The Kingdom in the Sun (52 page)

But could he? One of his bitterest enemies among the palace eunuchs, the Great Chamberlain Ca'id Richard, had control of the royal guard and could certainly not be relied upon in the event of trouble. Indeed, one of the inevitable results of a successful
coup
by the Chancellor would have to be the arrest and probably the imprisonment of all the senior Muslims of the court, including the baptised Caids; a step which, in the present circumstances, might easily provoke a general rising among the Islamic population of the capital. If then he were to forestall his enemies with a sudden swoop of his own, he would be well advised to do it elsewhere than in Palermo. Fortunately it had already been agreed that young William should make his first official visit to the mainland in the following year. On the pretext of making the necessary arrangements, it was accordingly announced that the whole court would move for the winter to Messina.

Hugo Falcandus's description of Messina has already been quoted. The second city of Sicily, with a harbour as busy if not busier than that of Palermo itself, it enjoyed, like all great ports, an agreeably
louche
reputation. For Stephen, however, it had one overriding advantage: it was a purely Christian city. Ibn Jubair, visiting it some twenty years later, noted that it seemed 'full to overflowing with the adorers of the Cross' and that 'it was thanks only to the handful of Muslim menials and servants that a traveller from the Islamic lands was not treated like some wild beast'. The population was in fact largely Greek, with a generous admixture of Italians and Lombards; none had ever shown any dissatisfaction with the present regime. Another point in the city's favour was its proximity to the mainland; and Stephen now wrote secretly to his cousin Gilbert, with whom he had been on excellent terms ever since his visit to Gravina the previous year, asking him to hurry to Messina, bringing with him as many soldiers as he safely could without arousing suspicions or causing alarm.

Meanwhile, in court circles, news of the coming move had been received with almost general consternation. Except, we may imagine, for Henry of Montescaglioso, who never understood much of what was going on and probably looked forward to a reunion with his witty Messinan companions, those who planned the Chancellor's overthrow recognised at once how much, in a strange city where they could not rely on any popular support for their action, their strategic position would be weakened. The high ecclesiastics, in particular, were horrified. They knew that they would have to go —anyone who did not would be sure to suffer from the intrigues of the others the moment his back was turned—but they were loath to leave their sumptuous Palermitan palaces in order to pass the winter in rented accommodation which threatened to be both cold and uncomfortable, and to vent ;re their cossetted persons on the rough mountain tracks which, at this time of year, might well be washed away altogether.
¹
Here, to be fair, they had a point; the rains that autumn proved the heaviest in living memory. But Stephen was firm. Letters were sent under royal seal to all the local authorities on the route, ordering them to look to the state of the roads throughout the region under their control, widening or levelling them wherever necessary and preparing them in all respects for the passage of the King. A day or two before the date fixed for the departure the skies cleared, and on
1
5
December
²
William and his family set out in state for Messina, his courtiers and churchmen riding morosely behind.

¹
Until the middle of the last century the road from Palermo to Messina was still so bad that travellers normally went by sea from one city to the other.

²
Falcandus gives the date as
15
November, but this is probably a copyist's mistake. See Chalandon, II, p.
33
m. Romuald of Salerno expressly states that it was around Christmas.

Messina greeted its King with joy, and William settled with his mother into the royal palace—'rising white as a dove,' wrote Ibn Jubair, 'from the water's edge, a building in which a great number of pages and young girls find employment'. Meanwhile Stephen du Perche, well-meaning as always—but conscious too that he might need their support in a crisis—made a genuine effort to endear himself to the local inhabitants, even restoring to them privileges that they had been formerly granted by Roger II but since lost. Try as he might, however, he could not hold their affection for long. Within a month, the arrogance and high-handedness of his entourage had made the French hated throughout the city and alienated even those who, on their arrival, had been the most favourably disposed towards them.

In these circumstances the long-discussed plot against the Chancellor's life which—owing largely to the inanity of the Count of Montescaglioso—had till now remained somehow inchoate and formless, suddenly began to take shape. Though there had never been any shortage of adherents, their numbers were now further increased by certain Calabrian vassals, whom the King's arrival had attracted across the straits; but participation was by no means confined to the noble faction. Several court officials, among them Matthew of Ajello and Caid Richard, were heavily implicated; while the hierarchy was represented by that old voluptuary Gentile of Agrigento—who only a few weeks before had insisted on swearing his faith to Stephen in an oath of quite unnecessary length and almost baroque pomposity. The whole weakness of the conspiracy, in fact, lay in its size. The agreed plan, which was simply to strike Stephen down on a given morning as he was leaving his palace, needed no very large group to implement it. What it did demand was secrecy; and it was the inability of the conspirators to preserve this one essential that led to their undoing.

The member responsible,
it
need hardly be recorded, was Henry of Montescaglioso. For some reason we shall never understand, he blurted out full details of the plot to a local judge, who at once passed them on to the Chancellor. Stephen acted with equal swiftness, pausing only to tell the King and his mother what he proposed to do and then summoning, in the Regent's name, an immediate council of the whole court, including all the bishops, nobles and justiciars at that time in Messina. As soon as it was assembled, Gilbert of Gravina was to have his men surround the palace; those of the clerks known to be loyal were discreetly advised to carry daggers or short swords concealed about their persons. The Chancellor himself, when he entered the council chamber, was wearing a coat of mail under his state robes.

As
soon as the meeting opened, the Count of Montescaglioso rose to his feet and launched into a passionate if incoherent diatribe, in which pride and self-pity were uneasily combined. He was, he confessed, heavily in debt—a fact which nobody had any difficulty in believing—the revenues of his fief being nowhere near adequate to maintain the scale of living to which he was accustomed and, by his rank, entitled. As uncle to the King, he therefore laid formal claim to the Principality of Taranto—with which Roger II had invested his bastard son Simon but which William I had taken back—or, failing that, all the lands and properties which Simon had formerly possessed in Sicily.

His outburst, for which such a gathering clearly offered neither a suitable dme nor place, seems to have been deliberately intended to provoke bad feeling in the chamber. The Chancellor would be certain to refuse; Henry or one of his supporters would protest, as offensively as possible; and the ensuing uproar would provide an ideal opportunity for the assassination. At this point, however, things took a different turn. Scarcely had Henry finished speaking when Gilbert of Gravina leaped up and delivered, before the assembled company, not so much a reply as a blistering indictment of the Count of Montescaglioso, his character and his misdeeds. Had Henry ever comported himself with a minimum of dignity or decency, Gilbert pointed out, he might long ago have been freely offered what he was now demanding with menaces; instead, he had dissipated huge sums in the pursuit of immorality and vice; he had oppressed his feudatories and inflicted unspeakable outrages upon them; he had done his best to poison relations between the King and his mother, suggesting to Margaret that her son was plotting her overthrow while simultaneously vilifying her to William, and all the time insinuating that he himself should be entrusted with the government of the Kingdom. Let Henry deny it if he dared; both King and Queen were present to hear him. Finally, thundered the Count of Gravina, let him confess to them and to the entire assembly the evil which he had been plotting against the Chancellor for that very day, thus revealing himself as 'a perturber of the Kingdom, against the King's majesty contumacious and rebellious; one who, saving the royal mercy, deserved to lose not only all the lands he already possessed, but his own miserable life as well'.

Taken utterly by surprise and paralysed with fear, Henry could only bluster. He was quickly cut short. A witness was called—the very judge to whom he had confided his plans only a day or two before, and whose evidence now settled the matter. The Count relapsed into silence; and when he heard the Chancellor ordering his arrest and detention in the castle of Reggio he made no objection.

The news spread quickly through Messina, and with it the usual crop of rumours. In the house only recently vacated by the Count of Montescaglioso his Spanish henchmen prepared for armed resistance. But Stephen was ready. Gilbert's men were still stationed around the palace and at other strategic points in the town; and now heralds were despatched through all the streets and squares announcing that every Spaniard had twenty-four hours to leave Sicily. Henry's men, who had not expected to escape so easily, accepted without hesitation; many Calabrians who had been involved in the conspiracy also elected to leave while the going was good. Unfortunately, it proved rather less good than they had hoped. Bands of Greek brigands from Messina pursued the fugitives before they were able to cross the straits and stripped them of all they possessed —^including, so Falcandus assures us, their clothes; so that the majority of them, left with no protection against the winter snows, perished miserably in the mountains.

Though several of his advisers recommended the hanging or mutilation of all concerned in the plot, the Chancellor refused to listen. He had a natural dislike of violence; moreover, the sheer numbers of the conspirators argued against any such savage measures. Only one or two of the ringleaders followed Henry of Montescaglioso into prison; the rest, like the Bishop of Agrigento—who had been stricken with a convenient indisposition on the very day of the
debacle
—were allowed to slip away. There was only one notable and undeserving sufferer—Richard, Count of Molise. Although he had had good reason to dislike Stephen du Perche, having been supplanted by him in power, he had almost certainly taken no part in the conspiracy; but he was hated by Gilbert of Gravina, who had not forgotten the circumstances of his own dismissal from Palermo some eighteen months before and was determined to have his revenge. He now had the unfortunate Count arraigned on a charge of illegal tenure of his lands; the accusation was upheld on a technicality and the estates in question were confiscated. Richard protested, loudly and with vehemence, against the sentence; and his enemies pounced. That sentence, they crowed, was passed in the name of the King. To question it was, by Sicilian law, tantamount to sacrilege. The poor Count was dragged before an ecclesiastical court composed of such bishops and archbishops as were still in the neighbourhood, found guilty and imprisoned at Taormina.

Bluff, impulsive, not too intelligent, innocent alike of malice or guile, there is something likeable about Richard of Molise—and, in the fetid atmosphere of lies and subterfuge in which he lived and which emerges with such sickening vividness from the pages of Falcandus—something refreshing. Twice, admittedly, he was himself involved in conspiracies; but on the first occasion, the moment he saw his King in danger, he had sprung forward to shield him with his own body; while on the second, as we shall see, he could hardly have behaved otherwise than he did. Never did he deliberately strive for advancement or personal gain; he accepted high office when it came his way, laying it down again when required to do so without complaint or resentment. A sheep among wolves, the only wonder is that he lasted for so long.

When Stephen du Perche returned to Palermo with the King and the Regent towards the end of March
1168,
it was to find that he had indeed been too lenient with his adversaries. In particular, he had feigned to overlook the complicity in Count Henry's plot of the two most powerful palace officials, the Grand Protonotary Matthew of Ajello and the Great Chamberlain, Caid Richard—trusting, presumably, that they would congratulate themselves on a lucky escape and
keep well away from sedition in future. He had miscalculated badly. Matthew and Richard knew that the Chancellor could not possibly be ignorant of the part they had played; sooner or later he was bound to strike, and the blow would fall none the less heavily for being deferred. Immediately after Henry's arrest they had therefore hurried back to the capital with the Bishop of Agrigento to plan one more attempt. There, with a population already hostile to Stephen and no Gilbert of Gravina to contend with, their task promised to be easier. By the time the Chancellor returned with the rest of the court, all would be in readiness. He would be given no chance even to discover what had been going on in his absence; they would move too quickly. Within a day or two of his arrival—on Palm Sunday to be precise—he would be dead.