Guaimar of Salerno was deluded to think he could get away quickly, or undetected; in organising his escape the Jew would not be rushed and weeks turned into months of frustrating delay, which put in peril the whole affair. His patrimony was like every city, a place of rumour, gossip and downright betrayal if some citizen suspected there might be a reward for information.
Though the late duke had been respected, and there was always appreciation for a handsome young heir fallen on hard times, there was also in many hearts a residual dislike of the whole Lombard race – with their north European background – who had lorded it over the local populations of the land they had conquered and resided in for five hundred years, without ever assimilating. Their masters required them to pay taxes and to fight when they disputed with their enemies, other Lombard nobles, or even the mighty empires whose world they straddled. Minor offices they could hold, but never were they allowed real power, and just in case they should rebel, which they did often, the Lombards had their hated Norman mercenaries to keep them in place.
What shocked Guaimar was not that some Italians were prepared to betray him – he had grown up in Salerno – but he learnt that the gossip of impending flight was emanating from Kasa Ephraim. The Jew had insisted no more visits be made to his house, but he did send round written instructions with a different body every time on how matters should proceed. Sealing a letter in reply, the young man demanded he explain his betrayal.
The response was blunt, informing him that he was being naïve. He could barely move without news of his activities coming to the attention of the Normans occupying the Castello de Arechi and through them the Wolf. He was well known all over Salerno and he had neighbours, as well as those who observed him in the streets he used frequently.
Osmond de Vertin was not so well supplied with men that he had enough to place permanent guards on his doorway or that of anyone else suspected of fermenting trouble, but he had his informants and, by their very nature, these would be people unknown to Guaimar, and just as importantly, neither he nor Ephraim knew how numerous they were.
He and his sister must be prepared to walk out of the door of the humble gatehouse they now occupied with not a single possession. Any preparations they made would be observed, indeed, he did not know if they could trust even the servants they employed – like Berengara’s maid and his own attendant valet – those who supplied their food, the people who cleaned their house or the priest that confessed their sins, and he would, by following the instructions he had to burn every note from the Jew, cause some suspicions to be raised.
…You may hear it said, it could be whispered to you by someone loyal to your house, that your intended flight is known about, that the horses and supplies being gathered at your father’s old monastery are no secret. They are not to me, since I have arranged for them in your name and likewise sent ahead to various places on the route to the Apennines to arrange accommodation. Thus, it is to be hoped that the Normans will be guarding the routes out of the city to the east, while you are choosing the northern path skirting Capua…
He had to admire Ephraim then; even in a letter to him he would not break the true method intended. The Jew was not even prepared to trust his messenger!
Matters are in hand for the night of the new moon in January, when there will be little light. A man you have never before seen will come to you to lead you, and he will ask you to follow the Star of David. Do as he says.
In the days before their flight, various souls came to the villa and each one took away with them a bundle. No words were exchanged, just a note saying to trust this fellow, which left Guaimar with no choice; he had no idea where their possessions, packed by his own hand without even telling their personal servants, were being taken, or how Ephraim would get them aboard a boat. There were his clothes, but more importantly there were the dresses his sister would need, those carefully stored in chests for the day she returned to become once more a lady of the court. These she would certainly need; there was little point in turning up in Bamberg with her in rags when she needed to make an impression.
‘Brother.’ Guaimar, who had been looking out onto the street trying to work out who might be informing on them, turned in surprise to see Berengara standing with a velvet bag in her hand. ‘I have brought you my jewels.’
‘Your jewels?’
‘Those few I managed to smuggle from the Castello when we were thrown out.’
Looking at her, he saw in those great almond eyes the distress the mention of the name of their old home still caused.
‘What would I want with your jewels?’
‘You are, I think, going away.’
Guaimar had told her nothing, his reasoning being that she might be alarmed at the risk, but then it occurred to him that he had been as close mouthed as the Jew. Had he kept his plans to himself from fear that she might inadvertently disclose them? He walked over to where she stood and kissed her on the forehead.
‘Do you think I would go away without telling you?’
‘I would say that you might have to.’
‘And leave you to face the wrath of Pandulf?’
Her face puckered up with determination. ‘If I must face that then let it be. Our father must be avenged.’
‘My word, sister,’ said Guaimar, chucking her chin, ‘you are valiant.’
The voice became a hiss, and the eyes actually blazed in a way Guaimar had not seen since they used to scrap as children. ‘Do not seek to belittle me!’
‘I don’t,’ he replied, surprised and well aware that, even if it was unintended, that was exactly what he had done.
‘Then take these jewels and sell them. There is a Jew near the marketplace called Ephraim who will give you money in exchange.’
‘How do you know of a Jew by the marketplace?’
‘Bricee told me.’
‘And why did your maid tell you that?’
‘The town is full of rumours that you intend to flee to Byzantium to seek assistance to get rid of Pandulf.’
‘Is it?’
‘So Bricee said!’ she insisted. ‘She also said the only way you will get clear is with a bribe. Everyone knows if you want the services of a Norman you buy it.’ She pressed the bag towards his hands. ‘Do so with these.’
About to tell her she was wrong, Guaimar stopped himself, but in doing so he wondered at what he had become. Ever since he had spoken with Kasa Ephraim he had been forced to examine the past both of himself and his house. If his father had business with the Jew that gave him funds, what were they for? Secret pleasures, possibly, but more likely his dealings provided money with which he could bribe people. To find out what? Local dissent, information of plots being hatched, even the placing of spies in the households of his perceived enemies and, even more troubling, those he called friends. What would Berengara say to find out the father she thought a saint was almost certainly very far from that?
He loved his sister in a way that was not possible of expression, and he also felt a duty to protect her that went with his position as her elder sibling, but he must hold to caution, as surely his father would have done. Could he trust her not to let something slip to Bricee, a woman who had been with the family for decades and had served Berengara as almost a surrogate parent when her own mother died? He could not even tell her she was coming with him, so he held out his hand and took the jewels.
‘Thank you.’
‘It is no more than my duty,’ Berengara replied, with a determination that made her look younger, not older, than she was. For a long time, Guaimar had not seen that face; it was one he remembered well, of the sister who never hesitated to stick out her tongue at him just after it appeared.
‘If you need directions to the Jew,’ she added, ‘Bricee will give them to you.’
Again he questioned what he was turning into, for he knew, as a subterfuge, he would indeed ask her maid that question.
The last note from Kasa Ephraim came two days before the new moon, and told him that all was in place, while he was off to Capua to present himself to Prince Pandulf, with the hope of becoming the Wolf’s man of veiled and discreet business. He did not say that, when the absence of Guaimar and Berengara became known, there could be no safer place to be than in the man’s actual lair. The last two figures on the note were an eight and a bell, to tell him at what time to expect his messenger to call.
Osmond de Vertin, on the night of the new moon, as soon as it was dark, sneaked a troop of his men out of a side gate of the Castello de Arechi. He was in high spirits, for he not only knew that Guaimar was going to seek to get away, but he knew, from a variety of informants, precisely the route he intended to take. He could have stopped him at his own front door, but he decided not only to let him get to the monastery and the ready pack animals assembled there, but to be on his way.
The Norman wanted to take him when there was no doubt about his intentions, on the road leading to the main pass through the mountains to the east, and with all the possessions he had so carefully accumulated. There would be no return to Salerno for the snotty little swine. Osmond would take him straight on to Capua, to be handed over to Prince Pandulf and his torturers, so that the names of all who had assisted in this undertaking could be dragged out of him.
As he rode ahead of his men under a starlit sky, he wondered what reward Pandulf would think appropriate for his success. He knew in his mind that, if asked to name what he desired, he had a ready answer. Guaimar would die, either under torture or in a deep dungeon in years to come. His sister, however, would still be alive. She was young, beautiful already, and would ripen superbly under the hand of a lusty husband. That would, to the Norman captain who had once carried her as a child, be a fitting reward.
* * *
The man who came at the appointed time said only the password and nothing else. Guaimar had told his sister only minutes before that they were leaving, and when she spoke of packing something suitable he told her she would find the chests that held her better clothes empty, and why. The look she gave him then was one to make Guaimar uncomfortable, which made him realise that Berengara had grown in more than just a physical sense: she was developing a deductive brain as well; she knew he had deceived her.
They exited in their cloaks, hoods up, to streets that were dark and deserted – people lived by the sun and mostly slept when it was no longer light. Their guide walked just enough paces ahead to be visible but, as Guaimar knew, also far enough to disappear if they were intercepted by the Norman garrison. A tallow wad showed in the odd window, but mostly they made their way, moving downhill to the port, through a silent city.
Was it quieter than usual? There seemed to be no revellers out at all, and Guaimar knew that was unusual. Had he not been a party to many a noisy drinking bout with his friends in the taverns that lined the edge of the port when still the ducal heir? He found he was sweating, and he knew it was brought on by fear. Odd, when he took Berengara’s hand to reassure her, it, unlike his own, was dry.
Having reached the edge of the quay, their guide stopped and indicated they should go down in a decked boat bobbing on the very slight swell that came through the harbour entrance. There was no one on deck to greet them; indeed the boat seemed deserted. The last thing their guide did was to press a very small purse into Guaimar’s hand.
‘To use when you get ashore in Romania.’ Then he was gone.
Lord in Heaven, Guaimar thought, even this fellow does not know where we are going. It then occurred to him, given the cunning of the Jew, that perhaps he did not know either. There was little headroom under the deck and no sign of anyone to sail the boat, which induced in the young man a feeling of impending betrayal. Was all this an elaborate ploy; would they sit there till daylight only to find the quayside lined with Normans when the sun came up?
Time passed with neither he nor his sister having any idea of how long they sat in the dark, but it was hours, time in which Berengara prayed in a soft voice. Then there was shouting, faint but clear, the noise of many voices. The sound of bare feet on the deck above their heads, as well as the way the vessel dipped and moved, made Guaimar’s heart contract with terror, but then he heard the faint creak of ropes, along with whispered instructions and he understood the crew were aboard, having waited a long time to make sure that he and his sister had not been followed; that way, if they were discovered and exposed, they could claim ignorance.
A lantern was lit, which cast a sliver of light into the space where they were huddled, and immediately after the whole boat began to rock and creak as it left the shore. All the two young escapees could do was imagine every possible scenario. A crack made them jump until Guaimar whispered he thought it was a sail taking the wind. The fishing fleet must be on its way out, and each would have a lantern at the stern. At the end of the mole there was a permanent Norman guard, but this happened every morning except Sunday. Were they too bored to look very hard?
Lots of shouting went on around them, faint through the planking but raised voices nonetheless, then from above their heads the voices of the men in whose hands their fate lay, shouting insults to the guards on the mole, of the sort that were returned in kind with no hint of rancour on either side. Berengara fell against him as they hit the first real wave, and as the boat began to rock up and down, he whispered in her ear.
‘We are safe now, sister, we are safe.’
That was the first time she retched, but not the last.
Osmond de Vertin began to fret as the night wore on, then as the grey light began to tinge the sky he began to shout in frustration. By the time the sun was above the Apennines he was raving at his men, cursing them for fools. He had already seen that the undulating road from Salerno, though full of carts going into town with produce, was barren of folk leaving. Mounted and riding furiously, he made for the monastery, to find the monks at lauds, having had their breakfast. There was no sign of Guaimar, his sister, or a loaded packhorse and the response of the inhabitants to his threatening questions met with looks of ignorance.
Osmond was no fool; he would not have risen to his present position if he had been a dolt. He was well aware that he had been tricked. First he sent off messengers to Salerno; a party was to set off north, and seek information, with the instruction not to be gentle.
‘Demand of the peasants if they have seen Guaimar; if they so much as shrug, whip them till they speak.’
Sensing the monks were secretly enjoying his discomfort, he bade his men dig a pit and start a fire with the monastery’s own logs. The Abbot, a venerable old man, was seized, then roped about his feet, his waist and his chest, before a lance was rammed through the ropes and he was lifted by two strong men who advanced with him suspended towards the now blazing logs.
What could he tell them? No horses had come from the old duke’s heir, nor any clothing. Osmond was incensed enough not to care; to him the old man represented all those educated swine who could read and write and talk in high Latin while laughing at his ignorance. He ordered him seared, and the two men holding the lance moved him over the flames, which immediately began to burn his flesh amid his hellish screams.
Half the watching monks were on their knees praying, the rest were crying for mercy for their Abbot. Osmond signalled that he should be taken away from the blaze before the ropes burnt through, not from compassion but so that he could be held up to see what had been done to his mortified flesh. There was his face burnt beyond that which could be recognised, his simple garments scorched off his body to reveal flesh blistered and peeling from his aged frame. Was he dead? He might as well be; there was no recovery from such mutilation.
‘Every one of you will face this, unless I get an answer,’ he bellowed. ‘And if you die in the flames I am sure that Christ will welcome you into the Kingdom of Heaven, for you will have faced the fires of Hell on this earth.’
It was one of the servants who spoke up then, coming forward at a grovel, to say that various people had come from Salerno over the past weeks with horses, but they had taken them away again. Others had come with bundles of clothing, as gifts to the monastery, which were still lying untouched.
‘Show me,’ Osmond barked.
He took his sword to the wrapping, and being sackcloth it parted with little effort. The clothes inside were the garments of a rich woman, dresses and the like, of velvet, one or two trimmed with ermine. For Osmond de Vertin it was like a stab at his hopes; when the servant, ordered to hold them up, did so, he recognised the garments that had once graced the sylphlike young body of the girl, now grown to woman, he had decided days before would be his wife.
The servant should not have looked at him questioningly, nor sought to smile in the hope of reward. Osmond saw it as mocking, and with a scream he stuck his sword into the poor fellow’s ribs, and hauled hard to pull it up through his heart.
By the time he got back to Salerno, having left the roofs of the monastery buildings blazing behind him, and the Abbot dead, he knew that Guaimar and his sister had got away, maybe going north without using roads, probably by sea. The fishermen came in with their catch for the day to be questioned, and even with two who had protested hanging from a warehouse gantry, and the entire day’s catch floating in the harbour, the others, kneeling and pleading for mercy, had nothing they could tell him.
One fellow was held upside down above the harbour waters and interrogated about the chances of catching a sailing boat that had been at sea since daybreak. Despite being ducked and near drowned half a dozen times he still insisted that the chances of finding a boat at sea were close to impossible. He survived, wet but breathing, too stupid to know that another answer might have saved him his ordeal, without knowing how lucky he was.
It was the way his men looked at him that really troubled Osmond. Normally respectful, they were now giving him the glances a fellow throws to a dead man. He would have to go north himself and tell Pandulf what had happened. Could he stop at Aversa and plead with his old leader to intercede, and if he did what could Rainulf say to the Wolf to assuage his wrath? The Normans were careful never to sacrifice each other, but was this an error too great to forgive? And there had been bad blood in Aversa at Osmond’s desertion; would Rainulf Drengot, even if he begged on his knees, just throw him to the Wolf, for Pandulf to do with what he liked?