‘I will settle for a title that matches that of Rainulf.’ Guaimar was nodding, but that stopped as William added, ‘So will my brothers.’
‘What!’
‘Land and titles.’ He nearly said ‘except Robert’, but decided not to bother. ‘And then, whatever elevation you visit upon yourself, we will kneel before you and swear fealty.’
‘What about the port cities?’
‘Give them free status. You might as well since they will not agree to anything else, and, Prince Guaimar, there is enough land and wealth in Apulia. You do not need them too.’
The next words from the prince were bitter. ‘Anything else about which you would wish to advise me?’
‘Just one, sire,’ for the first time granting the prince the kind of respect to which he was accustomed. ‘It would cement the arrangements if you were to grant me your sister’s hand in marriage. I might add, I will agree to nothing else if you do not assent to that.’
If William had slapped Guaimar, Prince of Salerno, he would not have produced a more shocked reaction.
Guaimar, left alone after that talk, had much on which to ruminate: he had tried to marry Berengara off more than once, to various Lombard dukes of places like Teano and Gaeta, and even a nephew of Naples, but such attempts had foundered on her insistence on marrying a man of her own choosing. Really, he should have put his foot down long ago: he was a ruler, she no more than a woman, to be used as a diplomatic pawn to keep safe their patrimony. That was how alliances had been gained and cemented since time immemorial.
Yet he knew why he had acquiesced: it was her bravery and that shared past of daring escape and difficulties. He recalled now how, aged no more than fourteen years, she had offered him her jewels, this to facilitate his escape from Salerno and the clutches of the cruel and rapacious Pandulf of Capua. He had already tried to rape her and would no doubt make a second and more successful attempt. Guaimar would get away; she was willing to stay and face what she must.
Likewise in Bamberg she had played cat and mouse with the Emperor Conrad, a man like any other, who had seen before him a beautiful young lady not averse to his advances. Berengara would have surrendered her virtue if it had been called for; she had made that clear to him. That it had not been required did not lessen the proposed sacrifice.
Yet there was no doubt that since then he had overindulged her, a fact made obvious by the way she had insulted Rainulf to his face. Her tongue had ceased to be a weapon and become for him a liability, and that had been plain to see in the distressed faces of those courtiers who had been present earlier, it being a look he had observed before. Salerno needed her to act as a princess should, not, as she thought, a woman acting as his equal.
Odd, thought Guaimar as he prepared to confront her, in all my decisions as a prince, this might prove the hardest.
‘Never. I would rather take the veil.’
‘I must tell you, sister, that is your choice, for I will not be gainsaid in this. Policy requires it and you must succumb.’
Guaimar could see she was hurt, her eyes left him in no doubt, and he knew why: he had never spoken to her like this before — he had always been a brother not a ruler. ‘We are no longer children, to play games as we wish.’
‘So I must play what game you choose?’
‘If I could have it otherwise, I would, but everything I have set out to achieve here in Apulia will come to nought unless you agree.’
She shouted then. ‘You are asking me to marry a Norman, to be brought to the bed of a man from a tribe I despise, to have me lie beneath him as he uses me as his chattel and to bear his children, who I will despise also!’
‘You must do as I say.’
‘No, brother, if it is that or a nunnery, I will take the veil. I will not be whore to a Norman.’
‘Very well,’ Guaimar replied, which should have made Berengara suspicious: he had long since ceased to be the kind of person who gave up easily, and he was a prince who knew that men such as he had had trouble always with unwilling female relatives. He would get his way, with the help of an apothecary if he could not have consent.
Berengara went through the ceremony of marriage to William de Hauteville in a daze, induced by the infusion she had unknowingly consumed, before the whole assembly gathered at Melfi, a signal to them all that these Norman de Hautevilles were no longer mere mercenaries: they had become lords in their own right and elevated enough to be attached by matrimony to a princely house. Drogo orchestrated the acclamation of Guaimar as Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and he in turn granted William the appellation of count, with the land and title of Ascoli, then acknowledged him as what his confreres now hailed him, the Norman leader in Apulia.
Drogo got Venosa, lesser demesnes being granted to the rest of the de Hauteville clan, except Robert, who was, as his nature dictated, furious. Rainulf was given a small barren county near the coast as a sop, not enough to satisfy his pride, while Melfi was to be held in common, the place where the one-time rebels could combine to hold on to that which they had gained. Yet no sharp eye was required to note that the garrison now was entirely Norman and that the captain of the castle was none other than William de Hauteville.
The nocturnal part of the nuptials, after much feasting, passed for Berengara in the same haze as had her wedding and the effects of the drug only wore off as she slept. When she awoke, the first thing she registered was the fire in her lower belly, which told her, along with the bloodstained bedding, that she had been violated. Next she realised that the chamber she was in and the bed she occupied was not her own, a mystery soon solved by the great banner hanging on one wall, the blue and white standard of the de Hautevilles, spilt across at an angle with a chequer in the same two colours.
Of the man to whom she had been given there was no sign: he was in another chamber, with the arms of the shepherd girl Tirena wrapped around his naked, sweat-soaked, but slumbering body.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
News of the triumphs in Apulia had been slow to reach Normandy, but when it arrived and was digested, it stirred ambition in many a thwarted breast, not least in the still-unruly Contentin, though the knights in that county were not alone in seeing that opportunity, much frustrated in their homeland, was truly on offer in the fiefs of South Italy. What had been a trickle of lances heading there did not turn into a torrent, but instead of men travelling in twos and threes, bands of warriors now formed, sometimes as many as fifty in number, especially of those who had no love for, or saw no future in, serving the present duke.
William of Falaise made no effort to stop such men departing: he saw much advantage in the removal from his domains of those who might unite to oppose his rule. It was like cutting off an affected limb. Tancred, still under a cloud, was unsure what to do about the rest of his sons. Roger was, of course, too young, but there was no doubting his desire, once he had reached his majority, to join his mercenary brothers. Serlo was safe from ducal justice in England, serving in the far north, protecting the coasts of Mercia against the Danes, but that left four sons still to decide on their future. The only solution was to seek advice from his nephew.
If the uncle had suffered banishment from court, Geoffrey of Montbray had endured just as much, even if he was still, in the physical sense, close. Prior to the murder of Hugo de Lesseves he had been climbing to prominence in the councils of the dukedom. Given his role in extricating the culprits, he had then been frozen out as untrustworthy, though there had been no attempt to remove him from his ecclesiastical office.
Yet Duke William was not so rich in clear-sighted minds that he could forgo one so sound, one so attached to his cause, and nor had the victim of Serlo’s knife been a man he had much favoured, so slowly but surely Montbray found the atmosphere thawing in his favour. Thus his advice to his uncle was that it would be best to wait: perhaps if he could be absolved of blame so could Serlo’s brothers; perhaps there was a chance of ducal service after all.