‘You would make our children bastards, Robert?’
Alberada’s voice was low and bitter. In her lap she had the reply from Rome, granting her husband that which he had requested, a papal bull annulling their union, one of the first acts committed by the new Pope Nicholas on the advice of Hildebrand, who saw, like Desiderius, that a counterbalance was needed against Richard of Capua.
‘There is no answer to this, is there?’
He could not look at her. ‘It is final.’
‘Your son will want for an inheritance.’
That stung enough to make Robert turn round and glare. ‘Do you think I would abandon Bohemund? I do this so he will have more, not less.’
Alberada had known this might be coming, even if she had not been asked to agree: you could not send such a communication to Rome without word of its contents leaking out and that had induced mixed feelings. If she had hated Robert it would have come as a blessing, her children’s future apart. Did she esteem him enough to fight for her place? Over the months in which it had taken the Pope to decide, Alberada had thought not, and while she was saddened by the way this had come about, she was of Norman blood and knew the reasons why: if her marriage had not been dynastic, this manoeuvre of her husband’s was wholly so.
‘You will be free to marry again, woman.’
That protestation almost implied she was being unreasonable, that she was failing to see the needs of his title. Never discussed with her, that too was no secret: Robert was not content with what he now held, nor was he happy with the need to continually put down rebellion. He wanted to extend his domains and for that he needed an army drawn from the entire population of Apulia, and given the Lombards were the most fractious, the obvious answer was an alliance which would allow him to demand their loyalty.
‘Who is to be my unfortunate replacement?’
‘Unfortunate!’ he bellowed.
That engendered a mischievous smile. ‘It pleases me that I can still make you angry.’
The response to that was gentle. ‘Alberada, it is not dislike that prompts this.’
‘No, but I would like to know who it is to be.’
‘I have decided on Sichelgaita of Salerno. No Lombard family has a lineage to match hers.’
‘Never!’
Stomping around his council chamber, Gisulf of Salerno was near to foaming at the mouth. The notion that his sister should wed Robert Guiscard had sent him into a frenzy: if he hated Normans, Richard of Capua most of all, Robert de Hauteville came a close second. Yet he dared not look into the faces of those who were gathered to advise him, for in their eyes he would have seen that they thought he had no choice. To refuse was to threaten his very existence: that they did not speak said more about the capricious nature of their prince than it did about their intelligence.
Under pressure from the Normans for years, there had been a small flicker of hope that Gisulf’s fortunes might improve during the brief papal tenure of Ascletin. They had engaged in correspondence about ways to rid Italy of what both saw as a plague. That had gone into reverse with the election of Nicholas — things were even worse now that his greatest enemy had become the main support of the new pontiff.
Kasa Ephraim rarely spoke at such gatherings, preferring to give his advice in private, a privilege he was granted on a regular basis given he had discreet business to transact. Part of his task as controller of the port was the management of smuggling and, being a pragmatic fellow who knew it could not be stopped, he sought to keep it in check and profit from it. He allowed himself to be bribed by those seeking to avoid the mandatory custom dues, threw to the mob those who sought to cheat him and through this provided for Gisulf, as he had for his late father, a source of secret revenue that never showed up in the tally books of the official treasurer.
Neither parent or successor had ever discovered how much the Jew made from the arrangement, but that which he provided was sufficient to endow them with that most necessary thing for a ruler, secret funds he could use for his own purposes: private reward for those close to him, the ability to pay spies to report on those he doubted he could trust, both Lombard and Norman. Given such sources, surely he must have had wind of the coming of this proposal, or was he wasting his monies on nothing but secret pleasure?
‘Sire,’ Ephraim said. ‘You must see there is advantage in accepting this application and much danger in refusal.’
That got him a suspicious look: the Jew transacted business with the Normans, indeed he had done so before the arrival of William de Hauteville: if it was not common knowledge that he had aided Roger in the Calabrian famine it was suspected. For all that, Ephraim had a sound reputation: he might transact business for many but he held to his bond with each. What was told to him by those he dealt with in secret stayed locked in his bosom and any advice he gave was likewise held in trust.
As a man engaged in trade, in a febrile world where the fortunes of any ruler could change overnight, and likewise that of any merchant, knowledge was the key to both security and success. The Jew, through his many contacts and business dealings, knew more than most, indeed had knowledge of what was happening outside the confines of the part of the world in which he lived. His confreres, thanks to the great diaspora, resided in many places and they, like he, were eager correspondents.
‘Is there advantage for you?’ Gisulf demanded.
‘Have no doubt, sire, when I offer you a view it is your interests I hold close and those of Salerno, which is my home. A marital alliance with the Count of Apulia will deal a blow to the increased influence of Capua.’
‘There is no guarantee of that.’
‘There will be if you make it a condition of the marriage.’
Gisulf’s father would have needed no telling, but then Guaimar would never have allowed Salerno to sink so low that protection would be needed. If he had been a far-from-perfect prince he had at least always seen ways to protect himself, never falling in to the trap of trusting anyone with the future of his patrimony. He had played Rainulf off against William de Hauteville; here was a chance to do the same with the successors to those two Normans.
Aware he was being eyed by the other courtiers with some mistrust, and not least by Gisulf himself, he was tempted to tell them of his motives. At the centre of the Jew’s concerns lay the security of himself and his family, and if that was common then few faced so many threats as those of his race. He had been loyal to Salerno in the past and would continue to be so: he would not betray his prince as long as his prince did not betray him.
He had discerned before others, long before they held their present land and titles, the Normans were likely to become the dominant power in South Italy and that the Lombards were too fractious to contain them, while both the Eastern and Western Empires were too distant to put a brake on their expansion. He had watched the increasing impotence of all three as the fortunes of the Normans rose. The crisis had come at the Battle of Civitate: that was the moment when the pendulum swung decisively, when the Pope’s massive host, supported by levies from Germany and allied to Byzantium, had been soundly beaten and the pontiff made a virtual prisoner. If that combination could not stop the Normans, no one could.
In a world where authority relied on military ability and racial cohesion, the Lombards, unsupported by outside assistance, could not stand against the likes of the Guiscard or Richard of Capua; the question for Salerno was not how to avoid being swallowed up by one or the other, but the need to find a way to choose who would, in the future, be the most benign conqueror.
Richard of Capua would swallow Salerno and, of necessity, to assert his legitimacy, he would need to snuff out Gisulf’s line. With the men under his command given to rapine, the level of destruction could be total. Robert de Hauteville as a brother-in-law might also seek to take over the port city, but with a Lombard wife and perhaps children with the blood of Salerno in their veins, the likelihood of the city being razed to the ground, of the gutters running with the blood of the inhabitants, was lessened. Quite possibly he would leave Gisulf or his heirs in place, asking only to be acknowledged as suzerain. Yet how do you tell a prince, and a purblind one, he is doomed, that he must choose the lesser of two evils? Kasa Ephraim suspected only a false promise would serve.