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debaucherieslike his fellows. Out in the field he has, like you, an almost mystical ability to discern what cannot be seen beyond a hill, and when he hunts his eye for locating game is superb.’
    Ademar had lost his wager the day they went hunting, but talk of forfeited skins of wine was not appropriate; he stuck to answering the question.
    ‘Men, often those in advanced years to his own, come to him for his views and he is the arbiter of right and wrong with those of his own age and younger. In the training manège your son is paramount, an opponent even his seniors seek to avoid having to contest with, for he is not gentle in mock combat. At the same time he is the first to raise up and praise those he has bested and it seems there is little resentment for the heavy blows and bruises he hands out.’
    ‘He sets an example, then?’
    ‘I would say so.’
    ‘You say he has followed my progress?’
    ‘He closely questions anyone who has ever fought with you. I think you would be astounded by the depth of his knowledge of both your victories as well as your setbacks.’
    The thought of the latter clouded the Guiscard ’s brow for a moment; he hated to think of anything other than victory. ‘There must be anger too?’
    ‘If there is, it is well concealed. Your son is the master of his emotions, not a slave to them.’
    Robert stopped walking and looked Ademar right in the eye. ‘Even when it comes to my wife, the Lady Sichelgaita?’
    Ademar took refuge by being ambiguous; he knew if Bohemund loathed anyone, it was a woman he saw as his own mother’s usurper, to the point of never referring to her by anything other than aninsulting soubriquet, the ‘much-larded sow’ being his favourite.
    ‘I have never heard his opinion of her – it is not a name that he mentions.’
    ‘I am minded to relieve you of the duty of raising him and take him under my own wing.’
    Ademar had the satisfaction that he had guessed right. ‘I can think of no place where your son would be happier, and as to raising him, Bohemund is now grown to manhood. Certainly there is bulk to come with added years but he needs no instruction in combat. Leadership, perhaps, but not how to fight.’
    ‘You never call him by his given name of Mark?’ the Guiscard asked, in an abrupt change of subject, as he began walking again, his shoulders hunched; the impression created was that he had been too open and revealed too much.
    ‘It is not one he would answer to, even with his sister. You gave him the name of the mythical giant when he was a child and he wears it with pride.’
    ‘He was a giant of an infant all right,’ Robert said, stopping to face Ademar with a smile of reminiscence. ‘Damn near killed Alberada bearing him. Too narrow in the hips, I think she feared to bear another like him.’
    They had come full circle to a point above the kitchens and the great hall, from where they could see, now that the sun was near gone, the flickering fires that illuminated the main encampment which had been set up outside the walls, temporary home to the mass of Robert’s forces, each blaze under a spit of roasting meat, the smell of which permeated the whole atmosphere.
    ‘Then we shall talk, my son and I, but not yet, for my nose, as well as my grumbling belly, tells me it is time to eat.’
     
    The great hall of the castle of Corato was neither grand nor overly spacious; this meant, given the number of knights needing to be fed in the presence of their lord, it was crammed. Added to that it was exceedingly noisy, rowdy voices echoing off the bare stone walls as men who felt sure their campaigning was over indulged in the copious supplies of the wine that had been hoarded to quench the thirst of the recently surrendered defenders. They would have consumed to excess anyway, but with no enemy to face the next dawn it was likely to end up with many rendered insensible.
    At the high table, set on a dais to dominate the assembly and to his father’s