Mercenaries c-1

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘You know why, to aid me.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Guaimar avoided an honest answer to that; to admit he had hoped she would melt stony hearts with her beauty was tantamount to admitting he was prepared to act as a pander for her. ‘I particularly wished to keep you safe from Pandulf. After what happened…’

  Though she interrupted, it was not with any rancour; indeed her voice was soft. ‘Please, Guaimar, do not seek to deceive me. We are both engaged in seeking the same outcome. You have your title and your wits, I have what you sought to use.’

  ‘Has Conrad…?’ He could not say the words.

  ‘He has been kind, brother, considerate, and he has, thanks to me, acceded to my request that he see you.’

  ‘The price?’

  ‘Is one I am prepared to pay!’

  ‘So it has not been forfeit yet?’

  Berengara gave him a smile then, an enigmatic one that revealed to him that she too was growing up, as he had had to. She was no child now. What it did not do was answer his question.

  Guaimar knew Conrad had been deliberately keeping him at arm’s length, quite happy to talk in passing but never ready to sit, as he was doing now, and seriously discuss Pandulf or the situation in Campania. There was history here too, of course: Pandulf, for his previous treachery with Byzantium, had been a prisoner of his predecessor. Conrad had released the traitor on his accession, which he probably now felt to be a mistake, but not one to which an emperor could admit. The young man before him was asking him to alter a situation he had brought about.

  So he listened politely while Guaimar enumerated the Wolf’s manifest transgressions, which apparently failed to make much mark on the emperor’s thinking. Not that he saw such behaviour as acceptable, it was just he could not be brought to see it as in need of remedial action.

  ‘I had an audience with the Bishop of L’Aquila. In fact, he confessed me before mass this very morning.’ Guaimar was not sure he believed that: Ascletin was so raw in the priestly line he doubted he knew the necessary words to say in a confessional booth. ‘You travelled with him, of course.’

  ‘And most pleasant it was,’ the younger man lied.

  Conrad looked at him quizzically then. ‘Tell me, young Guaimar, you say you came only to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I do not follow.’

  ‘I am not the only source of redress, am I?’

  ‘You mean Byzantium,’ Guaimar replied, thinking it was Ascletin who had confessed in that booth this morning, not Conrad Augustus. The emperor sat back in his chair, making a gesture that demanded explanation. ‘I agree, I could have gone to Constantinople, but I believe it was my duty to come here to my suzerain.’

  ‘But you could also have sent to the Emperor Michael for aid, without actually travelling there. By ship for instance.’

  He is stalling me, thought Guaimar; he is waiting to hear from his spies if Byzantium is prepared to intervene. The other thought he had was depressing: there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘No eastern emperor since the great Basil enjoys the reputation that you have, Conrad Augustus.’ If he was flattered by comparison with the Bulgar-Slayer, who would have been a match for Charlemagne, Conrad took it as his due. ‘The late Emperor Romanos was a voluptuary by all accounts, ruled by the whims of the Empress Zoe. Her new husband, Michael, is little older than I, and I cannot see him as your equal.’

  ‘He is the brother of the eunuch who runs the court and that gives him power. Besides that, they say Michael is an ardent young buck and makes an old woman happy.’

  ‘Competence in the bedchamber is not what makes a man great.’

  Guaimar had replied tersely, annoyed by the way Conrad was taking the conversation. He had no concern for the carnal joys young Michael gave to a woman thirty years his senior and it was, he knew, just part of the game Conrad was playing.

  ‘They have great resources, and a fleet that could put a force on Campanian soil in much less time than I can march there with an army, and they would dearly love to assert their authority there, as they have tried to do many times in the past. Even a youth and his frivolous old wife might be tempted by the prospect of detaching my imperial fiefs of Southern Italy from their allegiance.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, sire, that I have come to the wrong place?’

  Conrad smiled, like a man who had spotted a trap and knew how to avoid it. ‘I am saying that your need is great, so perhaps it makes no difference who brings down Pandulf. You Lombards have bowed the knee to Constantinople before.’

  ‘Not with much joy.’

  That got a sharp response. ‘My predecessor took an army all the way to the borders of Apulia to keep you free of the Eastern Empire, and it advantaged him nothing. I seem to remember Salerno sided with his enemies, and only acquiesced when faced by a host outside your walls too powerful to resist. The same blood flows though your veins.’

  ‘I cannot answer for the actions of my predecessors. All I can say, sire, is no man likes to be a subject.’

  ‘Yet you beg to be mine.’

  ‘I beg to have righted a great wrong, and if the price of that is an acknowledgement of a title you already possess, then I am happy to accede to it.’

  ‘You have still not explained to my satisfaction why you failed to send any request to Constantinople.’

  Guaimar was hoist on his own petard and he knew it: he had tricked Ascletin, who had played his perfidious part and it had produced the opposite effect to that intended, making Conrad cautious instead of bold. There was no point now in telling the man the truth — he was not inclined to act regardless and anyway he would not now be believed, even if he had to try.

  ‘I acted on the advice of my archbishop. Indeed it was only through his good grace that I could make the journey, for he funded it. You will readily understand his reluctance to have a Byzantine fleet in Salerno Bay.’ Conrad’s eyes bored into his, and they seemed to be saying that he had deceived him too. ‘Am I to understand that you will not come to our aid?’

  ‘I have not decided.’

  ‘And if Pandulf takes Naples as well?’

  ‘That may alter things, but we would have to see.’

  ‘He intends to fight Byzantium.’

  An inquisitive look demanded more information, which Guaimar supplied, and when he had finished Conrad actually burst out laughing. ‘You will never learn, you Lombards. There’s not one of you who is not wedded to betrayal.’ He saw Guaimar about to protest, and he cut him off. ‘And before you tell me that you are the exception, let me tell you that I will decide nothing until I know what it is I might face.’

  ‘Berengara, I am bound to ask you how much influence you think you have with Conrad?’

  ‘I may have a great deal, Guaimar, as long as he has not been gifted that which he so desires.’

  So she was still chaste; her brother was not sure whether he was pleased or disappointed, and then he felt like a true scrub. As he asked the next question, so embarrassing to posit, he knew his face was slightly flushed.

  ‘If you…would it? Do you think you could persuade… the emperor to act?’

  ‘How tongue-tied you are, Guaimar, when talking of trading my virtue.’ He could see by the wicked smile that she was teasing him, and she was enjoying it too.

  ‘You would have to think Salerno worth the price.’

  ‘Revenge,’ she spat, ‘is worth the price. Your father was my father too. The emperor wants to bed me, and my maidenhead is an added attraction. I think I could extract a promise from him to help us before it is surrendered. Could I get him to keep to what must be said in private after the event, I do not know.’

  ‘How practical you are.’

  ‘Does that disappoint you?’

  ‘I still think of you as…’

  Another snapped interruption. ‘I am no longer your little sister, Guaimar. I know what must be done, and I will undertake to do it.’

&nb
sp; ‘When?’

  ‘Given his eagerness, as soon as his wife or one of his clerics is not looking, which is not often.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why be sorry?’ she replied coquettishly, ‘I shall be like the mythical Helen, and launch a thousand spears, if I can hold him to his bond.’

  ‘Damn that swine, I’ll rip the skin off his hide. I’ll sow him in a sack with a cat and snake and throw him into the nearest harbour.’

  Both recognised the angry voice, shouting in the echoing corridor outside their apartments. Guaimar was convinced as he digested what was being said he was going to be the victim of those threats. The door was flung open with a resounding crash and Conrad stood there, his eyes on fire, boring into those of the young man.

  ‘Do you know what that bastard has done?’

  ‘Sire, I…’

  ‘He has laid hands upon the Abbot of Montecassino, that’s what he has done. He has thrown Theodore, a man whose election I personally approved, into his dungeons.’

  By now Conrad was in the room, kicking any object that came within reach of his boot.

  ‘When I lay hands on him he will wish he had never been conceived. I want you at my council in the morning. The host will be summoned and I will march south and crush that swine like a gnat.’

  Then he was gone, still raging, still shouting, his voice fading as the distance increased, leaving them to exchange a look of relief.

  ‘Well, brother,’ Berengara said, ‘it appears my virtue has been saved.’

  ‘And by the Wolf himself, of all people.’

  The door was flung open again, to be filled, once more, with Conrad’s stocky frame and puce countenance. ‘And by the way, you treacherous young swine, you can forget Byzantium. That Michael you call a callow youth has sent his whole fleet and army to conquer Sicily.’

  ‘I did not set out to deceive you, sire…’

  Conrad cut right across him. ‘Of course you did, and if you had not, I would have had you for a fool.’

  The so-called Empire of the West was nothing like that which had existed in ancient times; it was a loose agglomeration of states, the rulers of which elected one of their number to be Holy Roman Emperor. Conrad had his own lands and his own feudal levies, but to bring together an army large enough to subdue Pandulf, and stamp his authority on Campania, required the whole resources of the empire, and that took time to assemble.

  Having got what he had come for, Guaimar was now suffering the tortures of Tantalus, so slow did it all seem, yet even he had to acknowledge that to march south with a thousand lances, and to gather more on the way, required an organisation of staggering complexity. The sheer provision of food and shelter for the men, and the amount of fodder and pasturage required for their mounts, beggared belief, and that only increased the further south they travelled and the greater the size of the host became.

  Any plans that were laid had to do with that, not battle, and Conrad was in constant dispute with imperial vassals about the measure of their contributions in terms of lances provided, the money payments due after their days of feudal service had expired — as they must on such a campaign — the amount of forage and food their lands should provide as the imperial host crossed their domains, and that had paled when set against the prickly personalities and endemic feuding of powerful lords accustomed to be the masters of the world in which they lived.

  The army camped outside Rome, and Conrad took the opportunity to enter the city and overawe both the leading families and the populace. Benedict, with imperial protection, was for once at liberty to travel around the city without fear of physical assault, and given such liberty, and the fact that he was as much in fear of Conrad as grateful, he was able to satisfy the emperor regarding any ecclesiastical appointments that were outstanding throughout his own domains; in short, Conrad got the archbishops he wanted.

  Berengara had thoroughly enjoyed the progress, unlike her impatient brother. Still pursued by Conrad, and still denying him that which he sought, she was, as a seeming intimate of the emperor, also being fawned on by Ascletin and every ambitious noble in the imperial entourage. Many showered her with praise; the Pierleoni showered her with gifts, which she took with a smile that hid her deep dislike. When Guaimar sought to chastise her for this, he found himself put down like a disobedient dog; his sister was in full womanhood now, and not to be told what to do by her brother.

  Finally, south of Rome, with the papal contribution of paid-for foot soldiers, as well as healthy contributions to the costs of the campaign wrung from the likes of the Pierleoni, military matters began to assert themselves. As they had marched, the news that had come from the south had not been good; they had barely left Germany before Pandulf had attacked Montecassino and stripped it of its most precious possessions: priceless books, plate, church ornaments, as well as a considerable chest of money.

  Then, having seized the extensive and well-cultivated lands the monastery owned, he had parcelled it out to his own Norman mercenaries, knowing how hard they would fight to retain it. A procession of monks had come to Conrad to tell him that hardly any of the original brotherhood was still present, so reduced was the monastery. One of the greatest abbeys in Christendom, a centre of learning to rival Cluny, had been practically destroyed, its buildings torn down, in an assault to rival any ever committed by the Saracens.

  Conrad was no fool: he knew the Normans in the mass represented a threat to his whole campaign. He thought himself a good commander and he had under him a fine and powerful army, but time and again in this part of the world the Normans had triumphed in situations where they should have been crushed, this entirely due to their disciplined way of fighting. Given that, it made sense to consult the man who knew them best, despite his youth.

  ‘The key is Rainulf Drengot,’ Guaimar said.

  Conrad’s reply was telling. ‘I hear that Pandulf’s own Normans are numerically a match for Rainulf now. Indeed many of Drengot’s own lances deserted him, tempted by monastery land.’

  ‘Who commands them, sire, that is the important thing. Rainulf is a leader to be feared. Has Pandulf got anyone to match him?’

  ‘If he has Drengot, he has his leader, and the man is attached to him since he betrayed your father.’

  ‘What if he could be detached from Pandulf?’

  ‘For money?’

  ‘No. I have another prize that might tempt him.’

  ‘Which is?’

  When Guaimar outlined his thinking he could see that Conrad was impressed. He was promising no less than the settlement of endemic dispute, a way for Conrad to return to Germany with the very good prospect that neither he nor his successor again would have to bring a host south.

  ‘Did you learn such subtlety at your father’s knee, Guaimar?’

  ‘I learnt much from him, it is true.’

  ‘Like how to lie to an emperor?’ Conrad was smiling as he said that, but it was not friendly, more enquiry. ‘My spies in Constantinople told me that no request was sent there for help, information that reached me in Rome, and news confirmed by Pope Benedict’s own informants at the Byzantine Court.’

  There was no easy way to respond, at least not one which would not mark him out as devious, so he fell back on bluster. ‘Then I am accused of being truthful.’

  ‘So the Bishop of L’Aquila is the liar?’

  ‘He is elevated enough a cleric to answer for his own sins, sire.’

  ‘That is not an answer.’

  ‘I cannot think of another.’

  ‘Then think on this, Guaimar. Can I trust you?’

  ‘I hope you do not doubt it, sire.’

  ‘I always harbour such doubts. It is the price of the office I occupy. It is a lesson you should hold to if you truly wish to rule Salerno.’

  ‘I am always eager to learn from such as you, sire,’ Guaimar insisted.

  ‘You are a Lombard, young man,’ Conrad insisted. ‘Lying is in your blood, so there is little I can teach you, but have a
care when you lie to me. Now who is to carry this proposition of yours?’

  ‘I am willing to do so.’

  ‘The man may lop off your head.’

  ‘If he is so inclined, I will have failed. Given that, what do I have to live for?’

  ‘Don’t go throwing away your life, Guaimar. Not even Salerno is worth that.’

  ‘Not to you, sire. But it is to me.’

  ‘I wish to accompany you,’ Berengara insisted, not in the least deflected by her brother’s furious shake of the head. ‘You say it is dangerous, I believe my presence makes it less so.’

  ‘And if we both perish?’

  ‘Then it is God’s will and so be it.’

  ‘Berengara,’ Guaimar pleaded.

  ‘You took me to Bamberg for the same reason.’

  Argue as he might, Guaimar could not shift her, so it was a small party that included her which left Conrad’s camp, and made for a place where they could safely cross the River Volturno.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sentinels at the top of Rainulf Drengot’s tower again gave early warning of the approaching party. Even at some distance they could see this was a different kind of delegation to that which normally called on the encampment: one of the party was a highborn female and, closer to, the sight of the imperial banner held high by one of the armed, six-man escort made apparent the sense of something unusual.

  Riding through the rows of round huts, they were scrutinised by every woman in the camp; likewise the mercenaries lined the rail of the training manege to watch them pass. By the time they arrived at the ramp leading to the entrance to the donjon, Rainulf awaited them, his dogs snuffling about his lower legs, in the company of his trio of captains, which now included, since the defection of another senior mercenary to Pandulf, the recently elevated Drogo.

  It was obvious to both the youngsters that Rainulf had aged: what had once been a full face, albeit a high-coloured one, was now lined and there was the beginnings of a dewlap of flesh under the chin as well as large bags under the eyes. His hair was now more grey than black and thinner than the young man remembered, while his build seemed less solid. Where previously he had looked like a warrior to be feared he now had the appearance of an ageing man, whose watery eyes were staring, trying to make out who was approaching.