Other reasons abounded, a less than noble one his desire to send a letter to William of Normandy as King of England, with the signature and seal at the base telling the upstart that he was being addressed by an imperial de Hauteville, which would pay back in bezants the insult the father of the Bastard of Falaise had heaped on his own family. Yet in truth the time was ripe; the Eastern Empire was weak both internally and externally, troubled on its borders by the pressure of Kiev Rus, the Magyars of Hungary and the Turks of Asia Minor.
Control from the centre was weak, with the man who had usurped Michael Dukas faced by constant intrigues seeking to depose him, this allowing the various satraps who ran the provinces to behave with a degree of independence, sometimes so barefaced as to have them acting like separate sovereign powers as they manoeuvred for an attainable imperial throne. If it was open to them, it was also exposed to the ambitions of the powers that pressed on its borders; someone might bring it crashing down — better that was himself, Robert surmised, than that he face a more potent power in its place.
The Duke of Apulia also had an unemployed army, a dangerous tool to leave idle in his own domains, as well as a fleet that he had built up to help subdue the numerous ports he had been required to blockade; that could so easily be transformed into an offensive weapon. Yet deep in his soul there was another pressing motivation and that had to do with his eldest brother, William. For all he had conquered and all he now held, Robert had still not matched in his own estimation the achievements of Iron Arm.
It was William who had founded their family prosperity, he who had created the base upon which successive de Hautevilles had constructed the holdings over which Robert now held sway, William who had defeated the Byzantines when they were a force to be reckoned with on the ancient battlefield of Cannae, so that he stood comparison with Hannibal, the previous victor on that field who had destroyed the legions of Rome. For all the songs made up in praise of his deeds, none, to Robert’s mind, matched those dedicated to the warrior actions of William and that was a situation he strongly desired to change.
As ever, anything he desired to do was beset with problems that had nothing to do with combat, the first of which surfaced when he proposed to send an advance party across the Adriatic to secure for him a base for his fleet.
‘Your rightful son should have the command,’ Sichelgaita demanded. ‘Not your long-legged bastard!’
For Robert this was tricky; how could he say to his faithful helpmeet and wife that he did not trust Borsa to lead the expedition? Even less could he intimate to a doting mother that the men who would go under Bohemund in his advance guard might not readily follow his heir with the same confidence? Borsa was not, as far as his sire could see, a leader of men; he lacked the ability to either inspire them or to instil such fear that they would obey his every command. In administration he showed ability — the appointment of officials, not least satisfying Rome with his clerical placements, added to an assiduous collection and accounting of revenues. These were his forte, so that his father had a bulging treasury — but then money had always been an attraction to the boy.
‘It is not without risk,’ he replied in a voice that lacked its usual force.
‘What fight is not, husband?’
He could not help but think, even when being castigated, that an angry Sichelgaita was a magnificent sight to behold; near eyeball to eyeball with him, her hair was still burnished blonde, her shoulders square and her protruding breasts magnificent in their size and outline and even after the bearing of eight children she was a fine-looking woman. How he wished he still had the powers in his loins to engage in the kind of ferocious carnal coupling with her that they had at one time enjoyed, but that had not survived his near-death illness at the level he had once known. He had reached a point in his life where his vital spark required to be coaxed.
If, at sixty-five years of age, he felt his sword arm was still strong, the other parts of his body were subject to the terrors of old age. There was a stiffness in the joints when he rose from his bed of a morning and he was aware that in the manege he was no longer a figure of fear to the younger knights as he had at one time been; it was respect that permitted him to overcome them, not a superiority of arms. From now on he knew that, while he could still fight, his task was more to command than engage and not to lead by sheer example, which required that someone in whom he reposed faith should undertake that role.
In his son made a bastard he recognised those abilities he had for much of his life possessed: raw courage, a terrifying strength with any weapon he chose to employ, the cold blood and concentration needed to kill without mercy. But most important of all Bohemund had the ability to arouse in the Normans he led a passion that made them outdo even their known and famed skills. Added to that, he engaged in a way with Lombards and Greek milities which, his father had to admit, was superior to his own. Robert found it hard to disguise his antipathy to races he considered feeble, a disadvantage in a host in which increasingly they outnumbered his Normans.
‘You would expose our son to the risk of death for the sake of an excess of pride? What if he was lost?’
‘Then Guy would become your heir and he in turn will lead your army.’
That was a jest, but not one Robert dared laugh at; if Sichelgaita had a mote in her eye about Borsa, it was nothing to the regard in which she held his younger brother. Robert too was fond of him, for he was hard to dislike; Guy was a joy to be with, clever, witty, a bit of a rake, who had a legion of scrapes on his bedpost and a natural courtier manner, being well versed in the arts of diplomacy. But he was no soldier.
‘No! Bohemund will lead.’
‘And how will that be seen?’
‘Sichelgaita,’ Robert said, unusually for him almost pleading, ‘Borsa will have my titles, all of them, as well as what lands I possess, and if my planned expedition prospers that might be the imperial purple. But if he is the person destined to rule when I am gone, he is not the one to lead an army all the way across Romania and to capture Constantinople.’
‘And Bohemund is?’
‘Yes! As much as I am myself.’
Robert de Hauteville stood under the twin marble pillars that marked all that remained of a temple once dedicated to Neptune, as the galleys of a good proportion of his fleet manoeuvred to make their way out of the narrow neck that closed off the natural harbour of Brindisi. The temple had stood at the very end of the Appian Way since the time of Ancient Rome, a sacred place where the pagan gods had been beseeched to grant safe passage to both war galleys and trading vessels as they set out for the East from the Empire’s premier southern port.
From here great Roman generals had sailed, much the same as Bohemund was doing now, to war and possible conquest: the likes of Pompey, Caesar and Mark Antony. Was it not from Brindisi that Octavian, soon to be Caesar Augustus, had set out for the decisive Battle of Actium and was not that an omen of some kind? Given this expedition had been blessed by the Bishop of Brindisi and all of his assembled clergy it was very hard not to feel so, to wonder if he too would rise to imperial magnificence?