‘He was a good commander, and much respected, until he took Syracuse.’
‘He betrayed you,’ Berengara said, almost with pleasure.
William knew she was right, but he had no desire to give her the satisfaction of agreeing. ‘I like to think he had a higher loyalty, one perhaps I did not understand.’
‘It comes as no surprise that a Norman lacks understanding there!’
‘He had, however,’ Guaimar cut in, giving his sister a hard look, ‘done us a service.’
‘Which is?’
‘The levies Maniakes took to Sicily did not go willingly and so he left behind a discontented province. Revolt broke out last year in Apulia, and if that has been dampened the countryside is, I am told, still afire with dreams of freedom, of throwing off the yoke of Constantinople completely.’
‘Not a new idea, Prince Guaimar.’
‘No,’ responded Guaimar, his face alight with anticipation. ‘But now that you have returned, we have at our disposal a potent force which might just make the difference. Arduin, who fought alongside you in Sicily, has been asked by the new Byzantine Catapan to take command of the fortress at Melfi.’
William knew Arduin well and esteemed him; a Lombard, he had been one of the few commanders to get anything approaching a fighting spirit out of Maniakes’ conscripted Apulian levies.
‘Unknown to the Catapan,’ Guaimar continued, ‘he is a Lombard first and holds any loyalty to Byzantium second, and has offered to hand it over to the forces of revolt. He who holds Melfi possesses a key that could unlock the whole of the Byzantine possessions. I can show you on a map…’
William shook his head, which stopped Guaimar from moving. He knew Melfi and had avoided it many times when previously raiding in that region. High in the Apennines it was near impregnable and commanded the route from Campania into Apulia. It would provide a base from which operations could be mounted, while also affording a safe haven into which to retire should too great an opposing force appear. Had he been eager for the challenge, the prospect of possessing such a formidable stronghold and the advantages it provided would have excited him; the trouble was, he was not.
This prince had altered since their first meeting: before he had come across as honest but naive, but there was now an undercurrent in his words, simply because they were formed of calculation. It did not, of course, take any great wit to follow his thoughts. The dream of kicking Byzantium out of South Italy had a long history, had been tried and been soundly beaten, even with the aid of a strong Norman contingent. Guaimar was raising that tempting spectre and dangling it before William as another way to avoid talking about the subject he had come to thrash out.
The two would naturally connect for Guaimar; he could divert these battle-hardened Normans to ferment revolt in Apulia, which would relieve him of their presence and might just bring in its wake, for little cost, great rewards in a part of the world where they could legitimately live off the land; in other words, plunder. And with this de Hauteville fully engaged, the question of the succession could be safely left in the air.
If he was annoyed, William knew Guaimar was merely acting as a prince should: looking to his own interests. Rainulf kept him in power, protected him from his own subjects, and was of an age at which going off on campaign would be a hardship. He had a bastard son who might or might not come into his title; it was an inheritance Guaimar could block with ease, indeed it would be he who would be ensuring that no papal dispensation came for annulment, so he could keep the old Norman leader in his purse.
The man before him was of a different stamp: in his prime, a hero hailed as Iron Arm by those he had led and perhaps a fellow harder to control as a vassal. Yet, if he did not commit himself Guaimar could just as easily dangle before William the prospect of that same succession for as long as Rainulf lived.
William was trying to work out what to do on the same basis; he was head of his family and they looked to him to make their way, that made even more pressing by the arrival of three more brothers. His father had been betrayed in Normandy and this prince, who had embraced William at Capua and had acceded in the impression that he should succeed to Rainulf’s title, was very capable of doing the same.
Yet what he had said to Drogo was nothing but the plain truth. What made the Normans formidable was not just their military prowess but also their cohesion. To force a decision on the succession now would certainly fragment that, and it was possible that Guaimar would welcome such dissension; he might need his Normans, but he did not love them any more than his more forthright sister. William, just as much as Rainulf, lacked the means to force this prince to decide; all the advantage for Guaimar lay in the opposite!
If he led the Normans into Apulia and succeeded where previous invaders had failed, was he really prepared to hand it all over to Guaimar, who he suspected would do little to aid him? He might dream of a Lombard kingdom in South Italy ruled from Salerno, but if it was to come to pass it could only do so with Norman assistance.
Many strands of thought were running through William’s mind at that moment but the paramount one was simple: from this moment on he must look to his own future and to that of his family, must look to take what would be his due, not wait to be gifted it by any other power. Never again would he leave himself or the de Hauteville name at the mercy of any prince or duke.
He would go to Melfi, take over the fortress, aid Arduin and nourish Guaimar’s dreams. But like this prince, when the time came, he would look to his own interests and to those of his brothers. One day, he swore silently to God, just as he smiled at Guaimar in the way he had once smiled at Duke Robert of Normandy, this Prince of Salerno would acknowledge the blue and white banner of his house. And that sister, Berengara, so arrogant and spiteful to his Norman blood? Perhaps one day she would be made to bow and scrape to please him.
