My lord never cared for his children, and they repaid him with indifference; he was kind to chubby infants, and a good comrade to the knights who rode beside him in the charge, but raw youths betwixt and between got on his nerves. It seemed a little surprising that after so many years of solitude he should seek out his own wife for his first night of freedom. But I discovered later that he feared it might bring him back luck if he went straight to a brothel and fell into mortal sin. For a long time he had been in a State of Grace, but a dungeon provides no opportunity for anything else. Anyway, it was the right way to behave.
As they left the Abbess wished them joy, but there were none of the coarse remarks you would get in even a well-regulated western convent; Roman nuns are lax, but discreet in speech; the standard of what is funny and what shocking varies from country to country in the most surprising way. The rest of us sat around until dawn, drinking and discussing the campaign.
It was the general opinion that Michael must now beat Bryennius. He had the support of the city, and Alexius was wholeheartedly on his side; it was obviously the Domestic who had released my lord. Everyone was pleased, for after victory the convent would merit a good thank-offering for its shelter of the Frankopole’s family. Only young Ralph was depressed.
‘I hope father has learned his lesson,’ he said to me aside. ‘It was all arranged that I should be an officer in the regular army. But if father gets up to his old tricks again he will really be blinded, and no one will trust me, either. Do you think, uncle Roger, that for once he will be faithful to his paymaster? He seems faithful now, but after he has won a battle I bet he hoists the banner of St Michael and challenges all comers.’
It only shows what can be done by a constant drip of slander. People had somehow got it into their heads that Messer Roussel rebelled against his employers, the worst fault in a mercenary; here was his own son believing that malicious gossip. Young Ralph was too big to be beaten, but I took him by the ear and led him into the courtyard, where I spoke to him as though I really were an uncle.
I pointed out that my lord had displayed astonishing fidelity to every one of his paymasters. In the early days in Italy he served Roger fitzTancred without the slightest hint of disloyalty; he had left the west quite openly, with the goodwill and consent of everyone who had a right to be consulted; in Romania he had been faithful to Romanus Diogenes, doing his duty as long as there was a Roman army to command his allegiance; he had never sworn fealty to Michael, and when Isaac Comnenus hanged his followers without trial he had been obliged to go to war in their defence; even then he had put himself under the orders of John Ducas, and had continued faithfully to uphold his losing cause until Alexius captured him by treachery. My lord had been taken in war, and he was lucky to be alive and unmutilated; but his honour was spotless, and anyone who understood the customs of the west would see that he was an exceptionally loyal mercenary.
Privately I thought it likely that my lord had learned discretion; at least while Alexius commanded the Roman army Michael was too strong to be overthrown, and Messer Roussel would serve him.
In the morning my lord set out, in borrowed mail, to raise a band for the war against Bryennius. Most Franks in the army were content with their status, and did not wish to jeopardise promotion by joining an irregular unit; but the port was full of Italian ships, and some bad characters in the regular bands were glad to make a fresh start where their records were unknown. Neither these men nor the Italian pirates were a good class of recruit, but they could fight very savagely if there was no way of retreat. The Emperor issued horses and in the east every Frank has arms hidden somewhere. By midday my lord was at the head of two hundred and fifty of the worst rascals in Christendom, as brave and well-armed as any Varangian and better trained for warfare among complicated fortifications.
The fortifications of the city are very complicated. There is a triple line, first an outer wall six feet high, embanked within to form a breastwork for archers; then a curtain forty feet high set with sixty-foot towers; behind that a sixty-foot wall set with eighty-foot towers. In front is a wide ditch lined with masonry, furnished with pipes by which it may be flooded; but the machinery had been neglected, and in fact the ditch remained dry. Every tower carries catapults, and in theory no besieger can approach.
But John Bryennius nearly got in, for the city was defended by a very small garrison which was not expecting an assault. By a sudden surprise the Patzinaks carried one sector of the outer breastwork and the middle wall behind it. They held a tower of this middle wall, and nothing barred their way except the last curtain; which was the strongest, but would soon be breached if they brought up engines under cover of the outer works. They could be seen fetching timber. Here was the obvious place for Franks to attack; the enemy must stand and meet us, instead of keeping out of reach and shooting arrows.
Although at least his throne and probably his life were at stake the Emperor took no part in the war. I admired his self-restraint in refusing to meddle with a business he did not understand. Most princes would have waved a sword in the background, giving futile orders to the reserve just when it was. needed for some urgent task. But even he could not bring himself to trust all his forces to a Comnenus and a rival; as nominal colleague to Alexius the Emperor’s brother Constantine had been dragged from the second-rate palace where he amused himself by drilling a sulky guard. The real second in command was of course Messer Roussel, but the Caesar Constantine had to be kept harmless and occupied near the Golden Gate, three miles from the point of danger.
By nightfall the Patzinaks were back beyond the ditch. Nomad archers who have been compelled to dismount are no match for mailed Franks. Young Ralph drew his sword for the first time, though his brother Osbert was considered too young. Even Matilda and Joan were there to keep order in the ranks, for we had no respectable knights whom we could appoint as subordinate officers. But it was not really much of a fight, though it increased our fame among the ignorant burgesses of the city. These Romans were all on our side; for John Bryennius by plundering the suburbs had brought politics into their private lives in a way that made him very much disliked.
The rebels hung about the neighbourhood until the middle of Advent. They were too weak to blockade the city, and the loyalists were too weak to drive them away; for the oddest thing about this slow-moving and half-hearted war was the very small number of warriors available to fight it. Here was the richest city in the world, dignified by the oldest crown in Christendom; John Bryennius had nearly won it with a thousand heathen light horse, and the Emperor was safe on his throne because in the nick of time he had taken into pay less than three hundred Franks.
Of course both sides had other troops at their disposal; but even in this crisis they behaved like good Romans. Nicephorus Bryennius kept most of the Army of Europe in Hellas and Dalmatia, to check the Sclavonians; and what was left of the Army of Asia held the diminished eastern frontier against the Turks. This was partly because in a civil war both sides must please public opinion, but partly because Roman nobles, even in rebellion, care deeply for the welfare of the state.
My lord was again Frankopole, and the Treasury owed him a generous salary, though it could not be paid until the war was won. But in his own city the Emperor’s credit is good, and we lived in considerable state; my lady was at last mistress of those private female apartments which had so charmed her as a guest in Roman mansions, and we did not see much of her. Usually she had the nuns of St Thecla, and all the other female friends she could think of, eating cakes in her private room. It was rather restful to be free of her driving energy, and my lord did not complain.
But campaigning from the city, though it meant warm beds and good food when the jousting was finished, brought us no plunder. We were glad when, just before Christmas, the war moved westward to Thrace. All the Patzinaks suddenly went home; they had pillaged the suburbs until nothing was left, and Bryennius had no money to pay them wages. He fell back towards Adrianople, where his broth
er Nicephorus kept the meagre state of an unsuccessful claimant to the Purple. That should have ended the war; a usurper must go forward; when he retreats his supporters lose heart and try to buy forgiveness from the established ruler, as had happened when John Ducas withdrew from Chrysopolis. What kept the struggle alive was the rivalry between the two halves of the Empire. Bryennius was head of the only European house on a par with Comnenus, and Palaeologus, and Ducas, the great families of Asia; at last the despised Army of Europe had a chance of setting their commander on the throne; they would not submit until they had been beaten in the field. Meanwhile Alexius was ordered to lead an expedition against the rebel towns of Thrace, and he took Messer Roussel as second in command.
Before we set out, between Christmas and Epiphany, a council was held in the mansion of the Domestic. Matilda and her sons were invited to be present, and I came along because no one forbade me. Alexius wished the proceedings to be known in the city; he was so powerful that he must always be under suspicion of aiming at the Purple, and he dared not hold secret discussions with prominent military leaders. But what was really in doubt was the fidelity of Messer Roussel. There was no reason why he should join Bryennius, who was in constant straits for money, while Michael controlled the temporarily insolvent but well-managed Treasury of the city; but he might try to found an independent realm in Thrace; as he had done in Asia. The Domestic was frank about it; he is a man of many moods, who can fit his demeanour to his company; on this occasion he chose to be a bluff warrior with no time for politics.
‘Lord Frankopole,’ he said cheerfully, ‘we are to march against John Bryennius, who holds Athyra in Thrace. I know we’ll beat him easily, though if these stubborn Europeans defend every fortified town the campaign may last for years. I might be called back to the city, since the pay of the Army of Asia is heavily in arrear, and they may revolt when they think I am busy. Then you will command in Europe. But the Logothete doubts your loyalty. I told him you are an honest knight, who has never yet broken his engagement. You know exactly how true that is, and I need not dwell on the subject. Anyway, here are a company of holy monks, with the genuine image of Our Lady of Blachernae. The Emperor commands you to swear fidelity on that holy relic before you leave the city.’
This was insulting, however you looked at it; but Alexius had put it as gently as he could, pretending that the whole idea was a whim of the hated Nicephoritzes. My lord hesitated; I think he intended to be loyal, but no one likes to be publicly singled out as less trustworthy than his comrades. My lady intervened, seizing the picture from an embarrassed monk and kneeling before her husband.
‘Come on, Roussel, swear,’ she said briskly. ‘We tried to found a Frankish state when we led disciplined sergeants who had followed us from Italy; and we failed. We won’t succeed now, with a gang of scoundrels picked at random from the harbour. Earn your pay and save it for your daughter’s dowry. The Balliols will never be independent rulers.’
My lord put his hand on the panel, and repeated the usual oath. He spoke impressively, but I could see him change as he did it. When he had finished his head dropped and his mouth grew slack. He was an old soldier, still good for a few more campaigns, but looking for security and a warm hall for his old age; no longer the gallant captain who had been prepared to meet the world in arms to found a realm of his own. The great adventure was over.
16. Nicephoritzes the Eunuch
We marched before Epiphany. The Domestic brought the Schools of the Guard, the only regular troops in the city and the Varangians, who are not properly troops at all but who might be useful in the escalade since they are trained to fight on foot. The Frankopole now led more than four hundred mailed horse, for every Frank in Romania was eager to join his banner.
Athyra is an unimportant place, but our army was not strong enough to invest it in form. However, Alexius brought firstclass engineers from the naval arsenal, and after less than a fortnight we battered down a gate. We tried an assault, though the Romans dislike that bloody method of winning a town. At the end of a long day’s fighting we got in, and John Bryennius fled with his horse, leaving his foot to be cut down in the streets; he had more foot than most Roman armies, for his Sclavonian mercenaries had never learned to ride. In fairness I must admit our Varangians were useful; in their own homes they rule Sclavonian peasants, and both races fight in the same way, with great two-handed axes; but the Varangians do it very much better.
In the little port of Athyra we waited for the spring. We would not move until we received our arrears of pay; but we must remain faithful to our defaulting paymaster, for no one else in the eastern world had any money either. We lived in the castle; but the Domestic lodged there also, and saw to it that my lord had no dealings with the burgesses. We were tired and bored. This was a nagging, petty war in a plundered land, where four hundred horse made a great army and every farm had been burned by the barbarians; less than seven years ago we had marched with sixty thousand horse through the smiling untouched countryside of Asia. It was melancholy to witness the collapse of a great Empire, and we could not decide whether our futile and cautious warfare made things worse, or whether the only hope for Romania lay in the suppression of Bryennius.
My lord’s children were a trial to him; in early youth they had been flattered as the heirs of a great man who might become a mighty prince; now they were of no particular importance, and they blamed their father. Ralph was nearly sixteen, and already rode with the band, though it was one of my duties to jostle him out of the front rank if the enemy looked like meeting our charge. It was difficult to foresee his future; he did not take kindly to discipline, and Roman officers dislike recruits who will not obey orders; but he was not a good enough jouster to win fame among the turbulent champions of the west. He thought common troopers should follow a Balliol, but mercenaries care very little for noble birth and only obey the captains who lead them to rich plunder. As we gossiped in the hall after supper (this Roman hall had no hearth, for the hot-air pipes were in good order; it was warm, but gloomy to a fire-loving Frank) he would make catty remarks about the danger of negotiating with infidels or the discomforts of a Roman prison. He was a cheeky cub who would have been improved by a thrashing, but in his heart my lord agreed that he had ruined his family. Ralph was not rebuked, and grew more impudent every day.
Joan was thirteen, and during the coming year she must be married or shut up in a convent; men and women mix very freely in Romania, and those mansions have so many little private rooms that a seducer has more opportunity than in a Frankish castle where the ladies sit together in a crowded hall; a damsel of fourteen easily loses her reputation, if not her virginity, and then good communities, where the nuns are ladies, will not have her even with a large dowry. But Matilda, who should have been negotiating with suitable young men was unwilling to commit herself during the war. Messer Roussel might win promotion; it would be rash to betroth his only daughter to a younger son, when next year she might be worthy of an heir. The girl herself was obedient, though a little sulky; she desired the freedom of marriage, and did not care who might be her lord; for once she was the mother of a son she might choose a friend from among the gallants of the city.
Osbert was only eleven, and his elder brother compelled him to behave meekly. Besides, his career was settled, and a pirate is never a nuisance to his family and may one day bring home useful plunder. He was a cheerful child, always climbing trees, and learning to fence without a shield as sailors must when they board a hostile ship. He obeyed me, and I liked him.
The head of the family was undoubtedly Matilda. She had resumed her habit of giving orders, because when a decision had to be made we all asked her opinion. Without her guidance we would have sat all day in the comfort of Athyra; she kept us up to the mark by demanding every evening where we proposed to ride next morning, and telling us where to go when my lord answered that one direction was as good as another. For many miles round we protected the peasants, so that they could get on with thei
r winter ploughing and contribute their quota of land-tax when the harvest was reaped. Money is the most important weapon in civil war, and Alexius was continually increasing the areas which paid taxes to the Emperor Michael. He was pleased with our activity.
Riding against the rebels my lord displayed the old dash which had made him famous in Italy. The hauberk hid his grey hair, and mail conceals a middle-aged paunch better than the most cleverly-cut tunic. The common sergeants, who only saw him on horseback, followed him with devotion. But in the evenings he relaxed, an old tired warrior who knew his life was ending in failure.
‘When I first came east it seemed quite simple,’ he said to me one evening, while the rest of the company were shaking dice for a silver jug, too finely made to be chopped into equal shares.
‘I intended to set up for myself when I got the chance, though naturally I did not propose to make treacherous war on my employer. Romanus Diogenes had the finest army in the world, and after I had helped him to beat the infidels there would be room for a Frankish county beyond the frontier of Romania. Frankish ways are better than Roman. They build fine churches and castles, and the city is the wonder of the world; even these blasted pipes of hot smoke warm the hall better than a hearth, though it means that people sit about in corners instead of gathering round the fire to listen to the head of the family. We can’t make anything like that. Our food and wine are not so delicate, and we dress like peasants beside their silk robes and gauze mitres. But when all’s said and done they are taxpaying slaves; eunuchs tallage the most noble families, and they won’t even fight unless someone pays them; the Patriarch serves the Emperor as though he were indeed the Equal of the Apostles, instead of putting Kings to the ban in defence of the liberty of God’s Church; they accept the decisions of hired judges in their lawcourts; even the villeins in Balliol would revolt if their suits were not decided by a jury of their peers. And the Emperor at the head of it is nobody in particular, just some lord who has come out on top in their everlasting civil wars. They have neither loyalty nor freedom. When I showed them the decent Frankish way of doing things I knew they would be my faithful subjects. So they were; wherever I ruled the burgesses were content. But these blasted lumps of gold and silver which they continually handle got the better of me in the end. You can tell my ungrateful children, next time they raise the subject, that I was beaten, not because I am not the best knight in the east, but because these Romans are moneygrubbers, unfit to be ruled by a warrior. But they pay generously. I am content to serve them. My sons can found their own realms if they are men enough to do it. Why should I risk my eyes for their benefit?’
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