‘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.