Jack Ludlow - Conquest

‘Surely men will come from Messina to help?’

‘In time, and always with the caveat they are not occupied elsewhere. But they will not risk Messina to save Troina.’

Kissing his chest she murmured. ‘There are worse things, husband, than being besieged with you.’

‘Don’t let my men hear you say that.’

The first snow came within a week, having long blanketed the higher slopes of Mount Etna, the volcano smoking and rumbling angrily in the near distance as if peace were impossible. No more did studded boots ring on cobbles; now they moved silently about on a bed of soft white powder. Men sat round blazing fires fed by the ample wood store of the castle above the smoking chimneys of the lower town. If the snow masked the noise of boots it also hid the preparations for any attack, which were launched often, with the Greeks, aided by an increasing number of Saracens, probing for weakness, so that every day involved a raft of small conflicts, with Roger’s men rushing from one hot spot to another to keep them at bay, action that took a steady toll on his numbers.

Roger had his sources of information: not all the Greeks were happy with rebellion: many had prospered from a Norman presence, wine shop owners and the like. So he knew the numbers he faced and their composition, though that brought him scant comfort. News having spread, every Saracen for leagues around had come to aid the Greek cause, contingents arriving also from the surrounding towns, which explained how his enemies were able to keep up their pressure, launching sorties at varying points to keep him and his defenders off balance.

It was when that stopped, after the first four weeks, that Roger really began to fret, for it indicated that those keeping them confined had decided to settle for a different outcome, starving him out. He launched attacks, moving aside barricades to raid the lower town and slaughter those he found there, as well as stealing their stores. It was hard and dangerous fighting in which men died and were wounded, and too often Roger found he needed to restrain his overenthusiastic son, who seemed intent on getting himself killed or maimed. Jordan was filling out by the day, turning into a fully grown man before his eyes, still seeking to impress his father, unwilling, despite constant repetition, to accept it was unnecessary.

They started to eat their horses before Christmastide, two months into the siege, and in his daily examination of the storerooms Roger was bleakly aware of what was needed to feed his remaining fighting men, over two hundred in number, plus the wounded, anything they managed to plunder a drop in an ocean of consumption. No sign had come of any kind of relief, and while he could speculate endlessly on the reasons for that, it was pointless: if it came it came, if it did not and this cordon around his castle was maintained, he was going to be in serious difficulty, which made him curse the fact that he had brought Judith to this place.

That was not a regret shared by his lances; they saw her as a talisman. Judith tended the sick and spoke with them all and what she did not know about their families and how they came to be in Sicily she soon learnt. If food was scarce, she insisted by rotation that, conroy by conroy, her husband’s knights should eat at high table in the great hall to underline their shared difficulty. If Roger was in love with her, by the time it came to celebrate the birth date of Jesus Christ, so were half the garrison.

The high hills in which Troina stood were now in the grip of deep winter, the whole landscape blindingly white, the air crisp in the day if the sun shone, freezing when cloudy and at night. It was some comfort to Roger to know that, sentinels keeping watch on the barricades aside, he and his lances were in reasonable comfort. His tactic of launching surprise raids, which he kept up night after night, burdened his besiegers more than it weighed on him: he had professional fighting men, those they attacked were not good in a sharp combat, meaning they had to keep greater numbers in position to ward off his raids than he employed to undertake them.

Yet there was the gnawing worry of where it was all going to lead, a feeling that grew as week followed week. The Greeks and Saracens had access to the countryside and supplies, which, even in the midst of winter, gave them meat to eat and wood to burn, this while he was running short on both. By the third month the horses were gone and the garrison was eating their oats, the stores of hay long gone onto the fires that kept them warm. Every building inside his barricades had been stripped of timber and they were now knocking out roofs to get at the beams and still there was no sign that his plight had registered in Messina.

One tactic he initiated seemed to be paying dividends, his instruction that if those of his enemies opposite his barricades lit a fire it should be a signal for an immediate assault. If they were going to confine him and his men let them do so cold: it took time for the Greeks and Saracens to realise this, but come to the sense of it they did and, each night, they huddled in their defences, often while snow fell around them, which was at least warmer than a clear and frosty night.

‘They are drinking wine to ward off the chill,’ Jordan said.

This information was imparted through chattering teeth. He had been out, in the snow, now melting off his discarded cloak, on one of his daredevil escapades, which he continued in spite of a direct instruction to desist, and he was now trying, at what were feeble flames, to get the blood flowing through his frozen frame. Roger, angry with the continued insubordination, could not help but notice the drawn nature of his son’s face, which was not brought on by fatigue but by lack of food. It was the same with all of his lances, the sick now added to the wounded and that included the man he relied on most, a fever-stricken Ralph de Boeuf; he had cut the rations but it took no genius to work out that they were running out of the means to stay alive. If something did not break soon, he would be obliged to surrender.

‘The Greeks, yes,’ he agreed, pulling his fur cloak tighter round his frame, ‘but Islam forbids its sons to drink wine.’

‘Why do you never believe what I say, Father?’ Jordan asked brusquely.

It was an unaccustomed tone from his son and Roger was about to react as he thought he should, only to realise that it was induced as much by hunger as anger at him.

‘Do I not?’

‘No. And you diminish me in front of others every time I speak.’

‘You cannot fault me, surely, for trying to teach you what you need to know.’

‘I can fault you for doing so in public.’

‘If I do so, it is for your own good,’ Roger barked, his patience with being corrected evaporating.

‘Then,’ Jordan responded, equally sharp, ‘for your own good, go out and see if what I have just told you is the truth.’

Roger’s hand was raised but he did not strike, partly because Jordan showed no sign of seeking to avoid the coming blow. Instead he stood. ‘Get your cloak back on and show me.’

Out on the concourse before the castle it was like daylight, with the full moon high in the sky reflecting off the deep snow. Roger stopped to talk to a party of his men coming back from their short duty as sentinels — no one could stay out too long — and established that all was quiet from where they had come.

‘Apart from the singing,’ one said.

‘Singing?’ Roger demanded.

‘More chanting,’ another replied, ‘I think to keep up their spirits.’

‘It’s good to know they are so low.’ Roger regretted that as soon as he said it, for in the eyes of the man he was speaking to lay clear evidence that they all knew of their situation: they too were low in spirits. ‘Go inside, get warm.’