No one else was backing Serlo in his bellicosity; they were silent and that included a miserable Ibn-al-Tinnah: this was a time when a leader needed to make a decision. If Roger sought advice it would do more to diminish him than raise him in the eyes of those he led. What remained of his Italian levies — not many for they had, numerically, suffered most at the walls of Messina — would do as they were told. His lances, if he so commanded, would die where they stood rather than retreat and he would fall with them, being too proud of their reputation to lay down their arms, asking only that they be shriven before the end to facilitate their entry into paradise.
‘We might pay a higher price, and for what?’ Roger smiled, indicating it was not a question requiring an answer.
‘We cannot run away,’ his nephew insisted.
‘That is a fine sentiment in a lad your age, but if you look you will see it is not one many of your confreres share.’ Roger turned to the man he trusted most, who would take over command if he fell. ‘Ralph?’
‘We must run, with our tails between our legs, Roger, you know that as I do. A bloody end is the only other outcome.’
‘Which you would face?’
‘If I must.’
‘Ibn-al-Tinnah?’
‘I love Allah as much as you, Lord Roger, but I am in no rush to meet him.’
If they were going to depart, it would need to be near empty-handed. Occupied with fending off attacks, they could not load their plunder, even if the sea were akin to a millpond, and they would never get their horses away. Added to that they would have to sacrifice the narrowness of the approaches to the north and south and seek to defend themselves on an open beach, possibly a recipe for disaster.
‘Send word to Ridel to bring in every boat he has and get the remaining Calabrian levies aboard first. In the meantime they must be put to slaughtering the livestock. The horses we will leave till last. Ralph, I want a sentinel at the northern approach, I need to know if the enemy get there in strength. Tell him to look out for a beacon of smoke as a sign to rejoin us and advise him to be swift when he does so.’ Looking around the assembled faces, he added, ‘We are not going to get away easily. Some of us are going to leave our bones on the beach. I suggest it would be a good time to make your peace with God.’
Fatalism is an essential quality in a warrior: the more he has been exposed to death the less he will consider it. Every lance Roger led knew the words he spoke to be the truth but it interfered not at all in what they now did, the only point of disagreement being that some of his knights would have left the Calabrians to die or used them to gain Norman time. Roger would not abandon them, his Christian soul would not permit it, but he also thought like a ruler: leave those men and he would struggle to raise more when the time came to return to Sicily as well as the gates of Messina. That was a vow he had not made lightly!
Stopping those levies panicking proved difficult and, an added difficulty, many were landsmen and feared the sea, happy to board a ship from a jetty but terrified of doing so from an open boat. Further trouble came from the open nature of his actions — it could not be hidden from his foes and they did what he anticipated, launched an immediate attack on his too-thin lines. He lost a dozen knights in driving them back, albeit with much slaughter, during what had to be his last use of his horses.
Having achieved a breathing space, he broke off the battle and retired to the beach through a landscape saturated with the blood of sheep, cows, donkeys and the packhorses, ground which was also littered with that which the latter had carried, fighting to keep his own mount’s head in the right direction as it was spooked by the overpowering smell of blood. On the sand, his knights dismounted and each man saw to his own animal, before forming a tight arc behind their carcasses, weapons at the ready for the inevitable assault, the only positive being that the wind had finally begun to ease, the sea state calming with it.
Their enemies came on buoyed by their fury and the Norman retreat, while to the rear of the defenders the boats plied back and forth with their human cargo. To the pile of equine corpses was added a multitude of the human variety as the menfolk of Messina, many fired up by an excess of drink, flung themselves at the gorespattered Norman line. Weary arms could not be allowed respite and swords were swung with deadly effect, Roger losing track of the number of men he had decapitated.
While fighting he had to oversee the collapse of the defence, shrinking his perimeter as boats came in to take off his knights in parties of twenty. The concomitant of that was obvious: those remaining, already massively outnumbered, faced an increased threat, yet if anything aided them it was too much desperation on the part of those attacking: each mad-eyed assailant wanted a kill, wanted to be able to say they had, by their own hand, slain a Norman barbarian. Also, in such close-quarter fighting their lack of professional skill was most exposed, frenzy in a fight not always being an asset; it can be a liability.
The second-to-last withdrawal did not make for the ships: taking advantage of the less-troubled water they took station in the shallows, with men over the side to seaward to keep them level so the remainder could stand to aid the final evacuation. Roger, at the head of his own personal conroy, was now up to his knees in water, the waves coming in bubbling white caps to run up the beach, before hissing back down suffused with a deep red colour. At his command, instead of backing away, Roger called for a swift advance, summoning from both himself and his men their last vestiges of strength.
Surprised, the citizens of Messina fell back. Roger next shouted a command to break off fighting and run, which, given they were soon in deep water, was more a hope than an actuality. There was no elegance in boarding those boats either: it was dive in bodily and hope that those who had stayed to aid them could keep at bay those rushing to achieve their kill. Nor were those manning the oars willing to die; the sailors had their oars biting the water in desperation, so the last seeming part of Roger’s Sicilian adventure ended with him as a humiliated heap in the bottom of the boat, lying on the sword and shield he had thrown in before him, with water dripping off his body where he had spent a few moments submerged, spitting salt water out of his mouth.
Some of the attackers were foolish enough to follow too far: it is hard to fight on land, impossible with water lapping your chest, and they faced Normans who had been gifted time to recover their breath. So much of their blood was expended that the waves going ashore were as red as those receding; others, with nothing but death facing them, resorted to yelling imprecations, while wiser heads looked for lances to throw after the retreating boats.
Struggling to his knees, Roger looked at the bodies on the beach as well as those floating in the pink spume, saddened to see how many more of his own men he had lost, until, within a short time, he was being hauled up onto the deck of Ridel’s ship, a hive of furious activity as men pulled on ropes to hoist the great square sail while every warrior brought aboard had been sent to the windlass to get the ship over its anchor. Roger felt relieved to be off that shore, though he was wondering why, instead of looking pleased, Ridel was looking grim. A finger pointed to the south, to the great hook of the bay that housed the harbour of Messina, showed him the reason.
‘Galleys,’ Ridel growled.
The long, low ships, ten in number, with huge sweeping oars dipping and rising rhythmically, were heading straight for Roger’s little fleet, come out because the weather had moderated enough for them to be employed. Even if he could not see, Roger knew the decks would be crowded with the seafarers of Messina, bound just by their trade to be hardy individuals and, in waters much affected by piracy, probably more accustomed to fighting than those he had already faced.