Templar

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Mistress,’ Simeon intervened. ‘Dorylaeum, we left Dorylaeum, remember? It was the height of summer . . .’

  They’d left chanting the Veni Creator Spiritus, which was just as well, Eleanor reflected, for they needed all the help God could give them. The leaders had decided to keep the Army of God together even though this meant foraging for food and water became more intense. The taste of victory soon turned sour as they trudged in the wake of the Turkish army, which had already devastated the bleak countryside with fire and sword. The only comfort was that they met no opposition. The Franks had replenished their armouries with lances, axes, swords and maces; these, together with their great oval shields, were slung on the carts from where women and children, silent now, stared sorrowfully around at the burnt villages and the blackened crops of wheat, barley and millet they passed. Hunger and thirst soon stalked the Army of God. The vultures became busy again, their great white-haired heads constantly blood-stained. They shadowed the army like a host of demons. Beneath them floated the hawks, kites, buzzards and fantail crows that also gathered eager for the feast of flesh. Wells and cisterns had been deliberately polluted. Eleanor approached one, leaned over its crumbling wall and stared in horror at the severed head of the camel floating there, its dirty grey hair all fly-infested, yellow teeth bared, bloodshot eyes glaring, the murky slime from its severed neck fouling the water. Other horrors affected them. Hordes of flies and reptiles that swarmed out of the undulating yellow hills and deep dusty hollows on either side of their route. Black-red dragonflies, yellow-black hornets and strange lizards, that kept changing colour from a dusty grey to a muddy red as if some mysterious angry fire burnt inside. Such creatures were their constant companions. All these frightened them whilst myriads of pot-bellied black flies wriggled into mouths, noses and ears or crawled under collars or cuffs to torture their sweat-soaked bodies. Around them the landscape stretched bare. The peasants and farmers had fled. Only occasional scouts were glimpsed, bearded men in evil-smelling goatskins riding shaggy hill ponies and armed with long tufted lances. No one could tell whether they were Turks or simply local inhabitants, for they scattered like quail under the shadow of a hawk when the knights rode out to meet them.

  The army crossed arid scrubland, dotted with tamarisk and acacia bushes that sprouted from rugged masses of rock, their surfaces smoothed by wind and rain. A nightmare of winding chasms and dark brooding valleys, so hot and unwelcoming Simeon claimed they were crossing the lip of hell. Eleanor heartily agreed. Sometimes they would shelter from the noonday heat in caves, but even there, danger lurked: blue and green lizards darted in and out of crevices, and were just as dangerous as the vicious-looking snakes, horned and decorated in macabre colours, which struck fast and furious at the unwary. Armour-plated black scorpions and scuttling spiders as big as a man’s hand only heightened their terrors.

  Eleanor reflected on Simeon’s description: if daytime was one lip of hell, night-time was certainly the other. They pitched their tents, if they could, and gathered around weak fires of dried dung, wormwood and whatever bracken they could find. Darkness was truly a time of terror! Eleanor never understood how such a deserted place could conceal so many creatures. Wolf jackals howled at the sweet fleshy smell of their restless horses and braying donkeys. Fire beetles flared eerily out of the dark. White moths flew in over the camp fires whilst the exhausted pilgrims screamed as bats, with their half-cat, half-monkey faces, chattering and swishing, swarmed in to feed on the myriad of insects. Eagle owls, fierce and fiery-eyed, joined other predators: jackals, snakes, huge rats, as well as the occasional lynx that slunk into the camp to seize dogs, birds, pets and, on one occasion, a sleeping girl. Eleanor herself soon experienced the dangers of leaving the camp. One night, alarmed by strange sounds, she went beyond the line of carts. She heard a soft growl and, turning to her left, glimpsed what looked like balls of green fire staring at her. A dark shape emerged from the darkness, a squat head with grinning mouth displaying sharp fangs and flecks of bubbling froth on a curling upper lip. Eleanor screamed, lashed out and the striped hyena swiftly disappeared into the darkness.

  The effect of such hardships on the Army of God soon became apparent as they journeyed through the stifling heat. Hunger was commonplace. Leaves, bark, flowers and berries were eagerly seized and eaten. Some were poisonous, and more corpses and graves trailed their route. Horses, donkeys and dogs died. Pack animals became a rarity, so goats, sheep, cows and even dogs were used to carry the baggage until their skins became scuffed and worn. Knights rode oxen or trudged wearily in the wake of the carts. Water became equally precious; those wells, streams and waterholes the Turks had missed were soon turned into nothing better than muddy messes. People left the column to dig at roots, searching for any moistness. They prayed for rain, yet the sudden violent storms only brought fresh hardship. Simeon taught them how to build screens of poles, interwoven with palm fronds, prickle pear and acacia twigs, to protect their tents; these became ragged and torn but could be quickly repaired with goatskin. The abrupt, tempestuous sand storms, however, became the bane of their lives, especially at night, when the heavy clouds rolled in, hiding the stars and plunging everything into an inky blackness. Blinding flashes of yellow forked lightning silenced the growls, howls and deep coughs of the night prowlers. The air became heavy, and hot, thick flying sand pelted them so all they could do was shelter and pray for it to pass. Jagged holes would appear in the clouds, then close again, whilst the rain would fall, streams of icy water turning the ground into a sticky yellow mud that coated everything. The night would pass. The storm would break and the sun rise to blister rock and burn the ground, then by noon the dust returned to redden eyes, clog the mouth and block the nose.

  Some pilgrims just disappeared; others turned back. Even their leaders began to falter. Tancred of Hauteville and Baldwin of Boulogne decided to take a different route through the Cilician mountains. They reached Tarsus, drove out the Turkish garrison, then fought each other for control of the city. Tancred, furious, had to withdraw and return to the main army. Baldwin followed because his wife was dying, but when she was gone so was he, with a conroy of knights, to Edessa in the land of the Armenians. Here he became the adopted son of Tholos, the ruler of the city. Treacherous as ever, however, Baldwin conspired with certain leading men in the city and Tholos was literally thrown to the dogs.

  Peter Bartholomew, their self-proclaimed prophet, now came into his own. For most of the journey he had kept quiet, apart from the occasional outburst. As they suffered the horrors of their march from Dorylaeum, he seemed to survive only on brackish water, and began to preach and proclaim his visions. How in the dead of night he had dreams in which the trumpets of the Apocalypse summoned him to watch what was about to happen. How fire would fall from heaven to destroy the impious, yet this fire was only the harbinger of even greater calamities. Thunder and lightning delivered further visions. Plagues would be released to the clash of cymbals. Earth, air, water and fire would become polluted by the horrors God intended to unleash on the world. The Angel of Wrath would fly over ruined cities, whilst a devil named Wormwood lurked in the shadows, ready to strike. Very few understood him; even fewer cared. Nevertheless, after the morning Mass, or in the afternoon when the Ave Maria was recited, Peter would often climb on to some cart and preach about the pale horse, mounted by Death, which rode on their right flank, whilst black horses carrying Famine and Hunger galloped to their left. Of course the curious asked if God was punishing them rather than the Turks. Peter would blink, stare into the middle distance and immediately launch into another vision he’d received.

  Eleanor wondered if Peter really had become witless. Beltran and Imogene insisted that he be banned from preaching and kept close, but Hugh thought differently. Now and again he would take Peter off into the dark, and they would sit away from the camp fire and talk quietly together. Once Eleanor asked Hugh what the topic of conversation was. Hugh merely gave that lopsided smile, his eyes not meeting
hers. Indeed, brother and sister rarely talked during the march. Hugh was constantly employed by Count Raymond for this task or that, whilst Eleanor’s companions were either Beltran or, more usually, Theodore. On that occasion, when questioned about Peter, Hugh gnawed his lip and was about to walk away, but Eleanor caught him by the sleeve.

  ‘Hugh, we face horrors enough without Peter’s trumpeting. Why do you allow it?’

  ‘Very simple, sister.’ Hugh stepped closer, his face coated with a fine sheen of dust. ‘Peter reminds us that this is God’s journey. True, we call ourselves the Army of God, but in fact, Eleanor, we’re not. We have blood on our hands. We are as vicious and as cruel as our enemies. Nevertheless, God uses us for his own secret purposes. We will reach Jerusalem. We will discover the treasures there. Peter is important in this. If his voice echoes like a trumpet, then I say it is God’s trumpet reminding us why we are here.’

  Theodore thought otherwise and approached Eleanor with a plea to talk quietly to Peter to try and calm him. Eleanor repeated Hugh’s words. Theodore shook his head.

  ‘Sister,’ he replied, ‘the pilgrims thought they would march through Asia into Syria and take Jerusalem. We have lost some twenty thousand souls through hunger, thirst, desertion, war and weakness. If we are not careful, the Army of God may think itself cursed, and then what?’

  Eleanor realised that both Hugh and Theodore were correct: they were walking a narrow bridge. The Army of God must be virtuous, but if it lost hope, then what future was there? What vision existed? Hugh also sensed this and did his best for his own company. He would gather the Poor Brethren of the Temple and lead them in Compline or Vespers, or simply stand on a cart, a solitary stark figure, reciting his Ave beads and inviting others to join him.

  The Army of God continued its march, beginning its climb through the mountains leading down to the plains of Syria and the city of Antioch. As Peter Bartholomew so eloquently proclaimed: their ascent was, in fact, more of a descent into a cruel hell of tortuous shale-strewn trackways lined with dark, sombre forests, along ledges that turned treacherous underfoot, especially when the autumn rains set. Little wonder Hugh and Godefroi called them ‘the Mountains of the Devil’ or ‘the Mountains of Hell’. Now and again they found some respite in one of the scattered stone-walled villages with their brown-domed churches and flat-topped, mud-brick cottages with cow and goat pens hidden behind. At least the inhabitants did not flee. Squat, sallow-faced men, garbed in old armour and reeking of cattle, dried milk and dung, came out to greet them. They carried crosses and offered wine and stale bread, explaining how they were Armenian Christians, hostile to the Turks. When Eleanor, Hugh and other leaders of the Poor Brethren met them in the dusty porchways of their round churches, they found the Armenians equally wary of the Franks. In truth, they offered little help and stole whatever they could. They also relayed false information, telling them that Antioch was an open city where the Turks were preparing to flee. Count Raymond, recovering from a near-fatal illness, believed them and immediately dispatched a conroy of five hundred knights, but the news proved false. On one subject the Armenians were adamant: the way ahead was bleak and treacherous. And so it proved.

  The Army of God climbed across a landscape of plunging gorges, narrow winding tracks, twisting paths, icy air, biting winds and mist as thick as vapour from a steaming pot. Men, horses and pack ponies missed their footing or were too weary to be wary and slipped into the yawning darkness below. Knights found armour and harness a great burden and offered to sell them for a few coins; when they found no buyers, they cast their heavy loads into the chasm. Nights were long and cold. Sometimes it was impossible to kindle fires as they perched on ledges and trackways under brooding cliffs. Bishop Adhémar kept their spirits up by insisting that they intone the Ave Maria, whilst Hugh continued to lead the Poor Brethren in their own devotional hours. Eleanor found it difficult to reflect. She could only concentrate on each day as it came, plodding through that grim, horrid place listening to Simeon the Scribe whisper how they would soon be out of the Mountains of Hell. Eventually they were. Early one morning they breasted the peaks and began their descent into green-carpeted valleys, down through soft meadowland and fields where barley, wheat and millet had been freshly harvested. Simeon pointed out the various trees: sycamore and oak, laurel, terebinth and palm. They feasted on the soft, plump fruit of olive trees with their knotted trunks, shiny green bark and lance-like leaves. They collected the fruit of fig, almond, apple, apricot and pear. They wondered at the purple pomegranate and plucked at carob trees for their medicinal use while gazing hungrily at the fat-tailed sheep browsing in the grasslands and the occasional black-nosed gazelle that sped hastily across their path.

  Eleanor felt as if she had been reborn as Simeon described the great variety of birds: shrikes, goldfinches with rose-coloured breasts, cranes and white storks. They slaked their thirst at pools where river warblers sang, and in the grassy fringes, crickets and grasshoppers chanted their monotonous hymn to the sun. Food and other supplies became plentiful through barter or foraging. No Turkish forces appeared; news of the defeat at Dorylaeum had spread on the wind. The only threats were the scattered garrisons locked up in their hilltop fortresses. According to scouts, the way to Antioch lay open. The Poor Brethren, like the rest of the Army of God, relaxed. They camped in the meadowlands enjoying the sun, filling their bellies and, as Peter Bartholomew declared, shaking off the dust from the devil’s mountains. A census was taken. The wounded were moved to be tended by leeches and priests. Animals were let out to graze. Clothes were stitched, darned, washed and stretched out to dry. Armour was cleaned with sand, weapons were sharpened, harness, carts, baskets and panniers repaired. Eleanor bathed, washed and mended what she could and seized any hour for rest and sleep. The journey from Constantinople had changed her. She was now less certain about everything; more concerned about those around her than reaching Jerusalem. She put this down to exhaustion, yet there was something else. It was as if all her old certainties had been shaken. Such quiet reflection soon ended. Eleanor became alarmed at disquieting rumours about Antioch. How the city was heavily fortified, so impregnable its inhabitants openly boasted that it could only be taken by treachery, surprise or starvation.

  ‘The latter is out of the question,’ Hugh announced at one of their meetings. They sat under the spreading branches of an old oak tree sharing a wineskin and a dish of fruit. They revelled in the warmth of the autumn sun, their nostrils tickled by the sweet scent from the nearby orchards mingling with the fragrance of wild flowers.

  ‘Why?’ Peter Bartholomew asked.

  ‘We have no siege weapons,’ Hugh replied, ‘and it would take weeks to hew wood, fashion planks and construct engines of war. We have lost engineers and masons. The Emperor Alexius is a hundred miles away, unable to help us. Antioch is our real challenge. Let me explain.’ He snapped his fingers. Simeon produced a scroll of parchment and unrolled it. They gathered closer to study this finely drawn chart of Antioch.

  ‘The first line of defence,’ Hugh explained, ‘is the river Orontes, which cuts across the plain of Antioch. Beyond that, the great wall of the city rises at least thirty-two feet high. This wall is so thick, one of our great carts could be rolled along its ramparts with horsemen riding on either side.’ He stilled the rising clamour. ‘It runs two miles along the Orontes, then on either side it climbs to encircle the city as well as contain three great hills. On the highest of these stands a towering citadel that dominates everything. When we march there we will leave the foothills and occupy the northern plain. Looking across it, we will see the river, a stretch of land, the great ditch and then the might of Antioch. We will have to camp in front of the city. The flanks and rear of Antioch are protected not only by that wall but also by the sheer height of the three hills. On the flanks and rear stand no gates; only small postern doors served by narrow trackways. It would be impossible to camp there. The ascent itself would be very, very dangerous and easily detected by guar
ds on the wall or the citadel.’ Hugh paused. ‘Think of climbing the cliffs we have recently crossed, then having to scale a wall, whilst we can only camp on a ledge so narrow, only a few men at a time could assemble there.’

  ‘So our attack,’ Imogene asked fearfully, ‘must come from the front?’

  ‘Yes, and again there are great difficulties.’ Theodore pointed to the chart Simeon still held between his fingers. ‘The curtain wall is very thick. The city has many gardens and fruit orchards, whilst a stream runs down from those three hills through a watergate on to the plain.’ He wagged a finger. ‘Remember that! Antioch is furnished with enough water and produce to withstand a siege for a while. Moreover, that wall is so long and so massive, we simply do not have the siege equipment to break, shatter or undermine it.’

  ‘What about gates?’ Beltran asked.

  ‘Five in all,’ Theodore declared, ‘along the great wall facing the plain. All of these are flanked and protected by massive square towers rising sixty feet into the sky. From these towers the gates, as well as all approaches to them, can easily be protected.’ Theodore paused at the groans of his companions.

  ‘We have given the gates names,’ Hugh declared. ‘The furthest east, leading to Aleppo, will be called St Paul’s. The second, moving from east to west, is the Dog Gate, which opens on to the river. The third, where the Orontes skirts the city wall, is the Gate of the Duke. No,’ Hugh fended off a question, ‘this is not as vulnerable as you think, as it is protected by a tangle of marsh. Further along there is a bridge spanning the Orontes; at the end of this stands Bridge Gate. The most western gate leading down to the port of St Simeon and the sea is the St George Gate. What you must realise is that to attack any of these gates we have to cross the Orontes. However, because we don’t have enough men to attack all five at the same time, the Turks can sortie from any other gate left free and trap us against the walls.’