Bohemond’s ancestors of the fifth century who fought under Chlodovech, they fought without armour and on foot, they hurled axes and barbed javelins, God knows what stocks and stones they offered to. What did they know of Jerusalem? How in the world has Bohemond come to be a soldier of Christ? How has Bohemond become the Bohemond who cut up his scarlet cloak into crosses? This is not to be known by me, I shall die without knowing it.
Bohemond is always in my mind but I have no chance of understanding him. When he was first pointed out to me I was high up on the wall looking down at his distant figure but in my thoughts he at once took his place high up as if striding on ramparts built for him alone. He is everything that I am not, this quintessential warrior prince. I am told that he can, fully armed, leap from the ground to his horse’s back; that no other man can wield with two hands the sword he wields with one; that he requires three women nightly to keep him tranquil; that he is a serpent in cunning, a thunderbolt in attack, he is simply not to be withstood. Red-haired and blue-eyed, he does what he wants and he gets what he wants. How should I not be obsessed with Bohemond? But his thoughts are beyond my imagination. In my drift through this space called time I have reported two dreams of Pope Urban II and I know that, whether virtually or actually, they are true. They are there, I have experienced them. But of Bohemond I can offer nothing sure, only intimations, only things half-sensed, half guessed-at. As the animals of the forest scent the questing hound I scent him, questing through the death of Christ and God’s departure, questing on the track of gold and fame and power, questing for the tangible, the visible, questing for that which cannot be mistaken, that which can be held in the strong hand, that which can be gripped between strong thighs as a horse is gripped.
So. Bohemond is encamped before the walls of Antioch and now we are in the year 1098. Bohemond, greedy and lusting for the seen, cannot yet have what he craves; that time is not yet come. As I say this there comes into my mind an image of Bohemond opposed by Bembel Rudzuk; it is a night image, the background of it is darkness; against the darkness the two figures are luminous, they leap out of the dark, stopped in mid-motion as if by lightning — Bohemond with the gleam of his helmet, the glitter of his mail, the flash of his great sword, the scarlet cross on his surcoat, the iron nasal and the straight brow-line of his helmet simplifying his face, the face of the death-angel haloed by the rainbow arc of the great sword. Bohemond the death-angel, Bohemond the questing death-hound circling in the night beyond the circle of Christ’s little wander-fire. Bohemond the tall, lit by the lightning as he leaps with his death-bringing, with his blood-drinking sword. And leaping at him with a flash of the gold brocade on his elegant scarlet jacket, with his Turkish sword heroic against the death-hound, with his moustaches heroic, Bembel Rudzuk the dauntless, Bembel Rudzuk who is at the same time like a lion of innocence, like an angel of folly, like a butterfly transfixed by the pin of actuality, Bembel Rudzuk the friend true unto death.
That is the image, held motionless against the dark as if by lightning, that comes into my mind as I think of the never-to-be-known, never-to-be-understood Bohemond. Simple greed, simple ambition, simple unlimited courage do not suffice to explain this man. Nothing I have so far said explains Bohemond. As one who is not a mathematical genius cannot understand one who is, so I cannot understand this genius of maleness and action; even simply counting up his attributes and his actions one arrives at something that cannot be accounted for: the total of the seen becomes the unseen, becomes a mystery. Bohemond has in the mystery of him such force as to make him a kind of un-Christ; in the greatness of his courage and his greed he looms gigantic; almost Death stands aside at the sound of his name and his great bones stand up shouting. His tomb in Apulia is domed, it has Romanesque arches, it has bronze doors. Sometimes as Pilgermann the owl I sit on the dome of Bohemond’s tomb in the twilight when it is still warm from the last sun of the day.
But it is the year 1098 that I tell of now; the bones of Bohemond are still in active partnership with his flesh and I have not yet achieved owlhood. It is February, a Turkish army is again on its way to the relief of Antioch, and this time Rudwan of Aleppo is with them. The Frankish cavalry is much diminished now; they must have less than a thousand horses fit for war. I cannot help thinking of those battles in the Holy Scriptures in which God would diminish the armies of the children of Israel the better to show his power; I have come to believe that God, having departed, now wills that nothing should stand between the Franks and Jerusalem.
Bohemond does not wait for the Turks to come to Antioch; he leaves the foot-soldiers and the horseless cavalry to defend the camp against further sorties and with that cavalry numberless in arrogance but many times outnumbered by the enemy he moves out to take up a position between the Orontes and the Lake of Antioch where he cannot be encircled. Needs must when the devil drives, and he has learned by now that the harrying, stinging, in-and-out, encircling tactics of the Turks must be met with equal cunning if he is to beat them. And of course he does. On first sight of the Turks the Franks charge before the Turkish archers can be effectively disposed, then they withdraw, luring the Turks into that space between the lake and the river, that space chosen for the battle. Here the Frankish cavalry do again what they do better than anyone else, the straight charge with lance in rest. So again the relieving army is put to flight by Bohemond, by that unturning battle-greed of his. So ardent is he in his pursuit of the enemy that the points of his crimson banner, we hear, fly over the heads of the rearmost Turks.
Here at Antioch the absence of Bohemond reliably brings Yaghi-Siyan out through the bridge gate for yet another sortie on the Frankish encampment where there are only men on foot to oppose him. Things are going badly for the horseless Franks, the time must seem long to them until Bohemond returns in the afternoon like the sun and Yaghi-Siyan, like a wooden foul-weather figure, goes back inside. The soldiers of Christ put Turkish heads on poles outside their camp to stare with dead eyes at the walls of Antioch until the flesh rots away and they are no longer heads but skulls.
The Franks have so far held off two attempts to relieve the city but they have not yet been able to close it off completely from the world. The Suwaydiyya road, though no longer travelled by caravans, is still used by enterprising traders at unlikely hours and for high profits. Supplies are also moving through the Ladhiquiyya Gate at carefully chosen times.
At the beginning of March we hear of ships at Suwaydiyya and we hear that they bring to the Franks fighting men and horses, siege technicians from Constantinople, timber and every kind of tackle for the building of siege towers and giant war machines, also apparatus capable of shooting Greek fire from the far side of the Orontes into the centre of Antioch. There is little doubt that Antioch will soon be in Frankish hands unless the siege materials are intercepted.
It is Bohemond and Raymond who one night lead their men to Suwaydiyya to bring in the materials and the reinforcements. About an hour after their departure we hear the horsemen trotting to and from Yaghi-Siyan’s palace, hear the shouting of commands, the slap and jingle, the shuffling and snuffling and whinnying as cavalrymen ready their horses and themselves. They ride out on the Suwaydiyya road and we of the civilian militia together with soldiers of the garrison man the walls to watch the Frankish camp and wait.
It is while I stand on this wall built by a Roman emperor and keep watch on the Franks with a Turkish bow in my hand that I find myself reflecting on where I am and what I am doing. It isn’t that I haven’t taken notice of the separate parts of it but somehow I haven’t taken notice of how the parts look when they’re all put together. I am carrying weapons that I was taught to use by a Muslim (we non-Muslims of the militia are now permitted to go armed) and I am keeping watch on the walls of this city that is being held by Muslims against Christians who call themselves soldiers of Christ. Bohemond himself may at any time come climbing over this wall with his sword that only he can wield with one hand, Bohemond the battle-greedy, the death-hound.