Song of the Eight Winds - An Epic Tale of Medieval Spain

by Peter Kerr

  There was still no reponse from En Nunyo.

  ‘And for his further reflection,’ King Abû continued, ‘I can assure your king that I care not a whit about the damage that your war engines and miners are inflicting upon our northern fortifications, for I have no fear of the city ever being entered on that side.’

  En Nunyo finally replied by pointing out that, almost four years earlier, the Moorish king had in fact done King Jaume a great wrong by insulting an ambassador he had sent, in good faith, to ask for the return of two merchant ships from the city of Barcelona which had been captured by Moorish pirates and handed over, cargoes, crews and all, to King Abû himself. However, instead of being shown the courtesies appropriate to a royal emissary, King Abû had told him that he had never heard of this Christian King Jaume of Aragon whom he purported to represent.

  The envoy had then taken it upon himself to suggest that King Abû must have been familiar with the existence and reputation of his lord and master, since he was the son of King Pedro of Aragon, who had defeated Abû Abdilla Mohammad, the mighty Sultan of Africa and Muslim Spain, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa some seventeen years previously. Everyone in the world knew of that famous victory of King Pedro’s, so it was grossly contemptuous of anyone, particularly a Moor, to claim that he had never heard of his son, whose own successful exploits on the battlefields of mainland Spain were already the stuff of legend.

  En Nunyo then sought to remind the Moorish King that, instead of apologising to the Christian emissary, he had bluntly informed him that, if it had not been for his alleged ambassadorial status, he would have been severely punished for his insolence. When, eventually, this had been reported to King Jaume, he had sworn that he would delight one day in personally pulling the beard of the perpetrator of such a blatant discourtesy to one of his train.

  ‘So, you can take it from me here and now,’ En Nunyo stressed, ‘that your offer to buy my king off will be greeted with all the contempt it deserves. In fact, I assumed you would already be aware that he recently conveyed as much to a turncoat quisling called Don Gil de Alagón, now masquerading under the name of Mohammad.’ With the bit now firmly between his teeth, En Nunyo then made it very clear that King Jaume, despite his youth, had embarked on this campaign, one of the biggest ever undertaken by a Spanish monarch, because it was the will of his God that he should have the land and kingdom of Mallorca to hold in the name of Jesus Christ. He had made the most solemn vow that he would not leave the island until he had achieved that goal, no matter how long it took or how many of those who resisted him had to be destroyed in the process. ‘Now, senyor,’ En Nunyo concluded, ‘you may speak to me of anything else you want, for what you have already proposed is not worth talking about.’

  Instead of resuming his previous stance of defiance, King Abû elected to take a more pragmatic approach – and a surprisingly submissive one at that. He informed En Nunyo that, as his earlier terms had been rejected, he would now offer to pay five gold besants for the ‘safety’ of every one of the fifty thousand men, women and children in the city of Medîna Mayûrqa. He himself would leave the island with everyone who wished to follow him, on condition that he was provided with sufficient ships to cross over to the Barbary Coast of Africa. Those who chose to remain behind could do so.

  Several things occurred to Pedrito as he listened to all of this from outside the tent. Firstly, he was impressed by the assertiveness displayed by En Nunyo Sans. He may occasionally have shown a tendency to err on the cautious side when going into battle, but when it came to a verbal contest, his confidence certainly could not be called into question. Secondly, giving credit where it was due to Senyor Babiel, laboured though his translations may have been, he’d got the gist of the most crucial aspects right. In the event, King Jaume need not have had any reservations in that respect.

  Yet the thing that struck Pedrito most forcefully, albeit on a personal level, was how easily the Moorish King had capitulated. On this showing, it seemed that his mettle didn’t match the manliness of his voice. Although already filled with loathing for the man, Pedrito still felt a strange twinge of disappointment that his own flesh and blood had acted in such an ineffectual way. As King Jaume had recently told him, changes of fortunes in a war are invariably tied to the survival of someone of influence. And here was a reputedly valiant king offering to sell his dominion over his land and subjects in order to save his own skin. Despite himself, Pedrito now felt an almost morbit compulsion to see the face of this perverse character.

  But it was not to be. No sooner had Nunyo Sans made his somewhat smug declaration that he would present his leader with the terms of surrender now offered than King Abû swept out of the tent in a flurry of white robes. Then, keeping his back purposely turned to the onlooking Christian soldiers, he straddled his white Arab stallion. Without a backward glance, he galloped off towards the city at the head of his mounted escort, their lances raised, their pennants proudly fluttering as if departing a battlefield in triumph.

  *

  The truce that had been called to accommodate what turned out to be such a potentially historic dialogue was to be surprisingly brief. King Jaume convened a meeting of his entire Privy Council immediately after hearing that the Moors had sued for peace, and he had no hesitation in telling this august gathering that he believed the tendered terms of surrender should be accepted. Not only would the crusade be ending in what it had been launched to achieve, namely the Christian reconquest of Mallorca, but a veritable king’s ransom would also be paid by the Saracen King before he left for Africa. And this in additon to all the booty that would subsequently be there for the taking without another drop of Christian blood being shed. The young king concluded that God Almighty, His Son their Saviour and the Blessed Virgin had now delivered this land to them, just as he and every God fearing man who had followed him always believed that they would.

  But not every God fearing man in the assembled company thought the matter to be as straightforward as that, and it was no less a voice of religious authority than En Berenguer de Palou, the Bishop Barcelona himself, who spoke for them first…

  ‘Many good and brave men have been slain while serving God here, and their deaths should be revenged. That vengeance would be seen in God’s eyes to be good and just. I tell you this as an intermediary of God, and you can therefore believe that what I say can be taken as God’s will. However, you knights and barons seated here among us know more of military affairs than I do.’ He gestured towards En Nunyo Sans. ‘So, you must have your say as well.’

  Accordingly, En Nunyo got to his feet and stated that it seemed to him that, if their lord King Jaume were to agree to a treaty as proposed by the Saracens, then he would achieve everything that he had come here for. ‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘I was but the bearer of the news, so I will say no more. Others are entitled to their own opinions.’

  At that, En Remon Alaman, the nobleman of En Nunyo Sans’ company who had advised the king to proceed with caution after the Battle of Na Burguesa at which En Guillen and En Remon de Muntcada had been killed, made a plea on behalf of the kinsmen and followers of those late lamented heroes. The Muntcadas, he said, had been an example of the best and most loyal vassals that any king could ever be served by, and they had lost their lives in unquestioning pursuit of that duty. However, there was now an opportunity, while the enemy was on its back foot, to properly avenge their deaths.

  When the king made no immediate response, En Remon Alaman added that it should also be borne in mind that the Moorish King knew the island better than anyone here, and as he was a high ranking Saracen with appropriate connections and resources at his disposal, allowing him to retreat to North Africa would only invite a later invasion with such a huge army of well briefed Moors that King Jaume’s tenure of Mallorca, gained at the price of so many Christian lives, would quickly be lost. Consequently, it was now incumbent upon the king to punish those who had slain his most dedicated servants, while also ensuring that t
he infidels would never pose a threat to his rightful possession of this land which the Lord God Almighty had granted him.

  ‘As to our brave brothers who have died in battle,’ the king replied, ‘I can only say that what God ordains has to be fulfilled. And though I may gain land and riches by taking this island, those who are dead already have better reward, for they have the glory of God in heaven. But be that as it may, it must be remembered that I came here to serve our Lord and to conquer this land for Him, and since the proposal which has been made would realise that objective, it seems to me that I should accept. However, as you are my esteemed counsellors and leaders of all those who have sacrificed so much for me, I deem it right and proper that such a momentous decision as this should be left to you.’

  It took but a brief exchange of mutterings and nods of the head for an agreement to be reached, then it was announced as with one voice that it would be far better to take Mallorca by force than to accept the offer extended by the enemy. Retribution for the deaths of the Muntcadas and their gallant like was merited, and should therefore be taken.

  ‘And so it shall be,’ said the king, though with little enthusiasm. ‘But on your heads be it if rejecting my recommendation should prove to be costly.’

  *

  Scarcely an hour had passed before King Abû’s reaction to the rebuffal of his offer was made abundantly clear. With the truce still in force, a Moor approached the Christian encampment under an appropriate flag and stopped midway across no-man’s-land, where he began to shout defiantly in Arabic.

  Pedrito was called to the stockade’s southern gate by King Jaume, who had already been advised of the messenger’s presence. ‘He seems to be repeating himself, Master Blànes. Can you make out what he’s on about?’

  ‘He’s simply saying that Allah is the one god, Allah is great, Allah is all-powerful, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, he’s mistaken on all three counts,’ the king muttered. ‘Shout back and tell him that the Christian king forbids such sacrilege to be uttered in his presence, then ask him if he has anything worthwhile to say.’

  The man didn’t have to be asked twice. Reciting what was clearly a carefully worded dispatch, he declared at the top of his voice that his king had warned his men that the Christian invaders sought to make them slaves, and, worse than that, would do violence to their wives and daughters and would defile them to satisfy their own heathen pleasures. His king had vowed in the name of Allah that he would rather die than allow such crimes to be committed against his people and their sacred laws. He had therefore called on all the citizens of Medîna Mayûrqa, man woman and child, to fight with him so fiercely that one of them would be as good as two until the barbarian foe had been driven into the sea.

  ‘So be it,’ was the king’s phlegmatic response to Pedrito’s translation. ‘Tell him to invite his king to do his worst, for that is precisely what I intend to do to him.’ He then addressed the commander of his siege engines, who had been standing close by. ‘Wait until the Moorish envoy has made it back into the city, then hit them with everything you’ve got. Oh, and by that,’ he said as an afterthought, ‘I mean dead bodies as well. There are plenty decomposing corpses strewn about the countryside, and it’s high time we lobbed a few into the city to spread a bit of pestilence.’ He dusted off his hands. ‘We’ll see how the all-powerful Allah copes with that!’

  25

  ‘A DILEMMA FOR PEDRITO’

  EARLY DECEMBER – THE CHRISTIAN CAMP OF ‘EL REAL’ …

  It remained to be seen how Allah would cope with the gruesome form of plague warfare now being directed against the city, but what did become immediately evident was that his faithful followers had been spurred by this action into stiffening their resistance to the Christian offensive. Obviously, they were supporting to the hilt their king’s appeal for each and every one of them to put up the fight of two.

  This was carried out to such good effect that, only a few days after having gone against King Jaume’s recommendation to accept the Moors’ terms of capitulation, En Remon Alaman and the Bishop of Barcelona, two of his Privy Council’s most vociferous opponents of the proposition, were suggesting to him that, on second thoughts, it could be advisable to enquire whether the Moorish king’s offer might still be open.

  For all that he recognised and respected the bishop’s influence within the all-powerful establishment of the Church, and although he had always acknowledged the high regard in which En Remon was rightly held by his military peers, King Jaume left them both in no doubt as to what he thought of their proposal. To make such an approach to the Saracen king now, he told them, would put him in the position of a beggar kneeling with his bowl at the feet of someone who had only recently come to him as a beggar. The upshot of this, King Jaume fumed, would be to have himself portrayed as an indecisive mouse, and he would rather catch the pox!

  Then, prudently turning away from the bishop and directing his displeasure specifically at En Remon, he barked, ‘You would do well to take a leaf from the book of the Count of Empúries. When you were busy preaching vengeance to me and your fellow members of the Privy Council the other day, he remained steadfastly working in the mines with his men, having declared that he would remain there until their labours had resulted in the taking of the city.’

  While his two counsellors stood in abject silence, King Jaume bluntly informed them that the die had been cast; the battle for Mallorca would continue as planned – but with redoubled conviction – and neither would respite be afforded any Christian soldier nor quarter given to the enemy until the war had been won.

  *

  As the days and weeks passed, the ferocity of the Moorish fight-back became such that all the Christian mines and trenches either had to be abandoned or had been destroyed, with the exception of one tunnel, into which every effort then had to be concentrated. Under the tireless direction of the Count of Empúries, sufficient excavations were eventually completed to result in the collapse of a section of the city wall some forty paces in length. Yet the breach was so stoutly defended that the besiegers were forced to retire, while the besieged set about rebuilding their fortifications with daunting speed and ingenuity.

  It was now early December, fully three months since King Jaume had set sail with his great invasion force of one-hundred-and-fifty ships and some seventeen thousand men from the mainland of Spain. Perhaps predictably, the onset of winter weather, combined with a feeling of weary dejection brought on by the seemingly unbreakable will of the enemy, was beginning to tell on the morale of the Christian troops. Then news of the capital city’s dogged resistance somehow reached the outlying districts only recently transferred to King Jaume’s rule by his unlikely ally and benefactor, Ben Abbéd, the powerful Moorish wali of Alfabia. As a result, the threat of an uprising against the Christian occupation of the territories around the towns of Inca and Pollença became so real that both of the nobles whom King Jaume had installed as local governors were forced to return to the camp at El Real with their entire companies of men. Of a sudden, the outlook for the Christian reconquest of Mallorca had become disturbingly uncertain.

  Nevertheless, inspired by their young monarch’s zeal, driven on by prospects of booty, and reassured by ever more persuasive promises of a lavish life after death by their priests, the Christian troops persevered with the job in hand. Their spirits were eventually given another much-needed boost when the Count of Empúries’ sappers succeeded in bringing down a second section of undermined wall – this stretch including a defence tower, which collapsed into the excavations as if struck by an earthquake. Surely this would herald the change in fortunes that every Christian soldier had been craving for so long. But yet again the Moorish resistance was so unwavering, the furious struggles to gain or hold ground so prolonged, that by the approach of Christmas there was still no indication that a final assault on the city was any closer to being launched.

  *

  Pedrito had been assigned throughout to one of several teams of
men engaged in the essential tasks of felling and transporting timber for use as props and shoring-beams in the mines, as well as lugging away spoil from the associated diggings. It was exhausting, backbreaking work, made all the more unpleasant after seasonable rainstorms resulted in the ground being churned into furrows and ridges of heavy, clinging mud. It was also work fraught with the very real risk of injury, or even death, when obliged to venture within range of enemy positions on the city ramparts. Once again, the casualty rate among his colleagues brought it home to Pedrito that survival in such situations was very much a matter of luck, irrespective of efforts made to shield ‘labourers’ like himself from the attentions of Moorish archers and those manning their siege engines. No-man’s-land still ran with the blood of Christians and reeked of their rotting flesh.

  On the occasional rest days granted him, Pedrito had unfailingly foresaken catching up on much-needed sleep in order to make his way to the bolt-hole high above Génova hamlet where his mother and Saleema were living in increasingly punishing conditions. With the shortening of the days, such visits had become correspondingly more brief. Although Christian patrols had been constantly scouring the countryside between El Real and the mountains for Moorish militants, and summarily killing anyone suspected of fitting the bill, there were still desperate men at large, their readiness to attack and rob those who crossed their paths prompted as much by the need to keep body and soul together, perhaps, than by wanton banditry. In any case, Pedrito had to keep his wits about him when travelling.

  That aside, every time he now set out, he took from the stores – not merely with King Jaume’s permission, but by his insistence – whatever he considered necessary to ease his mother and Saleema’s discomfort, right down to some hide and twine for them to make rudimentary shoes to protect their feet from the rigours of winter. Saleema was having to learn the hard way about life at the opposite end of the spectrum from the pampered existence she had been accustomed to in King Abû’s palace. After all, Farah’s ability to fashion and sew leather was severely limited by the physical effects of the punishment meted out to her at the behest of that selfsame potentate.