Soldier of Crusade Read Free

his uncle. He had the option of making the progress of Bohemund and his host adifficult one, or as easy as such an inherently fraught enterprise could be.
    ‘Which would be a waste,
topoterites
,’ Bohemund added, ‘given we have come to coat the earth with the blood of your uncle’s enemies, not that of his own men and certainly not that of his family.’
    ‘I am minded to provide an escort.’
    ‘Something,’ Tancred replied, ‘given to those in need of succour, like pilgrims. We are not pilgrims.’
    ‘We move out on the morrow,
topoterites
,’ Bohemund pronounced, ‘our aim to join the Via Egnatia at Vedona, and be assured I know the terrain well. I will give no trouble to those who do not trouble me. Now, allow me to offer you some refreshment in my tent.’
    After, Comnenus thought, you have humiliated me in front of your Greek-speaking army.
    ‘I must decline,’ he said, ‘for I have the command of Durazzo and that I must protect.’
    ‘No doubt you will send to Alexius to tell of our arrival.’
    ‘I shall.’
    Bohemund could not keep the wry tone out of his voice. ‘News to delight him, I’m sure.’
     
    The despatch John Comnenus sent off to his uncle that night was full of foreboding about the intentions of the Apulians and while he was careful in his recommendations – he did not ask for troops with which to contest their passage for the very sound reason they did not exist – he did ask for gold with which to bribe Bohemund’s half-brother and primary enemy, the reigning Duke of Apulia, Roger de Hauteville, known as
Borsa
.
    Rendered a bastard by the papal annulment of his father’s first marriage on the grounds of consanguinity, Bohemund saw himselfas the rightful heir to his father’s domains;
Borsa
, first son of the second wedding to Sichelgaita of Salerno, had claimed his rights as the legitimate successor and his formidable mother had secured that for him. The two sons of Robert had contested that right over many years and Bohemund had wrested much of the Apulian domains from his half-sibling, who was, militarily, no match for him in the field or in the loyalty he could command from his subjects. Thus he would be easily tempted to stir up trouble.
    If
Borsa
could be bribed to take up arms, that might force Bohemund to look to save his Italian possessions; in short it might oblige him to hurry home with his army, a repeat of the well-funded upheavals that had saved the empire in the past. This he did on the grounds that such an army and such a presence on the soil of Romania, regardless of the stated cause, was too dangerous for imperial security.
    He also felt obliged to send ahead messengers to deny the Apulians easy access to supplies and, for all the weakness of the forces he commanded and the responsibilities thereof, Comnenus despatched in his wake a strongly armed party to ensure that they continued to progress east and did not succumb to the temptation to set down in any one place. That it was no more than a gesture Comnenus knew, but he thought it one worth making.
     
    The despatch from Durazzo reached a ruler who had enough troubles without worrying about Bohemund of Taranto, though his arrival, as well as the method of it, underlined a difficulty that would be the devil to deal with. In calling for help from the Christian powers of the West, Emperor Alexius Comnenus had already got a great deal more than he had bargained for and the primary part of that was standing before him now, a charismatic preacher called Peter the Hermit.
    On his own Peter was not a problem; he was a holy man with the simple tastes of his title, ascetic enough to fast regularly, humble in his person, a man happy to live wholly by the tenets of his Lord Jesus Christ and who even looked – tall and thin, with his great beard and the way he leant on his full-length crook – like an Old Testament prophet.
    The problem was the nature of the multitude he had inspired with his sermons, for, if there was a