The men Tancred led, a dozen in number, let themselves down rope ladders in Stygian darkness onto the steep part of the slopes of Mount Staurin, those being hauled out of sight as soon as they were on the ground. Lightly clad, eschewing mail, they moved with slow deliberation downhill towards the fires of the forward Turkish camp, re-established after Godfrey of Bouillon’s debacle.
There was no attempt to kill on the scale the Lotharingians had attempted; the aim was to spread alarm. So the party stayed well clear of the men on guard and out of the arc of those flickering flames that stood central to the camp, choosing a tent where the sounds of deep slumber were obvious through the canvas.
The killing was silent, even to the point of the removal of the heads and, the deed done, they retired and called for their ladders to be relowered so they could re-enter the city. The whole affair had not lasted less than three glasses of sand and the half a dozen Turkish heads sat on Bohemund’s table were a welcome sight. Tancred’s enthusiasm would have been infectious to a less experienced soldier; for all that, his uncle made his pleasure more obvious than any reservations.
‘This way we spread terror. Let our enemies wake up each morning, whatever camp they occupy, to find six or more of their number decapitated and with no knowledge of how it had occurred. If we cannot fight them in open battle let us make slumber a risk.’
‘You have done well, Tancred, but have a care if you attempt to repeat this. What works once will not always allow for a second attempt.’
‘I am not fool enough to strike twice in the same place, Uncle.’
‘Wise,’ Bohemund responded, though he looked down to avoid Tancred’s eye. How could he say to his young and passionate nephew that at this rate of attrition he would still be killing Turks at the coming of the second millennium? ‘But next time leave the heads and bring back their victuals, which is a more pressing need.’
There was food, if not in abundance, but it was in the hands of those who wished to profit from ownership, and not just smugglers. The citizens of Antioch, or at least a good body of them, were as shrewd and rapacious as folk anywhere, sharpened by having already gone through one siege.
They knew how to hide what they had so it could not be stolen or sequestered by whoever held the city at a time of siege – livestock was kept in straw-lined cellars to avoid their bleating and crowing being overheard, wheat was stored in the rafters until desperation made the prices that could be extracted from the tired and famished fighting men rise to the right level.
Any Crusader who had managed to come upon and keep hold of some coin in the march from Nicaea was obliged to part with it now and for very little in return. Knights started by drinking the blood of their horses for sustenance, then when they became too weak to be of use in battle they killed them and consumed their carcasses, ignoring the effect on the loss of the ability to fight.
A dead oxen caused high excitement as the owner sought to sell it bit by bit, while the sight of a scrawny and ill-fed chicken being auctioned was enough to start a near riot so that the successful bidder was obliged to make a fast escape to keep what he had bought. Every member of the Council of Princes ate better, for they had the funds to do so, but they were also distributing a dole to their men, small payments that should have been enough to buy food, yet seemed to purchase less and less each day.
Toulouse was the wealthiest of the magnates, for fertile Provence, a rich region even before the Romans arrived, had for years made his coffers groan with gold and the silver coins still known by the Roman name of solidi.
If he used it to provide sustenance to his Provençal lances, he was also employing it to suborn men from the other contingents – Franks, Apulians, Normans and Lotharingians – urging them to desert to his banner so as to strengthen his hand in the council, sure his increasing numbers would eventually hold sway on any decisions made.
Bohemund worked hard to hold his men to him; he had managed to get some of his revenues from Apulia shipped over to St Simeon to bolster the fortune in treasure – literally a room full of gold, silver and jewels – he had received from the Emperor Alexius, his one-time enemy, in a bid to buy his loyalty.
Likewise every other prince had disbursed what Byzantine largesse they had been gifted and what they had in coin. Yet even with such subventions, hunger could not be staved off, any more than could Kerbogha be turned into a chimera, and if the acts of Toulouse caused resentment nought could be done to counter that either.
The pilgrims, many of whom had no money at all and received none from on high, were chewing old leather belts and making soup from grass and weeds – some were said to be eating their shoes – and being deeply devout and close to starvation, visions were becoming even more rife. Every act and every untoward noise was a portent, positive or the reverse, prophecies laden with either glorious deliverance and entry into heaven as martyrs or to a collective descent into flaming hell, there to burn for their transgressions, their pride and their heresies.
Many came to believe there was no salvation at all without divine intervention and that within days. Less superstitious minds still hoped for Byzantine aid, though with a decreasing level of expectation, for no news came of any approaching host.
There was nothing grand about any of the knights, ten in number, who stepped ashore at Alexandretta; their clothes were ragged and every one had days of facial growth, untidy and salt-streaked, evidence that the means to shave had not been available for the several days which must have been spent at sea.
That was the impression created when they were still afloat and it was not improved on closer inspection, for there were traces of dried blood, mixed with filth, on every one of their garments and not a few were carrying wounds, added to which they looked half-starved, standing in sharp contrast to the man who greeted them as they stepped onto the jetty.
‘Grandmesnil, is it you? And do I see Hugh of Liverot under all that hair? Bernard of Maine?’
Count Stephen of Blois was not only dressed in fine and clean garments, both his smooth face and ample body showed that no shortage of food had attended him for some time; indeed he was sleek to the point of causing resentment to men who, racked with hunger, had been obliged to scrape down the walls of Antioch in the dead of a cloudy and moonless night.
That achieved they had then to creep, many times on their belly, through lines of Turks to get to the rear of their camp before they could stand upright and try for a swifter progress. Blois rattled off several more names in greeting, for these were well-known captains he was addressing.
‘It is us as named, My Lord,’ William croaked, speaking for all.
‘Come from Antioch?’
‘Where else?’
The blood seemed to drain from the well-fed face. ‘Has it fallen to the Turk?’
‘No.’
William made that reply before he realised that an opportunity had been missed, for if it had not fallen what was he doing here? Blois clearly knew that it had been taken by the Crusade, just as he seemed well aware that it was now besieged and that would imply he was also aware of by whom and in what strength.
He recalled that Count Stephen had abandoned the siege while the army of the Crusade was still outside the walls, had fled the hunger, indeed near famine, of the winter and taken his three hundred lances with him. When it came to desertion the escaped knights could hold their heads up in the presence of this particular magnate. Added to that, William had the wit to employ an immediate excuse.
‘The situation is grave …’
‘It was far from ever good, William,’ Stephen interrupted, his voice sombre as he continued, having about it a speed of expression that robbed the words that followed of any verisimilitude. ‘I had intended to rejoin you all not long past, but then that devil Kerbogha got across my route to Antioch. I have spent much time trying to think of a way to get through his host without I lose every one of my men and my own life with it.’
About to tell a falsehood himself, it seemed clear to Grandmesnil that Blois was engaged in just that; he had never had any intention of a return to the siege of Antioch and it was apparent not just in the haste of his justification, it was also in the way he would not look the man he was addressing in the eye, instead half turning, as if by glancing south for a second he could underline the risks he had declined to run.
Grandmesnil put as much force as he could into his reply. ‘I have come at the request of your fellow lords to seek out the Emperor Alexius and his army so that they may know how our confrères are faring and ask that he hurries to their assistance.’
If Blois had any inclination to believe that, the reaction of the rest of the unkempt knights would have disabused him; long stubble and unkempt hair did nothing to obscure the look of surprise in their salt-crusted eyes, albeit that disappeared almost as quickly as it had materialised. Such a fleeting set of expressions cheered the Count of Blois; to be lied to is acceptable when one is also engaged in a high degree of dissimulation.
‘We cannot stand here when you are clearly in need of sustenance.’ A twitching nose also indicated that some clean water to wash would not go amiss. ‘Come, I will have a feast prepared and we shall search you out some decent garments. Then, with wine in hand and food in your belly, you can tell me of your adventures.’
This Grandmesnil was only too happy to relate, though first he had to describe the dire state of both the defences and the defenders of Antioch. Much was made of the daring of he and his companions, as well as the sterling aid they received in their flight from those hopefuls they left behind, added to what it took to avoid detection close to the walls. First had been the sheer difficulty of escape, for they needed to lower not just themselves but flat boards on which to float across the Orontes and they were soaked by the time they made the opposite bank. But soon he was on to their subsequent travails.
Their mistake had been to stick to the St Simeon road once they had got clear of the main Turkish lines, for the enemy had posted a piquet on that, probably more to stop and rob smugglers than to catch fleeing Latins; after all, the fewer who remained the better. The men manning the post, alerted by such a large number of knights, possibly saw not flight, which they might have ignored, but an attack.
They ignited a pre-prepared alarm beacon and set up enough of a hue before they expired on Crusader swords to set in chain a strong pursuit, luckily on foot and not mounted, otherwise Grandmesnil and his hard-running compatriots would never have got to St Simeon ahead of them.
There was no attempt to halt that pursuit, no attempt to stand and fight; their enemies were too numerous. As soon as they made the berthing jetty their only concern was to choose the best ship, one that was at single anchor, waiting for dawn to set sail. An axe saw to the anchor cable but even that was not a solution.
The Turks took to boats to seek to stop them, leading to a long and bloody fight over the bulwarks and on the ship’s deck as it drifted out to sea, a contest that accounted for many of the wounds they now carried. In all, eight of their number had either been killed or had injuries so severe that they succumbed over the following days to be, like those already expired, buried at sea.
It was natural that the talk turned back to the situation at Antioch just as it was natural that William of Grandmesnil, left by his fellow escapees as their spokesman – he was, after all, sat on the right hand of the Count of Blois, who had his comely looking Armenian mistress on his left – should paint a picture of the situation being close to hopeless, albeit that could change with the arrival of the Emperor.
There was no attempt to in any way embarrass his host, to hint that he might have seen it as his duty to come to their aid, though Blois continued to insist with every opportunity that was presented to him that he should try; both men were happy in their falsehoods.
‘The Emperor must be told what the true situation is,’ the Count insisted.
‘Which we could do if we had any notion of where he is, My Lord.’
‘We owe it to our fellows to find him, do we not?’
There was both sense and comfort in that, which led to ready agreement; to head north and find the Byzantine army was to be active without much in the way of risk. Stephen was quick to procure a ship by which the two, and they alone, should proceed by sea, heading for the last known place where imperial troops had been reported to be active under John Comnenus, the Emperor’s nephew, who commanded the imperial fleet.
A landing at Tarsus brought more solid information: Alexius himself was in command and camped to the north at Philomelium and to there they proceeded as fast as they could on horseback. Sighting the huge tented encampment, thousands of men spread over the fertile plain and having identified themselves to the guards, they were ushered into the splendid pavilion of the man who was addressed in the style, by those who served him, as the reigning Roman Emperor.
To a pair who had been riding for most of the day and were subsequently coated with dust, the magnificence of the imperial accommodation was doubly impressive: Alexius even had along a dais on which he could place a throne-like chair so as to be above anyone whom he addressed. As in his palace, high officials, courtiers, as well as his huge axe-wielding Varangian guards surrounded the Emperor, while the decor matched anything to be found in a more solid structure.
Thick carpets lay one over the other on the ground, while military standards lined the silken sides. The light from the numerous oil lamps, as well as the sun, which streamed through the canvas roof, sent beams of glitter flashing off the kind of gold and silver objects with which Imperial Constantinople surrounded itself; it was display, of course, and impressive enough to cow anyone who came upon it as a friend. More importantly it would astound the representative of an enemy come to parley.
Yet it was not all Byzantium; there were Franks in attendance too, men who had come east to join the Crusade and, it seemed, expected to do so in the company of the imperial host, among them Guy de Hauteville, Duke of Amalfi, half-brother to Bohemund and a man well known to William of Grandmesnil. If he was greeted with nothing but eye contact – protocol denied any other way – it was as a friend. The two arrivals having made their obeisance with deep bows, Alexius immediately enquired as to from where they had come.
‘I from Alexandretta, Highness,’ replied Blois, adding to an immediately raised and quizzical eyebrow, ‘where I was recovering from a long and debilitating illness.’
‘Cared for by three hundred lances, I am told,’ Alexius replied, though he was careful to add to that there had also been mendicant monks to bring the Lord of Blois back to full health.
The eyes of Count Stephen flicked towards Tacitus then, the half-breed general with the golden nose Alexius had sent south with the Crusade to ensure imperial interests were served; such information very likely came from him. However it was imparted or gilded it told Blois that the Emperor knew what had been happening around Antioch, while the temptation to refer to the fact that Tacitus and his men had also left the siege at much the same time had to be resisted. He would have done so under orders from the man on the throne.
‘And you, Grandmesnil?’ Alexius asked.
A falsehood now so well honed by repetition came out without hesitation, William looking the Emperor right in the eye, both to give credence to what he was saying and to seek to discern if he was being believed. That was a waste of time with a man like Alexius Comnenus, so well trained, as he had to be, in masking his feelings.
‘And how do you see their prospects in Antioch now?’
Such a question demanded a response larded with both gravity and sorrow, both of which Grandmesnil managed in abundance, lent more of both by the speaker’s belief than it was true.
‘Your Eminence, I cannot see how they are still holding the walls against the might of the army of Kerbogha. I say this not from any lack of valour on the part of my confrères, but merely from the belief that they are in want of the means of sustenance to keep on fighting. Most of their mounts have either died or are so weak they are useless. When I left there was nothing in the grain stores but an echo, and as for meat, none was to be had even for those like my Lord of Blois, with purses deep enough to meet the demands of the hoarders and smugglers.’
Stephen stiffened at the reference to his having a deep purse, which got Grandmesnil a glare, one that was ignored. Here in the imperial presence and its very obvious magnificence William could sense opportunity; in that, Blois would not be a companion but a potential rival, a difference he underlined as he continued, for it was necessary to raise his own standing and to diminish that of his fellow messenger.
‘Had my confrères been as well fed as I found to be the lances attending Count Stephen, I would say they could hold till the moon fell from the sky but with no food and the Turks holding the citadel …’
‘I was seeking to join them, Highness,’ Blois protested, his face showing he was well aware of what Grandmesnil was seeking to do. ‘But with Turks in their many thousands between Antioch and me, what could I do rather than engage in useless sacrifice? Better to hold Alexandretta for both the Crusade and the empire than that!’
Stephen was about to go on, indeed to protest too much, but a held-up imperial hand stopped him and that was followed by silence, no one daring to speak and disrupt the imperial ruminations. Neither man could see into the mind of the Emperor Alexius, nor be privy to his thinking. Perhaps Bohemund alone amongst the Latin magnates would have been able to perceive the train of his thoughts, for he had lived cheek by jowl with Byzantium all his life and had an insight in to the manner of its deliberations.
He might have sensed that paramount to Alexius Comnenus was the security of the Byzantine Empire and with that the continuance of both his rule and that of his family, for in truth Alexius had usurped the title from his predecessor and it was scant comfort to the darker nights of his soul that Nikephoros, the man in question, had taken the diadem dishonestly himself from a previous incumbent. It was thus not a wholly secure inheritance for the son to whom Alexius was determined it would devolve.
The Eastern Roman Empire had always had to fight on its borders but it had, in Asia Minor, been in retreat for many centuries, a shadow of the power it was in the days of the Emperors Constantine and Julian. First they had, in the seventh and subsequent centuries after the birth of Christ, lost ground to the Arabs emerging from the desert fastness, inspired by the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
In more recent times it had been the Seljuk Turks who had prospered at imperial cost. They too had taken much land and treasure, to the point where they had sat no more than three days’ march from his capital. The arrival of a massive Frankish army had changed that: they had pushed the Turks as far back south as Antioch.
Working to take advantage of their successes his armies and fleets had taken full possession of lands through which the Crusaders had only passed, giving him possession of rich towns and cities that had not flown an imperial banner for decades, as well as great swathes of fertile land. The question now was simple: should he rush to the aid of the Crusaders or should he show caution?
At the forefront of his ruminations lay memory of the Battle of Manzikert in which, twenty-seven years previously, the Byzantine army had been destroyed by the Turks, a defeat so complete that the then emperor had been taken as a captive, while most of those he led were slaughtered like cattle.
The force that Kerbogha had assembled was every bit as powerful as that which had been met at Manzikert and if the Franks were in trouble at Antioch, indeed from what had been hinted at by Grandmesnil it may have already fallen, was it wise for him to seek to uphold an already lost cause and risk battle on his own?
Added to that was the fact of mistrust: if Alexius was grateful for the success of the Crusade, he had been just as keen, having seen them as both a blessing and a plague, to hurry them on their way, for he knew that there was as much avarice as faith in their higher ranks and the man he trusted least of all was Bohemund of Taranto.
Despite the pledges all the magnates had made, no man was immune to temptation when presented with the prospect of untold riches – one only had to examine the actions of Baldwin of Boulogne to see that – and that was why he had sent Tacitus and a token force of soldiers with the Crusade, to ensure that should they take back one-time Byzantine possessions, they were handed over to imperial control.
Tacitus had been withdrawn because of doubts that the Franks would ever take Antioch; now, even if they had, it seemed the situation was even more dire. Kerbogha would not be lenient if he took them as prisoners and having spilt their blood his next aim would be to do the same to the imperial forces coming to their aid.
His army was strong, but not so much so that they would outnumber the Turks. In such a situation he could lose everything he had gained since the Crusaders crossed the Bosphorus, including Nicaea; worse, he could lose even more and might find Kerbogha at the very gates of Constantinople itself.
‘I am bound to ask you both,’ the Emperor asked finally, ‘for an assessment of what could be achieved for us all by an immediate and forced march south?’
The ‘us all’ was cunning; the imperial mind was that of a man who had to live in a court seething with intrigue, where emperors without number had been deposed in palace coups by poison or the knife. Alexius was better placed to guess at the thinking and motivation of both Blois and Grandmesnil than any other man present. He was asking them if they would march themselves to the aid of their confrères, albeit within his army.
‘I fear,’ Grandmesnil replied, when Blois declined to do so, ‘that we might find we are too late.’
‘William!’
That outburst came from Guy of Amalfi and his cry received a gasp of amazement from the rest of the assembled Byzantines; no man spoke without invitation in the imperial presence. Yet Guy was a de Hauteville, his father had been Robert Guiscard, and if his brother the reigning Duke of Apulia was a weakling who made men wonder at his blood, Guy was not. Despite black looks he would not be silenced.
‘How can you even think to abandon Bohemund, your liege lord, not to mention my cousin Tancred and the men you yourself led?’
‘Do you think I take any joy in saying such things? I told you, when I left they had no horses, no food and no way of breaking out and that was two weeks past.’
‘You say you came to seek aid for them, now you are telling us that is no longer the case.’
If it was not an outright accusation of cowardice there was enough in Guy’s look to imply that it was just that.
‘I asked the question,’ Alexius barked. ‘The answer he gives me, if it is truthful, provides me no more pleasure than it does to Grandmesnil.’
By sinking his head to his chest, Alexius commanded silence, which even Guy of Amalfi had to respect. The deep thoughts did not last long; the conclusion he reached then being delivered with suitable solemnity.
‘Prepare to break camp. We march north!’