‘Right now, I think I need a slave to whisper in my ear that all glory is fleeting.’
‘Only now, Father? I would have said you needed that in your crib.’
From feeling proud and regal, Robert’s mood was reduced to a feeling of ongoing irritation. Bohemund’s sister, Emma, come to see her brother off on his first independent command, had always possessed the ability to get under his skin. He turned to chastise her, only to find himself staring into the still, blue eyes of her six-year-old son, Tancred, which killed in his throat the shout he had been about to utter. What was it about grandchildren that so softened a man? He had never feared to bark at his own offspring, nor employ the back of his hand if they went too far, but somehow the gap in years made such a thing impossible.
‘Give me the boy,’ he growled.
Emma’s reply was biting. ‘Only if you assure me you are not hungry.’
Robert reached out for Tancred, who was given up without resistance and then raised to perch on his grandfather’s shoulders, first kneeling, then standing.
‘There, my boy, from such a height you can see the East and the future. Out on that galley is your Uncle Bohemund, the man to help me make it for us.’
Bohemund, as ever dressed in his family colours and standing on the poop of the galley, had a feeling that to look backwards was unlucky — Lot’s wife came to mind — but he could not help but do so, for he wanted to feel that he had his father’s confidence and somehow hoped it would be able to travel the distance between them like some raw animal spirit. He saw clearly Robert lift a boy on his shoulders, knew it had to be his nephew and that induced a pang of regret; he could not recall that ever being gifted to him, for if it had, he had been too young to recall it. Abruptly he cast his eyes to the harbour mouth, aware that such a sight actually pained him and made him jealous of a child of whom he was very fond.
There was much bellowing and oar work needed to get out safely, and when they finally emerged there was a moment of slight anxiety as the vessel hit the swell of the sea, for like all landsmen Bohemund feared to be sick; his shipboard experience to date had been the short trip across the Straits of Messina, another from Amalfi to Salerno Bay, both on very calm water. Here it was not truly rough — they would not have weighed if it had been — but there was a noticeable north-westerly breeze, which whipped up choppy waves that made the ship shudder when they struck. It made no difference that sailors often suffered from such an affliction; it was, especially to a warrior, too diminishing to be borne, too much of a blow to pride. With half his mind on his stomach, he addressed the sailing master, Lamissio of Viesti, the man who would control the whole fleet, as much to distract himself as to seek information.
‘It would be of interest to me to be told the meaning of your commands. I am eager to learn the ways of the sea.’
The immediate if silent reaction to that request was one of scorn, quickly replaced by faux eagerness, for the thought, to the sailing master, of seeking to distil a lifetime of experience into few enough words to instruct one bound to be utterly ignorant bordered on the risible. Against that, this Norman was a Goliath, while he was a Lombard and, like most of his nautical breed, obliged to sail in cramped vessels, of necessity short and stocky even by the standards of his race. This fellow could pick him up with one hand and chuck him over the side. Quick as his change of expression had been, Bohemund had spotted it; the master was aware of the fact and he sought to head off the blast he knew was coming. Normans were bad-tempered by nature, yet Lamissio was surprised by the calm voice.
‘It will not suit either of us if I am totally in ignorance, will it?’
‘No, Eminence.’
The gentle chuckle was even more unusual from a Norman. ‘I am not yet eminent, fellow, so Bohemund will do.’
‘I was about to send up the pennant that would have the fleet set sail, sir. With the wind on our quarter it favours us.’
‘You do not require my words to make it so?’
‘No,’ Lamissio replied.
At Bohemund’s nod he raised a wide-mouthed trumpet to his lips and bellowed his command, which could be heard on the nearest vessels, those more distant relying on the chequered flag that was run up to the masthead. Bohemund left the poop for the deck so that he could closely observe the men hauling on the lines that raised the great square, blood-red sail, and was even more keen to see how they lashed it off to the side of the ship at an angle so it billowed out as it took full advantage of the breeze. The heel as it did so nearly caught him out, the canting deck forcing him to hang on to the bulwark, the only sound to add to the wind whistling through the taut ropes the noise of a fair number of his knights voiding their guts.
The tang of the sea was strong in Bohemund’s nostrils, his knees bending alternately as he rode easily the pitch and roll of the deck. The sky was blue and the surrounding sea, save from his own vessels, was empty, with the black ravens in their coops cawing now, aware by some divine gift that the sight of land was diminishing. He was thinking this was how his Viking ancestors had terrorised the world, pagan warriors sailing or rowing to destinations sometimes a year away — the cities of the eastern Mediterranean had not been spared — over endless seas out of sight of land, even up rivers to great inland cities like Paris and Tours, to steal, burn and destroy, and if that failed, to extract tribute for the mere act of withdrawal. As of this moment he felt at one with them.
If it was a mystery how the sailing master knew the direction in which to go in daylight; that was multiplied when darkness fell and the only sight of the fleet was the myriad flickering stern lanterns. The sky was filled with a million stars, numerous and strong enough to make up for the paucity of a moon, and by now Lamissio had realised that this commander was a different kind of Norman, with an even temper and a genuine desire to be instructed, amazed that to sail at night was easy for a man who had been at his trade from the age of five. Lamissio knew his constellations and the stars within them, and where they would be at any given time of year.
‘Why, sir, it is as easy as walking an old Roman road.’
‘When will we raise Valona?’ Bohemund asked, in order to avoid agreement; he was far from sure he could ever learn to do that which Lamissio did quite naturally.
There was a pause while a concentrated examination was made of the heavens, Bohemund in the darkness having no difficulty in hiding a smile, for he guessed this was play-acting. ‘We will be off the town before first light.’
‘Could we sail directly in?’
The sucking of teeth was just as overdone. ‘Depends, Your Honour. If the great lanterns are lit on the end of the moles, maybe, and even then we would have to risk them sealing off the harbour.’
‘Chains and logs?’
The nod was imperceptible. ‘Which would rip the bottom off any galley that tried to enter.’
‘If the chain could be broken?’
‘Don’t see how, sir.’
Bohemund laughed, for a plan was forming in his mind. ‘That is because you are a seafarer.’
There was no overnight rest. It took five turns of the glass to relay Bohemund’s instructions, which saw the fleet of galleys drop their sails and close with great care till there was little space between the oars of those sailing abreast and even less between the bow and stern of the vessels following, a point from which orders to the fighting men could be relayed by shouts. Then they had to douse their lights, the only one visible that of Lamissio’s ship, out ahead of the rest, where a bit of thick canvas had been rigged to cut off the light from the approaching shore, while beside it rested the sailing master’s hourglass, the sand slowly dribbling through. Still too far off to be visible, it was the hankering caw of the ravens that told Lamissio they were as close to land as Bohemund needed to be.