Jack Ludlow: Conquest

It was a contented property: Tancred had been a benign master, seen by some as soft, but he had reminded his sons that the horses they rode, the mail they wore and the weapons they carried came from the toil of these peasants and tenants. If it was a place of tranquillity and security it was still surrounded by trouble, less now than when Roger had been born. At that time the family had been in constant dispute with powerful neighbours who claimed overlordship of the de Hauteville domains, an assertion furiously refuted by his father. That had been laid to rest: this round stone tower on which he stood was proof of that.

Built to replace a motte-and-bailey structure of wood and earth, a proper donjon had been a dream of Tancred for years, a sign of his status, a smack in the eye to those who claimed they held authority over his land. Brothers William and Drogo had sent the funds for the construction, fruits of their successful campaigns, but it was Iron Arm who had persuaded the Duke William to grant permission for its construction — no such structure could be raised without it — by writing to him as an equal in power and prestige.

Not overly emotional, Roger nevertheless felt the tears prick his eyes as he recalled the day of completion. Tancred had been aged then, a shadow of his old warrior self, but still a tall man, grey-haired, grizzled and scarred. He had wept at the sight and also at the loss of his sons to another land, for he knew he would never again clap eyes on those who had gone. That was Tancred: a doughty fighter, a prolific lover who had produced fourteen children with his two wives and yet an honourable husband who had never strayed from his marital bonds, a man passionately proud of his unruly brood.

To Roger, his youngest and very much his favourite, he had been a paragon, entertaining in his storytelling, easily forgiven when he had consumed too much apple wine and became maudlin about his past deeds, a man of fair dealing and strong friendships, that attested to by the number of neighbours who came to any family celebration. How far they had come, those boys of his — even his daughter was married to the Norman Count of Aversa, the greatest power in Campania, while his nephew, raised as another son after his father’s death in battle, was now the incumbent bishop of the nearby see of Coutances.

‘Can I make him proud?’ Roger asked himself, speaking out loud, before looking to the sky and the god he worshipped, who saw all things. ‘I ask for no more than to live as he lived, to fight as he fought and to be as honourable as he was in both.’

Looking down to the grey-stone manor house in which he had been raised he saw that his horses were ready, the saddlecloth in the blue and white chequer of his house loaded with his weapons: lance, great broadsword, his suit of chain mail and his helmet, a scene he had witnessed when his brothers had departed, each one swearing an oath to their father on the hilt of their sword, the one thing on which Tancred insisted: that, in a world where violence was the norm, no son of his should raise his weapon against a brother.

There was no vow for him: Tancred was long in the ground now and it was different in so many ways. His brothers had left alone and with little: a small amount of coin, salt to trade with in its place, taken from the family pans that lay on the Atlantic shoreline, destined to seek shelter in the pilgrim hospices that lined the route to Rome, to sleep in discomfort and just as often under the stars, heading towards an unknown destination and an even more obscure future.

Not Roger! It was his mother who would weep to see him go, but he would travel as a person of consequence attended by twenty lances, other young sons eager for an Italian adventure, waiting now by the roadway to join him, who would testify to his position. He would send in his name to every great property he passed and that would open the gates. He would be entertained, fed well and given good wine to drink, such was the power of the de Hauteville name. Yet when he got to Italy, albeit he would be given opportunity, the same predicament would face him as faced every one of the Normans who had preceded him.

He must make his own way, carve out his own success, face his travails and overcome them, fight whatever enemies presented themselves and conquer. His name would get him into battle but it was his own sword arm, his own lance and the aid of his own trusty mounts that would raise his name to equal his brothers. Standing on the parapet of that stone donjon, it was as easy to imagine failure as success: there was only one certainty — whichever it was, glory or ignominy, it was not to be found here in the Contentin.

Robert Guiscard, Count of Apulia, knew that the enemy commander, Argyrus, would be obliged to sortie out at some time: it was his only hope of raising a siege now approaching a year in duration. Brindisi had stout walls that had withstood much in the way of ballista, and many hands to repair any breeches made by the huge, flying stones, so that all his assaults had failed to get the besieging army into the great port city, one of the last of the Byzantine bastions left in Southern Italy; in a lightning sweep the previous year he had taken the other cities of Apulia and Eastern Calabria, leaving the two greatest outposts, Brindisi and the even more formidable Bari, isolated.

But those numerous hands repairing broken stone needed to be fed and the siege had cut off any hope of forage from the surrounding countryside, while hired Venetian galleys blocked off any supplies from the sea. Populous and crowded, Brindisi would be fast approaching the point of mass starvation: the moat and the harbour that bordered the city were already filling up with the bloated, decaying cadavers of the weakest inhabitants: the elderly, the sick and children.

There is a point in an invested city where a good commander must decide whether to feed his horses — necessary for a sortie — or eat them, then distribute the oats needed to keep them healthy to the starving inhabitants: Argyrus was at that point. Delay too long and there was a risk that the citizens, driven by fear and hunger, at a time when there were no more dogs, cats or rats to eat, would take matters into their own hands. Many a leader had waited too long and found himself overthrown, forced to flee or even murdered by those he was tasked to defend, thrown as a corpse from his own walls before the gates were opened to surrender the city.

‘I need news,’ Argyrus insisted. ‘I need to know if any of my stratagems are bearing fruit.’

The men to whom he spoke — his senior subordinates — were also aware of the approaching crisis: they also knew they needed to appear confident before their commander, lest by an expression of doubt they forfeit their own lives, this necessary to destroy any hint of defeatism in the higher echelons of the defence. Argyrus was a man much dependent on spies — he had his informants in the city, some in the Guiscard’s camp, yet others dotted around the provinces seeking to stir up trouble in the Norman rear, acting either for gain or from conviction — but getting in and out of the city was difficult: his messengers were being intercepted too easily.

‘We will be gifted but one opportunity, so we must make sure it is final in its outcome.’

‘We could offer to buy him off, My Lord. Normans are always grasping for gold.’

‘Not the one outside our walls! The Guiscard seeks power and will not be content with Brindisi. He will have Bari as well if he can. If the imperial court would realise that they would have reinforced me long ago, but there are more fools in Constantinople than wise heads.’

No one would meet the Catapan’s eye then: it was not a good idea to question the decisions of the emperor or those who advised him; the dungeons of Constantinople were brimming with those who had dared, no doubt betrayed, as they would be now, by those they trusted. Argyrus had, like his predecessors, never had enough troops to beat the increasing power of the Normans, yet he had kept them at bay for years by intrigue and bribery, provided with gold in abundance. Where that had worked in the past in terms of divide and rule, it was of less use now.