‘The whole fleet?’
‘No, just the dromons, they have left their smaller galleys to mask the harbour and keep us out.’
Rudely awakened, Robert was slow to ask the obvious question, sinking his milk first. ‘Why, Geoffrey? Is it some kind of Trojan trick?’
‘I do not know.’
The Guiscard was off his cot and heading for the deck when he next spoke, Ridel on his heels. ‘I expect you to tell me. You are Master of the Fleet, not I.’
Both men made their way to the poop, where the truth of what Ridel had imparted was clear. The dromons were stern-on and their gently stroking oars were taking them further away, while a line of smaller galleys had taken station across the harbour mouth, a scene that held them for several moments before Ridel responded, trying to ease things with a joke.
‘I was not aware that anyone told you anything.’
The reply was a bark. ‘Don’t jest with me, Ridel, give me reasons as to why, when they have us in their palm, the Venetians should withdraw a weapon we cannot overcome. And why did they let us off so lightly yesterday, come to that?’
‘They think us utterly beaten?’
‘That is not enough.’ Seeing Ridel was seeking a proper answer, Robert had the good grace not to interrupt his thoughts; for a man who was a slave to impatience that was a struggle.
‘It may be they cannot enter the harbour,’ Ridel said eventually, with a slow and deliberate tone.
‘Why not?’
‘They draw too much water under the keel perhaps, but I think it is that they fear to be blocked in there.’
‘Who can do that, for God knows we can’t?’
‘Size, My Lord!’ the sailor responded, not hiding his ire at being pressed when he wanted to weigh his words. ‘Even if there is depth enough, the access is narrow, so once inside they can only emerge singly …’
‘Which means we could lock them up there?’
‘Let us say it would seriously disadvantage them to the point where they might lose a vessel in driving us off, as they did yesterday in the fighting, which I would hazard shocked them. It was not in their mind to see one of their dromons sunk. By the same token, there is no security in anchoring in the outer roads for an extended time.’ About to speak, Robert was stopped by a glare. ‘Understand, My Lord Robert, that just as your lances are vital to you and your ambitions-’
‘Those large fighting ships are vital to Venice!’
‘They cannot afford to risk them on an open shore, for if a tempest arose of the kind we suffered on the way from Corfu, they could be driven onto land and wrecked. Such an event risks the major and most effective part of their fleet.’
‘And lacking them Venice is, as a power, nothing?’
Ridel nodded and the silence that followed was a long one, one in which the dromons shrank in size as the distance between them and the two men on the Apulian galley increased to a point where they were mere pinpricks on the horizon.
‘The question is, Geoffrey, will they return?’
‘Why would they? I have told you already, they think us crushed.’
‘Call everyone aboard at once.’
The subsequent battle was a very different affair and the loss of it for the galleys defending Durazzo was caused by the same failure to understand the Normans, and especially Robert de Hauteville, as had afflicted every power on the Italian mainland; they did not readily accept defeat and were only given to licking their wounds for a period long enough to either recover or allow fate, as it had now and had done many times in the past, to take a hand. They waited until those dromons were well over the horizon before launching an attack, one in which they were evenly matched in terms of the size, weight and number of vessels; what mattered was when they closed and engaged, where Norman fighting prowess did the rest.
As the sun began to set on the second day it was the Venetians who were obliged to cast an eye over their losses, many of them forced to do so from the shoreline onto which they had been driven by relentless Apulian pressure, there to watch their galleys break up in the surf. Out on the water they saw abundant wreckage where other vessels had been destroyed, or ships which had that morning been theirs, now in the hands of their enemies, with bodies floating around them of those who had been slain. For those that remained intact, all they could do was withdraw into the harbour and await what was bound to come, an assault coordinated with the advance on land, in which the possession of the harbour would be lost and the city they had sought to defend would be thus fully under siege.
The dromons did return, a fast six-oar and single-sail sandalion being sent after them, but which took time to find the fleet, but it was to see the Apulian army camped around the city and the mouth of the harbour blocked in a way that made it dangerous to attack, while staying offshore ran the risks of destruction by tempest outlined by Geoffrey Ridel. Venice had to have an intact fleet, not only to be a power, but also to maintain and increase that to which they were committed: their trade and wealth. Nothing Byzantium could offer would compensate for the loss of that.
Laying siege to a city was one thing, taking it another, and any lack of progress had as much to do with the man in command of the resistance as it had with the state of the walls and the cunning construction of the defences. Alexius had put his own brother-in-law in charge of holding Durazzo, but not because of a family connection; with George Palaeologus the reason was sheer ability. He was a brilliant soldier, an inspiring leader as well as a man not content to hide behind those stones, so the Apulian camp was on constant alert for the endless sorties in which he engaged. For all his own abilities, Robert de Hauteville was not slow to accord him the accolade of a worthy opponent. But there was another reason Durazzo held out and that had to do with the Guiscard’s tactics.
‘Yet you do not press home the assaults,’ said Sichelgaita, an observation that got a silent and furtive smile of agreement from her husband.
It was Bohemund, now openly acknowledged as his father’s second in command, who replied. ‘To do so would entail great loss.’
The sneer on the face of the Duchess of Apulia was undisguised; Bohemund’s elevation was the reason she had crossed from Brindisi. ‘I can accept you might fear to expose yourself, but not my husband.’
‘Peace, woman,’ Robert growled, the smile now gone to be replaced with a look of resignation. ‘I have none braver than Bohemund.’
‘And none so stuffed with ambition, husband,’ she snapped, her face going red with anger, ‘which you seem blind to.’
That made Bohemund smile. He was always happy when Sichelgaita was upset and she was not a woman to let her emotion remain hidden — it was not just the skin colour, added to that was her expression and right now she looked as if she had swallowed a hornet. If he was privy to this exchange, Bohemund had not been to the berating his father had received when she arrived. Borsa, who to Sichelgaita’s mind should occupy the position Bohemund now held, had been left behind in Salerno, given no good would be done to his pride to be in the presence of his half-brother while forced to defer to him on anything of a military nature. Robert’s reaction had been to admit that his possessions were in good hands, but he refused to dismiss his bastard in favour of his heir for the very simple reason he was going to have a battle and it was one he wanted to win.
‘As of this moment, Alexius is marching towards us with a relief army and his brother-in-law has one task, which is to hold Durazzo until he can get here.’
‘He would still come if you held the city.’
That riled Robert. ‘Allow that when it comes to fighting I know what I am about. I need to bring Comnenus to battle and I need to defeat him, and for that I cannot risk losing men to take a city that will fall to me anyway. What if I can repeat Manzikert, destroy his army and take him captive? The road to Constantinople will be mine, so when you think of our son, which you seem to do above all other things, think of him clad in imperial purple.’