Terror and panic swept the camp as more scouts rode in. The Turkish battle lines were fast approaching. Bohemond forced his way through the gathering troops, imposing order. Carts were pulled into position. Oxen and donkeys were swiftly unhitched, their pack saddles and baggage used to defend gaps. Bohemond ordered all horsemen to the front. The rear of the camp would be protected by the marsh whilst a semicircle of foot and archers would guard its flanks. Battle instructions were shouted, armour and harness quickly donned and clasped, swords and daggers loosened in their sheaths. The anxiety spread, apprehension deepened. Men knelt praying, sobbing for help.
‘Here they come!’ shouted a voice.
Eleanor, standing on a cart, watched the haze swirl out of the mouth of the valley. It ebbed and flowed to reveal flashes of colour and the glitter of armour. A rumbling thunder shook the earth. The cloud of dust billowed then broke. Eleanor caught her breath at the power of the enemy. Hordes of horsemen armed with round shields, their bows already strung, arrows notched. They came on in a thunder of hooves, a pounding of drums and a clash of cymbals. They broke into a trot, a dense throng hurling itself towards the now silent Frankish lines. Screams pierced the air. Green banners flowed and rippled in the morning breeze. The Franks, standards now unfurled, answered with their own battle cries then, like lurchers in a hunt, burst into a furious, galloping charge. They should have smashed into the enemy like a battering ram, but the Turks divided abruptly to the left and right. As they did so, their mounted archers loosed shaft after shaft at the Frankish lines before closing in on the flanks with axe and scimitar, grappling hooks being thrown to drag the mailed knights from the saddle. Steel, flint and rock bit into head and stomach, smashing blows that severed hands, arms and legs. A second phalanx of Frankish knights prepared to charge but the Turkish horse, light and swift, came round the embattled first line and raced past the waiting ranks, loosing a deadly hail of arrows. Horses collapsed; others were panicked into galloping, only to be surrounded by Turks who closed to bring both horse and rider crashing to the ground. Bohemond could take no further provocation. The battle standards of Normandy unfurled, the air ringing with his war cry, his knights broke into a full charge against their tormentors.
Eleanor, drenched in a sweaty dust, the strengthening sun beating down on her, could see the Turkish tactics of attack and faked withdrawal. More enemy forces appeared. Eleanor glanced around. The camp was in chaos. Men, women and children now realised that if Bohemond’s men broke, the Turks would sweep through and massacre them. The air became a hellish din of horns, drums, cymbals and trumpets, all mingling with the shrieks, yells and crash of battle. Vultures appeared in the blue skies, forbidding black shadows hovering over that place of blood. The wounded were being dragged back to receive the attention of leeches or shaven-pated priests. One knight, bruised and battered, came clutching his side and collapsed by the cart. Eleanor, startled out of her shock, jumped down and ripped off his mail hauberk and jerkin. Beneath these, his shirt was sticky with blood. She went to staunch the wound, blackish red with the flies already hovering close.
‘No, leave me to a leech,’ the man gasped. He grasped Eleanor’s arm and gestured to the front. ‘They need water.’
Eleanor called to a leech kneeling beside another man, his limbs jerking, the death rattle noisy in his throat. The leech shrugged, pushed a wine-soaked rag into the dying soldier’s mouth and hurried across. Eleanor rose, calling Imogene and a cluster of women and children to bring waterskins, jugs, anything that would hold water. Some of the priests were already organising this as well as putting on white vestments and hurrying to the battle line to offer absolution and the Eucharist. Eleanor reached the rear rank of horsemen, a host of stinking, wounded knights, blood seeping through their chain mail, faces masked red. They sheltered and rested against the corpses of their horses, the bellies of which were already swelling. Some knights seemed to have swam in blood, swords red to the hilt, maces and axes smeared with gore. Angry eyes, glazed with the fury of battle, glared at her. She offered water, which was snatched and drunk greedily. Flies buzzed in dark clouds. Ahead of her echoed the raucous noise of battle. Bohemond had changed his tactics. The army was losing too many horses, so the Franks now stood in a curving arc of steel against the Turks, who attacked them then swiftly sheered off as they delivered shower after shower of barbed arrows. Men cursed and prayed as they rose to rejoin the battle. A few joked how, when they seized the Turkish camp, they’d bathe in water gushing from crystals, wear garlands of flowery spiken mixed with roses and sprinkle cinnamon in their hair. Others stayed nursing hideous wounds, cuts, slashes and bruises.
Eleanor glimpsed Hugh sitting exhausted on his horse, Godefroi beside him. She called their names but the ground shook with the thunder of a fresh charge and the ear-piercing whistle of the Turkish war cry. Arrows whipped through the air; a horse whinnied in agony. Men screamed for respite. Eleanor wanted to reach Hugh, but a heart-chilling shout sent her racing back to the camp. She stopped by a cart and stared in disbelief. A troop of Turkish horse had found its way across the marsh and was racing into the far side of the camp. Here and there men-at-arms and archers tried to hold them back, but the Turks spread out like angry hornets, shooting arrows before drawing their curved swords to cut to the left and the right. Women, children and priests were slashed and hacked. The Turks were dismounting in groups of twos and threes, seizing fleeing women, stripping them and throwing them down on to the ground. Eleanor felt as if she was carved from stone, with no life in her legs. She felt imprisoned by what she saw, as if asleep, suffering a nightmare that had to be endured. A line of foot was forming to protect the rest of the camp, but beyond these sprouted scenes from hell. A priest, still in his vestments, was fleeing for his life only to have his head sliced open with one swift cut. A monk was staggering backwards, facing the pursuing horseman, who paused, then leaned slightly to one side so his sword neatly severed the monk’s head. A soldier stood trying to free a shaft embedded deep in his chest. A Turk was getting up from raping a woman even as the knife in his right hand gashed her from groin to neck. Others were pillaging a tent, running out with jugs and basins and what looked like severed heads.
The line of Frankish foot between Eleanor and the Turks moved forward. From behind, archers loosed arrows that hit friend as well as foe. A further shout. The Frankish line surged more swiftly as a conroy of horse dispatched by Bohemond charged into the camp, attacking the Turks now trapped amongst the tents and carts. Eleanor felt the tension ebb, though her stomach clenched and spasms of pain coursed up her legs and across her back. She couldn’t open her mouth. Frankish knights now hacked at white-robed horsemen whilst on the breeze shouts of ‘Toulouse, Toulouse! Deus vult! Deus vult!’ grew stronger. Theodore had been successful! The rest of the Frankish army had debouched on to the battlefield, flinging themselves at the Turkish flanks, whilst Adhémar’s company, armed with maces to shatter bone rather than swords to slice flesh, assaulted the Turks from the rear. Hoarse voices shouted further news, Bohemond was leading his line forward; the battle had turned.