Prince of Legend

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The 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 Provencals 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 confrere 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.

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 Provencal 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.’