The Waste Land

by Simon Acland

  However, I soon discovered the insincerity of these gifts, and the Emperor’s real feelings towards us, his supposed allies, when I tried to enter Nicaea to find news of Blanche. All the gates into the city bar one were closed to us. Even then the imperial guards had orders to admit no more than ten men at once. Maybe, given what I later saw, they were right to fear the uncontrollable behaviour of a larger group, but their price was a rise in anti-Byzantine feeling. Most of my comrades lacked the patience to wait their turn at the gate. Their hope for a bit of fun in the city was less urgent than my need to find news of Blanche. So most of them returned grumbling to camp. Nevertheless, I had to wait the best part of a day for my turn. When at last I was allowed through, I had only three hours before the curfew. Search and question as I might, I could find no trace of any of Peter the Hermit’s followers. I was forced to accept that any who might have been captured had not been taken to Nicaea. I tried hard not to lose faith but inside I feared more and more that I would never see Blanche again. In bitterness and sorrow I assisted the preparations for the march south, all the while trying to regain purpose from the thought that I would soon be moving on towards the Holy City.

  After some discussion it was agreed that the army would have to divide into two. Tatikios had advised that each division should have to march at least a day apart so that the supply of water along the way in the small streams would be adequate. Bohemond, now joined by his flame-haired nephew Tancred, seemed determined to have the honour of leading our advance.

  “You know what they say about redheads, Hugh!” Godfrey exclaimed to me with glee. “Just as hot-headed inside as out. I’m sure Tancred has worked on his uncle. That’s why he insisted on taking the vanguard. He can’t be a day older than you. His inexperience shows. He is welcome to it. The Sultan is still out there somewhere. Any blow he strikes will fall first on the Normans. And they will have the pleasure of old gold nose’s company. Tatikios may claim to be a useful guide but we know what he is really about. He just wants to poke his prosthesis into our affairs for the Emperor’s intelligence.”

  I could not share Godfrey’s good spirits and rode morose and subdued nearby. Behind us came those Provençals under Count Raymond and Bishop Adhemar who were fit enough to travel after their fierce encounter with Sultan Kilij Arslan outside Nicaea. We moved at a stately pace, not wanting to tire our warhorses, the camp followers and baggage sandwiched between bodies of fighting men. I found my mail and helmet uncomfortable under the hammering sun which was beginning to bake the countryside into shades of brown.

  Three hours after sunrise on the fourth day, I saw a cloud of dust ahead. Two riders emerged from it, galloping back down the path trodden by the forward army the day before. They pulled their panting horses to an abrupt halt and gasped out their news to Godfrey.

  “My Lord Duke, help us. Hurry. We are under attack. The Sultan’s army came over the hill at our camp in the plain of Dorylaeum just after sunrise. They took us by surprise. There are thousands of the devils. By now we will be encircled. Lord Bohemond urges you to come to his aid as fast as you can. He will not be able to hold out for long.”

  Godfrey looked at me with a grim smile of satisfaction that he had been right. Then he sprang into action, sending messengers back to Raymond and Adhemar to bring their troops forward past the camp followers. Orders were passed among his knights to ready themselves to ride into battle.

  “Don’t look so worried, Hugh. Stay close to me with the rest of my bodyguard. You will be fine. When we charge we’ll be in the middle, three ranks back from the front. You won’t have to do anything. You’ll just be carried forward by the momentum. You’ll see.”

  I felt ashamed that I had allowed my fright to show and I composed myself. But I could not conceal my nervous energy from my horse beneath, which shied and reared so that I was grateful for the high-backed saddle which held me in place.

  Then the trumpets blew. In response spurs goaded horses forward. Pennants flew out in the wind behind us, revealing the orange cross of Lorraine and the three balls of Boulogne. As we galloped, my mouth dried. I told myself that it was from heat, dust and exertion, not fear. At last we crested the hills that looked down over Dorylaeum and pulled our horses to a halt. In the plain below a desperate scene played out. Bohemond’s soldiers and knights, all on foot, had formed a wide circle three or four deep around a green patch of grass that contained a spring. In some places they had used baggage carts to form crude barricades. In the middle huddled the horses and livestock, neighing and lowing plaintively, with the stores and the non-combatants. Some of the women and children passed to and fro carrying water to the thirsty fighters. All around the rim of this circle, the Sultan’s men wheeled in their thousands on swift horses, screaming like demons, one wave firing arrows, then retiring to be replaced by the next, again and again, so that a constant downpour of deadly missiles rained upon the defenders. The riders threw up clouds of orange dust, through which the sunlight glittered on swords, lances and armour. Many of the Normans returned crossbow fire, to some effect judging from the Turkish men and horses lying dead or wounded on the ground. But I could see that the defenders’ casualties were far worse. Battle cries rang out – “Bohemond” – “Tancred” – “Deus le volt” – “the Holy Cross” – amidst the guttural alien shouts of the Turks.

  Hurriedly, my training overcoming my nerves, I took my place near Godfrey in the battle order. At his signal, in two groups, tightly packed knee to knee, lances at the ready, each some fifty abreast and three times fifty deep, our force poured down the shallow slope. With the noise of thunder we picked up speed to a full gallop. As Godfrey had said, squeezed together with the other knights I was carried forward and could not have turned from side to side had I wanted to. Jammed in my saddle I felt a rising panic-infused thrill. The dust, the speed, and the closely bunched horses made it hard to catch breath. I thought momentarily what would happen if my horse stumbled and fell. With grim instinct I gripped my saddle still more tightly with my knees and pressed down harder on my stirrups. I felt war cries – “Bouillon and Boulogne – the Cross, the Cross” – erupting from my throat and joining a deafening roar from the others as the furious flood tide of our charge poured down the slope into the plain.

  We took the Sultan’s horsemen by complete surprise – they must have thought that they had surrounded the whole of the Crusader army. Our charge punched into their side. The ground quaked under the impact as our momentum ploughed us deep into the enemy’s ranks, knocking over horses and riders which were then trampled under the heavy hooves of our destriers. Wedged between comrades on either side, I had no time, no room to use lance or sword. More lightly armed, and mounted on smaller, swifter horses, the Turks span away, guiding their mounts with their knees and turning in their saddles to fire back. Their light arrows made little impact on our mail but some horses fell, to be trampled in turn, for there was no time or space to avoid riding over our own.

  A great cheer rose from the Normans and French as we newcomers joined them and turned together to face the enemy line. Now we became an easier target for the Turkish arrows. The horse archers’ manoeuvrability made it hard to come to grips with them. More of our horses went down. I muttered thanks to God not to be in the front rank and then was immediately ashamed of my fear. As if in admonition, a black feathered dart thumped my shoulder with a bruising blow and hung there by its barb in my mail. I was startled and shocked but realised it had scarcely penetrated my flesh. It vexed me, flapping up and down there with the movement of my mount. I saw that some others around suffered the same irritation, like me with no hands free to tear the missile away. The enemy started to waver as Bohemond’s knights remounted and began to join us in the charge. The Saracens turned to flight. Excited cheers rang around me. Then I saw the reason; the group of Provençals led by Bishop Adhemar had come over the hills by a different route and taken the enemy in the rear. Caught a second time by surprise and doubtless fearful of being trapped between two
attacks, the Turks scattered. Godfrey waved his revitalised force forward in hot pursuit, urging them to make short work of enemy stragglers. He beckoned me with his bodyguard towards Bohemond’s post. By mid-afternoon the victory was won.

  But it came at a heavy cost. Over the next three days we buried more than four thousand of our comrades. Most of these were from Bohemond and Tancred’s contingent, which had lost at least a fifth of its strength, helpless victims of the furious hail of arrows poured down by the Turkish horse archers. In places the ground was so stuck with darts that it looked like a sinister field of black corn. Some dead horses had so many arrows in them that they resembled giant hedgehogs or porcupines. And the barbs made them harder to butcher for the feast after the victory. If knights had been killed or injured, it was only when their horses had been brought down, hurting them in the fall, and leaving them to be crushed on the ground by their own comrades. I remembered how Peter the Hermit had described Walter Sans Avoir’s end. The men-at-arms, many dressed in leather jerkins rather than iron or steel, had suffered far worse from arrow wounds than the fully mailed mounted knights. But even more of the dead were camp followers, soft targets unprotected by mail or armour. When I saw the damage done to them I thought of Blanche and turned away.

  Throbbing emptiness was my main emotion in the aftermath of the battle. The exhilaration of the charge was followed by numb exhaustion. The groaning agonies of the wounded and the dying released in me a tired feeling of relief at being unhurt. My pride at having taken part in the great charge down the hill was tempered by frustration that I had not blooded my own sword or lance, and that packed into the middle of the charge I had been unable to distinguish myself. But I also felt relief that I had not had to kill a fellow human being face to face. Unjustified vainglory swelled my chest when I joined in the great Mass of celebration and thanksgiving led by Bishop Adhemar the morning after the battle, the Te Deum echoing forth from thousands of throats, reminding me that I had fought in the name of God and had been given victory by His grace.

  But confusion tumbled after that sensation. My monkish upbringing should have made me glory in the triumph of Christ. But I wondered if perhaps it had also made me too sensitive to the horrors after battle. Few of my comrades seemed to pay attention to the ghastly wounds that their neighbours had suffered, the severed limbs, the disfigured faces. Unaffected, the soldiers set to with gusto, bloodying themselves further as they dismembered the dead horses for their next meal. They did not seem to mind the vultures which soared from leagues away, spiralling down on black-fingered wings to settle on any dead body, human or animal, where they could find a safe space. Then they would tear into the exposed flesh with their hooked beaks, burrowing their bald white heads deep into the innards until they were painted grotesquely red down to the neck. Boldly they fought each other for the choicest pieces of carrion, squawking harshly, and were scared away only if a man came within striking distance. Then they flew up in a flock to settle down on the next corpse a little further off. With a shudder I remembered the damage done by the ravens and the crows to the sightless dead bodies of my father and brothers all those years before; but they were no match for these vultures. I shot one or two with my crossbow until Godfrey laughed and told me not to waste quarrels.

  And I watched with disquiet as soldiers greedily stripped the corpses of Moslem foe and Christian friend alike in the selfish search for better equipment. Their squabbles with each other over the choicest bit of mail or weaponry were little different to the vultures’ fights over the tastiest piece of lung or liver. Once stripped of useful accoutrements, the Christian dead were unceremoniously buried. The Moslem corpses were just heaped aside. Within two days in the hot Turkish sun, the choking stench of rotting bodies became unbearable. They attracted cloud upon cloud of iridescent blue-black and black-green flies. The army moved on south to camp away from the smell and the memories.

  Godfrey seemed oblivious to this misery. His high spirits were boosted by the extreme booty from the battle. What the common soldiers had been able to pilfer from the rotting, scavenger-ravaged corpses were poor pickings compared to the treasures found in the Turkish camp over the crest of the hill from which the attack had fallen on the Norman vanguard. Then I was ignorant of the habits of the Seljuk people, but from the contents of their Sultan’s camp it was clear that this was a race that carried along its most precious possessions wherever it went. It seemed that the Sultan even carried his treasury along with him, for in his tent we discovered stout wooden chests full of coins minted in gold and silver. Some of these were Byzantine, bearing the Greek markings familiar already from the Emperor’s gifts; others were dinars bearing the Turks’ own looping script. I was eager to learn this language, and in return for promises of merciful treatment I sought lessons from an educated prisoner, and found out that the marking on these gold coins which now lined Christian pockets were verses from the Koran, the Moslem holy book.

  Supplies near Dorylaeum were scarce, especially of water, for many of the streams and springs were now clogged and poisoned by rotting corpses or trampled into mud by the horses. Coupled with the smell, the flies, the vultures, and the fear of plague, this forced the decision to move on rapidly. But within days I remembered that foetid field of battle as a paradise on earth; for now began far the worst suffering that I had yet undergone.

  SAINT LAZARUS’ COLLEGE

  The Chaplain came into the Senior Common Room wearing a more serious expression on his solemn face than usual.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. There has been an accident. The Porter’s just taken a call to say that our friend crashed his Maserati on the way back to London. Apparently he just ploughed straight across a roundabout without stopping. No, I don’t know how badly he is hurt. They cut him out of the wreckage and took him off to hospital so I assume that he was alive at that point at least.”

  Thunder clouds gathered across the Master’s brow.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. What the hell are we going to do now? I’ll see what I can find out. Don’t wait for me; I’ll have some food brought to my rooms later.”

  He stalked out.

  “What rotten luck. Do you remember him telling us all that he was going to have to get rid of his driver? He was obviously out of practice,” said the Classics Fellow.

  “Terrible news. Terrible.” His eyes full of alarm behind his thick glasses, the Modern Languages Tutor tried to inject as much compassion into his voice as possible. He must tell the Steward about the “rats” in his room before any unfortunate conclusions about his murderous intentions could be drawn.

  “He was such a nice chap, too,” added the Professor of English. “I had really got to like him. He was so receptive to the suggestions I made. Fortunately we talked a lot about the rest of the book, so I will definitely be able to finish it off.”

  “Come, come,” said the History Don, as always a stickler for facts, “let’s not leap to conclusions. The poor fellow isn’t dead yet.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHERE THE SUN BEATS

  I was assailed by doubts during that hellish journey. Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps after all my God was no less cruel than his servants. Then I blamed myself for bringing suffering down on my comrades with such wicked thoughts, and prayed for the return of my untroubled beliefs. But instead my doubts redoubled, for I could still not see why those around me should be punished so bitterly just for my heretical wavering. In more lucid moments during my ordeal I began to fear that the false motives of my leaders and the brutality of their men were to blame for turning God’s face away from us and leaving us to the mercy of Satan.

  Now it was high summer. How much better it would have been to go south in the winter. As our advance moved onwards, the landscape became barer, browner, rougher. To our right rose a range of mountains, shallow at first and then steepening, their grey upper slopes deeply scarred by long dead streams, the lower parts dotted with scrubby thorn bushes. To the left stretched a desert wast
eland as far as the eye could see. It was unvarying, unbroken, save by occasional salt pans where perhaps there had once been water. Water! Supplies ran out within days and then our march became desperate. Tatikios had promised water along the side of the road in storage tanks built for travellers by earlier Byzantine Emperors, but in the long years of Turkish occupation these had been allowed to fall into disrepair. All we met were empty cisterns and exhausted wells. Perhaps some had been deliberately destroyed by the fleeing enemy; certainly the few small villages through which we passed had suffered that fate and were ruined and empty. Across the desert in the direction of the rising sun, in cruel mockery, shimmered occasional lakes and limpid pools, but I quickly learned that these were just visions, mirages. From time to time thirst-maddened men would crack and run towards them, burning their last reserves of energy before collapsing flat and motionless on the ground.

  I could almost accept that it was just for the sinful soldiers of God to suffer, as His Son had suffered and died for us. The shreds of my faith helped me through my own misery, but I witnessed innocents suffering so hellishly that I could not understand. At first, with the rest of Godfrey’s close retinue, I was better off than many, and felt almost guilty for it, for the Duke had the foresight to fill a covered wagon with barrels of water for our use. We were rationed to two small cups a day but this was relative largesse. More was set aside for our horses. On the third day, I heard a pregnant camp follower screaming in labour by the side of the road as the tattered army staggered heedlessly by. I ran to fill a cup from the water wagon and took it to her. She gulped it down and as if in response to the drink immediately gave still birth to a shrivelled desiccated creature that might have come from hell itself. She pulled back down her skirts, and struggled back to her feet, leaving the diabolical object where it lay. She staggered on for a few more paces before collapsing herself and lying still.