Free Warriors by Jack Ludlow Page A

from the north had plundered at will; it was rich now, but it was also the land settled by those same raiders for two centuries and thus not for despoliation. There was a part of Tancred de Hauteville that had always hankered after the notion of living in older times, even if the age he lived in now was troubled enough for any man.
    The rest of his party, all members of his family, fanned out alongside him. Tancred and his sons were not only on higher ground, but being mounted as well, they were at near eye level with the round, crenellated towers of mighty Moulineaux, which stood at each corner of the curtain walls that connected them. They were close enough to see the separation between the mortar and the stone blocks, as well asthe dark slash of the deep ditch before the ramparts, though not enough to see into the great square keep they protected.
    Within ballista range the forest had been cleared to deny cover to any approaching enemy intent on battering the walls, but Tancred, who, despite his advanced years still prided himself on his skill, as well as his experience as a fighting man, was adamant the castle was not built in the right place.
    ‘Mind it, some clever clogs will build a contraption that can fire a stone ball further than we now know, and they will gain distance from this high ground. Those walls could be breached and even the keep could be open to a shower of deadly rocks big enough to kill. Duke Robert should have put it up where we are sitting now so it could not be overlooked, and I told the young fool that when he was building the place.’
    ‘Which is no doubt why he sought your advice in all matters since that day.’
    ‘Mind your cheek, boy!’
    Robert de Hauteville, named as a child after the very duke just mentioned, showed no reaction to this stricture from his father, nor did he even deign to look as though he noticed the glare which accompanied it. The rest of the family did not react: that was just Robert and his papa, forever in disagreement as they had been on the whole journey and for years priorto that. If anything, they were slightly embarrassed, given that riding to attend a ceremony of great importance – one to which every loyal subject of the Duke of Normandy was ordered to be present – their party was in company with many others travelling on the same errand.
    One such group, a dozen knights, rode slightly ahead of them on the narrow highway that ran along the ridge top, with yet more close behind, all summoned to attend upon their liege lord. King Henry of the Franks, was coming downriver from Paris in all his majesty, his purpose to confer knighthood on his vassal, William, the adolescent Duke of Normandy, this on the occasion of his fifteenth birthday.
    ‘Roger,’ Tancred barked to his youngest and favourite child. ‘Do me the honour of not growing up to be like this one, who, by his manner, is bound to be a changeling.’
    Such a statement was nonsense, of course: you only had to see Robert and Tancred together to know that the old fellow, for all his hair was white, his frame somewhat shrunk, with a face lined and craggy, was the sire of this sturdy, tetchy giant. Indeed that was where the constant rubbing up against each other came from: they were too alike.
    From a mere ten-year-old, the response was loud and firm. ‘I will match his height and valour, Father, if not his conduct.’
    ‘Don’t be too keen on the loftiness, lad. There comes a point where it clearly affects the brain.’
    ‘Then I must have more sense than anyone else in the family,’ insisted Serlo, who, though a year older than Robert and no dwarf, was nowhere near the size of his half-brother; few men were.
    ‘Are you going to block the path, or move your fat arses on their way?’
    The irate voice came from the party immediately behind them, half a dozen mounted men still in amongst the trees, and the reaction was telling. Tancred half-turned to request patience, his face showing no rancour, but