‘I don’t need much. I am going west and when it comes to food and fodder Robert will provide them whether he likes it or not.’
Good as his word, Roger de Hauteville lived very well off the Guiscard’s lands: when his men ate beef it was from his brother’s cattle, when his horses downed oats they came from Robert’s grain stores. It would have pleased him to know that such theft, when reported back to Melfi, nearly produced an apoplexy.
Roger’s stop in Capua was of short duration: although he was made welcome, it was clear that his brother- in-law found his presence either irksome or inconvenient and no intercessions by his sister carried any weight. Richard’s relations with the Guiscard were fragile, as suited two equally powerful magnates whose interests did not always coincide. They would combine if the Norman position in Italy was threatened, but that did not extend to a deep common purpose and the fear always existed on both sides, in a world where suspicion was rife, that one great Norman fief might combine with outside forces to destroy the other, despite a long-standing commandment that, here in Italy, Normans did not kill Normans.
The Prince of Capua took care to keep his operations to the west of the Apennines, while Robert Guiscard made sure none of his lances strayed into his neighbour’s bailiwick. If they met at all it was in the papal fief of Benevento, which straddled the mountains and was rich in everything that was of value in their world: field crops, orchard fruit, vines, livestock, fish and timber, as well as all the trades that commanded good payment. Both Norman fiefs had treaty relations with the papacy in the Principality of Benevento; both treated such obligations more in the breech than the observance.
There was also the jealousy of Richard’s captains: a de Hauteville was too prominent a personage to be a mere lance, too well connected to be employed as a mere warrior, quite apart from the fact that he had arrived in Capua leading fifty followers. To show them any favour was to upset the delicate balance any leader had with his own key supporters. After a month of well-fed idleness, Roger knew his own men were becoming impatient: like every Norman in Italy, these men served for reward and plunder. It was time to move on.
‘To where?’ asked Ralph de Boeuf.
‘We could offer our swords to Gisulf of Salerno.’
‘If we do, we’ll soon find ourselves fighting the men we are living with now at odds of a hundred to one.’
There was truth in that: having swallowed Capua, Richard continued to press in on the territories of his one- time nominal suzerain, so squeezing Salerno that the prince could only now say with certainty he ruled in his own city.
‘I have also heard that Gisulf is short on sense.’
‘Let us travel through that city and see what presents itself.’
The sight of a strong party of Normans riding towards Salerno did not go unnoticed: word of their presence reached the city gates before they did. Prior to that, Roger and his men had sat on a high hill looking at the great bay on which the city sat, one of the premier trading ports of Western Italy, rival to Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, all of them wealthy, all of them victims over the last five hundred years of internecine Lombard rivalries, expanding and contracting as one fief rose and another diminished. Now they faced the Normans, a bitter pill for Salerno, given it was the duke of that city who had first sought their mercenary aid to fight the Saracens.
‘They are accustomed to disquiet,’ Ralph observed, his eye following the trace of the exterior walls. ‘How long do these Lombards have?’
‘How long do we Normans have, Ralph?’
‘There’s no one to threaten us.’
‘God has a way of marking and dealing with hubris.’
‘God in heaven, you are dismal.’
Roger smiled. ‘I am made thoughtful, Ralph. We have just ridden the same roads that my eldest brothers traversed many times and they are now bones. William’s iron arm did not save him from a secret knife, nor did being a doughty fighter spare Drogo the same fate. Sitting here, I feel somehow their presence, more so than at their tomb in Venosa. This is where my family’s adventure began.’
‘And where yours will end if we don’t eat soon.’
Roger nodded, and taking a tight hold of the reins of the mounts he led, he gently kicked with his heels to set his horse in motion.
The de Hauteville name got Roger an immediate audience as well as accommodation in the Castello di Arechi, the towering fortress that overlooked the town, but Gisulf of Salerno did not impress. The prince was too shifty in nature and that trait was marked in both his features and manner. He fidgeted constantly, unbecoming in a nobleman who, whatever his own anxieties, had a need to appear calm before his court, many of whom were present and loud in the way they reacted to his pronouncements, however outlandish. Dark-complexioned, with black hair and eyes, Gisulf looked and acted like a schemer and, given what he had been saying to Roger, one with a tenuous grip on reality. He had already created a great armed host from nothing but his imaginings, and sent it, with Roger at its head, to inflict a terrible defeat on Richard of Aversa.
‘I see his head on my city gate,’ he cried.
‘You speak of a man to whom I am related by marriage, sire.’
Gisulf, slightly hunched and too gaudily dressed for his slight figure, waved an impatient hand: such ties clearly meant nothing. ‘And you would be paying back his family for what they did to your own, the treacherous swine.’
Roger wondered at that misinterpretation of the past, which got loud approval from most present: certainly Richard’s uncle, Rainulf, had cheated his brothers, but Gisulf’s own father had not treated William and Drogo well at all; indeed, if this inelegant prince was a schemer, then it was a parental inheritance. Guaimar, who had sired this fellow, had done his best to play off Rainulf against the de Hautevilles. That he had not succeeded in getting them to kill each other came from an over-reliance on conspiracy rather than a lack of the desire to indulge in such a thing.
While listening with seeming intent to the prince, Roger was taken with one of his advisors, a tall sallow- complexioned fellow in a skullcap, very much older than the rest of the courtiers present, not given, either, to reacting with enthusiasm to their lord’s more outlandish suggestions. Indeed, the slight smile that played around his lips hinted at a more realistic grasp of where Gisulf stood in relation to the main enemy, for there were others. Roger’s brother, Mauger, from his castle of Scalea, preyed on Gisulf’s territories from the south, as much as Richard of Aversa did from the north and west.
‘You will dine with me this night, Roger de Hauteville, and we will speak. Plans must be laid, messages sent to Naples and Amalfi to seek alliance — I will not deal with that pile of ordure they call the Duke of Gaeta.’ Gisulf stopped both his pacing and fidgeting and fixed Roger with his beady eyes. ‘Would a force of Saracen mercenaries be an advantageous idea?’
He spun then to face the tall fellow in the skullcap.
‘Ephraim, do we have the funds to pay for such aid?’
‘If you sell your plate, sire, yes.’
‘Sell my plate? Am I so reduced that I cannot dine off my gold?’
‘The man whose head you wish to see on your city gates is an avaricious neighbour.’
Gisulf spun to look at Roger again. ‘You see what a robber your Richard is, you see how much I have to give him to have peace? He demands bezants and I must pay.’ The cunning look came on now in full force. ‘But you will also see what wealth you could gain if he were no longer my bane.’
Having been given an apartment, Roger retired, wondering how long he should stay in this land of fairies and their dreams. Quite apart from any ties to his sister, he was disinclined to do battle with his powerful brother-in-law to advance the cause of a Lombard, especially one who would seek to swindle him, even if he had a chance to succeed, which he most certainly did not. In contemplation of this, he was distracted by the knock at the door of his chamber, opening it to find the man called Ephraim outside.
‘I wonder if we may have a private word?’ Roger stood back and indicated he should enter, quite naturally looking to ensure he was not armed. Once inside and the door shut, the fellow looked at him and smiled in a friendly way. ‘You remind me of your brothers, William and Drogo. It is striking how you all resemble each other.’
‘If you had seen my father you would know why.’
‘Ah yes, Tancred. He and I did much business, even if we never met.’
