Mercenaries

CHAPTER SEVEN

The plain stretched as far as the eye could see, flat and fertile, dotted with small windmills, the strips of cultivation full of people working to plant their spring crops. The two riders on the road between the River Volturno and Naples attracted attention, but what looks did come their way were far from friendly; to the people toiling in fields they were clearly not of their kind and the differences extended beyond mere occupation. They were tall, blue-eyed and fair in a world where the people were generally dark, small and swarthy. That height difference was more obvious when they dismounted to walk their horses and they towered, one of them excessively so, over those with whom their animals shared a trough.

Any greetings offered were ignored and not just because they were in barely comprehensible Latin. Habit made the peasants of Campania cautious, and these giants were armed with big swords and sharp knives; if the locals carried anything they were farming tools. Close to, it could be seen that the faces of these strangers did not take well to the climate, and in places the reddened skin had peeled. Both kept a leaf in their mouth to protect them from a burning overhead sun that would blister an exposed lower lip.

To look at the horses was to know these men. Those on which they rode had the height and fine lines of an animal bred for swift movement. The first-led horses were sleek and well cared for, those behind a last pair of pack animals. As well as the slung pouches containing the riders’ possessions, there were lances, helmets and shields strapped to the animals’ sides, the whole assembly identifying them as men whose trade was oppression. The one word spat out was never said in their hearing, only when they had passed by: Normans.

Their destination was a square tower of white stone rising out of the waves of heat that made the ground ripple. Soon strips of farmland gave way to green pasture, and endless paddocks full of horses, which were the subject of close scrutiny, for the de Hauteville brothers had grown up surrounded by equines in all their forms. The railed fields each had a thatched byre into which the animals could retire from rain or, as they had now, the mid-morning sun. Haystacks were liberally dotted between these paddocks and the air was full of that sweet smell of piss and dung, which was ever present where horses were kept in numbers.

Past the paddocks, running towards the tower, there were lines of round huts with pointed thatched roofs set around a huge barn; the inhabitants, if there were any, inside in the shade, that is, with the exception of the tribe of near-naked children who stopped playing to look up at these passing strangers. The cries they emitted brought to the door of one hut a short, round, black-haired woman.

‘We seek a knight by the name of Rainulf Drengot,’ said William, in Latin.

The response was a lazy hand waved in the direction of the tower. It did not get them a greeting of any kind, nor a smile: if anything the look was one of suspicion from a woman with hard eyes and little humour. Long before the sun had caught metal atop the castellated donjon, lance tips most like, and looking hard into the glare, now they were near, the brothers could see the helmets of those set to watch out for approaching danger, men who must have first seen them, on so flat a landscape, a good half a league away.

The sound of clacking wood and grunting came to them as they cleared the huts and that revealed a large, fenced-off and sand-filled manege equipped with low poles set up as jumps, some followed by deep ditches, and thick upright baulks of timber showing the cuts where they had been smitten by hundreds of sword blows. Lance targets stood at the end of long balancing poles, while in a line shields stood at the height they would be when held by a foot soldier, next to a circular wood target marked with roundels. In the middle, two lines of tough-looking men were practising swordplay with round wooden staves.

Activity ceased as they rode past, every eye examining these newcomers, stares that were returned, but they did not stop, instead riding on to the square tower. Close to, this donjon did not look so white: the stones were streaked with the effects of age, moss was thick at the base, the mortar at the joins of the blocks was crumbling and there was some blackening around the door to show that at some time a fire had been lit at the base in an attempt to burn out the defenders. This was a fortress that had stood for tens of years, perhaps hundreds, perhaps long enough to have once been occupied by Roman legionaries.

The heavily studded door, topped by a carved armorial device, was now open; attack the place and the ramp that led to it would disappear inside, while the door would be slammed shut. Several floors below the living quarters of the defenders it would be the well that guaranteed a steady supply of water, stalls for horses and a byre for animals which would be kept alive to eat, just above them the storerooms full of hay, oats, pulses and peas, enough to keep fed the knights who would man the walls.

As the brothers dismounted a figure appeared in that doorway, which immediately brought half a dozen lean hunting hounds out from under the ramp where they had been dozing, not least because the fellow observing them had in his hand a piece of leg bone on which he had been gnawing. As broad as he was tall, in a fine surcoat decorated with a coat of arms, the man eyed them up through what appeared to be slits in his deep-purple face, making both brothers conscious of how they must appear: weary, dust covered and in garments that, after five months of travelling, were close to threadbare.

‘William and Drogo de Hauteville,’ William said in French, his voice rasping in a dry throat, ‘seeking to take service with Rainulf Drengot.’

The bone was tossed aside, which sent the dogs scurrying to fight over it as the fellow responded in the same tongue. ‘You are Norman?’

‘We are.’

‘From?’

‘Hauteville-le-Guichard, where our father has his demesne.’

‘I do not know it.’

‘It is in the Contentin.’

William was aware that some of the men they had passed had left the manege to follow them and were gathering to listen to the exchange. Though he did not turn to look he heard the growl in his brother’s throat and assumed he had. Drogo, amongst his other faults, was inclined to brawl, almost without cause being given and quite impervious to numbers, so he whispered a caution to tell him to stay still.

‘A land of rough folk, the Contentin, I’m told,’ said the fellow at the top of the ramp. ‘Ill-mannered and quarrelsome.’

‘Others may have told you that it is a land that breeds good fighting men.’

‘What others would they be?’

‘Duke Robert thought us the best.’

‘How can I ask Duke Robert? He is dead.’

‘God rest his soul.’

William crossed himself as he replied; they had heard in Rome that their one-time liege lord had died on his way back from the Holy Land. They had also heard that the whole of Normandy was in danger of disorder over the succession. It made no difference to him and Drogo; they were too far south and too strapped for the means of existence to think of turning back.

‘My father, brothers and I fought under his banner at Bessancourt when he aided the King of the Franks to bring his rebellious brother to heel.’

‘Before which, I am told, he named his bastard son as his successor.’

Even if he had worries about how such things might affect his family, it was not the way William wanted this discussion to go. ‘If you know of that battle you will know that we Normans won it. Henry, King of the Franks, could not have done so unaided. The men of the Contentin were in the front rank.’

‘Duke Robert was a fool to name his bastard as his successor and an even bigger fool to die while he was still a child.’ The man waited to see if William would respond to that, in fact, display his own feelings on the matter; he waited in vain. ‘So once you fought for Duke Robert and now you would like to fight for me?’

‘If you are Rainulf, yes. We were told by those who have returned to Normandy that we would be welcome.’

‘More than welcome,’ hissed Drogo. ‘Embraced.’

Rainulf looked over their heads at the men to the rear. ‘What do you say? Shall we try out these Contentin ruffians?’

‘Try out?’ demanded Drogo.

Rainulf looked past William to his brother, not in the least upset, it seemed, by Drogo’s angry glare.

‘Many men come here from our homeland and claim they are doughty fighters. Most are, some are not. It is best that we find such things out before our lives might be forfeit for an error of judgement. Behind you, in the manege, we can carry out all the tests we need to see what you are made of, both on foot and mounted. So, let us see your mettle.’

William was surprised. ‘Now?’

‘I can think of no better time.’

‘Our horses need rest.’

Rainulf smiled for the first time, but it was not warm. ‘If you can assure me that when I fight I will do so rested, then I will let you have that. But if you ask those fellows behind you they will tell you that Campania is a place of snares and ambush, where trust is a virtue that can get you killed, a place where a morning friend can be an afternoon enemy. So, it is best to be ready to do battle in an instant. You have your swords, and I see your lances and shields. All you need do is don hauberks and helmets and move your saddles to your destriers.’

‘A little time, perhaps till the sun cools?’

Rainulf shook his head. ‘Prepare to show us your quality, or prepare to ride out of here.’

By the time they had donned their mail and helmets, and moved the high-formed saddles to the destriers, Rainulf Drengot had arranged for another eight riders to be made ready. There was no need to explain to a Norman knight what was required — the basic fighting unit, the source of the success of their cavalry arm, was a convoy of ten lances which, unlike the mounted knights of other forces, operated as a disciplined unit and could be multiplied by joining several convoys together.

Drogo and William were separated. On one side of each was the shield of an unfamiliar neighbour, on the other their own shields touched that of another rider, neither of whom looked in their direction. Like the brothers, their animals were especially bred for the task, steady and fearless; they would have been constantly put through their paces against false shield walls so that facing the real thing became familiar.

Back in Hauteville-le-Guichard there was a valley field where they had practised these very same skills. Neighbours had often come to joust and train just as the de Hautevilles had gone to them. No festival gathering at the nearby cathedral town of Coutances had been complete without a show of equine and armed skill that, with spirited young men pitted against each other in what was supposed to be mock combat, had quite often descended into a brawl that drew copious blood.

On top of that there were the endemic disputes with other landholders, the containment of uprisings against ducal authority, on whose side Tancred always placed his duty, and the task entrusted to all the knights in their area when the bells sounded in alarm: the defence of the coast of their part of the Contentin; there was nothing unfamiliar in what they were being asked to do.

William and Drogo had one major problem: their destriers had not been in training for all the months they had been on the road, so they were skittish and harder to control than normal when harnessed, and set next to unfamiliar mounts they did what all horses do: tails stiff and high, stepping like dancers, they tried to assert dominance and that did not go unchallenged, so there was much biting and some flying hooves that, had they made contact with human flesh, would have at the very least broken a bone. Strong hands and many a hard slap on the neck were required to keep them under control and get them into line, and even then they were disinclined to settle.

Thus their performance was far from perfect as they manoeuvred, riding from one end of the manege to the other, first at a walk, then at a trot and finally at a canter. At the command all ten lances should have turned left or right as one, or reversed their course and retreated in unison. The best that could be said was that it was untidy. Norman cavalry could pretend flight, a tactic that often broke an otherwise solid line of pikemen who could not resist the urge to pursue and once the defence was fractured the Normans would swiftly reform and attack again. An attempt at that left William and Drogo lagging behind.

Reformed and cursing, the next manoeuvre went better as a touch of fatigue made their mounts more malleable. The whole convoy attacked the shield wall, first with lances couched, each one hitting a guard of wood and leather in a tattoo of sound before turning to the right and rising on their stirrups so that their shields protected their flank. They could then employ their swords to smash at the same targets and, being upright, their blows were delivered with great force. To follow came the same attack but this time with lances raised above their heads. Again they stood upright, controlling their mounts with their thighs, shields held forward with reins in the same hand, while they jabbed over the shield wall at straw bales, which represented the holders of the line or those who made up the second rank.

In a third attack targets had replaced those bales and they were required to accurately cast their lances as spears. The final mounted acts were individual, hacking at those great baulks of timber as they rode past or aiming their lances at the hanging targets, the one and only time they put their horses into a gallop. By the time that was over the horses were near to being winded.

‘Dismount,’ shouted Drengot.

Weary and sweating, William and Drogo complied, aware of two things. What their father had told them about fighting in southern climes was true, for he had fought the Moors in Spain to keep open the pilgrimage route to Compostela. Wearing a hauberk, cowl and a metal helmet made a man sweat copiously. The second was, though they were not going to openly admit it, that they were tired and near as rusty in battle practice as their mounts.

‘Let’s see your sword work,’ Drengot ordered, signalling forward a couple of big fellows with the round staves that were used for practice.

‘Should they not be mailed too?’ asked William.

The reply was more of a sneer than an answer. ‘I’m not testing them, fellow, I know they can fight.’

Wearing only padded leather jerkins the opponents would have an advantage in freedom of movement denied to the brothers, and that showed quickly as they feinted with their staves, only to draw the pair forward, and to a gale of laughter they cracked them both across the helmet, making their heads ring.

‘Step back, Drogo,’ William ordered as their opponents attempted another ploy to embarrass them, this time trying to thwack their shins.

They had fought together since they were boys, as much with each other as anyone else, and they knew one another intimately. William de Hauteville was not obeyed because he was the older brother; he was obeyed because Drogo knew he was twice the fighter in combat than he was himself. In unison they took two paces back and created enough space to draw on the men intent on making them look like fools.

‘Now!’ was the single word of command and the two mailed brothers came forward again as one, staves swinging right and left which forced their opponents to parry, before the weight of the blows then obliged them to step back. A man advancing generally has the advantage of one retreating and Drengot’s mercenaries were forced to defend themselves. They were no fools either and soon they made enough telling sweeps to hold their ground. It then became a contest of strength as the staves were swung, under, over, right and left, with occasional jabs, four pairs of eyes locked on each other seeking to detect where the next sweep was coming from.

‘Keep going, brother,’ Drogo called; he loved nothing more than fighting, if you excluded bedding women, a pair of traits that had caused them no end of trouble on their travels.

William barely heard him, he was breathing so heavily, while concentrating on his opponent, a shrewd swordsman. What told in the end was the sheer size and muscular power of the oldest of the de Hautevilles, for having manoeuvred his opponent into a position where he had to hold his weapon horizontal in defence, the downward stroke of William’s weapon had behind it so

much weight that he smashed the stave in two.

Shocked, his opponent quickly stepped back out of harm’s way. William did not desist, he turned on Drogo’s man and with cruel intent and his brother’s assistance drove the fellow to his knees. Unaware of a loss of control, Drogo had raised his stave high and was about to seek to smash the fellow’s skull, when Drengot’s barking voice brought him back to the present.

‘Enough!’

Slowly he walked towards them, they leaning now on their staves and sucking air into aching lungs.

‘So, you can fight, you Contentin ruffians, at least on foot, though I think you are dolts mounted.’

‘Our horses are rusty,’ Drogo insisted. ‘Give us a few days to train them up and you will think otherwise.’

‘Perhaps,’ Drengot replied, with the air of a man who did not want to be convinced. ‘I will tell you how it is here. We are mercenaries and when we are not fighting we are training to fight. You will be paid whatever you do and allowed to plunder as long as you don’t steal that which is mine by right. If I say kill, you do not hesitate, nor do you take the life of anyone who might provide ransom. I have the right of life and death over you. Serve me well and you will prosper, betray me and I will strip the skin off your bodies with hot pincers. Is that a bargain you accept?’

‘Yes,’ gasped William, removing his helmet and woollen cowl to reveal hair plastered with sweat.

‘If you die I will bury you with honour, and take steps to let your family know so they can say a mass for your soul. If you lose a horse or equipment through carelessness you must replace it, if you lose it in my service I will provide you with a mount from my stud or a weapon from my store.’

‘Would it be possible to have a drink?’ asked an equally sweating Drogo.

Rainulf indicated over his shoulder to some servants who had come to watch and a ladle of water was brought from a covered barrel, both brothers supping greedily.

‘Go to the armourer tomorrow and get him to punch some holes in the rear of your helmets. You cannot fight in this climate without it, or your head will fry. And always wear a bandana underneath to keep the sweat out of your eyes, otherwise you will be so misted up you will be bound to die from being blinded.’

‘Anything else?’ asked William.

‘Yes. Get out of that mail.’

‘We need to wash.’

‘There is a stream fifty paces from the back of my donjon. You might wish to cool yourself in its waters.’

‘We must look to our horses.’

‘It is good that you look to the comfort of your mounts before your own. Perhaps you are true Normans after all.’

For the first time Rainulf Drengot favoured them with a genuine smile as he shouted to the servants behind him, who had fetched the water, pointing to the now hitched but still sweat-streaked destriers. ‘Get these animals seen to, groomed, fed and watered, but have care which paddock you put them in.’

‘We too have not taken sustenance since sun up,’ Drogo said.

‘Then I bid you enter my dwelling, for there is food and wine on my table.’

‘Thank you, my Lord,’ William replied.

‘I have a desire to hear of the fight at Bessancourt.’

That was as much of an acceptance as they were going to get. William nodded and put his arm round the shoulder of Drogo. ‘Journey’s end, brother.’

‘Thank God, Gill, you have no idea how sick I am of nothing but your company.’