Son of Blood (11 page)

Not being called into his father’s presence until the next day, plus knowing that Reynard had been summoned, caused frustration; it made him feel of no account, but there was one blessing: Sichelgaita had not come to Melfi to stay – she departed with a substantial train at dawn on the second day, on the way, he was told, to her prenuptial home of Salerno. It was later, well into the afternoon, when Bohemund was sent for, entering his father’s privy quarters to another less than glowing welcome.

‘So, are you going to tell me what you failed to pass onto Reynard?’ Robert demanded. ‘Did you commit yourself to Capua, did they even seek to detach you from my service?’

‘There is nothing I can say in that regard that you will not guess.’ The look he got in response was designed to show much doubt. ‘But
I think I have learnt much that might be of use to you.’

That got the kind of raised eyebrows that acted as an invitation to continue. Bohemund briefly reprised his conversation with Fressenda, but laid much more emphasis on the exchange with Jordan, seeking to skip over his offer of aid while underlining the disagreement with his father Richard about how to deal with the supposed death of his great rival. He did not leave out his impression of a one-time warrior prince going to seed through overindulgence, or the advice that a deeper investigation of who stirred up the recent uprisings might point to a different culprit.

‘Richard must trust him, since Jordan had no fear of his anger in letting me depart – either that or it was prearranged. I have had time to think since then and I cannot believe that what was said to me was anything other than a policy to which Jordan would hold. He claims to be continually prodded by Gisulf to bring you down.’

‘You trust his word on my dolt of a brother-in-law?’

‘I do,’ Bohemund replied, with real feeling. ‘As I do on many things.’

‘This son of Capua has clearly captured your heart.’

‘You mock me for believing him?’

‘You talked to him but once and you trust him. You claim he has the confidence of Richard without proof. I like to see into a man’s eyes myself and even then I look for duplicity, for the very good reason it is there more often than honesty.’

‘What if he really does believe that a bloody contest between Capua and Apulia will only advantage others and will do all in his power to avoid it? And if Jordan is speaking with sincerity and Capua did nothing to stir up and sustain the revolt of your vassals, who, then, was behind the likes of Peter and Abelard?’

It was pleasing that his impassioned statement did not draw ridicule; instead his father looked thoughtful, though he remained silent for a long time, even holding up his hand when it looked as if his son was about to speak. Eventually the silence became too much.

‘It could be Gisulf,’ Bohemund said quietly.

‘That fool! Even with the proceeds of his nautical larceny he lacks the means. The rebels had funds to pay their soldiers and that could not have come from their own money chests. And who armed those Lombards you slaughtered at Noci?’

‘Gisulf is a Lombard.’

‘So is my wife,’ Robert barked. ‘Leave me, I need to think.’

It was not often that Robert de Hauteville considered that he might have been duped, but he was thinking that now and in the background he saw the hand of the one-time Hildebrand. If Bohemund was right and Jordan was telling the truth, then there were only two other places the funds to feed the rebellion could have come from and he had already discounted Byzantium, while Bamberg was too distant and too disinterested. But if the cunning archdeacon were the gremlin he would work to keep his hand well hidden, so it was very possible that he had used Gisulf as a proxy. If that was the case, how much more trouble would Hildebrand cause now he was Pope Gregory; there was no comfort in thinking he might desist – the man was not like that.

Odd that in ruminating on such a conundrum, the thoughts he had mulled over the day before should resurface, melding into a set of possibilities that might solve several problems in one fell swoop. What emerged was the kind of tangled solution that the
Guiscard
loved, and in truth it had all the hallmarks of the combination of cunning and clear-sightedness for which he was famous; no one could
pull the strings of the tangled skein like him. The call for messengers, when he had reached his conclusion, was as loud as that to which his clerks were accustomed.

‘Messengers and scribes!’

For Reynard the notion of being a messenger was not one to make him feel elevated, but Robert had insisted that the message he was sending had to go with someone known to be close to him, so that its importance could not be doubted, and to assuage his pride the
Guiscard
had gone as far as to appraise him of the contents. This saw him heading back from Melfi in the direction in which he and Bohemund had so recently ridden, though at a less furious pace and on a constant change of horses.

There was no sneaking into Capuan territory this time; he went straight to the old Roman bridge and settlement by the Ponte Ufita where there was a contingent of soldiers to back up Prince Richard’s toll collectors, stating his business and demanding free passage. Naturally, such a crossing was home to a hostelry where he could get food, drink and negotiate for a change of horses, his to be stabled until he came through on his return. It was while he was arranging this, as well as bespeaking a bed, that a knight of Capua, a tall, burly fellow in a red and black surcoat, came to talk to the innkeeper on exactly the same subject and since they were both Norman it was natural that they should fall into conversation over a flagon of wine.

‘A messenger you say?’ Reynard asked, for the fellow, who went by the name of Odo, had about him the air, as well as the build – not to say the scars – of a fighting man.

‘To the Prince of Capua,’ Odo replied.

‘Can I say you do not look to be a mere messenger?’

That puffed his chest. ‘I am one of the senior familia knights to Prince Richard of Capua, but it was felt that a communication of such importance required that it be carried by someone of my rank.’

‘On what purpose, friend?’

From being affable, the look on the fellow’s face made the appellation ‘friend’ seem out of place. He positively growled. ‘I am not at liberty to share the thoughts of my prince.’

‘What if I were to tell you that I too am a messenger, that I too am a familia knight, to the Duke of Apulia, and that he prevailed on me to carry a very important communication to Prince Richard for the very same reasons of standing?’

‘Yet you will not know its contents?’

‘Not the words, but I do the sentiments.’

There had to be something in the way Reynard said that, for Odo’s eyes narrowed and he whispered, ‘Peace?’

‘And harmony between Capua and Apulia.’

‘There’s devil’s work here, Reynard, for my message is the same.’

‘Not the work of the Devil, friend,’ Reynard replied, filling both their goblets then raising his. ‘Maybe God’s?’

Bohemund was allowed to accompany his father to the meeting with Richard of Capua at the Castle of Grottaminarda, but required to be discreet in his presence, for
Borsa
was there too and it would have been unseemly for him to seek to stand as the acknowledged heir’s equal, added to which Sichelgaita was on her way from Salerno. Naturally, he and Jordan exchanged meaningful looks but to avoid suspicion they did not seek each other out for a private discourse. The two rulers greeted each other with a warm embrace; they had, after all, fought as allies against Pope Leo at Civitate many years before and
if they had been very deeply suspicious of each other’s motives since, and no doubt still were, they understood the demands of diplomacy and conversed as friends, while Robert graciously kissed his sister Fressenda’s hand.

The arrival of Sichelgaita allowed for the very necessary great feast in which the followers of both magnates sought to outshine each other, while their wives sought, with less success, to disguise their mutual loathing, for Sichelgaita knew exactly what Fressenda thought of the annulment and her subsequent marriage. But important as both the spouses were, such dislike was not allowed to cloud the masculine bonhomie.

Richard, as was his habit, drank too much and had to be led off to bed, and a keen eye might have spotted the look from the
Guiscard
that followed him as he departed at a stagger; Jordan certainly did, and Bohemund, observing his father, saw that he was far from pleased, for it was not a benign gaze, rather one of pity mixed with calculation – the look of a plotter, not a companion. To Bohemund it only showed that his father too had drunk too much; he suspected he was normally more careful to disguise his feelings.

The outline of their discussions the next morning was perfectly simple: they would not fight each other but cooperate in those areas of mutual advantage, and part of that related to Robert’s wayward brother-in-law, for Gisulf was as much if not more of a thorn in the flesh to Richard as he was to the
Guiscard
. The Prince of Capua’s land bordered what little Gisulf still retained and if he had the power of a flea, they still nip and leave a mark, so when the suggestion was put forward by the Duke that both men should gain from the meeting it was warmly received.

‘I sent my wife to warn him to behave and he laughed in her face,
Richard, and swore to bring me down. Even now I think him still in league with Rome, so I will countenance that no more. I intend, when the time is right, to chase Gisulf out of Salerno and make it my capital.’

There was a pause then, a look exchanged between Jordan and his father, which was held until the
Guiscard
added, ‘And I will make no move to interfere should you wish to take Naples and I will also come to your aid with my fleet to enforce a blockade.’

Richard of Capua nodded; to take Salerno the
Guiscard
would wish passage for part of his forces across Capuan lands – he lacked ships to lay siege to a port like Naples. That was all that was needed, there being nothing put in writing: an air of amity they could show to the world, as well as an embrace made in public. Such secret arrangements had to remain that, so as not to forewarn their numerous enemies, while beneath the bonhomie, the mutual suspicion and distrust had not dissipated one jot.

T
he news that all his plans in the south had come to nought sent Pope Gregory into another one of his teeth-gnashing passions; all his machinations through Gisulf were now exposed and the awareness of this saw a newly gifted chalice thrown against a wall of his Lateran Palace with such force that the dozens of jewels and pearls embedded in the solid-gold body flew free to roll across the floor because, sent by King William of England, it reminded him of those who were his enemies. He could not have the two great Italo-Norman powers in accord at a time when his other adversary, Henry IV, was weak; the Western Emperor-elect, a young unproven ruler of twenty-three years of age, was dealing with a revolt in Saxony and struggling to press home his imperial claims as throughout the Empire.

Desiderius was, as ever, the mediator and fount of knowledge when it came to dealing with Capua and Apulia. He was sent for and he advised Gregory of the obvious: that he must, in such a precarious
situation, seek some kind of accommodation with the Norman rulers. That was easier with Prince Richard than the
Guiscard
, given the latter was an excommunicate and no pontiff could even dream of holding talks with anyone not in a state of grace, while papal dignity meant it could not be lifted without good reason. The first task as Desiderius saw it was to pacify at least one branch of the threat, not least in order to protect his own monastery of Monte Cassino, which overlooked the road from Capua to Rome and was thus likely to become embroiled in any dispute with Richard regardless of any wish to stand aside.

Envoys were despatched to offer a treaty of peace to the Prince of Capua in order to keep him quiet, with the granting of various benefits in terms of disputed revenues as an inducement. To initiate that was unsettling enough but Christ’s Vicar on Earth nearly choked when it came to Robert de Hauteville. If compromise had been anathema when he had been Hildebrand, then as Pope Gregory it was even more unpalatable. Yet he had, on the pragmatic advice of Desiderius, to write to Roger, Count of Sicily, who was still on the mainland, hinting his elder brother could find his way back to the bosom of the Holy Church if he showed a degree of repentance. An offer that would have been declined out of hand by Robert caused surprise by being accepted; there was, after all, the future capture of Salerno to take into account and it would help if the
Guiscard
could persuade Gregory to disown the unreliable and foolish Gisulf.

After months of comings and goings, which must have taxed the body of a man well past his prime, and just enough give and take to allow the excommunication to be lifted, Desiderius got both the
Guiscard
and Gregory to Benevento, where the Pope had a palace, for if the Duke of Apulia held the lands of the principality, the city itself was still papal territory.

There this outburst of harmony stopped; Robert would not enter the city for fear of assassination, Gregory would not leave his palace for the dread of a further loss of papal dignity. Thus an encounter designed to make peace and foster concord did exactly the opposite and both went their separate ways without meeting. Gregory was already fuming when news came that the Duke Sergius of Amalfi had passed away, leaving only an infant son to inherit a city and trading port that had been in conflict with its nearest neighbour Salerno for decades, a conflict deepened by the fact that the Amalfians had participated in the murder of Prince Gisulf’s father.

So, to protect themselves against the Prince of Salerno’s oft-stated desire for retribution – he would hang half the citizens if he took the city – Amalfi asked the Duke of Apulia to accept the title. A letter from Gregory forbidding the Amalfians to allow Robert to accept was ignored and he was again excommunicated. But that was insufficient for the Pope, who decided he had to finish off the
Guiscard
once and for all. Hildebrand’s memory of Apulian humiliations was long; he had served Pope Leo, only to see him humiliated by the de Hautevilles at Civitate – it was time to rectify that stain on the office he now held.

Since he was relatively secure in the north, and having that just-signed treaty with Richard of Capua that would, he hoped, keep him out of any conflict, Gregory sent out his envoys to those powers that he could count upon to aid his cause: Beatrice of Tuscany, her daughter and her hunchback husband who held Lorraine, to the port cities of the Tyrrhenian Sea, Salerno, Pisa, to Amadeus of Savoy, the Count of Burgundy and Raymond of Toulouse, all Christian knights in good standing with Rome.

Gregory was cunning in his appeal; the object of such a host, he insisted, was not to just spill Christian blood; indeed he desired
that the gathering would bring the
Guiscard
to heel without a drop being shed. The prize was singular: once the Normans were subdued – Capua would be much more amenable if Apulia was humbled – the assembled forces would find themselves free to use the ports of the Adriatic coast. Given that access, they should not disband but proceed by ship to Constantinople to aid their Christian brethren suffering under the constant attacks from the followers of their so-called Prophet.

‘Imagine it, Desiderius,’ Gregory enthused, his eyes alight as he looked at a map of Asia Minor, his finger tracing the route from the Bosphorus to Palestine, ‘a huge body of knights under a papal banner, riding in crusade to the rescue of the Eastern Empire, driving back the Turks and every other infidel. Can you not see a great Christian army entering the city of Jerusalem to celestial trumpets and bringing back under the control of our faith the very place where Jesus rose from the dead? Surely in doing that we could claim to be serving the will of God. And what ruler or patriarch, with our soldiers outside his palace, will deny the rights of the Bishop of Rome to universal hegemony?’

‘Let us see to the
Guiscard
first,’ the abbot replied; even if he too hankered after a great Eastern crusade he had been too long troubled by the Normans, had seen them slip too many a noose, to see what was coming as straightforward.

‘My father declines to receive you, Bohemund,’ Jordan insisted, ‘for he can guess the errand on which you have come and he cannot agree to that which you are bound to seek.’

‘It is simple: if we fall, so in time will Capua.’

‘While the route to Apulia from Rome is through our principality,’
Jordan replied. ‘If we contest the passage of Gregory’s great host, the lands we possess will be destroyed much sooner by joining your father than standing aside and giving them free passage.’

Was Jordan uncomfortable? Bohemund could not tell; he hoped so, believing as he did that he had some regard for both him and his father. Yet he could not help but reprise the conversation he had shared with his sire at Melfi prior to allowing him to embark on this mission, for Robert knew very well the contents of the letters sent out by Pope Gregory, as well as the fact that his only potential ally was treaty-bound to his enemy. Capua had made no moves to show they might break that attachment and combine to meet the threat to Duke Robert. And he needed aid, for it would be potentially deadly to face on his own, as well as a serious risk even if he could repeat the alliance and the good fortune that was won at Civitate.

The army he might face was the largest to come south of Rome since a previous Emperor Henry had descended with all his imperial might to put in his place a previous Prince of Capua, a fellow named Pandulf who was unusually avaricious even for a Lombard. Pandulf had not only appropriated the lands of Monte Cassino and rendered beggars the monks who lived there, but had thrown its venerated abbot, a predecessor of Desiderius, into his dungeons. Count Roger, who had not long departed, had been summoned to return with every lance he could muster, for if Robert went down, Sicily would cease to be a secure Norman fief.

Increasingly allowed into his father’s confidence, much to the disgust of Sichelgaita, Bohemund had no difficulty in observing that the
Guiscard
was worried; his assessment of the quality and quantity of the forces Gregory had managed to combine was alarming. Being outnumbered was always a concern, but a deeper concern came from
facing a vastly superior number of warriors of a fighting capacity little short of those he could muster. Whatever the Normans put in the field as
milities
– and they would be inferior in numbers – it was his mounted knights on which he relied to win his battles, and if the reports he had received were true, then it was in that arm most danger threatened.

As well as learning how to use weapons as a growing boy, Bohemund, like all his kind, had been schooled in tactics, and the one paramount fact of fighting mainly on horseback was that it generally allowed the Normans to manoeuvre with more flexibility than their opponents and thus allowed them to choose the field of battle as well as giving them the ability to engage or decline contact at will. Quite naturally they wanted a slope down which to attack, preferably with at least one flank closed off by topography, a river or a steep hillside, a site on which their superior discipline counted. It was highly likely that such advantages would not be available to them.

‘Then Capua must be persuaded, Father,’ he had insisted, ‘and I have a bond with Jordan.’

The reply had been cold. ‘Do not be too ready to believe him, Bohemund.’

‘I trust him and I am prepared to try to persuade him to work on his own, sire.’

That had produced an awkward pause; if they had never openly discussed the reasons Bohemund had for saying he trusted Jordan, it was no mystery – a shrewd mind would have little difficulty in seeing the outline if not the detail. Yet it seemed as if that knowledge had not acted to cause a breach; it was as if Robert had accepted it as a fact he could do nothing to alter and the subject of his successor was not one he was prepared to ever discuss. Perhaps it was because of the way he
had come to the title himself, more, Bohemund suspected, because to do so tempted a fatal providence; he had a superstition that to talk of death might bring on that very fate.

‘Father and son, Capua will always pursue a policy they think benefits them, just as I will always act in my own interest.’

When his father continued, his voice had an air of detachment, as though the outcome he was speculating upon had no bearing on him or his future.

‘If Richard holds his peace with Gregory, what happens in Italy when this great host the Pope has gathered, having done that for which it was assembled, departs these shores on his mad Eastern crusade? Who then will be left to protect Apulia, and for that matter Rome itself? From being the inferior Norman overlord in the country, he leapfrogs to become the strongest, and unless our deluded pontiff can assemble another army to subdue Capua he will find himself at their complete mercy.’

‘Is that Richard’s thinking?’

‘No, Bohemund, it is mine, but do not suppose that a nephew of Rainulf Drengot is any less calculating than a de Hauteville. My brother William learnt how to think and act from Richard’s uncle and he also learnt never to repose trust in them. Remember, when William set out for Melfi he did so as a vassal of Drengot, and they would no more forget that the bond had been broken than would we. Deep in their hearts they see us still as their vassals.’

‘Then why allow me to seek their help?’

Robert smiled and his reply was as enigmatic as the look. ‘You should see more of your cousins, don’t you think?’

He’s tempting me again
, Bohemund thought.

Following on from a wasted journey to Capua, it was even more depressing to join with and accompany his father to Benevento. Bohemund became part of a two hundred-strong escort of his most accomplished lances, a number that underlined his father’s concerns; Robert still did not repose any faith in the Pope but this time he came as a supplicant, not an equal, which meant he would be obliged to enter the city to meet him at his palace and when he did so he wanted enough men with him to fight his way out again if he had to. A whole raft of communications in which he humbly begged to be told how he had offended his suzerain had preceded his visit, adding a wish to be informed of what redress he could make for slights he had never intended, none of which had softened the tone of Gregory’s replies.

The
Guiscard
knew he was going to have to be subservient in the presence of a pontiff who would take much pleasure in his grovelling humiliation. To the north of the city was assembled his massive host, seemingly made up of half the knights in Christendom. Calculation had persuaded Robert to leave his own forces in Apulia, for no good would come of being thought to be playing a double game; it was time to extract from this meeting what he could and that might amount to no more than salvage – at the very least he knew he would lose the Province of Benevento.

In his palace Pope Gregory was ebullient and hardly able to contain his excitement; here, in the very same reception chamber in which Pope Leo had been made to eat dirt, he would make amends for the defeat of Civitate and extract from the Duke of Apulia a price so high he might be prepared to spill blood rather than meet it. Benevento would be his again and he had his eyes on depriving him the cities of the Adriatic coast, places he and his families had captured at such a high price. If he refused he would be crushed, but at the very least the
Guiscard
, whom,
he was told, scoffed at the notion of a crusade to aid Constantinople, would be obliged to take ship under papal command and participate in a fight for the aims of Rome instead of his own.

Desiderius, in his last meeting, had sought to remind Gregory that for the trouble he had caused Rome, Robert de Hauteville had been a better son of the Church than for which he was being given credit. In every conquest he had made, the
Guiscard
had advanced the spread of the Roman rite, importing priests and monks, discouraging if not actually displacing the Basilian monks and Greek priesthood in their favour, endowing places of worship and contemplation, enforcing celibacy and even allowing his own Archbishop of Bari to be defrocked for refusing to set aside his wife.