‘Could it be that this Acip Bey is just playing with us?’ asked Bishop Ademar.
‘Boutoumites would smoke that,’ Bohemund suggested, ‘and break off negotiations. If Alexius places so much faith in him he cannot be a fool.’
‘And where,’ Vermandois demanded, ‘is our fabled emperor?’
‘At his forge,’ scoffed Robert of Normandy, ‘fashioning rings.’
That reminder of his treatment was enough to send Vermandois out of the council tent, Walo obliged to follow, yet no sooner had he departed than a monk entered to say that Manual Boutoumites had been seen exiting the main gate of the city. Called upon to listen, the princes could just hear what sounded like jeers. This proved to be the case when, standing outside, they saw the walls of Nicaea packed with the garrison, all waving and shouting and in such a manner as to leave no doubt that it was derisory.
‘I cannot comprehend it,’ Boutoumites explained, once they had reconvened, the returned Vermandois looking particularly smug. ‘Everything was proceeding well and I sensed Acip Bey and I were close to agreeing final terms, then suddenly there were armed men in my chamber, I was led to my already saddled horse and sent through the gate with clods of mud aimed at my back.’
‘They were toying with you,’ Vermandois snorted, looking to Ademar as if to say that if others had not seen it, he had.
‘No, Count Hugh, I would have sensed that immediately.’
‘What has changed, then?’ Bohemund enquired, the Byzantine responding with a look of bemusement.
‘Let us accept,’ the Duke of Normandy said, ‘that we are no further adrift of our goal than we were when our courageous friend undertook his mission.’
‘Hardly courageous, My Lord.’
‘Not so,’ Robert insisted. ‘I have had one occasion to send an envoy into a fortified place which my brother’s forces have taken from me. The only thing that came back was a severed head.’
Ademar cut in. ‘Perhaps they will see sense when Toulouse arrives.’
‘Possible, but we have no choice but to continue with our own preparations.’
The news that a force of Byzantine soldiers was approaching raised the spirits on a day of gloom, until it was realised just how token it was, no more than two thousand men and with no sign, as Bohemund had surmised, of their Emperor leading them. The fact that such an absence upset his fellow princes, as well as the papal legate, underlined to him again just how little they understood their nominal ally, though Bohemund did not think it either tactful or wise to point up such a failure.
An imperial general called Tacitus, according to Boutoumites a highly regarded mixed-race mercenary, who held the imperial rank of prostrator, led the Byzantines. Half Arab, half Greek he had lost his nose when captured in some previous campaign and replaced it with one of precious metal. His greatest asset, aside from the amusement caused by his golden snout, was that he had been present at two previous sieges of Nicaea and he was thus able to give sound advice that would cut down on the possibility of errors of application by the Westerners, misjudgements he had observed before.
Less welcome was his assertion that he had come to take over the command on behalf of Alexius, which led many of Bohemund’s fellow princes to express even more disappointment, which again showed they still had a very shallow grasp of the aims and pressures under which a Byzantine emperor laboured. He persuaded his peers to let Tacitus assume leadership, it being more formal than real; he could not, after all, with the few men at his disposal, do anything to which they did not agree.
More important than his troop numbers or his experience, Tacitus brought in trained carpenters and metal workers who set about the construction of a massive siege tower that would match the defence in height, while others were put to fashioning boulder-firing mangonels with which to bombard the defenders. Soon the ground before Nicaea resounded to the sawing of baulks of wood and the driving home of tight dowels, while metal was heated, shaped and bent to provide rims for the great wooden wheels.
The Christian soldiers, all other activities put aside, gathered stones of the right size for the mangonels and fashioned more by heating and splitting boulders. Others worked to provide the fascines that would act as protection for the various floors of the siege towers, while the supply ships were stripped to provide the cables by which they would be pulled up to the walls. For all their expertise and effort, such massive constructs took time to build, periods in which martial impatience wore upon the nerves of many of the leading knights, it being obvious that those with the least experience suffered from that most, a dangerous brew when they were intent on achieving the kind of glory about which men would talk for generations.
‘Let us mount an assault with ladders first,’ Tancred demanded, ‘to test the quality of their defence.’
‘Do not let your eagerness cloud your judgement.’
‘It is not just I, Bohemund — you must have noticed how fretful some of our lances have become?’
‘I have observed that the youngest ones are keen on activity, but I also see none of the men who have faced such walls many times, as have you, being easily tempted to test them. Remember you are a leader, not a follower, and a man who should know better than to allow those you command to press you.’
As he said that he looked over Tancred’s shoulder, to where stood Robert of Salerno. He would be keen for glory and would happily see a blood sacrifice by others to achieve it, albeit he was no coward himself. Tancred, without turning round, guessed who was responsible for the frown on his uncle’s face.
‘You say that as a man who has much, Uncle. Try to see it from the view of those who have nothing.’
The response was quiet. ‘So Robert is pushing to attack.’
‘He is keen to win his spurs, but he is not alone.’
Still looking at the Lombard, who was studiously avoiding looking back, Bohemund understood what made Robert act so. He was the grandson of Prince Gisulf, who, if he had been a vainglorious windbag and a disaster both as a ruler and a soldier, had also been the reigning Prince of Salerno until he was deposed by the Guiscard. His profligacy left his heirs with little but their name and, since the recovery of the prosperous port city of Salerno was never going to be possible — both it and the title were held by Roger Borsa — then the need to make something of oneself became paramount. The trouble was it became so to the point of foolhardiness.
‘I do not lack sympathy, Tancred.’
‘I doubt that will assuage his pride.’
‘I will speak with him.’
Bohemund was about to say he should be fetched over when his attention was taken, as was that of everyone in earshot, by a great commotion and his height allowed him to see what was happening, though not with any clarity. Men were abandoning their various tasks to make a sort of ragged avenue, through which a man was being dragged by some of the Byzantine levies of Tacitus, both victim and charges in black and yellow surcoats. They were heading for their Prostrator’s tent and the same noise that had alerted Bohemund had alerted him, Tacitus coming out, bareheaded, to stand, hands on hips, his golden nose glinting in the sun, soon followed by Manual Boutoumites.
‘Robert must wait, let us see what this is about.’
Close to the Byzantine General’s tent, the crowd following the fellow being dragged and pummelled had stopped, which showed that if there was one roped and staggering, there was another being hauled along as a dead weight, his surcoat more red dust than black and yellow. As Bohemund and Tancred strode towards the scene, Tacitus stepped forward and was obviously in receipt of some kind of explanation, that causing him to kick the inert body hard, before he turned to the other man, now on his knees and shaking his head at the question to which he had just been subjected, first as a whisper then as a shout.