‘They will succumb, Bohemund, but I fear we will be here for an age.’
‘Perhaps we might see Borsa achieving glory at last.’
‘Sainthood is the more likely,’ Roger replied. ‘But enough of this gloom and the difficulties; let us all eat together and you can tell me what mischief you have been about since we last met.’
Bohemund laughed. ‘For mischief, Uncle, you must look to Tancred — he is the one wedded to it.’
Much had happened in the world in which they lived. Pope Victor had years before gone to meet his maker — no doubt Desiderius was happy with that, for he had never liked his office — while the man who replaced him, Urban II, had inherited just as much trouble with Rome and emperors, though he had suffered less from the Normans. They had aided his election and joined a coalition to fight the Emperor Henry, once more excommunicated, which had led him to a civil war with his heir.
Between Roger and Pope Urban there was apparent harmony, though they had disputes enough about ecclesiastical matters in Sicily, mostly about clerical appointments, but it had never extended into an open breach, both men being too well versed in diplomacy. Over food and wine, Roger related how Urban had tried to entice him into an attack on the North African coast to fight the Moors, a crusade which would aid the monarchs of Catholic Spain, an offer that had been declined.
‘Then I take it you are not tempted by the great crusade Urban has called for to the Holy Land?’
‘I have enough on my hands here and in Sicily to keep me from temptation.’
Tancred, hitherto mostly an observer, not a participant in a conversation he found dull, as all young men do when their elders talk of past events, suddenly perked up and cut in.
‘Given its purpose, “temptation” seems an odd word.’
‘Is it? I do not see it as so. You cannot march on the Holy Land without the aid of the Emperor Alexius.’ Bohemund’s face closed up at the mention of that name; it was a reminder not only of his defeat at Larissa but the ignominy that followed, but he had to put that aside; Roger was still talking. ‘And there is also the small matter of pushing back the Turks, which will not be easy.’
‘Agreed.’ Bohemund turned to Tancred. ‘I have fought them and they are hard opponents.’
‘But worth it if you seek wealth.’
‘I never saw them as having much to plunder. If they were staunch, they were also poor.’
Roger looked confused. ‘Do you not see, Bohemund, that if the Turks are dispossessed how much land will become free for Alexius to distribute, and the only people he can safely give it to are those who have by their fighting taken it from his enemies?’
There was some satisfaction in the reaction from both of his relatives; now he had their undivided attention as he outlined what was possible.
‘Put aside all the talk of Urban’s call to crusade. There are those truly pious who might take up the cause of the cross for their soul, yet there are ten times as many who would see it as a chance to enrich themselves. Those provinces Byzantium lost to the Turks are among the richest they ever possessed and that pales when you include Palestine and the wealth fetched in by Christian pilgrims.’
‘Much-abused pilgrims,’ said Tancred.
‘Take a pinch of salt with those tales,’ Roger scoffed. ‘I know Urban well and his stories of pilgrim rapine are as likely to be exaggerations as truths.’
‘A pope telling lies?’ Bohemund responded, his face alight with a joke he and Roger shared: they had never known one not to.
This was no terrain for siege towers; it was too uneven and rocky, so any assaults on the walls of Amalfi had to be carried out by a combination of ballista and ladders. First the great stones were hurled to seek to create a breach or to take off the higher parts of the walls. The rubble caused provided, albeit with a steep climb, a means to make for the gap and naturally that was where the Amalfians concentrated their defence, so either as a distraction or as a proper attempt at scaling — they would never know which inside — another assault would be launched with long ladders, backed up by archers, with the ballista now employed to send fireballs of oil-soaked hay to clear a space on the parapet onto which the knights must climb.
Gathered in darkness at a point where the curtain wall ran uphill to where the steepness of the mountain provided protection, Bohemund hushed his men to be silent. His next command was to pick up the battened-together planks that formed a heavy screen that would protect them until they got close to the walls. By weight it took strong men to carry it, for hooked on the back were their climbing ladders. As soon as they made the base of the wall, the archers and ballista would come into play, seeking to drive back the defenders from the parapet. If this was an attack that had been tried before, it now had a better chance of success; the defenders must be going hungry despite their once full storehouses, for after eight months without a single ship being able to enter the port, they should be running out of food and with it the will to keep resisting.
A three-pronged attack — Borsa was to command the centre before the high breach made by heavy fired rocks, though, as was his way, he would send his knights into combat rather than lead them. At his right hand stood his Uncle Roger to proffer advice — in truth to issue the commands. Never doubting that his half-brother was far from admired, Bohemund had come to realise that there was in fact an even less flattering feeling now amongst those gathered, and it was one which extended to his Lombard and Greek levies. Time had caused that lack of love to turn him into being gently despised, both for his weakness and his vacillation. Such men would rail against a strong hand, yet they preferred it to a weak one, and that applied doubly to his Norman lances.
Tancred and the knights of Lecce and Monteroni were on that donkey track, having taken the whole of a moonless night to get into position. They too had ladders, but the aim was to only begin their assault if the defenders denuded this part of the walls to support those under pressure from Bohemund and Borsa. Crawling forward with a local who understood the Amalfi dialect, using the reflected light of stars on the water, Tancred had got close to the walls and was sitting listening for the sound of orders being relayed, hopefully followed by departing feet.
Looking at Amalfi from the sea, there were three mountains, one set back and around which the road split to take a traveller east to west along the rocky coast. Atop that stood a picket with a lit beacon, screened off so it did not show to those in the city. As soon as the man in charge saw the first hint of grey light on the eastern horizon, he slid the screen to one side to show the beacon, hurriedly putting it back once more, which told the commanders in the valley it was time to begin the assault.
Tancred heard the horns blow and stood to better listen, hauling his local up too, this as Bohemund and those under the ducal command began their advance towards that mound of rubble. The defenders were not fools; they knew that first light was the best time for a besieger to attack and they had their own means of countering that as soon as they heard sounds they thought suspicious, and no host could move without making a noise.
Using catapults, they sent out their own bales of blazing hay into the still-dark night, which when in the air showed the men coming to assault their walls, as well as allowing their archers to mark their range. Moving forward behind that shield of planks, Bohemund could hear the thud of arrows hitting home as well as smell the stench of burning as the lit points set the wood to smouldering, while over his head flew the burning wads of his own ballista.