The first thing he noticed, as he dismounted, was that they were scarred veterans now, not the fresh-faced youths he recalled from the day they departed Hauteville-le-Guichard. Geoffrey he had not seen for a decade past, while his last sight of big, blustering Robert was after the murder committed by Serlo; being present when the knife went in he had likewise been required to flee, not in his case to avoid hanging, but to avoid being shut up in one of Duke William’s dungeons.
‘Well,’ Robert boomed, neither his voice nor his manner entirely approving. ‘The sprat of the family has finally come to join us.’
The great hall was full, the table at which the family sat set on a low dais crosswise, with the rest of the tables running down the sides full of Robert’s lances, now joined by those of Roger’s, and all the way down to his servants below the salt. The noise, echoing off the unadorned walls, was deafening, making the need to talk loudly essential just to be heard. Naturally their conversation at table was of home, though it was plain that if there was a residual hankering for Normandy it did not extend to a return.
‘My bones would not take the cold and damp now,’ Geoffrey insisted. ‘Damn me, they can scarce take service mounted.’
‘Would that be a whore or a horse?’ Robert demanded, with a braying laugh.
‘With the whores you use it would be hard to tell what you were boarding. Half of them would struggle to get into a horse’s girth.’
Roger felt a slight discomfort at this ribaldry: he found it difficult to listen to such banter from a brother who he had last sat down to dine with as not much more than a mewling child. Odd that he had felt the same with Fressenda and his brother-in-law, making him wonder if he was, in fact, a prude. Whatever, he decided a change of subject was called for.
‘I had audience with Duke William before I left.’
‘How is the Bastard?’
‘Secure now and thinking of a war with the Franks.’ He noticed the faces of his brothers, both of them, close up: the way William’s father had treated the family was neither forgiven nor forgotten, even if they had prospered because of his refusals, and news of any comfort in his life was unwelcome. Quickly he changed the subject yet again. ‘But tell me about Brindisi.’
No battle is ever fought only once — it is replayed many times. The table, along with the residue of the meal, provided sufficient material to re-fight the engagement, bones stripped bare of meat to show the walls and harbour, bread to denote the disposition of Robert’s forces, his manner enough to underline the frustration of a long siege.
‘It came down to subterfuge in the end, brother, or we might be sitting there still, while the foul airs decimated our strength.’ Robert described his ploy of riding away to draw out Argyrus, well aware as he did so that there were beacons being lit to mark his progress, for he could see them as plainly as his enemy. ‘But he forgot the sea, Sprat, and so I had him.’
‘How did you navigate all those vessels down the coast?’
It was Geoffrey who replied. ‘He had riders on the shore carrying torches, Roger, and he gave each ship’s master a catapult.’
Seeing his little brother confused, Robert burst out laughing. ‘You cannot see it, can you?’ Much as it hurt to confess he did not, Roger had to nod. ‘The riders had measured lines which they were instructed to keep as taut as possible.’ Robert held up two spread fingers. ‘Keep those two flames on the points of the catapults and you have a fair idea how far you are off from the shore.’
‘Clever,’ Roger acknowledged.
‘Not clever,’ Robert boomed. ‘Brilliant.’
‘And Brindisi?’
‘The plunder was enormous! God Almighty, these ports are rich and the inhabitants saw quickly which way the wind blew. I doubt the men I led would have had much more fun, bloodshed apart, if we had sacked the place as it deserved. There’ll be a raft of Norman bastards come the women’s term time.’
‘But is it secure?’
Robert shrugged. ‘What’s to tell? Except the man I left to captain the place is sitting here stuffing his face with goose. If the Byzantines take it back I’ll flay him alive.’
‘I came to see to my Loritello estates.’
‘I think you came for some cool mountain air,’ Robert jested, before turning back to Roger. ‘Brindisi is in the past, brother. What we need to talk about is the future.’
‘Mine?’ Roger asked.
‘Of course, you don’t think I want you sitting around here on your arse like Geoffrey, do you, eating my food and drinking my wine?’
‘What would be left, husband, after you had eaten?’
‘God in heaven, no man should be checked by his wife!’
Robert growled as he responded to the Lady Alberada, but it was plainly mock anger, not the real thing. They were relatively comfortable in each other’s company, not always common in marriage, and it seemed the salacious nature of their previous brotherly talk had no effect on her.
‘Now that my mouse has spoken-’
‘She is far from a mouse,’ Roger jested, ‘if she is prepared to gainsay you.’
‘Look at the size of her man.’
Alberada was tiny and slim, dark-haired and olive-complexioned, in marked contrast to her huge, florid and golden-haired husband, and it had been an inadvertent thought on introduction to imagine them coupling and the difficulties therein. She looked as though Robert would conjugally crush her.
‘Should have heard her when she spawned my daughter, screaming fit to bring down Jericho.’
‘She’s a big child.’
‘She’s her father’s girl,’ Robert boomed, ‘even if she has your black hair. But enough of that; when we talk of your future it is to Alberada’s part of the world we must go.’
‘I heard you wanted to take Bari, then go to Romania and sack Constantinople.’
‘In time, Roger, in time, but Calabria first. Bari is the strongest fortress in Apulia and will need a great effort. Besides, I cannot cross the Adriatic until my back is safe.’
‘Which it won’t be even if you subdue Calabria,’ Geoffrey insisted.
It was Alberada who responded to Roger’s enquiring look. ‘Saracens.’
‘I’ve beaten them before,’ Robert insisted, ‘and I can do so again.’ Then he looked hard at Roger. ‘You want something in Italy, little brother, well there’s a place there for you.’
‘As what?’
Robert’s face closed up slightly. ‘That we will talk about later. Now, tell me what that papal rogue said to you.’
‘Perhaps it would be better we talk in private, brother. What the Pope said is less important than the conversation I had with the Abbot of Monte Cassino.’
It was pleasant to see his elder brother slightly thrown by that.
‘Do you trust him?’ Robert asked.
Alone now, in a quiet chamber, Robert was speaking softly to avoid waking his child, sleeping close by with her wet nurse.
‘It is you who have to worry about trust, Robert, I am a mere messenger, but I have had time to think and what Desiderius says makes sound sense, with the caveat that, if an alliance of all three powers could be raised against you and Richard of Aversa, you must lose.’
‘Think on this, Sprat, think of the time it would take to agree such a combination and what the outcome would be. The imperial throne is occupied by a child, but even grown, will a Western Emperor do battle to give Langobardia back to Byzantium? Will Rome raise an army from the duchies of Tuscany and Spoleto to see the churches of Apulia and Calabria once more locked into Greek worship?’
‘I think you do not see how much we Normans are hated.’
‘Fear not, I know that. No one who takes land and wealth off another is loved, and as for their affection or approval I can do without it. What I am saying is this: even if they could agree to suppress us, their coalition would not hold in the heat of success and would fall apart long before that as the differing aims surfaced. Also, it would demand that Byzantium do the one thing they have failed to do since the first defeat of the last Lombard revolt: send to south Italy an army strong enough not only to help to put us down but to fight the Pope and the Western Empire, in case they tried to hold what they had helped to gain.’