Son of Blood

CHAPTER SIX

At the very moment when Bohemund was riding towards the parley, his father was lying in his bed, wracked by the effects of a horrific fever, his body shaking and sweat pouring off his naked frame, with Sichelgaita bent over him seeking to ease his discomfort with cloths which had been dipped in iced water, wondering whether instead of that as a remedy her husband should be shipped to the underground icehouse where there were still enough blocks left over from the winter supply to make it seriously cold. The Greek physician attending advised against that, convinced the malaise was escaping from the ailing body through a combination of perspiration and loose defecation; a cold atmosphere would not be beneficial.

The smell in the room was of overpowering corruption, for the mighty Guiscard had soiled his bed more than once like a mewling child, and the discharge by its colour and deathly odour indicated that the malady was horrendous enough to be fatal. Retching produced nothing but a trickle of bile, for without food there was little for his stomach to emit. He was dipping in and out of consciousness and gabbling, ranting in a way that sounded as though his mind was as troubled as his body.

Curses were heaped upon foes real and imagined, Robert speaking for and against them in a frenzied dialogue, some of the names human and known to those attending, others imagined creatures sounding like demons from the depth of hell as he screamed imprecations that made no sense to those listening, this while a relay of priests prayed continually for his troubled soul. For a warrior who had faced many battles in his time and had shaken off sicknesses as a dog shakes off water, it was clear this was one of the greatest challenges he could face.

His wife was in discomfort too, for, regardless of the heat of the day, she had ordered braziers to be lit and herbs to be burnt on them to relieve the malodorous stink, which she was sure was making her husband’s condition worse. When torches, oil lamps and candles were added after the sun went down it turned the sickroom into an oven, for the drop in temperature was not great; a scorching day was followed, as clouds gathered to trap the heat rising from the baked earth, by a humid night. Her garments were soaked and her long blonde hair, normally braided, hung limp along her cheeks as she mouthed quiet prayers to all the saints she knew to intercede and make her man well again.

‘Lady,’ the physician whispered, ‘a messenger has come from the Master of the Host to say that the sickness that affects the Duke is within the town and spreading. He has moved out the mounted knights to surrounding farms but he seeks permission to order outside of the walls every citizen of Trani their master has listed for conscription. He insists he needs to preserve the strength of the army.’

‘Take back the message that he must act as he sees fit,’ Sichelgaita replied, her cracked voice betraying her own near exhaustion; she had been at Robert’s bedside for over eighteen turns of the glass and had not eaten or drunk anything in that time, ignoring the advice to rest lest she too succumb. Then, as the import of what had been said to her sank in, she grabbed the man by the sleeve. ‘The sickness is spreading?’

‘It is most rampant in the port, though I am told some cases have begun to surface in the upper town. The priests and mendicant monks are doing what they can, but for some it is giving nothing more than last rites.’

‘Many have died?’

‘Several dozen I am told.’

Sichelgaita had been bent over the troubled body, sometimes required to physically restrain her husband lest his writhing throw him to the floor, and as such she had addressed the physician eyeball to eyeball. Now she stood up and towered over him, her blue eyes boring into his, her sweat-soaked face flushed so her cheeks seemed on fire, and such was the effect of the flickering light and her own appearance that the man, no stranger to shocking sights and fearsome wounds, or even angry patients, took two paces back, alarm on his face.

‘Never mind the conscripts; if death is around us we must get my husband and my son to somewhere that is safe.’

The Greek responded with a gesture of open hands, a signal that such thoughts were futile. ‘Who knows where that is, Lady?’

‘Is there any word of the sickness from any other place?’

‘I do not think it has been reported elsewhere.’

The voice boomed out, with no particular person in mind, as Sichelgaita ordered the servants present to first find out, then to organise a litter and enough men to carry it in relays, plus a message to her eldest son, already outside the walls with his father’s familia knights, to make his way to the road leading south, bringing them with him as escort.

‘To move him could be hazardous, Lady.’

‘To keep him here could be worse.’ Then she yelled at those she had ordered to make arrangements, few of whom seemed to have reacted as she wanted them to. ‘In the name of Christ risen, move!’

‘Prince Richard asks that you accompany me to his castle of Montesarchio, where you will be received with all honour.’

It was notable to Bohemund that his uncle by marriage had sent one of his own race with the message, not a Greek or someone spouting Latin; was there some kind of statement in hearing the communication in Norman French? The fellow, however, did not look like a fighting man; the face was unmarked and smooth, more like that of a priest perhaps, even though he was armed with both lance and broadsword. Unheard of in Italy, he could indeed be a cleric, for the Norman divine saw no disgrace in being fighting men as well as members of the clergy. For such a breed it was in order to smite their foes and then see their souls into the afterlife.

‘And my conroys?’ Bohemund demanded.

‘Will be accommodated as guests too.’

‘How do I know Prince Richard won’t just slit my throat, and theirs, once I am inside the walls?’

The smile was meant to point up the absurdity of such a notion. ‘Nothing would bring down the wrath of your father quicker than that his son should be in any way harmed, quite apart from the custom of our race that no guest can suffer indignity, regardless of how much he is seen as an enemy, when he is inside the walls of a castle by invitation.’

‘And what does Prince Richard want to say to me?’

‘I am too humble to even pretend to guess.’

‘You don’t look humble.’

That got a half bow, to acknowledge that his manner was, if anything, haughty.

‘Perhaps if I was to outline the alternative, which is that you will be pursued until captured by a level of force you cannot overcome and taken into my master’s presence in chains, while your conroys might suffer the fate of those who burn and plunder, the ignominy of dying at the end of a rope.’

‘I would not be taken alive.’

The messenger, by the expression that appeared on his face, took that for what it was, an idle boast; few men chose death when life was possible. Bohemund wanted to tell him to return with a flat refusal, added to that a message to underline the difference between a threat and its implementation; they had not caught him and his band yet and it would not be any easier for them in the future as long as he kept moving and the peasants remained happy with free grain, oil and wine. But to do so would fly in the face of his father’s instructions. That accepted, it seemed to him foolish to take his lances with him; even if the laws of hospitality were applied, as soon as they rode out to resume marauding Richard’s possessions, their location would be impossible to keep from those pursuing them, for the Prince would have them closely followed, to ensure they left his patrimony and went back from whence they came.

‘I will accept, my men will not.’

That got a shrug, as if his lances were of no account; was it meant to flatter him by making him feel important, or genuine indifference? Bohemund surmised he would never know, so he spun his mount to return to the messenger he had brought, a squire who held the reins of his packhorse and destrier.

‘Go back to Reynard and tell him I am going to meet and talk with the Prince of Capua. I will rendezvous with him in four days by the River Calore, where we last camped seven nights past, and him alone — he is not to risk the conroys. If I do not, I leave it to him to either continue raiding or return to my father to tell him I am not at liberty to act as I wish.’

‘And these?’ the man asked, indicating the horses.

‘Keep them. I am to be a guest of a prince, so they can provide for my needs and I doubt I will require a destrier on which to fight.’

It did not take long on the road to Bari for Sichelgaita to realise that, even on a well-maintained old Roman surface and with much care and frequent changes of bearers, her husband was suffering from the rocking of the litter. Hurriedly a messenger was sent back to Trani to requisition a galley to meet them at the fishing settlement close to Bisceglie. With great care and using two boats to form a wide stretcher, the Duke of Apulia was taken out and, after the making of a cat’s cradle of ropes, a crane was employed to get him aboard and laid flat amidships. On pain that he would suffer as much as the patient, the master then had another rig made that left the board suspended and that took out the effect of the rise and fall of the sea, while an awning was added to keep the blazing sun off the Duke.

Sichelgaita had sent more than one message; she had despatched dozens by her husband’s familia knights, calling on all of Robert de Hauteville’s senior vassals to gather in Bari, and if she did not say why, once word spread of the Duke’s condition it would not take a genius to work out what his duchess wanted. Riders had also been sent ahead to the destination with instructions to prepare to receive their lord and for every available physician to be in attendance, so by the time the galley passed through the water gate and drew up alongside the great stone quay a huge crowd had gathered to gaze at the still fevered body of their overlord.

‘How many have come here hoping he is dead?’

That enquiry came from the Guiscard’s son and, as far as his mother was concerned, Robert’s undoubted heir. Sadly it underlined a truth: that in such a Greek city as Bari his father was far from universally loved. It was not too many years past since many of those gathered had been reduced to near starvation by his four-year-long siege. Prior to that they had jeered at him from their massive — and they thought impregnable — walls and called him shoddy and a fool as well as many more and less flattering things besides. The siege had lasted so long because Robert, without a fleet, could not cut off access to the sea, meaning that Byzantium could resupply the jewel in its Apulian territory with all it needed to resist.

Most men would have given up after a year of no progress, but not the Guiscard. He found a way to cut off the city by ringing it with a wall of small trading vessels, all attached to each other by wooden gangways to form a solid and defensible bulwark. It had not held entirely when attacked but it had so diminished the relief efforts as to bring on hunger, disease and discontent, and that induced enough of the minds of those inside to see the only way to end it was to bow the knee to the Normans. To aid this Robert had his spies, as well as a small number of supporters within the walls, men who thought to prosper by surrender.

With a population close to revolt, those adherents took one of the main towers and that allowed the final Norman assault to prevail to the point where capitulation was the only option; the Byzantines in the garrison were obliged to flee. Robert entered the opened gates to a grovelling plea to be spared what their intransigence deserved: rapine and sack till not one body remained breathing. They had misjudged their conqueror — he was no angel of death, but a shrewd ruler disinclined to make enemies where it was unnecessary.

Not only did he spare them a massacre, but since the city fell their new master had been benign, allowing the leading citizens who had opposed him to keep their trades and positions, ensuring many of the privileges Bari enjoyed were maintained so that the port retained its wealthy trade and important revenues. In another setting the community would have been content but, as ever, it was religion that made true concord impossible; the Greeks resented the new cathedral Robert ordered built, for inside that would be performed the Latin Mass, conducted by celibate priests, while the monks and divines that came with the Normans worked hard to proselytise their version of the Christian faith.

‘Odd,’ Sichelgaita replied after a long pause, for she could not disagree with her son, ‘that he loves a city in which so many loathe him.’

‘Is that why we came here?’

‘Partly; it was his favourite from the day he rode in to accept the surrender, but the best Greek physicians reside here too and they are much required.’

‘And the other reason is?’

‘Surely you have thought about what will happen if God takes him from us?’

‘I try not to, Mother, and I shall pray that it is not so until he is well again.’

Few mothers see anything untoward in their sons and Sichelgaita was no exception with both her boys. She relished the piety of her eldest and saw his way of ever counting and recounting his purse money that had earned him his sobriquet of Borsa as just a harmless affectation, so much so that she employed it herself. But for all the maternal mote in her eye, she also knew that her son lacked the fiery spirit of his sire, and while he was a competent fighter for his fourteen summers, he was not amongst the first rank of his peers; in short, there were those of his own age who could best him in mock combat, and given the closeness of Norman training to actual battle, such a handicap was likely to apply there as well.

Experience, added to a few years, would make him more capable but he was not yet commanding by nature. Sichelgaita knew that if what she feared to happen came about, and her husband did not recover, then it would fall to her to protect her Roger until he could come into the qualities he required to hold his own amongst the Guiscard’s troublesome vassals. So be it; she had often stood in for her husband, indeed was seen by many as a co-ruler of the dukedom and was a match for Robert as a force of nature, understood the politics needed to acquire and maintain authority, all of which she would employ to keep Borsa safe.

‘Come, let us go ashore,’ she said. ‘I desire you to go ahead of your father’s bier and I also require that you smile at the populace. Look confident, Borsa, for whatever happens in the coming days, that is an attitude you are going to require.’

Robert had been craned ashore and laid on to a litter, to be surrounded by monks swinging thuribles of burning incense meant to ward off any malodours, with the crowd pressing forward as far as they were allowed to look at him, peering between the soldiers who formed an outer ring, seeing a much-diminished figure if you took account of the face. Gone were the florid cheeks and full red lips, to be replaced by heavily drawn features in which the bones of the jaw and the nose were prominent, while even his hair, which Sichelgaita had dressed, looked like used straw. Many just stared, but there were those, and this cheered Sichelgaita, who crossed themselves repeatedly and seemed to silently pray, hoping for his recovery, not saying farewell to his departing soul.

Massively walled, Bari also had a strong castle with a formidable citadel at its heart and it was to here that Robert was taken. His son made for the partially built cathedral, where he knelt with the priests and the congregation, many of them recently Orthodox in their worship, as the new Archbishop of Bari said Mass in the Roman rite to aid in the recovery of their overlord. Robert now lay peacefully in a private chamber, no longer the ranting, sweating victim of whatever assailed him, but in his wax-like appearance akin to an alabaster representation of the kind that one fateful day, mailed and with a sword in his hands, might grace his sarcophagus.

Bohemund was well beyond the reach of that and, in any case, heading further west. He had sight of Montesarchio a good while before they came to the base of the steep, cobbled causeway that led up to the castle gates. Once there he could not, as a Norman warrior, look at it from any other viewpoint than a fortress that required to be taken by assault. With his worship of family it would have pleased the young man to know that this was where his Uncle William had first won his spurs in the mercenary service of Rainulf Drengot, to know that the warrior who many years later became known as Iron Arm and Count of Apulia had bloodily fought his way up that cobbled causeway to the very gate through which he would be welcomed, and once inside, given the man commanding the expedition was wounded, taken it upon himself for the first time to act as a leader not a follower.

Constructed of cream stone blocks, the small castle of Montesarchio was set on a high hill, almost conical in shape, broad at the base but tapered at the top so that there was no glacis around the actual walls on which either ballista or ladders could be employed; thus the only route of assault was up the causeway, making it a hard place to capture. From its highest point — probably, judging by its aged stone, the original Roman tower — it overlooked the surrounding landscape, not least an old imperial road running straight east and west, which rendered it also near immune to surprise. From the pole at the top of the tower flew a red and black banner to tell all it was a fief of the Prince of Capua, though in size it barely suited his station.

Fearing that his horse would slip on that cobbled causeway, Bohemund dismounted, the reins immediately taken from him by one of the men on duty as sentinels. When he was halfway up to the open gates an elegantly clad group, some six in number, emerged and stood waiting to greet him. From the bearing of the man in the middle he knew he was about to meet his relative by marriage, who was employing the first step of what would be a long attempt to flatter him by the singular act of coming out to give him greeting. By his side was a lady who stood a good hand taller, whom he assumed to be his aunt, given he could see in her something of his sister Emma.

If the Princess Fressenda was loftier than her spouse — she had a measure of the de Hauteville build — it was natural that her nephew towered over him and by habit he sought to shrink himself by slightly hunching his shoulders to mitigate the effect. Bareheaded, the suzerain of Capua was stocky, small and balding, with cheeks that seemed puffy in a way that indicated he ate and drank well. An eye drawn to his midriff showed he had a paunch as well, which for some reason Bohemund found unbecoming in a Norman leader; if his father had bulk, it was muscle not fat. Try as he did, it was impossible to avoid the need for Richard to strain his neck to meet a pair of eyes now searching his face, the effort of forcing himself to smile obvious.

‘Greetings, cousin.’

Bohemund turned to a more genuine smile, that of his aunt, and as she proffered her hand to be taken by his, he dropped to one knee to kiss it, saying as he did so, ‘You do me great honour, Lady.’ He would have been pleased to observe her husband’s expression; he looked piqued that no such accolade had been addressed to him.

‘It gives us great pleasure to receive you, Bohemund,’ Fressenda replied, gently raising him up again, then stepping forward and forcing him to bend so she could kiss his cheeks. ‘And it is to be hoped that you will stay as our guest for some time. I wish you to know that, for us, this is as much the bosom of your family as anywhere in Apulia.’

Looking down still, Bohemund smiled; there was no time-wasting here — that was the first round in an attempt to seduce him from service to his sire. A movement to his aunt’s rear made him look past her, this as she stepped aside to introduce a young man who had recognisably de Hauteville features: broad shoulders, red-gold hair, blue eyes, a fair complexion and, not least, a height greater than his father, though like most men he was dwarfed by Bohemund.

‘Allow me to name to you your blood cousin,’ Fressenda said, ‘our son Jordan. It is to be hoped that you will behave more like brothers.’

Jordan’s eyes narrowed as swiftly as did those of Bohemund; how they would come to see each other, whether they would be friends, indifferent or enemies would not be dictated by blood but by the kind of rivalry that afflicts all young men.

‘Come,’ Fressenda said, turning to re-enter the castle, ‘we have here dozens of men eager to set eyes on the youth they could not lay by the heels.’