mind, for none of the others would look at him. He had come here to make his brother grovel, not to draw de Hauteville blood. That others might die to achieve that was, to Robert, a price worth paying, yet to be open about that would not elevate him in the eyes of these men and he needed their respect. Besides, the Guiscard was never too open about his thinking.
‘It is enough that you do as I bid you to do.’
‘Of course, My Lord.’
‘Then do so, all of you.’
Unbeknown to Robert, the sortie had already been discussed by his Norman captains, who knew they were on was an errand driven by conceit rather than good sense. These men knew his brother as well as they knew their duke and had fought alongside him, not that such a thing alone would have stopped them from killing him if so ordered: their loyalty and any hope of advancement, to a castle or even a fief, lay with the man who led them. Yet they knew Robert would never harm Roger, so if they were to risk death or injury, and to be asked to inflict the same on their conroys, it had to be in a cause in which they believed and this one was not.
‘Best find him,’ Grenel said forcibly. He might be Greek but he shared the same thoughts as his Norman contemporaries. ‘And make a dumb show of preparing to attack. The sooner the two of them are face to face and Roger bows the knee the sooner we can go home.’
‘Perhaps, when Sichelgaita arrives, she will be able to talk some sense into him,’ said one captain.
Robert had his wife and child on the way, though not obliging them to keep to the furious pace he had set in the hope of trapping Roger.
‘Are you mad?’ another captain replied. ‘She’s more of a warrior than he is!’
Throughout the day, riders were sent out in all directions, watched from the battlements by Judith. Likewise she saw the preparations for an assault on the walls where she stood: ladders being cut and assembled, the sound of the stone wheel sharpening swords, axes and lance points. Roger would come as soon as he heard his brother was outside Mileto: he was not a man to see others die to save his pride and that was doubly the case when it came to her. That she wished he would desist, that it was not expected by the men he had left behind, who would face what was to come with their accustomed equanimity, counted for nothing.
She turned to face those lances, who were awaiting her orders, as well as the men stood around the great metal cauldron with a pile of faggots at its base.
‘Light the fires. Let’s get that oil bubbling enough to strip skin.’
The problem for Roger was simple: he was too obvious, given his height, build and colouring, to move around unnoticed, that compounded if he rode at the head of over three hundred lances, displaying as his banner the family blue and white chequer. The second difficulty was that Robert had twice that number of men, and if he was going to induce a stand-off in which matters could be discussed, if not settled, his preferred aim, he needed more warriors — not necessarily cavalry, but in sufficient numbers to induce Robert to talk rather than fight.
Encamped in the mountains above and to the east of Mileto, with ample wood, water and fodder, Roger was sure, if he could bring that about, he had the means to talk Robert out of his foolishness, unaware that his brother was working on the same principle but seeking the opposite outcome. For all Roger was popular, many had not rallied to his banner as quickly as he wished, leaving him only one choice: a personal plea for their aid.
‘There are thirty lances guarding the coast at Gerace.’
‘Which is ten leagues from here,’ complained Ralph de Boeuf.
Roger put his arm round Jordan’s shoulder. ‘Ten leagues would not trouble you, my boy, would it?’
‘Never, Papa.’
‘Then you will accompany me.’
‘And the rest of us?’
‘Stay here, Ralph, there are none of Robert’s conroys this side of Mileto.’
‘Take an escort, Roger.’
‘And wear men out to no purpose? What need do I have of an escort when I have Jordan at my side?’
Ralph de Boeuf’s expression showed he knew that to be rubbish, but Jordan was beaming, his face so flushed with pride his juvenile spots looked like fire coals. Told to prepare, he rushed off to get their mounts ready, his bright blond hair flying, followed by the admiring eyes of his father.
‘I swear he has grown half a hand since we left Mileto.’
‘Which makes him just as easy to mark as you. Be careful, Roger, remember your brother is no dimwit.’
Roger was right, there were none of Robert’s conroys east of the central mountains. What there were, however, were numerous individual riders seeking news of his whereabouts, and even if he avoided towns, he was every inch the Norman knight, while Jordan had an innocence and a pride that meant if he was asked, out of Roger’s earshot, with whom he rode, he was only too happy to tell the enquirer not only his father’s name and title, but where they were headed and why. Pushing their mounts, it was only a day’s ride to the walled town of Gerace, full of Greeks and one which had suffered much in the famine, happy to welcome the man they saw as their liege lord and saviour.
Normans cared for their horses when they must: Roger and Jordan walked their mounts a third of every league. The fellow informed of their presence and destination had no such consideration. He rode his horse till it nearly dropped, then commandeered another that got him swiftly back to Robert’s encampment. Few grains of sand made it through the neck of the glass before the Duke of Apulia was mounted and on his way with a hundred lances, driving his mounts with the same lack of regard. It was only by the greatest good fortune and a whisker of a wooded hillside that he missed Roger and Jordan, who had spent a whole day and night in Gerace, and were now riding back to their mountain retreat with half the men of the garrison, the rest pledged to follow.
Robert’s lances were spotted thundering towards the walls and even if they had not known his identity they would have slammed shut their gates. Nothing they subsequently learnt was inclined to alter such thinking: to these Greeks the Guiscard was remembered as a ravaging brigand, for Gerace had met him before. He had not been a duke then, nothing more than a thief, one feared by the citizens of this part of Calabria for the destruction he had wrought.
‘You know me and you know what I will do if you do not open your gates.’
‘We do know you too well, weasel,’ a voice cried. ‘May the Devil take you!’
‘I am your duke.’
‘We are loyal to Roger of Mileto.’
‘Which I will burn and when I have I shall come to Gerace and do the same.’
‘The children of the men you slaughtered before await you, pig.’
It was a futile exchange: he had no idea if Roger was in Gerace — with just a boy alongside him he would be mad to show himself — and no way of forcing entry with the forces he had to find out, as obvious to those hurling insults as it was to him. Previously he had taken Gerace in a lightning raid which had left the inhabitants, undefended by Byzantium, no time to bar his entry. Blood had been spilt, but that was to be as expected as was the violation of the women — it was a Greek town owing allegiance to Constantinople and he was a Norman seeking plunder. There had been much of that, too, but what he also recalled was the name of one citizen who welcomed him. It was time for a touch of the famous Guiscard cunning.
Having set up camp far enough away so his fires could not be seen, Robert posted sentinels around the town with instructions to ensure his brother did not sneak away. Having divested himself of his surcoat and mail, with a cowled cloak over his body and head, crouched to minimise his height, he made his way back to the town, sure that folk would be slipping in and out, going about their various errands. He was right: the carts that had come in from the country before he was sighted were sneaking out to return to their outlying farms and it took little effort to creep along the unlit wall and dash through the gap, hidden from those guarding the gate on the other side of a cart.
Memory helped him find the home of the man he thought most likely to help him, a Bulgar named Brogo, and a man who so hated the Byzantine killers of his people that he had secretly helped Robert to identify those citizens of the town likely to have hidden wealth — a betrayal for which he had been well rewarded, his secondary pleasure being in watching them tortured to reveal their hiding places. Fifteen years is a long time and Brogo had aged much, yet he could not fail to recognise a man of the height and build of the Guiscard, nor did he hesitate to drag him from under the lantern outside his doorway and into his hovel.
‘Lord Robert, how I longed to see you come again.’ The man was slobbering over his hand in the most
