‘We have a proper papal blessing, Bohemund, for Gregory has termed what we are about as a crusade to bring back to the Mother Church those Greeks who have strayed from obedience to Rome. In such a cause, how can we fail? We are crossing the Adriatic and not coming back. I have promised our pontiff he will soon say Mass in Latin and in Santa Sophia.’
If Robert de Hauteville had a near-permanent advantage, it was that his enemies never seemed to learn. His first task was to retake Corfu for the same tactical reasons that had previously existed, though this time it was better defended, especially in the naval sense, with a combined Byzantine and Venetian squadron controlling the Corfu Channel. Also against him was a run of bad weather that trapped his own fleet in Butrinto for several weeks. When he finally emerged to do battle he was up against those same problems that had existed off Durazzo — ships too large to overcome — and so he was soundly beaten twice in two days and forced to retire with his ships battered and leaking, while the losses in men had been even worse.
So confident were the Venetians, who made up the bulk of the combined squadron, that victory had been achieved, they sent off a body of fast-sailing sandalions to carry the good news to Alexius and Venice. Even with ships near to being wrecks that was a foolish thing to do when fighting the Guiscard; those departing messenger vessels did not escape his attention and nor did he struggle to discern what intelligence they might be carrying. Many an ordinary commander would have struggled to raise the enthusiasm required for another assault, but that did not apply to Robert de Hauteville and once more that luck which had attended him all his fighting life resurfaced.
Not only had his enemies assumed him beaten, they had taken out of the fight those ships the Apulians most feared, the dromon-like galleys which had pummelled them previously. Having been at sea for a year, waiting for and then fighting the Apulians, they had bottoms covered in weeds and were in need of careening to deal with that, as well as the worms that, left to burrow, would rot their hulls. Prior to careening, in which the vessels must be carefully hauled over to expose one side of the hull then the other, it was necessary to remove the ballast — the weight that kept the vessel stable at sea.
Thus the dromons were sitting high out of the water when the men on board spotted the supposedly beaten Apulian fleet leaving Butrinto for another bout. Unable to raise anchor, for in any kind of sea they risked being capsized, they became easy targets for Robert’s galleys — indeed two of them turned over in their Corfu harbour merely because the crews rushed to one side to fight the approaching enemy. This time the Apulians took full revenge for Durazzo: the destruction of the fleet that had ruled the Adriatic was total and without that the island was indefensible.
That conquest completed, Robert, much to the chagrin of Bohemund, gave Borsa an independent command. He was sent south with a sizeable force to take Cephalonia. Hardly had he departed when sickness struck his father’s host. It was not unknown; men crowded in cramped encampments, naturally unsanitary, were ever at risk — how many besieged cities had been saved by such an affliction to their enemies? In this instance the outbreak was sudden and ravaging in its intensity, striking down men in substantial numbers and afflicting the normally strong and robust, not just the weak.
Bohemund fell victim quickly, for such a sickness did not spare leaders, and Robert, fearing for his firstborn and defying his wife, quickly determined to send him to Bari, home to those physicians, the most accomplished in his domains, who had cared for him years before. Before the transport ship departed his sire came aboard to see him, despite concerns that he was exposing himself to the malady. In the last two years of his seventh decade, the Guiscard shrugged off such concerns, sure that he was immune — had he not been visiting the overflowing sick tents for days without succumbing? — and in truth, sitting by the cot of his weak and feeble son he sounded as hearty as ever.
‘You won’t expire, Bohemund, I won’t allow it.’ Seeing his words had not been received as he hoped, Robert added, ‘I wonder sometimes if I do not have a direct line to the Almighty, so lucky have I been, so take note of what I say.’
‘Pope Gregory would not have approved,’ Bohemund hissed, trying as well to smile, though what he produced was unconvincing.
‘Poor Gregory, gone to meet our Maker, eh! I wonder what they made of him in paradise?’
Robert shook his head and sighed. ‘He was his own worst enemy and never ceased to be crabbed Hildebrand even when he was granted the mitre. He could have had me as his protector all his life if he had but asked, yet he could never accept that all our conflicts were caused by his own intransigence, not mine. And what does he end up with? A miserable death in exile.’
‘And no crusade.’
‘A foolish notion, Bohemund, as you have heard me say many times before now. The Byzantines at their height could not hold back Islam and I think any army that carries the banner of Christ to fight them will end up as did Byzantium, dead in the sand.’
‘For a good cause,’ came out a wheeze, followed by an effort to produce a stronger tone. ‘And if you had Constantinople?’
‘That would alter matters, it is true, but I would march into Palestine for land, not the faith.’
‘Father?’
‘Don’t ask me, Bohemund, for I can see the pleading in your eyes. I will tell you now, that I put your mother aside for a necessity. I could not hold my territories without a Lombard wife, but I will also tell you that Sichelgaita has made me as content as a husband can be, which, when you wed, you will find out is not without shortcomings, for women … well, they are what they are …’
The voice trailed off and Robert sat for a moment in silence.
‘I cannot give you what you want, Bohemund, but when I am gone I cannot stop you from trying to take what you believe to be rightfully yours.’
‘Nothing will stop me, bar death.’
‘There are many things that might, God only being one of them.’ Robert hauled himself up, his voice once more booming. ‘But recover, for with what is coming I need you fighting by my side. Let providence take care of the rest!’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Your father felt the sickness come upon him as he sailed to join Borsa, and so quickly did it diminish him that Sichelgaita ordered his ship into a Cephalonian bay in the hope that on dry land he would recover. He died without speaking a word, even to Sichelgaita.’
Still weak himself, but feeling better, Bohemund saw tears in Reynard’s eyes and esteemed him for it; having been a faithful knight in his father’s service for so many years he would feel the loss keenly. Yet he found he could not weep himself, for if he had a high regard for his sire, the kind of love that has the grieving tearing at their garments was now, he realised, not part of it.
‘The body?’
‘Is on the way to Venosa, to be buried where Duke Robert desired to be interred.’
‘With his brothers?’ Reynard nodded, as Bohemund added with a sad smile, ‘No doubt he wants to dispute with them in death, as he did in life. Heaven will be a troubled place if they meet there.’
Love him he might, but Reynard obviously thought the chances of Robert de Hauteville or any of the tribe ascending paradise was unlikely, notwithstanding the abbeys they had endowed and the churches they had built. Yet of more vital import was the fact that the host of which they had both been part had quickly lost cohesion and like Reynard they were streaming home; it had been Robert’s iron will that had got them across the Adriatic and without that the purpose faded. There was another reason to abandon the expedition: with Bohemund in Bari, possibly fully recovered and able to raise the standard of revolt, keeping a powerful army on the Greek Islands was unwise.