Siege of Heaven (56 page)

I did not see Grimbauld’s mace drop, but I heard the command that accompanied it.

‘Begin.’

With a groan that seemed torn from the wood itself, we heaved on the ram. It rocked forward an inch, and for a moment the sum strength of three hundred men held it there. Then it rolled back. A dispirited moan shuddered through us. My arms, already sore from the night’s labours, burned anew.

From the corner of my eye I saw Grimbauld walking back. He disappeared from my sight, but he must have taken up a position at the rear of the machine for a moment later I heard the cry of ‘Ready’, and then the beat as he rapped his mace on the end of the tree-trunks. We hauled again. The ram edged forward, tottering, but fear of failing must have given us new strength, for this time it rolled forward. An inch, no more, before it shuddered to a standstill.

‘I’d like to find whoever made these wheels and tie him to the rim,’ muttered Sigurd grimly.

I had neither breath nor time to answer. The mace struck its beat again, and again we pushed forward with all our strength.

It was not how I had hoped it would be – a headlong charge, a terrifying scramble up the walls, and then victory. It was not even the dense, desperate mêlée of hand-to-hand combat I had feared – not yet, at least. Instead, the battle for Jerusalem was nothing more than drudgery. For
what seemed like hours we heaved, hauled and cursed the machine forward, inch by terrible inch. Some men fainted with exhaustion and had to be dragged away, but I stayed in my place, refusing to let go. I was tiring badly, but if ever I failed to move forward with the others I immediately felt the harsh touch of the bar behind striking me across my shoulders. The wheels barely seemed to move – as often as not, we had to drag the ram forward rather than roll it, leaving two great welts in the earth where we had passed. When I looked back, it was pitiful to see what little distance we had come.

Meanwhile, the sparks of battle began to take hold and burst into flame around us. Alone among the Franks, Tancred’s company had kept their horses: they rode in a loose screen on either side of us, shielding us from any counter-attack and peppering the ramparts with arrows. They had to be nimble, for although the Fatimids still did not seem to have brought up their heavy siege weapons, they had by now managed to deploy smaller slings and rock-throwers, which lashed us with well-aimed stones. To all that I had already lost or diminished on that pilgrimage – my family, my strength, my faith – I now added my humanity. I saw the men on the ropes dying, their faces smashed in or their necks broken, and all I felt was relief. When rocks hit the wattle roof above me and bounced away, I did not just feel gratitude for my protection, but jealous pleasure that I had what others did not. And when I saw the arrows begin to fall around me, cutting men down, I was glad, for it meant we must at last be nearing the walls.

The end, when it came, was sudden. We were stooped like slaves, pressing our bleeding hands against the staves to drive the beast forward, except that this time the ram did not stop when we did. It rolled on. Those who held on to the handles were dragged forward, while those who had let go found themselves knocked down by the men behind. Standing at the end of the bar, and far enough forward, I just had time to see what was happening. I jumped clear, pulling Sigurd after me as we stumbled into the fevered mass of men around us.

The Franks had chosen the line of their attack well. The ground here sloped quite steeply to the outer walls: as soon as the ram crossed the rim its head went down, and the full power of its dead weight was unleashed. The men who had given every ounce of their strength to move it that far suddenly found themselves left behind or – unable to move themselves fast enough – trapped beneath it.

It struck home with a thunderclap, shattering the wall like glass and blasting it into a thousand fragments. Through the dust cloud that engulfed it, I saw the ram lumbering on. With a second crash, deeper and more profound than the first, it slammed against the inner wall. Deep cracks exploded through the stone, but it did not break. Only then did the ram come to rest.

The break in the battle lasted a heartbeat longer, while bricks and dust slowly settled. Then, in an instant, the fighting erupted again, fiercer than ever, and this time I had no roof to shield me. Through the choked air I saw Grimbauld standing defiant, his shield held over his head
and his mace pointing towards the walls. ‘
Forward!
’

‘
Forward!
’ Another voice echoed it in my ear. Sigurd. He ran forward and I followed, craning around to see if Thomas was with us. In the dust, we must have been all but invisible to the defenders on the walls, but they poured their missiles down on us like rain. Several fell near me; one arrow planted itself right between my feet, but I ran on. The ruins of the wall loomed before me. I slid to a halt behind it and huddled close so that the missiles could not strike. Sigurd was with me; a second later, Thomas dived into the shelter as well. A scratch on his face was bleeding, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Nearby, I heard Grimbauld still bellowing us to advance.

‘We won’t get through that gap,’ said Sigurd. He pointed to our left. A little way along the wall, I could make out the rear end of the ram protruding through the hole it had smashed. The inner and outer ramparts were so close here, and the ram so long, that it could not pass all the way through but plugged the very opening it had made.

Grimbauld had seen it too. ‘
Back to the ram!
Bend yourselves onto those ropes and pull, curse you.’

It seemed almost impossible that anyone could have survived in that storm of arrows, but men came running through the fog and tried to pick up the traces that lay splayed out behind the ram. The dust was settling, but the air was not growing any clearer. If anything, it seemed thicker. And from somewhere beyond the wall, I smelled burning.

‘The ram,’ shouted a voice. ‘The ram is on fire.’

Holding up my arm as a makeshift shield – better to take an arrow in the hand than in the face – I risked a glance over my barricade. With the ram stuck beneath the walls, the Fatimids could drop burning straw and oil on it at will. Flames already licked up from the wattle roof, and a column of black smoke poured into the sky, though it would take an age for the great trees beneath to burn.

‘
Get it out of there!
’ Ten teams of oxen could hardly have hauled the ram up that slope, yet men still tried, running in to harness themselves to the beast Apollyon. If more did not die, it was only because the smoke from the fire blinded those who had set it. But the ram would be ashes before we dragged it free. Instead of trying to move it, men now clambered around it into the narrow space between the walls. There they tried to smother the fire with dust and earth – but the ground was stony, and there was little they could use. Beside me, Thomas made to follow them, and I had to grab the collar of his hauberk to haul him back.

‘No.’ With the roar of battle in my ears, I put my face an inch from his merely to be understood. ‘Think of Helena and Everard. You will not help them by dying now.’

He shrugged off my hand, but did not go further.

Now a new and terrible thing happened: women began to appear in the battle. They staggered out of the smoke, bent double under the weight of the burdens they carried – vessels of water to quench the burning ram. The sight of the water made my parched throat ache for a sip, even a single drop, but there was none for me. Each vessel was
solemnly handed forward to the men at the front, then poured on the tongues of flame that licked the ram. Each time the water touched the fire it vapourised in an instant, hissing up in terrible gouts of steam. It was torment to witness.

At length, a knight came running back to Grimbauld, crouched near us in the lee of the wall, and shouted that the fire had been put out. All around, the bodies of women – girls, some of them – lay strewn with the men, promiscuous in death.

Grimbauld glanced over his shoulder. ‘Go back to Count Godfrey,’ he told the knight. ‘Tell him to bring up the siege tower. We’ll never get close without men on the tower to cover us.’

The knight saluted and ran off, weaving his way through the maze of corpses at his feet. After what seemed an age – though on a battlefield, time stretches as long as a man’s life – I saw him return. Instead of a sword he carried two shields; he scuttled forward like a crab, creating an impenetrable wall against the arrows that swarmed about him. He crawled down the embankment to where Grimbauld waited and raised the two shields as a roof over them.

‘Duke Godfrey says he cannot bring up the tower while the ram is blocking the breach,’ he stammered. ‘He orders you to drag it back – or, if that is impossible, to burn it out of there.’

Grimbauld stared at him with wild eyes. ‘Burn it out?’

The knight nodded glumly. Even as he did so, another
column appeared at the top of the slope and began shuffling towards us. These men carried bales of hay and armfuls of firewood, piled so high they almost bent double with the weight. At the sight of them, a trumpet whooped from the walls, and a fresh burst of arrows showered down on them. Many fell clutching their burdens like children, but some managed to reach the ram and stack their kindling around it. When there was enough, Grimbauld lobbed a burning brand onto the makeshift pyre. Flames swept up around the great tree-trunks at the heart of the ram, and we cheered it, even as we stood on the corpses of those who had given their lives to prevent such a thing.

Cheers turned to disbelief as a torrent of water gushed from the sky, drowning out the fire in an instant. Gleeful shouts of triumph erupted from the wall; I looked up, and saw the Fatimids hauling back a great cauldron they had poured out. Some of them waved; I even saw one jump into an embrasure, pull up his tunic and – to the cheers of his companions – send a contemptuous stream of piss spattering down on the ram. An outraged volley of arrows pricked him back, but was immediately answered in kind as the Fatimids unleashed a new onslaught on the despairing Franks.

Grimbauld turned to the pilgrims. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he screamed. ‘Bring more wood!’

The battle raged all afternoon. Each time we piled on fresh kindling, the Fatimids retaliated with a new torrent of water. With each subsequent attempt, the pile of wood
and straw around the ram grew higher, until its vast bulk was almost buried, but even then it could not overcome the Fatimids’ defence. There seemed no limit to the water they had in that city – and that, too, drove us to despair. The air was thick with smoke and hot steam that scalded my lungs; I felt that I must have fallen inside a vast black cauldron and be boiling inside it. Only when we managed to bring up jars of oil and soak the wood with that did we at last make a fire that the Fatimids could not quench. The flames licked up high over the wall: I doubt there was a man in the garrison who could have endured the heat and smoke, but though the wall sat undefended we could not go near it. The fire for which we had fought so hard, first to quench and then to light, had become our enemies’ best defence. As the shadows lengthened and darkness fell, we left the walls behind and limped back to our camp.

Another day dawned – Friday. This time there was no great rallying of the army, no processions or speeches. We crawled up from the places where we had fallen asleep and massed around the base of the tower. I did not even need to get dressed, for I had slept in my armour on the ground where I collapsed, dead to the world until the trumpets summoned me. Pain racked my body: my limbs felt as though they had been disjointed and then hammered together with iron nails, and my hands were still bloody and raw from pushing the ram. Worse than that was the thirst: my mouth felt as though it had been swabbed with quicklime, but there was no water to slake it. We had spent all our supplies putting out the fire on the ram.

‘Friday in Jerusalem. I suppose it’s a good day to die,’
muttered Aelfric as we mustered at the tower.

‘Or to defeat death,’ Thomas reproved him. His cheeks had sunk in and his beard was ragged, so that he looked like a prophet stumbling out of the wilderness, far older than his years.

‘Better to defeat the Egyptians,’ said Sigurd. ‘It has to be today. The army won’t stand any more.’

‘Has anybody heard how the battle went for Count Raymond yesterday, in the south?’ I asked.

‘Badly. Saewulf told me. He tried to bring his tower up to the walls but had to withdraw it. The defenders knew exactly where he was coming – they had ten mangonels waiting to bombard it with stones and fire. They say that afterwards the count could not persuade any of his knights to enter it again.’

In the mean, shrivelled husk that had become my heart, I thanked God for that.

A quarter of an hour after dawn, Duke Godfrey and his retinue mounted to their positions within the tower. I watched them jealously, wishing myself in their place. As well as his regular arms, Godfrey carried a broad crossbow to use from the top deck of the tower, and the sight of it reminded me of a similar weapon, many years and miles ago, that had first coaxed me onto the road to Jerusalem. I looked at Thomas to see if he remembered, but his eyes were dull and fixed elsewhere.