The Lady for Ransom Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/bello

  Sign up to our newsletter to hear about new releases events and competitions:

  www.panmacmillan.com/bellonews

  Contents

  Alfred Duggan 1903–1964

  Introduction

  1. I Meet Messer Roussel

  2. Romania

  3. The Politics of Romania

  4. The Eastern Rim of the World

  5. The Great Battle

  6. Anarchy

  7. At War with the World

  8. The Bridge of Zompi

  9. High Politics

  10. Mount Sophon

  11. Matilda the Deliverer

  12. Matilda the Leader

  13. Amasia Revisited

  14. Alexius

  15. The City

  16. Nicephoritzes the Eunuch

  Historical Note

  Alfred Duggan

  Lady For Ransom

  Alfred Duggan

  1903–1964

  ‘There have been few historical imaginations better informed or more gifted than Alfred Duggan’s.’ (The New Criterion).

  Historian, archaeologist and novelist Alfred Duggan wrote historical fiction and non-fiction about a wide range of subjects, in places and times as diverse as Julius Caesar’s Rome and the Medieval Europe of Thomas Becket.

  Although he was born in Argentina, Duggan grew up in England, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. After Oxford, he travelled extensively through Greece and Turkey, visiting almost all the sites later mentioned in his books. In 1935 he helped excavate Constantine’s palace in Istanbul.

  Duggan came to writing fiction quite late in his life: his first novel about the First Crusade, Knight in Armour, was published in 1950, after which he published at least a book every year until his death in 1964. His fictional works were bestselling page-turners, but thoroughly grounded in meticulous research informed by Duggan’s experience as an archaeologist and historian.

  Duggan has been favourably compared to Bernard Cornwell as well as being praised in his own right as ‘an extremely gifted writer who can move into an unknown period and give it life and immediacy.’ (New York Times)

  Introduction

  December 1096

  Although I am not yet forty-five, and hope to serve God for many more Advents and Christmases, Lents and Easters, yet even in this short life I have witnessed great events and surprising reversals of fortune; notably the overthrow of a great Empire and the struggles of brave men to save something from the wreck. And now all the good knights of the West have set out on that journey which in my youth was seldom accomplished. Our cousins from Normandy are wintering here in Italy, and next spring Duke Robert, and our Count Bohemond ride together for Romania, and then, if God wills, to the Holy City.

  Because I, alone of this community, have marched and fought from Thrace to Armenia and back again, our Abbot has commanded me to relate all that befell me. The scriptor will write it down, to be read to the young knights who keep Christmas here; they ride through Romania as allies, and it would be a pity if they offended their hosts through ignorance.

  There is one point I must make at the very beginning. Everyone has his own name, in which he takes pride; calling a man by the wrong name can cause great ill-feeling. So don’t call their Emperor ‘the King of the Greeks.’ It is a deadly insult, and he will not receive letters addressed to that title. His proper style is Basileus Autocrator, though we who pay due deference to the See of St Peter need not also call him Isapostolos, Equal to the Apostles, as his subjects do. But the people who dwell in the City of New Rome are Romans, their army is the Roman Army, and their ruler the Roman Emperor. That seems queer to us, who visit the true Rome and have dealings with the true Emperor in Germany; but the Greeks feel very strongly about it. It does no harm to follow their custom, and in this narrative I shall refer to them as Romans. Oddly enough, the language they speak is called Greek, and nobody minds; in fact they are rather proud of it, because the Gospels were written in that language; though I believe time has brought certain alterations.

  Very well then. Please pay attention, young gentlemen.

  1. I Meet Messer Roussel

  My father was Odo fitzRoger, a Norman of Normandy, who came on pilgrimage to St Michael at Monte Gargano and then served the fitzTancreds in their conquest of the country. He was not a gentleman, but neither was he a villein; he was a free craftsman, a smith. He carried his tools on a donkey, and boasted he could earn a living anywhere in the world where throats are cut with steel. He was not devout, but he kept his bargains and served his lord, in the field as in the workshop. He fought on foot, with a hammer of his own design, and said it was most interesting to find out by experiment whether strange armour was as strong as it looked.

  My mother was Theodora Melitissa, whose first husband came to this country from Romania as smith and armourer to the troops of the Catapan. Nowadays the young men use a horrible slang word, ‘Gasmule’, to describe the son of a Frankish father and a Greek mother; if anyone called me that in the days before I entered religion I drew my dagger and made him apologise; because the word really means Bastard. I suppose people take it for granted that such a child must be the outcome of rape or seduction, but my parents were properly married, in church, before I was born. It was not exactly a love-match; but the Catapan’s army had fled, and there was my mother trying to bury her husband single-handed, and heir to a well-equipped forge. By marrying her my father got a good title to the smithy, and settled down to shoe horses and mend ploughs at the crossroads instead of marching with the Norman army.

  That was in the year 1051, and in 1052 I was born and christened Roger; I was the only child to survive the perils of infancy, though I had several brothers and sisters who lived a few weeks. When I was seven I began to help my father in the smithy, but this is a land of war, and I did not finish my apprenticeship. When I was twelve the Norman conquerors fought among themselves; Robert the Weasel was making himself ruler of all the Franks of Apulia, and some of his fellows were unwilling to take orders from him. A band of defeated rebels halted to sack our little settlement. My father rashly tried to defend his home, and when they killed him someone cut down my mother also; I suppose I should have helped my father until I was killed in my turn, but I inherit a sensible caution from both sides of the family; the forge was cold, and I hid up the chimney until the plunderers rode on. The stone chimney did not burn, though it grew very hot as the thatch blazed round it; when I came down there was not another living creature within miles.

  I did not bury my parents. I know it is the right thing to do, but I had no spade, and was not feeling strong. Duke Robert the Weasel was coming up in pursuit of the murderers, and he always made his men bury casual corpses and in general keep his lands tidy. I am sure my parents did in fact get Christian burial; otherwise my mother would have haunted me in dreams, for all Romans set great store by a proper funeral; but she never has.

  I was twelve years old, my clothes were filthy from my hiding-place and I had not a penny or a friend in the world. But I knew something of metalwork, and a good deal about the management of horses, because my father dealt in them as a sideline. If warriors have ruined you the
obvious remedy is to become a warrior yourself; then you can plunder others; a groom who could also do simple repairs to a mailshirt would be welcome in any army. I began walking westwards, towards the coast.

  In the evening I saw the coast-road below me, with Sicily on the horizon. That was where most warriors were at that time, for the infidels were besieged in Palermo. If I could beg a passage across the strait there would be gallant horsemen on the other side, needing grooms when they captured more chargers from the foe.

  But I did not journey as far as the coast. That night I joined the household which I served for the rest of my life in the world. As I came down a little ravine I heard horses on my left; I hid in a bush, fearing brigands; but round a spur came a troop of Norman horse, led by a lady on a tall stallion. There were ox-waggons also, containing women and children, and a few waiting-ladies sitting sideways on quiet mules. I did not suppose a lady would be gathering recruits, but she would give me alms, especially if I appealed to her in French (at home I spoke Greek to my mother, but I am fluent in both languages). The Italian children in my native hamlet begged from every passer-by, whether they were hungry or not; my father beat me if he caught me copying them, but I knew it was done. I skipped among the prancing horses of the escort, crying.

  ‘Gracious lady, spare a crust for a starving orphan. I have no father, I have no mother, my home was burned by brigands, and for three days I have not eaten.’ As a matter of fact I had eaten breakfast that morning, but it was a pardonable exaggeration.

  A sergeant knocked me over with the butt of his lance, which showed that the lady was charitable; otherwise he would have run me through with the point. I scuttled on all fours among the plunging hoofs, still begging at the top of my voice, until the lady raised her hand to halt the troop and called:

  ‘Come here, you filthy little scarecrow. I can’t think how you picked up all that soot in your short life. But how is it that you speak the decent French of a gentleman? Have you escaped from the sulphur-mines of the infidel?’

  I was strongly tempted to pretend I was the son of some great lord, delivered as a hostage to the infidel and then condemned to the mines. But the lady spoke a very Italian French; she must have lived in Apulia for many years, and would be personally acquainted with every noble family. I lifted my eyes for a brief glance at her face, and decided that, at least on this occasion, honesty was the best policy. For she looked competent, and more honest than charitable. She had the grey eyes and faded fair hair of a Frank, but her skin was so scorched by the sun, though she was not much more than twenty years old, that she must be of Italian birth; her nose was a commanding beak, very red from sunburn, and her mouth set in firm lines of decision. She was as big as a warrior, and more like a handsome man than a pretty girl. Above all, she looked as though she would stand no nonsense. I told her the truth.

  ‘So although you are not a gentleman you are a Norman, or at least half one,’ she said when I had finished. ‘My lord will always help Normans in distress. You may come in my company to Sicily, and if you can really look after horses and mend mail we will find work for you in the household. You are Roger fitz-Odo, and you should know my name. I am the lady Matilda, wife to Messer Roussel de Balliol, who serves Roger fitz-Tancred. Since you have been hiding in a chimney I shall forgive your present appearance, but if I give you a clean shirt you must look very different by supper time. Go and help with the pack-mules until we halt for the evening, and then see me again. Here is bread and cheese to eat on the road.’

  This speech was typical of the lady Matilda, as I got to know her later. I was so exhausted I could hardly walk, but she put me to work at once, for she hated her servants to be idle; on the other hand, she fed me immediately, instead of waiting for supper, because if her servants worked diligently she looked after them.

  In the evening we halted by the roadside, just short of a walled seaport. In those days in Italy anyone who was worth a ransom did not care to enter walled places which were held by someone else. Duke Robert the Weasel called himself chief of all the Normans of Italy, but in practice they did not obey him very faithfully.

  I threw away my sooty clothes, and a groom gave me a woollen shirt and a pair of pantaloons such as peasants wear, copied from the riding-chausses of their Lombard masters. I waded into a cold torrent and got myself cleaner than I had been for many years. Then, in my new clothes, I walked up to the main cooking-fire and asked a serving-maid where I might wait on the lady Matilda.

  Without thinking I spoke in Greek, because at home I had spoken Greek to my mother and it seemed the right language for women. But the lady Matilda had come up behind me; she was always trying to stop the cooks stealing more food than was reasonable.

  ‘What’s that you said, boy?’ she called. ‘E Despoina Matilda? I know those words, though that’s just about all I know. Can you speak Greek? Then my lord will certainly employ you. I suppose you can’t read? A pity, though it’s only natural. You can’t be our interpreter if you can’t read and write, but you will be a useful check on those rascally hired linguists; half of them don’t really understand French, and they tell the Catapan anything that comes into their heads. You look quite presentable without all that soot. We’ll see in the morning how you ride. My lord needs a lightweight page to ride his second charger, and one who knows Greek will be useful. You had better eat with my servants; then the sergeants won’t steal your food.’

  Four days later, when we landed in Sicily, I had begun to know my way about the household. There were more than three hundred men, women and children, of different races and speaking different tongues. But all had one thing in common; they had been uprooted by war, and they looked to further, unending war to provide their daily bread. The lady Matilda was the daughter of a Lombard noble, who had been killed in the breach when his town fell to the Normans. Messer Roussel married her that evening, as I learned from her women; I suppose he hoped for her father’s fief in dower, but Duke Robert gave it to another knight. She was content with her fate. Noble ladies are always wedded to strangers, and never, as maidens, marry the man of their choice; though occasionally as widows they do; at least it was a great deal better than being raped by the whole army and then thrown out to starve. Messer Roussel was of high birth, a cadet of the Balliols of Normandy, and he treated her with as much courtesy as if she had brought him a rich fief. Her women were local peasants; Italian was their native language, but some of them knew a little Greek. The men were more of a mixture. There were three Norman knights and about fifty Norman sergeants, who had arrived a few months before to seek their fortunes in Italy; it was to enlist this band that the lady Matilda had crossed from Sicily. Some of the grooms were infidel slaves, there were half a dozen Sclavonian mercenaries who had deserted from the Catapan, and ten horse-archers who came from nobody knew where, because their language was incomprehensible and they did not appear to be either Christians or followers of Mahound; no one could give them orders, but then they would not have obeyed anyway; they were crafty scouts and kept their horses very fit. I suppose they were nomads from the Danube, but we just called them the Foreigners. There was also one Saracen sergeant, who had been baptised; he appeared devout, and possibly his was a genuine conversion; but we all took it for granted that he had abandoned the faith of his forefathers to escape from slavery, and despised him accordingly.

  Italian was the common language of the band, as it was of all the Norman forces in Sicily. A Frenchman of the north can make himself understood in that language, and other strangers had to learn it or remain silent.

  Those Normans who were getting on with the war, instead of fighting among themselves or pillaging the open country, were at that time blockading Palermo; and Messer Roussel de Balliol awaited us before the city. By the time we got there my status had been fixed. I was luckily born with good hands, and even bad-tempered horses go quietly when I ride them; I rode a spare warhorse and led another. All over the world the great social distinction is between those who rid
e and those who walk, and I was a horseman. The food was good, and my lady had given me an old pair of riding chausses and two blankets. She said nothing about wages, but I gradually discovered that no one in the expedition was paid; the plunder we might take would be divided in fixed shares, according to the military worth of each man, and until we won plunder we would get nothing.

  That particular attack on Palermo was unsuccessful; the town did not become Christian until several years later. When we arrived the army was already discouraged, and the camp was as foul and uncomfortable as unwilling troops can make it. But naturally Messer Roussel wished to make a good impression on the warriors his lady had collected to join his banner. We found him under a gay awning, with his knights standing behind in full mail.

  If Messer Roussel had not been the man he was my story would be very different. When I stood by my horses, on the left of the line, my first impression, and I am sure the impression of everyone else in the band, was that we had found a friend. His hair was a foxy red, which was why he was called Roussel; I believe he had been christened William, but the nickname was so firmly established that everyone knew him by it; his skin was by nature very fair, but the Italian sun had burned it to a fiery scarlet; it never turned brown, and his nose was always peeling, so that in a crowd of southerners he stood out as a Frank of the Franks; he was straight and supple, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist; not the type of beefy musclebound champion who wields a mace no other man can lift, but obviously a good horseman who would be formidable in battle; he was about forty years old, and his red beard and red hair were clipped for comfort under the hauberk, though the sun made his skin so tender that he would never have his chin shaved. So far he was just a gallant Norman, like many other Normans in the following of the fitzTancreds. It was the smile which spread from his lips to his eyes that made him at once the trusted comrade of every man under his command.