Attending the ceremony in which Bohemund did duty for his fiefs was to see open and raw hatred, mixed with enough insincere platitudes as to make a sane man vomit. Borsa might stand above his kneeling brother, but it had to be remarked that even then he barely outdid him in height. The Archbishop of Salerno was there to witness what was bound to be hypocrisy as Bohemund swore an oath that no one present had any faith he would keep, and if they wondered at his duplicity, well had they not all at one time made vows that had been subsequently broken? How that would be judged was not in their hands, but in those of God.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Roger de Hauteville was witness, over the following years, to the proof of his suppositions; if Bohemund’s uprisings were not endemic, they were frequent enough to give his half-brother sleepless nights. Any slight, however small, would do and any excuse: a demand for his revenues to be promptly paid, a desire that he submit an account of improvements to anything he possessed from castle to wheat field; Borsa had heard of William of England’s Domesday Book and wished to emulate it. Part of the reason for so much warfare on Bohemund’s part was to keep his knights employed — if they did not rebel with him, they would rise up against his title; that was the Norman way.
Slowly, inexorably, the Prince of Taranto expanded his possessions till he controlled all the land and sea ports from Melfi to the heel of Italy, Bari included. It would only have been remarkable if he had been singular, but he was not; there was hardly a vassal in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in the years following that swearing of fealty who did not at some time feel he had the right to question the rule of the Duke of Apulia. Count Roger had met and negotiated more than once with his nephews and more often than that he had come from Sicily, now wholly his, to put in place — often obliged to spill blood — some rebellious vassal of his brother’s heir when it was plain he could not do so himself.
Borsa was not alone. When Jordan of Capua died, the Lombards over whom he ruled, always smarting and ever capricious, overthrew his young son Richard and expelled him from his own domains, which had Bohemund eyeing that great fief as a tempting addition to his own, while his half-brother, who had accommodated young Richard, was in terror that he might try to take it over. Then Amalfi rose up; in the years since the death of Duke Sergius, the infant son whom his people were scared to elevate for fear of Gisulf of Salerno had grown to manhood. Taxed by the Normans, who were assiduous in collection, when he raised his standard, the citizens, thinking to ease their burdens, took his part.
In a patrimony beset by widespread rebellion, it was far from a shock that John of Amalfi should demand the return of what he saw as his rightful inheritance. Unable to enforce his own will and with a deposed brother even less able to do so, Borsa had sent a desperate plea to his uncle, fearing that with Amalfi so close to his capital — it was only five leagues distant — it posed a threat that had to be met. The surprise was that, when calling on all his vassals to come to aid, Bohemund too answered the call, bringing with him Tancred of Lecce, now in his twenty-first year and already a warrior with a formidable reputation.
There were few more strange sights than to see Bohemund and his half-brother together, the former full of natural, strutting confidence, towering as he ever did over all around him, while Borsa, ever beset by worry and his own inadequacy as a ruler, was made doubly nervous by such a commanding presence. The only person who could match him in that was his Uncle Roger who, despite his sixty-plus years was still handsome, still virile and a match for most of those with whom he still trained daily in the manege.
If the Duke of Apulia was the titular commander of the siege, it was in the tent of the Great Count that control was exercised — indeed, it had to be, for Borsa, now without the late Sichelgaita to stiffen his spine, spent much of his time in church praying for a victory rather than actively planning and fighting to gain one. Thus, once the rituals of greeting had been completed, and with a degree of suppressed contempt, the Prince of Taranto and the Lord of Lecce bent the knee to their suzerain, then went to Roger’s tent to discover where and how they could be of use.
The man they met was greater now than he had ever been hitherto: not only was he the complete master of Sicily, but he had sailed south as well and taken Malta from the Saracens. His daughter Constance had married Conrad, son of Henry IV, and, even if the two were now in conflict, it was very possible that one day a de Hauteville female would wear an imperial diadem. It was well known he was much cosseted by the reigning pope, Urban II, who, unable to enter Rome and be consecrated, had spent six years wandering South Italy, where he had come to realise that for all their varying titles, only one man stood head and shoulders above the Norman herd.
‘It has ever been my wish, Uncle, to fight alongside you,’ Bohemund said, after they had embraced.
‘A desire I share, Count Roger,’ Tancred added.
Returning to his seat and looking up at Bohemund, Roger adopted a sarcastic tone. ‘I had conflict in Sicily for both of you if you desired such a thing.’
‘You will forgive us for not rushing to aid you.’
‘We were not prepared to turn our back on Borsa.’
‘I cannot think what you had to fear, Tancred. Perhaps a priest’s missal thrown at your head?’
‘How does the siege progress?’
‘It will take time, Bohemund. The walls are sound, the defenders determined and this was not undertaken in haste. The citizens and the lord they want to take back spent much time in preparation.’
‘So they are well supplied?’
‘With everything,’ Roger replied, rising out of his chair. ‘Come, I will show you what we face.’
Set between two mountains and in a deep bay, with only one real land route in and out, Amalfi had ever been known as a hard objective to subdue and impossible if the besieger lacked a fleet. A lack of such a weapon plainly angered Roger as he outlined the difficulties, for, less intent on expansion than his father, Borsa had let the fighting ability of that atrophy, this while most of Roger’s own fleet had the never-ending task of keeping at bay Saracen incursions into Sicily, and was thus protecting that island.
He had managed a blockade, but the Amalfians, sea traders themselves for centuries, had set their own merchant ships across the bay to form an arc of defence and Roger lacked the kind of galleys and the men who manned them to break it. The land defence, a high curtain wall, lay between those two peaks, which formed a steep-sided coombe, while at the top of the two mountains, dotted with steep crags and near unclimbable, the Amalfians had built strong bastions hard to assault.
After a long walk they were shown a donkey track that ran along the coast from the west, but that had been sealed off by another wall, which was joined to the arc of ships the Amalfians had set to protect the bay. In the water were sharp wooden spikes, which had been driven deep into the shallows to prevent the besiegers wading in to an attack, and if they gathered to seek to dislodge them, that brought to this part of the defence the archers of Amalfi to dissuade them.
The return up that narrow valley to Roger’s tent was to see how crowded it was with fighting men, and that extended well inland — a sea of tents, fires and fluttering standards, for all the vassals of the Borsa were here, and for the same reason. It had nothing to do with loyalty and much to do with gold: Amalfi was one of the richest ports on the Tyrrhenian Sea, its traders were masters of profit and it was very obvious that once taken, there would be abundant plunder with which to justify the time spent in breaking down the walls.