Knights of the Cross

by Tom Harper

  ‘Roger Barneville,’ said Sigurd. I knew him too, a Norman captain from Duke Robert’s army. Though he was not as mighty as the princes, he had joined their councils on occasion to offer advice. He was renowned as a skilful soldier and a formidable warrior.

  ‘What is he doing?’

  Fifteen knights had followed him out through the open gates and formed a line driving towards the Turks. To the cheers of the garrison they swept past the tower and charged up the slope, following the Alexandretta road away from the river. Though the Turks had twice their numbers, and bows to fire against the Frankish spears, they offered not the least resistance. They turned their horses and galloped away, dust billowing behind them.

  ‘Does Roger think they will tell Kerbogha to retreat to Khorassan because fifteen knights dared to oppose them?’ Sigurd asked.

  I made no reply. The dust still whirled where the Turks had vanished, but instead of dying away with their passing it seemed to build, creeping ever wider along the ridge. It was too far off for me to see clearly, yet I thought I glimpsed dark shadows moving under the eddying cloud. Still it grew, as though a storm wind whipped it to new heights.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  The swirling shadows resolved themselves as a line of Turkish horsemen emerged from the dust. They crested the ridge and charged down the slope; a second later, I heard the thunder of their hooves rolling across the river. The Normans saw them and in an instant swerved their horses back towards the city. But they had been drawn perilously far away. There was no thought of battle, for the Turks were ten times their number and had fresh horses under them. Even as I watched, they began to outflank the Normans, driving them away from the refuge of the bridge and forcing them towards the river.

  A shout rose from the gate below. ‘Where are the reinforcements? Will we allow the Turks to chase us from before our own city?’ It was Count Raymond’s voice, honed to a cutting edge by a lifetime on the battlefield, but though I heard much clamour and jangling no one rode out to help.

  Now the Normans had reached the river. The summer drought had shrunk it into a thin channel between cracked mudflats; even in its centre, rocks protruded from the water. The first of the Normans slid his horse down the embankment where animals came to drink and splashed across. Others followed, picking their way over the uneven course while the water foamed white with falling arrows. I counted fourteen men on the near bank now: only one remained on the far side, the red feathers still sticking defiantly from his helmet. It was Roger Barneville, who having led the charge up the ridge now found himself in the rear of the retreat. The Turks were close behind him, their arrows whipping past, but if he could ford the river he would quickly come under the protection of the walls.

  His horse cantered down the muddy embankment and onto the naked river bed. The treacherous ground slowed his pace; the pursuing Turks drew nearer, but still he managed to duck their arrows.

  Barneville was almost at the water’s edge when suddenly his horse stopped short. The jarring halt threw him forward but he managed to keep in the saddle; when he tried to spur the horse again, though, it would not move. Had an arrow struck it? I could not see any wound. The horse seemed to be straining forward, struggling to lift its hooves, yet rooted to the ground.

  Roger glanced over his shoulder. The leading Turks were on the river bank, looking down on him. Panicking, he tried to kick free of his stirrups, but it was too late. An arrow buried itself in his back and he jerked up like a puppet. At such close range it would have driven clean through the armour.

  The shouting around me died away to nothing. Every man looked on in horror.

  ‘Who will help him?’ bellowed Count Raymond, now up on the walls.

  No one answered.

  Roger Barneville was alive – I could see him still fumbling with his bridle, trying to dismount – but the Turks had not finished. One of them galloped forward, spear in hand, and as he came up to Barneville he drove it through him like a spit. I saw the point gleaming in the sun as it emerged from his chest. He must have cried out, but he was too weak to be heard: we could only watch as he toppled slowly from his saddle into the river. A second Turk rode past; his sword flashed, and blood welled into the water. As he wiped his blade, another horseman stabbed his spear into the river like a fisherman seeking octopus. When he lifted it out, a misshapen bulge was fixed to its tip. A red feather hung limp beneath it.

  It took much to outrage the Franks, but they were silent with shock and shame now. I heard one voice mumbling that they had too few horses, another that there was little they could have done in any event, but none raised their voices to agree. The Turks crossed the river and rode impudently along the base of the walls, waving their bloody trophy at us. Few arrows flew to punish them. In the distance, Roger’s horse tipped back its neck and screamed, mourning its master or bewailing its captivity, while the Turk who had struck the final blow drew up his own mount near the bridge and shouted violence at us. His words were alien, but the meaning was unmissable.

  The crowd on the walls was ebbing away. Sigurd and I followed.

  ‘Fool,’ he hissed when we were out of hearing. ‘Senseless, worthless, idiot fool. How many times have we seen ten Turks lure us to battle, only to become a hundred? Why do the Franks refuse to learn the ways of their enemy?’

  I had no answer.

  ‘Today we saw thirty become three hundred. What will we do tomorrow, when the three hundred become three thousand, then thirty thousand? Will we ride out to be slaughtered every time Kerbogha sends a company of scouts to goad us?’

  I looked up at the mountain. Smoke was rising from the furthest peak, above the citadel, but I did not see Bohemond’s banner flying there.

  ‘It is a bad beginning.’

  κ β

  That evening we made a fire on top of the tower that we had occupied. Beric the Varangian had ridden to Saint Simeon that day and had fetched back fish and grain at exorbitant cost. I did not think that that path would be open to us much longer. As long as we held the tower by the bridge we could defend the road, but all afternoon the Turkish vanguard had harried the defences with fire and arrows. The Franks had withstood them, but they would not hold out for long when Kerbogha came in his full might.

  ‘We would not be able to go to Saint Simeon often in any case,’ Beric said. He pulled the pan from the fire and scraped charred fish into our bowls. ‘I almost killed my horse getting back here before dark.’

  ‘That will be tomorrow’s supper, then,’ said Sigurd.

  ‘And what shall we do the day after?’ I pulled apart the sticky flesh in my fingers, wincing at the heat. ‘It took us four months to close off the city; I doubt Kerbogha will be so slow.’

  Sigurd scowled as he tasted the bitter fish. ‘If I am alive the day after tomorrow, then I will consider what to eat.’

  ‘Do not say that.’ It was a warm night, and the fire made it warmer still, but Anna pulled her shawl closer about her. ‘We must survive. There is no gain in thinking of the alternative.’

  I reached out an arm to comfort her, but she shrugged free of it. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared intently at the flames.

  ‘I wonder how Bohemond finds the city that he schemed so hard to win,’ Sigurd mused. ‘It is not the best beginning for his new empire.’

  ‘A curse on him and his empire,’ I said. ‘I would like to see them both thrown down in ruin and picked over by crows, if I did not fear that we would fall beside him.’

  Sigurd belched. ‘He may be our brightest hope.’

  ‘Then our plight is truly dire.’

  ‘Bohemond is a snake, Demetrios, like all Normans. When the bastard William landed in England, his army was too small, his supplies too few, and winter fast approaching. Within a month he was master of the kingdom. Bohemond is hatched from the same egg. He is a snake in a corner, and therefore most dangerous. The Turks will need a long spear to force him out.’

  ‘Or a single well-aimed arrow. How have we co
me to rely on allies like these?’

  ‘When the Emperor comes, we will not have to.’ Sigurd licked the last juice off the fish’s skeleton and cast it into the fire.

  ‘If we are still here when he comes.’

  ‘Halt!’

  The challenge from the foot of the tower echoed up to us. I jumped to my feet and leaned out through the embrasure. In the orb of a burning torch below, I could see a tall man in a long white robe standing at the door. A Varangian faced him, axe in hand.

  ‘Who is it?’ I called down.

  The visitor tipped back his head. The torchlight flickered on a dark face fringed by a black beard. ‘Demetrios? It is Mushid. The swordsmith.’

  I relaxed my grip on the battlements. ‘Come up.’

  We shuffled closer in our circle and made an opening for Mushid. As he seated himself by the parapet, I heard a muffled thud from under his robe. He would be wise to keep his wares close at hand in the city, I thought, though foolish to venture here at all. At least he had taken some precaution – I saw now why I had not recognised him immediately.

  ‘You’ve removed your turban.’

  He nodded. ‘I do not want my head raised on a Franj’s spear.’

  ‘If you are so cautious for your neck, why enter Antioch?’ asked Sigurd. He had not met Mushid before, and watched him across the fire with narrow eyes.

  ‘For many reasons. I came to see if it was true, the rumour of the ruin which the Franj had worked.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So I saw. All through the city I have seen not one Turk today, save those being thrown into pits to be buried.’

  ‘The Franks boast that not a single Turk survived the sack. I am sorry.’

  ‘It was not your fault.’

  It was, though. Again I remembered hammering back the bolt, the shouting of the Normans and the clatter of arrows about me. I remembered climbing that frail ladder, mounting the walls that had defied me for so long and being too terrified to care. I remembered—

  ‘Mushid.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Two nights ago I was with Bohemond’s men on the walls, translating for the Turk who betrayed the city. He was agitated – he thought we had too few men and that Bohemond had not come. He said . . .’ I commanded my mind back. ‘He said Mushid promised that Bohemond would come.’

  Mushid folded his hands together and stared into the fire. It hissed and crackled; the reflected flames danced on the battlements around us. No one spoke.

  ‘There are many men called Mushid in my country, as there are many called Demetrios in yours.’

  ‘There are not many who visited Bohemond alone in his tent three weeks ago.’

  Again there was a long pause. At last: ‘It was my name you heard.’

  ‘You plotted with Bohemond to let him seize the city?’

  ‘I brought messages to him. Firouz, the captain on the tower, he is an armourer. I am a swordsmith. We have friends through the guilds. I travel freely wherever men need arms. Sometimes I carry more than swords.’

  ‘But why?’ demanded Anna. ‘Why betray the city – and your own people? Did you revel in the destruction you saw today?’

  Mushid shrugged. ‘They are not my people. They are Turks; I am an Arab, a Saracen.’

  ‘But you worship the same god—’

  ‘We all say we worship the same god – Jews, Franj, Byzantines, Turks and Arabs. But we do not agree how He is to be worshipped. Why do you think you have endured so long in such hostile country? Because of the power of your arms? You survive because every lord from Cairo to Constantinople wishes to make you his tool. The Byzantines and Fatimids seek to destroy the Turks; the Armenians would become their own masters; the emirs of Damascus and Aleppo and Antioch each hope you will destroy their rivals. You have marched into an ancient game played out in the dust of Asia. You see in straight lines, but all about you others move obliquely. That is why you live now: because each of your enemies hates his neighbour more.’

  He fell silent, and leaned back against the wall. The empty spaces between the battlements were like black teeth above him.

  ‘If that is so, then whom do you serve?’ Sigurd asked.

  ‘I am a swordsmith. I serve myself, and those who buy my blades. Others make schemes; I carry their messages.’

  I shifted on the hard stone beneath me. ‘Why are you here now?’

  ‘I heard that you had occupied this tower. It is prudent to know where your friends are in these times.’

  ‘That was not what I meant.’

  Mushid lifted an eyebrow. ‘Then what? Do I carry more secrets of hidden plans? Having worked the city’s betrayal once, will I do it again? Is that what you ask?’

  ‘If a man sits at my fire I like to know why he is there.’

  ‘Then you are wise.’ He smiled. ‘I did not weep to see the Turks lose Antioch, because they were Ahl al-Sunna. Having helped the Franj, I will not turn away so quickly from them. And if Kerbogha takes the city, there will be more killing. You will have killed all the Muslims, he will kill all the Christians, and Antioch will become a wasteland. Nobody will win.’

  ‘How can you bear it?’ Anna spoke so quietly that her words seemed to entwine with the hissing fire. ‘Whichever doctrines divided you from the Antiochenes, they were your brothers. By your hand, many thousands of them now lie in an open grave. How can you sit by our fire and discuss this calamity as if it were nothing more than the forging of a sword?’

  ‘First, because they did not die by my hand. They died by the hands of a thousand Franj, not one more or less guilty. Do not try and blame me for what your allies have done.’

  ‘They are not my allies. And hateful though they are, their evil would have remained undone if you had not arranged for the gate to be open.’

  It was as if hot lead had been poured into my belly. I squirmed where I sat, praying that Anna’s fixed stare did not move onto me. In my account of the battle at the walls, I had not told her the truth of my role: the fear that she would blame me for all that had happened since was unanswerable. How could it be otherwise, when I could not defend it myself?

  ‘Firouz the armourer opened the gate,’ said Mushid. ‘If I had not carried his messages to Bohemond, he would have found another. Even if he had not, even if I alone were responsible for unlocking the gate, I would not bear the blame for what happened afterwards. Many doors open: it is for men to choose which they enter – and what they do inside.’

  I had rarely seen Anna bested in argument, but now she had no reply. None, at least, that she could voice, though her face evinced an inconsolable anger.

  ‘Would you rather that I had done nothing?’ Mushid continued. ‘Would you rather now be cowering in your tent before the walls, watching Demetrios pull on his armour? Would you rather see three thousand Franj, with barely a sound horse between them, marching to fight the mightiest Turkish army in a generation? Would you rather be in the camp when Kerbogha’s victorious janissaries overran it, massacring every man and boy and dragging you away by your hair to the slave-brothels of Mosul where—’

  ‘Enough,’ I snapped. ‘That is not necessary.’

  Mushid looked at me almost curiously, then bowed his head. ‘I am sorry. I meant no insult. It is bad to offend one’s host at his own fire. All I wished to say is that there would have been a terrible killing in any event. Perhaps you do not like what I have done, but I have been on many battlefields, both as victor and vanquished. I assure you of this: it is always better to be among the living than the dead.’

  I could see from the faces around the fire that his argument satisfied no one, me least of all. It did not lift one straw from the burden of guilt I bore. Yet unless the dead came to lend their voices to the debate, it was irrefutable.

  I was uneasy with the turn that the conversation had taken, and with the enmity that seemed to have flared up between Anna and Mushid. Still, there were questions I wanted to ask.

  ‘Your friendship with Drogo – was that part
of this plot?’

  Mushid studied his knuckles, his face impassive. ‘No. As I told you once before, I met Drogo when I sold him a sword. It was much later that Firouz confided in me his plan, after Drogo had died. He was simply a friend, a good man to sit with by a fire. It is sad that he lived under so unfortunate a roof.’

  ‘Unfortunate indeed, but not uncommon.’

  ‘And still the misfortune continues. His servant was found dead by the river three days ago.’

  ‘Simon?’ A torrent of images flooded my mind: the boy shivering under Quino’s brutality, picking herbs from the river bank covered in mud, rubbing an oily cloth over Drogo’s sword. Was it possible that he had suffered the same fate as his master?

  ‘Simon, yes. I was in the Norman camp when they discovered him.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ So many men had died in the past days – and weeks and months – that it was astonishing I could feel anything from one more death. In truth, I felt nothing, for the news had a numbing effect that I could not resist. Yet somehow, if it were possible, in the recesses of my soul I felt a cold hand squeeze tighter about me, felt a more profound absence of feeling itself.

  ‘He was pierced with arrows. He had been hunting for herbs on the bank – a party of Turks must have seen him from the far side and chanced their aim.’

  Perhaps, I thought, I had known it already. I remembered dismantling the boat bridge two days earlier, and a peasant telling me of a boy killed picking herbs. I had felt a sickening premonition, but then Bohemond had arrived and dragged me away, and all else had been forgotten. Not that remembering would have helped by then.

  Mushid was still speaking. ‘It was a tragic end. Had he lived another day, he would have entered the city in safety.’

  Through the welter of thought and memory that flurried about me, I found myself thinking that if this city, besieged and starving, had been Simon’s best hope of safety, how wretched must he have been? Hardly less, I supposed, than we who had survived.