Hugh
A few generations later the great grandson of Norris, Hugh, enjoyed life in the very same Normandy castle. Life was as mother nature had intended, the Norman Knights had all the security, all the fun, all the money, all the women, and all the foreign holidays, whereas the serfs had all the fleas.
But there was a price to pay for having the good life. When it came time to do battle, the Norman Knights had to sit on horses wearing all that heavy armour, while ordering the serfs into battle.
It could get quite warm and smelly inside a suite of armour on a sunny day, so on those days Hugh would avoid going into battle by sending a loyal servant in his place. After all, no one knew who was inside the armour and Hugh would pay the servant a bonus for each kill. If the servant was killed Hugh would change places with him in the mortuary and when he returned from the dead the serfs thought a miracle had happened and worshipped him even more.
Of course, if it was raining you risked being rusted into your underpants, so the servant would be sent into battle on rainy days as well. For Hugh this had the added bonus of the attention ladies of the court would give to treating such wounds.
The servant was also sent into battle if the weather was stormy. I can tell you, 25,000 volts of lightning in a suite of armour is the worst, the very very worst; it brings tears to my eyes just writing about it. It happened to Sir Pierre Etincelle, a great Norman Knight but he died young, just a flash in the pan and gone forever.
Cold days were also to be avoided. Falling off your horse onto hard ground in heavy armour would bruise every bone in your
body. Fall onto snow and it would be spring before you stood up again.
No, the only day to go into battle was one that was slightly overcast with a light wind, provided of course that the weather forecast said it would last all day. Oh, almost forgot, weekends were definitely out, as were religious holidays, and then of course he always allowed his servants to wear his armour on their birthdays.
Sir Hugh was no fool.
On the three hundred and sixty four days of the year that he was not doing battle, Sir Hugh would work on his hobby, painting.
It all started one winters evening while he and his wife, Bridget, were sat in front of the fire watching the servants perform an ancient play. It was coming up to the bit where the pigeon bit the Greek on the nose when Bridget interrupted.
"That's enough! We saw this one last month. Repeats, repeats, repeats, that's all we get these days!" She blurted. "Stop the play!"
Jean-Paul, the commercial actor, thought it was his queue and walked on to the stage.
He sang.
"Here's the thing, to give your castle zing,
Make it look like what it aint,
with this new invention we call paint.
If your castle's looking gritty,
here's the thing to make it pretty,
don't let the old man say he caint,
buy him a cart load of our paint."
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