CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The recipient of those laurel leaves would have been less pleased, or in his case utterly confused, had he been further south at a meeting convened by Guaimar at the near-ruined castle of Montecchio, just inside his own territories. Nor was the Prince of Salerno entirely happy. He had to listen to the envoys from the great port cities treat him as if he was of no account, not that they favoured anyone above him. They repudiated the leadership of a fool like Atenulf and they were not prepared to take orders from an upstart like Arduin of Fassano. As for the Normans, they were nothing but brigands.
Arduin, in the face of such contempt, was furious, while Rainulf Drengot looked as though he had been slapped, which given his past exploits, was absurd. A party of Normans from the fortress of Troia, as massive and as hard to capture as Melfi, had finally come south too, and they had reacted noisily to accusations of brigandage. They had also made it plain they had no interest in furthering the ambitions of anyone but themselves. Long in the service of Byzantium, if that power was removed, they cared only about who would take up the burden of paying them; William de Hauteville did not allow himself any expression at all.
‘If you put aside cohesion,’ Guaimar insisted, still trying to work through his proxies, ‘you will find yourself back under the thumb of Constantinople.’
‘We have walls to resist Byzantium,’ the envoy from Brindisi insisted. In the case of his own city he was right, and his next words underlined the disparity of interest amongst these mainly Lombard envoys. ‘Let Arduin and his Normans control the countryside. As long as they hold that, no siege of our port can succeed.’
That set up a clamour, as each representative bellowed about the needs of his own community, proving that the one thing that did not exist was unity of purpose.
‘What do you think, Gill?’ said Drogo, using, as he habitually did, the French diminutive of William’s name. The de Hauteville brothers were standing far enough away to talk quietly, observing proceedings. ‘Guaimar looks as though he has bitten one of those lemon fruits we found so abundant in Sicily.’
‘They are greedy, Drogo. They want to run their own affairs and pay taxes to no master, with us, or the Lombards led by Arduin, fighting a Byzantium army in the open to keep them free to trade.’
‘Surely they would pay for that service.’
‘They might,’ cut in Humphrey, his brow as usual looking furrowed, ‘but it would be a fee collected after service not before, I’ll wager.’
‘You mean they would not pay for our lances?’ asked Mauger.
William replied, ‘They would only pay if they felt secure. They would feel secure only if Byzantium was booted out of Apulia for good. Who then would they have to fear?’
‘Me!’ young Mauger replied, vehemently.
Humphrey had a laugh that always sounded derisory, never humorous, and that came out now, his upper teeth jabbing into the skin below his mouth. ‘That is a thought which will scare them rigid.’
William called upon both brothers to hush: that exchange had been too loud and earned a sideways glance from Guaimar, now speaking again.
‘You are glad to be free of Constantinople, are you not?’
The envoys exchanged glances, none of them friendly to him or to each other. They had come from Brindisi, Monopoli, Giovinazzo and Barletta, and while most were Lombards, there were Greeks and Italians too, while back in the cities from which they came were more of all three races to whom they were answerable. It was telling that no representative had come from Trani, a majority Greek port still loyal to Constantinople. The entire party who had travelled all the way from Taranto was actually Greek, but they shared with the others a desire to cast off the same oppressive yoke and the impositions that went with it.
The looks nailed another one of those problems for that tiresome Lombard dream: not one of these mixed-race city states really looked with favour on the idea of a South Italian kingdom, and that applied to the many Lombard citizens, even run by one of their own kind. To such worthies, all wealthy traders in their bailiwicks, that was only replacing one tax-raising power with another.
It was a Lombard from Bari who answered. ‘That we are, and to a man we share the dream of the late Melus and we look with favour on his son Argyrus.’
‘Liar,’ hissed Geoffrey de Hauteville, which got him a nudge from William.
Not that his older brother disagreed: he had come to see the name of Melus as a talisman that could be trotted out without much attachment to sincerity, and the idea that the late leader’s son could oversee a revolt was just as disingenuous. Argyrus, as had already been proved, did not have the stature to compete with the likes of Guaimar or the Prince of Benevento, and if such powerful Lombards as they would not bow the knee to him, then these city states had a ready-made excuse to do likewise.
William’s eye was drawn to Kasa Ephraim, who stood well back, taking no part in the discussions, but with a half smile on his face. He, too, understood perfectly the nuances of the negotiations and the fact they were going nowhere. He had not had a chance to speak with the Jew since he arrived, but he knew he would. Ephraim had not come with Guaimar, but separately, two days after the prince, and he had yet to sit down with the Normans, William included, and contract his business.
But he was a wise old owl, a man who could see which way the wind would blow and plant his crops to avoid damage, to protect, in his case, his wealth. William was looking forward to talking with him, and seeking his views on what he was now witnessing, as the wrangling continued without any solution in sight.
‘I urge you to talk more amongst yourselves,’ Guaimar concluded, ‘and will gather again on the morrow.’
As the port envoys filed out of the great hall, Guaimar signalled to Rainulf, Arduin and William to join him in an antechamber. He was already on his way to that smaller room, his face dark with anger, before the others moved.
‘They must be made to bend the knee,’ he spat, as the door was closed behind William.
‘To whom?’ William asked.
Guaimar nearly spoke the truth and said ‘To me’, but he stopped himself, still wishing to uphold the fiction that he had no ambitions to be the man who ruled, falling back on the usual mantra. ‘To the revolt.’
‘Only force will persuade them,’ William said, then added, ‘the ability to breach their defences, and those, with stout walls in good repair, we lack.’
Being true did not make it palatable: the ports were rich enough to keep their defences in proper repair. It would require a fleet to block the harbour, need siege engines or trained men to sap under the walls and undermine them, as well as enough force to take advantage of any breach created by their efforts. Guaimar’s sour reaction gave Rainulf Drengot a chance to favour William with a look that implied he was fearful, which got the older man that de Hauteville smile which so infuriated those on the receiving end.
‘Arduin,’ Guaimar demanded, as though he would have the answer.
He had one, but it was not to the taste of the Prince of Salerno. ‘If you were to take the field, sire, and-’
‘What would Landulf of Benevento have to say to that?’ Guaimar interrupted.
He really meant Byzantium, who still had troops in Sicily, only a few days sailing from Salerno, and a massive fleet, should it be sent from Constantinople, to transport them to the bay on which his city stood. Benevento was, in terms of places to plunder on the coast, safe: the wealth of the principality was all in the interior. It was still too soon to openly declare himself.