A mock tourney it might be, more a way of exercising fighting men to avoid them becoming rusty, rather than proper warfare, but today would, nevertheless, be brutal. No one should die, but none would emerge lacking a bruise and quite a few would need days in their cot to recover, added to the ministrations of their womenfolk and, perhaps, a mendicant monk from nearby Aversa. William de Hauteville, still the senior captain, had arranged the fighting contingents, several of them led by his own brothers – but if they were united by blood, they were also animated by the desire to prove their fighting worth; no sibling could expect gentility from another.
On the open agricultural plains of Campania, finding room to deploy four hundred mounted warriors presented little difficulty, and if some crops got trampled in the process, well, these were Rainulf’s own lands, the peasants his to command, the rich soil his to exploit, so they would be obliged to watch the destruction of their careful husbandry and ploughed fields in silence.
William, aware of this, and as a sop to their depleted larders, had arranged they should participate in the feast which would follow the tournament – several oxen were already roasting on spits – an act which had earned him a snort of disapproval from his chief.
‘They will not love you for it,’ Rainulf insisted, looking up at a man who towered over him by several hands, his purple-veined face censorious. ‘The Italian peasant understands only hard treatment, and if you are soft on them, your reward, one dark night, will most likely be a knife in the back.’
‘Part of the crops we destroy are theirs to live off. If we are taking the food from their mouths, it does no harm to put some back.’
‘My crops, my food! I could overrule you.’
‘You could,’ William replied, his tone as cold as his stare.
The locked eyes and stony expressions, which followed that exchange, underlined how things had altered between these men in the last two and a half years. At one time Rainulf would have welcomed the suggestion from a man he trusted absolutely; now there was some doubt if he could tolerate the speaker’s presence.
‘It is time and Prince Guaimar is waiting,’ William said, indicating with a finger that the powerful Italian sun was well past its zenith, that the day was cooling and so it was time to commence the tourney.
Mention of his titular overlord had Rainulf looking to the elevated, shaded pavilion he had erected so the party from Salerno could watch the tourney in comfort. Prince Guaimar, at a mere twenty years still looking too young for his title, was seated next to his wife and young son, she holding a newly born daughter still at the suckling stage, while his sister, Berengara, her radiant beauty evident even at a distance, sat on their left. On the right of the prince sat another Lombard called Arduin of Fassano, a fellow known to William but not to Rainulf. Behind the prince, alongside the various officials from Guaimar’s court, sat Rainulf’s slender young concubine, his new bedmate, holding his restless child, Hermann.
‘Odd,’ Rainulf observed, with no attempt to disguise a degree of contempt. ‘Guaimar is a prince who has never led men, never seen a real battle, yet I, who have seen and spilt much blood, must bow to his title.’
William was about to reply that the prince had in his veins the blood of his forbears, but he checked himself: to mention such a lineage was to raise the spectre of Rainulf’s bastard son, a subject best avoided.
‘He has the good sense to let we Normans do his fighting.’
‘The other fellow, Arduin, you know him from Sicily?’
‘I do.’
‘And?’ Rainulf said querulously, not happy at having to drag out information.
‘A good soldier, he commanded the contingent of pikemen from Apulia, and given they were reluctant to serve, he trained and led them well.’
‘Trustworthy?’
‘He’s a Lombard, Rainulf.’
The squat older Norman nodded, which made the spare flesh under his chin more pronounced; that remark required no further clarification for a man who knew the Lombards better than most and shared with them a history of conspiracy.
‘Any notion of why he is here?’
William knew very well why he was here: realising that Rainulf was intent on breaking his word regarding the succession, he had gone to see Prince Guaimar in Salerno, and, in a disappointing interview, in which he had tried and failed to get him to remind his vassal of his promise, the prince had told him about Arduin and his appointment as the topoterites of Melfi. He had also told him of the plan to betray his new master, Michael Doukeianos. It was telling that Guaimar had yet to inform Rainulf.
‘My guess is he will be looking for lances.’
‘To fight where?’
William just shrugged.
‘Then it is time we showed him of what we are made.’
Rainulf was now too long in the tooth to spend much time in the saddle; he would watch with Guaimar, and no doubt use his proximity to press the prince once more for help. He had asked the Papacy to grant him an annulment of his marriage to his second wife, without which he could not legitimise his child, Rome being a place where a Lombard prince could apply more weight than any Norman. William knew he was wasting his time, and not just because of the tangle of Roman politics: Guaimar had only borne his title for less than three full years but had learnt very quickly that the best way to sustain his power was to keep alive dissension amongst those who might oppose him.
He would no more act as Rainulf requested than respond to William’s appeal, and for the same reason. All the advantage for him lay in the strained relations between the two Norman leaders. In fact, there were very good grounds to suppose that Prince Guaimar was doing the very reverse of what Drengot required – this made easy by the endless jockeying of several claimants to the papal title – using whatever influence he had in Rome to block that which Rainulf sought, and thus keep him dependent.
Guaimar had grown in acumen as he had become accustomed to power and, no doubt, fatherhood had sharpened his resolve. He was no longer the young innocent William had first encountered – the dispossessed son of the previous ruler, easily outwitted in negotiation. Now he had a mind that could calculate where his advantage lay and he applied it well. He might smile at Rainulf, but he would never fully trust him, never forget this was the same man who had betrayed his father.
Should he falter in that resolve his younger sister was ever present to remind him. Berengara had her beauty, but that was leavened by a degree of spite aimed at the Normans, any Norman, which made speaking with her an exercise in bile. She hated the men who had betrayed her family with unabated passion, and rumour had it she had traded her virtue to put pressure on Conrad Augustus to come south and restore her brother to his fief. The Normans, when the news came that the Holy Roman Emperor had expired, were inclined to put his demise down to her poisonous embrace.
William’s relations with her were no better than those of his confrères, but he was prone to guying her when chance presented itself, given that she never failed to react. Much as he despised Frankish customs – no true Norman had any respect for their French or Angevin neighbours – he had heard that the knights of Paris and Tours were wont to request from a lady, prior to an event such as this, some favour to decorate their weapons. Thus, before he rode out to commence matters, he stopped before the pavilion and lowered the padded point of his lance till it was before her face.
‘My lady, I am told it is the custom of the northern courts to beg support from a fair maiden prior to combat.’
Berengara knew she was being played upon, and if she had had any doubts, the smile – or was it a smirk? – on William’s face, would have told her so.
Her brother sought to head off her angry response, by speaking first. ‘It is not yet the custom in Italy.’
‘You may have my favour,’ said Berengara, swiftly, removing a thin shawl, which had covered her bosom, pleased by the way William’s eye was drawn to that which was revealed. She was still smiling when she spat on it, followed by a swift twist round his lance. ‘And also you now have my sentiments as well.’
William laughed out loud, which wiped the acid smile off her face, before he hauled round his mount and headed out into the open, past the curious peasantry, to where the entire force of Rainulf’s mercenaries was lined up.
‘He has pride, that one,’ whispered Arduin to Guaimar, ‘and has the gift of command as well. I saw him fight outside Syracuse, and he is formidable both in single combat and in battle.’
‘They all are that, Arduin,’ Guaimar replied in the same soft tone. ‘So much so, that they are also a menace. You will do me a service if you take most of them out of my lands.’
The sound of a battle horn, a single long note, floated across the open fields, the signal for the tournament to commence.
‘It is the catapan’s gold that will take them there, Prince Guaimar, and I will give them Melfi, but they need two other things if we are to foment a real revolt that will not only break Byzantium, but elevate the Lombard cause: a leader and a purpose.’
‘Will you not lead them?’
‘I am but a soldier, with no land and only the title gifted to me by the catapan. Militarily I can command, but to head the enterprise I have outlined requires a nobleman of stature, someone under whose banner the Italians and Lombards can unite against the Greeks. It is not modesty, but truth, to say they will not follow me.’
The invitation was obvious in the words and look, a request that Guaimar should raise the banner of Lombard revolt in Apulia, an offer he would decline. Arduin might say, and indeed might believe, Byzantium was uniquely weak and vulnerable at this time, but if revolts had failed in the past they could do so again and, previously, retribution had been bloody and swift. Whoever raised the standard would, if things went against him, pay a heavy price.
If an army could invade Apulia, a rampaging Byzantine host could do the same to Campania, quite apart from the prospect of a powerful fleet sailing from the Bosphorus, then appearing in the Bay of Salerno, which had also happened before. Guaimar had held his title for too little a time to place it in jeopardy; let another take the risk, as long as he was around for a share of any reward should they enjoy success.
‘I think when you leave here you should pay a call upon the Prince of Benevento.’
‘You think Prince Landulf will take the lead?’
‘I was thinking more that Argyrus, the son of the great Melus, now resides in Benevento.’
Melus was a potent name, as the man who had so nearly succeeded in the task Arduin was now setting out to repeat. Argyrus, his son, had only recently been released from imprisonment in Constantinople, as a sop to Lombard sensibilities. He was, as of this moment, an unknown quantity, but his name was worth half an army.
‘His presence is known to Byzantium. To lead another revolt he must have permission from the Prince of Benevento. Would Landulf agree to let him participate?’
‘I think he might. Benevento has much to gain if there is any success.’
So do you, Arduin thought, but he kept that to himself.
* * *
There was no metal in use this day, for the very simple reason that every one of the men assembled was either young or too seasoned a fighter. The former were, by nature, hot-headed in battle, the rest too proud to take lightly being bested by another. No trust could be placed in their restraint, and the use of swords and metal-tipped lances would lead to multiple deaths. What William wanted was to exercise the horses and men, not in the tens of the standard Norman conroy, but in the mass, to underscore the lessons learnt in Sicily. He wanted them to behave as the mounted component of an army.
The purpose of doing so he had kept from Rainulf: in his meeting with Prince Guaimar he had as good as acceded to the notion of taking service with Arduin. He would follow the Lombard to Melfi and take possession of the fortress, and, under his command, invade Apulia. But on this expedition he was determined to act on behalf of himself and his family. If Rainulf Drengot could gain land and title in Campania, then William de Hauteville was determined he would do the same in those fresh pastures.
There would be many obstacles along the way, not least the Byzantines, who were formidable in adversity. He would also have to outwit the Lombards, Prince Guaimar, and Rainulf, all of whom would see him only as a mercenary, or in the Norman leader’s case, a captain, acting on his behalf. His brothers, in that vestry, had more or less accused him of allowing himself to be cheated; they too would learn that their elder brother had the wit and guile to outmanoeuvre those he felt had duped him.
The mercenaries had been broken up into bands of one hundred lances, and their first task was to attack a long false wooden shield wall William had had erected fifty paces from the front of the elevated pavilion and the assembled guests; let them feel some sense of what it was like to face a Norman host. Taking station to the right of the first line, commanded by Drogo, William ordered them forward, noting that no command was required for another captain, called Turmod, to advance his own century after a slight gap.
Humphrey, with Rainulf’s blessing, had been elevated to command for the day, and so had brother Geoffrey, which left Mauger fuming as the only de Hauteville not leading one of the four assault lines. He was obliged to act as William’s aide, which, hero worship notwithstanding, was not enough to mollify him, and as he sat alongside his elder brother his frustration was not something that could be hidden by either helmet or nose guard.
The strength of Norman cavalry lay in their use of weight as opposed to tempo. Horsemen of other armies charged, hoping by sheer brio to break an enemy line, which inevitably led to some moving at more speed than the rest so they arrived at the point of battle as a disorganised melee. The Norman line was solid, the destriers they rode chosen not for fleetness but for their sturdy nature. Both horse and rider were trained to hold their line and hit an enemy position as a formidable mass.
This required well-practised horsemanship and constant attention; no steed next to another could entirely be weaned off the desire to race: a horse did not require to be told how to run, but when. To hold them in exact relation to their neighbouring mounts took endless training as well as strong hands and thighs, the latter becoming immeasurably more important as the point of actual combat approached: the rider would be looking to use his hands for his lance and his shield, albeit he would still hold a rein. Once battle was joined, the main pressure a warrior would have to control his mount was those thighs.
No mock tourney could ever be like the real thing, but for the likes of Guaimar, who was no soldier, the sight of a hundred lances attacking in his direction made him tense, even if he knew they were blunted and it represented no threat, so much so that he put a protective arm around Gisulf, his young son. Looking past his wife at his sister, he was surprised to see how excited she was, her body tensed and leaning slightly forward, her mouth open and the one eye he could see alight with anticipation, nothing like the frisson of fear in his own.
The Normans were now standing in their stirrups, the hooves of their horses kicking up a huge cloud of dust, their lances couched under their arms and their teardrop-shaped shields, coloured in the red and black of Rainulf Drengot, set forward to protect both themselves and the flank of their horse; two hundred eyes and those padded lance points, in Guaimar’s overvivid imagination, fixed on the point of his chest.
Berengara’s body jerked as the points hit the wood, a hundred thuds like a tattoo of many drums melding so close as to be as one, mixed with the battle-cry shouts of the attackers. It was what happened next that was most impressive. At the sound of a battle horn all hundred riders spun their horses to run parallel with the wall and, jabbing their tipless lances at imaginary foes over the top of the shields, they moved as one at a steady canter, and there, behind them as soon as they were clear, were another hundred lances a few grains of sand away from contact.
That century turned right to get clear, and the sight of another attack was repeated twice more, in a series of sounds and cries, each one of which seemed to pass like a lightning strike through Berengara’s tensed frame. But her excitement did not end there, for Drogo’s century was approaching again, this time with lances held high, to be thrown on command at the straw bales which lay in front of her. Those dispatched, swords were unsheathed and the wood hacked at with great force, sending splinters flying from the edge as they again made their steady way to the left to be replaced by another century executing the same manoeuvre.
‘Few would stand against this, Prince Guaimar,’ shouted Rainulf, also in a state of high excitement. ‘Most would have broken by now.’
Locking eyes with the Norman leader, the young Lombard wondered if there was an implied threat in the observation. Was Rainulf telling him that no army of conscript Italians and Lombards could sustain him if he chose to challenge such a host?
‘The Varangians would stand,’ called Arduin.
That reference to the axemen of Kiev Rus brought to Rainulf’s face a deep frown. He had fought them in the Lombard revolt led by Melus, and he had lost his elder brother in the final battle. A force of Norse lineage provided to Constantinople by the Prince of Kiev, the Varangians were indeed formidable and their chosen weapon, axes swung and thrown, were deadly against both horse and rider.
‘I saw them in Sicily, Count Rainulf, and I came to admire them greatly.’
Rainulf just jerked his head to look to the front; he did not want to talk of Varangians or of campaigns led by William de Hauteville. His eyes were now on the two lines of Normans who had taken station facing each other, and at a command they closed, first seeking to unhorse the men they fought, then, once the lance had been used or abandoned, fighting each other on horseback with hardwood swords. No mercy was shown to anyone who left an opening: several jabbing and slashing men were dismounted to fall at the feet of, and scrabble away from, the heaving mass of hooves, more dangerous by far than that which they had faced in the saddle.
At the sound of the horn they disengaged and were replaced by the other two centuries, the whole confrontation repeated with the same level of effort. To the rear, men could be seen limping away both from the previous battle and this, while the odd mercenary lay comatose where they had fallen, as their confrères tried to continue to jab, slash and parry without simultaneously trampling them.
‘Look,’ cried Berengara, as the two lines disengaged and withdrew.
She was pointing to a line of marching Normans, making their way through the clouds of dust left by their previous mounted engagement. Only on foot could you truly appreciate that these warriors were likely to tower over any enemy they faced. Every one was well above whatever height could be named as average, and in the middle of the line it was impossible to miss William de Hauteville, taller still, with his brother, Mauger, a hand smaller, at his side.
He led his men to the shield wall where they began hacking away, reducing what was left of the wood of the defence to shards, which set young Gisulf to crying, a sound which had no effect on the swordsmen but one which had his mother take him away from the noise. Destruction complete, the Normans retired, exchanging their weapons for wooden replacements, as two centuries faced each other in foot combat, coming together with a series of loud cracks and screaming imprecations as they fought each other in mock battle.
William had by this time remounted, and it came to the point which interested him greatly. There was a tactic he knew his men could use mounted – the false retreat. Could they do it on foot? He had deliberately left till last a fight between men who had served him in Sicily, under Drogo’s direct command, and those of Turmod’s troop, who had stayed behind in Aversa to protect both Rainulf and Prince Guaimar, knowing there was a deep degree of rivalry between them.
Only Drogo knew he was going to give the horn signal for a false retreat; would his men realise that it applied to them unmounted? Drogo was key, as was any commander in a conflict, but in this the Normans had their other great asset: close battlefield control. They knew the commands just as they knew they must be obeyed; it was not their job to think but to obey. The horn blew its triple notes and William saw his brother’s sword in the air, waving as he fell back, pleased to see that his shouts and gestures were bearing fruit – his men had disengaged.
Turmod’s men should have known better: they were Normans too, but they could not resist moving forward to pursue, a fatal tactic, because they did not all do so at the same pace, creating dog-leg gaps. William signalled for the horn to blow again, and watched with pride as Drogo turned his men round in a tight line and rushed them forward, completely overwhelming their opponents and driving them back, inflicting more bruises on that century than had been suffered by any other in the day.
If he had been looking at the pavilion, he would have seen an irate Rainulf ranting about the deviousness of his senior captain, for he was soldier enough to know it had been he who had initiated the manoeuvre. William would not have cared: as a leader he had just added another string to his tactical ability; everyone in Rainulf’s band had seen it, now all four hundred lances would know what to do in the future.
The sun was sinking, the light going, the wounded were being helped away, and in the gathering gloom the fires of those roasting oxen glowed, while torches by the hundred were being lit around twin rows of great tables. It was time to eat and drink.