Authors: Jack Ludlow
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!’
I
n the time since Grandmesnil had deserted matters had not improved and that did not apply just to the need to fight or a lack of supplies. It seemed every day someone was having a vision of angels descending from heaven to their aid or the earth opening to take them into the arms of Satan and his eternal fires. Not to be outdone by the revelations of others, a Provençal peasant called Peter Bartholomew, no preacher but one who chose to clothe himself in monkish attire, claimed his own experiences and related stories so startling he was obliged to appear before Bishop Adémar and his natural lord, a recumbent and ailing Raymond of Toulouse.
Bartholomew recounted how, over several months and on many occasions, apparitions had appeared to him that seemed to wake him from his slumbers, yet did not. Two ethereal presences surrounded by a glowing orb of light had come to him, one a bearded, elderly man who looked like a benign biblical prophet, the second young, dark
and silent yet with a cast to his penetrating blue eyes that spoke of his divinity.
‘They are, I believe, the spirits of St Andrew, who speaks to me, and of Christ our Saviour himself, who does not.’
‘You do realise,’ Adémar pointed out, ‘that to make such a claim, if it is false, will lay you open to a charge of sacrilege?’
‘Like every other person come on this journey, Your Grace, I left home and dedicated my life to God. If it his wish that I surrender my being, then who am I to raise a question?’
‘You say this has happened more than once?’
Addressed by Raymond, Bartholomew immediately dropped to one knee and threw back the cowl that had covered his head, for he had grown up hearing of the mighty deeds of the Count of Toulouse and now, only ever having seen him from afar, he was in that illustrious presence.
‘Yes, My Lord, first when we crossed Anatolia on that desperate march through the desert in which we nearly died of thirst, and many times since.’
‘In Antioch?’ demanded Adémar, with a sharpness born of too much exposure to visions.
‘Not just here, My Lord Bishop, in many places as I went foraging for food to support our cause, but always at night and yes, once here, when we were first encamped outside the walls.’
‘You say the older man spoke?’ Raymond asked, hauling himself upright. ‘What did he say?’
‘That a piece of the Holy Lance, which pierced the very body of Christ on the crucifix, lay within the confines of St Peter’s original cave church. On that last visitation I was told to go to the spot where it was buried by the hand of St Peter himself so that I would recognise
the place when the city fell and be able to recover it should the need for divine inspiration arise.’
Adémar had a carapace of seeming interest in such situations – he had dealt with many religious fanatics in his time – which masked any scepticism. Yet this claim was stretching that to the limit and what followed from this peasant did nothing to make easy holding his incredulity at bay, not that his expression dented Bartholomew’s certainty.
‘I was instructed to go to St Peter’s Church and stand over the place of burial.’
‘You entered Antioch while we had it still besieged?’ Raymond demanded.
His tone demonstrated wonder as well as an acceptance and that had Adémar questioning the seriousness of his ailment. Perhaps it was of greater threat than he had hitherto supposed for it might be affecting his mind, which had always been too superstitious for the Bishop’s liking, while his body, especially his florid, well-fed face, seemed to show few ill effects.
‘I did so in spirit, My Lord, not in person, clad in the very garment in which I now stand before you, which with a celestial touch made me invisible to the infidels who held the city. Such was my transcendence that the walls proved no barrier to my progress, so great is the power of God.’
‘You speak well for a peasant, do you not?’ Adémar scoffed, seeking to knock a man he thought a charlatan off his stride, only to receive a confident response.
‘I speak as my saint has instructed me, for I could not, humble and lacking in schooling as I am, conjure up such words.’
Count Raymond’s eyes were now alight, either with fever or faith,
Adémar could not tell. ‘You say you could take us to the place where the Holy Lance is buried?’
‘My Lord, that is why I have come to you, for with that lance no Christian knight could be defeated in battle against an infidel and no man is more deserving to hold such a relic in his fighting hand as you, who, if men could see right, would have command of the whole host that will lead us to Jerusalem.’
About to respond with agreement, Raymond hesitated, no doubt from the presence of the papal legate, who was de facto in that position. That the Count of Toulouse felt he should have the leadership of the Crusade had been a barely disguised fact ever since he had arrived in Constantinople, the only man he was prepared to bow the knee to being the Emperor Alexius himself, who had hinted he would lead the enterprise personally but had signally failed to make good on his vague undertaking.
‘You waited a long time to reveal this,’ Adémar added. ‘Why?’
‘Before this day I hesitated out of fear and doubted even my own experience, but I was again visited last night and by an angry saint, so I am commanded by him and God to bring to your attention the means to strike down the force that threatens our endeavour. Even if I face a burning at the stake for speaking out, I cannot remain silent.’
‘This is nonsense,’ Adémar expostulated, waving an arm to dismiss Bartholomew.
‘That, My Lord Bishop is easy to establish,’ Raymond insisted, with a look of cunning that Adémar had never taken to. ‘Let our fellow here take us to the spot where he claims the Holy Lance is buried. If he speaks the truth we will find it, if not …’
‘Fire for my body and damnation for my soul,’ Bartholomew intoned, his eyes closed.
A search for such a holy relic, as close to the body and blood of Christ as it was possible to get, could not be kept secret and nothing so inspired faith as anything which had a connection to the Crucifixion – the bones of a martyr were as nothing by comparison and there were several of those being borne to Palestine by the Crusaders.
Adémar himself had a piece of the True Cross in his baggage, which he had bought from the Emperor Alexius. It was not the notion that a piece of the Holy Lance might exist that made him a sceptic, more the timing and claimed placement of Bartholomew’s disclosure; it was too convenient.
The reaction of the other magnates varied as Bartholomew reprised his vision, on the insistence and in the presence of Raymond, to the Council of Princes. Bohemund and Robert of Normandy were vocally dubious as to the truth of the assertion, Vermandois not willing to sway one way or the other, while Godfrey de Bouillon was sure, if it could be found, it would, as it was claimed, lead them to victory.
Robert of Flanders, a man in love with relics and the owner of many, was excited by the notion but none came to see the need to exhume the lance more than the Count of Toulouse who claimed the right, as Bartholomew’s lord and master, to oversee the endeavour; his fervour knew no bounds, yet that turned to frustration as two days of digging produced no positive result.
Six men had hacked at the floor of the cave, through the compacted earth of a millennium of worship to the softer ground below, spades wielded with decreasing gusto as they sunk ever lower to a depth where their heads were hidden from view. All this went on while sporadic fighting took place in every quarter of the defence as Kerbogha worked, not to overcome the walls but to keep his enemies on their mettle and exhausted. Peter Bartholomew stood over the dig,
eyes closed and praying to the heavens, though never in doubt and hope, more in certainty that his vision was real.
Raymond, somewhat recovered in health on the prospect of the find, came to visit often, for to him the discovery of such an object had become of paramount concern, many observing this as a sign of his loss of faith and the need that it be restored by a divine revelation.
It was not long before his confidence in Bartholomew began to waver, which produced a flood of questions, the most telling being: what hands, those who had the buried the Holy Lance, would dig so deep? The peasant seer pointed out that it had needed to survive many occupations of Antioch, even the reversal of Christianity and the return to paganism forced by the Byzantine Emperor Julian, followed by the arrival and occupation of Islam.
Those who had interred it knew the dangers that would be faced by such a holy object over a thousand years, knew that the lance had a purpose and the day of that need would come just as spiritual guidance would be required to exhume it. They would not burrow a shallow hiding place, but one so deep that only a person of true faith and divine resolve could find it.
‘Then I suggest you do so, Bartholomew,’ Raymond growled finally, his sombre tone of voice made more ethereal by being echoed off the walls of the cave church. ‘For if it is a lie I will not be alone in wishing to flay the skin from your back and see your entrails in your hands before we set light to the faggots around your body.’
‘Give me the means, My Lord, and I will expose it myself.’
‘You men cease digging and help this miscreant down.’ Raymond then fixed his Provençal peasant with a basilisk stare. ‘Dig well, Peter Bartholomew, for what remains of you should you fail will aid us in refilling this.’
The diggers needed a ladder now to allow them both into the hole and out. Gathering his monkish garment around him Bartholomew disdained any aid as he clambered down into the small area lit by a single guttering oil lamp, taking up one of the spades left and beginning to slash at the earth with fury. The clang as he hit rock reverberated up and out to fill the chamber, which had Raymond’s diggers looking at a lord who would not return their stare, he too busy in contemplation of the problems of being made to look like a credulous fool.
Judging by the sound now coming from below, Bartholomew had taken up a pick, also left below, and was hacking at the rock, which tempted one of those standing above to snigger, that dying as the Count gave him a black look, which seemed to deepen with each blow of that instrument, now a rhythmic ringing that might have passed for a church bell, given the mountains on which Antioch had been built were made of near indestructible stone.
‘Hallelujah!’
That cry had all pressing forward, lanterns in hand, to gaze down at the dirt-blackened face of Peter Bartholomew gazing up, his eyes seeming to glow and in his hand an object too indistinct to identify.
‘God be praised!’ was his next cry, before he sunk to his knees so that the sounds of his loud and thankful prayers now rose up to the waiting ears.
‘What have you found?’ Raymond demanded.
The response was slow in coming; Bartholomew was too busy thanking God. ‘That which I was sent to discover, My Lord.’
The temptation to blaspheme with impatience had to be curbed. ‘Get up here and at once.’
Bartholomew’s ascent was slow and what appeared before him,
held aloft in one hand, did not look in any way divine: was it even metal, for time and burial had dimmed its shine with rust and grime? What became apparent when examined more closely, as Bartholomew held it out for inspection, was its shape, it being very like the partial tip of a Roman
pilum
, a finger width at the base and reducing to the point, the very form of a weapon that truly might have been carried by a legionary on the Mount of Calvary.
‘Where is the shaft?’ Raymond demanded, only to be met with a look of disdain, with a manner to match, by a man now confident of his safety.
‘Who would bury that, and if they did, would the timber not rot?’
If Raymond missed the tone of voice, as well as the lack of acknowledgment to his title, the others present did not and one spoke up to tell Bartholomew of whom he was addressing, only to be reminded, and with discourtesy, that the man he was talking to was blessed by God and to mind his manners.
‘Pass it here.’
The pointed metal shard, a hand and a half in length, was passed to Raymond who took it gingerly, as if expecting the contact to scorch his flesh. Instead it was cold, as it should be, which sent a look of doubt across his face, noted by the man who had found it and responded to swiftly.
‘Do not expect it to glow or burn your skin, My Lord, the force it carries is in the flesh of whom it once pierced. Underneath that dirt and rust – who can tell? – may still lie the dried blood of Jesus.’
Raymond recoiled at that and he was not alone; those who had been digging previously stood back in near horror at being perhaps so close to such a liquid, even if dried. These were men who believed that when shriven by a priest what they received in the Eucharist was
the very blood of Christ transformed; to be in the presence of reality was overpowering.
The noise from the mouth of the cave church began to grow, for there had been believers as well as doubters gathered there throughout, diminishing in numbers as time went by, it was true, but never so few that one or two were not keeping vigil. Bartholomew’s cry of hallelujah had echoed out of that hole in the ground, bounced off the walls of the tiny cave church, flying out to those waiting ears.
Those lacking faith crossed themselves but the greater effect was on the devout: their wailing and gnashing of ecstasy had brought many more running to see what they hoped would be a sure sign of their deliverance. The man who carried it out into daylight and a now milling crowd was not the man who found it, though the dirt-covered Bartholomew was close on his heels.
It was Raymond of Toulouse, eyes alight and gait steady, who held it aloft to the gathering throng and he who paraded it through the streets, where likewise all who observed it, be they knight, fighting foot soldier, camp follower, pilgrim or Armenian Christian, fell to their knees and sent up a keening sound of worship that was, in truth, mass entreaty.
It was no surprise, then, that the work of Peter Bartholomew in actually disinterring the relic was overborne by the spreading fame of the man who had possession and was eager to show it off. The relic was hailed wherever Raymond went, for he never subsequently moved without it – rumour had it that he took it to his bed with him that first night – and it was not long, those who shared his rank thought, before he seemed to confuse worship of the Holy Lance with praise for his own person.