Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“What error did you make?” he asked his brother-in-law.

The young knight looked up at him with astonishment. “Error?” he repeated incredulously. “You mean what one thing did we do wrong so that the Turks won?” He laughed almost hysterically. “What did we do wrong?” he repeated over and over until his sister drew Volkmar and the priest away.

One of the other survivors, a freeman from Gretz, discovered where his count was staying and came by to submit a more coherent report, and again Volkmar was appalled at the man’s condition, for he was so haggard that he must have been starved for months. “No organized supply,” he growled. “No discipline. Women in the way and guards at night sleeping with the women. Gunter insisting that his two whores get full rations. Priests praying where we needed cavalry.” It was a sorrowful picture relieved by only one report: “In the final battle at Nicaea the few knights we had were marvelous. Gunter killed … how many?” In admiration the freeman recounted the blond knight’s conspicuous bravery: “And after performing all this he cut his way through the Turkish lines, and since I had stolen a horse, I was able to ride after him. But the courage was his, not mine.”

Volkmar fed the man and asked why the Turks were such powerful men, and to his surprise the man became excited: “Sir, the Turks can be beaten. They’re ordinary soldiers with fast horses and good arrows. But I watched … a hundred real knights … you … Gunter …” He was so enthusiastic that he stuttered, but his eyes flashed.

“You think we can win?” Volkmar probed.

“Of course! So does Gunter. All the way back from the battle he kept telling me of how we would fight next time. He spotted every weakness of the Turk.”

“Then why did you lose so horribly this time?” the count insisted.

“Because we had no soldiers, sir. We had only men like me who believed that God would open a way for us and feed us and blunt the sword of the enemy.” He raised his thin face and looked with a certain calm content into Volkmar’s eyes and said, “What we needed in addition to our faith in God was armed soldiers and knights like you to lead them.”

In the next month both began to arrive—soldiers led by Hugh of France, tough, tested warriors obedient to Godfrey of Bouillon. Then came the wiry Normans following their Duke Robert and the insolent northern Franks led by Stephen of Blois. The streets of Constantinople rattled with the armor of these disciplined men, and in the afternoons when they sat together looking across the straits at Asia they did so with well-prepared plans in mind. This was no rabble led by a barefoot priest on a donkey. This was the most powerful army that had ever poised on the edge of Europe, and as the warriors gathered they listened attentively to each detail of Gunter’s disastrous engagement with the Turks. Some of the newcomers were frightened by this dismal account, but most bolstered their confidence as he reported soberly: “We must have a disciplined group, moving in precision, and the best men shall ride at the rear—for that’s where the Turk likes to strike.”

On May 24, 1097, twelve months after his departure from Gretz, Count Volkmar, attended only by his wife, his daughter and his priest Wenzel—for all the rest who had ridden with the sixteen wagons were dead—crossed over from Constantinople into Asia on the first dramatic step of the real Crusade, and as he sat in his small boat, eager to be first ashore on the holy battleground he thought: It’s perplexing. I’ve been fighting for a year and have yet to see an infidel. We have slain so many and all were Christian … except for those first thirty thousand Jews. Sickened by his reflections he turned on the spur of the moment to Wenzel, crying, “Good priest, bless the completion of this venture, for we have begun so poorly.” And he knelt in the boat, a thick-shouldered, heavy-necked, sandy-haired German seeking God; and his wife Matwilda knelt beside him and his daughter Fulda; and that night Wenzel of Trier recorded in his chronicle how the Crusade had started on the edge of Asia:While the sea was about us, my Lord Volkmar and his lady knelt and I asked upon his pure head God’s blessing, saying, “This is your honest servant Volkmar of Gretz, who has set forth to accomplish Your bidding. Bless him. Keep his arm strong and bring him at last to the gates of Jerusalem for his whole desire is to support You and to destroy Your enemies. Amen.” And when the boat touched land my Lord Volkmar leaped ashore, raising his sword above his head and crying, “Lord, let me be worthy of Your Holy Land.”

In this benediction Gunter did not bother to participate, for nine months earlier he had leaped ashore in similar fashion, burning with equal zeal. This time he stayed in the rear of the boat entertaining a group of French women whom he had acquired from the camp of Hugh, brother to the French king.

… THE TELL

Whenever John Cullinane faced intellectual problems relating to the dig he found inspiration by visiting Akko, where he spent his mornings in the loveliest mosque of Israel, admiring the peaceful courtyard with its numerous date palms and hibiscus bushes. It was a seductive place, a Muslim enclave in a Jewish state, made doubly attractive by the six giant columns that some Turkish robber in the eighteenth century had dragged to this spot from the Roman ruins at Caesarea. In the courtyard surrounding the mosque were half a hundred smaller columns from the same place, and inside the brightly colored building stood many more, and as Cullinane studied them he was able to convince himself that King Herod had known these particular pillars during those years when Caesarea flourished.

Never did the beauty of the Akko mosque fail to assert its subtle dominion over Cullinane, so that if he considered all the Jewish and Catholic remains in Israel—from the superb white synagogue of Bar am to the soaring Franciscan church on Mount Tabor—he derived his greatest pleasure from this Muslim mosque. This was partly because he usually took with him Jemail Tabari, who apparently felt the same affinity for the place, for he used to lounge about the courtyard making acidulous comments which Cullinane enjoyed.

“You come here,” the sharp-witted Arab suggested one day, “because when you stand among the date palms and the pillars you can imagine yourself living with the Arabs. Confess. Isn’t that right? Well, I created quite a stir at Oxford in my second year with a scatterbrained theory I think you ought to consider. I developed—half daydream, half history—the theme that the Crusaders doomed themselves when they failed to establish an alliance with the Arabs. Everybody at Oxford was like you, Cullinane. They thought that Richard the Lion Heart fought his battles against gallant Arabs from the desert. They were quite hurt when I had to tell them Saladin wasn’t even one tenth of one per cent Arab.”

“I thought he was.”

“Pure Kurd,” Tabari said with no further comment. He argued in Arabic with the caretaker of the mosque, who finally admitted the two archaeologists to the minaret, inside whose tightly twisting innards they climbed in darkness until Tabari broke free onto a platform from which they could see the timeless beauty of this remarkable city, and Cullinane had nothing to say. He could only stand and look down at the scarred land. The Turkish walls, so wide that in spots ten chariots could have stood side by side, had in Crusader times contained twenty-two towers, some of whose roots were still visible. Squares and docks and ancient buildings dating back nearly a thousand years stretched in all directions, while to the east rose the silent tell of prehistoric Akka, from which Napoleon had tried in vain to capture the city … a tell as yet unexcavated but containing the mysteries of at least five thousand years. Farther to the east lay Makor, with two gaping wounds in its flanks through which inquisitive men were peering into its secrets, while to the west lay the immortal Mediterranean across whose stormy bosom had come the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans and later the English.