Prince of Legend

by Jack Ludlow

  One preacher, by the name of Stephen, swore that he had seen a vision of Christ and the Virgin Mary, with an admonishment that the Crusaders should purify their souls by a five-day fast, and his claim was backed up by some of the attendant clerics, Adémar not amongst them. That might have scotched the whole thing but the personal confessor of the highly credulous Raymond of Toulouse chose to believe Stephen and that was enough for his claims to be taken as serious.

  Stephen added to his certainties by claiming the appearance of a bright and streaking light in the sky, larger than those that normally filled the summer nights of Syria, was the body of Christ himself come to underline his message of victory and absolution. The meteor came down in a flaming ball of increasingly crimson fire, to crash into the distant mountains, which heartened the defence and, judging by the wailing from without the walls, unnerved the equally superstitious Turks.

  If the believers thought to wake to find their enemies gone, they were sorely disappointed; in truth it was worse, for they were finally in the process of undertaking the dispositions that had been anticipated when they first arrived.

  ‘Kerbogha does not, it seems, believe in divine portents.’

  Bohemund was watching the massed ranks of the approaching host, again Kerbogha’s best Turkish troops, deploy for the first time outside the western and northern sections of the defence. Like the Crusaders they targeted the Bridge and St Paul’s Gates, really the only segments they could get to and hope to be effective, thousands of men with siege ladders and the clear intention to press home an assault. Aware that his uncle was more cynical of visions than he, Tancred crossed himself before replying.

  ‘It matters if his men do.’

  The response was harsh. ‘Look hard at them, Tancred, and tell me if you see a fear that divine fire is about to descend upon them?’

  ‘As long as our people are of good heart, as long as we believe.’

  Bohemund, from his vantage point outside the citadel, looked along the walls, the rear parapet in plain view, noting how thinly they were defended. That would alter as the attack was pressed home, men would coalesce at the points of maximum danger and if they were not too numerous they should prevail. If there were a great many he would have to thin his own ranks to provide support and hope that having decided to change his tactics Kerbogha did not launch a simultaneous assault to those of the proceeding days.

  ‘Place less faith in visions and more in your sword arm, nephew.’

  ‘You pray to God before every fight, I have heard you!’

  ‘I pray that should I fall my soul will gain entry to heaven, not that Christ in person should come to my aid in battle.’

  ‘Even when, as now, we need such a divine intervention?’

  ‘What we need is the army of Alexius to press upon Kerbogha’s rear.’

  ‘Perhaps that is the meaning of the vision?’

  ‘Citadel gates are opening,’ came the call.

  This killed off Bohemund’s reply, which would have been that the need for divine portents did not bring about compliance; if Alexius was even on the way there was no proof of it, and besides, there was no time to speculate on such matters. What he had feared, an attack in many places at once, was about to happen.

  ‘We are in for a hard day, Tancred. You take what comfort you need from what you believe and allow me to take my own.’

  That assessment turned out to be an understatement: when dusk fell no one, certainly not Bohemund, could have told a listener how they had survived such a relentless assault, lasting as it did throughout the daylight hours. Everywhere the Crusaders fought they had lost ground and been obliged to recover it. Sections of the western wall had been taken by the enemy, including the barbican above the Bridge Gate, and in the very short breaks in his own action Bohemund had been able to see the Provençal knights take it back again, which, if he did not admire their leader, laid low and too ill he claimed to take part, did not in any way diminish respect for his men.

  Godfrey de Bouillon struggled just as hard at the St Paul’s Gate, where Kerbogha had concentrated his main strength. There, only the narrowness of the area of assault – he was constrained between the River Orontes and the steep slope of Mount Staurin – held him in check, but it was a close run as several times he got substantial bodies of fighting men onto the parapet, where they engaged hand-to-hand with the Lotharingians in a fight that came down to knives, clubs and sometimes nothing but fists or gouging.

  Matters were just as desperate outside the citadel and they turned critical when the Turks came close to taking one of the towers along the eastern wall, which would have outflanked the Apulians and rendered their drystone edifice untenable, their efforts scotched single-handedly by one knight who held his ground against stupendous odds until reinforced. Dusk fell on a besieged city full of spent men but they had held and that was all that mattered, even if they knew the morning would bring a renewal of the same.

  Yet it did not come and some hoped that because Kerbogha had suffered great loss in his assault he was weakening in his resolve, a hope that was not long in being dashed as wiser heads prevailed. The Atabeg of Mosul knew very well the state of the besieged Crusaders; he had tested them as good sense dictated he must and then made a tactical judgement. Over the next days it became obvious he had decided that to throw bodies at the walls to seek to overcome them was a waste: time and hunger would do for him that which main force would not.

  To sit in passive acceptance was neither natural nor wise and Godfrey of Bouillon was most determined to act; two days later, just before dawn, he led five hundred knights out of the St Paul’s Gate to attack the Turkish encampment, first overcoming and slaughtering the small body Kerbogha had kept close to the walls. Emboldened by that and the passion such success aroused in his men, he carried on towards the main camp only to discover that his enemy had taken precautions against just such a sortie. Godfrey and his men walked into a trap and it was only sheer bloody-mindedness that allowed a good half of them to escape, over two hundred left behind as dead, which imposed a salutary lesson to all.

  ‘It is madness to exit from any of the gates and in numbers,’ Tancred insisted when his uncle related the discussion he had just engaged in at the council. ‘Better to go out in small groups and spread terror.’

  ‘Do you intend to attempt that?’ Bohemund enquired, as he considered the notion.

  ‘If you will permit it, Uncle.’

  ‘I have noticed you often call me that when you want something.’

  ‘I mean it as a mark of respect,’ Tancred protested, until he realised Bohemund was smiling.

  ‘You second me in command of our Apulians, nephew, and I know you chafe at the restraint.’

  ‘I do not deny it. When I was sent away on my own and took Mamistra as my fief, I confess I took pleasure in not having anyone to question my decisions.’

  That caused Bohemund’s face to cloud over; it was during that expedition, to clear the passes on the shortest route to Antioch, that, despite Tancred’s successes, his uncle had lost a hundred and fifty lances to a massacre in which Baldwin of Boulogne might be implicated. Yet he did not dwell on it for long.

  Baldwin was in far-off Edessa and nothing could be done about him or his deeds now. Nor did he think on the reason such an expedition had been sent out: those passes known to now be free of defence would allow the Byzantines to use them as a fast route to join with the Crusade outside Antioch. That meant if Alexius was coming he should be here by now.

  ‘I would want you to feel free to act on your own.’ Seeing the doubt that induced, Bohemund added, ‘Have I not said many times that the day will come when you will need to seek your own future?’

  Now it was Tancred’s turn to be amused and that came with a grin and a sweeping glance at the walls of Antioch. ‘A proposition hard to realise now.’

  ‘Act as you see fit, nephew, and that is a command.’

  Watching him depart as he went to make his arrangements, Bohemund
could allow himself to feel a sense of contentment; his sister’s boy had been with him for so many years he was more like a son than a nephew, though there was no thought to dispute the designation with Tancred’s father, a Lombard who had been a faithful servant and fighting knight to his own sire.

  Such musings turned almost without effort to the image of Robert, the mighty Duke of Apulia, known throughout Christendom as the Guiscard, which meant cunning to those who admired his guile and the very reverse, more than weasel-like, to the many who hated and feared him. Even the latter could not doubt his abilities, which were the stuff of legend and that only marginally outshone those of his elder siblings.

  Robert de Hauteville came from a family of twelve brothers and two sisters, the offspring of his nephew’s namesake, who had, with two wives, sired a remarkable brood on what was a small demesne in the north-western part of Normandy known as the Contentin. Old Tancred, now long dead, had been a doughty soldier himself and, if far from wealthy, had raised his sons, all tall and as stoutly formed as their giant of a father, equipping them to be that too.

  Tancred the Elder had hoped this would be in the service of the then ruler of Normandy, only to find that, having wed as his first bride the illegitimate daughter of Richard, the reigning Duke’s father, such a connection worked not for but against his heirs. Duke Robert the First, known as ‘the devil’ for the suspicion that he had murdered his brother, was a man who lacked a legitimate heir of his own.

  His only son, William, at one time called the Bastard of Falaise, now known to Christendom as the Conqueror, had been sired out of wedlock, and his father had quite obviously feared a de Hauteville bloodline of puissant fighters and outstanding physical presence, who might claim precedence by a superior bloodline.

  To constrain them as well as any perceived ambitions for the dukedom he had refused them service as close knights to his body and thus any hope of moving from relative poverty to a position of some wealth and possible influence.

  With all chance of advancement gone – ducal disfavour made that unattainable across the whole of Normandy – the two most senior of Tancred’s sons, William and Drogo, had set out for Italy to make their way as mercenaries with nothing but their swords, lances and their fighting prowess, following in the wake of many who had departed Normandy before them.

  In the eldest son, William, the world had discovered not only a fighter who well deserved the soubriquet ‘Iron Arm’, but also a soldier with a quite remarkable tactical brain and no shortage of guile when it came to dealing with the one-time ruling Lombards of Apulia, his fellow Norman freebooters who fought their battles, as well as the Byzantines who now lorded it over them.

  William had set the family on its way in Southern Italy, sidestepping his mercenary confrères as well as the slippery Lombards, trouncing the Byzantines in numerous battles, being followed in turn by Drogo and Humphrey, the brothers next in age. Humphrey had humbled the papacy as well as their Byzantines allies at the Battle of Civitate to consolidate and extend the family power in South Italy.

  Succession by maturity had been set aside when Humphrey died and Bohemund’s father had leapt over, by acclamation, two of the other brothers to assume the leadership of the family and the forces they had created. In a life of constant warfare, devious manoeuvring and greed for possessions the Guiscard had made Apulia secure by his conquest of the coastal cities of Brindisi, Bari and Otranto.

  Far from content and aided by the youngest of his brothers, Roger, he next conquered Calabria, then led an expedition across the Straits of Messina to take control of Sicily from the Saracens. Robert de Hauteville, like William Iron Arm, had risen from penury to become, by papal investiture, the Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily as well as the most famous soldier in Christendom.

  No such ruminations were possible for Bohemund without a reflection on how he had been robbed of his inheritance. For reasons of political necessity, though it was disguised as being required by the sin of consanguinity, Robert had, with the connivance of a well-bribed pope, put aside his first wife to marry Sichelgaita, a Lombard princess and sister of Prince Gisulf of Salerno. She had produced two sons as well as several daughters, the eldest of whom had, through the manoeuvring of his formidable mother, inherited all the ducal titles.

  Bohemund immediately went to war with his half-brother Roger, known as Borsa, and he would have taken what he saw to be rightfully his if Borsa’s namesake uncle, who held the title of Great Count of Sicily and was every bit a match as a soldier for any of his siblings, had not stepped in to prevent it. If Roger of Sicily had also ensured Borsa likewise never enjoyed the whip hand it was small compensation; the Great Count held them in balance and Bohemund suspected he did so, not as he claimed for any vow he had made to his elder brother, but for some long-term aim of his own.

  Many, Bohemund knew, suspected he had come on Crusade to repair that paternal fault, to gain in Asia Minor what he had been denied in Italy, and if pushed, he would have been hard-pressed to tell if that were true or false. Certainly he chafed to be denied his titles but more he had come here to get away from the endless need to fight with and sometimes serve under his half-sibling, this to preserve intact the whole inheritance – Borsa was a weak creature, a poor general and a man who placed more credence in priests than common sense, which made just being in his presence a trial.

  Perhaps a more telling truth was that Bohemund was like most of his race – his mother had been a full-blood Norman – a man who lived to fight and conquer, made restless by the lack of it. From that he might accrue the rewards that his bloodline indicated to him he deserved, but what would come of this adventure, as he had told Tancred many times, he did not know, for the future was to him, as to all men, a mystery.

  Yet chance was ever on the wing and it might be that here in Syria he might find that which he sought, an undisputed destiny and a fame all of his own to match or even surpass his famous sire.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The men Tancred led, a dozen in number, let themselves down rope ladders in Stygian darkness onto the steep part of the slopes of Mount Staurin, those being hauled out of sight as soon as they were on the ground. Lightly clad, eschewing mail, they moved with slow deliberation downhill towards the fires of the forward Turkish camp, re-established after Godfrey of Bouillon’s debacle.

  There was no attempt to kill on the scale the Lotharingians had attempted; the aim was to spread alarm. So the party stayed well clear of the men on guard and out of the arc of those flickering flames that stood central to the camp, choosing a tent where the sounds of deep slumber were obvious through the canvas.

  The killing was silent, even to the point of the removal of the heads and, the deed done, they retired and called for their ladders to be relowered so they could re-enter the city. The whole affair had not lasted less than three glasses of sand and the half a dozen Turkish heads sat on Bohemund’s table were a welcome sight. Tancred’s enthusiasm would have been infectious to a less experienced soldier; for all that, his uncle made his pleasure more obvious than any reservations.

  ‘This way we spread terror. Let our enemies wake up each morning, whatever camp they occupy, to find six or more of their number decapitated and with no knowledge of how it had occurred. If we cannot fight them in open battle let us make slumber a risk.’

  ‘You have done well, Tancred, but have a care if you attempt to repeat this. What works once will not always allow for a second attempt.’

  ‘I am not fool enough to strike twice in the same place, Uncle.’

  ‘Wise,’ Bohemund responded, though he looked down to avoid Tancred’s eye. How could he say to his young and passionate nephew that at this rate of attrition he would still be killing Turks at the coming of the second millennium? ‘But next time leave the heads and bring back their victuals, which is a more pressing need.’

  There was food, if not in abundance, but it was in the hands of those who wished to profit from ownership, and not just smugglers. The citizens
of Antioch, or at least a good body of them, were as shrewd and rapacious as folk anywhere, sharpened by having already gone through one siege.

  They knew how to hide what they had so it could not be stolen or sequestered by whoever held the city at a time of siege – livestock was kept in straw-lined cellars to avoid their bleating and crowing being overheard, wheat was stored in the rafters until desperation made the prices that could be extracted from the tired and famished fighting men rise to the right level.

  Any Crusader who had managed to come upon and keep hold of some coin in the march from Nicaea was obliged to part with it now and for very little in return. Knights started by drinking the blood of their horses for sustenance, then when they became too weak to be of use in battle they killed them and consumed their carcasses, ignoring the effect on the loss of the ability to fight.

  A dead oxen caused high excitement as the owner sought to sell it bit by bit, while the sight of a scrawny and ill-fed chicken being auctioned was enough to start a near riot so that the successful bidder was obliged to make a fast escape to keep what he had bought. Every member of the Council of Princes ate better, for they had the funds to do so, but they were also distributing a dole to their men, small payments that should have been enough to buy food, yet seemed to purchase less and less each day.

  Toulouse was the wealthiest of the magnates, for fertile Provence, a rich region even before the Romans arrived, had for years made his coffers groan with gold and the silver coins still known by the Roman name of solidi.

  If he used it to provide sustenance to his Provençal lances, he was also employing it to suborn men from the other contingents – Franks, Apulians, Normans and Lotharingians – urging them to desert to his banner so as to strengthen his hand in the council, sure his increasing numbers would eventually hold sway on any decisions made.

  Bohemund worked hard to hold his men to him; he had managed to get some of his revenues from Apulia shipped over to St Simeon to bolster the fortune in treasure – literally a room full of gold, silver and jewels – he had received from the Emperor Alexius, his one-time enemy, in a bid to buy his loyalty.