrugged and took a long pull of ale.

One of the men – an enormous redhead with a round stomach bulging out over his beautifully tooled leather belt and a flagon of wine in one hand – said, his blue eyes wet with emotion, ‘Ah, but it’s good to see men from our homelands. We haunt the quays where the longboats from the north tie up, you know, and very often we encounter distant kin.’

‘Like that wild-eyed madman who’s there at the moment,’ another put in. ‘Not that anyone here’s related to him, or, if they are, they’ve got the good sense not to admit it!’

Other men arrived, word apparently having spread of Rollo’s presence. They crowded round him, demanding to know if he had ever come across Eilif of York, Harald One-Eye of Lincoln or Sigurd the Smith who lived a few miles south of Norwich.

‘Ah, England’s a big place,’ one of the English guards said with a sigh when Rollo admitted that no, he hadn’t actually met any of the men. ‘It’s a shame, though. I’d have loved news of old Sigurd. He was good to me. Like a father, you could say.’

‘Just as well he was, Ottar,’ one of the others said with a great snort of laughter, ‘given that your own father buggered off even while your mother was still straightening her petticoats.’

Ottar aimed a good-tempered lunge at the man, then took another giant slurp from his mug.

It was another aspect of the Varangians’ reputation that was proving accurate, Rollo reflected: their enormous capacity for alcohol. He had heard them referred to as the emperor’s wine bags, and now he was seeing for himself just how accurate the description was.

Something in the recent exchange had snagged at his attention, and while, first with words and then with his fists, Ottar continued to fend off increasingly ribald suggestions concerning his likely paternity, he went back over the conversation.

Eilif of York … the smith who lived south of Norwich … Harald. Yes, Harald: that was what had alerted him. Harald One-Eye. Rollo knew of a man called Harald, who had once fought beside his king and, when that king fell, had fled his native land rather than bend his knee to the man who had felled him. And the man called Harald was Lassair’s great-uncle.

While the shouts and the yells of laughter – and quite frequently of pain – carried on around him, Rollo seemed to enter a small bubble of quiet. Lassair’s face appeared in his mind, and he drank in the grey-green eyes with their watchful expression, the wide, well-formed mouth beneath the small, straight nose, the glorious copper-coloured hair. He saw, too, the pale crescent-shaped scar on her left cheek; the scar she had won when once she had fought beside him.

A huge fist flying past his ear brought him back to the moment. ‘Sorry, mate, I was aiming for him!’ yelled an enormous man clad in bright scarlet, the colour clashing violently with his brilliant ginger hair. With a grin, Rollo leaned back, out of his way.

Harald. It was a common enough name, and it seemed very unlikely that this Harald One-Eye of Lincoln was Lassair’s great-uncle, since the family were firmly convinced that he had long ago left England. But, if indeed he had made his way south to join the Varangians, then might not one of Rollo’s new friends know of him?

There was only one way to find out.

When the wrangling finally subsided and the dozen men sitting around the long table in the guards’ room had refilled their mugs – and Rollo’s – he said, into a gap in the chatter, ‘Someone I know in England has a long-lost kinsman. I’d love to be able to tell her I found out he joined the guard.’

‘Is she pretty?’ one of the men said, provoking a flood of further questions, largely concerned with intimacies which Rollo certainly wasn’t going to discuss. Grinning, he held up a hand. ‘She’s extremely pretty,’ he said, ‘and that’s all I’m prepared to share with you. It’s her great-uncle who may have come here; her grandmother’s youngest brother. He and his two older brothers were at the battle and fought beside the king -’ there was no need to specify which king, or, indeed, which battle; not to these men – ‘and the other two were killed. He left England, never to return.’

Abruptly the laughter and the joking ceased, and the atmosphere in the stark room turned sombre. For a moment, nobody spoke, and the men sat with bowed heads. It was as if, Rollo thought, each one was saying a silent prayer to the past and its griefs. Then Ottar said, with a sigh, ‘Many of our men did the same. What’s this great-uncle called?’

‘Harald,’ Rollo said.

Ottar gave a brief laugh. ‘That’s it? Just Harald?’

Rollo shrugged. ‘It’s all I know.’

‘Well, there’s any number of Haralds. What else d’you know about him?’

Rollo thought briefly. ‘His family are fishermen and eel-catchers. They’ve lived in and around the same East Anglian village for generations, although for sure it hasn’t made them rich.’

‘No, not many of us come from wealthy families,’ Ottar agreed.

‘That’s what we come here for,’ one of the others put in with a belly laugh. ‘Nobody cares what you have or haven’t got when you arrive. If you do your job well, then you’ll soon acquire riches.’

‘Your imperial master values you, then?’ Rollo remarked.

‘We’re his axe-bearing barbarians,’ the man said with fierce pride. ‘Of course he values us! Some of us have been here for generations, and loyalty to the emperors is a family tradition with us. We view it as a sacred trust.’ He nodded emphatically. Then, scowling, he went on, ‘We’ve been busy, over the weeks and months of this interminable summer, what with the rumours and the riots.’ Rollo looked at him quizzically. ‘The Turks!’ he hissed. ‘They grow closer each day, and their presence sparks off unrest among our own citizens. It’s not right!’ he burst out.

‘In what way?’ Rollo did his best to disguise his sudden flare of interest.

‘It’s not right because, until this new menace started to threaten us, men of many different faiths lived here together quite happily,’ the man said angrily. ‘Now, it’s all changing. We’ve had riots, let me tell you; riots between Christian and Saracen, Turk and Jew, and all because people are afraid of what’s to come. It makes them nervous, see.’

‘That and the heat,’ put in another man.

‘Well, yes, I grant you there’s always more trouble when it’s hot,’ the first man agreed. ‘But not like we’ve had this summer! Men have been dragged out in the streets and killed, for no more reason than the manner in which they choose to worship God.’

His angry words echoed in the sudden silence. For some reason, Rollo observed, the other guards seemed uncomfortable at their colleague’s outburst. ‘In such an atmosphere, your emperor must have valued you even more than usual,’ he remarked mildly.

‘Oh, he did, he did,’ Ottar said quickly, as if eager to move the talk on to safer ground. ‘Our emperor knows we won’t betray him. We’re his personal guard, and we swear our oath of loyalty directly to him.’

‘And, naturally, your loyalty is handsomely rewarded?’

‘You’ve heard the talk, no doubt,’ Ottar said.

‘The talk?’

Ottar shifted on the bench, and his wide leather belt creaked as his great bulk strained against it. ‘It’s said among the locals that when an emperor dies, the Varangians are permitted to visit the imperial treasury and take away what gold and gems they can carry in their two hands.’ He gazed down at his own hands, lying palm uppermost and huge on his knees. ‘They call it palace-pillaging, but only because they’re jealous.’ He gave Rollo a wide smile. ‘It’s true, we do have that unique privilege, and it’s not pillage because the emperor himself permits it.’ Again, he glanced at his hands. ‘You’ll have observed, my friend, that most of us are built to a generous scale, and our hands hold a lot. As Bersi here was just saying, we acquire riches, right enough.’

‘So, what of the Harald I was asking about?’ Rollo said. ‘Do any of you know a man who fits the description?’

The guards muttered among themselves for a while, and Rollo heard various Haralds being discussed, most of them dismissed as unlikely because they came from a different place, or were the wrong age. Finally, Ottar turned to him and said, ‘I’ll ask around among some of the men who aren’t here just now. Maybe someone will be able to help.’

‘Thank you,’ Rollo replied, adding politely, ‘I hope you won’t go to too much trouble.’

‘Ah, it’ll be no trouble,’ Ottar assured him. ‘We always enjoy contact with our homes.’ He leaned closer to Rollo, lowering one eyelid in a suggestive wink. ‘And you did say your friend was pretty. Perhaps she’ll reward you with a kiss if you can return home with word of her great-uncle.’

On cue, the others chimed in with other likely rewards, many of them verging on the obscene. Smiling, Rollo stood up and, promising he’d come back, slipped away.

Ribald joking and laughter with gate guards was all very well, he thought as he closed the guardroom door behind him. But if he was going to find a way to the emperor’s ear, he needed to speak to someone higher up the chain of command. Emerging on to the wide yard that spread out inside the encircling walls, he turned away from the gates and headed for the imposing entrance to what appeared to be the main building.

He felt a momentary apprehension. He ought to be used to operating alone; it was the only way that a man doing his job could operate. At times, however, his vulnerability threatened to undermine him. Here he was, a stranger and an outsider, hundreds of miles from anyone he knew or loved, with nobody to speak for him or watch his back. Yet he was proposing to demand access to whatever charmed inner circle ruled here, with no greater explanation for the outlandish request than that he had been travelling in the lands of the enemy and had information which the emperor might like to hear.

For a split second, his step faltered. What would his own king do, he wondered wildly, faced with such an impudent and presumptuous visitor? He felt his heart hammering in his chest, making the sweat break out on his skin. And it seemed to him that a quiet voice inside his head said, There is danger here.

He stopped dead. For the space of a heartbeat, he was paralysed by fear.

But then the moment of weakness passed. As he walked on, released from whatever enchantment had held him and confident once more, he realized that it was the thought of King William’s reaction that had reassured him. William, he reflected with a secret grin, lapped up information like a thirsty hound laps water. As long as the intelligence was accurate, and something the king did not already know, then the source was unimportant.

Rollo’s information was without doubt accurate: he had gathered it himself. As to whether it would come as news to Alexius Comnenus, well, only time would tell.

He had reached the long flight of stone steps leading up to the main building’s door. His confidence and his belief in himself restored, he leapt up them two at a time and went inside.