GuyBoy
Hero
He had been drinking the night before; of course he had been drinking, like any self-respecting Norman seigneur would have done for the new year approaching.
Guillaume de Tourelles was lord of the eponymous holding, with its wooden motte and bailey stronghold and three villages, held from Duke Richard II, Lord of Normandy these last two years. And the Viking blood of Rollo and his followers flowed strong in all these Norman lords, with only some veneer of Frankish civilisation coating the sea-reaver within Guillaume’s soul.
The veneer did extend to wine over beer, and it was the sour taste of grape, not barley, that flavoured Guillaume’s mouth as he woke to the sound of screams and the scent of smoke.
Rushing to the hole in the wooden wall of his bower, Guillaume pulled aside the linen drape. Cold January air assailed his body, but he paid it no heed. The small chapel of Tourelles was ablaze and strange forms of horror capered in the smoke, or pursued fleeing peasants.
His chapel, his peasants, his demesne.
Snarling, Guillaume spun, his eyes falling on his mail shirt, coif, helmet, and, most of all his sword, a gift from Duke Richard himself.
“Deus vest,” he mouthed.
Something like the above.....perhaps repeated, with variation, in the palaces of Baghdad, the fjords of Norway, the cloisters of Cluny and the steppe mirs of the Rus as the fated day of 1st January 1000 dawns.
Guillaume de Tourelles was lord of the eponymous holding, with its wooden motte and bailey stronghold and three villages, held from Duke Richard II, Lord of Normandy these last two years. And the Viking blood of Rollo and his followers flowed strong in all these Norman lords, with only some veneer of Frankish civilisation coating the sea-reaver within Guillaume’s soul.
The veneer did extend to wine over beer, and it was the sour taste of grape, not barley, that flavoured Guillaume’s mouth as he woke to the sound of screams and the scent of smoke.
Rushing to the hole in the wooden wall of his bower, Guillaume pulled aside the linen drape. Cold January air assailed his body, but he paid it no heed. The small chapel of Tourelles was ablaze and strange forms of horror capered in the smoke, or pursued fleeing peasants.
His chapel, his peasants, his demesne.
Snarling, Guillaume spun, his eyes falling on his mail shirt, coif, helmet, and, most of all his sword, a gift from Duke Richard himself.
“Deus vest,” he mouthed.
Something like the above.....perhaps repeated, with variation, in the palaces of Baghdad, the fjords of Norway, the cloisters of Cluny and the steppe mirs of the Rus as the fated day of 1st January 1000 dawns.