‘For the moment there is peace.’ Seeing Drogo’s face register disappointment, Rainulf laughed out loud. ‘But it never stays long like that. Eighteen summers I have been here and not one has gone by without a quarrel from which I have been able to prosper. And if it is too quiet, we have ways to ensure we do not go without.’
‘Such as?’ asked William.
The question seemed to annoy Rainulf; his face went a deeper shade of purple and the eyes, already hard to see, seemed to slip deeper into the fold of the flesh surrounding them.
‘You will discover that in time,’ he rasped, holding out his goblet for a fourth refill. ‘Now, tell me about Bessancourt.’
‘William will do that,’ Drogo insisted.
Which his brother did, for he was a good storyteller and he had, many times, told his tale coming south to willing listeners in the various pilgrims’ hospices in which they had found a place to lay their heads. Rainulf interrupted occasionally to ask a pointed question or two, mostly about how the Frankish milites had performed, never without supping from his goblet, and he forced William to be quite exact in his description of how they had first retreated, then were able to reverse that and resume the attack.
‘They must have been well led.’
‘They were beaten,’ William insisted, as the servants lit candles, mildly distracting him as he came to the end of his tale: candles cost money and he was more accustomed to smoky tallow. Whatever else Rainulf was short of — like company — it was not money.
‘The enemy horse were broken and suddenly with them in flight it was clear that we had the power of decision. Duke Robert did not rush; he ensured an organised line before calling for the advance, so that the King of the Franks could be in no doubt as to the person to whom he owed his triumph. A number of the enemy pikemen formed up to defend themselves, but for all their bravery the battle was lost. We hit their line like a great rolling rock smashing a haystack.’
‘That, brother, is too poetic.’
William smiled at Drogo. ‘Is it? Almost the whole of those who stood to defend themselves paid with their lifeblood. Behind them panic took over as each man sought to save himself, and that included the King’s rebel brother.’
‘I hope he flayed him alive,’ said Rainulf.
‘No,’ Drogo hooted, ‘he made him Duke of Burgundy. He gave the Frankish half of the Vexin to Normandy for a battle that he did not need to fight.’
‘Some men will forgive their brothers much.’
The look in Rainulf’s hooded eyes then was a curious one, which was not helped by the way his gaze was fixed on William. ‘You describe the battle well.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Let us hope you get a chance to do for me what you did for Duke Robert.’
Over the days that followed the brothers discovered how well organised Rainulf was: there was accommodation for up to four hundred knights, the great barn for communal eating and feasts, a proper stud to provide a steady supply of mounts, mendicant monks from the monastery at Aversa to see to the ailments of men and horses, a nursemaid equally versed in remedies to care for the women and children.
The balance of mares to stallions and good animal husbandry ensured a steady supply of foals, and extensive ditch work and careful attention to paddock numbers, fed by windmills, gave all the mounts good pasture, while the fecund fields of the Aversan plain provided fodder in abundance, the peasants taking away as rich fertiliser the dung that littered the fields.
There was a blacksmith who doubled as an armourer to maintain weapons and keep the fighting mounts shod while the Norman leader had even engaged the services of a scrivener so that anyone unlettered, wishing to send written word back to Normandy, could do so, through the auspices of a Jewish trader, who would also commute money through mysterious channels, this gained from both normal service and plunder.
Guaimar had grown to manhood in some luxury, but he had never seen anything like that which attended the family of Pierleoni. They lived in a villa that had once been the property of a wealthy Roman senator, a haven of arboreal peace in the teeming city which surrounded it. There were fountains set in mature gardens, cool, tiled and colonnaded courtyards from which to stay out of the sun, endless rooms in which to take repose and a whole tribe of hosts who could not let their legions of servants do enough for these two young unfortunates from the south. Yet the walls that faced the city of Rome had been fortified and armed retainers made sure that no one could breach the peace of this fabulously wealthy family. It was such a relief to come to this after their journey.
Sailing in a boat normally used for limited coastal trading had been damned uncomfortable out in deep waters. It had taken every wave in full measure, the bow lifting and dropping, the vessel pitching from side to side at the same time as the single sail reacted to the unsteady wind. Guaimar had been sick the first day, but had recovered; not so Berengara, who had lain below the deck the entire journey in a state of wretched distress, in the now fetid space, while her brother had sucked in fresh sea air and tried to hold conversations with the trio of taciturn Italian sailors who had helped them escape. Initially he had been fearful of them, for they looked like a bunch of cut-throats, until it finally dawned on him that the reverse was true: they were in some dread of him.
Even in clothes that had suffered from his previous confinement, he had still looked, with his build and features, like authority to these fellows, the kind of person, in Salerno, they would have avoided like the pestilence. He had assumed the Jew had paid them well for the service, and he had extracted from them the reason why they were out of sight of land — the need to avoid curiosity from boatmen from places like Naples and the various offshore islands by which, in the distance, they took their bearings.
The young man did not think it wise to point out that the mere knowledge of such places as Ponza and Palmerola, the last small island now a smudge over the stern, was telling evidence, in a boat this size, of the occupation they followed. What did they smuggle? It was not a question he could ask.
It had been a shock to find they had no possessions, not so much as a change of clothes, something Guaimar had kept from his sister; she was suffering enough. He had to assume that Ephraim had seen the necessity of using those as a blind. The purse he had been handed was far from heavy and, standing in the prow, looking north, he had worried as to how they were to clothe themselves for the onward journey to Bamberg and he had felt like a vagabond when a velvet-clad and scented representative of the Pierleoni came to the synagogue in Ostia to fetch them. His sister felt that more than he; since the age of ten she had been fastidious about her appearance.
Now, as they prepared to depart from Rome after a stay of two months, they were better dressed than they had been at home. It seemed there could be no service to which they were not privileged: clothing of the very best run up by tailors and shoemakers brought into the villa for the purpose, servants to dress their hair and attend to their skin and nails, any amount of scents with which to grace their bodies and travelling chests provided, with the ducal crest of Salerno picked out in proper colours, for their onward journey.
They had enjoyed sumptuous meals as well, and the last of these before they departed was attended by the whole extended family, including one son newly introduced, Ascletin, who would accompany them. He was only a year older than Guaimar, but already a bishop with a very high opinion of himself, loudly delivered. Toasts were proposed both to their prospects and to future prosperity. Well-mannered, Guaimar was bound to respond and thank them, and say that if the House of Salerno could ever be of use to the House of Pierleoni, then it must be taken as a given that whatever aid was requested would be provided.