The Waste Land

by Simon Acland

  I remembered what I had seen in the shipyards in Genoa.

  “My Lord, when they build ships they do not nail all the parts together before the launch. The masts and other parts of the superstructure may be fitted in dry dock but then are often taken down again so that the hull can be floated more easily. Perhaps our carpenters could employ the same technique here. What if they build the ram and the tower in sections which can be taken apart, transported, and put together again?”

  Godfrey’s eyes lit up, and he turned to Gaston de Bearn, who was in charge of the carpenters.

  “You heard what Sir Hugh had to say. Could do it like that?”

  The engineer sucked his teeth and thought for a moment. “Won’t be easy. But could be done.”

  “Hugh, Hugh,” Godfrey said with a broad smile that made him look his old self, “Yet again you prove your worth. Make sure you stay close by my side until we have taken the city.”

  Whilst the carpenters hammered away, the spiritual preparations for the assault were not neglected. A great procession was decreed around the city walls to the Mount of Olives, where a Mass was to be said on the very site of Christ’s Ascension into Heaven. I prayed that, thus blessed, the assault on the Holy City could be as merciful as possible. But I had seen enough of a siege’s aftermath at Antioch and heard enough of Marrat to know that brutal massacre and bloody slaughter in the name of the God of Peace would mark Jerusalem’s fall.

  The hot south wind blew incessantly. Grit, dust and sand were everywhere – in the rationed food, in the poor supplies of water, for what had been brought from the ships was soon exhausted, in the tents and scratching inside clothes and mail. The day prescribed for the procession dawned under a cruel clear sky in the second week of July. All the knights and soldiers, save a skeleton guard on the earthworks and around the near-complete siege machines, formed a column behind Godfrey’s gilded cross, and marched barefoot around the ancient walls. With loud psalms and chants we drowned out the jeering of the Saracens from the battlements. But we were unable to ignore the wooden crosses set up there and could only watch helplessly as our enemies desecrated them with spittle, urine and excrement. I wondered what this taunt was meant to achieve – except to incense the Christians so that, when it came, our attack would be more furious than ever.

  At one point the procession had to pass within bowshot of the walls, for the valley at their feet was too narrow. A flurry of Moslem arrows wounded some of the unmailed priests and monks at the head of our procession. Further enraged by this cowardly abuse of our few men of peace, we reached the summit of the holy Mount of Olives and looked down over the towers and spires of the city. Able for the first time to see inside the walls, I wondered where Saint Anne’s house might be. The ancient city looked a confusing maze. In distraction I scarcely listened to the Mass, and only took in the end of the stirring sermon at its conclusion.

  “Worthy soldiers of Christ, you now stand gazing over the Holy City of Jerusalem, the navel of the world. Many moons ago, you vowed not to rest until the faithless Saracens were driven from it. Now, thanks to the grace of God, you stand on its threshold. One last battle, one last assault, and your solemn oaths will be fulfilled. You will be purified; all your sins will be forgiven, and your place in Heaven will be assured. If we fall, we will join all our brothers who have perished along this hard way, only to be installed in glory among the Saints in Heaven.”

  A great ‘Amen’ answered these stirring words, followed by cheers. We all returned to our stations for the final preparations, and a fast was ordered. I concluded with weary cynicism that supplies were again running short.

  Our siege tower was now ready, menacing the Quadrangular Tower at the north-west corner of the city. Its three tiers reached just higher than the main walls. Its wooden structure was clad in hides which could be soaked in water to protect against incendiaries and flaming arrows. Wicker panels were fixed to the front and sides to deflect missiles. Beside it, like some malevolent tortoise, squatted the new battering ram, the head of its huge iron-capped trunk emerging beneath a stout wattle roof. New mangonels were set along the perimeter of the city and were already busy at work throwing rocks, and occasionally the broken bodies of tortured captives, at and over the walls.

  Geldemar Carpenel had not exaggerated the jealous rivalry between the two sections of the army. Most of the contact we had with Raymond’s men now came from his supporters flocking to join us, fed up with their leader’s overweening arrogance. From some of these new recruits we learnt that the Count only retained his force through bribery; even the common soldiers at work filling the ditch near the south wall had to be paid a penny for every three stones they threw into it. Nevertheless, even Tancred had enough sense to acknowledge the need to co-operate enough to press the attack simultaneously at north and south. So a date for the final assault was agreed.

  All day we had rushed feverishly with our final preparations. As night fell, the stratagem I had suggested to Godfrey was put into action. The carpenters swarmed over the great siege tower, breaking it into its component parts, some of which they loaded on to camels, and carried to the north-eastern corner where we actually planned to attack. Complaining teams of soldiers manhandled the rest. The great battering ram received the same laborious treatment. We also moved our three best mangonels. Carpenters raced against time to rebuild the siege tower just outside the range of the enemy catapults. I prayed that they would do their work thoroughly, for my station was to be in the top tier of the tower with Duke Godfrey and Count Eustace.

  As the first light of dawn touched the sky on that fateful day, the mangonels shuddered awake and began to release their payloads, bombarding the top of the curtain wall and the higher ramparts behind. Under this cover the battering ram inched forward, parties of men pulling on ropes fastened to its front, and pushing from behind and at the beams inside.

  At first, the defenders made little response, for our tactics had had the desired effect and this corner of the wall was thinly garrisoned. I could almost feel the panic and consternation among the enemy soldiers opposite, as they rushed hither and thither and called frantically for reinforcements. As more men arrived, the fire raining down upon the battering ram intensified, and the Saracen archers began to take a heavy toll on the unprotected men pulling the ram forward. Soon Godfrey gave the order for them to run back with their ropes to shelter behind the engine, and its forward momentum slowed as the burden fell solely on those pushing underneath the wattles. Nevertheless, watching from a slight rise beside the siege tower, the Duke was well pleased with progress.

  “See Hugh, they have no catapults in this corner. It will take them time to bring them up. They will have to set them on the towers there,” he pointed right and left, “The streets behind must be too narrow and the walls too high for them to throw up missiles from below. For the moment we have the advantage. The ram will be safe until it is right under the walls. Then they will be able to hurl stones and incendiaries straight down on it.”

  All the same I thought the movement of the ram painfully slow. I watched at Godfrey’s side, scarcely able to stand still, fidgeting with tension, willing them forward, listening to the regular shouts of ‘Heave’ as the sergeants urged on their teams. I involuntarily tensed my own muscles at each cry of command. The sun was past its zenith before the ram reached the base of the curtain wall. It had now turned from woodlouse to hedgehog, its rounded back bristling with Saracen arrows. Battle was joined in earnest as the reinforced enemy heaved down boulders, boiling oil and the fearsome incendiary Greek fire. Our mangonels continued to pound the walls, an occasional direct hit on the ramparts raising cheers from our lines and shrieks from the Moslems who were crushed or toppled down. Companies of archers exchanged fire like the barbs of a religious argument, but the defenders enjoyed the advantage high behind their battlements.

  The hammer blows of the ram were now drumming in a regular rhythm against the wall, which shook and vibrated at every blow like a stone t
abor. I counted a score of these great blows, and then another score. Then with a thunderous crash the wall cracked and tumbled. The momentum of the ram was so great that the whole vehicle was hurled forward through the breach. It hurtled across the narrow space beyond the curtain wall and slammed to a rest at the bottom of the main rampart. I cheered with the others, only to fall silent as incendiaries poured down from the battlements and the protective wattle caught fire. The soldiers who had driven the ram forward scattered from inside and scuttled for safety.

  Men had set great flagons of water beside the siege tower in preparation for drenching it against the same threat to which the battering ram now succumbed. Teams now ran these forward, and doused the flames at a heavy cost in dead and wounded. Too late came the realisation that the broken shell of the ram was now wedged in the breach through which the siege tower had to penetrate. It should have been left to burn. Godfrey cursed such stupidity and ordered teams forward to set fire to the ram again. Now, in a bizarre reversal of roles, the defenders poured down water to put out the flames instead of incendiaries to set them ablaze. At last, though, the bones of the ram caught irresistibly, and flared away through the dusk. Then Godfrey gave the order to withdraw out of bowshot, so that our men could eat, drink and rest, and gather their shredded strength for the final assault on the morrow.

  Soon after dark, Godfrey received humbled messengers from Count Raymond. The fight to the south of the city had not gone well. The Saracens were well-prepared, for they knew exactly where the Provençal attack would land, and they had been able to concentrate their mangonels and heavy bows at that point. So as the southern siege tower approached, they had subjected it to a murderous crossfire. They set alight wooden nail-studded mallets, covered in tarry pitch, and threw them against the sides of the tower, where they stuck and burned and could not be put out by water. In lucky desperation a Provençal sprayed one in vinegary wine and discovered that this was an effective antidote. Godfrey thanked the messengers for this intelligence and immediately gave orders for skins full of vinegar to be stashed at the top of our tower.

  “We’d have faced the same stern resistance if we had attacked where we were expected,” said Godfrey with satisfaction. “So far, Hugh, the plan you seeded has worked but they will be readier for us tomorrow and we must be at our best. I will turn in.”

  I did not share Godfrey’s sang-froid, and all my attempts to sleep were in vain. I soon gave up and instead paced about the lines, listening to the excited murmurings of the troops. Bursts of exuberant and drunken song punctuated the groans of the wounded and dying. Tired of such callousness, I walked into the darkness away from the camp, where occasionally the eerie churring of a nightjar sounded above the chorus of cicadas. Moving towards these peaceful noises, away from the damaged walls and the smell of smoke, death and charred flesh, I breathed the dry odour of the land, so different to the moist scents of my home. Memories of those smells carried me back to the beginning of my journey just three years before. With bitter nostalgia I longed for the absolute certainties of my boyhood. At Cluny I had known right from wrong. Now I had fulfilled my childhood ambition to see Jerusalem. But on the next day I would join in a violent battle, fight, maim and kill in order to achieve my own end. How was that right? In my mind’s eye I saw Abbot Hugh, quizzical sorrow in his expression, and I knew the answer. Angrily, I shut the Abbot out and replaced him with an image of Blanche, picturing her smile lighting up at my return and the melancholy chasing from her blue eyes.

  That happy thought was jerked from my mind by a sudden shadowy movement, half seen, half felt behind me. The hairs prickled on the back of my neck but before I could react, a firm hand was over my mouth and a sharp blade at my throat. A familiar voice whispered in the Persian tongue. It was Mohammed.

  “Greetings, Hugh. I seized you because I did not want you to cry out and give the alarm before you knew who I was. Now I am going to loose you; just keep quiet. You will gain no benefit from betraying me.

  “You see, my Christian friend, we are well informed. I knew of your return from a da’i watching in Jaffa. We have comrades in all the ports along the coast. Word reached me in Damascus, but this is the first chance I have had of speaking with you. What did you find on your journey to the West?”

  “How is my Blanche?” I countered, scanning Mohammed’s face for news, but the darkness foiled me.

  “I haven’t been at Alamut for many months,” he replied, “My father has kept me busily employed elsewhere. I returned there briefly after our last encounter at Antioch, and then I saw her in good health.”

  “And looking forward to my return? Did you give her my message?” I imagined sympathy gleaming from his eyes in the dark.

  “I gave her your message as best I could, my friend,” he replied, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “But come, to business, where is the book?”

  Wearily I gave a brief account of my trip back to Cluny and my frustrating discovery that the Abbot had possessed one copy of the book but destroyed it. I told of my elation at my rediscovery of the second papyrus, and my unravelling of its riddle.

  “Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, Jerusalem will fall. I will find the ‘House of Mary’s Mother’. Then the book will be mine. As soon as I have it, I will ride north to Alamut.”

  I filled my words with outward confidence but I shrivelled inwardly at the enormity of the challenge.

  “As ever, I will be watching. Ensha’allah, God willing, you will be successful. God be with you.”

  As he melted away back into the darkness he touched his forehead with his fingers. I returned his salute.

  I walked back to the Duke’s tent in the dark hour before dawn. The sliver of reassurance provided by Mohammed’s news of Blanche was negated by the apprehension of battle. Godfrey was dressed and ready. He gave me a kindly greeting.

  “So you could not sleep, Hugh? When I was your age I was the same. I too would spend a sleepless night before a fight. Now…well.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We old men need our rest.”

  He passed me an earthenware flagon. “Here, have a swig of this. It’ll warm you up in the cool morning air.”

  I poured a large shot of the strong wine down my throat. I coughed and spluttered and Godfrey laughed. It certainly helped to fill the hollow feeling in my stomach. I passed the bottle back, and the Duke took a deep draught.

  “Time to take our positions.”

  Briskly I followed him towards the dark looming mass of the tower. Inside it was foetid with the smell of nervous bodies. The men whose task was to push the tower forward were already there in position. I fumbled in the dark for the ladder. I clambered up and emerged into the freshness of the open air at the top. A quiet chorus of greeting sounded from the shadowy figures already gathered behind the wooden chest-high ramparts. In the centre stood the gold cross, fixed there at Godfrey’s command as a proud standard. Dawn stained the eastern sky above the Mount of Olives. I could soon make out the portly shape of Eustace and the silhouettes of the other knights beside him. Then I could see their paraphernalia of war – the crossbows to be used in the approach, the long spears that would come into play as the tower neared the battlements, the grappling irons, the skins of water. I found myself hoping that there was some wine there too.

  “Did you have the vinegar brought up?” asked Godfrey of one of his lieutenants, who answered briskly in the affirmative. “And have the scouts checked that the battering ram is burnt to ash? Are we sure that nothing blocks our passage through the curtain wall?”

  Again the affirmative reply.

  “Do we know how many mangonels they’ve been able to move to this sector? We’ll be at most risk when we are further away. If we can get in under their range we’ll be as good as home and dry.”

  The pale drawn faces now emerging in the thin dawn light looked less sure. I fingered my crossbow nervously, and checked that my helmet sat snugly on my head over my mail hood.

  “There’s enough light to make out any obs
tacles now. Let’s move,” commanded Godfrey.

  Orders were passed down through the guts of the great tower. Then, with a jerk, we lurched forward. Like the battering ram which had prepared its way, the tower was furnished with ropes for pulling it forward until it came closer to the walls and the barrage pouring down became too much for the men in front. Then the task of pushing the tower on would fall solely upon those sheltering inside and behind the structure. The ground up to the walls was relatively flat, but the man-sized wooden wheels on which the tower rolled still bumped up and down so that the top swayed alarmingly from side to side. I had to grasp the ramparts in order to stand upright.

  Behind, the mangonels began their covering fire. Beside, detachments of archers moved cautiously forward, as if to emphasise that the tower’s fastest speed was less than their slowest walking pace. If the enemy had brought up catapults of their own to protect the breach in the curtain wall and to anticipate the attack, the lumbering tower would provide them with an easy target.

  As if echoing my thought, a great rock crashed to the ground half a dozen paces to the right. I instinctively ducked my head. It was now light enough to make out that mangonels were indeed mounted in front on each tower beside the breach. The Moslems had been busy through the night. ‘Oh my God,’ I thought. Our tower was now perhaps one hundred paces from the walls and they began to get the range. One rock fell amongst the men hauling us forward. I peered over the edge and saw four crushed, others scattered. More ran up to take their place. Then the first projectile hit the tower with a dreadful thud, swaying it so that I feared it would topple. But the wattle screens did their job and absorbed the shock. We now came under a constant and ferocious barrage of arrows as the archers lining the battlements took aim. Sheltering as best I could behind the wall that surrounded the platform, I returned fire with my crossbow but with the movement of the tower it was hard to aim steadily and my quarrels flew well wide of their mark.