It was as well he had that escort for, at every turn, he found his way blocked by mobs of armed men, as many Saracens as Greeks, an oddity since there was little love lost between them, which led to an unpleasant conclusion based on that sullenness he had experienced on first arrivaclass="underline" much as they despised each other they hated the Normans more.
Such a combination had another troubling facet: with both Greeks and Saracens against him, it indicated the whole country around Troina was hostile, which meant he was cut off from Messina and assistance. The option did exist to fight his way out and he knew, even if he sustained losses, he would succeed, but that meant the abandonment of Troina and that he could not countenance.
‘We are going to stay and we are going to wear them down,’ he said to his men assembled. ‘Everybody out and barricade the streets leading to the citadel, we must hold them away from the walls.’
‘Surely they are strong enough?’ Jordan asked.
That got the youngster a look from the more experienced knights: you did not question such commands in the situation in which they found themselves, even from someone as understanding as Roger — you obeyed them.
‘A lesson, Jordan,’ Roger replied gently. ‘In this kind of situation never let locals near your walls and always worry that one will betray you to your enemies if besieged. We have built on what was here before us and the Saracens built on what was here before them. If there is a secret way into this castle, or some flaw in the defence, who would know it best?’
‘Those who live by its side?’
‘And have done for generations. I have known boys climb cliffs to supposedly impregnable fortresses that would defeat the most puissant warrior. Why? Because they know the way, knowledge handed down from father to son and brother to brother. So, we will keep them behind barricades, which has the added advantage of forcing them to fight us in small numbers. On the concourse before the gates, we could be overwhelmed. Only if those barricades fail must we rely on the castle walls.’
They worked hard into the dark and through the night, fighting often to repel those who wished to contest their placements, incurring wounds but inflicting more. Carts were overturned, houses stripped of their timbers, even their doors pressed into service, anything used that would serve to block an approach, creating a barrier that could be defended. Roger, meanwhile, was in the storerooms, to assess the state of their provender. That done, and he satisfied they could hold out for a long time, he finally retired to bed. Judith, despite the hour, was waiting for him.
‘We are trapped, Judith.’
This was said as she lay in the crook of his arm, both of them in a blissful state of post-coital well-being.
‘Surely men will come from Messina to help?’
‘In time, and always with the caveat they are not occupied elsewhere. But they will not risk Messina to save Troina.’
Kissing his chest she murmured. ‘There are worse things, husband, than being besieged with you.’
‘Don’t let my men hear you say that.’
The first snow came within a week, having long blanketed the higher slopes of Mount Etna, the volcano smoking and rumbling angrily in the near distance as if peace were impossible. No more did studded boots ring on cobbles; now they moved silently about on a bed of soft white powder. Men sat round blazing fires fed by the ample wood store of the castle above the smoking chimneys of the lower town. If the snow masked the noise of boots it also hid the preparations for any attack, which were launched often, with the Greeks, aided by an increasing number of Saracens, probing for weakness, so that every day involved a raft of small conflicts, with Roger’s men rushing from one hot spot to another to keep them at bay, action that took a steady toll on his numbers.
Roger had his sources of information: not all the Greeks were happy with rebellion: many had prospered from a Norman presence, wine shop owners and the like. So he knew the numbers he faced and their composition, though that brought him scant comfort. News having spread, every Saracen for leagues around had come to aid the Greek cause, contingents arriving also from the surrounding towns, which explained how his enemies were able to keep up their pressure, launching sorties at varying points to keep him and his defenders off balance.
It was when that stopped, after the first four weeks, that Roger really began to fret, for it indicated that those keeping them confined had decided to settle for a different outcome, starving him out. He launched attacks, moving aside barricades to raid the lower town and slaughter those he found there, as well as stealing their stores. It was hard and dangerous fighting in which men died and were wounded, and too often Roger found he needed to restrain his overenthusiastic son, who seemed intent on getting himself killed or maimed. Jordan was filling out by the day, turning into a fully grown man before his eyes, still seeking to impress his father, unwilling, despite constant repetition, to accept it was unnecessary.
They started to eat their horses before Christmastide, two months into the siege, and in his daily examination of the storerooms Roger was bleakly aware of what was needed to feed his remaining fighting men, over two hundred in number, plus the wounded, anything they managed to plunder a drop in an ocean of consumption. No sign had come of any kind of relief, and while he could speculate endlessly on the reasons for that, it was pointless: if it came it came, if it did not and this cordon around his castle was maintained, he was going to be in serious difficulty, which made him curse the fact that he had brought Judith to this place.
That was not a regret shared by his lances; they saw her as a talisman. Judith tended the sick and spoke with them all and what she did not know about their families and how they came to be in Sicily she soon learnt. If food was scarce, she insisted by rotation that, conroy by conroy, her husband’s knights should eat at high table in the great hall to underline their shared difficulty. If Roger was in love with her, by the time it came to celebrate the birth date of Jesus Christ, so were half the garrison.
The high hills in which Troina stood were now in the grip of deep winter, the whole landscape blindingly white, the air crisp in the day if the sun shone, freezing when cloudy and at night. It was some comfort to Roger to know that, sentinels keeping watch on the barricades aside, he and his lances were in reasonable comfort. His tactic of launching surprise raids, which he kept up night after night, burdened his besiegers more than it weighed on him: he had professional fighting men, those they attacked were not good in a sharp combat, meaning they had to keep greater numbers in position to ward off his raids than he employed to undertake them.
Yet there was the gnawing worry of where it was all going to lead, a feeling that grew as week followed week. The Greeks and Saracens had access to the countryside and supplies, which, even in the midst of winter, gave them meat to eat and wood to burn, this while he was running short on both. By the third month the horses were gone and the garrison was eating their oats, the stores of hay long gone onto the fires that kept them warm. Every building inside his barricades had been stripped of timber and they were now knocking out roofs to get at the beams and still there was no sign that his plight had registered in Messina.
One tactic he initiated seemed to be paying dividends, his instruction that if those of his enemies opposite his barricades lit a fire it should be a signal for an immediate assault. If they were going to confine him and his men let them do so cold: it took time for the Greeks and Saracens to realise this, but come to the sense of it they did and, each night, they huddled in their defences, often while snow fell around them, which was at least warmer than a clear and frosty night.