from the surrounding land and they would have to be trained. He still had some proper soldiers, his own personal troops and bodyguards, as well as some of the hastily conscripted levies from Bari with which he had put down the recent rebellion; with luck he might surprise the traitor while he was away from Melfi and get between him and the fortress.
If he could do that and he was weak, he would make Arduin pay for his treachery. As for the Normans, they could be bought off: they always put coin before loyalty to a cause — anyone’s cause.
But that brought forth another concern: mounted and already well trained and armed for war they could move swiftly and anywhere, which included the coast, which must be protected at all costs. If Byzantium held the port cities it held a firm grip on Apulia, but they were a rich and tempting prize for men who loved to plunder.
‘Captain, to which port are you bound?’ Doukeianos demanded, turning round to face a roomful of blandfaced officials, some of whom had served half a dozen previous catapans.
‘Ragusa, Excellency, with a cargo of oil.’
‘Forget that. You will proceed to Constantinople under my orders…’
The man’s hands were suddenly open in protest. ‘Your Excellency!’
‘Oil commands a good price there too, so you will not lose, and I will reward you for the service. You are to take a despatch which will be written speedily telling the emperor of what has occurred and asking for reinforcements.’ Then he looked past the bowing captain, that being enough to send one official off to compose the necessary document. To another he demanded, ‘Get me a list of what levies we still have under arms.’
‘Excellency.’
The command to a third was just as brusque. ‘I want a message sent by sea up the coast, first to alert the ports to the danger, and then a rider sent on to Troia, to the garrison there. They are to send out patrols to scour the border with Benevento. I want to know what kind of support the principality is providing in arms and men.’
A stream of other instructions followed, with the required officials departing to obey. It was an element of the efficiency of the Apulian administration that he had in his hands a paper outlining the message he wished to send to Constantinople with less than half the sand run through the glass, one which he perused quickly before, satisfied, he appended his seal. Quietly, he told the man holding the wax and candle how much to pay the captain for the service required, then ordered him, once the man was on his way, to return on his own.
With everything that could be put in hand complete, Michael Doukeianos sat down to compose a message to be sent to Salerno, one in which he imparted that he understood the constraints under which Prince Guaimar struggled, and also that he was appreciative of the stand he had taken, as well as the steps in informing the Western Emperor. He also wrote that he regretted his own concerns prevented him from offering to bring to Guaimar’s aid the kind of force which would put his rebellious vassal, Rainulf Drengot, in his place.
He stopped and smiled then: the last thing Guaimar would want to see was Byzantine war vessels filling his bay. Then he went back to composition.
The fulsome praise which followed was to the prince’s sagacity in the actions he had taken, as well as his caution, plus an assurance that once he had dealt with Arduin and recovered Melfi he would be content to leave Campania in peace while he sought to enforce redress on Benevento, albeit he would have no choice but to ask the men Drengot commanded to return to Campania.
Reading it over twice, the young Byzantine general was satisfied that it implied that which he intended: if Guaimar wanted to take part in the dismemberment of Benevento, he, as the representative of Constantinople in Southern Italy, would welcome him, and given that occupied Normans were better than idle ones, such a course might distract them from mischief in his own domains.
He knew the man who had sealed his despatch earlier was waiting and he called him over, sanding and sealing his own message without allowing the fellow to have sight of it. ‘This is to go by ship to Salerno, to be placed in the hand of Prince Guaimar and no one else. See to it.’
The message found Guaimar under the walls of Amalfi. Not that he himself was engaged in trying to subdue the place: on land that fell to Rainulf Drengot, who led his Normans as well as the foot soldiers the prince had raised in his fiefs. Likewise at sea, a trusted admiral was responsible for ensuring no ship entered or left the harbour and he had placed stout booms across the entrance to ensure that task was carried out.
To subdue the place would take time, perhaps till they were starving — it had stout protective land walls — but that he had. If he had ever thought he might have an enemy who could trouble him, the response from Michael Doukeianos was everything for which Guaimar could wish. Both Naples and Gaeta, his other trading rivals, were either only too happy to see Amalfi humbled or too afraid of his Normans to intervene. To amuse himself, given he had little to do but inspire the besiegers by his presence, he spent time making lists of those enemy citizens he would hang from the walls, some of whom had troubled his father before him, while also dreaming of one day being acclaimed as a king by his fellow Lombards.
CHAPTER NINE
News of that siege naturally travelled east, but it was of no concern to either Arduin or William de Hauteville, except that it kept Guaimar and Rainulf busy. When word came of the approach of a Byzantine army, William was occupied, with the aid of his youngest brother, supervising the reconstruction of the walls of Lavello, which, on inspection, had proved be in a more sorry state than those of Venosa.
Michael Doukeianos knew of the occupation of Melfi by the Normans, knew of Arduin’s betrayal: he was heading their way to set matters right, the size of his army unknown. The messenger, a Lombard from Giovinazzo, had set out to warn of the intention, without waiting to assess numbers, but the fellow was certain the catapan could not be far behind: had he not moved like lightning the previous year to crush revolt?
Arduin was travelling throughout Benevento, well to the north, seeking Lombard volunteers, too far away to make any decisions affecting the urgent problem, leaving William to make them instead. He sent word at once to Drogo at Venosa, to Humphrey and Geoffrey still in Melfi, all three to join him while he despatched Mauger with a small party of horsemen to ride down the southern side of the River Ofanto, the route he suspected his enemy would take, to warn of their approach.
Instinctively, he wanted to meet the catapan in the open — the idea of being locked up in a fortress, however strong, was anathema. He also had to take a chance that Michael Doukeianos would not take the direct route from Bari across the high uplands, that he would hog the fertile coastal plain and the port cities, which would provide his troops with both ample sustenance and, if he had time to press into service the younger men, with recruits.
Drogo was with him the next day, bringing in the conroys who had been working with him, supervising the restoration of the Venosa defences; from Melfi came the garrison, excepting a skeleton force to hold it safe as a refuge to which they could fall back if need be. William had at his disposal all the men he could muster.
‘He can surely only assemble a small force,’ Drogo insisted, ‘and cannot field much in the way of trained bands. Moving as quickly as he has, he has not had time to raise fresh levies.’
That word ‘time’ hung in the air. Doukeianos had been expected to react but he should not have marched so soon. He had come to know of the Norman presence in Apulia long before he should; how had he found out mattered less than his being on the way: that had to be dealt with immediately.
‘That lack of trained bands applies to us even more,’ William replied. ‘We have none at all, and only a few Lombards who have volunteered as foot soldiers.’
None of his brothers, cogitating on that unpleasant fact, seemed willing to offer any ideas. It was William, looking over Drogo’s shoulder at the hundreds of labourers he had been supervising, who came up with a solution. They had been forced to the work and, apart from a couple of stonemasons, were the least skilled men in the town. That mattered less than their number; that they would certainly, without training, be near useless as soldiers, was even less important.
He knew there were weapons in the Lavello armoury — swords, shields and pikes. It was a requirement of any sizeable town in the Catapanate to act as an arsenal as well as a storehouse for any passing Byzantine army. The sight of men in such numbers, as long as he had no idea of their quality, might force Doukeianos to alter his tactics; it might even throw him off balance.
‘Drogo, get back to Venosa. I want all the labourers you have employed armed and marched to the east of
