‘What of our men, Tancred?’
‘They have obeyed your orders and will continue to do so unless you change them.’
‘Even when tempted by such a rich prize?’
Tancred produced a grim smile. ‘That will not be much use to a man hanging from a doorway for disobedience.’
‘And how, nephew, do you think Raymond would react to find that his own men had been denied any part of what is rightfully theirs, arrived in Ma’arrat to find it plundered by us?’
‘He would have to be incensed, his lances even more so.’
‘Which might push him to act against his better nature.’ Bohemund looked at his nephew and grinned then. ‘Always assuming he has one.’
‘You think he might resort to arms?’
‘He might have no choice, Tancred. The pressure from those he leads might oblige him to seek bloody redress.’ Another silence followed, Bohemund’s chin was back on the wooden haft of that axe until he had cleared his thoughts. ‘In all my disputes with Raymond, as I have said before to you, I have had a care to never push it to a contest of weapons.’
‘You would kill him in such a fight.’
That got a faint nod but there was no pride in the response; Bohemund was the foremost knight of Christendom and well aware of the fact. He knew that Raymond, even given his prowess as a fighter and leader of men, could never defeat him in single combat. Quite apart from his greater age — he was in his fifties and so a good decade older than Bohemund — there was the sheer difference in height and strength, let alone repute. Such a contest would be an uneven one and Raymond of Toulouse was equally aware of that.
‘And I would have no choice lest I wish him to kill me.’
‘The Crusade,’ Tancred responded in what was a statement not a question.
‘If blood is to be spilt on this venture it will not be by me, or those I lead. I will hold to my papal vow.’
Tancred had to bite his tongue; where did Antioch come in such a declaration?
‘Single combat fills me with no fear, but a battle of factions …’
‘And you sense that here?’ Tancred asked as his uncle’s voice trailed off.
‘I see the possibility.’
‘You could ensure it is single combat by issuing the challenge?’
‘The Provencal knights would not stand to see their leader slain.’
‘So you are going to leave Raymond’s men a free hand to plunder the city?’
‘Never!’ Bohemund spat back, before sitting up and smiling, his tone benign. ‘But I will wait till his men make their entry before any of ours move a muscle. Then we can happily see to the garrison and plunder in company to our heart’s content. No one can gainsay that.’
‘He will want the governor’s treasury, to compensate for the silver he expended on his siege tower.’
‘Then he best move with speed, for to lay his hands on it he will need to get to it first. Now oblige me by fetching Firuz.’
Raymond of Toulouse had as much discipline over his knights as did Bohemund, so that his instruction to wait until daylight before entering the city was obeyed, as much because his men were exhausted from fighting most of the day as the fear of disobeying their liege lord and the consequences. They were now sat round their fires earnestly discussing the wealth that would be theirs on the morrow, as well as how the Turkish citizenry would pay for their obstinacy.
Such talk had a deeper resonance than in normal times for these men. Since leaving Constantinople most of the towns and cities taken, faced with a formidable and successful Crusader army, had surrendered and opened their gates, only for possession to be taken as imperial fiefs by the body of troops Alexius Comnenus had sent to accompany them, this before treaties were made respecting the inhabitants, which meant plunder was out of the question.
The first occasion on which this had occurred had been at Nicaea, the primary target of the campaign. That had been a proper siege, yet instead of the expected booty and other pleasures which normally came from the surrender of a place that had refused terms, the fighting men, high and low, got nothing. All had stood by to watch Byzantine troops take ownership.
They had been rewarded by the Emperor’s largesse, which if welcome could not compare with the prospect of what might be gained from a man’s own efforts in a captured city of some size and wealth. The princes and their senior supporters had received gold and silver, the rest had to be content with copper, albeit in abundant quantities.
In Antioch, with Kerbogha’s huge army in the offing, common sense dictated they should not alienate the populace and that debarred the Crusaders from engaging in mass pillage, albeit there had been many individual acts of thievery. Only at Albara had the Provencals been allowed to behave in the time-honoured fashion, that being a proper sack, which whetted an appetite never much hidden.
The mailed knights had, as was commonplace, the best pickings, being first over the walls, able to kill anyone who stood in their way, quick to spot the homes of the wealthier citizens as well as the public buildings, bound to be repositories of high-value items to steal, albeit care had to be taken not to cross the avarice of their liege lord and his senior subordinates. Food and wine was carried off to their own encampments for later consumption and that too applied to any well-born women.
The milities coming along behind them, if they often found that the easy pickings were gone, had been able to find booty, if necessary by torturing the ordinary citizens to find out where they had hidden money and provisions their betters had missed, killing those who refused to reveal their secret places while treating their womenfolk of whatever age as chattels to be abused prior to being passed up to their liege lord to be sold into slavery.
By the time the pilgrims got entry to Ma’arrat — those thousands who had followed Raymond and the Holy Lance to Albara and to here — the infidel, from whom they could with a clear conscience steal anything they could find, would have been stripped even down to their naked bodies, and if they had a storeroom it would be long emptied. The only pleasure to be gained in dealing with the enemies of their faith would be from granting them the choice of forced conversions or immediate death.
Thus it had been at Albara, yet there they had not faced near starvation, which is what afflicted them now. In the short time Bohemund and his Apulians had been outside Ma’arrat, their condition, poor to begin with, had shown a marked deterioration. They had been reduced to rutting in the surrounding landscape for weeds and roots with which to make some kind of soup, while any edible berries had been already picked and consumed.
Now these pilgrims were sat outside a city seemingly devoid of defence — the walls were deserted — with the possibility of well-stocked larders, while those who were armed and could stop them were sat round their fires dreaming of plunder, so here lay an opportunity to be first to the trough. It was not a mass affair or in any way organised: people weighed up their situation and acted in small groups, slipping out of their camp at various intervals to bypass, on a night of Stygian darkness, the sentinels set by Raymond.
When it came to discipline the writ of Raymond and Bohemund ran less well within the minds of their poorer soldiery, the milities, who collectively had none of the haughty pretensions, nor the dreams of riches, which exercised the knightly cohorts. If they expected to be second to the sack, and would be on the morrow, it was more of a present concern that they had enjoyed less of the food here at Ma’arrat that kept their betters in superior health.
If they were not starving they were hungry, for food distribution naturally favoured the men in chain mail, who undertook the burden of fighting in a siege, the milities being required for the base work of making and carrying ladders or pulling and pushing the tower built by the Count of Toulouse into place, before plying their shovels to undermine the walls. Had they not, for all their mean standing, brought about the fall of the city, so why should others have first rights?