by Jack Ludlow
Robert pushed hard with both hands, feet splayed, at a stone block to check the strength of the mortar, satisfied that it did not yield. ‘Yet I hope she allows that I found her a good husband.’
Ademar was known throughout Apulia as the ‘Good Marquis’; a sturdy warrior, a captain careful with those he led, uxorious in regard to his wife and just as faithful to his liege lord in a world where the Guiscard’s vassals were endemic in complaint about anything they saw as a slight to their prerogatives, not least the need to pay him the assessments rightly levied on their lands. Too many were like Peter of Trani, now locked up in his own Corato dungeon, prepared to engage in outright insurrection rather than cough up their dues in either goods or gold. Ademar was the opposite: a steady fellow, content with that which he held and always quick to answer the call to aid his father-in-law and to put his possessions at his disposal.
The notion that Robert had found his daughter a good husband was risible; they had found each other in a genuine love match, the only curious actuality that her father had acceded to his illegitimate daughter marrying a man whose station at the time – no more than an ordinary lance – was scarce grand enough for the union. That had been rectified by the granting of his title and made more so by an extension of his present holdings around the old and at one time important Roman town of Licea, Lecce to its inhabitants, which having fallen into disrepair, Ademar was now reinvigorating as a regional centre.
‘So tell me about Bohemund and not what you have sent by letter.’
In dealing with the Guiscard, Ademar had realised many years before that he was not a man for idle gossip; if he posed a question, as he had now, there would be motives behind the enquiry that he would keep hidden. What was he asking and what was he after? Ademar’s first response was to be circumspect.
‘The word I would use to describe him best is “diligent”.’
‘A quality, certainly, but is it enough of one in the times in which we live?’
That rejoinder gave Ademar a clue; Duke Robert had many who would oppose him if they could, and not just fractious barons. There were enemies aplenty bordering his domains and even more troubling ones further off in Rome, Bamberg and Constantinople, as well as Saracens in Sicily and North Africa. He was probably seeking to find out what use his bastard son could be to him in such a situation; in short, was he as good a fighter as had been said, was he a leader and most importantly could he be trusted to be loyal to his sire?
‘He is much admired, even if he does not engage in debaucheries like his fellows. Out in the field he has, like you, an almost mystical ability to discern what cannot be seen beyond a hill, and when he hunts his eye for locating game is superb.’
Ademar had lost his wager the day they went hunting, but talk of forfeited skins of wine was not appropriate; he stuck to answering the question.
‘Men, often those in advanced years to his own, come to him for his views and he is the arbiter of right and wrong with those of his own age and younger. In the training manège your son is paramount, an opponent even his seniors seek to avoid having to contest with, for he is not gentle in mock combat. At the same time he is the first to raise up and praise those he has bested and it seems there is little resentment for the heavy blows and bruises he hands out.’
‘He sets an example, then?’
‘I would say so.’
‘You say he has followed my progress?’
‘He closely questions anyone who has ever fought with you. I think you would be astounded by the depth of his knowledge of both your victories as well as your setbacks.’
The thought of the latter clouded the Guiscard’s brow for a moment; he hated to think of anything other than victory. ‘There must be anger too?’
‘If there is, it is well concealed. Your son is the master of his emotions, not a slave to them.’
Robert stopped walking and looked Ademar right in the eye. ‘Even when it comes to my wife, the Lady Sichelgaita?’
Ademar took refuge by being ambiguous; he knew if Bohemund loathed anyone, it was a woman he saw as his own mother’s usurper, to the point of never referring to her by anything other than an insulting soubriquet, the ‘much-larded sow’ being his favourite.
‘I have never heard his opinion of her – it is not a name that he mentions.’
‘I am minded to relieve you of the duty of raising him and take him under my own wing.’
Ademar had the satisfaction that he had guessed right. ‘I can think of no place where your son would be happier, and as to raising him, Bohemund is now grown to manhood. Certainly there is bulk to come with added years but he needs no instruction in combat. Leadership, perhaps, but not how to fight.’
‘You never call him by his given name of Mark?’ the Guiscard asked, in an abrupt change of subject, as he began walking again, his shoulders hunched; the impression created was that he had been too open and revealed too much.
‘It is not one he would answer to, even with his sister. You gave him the name of the mythical giant when he was a child and he wears it with pride.’
‘He was a giant of an infant all right,’ Robert said, stopping to face Ademar with a smile of reminiscence. ‘Damn near killed Alberada bearing him. Too narrow in the hips, I think she feared to bear another like him.’
They had come full circle to a point above the kitchens and the great hall, from where they could see, now that the sun was near gone, the flickering fires that illuminated the main encampment which had been set up outside the walls, temporary home to the mass of Robert’s forces, each blaze under a spit of roasting meat, the smell of which permeated the whole atmosphere.
‘Then we shall talk, my son and I, but not yet, for my nose, as well as my grumbling belly, tells me it is time to eat.’
The great hall of the castle of Corato was neither grand nor overly spacious; this meant, given the number of knights needing to be fed in the presence of their lord, it was crammed. Added to that it was exceedingly noisy, rowdy voices echoing off the bare stone walls as men who felt sure their campaigning was over indulged in the copious supplies of the wine that had been hoarded to quench the thirst of the recently surrendered defenders. They would have consumed to excess anyway, but with no enemy to face the next dawn it was likely to end up with many rendered insensible.
At the high table, set on a dais to dominate the assembly and to his father’s left, sat Bohemund, his expression benign and uncritical of what was happening before him. He nursed his half-empty goblet and was quick to put a hand over it when a servitor came from behind ready to refill it from the heavy clay ampoule. Likewise his father was careful in his consumption, if not as abstemious as his son, aware that if he was surreptitiously watching Bohemund, then the examination was mutual.
In between responding to the shouts of his followers, the Duke was working out in his mind what to say to this paragon and he had come to a reasonably swift conclusion that to seek to employ subterfuge, to make excuses or to dissemble would not serve. The boy had no reason to trust him and that was what he required, along with blind loyalty, so he would tell him the truth and watch closely to gauge how he reacted.
Before that could happen, both were obliged to sit through the acclaim heaped upon the mighty Duke of Apulia for his warrior prowess, as his knights sang his praises in drunken orations, their words interspersed with shouted toasts from their companions, each of which had to be responded to. Bohemund observed how his father allowed his goblet to be filled time and again and, just as obviously to one sat close to him, poured the contents on to the flagstones at his feet before rising to drain what was a near-empty vessel in a show of excessive participation. Hours passed as the hall filled with the smoke from torches and their heat added to the crush of bodies, as well as the high night-time temperature, to leave the diners, even in light clothing stained with spilt wine, drenched in sweat.
Robert maintained his place, beaming and returning shouts, as some of his followers began to pass out, while others
voided their belly so they could keep drinking and eating. One or two had begun to slip away, the attraction of a waiting concubine greater than the desire to stay and partake of the feast, and still the Duke sat there in what was a deliberate attempt to break his son’s calm demeanour, to see him show even a hint of impatience. That he failed was half a cause for salutation, as much as being an irritant to a man who was known to have no fortitude in that area at all. Bohemund stood as soon as Robert did, underlining that he was waiting with some eagerness for what was to come.
The private chamber Robert had chosen was at the top of one of the corner towers, well away from prying ears, accessed by a trapdoor set in bare wooden boards, now closed, with balistraria on three sides and lit by tallow wads that smoked enough to hopefully keep at bay any biting insects. Peter of Trani’s bowmen had manned these arrow slots earlier in the day; now they allowed a welcome breeze to run through and over the simple cot on which the Duke would sleep, for the Guiscard was not a leader who craved luxury.
His first act was to abandon his blue and white surcoat, which bore his ducal coat of arms, then the sweat-stained cambric shirt, to leave him bare-chested, the first and most obvious thing his son observed being the number of red-to-blue weals and scars added to the dents of healed wounds that covered the flesh of his trunk. Then he went to stand by one of the balistraria, allowing the air to cool his body.
‘You may sit on my cot if you wish. I have no need for you to stand in my presence.’
Bohemund’s response was to half park his backside on the angled stones of an embrasure, his bulk completely blocking it, yet the crossed opening too allowed a draught of air to cool his back. Turning and observing where he sat his father frowned, as though he was witnessing an act of disobedience, then his face cleared and he waved his bile away. It was plain to Bohemund he was searching for a way to begin talking and when he did so it was several leagues away from the point the young man thought they must come to.
‘When I was your age I was still in Normandy.’
‘Driving my grandfather to chew his boots I have heard.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Your brother Roger related the tale of your upbringing to my sister. He says Tancred saw you as a sore trial.’
The Guiscard grinned at that. ‘Roger blathers too much, though what he says is true – my father and I never saw eye to eye.’
‘Roger has it that you were too much alike.’
‘Does that same blabbermouth tell you why I had to leave?’ Robert demanded, leaving his son to wonder at his irritation; was it Roger talking too much or memory? ‘Not that I was overly inclined to stay where I was scarce welcome and there was little chance of advancement.’
Bohemund did not reply, which made Robert curious, for the lad could hardly have failed to have heard that the leaving of Normandy had been forced upon him, nor could he be unaware of the dearth of opportunity that had brought his uncles south beforehand. Having been thinking of a way to approach Bohemund throughout the feast, his father now saw a route to entice him into a better understanding of his own life and actions, which might bind him to his cause.
How much of that family narrative did the boy really know, and was what he had heard accurate or part of the same embellishments shouted at him as Duke of Apulia in the great hall? If he had been at war with his father, Robert de Hauteville had not enjoyed one easy relationship with his numerous brothers, at home or in Italy, yet for all of the sibling disputes he was strong on family. Despite all their arguments, when danger threatened they hung together to avoid dangling apart, and to that, more than any other characteristic, could be ascribed their success.
Robert had faith in that as the means to keep secure and expand his possessions, but he was down to a single brother now: the others who had come to Italy had all passed over, while those who had stayed behind in Normandy showed no inclination to travel. In recent times the mixture of disputes and cooperation had been with the aforementioned Roger, the youngest in the family, and he had been leant on heavily when it came to fighting Byzantium, especially in Calabria. Now fully occupied in Sicily, he would only leave the island if the circumstances were so dire it was essential to protect their joint holdings and his line of communication.
‘Did you know your Uncle Serlo knifed a high-ranking vassal of Duke William at his castle of Falaise, when weapons and their use had been expressly forbidden within the walls?’
Bohemund did not respond, forcing his father to continue and leaving him to wonder at what he had previously heard. ‘To avoid the rope he had to flee for the deed and I was obliged to depart, sharing as I did his guilt by association, given I was with him when murder was done. Serlo went to England to fight with the Saxons, I came here to Italy and to a cold welcome.’
Robert laughed suddenly, filling the small chamber with the sound. ‘My brothers were not cheered by my arrival. I was seen as a nuisance and shoved off to lawless Calabria where my men and I were reduced to living off my stirrup leathers. It was not a happy or glorious time.’
He paused then, possibly expecting Bohemund to comment, but the young man continued to hold his tongue as his father’s mind filled with images of those years of struggle, of his crabbed half-brothers, never adding to his thoughts of them and the way he had been treated that he had been more than half at fault for his brash way of diminishing them – even William Iron Arm, the steady, shrewd genius who had first engineered the rise in the family fortunes, going from a mere mercenary lance to being called the Count of Apulia in a decade. William had been murdered, to be followed by the irrepressible Drogo, another brother destined to fall to an assassin’s blade, unarmed while exiting a church that he had endowed and had built in memory of his favourite saint.
Next came miserable Humphrey who had succeeded them to the title they had taken, aided by compliant Geoffrey, the oldest, yet content to be subordinate to whoever held the honour. Not fiery brother Mauger; he had been bred for contention and died wrapped in complaint for being passed over in favour of Humphrey, who had won for the family acknowledgement of a title they had taken upon themselves, being granted his gonfalon by a reigning pope.
On his deathbed and with ill grace but shrewd judgement, Humphrey ignored his own infant son Abelard and passed the leadership of the Apulian Normans, as well as his lands and titles, to Robert, the only man who could hold it. Finally Roger, the apple of Tancred’s eye, now Count of Sicily, had come south, to be alternately a thorn in his flesh as well as Robert’s right arm for years. Given everything the family held had been acquired, even as they squabbled in concert, right at that very moment, in the recollections of their joint endeavours, Robert felt alone.
‘You’re right to say my father and I were at loggerheads and it may be for the reason you say, though he was forever dribbling on about his exploits when in his cups, telling me about his campaigns against the Moors and the Saxons, though he seemed to spend most of my growing years in dispute with his most potent neighbour instead of finding positions that would ensure my brothers and I could raise ourselves.’
Which was necessary; Tancred had bred too many sons for the petty barony he owned: a few dozen fields worked by tenanted villeins, others for his horses and cattle, the lordship of Hauteville-le-Guichard, a small hamlet that lay beneath the manor house and wooden motte-and-bailey bastion into which all of his children had been born, that later turned into a stone tower paid for by those successful mercenary sons. He possessed the fishing rights on a stretch of the river as well as some salt pans on the rugged western coastline, and there was too the entitlement to appoint the parish priest, who was required also to tutor the family in Latin and numbers. Yet the whole added up to scarce enough to equip those sons with the weapons and mail they needed to call themselves knights.
‘There’s still scarce enough to feed the rest of the family who stayed behind, without I send them the means to maintain their inheritance.’
‘Emma insists our grandfather wa
s a good man, proud and upright, and she intends to name her firstborn son in his honour. She is, as you know, with child now and is sure God will grant her a boy.’
‘He was only upright when sober,’ Robert replied, seeking to avoid mention of an impending grandson, only to see what he intended as a jest not well taken. ‘Certainly he was proud and not beyond reminding his own suzerain of his failure to honour the commitments made by his dead brother. I was present when he did so and you would have wondered, to hear him, who was Duke of Normandy and who was Lord of Hauteville.’
It had been a stony confrontation, just before a battle in which Tancred had led William and Drogo into their first proper engagement. The Guiscard could not claim to be a cousin to the Duke, he being from Tancred’s second marital union, but William and Drogo, being born of an illegitimate sister to their suzerain, claimed that right. The promise referred to was to take them both into the ducal service as familia knights, from where they could hopefully rise to their own lands and titles by good and faithful service.
‘You’re named after Duke Robert, are you not?’
‘I am,’ the Guiscard hooted, ‘and when I write to his son, I address him as “cousin” at every chance that presents itself, which I hope he chokes on.’
There was an unspoken truth hanging in the air, with Robert looking keenly at Bohemund to see if he would make reference to it, the burning tallow in the sconce at his side throwing gruesome-looking shadows over his face; William of Normandy, now styled King of England, was also referred to, if not in earshot, as the Bastard of Falaise, having been born outside wedlock, yet he had inherited fully his father’s land and titles.