Son of Blood c-1

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘My father holds no grudge against you, Jordan.’

  There was a close examination of the man as he spoke, to see if elevation to the title had made any difference. What Bohemund observed was a degree of reserve brought on by, he thought, discomfiture at Jordan having acted as he did, given he was not the only one present who knew the truth; Abbot Desiderius was just as aware of the hand of Pope Gregory in what had so recently occurred.

  ‘And what does he propose?’

  It was the Abbot of Monte Cassino who answered. ‘That you renew the peace he had with your late father.’

  Jordan addressed the layman, not the divine. ‘He requires no indemnity?’

  ‘He asks only that you cease to support those who would rebel against him-’

  ‘Are there any left, Bohemund?’ Jordan interrupted, showing just a trace of his old, more light-hearted nature.

  ‘… and that you give those who are now fleeing no succour by allowing them to reside in your possessions.’

  ‘And what, Abbot, will His Holiness say to this?’

  Unbeknown to either of the others, Desiderius was in Capua as much to represent Gregory as the Guiscard. The Pope, now that his hopes of a successful Apulian rebellion had crumbled, had been forced to once more turn his eyes north, where Henry was succeeding in a way he had not foreseen: he was beating his rebels.

  ‘It has ever been the task of Holy Church to promote peace, my son.’

  It was a measure of their increasing comfort in the world of diplomacy that both Jordan and Bohemund took this barefaced falsehood without a reaction. Jordan knew that in the case of Desiderius, the older man spoke a truth to which he could hold, for he always had. Bohemund, having only just met him, thought he was as dishonest as his papal master. That counted for nothing; let him lie if he must, as long as he could return to his father with the right result.

  ‘I might add,’ Desiderius said, ‘that I am here on behalf of His Holiness as well as Duke Robert. It is his strong desire that these disruptions should cease. He wishes Capua and Apulia to be at peace and has asked me to bend all my efforts to achieve this.’

  ‘Why?’ Bohemund demanded abruptly, breaking the air of diplomatic harmony.

  ‘There can only be one reason, Abbot Desiderius,’ Jordan interjected. ‘And that is he has troubles elsewhere.’

  Not wishing to admit that was true, the elderly abbot held his hands open, palms out, while on his face was a look of resignation. Whatever it implied, it was enough for Prince Jordan and peace was restored.

  For Pope Gregory, matters went from bad to worse. Having put a cap on his own rebellion, the Emperor-elect called a synod of all those bishops and cardinals who both lived within his domains and quite naturally, for the sake of their continuation in office, owed him fealty. Along with those princes who had so recently threatened to depose him they proclaimed Gregory’s election illegal and elected an antipope called Clement, putting the Church once more into schism. The next step for Henry, once more excommunicated, if this time ineffectually, would be to descend on Rome to have himself crowned Emperor by his own Pope.

  Gregory needed the Normans and he required them to be united and on his side, more the powerful Guiscard than the Prince of Capua who had so singularly failed him. Ever an intensely proud man — he had stood on his dignity at Benevento seven years previously by refusing to meet with Duke Robert — he had to accept that there was now no time for such conceits. Yet he was not prepared to grovel and the melting of enmity took much time. Messages were sent but in a subtle way, as in an invitation for any magnate with grievances to bring them to his attention. As usual Abbot Desiderius was brought into the equation to smooth ruffled feathers until finally a meeting was arranged.

  For the first time since Gregory’s election, Robert de Hauteville walked into the same room as his papal suzerain, there to kneel and do homage as he had to Gregory’s predecessors for his ducal titles of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. No mention was made of Amalfi or Salerno; apple carts were required to remain stable not overturned, but in remaining silent upon them it implied a tacit agreement regarding their legitimacy. As he held Robert’s hands in his, seeing how puny were his in comparison, and pronounced the required prayers over his bowed head, Gregory could be forgiven for enquiring if God was truly on his side.

  If the places Robert had taken in defiance of Gregory were ignored there were still matters to discuss. Letters had to be composed and sent to Bamberg to let Henry know, without in any way sounding like an outright threat, that the Guiscard was concerned about the election of a pope to replace Gregory. Clement was a man in whom he could repose no faith — as good a way as any of telling the Emperor-elect that Rome was under Norman protection and that any attack on the city would be met with as much if not more force as any he could bring to bear.

  Gregory had been satisfied on that concern but he still had all his usual concerns in the East. With the Holy Sepulchre in the hands of people he saw as heretics, problems were bound to surface. There were an increasing number of grim stories of Jerusalem pilgrims being badly ill-treated, denied access to the holy places, assaulted and robbed and even in extreme cases facing the enforced demand to convert to Islam. Had not Robert and his brother Roger dealt with that problem in Sicily by taking back the churches made into mosques? For all their efforts, the Pope was irritated that the infidels were still allowed to freely worship throughout the island, adding that he felt Count Roger could also do more to bring those of the Orthodox persuasion into the bosom of the Roman Church.

  Robert brushed aside these concerns but got a blessing for what he proposed next, which would create difficulties for the still-excommunicated Emperor Botaneiates, who was struggling to hold his place in the face of constant threats and had also failed to shore up the Byzantine Empire. In the main it was a satisfied Duke of Apulia who left his suzerain; he had, after all, everything for which he had come. Gregory, still working hard on his notion of religious reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople, had kept up the pressure without once ever offering any concessions and what was proposed to him, nothing less than an invasion of Illyria, appeared a good way to concentrate minds in Constantinople.

  It was irritating that Borsa, whom Robert had been obliged to bring along as his heir, seemed to incline to the papal point of view regarding both what was happening in Jerusalem, as well as the papal opinion on Sicily. He seemed willing to believe what he was told and less ready to give credence to his father’s assertion that, when it came to the Holy Land, although pilgrims to the city faced difficulties — and how could they not? — much of what had been propounded was, as far as he knew, exaggeration. That it was so suited Gregory and his ilk; the spreading of this embroidery was used to drive home his desire for a great Eastern crusade, in which the whole of Western Christendom was being called to participate.

  ‘It would be a noble thing to do, Father,’ Borsa opined, as they made ready to take the road back to Salerno. ‘To have in our possession the place where Jesus gave his life so that we could be saved.’

  ‘All this blather about a crusade is so much stuff. Gregory talks as if the distance to Palestine is the same as crossing the sea from Reggio to Messina. You tell me how we are to get any army to the Holy Land and maintain it there?’

  ‘Surely we would do that in concert with Constantinople?’

  ‘Right at this moment, they could not swat a fly, never mind a Moslem.’

  ‘With our help-’

  Robert asked his next question gently, in a tone that he had to force upon himself. ‘Tell me who is going to pay for this great expedition, for the Pope will not, in which, I will point out to you, there can be no plunder to meet the bill. We cannot sack Jerusalem as if it was any other city.’

  That made his son think, which is what the Guiscard intended; he knew which levers to press in that penny-pinching breast.

  ‘And when it comes to Sicily and letting Moslems worship in their mosques, ask Gregory how a few hund
red Norman lances, which is all your uncle has, are going to rule a population in the hundreds of thousands if we force them into a form of piety they dislike?’

  ‘So giving succour to the pilgrims of Jerusalem is impossible?’

  ‘No, but it cannot be done in the way Rome proposes.’

  That got an intrigued look from Borsa, who wondered what it portended; he knew his sire as well as his father knew him. He was aware, if not of the whole purpose, that one of the Guiscard’s vassals, Count Radulf, had been sent as an envoy to Constantinople, ostensibly to enquire after Borsa’s sister. That was a tale in which it was hard to believe, given his father had shown scant interest in her welfare since the overthrow of the man who had promised her his son in marriage. That he was part in ignorance did not surprise the heir to Apulia; he was used to that, as was everyone who dealt with his father.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ever since he had received that despatch regarding the overthrow of the Emperor Michael Dukas, as well as the transfer of his daughter to a convent, the Guiscard had kept Byzantium in his sights as a crumbling edifice ripe for future exploitation. In the time since, other matters had kept him fully occupied: first his preparation against Capua, the siege of Benevento and then his need to put down the revolt Jordan had helped to engineer. He had, of course, made protestations about the fate of his daughter, but they were not heartfelt — as far as Robert was concerned her continued presence in Constantinople gave him every excuse to push a problem into a rupture at any time of his choosing.

  Now, with peace restored throughout his domains, he could at last concentrate on what to him was a prize of immeasurable potential — nothing less than the overthrow of the Eastern Empire, which with him at the head would become the greatest centre of Norman power in Christendom. He had fought and triumphed over Greeks, a race he despised, all his fighting life, so there was little doubt in his mind he could achieve such a great object. That it was what he hankered after had never been in any doubt, and while many might wonder at such vaulting ambition no one even thought to ask the Duke of Apulia whether such intentions were either wise or necessary.

  The wellsprings of that were many and varied; no Norman warrior worth his salt saw what they held as sufficient, which explained the trouble Robert constantly had with his vassals, and he was no exception. As a race they were by nature’s design committed to expansion and that was down to their Viking blood. Byzantium was a prize to tempt a saint, never mind a sinner, rich in a way that made even the Guiscard’s present possessions look feeble, and they used part of that endless stream of gold as a means to carry on a proxy war against him. Right now those like Abelard, who had rebelled and fled, both Lombard and Norman, were safe on the imperial soil of Illyria, just across the Adriatic, able to cock their noses at his demand that they be sent back.

  Other reasons abounded, a less than noble one his desire to send a letter to William of Normandy as King of England, with the signature and seal at the base telling the upstart that he was being addressed by an imperial de Hauteville, which would pay back in bezants the insult the father of the Bastard of Falaise had heaped on his own family. Yet in truth the time was ripe; the Eastern Empire was weak both internally and externally, troubled on its borders by the pressure of Kiev Rus, the Magyars of Hungary and the Turks of Asia Minor.

  Control from the centre was weak, with the man who had usurped Michael Dukas faced by constant intrigues seeking to depose him, this allowing the various satraps who ran the provinces to behave with a degree of independence, sometimes so barefaced as to have them acting like separate sovereign powers as they manoeuvred for an attainable imperial throne. If it was open to them, it was also exposed to the ambitions of the powers that pressed on its borders; someone might bring it crashing down — better that was himself, Robert surmised, than that he face a more potent power in its place.

  The Duke of Apulia also had an unemployed army, a dangerous tool to leave idle in his own domains, as well as a fleet that he had built up to help subdue the numerous ports he had been required to blockade; that could so easily be transformed into an offensive weapon. Yet deep in his soul there was another pressing motivation and that had to do with his eldest brother, William. For all he had conquered and all he now held, Robert had still not matched in his own estimation the achievements of Iron Arm.

  It was William who had founded their family prosperity, he who had created the base upon which successive de Hautevilles had constructed the holdings over which Robert now held sway, William who had defeated the Byzantines when they were a force to be reckoned with on the ancient battlefield of Cannae, so that he stood comparison with Hannibal, the previous victor on that field who had destroyed the legions of Rome. For all the songs made up in praise of his deeds, none, to Robert’s mind, matched those dedicated to the warrior actions of William and that was a situation he strongly desired to change.

  As ever, anything he desired to do was beset with problems that had nothing to do with combat, the first of which surfaced when he proposed to send an advance party across the Adriatic to secure for him a base for his fleet.

  ‘Your rightful son should have the command,’ Sichelgaita demanded. ‘Not your long-legged bastard!’

  For Robert this was tricky; how could he say to his faithful helpmeet and wife that he did not trust Borsa to lead the expedition? Even less could he intimate to a doting mother that the men who would go under Bohemund in his advance guard might not readily follow his heir with the same confidence? Borsa was not, as far as his sire could see, a leader of men; he lacked the ability to either inspire them or to instil such fear that they would obey his every command. In administration he showed ability — the appointment of officials, not least satisfying Rome with his clerical placements, added to an assiduous collection and accounting of revenues. These were his forte, so that his father had a bulging treasury — but then money had always been an attraction to the boy.

  ‘It is not without risk,’ he replied in a voice that lacked its usual force.

  ‘What fight is not, husband?’

  He could not help but think, even when being castigated, that an angry Sichelgaita was a magnificent sight to behold; near eyeball to eyeball with him, her hair was still burnished blonde, her shoulders square and her protruding breasts magnificent in their size and outline and even after the bearing of eight children she was a fine-looking woman. How he wished he still had the powers in his loins to engage in the kind of ferocious carnal coupling with her that they had at one time enjoyed, but that had not survived his near-death illness at the level he had once known. He had reached a point in his life where his vital spark required to be coaxed.

  If, at sixty-five years of age, he felt his sword arm was still strong, the other parts of his body were subject to the terrors of old age. There was a stiffness in the joints when he rose from his bed of a morning and he was aware that in the manege he was no longer a figure of fear to the younger knights as he had at one time been; it was respect that permitted him to overcome them, not a superiority of arms. From now on he knew that, while he could still fight, his task was more to command than engage and not to lead by sheer example, which required that someone in whom he reposed faith should undertake that role.

  In his son made a bastard he recognised those abilities he had for much of his life possessed: raw courage, a terrifying strength with any weapon he chose to employ, the cold blood and concentration needed to kill without mercy. But most important of all Bohemund had the ability to arouse in the Normans he led a passion that made them outdo even their known and famed skills. Added to that, he engaged in a way with Lombards and Greek milities which, his father had to admit, was superior to his own. Robert found it hard to disguise his antipathy to races he considered feeble, a disadvantage in a host in which increasingly they outnumbered his Normans.

  ‘You would expose our son to the risk of death for the sake of an excess of pride? What if he was lost?’

  ‘Then Guy would beco
me your heir and he in turn will lead your army.’

  That was a jest, but not one Robert dared laugh at; if Sichelgaita had a mote in her eye about Borsa, it was nothing to the regard in which she held his younger brother. Robert too was fond of him, for he was hard to dislike; Guy was a joy to be with, clever, witty, a bit of a rake, who had a legion of scrapes on his bedpost and a natural courtier manner, being well versed in the arts of diplomacy. But he was no soldier.

  ‘No! Bohemund will lead.’

  ‘And how will that be seen?’

  ‘Sichelgaita,’ Robert said, unusually for him almost pleading, ‘Borsa will have my titles, all of them, as well as what lands I possess, and if my planned expedition prospers that might be the imperial purple. But if he is the person destined to rule when I am gone, he is not the one to lead an army all the way across Romania and to capture Constantinople.’

  ‘And Bohemund is?’

  ‘Yes! As much as I am myself.’

  Robert de Hauteville stood under the twin marble pillars that marked all that remained of a temple once dedicated to Neptune, as the galleys of a good proportion of his fleet manoeuvred to make their way out of the narrow neck that closed off the natural harbour of Brindisi. The temple had stood at the very end of the Appian Way since the time of Ancient Rome, a sacred place where the pagan gods had been beseeched to grant safe passage to both war galleys and trading vessels as they set out for the East from the Empire’s premier southern port.

  From here great Roman generals had sailed, much the same as Bohemund was doing now, to war and possible conquest: the likes of Pompey, Caesar and Mark Antony. Was it not from Brindisi that Octavian, soon to be Caesar Augustus, had set out for the decisive Battle of Actium and was not that an omen of some kind? Given this expedition had been blessed by the Bishop of Brindisi and all of his assembled clergy it was very hard not to feel so, to wonder if he too would rise to imperial magnificence?