God's Warrior

by Hilary Green

  He gripped the door post to steady himself and ordered, ‘Find me a chair. Something solid enough to take this weight. Set it down there, in the middle of the courtyard, facing the gate.’

  Dino hurried off and returned with a large, splendidly upholstered chair. He set it down and Ranulph limped across and sat down. For the rest of that day, anyone coming through the gate would have been confronted by the sight of an armoured knight, sitting four-square between him and the main part of the house, with his sword laid across his knees. Ranulph knew that there was no chance he could withstand a concerted attack; but he hoped that a casual looter might decide to look elsewhere. After a while, he realised that he was not alone. The three servants who had fought alongside Hamid had appeared, carrying scimitars, and with them was Dino, armed with what looked very much like a long kitchen knife. They ranged themselves behind Ranulph’s chair and waited.

  As the house was in the higher part of the town, the citadel, perched on a crag at the topmost point of the encircling walls, was not far away and the sounds of the battle carried clearly to the watchers in the courtyard. Shouts and screams, the clash of swords, were punctuated by the thud of heavy missiles striking the walls. From time to time they heard a hiss and a glowing fireball shot through the air. Ranulph gritted his teeth. The men in the citadel had Greek fire and he knew what havoc that could wreak.

  Around midday Ranulph was aware of a stir behind him and looked round to see Mariam carrying a pitcher and followed by a boy with a tray of goblets. She came to Ranulph’s side and handed him a cup with her eyes downcast.

  ‘You must drink, sir. The day is hot.’

  He took the cup and she filled it with water from the pitcher. He drank gratefully.

  ‘Mariam …’ There was so much to be said, but this was not the time and he did not have the words. ‘Thank you.’

  She dipped her head in acknowledgement and turned away to fill the cups of the other defenders. Soon, Fernando followed, with bowls of the stew he had concocted. Considering the ingredients it was surprisingly tasty.

  The battle went on all day and it was only when darkness had fallen that the noise abated. Ranulph ached all over from sitting still; his wound throbbed and his skin itched from the sweat that had collected under the heavy coat of mail; but he would not move until he knew that Marc was safe. Feet tramped along the street outside and weary voices called greetings or asked questions. Ranulph was about to send Dino out to enquire for news when the door crashed open and Marc staggered through it and stopped short.

  ‘In God’s name! What sort of reception is this?’ The words came out as a hoarse croak and his knees buckled under him.

  Ranulph started up and then sank back as his leg gave way. ‘Help him!’ he shouted to the men with him and the servants ran forward. Marc was already dragging himself to his feet and with their support he crossed the courtyard to the room he had been given beside Ranulph’s. Ranulph limped after him, leaning on Dino’s shoulder.

  ‘Water!’ Marc begged and when he was handed a cup drained it in one long swallow. Then he sank onto his bed, plucking at his hauberk.

  ‘Get this off me!’

  Dino and one of the servants began to pull the heavy mail but as they lifted it Marc gave a cry of pain.

  ‘Wait!’ Ranulph hobbled to his side and bent to examine him. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from the metal rings at Marc’s shoulder. Ranulph slid his hand down through the neck of the hauberk and felt that the jerkin he wore under it was sodden with blood. He tried to ease the mail over the shaft but it was entangled with the rings and Marc cried out again. Ranulph straightened up.

  ‘The shaft will have to be cut short before we can get his hauberk off. It will be a painful business. Dino, bring me my box of herbs from my chest. Do we have any wine left?’

  One of the servants went off and returned with a small jug. ‘Lady Mariam says this is the last drop, but you are welcome to it. And she has sent this clean linen to be used as bandages.’

  Ranulph sniffed the contents of the jug. It was the bottom of the barrel and thick with the lees, but it would have to do. He opened his box of herbs. His store was much depleted but he found what he needed, a tincture of opium and henbane. He measured some carefully into the wine and held the mixture to Marc’s lips but he made a face and tried to push the cup away.

  ‘No, drink!’ Ranulph said. ‘It may taste bitter but you will be glad of it soon.’

  With some difficulty he persuaded Marc to finish the draught. Then he turned to Dino and said quietly, ‘Bring me my dagger. Make sure it is as sharp as possible.’

  Marc wanted to lie down, but Ranulph told the servants to prop him in a sitting position. ‘If he lies down, we will never get the hauberk off him.’

  By the time Dino returned with the dagger the wounded knight was unconscious and Ranulph was able to cut through the arrow shaft close to the chainmail rings and ease them free. Getting the hauberk off the supine body was a struggle but they succeeded at last and Ranulph cut away the fabric of the gambeson and exposed the wound. The chain mail had absorbed most of the force so the arrow had not penetrated deeply, but it still had to be cut out. Ranulph looked over his shoulder at Dino.

  ‘Go to the hospital. Find Ibn Butlan and tell him we need him. I can cut out the arrow head but I do not have the skill or the materials to suture the wound. Go quickly.’

  Working fast, before Marc regained consciousness, Ranulph made two incisions in the shape of a cross on either side of the arrow head.

  ‘Hold him steady,’ he instructed one of the servants, and gripped the remaining section of the shaft. He tugged and there was a sucking sound as the arrow head came free. Ranulph made a pad of the linen and pressed it firmly over the wound to stem the bleeding. That done, he could only wait and hope that Ibn Butlan would answer his summons.

  By the time the doctor arrived Marc was awake and he agreed that it would be dangerous to repeat the dose of opium. He washed the wound with wine mixed with oil of roses and anointed it with myrrh to deaden it slightly and Ranulph gripped his friend’s arm while the wound was stitched. Marc arched his back and gritted his teeth but made no sound. Dino, meanwhile, had prepared a fresh yarrow poultice and finally the wound was bound up and Marc was given a small dose of poppy extract to ease the pain. Ranulph offered the doctor payment, but it was refused, on the grounds that he could not charge for treating one who had defended them from the infidel.

  Marc begged for more water and then sank back on the pillow, his face colourless and drawn with exhaustion.

  ‘We held them off,’ he said huskily, ‘but it was a close thing. If they had not withdrawn when darkness fell I do not think we could have held out much longer.’

  ‘The fighting was fierce,’ Ranulph agreed. ‘We could hear that from here. It pains me to the heart that I could not be with you.’

  ‘I thank God you did not attempt it,’ Marc responded. ‘You would not have lived to the end of the day. We did not have time to eat or drink – or even to piss! I saw one man wrench his braies down with one hand and relieve himself while parrying a Saracen sword with the other.’

  ‘And if they renew the attack tomorrow …?’

  ‘Then God have mercy on us all. I doubt whether we have a hundred men fit to fight after today.’

  Everyone in the household was awake at dawn next day. Most had slept in snatches at best. Ranulph had sat up beside Marc for most of the night as he twitched and muttered in a feverish doze. With first light, however, he sat up in bed and called for his armour and Ranulph did not try to deter him. Instead, he followed his example, ignoring Dino’s protests. When both of them had struggled into their hauberks the boy produced a stout crutch.

  ‘Lady Mariam told me not to give you this, if you could not be persuaded to rest longer.’

  Ranulph took the crutch and bent his head in silence for a moment. ‘Thank her for me. I am grateful for her care.’

  As the sun rose the two knights hobb
led out of the courtyard and Ranulph stopped short, choking back the desire to vomit. All the previous day he had been aware of a sickly smell of decay filtering into the courtyard. Outside in the street it was overpowering, and the cause of it was horribly evident. The bodies of the dead still lay where they had fallen, or had been dragged into heaps in corners or in the doorways of abandoned houses. In the summer heat decomposition was well advanced. Flies formed a writhing carpet which partly hid the corpses from view or rose in clouds from the pools of drying blood on the paving stones.

  ‘In God’s name!’ Ranulph gasped. ‘Why has no one attempted to give these poor souls a proper burial?’

  ‘Because there is hardly an able-bodied man left in the city to do it, other than those occupied in fighting off the Turks,’ Marc responded tersely.

  They made their way slowly towards the highest point of the walls. Already the battlements were lined with men, grim faced and tense, many of the with bloody bandages round heads or arms. It took Ranulph all his strength to climb the steps. When he finally reached the top and could look down on the Turkish camp he saw men moving between the tents, but there seemed to be no preparations for battle. Time stretched interminably. Ranulph shifted his weight, trying to ease the pain in his leg. Beside him, he could hear Marc’s shallow, effortful breathing. Finally the order to stand down was passed from man to man along the walls.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Marc asked when they had made their way down to street level. ‘Are they just licking their wounds and preparing another attack for tomorrow or the next day?’

  ‘More likely they have decided it will be easier just to wait until they starve us out,’ Ranulph replied grimly.

  Marc cast a glance around him. ‘That will not take long, from what I’ve seen.’

  Back at the house Marc went to his bed. Ranulph saw that the chair Dino had found for him was still in the same place and he asked for it to be moved into the shade of a palm tree that grew beside the fountain in the centre of the courtyard. Sitting there, it occurred to him that this had once been a pleasant place to live. Hamid had been a wealthy man. The house was spacious and the walls of the courtyard were decorated with tiles bearing designs of fruit and flowers or words from the Koran. The sound of water playing in the fountain was soothing and shrubs with brightly coloured flowers grew in pots in the corners. From what he had seen the interior was equally well appointed. At least, he thought, Mariam had been able to bring up her children in comfortable surroundings; however unwelcome the marriage had been initially. Until, that was, the coming of the Frankish army; the army of God, prosecuting a holy war proclaimed by His representative on earth. Ranulph remembered Antioch as he had known it, before Yaghi Siyan came to power; a city of culture and sophistication, where Christians and Muslims and Jews had lived together without conflict, where scholarship and the arts had flourished. All this had been destroyed, and he had been one of the chief agents in the destruction. Circumstances had forced him to betray Mariam once and now he had been instrumental in ruining the life she had made for herself and her children.

  As if his thoughts had conjured her into his presence he looked up and found her standing a few feet away. As before, she had brought him water. He thanked her and took the goblet and she said, ‘Are you in much pain?’

  ‘No, not so much now. At least, as long as I am sitting still.’

  ‘May I sit with you for a little while?’

  ‘I should be glad of it.’

  She nodded to her maid, who was waiting nearby, and the girl placed a stool near Ranulph’s chair and then withdrew to the shade of the gallery that ran round the back of the courtyard. Mariam sat down and for a moment neither of them spoke.

  She said, ‘You must have suffered greatly. Sir Marc has told me how you were captured by the corsairs and made a slave.’

  ‘We have both suffered, you and I, in different ways.’

  She nodded but did not respond.

  He said, ‘I think I owe you my life. They told me you stopped the bleeding by making a tourniquet with a belt.’

  ‘As you taught me to do, once. Do you remember?’

  ‘I thought I had forgotten – but yes, I remember it well.’

  ‘Do you remember much about the time we spent together?’

  ‘Once I could recall every detail of every moment. It was what kept me alive in the first weeks and months after I was captured. I lived on the thought that one day, somehow, I would regain my freedom and be able to redeem my pledge to you. But the months became a year and I knew that the time had passed when you expected me to return, and still I saw no prospect of release. It was then that I resolved to banish all memories of those days. There was too much pain in thinking of what might have been.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I, too, tried to forget.’

  After a moment he forced himself to ask the question that was uppermost in his mind. ‘What will become of you and the children now?’

  She lifted her shoulders. ‘That must be as God disposes. Unless there is a miracle and the Turks abandon the siege it seems probable that there will be no future to plan for. Starvation will put an end to all our problems.’

  ‘I will shed the last drop of my blood to prevent that,’ he said.

  She gave him a small smile. ‘We are not leeches, to nourish ourselves that way. Already, if it was not for the food your gold has procured for us, we should be close to death.’

  ‘And all I have in gold or treasure shall be yours, as long as there is food to be bought in Antioch, no matter what the cost.’

  They were interrupted by Mariam’s steward.

  ‘Sir Ranulph, there is a knight here with a message for you.’

  Mariam rose. ‘I will leave you to your own affairs.’

  He was tempted to catch her hand but restrained himself. ‘We will talk again … soon?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  As Mariam retired into the inner court Robert Fitzgerald, Bohemond’s standard bearer, entered.

  ‘So here you are! We have searched the city for news of you. Bohemond wants you.’

  Ranulph tightened his jaw. ‘I have no wish to see or speak with him.’

  Fitzgerald’s eyebrows went up. ‘You are his liegeman. You have no choice in the matter.’

  ‘Tell my lord Bohemond that since he broke faith with me and failed in his promise to protect the Christian citizens of Antioch, I repudiate my oath to him.’

  Fitzgerald looked at him in silence for a long moment. Then he said, ‘You are wounded?’

  ‘A swordcut to the thigh. It will be healed soon.’

  ‘I shall tell Bohemond that you are unable to attend on him at present. But think what you do. He is not a man to be crossed lightly.’

  Ranulph raised his eyes. ‘I have no quarrel with you, Robert. But I cannot any longer profess fealty to that man, come of it what may.’

  Fitzgerald shook his head sadly. ‘I pray that you may find better counsel somewhere. We need every man, Ranulph. But I can see that there is no more I can say at present. I wish you a rapid recovery.’

  12.

  There was no attack that day, or the next. Ranulph sent Dino to find out where Bishop Adhemar had set up his headquarters and by the third day he felt strong enough to make his way there. Adhemar had taken over a large house which must have belonged to a highly placed official and when Ranulph reached it he found the outer courtyard thronged with an excited crowd. There were knights and common soldiers, wearing Adhemar’s colours or those of Raymond of Toulouse, and priests in the vestments of the Church of Rome, the Greek and the Armenian churches. All were craning their heads towards the inner court and there was a buzz of questions which seemed to have no answers. With some difficulty Ranulph worked his way through the crowd to the entrance but there he was prevented from going further by two sergeants-at-arms.

  ‘Let me pass!’ he demanded. ‘I urgently need to speak with the bishop.’

  The older of the two shook his head
. ‘Sorry, sir. His grace is attending to important matters. He cannot be interrupted.’

  ‘What is going on?’ Ranulph asked. ‘Why are all these people here?’

  ‘No one knows for certain,’ the younger man said. ‘It’s all rumours.’

  ‘Rumours of what?’

  ‘They say some man has had a vision. Something to do with a holy relic, here in Antioch.’

  A thrill went through Ranulph’s nerves. ‘A relic? Here? What relic?’

  The first man shrugged. ‘It’s just a rumour. The man is probably mad, or a charlatan.’

  ‘Some people are saying it’s a fragment of the true cross.’ His younger companion’s face was flushed with excitement. ‘Or perhaps the crown of thorns – or even the Holy Lance that pierced Our Lord’s side.’

  ‘Not the crown of thorns,’ Ranulph said. ‘That is in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. I have seen it there. But the lance … that would, indeed, be a relic of great power.’ He edged forward. ‘I must speak with the bishop. I have urgent need to make my confession.’

  They let him pass, but it was impossible to reach the room where Adhemar was. Peering over the heads of other men Ranulph was able to see through the open door, where a small group, among whom he recognised Raymond himself and several of his chief officers, surrounded a young man in a tattered brown robe, wild-haired and unshaven. From his gestures it was obvious that he was engaged in passionate debate with the bishop, but it was impossible to hear what was being said. Ranulph lingered for a while, but it became clear that Adhemar would be in no mood to hear confessions that day, and he reluctantly turned away and hobbled back through the crowd and out into the street. The image of the young man nagged at his memory, until it came to him that he had seen him wandering around the camp while the army was still outside the walls. His name was Peter Bartholomew and they had spoken once or twice because Ranulph had discovered that his mother was English, though his father was a Norman. He had sought Ranulph out because he was losing his eyesight and came to ask for a salve to cure the condition. Ranulph had done what little he could, but there were many in the army who were suffering in the same way, due in part to the starvation diet they had endured. Peter was a monk, but there was something wild and wandering about his speech that made Ranulph think he might be drunk. Was it possible, he wondered now, that he had been mistaken, that in fact he was a visionary, a holy fool who was closer to the understanding of God that normal men?