by Jack Ludlow
‘Perhaps if Girard had not been so wealthy this concern would have surfaced sooner.’
Slightly embarrassed, Robert took refuge in loud bluster. ‘It has come to me now!’
‘Why?’
His wife found herself now looking into a face suffused with anxiety, which she suspected was false. ‘Such a marriage risks our souls, Alberada. We could pay in the fires of hell for what we have done here on earth, do you not realise that?’
She did not look up, lest, in her eyes, Robert observed she knew his claim to piety to be a convenience: it always was with the race to which she belonged; this she knew, being the daughter of a Norman knight. Her father had been no exception and neither was the nephew who had given her away: Norman men would invoke God to suit their purpose and forget his existence for the same reason. Certainly her husband attended Mass daily and confessed, but he was not truly constrained by the tenets of Christ, he was driven by the need to succeed as a warrior, the craving to extend his power and the necessity of being seen in the eyes of his men as a great leader.
Robert stood up suddenly. ‘I must tell you again it troubles me greatly and I must think upon it.’
‘If there is a special part of hell for apostates and double-dealers then surely Ascletin will end up there.’
‘You cannot be sure what you are being told is true, Hildebrand.’
The deacon looked at Pope Victor as though he had lost his senses, wondering why it was that feeble men seemed to fill the office more than those of purpose. The truth was, of course, that strong candidates to the papacy tended to have powerful enemies. God knew, even if he had never aimed for elevation himself, he had enough of them: priests, bishops, cardinals and the aristocrats of Rome, to name just a few. He doubted the child-emperor Henry would accept that he had the utmost respect for the office he held. Hildebrand just could not agree that the election of a pontiff was anybody’s business but that of those ordained in the faith: the laity, however powerful, had no business to interfere.
‘Hildebrand is right, Your Holiness, I’m afraid,’ said Desiderius, the other advisor present. ‘Ascletin can only have reversed his position for his own ambition. If it is a sin to be that way, it is not one in which he is alone in transgressing.’
The abbot said that in his habitual calm manner – he being a man who rarely, if ever, raised his voice – which also irritated Hildebrand, who was as likely to be short with the saintly as with the ineffectual, and that was made doubly so by the way Desiderius smiled at him, able to see his mood and be amused by it.
‘You can stop grinning like some gargoyle,’ he snapped.
That produced a laugh, which was not likely to lighten Hildebrand’s mood, given he had just used the soubriquet by which he was known to those who hated him and, it had to be said, by some who esteemed his sagacity. Squat, ugly and beetle-browed, his face too often reflected his passions which, given it was not of surpassing comeliness, only served to underline his lack of physical beauty.
Pope Victor spoke again. ‘The question is this. Will Ascletin contrive to succeed me, and if he does, will he be a tool of the emperor or a true son of the Church and hold to his commitment to end imperial interference?’
It was unbecoming to shout at a pope, even more so to ask him if he was a fool, but Hildebrand was not constrained by that. If Ascletin was to be elected because of imperial support then there must be a price to pay and that would rebound to the detriment of Holy Church. This tirade led not only to a moody silence and, on Victor’s part, to his own questioning whether he should seek the advice of others, but also a deep desire to change the subject.
This led to a discussion of the bitter exchanges between Rome and Constantinople over the various bones of contention: celibacy of the clergy, areas of doctrine relating to the Holy Ghost and, not least, the way the Normans in Apulia and Calabria were still inducing the local populations away from their adherence to the Orthodox creed by insisting Masses be said in the Latin rite.
‘To be ignored, Your Holiness,’ Hildebrand insisted. ‘Let the patriarch do as Rome instructs. He ranks as an archbishop and no more. We have disputed with Constantinople many times in the past and I daresay this, like other disagreements, will be resolved by acquiescence.’
‘It may be unpleasant to consider,’ said Desiderius, ‘but consider it we must. What can Ascletin have promised Henry and his council that would gain him imperial support?’
Pope Victor’s face registered his discomfort at being brought back to that which he wished to avoid. There was selfishness in this: much as he cared for the future of the Church, what these two close advisors wanted to discuss would only happen after he had gone to meet the Almighty. It was a matter on which he could have no influence, so he changed the subject again.
‘I have had a communication from the Count of Apulia, asking if he can be granted an annulment of his marriage to Alberada of Buonalbergo on the grounds of consanguinity.’
The Pope was greeted with silence then, this being a situation where morality and doctrine tended to clash with the more temporal needs of the Church, and such matters required careful consideration before any answer could be given, even a verbal opinion, which was hardly binding.
‘To what purpose?’ asked Hildebrand finally.
‘He does not say.’
‘What does he say?’
‘That they are cousins,’ Victor replied, ‘that they fall within the prohibited degree of consanguinity and that he feels their union is impious.’
‘Something,’ Desiderius ventured, ‘it might have been proper to consider before their nuptials and the birth of his two children.’
That remark left the trio deep in thought. An annulment was not out of the question, especially where the rules for such things had been breeched, as in this case they clearly had, but if doctrine impinged, politics had a greater influence. Robert Guiscard would pay handsomely for such a service and he, being powerful was a man it would be unwise to gainsay. He might be a vassal of Rome but he was, in truth, too mighty a warrior to pay any attention to strictures from his nominal suzerain; he was more likely, if rebuffed, to send his lances raiding into the Papal States and, if angered enough, he might appear at the gates of the Holy City itself.
‘It is for you to decide, Your Holiness.’
Hildebrand gave Pope Victor a direct look that implied, in no uncertain terms, he wanted no part of such a judgement. A look at the Abbot of Monte Cassino produced no enlightenment either; if the poor pontiff had been uncomfortable discussing Ascletin and his manoeuvres, he had changed the subject to one which was even more troubling. Truly, he was thinking, being pope was nothing but a sea of troubles.
Nothing blighted the papacy as much as the fact that a man coming to the office of pontiff was rarely in the first flush of youth, in a world where death was relentless in the way it stalked mankind. Reform of the kind Hildebrand favoured had been proposed before and it was not always a combination of political forces that stymied it. Just as often it was mortality, a fact which kept alive the hopes of the powerful Roman families: they might be out of power but God – or was it the Devil? – had a way of altering matters to their advantage.
Pope Victor was ill, something he had managed to hide from his two closest advisors, a lingering sickness of the kind that allowed him to carry out the functions of his office if not too taxed. One of the acts he continually put off was to write the papal bull granting the Guiscard his annulment. It would never do for a pope to be seen to be indulging in haste: if God was eternal so was the pace of pontifical decision-making. In keeping his infirmity a secret he sought only to make life easy for himself: that he created more trouble for those he held in high esteem was inadvertent. He died while the most powerful members of the Curia who supported him, Hildebrand included, were out of Rome.
Well versed in the intricacies of Roman politics, Ascletin, newly returned from Bamberg, moved quickly, making alliances where none had previously existed by promising
to share the spoils of his office with those families who might oppose him. They, knowing speed was of the essence and unable to impose their own candidate – matters had to be concluded before the likes of Hildebrand appeared back on the Vatican Hill – agreed to his elevation: within days of Victor’s death, Ascletin was proclaimed as Pope Benedict the Tenth.
Those who had voted against the new pope hurriedly left Rome, for if Ascletin was a bonehead he was popular with the mob he bribed with low-value coinage, meaning their persons were not safe. They travelled north to meet Hildebrand and their gathering was grim; in times past the only hope of redress was an appeal to the Holy Roman Emperor. That the present incumbent was a child mattered less than the power of the office.
Yet that was unpalatable for the very simple reason it once more abrogated to the reigning emperor the right to confirm a pope or deny him his elevation; yet again the papacy was caught between the empire and the corrupt Roman families, and to side with one or the other was to set back the process of reform by decades. Hildebrand would have none of it: first they must elect a true pope, and then seek the means to depose the man they considered false.
With much ceremony the Bishop of Florence was elected as Nicholas the Second. To deal with the antipope there was one other force to whom they could appeal, and one the newly elected Ascletin was known to hate and was determined to crush – the Normans. If the assembled divines were fearful of the consequences of such an act, they were more fearful of Hildebrand, the man on whom Nicholas depended and who forced the measure through, finally persuaded that, if needs required it, he must sup with the Norman devil.
Abbot Desiderius was tasked to sound out Richard of Capua. He saw, as quickly as would any other Norman baron, yet another step in the long march towards legitimacy in this part of the world was being taken. He immediately marched north with three hundred of his best knights, forcing Ascletin to flee. Pursued to the walled town of Galeria, he was besieged there, able to watch from its battlements the nature of those he had wanted to destroy.
All the devastation came from these Normans: Richard was unrestrained in the way he let his knights ravage the countryside around Galeria– growing crops were burnt, as was the next season’s seed, vines and olive trees cut down, with any peasant who sought to stop this despoliation hanged from what trees were left standing. Yet Galeria resisted and beat off many attacks on its walls until starvation forced them to surrender. Ascletin was publicly unfrocked, then dragged back to Rome where he was shut away in the crypt of a church, never again to see the light of day.
If the mobs of Rome were sullen when Nicholas arrived to take up his duties, they were not stupid: they rarely saw Normans this far north in numbers but they knew their reputation, while the aristocrats of Rome were left in no doubt by Richard of Capua that if they acted against the new dispensation, they would pay with their own blood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘You would make our children bastards, Robert?’
Alberada’s voice was low and bitter. In her lap she had the reply from Rome, granting her husband that which he had requested, a papal bull annulling their union, one of the first acts committed by the new Pope Nicholas on the advice of Hildebrand, who saw, like Desiderius, that a counterbalance was needed against Richard of Capua.
‘There is no answer to this, is there?’
He could not look at her. ‘It is final.’
‘Your son will want for an inheritance.’
That stung enough to make Robert turn round and glare. ‘Do you think I would abandon Bohemund? I do this so he will have more, not less.’
Alberada had known this might be coming, even if she had not been asked to agree: you could not send such a communication to Rome without word of its contents leaking out and that had induced mixed feelings. If she had hated Robert it would have come as a blessing, her children’s future apart. Did she esteem him enough to fight for her place? Over the months in which it had taken the Pope to decide, Alberada had thought not, and while she was saddened by the way this had come about, she was of Norman blood and knew the reasons why: if her marriage had not been dynastic, this manoeuvre of her husband’s was wholly so.
‘You will be free to marry again, woman.’
That protestation almost implied she was being unreasonable, that she was failing to see the needs of his title. Never discussed with her, that too was no secret: Robert was not content with what he now held, nor was he happy with the need to continually put down rebellion. He wanted to extend his domains and for that he needed an army drawn from the entire population of Apulia, and given the Lombards were the most fractious, the obvious answer was an alliance which would allow him to demand their loyalty.
‘Who is to be my unfortunate replacement?’
‘Unfortunate!’ he bellowed.
That engendered a mischievous smile. ‘It pleases me that I can still make you angry.’
The response to that was gentle. ‘Alberada, it is not dislike that prompts this.’
‘No, but I would like to know who it is to be.’
‘I have decided on Sichelgaita of Salerno. No Lombard family has a lineage to match hers.’
‘Never!’
Stomping around his council chamber, Gisulf of Salerno was near to foaming at the mouth. The notion that his sister should wed Robert Guiscard had sent him into a frenzy: if he hated Normans, Richard of Capua most of all, Robert de Hauteville came a close second. Yet he dared not look into the faces of those who were gathered to advise him, for in their eyes he would have seen that they thought he had no choice. To refuse was to threaten his very existence: that they did not speak said more about the capricious nature of their prince than it did about their intelligence.
Under pressure from the Normans for years, there had been a small flicker of hope that Gisulf’s fortunes might improve during the brief papal tenure of Ascletin. They had engaged in correspondence about ways to rid Italy of what both saw as a plague. That had gone into reverse with the election of Nicholas – things were even worse now that his greatest enemy had become the main support of the new pontiff.
Kasa Ephraim rarely spoke at such gatherings, preferring to give his advice in private, a privilege he was granted on a regular basis given he had discreet business to transact. Part of his task as controller of the port was the management of smuggling and, being a pragmatic fellow who knew it could not be stopped, he sought to keep it in check and profit from it. He allowed himself to be bribed by those seeking to avoid the mandatory custom dues, threw to the mob those who sought to cheat him and through this provided for Gisulf, as he had for his late father, a source of secret revenue that never showed up in the tally books of the official treasurer.
Neither parent or successor had ever discovered how much the Jew made from the arrangement, but that which he provided was sufficient to endow them with that most necessary thing for a ruler, secret funds he could use for his own purposes: private reward for those close to him, the ability to pay spies to report on those he doubted he could trust, both Lombard and Norman. Given such sources, surely he must have had wind of the coming of this proposal, or was he wasting his monies on nothing but secret pleasure?
‘Sire,’ Ephraim said. ‘You must see there is advantage in accepting this application and much danger in refusal.’
That got him a suspicious look: the Jew transacted business with the Normans, indeed he had done so before the arrival of William de Hauteville: if it was not common knowledge that he had aided Roger in the Calabrian famine it was suspected. For all that, Ephraim had a sound reputation: he might transact business for many but he held to his bond with each. What was told to him by those he dealt with in secret stayed locked in his bosom and any advice he gave was likewise held in trust.
As a man engaged in trade, in a febrile world where the fortunes of any ruler could change overnight, and likewise that of any merchant, knowledge was the key to both security and success. The Jew, through his many contacts and business dea
lings, knew more than most, indeed had knowledge of what was happening outside the confines of the part of the world in which he lived. His confrères, thanks to the great diaspora, resided in many places and they, like he, were eager correspondents.
‘Is there advantage for you?’ Gisulf demanded.
‘Have no doubt, sire, when I offer you a view it is your interests I hold close and those of Salerno, which is my home. A marital alliance with the Count of Apulia will deal a blow to the increased influence of Capua.’
‘There is no guarantee of that.’
‘There will be if you make it a condition of the marriage.’
Gisulf’s father would have needed no telling, but then Guaimar would never have allowed Salerno to sink so low that protection would be needed. If he had been a far-from-perfect prince he had at least always seen ways to protect himself, never falling in to the trap of trusting anyone with the future of his patrimony. He had played Rainulf off against William de Hauteville; here was a chance to do the same with the successors to those two Normans.
Aware he was being eyed by the other courtiers with some mistrust, and not least by Gisulf himself, he was tempted to tell them of his motives. At the centre of the Jew’s concerns lay the security of himself and his family, and if that was common then few faced so many threats as those of his race. He had been loyal to Salerno in the past and would continue to be so: he would not betray his prince as long as his prince did not betray him.
He had discerned before others, long before they held their present land and titles, the Normans were likely to become the dominant power in South Italy and that the Lombards were too fractious to contain them, while both the Eastern and Western Empires were too distant to put a brake on their expansion. He had watched the increasing impotence of all three as the fortunes of the Normans rose. The crisis had come at the Battle of Civitate: that was the moment when the pendulum swung decisively, when the Pope’s massive host, supported by levies from Germany and allied to Byzantium, had been soundly beaten and the pontiff made a virtual prisoner. If that combination could not stop the Normans, no one could.