she planted on him was closer to his chest than his face. He was gone before he realised what she had done, only aware of that mark of affection when the slight night breeze touched on the moisture her act had left behind.
The whole camp was awake now, all gathered around this unwanted bonfire, looking up with a mixture of anger and wonder as the labours of weeks was consumed.
‘Stand back,’ he yelled, ‘all of you.’
That was a command slow to be obeyed, even if it was much repeated, but the crowd had retired before the weight of the structure, acting on the destroyed lower parts, began to buckle and slowly fall. There was a strange grace to that, so slowly did it happen, that shattered by the crash of contact as parts broke off sending sparks flying in all directions. By the time it was down, Arduin was standing next to William.
‘It was set alight after being drenched,’ he said,’ I can smell the pitch.’
William was looking at the faces all around, lit by the orange glow, including his brothers. ‘Who was guarding it?’
‘A party of my men were set to watch it,’ Arduin replied, shaking his head. ‘Ten in number. Those not speared I saw with their throats slashed.’
‘Where’s Argyrus?’
Arduin looked around, as had William, scanning the faces, easily able to identify those he knew. ‘I pray to God it is not he.’
‘Then why can we not see him, or any of his escort?’
‘Perhaps he still sleeps.’
That got the Lombard a look, one he had to acknowledge despite how bitter it made him feel: no one could sleep through the noise of a whole camp rudely brought awake and the light from such a blaze.
William and Arduin saw Argyrus at first light. They were standing by the still-smouldering embers of the tower with the acrid taste of smoke in their throats. He was looking over the walls of Trani, while all around him the jeers of the defenders rose and fell in mockery. There was no need to wonder at what had caused his betrayal: it would be Byzantine gold, as it had been in the case of Atenulf selling his prisoner. Angry as he was, William could at least see what had prompted the young man’s treachery.
Since his father’s death he had been a prisoner of Byzantium, and who knew what his feelings were truly like towards them? Released, he had become the pawn of others more powerful than he, sustained by the hope that things would at sometime turn to his advantage. He had been used by Landulf of Benevento and surely he had been told of the council called by Guaimar, where he had been extolled by his fellow Lombards as a potential leader with obvious insincerity: whatever they saw him as, it was not as a future ruler. If Argyrus had any sense, he must have seen, too, in the Prince of Salerno’s manoeuvring, a future source of disappointment, so he had decided no doubt to take what was on offer now, in place of the uncertain rewards of the future.
Arduin was near to tears: for him this was no mere setback, it was like a physical blow. Who now would lead the revolt and provide a banner around which the ordinary Lombards, those who sought only freedom, could rally? He had been looking into their faces since the first grey light tinged the morning sky, and had seen in their expressions, as the word spread of this treachery, coming hard on the heels of what Count Atenulf had done, how badly it had affected them. The question was unavoidable: would they still fight?
‘Do we rebuild?’ William asked. He, at least, had no doubt what his men would do: they were professionals when it came to fighting. ‘It is for you to decide.’
‘I need to gauge the spirit of those who have volunteered.’
‘Their spirits will be lifted by your determination, Arduin.’
‘I will gather, then, after they have prayed and eaten, but I have to tell you, William, at this moment I cannot think what words I will use to inspire them.’
As the day wore on, with a listless besieging host clearing up the charred mess of that burnt tower, Arduin kept putting off that which he knew he needed to do. For all he had a silver tongue, he felt it would need to be diamond encrusted to overcome the disillusionment which was apparent in every face with whom he exchanged a glance. Equally troubling, and a problem that had him sulking like Achilles in his tent, was what to do next if the siege was not to be pressed, for if these men he led, Normans not included, would have been reluctant to go so far south as to fight George Maniakes before, they would be even more so now.
He looked up angrily as the tent flap was hauled back, prepared to snap that he wanted to be left in peace. But they were not words he could use to William de Hauteville.
‘You had best come, Arduin. Trani has opened a gate and is sending out envoys carrying olive branches.’
He saw them as soon as he emerged and moved to the edge of the camp, with William on his heels, the olive branches of peace being waved above their heads, and when they spoke, to tell him why they were now ready to hand over their port city, he had to stop himself from laughing out loud. George Maniakes had rebelled against Constantinople, lifted the siege of Bari, had his troops declare him emperor, and had set off in a fleet of ships for the lands of Romania, intent on toppling Constantine.
‘Argyrus?’ he demanded.
He had fled by sea, and once they had entered the city, and were on the jetty that made up half the harbour of Trani, they could still see the sails of his ship beating up into an unfavourable wind as he sought to escape their vengeance.
Over the following week, Arduin began to sense that the betrayal of Argyrus was impacting on him, and that was compounded by what had occurred with the idiotic Count Atenulf: it was in looks and conversations hurriedly abandoned whenever he appeared, and it was from his fellow Lombards that he felt the most distaste — the ordinary Norman lances, as they always had, paid him little attention. He had had his men in the palm of his hand until that siege tower was destroyed, able to rouse them to great deeds with his rhetoric. They had been fired to take Trani and spill their blood in doing so.
Yet now, only days later, if he issued a command, he had to wait for it to be obeyed, and when the men he led were collected in numbers such an order led to a ripple of unpleasant muttering, not silenced by their captains, a sure indication of a serious loss of authority, and he knew in his heart that what he was witnessing was impossible to repair.
There was little point in seeing it as unfair: yes, it was he who had started the revolt, but it was also he who had sought that titular leader around whom the Lombards could unite, never doubting in his own mind that it could not be himself. Both had betrayed the cause he espoused, and it took no great imagination to discern that he was being held responsible, being examined, in covert looks, in a way that saw him in the same light, even now that victory was at hand.
Alone in the villa he had taken, overlooking the harbour of Trani, idly throwing dice onto a table, which held a meal unconsumed since the night before, he was forced to examine, as the first hint of grey tinged the eastern sky, his options. News had come that Prince Guaimar had departed Salerno and was on his way to Melfi, where he had called a great council of all who mattered in Apulia. Sure he was entitled to much reward, Arduin had serious doubts as to whether he would get his just deserts, and he would certainly never receive that of which he had entertained in many dreamlike fantasies: real power in the province he had helped to conquer.
The realisation, which he had always known but now saw with great clarity, did nothing to reassure him. Without the Normans he was nothing, especially if he would struggle to command his own volunteer levies, many of whom, in any case, were drifting away. The atmosphere in his military lines, in the rows of Lombard tents which surrounded Trani, as he had walked through them that day, had been rank with dissent and suspicion.
For the tenth time he unfolded the note which had been pressed into his hand as he made his way through the bustling town on his return, an act carried out with such speed and in such a crowd that all he had seen of the deliverer was the disappearing back of the cowl on his head. The words he read only underlined the thoughts on which he had been ruminating, as he wondered if the people who had sent this to him had also fomented that suspicion he had felt in the looks aimed at his back, from the same eyes that would not engage with his own.
It was impossible to put out of his mind the meeting Guaimar had held at Montecchio, to forget how the delegates who had come from the port cities and inland towns had made it plain that they had no real regard for him; that they saw him as no more than an instrument of Norman ambition and would certainly not now wish to see him elevated to a position of any authority. Was he that, a dupe? Was such a role all he could claim? Had he been a tool not only of Norman aspirations but also those of Guaimar, who had done nothing to raise him in the eyes of the
