P. Doherty - The Templar

A short while later a man blackened from head to toe came up beating at his charred clothes and shouting for water. He knelt at Godfrey of Bouillon’s feet and talked tersely in gasping sentences. Godfrey crouched down beside him, feeding him the pannier of water Eleanor had placed there. The man nodded and hurried back. The ram was to be burnt, the attack called off. To the south of the city, Count Raymond’s company had fared no better. They too had pushed their tower against the walls and a hellish battle had broken loose. Catapults on the battlements hurled an avalanche of stones. Arrows pelted down like rain. The closer the Franks approached, the worse it became: stones, arrows, flaming wood and straw followed by mallets of wood wrapped in ignited pitch, wax and sulphur. These mallets were fastened with nails so they stuck in whatever they hit and continued to flare. Despite the intense heat and the ferocious defence, Count Raymond tried to edge his tower closer to the wall, but he too failed. The light began to fade, so the horns and trumpets sounded the retreat.

Eleanor, exhausted, black with smoke, her gown saturated with sweat, her hair charred, returned to her tent. She wrapped a couple of blankets around her and waited for the Portal of the Temple to emerge from the horrors only a short distance away. The attack had failed. All around drifted the shrieks and screams of men, women and children gruesomely injured by the fire. Keening and mourning echoed like some blood-chilling chant. Simeon came in with a wineskin and forced her to take hurried sips before he squatted down beside her and drank greedily. At last the others returned: Hugh, Godefroi, Theodore, Alberic and Beltran, blackened faces furrowed by lines of sweat, hands hardly able to grasp a cup. They tore off their armour, belts, straps and jerkins tossed to the ground, then threw themselves down, desperate for water and wine, anything to prise their lips free from the sticky dust, unclog their throats and bathe their eyes.

Eleanor did her best to help. Theodore, half asleep, murmured where she could find more wine and water, a secret cache buried in his tent. She hurried away and brought it back. For a while they sat drinking and tending to their minor wounds. Eleanor went to the edge of the tent and peered into the gathering dark. Norbert and Imogene were missing. She went back and questioned the rest, but they shook their heads and wearily conceded that they didn’t know. Eleanor forgot her own exhaustion. She glimpsed the pinpricks of torchlight as others stole from the camp to look for their dead, or to plunder them. She tugged at Simeon’s sleeve.

‘Bring a crossbow, a sword and a dagger,’ she whispered.

The scribe looked as if he was about to refuse.

‘Imogene and Norbert,’ she hissed. ‘We cannot leave them out there.’

‘They are dead,’ he retorted.

‘They might be wounded,’ she whispered back. ‘At night, Simeon, the prowlers, two-legged and four, will range the battlefield. Norbert and Imogene have fallen,’ she continued, ‘we feel fortunate to be alive. It’s the least we can do. Anyway,’ she picked up her cloak, ‘I’ll go.’

Eleanor left the tent. She’d scarcely gone a few paces when she heard Simeon cursing and groaning behind her. She stopped, took the battered arbalest and scuffed leather case of bolts from him and went down towards the place of blood. It was a hot, dry night. Nevertheless, even the fierce battle that had raged that day could not silence the constant chant of the crickets and other insects. A night bird shrieked. A dog howled in reply. Eleanor and Simeon approached their own picket lines, where groups of soldiers huddled around fires guarding the precious siege machinery, the mangonels, small rams and that soaring battle tower still reeking of oil, sulphur and charred wood. In the distance a roll of drums echoed from the battlements. Eleanor glimpsed the flickering lights and tongues of flame shooting up above the cauldrons and pots along the ramparts, sure proof that the defenders were vigilant against a possible night attack. Their own picket guards let them pass. Other dark shapes were also sloping down towards the battleground. Eleanor recalled how both Imogene and Norbert had been helpers like herself, carrying water, arrows and messages to the fighters beyond the dry moat. She went back and begged a torch from a group of soldiers, who teased and jeered but handed one over, and she and Simeon entered that ghastly, gruesome field of the dead.

The stench was foul, reeking of blood, burning and that sickening sweet smell of corruption. Corpses littered the ground, sprawled in grotesque shapes. Some, with their eyes stark open, stared unseeingly up into the dark. Others crouched as if resting. Groans and cries shrilled into the night. A group of monks were already trying to drag the wounded away, disentangling them from the dead. The torchlight revealed grisly sights. A man squashed beneath a huge boulder. Corpses with heads, arms and legs severed. Faces with only the eyes intact. The parched earth was sticky with blood. The occasional bold jackal was already nosing at swollen stomachs; dark, dog-like shapes that fled swiftly at their approach. Eleanor stared despairingly around. The dead lay singly or in heaps. A monk came crawling over on all fours like some foulsome creature of the night, yet he proved friendly enough. A Frenchman, he gasped that he was searching for the wounded as well as those who wanted a priest. He murmured a prayer but shook his head at Eleanor’s descriptions of Imogene and Norbert.

Eleanor and Simeon continued their hunt. At times they had to cover both nose and mouth at the foul stench of dried blood, rotting entrails and the ever-pervasive reek of burning flesh. Charred corpses were common, nothing more than shrivelled black stumps of flesh. Simeon retched and vomited. Eleanor ignored his protests and moved on at a half-crouch. She tried to ignore the pallid faces, the eyes all caught in the shock of death. Only a few looked peaceful. They approached a cart burnt to cinders by an incendiary and found Norbert lying on his back, eyes staring glassily. At first Eleanor thought he was sleeping. She whispered to Simeon to bring the light closer, then covered her mouth at the horrid mess the sling shot had caused to the back of the monk’s head, a congealed mass of shattered bone, dried brain and blood. She knelt, head down, making the sign of the cross and whispering the Requiem. Then she glanced around. If Norbert had been killed here, then perhaps Imogene wasn’t far. She crawled across the ground.

‘Imogene, Imogene!’ she whispered hoarsely.

Nothing but silence. She was about to move away when she heard her name being called, a hoarse, dry whisper trailing out of the darkness in front of her. She crawled round the cart. Imogene lay by herself. She had turned on her side and was trying to drag herself forward. Eleanor caught her and cradled her carefully. Imogene sighed. Her hair was all dishevelled, her face sheet white, large dark eyes gazing up, blood spluttering between her lips. She was trembling, trying to keep the veil pressed close to staunch the deep wound in her side.

‘Eleanor,’ Imogene panted, ‘listen…’

‘No…’

‘No,’ she gasped. ‘Promise me, my parents’ ashes?’

Eleanor nodded.

‘You will bury them and say a prayer?’ Imogene pleaded. ‘Any prayer? If the city falls, do that, in sacred soil in the corner of some shaded garden. Do that, Eleanor, and my vow will be fulfilled. Promise?’

Eleanor tried to reassure her.

‘No,’ Imogene gasped, ‘I’m dying, I know that. I will be glad to be gone. Too much pain, too much hurt! This wound… Beltran.’ She spat the name out. ‘He did this. He is not what he claims to be, what he pretends to be. He seduced me, Eleanor, not because he loved me but because of a conversation I had with him oh so long, long ago.’ Imogene’s eyelids fluttered. ‘The night Robert the Reeve left the church and went into the dark, Beltran, I am sure, went after him. I kept silent about it then later teased him. He laughed it off even as he began to court me. You can’t disguise everything, Eleanor, not for two years. Beltran has travelled far and wide. He betrayed himself in small things: knowledge of customs, petty mistakes; he too chattered in his sleep. On occasion he’d go missing and I began to wonder. He changed. The closer we came to Jerusalem, the more he wanted to enter the Portal of the Temple, draw closer to your brother. He wanted to be rid of me, but without creating any suspicion.’ Imogene coughed on the blood seeping between her lips.