Conquest

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Normans, herding before them sheep and cattle, drawing behind their own laden packhorses plus numerous beasts of burden, once they emerged from the trees that shielded the beach at Cape Faro, were presented with a very different sight to that which they had left a month before. The sea was not blue but grey now, reflecting the clouds under which it lay. The water was no longer choppy but angry, with white-crested waves rushing up the beach, driven by a wind strong enough to direct stinging sand into their faces, this while the ships which they needed to load pulled hard on their anchors as they rose and fell on the swell. They could not load in this.

‘Well,’ Roger called, ‘we shall not want for food and wine. Set up camp.’

The land on which they settled was a narrow strip between the sea and an inland lake, so fresh water, without which they could not have stayed, was plentiful. Trees surrounded that lake and wood-cutting parties immediately went to work, this while the livestock was herded into an area that could be turned into paddocks with long cut branches, others used to make horse lines for the mounts, still more timber employed to fill the pit fires on which the food for the soldiers would be roasted.

Few orders were required for this, either with or without animals: it was common work for an army on campaign, a daily ritual eased by the fact that the weather, if windy, was dry, while they had plentiful supplies of everything they needed, which was not always the case. Travelling with a minimum of baggage, there were no tents for the leaders, and since the few houses and fishermen’s hovels that had existed in the vicinity had been burnt down the day they landed, Roger and his captains would, like their men, sleep under brushwood cover, as would a still-disgruntled Ibn-al-Tinnah.

Before that he had to boat out to Geoffrey Ridel and get some assessment of how long the weather would remain foul. A rowed boat on an angry sea presented nothing unusual for Roger: as a boy he had fished and swum off the Normandy coast, and when it came to white and disturbed water nothing he was experiencing now could compare with the kind of waves which broke on that shore. Likewise he was comfortable on the bucking and dipping deck.

‘If we are to be here long I will have to forage for feed. The sheep and cattle need it, as do our mounts.’

‘If you are asking me to tell you how long this will last,’ Ridel replied, ‘you may guess, for that is all I can do. It could abate tomorrow or it could be a week.’

‘The ships’ captains must have some notion of the time of year.’

‘This might be the inland sea, Roger, but it is no different to what we knew as boys and young men, subject to any number of winds, north, south, east and west, and they change in a blink of your eye. We may get a tempest from Africa or the Levant just as bad, and in this narrow channel it becomes ten times worse. Be patient and wait for a good wind to take us back across the straits.’

The morning brought no respite, obliging Roger to send out parties to forage, more as a precaution against continued bad weather than a pressing need. A cautious commander, he also sent out individual scouts to ensure that no force was approaching of a size that could pose a threat; the opinion of an impatient al-Tinnah, that such a thing was unnecessary, he politely squashed.

‘Al-Hawas must know what we have been doing. Protecting his own land might be of more importance to him than ravaging yours.’

The emir made a gesture meant to imply that no Norman could comprehend the true situation. ‘It is my body he wants, my severed head on a pike. He thinks me still in Catania and nothing will tempt him away from that prize.’

‘Unless he knows you are with us.’

That was said to end the discussion, not because Roger thought it true and, since it was one of the emir’s times for prayers, he suggested he ask Allah to grant him a calm sea. This again raised in the eyes of his ally a frown of disapproval of the tactics being employed, which, in his opinion, leant more towards mere banditry than a proper pursuit of any long-term aim.

You cannot hide several hundred men for very long, especially when many are mounted, before the smell they create begins to carry on the wind: not a farmyard stench, but one with its own particular composition of human and animal waste mixed with wood smoke and cooked food. It was a stink with which every Norman lance was familiar, so when one of Roger’s scouting pairs picked up a faint trace they first checked their own position to that of their confreres camped at Cape Faro. A wetted, held-up finger indicated it was not from that source: the wind was from the wrong direction.

It took a sharp appreciation to then dismount and hide the mounts in a copse, with only one of the pair, careful to use what cover he could, heading unarmed and on foot, in the direction from which he thought it came, in the end climbing a tree to get sight of the mass of soldiers encamped behind the nearest set of hills close to the shore. Seeing they were making no attempt to move, the man stayed where he was until dusk and the point at which they knelt to perform their evening prayers, carefully seeking to establish their number before creeping back to join his companion. Getting back to their own camp presented little difficulty: the light from the Norman fires was reflected on the clouds.

‘Some seven hundred, I would say, only a third of that mounted. They doused their fires before dark to stay hidden but I saw no sign they were preparing to move.’

Roger, looking out at the still-angry sea, was troubled that such a force, greater in numbers than his own, had appeared and he had no idea from where. They had also got so close that they could attack at will, but why had they not done so? Had they tracked him from Rometta? Had they come from the south, sent by al-Hawas? Were they an advance guard or the whole threat? Whatever the answer was made no difference, they were clearly enemies and they had to be dealt with.

‘Serlo, gather half of the lances and get ready to leave before first light.’

In the glow from the fire around which he and his captains stood it was possible to see a stiffening among them: this was nothing but family partiality — was not this nephew too young and inexperienced to be preferred over the more tried and tested? Roger ignored it: there was not a man present who would not have favoured one of his own if the circumstances allowed — it was the Norman way, and one from which he had benefited from the moment he had arrived in Italy. Serlo was a de Hauteville; here was a chance for him to win his spurs.

‘No stars, so you will have to use the wind to guide you till the sun begins to rise. I want you to the west of this threat and prepared for battle. Find some high ground and look out for the rest of us, for we will break camp to move against them at grey dawn. Attack as soon as you see our pennants and seek to get behind them. With luck they will be surprised and panic.’

Suspecting his own camp to be under scrutiny, the preparations for the morrow had to be made with subtlety: Serlo had his party form up under the trees, conroy by conroy, weapons and harness hidden out of sight, with no trace of haste, before the horses were led to where they could be saddled out of view. Finally the whole force marched away from the camp on foot, the horses led to lessen the noise of their hooves.

The rest of Roger’s lances quietly made their preparations, checking weapons and ensuring that all that was needed was close to where it was required for a quick departure. This showed another part of that endless Norman training, the ability to harness their mounts, arm themselves and move out at speed, a set of actions which, when executed, clearly impressed Ibn-al-Tinnah, a fellow somewhat subdued since his own appreciation of the situation had been shown to be false. The foot soldiers, camped apart from the mounted men, were the last to be alerted, not being trusted to avoid showing their activities as they scuttled around the campfires.

Serlo was in position by the time Roger broke camp and he had the enemy in view, so was thus able to see the hurried way in which they readied to confront the approaching threat. Again a tree was employed to give height to a lookout, eyes peeled for the first fluttering pennant. The increasing light allowed Serlo to assess the ground before him, the entrance to the valley in which the enemy camp was situated. He had his instructions, but he also was well aware of the trust placed in him: he was expected to act as he saw fit. Thus, he led his men out to where they would be in plain view prior to the time agreed, gratified to see what had been hasty but ordered preparation for battle turn into alarm.

Nor did he delay in his attack, trusting those under his command to form up on the move, so what the enemy first saw as a ragged assemblage of horsemen coming towards them at a fast canter soon turned into a regular formation, the points of their lowered lances dull under the still-scudding clouds. The blowing of the horn, the way that line turned south, told whoever was in command that this attack was aiming for the rear of his position. He had been busy forming up his soldiers to face the oncoming assault coming from Cape Faro.

Nothing collapses more quickly in confusion than discipline, and the troubles of the enemy general were confounded by the need to take the crest of the northern hill before it was barred to him by Roger’s cavalry, while at the same time seeking to direct enough of his men to cover the flank exposed by Serlo; in the end he achieved neither, and before he had properly deployed he was under attack from the front, with an echelon of disciplined horsemen threatening his rear.

Roger’s lances, having heard Serlo’s horn, sped to the hill crest, arriving just before their opponents, not to halt but to use the slope to increase the effect of contact, their lance points slicing into the opposing cavalry and stopping dead their uphill advance. Lances embedded, their swords were out and employed, the Normans using the gaps created by the shock of their initial charge to get amongst their opponents, great blades flashing down on weak human flesh in a battle arena where the greater height and weight of their Viking heritage, added to their professional ability, counted — doubly so since most of those who opposed them lacked much in the way of fighting skill.

Serlo was driving his lances into the softer flank and rear, if anything killing more than Roger’s men. His uncle, surrounded by his personal knights, was made visible both by his size and the damage he was meting out to anyone who came within range of his weapon, on this occasion an axe, which spurred his nephew on to prove himself equal. That nearly led to his undoing as he found himself surrounded and fighting for his life, lacking a personal following dedicated to keeping alive his person.

How Roger saw his plight while himself hacking with his axe and, at the same time deflecting blows with his shield, Serlo did not know. All he did discern, through the sweat dripping into his eyes, was Roger’s near presence at the head of a phalanx of knights, cutting their way through to him. Wounds he had already suffered, but mortal danger threatened: even a deflected pike can deliver a telling blow and he was aware of one coming, aimed to take him under his sword arm, while he was locked in combat, with a mounted enemy blow. He could do nothing to deflect it.

The arm holding that pike seemed to split in two, before the weapon and the hand and forearm holding it fell to the ground, and there beside him was his Uncle Roger, magnificent in his yelling frenzy, slashing at everything within the range of the axe. The men who had forced their way through with him surrounded Serlo in such a tight circle he was left with no one to fight and, breathing heavily, aware of his injuries if not the pain which would come later, he realised that the enemy soldiers were trying to seek mercy, and mostly failing. Roger’s foot soldiers, his levies from Calabria, were amongst them now and they had suffered much from the Saracens of Sicily, making murderous revenge inevitable.

When the killing ended there were barely enough of the enemy alive to tell Roger de Hauteville they had come from Messina, further questioning revealing they constituted the entire garrison. They had planned to wait until he was loading his booty, when the Normans would be dismounted and disorganised, to attack him and drive him and his men to drown in the sea. Having failed in that, they unwittingly dangled before Roger’s eyes a prize he could barely have dreamt of, one greater by far than any enclave on the Milazzo peninsula.

‘Count the bodies in this field, Emir al-Tinnah. That means Messina is now undefended.’

‘We do not have the numbers for a siege, Lord Roger.’

‘We may not need one. The population is mainly Greek. Without Saracens to man their walls and threaten to cut their gizzards the citizens may open their gates to fellow Christians. A mere demonstration of force might be enough to gift us entry.’

The emir was on the horns of a dilemma: what Roger was saying was true, but he needed these Normans ravaging the lands of his enemy. If Roger de Hauteville occupied Messina he would stay there and ensure it was made too formidable for even the strongest Saracen force to retake it: anything else would go by the board, this while Roger was trying to imagine the face of his brother when told that his sibling had possession of the second greatest city on the island.

‘My friend,’ he said, with an expression he hoped conveyed his sincerity. ‘We have nothing to lose. The weather is still against us and I swear to you, even if Messina opens its gates, my men and I will go back to ravaging the possessions of al-Hawas.’

There was no choice but to accede, even if the emir did not believe what was being said: he was not in command, the leader was Roger de Hauteville and his goodwill was more important than any other consideration. Leaving a bloody, corpse-filled battlefield to the ravages of scavenging peasants, with a proud, bruised and bandaged Serlo at his side, Roger led his band south, which brought them outside one of the many gates of Messina, a mere four leagues in distance.

Roger rode forward under a truce flag, leading the few survivors of his recent battle with halters round their necks, to demand a parley with the leading citizens, some of whom were already on the battlements. Immediately they refused to come out to open ground to talk, forcing Roger to make his offer with a craned neck.

‘You see before you what remains of those tasked to defend you, so you are at the mercy of myself and those I bring with me. Open your gates and not a hair on the head of anyone in Messina will be harmed. Deny me what I ask and I will burn your houses to the ground and make dust of the bones of everyone who resides within your walls.’

Expecting they would seek time to talk amongst themselves, Roger was surprised by the speed and the brusque nature of the response, which was in Greek, immediate and negative from a greybeard, probably an elder of the city, who first stated that he knew of the Normans and their habits of rapine and plunder, insisted he did not believe what he was being told, then concluded with the words, ‘Do your worst.’

‘You have no notion of what my worst is.’

‘Hear this, barbarian,’ the old man called. ‘Many have tried to take our city and have left their blood in the dust of the fields around it. You will do the same, for you do not have the means to stay outside our walls for the time it will take to starve us into submission, a thing even an ignorant like you must know requires a fleet of ships that would block our access to the sea.’

‘I will send for those, never fear.’

The old man just laughed, which induced the same in those who stood with him. Such a response made Roger’s blood boil. His bluff was being called and in the most insulting way possible, which could not but diminish him in the eyes of the men he led. If he was noted for his sound common sense, this was one occasion when that gift deserted him: his bloodline was the stronger.

‘Then defend your walls.’

As a force to mount such an assault, Roger had pitifully few men, less than four hundred in total after the losses, albeit they were small, in his recent battle. Added to such constraint was the lack of enthusiasm from anyone other than his own nephew as to the chances of success. Hurriedly made scaling ladders were all they could manage to assault stout walls and Roger’s assertion of little in the way of defence was met amongst his fellow Normans with ill-disguised scepticism. Yet no man refused, their leader might be right and the Calabrian levies, fired with anti-Sicilian bloodlust, were too ignorant to make sense of what they faced.

The attack, launched at dawn the next day, was not a fiasco because of poor execution, it was rendered foolhardy by the sheer tenacity of the defenders who, if they were untrained, had fire in their bellies. Time and again the Normans got their ladders against the walls, with hardy fighters clambering to the top, and just as often the task of those seeking to follow was to break the fall of the repulsed warriors in the hope of saving their bones.

Roger did at least manage to get his feet on the parapet, only to find himself assailed by dozens of frenzied citizens, who seemed to care little how many of them died to force him to withdraw, lucky to get a foothold on his ladder and keep enough distance between himself and those trying to kill him to allow an ignominious retreat. The Calabrians fared even worse, leaving scores of their number twitching and dying at the base of the walls and forcing the man in command to call off the assault.

For Roger the humiliation of this reverse was total and there was no one close to him, seeing his mood, who had the temerity to tell him the attack should never have been launched in the first place: the thunderous look and the mood that went with it indicated to advance such an opinion was a sure way to die. Before him, as he stood out of crossbow range, he surveyed a scene of tangled bodies and smashed scaling ladders, this while horns blew from the parapets to crow the victory of those within the walls.

His request that he be allowed to collect his wounded was denied: they could expire where they lay and if they did not then the city had knives in plenty to slit their gizzards, adding they would not be buried and no prayers would be said for their souls. Let the vultures and the carrion crows cleanse their bones, for there they would lie to warn any other invader of the fate that awaited them. Roger raised his sword before his eyes, as a makeshift cross, then uttered a promise that sounded very like a curse.

‘One day, Messina, I will make your women keen for the death of their men and their boy children, and that before I send every one of those wailing creatures to the slave markets of Africa.’

Sheathing his weapon he gave the orders that would take them back to Cape Faro, a journey made with none of the joy and anticipation of the outward leg, and it was a mood not cheered by the sight of the shore and the angry waters off the cape. They still could not load the ships.