The kiss did not last long. Soon he reached up and gently unwound my arms from around his neck, pushing them down by my sides and squeezing my hands before he let me go. He smiled at me. Then he turned and walked away, his pace quickly escalating so that in no time at all he had vanished into the darkness.
I stood there still feeling the imprint of his lips, so fierce that I could feel my own swelling from the pressure. Had it not been for that very tangible proof of his presence, I might well have been left thinking that the whole thing had been a vivid dream caused by having fallen and struck my head.
Soon, realizing that I was very cold, I left the shadows of the wall and set out for the little house.
He had probably saved my life for, had Gewis’s guardians found me lying stunned in the cloister, they might well have thought I had been talking to their charge and killed me as they had killed his mother.
My saviour then. And I didn’t even know his name.
SIXTEEN
H
is name was Rollo Guiscard. He had been born twenty-three years ago on the island of Sicily to a Norman father and a Sicilian mother. His father belonged to the family of the great Robert Guiscard, a Norman adventurer who, with a band of like-minded men, had set out to carve himself a kingdom in the south and achieved his ambition in less than twenty years. It had been a day for celebration when, in 1059, the Pope himself had recognized the Guiscards’ right to their hard-won lands. Not that there had even been any question of quitting them had the Pope withheld his approval, for the Guiscards were a law unto themselves.
Rollo’s dark-eyed, fiery mother had not actually been wed to his father, but the Guiscards did not worry over-much about such details. Rollo had been born in a castle – Troina, on its high hilltop in the Nebrodi Mountains – and in 1070, while Robert was engaged on the campaign to capture Palermo, the two-year-old Rollo moved with his mother to the new castle at Adrano, where his father ensured that Robert Guiscard’s orders regarding its design were implemented. Robert was in the process of increasing the size of his Sicilian possessions by a considerable amount and he fully intended to hold on to what he had gained. Adrano, like all the new castles, was built tall, strong and with neither time nor money wasted on decoration. It might not have been a comfortable home but it was a safe one.
As soon as he could hold a toy sword, Rollo wanted to fight. He quickly demonstrated that he had inherited in full the rebellious, fighting spirit of his forefathers, and Robert Guiscard, spotting the boy’s potential, knew that one day he would accept the boy as a welcome and increasingly valued member of his private army. It was not long before he was put into training, and by the time he was thirteen he was already recognized as a very promising soldier. As he grew towards manhood he fought alongside his kinsmen and their supporters to consolidate the Norman hold on Sicily. The Kingdom of the South flourished; Rollo grew strong and skilled, and he feared no man.
In 1085 Roger Guiscard died and he named his son Borsa as his successor. Not many of the family were happy with the arrangement, for the love and loyalty of the fighting men was with Borsa’s brother. Christened Mark, he was a mighty man in all ways, and his great size had been evident even as he kicked and squirmed in his mother’s womb. He had been nicknamed Bohemond, after the legendary giant, even before he was born, and the name stayed with him all his life.
Bohemond did not meekly sit down and accept his fate. Typical of his bellicose line, he rose up against his brother, seizing key positions in both Sicily and Calabria from Borsa’s feeble grip. His onslaught was only stopped when he reached Bari, where his late father’s brother, the Great Count Roger, at last checked him.
Rollo had fought with Bohemond, and he knew in his heart that, had events turned out otherwise, he would have stayed with him, making his life in the hot south where he had been born. But Bohemond had suffered a temporary setback and, for now at least, was no longer the victorious, infallible, irrepressible force he had once been; another man had halted his ambitions in southern Lombardy, and now he was turning his eyes to the east.
Something changed in Rollo. His life had suddenly soured, and he wanted more than anything to get away.
Besides
, he thought, as he found a comfortable place on the deck of the ship that was talking him north,
who wants to spend all their days on one small island when the rest of the world beckons
? The Kingdom of the South had been magnificent and would continue to be so, no matter who held the reins, but instinctively Rollo was aware that it could never be the true centre of power.
Slowly, steadily, by sea and on land, earning his bread by any means that offered, Rollo made his way across the Mediterranean and southern Europe, always travelling north and west, and eventually he arrived in Normandy. He threw in his lot with Duke Robert, the Conqueror’s son, but Robert proved all too fallible a leader of men. When his attempt on his brother’s kingdom of England failed – many said because Robert did not lead the onslaught himself but let other men do the work for him – Rollo lost faith in him. Now it was that brother of Duke Robert, King William of England, who called silently to him. One day in the early spring of 1089, he took ship from Le Havre in the guise of a merchant and landed in England.
He made his way to William’s court, where he presented himself in his true identity as a son of the house of Guiscard, of the Kingdom of the South. He appeared to arouse King William’s interest, and for some weeks the king kept Rollo close to him, asking him endless questions about everything from the new castles in Sicily to what he thought Duke Robert would do next. Rollo answered everything he was asked easily and fluently. Observation came as naturally to him as breathing, and his judgement was critical and sound.
King William had quickly realized that he had beside him, in Rollo, a man to value. He began to look out for a suitably testing opportunity, and it was not long before one arose.
The business at Ely was a worry. Not yet a grave worry, for King William knew where his quarry was and who guarded him. However, the anxiety never quite faded away. Attempts had been made in the past, as the king well knew. In these uncertain times, when he had occupied his throne for less than three turbulent years and already put down one major rebellion, might not others come up with the same idea? Was this not why the young man had been spirited away and walled up with the monks of Ely?
Ely
, thought the king. The location in itself was a matter for concern, for the monks on their island in the desolate fens had always had a reputation for independent thought . . .
The king deliberated for some time. Then in the late autumn of 1090 he summoned Rollo Guiscard, provided him with all the details of the situation and told him what he wanted him to do.
Rollo set out for Ely the next day.
Now, back in his lodging in a row of houses – well-built, but with a quality too subtle to make them stand out and therefore attract unwelcome attention – Rollo sat in a wooden chair before the fire and thought about what had happened that evening. He reached out for the goblet of fine wine – the king was generous to those whose services he valued, even when they were of a clandestine nature – and took a sip, letting the smooth liquid slip down his throat.
The lad was in the abbey; Rollo had seen him. It had appeared that the boy had been making for the site where the ancient Saxon church had stood. Rollo knew where this was because, typical of his thoroughness, he had gone to great pains to find out all that there was to know about the abbey of Ely, as it had once been and as it was now in the transition from Saxon to Norman. He smiled slightly. So the boy knew, too, what had lain buried in the ancient wall. It was a surprise, considering he had been brought up as a poor carpenter’s son in some obscure fenland village, but perhaps someone had taken the trouble to tell him. Either that or the past had stretched out a silent hand and beckoned the lad . . .
Rollo knew he should not entertain such fancies. His Norman kinsmen would laugh him to scorn if they knew. But then, he thought, he was not pure Norman, for his mother was a woman of the south and she came from a long line of
stregha
. His smile deepened for it had been many years since he had heard the old dialect name for a witch. Then a thoughtful expression crossed his face as he recalled something he had heard regarding King William: that he had little time for the church and its ministers and his sympathies lay with the pagan religion.
Rollo neither believed nor disbelieved the rumour. He had merely stored it away for future reference.
He turned his mind back to the events of the evening. The pale boy was closeted away in Ely abbey and, although Rollo had not seen them, there would undoubtedly be very efficient and capable men posted to guard over him. Tomorrow he would find out how many men formed this guard and what sort of threat they posed. They would, however, be mere henchmen, engaged for their strength and their ability to carry out orders without question. The driving force behind this affair would lie elsewhere. The king had told Rollo where he thought this force originated; part of Rollo’s commission was to ascertain whether he was right.
He drained the goblet and set it down on the small table beside him. The he sat quite still, formulating in his mind what he would do in the morning. He was aware as he did so of a troubling, turbulent and insistent image that battered against the place where he had penned it. Deliberately, he fortified his defence against it. He sat for some time, making the careful, painstaking plans that were typical of him. Then, when he was satisfied, he left his chair by the fire and went into the next room, where a bed with a feather mattress and fine wool covers awaited him.
It was only with the relaxation of sleep that the image broke out of its prison. Rollo lay dreaming, and his dreams were full of a boy who turned into a girl, whom his dreaming mind seemed to recognize as if he had known her all his life and whom he had kissed with a passion that had exploded like a new sun.
Gewis was very afraid. He sensed that something was about to happen and, although he did not know exactly what, instinctively he sensed danger.
His four guardians had moved him from his bed in the dormitory, and now he occupied a tiny cell, furnished with a hard, narrow cot, a low wooden stool and with nothing to relieve the bare stone walls except a stark wooden crucifix. Food and small beer were brought regularly – whatever his fate might turn out to be, it did not appear that they were going to starve him – and several times a day he was taken out to pray with the brethren. On those occasions he was escorted by no less than two and sometimes all four of his guards.
He had heard them muttering among themselves. They spoke of someone called Lord Edmund the Exile; they spoke of him with respect and awe, and it appeared that this Lord Edmund was coming out of hiding somewhere abroad and returning to England. He was making for Ely. Gewis had no idea who this great lord was, but the fact that he inspired something quite close to fear in Gewis’s tough, brawny guardians was quite alarming.
He did not think there would be many more chances to evade the eyes always on him and slip away to the site of the old Saxon church. He was both drawn to and repelled by it, and in a way it was a relief to have the option taken from him. He thought back to the visit he had tried to make a few hours ago. It had called out to him as it so often did, and he had crept along the dark passageways until he’d emerged in the vast space where the new cathedral was going up. He had been about to cross over to the ancient wall when he saw a figure. At first glance it had appeared to be a boy, but he’d caught a glimpse of the face and had recognized the young woman whom he had seen before dressed as a nun. He was about to hurry over to her – if nothing else, he was curious to know why she was back again and why she was now disguised as a boy – but he lost sight of her for a moment, and when he looked again she had gone.
He had seen something else. In the place where she had just been standing, right next to what remained of the old wall, the air was . . .
shimmering
, was the only way he could describe it. He had approached the spot, already very afraid and suspecting what might be there, but it had felt as if he’d walked into a wall of ice and he had stopped.
It is here
, he’d thought, his mind numb with panic.
For the length of a heartbeat it had materialized before him. He would have screamed but his throat had frozen, and he’d thought he was about to die.
Then the enchantment released him. He’d turned and run.
He could remember little of his terrified flight through the abbey. He’d become aware that one of his guardians was pounding along behind him, and it had taken all his self-control not to stop, turn and fling himself into the man’s brawny embrace. The narrow corridor that led to his new quarters had never seemed so welcome and he’d thrown himself through the low door with a sob of relief.
Now, he lay face down on his hard bed. He had the palms of his hands pressed tightly against his closed eyes, but all the same he still saw flashes of the horror in the old church. Amid all the other ghastly aspects of its destroyed face and mutilated body, one thing stood out and, try as he might, he could not stop the image sliding again and again into his mind.
It is nothing
, he told himself. Nothing but the effects of age and long interment.