Chapter Two: A Duke and His King.
by The_Guiscard
“His Grace is now ready to receive you, my lord Duke.”
“Coming”, was the reply of Roger Borsa, Duke of Campania. He gulped down the last of the wine and rising from the window sill wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. His bastard of a half-brother had kept him waiting for nigh on an hour, and the quiet anxiety of Roger, who was always unnerved at having to face Bohemond, had in the meantime waxed steadily, despite the copious amounts of wine he had gulped down in an attempt to soothe his nerves.
Roger Borsa did wipe his sweaty palms on the costly fabric of his kirtle as he followed the scribe who had summoned him. The man, a Greek judging by the style of his long tunic, showed the Duke of Capania into the King’s council chamber adjourning the royal appartments. The Norman king’s residence at Palermo had by its former Muhammadan masters been enlarged and altered, and little of its original Byzantine style was still recognizable. The floor and walls of the chamber where King Bohemond used to confer with his advisors where tiled in a colourful checker after the Arab fashion, and the wooden ceiling was intricately carved with heathen scrollwork. Two wide windows made the room much more airy and admitted more light than those built in the Frankish style. Woven rugs of infidel manufacture were thick on the chamber’s floor, in places piled one atop the other, and one them were placed several small round tables and chairs, also in the Muhammadan fashion and with none of the high backs to them the Latins favoured to keep cold draughts away from the occupant.
The largest of these tables was covered with an assortment of maps, and bent over this table was the figure of Duke Roger’s half-brother Bohemond. The king of the Apulian Normans was a huge man, quite possibly the tallest in the world, towering well over seven feet. He had already been massive as an infant, allegedly almost splitting his mother in half in coming into this world, and he had been as tall as any kight before he had seen twelve winters. Mark, he had been christened, but his and Roger Borsa’s father King Robert Guiscard used to nickname him ‘Bohemond’ even as a toddler, after a famus giant of Norman legend, and the nickname had stuck – as had his own, Roger thought bitterly, ‘Borsa’, Roger the Purse, after the lands and wealth he had been thought to one day inherit from both his mother and his father. Well, Bohemond had befuddled their aging father and betrayed Roger of his inheritance from King Robert, leaving him with but his mother’s lands and the damned nickname, now nothing more than a jest at his expense.
Roger swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “My lord brother”, he addressed the hulking King, his voice sounding thin and feeble even inhis own ears. The Duke of Campania cursed himself for it. Bohemond always did that to him, making his belly tighten up and his knees go weak. Roger’s half-brother was strong as two oxen and quick to anger, and when angered wouldn’t hesitate to kill the object of his wrath, no matter what the cost to himself. It was not without reason that Roger avoided the King as much as he could.
Roger de Hauteville, called ‘Borsa’, Duke of Campania.
Bohemond looked up, turning his brutal face with that square jaw fully upon Roger. “Be welcome, dear brother”, the King said, his voice even and devoid of the affection conveyed by his words, “it is a rare pleasure to receive you. I am afraid I couldn’t spare the time any sooner, I was in session, planning the new campaign against the Hammadids.”
“Thank you, my lord brother. I have heard of your intent, it is the talk of the court.”
“And not anymore the court alone”, Bohemond replied. “This very moment, riders are dispatched, carrying the summons to muster throughout all of Sicily. If all goes well, we will embark for Tunis in no more than six weeks.”
“That’s good”, Roger replied somewhat sheepishly. He took a deep breath, then said: “There is also another war against the infidels being prepared. God himself has called for it, the pope has declared.”
Bohemond snorted, half amusement and half disdain. “Yes, I have actually heard, wouldn’t you believe it. Well, I have no time for foolish adventures a thousand leagues away.”
Roger felt his heart sag at his brother’s derision. Bohemond had always been something of an impious heathen, too dumb to actually grasp the great work of salvation done by the Lord or feel touched by it, but the Duke was still surprised at his brother showing his derision so openly. “It is dangerous, yes, and it is far, but I still think that it is a most worthy cause”, Roger said. “And God wills it.”
“The Pope wills it, more like”, Bohemond scoffed. “Anyhow, what is it you want, Roger? Out with it!”
Roger’s tongue flicked across his lips, one feeling as dry as the other. He longed for a drink of wine. “I have”, he started, faltered, and began anew. “I have a mind to join in liberating the Holy Land. It is just, you see, my lord brother, my coffers, they are, well, not exactly empty, far from it, but still, my treasury, well, it’s not quite sufficient to pay for all of my troops, for the mercenaries, and for ferrying all of them across the Adriatic Sea and for provisioning them on the march to Constantinople. Once there, the Emperor will surely reprovision us, I think, but to get there, I need, well, …”
“Out of the question”, Bohemond cut him off.
“Out … out of the question?”, Roger echoed. He felt sick. The holy war was a matter of faith for him, but first and foremost his hope to escape the clutches of his brother, to win himself a kingdom of his own after hateful Bohemond and their late father had conspired to unlawfully take Apulia and Sicily away from him.
He should be King, not that oaf Bohemond who plunged the Normans into one pointless adventure after the other, all for the sake of yet another worthless patch of African desert. The Pope’s war would have been his chance. He was a powerful Duke after all, and the son of a King of high reknown – who on the campaign might outrank him? None! He would have been lord of the expedition, both by virtue of his station and his cunning in battle. He
must go to Jerusalem,
must make himself its King!
Bohemond sighed. “Look, Roger, I won’t waste my time skirmishing with you. You want to go, and you want me to fund your adventure? Fine.” From among the many sheets on the table, the King picked up a folded piece of parchment bearing his seal and showed it to Roger. “Here is my order to you to assemble your troops and bring them to Palermo, to aid me in my campaign against the Hammadids. I need but hand this over to you and all your dreams of going to Jerusalem and doing whatever you delude yourself into being able to do are over once and for all. You will go to Tunis instead – or you will have to defy my order and renege on your duties as my vassal. Well?”
Panic was welling in Roger. The holy war, his chance of a kingdom of his own, of escaping his thrice-damned brother and the disdain and mockery he saw in his fellow lords’ eyes, all of them were retreating fast, escaping his grasp. He opened his mouth to reply, but something was cutting off his throat. A dry rattle escaped his mouth before Roger managed to say: “I will obey whatever you command, my lord brother.”
The King acknowledged this with a curt nod. “Very well”, he said, “listen. Do as I say, and I will not summon you to Africa. I will even pay you out a loan of one hundred pounds of minted silver from the royal treasury and provide you with ships to take your host across the Adriatic Sea to Greece. How does that sound to you?”
“Excellent, my lord brother”, Roger managed to reply. He needed some wine, why on Earth had Bohemond offered him none?
“In return for letting you go and even supporting your campaign, you will hand me back the County of Benghazi I have entrusted to your safekeeping”, the King said. “Furthermore, you will proclaim that that bastard of your’s, that other Roger, whom you’ve made Count of Naples, is not, I repeat,
not of your flesh and blood and that all rumors to this end are but that – rumors. Understood?”
The Norman realm (green) in early 1096,
and the lands of Duke Roger Borsa (red) and is vassals (yellow) within it.
Roger nodded weakly and Bohemond continued, pushing two sheets of parchment across the table towards his brother. “Here”, he said, “I have already had the documents prepared. I know that father wasted everybody’s time in having you learn some letters, so you know that I am not trying to trick you into signing anything unbecoming. This here is your renunciation of Benghazi, and with this document here you formally deny all allegations of having fathered Roger. Sign.”
Roger reached for a quill, then hesitated. Even though only a bastard, Roger was his only living son, his one legitimate one having died while still an infant. If he gave away the chance to acknowledge Roger, he was denying his one male descendant. Should he die without fathering another one, all his lands, everything he possessed, would pass to Bohemond…
“I will not make his offer again”, Roger heard his half-brother’s hated voice grate. “Hesitate but one more moment, and I will withdraw my offer, and the documents, and pass you this summons here in my hand.”
Once again, Roger licked his dry lips. Bohemond’s threats were never empty, he knew. The price his brother demanded was high, but then also not so high after all. Roger had fathered one son, he would father others, legitimate ones, not bastards. And what was giving away one sorry African county when he would win a kingdom instead? He reached for quill and documents and then signed both with his ducal monograph.
A thin smile on his lips, Bohemond took both documents into his keeping. “A wise decision, dear brother”, he said, “you have just won yourself the participation in the Pope’s holy war. A place in heaven is already reserved for you.”
“And the silver?”, Roger asked past the lump in his throat. He wanted to get this degradation over with as quickly as possible.
“Worry not. You know I am a man of my word. I will even today give orders for the silver to be paid over to you, and also orders procuring the ships to take you and your men into Greece.”
“I do thank you, my lord brother”, Roger managed to say. The exchange of a few more pleasantries and Bohemond wishing him success, and Roger was off to his own chamber and a soothing draught of cool red wine. It never occurred to him how the King could have had the documents already prepared in advance.