Knights of the Cross

by Tom Harper

  I put this to the Turk.

  ‘Too few Franj, too few. If I give my tower, it must be to Bohemond only. And his army – he promised he brings his army.’

  I relayed his words in the Norman dialect. While we spoke, the knights had continued to crawl over the wall, but with only a single ladder for access they were still alarmingly few. No wonder the Turk trembled to betray the city to us.

  ‘Mushid, he say Bohemond come with army. Where is Mushid?’

  It was the last name that I had expected to hear in that place, while men lay dead at my feet and knights hurried past into the tower. Before I could question him, though, a new voice sounded from the foot of the ladder.

  ‘Firouz!’

  The Turk thrust his head out between the battlements and stared down; I looked out beside him. At the foot of the ladder stood Bohemond, his face ashen in the early dawn.

  ‘What is happening up there?’ he called. ‘Is it safe?’

  I lifted myself forward so that he could see me clearly. ‘It is safe. There is no trap. But the Turk is anxious – he wants you to join him as proof of your intent. He fears you have brought too few knights.’

  ‘Tell him I have many more men in the gully. If we had another ladder, they would be over sooner.’

  I translated his words.

  ‘There is a gate,’ said the Turk, agitated. ‘Not big, but faster. At the bottom of the tower, down the hill.’

  I was about to relay this to Bohemond, but suddenly an enormous crack tore through the air. The ladder was gone: it no longer leaned against the battlements but lay in splintered pieces on the ground. Three or four bodies were strewn among the wreckage, unmoving.

  An unearthly scream of rage howled forth from Bohemond, so loud that it must have been heard in the encampment on the plain. His sword was in his hand, and for a moment I thought he might smash it on the wall in his fury. But before he could move a new sound rose from further along the rampart, shouts of anger and alarm. A clutch of fiery torches appeared from one of the distant towers, and by their light I saw spears hastening towards us.

  I grabbed Firouz and spun him about. ‘Are they your men?’

  He shook his head. ‘They have heard us. We are trapped. Your men are outside; they will only see us cut in pieces. We are dead.’

  As if to prove his words, an arrow slammed into the battlement in front of us. I dived to the ground, pulling Firouz with me as more arrows clattered off the stones above. Some of the Normans had managed to form a line across the parapet, kneeling behind their tall shields, but we were too few. Soon, I feared, every Turk in Antioch would be upon us.

  Firouz began to crawl back towards his tower, dragging himself through puddles of blood. Following, I hauled on the hem of his armour and pulled him back.

  ‘You spoke of a gate,’ I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the rising roar of battle. ‘There are five hundred men beyond the wall with Bohemond – if they can break in, they may yet save us.’

  He stared at me witlessly. His beard and armour were smeared red with blood, and I feared for a second that an unseen missile might have struck him. Then he nodded.

  ‘Through the tower.’

  Ducking beneath the arrows that fell around us, we scrambled on our knees into the guardroom. A dead Turk lay sprawled over a wooden stool, stabbed through the eye, while three Normans struggled to barricade the far door. In one corner an opening in the floor led onto a twisting stairwell.

  I lifted my silver cross and thrust it before the Normans, just in time to stay their swords. ‘Come with me. There is a gate.’

  I led the way down the curving steps, my shield held before me and my sword arm pressed uncomfortably close to the wall. No one opposed us. At the bottom another door led out onto the mountainside, inside the city. It was land we had dreamed of treading for months, yet now we did not even notice.

  ‘Which way?’

  Firouz pointed down the hill. Not far off, about halfway between two looming towers, I saw a small gate set in the wall, scarcely as high as a man. Thick timbers barred it, but it was not defended.

  ‘Be swift,’ said one of the Normans grimly. ‘I hear more enemies approaching.’

  We ran down to the gate. The knights circled us with their shields, while Firouz and I worked feverishly to loosen the bars which held the door. It could not have been opened in years, for the wood was thick with grime. I strained in vain to pull the bar free from its rusting brackets.

  ‘Make haste.’

  I looked back. A company of Turks were charging up the hill, spears raised before them. More arrows started to fall, several of them thudding into the Norman shields. One even stuck in the timbers of the gate.

  I knelt, mumbling prayers under my breath, and thumped the pommel of my sword up against the bar. The impact numbed my arm, but I repeated the blow again. Still it did not move. The din of battle sounded on the walls behind us and the Turks on the slope below drew ever closer.

  ‘There.’ The bar had moved. Another blow lifted it higher, before a third dislodged it completely. It fell forgotten to the ground. Still the gate would not open, for an iron bolt held it. I hammered frantically. Behind me one of the knights broke ranks and charged down the hill, tearing into the Turkish line like a ram. I heard the chilling ring of clashing metal, and he was swallowed beneath them.

  With the ponderous grate of age, the bolt slid clear of its socket. In an instant Firouz and I had our shoulders against the door and were heaving it open. The sun was rising and grey light flooded the hillside beyond. Barely twenty yards away yawned the gully where the Normans waited.

  I do not remember what I shouted, only that I had to repeat it for what seemed an eternity before the first of Bohemond’s men began sprinting across the open ground, shields held aloft against the archers on the walls. The first one came through the gate, caught an arrow in the throat and died immediately; the second threw himself to the earth, rolled aside, then leaped into a crouch with his shield before him. Together with Firouz and the other knights we formed a thin line in front of the door. Spears stabbed at us; one grazed my cheek and another glanced off my shoulder. In another minute we would be slaughtered.

  But our line did not shrink; instead, at last, it began to swell. Norman spears thrust over our heads, stabbing back the Turkish attackers. Behind me I could feel a press of bodies pushing me forward, and as our line bulged out men squeezed in among us. When I slipped on the bloody ground, the Turks did not charge through the gap; instead, a Norman was instantly in my place. In seconds I was left behind, while ever more Normans ran by to join the battle. Some found the steps in the tower and gained the walls, throwing down the Turks who defended them to be hacked apart by the men below.

  Bohemond strode through the gate, his red cloak like fire behind him. His bloodless sword shone pale in the dawn. ‘The city lies open before us,’ he bellowed, and every man roared approval. ‘But victory is not assured. William – bring your company with mine to the western gates, so that we may throw them open and complete the rout. Rainulf – take my standard to the highest point and plant it where all can see that the city is taken.’

  In the rush that followed his words I was entirely forgotten. Most of the Normans hastened down the slope with their captain, their appetite for plunder and slaughter undimmed, though a few stayed behind to secure the towers and dispatch the Turks who survived. All ignored me. For a time I sat in silence on a mounting block, watching them, but soon the stink of blood and death overwhelmed me. I walked away, wandering dazed and alone across the scrubby mountainside. The first fingers of sunlight were reaching over the ridge above and a new day dawned over Antioch. It gave me little hope.

  I reached a small promontory on the shoulder of the mountain and looked down. Thick smoke rose from the city below, and an occasional gust of wind brought the faint echoes of screams and clashing steel to my ears. I could see the great gates lying open, the hordes of tiny figures swarming through like ants come to
ravish a carcass, but I had not the strength to care. I was empty, poured out like water, my heart melted like wax.

  Antioch was ours.

  II

  Besiegers

  3 June – 1 August 1098

  κ

  The Franks exploded into the city like a vessel of flaming oil, splashing fire and death wherever they touched. On the walls, in streets and squares, in their homes and fields, men died and women were broken. Worthless possessions were dragged from houses merely because they could be stolen, then abandoned because they were cumbersome, then set alight because they would burn. Order was hateful, confusion master. By afternoon most of the killing was done.

  I had waited seven months to enter Antioch; within hours, I could not bear to stay. All morning I sat high on the mountain, alone, watching the devastation in the shade of the cliff. Sometimes my conscience whispered that I should go down, try to save the innocent, but each time I quashed the thought. It would have effected nothing save my death. I still reviled myself for my cowardice.

  As the sun came around onto the face of the mountain and the cries from the city lessened, I rose to descend the crumbling slope. I dared not risk the centre of the city, where the sack had raged fiercest, but kept to the fringes and made for a small gate in the south-west, near the bridge. Even here, the ruin was complete: in half a day, the Army of God had wrought a century’s worth of destruction. Doors lay sprawled flat; charred houses yawned open to the sky; clothes and dishes and tools and carved toys were strewn about like the debris of a receded flood. Worst, though, were the bodies. Most bore hideous testament to their brutal deaths, and in places their blood had turned the dust to mud. I pulled a length of my tunic from under my mail and bunched it over my nose, using the other hand to keep my silver cross clearly visible. Gangs of Franks still roamed, seeking easy loot and violence. In one street I saw a knight wrapped in orange cloth running after a half-naked woman crawling on her knees. The fabric billowed from his shoulders like wings; he seemed so drunk on pillage that he could not move straight but weaved between the pillared arcades. I stuck out a leg and tripped him as he passed, hoping that he would be too crazed to rise. He fell among a pile of Turkish corpses and did not move. The woman he had pursued looked round. Her breasts were withered and shrunk in to her skin, her hair torn; with not a speck of gratitude, she plucked a stone from the rubble and hurled it at me. It bounced off my shield as I watched her vanish down an alley.

  At last I reached the walls. The gates were pushed open and unguarded, and I passed through the shadow under the arch without incident. It was only when I had gone a few paces beyond that I thought to look back, to wonder that I had slipped so easily through the door that had defied us so long. I had not even looked to see how the walls appeared from inside. Much the same as from outside, I supposed.

  Whether it was the world that had changed or me, nothing seemed as it had before that day. Without the throngs of people, the film of smoke and noise, the camp felt a different place. The patched and torn fabric of the tents was now more dismal, their yawing angles more precarious. On the hill in the distance, the tower that we had erected to guard the bridge stood abandoned. Men had died to build it, and a day earlier it had been our first defence against a sortie from the city. Now it was useless, impotent.

  The camp was not completely deserted. Near the river, I found Anna with Sigurd and his company of Varangians. Crates and sacks were piled around them, while dismantled tents lay like discarded clothes on the ground. As Anna saw me she gave a little shriek and ran to embrace me. The day had left me so numbed that her arms around my waist were like hot irons, and it took an act of will to keep from thrusting her away. The evil I had witnessed and abetted defiled me. It would be many days before I could take comfort in kindness.

  ‘You survived,’ she said. I had rarely seen her drop her composure; now she was almost weeping.

  Sigurd set down the bag he carried and gazed at me severely. ‘I told her you would come back. If there were Turkish spears and arrows flying about, I thought you’d have sense enough to let the Normans stand in front of you.’

  ‘I survived.’ I lifted Anna’s arm away and stepped free. ‘You did not join the battle, Sigurd?’

  ‘There’s rarely honour to be won when the Franks take the field. And after the siege, little plunder either, I think. Besides, Count Raymond did not invite us.’

  ‘Did he expect it?’

  Sigurd nodded. ‘The Provençals were roused not long before dawn. When the gates opened, they were ready. Was it Bohemond?’

  ‘He found a traitor who kept one of the towers on the mountain.’ Briefly, I described the night’s business.

  ‘And how is the city now?’

  ‘A charnel house. It was well you did not go in.’

  ‘Soon we shall have to.’ Sigurd pointed to the north. ‘Have you forgotten that Kerbogha and his army are only two days’ march from here? Just because you have been busy, it does not signify that he has not. When he hears that the city has fallen he will redouble his speed.’

  In the momentous confusion of the past day, Kerbogha had vanished from my mind entirely: his name now was a hammer on my thoughts. I craved rest, weeks of solitude to mend the fractures in my soul. Instead, it seemed, I had days – or hours – before the next onslaught. I was not sure that I could bear it.

  ‘We cannot go into the city,’ I said. ‘The Franks are maddened, frenzied. If we go in, they will kill us.’ Nor, I might have added, did I want the taint of their barbarity on me any more. ‘I have suffered long enough on this quest. We will go back to Constantinople.’ Perhaps there I could make myself clean again.

  Sigurd looked at me cautiously, perhaps weighing my fragile state. When he spoke it was with unusual calm. ‘We cannot go back to Constantinople, not now. You know that.’

  I rounded on him. ‘Why? Because it will be cowardice? Because your honour as a warrior does not allow it?’

  ‘Because Kerbogha’s army would catch us and kill us – or worse. Do you want Anna enslaved in an Emir’s brothel?’

  I wanted to hit him but did not have the strength. ‘Do not test our friendship by playing on my fears for Anna. I can see the risks of our journey, but Antioch will be no safer. Kerbogha will come and besiege it, and all within will be trapped like sheep in a pen, to be slaughtered at his pleasure. If we travel by night, and with nothing more than we need, we can slip past his army unheeded.’

  ‘And after his army? Mountains so steep that even goats cannot walk their paths, and then the desert. A wasteland without food or water, whose only inhabitants are Turks and brigands. Look at us – how far would we get?’

  ‘We could take ship from Saint Simeon.’

  ‘If the Franks who control the harbour allowed it. How likely do you think that is, when half the army is trying to flee? And even if they took you and Anna they would not take a hundred of my men.’

  The conclusion was unspoken but inevitable. He would not leave his Varangians to face battle without him.

  ‘Kerbogha may reach his fist around the city,’ Sigurd continued, ‘but he will find it harder than you think to squeeze it shut. We have spent seven months trying without avail – why should it be quicker for him? The walls still stand unbroken. We are outnumbered but I doubt that we are fewer than the Turks who defied us so long. And if the Emperor is in Anatolia, as Tatikios said, then he may arrive to relieve us within weeks.’

  ‘No.’ It was a sound argument, but I could not accept it. Others had devised the schemes and fought the battles by which we had taken the city, but it had been my hand that drew the bolt which unlocked the gate. To see the devastation inside again, even for a minute, would be unbearable.

  In deference to my frailty, Sigurd had restrained his temper; now he loosed it. ‘Very well. You, Demetrios, can beg the Franks for a ship that they will not give you, or make yourself a target for Kerbogha’s archers, or throw yourself off a cliff in the mountains; I will not lead my company into
certain death. To be trapped in the city may be a grim fate, but I would rather face a grim fate behind stout walls than outside them.’ He turned to Anna. ‘What do you say?’

  She frowned, her fingers twisting in her belt. Her gaze would not meet mine. ‘I am not a soldier. I think . . . I think Demetrios is right to fear that we shall not survive a siege.’

  ‘Then you will come with me?’ I said.

  ‘But I also think that his thoughts are agitated. They do not run clear. You are not a soldier either, Demetrios. Perhaps at this moment you would rather walk free and die than face the awful confines of Antioch. But we must stay alive, or try to. What was it you said two days ago? Even if you had become a great-grandfather before you saw your family again, the delay would be worth it.’

  I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes, and turned away from them. A thousand thoughts warred in my mind, but they did not matter.

  ‘We will stay in Antioch.’

  We set our camp on the western ramparts, near the Duke’s Gate. A few of the Frankish captains had roused themselves from debauch and placed sentinels near the gates, but we found a stretch of wall between two towers that none had claimed. It was not a place where I would have chosen to be, guarding the line between two armies, but it kept us from having to venture any further into the city. And whoever attacked, from whichever side, they would pay dearly to prise us out.

  As quickly as possible, we set about strengthening our position. Each tower had one door opening onto the adjoining walls and one at its foot leading into the city. Using timbers and rubble, we filled in the lower portions of the stairwell in one of the towers so that it became impassable. In the guardroom above, we stacked broken beams with which we could bar the upper door if necessary. It was hot, weary work, but I did not resent it. The simple monotony of the task lifted heavier burdens from my mind; there was something pure in the effort which I snatched at. For the first time in what seemed an age I peeled off my armour and moved freely, rolling my tunic down to my waist. It was alarming to see how gaunt I had become.