Guaimar knew Conrad had been deliberately keeping him at arm’s length, quite happy to talk in passing but never ready to sit, as he was doing now, and seriously discuss Pandulf or the situation in Campania. There was history here too, of course: Pandulf, for his previous treachery with Byzantium, had been a prisoner of his predecessor. Conrad had released the traitor on his accession, which he probably now felt to be a mistake, but not one to which an emperor could admit. The young man before him was asking him to alter a situation he had brought about.
So he listened politely while Guaimar enumerated the Wolf’s manifest transgressions, which apparently failed to make much mark on the emperor’s thinking. Not that he saw such behaviour as acceptable, it was just he could not be brought to see it as in need of remedial action.
‘I had an audience with the Bishop of L’Aquila. In fact, he confessed me before mass this very morning.’ Guaimar was not sure he believed that: Ascletin was so raw in the priestly line he doubted he knew the necessary words to say in a confessional booth. ‘You travelled with him, of course.’
‘And most pleasant it was,’ the younger man lied.
Conrad looked at him quizzically then. ‘Tell me, young Guaimar, you say you came only to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I do not follow.’
‘I am not the only source of redress, am I?’
‘You mean Byzantium,’ Guaimar replied, thinking it was Ascletin who had confessed in that booth this morning, not Conrad Augustus. The emperor sat back in his chair, making a gesture that demanded explanation. ‘I agree, I could have gone to Constantinople, but I believe it was my duty to come here to my suzerain.’
‘But you could also have sent to the Emperor Michael for aid, without actually travelling there. By ship for instance.’
He is stalling me, thought Guaimar; he is waiting to hear from his spies if Byzantium is prepared to intervene. The other thought he had was depressing: there was nothing he could do about it.
‘No eastern emperor since the great Basil enjoys the reputation that you have, Conrad Augustus.’ If he was flattered by comparison with the Bulgar-Slayer, who would have been a match for Charlemagne, Conrad took it as his due. ‘The late Emperor Romanos was a voluptuary by all accounts, ruled by the whims of the Empress Zoe. Her new husband, Michael, is little older than I, and I cannot see him as your equal.’
‘He is the brother of the eunuch who runs the court and that gives him power. Besides that, they say Michael is an ardent young buck and makes an old woman happy.’
‘Competence in the bedchamber is not what makes a man great.’
Guaimar had replied tersely, annoyed by the way Conrad was taking the conversation. He had no concern for the carnal joys young Michael gave to a woman thirty years his senior and it was, he knew, just part of the game Conrad was playing.
‘They have great resources, and a fleet that could put a force on Campanian soil in much less time than I can march there with an army, and they would dearly love to assert their authority there, as they have tried to do many times in the past. Even a youth and his frivolous old wife might be tempted by the prospect of detaching my imperial fiefs of Southern Italy from their allegiance.’
‘Are you suggesting, sire, that I have come to the wrong place?’
Conrad smiled, like a man who had spotted a trap and knew how to avoid it. ‘I am saying that your need is great, so perhaps it makes no difference who brings down Pandulf. You Lombards have bowed the knee to Constantinople before.’
‘Not with much joy.’
That got a sharp response. ‘My predecessor took an army all the way to the borders of Apulia to keep you free of the Eastern Empire, and it advantaged him nothing. I seem to remember Salerno sided with his enemies, and only acquiesced when faced by a host outside your walls too powerful to resist. The same blood flows though your veins.’
‘I cannot answer for the actions of my predecessors. All I can say, sire, is no man likes to be a subject.’
‘Yet you beg to be mine.’
‘I beg to have righted a great wrong, and if the price of that is an acknowledgement of a title you already possess, then I am happy to accede to it.’
‘You have still not explained to my satisfaction why you failed to send any request to Constantinople.’
Guaimar was hoist on his own petard and he knew it: he had tricked Ascletin, who had played his perfidious part and it had produced the opposite effect to that intended, making Conrad cautious instead of bold. There was no point now in telling the man the truth — he was not inclined to act regardless and anyway he would not now be believed, even if he had to try.
‘I acted on the advice of my archbishop. Indeed it was only through his good grace that I could make the journey, for he funded it. You will readily understand his reluctance to have a Byzantine fleet in Salerno Bay.’ Conrad’s eyes bored into his, and they seemed to be saying that he had deceived him too. ‘Am I to understand that you will not come to our aid?’
‘I have not decided.’
‘And if Pandulf takes Naples as well?’
‘That may alter things, but we would have to see.’
‘He intends to fight Byzantium.’
An inquisitive look demanded more information, which Guaimar supplied, and when he had finished Conrad actually burst out laughing. ‘You will never learn, you Lombards. There’s not one of you who is not wedded to betrayal.’ He saw Guaimar about to protest, and he cut him off. ‘And before you tell me that you are the exception, let me tell you that I will decide nothing until I know what it is I might face.’
‘Berengara, I am bound to ask you how much influence you think you have with Conrad?’
‘I may have a great deal, Guaimar, as long as he has not been gifted that which he so desires.’
So she was still chaste; her brother was not sure whether he was pleased or disappointed, and then he felt like a true scrub. As he asked the next question, so embarrassing to posit, he knew his face was slightly flushed.
‘If you…would it? Do you think you could persuade… the emperor to act?’
‘How tongue-tied you are, Guaimar, when talking of trading my virtue.’ He could see by the wicked smile that she was teasing him, and she was enjoying it too.
‘You would have to think Salerno worth the price.’
‘Revenge,’ she spat, ‘is worth the price. Your father was my father too. The emperor wants to bed me, and my maidenhead is an added attraction. I think I could extract a promise from him to help us before it is surrendered. Could I get him to keep to what must be said in private after the event, I do not know.’
‘How practical you are.’
‘Does that disappoint you?’
‘I still think of you as…’
Another snapped interruption. ‘I am no longer your little sister, Guaimar. I know what must be done, and I will undertake to do it.’
‘When?’
‘Given his eagerness, as soon as his wife or one of his clerics is not looking, which is not often.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why be sorry?’ she replied coquettishly, ‘I shall be like the mythical Helen, and launch a thousand spears, if I can hold him to his bond.’
‘Damn that swine, I’ll rip the skin off his hide. I’ll sow him in a sack with a cat and snake and throw him into the nearest harbour.’
Both recognised the angry voice, shouting in the echoing corridor outside their apartments. Guaimar was convinced as he digested what was being said he was going to be the victim of those threats. The door was flung open with a resounding crash and Conrad stood there, his eyes on fire, boring into those of the young man.
‘Do you know what that bastard has done?’
‘Sire, I…’
