Conquest

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was still much to be done, several Byzantine strongholds to subdue, the most important being the main city of Reggio, but now Robert Guiscard was content to see Roger as his trusted lieutenant, who could be left in command while he saw to matters in his other fiefs, where rebellion, instigated and financed from Bari, was endemic. That the Apulian Greeks were unhappy to be ruled by Normans was only to be expected: they had enjoyed privileges under Byzantium denied to the other races in the Catapanate. The Italian indigenes consisted of tribes that could trace their origins back to the old Roman Empire and they were like any people: they hated whoever taxed them from wherever they originated. They had to be stirred to insurrection, a task readily undertaken by the priests of the Orthodox persuasion to which most of them belonged.

The main problem was the Lombards, who had never shown much in the way of cohesion in the past, their leaders continually manoeuvring for personal advantage. There had been exceptions, paragons who had got them to act in concert, Melus, the father of Argyrus, being one. If he was a sainted figure to the notion of Lombard independence, he had one flaw for which they would never forgive him: it was Melus who had brought the Normans into Apulia as mercenaries to aid the revolt he led.

Driven from power, they seemed more willing to combine and act in concert with the three other elements in Robert’s fiefs: the aforementioned Greeks and Italians, plus any Norman baron dissatisfied with the dispensations of his titular overlord. With the latter, the mere appearance of the Guiscard was enough to bring them to heel — they were rebellious only in his absence and easily mollified by small concessions. It was a question oft posed but one that lacked a clear answer: how was he to so engage the others in his rule as to stop these endemic uprisings, which kept dragging him away from Calabria. To take Bari was one answer, but one he was wise to shy away from, given it was near impregnable.

‘You should have married a Lombard,’ Roger said, ‘and produced sons.’

‘Alberada has given me a daughter and Bohemund. He is big enough to be a whole family. I think, one day, I may have to strain my neck to meet his eye.’

‘Which means he will always be seen as a Norman. With a Lombard mother you could have claimed to represent them and demanded they be loyal to your heir.’

They were gazing at the walls of Cariati, a Byzantine stronghold outside of which he and Robert had been positioned for months. There was no point in discussing the tactics required to take the place: that as a subject was exhausted.

‘I should have wed a woman of greater girth in the hips, brother, who would have given me the same number of sons as my father.’

Roger felt a slight reddening of the cheeks then — had he not thought on, as well as been amused by, the image of the two of them in congress? Apparently bearing Bohemund had nearly killed tiny Alberada, the boy a credit to his sire’s dimensions, not his mother’s. It was rumoured to have caused such damage as to render any chance of her bearing more children impossible, but that was a secondary consideration: it was again revolt which was troubling Robert. Trani, outside Bari the most Greek port city in his domains, had become the seat of Lombard-inspired rebellion. Robert was promising to cast down the walls and silt up the harbour.

‘Winter is coming, brother. If you were to ask my advice-’

Robert growled. ‘That is always welcome, you know that.’

That got him a jaundiced look: he did listen to Roger, but only after a long and tedious argument, though it had to be said dissension on tactics was rare — the Guiscard was a superb soldier whose only fault, apart from his being close-mouthed, was a degree of impatience, that, Roger suspected, brought on by the frustration of never having security at his back.

‘I think we should suspend our efforts to take this place and concentrate on just keeping the garrison bottled up. You know yourself it is unwise to keep men in siege lines too long. Let me rotate them in and out while you go back to Apulia, hang a few Lombards and perhaps give some comfort to your ailing wife.’

‘I doubt she’d welcome my comfort,’ Robert growled.

Unbeknown to Roger, that casual remark of his, a joke about Robert needing a Lombard wife, was to have long-term consequences. Unbeknown to either brother, matters were moving elsewhere that would have a profound effect on the future.

Cardinal Ascletin, always the self-centred fool, was doubly stupid not to realise that anything he got up to in Bamberg would quickly be known in Rome: a longtime opponent of imperial interference in papal elections, Ascletin did a complete volte-face when he actually met the child-emperor Henry. On the journey north he had reviewed his prospects of becoming pope. His family had invested huge amounts of Pierleoni money in getting him to his present eminence; had he not had a bishopric before he was aged twenty and his cardinal’s red hat soon after?

The whole scheme had been designed to raise the family profile so that they stood in equal importance to the other great Roman aristocrats, cliques who schemed to get elected to the fabulously lucrative office of pontiff, by fair means, or more often foul, numerous members of their clan. This allowed them to distribute to their relatives the many wealthy benefices in the papal gift. Why could not the Pierleoni, or more pointedly he, do the same? Yet Ascletin reasoned, in a rare bout of self-criticism, that he might never see himself elected due to his own personal unpopularity, a situation naturally ascribed to things other than his own mendacious character.

‘As you know, sire, there are many voices raised in the Curia to question your rights in these matters.’

‘Hildebrand?’

The ten-year-old spat that name, before looking to ensure he had the right of it, happy when he saw his counsellors nodding. Not yet of an age to command such men, older and wiser than he, Henry prided himself that once told of what to say, he had the ability to deliver it with proper imperial gravitas.

‘Hildebrand is indeed the loudest voice in condemnation of the imperial prerogative and the office he holds gives him great sway.’

‘Backed by the likes of the Abbot Desiderius.’

‘Unfortunately true, sire.’

Even the most partisan supporter of imperial rights would have had to acknowledge it was unfortunate to name the abbot: when it came to personal probity and lack of ambition Desiderius was a paragon; the papacy, come an election, was his for the asking, no one would oppose him, but he had made it plain it was an office he neither wanted nor was it one he would accept.

‘And you, Cardinal Ascletin,’ Henry demanded, in his high and piping child’s voice, ‘where do you stand on my rights?’

That was tricky: given his often very vocal objections to imperial interference, he was not seen in Bamberg as a friend, something in his introspections regarding his own future he had concluded must be reversed. His first reaction was to temporise.

‘It is, sire, as you know, a vexed question.’

‘Not to the heir of Charlemagne.’

‘Quite, but more of a problem stems from the way the leading families of Rome interfere in such matters.’

That was a fine piece of sophistry: the Pierleoni, while not of the front rank, were a leading Roman family and had started a few riots in their time, bribing the scum of Rome to cause mayhem for family advantage. That they had not done so with the frequency or violence of their competitors, given to deposing elected popes and installing their own candidates, was not much of an excuse. Too many times this young fellow’s predecessors had been obliged to descend on Rome to restore order, often to depose a usurping pope and needing to rescue the true incumbent, besieged by some paid-for mob.

‘Do you have an answer to that?’

Henry suddenly looked his age: having spoken without thinking he looked nervously again to those advisors to see if he had done right, not helped by the fact that they were split in their opinion, evident by their contrasting expressions. Some saw it as right to nail a difficulty, others were less convinced the bald illustration of a truth was the way to deal with such matters. Yet the reply was smooth: if Ascletin was a selfish man who allowed that trait to cloud his sense, he was also a polished politician.

‘It has often been mooted, sire, that an imperial force kept close to Rome would serve to keep the most troublesome elements of the slums in check.’

‘Not something any pope in my memory would countenance.’ The man who spoke, Robert of Lorraine and Count of Milan, maternal uncle to the emperor, was the most powerful imperial vassal present; certainly potent enough to speak without permission, though he observed the conventions. ‘Forgive me, sire, for speaking out, but popes in the past have seen that as even more excessive imperial interference.’

Ascletin replied before the young Henry could. ‘Then it may require a pope to be elected who does not object to such a presence.’

There are, in certain exchanges, times when words are superfluous and this was one. No one spoke to underline that which was evident in what Ascletin had said and in the steady gaze which accompanied it: that he was putting himself forward for such a role. Elected to the Holy See he would not object to an imperial garrison close to Rome. Henry might be young, but he was as quick as any to see the point.

‘Perhaps we may speak in private, Cardinal Ascletin, with my most intimate counsellors, and ponder on the whole problem.’

Robert de Hauteville and Alberada were generally comfortable in each other’s company, it could even be said they were friends, despite their often barbed public banter. What was rare was for Robert to talk with her on matters pertaining to his title and it was clear, in the way he was doing so, he was moving towards some telling point which made him uncomfortable, so much so that he was being irascible with Bohemund — unusual since he doted on the boy — who was busily crawling around upsetting whatever he could.

‘Damn the child,’ he barked, as the toddler dragged a cloth from a table, taking with it a fruit bowl and a pewter jug half full of wine. ‘Get his nurse in here, I am trying to talk with you.’

Alberada raised her head from her embroidery. ‘Singular in itself, husband; I am more accustomed to your shouting.’

There was truth in that, for he was given to bellowing, indeed to have Robert in her private apartment when it was daylight outside, was abnormal: he was a nocturnal visitor and one, though she would never admit it, she had come to dread. The child crawling around was a delight and a true rascal, but had been far from that on arrival. Physical relations with Robert might produce another child of the same size and she was sure such a thing would kill her.

She called for the nurse and observed the way she picked the boy up, straining to do so: at only a year and a half he was the size of a four-year-old and strong in his resistance. Once alone, her husband recommenced his grousing, now damning Lombards as the most fractious of his subjects, then cursing a string of lesser Norman barons who took Argyrus’s gold, men who would be eating their harness if it were not for his generosity. Alberada was only half listening, that was until he alluded to the fact they were second cousins. The way he did so obliged her to concentrate, as she began to see the drift of his remarks.

‘The consanguinity troubles you, husband?’

‘Of course it troubles me, woman. It could be seen as impious, given it falls within the prohibited degree. I wonder if I am cursed because of it.’

‘Not a thing that has hitherto raised any concern.’

That was sharply delivered and recalled the way they had come to be married. Robert de Hauteville was not one to woo a potential bride: instead, having decided the time had come that he should have one, he had browbeaten her nephew, Girard, into acquiescence. She was indeed a second cousin to the de Hautevilles through Tancred’s second wife, while her nephew was a mercenary who had been granted his title and fief by William Iron Arm, to whom he had been a faithful captain.

It was Drogo who had arranged the nuptials, seeking to both endow his brother and calm his unruly behaviour by marriage. Wealthy Girard of Buonalbergo had been left in no doubt that if he wanted to keep his fief he had best surrender his aunt — nephew Girard was older and her guardian, such was the confusion of generations — this, of course, accompanied by a demand for the proper dowry. In short, it had been a marriage for money, not affection and, as was common, having been accepted by both parties as such, they had set about making the best they could of the arrangement.

‘Perhaps if Girard had not been so wealthy this concern would have surfaced sooner.’

Slightly embarrassed, Robert took refuge in loud bluster. ‘It has come to me now!’

‘Why?’

His wife found herself now looking into a face suffused with anxiety, which she suspected was false. ‘Such a marriage risks our souls, Alberada. We could pay in the fires of hell for what we have done here on earth, do you not realise that?’

She did not look up, lest, in her eyes, Robert observed she knew his claim to piety to be a convenience: it always was with the race to which she belonged; this she knew, being the daughter of a Norman knight. Her father had been no exception and neither was the nephew who had given her away: Norman men would invoke God to suit their purpose and forget his existence for the same reason. Certainly her husband attended Mass daily and confessed, but he was not truly constrained by the tenets of Christ, he was driven by the need to succeed as a warrior, the craving to extend his power and the necessity of being seen in the eyes of his men as a great leader.

Robert stood up suddenly. ‘I must tell you again it troubles me greatly and I must think upon it.’

‘If there is a special part of hell for apostates and double-dealers then surely Ascletin will end up there.’

‘You cannot be sure what you are being told is true, Hildebrand.’

The deacon looked at Pope Victor as though he had lost his senses, wondering why it was that feeble men seemed to fill the office more than those of purpose. The truth was, of course, that strong candidates to the papacy tended to have powerful enemies. God knew, even if he had never aimed for elevation himself, he had enough of them: priests, bishops, cardinals and the aristocrats of Rome, to name just a few. He doubted the child-emperor Henry would accept that he had the utmost respect for the office he held. Hildebrand just could not agree that the election of a pontiff was anybody’s business but that of those ordained in the faith: the laity, however powerful, had no business to interfere.

‘Hildebrand is right, Your Holiness, I’m afraid,’ said Desiderius, the other advisor present. ‘Ascletin can only have reversed his position for his own ambition. If it is a sin to be that way, it is not one in which he is alone in transgressing.’

The abbot said that in his habitual calm manner — he being a man who rarely, if ever, raised his voice — which also irritated Hildebrand, who was as likely to be short with the saintly as with the ineffectual, and that was made doubly so by the way Desiderius smiled at him, able to see his mood and be amused by it.

‘You can stop grinning like some gargoyle,’ he snapped.

That produced a laugh, which was not likely to lighten Hildebrand’s mood, given he had just used the soubriquet by which he was known to those who hated him and, it had to be said, by some who esteemed his sagacity. Squat, ugly and beetle-browed, his face too often reflected his passions which, given it was not of surpassing comeliness, only served to underline his lack of physical beauty.

Pope Victor spoke again. ‘The question is this. Will Ascletin contrive to succeed me, and if he does, will he be a tool of the emperor or a true son of the Church and hold to his commitment to end imperial interference?’

It was unbecoming to shout at a pope, even more so to ask him if he was a fool, but Hildebrand was not constrained by that. If Ascletin was to be elected because of imperial support then there must be a price to pay and that would rebound to the detriment of Holy Church. This tirade led not only to a moody silence and, on Victor’s part, to his own questioning whether he should seek the advice of others, but also a deep desire to change the subject.

This led to a discussion of the bitter exchanges between Rome and Constantinople over the various bones of contention: celibacy of the clergy, areas of doctrine relating to the Holy Ghost and, not least, the way the Normans in Apulia and Calabria were still inducing the local populations away from their adherence to the Orthodox creed by insisting Masses be said in the Latin rite.

‘To be ignored, Your Holiness,’ Hildebrand insisted. ‘Let the patriarch do as Rome instructs. He ranks as an archbishop and no more. We have disputed with Constantinople many times in the past and I daresay this, like other disagreements, will be resolved by acquiescence.’

‘It may be unpleasant to consider,’ said Desiderius, ‘but consider it we must. What can Ascletin have promised Henry and his council that would gain him imperial support?’

Pope Victor’s face registered his discomfort at being brought back to that which he wished to avoid. There was selfishness in this: much as he cared for the future of the Church, what these two close advisors wanted to discuss would only happen after he had gone to meet the Almighty. It was a matter on which he could have no influence, so he changed the subject again.

‘I have had a communication from the Count of Apulia, asking if he can be granted an annulment of his marriage to Alberada of Buonalbergo on the grounds of consanguinity.’

The Pope was greeted with silence then, this being a situation where morality and doctrine tended to clash with the more temporal needs of the Church, and such matters required careful consideration before any answer could be given, even a verbal opinion, which was hardly binding.

‘To what purpose?’ asked Hildebrand finally.

‘He does not say.’

‘What does he say?’

‘That they are cousins,’ Victor replied, ‘that they fall within the prohibited degree of consanguinity and that he feels their union is impious.’

‘Something,’ Desiderius ventured, ‘it might have been proper to consider before their nuptials and the birth of his two children.’

That remark left the trio deep in thought. An annulment was not out of the question, especially where the rules for such things had been breeched, as in this case they clearly had, but if doctrine impinged, politics had a greater influence. Robert Guiscard would pay handsomely for such a service and he, being powerful was a man it would be unwise to gainsay. He might be a vassal of Rome but he was, in truth, too mighty a warrior to pay any attention to strictures from his nominal suzerain; he was more likely, if rebuffed, to send his lances raiding into the Papal States and, if angered enough, he might appear at the gates of the Holy City itself.

‘It is for you to decide, Your Holiness.’

Hildebrand gave Pope Victor a direct look that implied, in no uncertain terms, he wanted no part of such a judgement. A look at the Abbot of Monte Cassino produced no enlightenment either; if the poor pontiff had been uncomfortable discussing Ascletin and his manoeuvres, he had changed the subject to one which was even more troubling. Truly, he was thinking, being pope was nothing but a sea of troubles.

Nothing blighted the papacy as much as the fact that a man coming to the office of pontiff was rarely in the first flush of youth, in a world where death was relentless in the way it stalked mankind. Reform of the kind Hildebrand favoured had been proposed before and it was not always a combination of political forces that stymied it. Just as often it was mortality, a fact which kept alive the hopes of the powerful Roman families: they might be out of power but God — or was it the Devil? — had a way of altering matters to their advantage.

Pope Victor was ill, something he had managed to hide from his two closest advisors, a lingering sickness of the kind that allowed him to carry out the functions of his office if not too taxed. One of the acts he continually put off was to write the papal bull granting the Guiscard his annulment. It would never do for a pope to be seen to be indulging in haste: if God was eternal so was the pace of pontifical decision-making. In keeping his infirmity a secret he sought only to make life easy for himself: that he created more trouble for those he held in high esteem was inadvertent. He died while the most powerful members of the Curia who supported him, Hildebrand included, were out of Rome.

Well versed in the intricacies of Roman politics, Ascletin, newly returned from Bamberg, moved quickly, making alliances where none had previously existed by promising to share the spoils of his office with those families who might oppose him. They, knowing speed was of the essence and unable to impose their own candidate — matters had to be concluded before the likes of Hildebrand appeared back on the Vatican Hill — agreed to his elevation: within days of Victor’s death, Ascletin was proclaimed as Pope Benedict the Tenth.

Those who had voted against the new pope hurriedly left Rome, for if Ascletin was a bonehead he was popular with the mob he bribed with low-value coinage, meaning their persons were not safe. They travelled north to meet Hildebrand and their gathering was grim; in times past the only hope of redress was an appeal to the Holy Roman Emperor. That the present incumbent was a child mattered less than the power of the office.

Yet that was unpalatable for the very simple reason it once more abrogated to the reigning emperor the right to confirm a pope or deny him his elevation; yet again the papacy was caught between the empire and the corrupt Roman families, and to side with one or the other was to set back the process of reform by decades. Hildebrand would have none of it: first they must elect a true pope, and then seek the means to depose the man they considered false.

With much ceremony the Bishop of Florence was elected as Nicholas the Second. To deal with the antipope there was one other force to whom they could appeal, and one the newly elected Ascletin was known to hate and was determined to crush — the Normans. If the assembled divines were fearful of the consequences of such an act, they were more fearful of Hildebrand, the man on whom Nicholas depended and who forced the measure through, finally persuaded that, if needs required it, he must sup with the Norman devil.

Abbot Desiderius was tasked to sound out Richard of Capua. He saw, as quickly as would any other Norman baron, yet another step in the long march towards legitimacy in this part of the world was being taken. He immediately marched north with three hundred of his best knights, forcing Ascletin to flee. Pursued to the walled town of Galeria, he was besieged there, able to watch from its battlements the nature of those he had wanted to destroy.

All the devastation came from these Normans: Richard was unrestrained in the way he let his knights ravage the countryside around Galeria- growing crops were burnt, as was the next season’s seed, vines and olive trees cut down, with any peasant who sought to stop this despoliation hanged from what trees were left standing. Yet Galeria resisted and beat off many attacks on its walls until starvation forced them to surrender. Ascletin was publicly unfrocked, then dragged back to Rome where he was shut away in the crypt of a church, never again to see the light of day.

If the mobs of Rome were sullen when Nicholas arrived to take up his duties, they were not stupid: they rarely saw Normans this far north in numbers but they knew their reputation, while the aristocrats of Rome were left in no doubt by Richard of Capua that if they acted against the new dispensation, they would pay with their own blood.