Jack Ludlow - Soldier of Crusade

‘It fell before, to Byzantium, and if they can take it so can we.’

Bohemund’s conversation with Godfrey was elliptical in the extreme, more a case of the impossibility of Baldwin being involved in the massacre of his men than that he had contrived with the Turks to have it committed, yet the trace of an allegation could not be avoided.

‘I wished you to hear of this from my lips rather than from any gossip that might circulate, Duke Godfrey, for that would likely come larded with malice.’

Godfrey, his broad face sad, sighed and crossed himself. ‘My brother has ever been troublesome, but I have to think he would not stoop so low as you suggest.’

‘I have suggested nothing.’

‘You have laid out a case, Count Bohemund, and while you have not levelled any blame it is clear that some doubt exists as to how Baldwin acted. It is my experience that such a charge, even if false, levelled against a man’s name is not washed away easily and, sad to say, his blood relatives suffer by association.’

‘That is why I came to you and alone, for you do not deserve such a blemish. I have lost men I valued and I grieve for them, but I will not raise the matter in council, for to do so would embarrass you and would hardly serve our cause.’

That got a half smile. ‘I have observed how often you have restrained yourself in council, Count Bohemund. You let others speak rather than take the floor in your own right, yet I think I observe you often disagree, much as you try to keep that hidden.’

‘I must employ more effort to compose my features, and be assured, I would not let pass anything I thought endangered us or the Crusade.’

‘That I do believe. It is to your credit and I thank you for coming to see me alone. Now I am doubly indebted to you.’

‘If you mean the incident with the bear, you owe me nothing.’

‘Allow me to decide where my indebtedness lies, Count Bohemund. Now, if you will forgive me I must say prayers for my wayward brother, who needs them whatever he has or has not done.’

If the tale of the massacre at Tarsus did circulate it was kept from public discourse and, in truth, Baldwin’s absence was a relief to everyone including, Bohemund suspected, his own family, so that, if it was insincerely regretted as it had to be, it was far from troubling, for his natural bellicosity was being visited elsewhere. The future was of more import than what Baldwin was up to — before them was a Byzantine map of Antioch and the surrounding environs and plans had to be made as to how to subdue the city.

If the mass of the population of the city was Armenian and many of them adherents of their branch of the Christian faith that did not signify much; there would be those who through convenience or a genuine belief in Islam had converted, some of whom would fight for the Turks as well, either out of that same conviction or to hold on to what they had gained from being allies of the alien occupation. It was ever thus with conquest: some under a new master put personal advancement above principle, the powerless majority were swayed by their bellies, and those who stood out against the new dispensation were either killed or banished, and Yaghi Siyan, the Turkish Governor, had already expelled those who might stir up their race and religious brothers against him, careful, as an insurance, to hold the Armenian patriarch as a hostage.

Even discontented, which they might become when hunger struck, the mass of the Armenian indigenes would have no weapons with which to oppose the Turkish garrison and certainly no power to affect whether the siege would succeed or fail. None present thought it was going to be a simple affair, yet taken it must be — if Jerusalem was no more that a six-week march to the south, Antioch was the key to any chance of progress and much more beside.

It was no mystery, but here the Council of Princes came up against a stark reality that all knew but rarely mentioned: their host, though still powerful, was not as numerous as it had been outside Nicaea. Added to losses fighting there were the many more they had suffered in Anatolia due to thirst and starvation. There were the losses at Tarsus, and the march towards Antioch had taken its toll, several men lost from falls in the mountains. That did not include the number who had merely succumbed to accidents or the myriad number of diseases common to such a large body of men on campaign — foul humours, dropsy, sleeping sickness, seizures and the like added to the increasing number who had grown weary of seeking salvation and gone home.

Not everyone who left was abandoning the Crusade. A strong party of knights had been sent to secure the port of St Simeon, which gave the Crusade access to the Mediterranean and across that sea to Greek-held Cyprus and beyond, not least to Bohemund’s possessions in Apulia, as well as fast communications with the Emperor Alexius, telling of the open route south.

Messages had been sent by Bohemund to his Uncle Roger, the Great Count of Sicily, who if he was not prepared to join the Crusade would do all he could to aid it — even Borsa would help. Requests were despatched asking for many things to be delivered as soon as humanly possible and to use the treasure given to him by Alexius to pay for it.

But that still left the here and now to be dealt with; Tacitus, for so long a time left out of deliberations, only coming to life when appointing Byzantine governors to towns and cities the Crusade had captured, now put forward a plan based on the successful capture of the city a hundred years previously. This had taken the form of a partial siege, operated at a distance and designed more to reduce Antioch by starvation than to take it by direct assault.

Strategic locations were identified and if these could be secured, he assured the council, the supply routes to the city would be severely interdicted. When winter approached, the host could live, well spread out, in relative ease and comfort while the garrison of Antioch consumed the contents of their burgeoning storerooms and perhaps become so reduced by the spring they would start to eat their horses. That was the time to invest the city more closely and demand surrender, when morale was already at rock bottom.

‘Add to which, My Lords,’ his interpreter said in conclusion, ‘if your numbers are diminished now, they will, by then, surely be reinforced.’

‘By the Emperor?’ asked Robert of Normandy.

Tacitus, when that was translated, seemed to take that enquiry as some kind of affront and his reply when it came did not really answer the question. ‘The Prostrator refers more to the fact that knights are still coming from your own lands to bolster your numbers, but that will cease with winter and only truly be at full flow in spring.’

‘Ask him’ said Bohemund, making no attempt to disguise his irony, ‘if he has decided who is to be governor of Antioch yet?’

That brought from Raymond a frown as he took up the discussion, ignoring the whispered interpretation and Tacitus’s subsequent growl. Likewise Bohemund paid no attention to the look of malevolence from a man he had come to mistrust, being more intent on what the Count of Toulouse was saying.

‘Does the Prostrator wish to tell us how long he thinks such a way of proceeding would take?’ He did not wait for any translation. ‘Let me answer for him, so that we are not rendered impatient. He is talking of half a year before we even consider any form of assault, and I do not take to the notion of having my men idling for all that time and not fighting.’

He was not openly saying it, but all present understood: an idle army was one prone to illness, dissension and even disintegration, and besides that, they had already been about their business a long time, some of their number having left Europe and their lands two years since.