Crusade (43 page)

A feast was hastily organized and we sat and listened to one another’s stories. The birth had been straightforward; the Emperor Alexius had treated Estrith and Adela like his daughters; life in the Blachernae was a little like being a bird in a gilded cage, but splendid all the same.

Adela had eventually recovered, but only just. The Emperor’s physicians immediately stopped the use of the hot iron, saying that too much tissue had already been lost. They used instead the maggots of the blowfly, bred especially for the purpose and much more effective than the maggots used by the Crusader physicians. The treatment was uncomfortable at best and involved her lying on her stomach most of the time, but it worked. She had been left with a large hollow where her right buttock should have been, a mass of ugly scarring and a pronounced limp.

Adela, as ever, put it in her own inimitable way.

‘I’m still not a bad offering for a quick tryst, as long as I stay in the maiden’s position.’

The only sad story they brought was that the Emperor’s emissary had returned from Oviedo with the news that Cristina had died a few years earlier, but had lived out her
days happily in the care of Doña Viraca, the Countess of Oviedo, who was Doña Jimena’s formidable mother.

The emissary also brought news from Spain that Doña Jimena was alive and well in Valencia with the Cid, who was still Lord of the Taifa, but that he was not faring so well. His age and many battle scars were catching up with him and his body groaned and moaned at him all the time.

We were all sad to hear about Cristina, and Hereward in particular was unhappy to know that the Cid was losing the great strength and vigour for which he was famous.

He made himself a promise. ‘When this campaign is over, I will travel to Valencia to see my good friend the Cid. We can reminisce together before time has its way with us both.’

Estrith suddenly looked heartbroken.

‘I thought you would come back to England with us?’

‘If only I could, my darling Estrith! I would love to see England’s forests, heaths and fens once more. But many years ago, I gave a king my word, a vow I will never break. I will be content to end my days on my mountain, watching the sun going down to the west, until the sun sets for me also.’

He did not need to elaborate, and quickly changed the subject to a happier theme.

‘So, what shall we call the boy? He can’t live his life with a name like “Herry”!’

Estrith put her disappointment to one side. ‘Adela and I thought you would all have some good ideas about names and that we would name him here.’

Sweyn then spoke up, as a boy’s father should, firmly and clearly.

‘It is obvious what his name should be – Harold. Harold of Hereford.’

Robert looked perplexed.

‘I think I understand the reason for Harold – your noble King before my father put his large Norman boot in it – but why Hereford?’

Hereward was delighted.

‘It is where Torfida and I met and this long saga began. A good choice, Sweyn; it gets my vote.’

Everyone concurred and toasts were made to the boy’s health and prosperity. Sweyn picked up the child and handed him to Hereward.

‘Hereward, I would be honoured if you would proclaim his name. I want him to be told about this moment when he is old enough, so that he can remember it all his life and pass the story on to his children.’

Hereward held the boy in the cup of his mighty palm and raised him high above us. The baby thought about crying for a moment, then realized that the occasion was too significant for such trivialities and instead gurgled to himself contentedly.

‘In the presence of the Brethren of the Blood of the Talisman – Hereward of Bourne; Estrith of Melfi, Abbess of Fécamp; Adela of Bourne, Knight of Islam; Sweyn of Bourne, Knight of Normandy; Edgar the Atheling, Prince of England; and Robert, Sovereign Duke of Normandy – I name this child Harold of Hereford.

‘May his life be a long and honourable one, lived by the traditions and oaths of our Brethren. We welcome him to our midst.’

31. Jerusalem

The Crusader army, refreshed, replenished and reinvigorated, marched out of Antioch on the morning of the 13th of January 1099. But it was not the mighty host that had left Europe two and a half years earlier. No more than 1,000 knights and 6,000 infantry were under the command of the Latin Princes, now a handful of men, the only survivors of the cream of the aristocracy of Christian Europe.

Bohemond bade us farewell; he was too preoccupied with securing his hold on Antioch and its satellite cities to join us. But before he did so, he had offered Sweyn an extremely enticing inducement to join his contingent of Italian Normans – the lordship of Harim, a fortress city thirty miles to the east of Antioch.

‘You have a family now. It is time to settle down; there can be no better place than here in this new Christian world. Help me make it secure for our children and grandchildren.’

‘My Lord, your offer is extremely generous, but I must continue to Jerusalem and complete our mission.’

‘Are you implying that I am not completing mine?’

‘No, sire, I just want to see Jerusalem.’

‘I hear that you have been at the heart of much debate among the knights about the ethics of war.’

‘I and many others, including many Muslim knights,
follow the Mos Militum, a code of chivalry that encourages us to behave with honour and discipline.’

‘I have heard of it. It is dangerous. There is only one code to follow in war: kill or be killed.’

‘I don’t think my prowess in battle has ever been questioned. But what concerns me is fair treatment for our vanquished opponents, and the protection of civilians.’

‘Do you mean Muslims?’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘That is dangerous talk, Sir Sweyn. There are many on this Crusade who would call that heresy.’

‘I know, my Lord, but they are misguided.’

‘Count Raymond tells me that you once eloped with a Muslim girl while still married to the brave Adela. Is she the one who seduced you with the sinister ways of the infidel?’

Sweyn bristled. Hereward put his heavy, battle-scared gauntlet on the young knight’s forearm, while Robert intervened.

‘Prince Bohemond, we have much to do; Jerusalem beckons.’

Bohemond, clearly angered that Sweyn had turned him down, sneered at us all and rode away.

Hereward reassured Sweyn. ‘You handled that well. Bohemond is not a man to pick a fight with, even when he provokes you. Come, let’s move off. I want to see Jerusalem.’

It took us five months of steady progress to reach Jerusalem. With Robert in a position of much greater influence, our progress was marked by shows of force and negotiation with the local emirs rather than naked brutality. Tripoli,
Tyre, Beirut, Haifa and Caesarea all fell under our control.

But Jerusalem would be a different matter.

The Fatimids from the Caliphate of Cairo – Shia Muslims of a very different persuasion from their Sunni brothers, the Seljuk Turks – were in control of the Holy City, and its governor, Iftikar ad-Daulah, was a shrewd and resourceful leader. Much smaller than Antioch, less than half a square mile in area, the city had towering walls and a resolute garrison stiffened by 400 elite cavalrymen dispatched from Cairo.

Despite its formidable fortifications, it was nevertheless a thing of wonder. We climbed to the top of the Mount of Olives to see the holiest place in the world for the three religions of Abraham. There before us, beyond its lofty walls, were the Dome of the Rock, the Temple of Solomon, the al-Aksa Mosque, and the Holy Sepulchre – the most revered buildings in the world. They glowed in the sun, their walls bleached white, their domes, minarets and crosses gleaming symbols of man’s devotion to his maker.

Estrith was moved to tears. ‘Why would men fight over such a place?’

Sweyn was moved to anger. ‘Let’s try to make sure that they don’t.’

Iftikar ad-Daulah had prepared his ground well. Every stick of timber for miles around had either been taken inside the city or burned, all the wells had been poisoned, livestock taken, granaries emptied, and he had a strong supply base on the coast at Ascalon, fifty miles to the west.

To avoid a repeat of the disaster of Antioch, an immediate attempt to scale the walls was made, with disastrous consequences. The lack of timber meant we had far too
few scaling ladders and no siege towers, so the attack was called off before any more casualties were inflicted.

At the end of June, finally abandoning their greedy marauding across Syria and Palestine, more Crusaders arrived from the north. They swelled our numbers to 1,000 knights and 12,000 infantry, but also brought their bigotry and avarice.

Robert found it hard to keep control in the camp. Raymond of Toulouse had lost all sense and reason and, with the newly arrived Peter the Hermit and other zealots, had taken to walking barefoot around the walls of the city in prayer.

Despite his overbearing manner, Bohemond would have been useful to us, but, alas, his own cupidity had got the better of him.

One group of new arrivals became a godsend. William Embriaco, a gifted builder, boat builder and siege engineer, appeared from the coast with a large contingent of Genoese sailors. They had dismantled their boats at Jaffa and hauled the massive timbers, ropes and shipwright’s tools overland. We immediately got them together with Gaston of Brean, a genius in the science of siege engineering, and together they built battering rams, mangonels, scaling ladders and towers of amazing scale and power.

The towers were over fifty feet tall – mounted on wheels and built on three levels, they were designed to sit hard against the city walls. The assault troops were protected by thatch, covered with several layers of hide.

Then Tancred of Hauteville began his particular brand of intimidation.

First, a captured Muslim knight was paraded in front of the walls before being beheaded by one of Tancred’s henchmen. Then Tancred began to catapult bodies into the city, some already dead, some not so fortunate, who met their deaths dashed against its ramparts and buildings. To his credit, the governor did not retaliate in kind, but did expel all the Orthodox Christians from the city – a reasonable response that seemed only to anger the Crusaders even more.

One of the many zealots and visionaries with the army was a priest, Peter Desiderous, who claimed to have had a visitation from the much respected Adhemar Le Puy, Pope Urban’s Apostolic Legate, who had only recently died. Le Puy had commanded him to remind the Crusaders that they were pilgrims and that they should form a procession around the city, praying for strength from God for their attack on the walls.

Although it may have seemed a trifle too devout for the more worldly of the Crusaders, it had a dramatic impact. Not only did many of them work themselves up into a religious frenzy, but the arrows, stones, excrement and hot oil that were hurled at them by the inhabitants of the city only added to their fury.

The assault began on the morning of the 14th of July 1099, with the Crusaders attacking the city on two fronts at once. The sky was immediately filled with missiles flung from both sides. There were stones, firebrands and a whole range of improvised projectiles, flammable, sharp or heavy.

The fighting lasted for two days until Gaston of Brean’s
towers made a breakthrough. With Godfrey of Bouillon himself on the highest level, one of the towers reached the top of the wall. The defenders had one defensive weapon left, which they had held in reserve, a form of Greek fire that was thought to be impossible to extinguish. They poured vats of it on to the tower, but the banished Christians from the city had revealed the secret of how to kill the deadly blaze: vinegar, which the Crusaders had stored on the inside of the tower in skin sacks and used liberally to douse the fire.

As soon as the flames were out, Godfrey let down the hide-covered protective wooden lattice at the front of the tower and used it as a bridge to stride on to the wall, leading a mass of knights behind him. As soon as this bridgehead was established, dozens of scaling ladders were thrown against the wall and the Crusaders poured into the city.

What followed brought shame on us all.

After three years of struggling against overwhelming odds, on a tortuous journey replete with astonishing acts of bravery, for what most thought was the noblest of causes, the Crusaders once more behaved like wild animals. All sense of decency deserted them; their humanity was forgotten in order to slake their bloodlust.

There had been other atrocities and much cruel barbarity, but what happened in Jerusalem over the course of the night of the 15th of July was on an unprecedented scale. Almost the entire population of the city was raped, tortured and butchered; Muslims and Jews, none was spared, save a few of the elite Egyptian cavalry and the Governor, Iftikar ad-Daulah, who hid in the Tower of David and negotiated surrender.

It is difficult to estimate how many died, but it must have been in the tens of thousands.

Robert led our Brethren as we struggled in vain to prevent the carnage. He ordered his contingent to stand down, but only a few did. We were joined by some who were loyal to the Mos Militum and we managed to get a few poor souls into a safe house and keep it guarded while we went in search of more to rescue.

Harrowingly, when we returned, the guards had been overwhelmed and their charges massacred. In all, we managed to get two dozen out of the city and sent them with an escort towards the coast.

Word spread that, before they were killed, many of the richer citizens had swallowed their gold bezants and jewellery to prevent the Crusaders stealing them. Thus there followed horror upon horror, as crazed Crusaders sliced open the bellies of the dead in a grisly hunt for coins and gems.

Every place of worship, every public building, every home was looted until the carts could carry no more. Nothing of any value remained; the city was cleansed of everything with the blood of its people.

Within minutes of the end of the carnage, the Crusaders flocked to the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks for their deliverance. Heaving from their exertions, dripping in their sweat and the still-warm blood of their victims, they knelt in prayer.