How much of that family narrative did the boy really know, and was what he had heard accurate or part of the same embellishments shouted at him as Duke of Apulia in the great hall? If he had been at war with his father, Robert de Hauteville had not enjoyed one easy relationship with his numerous brothers, at home or in Italy, yet for all of the sibling disputes he was strong on family. Despite all their arguments, when danger threatened they hung together to avoid dangling apart, and to that, more than any other characteristic, could be ascribed their success.
Robert had faith in that as the means to keep secure and expand his possessions, but he was down to a single brother now: the others who had come to Italy had all passed over, while those who had stayed behind in Normandy showed no inclination to travel. In recent times the mixture of disputes and cooperation had been with the aforementioned Roger, the youngest in the family, and he had been leant on heavily when it came to fighting Byzantium, especially in Calabria. Now fully occupied in Sicily, he would only leave the island if the circumstances were so dire it was essential to protect their joint holdings and his line of communication.
‘Did you know your Uncle Serlo knifed a high-ranking vassal of Duke William at his castle of Falaise, when weapons and their use had been expressly forbidden within the walls?’
Bohemund did not respond, forcing his father to continue and leaving him to wonder at what he had previously heard. ‘To avoid the rope he had to flee for the deed and I was obliged to depart, sharing as I did his guilt by association, given I was with him when murder was done. Serlo went to England to fight with the Saxons, I came here to Italy and to a cold welcome.’
Robert laughed suddenly, filling the small chamber with the sound. ‘My brothers were not cheered by my arrival. I was seen as a nuisance and shoved off to lawless Calabria where my men and I were reduced to living off my stirrup leathers. It was not a happy or glorious time.’
He paused then, possibly expecting Bohemund to comment, but the young man continued to hold his tongue as his father’s mind filled with images of those years of struggle, of his crabbed half-brothers, never adding to his thoughts of them and the way he had been treated that he had been more than half at fault for his brash way of diminishing them — even William Iron Arm, the steady, shrewd genius who had first engineered the rise in the family fortunes, going from a mere mercenary lance to being called the Count of Apulia in a decade. William had been murdered, to be followed by the irrepressible Drogo, another brother destined to fall to an assassin’s blade, unarmed while exiting a church that he had endowed and had built in memory of his favourite saint.
Next came miserable Humphrey who had succeeded them to the title they had taken, aided by compliant Geoffrey, the oldest, yet content to be subordinate to whoever held the honour. Not fiery brother Mauger; he had been bred for contention and died wrapped in complaint for being passed over in favour of Humphrey, who had won for the family acknowledgement of a title they had taken upon themselves, being granted his gonfalon by a reigning pope.
On his deathbed and with ill grace but shrewd judgement, Humphrey ignored his own infant son Abelard and passed the leadership of the Apulian Normans, as well as his lands and titles, to Robert, the only man who could hold it. Finally Roger, the apple of Tancred’s eye, now Count of Sicily, had come south, to be alternately a thorn in his flesh as well as Robert’s right arm for years. Given everything the family held had been acquired, even as they squabbled in concert, right at that very moment, in the recollections of their joint endeavours, Robert felt alone.
‘You’re right to say my father and I were at loggerheads and it may be for the reason you say, though he was forever dribbling on about his exploits when in his cups, telling me about his campaigns against the Moors and the Saxons, though he seemed to spend most of my growing years in dispute with his most potent neighbour instead of finding positions that would ensure my brothers and I could raise ourselves.’
Which was necessary; Tancred had bred too many sons for the petty barony he owned: a few dozen fields worked by tenanted villeins, others for his horses and cattle, the lordship of Hauteville-le-Guichard, a small hamlet that lay beneath the manor house and wooden motte-and-bailey bastion into which all of his children had been born, that later turned into a stone tower paid for by those successful mercenary sons. He possessed the fishing rights on a stretch of the river as well as some salt pans on the rugged western coastline, and there was too the entitlement to appoint the parish priest, who was required also to tutor the family in Latin and numbers. Yet the whole added up to scarce enough to equip those sons with the weapons and mail they needed to call themselves knights.
‘There’s still scarce enough to feed the rest of the family who stayed behind, without I send them the means to maintain their inheritance.’
‘Emma insists our grandfather was a good man, proud and upright, and she intends to name her firstborn son in his honour. She is, as you know, with child now and is sure God will grant her a boy.’
‘He was only upright when sober,’ Robert replied, seeking to avoid mention of an impending grandson, only to see what he intended as a jest not well taken. ‘Certainly he was proud and not beyond reminding his own suzerain of his failure to honour the commitments made by his dead brother. I was present when he did so and you would have wondered, to hear him, who was Duke of Normandy and who was Lord of Hauteville.’
It had been a stony confrontation, just before a battle in which Tancred had led William and Drogo into their first proper engagement. The Guiscard could not claim to be a cousin to the Duke, he being from Tancred’s second marital union, but William and Drogo, being born of an illegitimate sister to their suzerain, claimed that right. The promise referred to was to take them both into the ducal service as familia knights, from where they could hopefully rise to their own lands and titles by good and faithful service.
‘You’re named after Duke Robert, are you not?’
‘I am,’ the Guiscard hooted, ‘and when I write to his son, I address him as “cousin” at every chance that presents itself, which I hope he chokes on.’
There was an unspoken truth hanging in the air, with Robert looking keenly at Bohemund to see if he would make reference to it, the burning tallow in the sconce at his side throwing gruesome-looking shadows over his face; William of Normandy, now styled King of England, was also referred to, if not in earshot, as the Bastard of Falaise, having been born outside wedlock, yet he had inherited fully his father’s land and titles.
‘Is it true that your namesake murdered his brother to take the dukedom?’
‘What does it matter if it is true or false, given so many see it as likely? I think my father believed it to be true. He always referred to him as Robert the Devil.’
There was a temptation to elaborate then, to refer to Duke Robert of Normandy’s then tenuous hold on his title, with so many of his vassals, like Tancred, suspicious that he had come to it by poisoning his elder brother Richard. On the day following the dispute with Tancred, prior to leading his host into battle, Robert the Devil had named his bastard William as heir to the dukedom and made every one of his vassals swear fealty by acclamation, but that was a slender oath to make to a child only five years old and one too easy to break.
Tancred suspected the Duke would not give employment to his sons for fear that they carried a measure of the same blood as William and would seek to usurp power if he died before the boy had grown to manhood. That is what came to pass, and who can say what would have happened if William and Drogo had remained in Hauteville-le-Guichard? Robert of Normandy was dead two years later and his bastard son, however successful he had been subsequently, had held on to his inheritance with great difficulty; given their bloodline and their subsequent rise to prominence, perhaps it was wise to refuse close service to the de Hauteville brothers.