Jack Ludlow: Conquest

‘One day,’ Argyrus carped, ‘if they are not careful, this count they so disdain will turn up outside their own walls. He seeks the purple and has too much wealth already to be distracted by more. You do not know these de Hautevilles as I do, for I have been close to them. They are of a different breed to their bandit confreres. I saw in William Bras de Fer and his brother Drogo…’

That induced a pause and recollection of another failure: it was by intrigue that Argyrus had ensured both those brothers fell to the secret knife. He had tried to do the same to Robert in the early stages of the siege, only to find the man sent to do murder fired bodily and alive over the city walls — an act he was not meant to, nor did he, survive — leaving the instigator unsure of why the attempt had failed.

‘They are truly a plague. Kill off one and another rises to take his place, each one more dangerous than the last.’

It was gold Argyrus was relying on now, spread about the provinces to foment revolt in the Guiscard’s rear. Not all the Normans of Italy were outside his walls or happy with de Hauteville hegemony; not all of Robert’s Apulian subjects were loyal. There were many who might, even if they owed vassalage to the Count of Apulia, see some advantage in revolt. That would draw Robert off and, because he would need to move swiftly, he would have to take with him the men Argyrus feared most, his conroys of mounted Norman warriors, the most feared fighting men in all Christendom.

‘Go out into the city,’ Argyrus commanded. ‘Search for the hoarding of grain and livestock and seize anything you can find.’

‘We have done that once already, Lord Argyrus.’ The fellow who spoke, one of his senior captains, got a stare that made him feel cold on what was a hot day. Likewise the voice that responded was icy in tone. ‘Do it again, there is always more hidden than you can find in one search. If nothing else, let the citizens see we are not close to capitulation. I need more time.’

Robert de Hauteville knew the Byzantine Catapan had spies in his encampment, just as he was sure it would be necessary to employ guile to draw the fellow out. Never comfortable in siege warfare, no Norman was, he was as eager as the leader of the Greeks to get Argyrus and what forces he could muster out into the open. There, superiority in Norman cavalry would count for more than any static assault by his Italian/Lombard levies. Robert’s problem was simple: if he knew that he had the advantage in mounted warfare, so did his opponent. He would not emerge to fight Normans, so some excuse must be manufactured to deceive him, and time was no more on his side than it was on that of Argyrus.

The Guiscard had his own problems, common to every siege: the constant need to rotate his soldiers out of the immediate vicinity of the walls to avoid the kind of sickness that would decimate his strength; the requirement to forage in a wider area to provide food for men and fodder and oats for his horses, without so weakening his force that he handed over advantage to the defenders. He also had a healthy respect for Argyrus: the fellow was a crafty enemy, the first Lombard ever entrusted by Constantinople to hold high office in the fertile south Italian provinces known as the Langobardian Theme. At one time an ally of the Normans and his fellow Lombards, as well as the titular leader of a Lombardled revolt against Byzantine rule, he had spectacularly betrayed his race and their cause for personal gain, only to be forced to immediately flee for his life.

Many cursed him for this; his present opponent, who had been a witness at the time to his treachery, saw it as sound common sense. More powerful Lombard princes had been using Argyrus as a figurehead who could be discarded once success had been achieved: the man had seen the sense of looking out for himself while the chance still existed to do so. Yet by his act he had done more than let down his fellow Lombards. The amount of distrust his treachery generated allowed William Iron Arm to take leadership of the revolt, turning it from a Lombard insurrection into a Norman bid for territorial gain, one that had been increasingly successful, as first William, then Drogo and the old misery Humphrey, all now gone to meet their Maker, had expanded Norman rule.

Elevated to the office of Catapan, Argyrus had returned to Apulia and proved a thorn ever since, launching plots and strategies to seek to hold back the Norman tide. Finding their expansion relentless he had even tried an alliance with the papacy, only to see that rebound on him at the decisive Battle of Civitate. On that field the de Hauteville brothers, massively outnumbered, had combined to soundly rout a huge papal army. If there had been genius in the fruits of that victory it had come from Robert, the youngest de Hauteville on the field.

It was he who had seen an opportunity, with the Pope now humiliated, isolated and a Norman prisoner, to turn them from Norman banditti, hated throughout the whole of Italy, into, if not loved overlords, legitimate rulers. With cunning and foresight the Guiscard had reasoned that a now defenceless pope, a man with no army who had need of one, had the authority to recognise the titles they had assumed through combat. All they had to do was bow the knee to the man they had defeated and accept him as their suzerain.

In the tangled world in which they lived, a thousand years after the crucifixion, no man could hope to hold a title not given credence by one of the triumvirate of great powers in the Christian world, two temporal, one ecclesiastical: Byzantium, a mortal enemy ripe for dismemberment, was out of the question; the Holy Roman Empire was too Frankish, too disdainful of Norman upstarts, wherever they resided, to reward them with titles unless absolutely obliged to do so. But the papacy, struggling to assert itself and beset by difficulties left over from the time of Charlemagne, had provided the key: the de Hautevilles, thanks to the Pope and his blessing, now stood as equals to any magnate in Christendom. Robert would thank Argyrus once he was captured, just before he hanged him: after all, he must be made to pay for the murders of William and Drogo.

‘Has he told you everything he knows yet?’ asked Robert, approaching the point where the latest captured messenger seeking a way into Brindisi was slowly spinning, naked, over an open fire pit.

‘All he does is pray to God in his screaming, begging his forgiveness as a miserable sinner.’

‘A true monk, then?’

‘So it seems, My Lord.’

Robert stepped forward to examine the flapping skin, scorched and blackened, that hung from the suspended body, aware of the heightened pork-like smell of his roasting. There was no screaming now, the fellow was long past that, just a low hiss of what he assumed was continued prayer.

‘Such an honest man it would be good to spare, so it is a pity he did not speak. It is rare to meet a monk who is not venal, truly a holy person.’

‘He is too far gone for life, sire.’

‘True,’ Robert replied. ‘Put him out of his misery.’

His back was turned when the fellow’s throat was cut; all he heard was the sound of the heated blood hissing in the coals beneath. He was looking at the walls of Brindisi for the thousandth time, nagged by the thought that he might be forced to raise the siege. The rate of desertions was rising as levies brought here on the promise of plunder lost any certainty of success. He was also aware of the number of eyes upon him, the glare of attention always afforded to the leader of any warlike enterprise, as men sought in his visage a message of the true state of affairs.

If Robert de Hauteville had a fault — many would maintain he had a raft of them — it was that he was not of a trusting nature. Ready to explain any tactical manoeuvre in battle, or to outline the bones of a campaign, he was very guarded in his thinking on his future plans, so open speculation as to alternatives was never discussed. Those he led were told what they needed to know and nothing more. Right now they would have been amazed to see inside his mind: their general was castigating himself, wondering if he should have let that newly expired messenger through.