in his line would it take place? There was a chance, of course, it would not, in which case the horn would sound and his banner would wave to order his men to retreat.
The Byzantine levies were holding their discipline better than he expected, though with much beating of men with swords to keep them from rushing ahead. William suspected what men he had who had fought in a battle before had been put out front to aid their captains in setting the pace, a shrewd move, and it looked as if the Normans were about to be faced, in extended and vulnerable order, with a wall of pikes, behind them eager men with knives ready to come through the front line to slash at horse and rider.
But they could not hold their discipline, even on a field of battle unbroken by gullies or rocks. Gaps began to appear, the greatest opening up before the men led by Drogo, and William knew that he would see it. He dropped his banner and held his breath until Drogo raised his. That was the signal, and breaking into an immediate canter the Norman line began to close, concentrating around Drogo’s battaile. Their opponent was no fool: Doukeianos could see what was happening and William suspected it was he who rode forward hard to try to close that gap by halting his troops.
With trained men he might have achieved it, but the actual result was greater confusion, with some men stopping completely while others came on. It was they, partially isolated, who now faced a solid line of Norman lances, and one that would lap round their sides when they met. Compounding what had already gone awry, the captain who led them saw his salvation in an aggressive charge, completely ignoring the horns his general had furiously blown ordering him to halt and retire.
Drogo’s banner was now central and the Byzantines were faced with a solid line of Norman lances. There was no escape, though many tried, making matters worse as the Normans got between them stabbing and, when a lance was lost, slashing with their broadswords. Inevitably these untrained milities broke and sought to run, in doing so getting in among those to their rear who still held some kind of cohesion, setting off a general panic as each body of men saw themselves in danger from these ferocious horsemen.
Soon the field was full of running men, being pursued by a wall of horseflesh and riders that took a weapon to any flesh that came within their reach. Michael Doukeianos was fleeing too: there was no point in standing still to die a glorious death. Those captains who had not perished had surrounded him and were acting as a shield, and in doing so they had left the men they led to their own fate.
It was foolish to try to surrender, though many made the attempt. A small host facing a massively larger one cannot take prisoners, and in any case these were worthless creatures, not rich men who would command a ransom. Wise heads lay down and pretended to be dead, the imprudent pleaded for mercy and died with their plea on their lips, many of them ridden down and trampled by hooves as well as cut with swords.
Soon the field was clear of fighters, the whole Byzantine host broken and in flight, even those contingents that had not faced battle. William de Hauteville, his arms soaked with victim blood, called a halt to the pursuit when the point of any further havoc had passed. Now he was in among braying donkeys and mules, animals abandoned by the sutlers who had brought them here, they running alongside what women had trailed the host from Barletta.
It was Mauger who found the pack animals that mattered: the beasts which had on their flanks the heavy brass-bound coffers of the catapan, full of the gold with which he had offered to bribe them.
‘Find out where we are, someone,’ William cried. ‘This victory must have a name.’
There were a couple of settlements called Moschella close enough by to provide that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Arduin was cock-a-hoop when he heard of William’s triumph, though that was tempered by his not having been present to lead the fight in person. Ensconced once more in the great hall of the castle at Melfi, his crows of triumph echoed off the walls.
‘Never fear,’ said William, seeking to bring him back to reality — he was behaving as if the end result of his insurrection was a foregone conclusion: that his enemies would be driven out of Apulia by what had just occurred. ‘You will get your opportunity. Byzantium won’t give up after one reverse, and I will wager it will be harder to beat them next time. The catapan has learnt about the risks of fighting we Normans.’
Those dark Lombard eyes were alight as he replied. ‘They will face a proper army, William, not just you.’
There was some truth in that, for Arduin had been busy: Melfi was already surrounded by encampments full of Lombard volunteers, and more were arriving each day, from Benevento and even parts of Campania, where Prince Guaimar had placed no restrictions on his subjects travelling individually to enlist — not that he would have been attended to if he had. If William had ever doubted the strength of that Lombard dream he had good evidence of it now: they had not seen Byzantium soundly beaten in Southern Italy in decades.
Norman lances came in too, some from Normandy in ones and twos; others were mercenaries who had been in Italy for years, come to swell the ranks of his cavalry, not yet in a flood, but enough to encourage William to believe that more would follow. Non-fighting supporters had come too: farriers to shoe horses and blacksmiths to forge weapons and shape helmets, while men with the right eye for a pikestaff combed the surrounding forests for suitable timber.
There were leather workers and cloth weavers, saddlers and harness makers, cobblers to produce footwear, vivandiers and bakers, along with their women, who would cook and sustain their fighting menfolk on the march. A steady stream of supplies was being brought in by mule and on human backs and, most vital of all, Arduin had found a troop of crossbowmen, not as many as would be needed, but enough to train up more when weapons became available.
A message of congratulations had also come from Salerno, but — and this William held to be strange — it was a verbal one delivered by a messenger employed by Kasa Ephraim. It was also noticeable that whatever Lombard volunteers had come in from Campania few of them, so far, were from that city and its immediate surroundings, where Prince Guaimar’s inclination to stand aside would be better known and, besides that, they would have been recently engaged in the taking of Amalfi…
The Jew proved as shrewd as ever: as soon as news of Masseria reached Salerno, he reasoned there might be business to transact with the victorious Normans, who needed someone to keep safe their funds, and also to facilitate any transfer of their plunder home to their relatives in Normandy. The message that was returned to him was that it would profit him to journey personally to Melfi where there was already Byzantine gold, and likely to be more to follow.
Sending money home was an arrangement he had provided for years to the likes of Rainulf Drengot. William and Drogo had used his services before. How he did it over such distances, at the constant threat of banditry, was a mystery, and one he was determined to keep to himself, but the funds to bring south their brothers, as well as the coin needed to finance the construction of their father’s stone donjon, still waiting to be built, had been safely commuted back home by Ephraim, who made substantial fees from the transactions.
Those brothers were not present now. Apart from a garrison to man the walls of Melfi the Normans were out doing that at which they were best: raiding Byzantine territory south of Barletta, taking towns and tribute if they would submit, ravaging the countryside around those places that held out — few of those, since the catapan was too busy training his newly raised levies to interfere. With word spread throughout the province, not only of the recent victory, but the fact that the Normans were raiding at will, Lombards were trickling in from the port cities as well, which provided William and Arduin with good intelligence.
It was from that source they heard of the methods of Byzantine conscription — many had fled from the threat of that — an imposition made more harsh by necessity. No one able-bodied was spared: the whole of Apulia down to Otranto, as well as Eastern Calabria, was being scoured for men. Even if they were unwilling to serve they were being dragged in to make up a host big enough to prevail, and the training was as callous as the recruitment. Even forced to serve, they would be better drilled the next time Michael Doukeianos faced the Normans and, to stiffen them, he also had trained reinforcements, a body of Varangians recently arrived from Constantinople.
That news was enough to give William pause: he had fought alongside the Varangians in Sicily and he knew how formidable they were. They were of the same stock as the Normans, men from the Viking heartlands who had gone east into the great wilderness rather than south to the land of the Franks and beyond, using the rivers and lakes instead of the sea to penetrate deep, finally setting up a rich and fruitful kingdom on a great river that flowed
