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 goaclass="underline" 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.