Warriors

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The multiple assassinations ordered by Argyrus had checked the Normans, but it had not stopped or removed them, underlined by the fact that Pope Leo was in constant receipt of complaints that his territory of Benevento was still being ravaged by roving bands of mailed warriors. Added to that, the grip of the Normans on the principality, despite assurances that they were not encroaching, was increasing. Appeals to the Emperor Henry to come south once more, this time with the whole might of the empire behind him, had produced nothing, leaving the Pontiff at a loss to know what to do — doubly frustrating given his background.

When the envoy arrived from Argyrus asking for permission to come to him, it took no great leap of imagination to conjure up a very good idea, in advance, of what he wanted to talk about. Argyrus had to travel incognito, secretly by ship from Bari to a point further up the Adriatic coast, before journeying inland, with Leo coming east to meet him at a secluded monastery high in the Apennines. They met alone, without attendants and devoid of the trappings of their responsibilities, Leo ostensibly on pilgrimage, Argyrus just an unknown traveller, the latter opening the discussions with a blunt statement of the truth.

‘The Normans are as much a plague to the Church of Rome as they are to Byzantium.’

Considering those words, with fingers arched before his mouth, Pope Leo was also sizing up this Lombard. He saw before him a solid-looking young man of fine countenance, with a direct gaze and a lack of the kind of excessive gestures or eager explanation which denoted insincerity.

‘Does the Emperor Constantine know of this meeting?’

‘No, Your Holiness, the court of the man I represent is not a place for confidences any more than Rome.’

‘Are the Normans not Christians?’

Argyrus knew the Pope was avoiding the point and, he surmised, seeking to find out, before he committed himself, the nature of the person with whom he was dealing.

‘Of a kind, though I sometimes wonder if there is a God, given that what they often do deserves that they be struck down by a bolt from Heaven.’

Leo replied, wearing a thin smile on his pale lips. ‘There is most certainly a God, my son, and should they seek his intercession he will forgive them.’

‘Do you?’

‘For their sins?’

‘For their actions in your fief of Benevento.’

Those arched hands parted to show open palms, and the freckled face took on a querying look. ‘Christ bore a cross to his Calvary, is it not fitting that the heir to St Peter should have the same kind of burden?’

‘So you are saying that you will turn the other cheek.’

‘When I first came to Italy it was as a soldier in the service of the Emperor Conrad — a bishop, yes, but a warrior who would not have recoiled at taking the life of anyone who opposed the imperial host. If I saw before me now a single head that I could remove, and by doing so eradicate a problem, I would be a soldier once more.’

‘That has been attempted.’

If he had hoped to shock Leo by a near open admission of secret murder, Argyrus failed: he was greeted by no reaction at all, so he was left to pose another question. ‘And if you had an army?’

‘Would you be offering me one?’

It was now the Lombard’s turn to smile. ‘Part of one, yes, for if I had the force necessary to defeat the Normans I would not have come to you here, would I?’

‘No. But you must know I do not have an army of my own to bolster yours.’

‘The day may come when you need one.’

‘And you think that day is near?’

‘What, Your Holiness, do you think the Normans will do once they have swallowed all of Benevento?’ That being greeted with more silence, Argyrus continued. ‘I think you must see that is what is going to happen, which will bring them to the borders of your own Papal States.’

Leo leant forward, nodding. ‘This I know.’

‘I cannot see what will satisfy them, can you?’

‘And you are suggesting?’

‘Force is the only thing they understand, and their removal from Italy is the only thing that will bring peace. Get the Western Emperor to join with the forces of his imperial cousin and together we will have an army too strong for the Normans to oppose.’

‘I am not sure Henry would wish to see Byzantium fully in control of Apulia once more.’

‘He would rather have a de Hauteville?’

‘No man relishes the choice of the lesser of two evils when he does not know which is the worse.’

‘We had peace before, we can have peace again,’ Argyrus insisted. ‘And I do not think it should be just the combination we have mentioned. You have massive authority through your office. Let us gather together all those who have suffered from Norman brutality, including Salerno.’

‘Guaimar?’

‘He has suffered more than most and he can hardly be said to be master in his own domains when he has Norman vassals like Richard of Aversa who do as they please. If he joins with us, others will follow, but no request from me to him would get so much as a hearing, but from you…’

‘You wish to remove the Normans from Italy?’ Leo asked.

‘Yes, but we must defeat them in battle first, then offer them that as a way out.’

‘And if they refuse?’

‘Then they must die, every one of them, down to the last boy-child. It is the only way.’

‘Would God forgive us for that?’

‘Would God forgive us for doing nothing, Your Holiness?’

‘I must go to Bamberg,’ Leo said, after a lengthy pause. ‘I must seek help from the emperor in person, but I will write to Salerno.’

When Guaimar received Pope Leo’s request to join in a grand coalition against the Normans he knew it was not a matter he could discuss with his council: the mere mention of it in public and it would be known in Aversa before a day had passed. In any other matter requiring discretion he might have sent for Kasa Ephraim, but he knew the Jew had extensive dealings with the Normans, so he could not be sure that any advice given would not be tainted by that connection. It was an indication, and an uncomfortable one, of how isolated he could become in such matters that the only person he had whom he could trust as a sounding board was his sister Berengara, and he was most discomfited, on broaching the matter, to be greeted by derisive laughter.

‘How long have I sought this,’ she said, ‘and how many times have you ignored me?’

‘I hesitated to even ask you. You have a half-Norman child.’

‘I have a girl-child who has tainted blood, but I will raise her to hate the Normans as much as I do. Did not her own relatives disown her?’

‘I have often wondered if it was you who had Drogo murdered.’

‘How I wish I had, and I would give my all to the man who did.’

‘So you had no hand in that?’

Berengara produced an enigmatic smile, one her brother had seen before and he knew was designed to bait him: he would never know if Berengara was guilty or not, for he would never hear either an admission or an outright denial from her lips.

‘Why did you laugh when I asked you if I should accede to Pope Leo’s request?’

‘How many times have you told me, brother, that a prince can not always do that which he wishes?’

‘Many times, for it is no less than the truth.’

‘So how do you think it makes me feel to tell you that if you agree to join Leo in his struggle against the Normans you would be a fool.’

‘Why?’

‘You know why, Guaimar. Look at a map. Richard of Aversa is between us and Rome and the de Hautevilles are on our border with Apulia.’

‘Argyrus could keep them occupied.’

‘If I hate the Normans, brother, I distrust Byzantium more. He would be happy to see Salerno humbled and then come to our aid when the city was in ruins.’

‘The depth of your thinking on this surprises me, Berengara.’

‘Why? Because I am a woman?’

Guaimar denied that, but they both knew it to be a lie.

‘So you think I should stand aside?’

‘I think you should return a polite response to the Pope saying that your honour does not permit you to attack one of your own vassals.’

Now it was Guaimar’s turn to laugh. ‘You expect the Pope to believe that?’

‘Who cares what he believes, brother? Much as you seek to blind yourself to it, I am my father’s daughter. He had Salerno taken from him by Rainulf and Pandulf and I often wonder if you recall how close we came to joining him in that simple tomb in which we buried him. Let Leo and Argyrus beat the Normans, and when they do we will rejoice, but I will not see Salerno destroyed first, which she will surely be, and long before either of those two can do anything to save us.’

Argyrus had entertained mixed hopes for Guaimar: he knew for the Prince of Salerno to join with him and Pope Leo would require a degree of daring. No one depended on Norman lances more than he and, while he was capable of raising armed levies of his own, as he had done in order to take Amalfi, the backbone of any force he had ever put in the field came from Aversa. What did surprise him was the way Guaimar decided to let his refusal be known: what should have been a secret, both the request and his negative response, were now known throughout Italy, severely denting any hopes of engaging the help of the other Lombard magnates.

Somehow that had to be reversed; all problems, to a mind like that of Argyrus, had a solution, while added to that was his ability to think ahead, so in order to hedge against a Salernian snub, and with other possibilities in mind, he had sent a trusted envoy to Amalfi, which might prove to be an Achilles heel, to assess matters.

That the adherents of the deposed duke hated Guaimar went without saying — they had seen power stripped from them — just as most of the citizenry disliked being ruled by another. But, from distant Bari, it was impossible to know if such hatred could be put to good purpose. The reports that came back, of seething discontent, were welcome.

Naturally, when it came to seaborne trade, Guaimar had favoured his own merchants over the needs of Amalfi, so that the once prosperous port saw the commerce off which it had lived leaching inexorably to Salerno. Being a Lombard allowed Argyrus to understand his tribe in a way that the Byzantine Greeks had never quite managed; was it not that very quality which had persuaded the Emperor Constantine to appoint him as catapan?

The leading citizens of Amalfi, be they dispossessed aristocrats or impoverished traders, were Lombards, and though they might mouth other sentiments, and pray mightily for Christian salvation, money, and the power that went with it, was their true divinity. Their other weakness was a lack of tribal loyalty, again something they would mouth, but a feeling which came a poor second to personal advantage.

Nestled in a precipitous coastal valley, connected to the interior by a pass through the surrounding mountains, and, within it, buildings piled on precarious slopes one on top of the other, it was a place built for intrigue. But the garrison and governor Guaimar had installed, supported by Normans, held the round tower that dominated the port — the easiest point of ingress and egress — feeling safe in the knowledge that control of trade from that near impregnable citadel gave them the key to an untroubled occupation.

They also held the two land gates to the city that fed a narrow coastal road: let the Amalfians grumble, and no doubt conspire, in their cliff-hugging dwellings. They lacked the means to strike out at those who lorded it over them. No adult male was allowed to bear arms, on pain of incarceration; any numerous gathering would be brutally dispersed so that conspiracy was confined to small numbers who dared not coalesce. Fear and an iron fist ruled Amalfi but the contact between oppressor and oppressed was non-existent: the former stayed in their bastions, the latter avoided them completely.

That was the message sent back to Argyrus: discontent was one thing, the ability to act quite another. The envoy had, of course, misunderstood his master’s purpose. The catapan, who would, if he had been required to, have held Bari in much the same fashion as Guaimar held Amalfi, had never thought that a revolt inside the port was feasible. What he wanted to know was the willingness of the leading citizens to act against Salerno, if he could give them a method of doing so.

Perusing the list his envoy had brought back, he chose for his purpose the well-born over the trader, for the latter would always weigh the righting of a grievance against the cost. Dispossessed nobles were more given to emotion: raised in luxury from birth, they were men who would have grown up seeing power as a birthright, and the removal of it as a personal slight. It came as no surprise to discover that many of such had landed estates outside the actual port, well inland over the mountains, with numerous tenants and peasants to work their soil.

Calling his envoy, he instructed him in what he had to do: to take a ship back to Amalfi, one which would sit in the harbour, its load of weaponry hidden in the holds, and prepare the city to rise up against their oppressors. He was then to find those well-born malcontents and get them out of the place. Once on their estates, they would be met by numerous and armed fellow Lombards who would aid them, as long as they equipped their own people to fight as well, the promise held out of the casting-off of the Salernian yoke. That they would be unaware of the hand of Byzantium in their task was all to the good.

Guaimar was an accessible prince, a man who did not fear to walk with a minimal escort through the streets of his city, nor was he excessive in the way he lived his life: he would not have Normans guarding the Castello di Arechi, a fact which went some way to mollify his sister, angry that he associated with them at all. Salerno was a teeming active port, a place hemmed in by hills but with a wide sweeping bay that left it open to cooling breezes, as well as the occasional hot African wind, and it was as wealthy now as it had ever been, with much building going on, some of it financed by its ruler.

Ships came in from all over the known world with silks, spices and valuable commodities, while from the Campanian hinterland the produce of the fertile province, capable of double harvests, flowed out: grain to feed the people of Rome, olive oil with which to cook and keep going the lights that allowed for life to continue when the sun set, fruit that grew in abundance in the orchards, and wood from the forested foothills of the mountains.

Every ship entering or leaving paid customs dues, these taken in by the collector of the port to add to the secret stipend he gave to his master from smuggling. Kasa Ephraim was a busy man, with much to concern him in the way of trade, for he had multifarious interests, and the need to push his way through crowded thoroughfares in the company of his coffer-bearing servants meant he had no eyes to spot anything unusual, not that the sight of half a dozen well-set young men in such a prosperous city was that.

If Argyrus had spies in Amalfi, he also had people who were his eyes and ears in Salerno and they told him, after months of observation, that the one time it would be certain that the Prince of Salerno would be in his Castello was the day the Jew delivered the port revenues. They had also found out from gossip in the wine shops that Guaimar was wont to meet his Jew in private after the transaction of official business, with no one else present.

The group that had trailed Kasa Ephraim was not alone: there were others in the city, all now armed and each one with a task to perform, some to take important buildings, others to take care of anyone who might raise resistance, but most important was the group who gathered outside the gates to the Castello di Arechi, becoming in time so much part of the landscape that if the guards at the entrance had noticed them at all, they did not stand out now.

There was no way of seeing through the stout stone walls, the time to act was a guess, based on the exit of some of Guaimar’s council, who would leave the Castello once the public business had been transacted. As soon as they were out of sight, the Amalfians struck. The guards — in truth, in such a peaceful city, long past being alert — were the first to be killed. While half the raiding party entered the Castello, others, the younger ones fleet of foot, were sent as messengers to tell the rest to act. Inside the building, for all that any shouts echoed off the walls, the doors to each chamber were built of stout well-seasoned and heavily studded timber, and so muffled such cries.

Kasa Ephraim would have died had he not just left the prince, having said farewell to Guaimar just as his sister and niece came into his presence. As it was he found himself knocked to the ground as those intent on killing Guaimar, six in number, swept past him towards the unbarred door to the chamber he had just left. The Jew was not a fighting man, but he was a clever one. Seeing the flashing knives, already dripping with blood, it took no great imagination to understand what was happening, just as he knew that alone he could do nothing to prevent it.

The cries of alarm and one scream, he heard as he pulled himself upright and hurried for the exit. Behind him, unseen, those six assassins had stopped before the Prince of Salerno, who seeing their blades and being himself unarmed knew what he was about to face. He pushed his sister and her child behind him, and with a voice carrying as much command as he had ever been able to muster, demanded to know who came upon him in such a fashion.

‘Amalfi has come for you, Prince Guaimar, to seek redress for the blood of its people.’

‘Strike and your city will burn, I swear,’ Guaimar spat back. ‘Not a stone will remain standing, not a life will be spared.’

‘Then, Prince Guaimar,’ the leader replied with a grim smile, ‘we have nothing to lose.’

The assassins rushed towards him and hit out with their blades, surrounding the prince and stabbing with fury. The last words he said before he fell to the ground, with blood spurting from dozens of wounds and his garments already bright red, were ‘Spare my sister and her child.’

That was not to be: the task was to kill off the House of Salerno; Berengara and her daughter, widow and child of William de Hauteville, died within moments of Guaimar and from those same knives.

Kasa Ephraim knew the Castello well, having served both the prince and his father. He made his way to the family apartments, where he spoke, in a voice he could not believe was as even as it sounded, of the danger they faced. Like every castle of the age in which they lived it had a private as well as a public entrance, and not just for fear of murder: all princes liked to be able to come and go unseen. If the Jew did not know where it was he suspected it existed, and he told Guaimar’s wife and children, most particularly his fourteen-year-old son, Gisulf, to get out of the Castello at once.

‘Take nothing, for you have no time.’

‘The prince?’

Though he hoped he was wrong, the Jew guessed he was right. ‘Will be dead by now. Go.’

No one demurred when he followed; he, too, felt that only by leaving could he survive. In the harbour, one fast sailing ship was hoisting sail, not from panic or fear, but to carry the news of the death of Guaimar round the toe and boot of Italy to tell Argyrus of the success of his plan.

The news of the murders came to the Norman host, gathered between Melfi and Benevento, through Guaimar’s cousin, Guy, Duke of Sorrento, who had escaped the city and ridden hard to deliver it.

‘The road to Aversa was blocked and there were Amalfians at every post house to stop any messenger changing mounts.’

‘But not on the road to Melfi?’ demanded Humphrey, his beetle brow creased.

‘No.’

‘That does not make sense,’ said Mauger.

‘Perhaps it does,’ Humphrey replied, his suspicious nature working overtime, as were his prominent teeth, chewing his lower lip. ‘I smell another hand in this.’

‘Argyrus!’ growled Geoffrey.

There was a silent exchange of looks then: one thing did not need to be stated, given they all knew of Pope Leo’s scheming. With the Pontiff trying to contrive an alliance to defeat them, and an army gathering north of the city of Benevento, an important fief like Salerno, who had proved to be their only dependable ally, could not be allowed to fall into the hands of someone who was an enemy. If Argyrus was involved that meant Byzantium, the worst possible opponent, given he might control the city and a hinterland that, in league with Rome, would see them surrounded.

‘William’s child was murdered as well?’ asked Mauger, sadly, more sentimental than his brothers. Guy of Sorrento nodded. ‘Then we have a blood reason to intervene.’

‘If we move on Salerno,’ Humphrey nodded, though he looked less grieving than Mauger, ‘he will move on our Apulian possessions while we are gone.’

‘The Pope?’

‘He is still assembling. Leo cannot threaten us yet.’

‘So we stay,’ Mauger asked, ‘or move south to block Argyrus?’

Since the loss of both William and Drogo, Humphrey had grown in both confidence and authority: he was very much in command now.

‘Leo is at present no threat. Geoffrey will lead half our forces to confront Argyrus. If we are wrong and he does not move from Bari then no harm will be done. If he does, and you cannot beat him, you can delay him Geoffrey, giving the rest of us a chance to rejoin.’

‘And Salerno?’ asked Duke Guy.

‘As long as we can block the catapan and Leo does not move, the men who killed Guaimar will see their own guts before they die.’

‘I thank you,’ he replied, relieved.

‘We will, however,’ Humphrey said, ‘need to be recompensed for our assistance. Guaimar was a wealthy man and Salerno is one of the richest ports in Italy.’

The bargaining that followed, for high sums of gold, might have embarrassed a man of tender feelings. Humphrey de Hauteville was not that man.