‘After that confrontation, and denied any prospect of service with the Duke, William and Drogo left for Italy, but know this: before they did Tancred made them swear never to raise their swords against each other or to do one another harm. It was at the time, and still is, I daresay, not unknown for brother to kill brother in Normandy without a desire for anything so grand as a dukedom. That oath he administered to each and every one of us who left the Contentin and it is one we held to, though the Good Lord knows sometimes it was a trial for me to keep my word.’
Robert slapped the cold stone wall hard. ‘If we have risen as a family then to that must be ascribed much of the reason, but know this, Bohemund. There is not a Norman lance in my domains that sees it as a natural duty to bow the knee to a de Hauteville. They will not say it in my presence but there are many from families who hold that they are superior in blood to us. We have what we have because we have fought for it.’
‘I have been told that it required a fair amount of cunning as well.’
‘That too, and if I am known as the Guiscard, then the best of your uncles were just as crafty as ever I have been.’
‘I look forward to hearing from you of their exploits.’
‘Do not pretend to me you have not heard of them from others.’
‘There is a difference as to the memories of one who shared their exploits.’
‘Ademar speaks highly of you.’
‘An opinion I would return in full measure.’
‘All this talk of family, Bohemund, what does that tell you?’
‘That if we are to hold what we have, Father, as well as extend it, that can only be achieved by the same combination which built the triple dukedom in the first place.’
That admission of his paternity, as well as the acknowledgement of the need for the unity of blood, rendered much of what Robert had intended to espouse unnecessary; his son had reasoned that his father wanted him by his side and he also had discerned why. The Guiscard was famed for never trusting anybody unless he was obliged to do so by circumstances. That was the way it had been with all of his brothers, all the way down to Count Roger, but if he ever reposed faith in anyone it was one who shared his blood. Could that be carried on through another generation?
‘I feel the need to walk, Bohemund. My words come more easily when my feet are moving.’
CHAPTER THREE
The trapdoor was lifted and both made their way down the stone steps to the arch that led on to the wooden stoop that ran along the battlements, where previously Robert had questioned Ademar of Monteroni. The parapet was lit by flaring torches with a man-at-arms standing sentinel every twenty paces; the lack of a known enemy close by did not interfere with what was set practice for an assembled host. Likewise there were mounted pickets out in the approaches to Corato with orders to look out for threats; the Duke of Apulia had enemies in abundance outside those who had so recently broken their oath of fealty.
He began to talk of them now, taking no cognisance of what Bohemund might already know; best to have it all out to ensure he fully understood what his father had to contend with. The province of which Robert was overlord had been carved out, over twenty-five years of continual warfare, of possessions that had either been held by Byzantium, been fiefs of the Holy See or tenuously claimed by the Holy Roman Empire, and they had been hard won. Sicily was a separate affair, for on that island they had fought the Saracens under the auspices of a papal banner — the same holy banner that had been granted to the Christian monarchs of Spain — in what Rome saw as a crusade to push back the infidels who had invaded both Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula centuries before to desecrate churches and turn them into mosques.
Such a banner did not imply any love for the Normans or the Guiscard, him especially; it was more a piece of papal pragmatism that would allow any subsequent pontiff to claim to be the island’s suzerain should the Normans of Apulia succeed in turning out the Saracens. Outside that campaign he was in constant dispute with Rome and suffering excommunication, not for the first time, over the jointly claimed Principality of Benevento. Added to that were the depredations of many of his followers in the Abruzzi, where it was said, thanks to their banditry, that no man was safe to travel for fear of being robbed down to his very small clothes.
Rome’s demand that this cease had only been met in recent months because Apulia needed all its fighting men to put down the revolt, and it would shortly be resumed; as far as Robert was concerned, it was best if any of his unemployed knights sought their plunder outside his domains, not within them.
The bulk of that quarter-century of fighting had been spent in wresting the province they called Langobardia from the Byzantine Empire, who had not surrendered control without a long and arduous contest, while taking the great port cities had led to siege after siege. The one that ended with the capture of the most important, Bari, lasted four whole years and strained the Guiscard’s tactical genius to the very limit. Every success had been followed with a reinvasion by an enemy that refused to lie down; cities and lands had been lost and recaptured for the very simple reason that the provinces of Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria dripped with fertile wealth, most notably oil from the endless olive groves. From Constantinople he felt he had, at present, little to fear if you set aside the gold they employed to bribe his vassals, of which the Eastern Empire seemed to have an endless supply.
‘Thank God, since Manzikert they lack the leaders and men to trouble me on their own.’
When word came from Anatolia, that disastrous battle, eight years previously, it had shocked the whole of Christendom to its foundations; the flower of the Byzantine army utterly destroyed by the Seljuk Turks advancing inexorably out of Asia Minor, the reigning emperor, Romanus IV Diogenes, taken captive, which led to a coup in Constantinople and one of his generals, Michael Dukas, taking the purple. Having done so, he was in no doubt as to the weakness of the Empire and he had written to both Rome and Apulia seeking support.
‘Michael Dukas sought from the Pope a Christian army that would fight the infidel, perhaps one strong enough to reverse the gains the Turks had made. The bait was his good offices to help to heal the rift between the two branches of the faith. The offer to me was more about holding his borders than pushing the Turks back. Three times he wrote and twice I did not reply.’
‘Why?’
Robert laughed. ‘If you had ever received a letter from a Byzantine emperor you would not ask; the language of flattery is enough to make a decent man vomit and if they have perfected anything it is the art of the vague promise. There were hints of high and profitable office without any commitment. In the second letter ideas were again more floated than solid regarding an alliance by marriage to one of Michael’s family. My silence forced them to be definite and the third time their letter included a proposal they knew I would be a fool to refuse.’
Knowing all this, Bohemund cut in to hurry his father on. ‘The hand of one of your daughters, for Constantine, Michael’s son.’
Robert had accepted that with alacrity, sending east his youngest, Olympias, a child of three, to learn their ways and to have her name changed to Helena as she was instructed in the Orthodox rite.