The man sat up straight in the saddle on the mare, his long gray hair and beard gently waving as the horse’s pace jostled the rider side to side. With his left hand resting on his thigh and his right hand folded in a loose grip on the reins, Robert Guiscard easily conveyed power, presence, and command.
Albert Prater rode beside him but even with his mount’s ornate saddle and braided halter, he was clearly the companion and not the leader in this troop of a dozen soldiers riding up to the gate of the castle. Robert, of the Hauteville family, had come to southern Italy several years earlier following his older brothers’ conquest of this region in the toe of the boot of Italy. Like William and Drogo before him, he had carried the Norman banner this far south on the peninsula to extend the em
