Robert paid no attention to the way the servant’s lacklustre eyes were fixed on him: the fellow being in a dreamlike state, his only reaction the notion of such a household having a servant at all. Having lost interest in the fellow before he slipped out of the door, Robert was left to listen to a litany of oleaginous flattery mingled with an equally heartfelt damnation of the Greeks who had, in times past, slaughtered his race as they would a flock of diseased chickens. Robert was only half paying attention, so it was he who first heard the rumble outside the door that led to the street.
Brogo, who had been talking too much to pick up the sound, was stopped by the look of dread in Melita’s black eyes. By the time his jaw dropped it was no longer a rumble but the noise of a yelling mob, their voices echoing off the stone walls of the narrow alleyway, which had Brogo running to slip the wooden bar across his front entrance.
‘Where is your servant?’ Robert demanded; the look that received gave full answer. ‘Is he Greek?’
The pounding at the door had Brogo grab Robert’s arm and propelled him, big as he was, towards the back of the hovel, the man’s wife following, gabbling about their being betrayed. The exit they used was like a trapdoor and Robert had to struggle to squeeze through, with Brogo insisting he should make for the gate and seek to force his way clear, leaving a clear impression: this Bulgar did not want to be anywhere near the Guiscard now, he wanted him out of his sight.
‘My wife and I must go to the church and seek sanctuary. Go, Lord Robert, and may God look after you.’
Half dragging Melita, Brogo scurried away. Robert, given little choice, followed, his head high and his step firm, eventually losing sight of the pair and left to follow as best he could by the noise of their echoing footsteps, while in the background he could hear the increasing sound of yelling and screaming: clearly the size of the mob had increased. Emerging at the end of an alley to look out on the main town square, with the church as always the dominating structure, he saw Brogo and his wife; he also saw that some of the wiser heads in the mob, sensing their quarry would flee, had made for the square to seek them out, filling the space with torchlight.
Melita tripped on the rough cobblestones of the square, losing her grip on Brogo’s hand. He looked at her briefly, then at the mob now debouching onto the square, many armed, and decided to try and save his own skin. Running for the church doors, stumbling up the steps, he nearly made it, getting only one blow on the closed doors to seek sanctuary before the first club struck him down, the precursor of many. Brogo disappeared under a hail of staves and fists; if he was screaming it was drowned out by the imprecations of those intent on his murder.
Another crowd cornered Melita, dragging her by the hair and ripping at her clothes until eventually she was naked, her wild black eyes, in the torchlight, full of fear. As many women made up the mob that surrounded her as men, and as they screamed and spat invective, Robert heard the words that damned her as a witch and a whore. By now those battering Brogo had done their worst and moved away from his broken, blood-soaked cadaver, that somehow bringing to the crowd a degree of hush. Then they parted and that skeletal servant was in plain view, slobbering the words that nailed him as the cause of their gathering. His damnation was rambling, but this was a fellow who had witnessed the previous plundering of the town. He had recognised Robert and raised the alarm, firing up their passions by telling the town of the nature of this Bulgar traitor and his whore of a wife.
‘Let her die for that which she lived, the slut,’ a woman yelled, a cry taken up by many. From somewhere appeared a pointed stake, standing upright before Melita, like a high fence post, and hands took her and raised her over their head and its point. She screamed in terror at what she knew was coming and squealed in pain as those holding her let her down onto the point, before exerting every ounce of their strength to impale her, satisfied that the point which had entered her vagina erupted out of her ribcage, spewing out bone and gore.
Robert, sensing escape was now impossible, stepped out of his alleyway to let himself be seen, making those who had been holding the stake on which the now writhing and dying Melita was impaled turn to face him. In the growling and shouting this produced he could make out the words of damnation, along with a litany of his past crimes, so, stepping further forward he held up his hand and in a loud voice commanded silence: it was a tribute to the presence he possessed that it worked.
‘People of Gerace, you have me in your power.’
That brought forth howls of agreement and required him to raise his voice.
‘And no doubt you are set on revenge for what you say are my crimes?’ It took an even louder shout to add, ‘But hold a moment and consider.’ He opened his cloak to reveal he had no sword and also used the moment of curiosity created to remove and throw down his knife. ‘Having me at your mercy will tempt you to an error, for if you kill me, what then do you think will happen?’
He could see in the movement of the crowd that men of better dress and stature were pushing to the fore, elders, holding up their hands to induce calm in their fellow citizens, while behind them there were soldiers by their garb and Normans.
‘There would be pleasure in your revenge, but with that comes a price. I have a hundred lances outside your walls, five times that number at Mileto and thousands more in Apulia. Do not, for your own well-being, let your passions rule your heads. Nor would I beg you to forget that I am your liege lord — that Gerace, as did every town in Calabria, swore to obey me.’
He raised one hand to the heavens. ‘God is watching us now, you and I, and he will observe the breaking of your solemn oath. The men I command will have his blessing to deal with those who sever it, and would it not shame you to slaughter as a mob a single soul who means you no harm, but seeks only his brother? Kill me, if you cannot contain your bile, but know it is a sin that God, and my confreres, will avenge.’
Robert did not have to say they would all die: they knew it, and such a threat was enough to make them sullen and silent, until a commanding voice spoke, the same one which had damned him from above the gate.
‘Take the duke to my house, and not a hair on his head to be hurt.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The gathering of the leading citizens soon turned into a babble of competing notions of what to do next: if fortune had favoured them in the gift of the body of Robert de Hauteville the Devil had cursed them equally. Some wished to just set him free in the hope that in his gratitude there would be no price to pay, others were firm of the opinion that the Guiscard could not be trusted: he would burn Gerace out of pure malice. The sky grew light and the arguments continued, this while outside the walls, at the Norman camp, it had become obvious that their leader was missing and, since he had not left unobserved, even if Robert had not told anyone where he was going, it took no great gift of imagination to discern his destination.
One of the Norman lances still in Gerace, Odo de Viviers, who had been making preparations to join Roger, witness to the disagreements of the town and mightily fed up with them, slipped out to tell his confreres what had happened. He, at least, had a clear sight of one fact: Gerace, where he had made his home and had a wife and children, could not keep so puissant a lord as the Guiscard; even to hold him too long was to invite total destruction. Robert, or his men, would kill every living thing down to the last cat regardless of how he was finally treated.
That continuing, unresolved discussion was brought to an abrupt end when the elders were informed that there were Normans outside their gates seeking parley. If they wondered at how quickly these warriors had found out about their prisoner it made little difference: they could not give him up for fear of immediate reprisals and they could not keep him for the same reason. Assurances that no such thing would happen were dismissed. As one elder put it succinctly to Robert’s most senior subordinate, ‘Such decisions are not yours to make, fellow.’