Warriors

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘He cannot take Melfi,’ Arduin insisted, looking at the walls of the castle as though they would somehow bear out his words. ‘It is too strong.’

  ‘He knows that, Arduin.’ William watched as Arduin took time to get to a conclusion, which with him had been near to instant, one which met his dislike of the notion of being bottled up in a castle, an absolute negation of the advantage of cavalry.

  For once the Lombard deduced the same as his mercenary commander. ‘And he could not take it even if it is held by only a small garrison.’

  ‘Just as he cannot safely besiege it if he has hundreds of Norman lances waiting to raid his siege lines and kill his foraging parties.’

  ‘Let us consult the maps,’ Arduin snapped.

  He turned quickly to re-enter the great hall, followed by the Normans. Halfway up the steps he stopped and turned, then spoke, for once, in a terse voice and with a thunderous look, to Atenulf, calling on him to follow. Even that took time for the dense brain to sift, and it was Humphrey, the last to move, who pushed him hard and with little ceremony to get him to obey.

  Examining the maps, it was obvious there were many directions in which they could go: towards Campania, which offered a safe line of retirement, should that be required; the least favourable was to the east; the one impossible to think on, to head south into the catapan’s line of march. Arduin, with his depleted forces, knowing that on this occasion, while not wholly dependent, he needed the Normans more than ever, asked William to decide.

  ‘North to here,’ William replied, placing his finger on an area he had ridden over when first he came to Melfi, close to the spot where Tirena and Listo had rolled that boulder down on him. The high hill that rock had come off, which he now knew to be called Monte Siricolo, gave a good view of the approaches to the fertile valleys over which it towered. There was ample pasture in those, with hayricks left over from the last cutting, and at this time of year the mountain streams were bursting with snowmelt, while the forests would provide wood to both construct shelters and keep them warm in the cold high-altitude nights should they have to winter there.

  Added to that, the longer they stayed there the stronger they would become, for if it cut them off from Campania, that was the main path for the return of the levies who had gone back north to Benevento, and any supplies they needed to sustain themselves could come by that same route. It was easy from there for cavalry to raid south, using the numerous trails through the mountains to achieve surprise. Any siege of Melfi would suffer mightily from constant attacks and the decimation of parties sent out to forage.

  ‘William,’ Arduin insisted, ‘Boioannes cannot just leave us there.’

  ‘No, my friend, he cannot.’

  He did not often use such a term with Arduin, but he did now. There should be nothing in the way of the Lombard seeing what was possible, and that was a place he got to with commendable speed.

  ‘So once more we bring him to battle at a field of our choosing.’

  Normans were used to moving at short notice, less so the Lombard levies that had remained, but all were long gone, accompanied by the locals, by the time the catapan’s banners were sighted from the battlements. Given the constraints he had laboured under, the losses suffered by his predecessor and the difficulties of recruitment, he had assembled an impressive host, and it was soon obvious he had brought along not just fighting men but artisans skilled in the construction of ballista and the like, who immediately set to work, so that the sound of hammering and sawing floated up to the stout walls.

  Left in command at Melfi, with a stiffening of Normans, but mainly a garrison of Lombards, it fell to Humphrey and Mauger, standing on the curtain wall which overlooked the narrow entry bridge, to refuse to accept terms. They listened in silence as the normal threats regarding no quarter were shouted up at them, restraining the men they commanded from any overt displays of either jocularity – showing their bare arses – or expletive-loaded insults, merely acknowledging the message and telling the Byzantines to do their worst.

  By the time the party sent to present those terms had returned with the expected refusal, Basil Boioannes knew that his enemy had flown the coop. The men he feared most were outside those walls, not inside, and he was also committed, far from his base at Bari, with a set of shrinking options, the least palatable of which, given the fate of Michael Doukeianos, was withdrawal.

  The next morning, he issued instructions that his artisans should keep toiling, with enough men to keep them safe staying behind. Then, once his host had been fed and blessed, he marched them away from Melfi, heading north, knowing that his approach would be observed. So be it: let them stand or flee, but the Normans had to be beaten or driven away.

  * * *

  That his enemies had come so quickly threw Arduin off balance: he had worked on the assumption that Boioannes would at least make some kind of assault on Melfi before seeking to cancel out the external threat. William was less unnerved: again their young opponent was showing sound judgement, his deduction that the peril would only increase with time, not diminish. Also, when he came face to face with his foes, below the great mound of Monte Siricolo, he did not make the same mistake as Doukeianos: he did not attack, he stood on the defensive and set his men to digging a ditch before the line on which he intended to fight, to slow down, and perhaps kill off, any Norman cavalry assault.

  But he did not control the high ground, and could not, therefore, see what his enemies were up to. He tried, sending strong assaulting parties through the low forests and up above the treeline to the barren slopes of Monte Siricolo, but they were beaten back by the same kind of boulders which had so nearly done for William. Because he could not capture those, he did not know that Arduin had sent most of the foot soldiers he had through two high passes on either side of the field of confrontation, to come down on the Byzantine rear.

  William’s task was simple, and this once it was the Normans who aided the Lombards, not the other way round. They attacked Boioannes, but only to fix him in front, using the crossbowmen to inflict casualties, serious enough, but not sufficient to break the line, while the enemy crossbows were brought forward to counter them, thus removing them from where they would be needed. The Norman cavalry, in lines, under Drogo and Geoffrey, rode forward as far as that freshly dug ditch several times, cast lances, then retired to jeers from their enemies, with William’s eye firmly fixed on the piquet sitting atop Monte Siricolo.

  The signal that Arduin was advancing came as a column of smoke, made black by throwing pitch on it, and William took command of his men, with his brothers alongside him. They were in one tight line now and they began to walk forward, as the first yells echoed off the hillsides, the shouts from the rear of the Byzantine host that there was an attack coming from that quarter.

  If these Apulian levies that Boioannes led were not the same men who had been at Cannae and Masseria, they were well aware of the defeats that had occurred there. Added to that, it takes little to break the spirit of a force bent on defence when they discover that there is an enemy behind their lines, while before them, coming on like a tide of death, are the mailed knights of Normandy.

  Arduin lacked force, but he had the option of retiring to the fortress of Melfi, because he had strength in abundance to brush aside anyone who tried to stop him. Thus his men had nothing to fear as they charged through the Byzantine baggage to attack confused troops who were not yet fully prepared for battle, and the cries they sent up, first of alarm and then of betrayal, totally destroyed the unity of the men facing the Normans. They were more concerned with what was happening behind them than in front and numbers began to move backwards in confused groups.

  Where that happened the ditch no longer protected them; odd that those who stood their ground had a better chance of survival, because for once, the approaching horsemen were not intent on maintaining a solid line, they were intent on exploitation. Before the opening gaps the lances spurred their mounts. Where Boioannes’s men stood, the
threat before them trended left or right to bypass them. It took no time at all for those stalwarts to realise that staying still would see them eventually surrounded and slaughtered, and just as the first lances struck home, practically the whole Byzantine line broke and fled, compacting back on a rear already in chaos, which had men spilling up the surrounding hills to seek safety.

  Boioannes, with those men who attended him personally and nowhere to go, stood firm, prepared to sell their lives dearly, and it was an indication of how comprehensive the collapse of his army had been that they were so quickly surrounded. William halted his men and stood off till Arduin arrived and called upon his opposite number to surrender. There really was not much choice, except death, and the catapan called upon his companions to put up their weapons, then came forward holding out his sword.

  To the disgust of William and his brothers, Arduin stepped aside and let that idiot Atenulf accept it in the name of the Lombard revolt.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Within a week the whole of Apulia learnt young Basil Boioannes was a prisoner and Byzantium had suffered total defeat, so that leading Lombard and Italian citizens of the great port cities, in conclave and with their Greek inhabitants overawed or frightened, decided that backing the revolt was a more promising policy than standing aside. Messages of support flooded into Melfi, but were seen for what they were: precautionary olive branches to the now dominant power in the land.

  The news of what had happened at Monte Siricolo, and the consequences, also travelled like a brush fire to Campania, there to reach the ears of Prince Guaimar, now back in the Castello di Arechi, and he hastily sent for Rainulf Drengot. Was it time for the Count of Aversa to call upon those mercenaries of whom he was the titular leader, to assert his rights? If it was, his suzerain intended to accompany him. Was there about to be a division of the spoils? Not to be there might be foolish.

  Guaimar’s regular meeting with Kasa Ephraim allowed him, before Drengot arrived, to test out how he should act towards William de Hauteville and an ambitious Arduin of Fassano; there would also be the puffed-up brother of his fellow ruler of Benevento to be taken into consideration. The Jew had been dealing with the Normans throughout their campaign using a travelling agent, but like everyone Ephraim employed, the fellow had an acute eye, so his master knew more of what was happening in and around Melfi than the ruler of Salerno.

  ‘I have to be open and say that the news, such a total overpowering of Byzantium, surprises me.’

  Kasa Ephraim hid a smile as he watched Guaimar weigh in his hand the heavy leather purse he had just gifted him: there was a time he would have waited until his collector of the port had gone. The young man had become less discreet in his avarice, as well as more competent at calculation. Now he could handevaluate the contents and guess the amount of his secret revenues.

  ‘I thought it would take years, quite possibly a decade, and even then...’ Guaimar did not finish that sentence; it was not necessary. ‘So now we must, earlier than we suspected, see how this affects the Principality of Salerno.’

  Watching him still, as he began to pace, the Jew could guess at some of what was on his mind: he would be concerned that his warning to Michael Doukeianos might be exposed by this sudden Byzantine reversal. Having arranged it, Ephraim was less so: it had been delivered with a discretion which was under his control, and by a ship’s captain who regularly bribed him to be allowed to smuggle, so he would say nothing. Any accusation from another source could be easily denied and put down to mischief-making by the Eastern Empire.

  The other problem was more serious: having gifted oversight of the revolt to another, how could Guaimar, in light of the speed of this success, bolster his own claims to what might very soon be a nascent Lombard kingdom?

  ‘We are secure in the matter of sending word to Bari?’

  ‘You are very secure,’ Ephraim replied, with an emphasis on the first word that Guaimar did not miss.

  ‘I have let it be rumoured that Amalfi is responsible, by a claim to have been told to me by a fellow we racked, before putting him to burn at the stake.’

  ‘Then you have even less to fear, honourable one.’

  ‘The Prince of Benevento must be wondering what to do with Apulia.’

  ‘I would advise that it is not yet there for him to dispose of.’

  ‘Byzantium has been beaten.’

  ‘Defeated in battle, not yet beaten. They will not, I think, give up such a rich and fertile province without yet more effort. The revenues of the Adriatic ports alone are too substantial.’

  ‘You know this?’ Guaimar demanded. This Jew had sources of information which made his look pale; for Kasa Ephraim trade, risk and the contacts that went with it were personal. For the Prince of Salerno such activity, performed as it was by others, was merely political, which meant he relied, for information, on his courtiers. ‘I am, as you know, surrounded by people who do not always tell me the truth, they tell me what they think I want to hear.’

  ‘It is the fate of princes. Your council fear more for their place and their privileges. They also know rulers can be capricious.’

  Guaimar smiled, which made human a face that had increasingly become solemn as he grew into his responsibilities. Few people spoke to him so directly as this Jew: only his sister, in truth.

  ‘You do not fear my caprice?’

  ‘I fear only my God.’

  ‘So, speaking the truth, advise me.’

  ‘Do not be hasty, honourable one.’

  ‘Are you saying I should not travel to Melfi?’

  ‘You have that right, but I think it too soon to make enemies. Better to make friends.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Count Atenulf is a foil for his brother, is he not?’

  ‘Of course, no one would follow that fellow. I have heard he is a fool.’

  ‘A prince who is a vassal of the Pope.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Apulia, in its religion, is mostly Greek. The people who live there, even those who are Lombards, after hundreds of years of Byzantine rule, look to the Patriarch in Constantinople for spiritual guidance. A Prince of Benevento, a vassal of Rome and a worshipper in the Latin rite, may not be to their taste.’

  Guaimar nodded: what Ephraim was saying made good sense; even if it appeared the revolt was succeeding, nothing was yet settled.

  ‘I would also suggest that city states like Bari and Brindisi, even if the Lombard sections of the population are now in the ascendancy of opinion, have enjoyed so much privilege under Constantinople that they will be reluctant to bow the knee to anyone. In pledging to the revolt they may have acted out of prudence, not conviction. Their actions henceforth will be regulated by fear, and I doubt any Lombard prince can command enough force to compel deference.’

  ‘They would not see Amalfi as an example?’

  ‘They are much more formidable than Amalfi.’

  ‘So whoever wanted to rule in Apulia, unless they have an emperor to sustain them, would still need the Normans.’

  Ephraim nodded, pleased that Guaimar obviously accepted the same constraint applied to him, without it having to be openly stated.

  ‘They are warriors you control through Rainulf Drengot.’

  Guaimar smiled again, but it was more wolfish than his previous good humour. He would not admit to Ephraim he had been worried, unnecessarily so.

  ‘Let me travel to Melfi. After such a victory there will be much business to be transacted with those people, more than I can entrust to another. You should not venture out of Campania, but stop before the border.’

  Guaimar’s eyes narrowed suddenly: those Normans would tell this Jew who handled their money things they would not impart to anyone else. Would he pass it on? ‘As long as you act for me.’

  ‘Honourable one, who else would I act for?’ The Jew then nodded to the bulging leather pouch on the table. ‘Quite apart from personal affection, there is the question of my own interest.’

  * * *
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br />   ‘Arise, Count Rainulf.’

  Guaimar said those words in a soft and friendly voice, hinting that for his vassal to kneel to him was unnecessary. The man in question knew better: if he had not wanted a public display of fealty Guaimar would have received him in private instead of his audience chamber, and not subjected his old bones to the dipping. Seeing him struggle to rise again, one of his attendant knights stepped forward to aid him, only to be brushed away. He was not so aged he needed lifting!

  Watching this, Guaimar could see that the years were continuing to take their toll of this one-time puissant Norman – or perhaps he had not yet recovered from his effort at the recent siege. Odd that his ears seemed so much bigger, and those on either side of a face now losing the ability to hold firm the flesh. The cheekbones were very pronounced now, in a countenance that had once been so puffy as to nearly conceal the eyes. Yet there was no denying his success: not only did he have Aversa and his rewards from Amalfi, but he had long ago replaced the Wolf of the Abruzzi as a bane to the great monastery of Montecassino.

  Where the late unlamented Pandulf had ravaged monastery lands and beggared the monks, Rainulf was more measured in his actions, forcing the abbot to cede land, so that Rainulf’s most loyal followers gained much of their income not from his purse, but at the expense of the monastery coffers. Even that failed to ease the threat of Norman brigandage – only distant warfare did that – just as it did nothing for the transferred tenants.

  Rainulf’s Normans had fought at Amalfi, but as soon as that was over, those not part of the garrison had gone back to raiding their neighbours. This Rainulf saw as none of his concern; he had to keep content men bred to war and in search of wealth, and with no war still to fight, and in consequence no plunder, this was his way of providing for them and stopping the discontented from sliding off to join William de Hauteville.

  The Abbot of Montecassino had appealed to Guaimar to intervene, as he had to both Rome and the Prince of Benevento, but those were pleas made to deaf ears: if Rainulf’s unruly Normans were not occupied ravaging the abbot’s lands, they might well find temptation elsewhere. Let them stay out of Lombard territory. Letters had been despatched to the emperor in Bamberg, but he, newly elected and of tender years, was a man with much more pressing concerns in Germany; Italy could wait.