by Jack Ludlow
The Byzantine giant had pulled his entire force out of the lines at Syracuse in a brilliant piece of organisation and had them in place without his enemy having the faintest idea of what he was about to face, and had done so at such speed that the Syracusans were left confused. Abdullah expected to surprise the Byzantine Army; instead it would be he that would get the shock.
He smiled as his brother approached, wondering what Drogo had in hands hidden behind his back, though there was a long wooden shaft extending above his head. ‘I brought you a present.’
‘What?’
Drogo produced his surprise like a conjuror, and as he unfurled it, William was stunned.
‘A proper banner, brother, not a pennant, this time.’ Large and rectangular, and made of silk, William fingered the blue and white banner, edged with the de Hauteville chequer, as Drogo added, ‘For the glory of our family, Gill.’
William stepped forward and embraced him. On another occasion the men who observed this might have cheered; not now, they were too clever to let Abdullah know they were close. The time had come for prayer, and with no priests of the Latin rite with a Byzantine army, William led the devotions, kneeling under Drogo’s banner, his heart swelling to think what his father would say to see this.
‘God bless our arms and those of the men alongside whom we fight. Let the power of your Church smite that of Islam, and take into your merciful bosom any man who falls in your cause this day.’
With that he kissed his sword, then stood and, taking the edge of Drogo’s banner, kissed that too.
The battle happened exactly as George Maniakes had predicted. Abdullah marched on, oblivious not only to the Norman presence, but equally to the fact that behind some low hills ahead of him the entire Byzantine force was drawn up to engage. As his leading files crested the rise and saw their enemy they halted in confusion, which was compounded when William Iron Arm led his Norman cavalry out to block the rear on perfect terrain for what they were the best at.
Abdullah was no fool: he stood his ground for some time and organised his forces to press home an attack towards Syracuse, ignoring the now stationary Normans lined up across the plain. Finally trumpets blew and Abdullah and his men charged off their hill towards the line of foot soldiers, this at the same time as William dipped his banner and began to move forward his convoys, lances half lowered.
They could not see, because of the hill before them, the way George Maniakes merely moved his unreliable levies right and left to form two horns of a trap, then brought forward the Varangians to fill the centre. They were in place by the time William crested the rise, but not yet engaged. That was when the Normans spurred their mounts into that deadly canter, driving before them the Saracen soldiers on to swinging axes that took off limbs and heads, and soaked the ground before the Varangian line in a deep pool of blood too great for the ground to absorb.
Those at the rear expired from Norman lances as well as swords and soon, as the horns closed in from left and right, it was an army utterly destroyed, a stunning and complete victory. There was no time to celebrate. Once the dead had been stripped and the baggage train plundered Maniakes was off at the head of his troops, to get them back to besieging Syracuse, the swiftest of them, the Normans, right on his heels.
Syracuse surrendered because the spirit of the Saracens was broken, not because of battle or starvation. The Sicilian inhabitants went wild when the gates were opened, as though they had not fought alongside their lords and masters, treating George Maniakes as a liberator rather than a conqueror, and from that stemmed all the trouble that followed, for he accepted the accolade of the mob as his due. The locals were less impressed when he immediately stripped out the religious relics they had kept hidden for decades, the bones of saints, and sent them off to Constantinople.
The general took over the palace of the emir, shipped all the remaining Saracens off to slavery, and then engaged in a raft of ceremonies which rededicated the churches of Syracuse back from being mosques to the Christian faith. The other thing he did was to bar from entry, into the city, his Norman and Varangian troops, yet he could not keep their leaders, who stood before him now in angry conclave.
‘Recompense?’
‘We have been denied our right to plunder,’ said William.
The giant stood up and glared at him. ‘You would treat Syracuse as a city like any other?’
‘I would, and you should treat Syracuse as we treated Messina and Rometta.’
‘They are not the same, you know that! This was once our capital, the churches our churches, this palace the home of the Sicilian Catapan.’
‘No we do not,’ insisted Harald Hardrada. ‘You have decided that we must respect Syracuse, no one else.’
‘And since I command,’ Maniakes growled, ‘respect it you will.’
‘Then pay us some of the gold you found in the vaults.’
‘That belongs to the emperor, not to me, not to you.’
‘Then I am forced to ask what you expect us to do,’ William snapped. ‘Some of my men died to take this place…’
‘Very few.’
That set Drogo off. ‘You are generous with Norman blood.’
‘I am generous with the blood of anyone my emperor employs. You are well paid, remember, and you got to plunder Abdullah’s baggage.’
‘General Maniakes,’ William insisted. ‘You must make a gesture to my men and the Varangians too.’
‘Must, must!’ Maniakes yelled coming close to tower over William, his spittle flying. ‘Who in hell’s name do you think you are addressing? No one tells me must.’
‘Pay them some gold, keep them loyal.’
‘No.’
Was it victory that had made him like this, William wondered, or the way the mob had kissed his feet and praised him as an angel sent from heaven to rescue them from the Infidel? It made no odds, Maniakes had changed, his head was swollen and instead of seeking advice he was denying the men who had won his prize what they were due.
‘Then, I regret to tell you, general, that neither I or my men will continue to serve Byzantium.’
‘There are other places,’ Maniakes replied.
‘Which you also may decide we cannot plunder. The Syracusans who so laud you fought you first. They stood on the wall while I engaged in single combat with Rashid and cheered him on to kill me. They were offered terms and refused, slamming their gates in your face, so they deserve everything which comes to a city that refuses terms from a conqueror. These are the laws of warfare and you choose to flout them for a few flower petals strewn in your path.’
George Maniakes just shrugged and went back to his chair, sitting down and staring on the papers before him. ‘This discussion is closed. Tomorrow we will begin the march back to Rometta, then on to Palermo. Perhaps there you can fill your boots.’
‘No!’ That made the general look up sharply at William, his broad, flat nose twitching angrily and his flat forehead creased. ‘We will not march to Rometta, but to Messina and take ship for Italy. I am obliged to remind you of your obligation to see us shipped back to the mainland and provisioned till we reach Salerno.’
Drogo was looking hard at his brother; was he bluffing?
‘And I,’ said Harald Hardrada, ‘will take my men back to Constantinople.’
That made the giant’s head jerk. ‘You serve the emperor!’
‘At the behest of the Prince of Kiev Rus. It is to him I owe my loyalty.’
The four men looked at each other in angry silence for half a minute, a long time in which no one even blinked. Finally Maniakes spoke, bowing his head to the work on his desk. ‘So be it. Now that I have Syracuse, and the forces I can muster locally, I doubt I need either of you.’
William suspected George Maniakes was bluffing, and he also suspected the general thought he and Hardrada were doing the same, but neither got to find out; the way he had nearly throttled Admiral Stephen and the words he had used regarding the imperial house came back to bite him. A messag
e arrived relieving him of command and ordering him to return to Constantinople. That news caught up with the Normans between Syracuse and Messina, and added to it was the name of the new commander, a eunuch none of them had ever heard of, though it was soon established his appointment came through court intrigue, not military skill; it seemed he had never fought a battle.
Naturally, as their leader, William put it to the men, but the air in Sicily had begun to stink of impending failure. Only the personal magnetism of George Maniakes had held tight a disparate army and that had been destroyed by his refusal to treat Syracuse as a conquered city. Few of the Apulian and Calabrian levies had fought with great will, neither had the Bulgars, and if they lacked a strong general would fight with even less, while Sicilian troops now being conscripted into the imperial army had not saved the Saracens.
They would achieve nothing without mercenaries and they would not fight for paltry rewards. It was time to return to that place from which they had come.
It was a weary force that rode into Rainulf Drengot’s encampment a month later, to be greeted by women who had aged at the same pace as their bastards, some of whom, Drogo’s included, had formed liaisons with the knights who had stayed behind, which promised much trouble. But there was recompense: they were greeted by three of their brothers, Humphrey, Geoffrey and Mauger. Matters had become more settled in the Contentin: a revolt by local barons had been crushed, so they were, at last, able to come south.
They brought news of home, of Tancred who had steered clear of that upheaval, fit and well, but still verbally embroiled with his more powerful neighbours in various disputes; of their cousin of Montbray, who had used his clever brain to become a power at the ducal court, which protected the family from interference more effectively than their father’s squabbles. Other brothers had grown to manhood and fired with the tales of William and Drogo’s exploits were also planning to join them.
And, of course, they had to report to their leader; meeting Rainulf Drengot was like meeting a stranger. He was sober, and none of the personal warmth he had shown William in the past was present. That which was present boded ill: an infant son on whom Rainulf clearly doted, and one he was quite open in crowing over as his heir; he even named the child as the future Count Richard of Aversa. If he noticed the stony face with which William responded to this it did not show, and it made no difference that his pleas to the Pope to annul his previous marriage had fallen on deaf ears.
‘He’s going to cheat you, Gill,’ said Drogo, when they were alone again. ‘He named you at Capua, and we were all there as witness. Challenge Rainulf, force him to keep to his word.’
‘If I challenge him, I must force the men to decide between us and not all of them will follow us, you know that. We could end up fighting each other.’
‘Are we to bow the knee to another bastard, as we would have had to do in Normandy?’
‘I need to think.’
‘There are five of us now,’ Drogo insisted, ‘and maybe more to come if our brothers speak true. When you are thinking, think on that.’
‘Leave me in peace, Drogo,’ William growled, ‘go and take your resentments out on your woman.’
‘What will you do?’
‘The only thing I can right now. I will go and see Prince Guaimar.’
EPILOGUE
Guaimar had grown in stature, though he physically looked much the same — too young for his title, but he was now a man, and one at ease in his own station, which had not been the case previously. His sister was even more self-possessed, if that was possible, and certainly was now a fully mature woman of great beauty, though she still had about her an air of malice. Perhaps both impressions were underscored by the place in which William de Hauteville was given audience, the forbidding Castello de Arechi, which might be the princely home, but was a citadel that had an air of something disquieting in its ancient stones.
The Prince wanted to talk about Pandulf, imprisoned in Constantinople; of Montecassino, in peace and prosperity under a new abbot, Theodore having gone to meet his maker; this while he resolutely deflected any conversation of that which his visitor had come to discuss. Indeed, when William alluded to it directly, the Prince of Salerno abruptly changed the subject, demanding to be given chapter and verse of what had happened in Sicily.
‘You will be pleased to hear,’ Guaimar said, when he had finished, ‘that George Maniakes has also paid a heavy price for his folly. As soon as his ship docked he was bound in chains and thrown into the deepest dungeon. Perhaps he is neighbour to the Wolf.’
‘He was a good commander, and much respected, until he took Syracuse.’
‘He betrayed you,’ Berengara said, almost with pleasure.
William knew she was right, but he had no desire to give her the satisfaction of agreeing. ‘I like to think he had a higher loyalty, one perhaps I did not understand.’
‘It comes as no surprise that a Norman lacks understanding there!’
‘He had, however,’ Guaimar cut in, giving his sister a hard look, ‘done us a service.’
‘Which is?’
‘The levies Maniakes took to Sicily did not go willingly and so he left behind a discontented province. Revolt broke out last year in Apulia, and if that has been dampened the countryside is, I am told, still afire with dreams of freedom, of throwing off the yoke of Constantinople completely.’
‘Not a new idea, Prince Guaimar.’
‘No,’ responded Guaimar, his face alight with anticipation. ‘But now that you have returned, we have at our disposal a potent force which might just make the difference. Arduin, who fought alongside you in Sicily, has been asked by the new Byzantine Catapan to take command of the fortress at Melfi.’
William knew Arduin well and esteemed him; a Lombard, he had been one of the few commanders to get anything approaching a fighting spirit out of Maniakes’ conscripted Apulian levies.
‘Unknown to the Catapan,’ Guaimar continued, ‘he is a Lombard first and holds any loyalty to Byzantium second, and has offered to hand it over to the forces of revolt. He who holds Melfi possesses a key that could unlock the whole of the Byzantine possessions. I can show you on a map…’
William shook his head, which stopped Guaimar from moving. He knew Melfi and had avoided it many times when previously raiding in that region. High in the Apennines it was near impregnable and commanded the route from Campania into Apulia. It would provide a base from which operations could be mounted, while also affording a safe haven into which to retire should too great an opposing force appear. Had he been eager for the challenge, the prospect of possessing such a formidable stronghold and the advantages it provided would have excited him; the trouble was, he was not.
This prince had altered since their first meeting: before he had come across as honest but naive, but there was now an undercurrent in his words, simply because they were formed of calculation. It did not, of course, take any great wit to follow his thoughts. The dream of kicking Byzantium out of South Italy had a long history, had been tried and been soundly beaten, even with the aid of a strong Norman contingent. Guaimar was raising that tempting spectre and dangling it before William as another way to avoid talking about the subject he had come to thrash out.
The two would naturally connect for Guaimar; he could divert these battle-hardened Normans to ferment revolt in Apulia, which would relieve him of their presence and might just bring in its wake, for little cost, great rewards in a part of the world where they could legitimately live off the land; in other words, plunder. And with this de Hauteville fully engaged, the question of the succession could be safely left in the air.
If he was annoyed, William knew Guaimar was merely acting as a prince should: looking to his own interests. Rainulf kept him in power, protected him from his own subjects, and was of an age at which going off on campaign would be a hardship. He had a bastard son who might or might not come into his title; it was an inheritance Guaimar could block with ease, indeed it would be he who would b
e ensuring that no papal dispensation came for annulment, so he could keep the old Norman leader in his purse.
The man before him was of a different stamp: in his prime, a hero hailed as Iron Arm by those he had led and perhaps a fellow harder to control as a vassal. Yet, if he did not commit himself Guaimar could just as easily dangle before William the prospect of that same succession for as long as Rainulf lived.
William was trying to work out what to do on the same basis; he was head of his family and they looked to him to make their way, that made even more pressing by the arrival of three more brothers. His father had been betrayed in Normandy and this prince, who had embraced William at Capua and had acceded in the impression that he should succeed to Rainulf’s title, was very capable of doing the same.
Yet what he had said to Drogo was nothing but the plain truth. What made the Normans formidable was not just their military prowess but also their cohesion. To force a decision on the succession now would certainly fragment that, and it was possible that Guaimar would welcome such dissension; he might need his Normans, but he did not love them any more than his more forthright sister. William, just as much as Rainulf, lacked the means to force this prince to decide; all the advantage for Guaimar lay in the opposite!
If he led the Normans into Apulia and succeeded where previous invaders had failed, was he really prepared to hand it all over to Guaimar, who he suspected would do little to aid him? He might dream of a Lombard kingdom in South Italy ruled from Salerno, but if it was to come to pass it could only do so with Norman assistance.
Many strands of thought were running through William’s mind at that moment but the paramount one was simple: from this moment on he must look to his own future and to that of his family, must look to take what would be his due, not wait to be gifted it by any other power. Never again would he leave himself or the de Hauteville name at the mercy of any prince or duke.
He would go to Melfi, take over the fortress, aid Arduin and nourish Guaimar’s dreams. But like this prince, when the time came, he would look to his own interests and to those of his brothers. One day, he swore silently to God, just as he smiled at Guaimar in the way he had once smiled at Duke Robert of Normandy, this Prince of Salerno would acknowledge the blue and white banner of his house. And that sister, Berengara, so arrogant and spiteful to his Norman blood? Perhaps one day she would be made to bow and scrape to please him.