The Kingdom in the Sun (41 page)

rid Sicily for ever of the Emir and his whole hated clan. Surprisingly, this group seems not to have included William's own two principal enemies to date; Robert of Loritello and Andrew of Rupecanina were certainly in sympathy with their aims, but preferred to devote their energies to more active warfare along the northern borders of the
Regno.
The leaders of the present conspiracy were, on the whole, less notable figures—barons of the second rank like Richard of Aquila, Roger of Acerra and Bohemund of Tarsia, Count of Manopello. Among them, however, one name stands out, a name we shall meet on several occasions in the story of the coming years— Gilbert, Queen Margaret's cousin, who had recently arrived at court and been sent almost at once to South Italy with the title of Count of Gravina.

Unlike most of the previous conspiracies that had so plagued the peninsula for a century and more, this one had as its object not insurrection but murder. Maio of Bari was to be assassinated. But by whom ? There could be no possibility of entrusting the task to hired killers; the Emir was too important, his spies too well-informed. The blow must be struck by one of the parties to the plot, one who knew Maio and could approach him easily, without arousing his suspicions. Thus the choice fell on a young aristocrat, Matthew Bonnellus.

Though Bonnellus bore no title and was therefore not, strictly speaking, a member of the nobility, he came from one of the oldest Norman families in the South. He was brave, he was handsome and, with his vast estates on both sides of the straits of Messina, he was also extremely rich. It had thus been no surprise to anyone when Maio—who, for all his mistrust of the aristocracy, was like everyone in those days something of a snob and who certainly knew a good
parti
when he saw one—had given him preferment at the court and had singled him out as a prospective son-in-law. Shortly afterwards, reports of baronial unrest had arrived from Calabria; and Bonnellus, who had important family connections in the region, had been the obvious emissary to send on a mission of diplomatic pacification. It was, arguably, the greatest mistake of Maio's career. Loving the young man, as Falcandus puts it, like his own son, he seems to have seriously overestimated his intelligence and his fundamental reliability. Once on the mainland, Bonnellus proved unable to resist the pressures which were put on him, notably those exerted by the ravishingly beautiful Countess Clementia of Catanzaro. Within days he too was on the side of the conspirators, sworn to destroy his benefactor; in return for which service he was promised the hand in marriage not of a little Bariot
bourgeoise
but of Clementia herself, the richest and most influential heiress in Calabria.
¹

One of the dangers of being a dictator—as Maio by now effectively was—is that it becomes progressively harder to believe unpalatable truths. Repeated warnings from his brother Stephen had no effect on him. At last he was presented with incontrovertible evidence of the plot, complete with the names of all the principal conspirators with Matthew Bonnellus at the head of the list; but even then the arrival of a single letter from Matthew, announcing that his mission had been successfully completed and asking, as a reward, that his longed-for marriage to Maio's daughter should be brought forward in date, was enough to soothe away all the latter's fears. Reassured, he flung himself into arrangements for the wedding; while his intended son-in-law, now back in Palermo, quietly busied himself with a very different set of plans.

On St Martin's Eve,
10
November 1160, he was ready. And, writes Falcandus,

...
as the sun went down and the twilight began to fall, you might have seen the whole city alive with vague and sudden rumours, with the citizens moving about hither and thither in groups, anxiously enquiring of each other what was that about to happen that was causing such consternation. Others, with their heads bowed but their ears ever alert for news, were meeting together in the squares and the piazzas, all expressing contradictory opinions. Most of them seemed to think that the King was coming that night, at

¹
At this point in the story, Chalandon falls victim to one of his mercifully rare flights of romantic imagination. He suggests that Matthew Bonnellus's mission to Calabria was arranged by Maio in order to put a stop to the love affair he was already having with the Countess Clementia—whom he describes as the natural daughter of Roger II—in Palermo. As his authority for this story he cites Falcandus ; but Falcandus says no such thing. It is in fact highly improbable that Matthew ever met Clementia in Palermo, since she lived permanently in Calabria. Neither is there any reason to doubt her being the perfectly legitimate daughter of Count Raymond of Catanzaro.

Maio's instigation, to the Archbishop's palace, and that there, in that very street, he was to be slain.

They were wrong only in the choice of victim; it was not William but his Emir of Emirs who was calling on Archbishop Hugh that night, and who would not live to see the morning. Whether Hugh was himself an accomplice we cannot tell; Falcandus of course maintains that he was. In any case, soon after Maio's arrival, Matthew Bonnellus silently stationed his men along the Via Coperta, which connected the Archbishop's palace with the Emir's own house. He himself took up a position near the Porta S. Agata, where the street suddenly narrowed before splitting into three. There, in the shadows, he settled down to wait.

At length the palace doors opened and Maio emerged. He was deep in conversation with the Archbishop of Messina and followed by a small escort. Still unconscious of the enemies that surrounded them, they began to move down the Via Coperta; but before they had reached the Porta S. Agata they were accosted by two frightened figures—the notary Matthew of Ajello and the chamberlain Adenulf, who had somehow discovered what was afoot and had hastened to warn their master of the danger. Maio stopped in his tracks and gave orders that Bonnellus should be brought to him at once; but he was too late. The assassin, hearing his name called, leaped from his hiding-place and flung himself forward with drawn sword.

It was all over quite quickly. Maio did his best to defend himself, but his escort had already melted away. He was surrounded and struck down; and his attackers disappeared into the night. Matthew the notary, who had already risked his life to avert the ambush, was also caught in the
melee;
gravely wounded, he just managed to scramble away to safety. Meanwhile the body of Sicily's last Emir of Emirs, slashed and lacerated by a dozen sword-thrusts, lay lifeless against the wall where it had fallen.

But not for long. Hearing the tumult, the inhabitants of the nearby houses had hurried to the scene, and within rninutes the news was all over Palermo. From every corner of the city men poured into the Via Coperta. Some, according to Falcandus, refused to believe that the blood-soaked corpse at their feet could be that of the great and formidable Emir under whose iron rule they had suffered for nearly seven years; but the majority knew that there could be no mistake and made no effort to conceal their joy. They hurled the body into the centre of the street, kicked it, spat on it; the hair and beard they tore out in handfuls. At last, tiring of the sport, they paused; but they did not disperse. After the violence and brutality of the past hour, what had begun as a curious, faintly apprehensive crowd had been transformed into a wild, vindictive mob. It clamoured for more blood, more destruction. Suddenly it turned and surged away down the street, leaving the former object of its wrath an obscene and shapeless bundle in the dust.

Away in his private apartments on the first floor of the royal palace, the King had heard the shouting, and had soon afterwards received from his Master of the Horse a detailed account of what had happened.
As
always in a real crisis, William had acted quickly and decisively—so quickly, indeed, that when the mob reached Maio's house they found it already protected by a detachment of the royal guard, the Emir's wife and family having been escorted to the palace for their safety. Other detachments had been sent out to patrol every quarter of the city; it was essential that the rioters should not get out of hand before the King had decided on his future course of action.

But what should this course be? William needed no Emir of Emirs to tell him that his position was both delicate and dangerous. Not only, as he himself put it, had he lost his right hand; he was threatened with the loss of his neck. He was aware that the great mass of his subjects, Muslim and Christian, proletariat as well as aristocracy, had hated Maio and were firmly on the side of Matthew Bonnellus; he knew too just how empty were many of their protestations of loyalty to himself. If he were to yield to his distracted Queen's entreaties by taking firm action against Maio's murderers, he might unleash a general uprising which he would be unable to quell. Regretfully, he saw that he had no choice but to come to terms with the assassins. One day, when his position was more assured, he would punish them as they deserved. For the moment he must hide his anger, dissemble as best he could, and welcome them as his deliverers.

The following morning, n November, the King summoned to his presence his old friend and former tutor Henry, Archdeacon of Catania—usually known as Henry Aristippus—and appointed him head of an interim administration. Almost certainly a Norman by birth despite his Greek nickname, Henry was above all a scholar and a scientist. The range of his interests can be judged from the works he translated into his beautiful Latin—two Platonic dialogues, the
Meno
and the
Phaedo,
the fourth book of Aristotle's
Meteorologica,
the
Lives of the Philosophers
by Diogenes Laertius and the
Opuscula
of St Gregory Nazianzen. In addition he was an enthusiastic astronomer and, thanks to the proximity of Mt Etna, an intrepid vulcanologist. He was hard-working and utterly trustworthy; but he was neither an administrator nor a statesman. William seems to have chosen him as much for his gentle, conciliatory character and his knowledge of languages as for any other reason. He deliberately refrained from investing him with Maio's titles—Aristippus became neither Emir of Emirs nor even Chancellor—but he did give his old tutor two lieutenants to help him in his task. One was Count Sylvester of Marsico, a middle-aged aristocrat distantly related to the royal family. His appointment was obviously intended as a sop to Bonnellus and his friends—of whom, though the King could not have known it, Sylvester may even have been an accomplice.
¹
The other was considerably more important: Richard Palmer, Bishop-elect of Syracuse, that learned and almost obsessively ambitious Englishman who was destined to remain for the next thirty years one of the leading figures of the political and religious hierarchy of Sicily.

Although two members of this triumvirate had been on friendly terms with Maio in the past they also accepted the necessity of reaching some sort of accommodation with Bonnellus, whose responsibility for the murder was now common knowledge. The

¹
One of his first actions on Maio's death was to secure the Emir's property in Palermo for himself—including the church of S. Cataldo, in which his daughter Matilda is buried.

first policy that they adopted, politically expedient as it may have been, therefore redounds to the credit of none of them, and still less to that of William himself—the deliberate and systematic blackening of the Emir's character to the point where his assassin could be shown as the saviour of the country. To his wife and children, already kept in the palace for their protection, the official attitude changed. Gradually they came to realise that they were no longer in care, but in custody. Maio's son was arrested and imprisoned, as was also his chief eunuch; under torture, the two were said to have revealed a whole series of embezzlements and extortions. The worst of those rumours that had so long been circulating were now, it seemed, confirmed.