Mercenaries (11 page)

Now, as they prepared to depart from Rome after a stay of two months, they were better dressed than they had been at home. It seemed there could be no service to which they were not privileged: clothing of the very best run up by tailors and shoemakers brought into the villa for the purpose, servants to dress their hair
and attend to their skin and nails, any amount of scents with which to grace their bodies and travelling chests provided, with the ducal crest of Salerno picked out in proper colours, for their onward journey.

They had enjoyed sumptuous meals as well, and the last of these before they departed was attended by the whole extended family, including one son newly introduced, Ascletin, who would accompany them. He was only a year older than Guaimar, but already a bishop with a very high opinion of himself, loudly delivered. Toasts were proposed both to their prospects and to future prosperity. Well-mannered, Guaimar was bound to respond and thank them, and say that if the House of Salerno could ever be of use to the House of Pierleoni, then it must be taken as a given that whatever aid was requested would be provided.

‘Most comforting to know, young friend,’ replied the head of the house, Francisco Pierleoni. Then he turned to Berengara. ‘And can I say how pleasant it has been to have a lady of your beauty grace our table.’

Berengara was maiden enough to blush at the compliment, but very slightly, for she took it as her due, and it had come from a man old enough to be her great-grandfather. The murmur of approval for the remark, from the younger males, sons, cousins and well-born adherents at the table, was more pleasing.

Francisco Pierleoni was a man of whom they had seen little, his absences explained by the very busy life
he led. Guaimar had been tempted to enquire what business he had been about, but his first tentative foray had met with such a sharp rebuff that he had since desisted. He guessed that the family was deeply involved in the affairs of the City of Rome and even Guaimar knew that to be a tangled affair. There were other families in the Holy City equally rich, some more powerful than their hosts, and they were, as a matter of course, at one another’s throat.

All had bands of heavily armed retainers; each one had a section of Rome, one of the hills usually, that they considered their fiefdom, populated by mobs which, for the distribution of money, would emerge from their slums to attack another rabble rioting at the behest of a rival family. Rome was a place into which flowed money from all over the Christian world. It was the home of the Papacy, that fount of enormous wealth provided by tithes, as well as splendid offerings so that masses could be said for the rich of Christendom. It was also a place rife with simony, where ecclesiastical offices were bought and sold. Inconvenient marriages could be dissolved if the payment was high enough, indulgences granted for the most terrible of sins.

So, to the great families of Rome, the holder of the office of pontiff and thus the key to the coffers was a matter of great import, the easiest way to profit – in commissions, offices and downright theft – being to
have a member of your own tribe on the throne of St Peter. Opposing that were not only the other families but the cardinals and archbishops who staffed the Curia, as well as the abbots of the great monasteries.

They would wish to place in the position a man who would meet their needs, which were not always those of the flocks they claimed to represent. Finally, in that mass of conflicting interests came the Emperor of the West and no Pope could maintain an office that he did not support: try as they might, and they had tried very hard indeed, the Roman families and the high church clerics had not been able to wrest from that source of power the right of appointing whomsoever they wished.

Guaimar had been granted an audience with the present incumbent, Pope Benedict, ninth of that name, in the great Castle of St Angelo, which overlooked the Tiber. A stout fortress and well protected by the Pope’s own guards, it was the only place in the city where the Pontiff could feel safe. From the noble, if impecunious, Roman family of the Tusculam, he rarely ventured out of St Angelo, for when he did so he risked being attacked by the paid mobs of the other great magnates.

The rumours surrounding Benedict were those that attached to any pope; he had not taken Holy Orders before his accession: he suffered from every carnal excess, from pederasty, through multiple concubinage,
to dabbling in alchemy and black arts that involved communing with the Devil, the only certainty being that he was not a woman, given that every incumbent since the scandalous Pope Joan had been obliged to be carried head high over his cardinals to ensure his genitalia were external.

Given all these supposed sins, Benedict had turned out to be a surprisingly gentle man. He blessed Guaimar’s purpose but refused to accept that the Bishopric of Salerno could not meet its obligation to the Holy See. Indeed money, or the lack of it from the duchy, had dominated the conversation. Pandulf was damned not because he was a rabid despoiler of other people’s property, but because his incarceration of the Archbishop of Capua had stopped the flow of tithes from the whole of that diocese, and seriously impeded money from others.

This Pope had seemed to Guaimar a nervous fellow but, of course, having been elected, he had been subsequently deposed, twice and violently, by families who opposed his elevation, which had seen him a prisoner in his own castle. And it was obvious to Guaimar that while he presently occupied the Holy See, his grip was yet tenuous: it was quite common for the Pope, any pope, to be besieged in St Angelo or chased out of the city altogether if two or more of the Roman clans combined against a choice sanctioned by a distant emperor. Benedict might have the power of
the Almighty himself at his disposal, but he had no real force he could depend on apart from his papal guards unless the great families of Rome chose to support him.

Perhaps Guaimar’s Pierleoni host had been party to that! It was hard to equate this lined, benign-looking old patriarch, with his heavily lidded eyes and large Levantine nose which showed his racial antecedents, with the kind of mayhem that was endemic in the streets beyond the walls. But one only had to see him prepare to depart the villa, through heavily studded gates that would not have disgraced a stone castle, to know that he took much care for his person.

His carriage was heavy and made of thick timber; crossbowmen sat with the driver and hung on to the postillion. Armed riders went ahead with their swords unsheathed while more brought up the rear, making Guaimar wonder if he was, in this peaceful domestic setting, actually in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

‘My son, Ascletin, is, as you know, to accompany you to Bamberg. I have no doubt you will be given audience with Conrad Augustus, and I also have confidence that he will listen to what you say.’

‘I require him to act, sir.’

Francisco Pierleoni nodded at that, but Guaimar thought it was less than wholehearted. Conrad could not march an army south without passing through
Rome. Was that a welcome prospect for his host, given the Western Emperor was the final arbiter of who sat on the throne of St Peter?

‘In your discussions with him he may ask you for your impression of my family.’

‘They will, sir, be wholly approving.’

‘I would particularly ask you to recommend to Conrad my son. He will, of course, meet with Augustus himself, on family and other business, but a word of praise from a Duke of Salerno…’

‘I am not yet that.’

The response was quite sharp; there was steel beneath that benevolent exterior.

‘You are, young man, despite the actions of the usurper. In short, you are the legitimate holder of the title, the holder of an imperial fief, which makes you the equal of those who have raised Conrad Augustus to his pre-eminence. He will listen to what you say. Your words, for all you are a young man, will carry weight.’

The old man stood, and everyone else did likewise. ‘You depart in the morning, and I will not see you after this. May God speed your journey and attend your purpose.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Guaimar, as the Patriarch Pierleoni smiled at Berengara’s curtsy.

‘And, when you return to Salerno, you will say, for me, a welcome to an old friend who has brought you to my house.’

Was it part of their religion, Guaimar wondered, to keep secret everything? The old man would not even use the name of Kasa Ephraim in his own house, and to a guest who knew him well.

The convoy of coaches that departed next morning was in itself impressive. Berengara had been allotted a conveyance of her own, with two maids to attend to her needs. In front of that, Guaimar and Ascletin travelled in the kind of coach used by the Pierleoni father, and it was just as well protected for between them sat a small chest full of money. Before them those mounted men were there to clear a route through the teeming streets, while at the rear, in front of the armed retainers who rode guard, was a heavily laden cart bearing all they now possessed, plus the son’s baggage, as well as gifts for the Emperor and the various court officials that attended upon Conrad Augustus.

As they made their way through the streets leading to one of the great gates that would take them north, they passed ancient temples now dedicated as churches, and buildings falling into ruin as the stones were stolen by the populace; Ascletin was busy distributing small coins to an endless series of grasping hands, the owners of which, out of sight, called out a blessing and a hope that he would one day occupy the office of the Bishop of Rome.

If Guaimar was in any doubt as to what he was supposed to ask Conrad Augustus, these outpourings of pious anticipation in return for money, accompanied by the look Ascletin gave him, dispelled it.

CHAPTER NINE

A little more than a week passed before William de Hauteville’s fellow mercenaries began to avoid him in one-on-one fights in the training area. He was there first every morning, working with a pair of heavy rocks he had found to rebuild his strength to that which it had been when he had left the family home, and that was formidable. Drogo was hard to beat, his brother near to impossible, susceptible only to a piece of clever guile, and even then his opponent had to be lucky. For such a big man, half a hand taller than anyone else in Rainulf’s band, he moved with grace and speed on foot, and with deadly control mounted; his destrier having also been put endlessly through its paces so that it, too, had been brought back to peak performance.

Drogo had caused a different set of problems,
and since unsupervised fighting with weapons was forbidden in a society of high-tempered young men, it was his fists of which they came to be cautious. Usually jolly and full of tart good humour, he was nevertheless easily slighted, this younger brother, ever ready to take umbrage and throw a telling punch without warning. But it was his attitude to the womenfolk in the camp that touched many a raw nerve: he saw them as common property; his confrères did not!

Most of the men had a local concubine to look after them, and several had bred children. It was galling the lack of respect Drogo showed these women, waylaying them in his heavily accented Latin and seeming to seek their favours, acts which were not always unwelcome, for he was a handsome devil with a beguiling smile. Not that their own men respected them: the women they kept were as good as slaves, but they were damned if another was going to be allowed to treat them with regard.

Rainulf had just over three hundred lances under his command, split into three companies, each with its own captain, and it was telling the way none of these men were overkeen to have the brothers under their command, seeing in them a threat rather than an asset: in William someone with an innate ability to lead others, someone who might usurp their position rather than enhance it, for if no one was keen to do mock battle with him, they found him easy to deal
with otherwise, while Drogo could cause internal squabbles.

Rainulf still trained himself, so he could ensure that others stuck to their task, but it was clear he was past the actual prime of his fighting life. He too had once been the best; he could not have risen to lead these men if he had not, and it was with mixed feelings that he watched the way the men he commanded began to naturally defer to William de Hauteville, rather than to those he appointed to lead the companies.

‘Send him away,’ said Odo de Jumiège, Rainulf’s senior captain, a much scarred veteran and second in command of his force. ‘His brother too.’

‘You fear him?’

‘I think perhaps you should fear him, Rainulf.’

‘I wonder. He seems to have no side to him.’

‘None he is showing now. What he will be like in time is harder to say.’

‘Perhaps we should test him.’

‘How?’

‘That is easy, Odo. I will make him responsible for his brother’s behaviour. If he turns out to be more loyal to his blood than to me, it will mean he cannot be fully trusted.’

There had been no more private dining with Rainulf – in fact there had been few words exchanged since that first night – and William had discovered that he
kept his men, even his captains, at a certain arm’s length, perhaps to underline the fact that the service they gave was moneyed not feudal. Nor did Rainulf reside in that square tower, using it only as a place from which to command his forces; he lived in a more sumptuous villa on the edge of Aversa, all marble, murals and mosaics. This he shared with his much younger wife, Pandulf’s niece, in what was said to be a stormy association.

Given they trained and ate with the men, some of whom had been in Campania for years, William and Drogo soon learnt about the world into which they had ridden as well as the man who commanded them. Rainulf too had come south with an elder brother, one Gilbert, who had been killed at a great battle on the field of Cannae in Apulia. There the Normans and their Lombard paymasters, who were fighting to gain independence, had suffered the same fate at the hands of a great Byzantine host as the Roman legions had suffered at the hands of Hannibal of Carthage.

Before Cannae, the Norman mercenaries, faced with Greek or Lombard opponents, had always been victorious; not this time. Constantinople deployed against them not only a good general with a substantial army, but a weapon equally as potent in battle as the Normans: the Eastern Emperor’s Varangian Guard, men from the land of Kiev Rus, of the same Norse stock as themselves who, unlike the opponents they
normally faced, did not break or flee, but stood their ground and used the great axes, which were their principal weapon, to deadly effect.

Chastened, the Normans had retired to Campania, to take service with new paymasters, but some had returned to serve, as mercenaries, the very Byzantine General who had defeated them, such was the volatility of life in these parts. Over the days that followed they struggled to get to grips with the seeming chaos of Southern Italy, and perplexing it was: a land of shifting fiefs, of claim and counterclaim, peopled by Lombards who ruled a mixed Greek and Italian-speaking population, with feudal oversight claimed by two emperors.

On the eastern side of the Apennines, directly opposite Campania, lay the Principality of Benevento, nominally a papal fief but one that was a cause of endless dispute. Below and to the east of that stood the Byzantine provinces of Apulia and Calabria, collectively known as the Catapanate, which, under a good ruling proconsul, was a land of peace and prosperity, the Adriatic and southern coasts dominated by great, near-independent trading ports like Bari, Brindisi and Taranto.

Threatened – and these proconsuls and ports often were by Lombard uprisings, Saracen raids, and even the odd attack from the Western Emperor and the Pope – they presented a formidable foe, as long as
the leader was competent and he was given an army. Generally it was the opposite: there was either no one in office or some venal satrap given the position by court intrigue, which made febrile that which was unstable. Constantinople was far away and it was a place too often ruled by emperors who were weak or self-indulgent, which fired endlessly the dreams the Lombards had of a kingdom encompassing the whole region. It was in pursuit of that very dream they had been beaten at Cannae.

It took many repetitions to get hold of what was a mass of confusion in terms of allegiances and ownership of land and titles, just to comprehend that the Campania region alone contained three distinct fiefs: Naples, Salerno and Capua. The lords of these territories were rarely associates, never friends. They sought constantly to undermine their neighbours, not difficult since each province was riven with petty baronies that were forever transferring their allegiance and often in conflict with each other and what passed for the centre of power.

‘My head is spinning, brother,’ Drogo complained, after one lengthy explanation. ‘This part of the world makes the Contentin look like a haven of order.’

‘It’s perfectly simple, Drogo, if you would listen.’

If Drogo loathed anything, it was times like these when his brother began to use his fingers to explain something, as though he was an idiot child. He
understood that Rainulf’s present paymaster, and so ultimately his, was the Prince of Capua, and really that was all that mattered. That Rainulf had betrayed another magnate to get his fief meant nothing: that same duke had at one time bribed Rainulf to betray the Prince of Capua. It was the way of this world and the only common goal of the mercenaries employed was that they should prosper.

Capua was, at present, dominant, and that ensured a steady flow of money as they carried out whatever commands were issued by the rapacious prince of that fiefdom. If thunderbolts of approbation at his depredations came from the Pope in Rome, as well as the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany, who might claim to be titular overlord of this part of Italy, it mattered not at all unless it was backed up by force. Strictures from Constantinople counted for even less.

All that required to be understood was the fact that the Lombards were treacherous, greedy, unreliable and given to rebellion, as were their subjects and it was those traits which kept the Norman mercenaries regularly and gainfully employed.

Rainulf sought out the brothers later in the day. They were working in one of the paddocks used for the training of fighting horses, an activity which took place in the early evening when the sun had lost its strength, both with animals not long risen from
being colts, seeking to teach them to respond to the command of the thigh alone, no easy task given they were still not fully trained on the reins. It was work that required endless patience: there was no way to force a horse into compliant behaviour, they were not like dogs, they had to be won over by constant repetition and a firm hand regularly applied, and even then only certain animals had the aptitude to face the kind of dangers to which they would be exposed in battle.

Rainulf, like every other Norman, bred his mounts with passion and made sure they were looked after, given they were the key to battle success. So he watched with interest as the de Hauteville brothers put these tyro destriers through their paces, gently cajoling them, occasionally hauling them up with strength to remind them who was in charge, trotting round the paddock standing upright, reins lightly held, pressing with one knee seeking to turn them left or right. You could go through this for weeks, months even, get it right, then find that the horse on which you had expended so much time in training would shy away from the danger of a shield wall, or pull up rather than jump a ditch.

To an experienced eye it was clear Drogo de Hauteville was better at the task. Not that his elder brother was poor, just that Drogo seemed to have an affinity with these equines greater than William.
Indeed, listening, it was obvious that it was Drogo who was proffering advice, the precise opposite of what took place in the manège where they trained to fight. On their own mounts, now resting after their morning exertions, both seemed equal, but not with animals yet to be taught. Judging by the sweaty state of the horses, they had been at their training for some time, and they called a halt before tiredness in the animals made them cantankerous.

‘Drogo,’ Rainulf said, as they came to the rail, leading the sweating mounts. ‘Oblige me by seeing the horses to their fields. I wish to have words with your brother.’

There was a slight feeling of anger in Rainulf’s breast when Drogo hesitated, waiting until William nodded that he should comply; he was a man who expected to be obeyed, not to have to have his orders – and it had been an order however gently couched – approved by another.

Waiting till Drogo was well out of earshot, Rainulf spoke again, aware, close up, just how much taller William was than he. ‘Your brother seems to be good with horseflesh.’

‘I have never met one better.’

‘I saw you deferring to him just now.’

The way Rainulf said that, as though it was odd, made William question the statement. ‘Why should I not?’

‘You are the older.’

‘By a year, Rainulf, which is not much, and be assured I will happily take instruction from any man who is my peer in anything.’

‘Including me?’

The clear blue eyes hardened at that. ‘You have come to talk to me for a reason; you have sent my brother away, I think because he is the reason.’

That piece of perspicacity caught Rainulf out. He had intended to talk for a bit and bring the subject round to Drogo, but he had found this de Hauteville too sharp for his game, which made him wonder if perhaps Odo de Jumiège had been right. Should he be cautious of this man, for there was no doubt, in close proximity, he had a commanding presence?

‘He is trouble, your brother.’

William smiled at that, which was just as disconcerting, given there was a reprimand implicit in the words. ‘He is his father’s son.’

‘You will forgive me if I say that makes no sense to me.’

‘If you knew my sire, Tancred, it would make perfect sense.’

‘But I do not.’

‘Drogo is my brother, but there are ten more of the same in my family, as well as three sisters. My father, and Drogo has inherited it, has an unbridled appetite…’

Rainulf interrupted. ‘You sound as though you do not respect your father.’

‘I respect him and love him, but I would wish him less fertile. The only peace my mother got, God rest her soul, was when he was away fighting.’

‘Your mother is dead?’

‘She is, but he wed again, and I have a raft of half-siblings.’

‘Away fighting?’ Rainulf enquired. ‘Fighting who?’

‘The Moors in Spain, the Parisian Franks as well as those on our border with Anjou. He even went to England once, to help put a king back on his throne.’

‘Ethelred?’

William nodded. ‘You see, he was as active on the field of battle as he was in the bedchamber. He was much admired by Duke Robert’s father, as a soldier.’