Conquest

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘The cost will be immense.’

  ‘I have gold but nowhere near enough.’

  ‘So you require me to provide more?’

  ‘At a proper rate of interest. My brother Robert has promised me land and titles, and the revenues of Calabria will be mine for a whole decade, so I know I can reimburse you whatever the cost.’

  ‘For a Norman you are acting in an unusual manner.’

  Roger’s response betrayed his impatience. ‘Can it be done?’

  Hands on his lap, the Jew sat silently, thinking, his eyes lowered and Roger waiting anxiously: this he could not do without help, money and lots of it, the only other source of that being Robert. But the price his brother would extract for such aid would be too high; he certainly would not give it for nothing, regardless of how sensible the notion, and Roger could not fault him for that. You did not get to be and stay a great magnate without certain abilities and habits of character, and extracting the best from any negotiation was as central to that as the ability to fight and win.

  Ephraim lifted his head and spoke in an even tone, surprising given what he had to say.

  ‘I have often found that in commerce a man must speculate, and sometimes profit must be put aside for a long-term aim. I said before I saw William in you, but it may be that you will surpass him in wisdom.’

  ‘A tall order,’ Roger replied.

  ‘I will support you and for mere repayment of that which I advance plus any interest I have to pay on borrowings.’

  ‘No interest on the principal, which has to be your own?’

  ‘My interest is long term. I think by aiding you I will prosper mightily in the future. Now, if you will be so kind, let us find a place on land where we can transact the finer points of that which you seek. I have a villa at Paestum, which is on the shoreline to the south. I will proceed there this very evening, and so shall you to meet on the morrow. Tell whoever sails your boat to question the fishermen as to where to land.’

  Not even an extremely wealthy Jew could transact that which Roger needed, but he had what the supplicant did not, good credit with other rich individuals: Kasa Ephraim could buy on the promise of future payment and on terms few people could command. It was not just flour and seed that was required: bread might be a staple but it needed to be supported by other commodities. Vegetables, fruit, cuttings for olives and vines and the stocks necessary to restart herds of livestock – goats in the main, for they were hardy – as well as the more delicate sheep and cattle.

  Roger had to locate a place to land all that had been purchased, then to find a means to distribute it to the best advantage. He chose a small landing stage at Cetaro, not far from the Guiscard’s fief at Fagnano, that one-time hilltop monastery now a formidable castle large enough to house the men Robert provided. That the news spread quickly of food to be had was unsurprising, but Roger did not want the starving to come to him, he wanted to go to them.

  That their lords shut their gates to a Norman host, even in the midst of famine, did not surprise him, but he had with him Lombards capable of building small ballista, not required to batter walls, but to fire the loaves of bread he had baked, always from a point at which the wind would carry the smell over the ramparts. To a garrison, already hungry, and to one pressed into resistance, it was a more telling military tactic than any battering ram applied to the gates.

  Just enough bread would be catapulted in to remind the defenders of what they were lacking, and when such men looked at those who commanded them to resist, most with full bellies, the will to support their overlords evaporated. The sensible, who realised their people would not fight for their title, opened their gates and sought forgiveness, readily granted provided payment was made for what had previously been withheld. Some did not, and such was the fear their people had of their revenge, the walls had to be stormed and those inside put to the sword, innocent and guilty alike, the news allowed to spread that this was the choice: surrender and you will live, eat and prosper, in time, with re-sown fields and fresh livestock, or resist and die, for no quarter would ever be given.

  The speed of re-conquest surprised even Roger: many lords came in to swear allegiance and hand over the contents of their coffers, or more often their plate, this so that the lands they owned could be returned to what they had been, while the man to whom they swore eternal peace and friendship was able to ship to the coast enough wealth to reimburse Kasa Ephraim for the credit he had provided.

  At every place taken Roger had a Mass said to thank God for blessing his purpose. Insisting on the Latin rite might have unsettled the laity – it infuriated the Greek clergy, but their protests were ignored, and, as if to show that what they preached was inferior, no sooner had the provinces been returned to fealty than the heavens formed heavy black clouds and the rains came to turn a land of brown grass and hillside forest fires back to fertility.

  Content, free of his obligations to the Jew, Roger sent back the lances Robert had provided, laden with plunder taken from those towns that had resisted. At the head of his own men, equally burdened, Roger collected Jordan and rode to his own fief of Montenero to find that even in the midst of famine they had continued to build, his subjects praising him to the skies for the food he had sent from the coast, one of his first acts on landing. The first two towers of his fortress, built from the stones of that ancient acropolis, were up and occupied, the blocks for the curtain walls and the other two towers being quarried nearby.

  With full bellies and great praise for their lord and master, the Mass that was said in a church now occupied by a priest from Normandy, obviously in Latin, was the sweetest of all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was still much to be done, several Byzantine strongholds to subdue, the most important being the main city of Reggio, but now Robert Guiscard was content to see Roger as his trusted lieutenant, who could be left in command while he saw to matters in his other fiefs, where rebellion, instigated and financed from Bari, was endemic. That the Apulian Greeks were unhappy to be ruled by Normans was only to be expected: they had enjoyed privileges under Byzantium denied to the other races in the Catapanate. The Italian indigenes consisted of tribes that could trace their origins back to the old Roman Empire and they were like any people: they hated whoever taxed them from wherever they originated. They had to be stirred to insurrection, a task readily undertaken by the priests of the Orthodox persuasion to which most of them belonged.

  The main problem was the Lombards, who had never shown much in the way of cohesion in the past, their leaders continually manoeuvring for personal advantage. There had been exceptions, paragons who had got them to act in concert, Melus, the father of Argyrus, being one. If he was a sainted figure to the notion of Lombard independence, he had one flaw for which they would never forgive him: it was Melus who had brought the Normans into Apulia as mercenaries to aid the revolt he led.

  Driven from power, they seemed more willing to combine and act in concert with the three other elements in Robert’s fiefs: the aforementioned Greeks and Italians, plus any Norman baron dissatisfied with the dispensations of his titular overlord. With the latter, the mere appearance of the Guiscard was enough to bring them to heel – they were rebellious only in his absence and easily mollified by small concessions. It was a question oft posed but one that lacked a clear answer: how was he to so engage the others in his rule as to stop these endemic uprisings, which kept dragging him away from Calabria. To take Bari was one answer, but one he was wise to shy away from, given it was near impregnable.

  ‘You should have married a Lombard,’ Roger said, ‘and produced sons.’

  ‘Alberada has given me a daughter and Bohemund. He is big enough to be a whole family. I think, one day, I may have to strain my neck to meet his eye.’

  ‘Which means he will always be seen as a Norman. With a Lombard mother you could have claimed to represent them and demanded they be loyal to your heir.’

  They were gazing at the walls of Cariati, a Byzantin
e stronghold outside of which he and Robert had been positioned for months. There was no point in discussing the tactics required to take the place: that as a subject was exhausted.

  ‘I should have wed a woman of greater girth in the hips, brother, who would have given me the same number of sons as my father.’

  Roger felt a slight reddening of the cheeks then – had he not thought on, as well as been amused by, the image of the two of them in congress? Apparently bearing Bohemund had nearly killed tiny Alberada, the boy a credit to his sire’s dimensions, not his mother’s. It was rumoured to have caused such damage as to render any chance of her bearing more children impossible, but that was a secondary consideration: it was again revolt which was troubling Robert. Trani, outside Bari the most Greek port city in his domains, had become the seat of Lombard-inspired rebellion. Robert was promising to cast down the walls and silt up the harbour.

  ‘Winter is coming, brother. If you were to ask my advice—’

  Robert growled. ‘That is always welcome, you know that.’

  That got him a jaundiced look: he did listen to Roger, but only after a long and tedious argument, though it had to be said dissension on tactics was rare – the Guiscard was a superb soldier whose only fault, apart from his being close-mouthed, was a degree of impatience, that, Roger suspected, brought on by the frustration of never having security at his back.

  ‘I think we should suspend our efforts to take this place and concentrate on just keeping the garrison bottled up. You know yourself it is unwise to keep men in siege lines too long. Let me rotate them in and out while you go back to Apulia, hang a few Lombards and perhaps give some comfort to your ailing wife.’

  ‘I doubt she’d welcome my comfort,’ Robert growled.

  Unbeknown to Roger, that casual remark of his, a joke about Robert needing a Lombard wife, was to have long-term consequences. Unbeknown to either brother, matters were moving elsewhere that would have a profound effect on the future.

  Cardinal Ascletin, always the self-centred fool, was doubly stupid not to realise that anything he got up to in Bamberg would quickly be known in Rome: a longtime opponent of imperial interference in papal elections, Ascletin did a complete volte-face when he actually met the child-emperor Henry. On the journey north he had reviewed his prospects of becoming pope. His family had invested huge amounts of Pierleoni money in getting him to his present eminence; had he not had a bishopric before he was aged twenty and his cardinal’s red hat soon after?

  The whole scheme had been designed to raise the family profile so that they stood in equal importance to the other great Roman aristocrats, cliques who schemed to get elected to the fabulously lucrative office of pontiff, by fair means, or more often foul, numerous members of their clan. This allowed them to distribute to their relatives the many wealthy benefices in the papal gift. Why could not the Pierleoni, or more pointedly he, do the same? Yet Ascletin reasoned, in a rare bout of self-criticism, that he might never see himself elected due to his own personal unpopularity, a situation naturally ascribed to things other than his own mendacious character.

  ‘As you know, sire, there are many voices raised in the Curia to question your rights in these matters.’

  ‘Hildebrand?’

  The ten-year-old spat that name, before looking to ensure he had the right of it, happy when he saw his counsellors nodding. Not yet of an age to command such men, older and wiser than he, Henry prided himself that once told of what to say, he had the ability to deliver it with proper imperial gravitas.

  ‘Hildebrand is indeed the loudest voice in condemnation of the imperial prerogative and the office he holds gives him great sway.’

  ‘Backed by the likes of the Abbot Desiderius.’

  ‘Unfortunately true, sire.’

  Even the most partisan supporter of imperial rights would have had to acknowledge it was unfortunate to name the abbot: when it came to personal probity and lack of ambition Desiderius was a paragon; the papacy, come an election, was his for the asking, no one would oppose him, but he had made it plain it was an office he neither wanted nor was it one he would accept.

  ‘And you, Cardinal Ascletin,’ Henry demanded, in his high and piping child’s voice, ‘where do you stand on my rights?’

  That was tricky: given his often very vocal objections to imperial interference, he was not seen in Bamberg as a friend, something in his introspections regarding his own future he had concluded must be reversed. His first reaction was to temporise.

  ‘It is, sire, as you know, a vexed question.’

  ‘Not to the heir of Charlemagne.’

  ‘Quite, but more of a problem stems from the way the leading families of Rome interfere in such matters.’

  That was a fine piece of sophistry: the Pierleoni, while not of the front rank, were a leading Roman family and had started a few riots in their time, bribing the scum of Rome to cause mayhem for family advantage. That they had not done so with the frequency or violence of their competitors, given to deposing elected popes and installing their own candidates, was not much of an excuse. Too many times this young fellow’s predecessors had been obliged to descend on Rome to restore order, often to depose a usurping pope and needing to rescue the true incumbent, besieged by some paid-for mob.

  ‘Do you have an answer to that?’

  Henry suddenly looked his age: having spoken without thinking he looked nervously again to those advisors to see if he had done right, not helped by the fact that they were split in their opinion, evident by their contrasting expressions. Some saw it as right to nail a difficulty, others were less convinced the bald illustration of a truth was the way to deal with such matters. Yet the reply was smooth: if Ascletin was a selfish man who allowed that trait to cloud his sense, he was also a polished politician.

  ‘It has often been mooted, sire, that an imperial force kept close to Rome would serve to keep the most troublesome elements of the slums in check.’

  ‘Not something any pope in my memory would countenance.’ The man who spoke, Robert of Lorraine and Count of Milan, maternal uncle to the emperor, was the most powerful imperial vassal present; certainly potent enough to speak without permission, though he observed the conventions. ‘Forgive me, sire, for speaking out, but popes in the past have seen that as even more excessive imperial interference.’

  Ascletin replied before the young Henry could. ‘Then it may require a pope to be elected who does not object to such a presence.’

  There are, in certain exchanges, times when words are superfluous and this was one. No one spoke to underline that which was evident in what Ascletin had said and in the steady gaze which accompanied it: that he was putting himself forward for such a role. Elected to the Holy See he would not object to an imperial garrison close to Rome. Henry might be young, but he was as quick as any to see the point.

  ‘Perhaps we may speak in private, Cardinal Ascletin, with my most intimate counsellors, and ponder on the whole problem.’

  Robert de Hauteville and Alberada were generally comfortable in each other’s company, it could even be said they were friends, despite their often barbed public banter. What was rare was for Robert to talk with her on matters pertaining to his title and it was clear, in the way he was doing so, he was moving towards some telling point which made him uncomfortable, so much so that he was being irascible with Bohemund – unusual since he doted on the boy – who was busily crawling around upsetting whatever he could.

  ‘Damn the child,’ he barked, as the toddler dragged a cloth from a table, taking with it a fruit bowl and a pewter jug half full of wine. ‘Get his nurse in here, I am trying to talk with you.’

  Alberada raised her head from her embroidery. ‘Singular in itself, husband; I am more accustomed to your shouting.’

  There was truth in that, for he was given to bellowing, indeed to have Robert in her private apartment when it was daylight outside, was abnormal: he was a nocturnal visitor and one, though she would never admit it, she had come to dread. T
he child crawling around was a delight and a true rascal, but had been far from that on arrival. Physical relations with Robert might produce another child of the same size and she was sure such a thing would kill her.

  She called for the nurse and observed the way she picked the boy up, straining to do so: at only a year and a half he was the size of a four-year-old and strong in his resistance. Once alone, her husband recommenced his grousing, now damning Lombards as the most fractious of his subjects, then cursing a string of lesser Norman barons who took Argyrus’s gold, men who would be eating their harness if it were not for his generosity. Alberada was only half listening, that was until he alluded to the fact they were second cousins. The way he did so obliged her to concentrate, as she began to see the drift of his remarks.

  ‘The consanguinity troubles you, husband?’

  ‘Of course it troubles me, woman. It could be seen as impious, given it falls within the prohibited degree. I wonder if I am cursed because of it.’

  ‘Not a thing that has hitherto raised any concern.’

  That was sharply delivered and recalled the way they had come to be married. Robert de Hauteville was not one to woo a potential bride: instead, having decided the time had come that he should have one, he had browbeaten her nephew, Girard, into acquiescence. She was indeed a second cousin to the de Hautevilles through Tancred’s second wife, while her nephew was a mercenary who had been granted his title and fief by William Iron Arm, to whom he had been a faithful captain.

  It was Drogo who had arranged the nuptials, seeking to both endow his brother and calm his unruly behaviour by marriage. Wealthy Girard of Buonalbergo had been left in no doubt that if he wanted to keep his fief he had best surrender his aunt – nephew Girard was older and her guardian, such was the confusion of generations – this, of course, accompanied by a demand for the proper dowry. In short, it had been a marriage for money, not affection and, as was common, having been accepted by both parties as such, they had set about making the best they could of the arrangement.