Song of the Eight Winds - An Epic Tale of Medieval Spain

by Peter Kerr

  Frowning himself now, King Jaume asked him to explain.

  One of the Christian patrols, En Nunyo disclosed, had just returned with word of a large force of Moors having come down from the mountains to a place called Canet, some four miles north of the Christian base here at El Real.

  King Jaume’s face fell. ‘Canet’s where the spring rises to feed the stream this camp straddles, isn’t it?’

  En Nunyo nodded. ‘The spring that supplies our entire army with water. The scouts say as many as five thousand Saracens are up there They have about a hundred cavalry with them, and it’s obvious they’re there to protect teams of diggers who’re trying to divert the stream. I’ve just had a look where it runs under the palisade here, and even now the little water that’s still dribbling through is thick with mud.’ He shook his head. ‘We’re facing a complete disaster – the possible end of the crusade.’

  Thinking hard, the king stroked his beard. ‘Five thousand men, you say? Hmm, and if we send an equal number to engage them, it’ll leave the camp susceptible to attack by forces from inside the city.’ He looked at Pedrito. ‘A twist on the unlikely pincer-movement the Saracen soldiers told you about at the inn, eh? Sí, and an extremely cunning one at that, don’t you think, Master Blànes?’

  Judging it prudent not to get involved in the military musings of the king, Pedrito remained silent. Nevertheless, he thought it highly unlikely that the three ‘arrow stoppers’ he had spoken to would have had even the slightest inkling of the stratagem now being employed by comrades of theirs who had taken refuge in the mountains after being so soundly defeated in battle. This development was more probably the result of impromptu action taken by an opportunist commander within the ranks of those same fugitive forces. In any event, if potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire Christian expedition were to be avoided, this unforeseen problem would have to be resolved, and swiftly. No easy task.

  En Nunyo Sans, however, appeared undaunted and duly declared himself well up to the callenge. He would take the cream of his own company of mounted men-at-arms, and, if the king would make their number up to a hundred with his own choice of knights, he would launch an attack on the Saracen cavalry at Canet with such speed and ferocity that they would be cut to pieces in no time. That had been the pattern of the previous confrontations between the two sides, and he saw no reason to believe it would be any different this time.

  The king responded by pointing out that there was the not-insignificant matter of five thousand Moorish infantrymen to take into account. Wouldn’t their presence tilt the balance overwhelmingly in the enemy’s favour?

  ‘Perhaps,’ En Nunyo airily conceded, ‘but who’s to say that those alleged infantrymen will turn out to be anything more dangerous than a collection of walking wounded, their ranks bulked out with chicken-hearted Moorish peasants rounded up like sheep from their mountain farms?’ En Nunyo was nothing if not confident. Give him a hundred good knights with their trusty followers, he declared, and the camp’s water supply would soon be restored.

  Pedrito was struck by this unexpectedly bullish attitude of En Nunyo’s. There was nothing here of the hesitancy that had preceded his commitment to earlier engagements with the Moors. Perhaps the desperation of the present situation was bringing out the best of his soldierly qualities, or maybe the glorious death in action of his relatives, the intrepid cousins Muntcada, had finally sparked a desire to show off a more gung-ho side to his nature than had previously been apparent. Either way, he was making it known to the king that he was ready and willing to assert his position as senior general of the Christian forces. And in so doing he had displayed a commensurate amount of aristocratic arrogance, including, Pedrito had noticed, a disdainful glance in his own direction when uttering the words ‘chicken-hearted Moorish peasants’.

  Pedrito harboured no illusion that he was regarded as anything other than a common upstart in the eyes of many of the high-ranking nobles and churchmen on this mission. The admittance of such a vulgar person into the inner sanctum of the royal house clearly went against the grain in some quarters, and Pedrito could fully understand their attitude. But, as the king himself had fostered the relationship without any self-seeking effort being made by Pedrito, he felt reasonably comfortable with the situation, while remaining fully aware that he was persona non grata in the eyes of certain influential people, and as such would be wise to watch his back at all times. He had already learned from his mother’s experiences what it could mean to fall foul of resentful elements within the covetous corridors of such a close-knit patrician community.

  That said, how, he wondered, would he be regarded by this crusade’s dignitaries, including King Jaume himself, if details of his own ‘regal’ lineage were made known to them? Pedrito had already decided, however, that this potentially explosive piece of information would be best kept to himself, for now at least.

  Before the king went off to muster a group of knights to ride with En Nunyo, he announced that Pedrito was being put into the service of the expedition’s chief engineer, En Jaspert de Barberá, whose primary duty now was to make urgent preparations for the undermining of the city walls. He also took a moment to tell En Nunyo that, as soon as he had resolved the situation at Canet, he would have to see to it that detatchments of troops were deployed to the vicinities of each of the city’s gates, thereby ensuring that no Moors could either enter or leave. Now that there was only need to station a few soldiers on the ships at Porto Pi, there would be sufficient manpower available to form such barricades without any serious dimunition of the essential forces garrisoned within the camp.

  Pedrito was taken once again by how the king had assumed so much more authority since the demise of the Muntcadas. He was now very much the commander-in-chief of the entire operation, overseeing and controlling every aspect of the campaign, and not even En Nunyo Sans took it upon himself to question his decisions. King Jaume had accepted his senior general’s claim that he could handle the Canet situation, so the word ‘if’ didn’t come into his thoughts regarding the successful outcome of the mission.

  Accordingly, Pedrito saved himself the trouble of suggesting to the king that, having had next to no sleep for the previous three nights, he might reasonably be allowed to rest a while before taking up his duties with En Jaspert. He already knew enough of the king’s character to predict that he would only be reminded that he himself was sorely deprived of sleep, and therefore expected every man to follow his example without question or complaint.

  It also came as no great surprise to Pedrito to find that the duties he was expected to fulfil for the king’s chief engineer relied more on muscle power than any requirement to take up arms. In this the king was being as good as his word by continuing to respect Pedrito’s declared unwillingness to kill any Moor, despite the heinous treatment meted out to his adoptive family by pirates of the same ilk.

  And if, because of Pedrito’s closeness to the king, he had expected any special treatment to be afforded him by En Jaspert, he would have have been brought down to earth with a jolt. As when instigating a headlong charge into enemy lines at the battle of Na Burguesa (while his superior En Nunyo held back), this no-nonsense nobleman was wasting no time in preparing an assault on the stout walls of Medîna Mayûrqa – an assault more subtle, in some ways, than the battering being inflicted by the Christians’ siege engines, but an assault that might ultimately prove to be at least as decisive. And to achieve this end, every man under his command would have to put his back into what was asked of him, even if this also meant turning that back into a potential target for the enemy.

  Just inside the stockade fence, the construction had commenced of a huge vehicle that resembled a wooden house on wheels, and it was to this that Pedrito, after exchanging his ‘borrowed’ Arab robes for his familiar old sailor’s shirt and pantalons, had been directed by the king. He was soon informed by one of the carpenters that this cumbersome-looking affair was called a mantellina, or, affectionately, a ‘she c
at’; an apt enough name for a contraption that was intended to creep stealthily towards its quarry, which, in a siege situation like this, took the form of the city walls. But the ‘cat’ herself would pose no direct threat to her prey, for that would be the responsibility of her kittens, or rather the ‘litter’ of burly men who would ultimately shelter under her belly.

  The mantellina was being assembled from timber components shipped from the mainland, and when Pedrito arrived on site, the framework of the base was already mounted on eight sturdy wheels – four on each side – on top of which a pitched roof was being made of hurdles overlaid with planking. But as robust as this protective canopy was, it would still have been prone to damage by enemy projectiles. So, to bolster its resistance, a layer of brushwood topped with a thick quilt of earth would have to be applied. It was to this latter task that Pedrito found himself assigned.

  He joined a team of other other stalwarts, each lugging two large bucketfuls of soil at a time from the ditch workings outside the palisade. To minimise the distance they would have to carry their loads, they were directed to the diggings closest to where the mantellina was being built, which, of necessity, was the point of the camp nearest the city walls. And you didn’t have to be a ballistics expert to realise that this area of operations was also the one most exposed to incoming missiles. It came as some consolation to Pedrito to know that, according to the king at any rate, those missiles were likely to fall short of their targets. Nevertheless, some rocks were landing uncomfortably close to where the buckets were being filled, and it crossed Pedrito’s mind on every trip outside the stockade that the Moors’ long-range algarrada, which, to everyone’s relief, had been destroyed, might be replaced by equally effective machines at any moment.

  Meanwhile, he was able to see at close quarters the operation of the mighty Marseilles trebuchet, which was positioned close to where the mantellina was being made ready. A fifty-foot-long timber boom, originally a ship’s mast, was pivoted between two even stouter uprights, and attached to one one end of this swivelling pole was a sling of the same principle as Pedrito’s hand-held version, though of massively greater proportions. On the opposite extremity of the boom, a counterweight, made up of boulders contained within a net of heavy-guage rope, dangled like a monstrous wasps’ nest.

  The sheer scale of this siege engine was truly awesome, as was the savagery of its action. After the counterweight had been cranked as high as possible from the ground and the cradle of the sling armed with suitably destructive ammunition, a trigger mechanism was released, allowing gravity to pull the counterweight down with such momentum that, as the opposite extremity of the boom shot upward, the sling was sent flying with a sound akin to the air being slashed by a giant whip. Then, at the very moment the cradle reached the apex of the sling’s trajectory, the ammunition – most commonly a large rock – was discharged towards its target at alarming speed.

  Even from this distance, Pedrito could see that the attentions of the Marseilles trebuchet were having the intended effect on the city walls. The puffs of dust he had seen rising when looking down from the mountainside above Génova were in reality great clouds of pulverised mortar peppered with chunks of shattered stone. But for all that, it was abundantly clear that the walls were of such a thickness that bringing them down by this means alone would be a long and arduous task, no matter how many siege engines might ultimately be employed. And this was precisely why En Jaspert de Barberá was making all haste to have his ‘she cat’ completed and sent creeping towards that selfsame objective.

  Suddenly, a cheer rose up as En Nunyo Sans and his company of knights, followed by a column of their squires, rode out northward from the opposite boundary of the encampment. Although a considerable distance away, Pedrito could plainly see the black-and-white horizontal halves of a Knights Templar banner flying in the vanguard. He was duly reminded of young Robert St Clair de Roslin’s disclosure that the only battle honour recognised by this order of warrior monks was ‘Victory or Death’. To retreat was forbidden, unless outnumbered at least three-to-one; an article of faith which the king had evidently borne in mind when assembling a band of the most potent men-at-arms to support En Nunyo on his vital mission.

  *

  As the day wore on, the atmosphere of urgency enveloping the camp prevailed, despite the energy-sapping effect of the autumn sun on man and animal. The king himself, true to his custom on such occasions, rode conspicuously to and fro, standing high in the saddle while shouting words of encouragement to his people. And, just as when the establishment of the El Real base had been in its earliest stages, no distinction was drawn between nobleman, knight or vassal when it came to doing whatever was necessary to secure the impregnability of the camp and escalate the bombardment of the city.

  Keeping the momentum going in such gruelling conditions, however, required the arousal in the Christian troops of an unflagging commitment to the cause. This was being achieved by the fiery eloquence of a robustly-built and ruddy-faced Dominican monk called Friar Miguel Fabra, who, according to one of Pedrito’s fellow earth-movers, was well experienced in the art of whetting a soldier’s appetite for the hardships of war. Pedrito marvelled at the passion this monk’s words instilled in even the most exhausted of men as he moved among them. Indeed, Pedrito mused, the friar’s rhetoric was as inflamed as his complexion and every bit as striking. King Jaume, or his ecclesiastical advisors, had obviously recognised the importance of such an inspirational figure when putting the ‘non-combative’ elements of this mighty invasion force together. Friar Miguel may not have wielded a sword, yet the power of his oratory alone was probably worth more in military terms than an entire platoon of men who did.

  A battery of siege engines, comprising both trebuchet and mangonel varieties, was now established along the southern fringe of the camp. Although none had the destructive capability of the Marseilles machine, they were finding their range and hitting their prescribed targets with increasing accuracy. Accordingly, the northern walls of the city were taking a terrific pounding, and in the hope of inflicting horrific injuries on their defenders, flaming barrels filled with oil were being hurled over at intervals by the trebuchets as well. The screams of the victims rising above the clamour of the barrage served as chilling proof of the effectiveness of these lethal incendiary devices, which Pedrito instantly realised were actually the ‘tiny balls of fire’ he had seen when watching proceedings from the heights of Génova the day before.

  But the Moors weren’t taking this onslaught without reprisal. Just as predicted by the mercenaries Pedrito had spoken to at the inn, replacements for any war engines destroyed by the Christian artillery were being built and brought into play with impressive speed. What’s more, the range of these new algarradas was increasing at a commensurate pace, so that every fresh salvo of rocks launched from the city ramparts landed ever closer to the El Real palisade. This, in turn, prompted the Christian counter-offensive to become concentrated afresh on the obliteration of these replacement machines. The siege of Medîna Mayûrqa had developed, then, into a mercilessly violent game of tit-for-tat. And Pedrito, for all that he wasn’t an active participant, was right in the thick of it.

  *

  Once the protective mattress of earth had been laid over the roof of the mantellina, a retaining blanket of hides was secured on top. Only then did her creator, En Jaspert de Barberá, announce that his ‘she cat’ was ready to prowl. Between the ‘cat’ and her quarry, there was a deep ditch, the essential first line of defence of any walled city, and it was to facilitate the digging of a tunnel under this that En Jaspert’s cumbersome feline had been built. The ditch was of considerably less daunting dimensions than the dry river bed that protected the city’s western perimeter, and which had been the deciding factor in the Christians establishing their encampment at its current location. Nevertheless, it still represented a formidable obstacle that would have to be negotiated before the undermining of the city walls could commence.

  W
ith a gang of diggers, or sappers, concealed inside her, the ‘cat’ had to be pushed manually across the rough expanse of no-man’s-land to the very edge of this dry moat. To move the lumbering beast over such terrain would have been onerous enough at any time, but when those involved were also being assailed by rocks and arrows directed at them from the city’s battlements, the task was fraught with a very real danger to life and limb.

  Thankful that he and his fellow earth-movers had been replaced by fresh muscle power for this particular undertaking, Pedrito watched from the palisade as the ‘cat’ was heaved forward inch-by-inch. The men pushing her were being given some degree of cover by companies of archers moving along on either side behind large wheeled screens. The archers, though, also became exposed to enemy fire as soon as they ducked out to release their own arrows. Consequently, to give them some cover, the targeting of projectiles from the Christian war engines was temporarily redirected from the city walls to the soldiers manning their ramparts.

  The ensuing casualty rate on both sides was horrific, with those Christians slain or wounded replaced immediately by men scurrying out from the camp. This, then, was siege warfare – relentless and brutal, with every man hell-bent on achieving the same goal; the annihilation of his opposite number, without a thought for who or what he might be. Not even the awful deeds he had seen committed during his years in the hands of Moorish pirates had prepared Pedrito for what he was witnessing now. It was as if attackers and defenders alike had been gripped by a murderous frenzy. The unfettered barbarity of it all made Pedrito cringe, yet those battle-hardened men around him, including the firebrand Friar Miguel himself, scarcely batted an eyelid, seeming more excited than dismayed, in fact, by the bloody spectacle unfolding before them.

  And little did Pedrito know that the real battle for Mallorca was only just beginning.