‘They are drinking wine to ward off the chill,’ Jordan said.
This information was imparted through chattering teeth. He had been out, in the snow, now melting off his discarded cloak, on one of his daredevil escapades, which he continued in spite of a direct instruction to desist, and he was now trying, at what were feeble flames, to get the blood flowing through his frozen frame. Roger, angry with the continued insubordination, could not help but notice the drawn nature of his son’s face, which was not brought on by fatigue but by lack of food. It was the same with all of his lances, the sick now added to the wounded and that included the man he relied on most, a fever-stricken Ralph de Boeuf; he had cut the rations but it took no genius to work out that they were running out of the means to stay alive. If something did not break soon, he would be obliged to surrender.
‘The Greeks, yes,’ he agreed, pulling his fur cloak tighter round his frame, ‘but Islam forbids its sons to drink wine.’
‘Why do you never believe what I say, Father?’ Jordan asked brusquely.
It was an unaccustomed tone from his son and Roger was about to react as he thought he should, only to realise that it was induced as much by hunger as anger at him.
‘Do I not?’
‘No. And you diminish me in front of others every time I speak.’
‘You cannot fault me, surely, for trying to teach you what you need to know.’
‘I can fault you for doing so in public.’
‘If I do so, it is for your own good,’ Roger barked, his patience with being corrected evaporating.
‘Then,’ Jordan responded, equally sharp, ‘for your own good, go out and see if what I have just told you is the truth.’
Roger’s hand was raised but he did not strike, partly because Jordan showed no sign of seeking to avoid the coming blow. Instead he stood. ‘Get your cloak back on and show me.’
Out on the concourse before the castle it was like daylight, with the full moon high in the sky reflecting off the deep snow. Roger stopped to talk to a party of his men coming back from their short duty as sentinels — no one could stay out too long — and established that all was quiet from where they had come.
‘Apart from the singing,’ one said.
‘Singing?’ Roger demanded.
‘More chanting,’ another replied, ‘I think to keep up their spirits.’
‘It’s good to know they are so low.’ Roger regretted that as soon as he said it, for in the eyes of the man he was speaking to lay clear evidence that they all knew of their situation: they too were low in spirits. ‘Go inside, get warm.’
‘Sire, I have forgotten what warm is like.’
‘How long do we have, Father?’ Jordan asked in a soft voice as they parted company with the sentinels.
‘It will be time when you can play a tune on your ribs,’ Roger replied in a determined tone. ‘And we are not there yet.’
But the thought nagged at him, as he walked ahead of his son: surrender was not more than a week away.
The soft chanting he heard as soon as he joined the men who had just relieved those to whom he had spoken, heavily cloaked, flapping their arms to stay warm, who had learnt weeks before this moment that to touch your sword blade with an ungloved hand was to lose your skin.
‘How long has this been going on?’ Roger asked.
‘A few days.’
‘Jordan says they are drinking wine, even the Saracens.’
‘Lucky them,’ the fellow responded.
The Normans had run out of that first and been forced to part with anything they had managed to plunder to pay those willing to smuggle a few skins into them; rough as it was it assuaged their anxieties. It was from that source, in a broken-down house with a connecting cellar to the other side of the barricades, he discovered the truth of what Jordan was telling him. Of all the garrison, he had the most with which to trade and he used the contact to seek news, always negative, of any form of relief coming his way. When he tried to bargain for some wine, he found the price had gone up and the quality, never high, had plummeted.
‘Saracens are drinking it by the tun barrel now,’ his contact whispered. ‘Their imams have given them absolution for the sin. Can’t get enough now they’ve found out what a pleasure there is in the grape.’
‘By the tun barrel?’
‘And the rest. Taking more and more each day and hauling skins out with ’em on guard.’
Later, wandering through the now cavern-like storerooms, which months before had been full to bursting, Roger mulled over how to use this information. Time was not running out, it was gone. Something had to be done, yet he was in a worse position now than he had been originally. When first besieged, breaking out would have been bloody, but a goodly number of Normans could have got out of Troina town and, mounted, they would have got away. Now, with men weakened by hunger and no horses, he would have to fight his way out on foot, leaving those like Ralph who could not do battle, against odds he could not calculate, and to what? Countryside in the grip of winter and one in which, unfriendly and dangerous, they could all die.
Over the next few days he could see, in every eye that met his, men resigned to their fate. The only person not so affected was Judith, locked in her self-imposed concerns for the sick and infirm, she being the only one with whom he could openly share his concerns. Her response was to gently drag him to his knees and tell him to pray, tell him that God had got him to his title and only God would save them all. If he prayed with her, and he did, it was with less conviction than she exhibited.
Hunger woke him in the night, a griping in his stomach that made sleep impossible, got him up and out into the cold air, under a black sky, with no moon and some cloud. He had avoided middle-of-the-night visits to his outposts, which might imply he did not trust his captains to keep alert their men, but he went round them this time and what struck him by the time he had reached the third barricade was the utter silence. There was no soft singing or chanting from the other side of the kind he had heard before.
Unbuckling his sword, Roger took out his knife and, ordering those on duty to be ready to catch him, he climbed to the top of the barricade and stood in what should have been plain view. Nothing happened, so gingerly he crept down the opposite side, not easy on a roughly constructed barrier, all the while conscious he was making noises that, in his ears, sounded like thunderclaps. Still there was no response and it was with one foot on the ground that he heard the first of the gentle snoring.
Just then the clouds parted enough to show a mass of stars, giving him light to see the huddled sleepers resting against the barricade. The snoring was very evident now; the whole lot of them were asleep and each had either in his hand or at his side an empty wineskin. He could not shout, that risked waking them, so, just as cautiously, he climbed back to the top and called softly to his men to take off their swords and join him, sending one fellow back to the castle to rouse out every man now sleeping.
Back down again, with both feet on the ground, Roger helped his men negotiate their descent, urging silence until they were lined up, knives at the ready, each one marking a slumbering enemy. Their throats were cut, quickly and, if you set aside the gurgling of slashed jugulars, silently, the smell of their blood mixing with the odour of their bodies, neither as strong as that of stale, vinegary wine.
It was a long night as, one by one, Roger’s men took each barricade, only very rarely leaving a sentinel alive and, if they woke and fled, which they did, found themselves running into parties of Normans at their back, men who had circled round soundlessly through deserted, snow-covered streets, to take them in the rear. Before dawn, Roger had got down to the lower town with his whole strength, to take in their beds and slay the men who had trapped him for so long. Troina was his again when the sun rose.
The revenge was awful, but it needed to be: Greeks suffered much, but the Saracens who had come to kill him and his men and who had survived the night, died to a man, the snow in the gutters washed away by their warm blood. He crucified the Orthodox priests and burnt at the stake the elders of the town, for these men had sworn fealty to the cause of Ibn-al-Tinnah and had betrayed their oath.