Prince of Legend

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It took little time for the news of that collapsed curtain wall to find its way to the ears of those opposing the Apulians, less than it took to reach those of the Count of Taranto himself. If he had heard the rumble of that falling masonry he lacked sight of it so had no idea why those Turks who had held his men at bay for so long suddenly stopped fighting. There was a lapse too before those who had been wielding weapons at enemy heads found them to be swishing through fresh air as their adversaries fled, another before they realised that there was no barrier to their climbing over the battlements and onto the parapet.

By the time the truth dawned Bohemund was alongside his men to remind them of his instructions, to take control of the nearest towers and not to seek to get down into the city, an instruction that was not easy to obey given there was no one to obstruct them, indeed it fell to their leader to curtail their progress; he was happy with a few of the towers of Ma’arrat an-Numan, he did not need them all. Tancred found him on the Apulian side of that collapsed breach, with barely enough light left in the day to see what lay on the other side of the gap.

‘Raymond has called on his men to fall back, leaving only the number needed to secure the battlements.’

‘In God’s name why?’

‘It seems he fears to fight in the streets in darkness, against an enemy that seems to consist of the whole Muslim citizenry of Ma’arrat, which means a fighter and perhaps a knife in every doorway. The cost in blood would be too high, though since he would not talk with me there may be another cause.’

‘I cannot think what it might be,’ came the reply, with a slow shake of the head. ‘Perhaps it is wise.’

‘What do you intend?’

‘Whatever it is will not be served by us standing in the open where we can be seen as soon as someone fetches a torch.’

‘Raymond will know that we have succeeded as well.’

That was said to his uncle’s back; Bohemund was already heading for the nearest tower, and the chamber within that had provided accommodation for the Turks who had previously occupied it. Entering upon his heels, Tancred was asked to shut the studded wood door that led to the breach, which plunged the tiny space into darkness, until Bohemund called for light and a torch was brought, this allowing him to set the flame to the tallow wads resting in the hollow sconces carved out of the solid stone.

The room, cold with thick stone walls and no fire, had a table and chests that served as seats in daylight, then, when set together, as beds at night, on one of which Bohemund sat, indicating that Tancred should do likewise, before falling into a contemplative silence, his chin resting on the haft of his axe, a position he maintained for some time and held even when his nephew spoke.

‘I think it sensible to wait for daylight.’ That got a slow nod. ‘If the enemy is not truly beaten that means they will still be fired with hope and still numerous enough to spill much blood in the streets.’

‘They are bound, on such a night, to be as dark as pitch and narrow.’

‘Which is deadly.’

‘You are saying it would be equal folly for us to attempt to do what Raymond has postponed?’

‘Possibly, but then there is the notion that we will have a free hand to plunder as well before sunrise.’

‘What of our men, Tancred?’

‘They have obeyed your orders and will continue to do so unless you change them.’

‘Even when tempted by such a rich prize?’

Tancred produced a grim smile. ‘That will not be much use to a man hanging from a doorway for disobedience.’

‘And how, nephew, do you think Raymond would react to find that his own men had been denied any part of what is rightfully theirs, arrived in Ma’arrat to find it plundered by us?’

‘He would have to be incensed, his lances even more so.’

‘Which might push him to act against his better nature.’ Bohemund looked at his nephew and grinned then. ‘Always assuming he has one.’

‘You think he might resort to arms?’

‘He might have no choice, Tancred. The pressure from those he leads might oblige him to seek bloody redress.’ Another silence followed, Bohemund’s chin was back on the wooden haft of that axe until he had cleared his thoughts. ‘In all my disputes with Raymond, as I have said before to you, I have had a care to never push it to a contest of weapons.’

‘You would kill him in such a fight.’

That got a faint nod but there was no pride in the response; Bohemund was the foremost knight of Christendom and well aware of the fact. He knew that Raymond, even given his prowess as a fighter and leader of men, could never defeat him in single combat. Quite apart from his greater age — he was in his fifties and so a good decade older than Bohemund — there was the sheer difference in height and strength, let alone repute. Such a contest would be an uneven one and Raymond of Toulouse was equally aware of that.

‘And I would have no choice lest I wish him to kill me.’

‘The Crusade,’ Tancred responded in what was a statement not a question.

‘If blood is to be spilt on this venture it will not be by me, or those I lead. I will hold to my papal vow.’

Tancred had to bite his tongue; where did Antioch come in such a declaration?

‘Single combat fills me with no fear, but a battle of factions …’

‘And you sense that here?’ Tancred asked as his uncle’s voice trailed off.

‘I see the possibility.’

‘You could ensure it is single combat by issuing the challenge?’

‘The Provencal knights would not stand to see their leader slain.’

‘So you are going to leave Raymond’s men a free hand to plunder the city?’

‘Never!’ Bohemund spat back, before sitting up and smiling, his tone benign. ‘But I will wait till his men make their entry before any of ours move a muscle. Then we can happily see to the garrison and plunder in company to our heart’s content. No one can gainsay that.’

‘He will want the governor’s treasury, to compensate for the silver he expended on his siege tower.’

‘Then he best move with speed, for to lay his hands on it he will need to get to it first. Now oblige me by fetching Firuz.’

Raymond of Toulouse had as much discipline over his knights as did Bohemund, so that his instruction to wait until daylight before entering the city was obeyed, as much because his men were exhausted from fighting most of the day as the fear of disobeying their liege lord and the consequences. They were now sat round their fires earnestly discussing the wealth that would be theirs on the morrow, as well as how the Turkish citizenry would pay for their obstinacy.

Such talk had a deeper resonance than in normal times for these men. Since leaving Constantinople most of the towns and cities taken, faced with a formidable and successful Crusader army, had surrendered and opened their gates, only for possession to be taken as imperial fiefs by the body of troops Alexius Comnenus had sent to accompany them, this before treaties were made respecting the inhabitants, which meant plunder was out of the question.

The first occasion on which this had occurred had been at Nicaea, the primary target of the campaign. That had been a proper siege, yet instead of the expected booty and other pleasures which normally came from the surrender of a place that had refused terms, the fighting men, high and low, got nothing. All had stood by to watch Byzantine troops take ownership.

They had been rewarded by the Emperor’s largesse, which if welcome could not compare with the prospect of what might be gained from a man’s own efforts in a captured city of some size and wealth. The princes and their senior supporters had received gold and silver, the rest had to be content with copper, albeit in abundant quantities.

In Antioch, with Kerbogha’s huge army in the offing, common sense dictated they should not alienate the populace and that debarred the Crusaders from engaging in mass pillage, albeit there had been many individual acts of thievery. Only at Albara had the Provencals been allowed to behave in the time-honoured fashion, that being a proper sack, which whetted an appetite never much hidden.

The mailed knights had, as was commonplace, the best pickings, being first over the walls, able to kill anyone who stood in their way, quick to spot the homes of the wealthier citizens as well as the public buildings, bound to be repositories of high-value items to steal, albeit care had to be taken not to cross the avarice of their liege lord and his senior subordinates. Food and wine was carried off to their own encampments for later consumption and that too applied to any well-born women.

The milities coming along behind them, if they often found that the easy pickings were gone, had been able to find booty, if necessary by torturing the ordinary citizens to find out where they had hidden money and provisions their betters had missed, killing those who refused to reveal their secret places while treating their womenfolk of whatever age as chattels to be abused prior to being passed up to their liege lord to be sold into slavery.

By the time the pilgrims got entry to Ma’arrat — those thousands who had followed Raymond and the Holy Lance to Albara and to here — the infidel, from whom they could with a clear conscience steal anything they could find, would have been stripped even down to their naked bodies, and if they had a storeroom it would be long emptied. The only pleasure to be gained in dealing with the enemies of their faith would be from granting them the choice of forced conversions or immediate death.

Thus it had been at Albara, yet there they had not faced near starvation, which is what afflicted them now. In the short time Bohemund and his Apulians had been outside Ma’arrat, their condition, poor to begin with, had shown a marked deterioration. They had been reduced to rutting in the surrounding landscape for weeds and roots with which to make some kind of soup, while any edible berries had been already picked and consumed.

Now these pilgrims were sat outside a city seemingly devoid of defence — the walls were deserted — with the possibility of well-stocked larders, while those who were armed and could stop them were sat round their fires dreaming of plunder, so here lay an opportunity to be first to the trough. It was not a mass affair or in any way organised: people weighed up their situation and acted in small groups, slipping out of their camp at various intervals to bypass, on a night of Stygian darkness, the sentinels set by Raymond.

When it came to discipline the writ of Raymond and Bohemund ran less well within the minds of their poorer soldiery, the milities, who collectively had none of the haughty pretensions, nor the dreams of riches, which exercised the knightly cohorts. If they expected to be second to the sack, and would be on the morrow, it was more of a present concern that they had enjoyed less of the food here at Ma’arrat that kept their betters in superior health.

If they were not starving they were hungry, for food distribution naturally favoured the men in chain mail, who undertook the burden of fighting in a siege, the milities being required for the base work of making and carrying ladders or pulling and pushing the tower built by the Count of Toulouse into place, before plying their shovels to undermine the walls. Had they not, for all their mean standing, brought about the fall of the city, so why should others have first rights?

The movement of the pilgrims did not go unnoticed either — they were camped closer to the milities than the lances — and soon bands of foot soldiers, pikes and daggers in hand, were on their heels. In Ma’arrat they found the streets full of pilgrims but free of any Turkish soldiers, who had retreated to the Governor’s Palace to await their fate, while the Muslim citizens who had fought so hard were cowering in their dwellings: nothing stood between them and rich pickings, including the unarmed pilgrims.

Bohemund had sent his interpreter Firuz to seek out the Governor of Ma’arrat with an offer that he should surrender his now untenable city. If he did so and gathered together in a body the leading citizens at his palace, he would provide a strong guard to secure their lives, bound to be forfeit if they did not concur in the frenzy that would follow the entry of the soldiery, regardless of their rank.

Once they were inside the walls there was not a high noble born, however feared he might be, who would be able to control his men in a city that had refused terms. Knights or milities it made no difference, each would be determined on what he saw as his just reward, the size of which tended to grow in the imagination the nearer the fall of a city approached, and grew out of all proportion when plunder was to hand.

Not to be cheated of what was theirs by right became the paramount emotion, often fuelled by wine taken to excess — bloodlust apart that was the primary object seized — so that in the unlikely event there was an ounce of compassion contained in a Crusader breast it was soon swamped by avarice. It was a sad commonplace to find those engaged in plunder, comrades in battle but intoxicated with drink and envy, seeking to rob each other.

Raymond had waited till first light to send forward his own herald to demand the surrender of Ma’arrat, only to discover there was no one in authority prepared to answer the ultimatum, which obliged him to lead his lances and the attendant priests over the breach in the walls and into the streets, where he expected to find the Turks ready to sell their lives dearly.

Instead he came across a teeming mass of pilgrims of both sexes, mixed with his own drunken milities, as well as bodies littering streets and alleys that ran with victim blood. More to the point, both groups had in their possession items of gold and silver, while their belts were hung with bulging leather purses.

Mindful of his standing as protector and possessor of the Holy Lance, Raymond forbade his men to take from the pilgrims what they had plundered and that, for military reasons, also had to apply to his milities, an instruction for which the citizens of Ma’arrat paid dearly. There would have been unbridled savagery whatever had occurred, but seeing themselves robbed of what they presumed as rightfully theirs sent the mailed lances in a passion even greater than that which would have attended their depredations.

As they moved into the city no one was spared, with the Armenians suffering too, and both Raymond and Robert of Flanders were to the fore in the killing and encouragement to do so; man, woman or child, a goodly number of the inhabitants that had so far survived were dragged through their smashed doorways to be executed in the streets, the only delay in instant despatch — there was no offer to convert for the Muslims — the chance to tell where they had hidden whatever they still possessed.

Bohemund had moved into the city at dawn as well, but with more purpose, no less surprised than Raymond of Toulouse to find that his men had been beaten to their pillage by a mass of villeins, drunk with wine and bloodlust, now crowding the streets and squares, his Apulians reacting in a similar fashion to the knights of Provence, for they too felt cheated.

He made no effort to contain them, nor did he even delay to observe; following the guidance of Firuz, he and Tancred, surrounded by familia knights, were led to the Governor’s Palace where he found that the arrangements his interpreter had made overnight were in place.

Assembled were all those of wealth and position, the merchants that had in their trade made Ma’rrat an-Numan such a tempting target for a conqueror, along with their possessions. There too were their many wives and even more children, all under the protection of the governor’s personal retainers, those Turkish soldiers who had been the backbone of the defence.

‘Firuz, tell those men to throw down their weapons,’ Bohemund commanded, after the governor had executed a deep bow.

A sharp command from the bent-over official saw that obeyed and Firuz translated his next words, uttered while he stood fully upright once more and pointed to the chests of coin that lay before him, a sweep following to include the objects of value that lay behind them.

‘He offers this to you as yours by right of conquest.’

‘And what does he seek in return?’

‘That which you proposed I offer, My Lord, their lives and the right to depart Ma’arrat with what they can carry.’

About to agree, Bohemund was forced to react to the sudden commotion as a body of knights entered, with Raymond of Toulouse and Robert of Flanders at their head, both blood-coated magnates stopping dead in their forward movement wearing expressions of surprise, or was it fury, to find the Count of Taranto present. That was before their eyes were drawn, as they must be, to the treasure that lay between Bohemund and the richly clad Turks, who had recoiled at the intrusion and were now gathered in a knot.

‘The city is surrendered,’ Bohemund said.

‘It is not,’ Raymond spat, ‘until it is ceded to me.’

‘It matters not, My Lord who has the glory, more who has the walls.’ He gestured for his Armenian to approach and spoke softly. ‘Firuz, tell the governor who it is that has just entered and that having surrendered to me he must also do so to the Count of Toulouse. Add that a very deep bow, even abasement, would not go amiss.’

There was a degree of terror in the governor’s eye as that was translated, but he was quick to throw himself onto the mosaic-tiled floor, an act that was copied by the whole knot of assembled males to his rear. From the floor came the words that asked for mercy, following which Bohemund explained what he had arranged.

‘Nothing of yours applies to me,’ Raymond barked.

‘It would have done so, Count Raymond, if you had climbed off your high horse and deigned to talk with me.’

Raymond’s response was to wave his bloodstained sword and order his men to seize both the assembled Turks and their possessions, an act which had Bohemund move forward to block their way, Tancred and the familia knights acting in unison to support him, all the Apulians having unsheathed weapons.

‘I have given certain guarantees.’

‘Which I had told you-’

‘You, My Lord, do not tell me anything.’

‘The lives of these infidels, as well as anything they possess, is forfeit.’

‘Their possessions, yes, their lives I have granted, as well as that which they can carry.’

Bohemund and Raymond were two sword blades apart now, and glaring at each other, which had Tancred wondering if that restraint which his uncle had stated the previous night was in danger of being broken. He was in a position where his pride would not let him withdraw but so was Raymond, and the younger man could only speculate what was going through the mind of Toulouse.

He had more men with him than his rival, but that would aid him little if it came to a fight, for he was well to the fore and might fall before his superior numbers could save him and such was the prowess of Bohemund that several of them might be despatched in the attempt, which as his familia knights they would be bound to do. Tancred thought he knew what Toulouse did not: his uncle would never strike the first blow, but it was the last one that counted and that would certainly be his.

Robert of Flanders pushed through to get between the two men. ‘Is there not enough here for all? No good will come of spilling blood in place of a share of the spoils.’

‘I demand their heads on my lances,’ Raymond spat, gesturing to the Turks, cowering in a group once more, ‘as recompense for the blood and treasure I have spent.’

‘Settle for their wealth, Raymond, for I have given them my word on their lives.’

Robert of Flanders put his mouth close to Raymond’s ear and spoke in such a low whisper that Bohemund could not hear what he said, words which did nothing to soften the look aimed at his Apulian rival. Bohemund held Raymond’s eye, but kept his countenance mild, until either from the words he was hearing or from the uselessness of maintaining it Raymond turned his head slightly and broke the mutual stare.

‘You would fight a Christian to save a Turk?’ Raymond asked, when Flanders had ceased to whisper.

‘I would fight to defend my bounden word.’

That caused the other man to blink, for it flew directly in the face of his low opinion of Bohemund, who to his mind was careless with his vows. It was then obvious that Flanders had suggested a compromise that would save the face of both men. It was equally the case that Toulouse was unhappy in the making of it, for his voice was strained.

‘You may have their lives, but they leave this palace with nothing but that in which they need for modesty.’

The time taken by Bohemund to consider that did nothing to lighten the threatening atmosphere, but eventually he called forward Firuz, with instruction being given that the Turks should be stripped of their personal valuables, including their rich garments, while explaining the alternative, which was worse.

‘Tell him I will provide an escort to the city gates and beyond, to ensure they are safe.’ ‘

‘And what of these men we had to fight to get here, Count Bohemund?’ Raymond asked. ‘Do you intend to protect them too?’

‘They are not subject to any promise I made.’

‘Then,’ Raymond hissed, ‘it is fitting that they pay the price for their deeds.’

Receiving no reply, Raymond issued a sharp command and the men who had led the Muslim citizens of Ma’arrat an-Numan and shown them how to fight, now without arms to defend themselves, were slaughtered to the frantic screams of the women present.