by Paul Doherty
Like some King of Misrule, Jehan entertained all the leaders to a great banquet. Eleanor, Hugh and Godefroi attended, their bellies sick for food, their throats craving the lush wines and fresh fruits on offer. The banquet was a clever move. Count Raymond was absent. Jehan played on the hunger and bitterness of the cross-bearers, turning them into his accomplices. Platters of fresh meat, duck, swan, pork and beef, were served in the light of roaring fires and flaring pitch torches. Jehan entertained them with tumblers and mummers as well as recounting a tale of how he had once swindled a fat wine merchant and a pompous canon of Montpellier.
‘I ordered some wine,’ he roared from his throne-like chair. ‘I told the merchant’s apprentice I would pay for it once it was delivered. He followed me to the cathedral. I told him to wait outside while I went in and accosted the canon. I told him I’d brought my nephew to be shriven as he had an insatiable hunger for money, a deep avarice, so would the canon talk to him and, in return, accept as a gift the barrels of wine I’d brought on the cart? Of course the canon agreed. He followed me outside and glimpsed the apprentice guarding the wine. I told him to wait, approached the apprentice and said that the fat, wealthy priest beckoning at him would settle the bill.’ Jehan’s story ended in roars of laughter at the mutual bewilderment of both confessor and penitent: the latter demanding money whilst the priest reproached him for his avarice. Truth eventually came with time, but by then, both Jehan and the wine had disappeared.
Eleanor regarded Jehan as a lying boaster, though she marvelled at his cunning. Hugh and Godefroi, however, as they surveyed what was being served and the plunder Jehan had gathered on his so-called foraging, tried to reassure themselves that what he had brought was legitimate. After all, if the Emperor wouldn’t supply them, what choice did the cross-bearers have but to take it for themselves? As Hugh and Godefroi watched Gargoyle, Babewyn and others display the glorious raiment and precious jewels they’d brought back to the camp, their anxiety deepened. They were confirmed in this by Theodore, a wandering Greek mercenary who had joined Count Raymond’s army and become closely attached to the Poor Brethren. Theodore claimed to have been born near Smyrna, of Greek and Norman parentage. He was certainly an expert swordsman, who owned his own destrier and pack horse. He was of medium height, his dark face bearded. In character he was courteous and kind, and he soon impressed Hugh and Godefroi with his knowledge of the Turks, the Greek army and the countryside they were travelling through. He also proved himself to be an able fighter, allowing Hugh and Godefroi to examine the special armour he wore: a mail-lined jerkin over a leather corselet made out of lamellar with a gorget of similar material and a ridged steel helmet. He was also skilled with the bow and couching a lance. A born soldier, Theodore had fought against Bulgar, Alan and Turk. He fascinated the Franks with his description of the Turks whose territory they were about to invade, describing them as swift fighters, deadly and ferocious, and skilled in mounted archery, which always confused their enemies. He also described the rigid discipline of the Emperor’s armies, its heavy and light cavalry and its well-organised infantry led by the Imperial Guard. He explained how Alexius organised his army into turma of about three thousand men, which in turn were subdivided into eight numeri each of about three hundred and fifty, delineating the various officers and standard-bearers as well as their military code. The Byzantine army was also well supplied in the field, being supported by siege trains, engineers and physicians. Hugh was deeply impressed by such organisation and began to impose similar discipline on the hundred or so Poor Brethren. He organised them into units of ten which he called a conroy, dividing the knights from the serjeants and allocating duties such as cooking and physic to various individuals, including even women and children.
Theodore arrived late for the Beggars’ banquet but immediately engaged Hugh in hushed conversation, talking quickly in the lingua franca of the Middle Sea. Hugh listened intently, then turned and whispered to Eleanor how Theodore believed Jehan’s men had not just collected supplies but had attacked and pillaged the villa and estates of a high-ranking local notable, a crime the Greeks would not ignore. The following morning, Theodore’s prediction was proved correct. The sun had hardly risen when scouts galloped into the camp, shouting how an imperial army was emerging out of the mist in column of march and deploying for battle. At first, the Frankish commanders thought this was simply a manoeuvre and moved to the outskirts of Radosto only to find their way blocked by imperial troops. Hugh and Godefroi were summoned by the Vicomte de Béarn for a hasty meeting near a clump of trees. Envoys were dispatched but imperial troops drove them off with a hail of arrows. Apparently the Greeks were intent on battle and all the Franks could do was sit and wait. Eleanor closed her eyes and dozed. After last night’s feast, she was no longer hungry but felt thirsty, tired and slightly sick, her joints aching. For a brief while she wondered if the whispers circulating the camp spoke the truth. Had they made a mistake? Should they have come? Was this truly God’s work?
‘Eleanor! Eleanor!’ She startled awake as her name was shouted. A group of horsemen – Hugh, Godefroi, Beltran and Theodore – came galloping up. Hugh threw himself from the saddle. ‘What is it?’ Eleanor pulled herself up; she had been so lost in her thoughts she’d ignored the growing noise from the camp. She turned and glanced out between the carts. In the far distance, the glint of armour and the flutter of coloured banners threatened whilst the dust-laden breeze carried the ominous sound of trumpet and drum.
‘Theodore believes the Greeks are massing for an attack. It will come soon.’ Hugh grasped Eleanor’s shoulders, his fingers squeezing hard. She glimpsed the fear in his eyes. ‘Eleanor,’ he whispered, ‘I love you, but in the name of God, is it to end here? For the love of heaven, Count Raymond has gone to meet the Emperor, so why are the Greeks attacking?’
‘Revenge!’ Eleanor stared out at the distant dust cloud.
‘I agree.’ Beltran had also dismounted and came swaggering across with Theodore, their dark faces sweat-soaked and anxious.
‘Negotiate!’ Eleanor rasped, pointing at the dust cloud.
‘Too late,’ Theodore declared. ‘Lord Hugh, we need to prepare.’
All along the Frankish line, the captains were trying to impose order. The Vicomte de Béarn and other commanders, garbed in full chain mail, conical helmets over their coifs, long oval shields fastened to their saddle horns, galloped up. They were desperate to close any gaps between the carts and deploy a mass of archers behind them. The vicomte reined in before Hugh.
‘What more,’ he yelled, ‘can we do?’
‘Close the line further.’ Hugh shouted back. ‘Close it fast. Place your horses here,’ he indicated each end of the line, ‘and here.’ He pointed to the centre. ‘Hold them in reserve. The same with some of the foot. Whatever happens, our line must not break. My lord,’ Hugh grasped the vicomte’s reins, ‘we must, if we can, treat with the Greeks.’
‘About what?’ the vicomte screamed back above the rising din.
‘Why do they attack?’ Hugh shouted.
‘Because they are Greek schismatics!’ one of the vicomte’s companions yelled. ‘Worthy of hell fire, jealous of our work!’
‘Nonsense, my lord.’ Hugh placed his hand on the vicomte’s mailed knee. ‘My lord, if we can, we must negotiate.’
The vicomte nodded. ‘There’ll be bloody bustle first,’ he murmured. ‘God wish the count was here. Hugh,’ the vicomte gathered his reins, ‘you remain in the centre.’ Then he was off.
Hugh began massing his own company before moving on to the Beggars further down the line. Banners and pennants were unfurled, crucifixes latched to poles raised and fixed on carts. Children, the aged and the infirm were sent back to the horse lines down near the stream under the protection of a group of women armed with spears, heavy arbalests and pouches of bolts. Rusty armour was hauled out of baskets and sacks. Short-sleeved mail shirts were quickly donned; body armour, buckram stuffed with wool, fastened securely. Pot-helmets
, chapeaux de fer or kettle-hats, were hastily strapped on. Long shields were slung on soldiers’ backs or placed across gaps between the carts. Horns and trumpets shrieked. Eleanor was given a bow and a quiver. She peered between the carts and groaned. The Greeks were now moving slowly but ominously towards them. A long line of foot, shields locked, spears jutting out, a moving wall of barbed iron. Here and there the Greek ranks broke to allow squadrons of heavy horse to come through, their riders desperate to restrain their destriers and keep to the line of the march. Standards were raised to shimmer through the dust. The air throbbed with the clash of cymbals, the shrill of trumpets and the deep lowing of battle horns. Godefroi came riding up. Eleanor hurried across and grasped the bridle of his horse. He leaned down, his face and head almost hidden by the chain mail coif, and released the strap across his mouth.
‘Eleanor, I swear, if we survive today I will do some great service for God, assume the cowl, become the Lord’s monk.’ Then he was gone in a flurry of hooves.
Eleanor laughed, coughing on the dust as she walked back to the cart.
‘A lovers’ farewell?’ Imogene teased.
‘A true troubadour,’ Eleanor replied drily. ‘High romance. If he survives, Lord Godefroi will become a monk!’
Imogene’s sardonic reply that she would enter a nunnery was drowned by the raucous blast of trumpets. The Greek line of march was quickening. The earth shook with the stamp of feet, the clatter of steel, the shrieks and yells of men and the loud neighing of horses. All along the Frankish line men and women were notching arrows or pushing bolts into the grooves of crossbows. Hugh reappeared beside Eleanor, coif back, and clambered on to the cart. Eleanor peered between the slats as the Greek line stopped abruptly. The shield wall opened. Bare-headed men dressed in jerkins and breeches streamed out. They raced towards the Franks, leather straps whirling above their heads.
‘Slingers!’ Hugh shouted. ‘Hide! Heads down, shields up!’
Eleanor and Imogene hid beneath the cart. The air sang with the jarring hum of angry hornets. Polished pebbles smashed against the cart, followed by chilling screams from either side. Hugh, shield over his head, stood up.
‘Archers,’ he yelled, ‘ready – loose!’
The clatter of stones was answered with the twang of bows, the click of catches, followed by a sound like that of a giant bird’s wings snapping furiously. Eleanor stared round the end of a cart at the figures dancing in the dust clouds. She notched her arrow, pulling back the bowstring even as Imogene released the catch on her crossbow; both arrow and quarrel disappeared into the haze. Shouts of ‘Toulouse, Toulouse!’ rang out. Eleanor glanced down the Frankish line; corpses, bloodied and torn, were already being dragged out. On the cart above her, Hugh was roaring at them to ready and loose again. Eleanor did so, hands and fingers sweat-soaked, Imogene breathing curses beside her. Were they going to die? It was muscle-aching work. They notched and loosed, speeding arrow and bolt at that moving line of figures dancing like demons. All the clamour of hell surrounded them. Brief memories of Eleanor’s childhood sparked: her father, a distant figure riding into a courtyard, cloak billowing about him; her mother hastening out to greet him . . . Hugh, standing on the cart above her, shook her from the reverie. She heard him yell.
‘Axemen!’
The Greek shield wall had opened again. Long-haired, bearded mercenaries clad in leather hauberks were racing towards them, shield in one hand, two-headed axe in the other, a horde of shrieking men. Some collapsed in the dirt as arrows pierced them in the face and chest. Others reached the carts, climbing up to be met by whirling sword, mace, club and spear thrust. One of them broke through the gap between the carts. Eleanor tripped him up with a lance whilst Imogene, screaming hysterically, clubbed the back of his head to a bloody pulp. On the cart, Hugh and other mailed knights held off the attackers whilst those who did break through were caught by the waiting infantry. A nightmare vision of hissing steel, spurting blood, angry faces, hideous cries and the soul-wrenching sounds of metal and wood smashing out life. A brief respite, then a fresh ferocious assault. Eleanor felt delirious. Bodies were piled either side of her, then she heard a roar, and the attack began to falter, the axemen withdraw. Hugh, all blood-splashed clambered down from the cart. His chain mail had caught pieces of human flesh, his face was splattered with gore. Eleanor turned away and vomited, aware of Imogene’s arm around her shoulder.
‘Eleanor?’ Hugh pulled her hands apart. ‘Godefroi and the other knights attacked the Greeks in the flanks; they are withdrawing.’
Eleanor nodded. She did not care. She just crouched by the wheel; she had descended into hell. Children were crying, sobbing furiously, footmen were moving amongst the wounded. The enemy were given short shrift, a mercy cut across the throat, the same for those Franks the leeches could do nothing for. Dust devils billowed across. Water-bearers with buckets and ladles moved along the line of men baking under the sun. The Beggars’ Company were already pulling the dead of both sides away from their carts. The Vicomte de Béarn and his officers came galloping up. Eleanor leaned against the cart; Imogene pushed a ladle of water into her hand. She slurped at it, staring out over the battlefield. The dead lay mostly in contorted positions, but occasionally so peacefully, heads resting on arms, they seemed asleep. The summer heat, hot and clammy, intensified the agony. The cries of the wounded drove away the marauding buzzards but not the flies hanging in black clouds around gruesome wounds. A child was weeping uncontrollably. A woman wailed. Voices shouted for leeches or a priest. Rahomer, one of the Poor Brethren, had taken an axe cut to his shoulder and was sobbing with the pain. A leech tried to dress the hideous wound. Eleanor glanced away. Hugh was talking to the vicomte. Eleanor rose and walked over even as the vicomte nodded in agreement.
Hugh shouted for Theodore, Beltran and Alberic to join him.
‘We’ll seek a truce,’ he informed them breathlessly. ‘This is madness. We must discover why the Greeks have attacked so fiercely.’
A short while later, carrying a leafy bough hewn from a tree and flanked by Theodore and Alberic, the priest bearing a cross lashed to a pole, Hugh galloped into the dusty haze, Beltran following behind. The Franks dragged the dead, now stripped naked, ghastly bodies with their shiny purplish wounds, to the funeral pyres hastily erected near the stream. The mound of corpses was sprinkled with oil. A priest intoned the Requiem. A torch was thrown to engulf that monument of the dead in sheets of flame followed by plumes of black smoke. The acrid stench of burning flesh curled along the battle line. Godefroi came riding up, his face still full of battle fury. He looked absent-mindedly at Eleanor and cantered off to where the vicomte and other commanders had created a gap between the carts to ride out and stare across the battlefield at the gathering mass of Greeks. Envoys from the enemy camp came galloping through the murk carrying peace boughs. The Franks accepted these, allowing the Greeks to scour the field for their own dead and wounded. Eleanor slumped down. Imogene squatted next to her. They shared a cob of hard bread, some bitter wine and a few dried figs.
‘We are supposedly marching to Jerusalem, the Heavenly City,’ Eleanor murmured. ‘Yet here we are in the meadows of hell!’
‘Sister?’
Eleanor glanced up. Norbert stood over her. The Benedictine’s gaunt face, skin peeling, was spotted with blood.
‘It’s Fulcher the Smith.’ Norbert indicated with his head. ‘He is dying of his wounds. He says he must speak to you before he is shriven.’
Eleanor rose to her feet. She felt so dazed, Norbert had to steady her by the arm as he led her down the line of carts. They passed groups clustered around screaming, moaning men and women. Others were repairing weapons. A few knelt and prayed around some small statue of the Virgin or their patron saint. Smoke floated across, thick and rank. It broke to reveal Fulcher propped against some baggage; he lay shivering, the dirty bandage around his neck and chest blood-soaked.
‘I cannot stop the bleeding,’ the leech murmured. ‘Wounds everywhere
.’
Eleanor knelt down. Fulcher’s eyes fluttered. He tried to grasp her hand but he was too weak. Eleanor, hiding her own weariness and fighting to control her stomach, ignored the fetid stench around them.
‘Arrowhead and sling shot,’ Fulcher gasped, ‘struck almost immediately.’ He blinked. ‘A wound to the back. Anyway, God wills it. Listen.’ The smith turned and Norbert withdrew. ‘Listen closer.’ Eleanor did so. ‘I’ve watched you,’ the blacksmith gasped. ‘I trust you, Lady Eleanor. I must speak to you. I was in the coven that killed Anstritha. No, hear me! You are not from the Auvergne, sister – where we live in a world of witches and warlocks. Anstritha had been a wandering woman, skilled in herbs, who came and settled in our village. She was a stranger. We had suspicions about her. She kept to herself, though God knows she was friendly enough. She was young and comely. Some of the women envied her, whilst the menfolk lusted after her. She had money and, to all intents and purposes, led a goodly life. It didn’t save her. Stories were rife, tragedies and misfortunes were laid at her door. A week after Michaelmas last, I and other sinners who drank at the Vine of the Lord . . .’ Fulcher gasped, a pink froth bubbling between his lips, and his eyelids fluttered. He took a deep breath. ‘We were given a secret message. No one knew its source. On a certain day we were to meet out along the heathland just as Father Alberic tolled the Vespers bell. We did so, gathering one by one in a grassy hollow; its sides rose high to hide the glow of the fire burning there. We thought it was a joke, but the message had mentioned Anstritha so, full of ale and mischief, we agreed. We were to come hooded and masked, and so we did, though I recognised them, Robert the Reeve and other sinners.’ He paused, gasping for breath.