‘I will give you my word.’
‘You can poke your word up your Lombard arse, begging your pardon, Lady Berengara.’
She looked as though she would like to put a red-hot poker in his, then twist it.
Rainulf was not drunk, but he was drink affected. It took less and less to get him to the point of a slight slurring and he was there now. And he was trying to rile this young man, to get him to lose his temper, but he failed.
‘I am told Pandulf has so many Normans in his pay now, many of them your old levies, he could depose you if he wished.’
Rainulf belched. ‘He knows better than to try.’
For the first time Guaimar raised his voice. ‘He will try eventually, Rainulf, for I doubt he still sees you as an ally.’
‘You know nothing.’
‘I know he is wedded to treachery, and you are a potential victim, as I once was. But is it not odd that my sister and I have come to save your hide?’
‘To strip the skin off my back more like, if that look on the face of the Lady Berengara is anything to go by.’
‘A trade in insults will get us nowhere,’ William insisted.
He was actually thinking hard on what Guaimar had just said, in fact an accurate assessment of the true situation in which Rainulf found himself, and the beginnings of a solution were forming in his mind, but it had to be one kept close. He gestured to the servants that they should leave the room, Rainulf indicating they should deposit the jug of wine by his right hand. No one spoke until they had gone.
‘My lord would need some guarantees, and there is only one I can think of that will be acceptable.’
‘And that is?’
‘He must be confirmed in his title by the emperor,’ he said softly, so as not to be overheard. ‘Perhaps as a count in his own right.’
‘That is to ask a great deal.’
‘Is it? You say you wish to keep him in his title. I suspect when Conrad restores you, if he restores you and gives you Capua, you will acknowledge him as your rightful suzerain and he will, with some ceremony, confirm you in your title. Let him do the same for Rainulf and he will have imperial protection against you, and…’ William looked at the still-peevish Berengara,‘…your successors, as well as any other Lombard noble who wishes him ill.’
Rainulf nodded vigorously; what William had proposed was a thing after which any man of sense would hanker. Right now he was in possession of his fief, but he had come by it in dubious circumstances which meant only his military strength kept him in place. To be confirmed by the Holy Roman Emperor would make him legitimate: if he could get rid of Pandulf’s niece, and perhaps breed a son with another, that child would be his lawful heir.
‘Only Conrad can decide that,’ Guaimar said.
‘True.’ William leant forward now, his voice remaining soft. ‘Sir, I have no desire to diminish you, but you are a messenger. Therefore the response must be carried back to Conrad Augustus to get his answer. Your aim is to detach Rainulf from his allegiance to Pandulf. Give him the desire to do so and you will succeed.’
‘And if I fail?’
‘Then you will face, when you seek to besiege the Prince of Capua, a force of Norman cavalry at your back which will put in doubt the success of the whole endeavour.’
Guaimar made to speak but William stopped him. ‘You may have the greatest host Christendom has ever witnessed, but we will call upon our brothers from all over South Italy to come to our aid, maybe as many as a thousand lances. I doubt Conrad wants to face such a force, as well as Pandulf and his Normans. Take it from one who knows, and I have no doubt Conrad knows this too, nothing is certain in war.’
There was bluff in what William had just said: Sicily was a more attractive prospect to the rest of the Norman mercenaries in Italy, but he imparted it with enough conviction to make it seem a real threat.
Guaimar sat in silence for half a minute. He did not know whether to be angry or impressed. He had advised Conrad to do the very thing this William de Hauteville was proposing, the notion he had formed before he and his sister escaped from Salerno, the idea he had kept from the archbishop. But he had intended to tease matters out, and draw Rainulf into grateful acceptance of an idea that would seem to come to him with a flash of spontaneity.
Imperial confirmation would make him, as his captain so ably outlined, inviolable: no matter how strong he became once back in his seat of Salerno, he could never revenge himself on Rainulf without incurring the kind of imperial wrath which was about to depose Pandulf, but he had very badly wanted the Norman to be grateful to him at least. Had he been outmanoeuvred? He was not sure, but he was now certain there was no point in doing that which he had originally intended, which was to ride out of Rainulf’s camp with the pretence of going back to plead with Conrad, then return to tell him that, after much argument, he had persuaded the emperor to agree.
‘I have no need to take such a message,’ he said finally, wondering, as he looked into the penetrating Norman’s eyes, if the man ever blinked. ‘It has already been conceded.’
‘As I thought,’ said William.
‘You knew?’ demanded Berengara.
‘No, I did not know, but to detach Rainulf you had to offer him something he could not refuse, and, given he has much wealth, that was the only thing that made sense.’ He turned to look to the top of the table, to where Rainulf was looking confused. ‘I advise you to accept, and if you do, I suggest that it would be a kindness to offer these two visitors both a meal and a bed if they want one.’
Rainulf just nodded. Berengara looked as if she had bitten that yellow fruit the monk had used at Montesarchio to cleanse William’s wound.
‘I would give my eye teeth to see the look on Pandulf’s face when he hears this,’ she said.
‘Let him hear it only when he sees our lances,’ said William. ‘I sent the servants out of the room so that they would not overhear. Not one of the men we command will be told of this till we turn up under Pandulf’s walls.’
‘I must tell the emperor.’
‘No, your honour,’ said William, giving for the first time some credence to his claimed title. ‘It is I who will tell the emperor, and I will also tell him that the next time he will meet you and your sister will be under the walls of Capua.’
‘You don’t trust me.’
Rainulf laughed, his belly shaking. ‘He is a true Norman, of course he does not trust you.’
‘And now,’ William said finally, standing up. ‘I would like a few words with my lord, alone, while you are shown to one of our huts. I fear the accommodation you will be offered will not meet the standard to which you are accustomed, but it is all we have.’
‘You have no idea, William de Hauteville,’ snapped Berengara, ‘of what we have had to live in these last few years.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
William rode out at dawn the next morning, accompanied only by Drogo, leaving behind him a camp speculating wildly about what was afoot. Like his brother, they were in ignorance, and try as he might Drogo could get no answers to his questions until the camp and Rainulf’s tower was well out of sight. That was not just caution on William’s part; he still needed time to think through what he was going to do, well aware that he had been lucky in his talk with Guaimar. Up against a more experienced envoy he would not have nailed things so easily, but he suspected the young man would learn: he had not been stupid enough to seek to string matters out when his ploy had been exposed.
William was in his prime: never had he felt more fit to be a leader and a warrior, and he knew Drogo was also at his peak, unlike Rainulf, who was fading. Though he might have many years to live, his days of leading men into battle were numbered, if not actually over, and while nothing would make William disloyal to a man who had come to trust him, he had to consider, in a world where every creature was at the mercy of an implacable and
