Norman priests, like his cousin Geoffrey, knew how to fight alongside the men they blessed and confessed. Montbray had wielded his sword and lance alongside his cousins in battle, under the banner of Duke Robert of Normandy, his only concession to his vows the determination to pray for the souls of those slain over their recumbent bodies, while their blood was still warm. Those thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Arduin, who, now that the priest had done with his rite, began his speech.
‘It is time to cease to exist like mice in the skirting,’ he boomed, to an audience who were not at all taken with the reference. ‘How long have you been in this part of the world as nothing but paid swords at the beck and call of others? Yet here before us is a province and wealth under the grip of an empire too distant to rule with wisdom. It is time to reach out with a strong hand and in this I will be your guide. Follow me and I will lead you against men who are as women, who lord it over and exploit this rich and spacious land.’
‘Windbag,’ said Drogo softly, for he was near the front of the throng.
‘Too fond of the sound of his own voice,’ opined Humphrey, managing, in his usual fashion, aided by his sour expression, to lard his words with an extra degree of disdain.
‘Let him speak away,’ William replied, ‘as long as he leads us well.’
‘It is you we will follow, Gill,’ Drogo insisted.
‘No!’ William insisted. ‘There can only be one man in command. Let Arduin be that, and only if he fails-’
‘And now,’ Arduin cried, loud enough to prevent that sentence from being concluded; he had finished his peroration, a mellifluous one in which every one of those present had been promised the Earth, the moon and the stars, ‘let us repair to the great hall, and a feast fit for the men who will humble Byzantium.’
That got him a loud cheer; if there was anything these Norman mercenaries loved it was abundant food and drink.
Prior to sitting down to the feast, William gathered his brothers: he too had something to say, albeit in a quiet way.
‘Make it known, all of you, that we are here to stay.’
That produced looks of surprise on every face but that of Drogo; he was nodding as if some long-held thought now made sense.
‘I want no act by any man to endanger our position with the inhabitants of Melfi. They are to be treated with respect. Anything taken must be paid for and nothing is to be stolen. Their women are to be honoured, even if they are bought as concubines, for their fathers and brothers will form part of the force Arduin must put in the field. That is to be the same for any place that surrenders to our arms. We are in a territory that is not our own, and who knows what our needs will be? We dare not make enemies in our own backyard.’
‘Surely we have the right to plunder?’ demanded Mauger.
‘We have that right with those who will oppose us, not with the people who will rally to our standard. Now let us eat our Lombard friend’s food and drink his wine, and show him all respect, for without him to secure for us a force of milities we will have little.’
Both Arduin and William de Hauteville departed the next day, the Lombard to spread the word of revolt, while William rode out, without helmet, hauberk or lance, to examine the whole area around Melfi with an experienced military eye, aware that, for all he had ridden through these parts, he did not know the terrain well enough.
Formidable castles had fallen before, and to his mind, given equal force, the Norman advantage lay outside stout walls, not within them. Already a piquet had been sent to climb the heavily wooded slopes of Monte Vulture, to man the round stone redoubt on its barren peak, thankfully now clear of snow, which had within it a warning beacon that would tell the Melfi garrison of the approach of any substantial force from the Apulian heartlands, giving them the choice of what action to take to thwart it.
He rode first to the east, which dropped away from the high hills that surrounded Melfi to the fertile lands and rolling landscape which led to the lush plains of Apulia, looking for those places where an army could properly and advantageously deploy, examining each valley to see how it could be used by cavalry to outflank an enemy, with the obvious corollary that it could also be used by them to the same purpose. He also needed to seek out those places where an attacking force could rest: open land, well watered, for no army could exist without that precious resource.
William de Hauteville sought to put himself in the mind of an enemy commander, and a competent one, to see the terrain from their point of view. How would he come to Melfi, how would he sustain a siege? It was obvious that one of the strengths of the place was the lack of ability to do the latter in any true proximity to the fortress, to keep enough force outside the walls, to feed and supply them over broken country that was just too far from that endless fertile plain.
Also, in each well-pastured and crop-sown valley he studied, William calculated what it would take to turn it into a desert, which is what would be required to frustrate his opponents should they seek to invest the Normans: to destroy yields in both field and store room and so deny them to the enemy, forcing them to forage far and wide. The peasants who had toiled to reap and sow the land he examined would suffer, but that was their lot: God must care for them, for he could not.
He was sure any threat would come from the south or east but that did not obviate the need to look elsewhere, and to that purpose he rode slowly north into less bountiful country, looking for anything approaching the same ground conditions. There were few of those in a landscape mostly consisting of rock-strewn hills interspersed with thick woods. Where it was cultivated there was little in the way of flat ground, instead steep and rolling fields, small in size and with the same high hedgerows he knew from home, separated by an occasional clump of trees, which hid the narrow streams and watercourses that fed them.
Any dwellings tended to be of the sod hut type, part sunk into the ground and buttressed with stones, the roofs of some made of thatch, the poorer ones of turf, all placed on hillsides close to rivulets of running water and surrounded by dry stone walls which acted as animal pens; the locals went out to their fields at dawn and retired to the safety of their hut at night, when bears and big cats, not to mention wolves, were out hunting.
They were in those fields now and as he passed by he could see them toiling, at this time of year working to keep at bay the pests that would, if left to prosper, ruin their crops, and it was with some gratitude he thanked his Maker that he had been born and raised to be a warrior. He might respect those who worked the land for their devotion to their drudgery, but he had no notion or desire to join them.
To the north, still within sight of Monte Vulture, the landscape was even more broken, bordering as it did on the mountains, and while some slopes were heavily wooded, at a certain height that gave way to heath where scrub proliferated and no crops could be grown, a place where only goats and sheep could graze, while above that the slopes were barren screed that would be snow-covered in winter. Though he saw no one, he surmised there would be shepherds and the like who could observe him, and if they could they would also see his sword, as well as his blue and white shield of that teardrop shape peculiar to Normans, and mark him as a man to avoid.
The chance of any substantial force coming from this direction was remote. It was too infertile, but William was determined to examine every possible avenue, and that was best done from high ground and, with a wearying mount, on foot. The walk up a narrow track, no doubt cut by herded animals, which led from one valley to a high peak, then down to the next, was steep, even more so on the bare hill to one side.