Chapter Eight: Dreams of Empire
by The_Guiscard
“Just look at them”, Duke Roger Borsa de Hauteville said to his marshal, inclining his head towards the Imperial guardsmen arrayed in the outermost courtyard of the great palace of Blachernae. “Fops”, he commented. “Not one decent fighting man among the lot of them.”
Duke Roger and his host of Normans and Lombards had been among the first contingents to arrive at Constantinople. Most other crusaders, as the warriors had come to call themselves, were only now making their way across Greece or the lands of the Bulgars, and Roger would have to wait for them to arrive before he could cross over into Asia Minor in force and engage the Turks of Ikonion. The Campanian host had been assigned a prime spot to make camp, right on the shores of the Golden Horn and not half a mile from the Blachernae Gate. Being a powerful duke and the son of a famous king and the brother of an even more famous king – a curse on Bohemond’s black soul! – Roger had very soon been invited to the palace of Blachernae to confer with the Basileus Alexios, the first of the house of Komnenos. Alexios, it was said, was a dangerous man, both on the field of battle and in the arena of politics, and the long lines of guardsmen arrayed in the courtyard could only be another part of the Basileus’ dual strategem of dazzling his visitor with the palace’s sophisticated luxuries whilst letting him glimpse the steel at Alexios’ command.
Well, Roger refused to be impressed. He was not a savage like those tribesmen who were said to be making their way from their miserable islands at the end of the world to join the Crusade; he was a son of the south, well acquainted with both Greek culture and Greek duplicity. He even knew to speak decent Greek, something his father had seen to.
“Fops, certainly”, agreed Bruto da Sanseverino, a seasoned old Lombard and Roger’s Marshal. Together with a dozen of other noblemen e had accompanied his liege to the audience with Emperor Alexios. “But I wouldn’t be so sure wether they are really good for nothing underneath all their gilded finery. Alexios has after all fought the Turk to a standstill.”
“Pfah”, sneered Roger. “Fought them to a standstill! Sure, after loosing half the Empire to the heathens. The Turk is right there, there, just across the Bosporus! I heard it said that one can on a clear day see their their lands by just climbing Constantinople’s sea walls. The Greeks have made a huge mess of it, and now, with the Turk knocking on their gates, they are calling for our help to defend Christendom – and their worthless hides. Nincompoops, total nincompoops!”
The Byzantine Empire, Asia Minor and the Levant before the First Crusade.
The Lombard veteran gave one of his noncomittal grunts, but Roger did already seize upon the topic. “If my brother wouldn’t hav been such an idiot as to charge into the desert,
we could by now be masters of Constantinople! Alexios staged his coup soon after father died. The Empire was reeling then, beset by the Turk and divided. I have beseeched Bohemond to push into Byzantium then – even a child with a pointed stick could have driven the Greeks out of Constantinople. But would he listen? Of course not!”
Roger and his party left the palace grounds, but not by the Blachernae Gate leading out of the city and to their camp, but into the city itself, to take a look at its legendary marvels. Roger was not now in the mood for sightseeing anymore. Father had dreamed of him wearing the imperial purple one day and had prepared him for it, and if the Guiscard’s mind hadn’t become enfeebled in old age, it would now be Roger Borsa and not Bohemond sitting on the Norman throne – and not on the Norman throne alone, by God. If Roger would have had his way, he would have long since conquered Greece and ripped the Kamelaukion crown from Alexios’ head. He knew he could have done it, and how; he had thought it through a thousand times.
Roger and his party passed by the monastery of Chora and reached the foot of the great aqueduct leading deep into the heart of the city. They were well within the immense triple wall protecting Constantinople, but the area was still rather rural, given to orchards and scattered private residences of substance. The city proper, protected by yet another, though slightly dilapidated wall, was still a quarter mile ahead of them. The Italian knights followed the aqueduct and entered the city through an entirely unguarded gate.
“I told you”, Roger said to his companions, “fops and slobs without the slightest discipline, leaving the gate unguarded like that. Taking Greece would have been a stroll, a stroll.”
Bruto, who was walking alongside Roger, cleared his throat. “Yes, probably”, he said. “But I’m not sure wether we should make too much of this unguarded gate, my lord Duke. The outer wall proper seemed guarded well enough.”
“Yes, yes, maybe”, Roger replied, only half listening to his Marshal. He had a taste for a little refreshment and he had spied a street vendor selling wine from two small barrels. Roger handed his purse to his young squire Jordan. “Run along and fetch us some red”, he said, and then, turning, joking to his companions: “Let’s hope it’s the famed Samian. Alexios has at least managed not to have lost Samos to the Turk – yet.”
Clipped, barking laughter from a dozen throats acknowledged the jest. Thus, a clay cup of wine in his right, Duke Roger Borsa de Hauteville swaggered through the streets of a city he had been robbed of by what he considered lesser men.
* * *
Bruto da Sanseverino looked upon the two bound men. Their backs were erect and their heads high as they stood their ground, defying both the Marshal and the men who had gathered all around. “Take them and string them up”, he said.
“You have no right to do this, Sanseverino”, shouted Hugo d’Eboli. The burly Norman knight was one of the more important barons of Duke Roger, and the culprits were both fighting men in his employ. D’Eboli had taken up their cause, and there were quite a few men in the audience who were on his side. “Fine them, if you must, and leave it at that. ‘twas only Greeks, and these men have Noman blood!”
Some of the knights and mercenaries whom Bruto had called upon to witness the trial in the middle of the camp’s main thoroughfare nodded in grim agreement with d’Eboli. The baron had brought up his retainers’ Norman descent, something that never failed to impress these sons of conquerors from the north. They had won their lands with sword and spear, and most of them still thought that entitled them to predate on whom they liked. Bruto da Sanseverino, on the other hand, was not Norman but Lombard, a descendant of one of the oldest families in what once used to be the Principality of Salerno, now no more than a county in a Norman realm. Many times had he proven his mettle in combat and his sagacity in ordering a battle, and he had won the trust of Duke Roger who had made him his marshal, but still he was found wanting – he was no Norman.
Bruto da Sanseverino, Marshal to Duke Roger de Hauteville.
“I have every right to do this, d’Eboli”, Bruto stood by his initial verdict. “They have been seen braining the man, and they have confessed to the rape.”
“No man denies it”, exclaimed Hugo d’Eboli. “But they are good men, and Normans, and they do not deserve to die for such a little thing. Drogo here has fought with the King himself at Capua, and Roger has proven his worth many times over. Fine them, I say! Fine them and be done with it.”
Bruto did dearly wish that he could. The men had only done what they had done dozens of times before while on campaign, raped some inconsequential young sheperd girl and brained her father when he had come running to his daughter’s help. It was nothing, really, not even worth mentioning had the circumstances been any different – but they weren’t. They were not in enemy territory but guests of the Emperor, and even though he had been veiled and circumspect in his words Alexios had made it abundantly clear that he would not tolerate any attack on his people, no matter how minor. If only the other contingents would be here already, then they needed not be as careful, that Greek would not then be able to enforce his will upon the crusaders, but as of now they were still too weak to defy Alexios openly.
“The men knew it”, Bruto insisted. “They knew that any man who trangresses against the subjects of the Greek Emperor will be made an example of. These people are our hosts, and we depend on the goodwill of Alexios.”
Coarse laughter and derisive chuckles rose from the assembled crowd at these words. The Normans had easily defeated the Greeks and driven them from Italy much like a boy drives geese to the market; for them, “Greek” was synonymous with “craven”. Little did they know that there was steel to be found underneath the polished manners of the Greeks, something the Lombards had come to realize in the past five centuries.
“If you’d like to pander to the Greeks’ tender sentiments, you can go and ask Alexios’ forgiveness. You know how to cater to the Byzzies, I guess”, Hugo said, a snidy comment on the many centuries of coexistence of the Lombards and Greeks. “But leave good Normans out of your dirty politicking, we want nothing of it!”
“Enough”, Bruto bellowed at his adversary. If this was to go on, it would soon come to the point where he would have to fight and kill Hugo. He was not afraid of the Norman, he knew that he could take him, but it wouldn’t do for two of the Duke’s captains to fight and slay each other while on campaign. “I am Marshal of Campania, and while at war have every right to try and sentence a common man-at-arms to whatever I want. I act with the authority of the Duke, and in accordance with his wishes, and by both these two men will be strung up, as a warning to others. Now take them away and do it!”
A few squires made to drag away the two convicted men. Roger, the older, was silently defiant, but Drogo, the younger of the two, started to yell and curse at Bruto. There was some commotion among the assembled knights and mercenaries, who were clearly unhappy with the outcome. Bruto sympathized with them and the two sentenced fighting men who were about to loose their lives for practically nothing, but he had to see this through.
One more time, the men’s master tried to intervene: “You are overstepping yourself, Sanseverino! I tell you…”
“Hold your teeth, d’Eboli”, Bruto shouted back. “You waste your breath – these men are already dead, they were dead the moment they defied the Duke’s orders. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Duke!”
With that, Bruto da Sanseverino stalked away to oversee the hanging. He heard the angry murmuring behind him and felt the scornful eyes in his back, but he knew he had done right – even though this feeling did nothing to alleviate his wish that he shouldn’t have had to do so. His gaze roved over Duke Roger’s tent. It should be
him who should have seen to this delicate business, but when Bruto had brought it before his liege, he had been ordered to do as he saw fit. Roger had been drunk, like he was most of the time. Well, at least the Duke knew that Bruto was a valuable officer of his and was sure to support and uphold his Marshal’s decision in the matter of the rape and slaying. Bruto would go on to direct the campaign, and Roger would be free to swill himself with wine and lose himself in the reveries of the crowns and thrones that should be his by right.