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 the new kingdom of Jerusalem and started home, bringing back a Norman bride of the south for the blessing of St. Michael of the Peril, and hanging up his standard in his mother's abbey-church at Caen. Legend, however, was kind to Robert: before long he had killed a giant Saracen in single combat and refused the crown of the Latin kingdom because he felt himself unworthy, until he became the hero of a whole long-forgotten cycle of romance.

The real Norman heroes of the First Crusade must be sought elsewhere, again among the descendants of Tancred of Hauteville. When Robert Curthose and his companions reached the south on their outward journey, they found the Norman armies engaged in the siege of Amain under the great Count Roger and Guiscard's eldest son Bohemond, a fair-haired, deep-chested son of the north, "so tall in stature that he stood above the tallest men by nearly a cubit." The fresh enterprise caught the imagination of Bohemond, who had lost the greater part of his father's heritage to his brother Roger Borsa and saw the possibility of a new realm in the East; and, cutting a great cloak into crosses for himself and his followers, he withdrew from the siege and began preparations for the expedition to Palestine. Among those who bound themselves to the great undertaking were five grandsons and two great-grandsons of Tancred of Hauteville, chief among them Bohemond's nephew Tancred, whose loyalty and prow-