The Kingdom in the Sun (51 page)

Anagni eight years before. It was his crowning humiliation; such was his Italian subjects' contempt for him that they had not even bothered to wait until he was back over the Alps before making their ultimate gesture of defiance. And indeed, when the spring at last came and the snows began to melt, he saw that even this last lap of his homeward journey would be a problem; all the mountain passes were now controlled by his enemies and closed alike to himself and his shattered army. It was secretly, shamefully and in the guise of a servant that the Emperor of the West finally regained his native land.

But, it may be asked, while Frederick Barbarossa was tasting his triumph and his disaster, what had happened to his old enemy the Pope? Alexander had first taken refuge with his Frangipani friends in the Cartularia tower near the Colosseum. Serious as the situation was, he seems to have thought that he might still be able somehow to maintain himself in the capital; and when two Sicilian galleys sailed up the Tiber with further massive subsidies from Queen Margaret, he had actually refused their captains' offer to carry him away to safety. It was a noble decision but, as he soon saw, an unwise one. The Romans, fickle as ever, turned against him. Disguised as a pilgrim, he had embarked in a small boat just as the Pisans were arriving and slipped down the river to freedom. Landing at Gaeta, he had then made his way via Terracina to Benevento —where, ultimately, his loyal cardinals joined him. He had escaped not a moment too soon. If he had fallen into the Emperor's hands, it would have been the end of his active pontificate; even if he had somehow avoided capture, he would probably have perished in the epidemic which, it need hardly be said, did not confine itself to the imperial army but raged through Rome until the Tiber was thick with corpses. The Almighty, perhaps, had been on his side after all.

Such was certainly the view of the papal supporters. Godfearing men everywhere, and in Germany perhaps most of all, saw in that dreadful visitation on Barbarossa the hand of the exterminating angel—not only a just retribution for his crimes, but also a proof of the Tightness of Alexander's cause. The Pope's popularity soared, and with it his prestige. The Lombard cities made him patron and chief of their new League and even invited him—though he did not accept—to take up residence among them. Meanwhile they founded a new city between Pavia and Asti and named it Alessandria in his honour.

In Rome, the anti-Pope Paschal had meanwhile lost what derisory support he had ever had. No longer did he dare even to set foot outside the melancholy tower of Stephen Theobald, the only place in the city where he felt safe. His health too was failing fast, and everyone knew that he had not long to live. In such circumstances it would have been a simple matter for Alexander to return to the Lateran; but he refused. He had come to hate Rome, and he despised the Romans for their faithlessness and venality. Three times in eight years they had welcomed him to their city; three times, through intimidation or bribery, they had turned against him and driven him into exile. He had no wish to go through it all again. Benevento, Terracina, Anagni—there were plenty of other places from which, as he knew from previous experience, the business of the Papacy could be transacted with efficiency and despatch, free from the intrigues and the ceaseless violence of the Eternal City. He preferred to remain where he was.

It was eleven years before he saw Rome again.

16

THE FAVOURITE'S FALL

. . . for that land devours its inhabitants.

Peter of Blois, Letter 90

T
he
exterminating angel that had wrought such havoc and destruction on the army of Frederick Barbarossa must have appeared, in Sicilian eyes, a messenger of deliverance. In the century and a half that had elapsed since the Normans first arrived in the peninsula, South Italy had faced the threat of imperial invasion more times than its inhabitants cared to remember; but never could the danger have loomed more large than in that agonising summer of
11
67. Then, suddenly, it was past. Expenses, largely in the form of papal subventions, had admittedly been heavy; but the actual losses—apart from a few stragglers in Gilbert of Gravida's army who had failed to retreat fast enough south of Ancona—had been nil. The Kingdom was safe again—at least from the outside.

In the capital, Stephen du Perche remained at the centre of power, still beloved by the faceless masses but more and more hated by those upon whom, had he but realised it, his survival depended— a hatred which had grown even more bitter after that day in the early autumn when the Queen, while retaining him as her Chancellor, had also had him elected by the complaisant canons of Palermo to the vacant archbishopric of the city. It was an extraordinary step— one in which both Margaret and Stephen demonstrated yet again their strange imperviousness to the sensibilities of those around them. The young man had never been intended for the Church; he had been ordained—by Romuald of Salerno, with one can imagine what reluctance—only a few days before. Richard Palmer in particular had made no secret of his disgust. And it was not only Romuald and Richard who felt the appointment as a personal affront. From the moment Stephen took his seat on the Archbishop's throne in Palermo Cathedral and the choir shattered the sullen silence with the
Te Deum,
the entire ecclesiastical party became his enemy.

Once more, plots against the Chancellor began to proliferate, just as they had proliferated against Maio and Caid Peter, until Stephen saw that he could now trust no one outside his French entourage. Among the Sicilians, all were now suspect—even the palace eunuchs, even Matthew of Ajello himself, who had made no secret of his hostility ever since the business of the notaries. One day Stephen, hoping to obtain material proof of Matthew's sinister intentions, arranged with a crony, Robert of Belleme, to waylay a messenger travelling between the protonotary and his brother, the Bishop of Catania, and to bring him whatever letters the man was found to be carrying. Robert's ambush failed; the messenger escaped and reported the whole incident to his master, who was understandably furious—so much so that when Robert died shortly afterwards in somewhat sinister circumstances Matthew immediately fell under the suspicion of having had him murdered. This suspicion was increased at the ensuing enquiry, when a certain doctor, known to be a close friend of Matthew's and a fellow-Salernitan to boot, was revealed as having introduced himself into Robert's house with a curious medicament which he described as a simple rose syrup, but which another witness testified to have burnt all the skin off his hand. Though the doctor was found guilty and imprisoned, he never confessed. Nothing was ever proved against Matthew; but his relations with Stephen became worse than ever.

Some time during the summer of
1167,
Queen Margaret's wastrel brother Henry of Montescaglioso had returned to Palermo. Once again, the circumstances of his arrival were typical of him. On reaching Apulia the year before, he had allowed himself to be persuaded by a group of discontented vassals that this ostracism to a remote fief was an insult to his royal dignity, and that his proper place was at his sister's side in the capital, in the seat at that time still occupied by Count Richard of Molise. Count Richard, they explained, was nothing but an upstart opportunist who had wormed himself into Margaret's favour—and, most likely, into her bed—in the cold-blooded pursuit of his own ends. Henry's only honourable course was therefore to go to Palermo and demand his dismissal, thus simultaneously vindicating his own and his sister's honour. It was a task in which they would be happy to assist.

When, however, Henry arrived in Sicily a few months later with his followers, both Spanish and Apulian, it was only to discover what everyone else in the Kingdom had known long ago—that Richard had already surrendered his position to Stephen du Perche. Though he probably knew little enough of Stephen, it must have been immediately clear to him that he could not object to a blood relation in the same way as he had objected to a local
parvenu
like the Count of Molise. On the contrary, this new appointment might prove very much to his advantage—if he played his cards right.

The Chancellor, meanwhile, played his own very cleverly indeed. From what he had been told of Henry, it seemed likely that a few promises and a fair measure of flattery would be all that was needed to render him harmless. Once he himself were won over, there would be nothing to fear from his hangers-on. And so it proved. Stephen, whose career throughout his short life shows that he must have possessed considerable charm, exerted it to the full. In next to no time Henry was one of his cousin's most enthusiastic supporters. The Apulian discontents were disgusted to see their former leader riding everywhere at the Chancellor's side, even accompanying him to the baths, and generally behaving as if the city belonged to him. Beaten, they had no course open to them but to return to their lands—which, not long afterwards, they did.

So, for some months, Henry basked; but he was too unstable—or perhaps simply too gullible—to remain quiet for long. The weakness of his character, his conceit and his close kinship with the Regent made him the perfect tool for intriguers and, as the summer wore on, more and more of them began to murmur in his ear how disgraceful it was that the Queen's cousin should rank above her brother, how instead of calling on the Chancellor, Henry should insist that Stephen should call on him—how iniquitous it was, in fact, that Stephen du Perche rather than Henry of Montescaglioso should hold the reins of power in Sicily.

At first, Falcandus tells us, Henry would reply that he had had no practice in the art of government, and that in any case he spoke no French, an indispensable language at the court. He was therefore perfectly content to leave state affairs in the hands of his good friend Stephen, who was after all a wise and prudent man, admirably qualified by his noble birth to occupy his high office. Soon, however, the murmurs took on a new note, with more than a tinge of scorn. How could the Count of Montescaglioso continue on such friendly terms with the Chancellor in view of the latter's notorious relationship with the Queen? Was he publicly pandering to their ignoble and incestuous desires ? Or was he still feigning ignorance of what was going on under his nose? Surely he could not be so crass and supine—the words are Falcandus's own—as to be genuinely unaware of what was now the talk of the city ?

Whether there was any foundation for these rumours we shall never know. Falcandus speaks elsewhere of how the Queen would be seen 'devouring the Chancellor with her eyes'. Margaret was still under forty and is said to have been beautiful;
¹
she had been largely ignored by her late husband, and it would perhaps have been surprising if she had not formed some sort of attachment to a young and handsome man of high birth, intelligence and marked ability who was, incidentally, one of the few people in Sicily whom she could trust. Even if there had been no such attachment, gossip on the subject would have been unavoidable. In any event, Henry was convinced. He became morose; where hitherto he had sought Stephen's company probably a good deal more often than the Chancellor found necessary or agreeable, now he began to avoid him. More ominous still, he took advantage of his free
entree
into the palace to recount to the King the stories he had heard about his

¹
La Lumia describes her as
bella ancora, superba, legiera
—but gives no references. His beautifully-written book on William II's reign, though now just a century old, remains the standard work for the period; occasionally, however, he allows his romantic imagination to cloud his scholarship.

mother, in an attempt—not very successful, as it turned out—to cause a rift between them.

The Count of Montescaglioso seems to have had no thought of concealing his altered feelings from his benefactors, and Stephen soon saw that—incredible as it might appear—he had overestimated his cousin; Henry was even more unreliable than he had supposed. His faithlessness had, on the other hand, served one useful purpose: it had indicated, more surely than any number of agents' reports could have done, that another conspiracy was in the wind and that the Count was a party to it. A few secret enquiries— and Henry could have been followed by a dozen spies without ever being aware of the fact—were enough to confirm the Chancellor's suspicions. He resolved to strike.