by Paul Doherty
Eleanor stared at the tent flap. She felt deeply uneasy about Hugh and Godefroi’s reasons for taking the cross. True, they had been crucesignati in Iberia. They revelled in the legends of Roland. They sought absolution for past sins and were tired of the jousting and the tourneying between neighbours, but was there something else? The journey to Jerusalem could be understood, but since leaving the Auvergne, her suspicion had deepened that both knights nursed secrets. What date was it now? The middle of December in the Year of Our Lord 1096. Urban had delivered his sermon at Clermont over a year ago. Yes, that was right! She and Hugh had been in Compiègne when dusty messengers brought the news. She remembered one in particular, cowl thrust back, standing in their smoke-filled hall talking about an evil Turkish prince, Al-Hakim, who had razed the Holy Sepulchre church, inflicting indignities on his own people as well as Christians. Hugh had taken up the summons fervently, but when Norbert the monk had appeared, he began to change, becoming more sombre and reflective.
Eleanor chewed on her lip and quietly rebuked herself. She should have thought of this earlier. The seeds of her suspicions had been sown ten months ago, but she’d ignored them, taken up with the excitement, the frenetic preparations and the journey south to Auvergne. Godefroi’s warm friendship had been most welcome, but again, events had been veiled by a mêlée of preparations. Yes, and something else. Alberic had been a constant visitor, often meeting Hugh and Godefroi by themselves. She recalled what she knew of the parish priest. He was undoubtedly a mysterious man, much better educated than the priests who usually served the village churches. He and Norbert appeared to be old friends. The Benedictine seemed much travelled. Was he an excommunicate monk? Someone expelled by his monastery for making trouble? Jerusalem linked them all, but what bound Hugh, Godefroi, Norbert and Alberic so closely? She had been swept up in the preparations yet she had always sensed something amiss. Hugh had become more austere, praying more often, not so responsive to the laughing glances of the ladies and village girls. Moreover, since they had left the Auvergne, he had tightened the discipline of the Poor Brethren, publishing a divine office of hours, drawing up rules about meetings, dress and even diet. But why?
The march to the borders of Sclavonia had, despite the sheer glory of the mountains, been a tiresome trudge along muddy trackways. Eleanor had had plenty of time to reflect, to become more aware of the growing secrecy around her brother. In many ways Hugh reminded her of those knights from the great romances, who pursued some glorious, mystical vision. One thing she had discovered was Hugh and Godefroi’s absorption with one particular chivalric poem: ‘La Chanson de Voyage de Charlemagne à Jerusalem’. Hugh read this constantly. On several occasions Eleanor had asked to borrow his copy, and Hugh promised he would lend it to her, but he always found an excuse not to. This poem, together with a list of relics, seemed to absorb him whenever he was not busy with the Poor Brethren or conferring with Count Raymond. Eleanor had discovered the list of relics by sheer accident. A memorandum drawn up in Count Raymond’s hand was delivered by accident to her tent rather than Hugh’s. She had asked her brother about its importance but he had dismissed it, declaring that it was simply a list of sacred items he would like to see. So much mystery!
Eleanor shivered against the cold and pulled her wrap closer about her shoulders. She was tired, eager for her narrow cot bed on the far side of the tent, yet she was determined to wait for the widow woman and resolve at least one mystery. She packed a few belongings for tomorrow’s departure. She now regretted the few luxuries she had brought. She dressed the same every day: a linen shift under a brown serge gown with a leather strap around her waist; a deep cowl sheltering her head, whilst her legs and feet were warmed and protected by woollen stockings and ox-hide boots. She also carried a short stabbing sword in a sheath, Hugh had insisted on that. She was just finishing her preparations when Imogene, escorted by Beltran, reached the tent. They whispered their farewells and Imogene slipped in through the flap. As always she carried the battered leather bag containing her precious box. Eleanor smiled; Imogene nodded and crouched over the brazier. Eleanor shook off her tiredness.
‘You were harsh against the Jews.’
Imogene simply shrugged.
‘I mean,’ Eleanor continued, ‘you are, were, of the Jewish faith.’
Imogene’s head came up; her mouth opened and shut.
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Eleanor smiled. ‘I do not mean to threaten; you just talk in your sleep! Most of it is the jabbering of dreams, but I’ve heard you pray the Shema. You mention the name Rachel, and sometimes you chatter in a patois I cannot understand.’ She came and knelt beside Imogene. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘no pretence, not now. You are no longer with the rest; there is no need to chant the common hymn. I am not a threat to you. Does Norbert know?’
Imogene nodded, her dark eyes never leaving Eleanor’s face.
‘He knows so much, our wandering monk.’
‘He has been to Constantinople,’ Imogene replied. ‘He and Alberic are more than what they seem; they search for something.’
‘Yes, yes, I have realised that myself, but you . . .’
Imogene squatted on the floor and pushed back her hood, snatching off the coarse veil beneath. ‘My birth name is Rachel. I am from Iberia on the borders of Andalus. The usual story,’ she continued in a dry monotone. ‘Portents and signs, a bad harvest, loans that could not be repaid. Of course the Jews were to blame, the usual scapegoats. My father was a merchant. He and my mother were trapped in their own house. They were burned to death along with my brothers and two sisters. I was six.’ She smiled nervously. ‘Small for my age. I escaped through a window. Night had fallen. I fled to a neighbour’s house; they were kindly. My father had always told me to trust them. They took me in and sheltered me. I later found they were Jews who’d converted. I became one of them, given a new name and a new life. The couple were still Jewish and secretly continued to practise our religion. They kept the sacred vessels and their copy of the Torah hidden away. They secretly celebrated Yom Kippur, Passover, the Feast of the Tabernacles and the other festivals. They also returned to my parents’ house and gathered what they believed to be their ashes.’
‘The wooden box contains these?’
‘Yes. I hoped to bring them to Jerusalem, a righteous act for my parents. The Christian signs on the lid are part of the pretence.’
‘And who are . . . what are you now?’
‘Sister, I don’t know.’
In the poor light, Imogene’s face looked younger, paler.
‘Truly I believe in nothing. Yes, that is correct.’ She laughed sharply. ‘How can I be Jewish when I believe in nothing?’
‘And why have you decided to be honest now?’
‘As Norbert says, why not?’ Imogene pulled a face. ‘After tonight’s meeting of the Poor Brethren, I met Norbert and Alberic, and they assured me I’d be safe. We have so much in common. They are searching for something, something that is true in all this horror.’
‘You know Alberic and Norbert from before?’
‘Oh yes, they are constant travellers. They crossed into Andalus and visited my foster-parents’ home. They are keen students of all things Jewish, be it the Kabbalah or the legends of the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.’
‘What are they searching for?’
‘God knows! Legends, relics, proof?’ Imogene shook her head. ‘They moved through the Jewish community asking questions, collecting information. I met them, and through them managed to meet my late husband Thomas, a wine merchant from St Nectaire.’ She shrugged. ‘The rest you know. I was a good wife, well respected. I settled in the area. My husband died. Urban preached his sermon at Clermont. By then, Alberic had taken the advowson of the local church. He’d been there for four years, exercising great influence over Lord Godefroi. Norbert seemed to have disappeared, then re-emerged as the Crusade was proclaimed. And then,’ her voice faltered, ‘came Anstritha, the wise woman, the one who was murde
red by the mob.’
‘What about her?’
‘Nothing, mistress.’ Imogene’s voice turned weary. ‘I have told you the truth about myself. It’s wrong to tell you the truth about others.’ She smiled thinly. ‘I am not afraid of the truth. I suspect your brother and Godefroi already suspect who I am.’ She got to her feet. ‘Yet what threat do I pose, sister? Like you, I wish to journey to Jerusalem, but my reasons, like everyone else’s, are a matter of the heart. Perhaps I will find comfort in bringing home the ashes of my parents; forgiveness for living after they died; absolution for my deception.’ She undid her cloak. ‘Get rid of my burdens and find some peace.’
Part 3
Radosto: The Feast of St Isidore, 4 April 1096
Dies quoque angustiae moeroris ac tristiae.
(A day also of bitter mourning and sadness.)
The Dies Irae of St Columba
‘To the right!’ Hugh de Payens’ voice, dry and cracked, shrieked a warning.
Eleanor, standing between two high-wheeled carts, wiped the sweat and dirt from her face. She brought up the arbalest, then lowered it. The morning mist played tricks on her eyes and Eleanor, like the rest of her companions, was exhausted. She stared along the line of carts and makeshift barricades the Provençal captains had thrown up. The absence of their commander, Raymond of Toulouse, was deeply felt. Perhaps they should have taken up a better defensive position. The Provençal line, bending slightly like a bow, stretched between two copses of trees. Behind them open heathland ran down to a stream, where their horse lines had been fixed. Eleanor took a waterskin and drank greedily, splashing more on her face before handing it to Imogene, who squatted trying to organise the crossbow bolts on a tattered sheet. The widow woman, black hair bound with a piece of string, smiled back, then coughed, spluttering how she was full of the rheums, her throat sore, her ears aching. She grumbled on as Eleanor patted her gently on the head. Over the last few weeks, during their nightmare journey from Istra down the Dalmatian coast, Imogene and Eleanor had become firm friends. They had, as Eleanor wrote in her chronicle, little choice but to unite against the dangers that confronted them. Imogene cursed as she cut her finger on the barbed edge of a bolt. She smeared some of the blood on her face.
‘Just in case the Greeks,’ she nodded towards the far haze of moving dust, ‘overrun us. They won’t rape the ugly ones!’
Eleanor stared despairingly up at the cloud-free sky. A buzzard came floating over and she wondered if the prospect of blood, her blood, had summoned it. The weather was turning balmy with the first hint of summer. They had travelled along the Via Egnetia to the Greek city of Dyrrachium and across northern Greece, arriving here outside Radosto only a few miles from Constantinople, yet their nightmare was not over. Alberic remarked how they were crossing Macedon, the wild, savage countryside that had once housed the great Alexander. Eleanor did not care for such history. The dark forests, rushing rivers, deep gorges and lonely meadowlands, from where the livestock had been driven away, were forbidding, rather haunting. Nevertheless, Macedonia for all its sombreness was a welcome relief from that nightmare road along the Dalmatian coast through Sclavonia. A dreadful dream of a journey, with the mist swirling as thick as fuller’s cloth across a trackway slippery with ice and littered with boulders and fallen trees. On either side of this pathway rose thick, dense forests whilst the wind cut along it like a razor. Nothing ahead, nothing behind but that mist curling like a host of ghosts.
Imogene said something. Eleanor was too tired to reply, and sat down with her back to the cart, staring across the heathland at the stream still bubbling from the spring rains.
Sclavonia! A barren land, Eleanor reflected, nothing but trees and mountains and that murk hanging like some vapour from hell cutting off sight and deadening sound. They rarely saw or heard any animal or bird. An eerie silence broken only by the sounds of their own straggling line of eighteen hundred souls on their horses and carts. The Poor Brethren of the Temple, their banner hanging limp from a pole, trudged along with the rest. Now and again the silent drudgery was shattered by swift, savage attacks. The Sclavs, who’d fled from their villages taking their livestock and precious food supplies with them, crept back to haunt the cross-bearers. They would follow the column, hanging on their flanks or rear, ready to attack any stragglers. They’d lop off heads, tie them to their standard poles and, if pursued, flee back into their mountain fastness. Eventually Count Raymond, tense and frenetic, moved mailed knights back to the rear of the column. He also asked Hugh, Godefroi and the Poor Brethren to sweep up the stragglers. A daunting task! A vigil that dominated the long, freezing days when the clouds seemed to descend so that when they did attack, the Sclavs were almost on them before anyone realised what was happening. Eleanor and the others fought back with crossbow, lance, spear and dagger. She recalled one attack. A Sclav, his bearded face all bloodied, climbed over the cart, crawling towards her. She shattered his head with an axe and pushed his corpse, blood pumping out, off on to the trackway.
Day after day the same numbing routine, cold, silent and hungry, until those hideous figures came shrieking out of the mist. Eventually Count Raymond decided on more punitive measures. They could not pursue their tormentors, who fled back into their rocky hiding places, so the Count turned on any prisoners taken. Eyes were gouged out, noses slit, hands and feet hacked off. The captives were left blinded, disfigured, bleeding hunks of flesh as a stark warning to other tribesmen to leave them alone: Eleanor would never forget those screaming men and women left crawling blindly about on the ice-bound trackways.
Eventually they reached Scodra. Count Raymond tried to negotiate a truce with the King of the Sclavs, but the aggression continued until they crossed the imperial border and reached the territory of Alexius Comnenus around the town of Durazzo. They all breathed a sigh of relief, especially when the Emperor sent letters of peace and offered supplies as well as news about other Frankish leaders swiftly approaching Constantinople. Imperial scouts closed in around them: Cumans in their quilted armour, along with Turcopoles, Buglars, Patzinacks and other mercenary cohorts. The Poor Brethren of the Temple believed they were safe. Hugh and Godefroi were pleased to doff their chain mail and heavy helmets. Norbert and Alberic celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving on an altar set up on one of the great two-wheeled carts. Peter Bartholomew announced he had experienced a vision of the tears of St John, who, as in the Apocalypse, wept at the thought of how the Poor Brethren and others had suffered in Sclavonia. The respite proved illusory. The Emperor’s mercenaries took to pillaging and harassing Count Raymond’s army. Fierce sword quarrels took place in which two Provençal leaders along with knights, women and children were killed. Even Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy received a knock to the head, and had to be sent under safe conduct to the city of Thessalonica.
By the time Count Raymond’s army reached the town of Roussa, its patience was exhausted; the townspeople there were unable, or unwilling, to trade, and fighting broke out during which shops and warehouses were pillaged. Running fights took place between townspeople and Count Raymond’s followers. Greek troops appeared, mounted men-at-arms with their oval shields supported by mercenaries, mounted archers and, more dangerously, Catephracti, the heavy-mailed cavalry of whom, Hugh assured Eleanor, Count Raymond was very wary. A truce was eventually arranged. Greek envoys entered the camp to beseech Count Raymond to accompany them to Constantinople to meet the Emperor, who was already negotiating with other Frankish leaders. The Count accepted the invitation and travelled on in haste, leaving his eighteen-thousand-strong host under the joint command of the Vicomte of Béarn and the Count of Orange; two young men who, in Godefroi’s opinion, hardly knew the difference between north and south, let alone how to command an army.
Three days had passed since the Count had left. The army had slowly moved on, close to the town of Radosto, still shadowed by imperial troops. There had been further clashes, and pillaging by the cross-bearers, for despite all the proclamations and ordinances,
not all companies followed the same strict discipline as the Poor Brethren. The worst of these was a gang of ribalds from Montpellier called the Beggars’ Company, led by Jehan the Wolf. A notorious character, Jehan had been hired by the city fathers to drain Montpellier’s moat and ditches. He did so, but also developed a skill second to none of poaching geese and ducks from the same moats and ditches, birds that belonged to local farmers or the city guilds. He then set himself up as a successful fowler, selling fresh bird meat to all and sundry. When the call from Clermont came, Jehan realised rich pickings were to be had elsewhere. He immediately used his wealth and notoriety to organise his own company, most of whom were denizens of the city slums. The Beggars’ Company swarmed with codgers, counterfeiters, jesters and japers, moon people and tumblers. Such men and women thought Jerusalem was only down the road or just beyond the far horizon. The harsh journey down the Via Egnetia had shocked and embittered them. As Father Alberic commented, the Beggars’ Company had no knowledge of scripture except for one verse: ‘Live for today, do not worry about tomorrow or about what you will eat, drink or clothe yourselves in.’ Jehan and his legion of imps truly believed the Lord would provide, and if not, they would gladly give heaven a helping hand.
Jehan was assisted by two lieutenants, ugly bruisers who rejoiced in the names of Gargoyle and Babewyn. These organised his horde of rogues, and as they approached Radosto, the Beggars’ Company simply disappeared. After an absence of four days, they returned bringing back cattle, sheep, chickens and fresh meat for the pot, as well as valuable tapestries, cloths and precious goods, gifts they claimed from grateful local inhabitants. No one questioned them, though Hugh whispered hoarsely that they’d pay soon enough for the feast Jehan had prepared. None of the captains of the companies or the great lords had the authority or status to bring Jehan to account. More importantly, none of them could resist the smell of freshly cooked meats, spiced and garnished with herbs, that wafted through the camp.