Jack Ludlow: Warriors

Somehow that had to be reversed; all problems, to a mind like that of Argyrus, had a solution, while added to that was his ability to think ahead, so in order to hedge against a Salernian snub, and with other possibilities in mind, he had sent a trusted envoy to Amalfi, which might prove to be an Achilles heel, to assess matters.

That the adherents of the deposed duke hated Guaimar went without saying — they had seen power stripped from them — just as most of the citizenry disliked being ruled by another. But, from distant Bari, it was impossible to know if such hatred could be put to good purpose. The reports that came back, of seething discontent, were welcome.

Naturally, when it came to seaborne trade, Guaimar had favoured his own merchants over the needs of Amalfi, so that the once prosperous port saw the commerce off which it had lived leaching inexorably to Salerno. Being a Lombard allowed Argyrus to understand his tribe in a way that the Byzantine Greeks had never quite managed; was it not that very quality which had persuaded the Emperor Constantine to appoint him as catapan?

The leading citizens of Amalfi, be they dispossessed aristocrats or impoverished traders, were Lombards, and though they might mouth other sentiments, and pray mightily for Christian salvation, money, and the power that went with it, was their true divinity. Their other weakness was a lack of tribal loyalty, again something they would mouth, but a feeling which came a poor second to personal advantage.

Nestled in a precipitous coastal valley, connected to the interior by a pass through the surrounding mountains, and, within it, buildings piled on precarious slopes one on top of the other, it was a place built for intrigue. But the garrison and governor Guaimar had installed, supported by Normans, held the round tower that dominated the port — the easiest point of ingress and egress — feeling safe in the knowledge that control of trade from that near impregnable citadel gave them the key to an untroubled occupation.

They also held the two land gates to the city that fed a narrow coastal road: let the Amalfians grumble, and no doubt conspire, in their cliff-hugging dwellings. They lacked the means to strike out at those who lorded it over them. No adult male was allowed to bear arms, on pain of incarceration; any numerous gathering would be brutally dispersed so that conspiracy was confined to small numbers who dared not coalesce. Fear and an iron fist ruled Amalfi but the contact between oppressor and oppressed was non-existent: the former stayed in their bastions, the latter avoided them completely.

That was the message sent back to Argyrus: discontent was one thing, the ability to act quite another. The envoy had, of course, misunderstood his master’s purpose. The catapan, who would, if he had been required to, have held Bari in much the same fashion as Guaimar held Amalfi, had never thought that a revolt inside the port was feasible. What he wanted to know was the willingness of the leading citizens to act against Salerno, if he could give them a method of doing so.

Perusing the list his envoy had brought back, he chose for his purpose the well-born over the trader, for the latter would always weigh the righting of a grievance against the cost. Dispossessed nobles were more given to emotion: raised in luxury from birth, they were men who would have grown up seeing power as a birthright, and the removal of it as a personal slight. It came as no surprise to discover that many of such had landed estates outside the actual port, well inland over the mountains, with numerous tenants and peasants to work their soil.

Calling his envoy, he instructed him in what he had to do: to take a ship back to Amalfi, one which would sit in the harbour, its load of weaponry hidden in the holds, and prepare the city to rise up against their oppressors. He was then to find those well-born malcontents and get them out of the place. Once on their estates, they would be met by numerous and armed fellow Lombards who would aid them, as long as they equipped their own people to fight as well, the promise held out of the casting-off of the Salernian yoke. That they would be unaware of the hand of Byzantium in their task was all to the good.

Guaimar was an accessible prince, a man who did not fear to walk with a minimal escort through the streets of his city, nor was he excessive in the way he lived his life: he would not have Normans guarding the Castello di Arechi, a fact which went some way to mollify his sister, angry that he associated with them at all. Salerno was a teeming active port, a place hemmed in by hills but with a wide sweeping bay that left it open to cooling breezes, as well as the occasional hot African wind, and it was as wealthy now as it had ever been, with much building going on, some of it financed by its ruler.

Ships came in from all over the known world with silks, spices and valuable commodities, while from the Campanian hinterland the produce of the fertile province, capable of double harvests, flowed out: grain to feed the people of Rome, olive oil with which to cook and keep going the lights that allowed for life to continue when the sun set, fruit that grew in abundance in the orchards, and wood from the forested foothills of the mountains.

Every ship entering or leaving paid customs dues, these taken in by the collector of the port to add to the secret stipend he gave to his master from smuggling. Kasa Ephraim was a busy man, with much to concern him in the way of trade, for he had multifarious interests, and the need to push his way through crowded thoroughfares in the company of his coffer-bearing servants meant he had no eyes to spot anything unusual, not that the sight of half a dozen well-set young men in such a prosperous city was that.

If Argyrus had spies in Amalfi, he also had people who were his eyes and ears in Salerno and they told him, after months of observation, that the one time it would be certain that the Prince of Salerno would be in his Castello was the day the Jew delivered the port revenues. They had also found out from gossip in the wine shops that Guaimar was wont to meet his Jew in private after the transaction of official business, with no one else present.

The group that had trailed Kasa Ephraim was not alone: there were others in the city, all now armed and each one with a task to perform, some to take important buildings, others to take care of anyone who might raise resistance, but most important was the group who gathered outside the gates to the Castello di Arechi, becoming in time so much part of the landscape that if the guards at the entrance had noticed them at all, they did not stand out now.

There was no way of seeing through the stout stone walls, the time to act was a guess, based on the exit of some of Guaimar’s council, who would leave the Castello once the public business had been transacted. As soon as they were out of sight, the Amalfians struck. The guards — in truth, in such a peaceful city, long past being alert — were the first to be killed. While half the raiding party entered the Castello, others, the younger ones fleet of foot, were sent as messengers to tell the rest to act. Inside the building, for all that any shouts echoed off the walls, the doors to each chamber were built of stout well-seasoned and heavily studded timber, and so muffled such cries.

Kasa Ephraim would have died had he not just left the prince, having said farewell to Guaimar just as his sister and niece came into his presence. As it was he found himself knocked to the ground as those intent on killing Guaimar, six in number, swept past him towards the unbarred door to the chamber he had just left. The Jew was not a fighting man, but he was a clever one. Seeing the flashing knives, already dripping with blood, it took no great imagination to understand what was happening, just as he knew that alone he could do nothing to prevent it.