On the whole he preferred father, as a person. Father was brave and gay and cunning and successful. He was also a bit of a fool at times, but then you can’t have everything. Father talked too long and too loudly, laughed too often and was too easily amused. All this playing with the sound of words was rather silly; especially when everyone spoke several languages at once, north French and south French and the many dialects of Italy, so that you could always find a word that sounded funny.
Little Bohemond himself knew exactly the quality which gave him pleasure, though he could not give it a name. When he saw a smith hit a piece of iron two or three times and produce a perfect horse-shoe, or a muleteer fasten a bulky load with one strong and complicated knot, or a cook start a blazing fire from one spark of his flint-and-steel, he would crow and dance with delight. What he admired was in fact efficiency, the exact fitting of means to ends with nothing wasted. Father possessed that quality, even though he was sometimes facetious when he was enjoying himself. There was a lot to be said for father.
By the time Bohemond was eighteen he was the son and heir of the famous Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and friend of the Pope; and also the eldest of a large family. As soon as Alberada had been peaceably disposed of Robert had married the lady Sigelgaita of Salerno, a princess of a noble Lombard house. She was tall and fair and stately, and better adapted to cope with the sunshine of Italy than any immigrant from Normandy. Every year she presented her husband with another bouncing child.
Bohemond had grown until he towered above even his mighty father. He was so much taller than his companions that he had got into the habit of stooping from the shoulders, to talk to them more easily. He had inherited the blue eyes and fair hair of a Norman, but in the quality of his skin he was luckier than his parents. While their cheeks were always scarlet and peeling Bohemond’s pink-and-white complexion was merely tinged with a golden glow. He looked as handsome as the statue of St. Michael in a church. He kept himself always very clean, and had a barber shave him every day when he was not fighting; if he was too busy for a shave he would rub his jaw with pumice stone, so that you could hardly make out what would have been the colour of his beard if he had allowed it to grow. His hair also was clipped as short as a priest’s, so that it never became tangled and sweaty under the hauberk.
In private life he was almost as blameless as the real St. Michael in Heaven. He had learned to read and write in Latin; Italian was his native tongue, but he could speak north French and south French and understand Greek. Every day he practised with his weapons, and he never ate or drank more than was good for him. He seemed to take no interest in women; but his father was relieved to note that he was not interested in boys either. Such a mighty horseman and jouster must be adequately virile, but apparently the temptations of the flesh did not bother him. His greatest pleasure was to see difficult things well done, or to do them himself.
Guiscard doted on his magnificent heir, and his stepmother admired him. But his half-brothers and half-sisters disliked him, for he did not conceal his contempt for them.
Soon after his eighteenth birthday Bohemond went with his father on yet another pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, the goal that had brought the first Normans to Apulia. After they had prayed at the shrine, and given a suitable offering, father and son stood on the open summit of the mountain.
“Splendid place, this,” muttered Guiscard. “I like it better every time I come. You know, my boy, quite apart from the famous and authentic visit of St. Michael, this mountain has a claim to be the very high place from which the Devil showed Our Lord all the kingdoms of the world. They say that about a lot of other mountains, too. But here, if you look with the eye of faith, you can see Rome over there, or at least a hint of the hills round it; and over there the high peaks of Romania, the other half of the famous ancient Empire. Rome the Great and East Rome, or bits of them. That’s a fair sample of all the kingdoms of the world.”
Bohemond squinted into the shadows of the sunset eastward. “I don’t know that I can see solid land, but from the way the clouds gather I know there is land below them. Pretty high mountains, they must be. So that’s Romania. The part they call Hellas, I suppose?”
“Hellas or Macedonia or perhaps Sclavonia. The boundaries are a bit tangled and I’m not sure which we are looking at. But they all obey the Emperor in Constantinople, and so does the wide country of Thrace to the east of them. Constantinople is the richest and most populous city in the world, as any of the Greeks round here will tell you. Then beyond an arm of the sea, the Straits of St. George, you come to the parts of Romania that lie in Asia. That’s supposed to be richer and more extensive than Romania in Europe. And so it goes on, for hundreds of miles. It all belongs to the Emperor, just as much as my horse belongs to me. He can make what laws he likes, levy what taxes he likes, set his subjects to planting mulberries for silkworms or to carting stones to improve his roads. They have no rights, he can do what he likes with them. In all Romania there is only one free man, the Emperor. The rest are either paid soldiers who carry out his commands or wretched serfs who obey them. Only the paid soldiers carry arms and no one holds land freely by military service.”
“That’s not exactly news, Father,” said Bohemond with a shrug of boredom. “Everyone round here has heard of the tyranny in Romania. That’s why even our local Greeks were quite glad when the Emperor withdrew his Catapan from Bari.”
“Everyone knows that, as you say. Here’s another bit of news that isn’t so widely known. Last year the Emperor fought a great battle against the infidel, far off to the eastward. All his soldiers were killed or taken, and he was made prisoner. At present Romania has no Emperor, and when there is one he will have no army.”
“What’s that?” Every muscle tensed in Bohemond’s huge body. “That wide land, that rich land, with no army to defend it? There, only just across the water?” His lips closed in a thin line as he peered steadily eastward.
“A Norman landed at Brindisi a few days ago, and I had a talk with him. His right hand had been smashed and he was going home to live with his cousins in Normandy. He came from Romania, and he told me all about it.
“Do you remember a knight from Bailleul who used to serve your uncle Roger?” Guiscard continued. “I suppose not. He left Italy when you were too young to take an interest in such things. He was a true Norman, and a good knight. I forget his name. We all called him Roussel because of his red hair. I gave him the nickname, and it stuck. Well, the Emperor hired him and all his band to fight for wages in Romania. This crippled sergeant had been one of his men. He didn’t see the battle. All the Normans were somewhere else, besieging an infidel castle. I expect that’s why the Emperor was beaten, fighting a great battle without his best troops. But this man was in the retreat afterwards, after this battle at a place called Manzikert, and he said the disaster was more complete than anyone can imagine. The people who beat them are a new breed of infidel, Turks like you get on the lower Danube. The army of Romania has been utterly destroyed. Think of it. Thirty thousand paid troopers and as many followers of the border chiefs, sixty thousand warriors and every man of them mounted. The greatest army the world has ever seen. At the end of the day they were all dead or taken or scattered in flight. They can never be replaced, either. Because the Turks have overrun the eastern Themes, where the soldiers were recruited. There’s money in Constantinople, and they will be able to hire mercenaries. But never again will there be an army of native Romanians.”
“Why are we waiting?” asked Bohemond simply.
“All in good time,” Guiscard answered with a smile. “How big is Normandy, and how many Normans live in it? We have conquered Apulia and Calabria, and we are beginning to nibble at Sicily. It’s not six years since Duke William conquered England. We are spread rather thin on the ground. The great Empire of Romania will take a lot of conquering.”
“That’s true. But we ought to begin now, before they can hire another army. Why don’t
we invade that bit opposite, Hellas or whatever they call it; and go on from there as we recruit more Normans to our banner?”
“There just aren’t any more Normans, that’s one good reason. Anyone who wants to leave home can get land in England, where our Duke has been crowned and anointed and the people recognize him as the lawful King. That’s easier than conquering a fief in Italy or Romania. We can’t recruit more true Normans. We must make do with the knights we have now, or Lombard knights who are nearly as good, or the odds and ends of common troopers from all over the world who have come to Italy to fight for wages. Besides, conquest isn’t the only way to get a footing in Romania.”
“It’s the only way for Normans to get in. The Greeks don’t like us because we are faithful servants of the Pope.”
“So we are, and I should like to stay that way. But if the Greeks offer me a fortune on condition I serve their Patriarch I might be open to conviction. Theology is a subject beyond the understanding of a simple knight. God won’t damn a layman for serving the wrong spiritual superior. But Normans can do more than fight. Look here, young Bohemond, you must get this into your head. Normans can govern—we are the best governors in the world. The revenues of Apulia and Calabria are greater than before we came, though then they were ruled by clever Greeks and during the conquest nearly every valley was plundered. Greeks are bright, but they’re all crooked. As for Lombards, they are lazy as well as crooked. Half the villages didn’t pay tribute because no one came round to collect it. Others bribed the collector with a little something for his own purse, much less than the due payment. Now everything runs as smoothly as a water-mill. No use trying to bribe a Norman collector, because he won’t take less than the full tribute even if he keeps it all for himself. A man who has to look after his irrigation-ditches jolly well must repair them once a year. A man who ought to collect toll from every traveller can’t let his friends pass free. In my fiefs only I plunder caravans of merchants; there are no other brigands. The peasants pay us rather a lot, but they don’t pay anything to anyone else. We can govern a country so that it prospers. Now don’t you suppose that whoever is the next Emperor of Romania would like to hire Normans to help him run his Empire? Things will be rather disturbed after a few civil wars.”
“You think a new Emperor might hire us to work for him?” asked Bohemond. “Would it be worth while to go there just for wages?”
“We should want wages, of course, and good wages. Those Greeks pay for everything in money. But I was thinking more in terms of a Greek marriage for one of the girls, and so working our way into the Greek nobility. They choose their Emperor from the great noble houses, and some of them were founded in the first place by foreigners.”
“A good plan, if you can find a Greek willing to marry one of us. But why not? To them Normans are foreign barbarians, no better and no worse than any other Frank. I suppose they don’t distinguish between Hautevilles and fitzRollos.”
“Nor does anyone else, my boy. We have come up in the world. My father, your grandfather, was a simple country knight, but the Pope has recognized us as rulers of Apulia, on a par with the Dukes of Aquitaine and the Counts of Provence. The Hautevilles are grand enough to marry anyone.”
“Then I shall wait until I can get the King of France’s daughter. For the present I don’t want a home, anywhere. While you lead our band I want to be ready to go anywhere and do anything as your second in command.”
“Very properly expressed, my boy. There isn’t a princess in the world who won’t be eager to jump into your bed as soon as she sees you, or a prince who wouldn’t be honoured to have you as son-in-law. I’m your father, and proud of you; but any stranger would say the same. But we mustn’t tie you down before we know how high the Hautevilles can climb. If you married a Greek, or even a German, we couldn’t get the match annulled for consanguinity. It’s lucky your mother was a Norman.”
Abruptly Guiscard fell silent, blushing. He was inclined to allow his tongue to run ahead of his discretion but it never ran very far ahead. It was not frightfully important, he consoled himself. Long ago Bohemond must have guessed that his mother had been discarded, with no hard feelings on either side, because she was not quite grand enough for the most eminent of the Hautevilles. Dear Alberada, she made no fuss when the time came to part, and in the beginning the two hundred horse she brought as dowry had been the foundation of his fortune. Now she was happily married to a decent Norman or her own rank in society, Roger of Pomaria, and when she met her first husband at social gatherings there was no embarrassment on either side. But she had never produced another child. The huge though perfect body of Mark-Bohemond had been too much for her.
Young Bohemond continued to live at home and help his father, the pattern of a good young knight. He was too proud to be led astray by low companions, too prudent to gamble heavily, too dignified to be amused by debauchery. His life was as regular and blameless as any monk’s. Even his father, who kept a close eye on him, suspected that at the age of twenty-one he might be still a virgin. Yet he was the fiercest jouster and the bravest horseman among all the daring Normans of Apulia.
His half-brothers were perhaps the only men who knew him and did not like him. Sigelgaita, their mother, was exceptionally courageous, but her children were, after all, only half Norman. The Lombards had been tough and savage barbarians when first they crossed the Alps, but some centuries in pleasant Italy had softened them. Of course any Lombard could chase any native Italian; but any Norman expected to chase any Lombard. Lombards lord were cruel and merciless, like any lord of any race who wished to hold an Italian fief; but they were more inclined to rely on poison or the dagger than their Norman competitors. In Bohemond’s eyes Lombards ranked below Normans, and Sigelgaita’s sons ranked low among Lombards. They knew it, and resented it.
Otherwise all the descendants of Tancred of Hauteville, that almost mythical ancestor who had lived and died on his muddy Norman fields, felt respect for one another, if not affection. Among themselves they fought incessantly, for each one of them was trying to make himself supreme over the whole family; but when danger threatened from outside they closed their ranks. As a united clan they were invincible.
Chapter II - First Trip to Romania
When Bohemond was twenty-four, and the best knight in Italy below Rome, his father gave him an independent command. The Hautevilles were trying to cope with a rebellion of their Norman followers, who felt that they were getting less than their due of the fruits of conquest. The Hautevilles were not entirely successful, though by tricky juggling with Lombard and native Italian warriors, and by buying off separately the less greedy of the rebels, they managed to fix up a compromise peace. So Bohemond’s quite honourable but unfortunate defeat at Troja did not make him stand out as less successful than his uncles. He had charged in front, and done great execution with his own hands. More could not be expected from a youth in his first command.
During the Christmas feast of 1080 his father talked with him privately in the solar.
“As soon as Apulia is genuinely at peace I shall be ready for Romania,” he said, holding his hands towards the brazier. He sat in his luxurious chair, which had sidepieces rising up to support the elbows. It was the only chair of its kind in those parts, the work of a cunning Greek joiner; more like the throne of an Emperor than the seat of a mere Duke. “We’ve got an excuse to intervene, and with any luck a party among the Greeks will support us. That’s much easier than naked conquest.”
“Apulia will never be genuinely at peace, in your lifetime or mine,” Bohemond answered him. “If we keep the Normans happy the Lombards rebel, and if we satisfy all the gentry then the Greek burgesses feel wronged. But now there may be peace for a year or so. What’s our pretext for invading Romania? I thought we had some kind of marriage treaty with the imperial house?”
“We did, my boy. That’s the pretext,” said Guiscard with a chuckle. With increasing age his conversation had become very obvious; though in the actual op
erations of politics he was as devious as ever.
“Do you remember your baby sister Helen?” he went on. “You never took much notice of her. But perhaps you haven’t forgotten that I fixed up a splendid marriage for her. She was betrothed to a boy of her own age, Constantine the son and heir of the Emperor Michael of Romania. We sent her to Constantinople as soon as she was old enough to leave her mother, so that they could bring her up as a proper Greek princess.”
“And the Greeks have cried off? That gives us an excuse to fight them, but I don’t see why it gives us Greek allies. Surely there isn’t a party among the Greeks who pine for an alliance with the Hautevilles above all other things?”
“You think too meanly of the Hautevilles. Nowadays we matter. In this particular case, as it happens, you are right. No Greek cares about Hautevilles. But a considerable faction among them are loyal to the noble house of Ducas. The Emperor Michael is a Ducas, and his father was Emperor before him. That’s as near a legitimate dynasty as you get among those faithless Greeks. Now a fellow called Nicephorus something, a name I don’t know, has overthrown the Emperor Michael and cast him into prison. Young Constantine is also in prison, and our little Helen has been shut up in a nunnery. Doesn’t your blood boil? It ought to. So we invade. But there must be a lot of important Greek officials who owe everything to Emperor Michael, and they will be on our side if we proclaim that we will restore him. It seems to me a very good opening.”
“How can we restore the Emperor Michael?” cried Bohemond, who could never keep track of Greek dynasties and did not share his father’s interest in them. “His gaolers will cut his throat before we can rescue him. Why didn’t they kill him when they turned him off his throne? It seems slack of them.”
“They never kill dethroned Emperors if they can avoid it. That’s prudence as much as mercy. The next Emperor hopes that his enemies also will be merciful. In this case they can’t kill the ex-Emperor Michael even if they want to. By a remarkable stroke of luck he escaped from his dungeon and has now made his way to Italy.”
Count Bohemond Page 2
