‘I do not deny it. When I was sent away on my own and took Mamistra as my fief, I confess I took pleasure in not having anyone to question my decisions.’
That caused Bohemund’s face to cloud over; it was during that expedition, to clear the passes on the shortest route to Antioch, that, despite Tancred’s successes, his uncle had lost a hundred and fifty lances to a massacre in which Baldwin of Boulogne might be implicated. Yet he did not dwell on it for long.
Baldwin was in far-off Edessa and nothing could be done about him or his deeds now. Nor did he think on the reason such an expedition had been sent out: those passes known to now be free of defence would allow the Byzantines to use them as a fast route to join with the Crusade outside Antioch. That meant if Alexius was coming he should be here by now.
‘I would want you to feel free to act on your own.’ Seeing the doubt that induced, Bohemund added, ‘Have I not said many times that the day will come when you will need to seek your own future?’
Now it was Tancred’s turn to be amused and that came with a grin and a sweeping glance at the walls of Antioch. ‘A proposition hard to realise now.’
‘Act as you see fit, nephew, and that is a command.’
Watching him depart as he went to make his arrangements, Bohemund could allow himself to feel a sense of contentment; his sister’s boy had been with him for so many years he was more like a son than a nephew, though there was no thought to dispute the designation with Tancred’s father, a Lombard who had been a faithful servant and fighting knight to his own sire.
Such musings turned almost without effort to the image of Robert, the mighty Duke of Apulia, known throughout Christendom as the Guiscard, which meant cunning to those who admired his guile and the very reverse, more than weasel-like, to the many who hated and feared him. Even the latter could not doubt his abilities, which were the stuff of legend and that only marginally outshone those of his elder siblings.
Robert de Hauteville came from a family of twelve brothers and two sisters, the offspring of his nephew’s namesake, who had, with two wives, sired a remarkable brood on what was a small demesne in the north-western part of Normandy known as the Contentin. Old Tancred, now long dead, had been a doughty soldier himself and, if far from wealthy, had raised his sons, all tall and as stoutly formed as their giant of a father, equipping them to be that too.
Tancred the Elder had hoped this would be in the service of the then ruler of Normandy, only to find that, having wed as his first bride the illegitimate daughter of Richard, the reigning Duke’s father, such a connection worked not for but against his heirs. Duke Robert the First, known as ‘the devil’ for the suspicion that he had murdered his brother, was a man who lacked a legitimate heir of his own.
His only son, William, at one time called the Bastard of Falaise, now known to Christendom as the Conqueror, had been sired out of wedlock, and his father had quite obviously feared a de Hauteville bloodline of puissant fighters and outstanding physical presence, who might claim precedence by a superior bloodline.
To constrain them as well as any perceived ambitions for the dukedom he had refused them service as close knights to his body and thus any hope of moving from relative poverty to a position of some wealth and possible influence.
With all chance of advancement gone — ducal disfavour made that unattainable across the whole of Normandy — the two most senior of Tancred’s sons, William and Drogo, had set out for Italy to make their way as mercenaries with nothing but their swords, lances and their fighting prowess, following in the wake of many who had departed Normandy before them.
In the eldest son, William, the world had discovered not only a fighter who well deserved the soubriquet ‘Iron Arm’, but also a soldier with a quite remarkable tactical brain and no shortage of guile when it came to dealing with the one-time ruling Lombards of Apulia, his fellow Norman freebooters who fought their battles, as well as the Byzantines who now lorded it over them.
William had set the family on its way in Southern Italy, sidestepping his mercenary confreres as well as the slippery Lombards, trouncing the Byzantines in numerous battles, being followed in turn by Drogo and Humphrey, the brothers next in age. Humphrey had humbled the papacy as well as their Byzantines allies at the Battle of Civitate to consolidate and extend the family power in South Italy.
Succession by maturity had been set aside when Humphrey died and Bohemund’s father had leapt over, by acclamation, two of the other brothers to assume the leadership of the family and the forces they had created. In a life of constant warfare, devious manoeuvring and greed for possessions the Guiscard had made Apulia secure by his conquest of the coastal cities of Brindisi, Bari and Otranto.
Far from content and aided by the youngest of his brothers, Roger, he next conquered Calabria, then led an expedition across the Straits of Messina to take control of Sicily from the Saracens. Robert de Hauteville, like William Iron Arm, had risen from penury to become, by papal investiture, the Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily as well as the most famous soldier in Christendom.
No such ruminations were possible for Bohemund without a reflection on how he had been robbed of his inheritance. For reasons of political necessity, though it was disguised as being required by the sin of consanguinity, Robert had, with the connivance of a well-bribed pope, put aside his first wife to marry Sichelgaita, a Lombard princess and sister of Prince Gisulf of Salerno. She had produced two sons as well as several daughters, the eldest of whom had, through the manoeuvring of his formidable mother, inherited all the ducal titles.
Bohemund immediately went to war with his half-brother Roger, known as Borsa, and he would have taken what he saw to be rightfully his if Borsa’s namesake uncle, who held the title of Great Count of Sicily and was every bit a match as a soldier for any of his siblings, had not stepped in to prevent it. If Roger of Sicily had also ensured Borsa likewise never enjoyed the whip hand it was small compensation; the Great Count held them in balance and Bohemund suspected he did so, not as he claimed for any vow he had made to his elder brother, but for some long-term aim of his own.
Many, Bohemund knew, suspected he had come on Crusade to repair that paternal fault, to gain in Asia Minor what he had been denied in Italy, and if pushed, he would have been hard-pressed to tell if that were true or false. Certainly he chafed to be denied his titles but more he had come here to get away from the endless need to fight with and sometimes serve under his half-sibling, this to preserve intact the whole inheritance — Borsa was a weak creature, a poor general and a man who placed more credence in priests than common sense, which made just being in his presence a trial.
Perhaps a more telling truth was that Bohemund was like most of his race — his mother had been a full-blood Norman — a man who lived to fight and conquer, made restless by the lack of it. From that he might accrue the rewards that his bloodline indicated to him he deserved, but what would come of this adventure, as he had told Tancred many times, he did not know, for the future was to him, as to all men, a mystery.
Yet chance was ever on the wing and it might be that here in Syria he might find that which he sought, an undisputed destiny and a fame all of his own to match or even surpass his famous sire.
CHAPTER FOUR
The men Tancred led, a dozen in number, let themselves down rope ladders in Stygian darkness onto the steep part of the slopes of Mount Staurin, those being hauled out of sight as soon as they were on the ground. Lightly clad, eschewing mail, they moved with slow deliberation downhill towards the fires of the forward Turkish camp, re-established after Godfrey of Bouillon’s debacle.