embarrassing fashion, yet Robert knew he must indulge him. ‘I hate the Greeks and I hoped once more you would come to strip them of their gold.’
Robert wanted to say, recalling what he had plundered here, there had been precious little gold. But he held his tongue on that: there was only one question to which he required an answer.
‘Is my brother still in Gerace?’
‘No, My Lord, he left this morning before the sun was high.’
The string of curses that induced, in Norman French, might have been incomprehensible to Brogo but he knew what they portended in a man much given to anger. ‘I have wasted my time, friend, I must away and pursue him.’
‘Wait, My Lord, do you not intend to take Gerace again?’
In a room with enough candles to see reasonably well, Robert looked at unsavoury Brogo, a thick-necked, round-faced creature who perspired constantly, with misshapen features, broken teeth and breath that would have halted a camel. He had made money from Robert before and it took no great imagination to see that he saw in this visit a chance to repeat his good fortune.
‘You cannot depart now, it is not safe.’
‘The gates are in use, Brogo,’ Robert growled, ‘how do you think I got here?’
‘They will not be so now, all who needed to leave will have done so. But at first light, when the country folk want to come back, as long as your men are not close-’
‘They will not be.’
‘Then wait till then, Lord Roger, and perhaps you will allow me to offer you food, humble fare to a man of your wealth, but you cannot have already eaten.’
In truth, Robert was sharp set, having ridden hard and consumed little and, even accustomed to hard service, he was weary. The prospect of a seat at a table and food, risky as it was to be sat here in an enemy town, was too tempting to resist. He threw back his cowl and nodded.
‘Very well, Brogo.’
‘If you would pay, I could buy food more to your liking.’
The odour of the place was enough to tell the Guiscard this was no house of plenty, more likely an abode where rotten vegetables were the staple fare. In his absence this man had not prospered, no doubt because, if he hated the Greeks of Gerace, they were not fond of him. Some coin from Robert’s purse produced a shout that brought into view a much younger woman, Brogo’s wife, a dark-skinned creature introduced as Melita. Another shout brought forth an ageing servant so thin and rickety he looked as though he was half starved, he given the coins and sent out to buy meat and wine.
Robert paid no attention to the way the servant’s lacklustre eyes were fixed on him: the fellow being in a dreamlike state, his only reaction the notion of such a household having a servant at all. Having lost interest in the fellow before he slipped out of the door, Robert was left to listen to a litany of oleaginous flattery mingled with an equally heartfelt damnation of the Greeks who had, in times past, slaughtered his race as they would a flock of diseased chickens. Robert was only half paying attention, so it was he who first heard the rumble outside the door that led to the street.
Brogo, who had been talking too much to pick up the sound, was stopped by the look of dread in Melita’s black eyes. By the time his jaw dropped it was no longer a rumble but the noise of a yelling mob, their voices echoing off the stone walls of the narrow alleyway, which had Brogo running to slip the wooden bar across his front entrance.
‘Where is your servant?’ Robert demanded; the look that received gave full answer. ‘Is he Greek?’
The pounding at the door had Brogo grab Robert’s arm and propelled him, big as he was, towards the back of the hovel, the man’s wife following, gabbling about their being betrayed. The exit they used was like a trapdoor and Robert had to struggle to squeeze through, with Brogo insisting he should make for the gate and seek to force his way clear, leaving a clear impression: this Bulgar did not want to be anywhere near the Guiscard now, he wanted him out of his sight.
‘My wife and I must go to the church and seek sanctuary. Go, Lord Robert, and may God look after you.’
Half dragging Melita, Brogo scurried away. Robert, given little choice, followed, his head high and his step firm, eventually losing sight of the pair and left to follow as best he could by the noise of their echoing footsteps, while in the background he could hear the increasing sound of yelling and screaming: clearly the size of the mob had increased. Emerging at the end of an alley to look out on the main town square, with the church as always the dominating structure, he saw Brogo and his wife; he also saw that some of the wiser heads in the mob, sensing their quarry would flee, had made for the square to seek them out, filling the space with torchlight.
Melita tripped on the rough cobblestones of the square, losing her grip on Brogo’s hand. He looked at her briefly, then at the mob now debouching onto the square, many armed, and decided to try and save his own skin. Running for the church doors, stumbling up the steps, he nearly made it, getting only one blow on the closed doors to seek sanctuary before the first club struck him down, the precursor of many. Brogo disappeared under a hail of staves and fists; if he was screaming it was drowned out by the imprecations of those intent on his murder.
Another crowd cornered Melita, dragging her by the hair and ripping at her clothes until eventually she was naked, her wild black eyes, in the torchlight, full of fear. As many women made up the mob that surrounded her as men, and as they screamed and spat invective, Robert heard the words that damned her as a witch and a whore. By now those battering Brogo had done their worst and moved away from his broken, blood-soaked cadaver, that somehow bringing to the crowd a degree of hush. Then they parted and that skeletal servant was in plain view, slobbering the words that nailed him as the cause of their gathering. His damnation was rambling, but this was a fellow who had witnessed the previous plundering of the town. He had recognised Robert and raised the alarm, firing up their passions by telling the town of the nature of this Bulgar traitor and his whore of a wife.
‘Let her die for that which she lived, the slut,’ a woman yelled, a cry taken up by many. From somewhere appeared a pointed stake, standing upright before Melita, like a high fence post, and hands took her and raised her over their head and its point. She screamed in terror at what she knew was coming and squealed in pain as those holding her let her down onto the point, before exerting every ounce of their strength to impale her, satisfied that the point which had entered her vagina erupted out of her ribcage, spewing out bone and gore.
Robert, sensing escape was now impossible, stepped out of his alleyway to let himself be seen, making those who had been holding the stake on which the now writhing and dying Melita was impaled turn to face him. In the growling and shouting this produced he could make out the words of damnation, along with a litany of his past crimes, so, stepping further forward he held up his hand and in a loud voice commanded silence: it was a tribute to the presence he possessed that it worked.
‘People of Gerace, you have me in your power.’
That brought forth howls of agreement and required him to raise his voice.
‘And no doubt you are set on revenge for what you say are my crimes?’ It took an even louder shout to add, ‘But hold a moment and consider.’ He opened his cloak to reveal he had no sword and also used the moment of curiosity created to remove and throw down his knife. ‘Having me at your mercy will tempt you to an error, for if you kill me, what then do you think will happen?’
He could see in the movement of the crowd that men of better dress and stature were pushing to the fore, elders, holding up their hands to induce calm in their fellow citizens, while behind them there were soldiers by their garb and Normans.
‘There would be pleasure in your revenge, but with that comes a price. I have a hundred lances outside your walls, five times that number at Mileto and thousands more in Apulia. Do not, for your own well-being, let your passions rule your heads. Nor would I beg you to forget that I am your liege lord — that Gerace, as did every town in Calabria, swore to obey me.’
He raised one hand to the heavens. ‘God is watching us now, you and I, and he will observe the breaking of your solemn oath. The men I command will have his blessing to deal with those who sever it, and would it not shame you to slaughter as a mob a single soul who means you no harm, but seeks only his brother? Kill me, if you cannot contain your bile, but know it is a sin that God, and my confreres, will avenge.’
Robert did not have to say they would all die: they knew it, and such a threat was enough to make them sullen and silent, until a commanding voice spoke, the same one which had damned him from above the gate.
‘Take the duke to my house, and not a hair on his head to be hurt.’
