As they rode slowly behind the lowing oxen, their ranks relaxed in safe consciousness of victory, Roger searched the column for his cousin, to make sure he had come through unharmed. He found him among the other Italians, with a Turkish waistcloth tied to his lance in imitation of a banner, and a leather bag hanging from his saddlebow.
“Good evening, cousin Roger,” he called with a happy grin. “I am glad to see you safe and sound. How did you get on in that little skirmish? I haven’t done so badly myself. But isn’t our Count a wily leader; don’t you wish you could serve under him always?”
Roger was a little annoyed at this. “The head of the whole Norman race is my lord,” he answered, “and I am his man with no mesne vassal between us. As for the Count of Taranto, it was brave of him to charge bareheaded, and he led us fast and far; but the victory was won by our swords and armour against those woollenclad archers. I haven’t been off my horse all day, so I won no plunder. I suppose this convoy will go to the Count of Blois, as provisions for the pilgrims in general.”
“So it will, and that will make things easier for all of us. But I thought you knew these Turks carried money in their waistbands; I dismounted at the top of the cliff, while you were riding down the valley, and I got this bag off a man with a silk cloak, who looked more prosperous than the rest; it’s so heavy that I would have baptized him before I cut his throat, and sent him straight to Heaven, if there had been water handy. You must use your opportunities if you are to last out this pilgrimage, but I don’t mind giving a handful of silver to Domna Anne since you have been so unlucky.” Roger was bitterly angry and disappointed at his missed opportunity, but if Robert was going to be generous he needed the money so badly that he must not quarrel.
“You had a more thorough training in the Italian wars than I in peaceful England,” he said calmly, but with rage in his heart. “Still, I don’t see that the Count of Taranto did anything special, beyond charging in front, as a leader should.”
“Don’t you?” said his cousin, smiling. “What about his eye for country? We were riding along that valley, with no thought of fighting, and we hadn’t picked a position to stand in if we were attacked. Then the moment the Turks appeared the Count hustled us on to that ridge; he spotted the precipice at the end, and knew that in both valleys we could see a signal from the top; he had it all worked out before the Turks could get into battle array. Everyone knows that the brutes can be bowled over if we get a fair charge at them, but the whole art is to put them in a position where they can’t get away. Our people agree that it was one of the neatest things ever seen.” And the other Italian knights grinned and nodded.
The captured food did not go far among the multitude of pilgrims and soon everyone went hungry again on a diet of barley bread and millet-porridge. After nearly three months’ occupation the camp was stinking abominably, for though the Orontes flowed past on the north, nothing could stop the footmen from dumping rubbish in the marsh that lay between them and the walls; and there were deaths every day. It was no consolation to learn from spies that the epidemic had spread to the town, for the Turks could get limitless reinforcements from the south or east, while the Western recruiting grounds were on the other side of the world. One day, in the middle of January, Roger was surprised to find his cousin waiting for him when he returned to his hut after supper. He could not remember a previous occasion when Robert had sought him out; it had always been the other way round in the past, except when Anne had been the attraction. His cousin began to speak at once:
“My dear Roger, I have bad news for you. Domna Anne is well, or was when I left Saint Simeon yesterday; but Domna Alice is dead. Apparently she ate a piece of goat that had been dead too long, and caught this flux that is killing so many people. She had a priest, and they buried her properly on the seashore. But it leaves your wife quite alone, without any female companion, and you know what that port is like. She is very worried, and doesn’t know what to do. She asked me to tell you this, since she can’t write very well, and she would like you to go to her at once.”
“You are sure she is in good health herself?” asked Roger.
“Oh yes, and as cheerful as she should be. We are all used to sudden death by now.”
“Then I shall start to-morrow morning. But I don’t know what to do when I get there; I can’t stay and look after her, unless I hand over my warhorse to someone else, and that is asking too much of me. If I bring her here she will be alone most of the time just the same.”
“Still, she will be better off here than in that rowdy place.”
“Very well, I shall go to-morrow, and see what she wants. I agree that she will probably be better off here.”
Once again he took the dreary mud-bound track to Saint Simeon, and tried to make plans as he rode. He was not used to responsibility, and he dreaded to make a decision that might be wrong. Perhaps he ought not to have married, while he was engaged on a Holy War. But then what would have become of his darling Anne, without a protector on that difficult march through Galatia? She was a fellow-Christian, and her peril had been as great as that of any of these Easterners whom he had sworn to rescue. Women were a hindrance to a single-minded warrior, but none the less her safety must come before the Pilgrimage. That was clearly his duty, and in any case he could not bear to think of his sweet, capable, courageous wife, exposed to all the dangers of a demoralized and starving seaport.
He found her in the same lodging, sitting hunched on her rolled-up bedding, staring at the wall; there was no furniture in the room except an empty charcoal-brazier, and a leather sack for clothes. She started up with a cry of alarm as he pushed open the trapdoor at the head of the ladder from the ground floor; but when she saw who it was she ran across the room and flung herself into his arms.
“Darling Roger,” she sobbed. “I have been longing for you to come, and I have been frightened some drunken sailor would find his way up here. Please take me away with you. I hate this place, and I never want to be parted from you again.”
Roger manoeuvred so that he could see out of the unshuttered window and keep an eye on Blackbird, who was tied to a ring in the wall below; although he longed to give all his attention to comforting his wife, it would be an appalling calamity if the horse were stolen now.
“I am very sorry to hear of your sad loss,” he said, as he embraced her. “Domna Alice was faithful, and she served you well. Come down with me while I find a safe stable for the warhorse, and then we will discuss what to do next. Have you had enough to eat lately?”
“Do let’s go and find some supper,” said his wife, stepping back out of his embrace. “For the last two days I’ve tasted nothing but their beastly bowls of porridge. I was afraid to go out marketing by myself, and there isn’t even any charcoal left to cook with. Look, there is a ruffianly crossbowman hovering round Blackbird; get down the ladder straight away, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
Roger was soon in the street, where he stood by the horse with his hand on his sword. In a few minutes Anne joined him with her sack of clothes, and leading the horse they wandered down to the beach. At the warehouse the clerks of the Count of Blois gave them biscuit and a little watered wine; they sat on a rock by the sea, munching the bread softened in salt water, while Blackbird sniffed despondently at the sand. Anne hated Saint Simeon, and wanted to get away at once, anywhere; but back at the camp she would still be alone. Very few wives had come out from Normandy, for the Duke meant to go home at the end of the campaign, and so did most of his followers. Neither Roger nor Anne knew any Norman ladies.
“I have never felt so lonely,” said Anne, “and you must never leave me again. I thought that all of us were in this holy enterprise together, but you can’t call the scum that rob round this port pilgrims in a Holy War. In Provence the troubadours made songs about the rich, hot East, where gallant knights could live in peace and comfort when the infidel was overthrown; and here we are, without fire or food, sitting on a rock eighteen month’s journey from
home. Why did I ever come to this God-forsaken land?”
Roger did not quite know what to answer; he had come out expecting danger, discomfort, cold and hunger, for war was always like that, as his brother had told him; but he had never thought that the second winter of the campaign would find them still on the borders of Romania, with all Syria unconquered before them, and an unending prospect of more fighting in the future. There was really nothing comforting to say, since Anne would not be consoled by the thought that they were all warriors for God’s Church, and if they kept their vows would earn remission of sins; for one thing, she couldn’t fight. He did his best.
“My darling, you must be brave. It would be shameful to go back to the West with Antioch untaken, and my father’s manor in England would seem rustic and uncouth to a lady from Provence. Things are better now in the camp, and you will be safer among the brave knights who face the foe than with this rabble of marauders at the port. Come back to our little hut. We shall still be hungry and cold, but I can stay with you much of the time; and when spring comes we shall take that city from the infidel.”
Presently she sobbed herself to sleep in his arms, and they spent the night wrapped in her blankets on the beach, with his armour for a pillow.
Next morning they rose at dawn, and Anne, who knew her way about the town, stole a feed of oats for Blackbird from a poorly-guarded storehouse. They had only the one horse between them, so Anne rode, with Roger’s mail in a bundle before the saddle and her leather sack behind. The clerks in the warehouse, impressed by the warhorse, gave them a bag of grain for the journey; properly equipped knights must be kept fit for battle, no matter who else starved. Then they set out on the familiar two-day journey, where every slough in the road, every stinking corpse of a pack-animal, was to Roger a well-known and well-hated landmark. The unpleasantness of the road made the camp seem more welcome, and it was with a sense of coming home that he reached his old stick-and-turf hut, and found his groom with a fire going and the day’s food set out; it was still millet-porridge, but they were all so used to it now that they would have been surprised at anything better.
Next morning Roger went round to the Duke’s pavilion to arrange that his wife should be fed, and to see if there were any orders for himself. The rule that non-combatants must leave the camp was now a dead letter. For the commands of the leaders, grudgingly obeyed when they were first proclaimed, were soon forgotten; and thanks to recent raids the besiegers before Antioch were now as well supplied as the port. There were no duties for him; the fighting stood still, and no warhorses were to leave the camp until the grass grew in the spring. Every hut and path in the camp was now boringly familiar; the walls of Antioch frowned unchanged across the marsh, the Orontes flowed in its old familiar bed, and the refuse of the thousands of inhabitants stank as ever; luckily it was too cold for flies to breed. The green damp of Sussex was a dimly-remembered background to childhood, and Roger found it hard to imagine they would ever leave this crowded spot, that combined the disadvantages of a desolate country and a closely-packed town.
Most of the time he was alone with Anne. They saw little of the other women, for they were too poor to mix with the barons’ wives who still had money, and Anne was too proud to drift into the dependent position of a waiting-lady. Roger was still awkward and shy with his fellow knights, and had practically no men friends except his cousin; Anne complained that he believed the boasting of any idle warrior, and always assumed that a man who laid down the law must be an expert; but it was not easy to change the life-long habits of a well-snubbed younger brother. So they were both pleased to see Robert de Santa Fosca when he called round in the evenings. He was one of the lucky men whose warhorses had stood the journey from France to the borders of Syria, and he did not know by experience the sense of uselessness and frustration that attacked a dismounted or badly-mounted knight. He got on very well with Anne, and it amused him to compose ballades and sirventes about her. Roger liked to see him also, for he always had the news of the camp, and told all the secrets of the leaders’ councils as though he had been present at them. It was common knowledge that the Count of Taranto was very friendly with his followers; in his position he had to be, for the whole Norman realm in Italy was new, and the succession of its rulers not really determined; in many cases these vassals were the first of their families who had followed the house of Hauteville as lord, and Bohemund had none of the prestige of a hereditary Duke of Normandy. Robert was always telling his praises as a warrior and leader of men, and running down the other chiefs who were supposed to be too cautious for his daring plans; Roger sometimes suspected that the Count was using his knights to influence opinion in the camp at large.
The close confinement was hard on Anne, though she never complained; it was not safe for a young woman to walk about the camp alone, and of the ten crossbowmen who had once followed her late husband only the groom who looked after Blackbird remained; all the others were dead, or sick, or had deserted to some other lord. Roger had nothing to give them, and their desertion was only to be expected, for they had not the faithful sense of duty of a knight. A groom he must have, and he kept that one man in his service by the occasional gift of a silver piece, and by promises of more when at last he had his castle. Roger himself had few duties, for there was nothing left to plunder in the parts of the countryside that a Christian raid could reach; the irregular issues of coarse and scanty food were brought from Saint Simeon, and there could be no more raids until the grass grew and the crops began to ripen.
No one was really busy, or even fully occupied, and to boredom was added unceasing hunger; the chief task of the footmen was to dig graves for those who died of sickness. All day long Anne had nothing to do but boil a little porridge, and Roger only went on patrol once every three or four days. In a sense, all castle and manor dwellers were used to killing a great deal of time, but in this camp it was hard to pursue the ordinary winter diversions; all the game had been scared away, and hunting might damage the precious horses, the songs of the trouvères and jongleurs were stale, and life was too depressing for them to compose new ones; even love was not amusing to a hungry man. The only way to pass the time was in gossip about the failings of the leaders, and on this topic husband and wife could not agree; Roger took to spending as much of his time as possible at the long religious services and processions organized by the Bishop of Puy, who hoped thus to counteract the moral deterioration of the pilgrims. He struck up a close friendship with Father Yves, the Breton priest, frequently served his Mass, and then breakfasted with him. Father Yves had his own view on the reason for the failure of the campaign; he thought it was the judgement of God on the wickedness of the pilgrims. But to Roger this seemed an inversion of cause and effect; they were wicked because they were demoralized, and they were demoralized because they could not take the city.
In his efforts to keep Anne amused and cheerful, he took her to Mass and breakfast with Father Yves. The priest was glad to meet a cultivated lady, and did his best to be pleasant to her. Both agreed in abusing the Greeks, and by a natural transition went on to hope that the conquered land would be settled by true Christians.
“These people are attached to their liturgy,” said the priest, “but they are ignorant of the teaching of their own Church. If we can leave their services unaltered they would never notice when the priest taught them the True Faith. What we should do is to drive out their bishops and theologians, and tell the inferior clergy what changes they must make. But every parish must have a French lord, to see that they don’t slip back into their old wicked ways.”
“Of course we must have plenty of French lords,” Anne agreed, “and it is the duty of those pilgrims who mean to live and die out here to get hold of a village as quickly as they can. My husband has sworn to follow the Duke of Normandy for as long as the pilgrimage lasts, but it was always understood that Duke Robert will go back to Normandy presently; if he keeps on and on, fighting infidels towards the ends of the earth, is it Messer
Roger’s duty to follow him for ever? Surely he can break his oath, if it will be a means to the conversion of infidels or heretics?”
“Do you think you are competent to advise on this?” asked Roger. “These oaths of fealty have very little to do with the Church. If I wanted to wriggle out, I am sure I could get an excuse from some lawyer; but I wish to be true to my word for my own private satisfaction, and because my father, who fought with the Great Duke William, would want me to keep it.”
“God forbid that I should tell you to break an oath that you want to keep,” said Father Yves. “All the same, homage is a thing altogether outside the Christian life, and I should prefer not to advise you. If you think you have been hardly treated, why don’t you ask the Duke for your release? He has the reputation of being an easy-going man, and certainly his followers did not obey him very faithfully in France.”
Knight with Armour Page 15