‘The key to protecting the border with Campania is the fortress at Melfi. As long as that is in my hands no force of invaders from there can hope to sustain itself in Apulia.’ Arduin knew the truth of what was being said, but he was also holding his breath for what he hoped was coming next. ‘And I am offering to you the post of topoterites of Melfi, if you can secure the services of enough Normans to hold it secure. I do not have the forces, myself, to garrison it properly and control the rest of the Catapanate.’
‘Will the emperor not send you more men?’
‘The Emperor Michael has no more men to send. He has serious trouble in Anatolia with the Turks and his armies are committed there. Do you accept my offer of Melfi?’
‘A great responsibility, Catapan,’ Arduin replied. ‘You do me great honour.’
‘I am sure you are worthy of it.’
Michael Doukeianos looked into a smiling, eager face. Had he been able to see behind that smile, as well as the dark brown eyes and the round, pallid face of the man before him, he would have been unsettled. Arduin of Fassano was a good soldier and had proved his worth to Byzantium both in Sicily and in the recent rebellion. To give a man of his experience the captaincy of such an important fortress was, on the face of it, sound policy, but Doukeianos should have remembered he was dealing with a Lombard, and they were a race much given to duplicity.
Arduin had not joined the revolt just crushed for one very good reason: with an experienced military eye he had seen it was doomed to failure, but that did nothing to dent his feelings for Lombard aspirations. Yes, he had served Byzantium; he was a soldier and had gone to where there was a war to fight with pay and plunder to be gained, and once there had done his very best and earned the plaudits of his peers and superiors by turning unwilling Apulian conscripts into effective soldiers, but in his breast the flame of independence had never dimmed.
His father had been a soldier in the great uprising of twenty years past, led by the late and revered Lombard hero, Melus of Bari. This was the very same revolt which had seen engaged the likes of Rainulf Drengot — and Arduin’s father had died fighting Basil Boioannes. As a lad he had been fired by parental ideas, and those he had never lost. It had been drummed into him that the time must come when Byzantium would be weak, when they could not find the forces to hold on to Apulia, told that would be the moment for the Lombards, under a competent leader, to strike and take back the power they had once held. Never mind that Melus of Bari had failed; was now the time and was he the man?
As he replied, he was aware of his rapidly beating heart, just as he was aware of the need to keep his voice, as well as his excitement, under control. ‘Before I accept, Catapan, I must be sure that I can do as you ask. I must go to Aversa, and parley with the Normans.’
‘Go to Melfi first, and see what needs to be done. Make sure the locals are loyal, and if they are not, do what is required to get them on your side. Hang or bribe the leading citizens, that I leave to you, then you can go to your Normans.’
‘If I am to bribe and recruit, both require funds and any Norman worth his salt will want to see coin before they commit themselves.’
‘Never fear, Arduin,’ said Michael Doukeianos, grinning. ‘If Byzantium is short of fighting men, it is never, ever, short of the means to pay for support.’
CHAPTER ONE
Any gathering of the sons of Tancred de Hauteville was bound to end up in reminiscence and this, taking place in the vestry of an Italian cathedral, given there were five of his offspring present, was no exception: they recollected the memories of growing up in the unruly Normandy region of the Contentin, of escapades, past quarrels, fights they had engaged in with each other, but more importantly with their neighbours, as well as raiders from the islands that lay off the Norman coast. And they talked of their father, sometimes in awe, sometimes with gales of laughter, but mostly with wry affection.
Tancred de Hauteville had been a noted warrior, as well as a man who bred sturdy and numerous sons — there were another seven brothers still at home, the product of two wives — and he had raised them to be puissant warriors like himself; their rank as the offspring of a petty Norman baron required no less. From their very first- taken steps they had been tutored in the use of weapons, toy wooden swords and shields, replaced by metal as soon as they could handle the weight, growing strong by constant practice, gifted on land and in water, swimming in the river that ran through the family fields and then in the crashing waves of the nearby great ocean.
The time came when they could mount first a pony and then a horse; they had been taught to ride and use a lance so that one day they could, if fortune favoured them as it had their father, serve in battle under their liege lord, the Duke of Normandy, as part of a mounted fighting force greatly feared throughout Europe. Well fed on the produce of Tancred’s fertile demesne, the sons came eventually to match and even tower over a parent whose own great height was often remarked upon.
Tancred never let them forget their Viking heritage, or that the five elder boys, through their mother, were half-blood relations to the ducal house. They came from a race and a lineage bred for combat: it was not for them but for others to cut timber, grow food, to sow and reap crops, to work the family salt pans and exploit the fishing rights which provided the means by which they could be armed.
Each had been provided with the weapons and equipment necessary for the tasks that lay ahead: the horses needed to carry them and their equipment to war, as well as a destrier to ride in battle, a sharptipped lance, a heavy, double-edged sword, a shield framed in metal, covered with hard wood and leather and painted in the de Hauteville colours of blue and white. Most expensive of all, but vital, each had been gifted a set of protective armour: a chain mail hauberk, gloves and a helmet.
The duty of vassalage obliged Tancred to provide to his duke ten lances, and that he had done — a task made so much easier as his elder sons, one by one and a year apart, grew to match then surpass his fighting ability. They also aided him mightily in his endemic disputes with neighbours, usually over land, water, or rights to the produce of the Atlantic shoreline, and given their talent for combat the name de Hauteville had soon become one to be respected in the Contentin.
Yet that very number of sons brought with it a greater problem: the petty barony of Hauteville-la-Guichard could feed them as they grew to manhood, could arm and mount them to be warriors, but it was too small a demesne to satisfy their needs as adults. They required land of their own on which to raise families and to provide for them the revenues which supported a fighting knight.
Tancred had sought to get them placed as personal knights, part of the familia of his liege lord, the son of the man he himself had served so faithfully. That suzerain, Duke Robert of Normandy, had ignored written requests more than once, and had then rebuffed the same appeal in a face-to-face meeting. For men bred to war, with no hope of advancement in their homeland, the brothers de Hauteville, first William and Drogo, and now joined by Humphrey, Geoffrey and half-brother Mauger, had taken the well-worn route to Italy and mercenary service, where the martial prowess of the Normans was highly prized and well rewarded.
‘Enough,’ William insisted, as Drogo continued to relate those amatory adventures he had indulged in at home, quite forgetting the trouble his activities had caused: he was the father of more bastards than could be counted on the fingers of his hands. ‘Home is far off in time and distance. We must turn our thoughts to that which concerns us here.’
Drogo frowned more from habit than irritation; William might be the oldest and Tancred’s heir, but too often in their growing years he had assumed near-parental powers.
Yet he deferred to him, not just as an older sibling but also as a chief; Rainulf Drengot commanded the Normans of Campania, but William was his senior captain and had led the mercenary contingent in the recent invasion of Sicily. A measure of his stature, gained in that conflict, was his soubriquet: he was now more commonly referred to by those he led as Bras de Fer, a title bestowed on him by his confreres after a single-combat encounter outside the walls of Syracuse. William Iron Arm had fought and defeated the ruling Saracen emir, a giant of a man who claimed to have on his belt the notches of a hundred skulls.
Humphrey, his beetle brow furrowed, stood suddenly, and went to the door that led from the vestry to the
