Knight with Armour

by Alfred Duggan

  “We shall starve first,” grumbled Roger. “Why can’t we get supplies from the Greek Emperor? We have liberated a lot of his country, and we are fellow-Christians, whom he promised to support in this Holy War; otherwise what was the point of that oath the leaders took in Constantinople?”

  “That oath, yes, we mustn’t forget that, or all the obligations he undertook in return for it; he is back in his city now, after mopping up all the towns in the south-west, when we had put the fear of God into the Turks. That will be important later on, when we come to share out the fiefs. But in the meantime I don’t think there is much he can do for us; the road we came by is a bit rough for convoys of supplies, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s closed now by the local inhabitants. We weren’t very popular by the time we had gone through, even if we are fellow-Christians. No, we must rely on ourselves, and get food up from the port if there is any there. Otherwise we can manage on dead horses and the leather from our saddles. But we must make a front against, the city.”

  Roger was surprised at his cousin’s determination; he did not look the sort of man who would starve rather than retreat, but after all, it was by that sort of toughness that these Normans had won Italy. They walked on, looking for driftwood by the banks of the river.

  That Christmas was a very miserable feast, the second the pilgrims had spent away from their homes. Horses were dying daily from hunger and disease, and there was very little to eat; many knights left the camp, and went to neighbouring towns to celebrate the holiday, leaving the crossbowmen to hold the camp. Roger decided to go to Saint Simeon to spend the first Christmas of his married life with his wife. Robert de Santa Fosca had nowhere particular to go, and cousins should stick together in a strange land, so he asked him to come also. The Turks were snug behind their walls, with plenty of provisions, and were unlikely to sally out and provoke a battle during the shortest days of the year.

  The two cousins rode their warhorses gently towards the coast, spending a night on the road, and reached Saint Simeon in the evening of the second day. The haven at the mouth of the Orontes was normally nothing but a fishing village and customs station for the great town up the river, and consisted of a few stone-built cottages inside a feeble rampart of earth. Now the harbour was packed with shipping from all over the Western world; square unwieldy merchantmen from Flanders and the ports of the North Sea, towering three-masted ships from Provence, swift feluccas from Sicily, and galleys from the Adriatic. The village itself was crowded with noble ladies, clerks, and Genoese merchants from the ships. Many of the peasant women, their husbands dead in battle or from famine, had turned to prostitution as their only means of livelihood, and starving crossbowmen and sailors menaced unarmed travellers. Robert hardly noticed the condition of the town, since for him it was the accustomed background to war, but Roger was shocked; this was not how the army of the Holy Pilgrimage should behave.

  They found Domna Anne with her waiting-lady installed in the upper room of one of the stone-built houses, for the Count of Blois had tried to make provision for the better-born ladies. One of the crossbowmen who had accompanied them was dead of disease, and the other had deserted to the footpads outside the town, but Domna Alice did the marketing, carrying a fully-wound crossbow, and they had some money left. There was an occasional free distribution of food, for alms had come in with the ships from the West, and sometimes a ship from Constantinople braved the wintry seas with a load of corn.

  His second Christmas abroad was the most miserable Roger had ever known; most of the firewood within reach had long been burnt, and it was too cold to go to the Midnight Mass; but they crept out, wrapped in blankets, to the Missa in Aurora, and then came back to their lodging for dinner. The night before Robert had gone foraging, and returned with a bundle of sticks and seaweed, so they could have the treat of a fire with their dinner; biscuit and watered resin-tasting wine had been given out by the Count of Blois, and Domna Alice had bought a little piece of smoked bacon. As they sat round the smoky, spluttering fire, munching the feast, Anne bust into tears, and her misery was infectious; Domna Alice sobbed quietly to herself, and Roger felt his eyes watering. Only Robert was unmoved, and he looked at his companions in surprise; then he began to sing a ridiculous and rather improper Italian song, beating time with his hands, and calling on them to join in the chorus. Anne tried to sing through her tears, and became hysterical, but Robert would not be denied, and presently their voices quavered together. When they had finished he spoke:

  “You should be gay, cousin Roger. We are both Normans, and neither of us has ever kept Christmas in Normandy; it is our nature to go into strange lands and rule them, as you conquered England and we conquered Italy. Now we are on the best conquest of all, a very rich land and the Kingdom of Heaven to follow. Dry those tears, cousin Anne, or you will weep away your beautiful eyes. With two such knights to protect you, you will be wearing a golden coronet next year. And you, Domna Alice, this is a better land even than Provence; we will make you Queen of Babylon, or Abbess of Mount Carmel if you don’t want to marry again.”

  “Oh dear, I shouldn’t behave like this,” sobbed Anne. “At home we always heard the singing of the troubadours at Christmas, and the knights would make vows about how much they would win in the next year; and here we are starving on biscuit round a smoky fire. Year after year we go on with this pilgrimage, and never find peace. Where is that dear little castle, with warm beds and good food, that is waiting for me somewhere in the East?”

  Now Roger tried to comfort her. “That castle is ready for us, just beyond Antioch. We must endure this winter, and we shall win it in the spring; cousin Robert says so, and he is an experienced warrior. Meanwhile we must do something to get warm. What about blind man’s buff?”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Domna Alice bravely. “Christmas isn’t Christmas without dancing, and there are four of us. But what shall we do for music?”

  “I know,” Robert cried. “There’s a man with a bagpipe on the Genoese ship by the hard. Let’s go out and ask him to play for us.”

  They went down to the waterside and called out to the ship; presently they were dancing slowly up and down, bow, curtsey and back again, so that other knights and ladies joined in, and the strumpets and crossbowmen too, until half the town was dancing. The few Greeks looked on in wonderment; what did these strange foreigners have to be happy about just now, and if they must rejoice, why not keep it until the Epiphany, the really big feast of the winter?

  On Saint Stephen’s Day the two knights started back for the camp. Robert had insisted on giving Anne five gold pieces, and she still had two left from her original store; with that, and the occasional free distributions of the Count of Blois, she would have to keep herself and her companion alive until the city fell. Roger hated to leave her behind him; the evenings were lonely in his hut, and the knowledge that she had not enough to eat made his hunger more unbearable. He now loved her gallant spirit as much as her beautiful body. Robert was also silent and depressed; he had taken leave gaily, with plentiful assurances that food must soon come from Romania, or even the West; but these were obviously forced, and deceived no one. They rode their horses at a slow walk, through the muddy wasted plain by the river, and spoke only at long intervals.

  On the following day, the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist, they reached the camp in time for dinner. The pilgrims before Antioch had got over their Christmas headaches, all the more easily because there was little wine in the camp, and a new purpose and activity seemed in evidence among the crossbowmen and grooms who wandered about collecting what they could find. A busy clerk came up to them before they had time to separate.

  “Two knights with Western warhorses, that’s good; I am looking for people like you. Go at once and see your lords; a big raiding party is being prepared and you will be in time for it.” He bustled away and caught hold of a crossbowman.

  Roger gave Blackbird to his groom, and had himself disarmed, with a pang as he watch
ed Anne’s neat and delicate knots untied from the hauberk; no one armed him better than she did, and he wondered when she would be there to do it again. He went to the Duke’s pavilion to find out the orders, but the clerks could tell him little; only that all knights with warhorses must appear fully armed an hour after sunrise next day, and that if he could bring two days’ food with him so much the better. On Holy Innocents’ Day he was there in plenty of time; he could not bring food, but he had eaten a good breakfast of the biscuit that was meant to provide his dinner. Rather to his surprise, a large number of crossbowmen were waiting also. The Duke came out of his tent, mounted his warhorse, and addressed them as they stood in their ranks.

  “We are trying a new departure; the Turcopoles and the other knights with light ponies have often been out foraging to the north; they have harried the country bare, there is no more to take, and the peasants now band together to resist us. Our only hope of getting more food is to ride south, where the Turks are thickest. The Count of Taranto is in general charge of the undertaking, and the Count of Flanders and I have agreed to follow him, of course saving our rights on all other occasions. The Count of Taranto says he wants to take a crowd of foot with him; why I don’t know, when there is plenty of work for them in the camp; so I have picked out my strongest crossbowmen, and they must do their best to keep up with us. Don’t forget them, or go galloping about the countryside leaving them behind. We will now ride out to join the Italian and Flemish contingents; keep your ranks, and hold your horses together, and we shall show them what the Normans of Normandy can do.”

  The Duke was always touchy about accepting a subordinate position; by inheritance he was the greatest man in the army, except possibly the Count of Vermandois, brother to the King of France; but everyone knew he was not good at getting himself obeyed, while the Count of Taranto was an exceptionally cunning warrior.

  When they rode out of the eastern entrance to the camp and formed up on the Aleppo road, Roger was surprised to see how many crossbowmen were coming with them; there were at least two thousand foot to four hundred knights, a very large number of second-rate fighting men to drag about the countryside. The Count of Taranto marshalled them all according to his strange but very definite ideas; footmen in front and behind, and even on the flanks, with the knights in the middle of what was practically a moving square.

  They left Antioch on their right, and marched south all that day at an easy pace, because of the foot; in the evening they halted by a mountain torrent, and went supperless to sleep; evidently their leader wished to get into unravaged country, and do the plundering on the way home; a sound idea with a swift-moving band of raiders, but risky when they were encumbered with all these unmounted men. On the 29th, still fasting, they pressed south until midday, when they swerved aside to a large village on a hilltop. They were beyond the limits of the Greek Empire even as it had been thirty years ago, and the inhabitants were infidels; they fled down the hillside to the west as the pilgrims approached from the east. There they dined, and fed their horses, before scattering to comb the valleys for hidden cattle. The afternoon went pleasantly; it was a hilly, fertile land that had not been ravaged since the infidels took Antioch more than ten years before, but the peasants, from old habit, still stored their food in or under their houses; as they did not stand to defend their homes this made plundering easy, and all the pilgrims, even the foot, had full bellies for once.

  On the 30th the ravaging continued, with little bloodshed save of the very old and very young who could not get out of the way in time; the pilgrims wanted food, not conquest. In the afternoon they turned north, and plundered slowly along the road they had come by so quickly on their outward march; they had a large flock of sheep and a few oxen for the camp, and so far they had not seen a single mounted Turk. On the 31st, the Vigil of the Circumcision (not then the last day of the year, which began in March), they were late in starting, and moved slowly; one or two of the horses had colic, from too sudden plenty after long weeks of semi-starvation, and the foot were stiff and lazy. The hollow square of crossbowmen now enclosed a multitude of sheep and cattle, each ox bearing a sack of grain on its back; they made slow progress through the mountains, for one party was nearly always climbing a steep hill, and the rest had to conform.

  Shortly before midday the beasts and the horsemen were jostling along a narrow valley while the flanking-parties struggled across the steep hillside, when there were shouts from the rear. Roger, in the middle of the column of knights, could see nothing, but the leaders began to gallop about, and the vanguard was induced to halt; soon all the mounted men were urging the herd up the slope to a grass-covered ridge that bounded the valley on the west, and the Count of Taranto rode up and ordered them to hold this ground. Twenty knights on ponies were told off as a cattle-guard, and the rest formed up in their ranks. Roger was surprised at the array; a strong detachment of crossbows was drawn up on the ridge, facing south, flanked on each side by another body of similar size, halfway down the slope to left and right; a fourth company barred the ridge to the north, and the knights were left with the plunder, almost encompassed by the foot. Why had the Count of Taranto chosen well-mounted men, with nearly all the trained warhorses, to fight a defensive battle on a ridge?

  Turkish horse were in the valley, and breasting the slope to the south; more and more of them came into sight, but as usual it was difficult to estimate their numbers in that loose formation. Presently the southern end of the ridge was a mass of fluttering cloaks and wheeling horses, and a black horse-tail standard appeared in their midst. The centre approached slowly, while the wings advanced at the bottom of the slopes until they were level with the Christian knights; then there was a sudden horrid clamour from the infidel cymbals and kettledrums, and the whole force closed in at a canter. As they came within range, those on the ridge began shooting with their short horsemen’s bows; but a bolt from a crossbow carried straighter and hit harder, and the front rank of the Christians kept up a continuous discharge, while those behind wound up the weapons and passed them forward; to Roger they looked like men digging in a cabbage-patch, as their backs bent and straightened. The Turks in the centre could not bear the shower of bolts, and drifted back out of range; but the wings crept forward, and now the pilgrims were encicled on three sides; soon enemy arrows were falling, nearly spent, among the knights and the animals. The Duke of Normandy, whom Roger had not noticed since they left the valley, rode up to his followers. He called out:

  “Now, gentlemen, our part of the battle begins. We are to advance down the western slope, at a trot and keeping our ranks. It is NOT a charge, and you must all control your horses; the Flemings will do the same down the slope to the east. Then, when we see a signal from the Count of Taranto up here, you must wheel left about and charge uphill at the Turks in front of the crossbows. The Flemings will be coming up from the other side, so don’t go for anyone you can reach; first make sure it’s a Turk. When we meet again on this ridge the Count of Taranto will be in command, and you must follow him till your horses drop or he tells you to halt. Watch, and advance when I do.”

  Roger hitched his shield higher on his bridle-arm, and took a good grip of the reins; the Duke edged forward, then waved his lance and trotted towards the enemy wing. As the Normans followed him the Turks withdrew; they knew that the shield of a Western knight was invulnerable to their arrows, and they waited to shoot when the Christians turned their backs to rejoin the main body. Roger was in the middle of the front rank, very happy to be riding Blackbird into battle for the first time; it was a joy to be mounted on a trained warhorse, who knew that his rider’s bridle-arm was busy with the shield, and who could be controlled as much by posture of body as by pressure of knee; so long as the lance was held upright, and not couched, the horse knew he was not charging, and trotted with his companions. The Duke looked all the time over his shoulder at the crest of the ridge; suddenly he wheeled his horse, and waved his lance in the air. Instantly the ordered ranks turned into
a milling mob as each knight pulled his horse short to the left-about; then they were galloping up the steep hill, each rider leaning forward as far as he could reach, and praying that his saddle would not slip.

  The Turks on the ridge did not realize they were being attacked from two sides, for each individual could only see down one slope; as they closed into the centre they formed a dense mass of horsemen. The Christians laboured uphill towards them, and when there was only twenty yards to go Roger couched his lance. Blackbird could see the point out of his right eye, and bounded forward, neck stretched out and quarters labouring; he might be past middle-age for a horse, but he knew his job. As they reached the enemy, he collected himself and jumped in, clear of the ground, as though there had been a ditch in the way. Roger’s lance went clean through the ribs of a Turkish pony that tried to turn at the last minute, and he dropped it to draw his sword. Charging uphill, the knights had not the impetus to gallop straight through the enemy, as they would have done on the flat, and for a few minutes they were trampling about, all mixed up with the Turks; Roger swung his sword, and sometimes felt it meet resistance, while Blackbird struck out with his forefeet, and worried with his teeth the thigh of a screaming infidel. Other shouts of “Deus Vult” sounded in front of them, where the Flemish knights pressed forward, and very soon the Turks found that their unarmed bodies and light swords could not avail against these heavy horsemen; the remnant turned desperately along the ridge to flee, and Roger arrested his sword in mid-blow before a Fleming’s shield. There was a shout from the Count of Taranto; he was urging his horse through the midst of them, bareheaded, his hauberk lying on his shoulders, and his scarlet face spotted with mud and sweat. He called on every knight to follow him, and swept on after the Turks towards the southern end of the ridge. The infidels had panicked, and their ponies, accustomed to delicate manoeuvres under the arrow-shower, were terrified of the screaming stallions of the West. But at the southern end the ridge fell away in a steep and rocky descent. Down this rock-face no horse could gallop, and complete disaster overtook the flying enemy; some tried to ride straight down, and rolled head over heels to the bottom, some hesitated on the brink and were caught by the Christian lances, the more level-headed jumped from their ponies and scrambled down on foot. Soon the Count of Taranto was leading his knights down the easier eastern slope, and into the valley where they had marched before the enemy overtook them; still at a gallop, he led them south over the road of the morning’s retreat. His guess proved right; the Turkish force had not been merely a sudden gathering to repel raiders, but a relieving convoy for besieged Antioch. Two miles further back they found the cattle and the corn-waggons, abandoned by their terror-stricken guards when the survivors of the flight rode by. They sent a message for the crossbowmen to come and gather the spoil.