by Jack Ludlow
Bohemund fell victim quickly, for such a sickness did not spare leaders, and Robert, fearing for his firstborn and defying his wife, quickly determined to send him to Bari, home to those physicians, the most accomplished in his domains, who had cared for him years before. Before the transport ship departed his sire came aboard to see him, despite concerns that he was exposing himself to the malady. In the last two years of his seventh decade, the Guiscard shrugged off such concerns, sure that he was immune – had he not been visiting the overflowing sick tents for days without succumbing? – and in truth, sitting by the cot of his weak and feeble son he sounded as hearty as ever.
‘You won’t expire, Bohemund, I won’t allow it.’ Seeing his words had not been received as he hoped, Robert added, ‘I wonder sometimes if I do not have a direct line to the Almighty, so lucky have I been, so take note of what I say.’
‘Pope Gregory would not have approved,’ Bohemund hissed, trying as well to smile, though what he produced was unconvincing.
‘Poor Gregory, gone to meet our Maker, eh! I wonder what they made of him in paradise?’
Robert shook his head and sighed. ‘He was his own worst enemy and never ceased to be crabbed Hildebrand even when he was granted the mitre. He could have had me as his protector all his life if he had but asked, yet he could never accept that all our conflicts were caused by his own intransigence, not mine. And what does he end up with? A miserable death in exile.’
‘And no crusade.’
‘A foolish notion, Bohemund, as you have heard me say many times before now. The Byzantines at their height could not hold back Islam and I think any army that carries the banner of Christ to fight them will end up as did Byzantium, dead in the sand.’
‘For a good cause,’ came out a wheeze, followed by an effort to produce a stronger tone. ‘And if you had Constantinople?’
‘That would alter matters, it is true, but I would march into Palestine for land, not the faith.’
‘Father?’
‘Don’t ask me, Bohemund, for I can see the pleading in your eyes. I will tell you now, that I put your mother aside for a necessity. I could not hold my territories without a Lombard wife, but I will also tell you that Sichelgaita has made me as content as a husband can be, which, when you wed, you will find out is not without shortcomings, for women … well, they are what they are …’
The voice trailed off and Robert sat for a moment in silence.
‘I cannot give you what you want, Bohemund, but when I am gone I cannot stop you from trying to take what you believe to be rightfully yours.’
‘Nothing will stop me, bar death.’
‘There are many things that might, God only being one of them.’ Robert hauled himself up, his voice once more booming. ‘But recover, for with what is coming I need you fighting by my side. Let providence take care of the rest!’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Your father felt the sickness come upon him as he sailed to join Borsa, and so quickly did it diminish him that Sichelgaita ordered his ship into a Cephalonian bay in the hope that on dry land he would recover. He died without speaking a word, even to Sichelgaita.’
Still weak himself, but feeling better, Bohemund saw tears in Reynard’s eyes and esteemed him for it; having been a faithful knight in his father’s service for so many years he would feel the loss keenly. Yet he found he could not weep himself, for if he had a high regard for his sire, the kind of love that has the grieving tearing at their garments was now, he realised, not part of it.
‘The body?’
‘Is on the way to Venosa, to be buried where Duke Robert desired to be interred.’
‘With his brothers?’ Reynard nodded, as Bohemund added with a sad smile, ‘No doubt he wants to dispute with them in death, as he did in life. Heaven will be a troubled place if they meet there.’
Love him he might, but Reynard obviously thought the chances of Robert de Hauteville or any of the tribe ascending paradise was unlikely, notwithstanding the abbeys they had endowed and the churches they had built. Yet of more vital import was the fact that the host of which they had both been part had quickly lost cohesion and like Reynard they were streaming home; it had been Robert’s iron will that had got them across the Adriatic and without that the purpose faded. There was another reason to abandon the expedition: with Bohemund in Bari, possibly fully recovered and able to raise the standard of revolt, keeping a powerful army on the Greek Islands was unwise.
‘Were you sent to me, Reynard?’
‘No. I came because it is not fitting that you should hear of such a thing as if it were marketplace gossip.’
‘Tell me, what will happen now?’
‘Sichelgaita will do what she did with the army on Corfu and call upon every one of your father’s vassals to renew their oath to Borsa.’
‘And will they?’
‘Most of them, yes, for he has the means to reward them.’
‘You mean his mother does.’
‘It amounts to the same thing, Bohemund, and there is not one of them who will not be pondering of their own personal advantage in the new dispensation. Think! It will not just be in the grant of land or titles. Duke Robert left a bulging treasury as well, which will be used to ensure that Borsa is supported.’
‘Whereas I have nothing.’
‘You have your name and there are men for whom that will carry weight.’
‘I am forced to ask if you are one of them?’
‘Why do you think I came to you?’
‘And do you have advice for me, Reynard?’
‘You need lances and I can think of only one place that will provide them.’
‘You recall what I said about Capua the first time we rode together?’
‘When you are a beggar, Bohemund, it ill begets you to examine the alms you are given to see if the coins have been clipped.’
‘I will go to Venosa first, to see my father interred. Besides, I want to look Borsa in the eye.’
The de Hauteville family church of Santissima Trinità had been started by Drogo de Hauteville and not finished by Humphrey or Robert, so it was far from a grand edifice, nothing like the latter’s great cathedral of Salerno, but it had a resonance for the family name and that was enough. It was not the Guiscard’s body they interred in the vault; a storm at sea had swept his coffin off the deck and the water had so corrupted the corpse when it was recovered that the heart and entrails had been removed and brought in a casket to Venosa.
As the priests intoned the words of burial and requiem, not every head could remain bowed, for there was an undercurrent: what would happen now that the man who had created the triple dukedom and held it together was gone, and with him the overwhelming personality that many reckoned irreplaceable? Sichelgaita eyed Bohemund as a cat examines a bird just out of reach of its leap; Borsa would look away when his half-brother’s eye caught his but there was no missing the sentiment of trepidation mixed with loathing.
Guy, for all his supposed careless nature, was the most honest in the directness of his stare and what it meant; left to him, Bohemund could expect nothing but a pauper’s grave – there would be no de Hauteville vault for him – and it would not be long in coming. Half-sister Emma returned that feeling to all three of them in full measure, which lent an icy mood to the whole occasion.
Robert’s senior vassals, who had sailed with him to Corfu, were there, including those he had seen as his most reliable lieutenants, and it was to these that his bastard son gave most of his attention; his half-siblings and their mother were known quantities but these men mattered, for if they pledged loyalty to Borsa it was not from love and even less for the de Hauteville name. When questioned, Reynard had related that the way Borsa had been hailed by the army had lacked conviction, especially amongst the Normans, many of whom had at some time in the past either participated or led revolts against one of the brothers.
Now their suzerain, if he bore a name to which they bowed the knee reluctantly, also had, to them,
a taint and that was his despised Lombard blood, added to which he was not the leader either in war or personality his sire had been. These were men who needed a strong hand to control them and even with that they took every chance presented to them to slip out of its grip. It was a sound guess that many would stay loyal only as long as it suited them and that Borsa would find that, as time went by and resentments festered, it was not only his half-brother who would cause him difficulties.
Could he hold the triple dukedom together? The missing factor was Roger de Hauteville, now called the Great Count of Sicily, who might not even yet know, as his brother was buried, that he was dead. Messages had been sent to Sicily to summon him from the siege of Syracuse – if not to Venosa, to the capital Salerno, where Borsa would be installed as his father’s rightful successor.
Those same vassals, who had been present at Santissima Trinità, this time with Count Roger, attended that ceremony, held in the great hall of the Castello di Arechi. He had brought with him all those who could be spared from Sicily, men who held their fief directly from the Duke of Apulia, but Bohemund stayed away, for here every vassal would be required to swear allegiance and that was not something he was prepared to contemplate. His powerful uncle noted the absence – it could hardly be missed by a man who knew what it portended and was not slow to touch on the subject when he met with Borsa and Sichelgaita in private.
‘Did your sire ever tell you, Borsa, about our adventures in Calabria?’ Roger enquired, once the polite formalities had been observed. ‘If I had not come to his rescue, he might have been food for the dogs.’
‘I told him,’ Sichelgaita replied, though it did not, judging by her expression, provoke a happy memory. Her brother-in-law knew she had been amused at the time; it was what the recollection signified that troubled her.
As always the Guiscard had made a promise, then regretted it as too generous, which meant Robert and his younger brother had fallen out. Roger might have ended up in a dungeon but for a stroke of luck; good soldier as he was, he could not field the number of lances needed to beat Robert. Foolishly, while pursuing him, Robert had, on his own and unarmed, entered a Calabrian town called Gerace, only to be captured and confined by the inhabitants. Roger had rescued him – in truth the good folk of Gerace had not known what to do with such a powerful prisoner – which if nothing else brought peace between them. But not harmony; the next month had been spent arguing about who was owed what revenues.
‘You see, even I rebelled, nephew,’ he said, when the outline of the tale had been rehashed.
‘That is in the past, Uncle, but I am sure you will be faithful to his memory now.’
‘I doubt Bohemund will be.’
‘We have the means to deal with him,’ Sichelgaita snapped. ‘Right now my husband’s subjects are lining up to pledge allegiance.’
‘So you are sure that every vassal who swears allegiance to Borsa will hold to his word? If that is so he will surely outshine my late brother.’
This was the crux and all three knew it; there were men who would make a pledge to him this day, then ride off immediately to join his half-brother, while others would go back to their demesnes only to plot rebellion. The new Duke looked at his mother, as if seeking advice, but Roger knew they must have discussed the matter without him being present.
‘Naturally, Uncle, we would look to you for support if they did not.’
‘And you shall have it, nephew,’ Roger replied.
That was delivered after a long and pointed pause, with a smile that lacked warmth, which left both nephew and his sister-in-law in no doubt that there would be a price for his aid. That being true, in turn it led to a great deal of fencing that lasted for hours – not the swiping and sweeping of broadsword blades, it was more delicate than that, but just as deadly in intent – until Roger felt he had extracted his price. As well as the shared revenues of Calabria, Roger got transferred to him some of the fiefs his brother had held as his own in the north of Sicily, though not Messina and Palermo.
It was not greed that prompted this but the feeling that since such domains were only kept secure by his efforts, the money they earned should be paid into his coffers, not those of Apulia. Borsa sought to talk down the demands and so did Sichelgaita, but they were in no position to argue; the new Duke was negotiating with the one person who could by a gesture, as he had at the gathering in Bari, unseat him.
‘Where is Bohemund now?’ Roger asked, once the negotiations were over.
‘In Capua,’ Sichelgaita replied, ‘raising lances.’
Prince Jordan had always felt keenly the fact that he was a weaker magnate than Duke Robert, just as he harboured resentments that went back beyond his father’s time to that of Rainulf Drengot, who had sworn till his dying day that the de Hauteville brothers had betrayed a sacred vow made to him as their suzerain. The last time they had made peace he had not been cheering; Jordan had been almost obliged by Abbot Desiderius to crawl in order to divert the Guiscard to Illyria. Now, with his nemesis gone and a fight about to begin for the title, he was presented with a chance to increase the power of Capua at no risk to his own domains. Apulia, in a family war for who held the right to inherit, was never going to have the means to invade his territories.
But the outcome was uncertain and while he was pleased to supply Bohemund with the men he needed to fight his cause, the last thing he wanted on his borders was a Duke of Apulia as powerful as the Guiscard and gifted with a matching military prowess. The dream was of a neighbour so diminished, a weakened Borsa or a Bohemund so needy, that he would bow the knee to Capua, leaving Jordan as the senior Norman leader in the south of Italy, acknowledged as such by the Pope, confirmed in his titles by the Holy Roman Emperor and seen as the more powerful prince by the subjects of the triple dukedom.
A kingly crown was not too much to wish for, though much time and a great deal of political manoeuvring would be needed to gain such a prize. All very tempting, but he knew that care had to be exercised and certain pieces would have to be removed from the board; the last thing Jordan desired was that he should so threaten Apulia that Count Roger, who could unite all three dukedoms as one, would see it as necessary to intervene with such force as to provoke a war to the death. But he, like Robert, could not live for ever and his son eldest was unfit to govern, being an imbecile, while Simon was an infant.
‘My lances must be free to plunder, Bohemund, you know that.’
‘I will direct them to those places where they may do so freely, for I have let it be known that those who decline to come and fight with me, even those who stand aside, will be as my enemies. It is therefore fitting, Jordan, that they should suffer.’
Standing outside a Capuan manège, Jordan and Bohemund were watching the knights he would lead go through their exercises. There had been some scoffing at using a lance couched instead of loose until he had shown them how easy it was to unseat an opponent by the greater power it produced, so now they were competent at it. This would be a war; not one of massed armies but one of lance against lance, which also meant on many occasions it would be Norman against Norman. If they had tended to avoid doing each other harm in the past, such a restriction could no longer hold; there was for Bohemund too much at stake, for he had few illusions about what would happen to him if he fell into the hands of Borsa and his family – the least he could expect would be to have his eyes put out.
It being common knowledge throughout Apulia and Calabria he intended to contest for the title, that brought to his side a number of his father’s old familia knights, men who were the companions-in-arms of Reynard of Eu and who were accustomed to serve a warrior, not a woman or someone they regarded as not much above a counter of beans. Then there were the endemic malcontents, men who had caused his father so much grief, lances that joined any rebellion which presented them with the opportunity to advance themselves, or to plunder the property of the more respectable.
Others of a more personal value travelled to Capua to offer thei
r swords, such as Ademar of Monteroni, who did so out of family loyalty and brought with him not only two conroys of his own followers but his son Tancred, now approaching twelve summers old and beginning to look more the man than the boy. Still to fill out, he had nevertheless the air of a true de Hauteville about him, the red-gold hair, the height and that look in the eye that hinted at a nature both serious and mischievous; though not as tall or as florid as the Guiscard, he did remind his uncle of his late father and Tancred was quick to request the promise previously made be fulfilled.
‘You know your duties?’ Bohemund asked.
‘I do, My Lord. To keep your horses groomed, your harness polished and your weapons sharp.’
‘I need food in my belly, boy, and the rust kept from my mail.’
‘Your stockings darned and the moth holes in your clothing repaired.’
‘You can sew, Tancred?’
‘No, My Lord, but I know how to find a woman who can.’
Bohemund grinned. ‘Make sure that is all you ask of a woman, the use of her needle.’
Those who witnessed that remark made little attempt to disguise their curiosity; it was well known that their leader was more than abstemious in that area and for many, less saintly in their own lives, it was a cause for speculation. Well past the age at which he should be married, Bohemund showed no inclination to do so and did not deign to explain why that should be so. Yet he gave no inclination of any other proclivities that might diminish him in the eyes of his men, so that concern was put to one side, because he was above all what he needed to be, a superb warrior.
