‘Prince Gisulf, my son, for the sake of amity and our purpose, I beg you to accede to the Pisan demands.’
Gregory had not seen Gisulf for some time, years in which the prince’s hair had gone from jet black to peppered salt, making a complexion that had always been sallow now look like a milk-based pudding. Also his taste for gaudy clothing, on a less than svelte figure, large in the midriff below a hollow chest and above extended haunches, was even more inappropriate than it had been when he had been a youth. The ability to pout like a spoilt child had not changed, nor his lack of the facility to see himself as ever being in the wrong; at this moment, in the Pope’s personal tent, he seemed deeply affronted.
‘Surely you mean Pisan lies, Your Holiness?’
‘They are good sons of the Lord, Prince Gisulf. Are you suggesting they would make up such accusations — claims, I am forced to remind you, made by others such as Amalfi and Genoa?’
The mention of Amalfi caused Gisulf’s face to screw up, giving him the air of a gargoyle. Gregory looked and behaved like the divine he was, his face concerned and his manner composed, with no hint on his countenance of his feelings. In truth he was thinking this prince before him was a sorry specimen: duplicitous by habit, conceited to an almost unbelievable degree given his manifest failings, capricious in his dealings with his own subjects and those who would be his allies, always denigrating the abilities of others while erroneously promoting his own.
Gisulf’s voice became a whine. ‘How can they not be so, when they are the opposite of the truth? I have bent my back to near breaking to see that their vessels sail unharmed, have chastised with the scourge my own subjects who have disobeyed my instructions.’
While pocketing a good half of what they have stolen, Gregory was thinking.
‘How can I make redress for what I have not done?’ came the bleat. ‘Do you not see their game for what it is, Your Holiness, an attempt to make poor my holdings, to raise Pisa up and to drive Salerno down into the pits of poverty and dearth? I would be betraying my subjects, whom you know I love as my own children, if I agreed to accept such falsehoods.’
Gregory knew full well that was hyperbole and nonsense, but he had more pressing concerns. ‘We are engaged on a higher purpose, my son.’
The hollow chest, in its colourful doublet, puffed out and the voice, weedy as it was, declaimed, ‘There is no higher purpose for a prince than to see to the needs of those God has entrusted to his care.’
‘Let us pray,’ Gregory responded, sinking to his knees and obliging Gisulf to do the same, in truth because he could think of nothing else to do. In a soft voice he asked God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost for guidance for his good and faithful servant Gisulf, noticing that the shoddy prince nodded at the compliment. Supplications over, he took his seat again. ‘If for the sake of harmony I asked you to return to Rome and await me there, would you oblige me?’
‘Rome?’ Gisulf asked, merely to prevaricate.
‘I will prevail upon Pisa and speak to them on your behalf,’ Gregory said, hoping God would forgive him the lie he had just spouted and those coming behind it. ‘And once they have been brought to see their error, and the devil we have come to put in his place has been dealt with, I would wish you to join with our host on their journey to Constantinople, where I am sure the chance will come for Gisulf of Salerno to become a name encrusted with glory.’
‘I can only do that if I lead the host.’
Thinking he was a sly cur, Gregory said, ‘That can be made to pass.’
‘When would you like me to depart?’
‘This very day would be best.’
For three whole days Robert de Hauteville had sat outside Benevento awaiting the summons, but none came, which he put down to papal malice. It made him a poor companion for anyone of his entourage, all of whom bore the brunt of his rage, not the least of them Bohemund, who saw a side to his father hitherto hidden. Being of an even disposition he never rose to the taunts and insults aimed at him, which only seemed to drive the Guiscard to a greater level of abuse as he gnawed on what might be demanded of him, in his imagination conjuring up torments of gigantic proportions, even to the point of having his eyes put out.
Dealing with Gisulf had obliged Gregory to delay the proposed meeting, but he retained his confidence that all would be as he wished. That was severely dented and he was obliged to rush back from his palace to the encampment of his host when he heard the news: getting rid of Gisulf had done no good, the protests against Salerno and its prince had filtered down from the Pisan commanders to their men and that had led to an exchange of name-calling between them and the soldiers of Salerno.
That in turn led to the first blow being struck, as one captain slapped another, only to see weapons drawn if not employed, as several knights from other entities intervened. Yet among those other contingents men took sides, often for reasons that they would never be able to explain, but common enough in an assembled army of conscript milities that was hovering on the edge of boredom, riddled with a concern for their continued existence and holding a strong desire to engage in battle, to get it over with so they could go back to their wives, their farms or their trades.
The first death was a secret knife at night, as a knight of Pisa was stabbed in his sleep. By mid morning there was a full-scale battle going on and much blood being spilt, with the aristocratic leaders of the contingents powerless to stop it. As an army fit to fight, Gregory’s host fell apart in a blink of the time it had taken to assemble and march to Benevento, while no amount of papal pleading mixed with hurled anathemas could bring the encampment to order. The troops of Savoy rode out first, Amadeus leading his men away lest they turn into a rabble, the Count of Burgundy close on his heels.
The people who had watched in wonder this proud host march from Rome to Benevento, with flutes playing and banners waving, saw them straggle back with heads bowed. In the encampment they left, the bodies of men from Salerno and Pisa littered the ground, more the former, for Tuscany was so much more of a power than Gisulf’s single city, while those troops left stood armed and between them to bring an end to the slaughter. Geoffrey, the Hunchback of Lorraine, sent off Salerno first then Pisa a day later, with a strong body of his own men to keep them apart until their routes diverged.
No more from the top of his palace could Gregory see that flower-petalled snowfield of tents; few remained standing, most left were torn and destroyed, the field now looking as what it was — a brown landscape devoid of men but rendered bereft of grass by the passage of thousands of feet. It was as desolate to look at as had become his dream and the time came, he knew, for him and his own followers to take the road back to Rome; he could not meet with and chastise the Guiscard now. The news of the falling apart of his papal army arrived in Rome before Pope Gregory, which found Gisulf of Salerno telling anyone who would listen, and they were few, that if he had been given the command, as he had demanded, this would never have happened.
A message had to be sent to the Duke of Apulia, but he already knew what had happened and soon found out why, and that restored his mood. Such an outcome made the ride back to Melfi a jolly affair and Bohemund was detached halfway to turn for Capua, and once there to request from Prince Richard that the Apulian army should be permitted to cross Capuan territory and to undertake the siege of Salerno, so much easier now that Gisulf, who had never had many friends, now had none at all. No one in South Italy had garnered to themselves so much hatred.