‘I would not be taken alive.’
The messenger, by the expression that appeared on his face, took that for what it was, an idle boast; few men chose death when life was possible. Bohemund wanted to tell him to return with a flat refusal, added to that a message to underline the difference between a threat and its implementation; they had not caught him and his band yet and it would not be any easier for them in the future as long as he kept moving and the peasants remained happy with free grain, oil and wine. But to do so would fly in the face of his father’s instructions. That accepted, it seemed to him foolish to take his lances with him; even if the laws of hospitality were applied, as soon as they rode out to resume marauding Richard’s possessions, their location would be impossible to keep from those pursuing them, for the Prince would have them closely followed, to ensure they left his patrimony and went back from whence they came.
‘I will accept, my men will not.’
That got a shrug, as if his lances were of no account; was it meant to flatter him by making him feel important, or genuine indifference? Bohemund surmised he would never know, so he spun his mount to return to the messenger he had brought, a squire who held the reins of his packhorse and destrier.
‘Go back to Reynard and tell him I am going to meet and talk with the Prince of Capua. I will rendezvous with him in four days by the River Calore, where we last camped seven nights past, and him alone — he is not to risk the conroys. If I do not, I leave it to him to either continue raiding or return to my father to tell him I am not at liberty to act as I wish.’
‘And these?’ the man asked, indicating the horses.
‘Keep them. I am to be a guest of a prince, so they can provide for my needs and I doubt I will require a destrier on which to fight.’
It did not take long on the road to Bari for Sichelgaita to realise that, even on a well-maintained old Roman surface and with much care and frequent changes of bearers, her husband was suffering from the rocking of the litter. Hurriedly a messenger was sent back to Trani to requisition a galley to meet them at the fishing settlement close to Bisceglie. With great care and using two boats to form a wide stretcher, the Duke of Apulia was taken out and, after the making of a cat’s cradle of ropes, a crane was employed to get him aboard and laid flat amidships. On pain that he would suffer as much as the patient, the master then had another rig made that left the board suspended and that took out the effect of the rise and fall of the sea, while an awning was added to keep the blazing sun off the Duke.
Sichelgaita had sent more than one message; she had despatched dozens by her husband’s familia knights, calling on all of Robert de Hauteville’s senior vassals to gather in Bari, and if she did not say why, once word spread of the Duke’s condition it would not take a genius to work out what his duchess wanted. Riders had also been sent ahead to the destination with instructions to prepare to receive their lord and for every available physician to be in attendance, so by the time the galley passed through the water gate and drew up alongside the great stone quay a huge crowd had gathered to gaze at the still fevered body of their overlord.
‘How many have come here hoping he is dead?’
That enquiry came from the Guiscard’s son and, as far as his mother was concerned, Robert’s undoubted heir. Sadly it underlined a truth: that in such a Greek city as Bari his father was far from universally loved. It was not too many years past since many of those gathered had been reduced to near starvation by his four-year-long siege. Prior to that they had jeered at him from their massive — and they thought impregnable — walls and called him shoddy and a fool as well as many more and less flattering things besides. The siege had lasted so long because Robert, without a fleet, could not cut off access to the sea, meaning that Byzantium could resupply the jewel in its Apulian territory with all it needed to resist.
Most men would have given up after a year of no progress, but not the Guiscard. He found a way to cut off the city by ringing it with a wall of small trading vessels, all attached to each other by wooden gangways to form a solid and defensible bulwark. It had not held entirely when attacked but it had so diminished the relief efforts as to bring on hunger, disease and discontent, and that induced enough of the minds of those inside to see the only way to end it was to bow the knee to the Normans. To aid this Robert had his spies, as well as a small number of supporters within the walls, men who thought to prosper by surrender.
With a population close to revolt, those adherents took one of the main towers and that allowed the final Norman assault to prevail to the point where capitulation was the only option; the Byzantines in the garrison were obliged to flee. Robert entered the opened gates to a grovelling plea to be spared what their intransigence deserved: rapine and sack till not one body remained breathing. They had misjudged their conqueror — he was no angel of death, but a shrewd ruler disinclined to make enemies where it was unnecessary.
Not only did he spare them a massacre, but since the city fell their new master had been benign, allowing the leading citizens who had opposed him to keep their trades and positions, ensuring many of the privileges Bari enjoyed were maintained so that the port retained its wealthy trade and important revenues. In another setting the community would have been content but, as ever, it was religion that made true concord impossible; the Greeks resented the new cathedral Robert ordered built, for inside that would be performed the Latin Mass, conducted by celibate priests, while the monks and divines that came with the Normans worked hard to proselytise their version of the Christian faith.
‘Odd,’ Sichelgaita replied after a long pause, for she could not disagree with her son, ‘that he loves a city in which so many loathe him.’
‘Is that why we came here?’
‘Partly; it was his favourite from the day he rode in to accept the surrender, but the best Greek physicians reside here too and they are much required.’
‘And the other reason is?’
‘Surely you have thought about what will happen if God takes him from us?’
‘I try not to, Mother, and I shall pray that it is not so until he is well again.’
Few mothers see anything untoward in their sons and Sichelgaita was no exception with both her boys. She relished the piety of her eldest and saw his way of ever counting and recounting his purse money that had earned him his sobriquet of Borsa as just a harmless affectation, so much so that she employed it herself. But for all the maternal mote in her eye, she also knew that her son lacked the fiery spirit of his sire, and while he was a competent fighter for his fourteen summers, he was not amongst the first rank of his peers; in short, there were those of his own age who could best him in mock combat, and given the closeness of Norman training to actual battle, such a handicap was likely to apply there as well.
Experience, added to a few years, would make him more capable but he was not yet commanding by nature. Sichelgaita knew that if what she feared to happen came about, and her husband did not recover, then it would fall to her to protect her Roger until he could come into the qualities he required to hold his own amongst the Guiscard’s troublesome vassals. So be it; she had often stood in for her husband, indeed was seen by many as a co-ruler of the dukedom and was a match for Robert as a force of nature, understood the politics needed to acquire and maintain authority, all of which she would employ to keep Borsa safe.
‘Come, let us go ashore,’ she said. ‘I desire you to go ahead of your father’s bier and I also require that you smile at the populace. Look confident, Borsa, for whatever happens in the coming days, that is an attitude you are going to require.’