‘The Turks are cowed, and much as it pains me to admit it, you are the one who achieved that.’
‘They have been beaten before yet still raised new armies.’
‘Do you have any proof they are doing that now?’
‘No, but I see the need to let them know that such a thing would be unwise. In order that such a thing should happen and be taken as serious, it requires that both you and I make moves to threaten the possessions they still value.’
Baldwin dropped his head to his barrel chest. ‘They would fear for Baghdad.’
‘Only against you and I combined.’
That produced a laugh. ‘What is this — the mighty Bohemund seeking aid from the cursed Baldwin of Edessa?’
‘Who would not be so cursed,’ Bohemund said softly, ‘if he was seen at home, and especially in the duchy you hope one day to inherit, to have abandoned his vows? Yet what if that same man had done something to make the capture of Jerusalem possible and quite possibly be reputed to have saved the endeavours of the Crusade, and most tellingly those of his brother and liege lord?’
In the silence that followed, Bohemund recalled his talk with Robert of Salerno regarding what he had proposed to say to Baldwin, very much what he had just expounded, the younger man convinced that all his lord would get was an insulting refusal. Yet no man likes to be seen as a pariah and no knight would ever want to carry to his grave the reputation now attached to Baldwin’s name, one that could so easily be tarnished further.
The whole of Christendom knew that he had deserted the Crusade and that meant he had repudiated those most solemn vows which, should he return home, would see him brayed at in the street as an apostate and a traitor. Even if he never departed from Edessa, that was not a stain to easily carry, and on top of that what had happened at Tarsus would be a subject of discussion in all territories from which the Crusaders had come, something Bohemund could easily foster.
What Bohemund had not said to Robert was that in some senses the same opprobrium might be attached to him for there were many who saw his attachment to Antioch as a less than faithful adherence to those same undertakings. If he was dangling redemption of reputation before Baldwin, there was an element of the same for him in the approach.
‘Do you foresee battle?’ Baldwin asked finally.
‘Would such a thing trouble you?’
‘Not if it was the Turk battering himself against my walls.’
‘More than that is required, you must make a demonstration towards the lands of our enemies. I think them cowed but if they do rise up to dispute with you …’
‘And you, Bohemund, and you!’ Baldwin insisted. ‘It is we both or nothing.’
‘Why am I here if that is not so? If they do attack you, then you have the walls to retire to, as have I, but in doing that they are not attacking Jerusalem and we will have done what is needed to give our confreres a fair wind. Let the news run back to Rome that you have acted to aid your brother and the others. The priests will see it is spread through all of Europe, that Baldwin, Count of Edessa, was and still is a Crusader.’
The light in Baldwin’s eyes then was proof enough that the prospect was to him an alluring one, a chance for redemption in the eyes of people he probably despised, yet whose good opinion he wished to have. Then those eyes narrowed and the glow he had manifested faded, to be replaced, Bohemund thought, with a way of behaviour and a mode of speech more akin to his true nature.
‘Do not ever again address me,’ he growled, ‘without you favour me with the title of Count of Edessa.’
Bohemund just nodded, for that was as good as a yes to that for which he was asking. Then he called for wine to be fetched, so that the two could toast to the success of the siege of Jerusalem, before calling for one of the priests he had brought along — no large body of crusading knights rode anywhere without the addition of a divine — to both say a Mass for Baldwin’s men and his own and publicly state by vow that they would act as had been agreed for the greater glory of God.
Bohemund might have been smiling throughout all this, but as he said to Robert when Baldwin had departed, ‘I nearly choked sharing wine with that viper and, God willing, I will slice the throat by which he gobbled it down if I find he had any hand in the killing of my men.’
‘And you think he will keep to that which he just swore?’
‘Yes. Even Lucifer himself likes to be seen as a fallen saint, capable of redemption.’
Baldwin was true to his vow. He, like Bohemund, sought no great battle, nor did he take possession of any of the strongholds, those that lay close to his borders, still in Turkish hands. But by their joint manoeuvres the two magnates kept those Turks who might have been tempted to make for Jerusalem within their walls. Such lords were fearful that, at any moment, a combined force from Edessa and Antioch might appear before their walls to invest their own cities. Even Baghdad and the Abbasid Sultan remained cautious and inactive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Having those Genoese sailors and their nautical tools — short saws, adzes, chisels and mallets — provided only a partial solution and was, on its own, insufficient to progress the siege of Jerusalem. They could work with planking as well as being able to turn short lengths of timber into the dowels necessary to secure heavily pressured joints. But siege towers required them to also fashion great baulks of wood for both the base and the platform supports. Added to that was a fair amount of metalwork, the latter less of an obstacle given the army marched with armourers and blacksmiths.
Long lengths of tree trunk, and also of the required thickness, were at the heart of the process and these had to be cut down, then formed to the required dimensions, which entailed the use of two-man saws, with one cutter required to work from above, the other below in a pit dug for the purpose and that process would have to wait; these were the same instruments needed to gather the material in the first place.
It proved yet another indication of how split was the Crusade that the princes could not combine to construct the apparatus needed to carry out the task before them, even to the point of gathering the required timber. Not that acquiring that was easy; the kind of wood needed, from a long-matured and untouched forest, lay several leagues distant and that necessitated a major detachment of mounted fighting men to escort the milities designated as woodcutters.
Flanders and Normandy went forth on behalf of Godfrey de Bouillon, Toulouse trusting to Bishop Peter of Narbonne who, if he was a cleric, was also a good administrator and fighter. More grist to the mill of argument came from the man Raymond chose as his master builder, William Embriaco, for in doing so he offended Gaston of Bearn, hitherto a strong supporter of the Provencal faction and a man famed for his ability in the craft of building weapons of war — Gaston immediately transferred both his allegiance and skills to Godfrey de Bouillon.
If such endeavours put an end to assaults on the walls, the teeming and visible activity before the twin encampments sent a clear message to the city of the determination of the Crusaders to eventually press home their attack. The air was filled with the sound of woodworking, the clang of blacksmiths’ hammers as well as the smell of the pitch and glue being used to coat the timbers and to secure the various joints.
In addition, men more accustomed to war, working alongside the many thousands of pilgrims who toiled for their love of God, put their hands to cutting and plaiting brushwood with which to protect the triple platforms on which they would later want to fight, those covered with animal skins that did not easily catch fire, for the standard first defence against such a weapon, in the hope of stopping it before it could be set against the walls, was to set it alight with flaming arrows.