Prince of Legend (24 page)

Godfrey’s men were to the fore, a dozen knights and fifty men under a captain called Geldemar Carpinel, this party shocked to find themselves barred from any progress by a force of Muslims larger than they thought possible to assemble; the whole plain before them was covered in the enemy, a good proportion of them cavalry. Carpinel had no notion to back off from a fight, however outnumbered he might be, and immediately engaged – he assumed his enemies to be a scratch force – only to find that they were disciplined warriors that soon had him in some difficulty.

It was Raymond Pilet, leading sixty of Toulouse’s knights on what remained of the Provençal mounts, who came to his rescue. Instituting a charge, the mailed lances sliced into the Muslim lines and, with their weight and brio, scattered them like chaff. Soon the field was strewn with enemy bodies, the horizon dotted with those fleeing from the fight.

If there was enmity between the contingent leaders, that did not always extend to their followers and success in battle easily cemented over any resentment, so it was a jolly band combined that entered Jaffa to see the cheering sight of half a dozen Genoese vessels riding high at anchor, even more heartening to see the quayside and jetty lined with their discharged cargo, an order going out to immediately gather to that place all the carts and donkeys in Jaffa.

It was agreed, by all, that such a success as their recent battle demanded a proper feast and one washed down with a goodly quantity of wine. One of the Genoese sailors owned a set of pipes so they had music too and, with abandon and under torchlight, they took to singing and dancing, until, one by one, overcome by excessive consumption, they fell into a deep slumber.

The first to open an eye – daylight had touched his eyelids – having scratched himself and yawned, not forgetting to run a hand over a throbbing head, peered out into the haze-filled harbour and that induced a cry of alarm, albeit croaked, that wakened the rest. Seeing what had so alarmed him had all of the men scrabbling to their feet for in the offing, outside the bay, was a fleet of Fatimid warships, seeking to beat their way into the harbour against an offshore wind.

‘Can you get your vessels clear?’ demanded a hung-over Raymond Pilet.

‘Never,’ replied the senior Genoese captain, ‘lest you get your fighting men aboard and drive them infidels off.’

It was Godfrey’s man Geldemar who responded to that idea. ‘We don’t have any notion of their numbers and they are likely to be well manned being vessels of war, friend. That is not a set of odds I would seek to challenge.’

‘None of the men I lead are accustomed to fighting at sea,’ Pilet added.

‘Then what do we do?’

‘Get back to Jerusalem and take along with us that which you have brought us.’

‘And what of me and my crews?’

‘Seems you must become Crusaders, friend.’

‘Damnation!’

‘That you will surely achieve if you seek to fight alone, that or a Muslim oubliette.’

That brought on a face of near despair, until Pilet added, ‘You might get remission for your many sins if you come with us.’

Still peering out to sea and nodding, for really there was no choice, the Genoese captain called to his men to man the boats.

‘You are going to seek to get past them?’ asked Geldemar, confused.

That got an emphatic shake of the head. ‘Never manage it, and even if we were lucky, them ships can outsail us all day. But judging by the time they are taking to tack and wear it will be an age before they get alongside, time enough to fetch our chattels.’

‘It would serve you to bring along any tools you have,’ Pilet suggested.

‘Whatever for?’

‘Because you are skilled in using them, friend, as are some of our own fellows, and we are in need.’

The soldiers set to loading every conveyance they had gathered,
from dog carts added to one or two drawn by oxen and even sacks tied to single donkeys, a job completed by the time the sailors had recovered their possessions, clothing, personal chests as well as their tools, setting light to their ships before they abandoned them. The whole combined number had cleared the port and city long before the Fatimid fleet thought of launching boats to chase them.

The arrival of the sailors allowed for the calling of another Council of Princes, first to rejoice in the cargo that had been fetched from Jaffa, but more to decide how to employ a much more precious asset, the woodworking skills of the men of the sea, who knew how to cut and shape timber and had brought with them the means to do so. With their help they could begin to contemplate the building of the necessary siege towers.

‘Now all we need,’ Godfrey exclaimed, ‘is the material to do so.’

I
t was easy to see the attraction of the County of Edessa as a possession: sat on a huge and fruitful plain between two of the great rivers of Asia Minor, and thus with well-watered soil perfect for the growing of crops, anyone who controlled it would have revenues sufficient to allow for regal magnificence. Passing fields full of toiling folk working that soil, Bohemund was aware that the sight of his forces caused a ripple of alarm to interrupt their labours; armed men, especially those with the crusading cross emblazoned on their surcoats and their reputation as bloody invaders, would always do that.

The road ahead was long and straight, evidence that the force of knights he was leading were still in country that had at one time been Roman. Thus it was possible to see far into the distance and observe the dot that was a rider closing with him and his conroys. The fellow did so with no haste; there was no danger in what Robert of Salerno later imparted to his liege lord.

‘It seems we are to be met before we even see the city.’

‘Baldwin himself?’

‘By his standard yes, and with an escort of several hundred knights, most certainly.’

Bohemund looked around him, at fields of good pasture on either side of the road. ‘How long before they get to where we are?’

‘I did not ride hard when I spotted them and neither did they seek to close with me. A glass of sand perhaps, certainly half that.’

‘Give the order to make camp, Robert, and with haste erect my pavilion. I would want to meet Baldwin out of the heat of the sun.’

The large tent was quickly set up and furnished by the minimum amount of furniture that the master of the household had fetched along in cart. All was in place before the thud of hooves began to reverberate through the ground, the sound of an approaching host. Bohemund was bareheaded, unarmed and outside his tent, with his familia knights close by and tense, as the one-time Baldwin of Boulogne, who now called himself Count of Edessa, rode close enough to remove his helmet and speak without the need to shout.

‘I am bound to ask what brings you and your men into my territory?’

‘Since the Battle of Antioch, Baldwin, I have felt free to go where I please.’

The lack of a title was deliberate and it hit home judging by the reaction on Baldwin’s face. He might style himself Count of Edessa, his brother and other magnates may oblige him in that; the acknowledged Count of Taranto was not one of them. His given name would suffice.

‘How do I address you, as Prince of Antioch?’ Baldwin sneered. ‘I have heard you lust for the title.’

‘My Apulian entitlement will do, given it is not in question by anyone.’

‘You are on my land, without my invitation, which displeases me.’

‘I did not come to offer you comfort, Baldwin, but to remind you of a duty you owe to the Crusade.’

That got a scoff. ‘A rich reminder coming from you.’

‘Ah! Baldwin,’ Bohemund sighed, ‘I had quite forgotten your gift for making enemies.’

That had the other man looking over his shoulder, then, quite dramatically casting an eye to the encampment behind Bohemund, the point obvious: he had arrived at the unarranged meeting with more men.

‘At a quick glance I would say that is something you should fear more than me.’

‘There may be in the future a time when I may call you to account for past deeds, but this is not one of them. If you have not already heard the reports, your brother Godfrey and his confrères have reached Jerusalem.’

For a man said to be impious, Baldwin was quick to cross himself. ‘When?’

‘It matters not, they are there and my information is that the Holy City is under siege. But what is troubling is this, they are far away from any succour should that siege take time, though they may be reinforced by sea.’

‘The Emperor?’ Baldwin exclaimed. ‘I would have thought you would trouble him more.’

‘Let us put Alexius aside, and as well we must put aside any opinions we have of each other, as well as any matters that need to be examined. I invite you to dismount, enter my pavilion and talk of what we must do to aid them, not least your own elder brother.’

‘I will only do so armed.’

‘So be it,’ Bohemund replied, with a full smile and his huge hands held out, which made Baldwin flush; this giant was telling him that he had weapons enough to deal with an assault from a man he thought a short-arse.

Any meeting between the Count of Taranto and Baldwin of Edessa was bound to be fraught. No satisfying explanation had ever been given to Bohemund for the way a hundred and fifty of his Apulian knights had been massacred by the Turks outside Tarsus, this following on from Baldwin – with a bit of low cunning that seemed, along with his brutal manner, to be his defining characteristic – having cheated Tancred out of possession of the famous city.

This was the first time they had clapped eyes on each other since the Crusade split up after the victory at Dorylaeum, but that type of behaviour had manifested itself in Baldwin from the very first days since the Crusade had crossed the Bosphorus. He was rude and openly disputatious with his own brother, to whom he owed both filial and bounden service, and was heartily disliked for his brusque manner by all Godfrey’s equals, constantly implying that he had a better brain and superior military ability to any of an assembly of men very experienced in war.

Unknown to his brother Godfrey, and certainly a mystery of which the majority of the princes were ignorant, Baldwin secretly supplied the Emperor with information that should have been kept within the confines of the Latin forces, with greed at the root of his duplicity, for while the childless Godfrey de Bouillon was both a duke and well-endowed with land, Baldwin, his heir, was strapped in both; anything he did own he had pledged to fund his Crusade.

If Edessa had not been his initial aim when he parted from the
Crusade, Bohemund had no doubt that he had something of the kind in his mind when he and Tancred were detached from the main body. Both, with a hundred knights each, were tasked to scout the fast route to Antioch through the Cilician Gates and the Belen Pass, two tight bottlenecks that were thought too dangerous for the host to pass through safely. That either could and should claim as a fief any place of value they could capture, subject to approval from and in line with vows made in Constantinople, was taken as only their right.

Secretly – even his brother did not know until he found them gone – Baldwin had added another one hundred and fifty Lotharingian lances to his contingent, meeting them at a secret rendezvous, which ensured that he would outnumber Tancred should they ever be in dispute about who owned a capture. When this became known Bohemund, having no trust whatsoever in Godfrey’s brother, sent the same number to reinforce his nephew.

Tancred got to the first major prize, the ancient city of Tarsus, without Baldwin being anywhere in sight. He had first fought a skirmish with the Turks and, having won that, he set about negotiating the surrender of the city by bluff, intimating the whole crusading host was close behind him. That engendered an agreement that would see the garrison march out unmolested the following morning, though without anything of value bar their weapons. In addition there was an agreement that Tancred’s de Hauteville banner should be immediately hoisted above the battlements.

When Baldwin arrived, having been delayed by his need to combine his forces, the first thing he noted was that red flag with the chequered bar of white and blue streaming out above the city. With stunning audacity – he had taken no part in anything to do with the
forthcoming surrender – he immediately claimed half the spoils as his due, a demand Tancred was quick to deny.

That he had underestimated his adversary was later seen as being to Tancred’s credit, he being upright where Baldwin was sly and dishonest. That was not the way the young Lord of Lecce saw things, for he felt like a fool when he awoke the following morning to find his banner gone and Baldwin’s in its place. Worse, the man himself, as well as his two hundred and fifty lances, were inside a set of walls now too potent and well manned to consider attacking; numbers alone were telling, but in addition to that he would be fighting not Turks, but knights of his own calibre.

Baldwin informed Tancred he was now negotiating his own terms with the Turkish governor and these did not include any reward for the Apulians, which led to the first instance of Latins, in strict contravention of their vows, taking up arms against each other on Crusade. It was not, however, driven to a fatal conclusion, being no more than a brawl, albeit with weapons, resulting in slight wounds and a few taken prisoners on each side.

Nothing more could be achieved by Tancred than an exchange of the latter, his Apulians for Baldwin’s Lotharingians, with the man himself refusing him even entry to Tarsus. Baldwin insultingly threw down his banner from the walls and told him to be on his way. It was a bitter pill to swallow but one that left Tancred with no choice.

He was obliged to lead his disgruntled lances on to the south-east, for there was still the mission to consider. It was only later, when he had, with Armenian aid, taken the town of Mamistra as his own, that he found out what had happened at Tarsus to those reinforcements sent by his uncle, of which up to that point he had been entirely unaware.

They had arrived at Tarsus within half a day of his own departure, tired from hard riding and in need of both rest and food, neither of which were forthcoming from an obdurate Baldwin. He even denied them the dubious comfort of accommodation within the city, obliging them to make camp outside by the nearby riverbank. What occurred next was clear in only one respect: the Turks, still armed since negotiations were unconcluded, sneaked out of the city in darkness and slaughtered the Apulian knights, not one of whom survived, despite a desperate fight.

Had Baldwin, in league with the Turks, engineered the massacre? Even some of his own lances had initially thought so, aroused by the cries of the last Apulians to die. The Lotharingians then set about securing their own safety by mass bloodshed within the city, yet such was the depth of suspicion that Baldwin was obliged to lock himself in a tower until his pleas of innocence could calm his accusers enough for him to resume command of his forces.

That achieved and his banner claiming Tarsus as his own fief, with all his lances sharing in the ravages he had inflicted on the survivors, Baldwin abandoned the Crusade completely, riding due east in search of conquests by which he could enrich himself, ending up at the massively affluent and important trading centre of Edessa, which he also not only took for his own, but one he then turned into a bastion of Frankish power that controlled the whole region.

Baldwin was never again seen anywhere near the Council of Princes, where he had once acted as a tendentious supporter to Godfrey, and because of that absence he had never been challenged by men who were either his superiors in noble rank, or even his peers, to provide an explanation of what had occurred at Tarsus, and the man who wanted to know most was with him now.

Much as Bohemund wanted to challenge him, indeed push him to the point of trial by combat, such desires had to be set aside in the name of the greater good.

‘You sitting in Edessa and my doing likewise in Antioch will not do anything to aid the safety of the Crusade.’

‘Is their security any real concern of yours?’ Baldwin demanded. ‘You have your principality, what more do you need?’

‘I think my conscience demands that I do more, as should your own.’

‘I have no qualms to trouble my conscience.’

Was the swine challenging him to refer to Tarsus? Bohemund did not know. What he was aware of was the pressing need to do something to ensure that the siege of Jerusalem could proceed without any threat of relief from the east and he took refuge from his suppressed anger in an explanation of the strategic problems that to a warrior like Baldwin, and despite his manifest shortcomings he was a good one, that were probably unnecessary.

‘If the Fatimids attack from the west there is nothing you or I can do to relieve them.’

‘But a force of Turks—’

‘Yes, but would such a host move if they felt threatened on the flank?’

‘The Turks are cowed, and much as it pains me to admit it, you are the one who achieved that.’

‘They have been beaten before yet still raised new armies.’

‘Do you have any proof they are doing that now?’

‘No, but I see the need to let them know that such a thing would be unwise. In order that such a thing should happen and be taken as
serious, it requires that both you and I make moves to threaten the possessions they still value.’

Baldwin dropped his head to his barrel chest. ‘They would fear for Baghdad.’

‘Only against you and I combined.’

That produced a laugh. ‘What is this – the mighty Bohemund seeking aid from the cursed Baldwin of Edessa?’

‘Who would not be so cursed,’ Bohemund said softly, ‘if he was seen at home, and especially in the duchy you hope one day to inherit, to have abandoned his vows? Yet what if that same man had done something to make the capture of Jerusalem possible and quite possibly be reputed to have saved the endeavours of the Crusade, and most tellingly those of his brother and liege lord?’

In the silence that followed, Bohemund recalled his talk with Robert of Salerno regarding what he had proposed to say to Baldwin, very much what he had just expounded, the younger man convinced that all his lord would get was an insulting refusal. Yet no man likes to be seen as a pariah and no knight would ever want to carry to his grave the reputation now attached to Baldwin’s name, one that could so easily be tarnished further.

The whole of Christendom knew that he had deserted the Crusade and that meant he had repudiated those most solemn vows which, should he return home, would see him brayed at in the street as an apostate and a traitor. Even if he never departed from Edessa, that was not a stain to easily carry, and on top of that what had happened at Tarsus would be a subject of discussion in all territories from which the Crusaders had come, something Bohemund could easily foster.