by Jack Ludlow
Now it was Guaimar’s turn to laugh. ‘You expect the Pope to believe that?’
‘Who cares what he believes, brother? Much as you seek to blind yourself to it, I am my father’s daughter. He had Salerno taken from him by Rainulf and Pandulf and I often wonder if you recall how close we came to joining him in that simple tomb in which we buried him. Let Leo and Argyrus beat the Normans, and when they do we will rejoice, but I will not see Salerno destroyed first, which she will surely be, and long before either of those two can do anything to save us.’
Argyrus had entertained mixed hopes for Guaimar: he knew for the Prince of Salerno to join with him and Pope Leo would require a degree of daring. No one depended on Norman lances more than he and, while he was capable of raising armed levies of his own, as he had done in order to take Amalfi, the backbone of any force he had ever put in the field came from Aversa. What did surprise him was the way Guaimar decided to let his refusal be known: what should have been a secret, both the request and his negative response, were now known throughout Italy, severely denting any hopes of engaging the help of the other Lombard magnates.
Somehow that had to be reversed; all problems, to a mind like that of Argyrus, had a solution, while added to that was his ability to think ahead, so in order to hedge against a Salernian snub, and with other possibilities in mind, he had sent a trusted envoy to Amalfi, which might prove to be an Achilles heel, to assess matters.
That the adherents of the deposed duke hated Guaimar went without saying — they had seen power stripped from them — just as most of the citizenry disliked being ruled by another. But, from distant Bari, it was impossible to know if such hatred could be put to good purpose. The reports that came back, of seething discontent, were welcome.
Naturally, when it came to seaborne trade, Guaimar had favoured his own merchants over the needs of Amalfi, so that the once prosperous port saw the commerce off which it had lived leaching inexorably to Salerno. Being a Lombard allowed Argyrus to understand his tribe in a way that the Byzantine Greeks had never quite managed; was it not that very quality which had persuaded the Emperor Constantine to appoint him as catapan?
The leading citizens of Amalfi, be they dispossessed aristocrats or impoverished traders, were Lombards, and though they might mouth other sentiments, and pray mightily for Christian salvation, money, and the power that went with it, was their true divinity. Their other weakness was a lack of tribal loyalty, again something they would mouth, but a feeling which came a poor second to personal advantage.
Nestled in a precipitous coastal valley, connected to the interior by a pass through the surrounding mountains, and, within it, buildings piled on precarious slopes one on top of the other, it was a place built for intrigue. But the garrison and governor Guaimar had installed, supported by Normans, held the round tower that dominated the port — the easiest point of ingress and egress — feeling safe in the knowledge that control of trade from that near impregnable citadel gave them the key to an untroubled occupation.
They also held the two land gates to the city that fed a narrow coastal road: let the Amalfians grumble, and no doubt conspire, in their cliff-hugging dwellings. They lacked the means to strike out at those who lorded it over them. No adult male was allowed to bear arms, on pain of incarceration; any numerous gathering would be brutally dispersed so that conspiracy was confined to small numbers who dared not coalesce. Fear and an iron fist ruled Amalfi but the contact between oppressor and oppressed was non-existent: the former stayed in their bastions, the latter avoided them completely.
That was the message sent back to Argyrus: discontent was one thing, the ability to act quite another. The envoy had, of course, misunderstood his master’s purpose. The catapan, who would, if he had been required to, have held Bari in much the same fashion as Guaimar held Amalfi, had never thought that a revolt inside the port was feasible. What he wanted to know was the willingness of the leading citizens to act against Salerno, if he could give them a method of doing so.
Perusing the list his envoy had brought back, he chose for his purpose the well-born over the trader, for the latter would always weigh the righting of a grievance against the cost. Dispossessed nobles were more given to emotion: raised in luxury from birth, they were men who would have grown up seeing power as a birthright, and the removal of it as a personal slight. It came as no surprise to discover that many of such had landed estates outside the actual port, well inland over the mountains, with numerous tenants and peasants to work their soil.
Calling his envoy, he instructed him in what he had to do: to take a ship back to Amalfi, one which would sit in the harbour, its load of weaponry hidden in the holds, and prepare the city to rise up against their oppressors. He was then to find those well-born malcontents and get them out of the place. Once on their estates, they would be met by numerous and armed fellow Lombards who would aid them, as long as they equipped their own people to fight as well, the promise held out of the casting-off of the Salernian yoke. That they would be unaware of the hand of Byzantium in their task was all to the good.
Guaimar was an accessible prince, a man who did not fear to walk with a minimal escort through the streets of his city, nor was he excessive in the way he lived his life: he would not have Normans guarding the Castello di Arechi, a fact which went some way to mollify his sister, angry that he associated with them at all. Salerno was a teeming active port, a place hemmed in by hills but with a wide sweeping bay that left it open to cooling breezes, as well as the occasional hot African wind, and it was as wealthy now as it had ever been, with much building going on, some of it financed by its ruler.
Ships came in from all over the known world with silks, spices and valuable commodities, while from the Campanian hinterland the produce of the fertile province, capable of double harvests, flowed out: grain to feed the people of Rome, olive oil with which to cook and keep going the lights that allowed for life to continue when the sun set, fruit that grew in abundance in the orchards, and wood from the forested foothills of the mountains.
Every ship entering or leaving paid customs dues, these taken in by the collector of the port to add to the secret stipend he gave to his master from smuggling. Kasa Ephraim was a busy man, with much to concern him in the way of trade, for he had multifarious interests, and the need to push his way through crowded thoroughfares in the company of his coffer-bearing servants meant he had no eyes to spot anything unusual, not that the sight of half a dozen well-set young men in such a prosperous city was that.
If Argyrus had spies in Amalfi, he also had people who were his eyes and ears in Salerno and they told him, after months of observation, that the one time it would be certain that the Prince of Salerno would be in his Castello was the day the Jew delivered the port revenues. They had also found out from gossip in the wine shops that Guaimar was wont to meet his Jew in private after the transaction of official business, with no one else present.
The group that had trailed Kasa Ephraim was not alone: there were others in the city, all now armed and each one with a task to perform, some to take important buildings, others to take care of anyone who might raise resistance, but most important was the group who gathered outside the gates to the Castello di Arechi, becoming in time so much part of the landscape that if the guards at the entrance had noticed them at all, they did not stand out now.
There was no way of seeing through the stout stone walls, the time to act was a guess, based on the exit of some of Guaimar’s council, who would leave the Castello once the public business had been transacted. As soon as they were out of sight, the Amalfians struck. The guards — in truth, in such a peaceful city, long past being alert — were the first to be killed. While half the raiding party entered the Castello, others, the younger ones fleet of foot, were sent as messengers to tell the rest to act. Inside the building, for all that any shouts echoed off the walls, the doors to each chamber were built of stout well-seasoned and heavily studded timber, and so muffled such cries.
Kasa Ephraim would have died had he not just left the prince, having said farewell to Guaimar just as his sister and niece came into his presence. As it was he found himself knocked to the ground as those intent on killing Guaimar, six in number, swept past him towards the unbarred door to the chamber he had just left. The Jew was not a fighting man, but he was a clever one. Seeing the flashing knives, already dripping with blood, it took no great imagination to understand what was happening, just as he knew that alone he could do nothing to prevent it.
The cries of alarm and one scream, he heard as he pulled himself upright and hurried for the exit. Behind him, unseen, those six assassins had stopped before the Prince of Salerno, who seeing their blades and being himself unarmed knew what he was about to face. He pushed his sister and her child behind him, and with a voice carrying as much command as he had ever been able to muster, demanded to know who came upon him in such a fashion.
‘Amalfi has come for you, Prince Guaimar, to seek redress for the blood of its people.’
‘Strike and your city will burn, I swear,’ Guaimar spat back. ‘Not a stone will remain standing, not a life will be spared.’
‘Then, Prince Guaimar,’ the leader replied with a grim smile, ‘we have nothing to lose.’
The assassins rushed towards him and hit out with their blades, surrounding the prince and stabbing with fury. The last words he said before he fell to the ground, with blood spurting from dozens of wounds and his garments already bright red, were ‘Spare my sister and her child.’
That was not to be: the task was to kill off the House of Salerno; Berengara and her daughter, widow and child of William de Hauteville, died within moments of Guaimar and from those same knives.
Kasa Ephraim knew the Castello well, having served both the prince and his father. He made his way to the family apartments, where he spoke, in a voice he could not believe was as even as it sounded, of the danger they faced. Like every castle of the age in which they lived it had a private as well as a public entrance, and not just for fear of murder: all princes liked to be able to come and go unseen. If the Jew did not know where it was he suspected it existed, and he told Guaimar’s wife and children, most particularly his fourteen-year-old son, Gisulf, to get out of the Castello at once.
‘Take nothing, for you have no time.’
‘The prince?’
Though he hoped he was wrong, the Jew guessed he was right. ‘Will be dead by now. Go.’
No one demurred when he followed; he, too, felt that only by leaving could he survive. In the harbour, one fast sailing ship was hoisting sail, not from panic or fear, but to carry the news of the death of Guaimar round the toe and boot of Italy to tell Argyrus of the success of his plan.
The news of the murders came to the Norman host, gathered between Melfi and Benevento, through Guaimar’s cousin, Guy, Duke of Sorrento, who had escaped the city and ridden hard to deliver it.
‘The road to Aversa was blocked and there were Amalfians at every post house to stop any messenger changing mounts.’
‘But not on the road to Melfi?’ demanded Humphrey, his beetle brow creased.
‘No.’
‘That does not make sense,’ said Mauger.
‘Perhaps it does,’ Humphrey replied, his suspicious nature working overtime, as were his prominent teeth, chewing his lower lip. ‘I smell another hand in this.’
‘Argyrus!’ growled Geoffrey.
There was a silent exchange of looks then: one thing did not need to be stated, given they all knew of Pope Leo’s scheming. With the Pontiff trying to contrive an alliance to defeat them, and an army gathering north of the city of Benevento, an important fief like Salerno, who had proved to be their only dependable ally, could not be allowed to fall into the hands of someone who was an enemy. If Argyrus was involved that meant Byzantium, the worst possible opponent, given he might control the city and a hinterland that, in league with Rome, would see them surrounded.
‘William’s child was murdered as well?’ asked Mauger, sadly, more sentimental than his brothers. Guy of Sorrento nodded. ‘Then we have a blood reason to intervene.’
‘If we move on Salerno,’ Humphrey nodded, though he looked less grieving than Mauger, ‘he will move on our Apulian possessions while we are gone.’
‘The Pope?’
‘He is still assembling. Leo cannot threaten us yet.’
‘So we stay,’ Mauger asked, ‘or move south to block Argyrus?’
Since the loss of both William and Drogo, Humphrey had grown in both confidence and authority: he was very much in command now.
‘Leo is at present no threat. Geoffrey will lead half our forces to confront Argyrus. If we are wrong and he does not move from Bari then no harm will be done. If he does, and you cannot beat him, you can delay him Geoffrey, giving the rest of us a chance to rejoin.’
‘And Salerno?’ asked Duke Guy.
‘As long as we can block the catapan and Leo does not move, the men who killed Guaimar will see their own guts before they die.’
‘I thank you,’ he replied, relieved.
‘We will, however,’ Humphrey said, ‘need to be recompensed for our assistance. Guaimar was a wealthy man and Salerno is one of the richest ports in Italy.’
The bargaining that followed, for high sums of gold, might have embarrassed a man of tender feelings. Humphrey de Hauteville was not that man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Robert, still castle-building in Calabria, heard of what had happened at Salerno long after matters were resolved, and he heard of how the hand of Argyrus had been exposed. The catapan had indeed moved out from Bari as soon as the ship from Salerno brought news of Guaimar’s assassination, and it was suspected he had sent word to Pope Leo asking him to act as well, but as soon as he met Geoffrey he knew that, even if he could beat and pursue him, he could be putting his head into a Norman noose, so he withdrew.
Humphrey, having joined with Richard of Aversa, had descended on Salerno within four days, a speed which had thrown the Amalfians off balance, causing most of them to flee. The assassins thought they had time to consolidate their position in Salerno when they had none. They thought, also, they had time to overcome the garrison of their own home city, now besieged in their bastions in a port in full revolt; that too was in doubt.
The Normans had gathered on the way the news that Gisulf had been taken into the Castello di Arechi, now barred and held by the most stalwart Amalfians, though it was said he was still alive, so Guy of Sorrento was sent in to offer them terms. Spare Gisulf, free him, and they would live, kill him and they would die — as they must for foul murder — and as an added incentive Amalfi would be spared sack and utter ruin.
The offer was refused. If the Amalfians thought that in holding Gisulf they had an unbeatable hand, they again underestimated the Norman mind. Richard of Aversa descended on Amalfi like a whirlwind and relieved the garrisons. The men in the Castello di Arechi were brusquely informed their own families — wives and children — had been taken as hostages, which allowed Guy to negotiate for Gisulf’s release, and as soon as he was freed his uncle bent the knee and did homage to him as the new ruler of Salerno.
‘He should have taken the title himself,’ Humphrey complained, as he saw Guy kneeling. ‘Gisulf is but a boy, and not an impressive one at that.’
‘It was a selfless act,’ Mauger replied.
‘Stupid,’ his elder brother spat. ‘Salerno needs a strong hand, not that of a weakling.’
‘So what do we do?’
They were in front of the Castello di Arechi, still occupied by the Amalfians, with crowds of Salernians not far off, at least out of the range of a crossbow bolt, seemingly cheering their new prince but probably more relieved that they would be allowed to return to making money. Between the crowd and the Castello stood a line of mailed and armed Normans.
Humphrey, biting hard on his lower lip, finally said, ‘What can we do, but the same?’
He led Mauger forward and knelt b
efore the young Gisulf, which was followed by the entire contingent of Normans. The youngster looked confused about how to respond, until his uncle told him to gently raise Humphrey up and thank him, which the boy did.
‘The assassins?’ he asked Guy.
‘Will come out now. I have told them they will be spared.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, we need peace and reconciliation more than we need more bloodshed.’
‘Then let us see them.’
Guy of Sorrento went to the gates of the Castello di Arechi and called for the men to come out, reiterating that they were safe. Slowly they complied, two dozen of them, blinking at the jeering which came from the citizens gathered at a distance.
‘Your weapons?’ Guy said.
Unsheathing their swords they threw them to the ground and moved forward to stand before Guy and the de Hautevilles, at which point Humphrey growled, ‘You spared them.’
‘I told you,’ Guy replied.
‘Mauger,’ Humphrey called, unsheathing his broadsword, his voice rising as he shouted. ‘We did not!’
Mauger had followed his brother; his sword was out and employed in moments, swinging left and right, smashing bone as well as slashing flesh, and the men who had killed Guaimar were cut to ribbons with a staggering degree of Norman ferocity.
Guy of Sorrento was shouting in protest, Gisulf was wailing in fright, until Humphrey stood before him, the decimated bodies at his back, a bloodstained figure towering over the boy.
‘Don’t weep, lad,’ he said. ‘My brother and I have just saved your life.’
The news of Guaimar’s murder was at first a cause for some rejoicing in Benevento, though Pope Leo felt the need to be muted in his gratitude that the greatest obstacle to the alliance he was creating was gone. Then came the Norman retribution, shocking both in the swift manner it was carried out and worrying to those who had joined the papal forces, not least in the way that Salerno and the Normans had combined. Men began to desert the papal cause, especially when news came from southern Apulia that Argyrus had been obliged to retire on Bari.
