Warriors

CHAPTER TWELVE

The long ride to the south was a solitary one for Robert de Hauteville, and he had learnt, as had his brothers before him, that those on the route to Italy recognised a Norman when they saw one, and given he was more blessed than most with the physical attributes of his race — the height, girth and that golden Viking hair — and his warrior accoutrements were highly visible, he found that his company was rarely sought, that being especially the case in any settlement which stood on a navigable river. These were populated by folk who chastised their children with threats of the evil Norsemen who had, albeit not in living memory, sailed up those same rivers in their longboats to pillage and burn.

Nor were matters always eased in the countryside: a giant with lance and sword brought back too many memories to small communities, and in some cases very recent ones, of roving bands, armed and unemployed fighting men, whose only means of existence without war was to rob and defile the weak in any period of peace. To ride into many a hamlet was to find it deserted, the inhabitants taken to the nearest woods until he had passed.

When the occasion demanded he traded to eat, Robert would merely dismount and wait. Peasants and farmers, seeing he was alone, would come out eventually, tightly grouped for mutual protection and carrying various weapons, though they would keep their wives and daughters hidden, to cautiously approach this seeming Goliath. It was a testament to Robert’s winning ways that, even bereft of a shared language, he could make friends and gain trust given time. Countless nights were spent round blazing fires in laughter and japes brought on by whatever spirit these yokels concocted to ease the drudge of their lives.

Whenever he could, he sought shelter in monasteries: they, lying as they did on pilgrim routes, had a Christian duty of hospice accommodation, and none would turn him away, but there was rarely joy in their charity. If there was a group of humans who hated and feared the race from which the Normans had sprung, it was the religious one, for their churches and abbeys had always been the first places to be plundered, quite simply because they were the richest in treasure.

Truly pious monks, proper heirs to the monastic founders, were a rarity, and where they existed were much loved by the laity; most were far from devout, inclined to use promises of salvation as an excuse for rapacious exploitation. The hypocrisy of living a life of comfort and ease, of consuming good food and wine, interspersed with endless prayer, not to mention a degree of carnal predation, all provided on the back of serf labour, this while preaching the Saviour’s message of poverty and humility, escaped them in the main.

The landscape changed, turning from green to brown, the smell changing from damp grass to burnt earth, the roofs from thatch to red tiles, the bastions and watchtowers from dank, rain-soaked grey to near white. In the high-perched castles, with stout walls, citadels that oversaw every route by which a great fief might be vulnerable to an invading army, he was welcomed by men of his own stamp: knights in service or the lords to whom they were attached, for there was a universal bond between warriors. Men who might themselves travel to fight or serve had an affinity with a lone confrere.

This was where Robert was most at ease, among men of his own stamp, who saw that the blade of his sword had been marked by others while his helmet had dents, and were eager to hear tales of how these marks of conflict had been gained. If he was privileged to dine with the lords of these castles, they were eager to hear of the customs of other courts, and given he had conversed with both the Duke of Normandy and the King of the Franks, it was easy to impress these men, and their chatelaines, with tales of regal magnificence.

Temptation for a vigorous young man was ever present: most monasteries-cum-hospices had a nunnery, if not attached, then close by, places where few of the inmates were truly there as brides of Christ. Most women were in such places against their inclination and in many cases in spite of their expressed will, confined by relatives for perceived or real offences, but more often for mere disobedience: a refusal to marry a designated spouse, a defiance of parents, an unwed pregnancy, a wife put aside, or widowhood which might lead to temptation, that too many times attached to a threatened inheritance.

That chastity was not their paramount concern was hardly surprising; that a hearty young giant was often indulged not at all startling. The monks who saw these nunneries and the females they contained, some of tender years, as their personal preserve, took umbrage. Such a thing was to be expected; that they never challenged a man like Robert de Hauteville showed that if they lacked the tenets of their faith, they were not in want of good sense, for he was not one who feared to box the ears of an ecclesiastic.

For a young man who had only very occasionally left the Contentin, travelling south was an education and Robert drank in everything he saw and heard. Monkish misconduct he had known about since he ceased to be an impressionable youth; peasant exploitation he had seen too often close to home, which contrasted with the care Tancred extended to his tenants and villeins, drumming into his boys that if they had arms, equipment and the right to bear them, it could only be sustained on the back of the willing labour of others.

Yet the depth of some of what he saw shocked him: great monastic and dynastic wealth surrounded by the near starvation of those who toiled to keep their masters in luxury; the barons of those great castles who, in their cups, would curse the dukes and kings they were obliged to serve, and this to a stranger’s ears. Some of those chatelaines had made no secret that should this strapping young visitor go a’wandering by candlelight, their doors would not be barred.

By the time he reached the stink of Rome, which was as much created by corruption as human and animal effluent, Robert de Hauteville’s education was complete: it only took a short stay in that den of papal iniquity, a city with three different popes, all of them equally corrupt, competing to control the Holy See, each supported by their own warring aristocratic factions, to complete a view of the world in which he lived, one that was utterly jaundiced. It was there he also learnt of the Norman activity in Apulia — news of their victories had reached Rome — which altered his intended destination: no point in going to Aversa if none of his family were there.

‘Where are you headed, brother?’ asked a sightless beggar at the Appian Gate, a fellow of much experience, who had either been tipped of the approach or knew the sound of a triple set of hooves. Robert’s hounds growled at him until commanded to desist.

‘To Apulia, friend, to seek my fortune.’

‘Is there a fortune there, brother? I sense you are of a kind, one of many who have gone that way. Even if they had gained much, perhaps there is not enough to satisfy.’

The booming laugh that engendered was loud enough to echo off the old and broken walls of the Eternal City. ‘I am Robert de Hauteville, and if there is fortune to be had, then I shall have it.’

‘Then God bless you, brother, and if you come back this way, do not pass by without gifting me some of that prosperity.’

‘Who knows if I ever shall?’

Even sightless eyes can narrow, and the beggar’s did so now. ‘Take the word of a man who can see with empty sockets, brother, a man who has senses more acute than those of priests. I know from your voice and manner, and that which surrounds you, that you shall come back to Rome, and with more horses and a deeper purse than you possess now.’

‘What are you, fellow, a sorcerer?’

The laugh was a cackle. ‘No, brother, happen I am a seer.’

That jest got another booming Norman laugh, turning the heads of all around. Robert’s purse was near to empty, but he liked the prophecy enough to pass over the smallest of his silver.

‘News has just arrived, William, that Prince Guaimar has accepted the surrender of Amalfi. He is busy taking bloody revenge for slights of long duration.’

William, standing by an embrasure, was watching the boy, Listo, practise with a wooden sword. One of the older mercenaries who had come with him from Aversa, a fellow who had been badly wounded at Cannae, had taken to the boy, teaching him not only how to use a toy sword and shield, but how to ride as well. Or perhaps, suspecting he might not see service again, he was looking for a role that would keep him in Melfi.

‘I have said before, Arduin, I have no interest in Amalfi.’

‘But I suspect you do in the other piece of news just arrived.’ Arduin, when William turned, was grinning, in a way that did not please the Norman. He looked too much like a cat who had stolen the cream. ‘We have a new catapan, no less than the son and namesake of that devil, Basil Boioannes. Michael Doukeianos has been sent to Sicily for his failures, where I suspect he will rot.’

‘Then we should be cautious of him, Arduin, lest he has the same ability as his papa.’

‘Who is Basil Boioannes?’ asked Count Atenulf, with his usual vacant expression, he having come with Arduin.

It was a question that astounded William: for a Lombard not to know that name was ignorance indeed. It probably shocked Arduin even more: had not the man in question led the army that beat Melus of Bari and killed his father on the very field where they had just been victorious? But if he was surprised, Arduin gave no evidence of it, too accustomed, probably, to Atenulf’s density to be stunned.

‘No doubt,’ Arduin added, ‘they think to win a prize with the same blood and name.’

‘Has he come with any more men?’ asked William, for that, to him, was of paramount concern.

‘He has apparently come with nothing but his father’s reputation. But the recruiting parties are out again, and they will use the name to gather a host. Also he has the remains of the men who fled the field at Cannae.’

‘Then he had better be clever,’ William insisted, ‘for they could not stand.’

It took several months to discover that the younger Boioannes was just that. Following on from Cannae, William had been cautious in the way he deferred to Arduin, who, though he had praised him for the victory he had achieved, and had taken without a blush the accolades which had come to him, was still rankled by the way he had been so ignominiously superseded at Cannae. Knowing that time favoured the Byzantines, as it always would, Arduin ordered the army out of Melfi and went in search of Boioannes, only to find him as elusive as a buzzing fly.

Every time they got close to him he manoeuvred quickly and efficiently to get clear, sometimes retiring to a fortress — especially when faced with just Norman cavalry — then slipping away from that if Arduin brought up enough men to institute a siege, always with a route open back to the great bastion of Bari. As a campaign it was wearing, especially for the foot soldiers, marching hither and thither with nothing to show for it at the end.

Given that lasted through winter and into the following spring, it became positively dispiriting and the numbers of recruits began to fall as those who had farms slipped away to sow crops while others who had left their trades saw more profit in pursuing them; with plunder they would have stayed, without it they saw only empty bellies, until Arduin was obliged to fall back on Melfi, which only increased the feelings of gloom and the rate of desertion.

‘Better to let them go, William,’ Arduin suggested. ‘If I do they will come back once their crop is in the soil. If I do not…’

That needed no finish: they might not return at all, a thought which made a general become dispirited even more downhearted. He thought a more inspiring leader could have kept them together; a more practical Norman mercenary knew differently: men served themselves, even if they mouthed causes. He also saw the need to ease the man’s mind.

‘I would do likewise, Arduin, as long as we keep the crossbowmen. And I too will welcome an end to campaigning. I too need to look to my men and horses.’

It was more the latter than the former, but his lances, now numbering near six hundred, were weary too, in need of rest: being in a saddle was better than being on foot, yet it was still hard work. For the horses, the burden of constant campaigning was becoming evident in losses — not deaths but wear: mounts becoming lame, increasing sickness such as laminitis and colic, which rendered them useless. They needed time in pasture, and the stud he had set up would benefit from replenishment.

‘We agree, then. Disband the milities, leave your men to hold Melfi, and plan a new campaign following the spring planting.’

The next days were marked by streams of foot soldiers heading off to their farms, livings and families; not all, for some so relished the military life that they were loath to part from it, or perhaps home life was miserable. Arduin accompanied Atenulf to Benevento, there to partake of the prince’s hospitality and think great thoughts about how he was going to beat Boioannes and then persuade the port cities to join in the revolt.

William was glad to see him go: he did not dislike Arduin and even if his military thinking was footbound he did respect him, but a constant exposure to that Lombard dream was exhausting. In the field they often shared a meal in one another’s tent, and while conversation might range over their past exploits in Sicily, which would mull on to a discussion of what Michael Doukeianos might achieve there — generally held to range from little to nothing — it always came back to that which was immediately before them, that inevitably leading to Arduin and his fellow Lombards’ aspirations.

Added to that, the opaque Count Atenulf was ever present, asking inane questions or making stupid statements, when not utterly silent and merely looking glaucous. William had acquired the ability to look interested when not, and took refuge in watching Arduin carefully, only listening to those parts of his conversation which bordered on speech-making, seeking to discern from his words the true meanings, which were bound to be hidden. He speculated, too, on Atenulf, on that young man’s presence, for it was obvious that their titular commander had personal ambitions and they were not that the Prince of Benevento, through his younger brother, should end up as the ruler of Apulia.

Obviously, having come to this whole enterprise through the Prince of Salerno, there had to be some secret agreement between Guaimar and Arduin, but William doubted it would satisfy this Lombard. It was more likely that Arduin dreamt that somehow, despite his lowly status in the hierarchy of his people, he would come to rule over Apulia himself and, if that were the case, it was also interesting to wonder how he saw himself dealing with the Normans. Would he seek to use them to fulfil his ambitions, or would he try to get rid of them?

Messengers seen from the ramparts to be riding sweating, chest-heaving horses, conveyed danger before they ever spoke and the one who came clattering into the great keep of Melfi was no exception. The shouts that heralded his approach had the entire command of the Norman-Lombard forces awaiting him as he came through the gate.

‘Boioannes is outside Venosa with the whole of his host, my Lord, but shows no sign of wishing to instigate a siege.’

‘He called on the garrison to surrender, surely?’ demanded Arduin, even although the messenger had addressed Count Atenulf.

‘He did, then he rode back to his camp, which was in long sight of the walls, and there he stayed, though it is suspected he was making preparations to move on.’

‘Then he is coming to Melfi.’

Arduin looked to William, who nodded, knowing that Venosa meant nothing to this new catapan, Melfi everything, and he had no doubt heard that his enemies were weakened. He could also guess at what he planned: if Boioannes could bottle up what forces remained in the fortress, especially the Normans, then he could prevent any of those farmers from coming back to serve after the spring sowing, and behind him, even if it would be difficult to supply an investing army, he had the whole of Apulia to draw on for the supplies necessary to endure a long siege. Thus he would have achieved one major goal, and an immediate tactical advantage.

For the Byzantines such a course of action made perfect strategic sense as well: having lost two battles in open country they had to deny their enemies the luxury of movement. Boioannes might not take Melfi, but he would put an end to that and snuff out the enthusiasm for revolt the previous victories had created. He would also deny his enemies the opportunity to reconstitute their army and, who was to know he would not, in the long months while he was outside the walls, acquire fresh troops from Constantinople and swing the whole campaign in his favour.

‘He’s more astute than we gave him credit for,’ said Drogo.

‘And devious,’ William added. ‘He lulled us into a feeling of security. All that marching to and fro was just to bring about this very thing.’

‘He cannot take Melfi,’ Arduin insisted, looking at the walls of the castle as though they would somehow bear out his words. ‘It is too strong.’

‘He knows that, Arduin.’ William watched as Arduin took time to get to a conclusion, which with him had been near to instant, one which met his dislike of the notion of being bottled up in a castle, an absolute negation of the advantage of cavalry.

For once the Lombard deduced the same as his mercenary commander. ‘And he could not take it even if it is held by only a small garrison.’

‘Just as he cannot safely besiege it if he has hundreds of Norman lances waiting to raid his siege lines and kill his foraging parties.’

‘Let us consult the maps,’ Arduin snapped.

He turned quickly to re-enter the great hall, followed by the Normans. Halfway up the steps he stopped and turned, then spoke, for once, in a terse voice and with a thunderous look, to Atenulf, calling on him to follow. Even that took time for the dense brain to sift, and it was Humphrey, the last to move, who pushed him hard and with little ceremony to get him to obey.

Examining the maps, it was obvious there were many directions in which they could go: towards Campania, which offered a safe line of retirement, should that be required; the least favourable was to the east; the one impossible to think on, to head south into the catapan’s line of march. Arduin, with his depleted forces, knowing that on this occasion, while not wholly dependent, he needed the Normans more than ever, asked William to decide.

‘North to here,’ William replied, placing his finger on an area he had ridden over when first he came to Melfi, close to the spot where Tirena and Listo had rolled that boulder down on him. The high hill that rock had come off, which he now knew to be called Monte Siricolo, gave a good view of the approaches to the fertile valleys over which it towered. There was ample pasture in those, with hayricks left over from the last cutting, and at this time of year the mountain streams were bursting with snowmelt, while the forests would provide wood to both construct shelters and keep them warm in the cold high-altitude nights should they have to winter there.

Added to that, the longer they stayed there the stronger they would become, for if it cut them off from Campania, that was the main path for the return of the levies who had gone back north to Benevento, and any supplies they needed to sustain themselves could come by that same route. It was easy from there for cavalry to raid south, using the numerous trails through the mountains to achieve surprise. Any siege of Melfi would suffer mightily from constant attacks and the decimation of parties sent out to forage.

‘William,’ Arduin insisted, ‘Boioannes cannot just leave us there.’

‘No, my friend, he cannot.’

He did not often use such a term with Arduin, but he did now. There should be nothing in the way of the Lombard seeing what was possible, and that was a place he got to with commendable speed.

‘So once more we bring him to battle at a field of our choosing.’

Normans were used to moving at short notice, less so the Lombard levies that had remained, but all were long gone, accompanied by the locals, by the time the catapan’s banners were sighted from the battlements. Given the constraints he had laboured under, the losses suffered by his predecessor and the difficulties of recruitment, he had assembled an impressive host, and it was soon obvious he had brought along not just fighting men but artisans skilled in the construction of ballista and the like, who immediately set to work, so that the sound of hammering and sawing floated up to the stout walls.

Left in command at Melfi, with a stiffening of Normans, but mainly a garrison of Lombards, it fell to Humphrey and Mauger, standing on the curtain wall which overlooked the narrow entry bridge, to refuse to accept terms. They listened in silence as the normal threats regarding no quarter were shouted up at them, restraining the men they commanded from any overt displays of either jocularity — showing their bare arses — or expletive-loaded insults, merely acknowledging the message and telling the Byzantines to do their worst.

By the time the party sent to present those terms had returned with the expected refusal, Basil Boioannes knew that his enemy had flown the coop. The men he feared most were outside those walls, not inside, and he was also committed, far from his base at Bari, with a set of shrinking options, the least palatable of which, given the fate of Michael Doukeianos, was withdrawal.

The next morning, he issued instructions that his artisans should keep toiling, with enough men to keep them safe staying behind. Then, once his host had been fed and blessed, he marched them away from Melfi, heading north, knowing that his approach would be observed. So be it: let them stand or flee, but the Normans had to be beaten or driven away.

That his enemies had come so quickly threw Arduin off balance: he had worked on the assumption that Boioannes would at least make some kind of assault on Melfi before seeking to cancel out the external threat. William was less unnerved: again their young opponent was showing sound judgement, his deduction that the peril would only increase with time, not diminish. Also, when he came face to face with his foes, below the great mound of Monte Siricolo, he did not make the same mistake as Doukeianos: he did not attack, he stood on the defensive and set his men to digging a ditch before the line on which he intended to fight, to slow down, and perhaps kill off, any Norman cavalry assault.

But he did not control the high ground, and could not, therefore, see what his enemies were up to. He tried, sending strong assaulting parties through the low forests and up above the treeline to the barren slopes of Monte Siricolo, but they were beaten back by the same kind of boulders which had so nearly done for William. Because he could not capture those, he did not know that Arduin had sent most of the foot soldiers he had through two high passes on either side of the field of confrontation, to come down on the Byzantine rear.

William’s task was simple, and this once it was the Normans who aided the Lombards, not the other way round. They attacked Boioannes, but only to fix him in front, using the crossbowmen to inflict casualties, serious enough, but not sufficient to break the line, while the enemy crossbows were brought forward to counter them, thus removing them from where they would be needed. The Norman cavalry, in lines, under Drogo and Geoffrey, rode forward as far as that freshly dug ditch several times, cast lances, then retired to jeers from their enemies, with William’s eye firmly fixed on the piquet sitting atop Monte Siricolo.

The signal that Arduin was advancing came as a column of smoke, made black by throwing pitch on it, and William took command of his men, with his brothers alongside him. They were in one tight line now and they began to walk forward, as the first yells echoed off the hillsides, the shouts from the rear of the Byzantine host that there was an attack coming from that quarter.

If these Apulian levies that Boioannes led were not the same men who had been at Cannae and Masseria, they were well aware of the defeats that had occurred there. Added to that, it takes little to break the spirit of a force bent on defence when they discover that there is an enemy behind their lines, while before them, coming on like a tide of death, are the mailed knights of Normandy.

Arduin lacked force, but he had the option of retiring to the fortress of Melfi, because he had strength in abundance to brush aside anyone who tried to stop him. Thus his men had nothing to fear as they charged through the Byzantine baggage to attack confused troops who were not yet fully prepared for battle, and the cries they sent up, first of alarm and then of betrayal, totally destroyed the unity of the men facing the Normans. They were more concerned with what was happening behind them than in front and numbers began to move backwards in confused groups.

Where that happened the ditch no longer protected them; odd that those who stood their ground had a better chance of survival, because for once, the approaching horsemen were not intent on maintaining a solid line, they were intent on exploitation. Before the opening gaps the lances spurred their mounts. Where Boioannes’s men stood, the threat before them trended left or right to bypass them. It took no time at all for those stalwarts to realise that staying still would see them eventually surrounded and slaughtered, and just as the first lances struck home, practically the whole Byzantine line broke and fled, compacting back on a rear already in chaos, which had men spilling up the surrounding hills to seek safety.

Boioannes, with those men who attended him personally and nowhere to go, stood firm, prepared to sell their lives dearly, and it was an indication of how comprehensive the collapse of his army had been that they were so quickly surrounded. William halted his men and stood off till Arduin arrived and called upon his opposite number to surrender. There really was not much choice, except death, and the catapan called upon his companions to put up their weapons, then came forward holding out his sword.

To the disgust of William and his brothers, Arduin stepped aside and let that idiot Atenulf accept it in the name of the Lombard revolt.