Son of Blood

CHAPTER TWELVE

The city, the most populous in Italy south of Rome, had stout walls and was nearly as hard to crack as Bari; it was not a siege to undertake without serious purpose and the notion of it lasting for more than one year had to be accepted. Fortunately the land around the city was some of the most fertile in Italy, easily able to support the force the Guiscard mustered: Normans, Lombards and Greeks, as well as Saracens sent from Sicily. He had the soldiers, the skill, as well as the will to triumph, but his most important advantage lay in the nature of the man he was determined to depose.

Gisulf had been much hated for years by a populace whom he treated as a source to feed his vanity and fill his coffers with gold. He, of course, saw this very differently, perceiving them as a multitude of men and women who loved and were devoted to his person, willing to die for him at any time he required them to spill their blood or surrender up their possessions. If he was a man with a tenuous grip on his personal reality, he was not so stupid as to be unaware of the way others lusted after his stronghold, especially his brother-in-law; he had, after all, pursued an anti-Norman policy ever since coming to power, as much with Capua and Apulia, in what was a gift for making enemies.

Suspecting an attack could not be deflected he had demanded that his citizens, on pain of being thrown out of the city, lay in and keep topped up two years’ supplies of food, reasoning, not without sense, that such a long campaign posed a threat of disease to the besiegers, which would go a long way to saving his city. This would have remained good sense if Gisulf had not, as soon as the Apulian forces appeared outside the walls and a Norman fleet occupied the great bay, sequestered one-third of those stores for his own personal granaries. Not satisfied with such theft, as summer turned to autumn he sent his soldiers round the city to seize the rest, or at least that portion those citizens had not so successfully hidden. Few complained at such larceny, for retribution was vicious; anyone who questioned Gisulf’s actions was likely to find himself or herself blinded or to suffer castration if the mood on that day sent his malice in that direction.

Despite such impositions the population fought hard for Salerno, and it was before the walls of that city that Robert saw his bastard son in real action for the first time, leading his knights against the walls in an opening assault, which came close to breaching what were formidable defences by the sheer brio of the attack. Getting the siege tower into place was in itself a major task; built just out of arrow range by the skilled carpenters who travelled with the Apulian army, it was constructed from the massive wheels up with local timber — they and the axles were brought from afar, built in a workshop where the solid timber rounds could be iron-hooped and the connections greased to run smoothly. The outer body was lined with reed matting and on the morning of the assault soaked with water. From the base, internal ladders led up to the assault platform, which matched the height of Salerno’s curtain walls at the point chosen for the attack.

The tower was pushed into place by those knights tasked to back up the initial assault, this made by a body of men already in place on the upper platform, Bohemund among them. In siege warfare this was the point of maximum exposure to risk but also the place of most valour. They had a high ramp to protect them as they approached, long enough to match the distance created by a surrounding ditch. This was riddled with long, needle-sharp spikes, which would drop onto the heads of any defenders too slow to pull back, and once that was down Bohemund and his men were required to rush across it and engage.

Above them another floor was occupied by bowmen, their task to drive the defence back from the parapet long enough to allow the chain-mailed knights to get onto the walls and stay there. They were obviously outnumbered, the only advantage being that the constricted space meant not all the defenders could mass against them, and if they could hold long enough, those knights who had pushed the tower from its start point to its place against the walls could ascend to reinforce them. Naturally the countermeasures were just as set: bowmen firing at an acute angle to skewer the Guiscard’s bowmen, knights with extended lances ready to spear their opponents, fire pots ready to throw, as well as tar-tipped arrows to set fire to the exterior screen of wetted reeds.

Bohemund led from the very front, employing in close-quarter fighting an axe instead of his broadsword. Even in the confusion of a melee at the top of the tower, those observing from a nearby hill, his father amongst them, could see him standing head and shoulders above his confreres, the weapon swinging, silver at first, a gleam that caught the sun, soon dulled by enemy blood. Given surprise was impossible, Bohemund and his men were up against the very best that Gisulf’s captains could pit against them and no one expected such an early assault to produce a conclusion; it would take many of these to wear down numbers and the will of the defence. Behind the siege tower, manning long ships’ cables, stood lines of milities whose task was, on their general’s command, to pull the tower back once it was clear the assault had been contained.

Bohemund was now even more visible, balanced on the top of the wall; somehow he had acquired a lance, the axe having been thrown — probably a weapon he had dragged from the dying hand of an enemy knight — and he was using it like a mad fisherman, jabbing with furious strokes at a quite remarkable speed, half his strength, those watching surmised, required to remove it from the bodies and entangled mail of those he struck. He was still there when his father gave the signal to pull the tower back, yet he did not move as others alongside him did to get to safety, which led to an anxious moment. Only the length of his stride saved him, for on his own he would have succumbed regardless of his fighting skill. Where other warriors would have had to jump, Bohemund seemed to step over the now open gap, his final command a shout that carried, telling his confreres to pull the ramp back up to give them cover.

Never able to openly express his pride that a product of his loins should behave with such valour, Robert de Hauteville’s gratification was evident in a palpable change of attitude; on his return to report, Bohemund was embraced then kissed on both cheeks, while also being subjected to much praise by a general keen to show him off to his assembled forces. As the siege progressed he was more and more brought fully into his father’s council, which happened despite the strong displeasure of Robert’s wife, given it diminished the standing of her own son, Borsa, who was kept from combat for fear of loss.

As reward for his valour, and in front of the host assembled, Robert gave his bastard son the title of Lord of Taranto. No subsequent assault was launched without Bohemund’s concurrence and it was he, not Borsa, who was despatched to Amalfi to bring from there the ships that would, by backing up the Guiscard’s fleet, finally block Salernian egress to the sea, cutting off their inward supply as well as any chance of escape. In another assault Bohemund stood shoulder to shoulder with his father as together they fought in a narrow breach the ballista had made in the walls, with Reynard of Eu on his other side. That they failed to break through did nothing to diminish any of them as warriors; even their fellow Normans saw this trio as supreme.

In the end it was Gisulf’s insistence that his belly should be full, while others went without, that did more than valour to ensure his downfall. Winter brought hunger and that lowered morale for citizen and soldier alike; the population was reduced to eating their horses, dogs and cats. Finally they were reduced to rats, which was the precursor of full-blown famine, and only then did their prince open his bulging storehouses. Yet he did not do so to supply his subjects; he sought to sell back to them that which he had stolen at prices few could afford. With the choice of dying from hunger or Gisulf’s greedy malevolence, a large number of the citizenry, seeing the Normans advance once more, opened the gates to the enemy and then surged out to pay homage to the man who would become their new ruler.

Gisulf, with the few still loyal to him, fled to the Castello di Arechi, the citadel that had been his family’s refuge of last resort for decades. Holed up in the home of his ancestors and with much of the food stolen from his subjects, they held out for a full six months, seeking terms from an opponent not prepared to grant him any, and he was only persuaded to give himself up when he was promised on binding oaths that he would be safe from his own people and be provided with both his goods and his treasure. Robert agreed because he wanted the city, not his brother-in-law’s blood or money.

Gisulf and his family left Salerno in a line of covered wagons at night, with a strong, armed escort, so that his one-time subjects could not see him, for it was obvious to the Guiscard they would, at the very least, take the chance to pelt him with filth if not string him up from his one-time own gates. The Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, as well as Lord of Amalfi, now had a fitting capital. If it was not his first task, it was to the Guiscard an important one; he set in train the construction of a new cathedral, one of a magnificence enough to house a relic he had long desired to own, a tooth of St Matthew that had been in his wife’s family for two hundred years and an object he had demanded Gisulf surrender. Naturally, the duplicitous prince had sought to palm him off with a fake; the message that persuaded him to part with the true relic was simple: surrender the real St Matthew’s tooth or forfeit every one of your own.

Gisulf headed straight for Capua, there to seek the aid of Richard in recapturing his city. He found out then of the secret arrangement previously made: the Guiscard’s fleet was on its way to Naples to begin a blockade of that port in support of Capua, while his fellow Norman magnate had assembled his army to march on that city. Gisulf was sent packing, forced to resume his journey towards the Pope, the only friend he felt he had left.

Gregory was not in Rome but Tuscany, where he had gone so he could be close to confronting Emperor-elect Henry, who, in defiance of his instructions, had appointed as Bishop of Milan a married prelate of whom the reigning pontiff, with his insistence on celibacy, naturally disapproved. The new bishop was just as naturally beholden to the imperial right of clerical appointment while Tuscany was also a hotbed of simony, with offices being sold to the highest bidder so that the revenues of the Church could go to lining the pockets of the already wealthy, rather than being employed to carry out God’s work.

Aware that he lacked the military power to curb young Henry’s ambition, which naturally centred on his ancient rights, the Pope had alighted on the one measure he possessed to bring him into line. For the first time in the history of Western Christendom, on a February day, a pope pronounced excommunication on an elected King of the Germans. If this was an anathema that the likes of the Guiscard could live with, the effect on Henry was profound and even more so on his pious subjects. North of the Alps it was catastrophic, especially given many of his vassals were already in rebellion, but more so because the entire population over which he ruled were stout devotees of the Church of Rome and genuinely saw the Pope as God’s Vicar on Earth; none of his subjects could obey or even show respect to a ruler who was not in a state of grace.

If that applied to the low-born, it was just as effective with the German princes who elected their king, especially to those who were ambitious for change. In an October meeting they joined with the religiously disquieted and threatened to designate another in Henry’s place if he did not receive absolution. He was given a year and a day from the date of the excommunication to achieve this and a diet was called at Augsburg in February at which he must either appear before them forgiven or lose his crown.

For Henry there was no time to waste and notwithstanding the fact that it was midwinter he knew he must go to Gregory, where he would be required to abase himself, a necessity to keep his crown. With his wife and son in company he crossed the frozen Alps and eventually located the Pope at the fortress of Canossa, where Gregory was staying until the snows melted and the Brenner Pass cleared, at which time an escort would arrive to take him to the Augsburg Diet.

If Henry, holed up in an inn, suspected the Pope kept him waiting many days through a desire to make him suffer, he could not have been more mistaken. The last thing Gregory had expected was that the excommunicate would turn up on his temporary doorstep and he was at a loss as to how to respond. If Henry begged forgiveness then he could not in all conscience refuse him absolution, but that would release him to take revenge on those who had rebelled against his authority. Added to that there was no way of forcing him to hold to any of the vows he professed, or to ensure he would behave better in the future; once back in the bosom of the Church he would not only reassert his authority, but once more become a thorn in the papal breast.

Eventually he was obliged to relent and the deed was done; Henry mouthed those promises he needed to make, his excommunication was lifted and he immediately went north to deal with his rebels. Still intending to travel to Germany himself, partly to impose his moral victory and hold Henry in check, Gregory found that the Lombard magnates who controlled the Alpine passes, aided by their prelates, would not permit his passage.

After six fruitless months of trying, and much chastened, he returned to Rome and news that was even more depressing: Salerno gone to the Guiscard, Naples remaining under siege. Both Richard of Capua and his son Jordan were excommunicated, the latter for his banditry in the papal province of Abruzzi, but worse than all of that came the information that Robert de Hauteville had marched on Benevento and now surrounded the city. How feeble it seemed to make his excommunication a double one!

From being in the depths of despond, the death of the Prince of Capua changed everything for Pope Gregory. Richard Drengot, retiring ill from the walls of Naples, lay abed and sinking for a month before, having made a deathbed reconciliation with the Church, he passed away. Jordan was well aware that to inherit his father’s titles as an excommunicate was impossible — it was a situation that could drag on for years and too many of his subjects, unlike those of Robert de Hauteville, especially those in the most valuable fiefs, were likely to listen more to their Roman priests than to a prince under anathema; he would have nothing but trouble and stood to lose everything. The siege of Naples was lifted forthwith, his plundering in the Abruzzi brought to a halt, and he headed immediately for Rome to make his peace.

The same news caused the Guiscard to worry because he was well able to read the runes. Jordan would do anything to get absolution and confirmation of his titles and that could include sending his forces to relieve the papal city. In an out-and-out contest he could best Capua, but it would not serve for the very same reason he had made peace with Capua before: the destruction brought on by such mutual enmity would only advantage their enemies. Yet for all his shrewd appreciation Robert failed to see how much pressure a ruthless pope like Gregory could bring to bear.

‘Do you not see, my son, how I am bound by my lack of the means to enforce God’s will?’

‘I find,’ Jordan replied, ‘just being in your presence humbling enough to make me ashamed of my own recent behaviour.’

Pope Gregory knew flattery when he heard it, just as he knew that this heir to Capua was dodging the point of his question. ‘You have committed serious sins, Jordan, and stolen much that was not yours to possess.’

‘All of which I brought with me to Rome, Your Holiness, and it awaits only your decision as to how it is to be disposed of. Either returned to those who I have sinned against, or held here in Rome to do the work which you so tirelessly pursue.’

This one has a silver tongue, Gregory thought, so unlike his sire who had been a ruffian and abrupt in his opinions with it. But that bloodline argued a sharp mind as well, so there was no doubt that Jordan knew the direction in which the Pope was trying to edge him, in short into an open conflict with Apulia. He did not want to go there and it was a moot point as to whether he could be persuaded, for holding absolution over him could only go so far. Like Henry, if he asked for forgiveness it was the prelate’s duty to grant it unless he could be absolutely sure such pleading was a lie.

‘It troubles me that my city of Benevento is not safe, Jordan.’

The younger man was quick to latch on to that but he was not going to fight the Guiscard; as a way of losing his titles it was, in the long term, as near certain as refusing to beseech the Pope. He recalled how Bohemund had been brought to Montesarchio and what had been his father’s suggested way of dealing with him. He spoke now, with that air which meant he was making an enquiry, not suggesting a course of action.

‘Perhaps, Your Holiness, the best way to protect Benevento is to provide a distraction.’

‘And what form, my son, would such a distraction take?’

‘Encouragement in certain quarters.’

The new Apulian revolt did not break out for several months; it took Jordan, who was moving cautiously in any case, time to suborn the men who would rise against the Guiscard, as even those willing, such as Peter and Abelard, needed an excuse that would bring others to their banner. The thought of seeking to involve Bohemund was discarded; he had shown no inclination to rebel when he had no authority, now he was Lord of Taranto and one of his father’s most trusted supporters, which led Jordan to surmise he would act to protect his father rather than seek to bring him down.

Capua needed an excuse and it was Robert in person who provided the pretext for revolt by demanding from his vassals, as was his ducal right, that they contribute funds to support the cost of his daughter’s forthcoming marriage to a high French noble and in this he was a touch too avaricious, determined as he was on magnificence, if not willing to spend his own treasure. This aim for grandeur at the expense of others raised once more the spectre of a family getting above themselves, and the talk of bringing the de Hautevilles to a proper realisation of their true standing, from men who felt their bloodline at least equal if not superior, began to spread.

Good sense dictated they wait till the liege lord was absent in furthest Calabria with his familia knights as well as his two sons, both the bastard and the legitimate Borsa, before striking home — he was raising money there too to cover the wedding costs. Though the uprising was widespread, Peter was the first to move and constituted the most serious problem by retaking his old fief, sure that he could secure it and make it impregnable before Robert reappeared.

The restored Lord of Trani had reckoned without Sichelgaita, who was much more than a mere decorative duchess. Robert and Bohemund were tied down, having laid siege to Otranto, and both were too far off to help, so, gathering every available loyal lance, she descended on Peter at the head of her own army before he could consolidate his hold on the port city, and her siege tactics were so successful and speedy he was obliged to flee and join the other perennial rebel, Abelard, who held Loritello.

It took a long winter campaign to bring the rebels under control, involving siege after siege and march and countermarch to contain something which acted like a forest fire that broke out in unexpected places. His disgruntled vassals, seeing their liege lord occupied elsewhere, rose in revolt in Apulia when he was in Calabria and vice versa, each one doused. But it had an effect on their suzerain; while he was prepared to pardon these new dissenters, the Guiscard let it be known that this time the repeat miscreants like Peter and Abelard would pay with their lives — there would be none of the previous magnanimous forgiveness.

But there was one other problem that had to be dealt with and that was Capua; Jordan was clearly behind things, at the instigation of the Pope, but taking no active part when he had many opportunities to do so. Robert, when he felt that he had reached a point of real superiority, when the senior rebels had fled over the Adriatic to Durazzo, once more sent Bohemund to negotiate with him in the company of Desiderius, who, as ever, had tried throughout to bring them to an understanding.

‘My father holds no grudge against you, Jordan.’

There was a close examination of the man as he spoke, to see if elevation to the title had made any difference. What Bohemund observed was a degree of reserve brought on by, he thought, discomfiture at Jordan having acted as he did, given he was not the only one present who knew the truth; Abbot Desiderius was just as aware of the hand of Pope Gregory in what had so recently occurred.

‘And what does he propose?’

It was the Abbot of Monte Cassino who answered. ‘That you renew the peace he had with your late father.’

Jordan addressed the layman, not the divine. ‘He requires no indemnity?’

‘He asks only that you cease to support those who would rebel against him-’

‘Are there any left, Bohemund?’ Jordan interrupted, showing just a trace of his old, more light-hearted nature.

‘… and that you give those who are now fleeing no succour by allowing them to reside in your possessions.’

‘And what, Abbot, will His Holiness say to this?’

Unbeknown to either of the others, Desiderius was in Capua as much to represent Gregory as the Guiscard. The Pope, now that his hopes of a successful Apulian rebellion had crumbled, had been forced to once more turn his eyes north, where Henry was succeeding in a way he had not foreseen: he was beating his rebels.

‘It has ever been the task of Holy Church to promote peace, my son.’

It was a measure of their increasing comfort in the world of diplomacy that both Jordan and Bohemund took this barefaced falsehood without a reaction. Jordan knew that in the case of Desiderius, the older man spoke a truth to which he could hold, for he always had. Bohemund, having only just met him, thought he was as dishonest as his papal master. That counted for nothing; let him lie if he must, as long as he could return to his father with the right result.

‘I might add,’ Desiderius said, ‘that I am here on behalf of His Holiness as well as Duke Robert. It is his strong desire that these disruptions should cease. He wishes Capua and Apulia to be at peace and has asked me to bend all my efforts to achieve this.’

‘Why?’ Bohemund demanded abruptly, breaking the air of diplomatic harmony.

‘There can only be one reason, Abbot Desiderius,’ Jordan interjected. ‘And that is he has troubles elsewhere.’

Not wishing to admit that was true, the elderly abbot held his hands open, palms out, while on his face was a look of resignation. Whatever it implied, it was enough for Prince Jordan and peace was restored.

For Pope Gregory, matters went from bad to worse. Having put a cap on his own rebellion, the Emperor-elect called a synod of all those bishops and cardinals who both lived within his domains and quite naturally, for the sake of their continuation in office, owed him fealty. Along with those princes who had so recently threatened to depose him they proclaimed Gregory’s election illegal and elected an antipope called Clement, putting the Church once more into schism. The next step for Henry, once more excommunicated, if this time ineffectually, would be to descend on Rome to have himself crowned Emperor by his own Pope.

Gregory needed the Normans and he required them to be united and on his side, more the powerful Guiscard than the Prince of Capua who had so singularly failed him. Ever an intensely proud man — he had stood on his dignity at Benevento seven years previously by refusing to meet with Duke Robert — he had to accept that there was now no time for such conceits. Yet he was not prepared to grovel and the melting of enmity took much time. Messages were sent but in a subtle way, as in an invitation for any magnate with grievances to bring them to his attention. As usual Abbot Desiderius was brought into the equation to smooth ruffled feathers until finally a meeting was arranged.

For the first time since Gregory’s election, Robert de Hauteville walked into the same room as his papal suzerain, there to kneel and do homage as he had to Gregory’s predecessors for his ducal titles of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. No mention was made of Amalfi or Salerno; apple carts were required to remain stable not overturned, but in remaining silent upon them it implied a tacit agreement regarding their legitimacy. As he held Robert’s hands in his, seeing how puny were his in comparison, and pronounced the required prayers over his bowed head, Gregory could be forgiven for enquiring if God was truly on his side.

If the places Robert had taken in defiance of Gregory were ignored there were still matters to discuss. Letters had to be composed and sent to Bamberg to let Henry know, without in any way sounding like an outright threat, that the Guiscard was concerned about the election of a pope to replace Gregory. Clement was a man in whom he could repose no faith — as good a way as any of telling the Emperor-elect that Rome was under Norman protection and that any attack on the city would be met with as much if not more force as any he could bring to bear.

Gregory had been satisfied on that concern but he still had all his usual concerns in the East. With the Holy Sepulchre in the hands of people he saw as heretics, problems were bound to surface. There were an increasing number of grim stories of Jerusalem pilgrims being badly ill-treated, denied access to the holy places, assaulted and robbed and even in extreme cases facing the enforced demand to convert to Islam. Had not Robert and his brother Roger dealt with that problem in Sicily by taking back the churches made into mosques? For all their efforts, the Pope was irritated that the infidels were still allowed to freely worship throughout the island, adding that he felt Count Roger could also do more to bring those of the Orthodox persuasion into the bosom of the Roman Church.

Robert brushed aside these concerns but got a blessing for what he proposed next, which would create difficulties for the still-excommunicated Emperor Botaneiates, who was struggling to hold his place in the face of constant threats and had also failed to shore up the Byzantine Empire. In the main it was a satisfied Duke of Apulia who left his suzerain; he had, after all, everything for which he had come. Gregory, still working hard on his notion of religious reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople, had kept up the pressure without once ever offering any concessions and what was proposed to him, nothing less than an invasion of Illyria, appeared a good way to concentrate minds in Constantinople.

It was irritating that Borsa, whom Robert had been obliged to bring along as his heir, seemed to incline to the papal point of view regarding both what was happening in Jerusalem, as well as the papal opinion on Sicily. He seemed willing to believe what he was told and less ready to give credence to his father’s assertion that, when it came to the Holy Land, although pilgrims to the city faced difficulties — and how could they not? — much of what had been propounded was, as far as he knew, exaggeration. That it was so suited Gregory and his ilk; the spreading of this embroidery was used to drive home his desire for a great Eastern crusade, in which the whole of Western Christendom was being called to participate.

‘It would be a noble thing to do, Father,’ Borsa opined, as they made ready to take the road back to Salerno. ‘To have in our possession the place where Jesus gave his life so that we could be saved.’

‘All this blather about a crusade is so much stuff. Gregory talks as if the distance to Palestine is the same as crossing the sea from Reggio to Messina. You tell me how we are to get any army to the Holy Land and maintain it there?’

‘Surely we would do that in concert with Constantinople?’

‘Right at this moment, they could not swat a fly, never mind a Moslem.’

‘With our help-’

Robert asked his next question gently, in a tone that he had to force upon himself. ‘Tell me who is going to pay for this great expedition, for the Pope will not, in which, I will point out to you, there can be no plunder to meet the bill. We cannot sack Jerusalem as if it was any other city.’

That made his son think, which is what the Guiscard intended; he knew which levers to press in that penny-pinching breast.

‘And when it comes to Sicily and letting Moslems worship in their mosques, ask Gregory how a few hundred Norman lances, which is all your uncle has, are going to rule a population in the hundreds of thousands if we force them into a form of piety they dislike?’

‘So giving succour to the pilgrims of Jerusalem is impossible?’

‘No, but it cannot be done in the way Rome proposes.’

That got an intrigued look from Borsa, who wondered what it portended; he knew his sire as well as his father knew him. He was aware, if not of the whole purpose, that one of the Guiscard’s vassals, Count Radulf, had been sent as an envoy to Constantinople, ostensibly to enquire after Borsa’s sister. That was a tale in which it was hard to believe, given his father had shown scant interest in her welfare since the overthrow of the man who had promised her his son in marriage. That he was part in ignorance did not surprise the heir to Apulia; he was used to that, as was everyone who dealt with his father.