by Jack Ludlow
Cohesion in defence was paramount and the Byzantine levies could not maintain it. Once it failed they were doomed, and now they faced, in their disorder, a solid line of mounted warriors coming at them at a fast canter with lances ready to impale them. And if they did not know of William Iron Arm they saw him, a towering figure bawling instructions and slashing at heads with a huge sword.
When they broke, they did so completely. The same soon happened on the left flank, and that left those mighty and fearsome Varangians trying to attack a solid line of pikes. Even as they lopped the points off the defenders’ weapons, taking human heads next, they found Norman lances pressing in on both sides in a way, given they were committed to a frontal battle, that could only have one outcome. Brave as ever, they died where they stood, as those who had come with them to ancient Cannae fled the field.
William was near to dropping off his horse when he approached the titular commander of this victorious host, a man bound to be unhappy, not about the outcome, but by the way it had come about. It did not help that the entire army was yelling ‘Bras de Fer!’ in praise of the man to whom they accounted their victory.
Iron Arm gave him an old Roman salute, arm across his chest, and managed to imbue the words he used with significance. ‘Arduin of Fassano, you have avenged the blood of your father. It is time to take Barletta.’
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 confrère.
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.’