The sun was setting, but Bithynia is warm in the evening in June. Roger had spent all his money during the comfortable winter in Italy, and all he had left was a silver chain that his father had given him at parting. With one link of this chain he bought quite a large pottery jar of wine; the jar itself interested him; he was used to leather jacks or wooden casks, and it seemed sinful that such a well-made pot should be thrown away when it was empty. Robert found him without difficulty, and they sat on a pile of balista-stones, taking turns at the wine, and chatting till supper should be ready.
After family reminiscences had been discussed, Roger opened the subject that had been troubling him.
“You were at Constantinople for this oath-taking, and I think you know a good deal about law. Please tell me what you think of it.”
“I do know some law, as it affects people like us,” said Robert, settling himself to deliver a long speech. “That is because I have been at the conquest of new lands in Sicily. Your manor was conquered before you were born, and you grew up knowing your father’s rights and duties; but all these things have to be settled when new manors are given for the first time. In the first place, an oath has two sides; you swear to be somebody’s man, and he swears to do something for you, either to protect what you already have, or to help you to conquer more. If the lord breaks his share of the contract, rebellion is justified. Now what are we doing for the Emperor? We are helping him to reconquer his lands, and to defend the remnant that he still holds. What is he doing for us? Well, we are going to eat his supper in an hour. He has fed and protected us, which is useful and, I suppose, kind of him. But so did the counts of Burgundy and Lombardy protect you when you passed through their lands, yet no one took an oath to the Emperor Henry, their overlord. In my opinion, he is not doing all that a lord should to protect his men. Where is his army? And where is he? He should be here with the whole army of Romania, not sitting on his throne at Constantinople. I think the Count of Toulouse was right, an oath to do nothing against his honour and dominion was quite enough. But I don’t think you realize the fix we were in at Constantinople.”
“I suppose it was rather awkward,” said Roger.
“Rather awkward! We were in a bloody trap. Walter’s miserable crew were sent straight across to Asia, but before we arrived they had come back with their tails down. The Emperor had the impertinence to arrest the Count of Vermandois, own brother to the King of France, and held him as a hostage. The Count of Taranto wouldn’t bring us up to the city, for fear we should storm the walls in spite of him. We were left encamped at Rusa, with no ships to cross the sea and a Greek army of soldiers to see we did not forage, while the Count went on to the Emperor to arrange some sort of peace. Of course we were in no danger; we could have fought our way home at any time. But we couldn’t cross into Asia without Greek ships, and we would have looked silly if we had gone back to Italy with nothing but a few Greek heads, when we set out to conquer Antioch. No, the Count had to take the oath for his followers, and that includes me; but I am not happy about the position.”
In his excitement Robert was using more and more Italian words, and waving his arms in a most un-Norman manner. Roger answered slowly, speaking distinctly in north French, to bring the conversation back to a language that he understood.
“It remains that your Count took the oath for you, and my Duke did the same for me. That binds us both, at least till our lords release us. Meanwhile we are engaged on a holy enterprise, and the least we can do is to keep our sworn undertakings.”
“There I agree,” said Robert more calmly. “Oaths must be kept, for oaths bind this army together, and indeed all our livelihood rests on them. But your talk of a holy enterprise only brings more confusion. Your Duke has come here, meaning to go back home with increased glory and greater strength to fight his brother; but the Count of Taranto is here to live and die in Romania, fighting the Turks. You think of freeing the Holy Places, I think of beating back the unbelievers wherever they may be, and the two aims should be kept separate. The Count wants to hold some big city from the Emperor, Antioch for choice, and therefore he must keep on good terms with him. Let those who don’t intend to stay go on to free Jerusalem, while we settle down in some border fortress, and defend Christendom from there.”
“I should like to free Jerusalem before I win a castle, and oaths should be kept on a pilgrimage,” said Roger with a frown.
“Well, let us leave things as they are, and keep our oaths as long as we can,” said Robert cheerfully. “We will see what happens to this town, when it falls, and that will not be very long. That garrison cheers too much; they can’t really be very happy, and there may be something in this story about bribing the commander.”
The wine was finished, and they got up to stroll over to the supper-place, where a crowd was already gathered.
That night Roger went to sleep with a buzzing head, after listening to many highly-coloured stories of the wars of Sicily. He was delighted to have a cousin and a friend in the most warlike contingent of the army, and he hoped to get good advice about fighting from him. The tangled question of feudal obligation could wait till they got to Antioch. He woke late and missed Mass for the first time since leaving Italy.
For a fortnight the siege went on, and Roger settled into the habits of army life. The weather was dry and warm, and as he got used to the climate his armour chafed him less. The Emperor provided abundant food and wine, and Godric had built him a fairly wind-proof hut of turf. But the garrison still shouted from the walls, and the balistas still made no impression on the tower. The siege seemed ready to go on for ever, and he realized that war is nine-tenths routine.
The end came suddenly. On the 17th of June, Greek ships appeared on the lake, brought overland from the Gulf of Nicomedia, a technical feat that only Greeks could have accomplished. These ships could batter the wall by the lake with their engines, and also cut off supplies that the Turks smuggled in by rowing-boat after dark. Then at midday on the 18th, while Roger was in his hut and Godric was helping him into his mail shirt, there was a sudden outbreak of shouts and cheers from the whole southern camp. Roger ran outside, without hauberk or helm, his mail shirt flapping unlaced. The tower, that had been so long the target of the balistas, had crashed outwards in a cloud of dust. Now was the time for an assault, while the defenders were still dismayed, but the opportunity was lost; the morning guard was due to be relieved in a few minutes, and many of them had slipped away to get good places for dinner; the afternoon guard, of whom Roger was one, were not yet armed. A half-hearted advance by the few knights who were ready was called off by the Duke’s criers, and soon the garrison lined the breach in great strength. The Count of Toulouse rode through the crowd, in tunic and mantle, to show that no fighting was intended, and the attackers dispersed, leaving Roger with the new guard staring across the old familiar two hundred yards of dusty ground.
When he came off duty for supper he heard that a grand assault was definitely fixed for the next day, at the fifth hour (11 a.m.), when the garrison would have lost the alertness of early morning, and the sun would be behind the attackers. There was a good deal of heavy drinking in camp that night, but Roger was too excited by the prospect of his first battle to need wine to stimulate him further, and he wandered into the Lotharingian camp. There he found a strange priest to shrive him, which was much less embarrassing than confessing his sins to a comrade whom he would meet at meals.
In the morning Godric brought him his breakfast of bread dipped in wine. After living together for a year they could communicate easily in a mixture of ungrammatical Saxon and mispronounced north French. His servant told him the rumours of the night; that trumpets had been heard in the town, and the marching of troops; evidently the garrison was getting ready for an obstinate defence. He polished his sword and helm, while the other went carefully over his mail shirt, renewing any that looked frayed of the leather thongs that held on the overlapping iron plates. An hour before the time fixed for the assa
ult, he was in his place behind the balistas, which still played on the curtain and the breach.
Knights were drifting up in ones and twos, so as not to alarm the defenders, while the poorer sort were kept out of sight behind the huts. As he glanced idly round, he noticed something different about the wall; he looked more closely: that was it! A banner was removed, and he saw that they were disappearing from tower after tower. Then one was replaced, but it looked different. Of course, it was not the same shape; instead of the flag streaming from a pole used by the Turks, this had a cross-piece, with the cloth hanging down the staff. Then another was displayed from a nearer tower, and he could make out the charge—the Saint Andrew’s cross of the Labarum, the flag of the Empire of Romania. Suddenly a trumpet blew, the south gate opened, and there stood a party of Greek soldiers!
A roar of disappointment came from the crowd of watching pilgrims. Without thinking they began to advance, brandishing their swords, while the footmen came running from behind the huts. But the gates were quickly shut, and Greek archers appeared on the wall. Then the Count of Toulouse appeared once more on horseback, in full armour but with his grey beard streaming over his open hauberk and his shield hanging from the saddle. He raised his arm for silence, and at last was able to make himself heard.
“Pilgrims! Our generous friend the Emperor of Romania now holds the good town of Nicaea. Respect his garrison. The plunder will be ours. Wise and discreet men from our camp shall enter the city to gather it, but the host will remain outside the walls. Return to your huts. There will be no assault.” Grumbling, the crowd slouched away.
What seemed most strange, in the whole strange business, was that no Turkish garrison came out; they would hardly have surrendered without the promise of life and freedom, since only one tower was down and the breach was strong. In the afternoon Godric, most conspicuously unarmed, managed to join a party of the poorer sort who were allowed to go and see the town. Roger thought it undignified to enter without his sword, and took Jack and his other horses out grazing. When Godric returned he had a strange story to tell.
“You know, sir, if you ask me the whole thing was a put-up job. They have restored the churches that the Turks used for their devil worship, and that’s about all they have done. There are the Turkish knights, sitting in the doorways of their houses. None of them are going to be turned out, and by to-morrow I expect they will all be soldiers of the Emperor. The townspeople seem to be more frightened of us than of them; of course, they are all Greeks, anyway, and it seems they helped the Turks to surrender to the Greek commander, for fear they would lose their filthy possessions if it came to a sack. Serve them right if we burnt the town over their heads. All the same, it is a lovely place, better than any we saw in Italy. You should see the paved streets, and the pillars and the arches, and the shops round the market-place. At least, there ought to be some good plunder, if it’s collected honestly.”
There was nothing to be done about it. So far, helping the Christians of the East seemed to mean helping the Emperor of Romania. Roger wandered away.
He was very lonely and homesick. There were plenty of other knights of his own class and upbringing with the pilgrimage, but most of them were older, and all seemed to have seen war before they set out. The Duke’s following was the only contingent that had not been compelled to fight before reaching the Greek capital, and on account of it they felt slightly inferior. His comrades did not seem to have the interest he had in oaths of service and the mutual obligations of vassal and lord; they took their oaths willingly, but always with the thought of rebellion in the back of their minds. England was a long way over the horizon, eleven months away as they had marched, and many weeks’ journey even for a messenger. England was a remote province of civilization, nearly surrounded by barbarians, Scotch, Irish and Welsh; but on the south-east lay all the countries of the Franks, France, Spain, Italy, the Empire, with Rome at the centre; and the limits were everywhere expanding against the infidel (he had been brought up on tales of the wars in Spain and against the Slavs). Now he had marched clean through the lands of Latin speech and the Roman obedience, and come to this pale imitation of Christendom as he knew it, this land of mighty cities and wasted fields, where there were no lords or vassals, only taxpayers and taxgatherers, mercenary soldiers, and the mighty Emperor who held his throne by successful rebellion. He wanted to hear the monks singing in Battle Abbey, to see a manor-court or a tavern that sold beer, and they were all such miles away. He curled up in his blankets, and wept with longing for Sussex.
Next day, Roger idled about the camp. He saw an ox-waggon draw up at a ruined farm near the town, and a Greek family, with women and children, get busy at putting up a sod roof. Peasants spent their lives doing that, repairing the work of armies, but it showed that they thought the Turks were driven away for good. At dinner-time criers went round the eating-places saying that the plunder had been collected, and would be distributed by the leaders to their men an hour before supper. Roger was early at the Duke’s pavilion, and joined the crowd of knights who sat their horses in front of the foot; for every man had been told to come armed, so that he might be paid according to his efficiency as a warrior. The spoil was disappointing, though the older knights agreed that it always was, and that what made a city look rich came to very little when it was divided among thousands. At least, the Duke of Normandy would not keep back more than his fair share, whatever the other leaders might do; he was too notorious a spendthrift for that.
The Duke’s clerks sat on a bench behind a trestle table covered with cloth marked off in squares, like the Exchequer at Rouen, and the valuables were handed to them by the Duke’s servants; meanwhile Duke Robert, all unarmed, strolled about in the background, grinning all over his face. The Count of Blois and the Count of Boulogne were called up first, and each received several gold cups; then the barons dismounted and came to the table, leaving their horses with grooms. The knights with mail breeches came before Roger, who was one of the last to be called; he found his share was three large silver coins and a piece clipped out of a flat silver dish. One of the coins could easily be divided in two, as the full-length figure of Our Lady ran down the middle of it; so he gave one and a half each to Peter and Godric, who were unarmed and therefore received no share of their own. The bit of silver plate was quite small enough to go in his pouch, and that he kept for himself.
That evening there was much gambling, drunkenness and rioting in the camp; but Roger was too poor to gamble, and he had seen enough to realize that the price of wine would be very exorbitant, so he spent another quiet night by himself. Next morning Godric called him at dawn as usual, and stood about waiting for permission to speak.
“It’s like this, sir,” he began, in his awkward jumble of languages. “I told you what a fine place the town is, and not by any means full of people. Well, the Emperor has set aside a quarter for the pilgrims who want to settle down in it, with a church and a building for monks, and they will live tax-free for the first two years. I met an English soldier from the Varangians who are in garrison there, and he told me all about it; they have quite a lot of English in their army. Now I would like to settle there and start a shop for leather-work. I have got the tools I brought with me, and hides are easy enough to get hold of. You will remember, sir, that I was a townsman of Rye before we started; I am not your man, and only followed you for protection on the road; you have paid me, and we can call it quits. Do you mind if I leave you here, sir?”
“You are no man of mine, and can leave me if you wish,” said Roger. “But there are two things to think of. First, how will you get on, in such a strange land, with a strange language? The second is the matter of your pilgrimage. You are under a vow; have you fulfilled it?”
“As to the strangeness of the land, that will not upset me. England is a strange land to the English now, with new masters and new laws and a new language. Here I shall be as good as any other Latin, and everyone is equal under the Emperor and his law. The vow of the
pilgrimage doesn’t bother me at all; surely I have accomplished it. I swore to go to the Eastern world and help to protect the churches of the East from the infidel; but I am in Romania, and I have been at the taking of a great town which was infidel and is now Christian. There are not many Latin churches in these parts, but there will be one here. I can settle here with a good conscience, and live as a free man, with no lord but the Emperor. But I don’t want to part bad friends with you, sir.”
“Very well,” said Roger. “Go in peace and with my friendship. I am a knight, and must march forward as long as there is fighting to be done, but you are, after all, completely unarmed. From now on we go through the enemy’s land, and if my armour breaks I shall be dead inside it, so I shall not want you to repair it. If you think you have accomplised your vow, I shall not dispute with you. Go with my good will, and pray for me.” He never saw Godric again.
It was given out that the pilgrims would march on the 27th of June, and Roger sold the hackney; a priest from Lotharingia gave a good price for it, four pieces of gold; for horses were beginning to die from the heat and the foul water round the camp. The Treaty was working quite well, although it was a disappointment that Nicaea had not been given to some lord of the Franks to hold from the Emperor. The plunder had been collected honestly, and the Greeks were not keeping the town to themselves, but allowing pilgrims to settle there. No one could complain of the way the army was being fed. It was said that a Greek force was being prepared to accompany them, though the Emperor himself would not take the field.
Best omen of all was the ease with which the town had fallen. As Robert said one day when they were guarding the horses together: “It only shows that the people of the Eastern world don’t know how to fight. We were forty years conquering Italy, but the infidels overran this whole country, from Antioch to the sea, in less than five years. It was as easy as the conquest of England. They say these Turkish barons quarrel among themselves; when they are attacked by people who are not afraid of them, they surrender as soon as a tower crumbles. Also I am told that Turks can be bribed to go away. They haven’t dared to meet us in the field; they have lost their chief town with hardly a fight; I think we shall be in Antioch in six weeks, and in Jerusalem by next winter.”
Knight with Armour Page 5