Prince of Legend (23 page)

Tancred made no attempt to negotiate that the garrison should peacefully depart. He rode right into the hamlet and, advised by those who had come to plead with the princes, made straight for the barracks in which his enemies resided. The noise of the mounted approach had awakened these men and, well aware that escape was impossible, they elected to fight from behind walls that were no more than half again of the height of a normal man; Tancred was so tall he could practically engage them on the tip of his toes.

Like nearly every infidel the Crusaders had fought in the last two years they were not inclined to easily succumb. Either their faith was equal to that of any Christian or, knowing death awaited them, or a forcible conversion, they were left with little choice but to engage in an uneven contest. By the time the first hint of light touched the eastern sky, the men Tancred led were over those flimsy walls and doing terrible execution, their swords swinging until no one was left to stand in their way.

The crowd that appeared when the fighting stopped, bearing beakers of wine for their champions to drink, were close to ecstatic; how many generations had lived under the Muslim yoke, how many times had they hankered after this deliverance in discreet prayer? Impatience did not permit the fighters to leave, the people of Bethlehem leading them to the Church of the Nativity, there to say a Mass of thanksgiving on the exact spot that saw the birth of Jesus.

Tancred, still covered in Muslim blood, was moved and he was not alone. Most of his men were moist of eye and possibly thinking how they would tell, once they got home, how they had liberated this venerable spot. Added to that they sensed that salvation was sure to be theirs: surely God would see that Bethlehem was as much a source
of remission as Jerusalem; surely, when the time came for them to join him, it would be in his celestial paradise.

Mass over, the locals asked for men to protect them, after all there could still be Muslims close by who would come to take revenge for their fallen comrades. Tancred had to agree yet it was not just to assuage their fears: that conference from which he had been sent away left in him an impression of ambition so unbridled that there was no way of knowing how matters would conclude.

Thus, much to the annoyance of Walter of le Bourg, he raised his de Hauteville banner above the Church of the Nativity before detaching some of his Apulian lances to occupy the barracks and provide protection. Whatever happened in the following days, for success would lead to a parcelling out of the domain of Palestine, he would claim Bethlehem and the lands surrounding as his own fief.

On the return to Qubeiba it was obvious that no host was encamped there, indeed when they entered the town it was close to being deserted, with no sign even of Godfrey de Bouillon. Calm interrogation of the few people he found informed him that the men of Provence had moved out in the hours of darkness, with Raymond at their head, seeking to steal a march on his noble rivals.

With the Count of Toulouse being obviously determined to be first outside the walls of Jerusalem, this had quite naturally led to the rest hastily following to seek to thwart him, including the Lotharingians. His initial anger at Godfrey’s broken promise had to be set aside; he would have had little option but to do likewise, with his lances champing at the bit lest others take the city by a
coup de main.

There was no time to rest his tired mounts and for the same reason: Tancred was just as keen on the potential glory as any count or duke, so the food and drink he and his men took on was hastily consumed,
the horses fed with oats given they would be walking not galloping, and off they set in the wake of their confrères, the route easily marked by the passage of a whole army.

They found the host outside the walls of the Holy City, not making camp, indeed many were on their knees in less than silent prayer, soon joined by the remaining Apulians and those of le Bourg’s. There was no shame in the tears they shed; how many months had they prayed to see this sight? For most it was three years since the day they first came together under their lords and priests to dedicate themselves to the cause of Crusade.

From that day their journey had been filled with as many doubts as elations, added to which were the numbers, friends and comrades, who had perished on the way and were not here to witness this stirring sight. There, lit by the rising sun, was the Temple Mount on which sat the Dome of the Rock and when he climbed the Mount of Olives, Tancred could look upon the epicentre of his religion, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. All that was now required was to take it back for his faith.

T
he headlong rush to Jerusalem had masked many dangers that quickly became apparent, not least that the Crusade was isolated; they had nothing but enemies behind them as well as to their front. If cities like Acre and Beirut had paid tribute to be left in peace they were Muslim in faith and not well disposed towards Christians. Having bypassed Jaffa, the princes had no hope of the kind of naval support that required a port in which to land reinforcements, so even if Alexius kept his word and sailed to their aid, which was still considered unlikely by everyone but Raymond, he would have to fight to get his host ashore.

Added to that, the army was nothing like the force that had set out from their homelands, indeed it was seriously more diminished now than it had been outside Antioch. To set against that was the fact that those who had finally made it to Jerusalem were amongst the hardiest of their breed; there were no doubters now, everyone had
suffered much privation to get here, so within them lay the kind of spirit, as well as a depth of belief, that could overcome obstacles the size of mountains.

The Holy City well fitted that description; it was formidable and its dimensions were no secret, for like Antioch every returning pilgrim described them with awe. Forming a fairly rectangular shape, the massive walls of Jerusalem extended a whole league in length, were the width of three knightly lances and the height of four fair-sized men standing on each other’s shoulders.

Accessed by five gates, each one of those had a set of twin towers to protect it and, at the sections deemed most vulnerable, stood two great fortresses able to maintain themselves independently of the city; they had their own storerooms and water supply. The larger bastion was known as the Quadrangular Tower, the other the legendary Tower of David, this constructed of great stone blocks fixed to each other with molten lead to well over half its total height.

Jerusalem was near impervious to assault on two sides due to the valleys of Josaphat and Qidron that protected it. To the north and east the rest of the defence was rendered equally difficult by man-made additions such as a secondary outer wall as well as dry ditches. Given the dimensions of the whole, set against the number who had finally made it to their goal, the notion of surrounding the city and cutting it off from support and resupply was unachievable.

The garrison, under the command of one Iftikhar ad-Daulah, was strong and had recently been reinforced by a large body of elite cavalry. If ad-Daulah had foolishly failed to impede the Crusade reaching Jerusalem he had shown some sense in poisoning or collapsing the outside water wells before they arrived. Added to that, suspecting the Christian inhabitants would aid their allies in
faith, he had chased them out of the city to prevent them rising in rebellion.

Food was not a problem for the besiegers: they still had possession of the granaries of Ramleh, but the lack of water was crippling in the full throbbing heat of a Palestine summer, where the very ground shimmered. The only uncontaminated source, a small spring-fed puddle called the Pool of Siloam, at the foot of Mount Zion, was within bow shot of the southern wall and the Fatimid archers gathered there in numbers for sport.

Each time it was drained the Pool of Siloam took three long days to refill and that was diminished, as it occurred, by thirsty animals, though not enough to prevent it becoming near full eventually, at which point it was rushed by every man made brave enough by desperation to risk death.

A hail of arrows greeted them, yet it was a harsh choice: expire from want of water or from a piercing bolt that might strike some vital spot. With so many seeking relief, that which was consumable soon became churned with mud, making it less than quenching, it being already rendered vile by the rotting carcasses of dead beasts. Each time the lack of remaining fluid persuaded the men to retreat they left behind them the bodies of their comrades, some of whom had been so trampled as to drown in what was now no more than deep sludge.

The two main divisions of the host, the leaders barely on speaking terms, moved to take up separate positions. Godfrey de Bouillon, supported by Tancred and Flanders, lined up to the north-west of the city between the Quadrangular Tower and the St Stephen’s Gate. Raymond having arrived first, and supported by the Duke of Normandy, had originally set up his camp opposite the Tower of
David, but that being an obstacle too difficult to easily overcome he had moved south to a more exposed position opposite the Zion Gate.

If the split was brought about by continued dispute it nevertheless had the advantage of forcing ad-Daulah to do the same. This divided the defence for it was moot how much the Fatimid governor knew about the mood in the Crusaders’ lines. Since Arqa, both because of the failed siege but more from the exposure of the Holy Lance, the position of Raymond of Toulouse had steadily diminished. He was no longer considered a spiritual leader as well as a military one, not that anyone meeting him would have realised this to be the case – his arrogance was fully intact.

Hopes in that area had shifted to the much more pious Godfrey de Bouillon, and men, even many Provençals who owed allegiance to Raymond, looked to him to lead them to their ultimate goal for the obvious sincerity of his faith as well as his undoubted ability as a fighter and leader. Seeing the need for a symbol, one of de Bouillon’s confessors had had made a cross of solid gold, this fashioned from the tribute the marching host had gathered on the way, to be displayed outside Godfrey’s pavilion.

If it was not of the one-time stature of the Holy Lance – not being a relic – it was nevertheless an object to which men could attach some meaning and the effect was soon demonstrated when, perhaps under pressure from his troubled knights, the Duke of Normandy detached himself from Raymond and moved his men to the north of the city to take up position alongside Godfrey de Bouillon.

‘Bohemund predicted Godfrey would end up as the leader of the Crusade,’ Tancred said, as the Norman lances rode up to form their new lines.

‘When?’ asked Flanders, watching with him, the implication that it
was easy to see that as true, quite forgetting that the man mentioned by his nephew was many leagues to the north and could have no notion of the fall from grace of Toulouse.

‘After the fall of Nicaea.’

The doubt on the Count’s face was very noticeable, for he made no attempt to hide it, which brought a smile of superior knowledge from Tancred. ‘I asked him about the leadership of the Crusade, which I thought should have been gifted to him from the outset.’

‘You would, being of his blood.’

‘No, it was that I have seen him fight many battles, much more than any of his peers and he has a gift for leading men to feats to which they would not normally aspire. I think you too saw the sense of that at Antioch.’

‘He never so much as hinted or put himself forward.’

‘Bohemund was certain he would never be acknowledged as leader, just as he was sure that if we ever got to Jerusalem the man the Crusade would choose to rule the Holy City would be Godfrey, as being the only one deserving of the title, though he was equally certain Raymond would seek to be gifted it by acclaim.’

‘There might have been a rival other than Toulouse.’ Flanders spluttered as he said that, not, Tancred thought, because he believed it to be so, but merely to underline that he too might have laid claim to the prize. ‘Even you must acknowledge, Tancred, that your uncle forsook the Crusade.’

‘I cannot deny it, but let those who wonder at his claim to Antioch, and the zeal with which he pursued it, think on what he saw well before any of us: that if he wished to profit from our endeavours and his ability it was not going to be where we now stand.’

‘Think what troubles we would have if he was here,’ Flanders replied.

This induced a hoot of laughter from his companion; if relationships were troubled now, the addition of a pugnacious Bohemund, sure of the rightness of his view, would have plunged them to new depths.

‘Our God moves in strange ways, his wonders to perform.’

The response was caustic. ‘And do we not need those wonders now?’

Even if they had been united, neither time nor the tactical means to overcome the walls were on their side. Yet after only six days the first assault was launched, a bid to take the city by sheer force of their passion. A lack of growing timber around Jerusalem obviated the ability to make ladders and the only one existing, a rickety frame, had been made by Tancred’s men, that from a stack of well-hidden wood found only by the pressing need to evacuate a set of loose noble bowels in private.

The mass of the host sought to drive back the defenders from the walls with lances and arrows, fired from ground level at men well above their heads, which was soon seen as ineffectual. The Apulians had at least a chance to fight on more equal terms, albeit if being perched on a strand of wood, your shield used as much as a hook to keep you from falling as it was for defence, with either sword or axe being swung from a position which diminished the weight behind it, could be called anything like parity. Yet that was enough to get them over the secondary wall and then, with the ladder shifted, onto the main defences.

It got harder from there: one giant fellow on the battlements was wielding a two-handed executioner’s blade, so heavy and weighty it sliced through the mail and took off the arm of one of the Apulian knights in a single blow. Then he was threatening to repeat the act until Tancred, at the next victim’s side, thrust his sword up into the
ribs beneath the executioner’s upraised arm, twisting it to catch the bones and drag the fellow forward so that both he and his weapon fell to the ground below.

Despite that small victory the attack was close to fiasco on all fronts and the Crusaders were forced to withdraw; Jerusalem was not going to fall with ease and no one with an ounce of vision could doubt the difficulties ahead. Godfrey, with some subtlety, let it be known that his pride would not stand in the way of a conference and Raymond, really with no choice once that had been covered to him, sent a message to imply that he was willing to arrange one, only insisting it took place in his pavilion.

‘Make him come to you,’ Tancred insisted.

That got a sigh. ‘To what purpose?’

Flanders and Normandy spoke in unison, suggesting it would dent his conceit.

That brought forth a smile from burly de Bouillon. ‘No weapon is that potent, my friends. We must speak to each other or our endeavour has no hope of progress and never let it be said that I was the cause of the failure by my intransigence. I will, however, hold no grudge against anyone who declines to join me.’

‘Of course we will support you,’ Tancred said.

‘Has anyone ever told you what a cunning old fox you are?’ Flanders asked, for it had been a loaded offer.

That got a bellow at the jibe, which was, to be fair, delivered with a grin. ‘With such rascals around me do I not need to be?’

‘These walls will not be overcome without siege towers, Duke Godfrey,’ Toulouse said, adding, in a tone he might have used with a dunce, ‘I take leave to suggest even you will agree.’

The reply came with suppressed irritation. ‘Count Raymond, my agreement does not make it practicable. We lack timber and we lack also the tools to build a device that will not fall to pieces the moment we seek to move it.’

Flanders cut in, his voice as bitter as his expression. ‘And we will die of thirst in the time it takes to construct one.’

A party of his men had, the previous day, been ambushed while seeking to fetch in water from wells further afield, cut down by one of the now numerous Muslim bands that roamed the countryside, able to cut off small groups of Crusaders. Not that he had suffered alone; every lord present had lost men to such snares.

That many succeeded in bringing in water, often fighting off attacks, was a positive, even if that commodity, carried in animal skins that had been given no time to cure, tasted foul when consumed. Another hazard existed to match the arrows fired at the Pool of Siloam; the skins sometimes came with leeches inside, which if ingested by men drinking greedily led to a painful death.

Talk was unlikely to bring about a solution, but that did not debar the employment of it, with Raymond coming close to suggesting they were wasting their time, which annoyed de Bouillon.

‘I am sure not one of us here has any notion other than to press home our attack?’ asked Godfrey, in a confrontational tone and a sweeping glare. ‘If so, I state now I will remain on my own and find a way to overcome these walls.’

Tancred replied, he hoped for all bar Toulouse. Godfrey, and it was well known, had a soft spot for the younger man, for both his nature and the fact that he had been party to the saving of his life when he had been attacked by that bear.

‘No one suggests such a thing, My Lord.’

‘What no one is suggesting,’ Raymond barked, ‘is a solution to our dilemma. Without we have the means to meet those Fatimids on equal terms we are pissing into the wind.’

If there had been bells in the siege lines they would have rung out to the news that a Genoese flotilla, laden with supplies, not least amphorae of wine, had anchored at Jaffa, this being brought to them in person by one of the ships’ captains. Added to his welcome, the princes were brought to the realisation that what they had been told about the port by their informers had been lies bordering on wild exaggeration: it was not a formidable city at all, for the sailors had found only a weakly manned and dilapidated tower from which the tiny garrison had fled before they could set foot ashore.

An expedition was despatched immediately to escort the cargo to Jerusalem, or to put it more truthfully, several separate expeditions, since it seemed that noble mistrust extended to any faith that a princely confrère could be relied upon to undertake such a task properly. In the end, if their God had smiled upon them by the arrival of that fleet, he had also done so by the fact that the forces that went to Jaffa, when confronted, were, once combined, strong enough to fight off the enemy they faced.