Crusade

‘There is no bone between here and your brain. At the right angle, and with almost no pressure, I can make the entire length of this blade disappear into your head. You’ll be dead before you can utter a sound.’

Suleiman was a large man bedecked in gold and precious gems and wearing a fine pale-blue, silk-lined kaftan, tied at the waist with a black sash. His beard was oiled and combed into tight curls. On his head he wore a matching embroidered blue Imamah turban, wound over a skull cap, with its tail hanging under his chin and over his shoulder to finish halfway down his back. He began to sweat but stayed calm.

‘You should be on my side. Isn’t this kidnapper your husband?’

‘Our marriage was over a long time ago, and he goes with my blessing too. He has my loyalty and respect, as does your daughter, and I don’t like you threatening them, or Prince Edgar.’

‘I’ve met your type before, neither man nor woman; they have them as a novelty in the whorehouses in Alexandria. It must be interesting to be able to give pleasure like a man and take it like a woman.’

Adela pressed the tip of her blade hard against Suleiman’s throat, which began to bleed. She then flexed her muscles, as if about to strike, and hissed into his ear.

‘Don’t tempt me, you fat pig. I have also met your type before, and nothing would give me more pleasure than killing you here and now.’

The intensity of Adela’s threat made me shudder and, I am sure, convinced Suleiman that she meant it. She pulled away, drew her sword and joined Edwin in standing sentinel in front of Suleiman’s men.

The Saracen took a couple of deep breaths and got to his feet.

‘This is not over. I will be back.’

Another year passed in the service of the Count, during which — for a while, at least — our habits were in stark contrast: Adela continued her relentless regime to achieve martial perfection, whereas Edwin and I both spent too much time cavorting with dusky young maidens who kept us amused during the balmy Sicilian nights.

To counter the ills of too much good wine and food, we sometimes joined Adela in her exacting routines. When it became clear that her skills, strength and health were improving, and ours were in rapid decline, we decided to be more temperate in our approach to life’s pleasures and more diligent in our devotion to duty. Life was still good and we enjoyed ourselves, but we were more disciplined and used Adela’s impressive regime as an inspiration.

However, in the autumn of 1086 matters in Normandy and England loomed prominently in our lives once more. It was October and I had — as always, when the leaves began swirling to the ground — been thinking of Senlac Ridge. It was now a full twenty years since the battle, but it was no distant memory. Like every Englishman, I thought about it constantly; every day brought fresh reminders of how irrevocably things had changed and how so many of our kin were unable to witness them because they lay rotting in the ground.

It was on typically Sicilian autumn day, warm and sunny with a fresh breeze off the sea, that a messenger from Count Robert in Normandy arrived in Palermo. He brought news of dramatic developments to the north. King William was still not at peace with his neighbours, or with himself. He was still tireless in pursuit of his enemies and in his determination to establish a unique legacy in history.

The King held sway over a huge domain that extended from the heartland of France in the south to his lordship of Malcolm Canmore’s Scotland in the far north. I had been wondering whether, like his predecessor on the English throne, Cnut the Great — King of England and most of Scandinavia, who had hankered after the title ‘Emperor of the North’ — a similar accolade should be applied to William. Even now that he was approaching sixty, his warrior spirit still burned as brightly as it had done when, as a boy-duke half a century ago, he first wielded a sword.

The Danes were being particularly restless and threatening a huge invasion, while William was still fighting to retain control of Maine. To meet the challenge of the Danes, he had, we were told, undertaken a great audit of England to find every piece of land, each property of substance and all potential taxpayers, English or Norman, in order to fund an army the scale of which had never been seen before. The inventory was likened to the imperial levies of Rome — so exacting and methodical that every person, beast and acre in the land was counted.

Norman bureaucrats in their hundreds were sent to every burgh and village in the realm to undertake the census: no chore was left unaccounted for, no piece of thatch (even as small as the width of a man’s arm) left unmeasured, and no crop, creature or artefact omitted from the national reckoning.