by Paul Doherty
Rumours emerged, spreading fast and furious like fire amongst stubble. How Peter Bartholomew was a charlatan and the so-called Holy Lance no more than a Turkish spear head; Peter Bartholomew himself, probably with the connivance of Count Raymond, had planted it to be found. The Franks were tired of Peter’s peering into the dark in the dead of night and relating his wondrous stories. It was time he was tested. Arnulf of Chocques, chaplain to the Duke of Normandy, led the opposition. He and others began to ask questions, and due to the influence of the Portal of the Temple, these questions were now chanted throughout the camp. Why was the Holy Lance discovered by Bartholomew himself, alone in a pit in the dark, instead of being revealed in the open light to many? Why did these visions come to Bartholomew, a former frequenter of taverns and possibly a deserter from the army? Moreover, how did the Holy Lance come to Antioch? When did Pontius Pilate and his soldiers ever visit that city? Why did no one except Peter Bartholomew experience these visions and know where the Holy Lance was buried? Not even Adhémar of Le Puy had made such claims. Indeed, the saintly Adhémar had been highly suspicious of the sacred relic.
So the argument ran. Many began to regard the Holy Lance as no more than a piece of treachery. Arnulf kept up the attack, growing more and more insistent, until eventually he provoked Peter Bartholomew, who rose in full council to defend himself.
‘Let a great fire be built!’ Bartholomew exclaimed. ‘And I will take the Holy Lance and pass safely through such a fire. If the lance be the Lord’s sending, I shall come through unhurt; if not, I shall burn to death!’
The ordeal by fire seemed to be the only just solution. The day was chosen: Good Friday 1099. Peter fasted and prayed. On the appointed day, a level stretch of land was prepared. Wood was piled loosely in the centre for a distance of about five paces. Soldiers crowded the slopes around to watch the ordeal, the army turning out en masse to witness God’s judgement. Near the centre of the cleared space stood a group of priests, the official witnesses; these were barefoot, clad only in their vestments. Eleanor and Theodore, mixing with Hugh’s comrades, went down to watch. Peter Bartholomew was led out and stripped of his outer garments. The dried olive tree branches were set alight. The pile of burning brushwood now stretched for about fourteen feet, divided into two heaps each about four feet high. Between these two piles a space of about a foot had been left. The fire roared up. Raymond of Aguilers, chaplain to Count Raymond of Toulouse, addressed the army, his powerful voice carrying.
‘If the Almighty God has spoken to this man face to face and the Blessed Andrew revealed the lance to him, he will pass through this fire without harm. If it is otherwise, however, then he is a liar! Let him burn and the lance that he carries in his hands.’ The entire army knelt and roared back, ‘Amen!’
The fire leapt higher, the heat spreading out. Peter Bartholomew genuflected, took the blessing of a priest then shouted in a loud, strident voice that God be his witness, he had not lied. He also asked the army to pray for him. The priest took the lance, wrapped in a linen cloth, and placed it into Peter Bartholomew’s hands. The prophet rose and went straight into the fire. A bird flew over the flames, the heat singed it and the bird plunged down. Peter, however, passed through the first pyre, paused for an instant and then continued through the second. The uproar that greeted his unscathed emergence rang to the skies. Peter held up the lance, still wrapped in linen; it too showed no sign of singeing. He ran towards the people, shouting how the Lord had proven he was no liar. Theodore withdrew Eleanor, as a riot now threatened. People crowded around Peter Bartholomew. Eleanor never really discovered the truth of what happened next. Whether it was adulation from the mob or the work of some enemy, Peter received more damage from his so-called supporters than from the fire: his legs were broken in two or three places, and serious damage was done to his back. In fact he would have been torn to pieces had not Count Raymond’s henchmen broken into the crowd, freed him and hurried him off to the hut of Raymond Aguilers. The mob, however, believing they had witnessed a great miracle, now turned on the fire, gathering up the coals and ashes as sacred relics.
Immediately various stories began to circulate about how Peter had escaped being burned by the fire, and witnesses called to inspect his face and body vouched for this. Others, however, said he had collapsed because of the heat. Whatever, the day after the test, Holy Saturday, Peter Bartholomew died of his injuries and was buried in the very spot where the ordeal had taken place. If Count Raymond of Toulouse hoped the miracle would silence opposition, he was wrong. The stories were still rife: Peter Bartholomew was a charlatan, the Holy Lance a fake. Desperately, Raymond tried to hold on to his authority, but already Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders were determined to take over the leadership, a task made easier by the likes of Hugh and Godefroi. The Army of God were tired of Arqa. Jerusalem waited. An Egyptian army was approaching. They should seize the Holy City immediately! As if guided by some invisible force, the army struck their tents, burned their huts and, chanting hymns and singing psalms, set their faces towards Jerusalem. Raymond of Toulouse still insisted on having the last word. His failure at Arqa had made the ruler of Tripoli think again: were the Franks so weak they couldn’t take a mere hill fort? He sent out raiding parties. Raymond retaliated ruthlessly. The raiding parties were ambushed and their corpses sent floating down an aqueduct back into Tripoli, decapitated cadavers and severed heads bubbling blood from their jagged wounds.
Part 10
Jerusalem: The Feast of St Mary Magdalen,
24 July 1099
Tam sancta membra tangere.
(Then to touch the sacred limbs.)
Venantius Fortunatus, ‘Hymn In Honour of the Cross’
The Army of God advanced relentlessly on Jerusalem. The Franks sang hymns and chanted favourite lines from the psalms such as: ‘One day in your court is worth a thousand elsewhere.’ They certainly did not sing that about the land they were passing through. Summer in all its scorching, blasting heat hammered the army. Swirling dust clouds closed in as swarms of stinging gnats and flies tortured their skin. They kept to the coastal road, a narrow, perilous passage. Thankfully no enemy waited to ambush them, even when they had to pass round a rugged promontory that jutted out into the sea, a highly dangerous place the local inhabitants called ‘the Face of God’. They warned the Franks that they would have to go round this fearsome place in single file, and so they did, but safely. Similar narrow passes were forced. The Dog river was crossed, Beirut circled. The Army of God swarmed over the fallen marble of once great palaces and swept under the magnificent yet crumbling arches built by the Romans until they reached Sidon.
Here they rested and took sustenance near the watering places. They cut honey-sweet reeds known as sucra, greedily sucked the sweetness and moved on to gape at the former glories of Tyre. They were entertained and advised by the local Christian Maronites about the journey south: how the coastal roads had few water supplies and still more narrow perilous passes. The Army of God, however, kept to the coast road, all eyes turned inland, fearful of that flanking attack by Saracens and Turks that might drive them into the sea. Water was scarce, whilst the sandy rocks were infested with snakes and basilisks terrifying in their strikes. Men, women and children, delirious for water, grubbed greedily, Eleanor amongst them, only to be attacked by venomous snakes that turned their bodies into fiery, tormented tongues of pain. The bites, Eleanor wrote in her chronicle, made some so desperate for water that they plunged into the sea and gulped the salt-soaked waves, which only increased their thirst.
At last the Army of God broke free of the infested terrain and camped on the bed of a river that was nothing more than shallow pools along a shale-lined gulley. They followed the gulley inland on to a rocky, dirt-strewn plain dotted with fig trees and date palms. In the far distance they glimpsed the white-walled town of Ramleh, set in a forbidding dry landscape of hard-baked clay, jutting rock and wind-furrowed sand. Despite all the hardships and thirst,
the army advanced cautiously, but the gates of Ramleh proved to be undefended. They passed within its walls and stared round the dingy, dirty town. Little greenery could be seen; nothing but arid dust clouds blowing through the streets and across desolate squares. The local Maronites crept cautiously out to greet them and showed the Franks the entrances to underground cisterns that fed the great bathhouses. The Franks crowded in, drank their fill and went on to the White Mosque. The cedar gates and heavy roof beams of the mosque were all black and charred, burned by the retreating Turks lest the Franks use the wood to build siege machinery. The Army of God knelt on the marble floor of the mosque as the townspeople whispered that beneath it lay the bones of one of their great patrons, the martyr St George. The Franks promptly turned the mosque into a church and elevated Robert of Rouen as its bishop. They would have dallied even longer, but Hugh, Godefroi and the Portal of the Temple continued their whispering campaign: this was not Jerusalem; they should move on.
Hugh and Godefroi had withdrawn from Raymond of Toulouse, being seen more and more in the company of the fiery Tancred. They also entertained their own visionary, a novice monk, Peter Desiderius, who constantly warned the Army of God to move towards its real destiny – Jerusalem. Tancred, however, needed little encouragement. He repeatedly voiced his demand that the army move quickly, and so, on 6 June, they reached the ancient town of Emmaus, only a few miles west of the Holy City, the very place where the Risen Christ had met two of his disciples journeying from Jerusalem. The Army of God, Peter Desiderius proclaimed, taking up the thread, must also meet the Risen Christ in Jerusalem. Tancred was determined to fulfil that vision.
In the middle of the night of 6 June, Theodore slipped into Eleanor’s tent and shook her awake. One hand across her mouth, he signalled with the other that she remain quiet. In the poor light Eleanor gazed across at Imogene, now fast asleep after returning to sob quietly to herself.
‘Listen,’ Theodore whispered, ‘Tancred has been approached by Maronites from Bethlehem. They fear the Turks might fire the town. He and a hundred knights, including Hugh, Godefroi and myself, are riding there. Do you wish to come?’
Eleanor pulled herself up.
‘We will see Jerusalem,’ Theodore added.
Eleanor needed no further urging. She quickly prepared herself and joined Theodore waiting outside. Darkness was beginning to fade, the sky lightening as they hastened towards the horse lines. Lantern horns glowed; wisps of smoke from the first fires drifted across. The yip, yip of a lonely jackal echoed, a strange contrast to the voices of the gathering men as they recited verses from the psalms.
Once they had finished their Matins, the knights donned their chain mail and helmets; girdles and belts were strapped on, long swords slipped into scabbards. Shields and lances were brought forward. No one objected to Eleanor’s presence. Some of the men nodded at her as they pulled on their loose linen robes, sure protection for their mail against the sun and dust. The war horses, all harnessed and ready, were trotted forward. The knights swung themselves into the saddle, leaning down to grasp lance and shield. Theodore positioned Eleanor, riding a small but sturdy palfrey, in the middle of the group. Tancred unfurled his scarlet and gold banner and the troop broke into a gallop, swiftly clearing the camp, leaving the lights of their picket lines winking behind them.
They thundered through the night, reaching Bethlehem in that murky twilight before dawn, riding past crumbling huts of stone, blank walls and dark alleyways. Dogs barked, the only sound as they reined in before the basalt-paved square stretching up to the Basilica of the Virgin Mary. The troop fanned out behind Tancred. The hooves of their horses clipped the stones, leather harness creaked, the jingle of mail echoed, followed by the ominous slither of swords being drawn from scabbards. Tancred, tall and dark in the saddle, cloak flapping around him, his gorgeous banner ruffled by the chill morning breeze, advanced across the square. He paused halfway and rose in his stirrups brandishing the banner.
‘Deus vult!’ he bellowed. ‘Deus vult!’ The cry was taken up by his escort, a triumphant chant of praise. As if in answer, the bells of the basilica began to peal their message. Lights appeared at windows. Doors were opened. People thronged into the square to view these dark angels on horseback who had brought deliverance to Christ’s birthplace. The double gates of the basilica were pulled back and the ancient patriarch of the town, flanked by Maronite monks carrying candles, crosses and lighted tapers, processed out to greet them even as the bells increased their clanging peals.
Tancred led his knights across the square. Eleanor dismounted and, with Theodore’s hand on her arm, followed the rest through the door into the cavernous cold nave smelling sweetly of incense and candle smoke. The Franks knelt as the dawn Mass was celebrated and then withdrew, though not before Tancred had hoisted his banner over the basilica. He also left ten knights to ensure it remained in place. Eleanor felt as if she was dreaming. The cold, hard ride and that long, gloomy nave with its tessellated floor, icons, mosaics and wall paintings. She had visited the town of Christ’s birth, and now they were riding through a narrow ravine that cut through the shadow-shrouded foothills leading to Jerusalem. They reached a plateau as the sky lightened, galloping past clumps of olive groves, stretches of pasture and ploughland. On the edge of the plateau the horsemen dismounted, holding the reins of their animals as they whispered, ‘Jerusalem! Jerusalem!’ to each other. The morning sun was rising fast behind them. Theodore and Eleanor walked to the edge. The hill below fell steeply. At the bottom lay a small church and beyond that stretched a deep, desolate gorge. On the far side of the gorge reared towering walls that seemed to have no gate. A dome gleamed above the walls, and further down from that, a squat white building caught the light of the rising sun.
‘Jerusalem!’ Theodore whispered.
Eleanor stared. No gold, silver or precious stones! No angel trumpet blast! No heavenly chorus! Nothing but a mass of masonry. A voice cried out, making her jump. She turned to look where others were pointing. In the far distance, along the broad thoroughfare leading to the city, she saw the glint of armour, the glitter of weaponry, the flashing colour of banners. The advance guard of the Army of God! Hugh gave a cry of triumph. No doubt the Portal of the Temple led the advance. The army was about to besiege Jerusalem.
The Franks camped before the Holy City on 7 June, the Year of Our Lord 1099. Tancred and the Portal of the Temple immediately scoured the surrounding hills, whilst the other leaders decided on what to do. Fierce debate raged for days. Hugh and Godefroi relayed the discussions to their own followers. Eleanor, escorted by Theodore and a group of mounted men-at-arms, inspected the Holy City, which, to all appearances, lay calm and watchful. Jerusalem’s Egyptian commander Iftikhar commanded a garrison of Turks and Saracens twenty thousand in number, with an elite corps of Ethiopian warriors and almost five hundred of Egypt’s best cavalry. The city, so the Franks learnt from spies, was well provisioned, with many underground water cisterns. The Franks were not so fortunate. Iftikhar had torched the land around Jerusalem, seizing or killing livestock and emptying granaries. Worse, he had also poisoned or broken all wells, cisterns and springs outside the city. Summer was at its height, the sun already scorching the bleak surrounding countryside. The only source of good water was the pool of Siloam to the south of the city, near the entrance to the Kedron valley at the foot of Mount Sion. A small lake, Siloam was only fed every three days by a spring and lay within an easy bowshot of skilful archers on the city walls.
Eleanor, even on her ride around the city walls, experienced a deep desperation. The sun was relentless, whilst along the battlements flashed the glint of armour and the shiny iron-weighted cups of the catapults and ballistae. Black smoke billowed from the many pots and cauldrons whilst the acrid stench of sulphur, brimstone and hot oil drifted on the dusty breeze. Gates and postern doors were bricked up, every battlement fortified. Jerusalem was no heavenly city but a mighty grim fortress ready for battle.
Hugh’s desc
ription, as Eleanor wrote in her chronicle, did nothing to reassure her. Once they had pitched tents, the Portal of the Temple gathered to the north of the city. They squatted under a makeshift awning facing a slab of sandstone; on this, using a piece of charcoal, Hugh scrawled a rough outline of the city defences.
‘The walls,’ he pushed back his cowl, ‘are about three miles long, fifty feet high and in places nine feet thick.’ He stilled their cries and exclamations. ‘Think of Jerusalem as a twisted rectangle almost a mile across from west to east and about the same north to south.’ He made a mark on the sandstone. ‘We are camped here to the north-west. We can only attack the city from the west or the north. The eastern side is protected by a deep gorge or valley called Josaphat.’ Hugh shook his head. ‘It would be impossible to launch an attack from there. The only gate, the Josaphat postern in the north-east section of the walls, is completely bricked up. On the south-east of the city stretches the Kedron valley. On the south-west stands Mount Sion; further along lies the valley of Hinnon.’
‘You must understand.’ Godefroi got to his feet, gesturing at the crude drawing. ‘Jerusalem’s walls are protected on its eastern, southern and south-western flank by hills that fall steeply into three valleys, the Kedron, Josaphat and Hinnon. Only the north and north-west provide flatter ground for attack: here the city defences are reinforced by an outer wall and a deep dry moat. This exposed part of the city is pierced by five gates, from Herod Gate in the north round the western wall to the Sion Gate in the south. Each of these five entrances, Herod, St Stephen, New Gate, Jaffa and Sion, is protected by a pair of soaring towers. Two fortified citadels offer further defence: in the north-west corner stands the Quadrangular Tower, and further down the western wall the Tower of David. Both,’ Godefroi’s voice grew stronger, ‘are built of solid masonry, large stones sealed with mortar and lead. Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and Tancred will lay siege from St Stephen Gate to the Quadrangular Tower. Count Raymond of Toulouse will camp opposite the Tower of David, though some claim he will soon move to Sion Gate.’