Behind the Veil (9 page)

“Someone comes riding to meet us,” Rufus warned.

“He looks Muslim,” added Bardas.

The man rode not from the direction of the camp, but from some distant cypress trees on a ridge. Tancred watched the lone figure, who wore a faded blue Arab headscarf.

“Caution, he carries a bow and a scimitar,” Demetrious said, “And strangely, he is followed by a falcon.”

Tancred smiled and rode his horse forward on the sun-bleached plain.

They met alone, their Arab horses whinnying and touching noses as though they knew each other, and Tancred reached to grasp the wily old warrior’s arm. It was Hakeem, the Moor from Palermo, Tancred’s faithful friend. He’d not seen him since Hakeem had ridden from the guard castle of Herion to remain a spy in Antioch. Hakeem was thinner, if possible, but no worse for it. Lean and tough, he wore the scars of battle well.

“So, you arrive at last, Infidel, but only when victory is already in the wind!”

Tancred watched as the falcon, which had traveled with Hakeem all the way from Palermo, landed on Hakeem’s shoulder.

”What spoils in the city do you think to take?” Hakeem asked, shrewdly hinting of Helena. “Perhaps the true booty waits at the Castle of Hohms.”

“It is good to see you alive, conniving old spy! But where have you been these months when I needed you? Enjoying the favors of Antioch, no doubt. And while I’ve wasted two months, held a slave to a mentally deranged baron!” 

Hakeem’s hard eyes laughed. “Ah, Jehan, I knew if I prowled the Moslem streets long enough you would escape to come here. And see! My confidence in you is unshaken.” He dropped his voice and became serious.  “I bring news of the assassin of Derek Redwan!”

Tancred tensed. “Is Mosul in the city?”

“I have seen him. He serves as captain of the guard to the royal family of the emir. He is now with Prince Kalid’s uncle, Ma’sud Khan.”

Tancred had heard the name, Ma’sud, but had never met him. “And Kalid himself?”

“Away from the city. I trailed him and Commander Kerbogha from Antioch to Aleppo. They seek from the sultan more warriors to aid the city.”

Tancred steeled himself against the next possible dark answer. “And Helena?”

Hakeem’s rough brown face, lined with wrinkles, sobered. “I have been able to hear little of her. The last news insists she is under the guardianship of Bishop Basel inside the city.”

“In Antioch now?” Tancred was surprised. He’d been almost certain she was at the castle.

“I cannot say for sure. I was attacked near Aleppo by Kalid’s men and received a wound.” He lifted his tunic and proudly displayed a dagger scar. “It heals. But over two weeks were afterward needed.”

“Praise God you are alive. You’ve done well, Hakeem. We will not give up.”

“Hah! That treacherous serpent, Basel. He has perhaps thirty men with him. He makes plans since Philip sent Helena to him.”

“Philip is dead,” Tancred said bluntly.

Hakeem’s rough brows lifted. “You have been busy.”

“Not nearly busy enough. If Helena is within Antioch I must find a way inside.”

“An impossible feat, Jehan, even for you. Although—” he paused glancing back over his shoulder toward the city.

“Yes?”

“I have found a secret route through the hills.” He gestured. “But the Turks set a guard at the postern gate once the princes arrived.”

“How many guards?” Tancred asked quickly.

Hakeem smiled. “Not many.” He gave a gesture of his head toward the three loyal men watching him while they kept to their horses. “With your warriors we may have one chance in twenty.”

“Come! We’ll take refuge in the Norman camp until our plans are made secure.”

“Ah, but it is my infidel head I wish to make secure, master. You forget that in asking me to enter the crusaders’ camp, you invite the hen into the fox’s den! Your three friends behind you, even now watch me with hands on their sword hilts!”

Tancred laughed. “You will be safe with them. But I understand your caution when it comes to entering the Norman camp. Where will I find you when I need you?”

Hakeem gestured back toward the cypress trees. “An abandoned village.”

Thank you my friend,  take care of yourself!”

***                           

Riding inside the Norman camp, Tancred discovered that Nicholas had come upon his Norman cousin.

“Leif!” Tancred’s spirits rose. His cousin was alive. He’d all but given up hope. It was unfortunate that he had to give him news of Norris’s death.

Upon entering his cousin’s tent, Tancred was surprised to find Adele, the niece of Bishop Adehemar. “This is my wife,” Leif announced, and his eyes glimmered like pale blue stone in his handsome sun-bronzed face. His long golden hair was drawn back with a leather thong.

“You work fast,” Tancred said taunting him, and turned with a smile as Adele rushed to greet him with joy. She was representative of most of the women who had joined the expedition to free Jerusalem from the infidel.

“Your cousin Erich died as a brave knight for our Lord,” she said. “Then I met your other cousin Leif, and I knew my future was blessed of God to join his. He too, is a great warrior. We will both fight for our Lord to take Jerusalem!”

Tancred wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

After she brought them what refreshments she had in her meager store, Leif explained how he had searched for Tancred and Norris after the attack at the summer house.

“Philip’s guards surrounded the house and I escaped. After a few days I ventured into the Greek city hoping I could learn something more, and gain the help of warrior friends. When we returned, the summer house was deserted. I searched the area and found your medical satchel in the bushes; I have it with me. Then I learned about the guard which Bardas had paid to let you to hide there. I confronted him, and when he showed fear, I made him talk truth. He betrayed you—when I threatened to run him through, he begged for his life in exchange for the emerald. It is in the satchel with your medical supplies.” He reached for the skin of wine.  “Then we had no choice except to ride to join Prince Bohemond.”

Tancred was satisfied. He’d never doubted his cousin’s loyalty. He had worried more about Leif being dead or taken prisoner than whether he had tried to help him escape. Leif was a warrior of honor, and Tancred knew he had gone the full measure.

“Walter of Sicily has not been seen in camp,” Nicholas told Tancred. “Bishop Adehemar states clearly that Bohemond has not heard from Walter since departing Constantinople.”

“None of our clan is here,” Leif assured Tancred. “I sought for them as soon as I arrived.”

“Strange,” Nicholas commented, frowning. He looked at Tancred. “I am not comfortable with their silence. What if Basel or even Mosul made contact with Walter, hoping to trap you to stand trial, they may be at the Castle of Hohms expecting you to come there.”

Tancred considered.

Leif scowled. “But why would our uncle Walter think so? Is not the Byzantine Lady Helena inside Antioch?”

Nicholas stroked his black mustache, and his lively dark eyes reflected his deep misgivings. “Yes…perhaps…did Hakeem have any word of Helena or Adrianna’s whereabouts?” he looked at Tancred.

Tancred explained the difficulty Hakeem had undergone at Aleppo.

“Then we do not know for certain,” Nicholas said, leaning back on his elbow as he chomped on a hunk of bread and cheese. “Adehemar is also uncertain. When he first arrived at the Castle of Hohms, Rolf was not there, but out on patrol. The guards left in charge knew nothing to pass on.”

Neither did Tancred like the uncertain news. Helena might be anywhere—the castle, Antioch, or even Aleppo.”

“My instincts tell me she is in Antioch,” Tancred said.

“Little reason trust your instincts,” Nicholas said.

“Nevertheless, I must get inside the city.”

“And I will send spies to search out the castle. We will once more try to get a written message to Rolf Redwan.”

“In the meantime,” Leif said, “the common soldiers are going without much food. What news do you have from the Greek city,  Bishop Nicholas?”

Tancred suspected that the emperor had long ago abandoned them, withholding  provisions because the western princes and nobles refused to surrender the villages conquered along the way since the fall of Nicaea.

“Do you blame them for not yielding the booty to him?” Leif complained. “They remember the Byzantine treachery done them at Nicaea. And there will be treachery anew over Antioch. General Taticus is here now as legate of the emperor. Again, he wishes to secretly negotiate the surrender of Antioch to Byzantium before any of the princes take the city. But Bohemond has plans to thwart General Taticus.”

The news was not surprising to Tancred or Nicholas. Tancred told him of the Genoese fleet. “By now St. Symeon is in the hands of the Byzantines. Captain Rainald will waste no time setting a course for Cyprus to gain supplies, but the arrival of the Genoese to reinforce the knights will do little. The problem of food will continue as the princes have even more fighting men to feed.”

“Rumors abound of hope,” Leif complained: “By summer, there will be food,”

“In three more weeks we will be in Jerusalem.”

Tancred gestured his impatience. “Words of hope, when not based on facts, circle like falcons, but never land. Rumors also persist that the emperor will send his engineers with siege weapons as he promised at Nicaea. Whether the feudal princes truly believe this is doubtful. Bohemond wishes to take Antioch and become its seigneur.”

“So does Count Raymond,” said Nicholas. “Adehemar mentioned it to me. Duke Godfrey, however, seems to have mellowed. He speaks more of the glory of God than of his own. That, by itself, is a miracle!” Nicholas said wryly.

The pride, arrogance, and bold ruthless courage of the western princes were well known to Tancred and the others. If there were a breed of warriors who could take Antioch and Jerusalem from the well-protected Moslem Turks, it would be these men, he thought.

Leif now became aware of something he apparently had not at first noticed. “Norris should have joined us here by now.”

Nicholas looked up from his cup to meet Tancred’s gaze. Tancred remained silent.

“We bring you dark news,” Nicholas told Norris quietly, and went on to explain Philip’s further treachery in making Tancred a slave to the baron corsair, and the death of Norris near the summer house. “He and Tancred went to a bungalow near the summer house thinking to aid Rufus and his son Joseph.  It was a well-laid trap. They were met by swords and spears from Philip’s guards. Norris was slain.”

Leif’s sense of loss was great, for he and Norris had grown as close as brothers with Tancred.

“I will avenge Norris,” Leif gritted, forming a fist. “And for what he did to you, Tancred!”

“There is no need. Philip is now dead,” Tancred stated flatly.

“The duel took place in the Hippodrome,” said Nicholas. 

Tancred stood and left the tent. The memory brought him no satisfaction, but rather  a determination to find Helena, then to leave the fields of death behind, and to return to Palermo—if  he could ever clear his name in the death of  his half-brother, Derek Redwan.

Behind the Veil  / The Royal Pavilions boo
k3
/ Linda Chaikin

As the famine worsened, bands of ribald French vagabonds, who were poorer than most of the stragglers following the army of knights and soldiers, began to feast upon the dead carcasses of the Turks outside the walls of Antioch. They would disperse and hunt out several bodies, then bring them back to their encampment to pound them with flails and skin them. The vagrants would boil the meat in caldrons over their cooking fires. The smell of simmering human flesh wafted to the tops of the walls, where Turkish soldiers looked in disgust.

When the news of the “feast” reached Bohemond, he and several lords went to investigate. Tancred and Leif walked with them to the ragged encampment of vagabonds.

They came upon the ribald King Tafur and his followers seated on the ground, who mockingly complained in French, “But there is no bread!”

Others laughed, “
Voici mardi gras
!”  ‘This is a party!’

The feudal lords, wearing their fur mantles, watched them in silence.

“How do you feel?” Bohemond inquired.

Tafur responded, “I feel revived. If only I had something in the way of wine to go with this!”

A lord laughed. “Sir King, you shall have it.” He sent his servant at once to fetch a jar of his own good wine for the monarch.

Tancred caught the eye of Leif and gestured to the summit of the gray wall of Antioch where the Turkish sentries stood watching the cannibalism. They shouted down in anger.

“What do they say?” King Tafur asked.

“They say your fine taste in food compels them to show you a kindness,” Tancred interpreted.

“A kindness?”

“They will execute all barbarian prisoners tomorrow, and catapult their heads over the wall for you to eat as well.”

***

In the days ahead a decision was made to travel farther from Antioch in search of food. Nearly twenty thousand knights gathered to ride with Bohemond and Robert of Flanders on a desperate foraging expedition. Tancred rode ahead of the army to scout. Hakeem must have found it safe enough to join him, for he approached Tancred from a distant rocky area.

“Hakeem, there may be trouble at the Castle of Hohms. Rolf Redwan has not been seen since Bishop Basel came from Constantinople with Helena and her mother, Adrianna.”

“I will go and spy it out.”

“Send me word if there is any news of Helena’s presence. I will come.”

Hakeem took his falcon and was about to turn and ride when they saw a massive army of Seljuk Turks proceeding toward them.

“I have never seen so many Turks,” Hakeem whispered.

Was this the army led by Kerbogha for the relief of Antioch? Tancred wondered, his energy rising as he speculated whether Kalid was with them.

He turned to leave when Hakeem shouted, “Bohemond has ridden ahead!”

Robert of Flanders had also ridden forward, oblivious to the danger. Tancred and Hakeem drove hard toward the knights.

“Escape!” Tancred shouted at Hakeem over the wind. “The knights will take you for one of Muslims!”

“I will not desert you, Jehan!”

“Depart, friend! Ride to the castle! It is there I need you!”

Hakeem hesitated, then signaled a salute and headed off toward the distant rocks from which he had come. The falcon soared after him.

The Seljuks came as if from a desert mirage. They were a force composed entirely of horsemen, carrying strong short bows and scimitars and their curved stabbing knives, called yataghans. Each of them handled his mount with the ease of a master horseman. They weaved back and forth as if to music, moving in formations that were strange to the skills of the western knights. A charge by Robert’s men was impossible as they were engulfed and taken by surprise. A barrage of arrows struck, followed by a charge. Tancred smashed his sword into a rider who leaped past him. The Seljuks kept coming, pressing them, dividing their ranks, and in the distance the drums beat and the high shout of “Allah! Allah!” rang through the hills. Robert’s knights of Flanders were falling, yet they fought on tenaciously, in spite of overwhelming odds. As men were struck from their mounts, others grabbed fallen weapons and swung them savagely into the Muslim charge. Tancred struck again and again, and still the Seljuks sent fresh cavalry into the battle. The men of Flanders held. The minutes stretched. The Seljuks came and came again, and Tancred was caught up in an endless struggle with his sword to stay alive. Arrows whizzed; knights fell only to pass their weapons to the foot soldiers, and they fought on, but still the Seljuk cavalry came. Tancred was knocked from his horse and fought on foot. Men died beside him, and then as if in an dream, he heard distant shouts as Bohemond’s Normans rushed to the fight.

Kerbogha’s cavalry saw them coming and the attack broke. The Muslims withdrew for the moment.

Bohemond’s crimson standard was raised.

The echoing shout of the Normans grimly challenged the Moslems: “God is with us! God wills it!”

With this, Bohemond led the charge, their great swords swinging above their heads and scattering the Seljuks in a push forward. Like thunder, the impact sent a breach into the Turks, now falling over the heaped-up bodies of the knights of Flanders. But from the hills on both flanks, Tancred saw new groups of Turks. The wave of bowmen galloped toward them, their arrows striking with deadly accuracy, followed by riders swinging scimitars. The two forces collided in bloody hand-to-hand fighting. The Normans fought savagely, unrelenting, like wounded wolves cornered and determined to break free. The long swords of the knights struck, smashing bones; the scimitars slashed heads from bodies. Neither side would yield. They persisted stubbornly. Seeing a riderless horse, Tancred swung himself up and rode to the side of Bohemond, and as he did, his own scimitar removed the head of a Turk who had leaped past, expecting a notorious kill. The fighting line of the Normans held, and because it did, the onslaught reaped a devastating harvest from Kerbogha’s cavalry. The grim leader, fearing to lose any more of his men, was quick to command a retreat, and the attack broke as they fled back toward the hills.

The men of Flanders were exhausted. Robert, somber and silent, rode past his knights in wordless tribute to their stand. Leif rode up to Tancred; both were too weary to speak. They joined Bohemond and rode back toward Antioch.

The foraging expedition had been a failure, and good knights and horses were lost. The Seljuks from Aleppo had been beaten back with heavy losses, but Kerbogha was not ready to give up. Tancred believed he would return with more fighters to relieve Antioch. A greater and more bloody battle waited yet another day.

***

That night he and Nicholas rode through the camp when a commotion near the tent of Count Raymond of Toulouse drew them aside. They had a prisoner from Antioch. At once Tancred recognized that the Turk was no ordinary soldier, so he rode up to Raymond.

“That man may be of use to us, Seigneur. He is an emir. If you would bring him to your tent we could question him.”

“Yes, a wise thought.” Count Raymond ordered the emir brought inside and motioned for Tancred to follow. The emir’s dark eyes moved from Count Raymond to Tancred.

“Who is your commander?” Tancred asked in Arabic.

“Yaghi-Sian.”

“A strong leader. And Prince Kalid?”

“He is with Kerbogha at Aleppo.”

“Was it not Kerbogha’s warriors we fought?”

“You fought with a contingent of his cavalry from Aleppo under Ma’sud Khan. But Ma’sud came not to fight you. He waits for a million Moslems from the East! He was riding to the Castle of Hohms to bring his nephew’s bride to Aleppo when you came upon him.”

His nephew’s bride—is with
Ma’sud Khan—who is bringing her to Kalid!” 
Tancred was aware of Ma’sud Khan, and had heard that he was more honorable than Kalid.

“Ma’sud Khan turned back. The losses were heavy on both sides,” Tancred said with deliberate calm. “How long has Prince Kalid been in Aleppo?”

“Since before the siege began.”

“Then how could the ceremony of marriage to the woman of Byzantine nobility have taken place?”

“It has not yet taken place.”

Only Nicholas who had joined them earlier understood the intensity of emotion behind Tancred’s pause.

Count Raymond watched Tancred with a curious frown. “You mentioned the name of Prince Kalid. You know him?”

“He is a cousin.”

Raymond appeared shocked. He looked over at Nicholas, who lifted both brows.

“Tancred’s mother was a Moor,” explained Nicholas. “But Tancred has come to understand that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one can come to the True and Living God  but by Him. Tancred is also the son of Count Dreux Redwan. Rolf Redwan at the Castle of Hohms is his uncle.”

The emir scanned Tancred. “You are Jehan, grandson of al-Kareem?”

“I am. And I seek Kalid and his bodyguard Mosul, another cousin—the assassin of my brother Derek Redwan.”

The emir made no reply but watched him steadily.

“How did you find this man?” Tancred asked Count Raymond.

One of Raymond’s captains explained. “The Turkish commander, the one you call Yaghi-Sian, slipped through the gate and launched a night attack against my men who were north of here, near the Orontes. They intended to ambush us, but our night guard alerted Count Raymond, who reacted promptly. He came out of the darkness, taking these wretched Turks by surprise. We routed them in no time and chased them back across the river to Antioch. We nearly succeeded in taking the open gate into the city!”

“We would have entered the city,” spoke another with a sullen face, “if this emir, as you call him, wasn’t thrown by his bolting horse! The incident threw our group of knights into confusion.”

“The grand moment was lost, and the gate was quickly shut,” Count Raymond sighed.

Nicholas drew Tancred aside, his hand on his shoulder. “If Ma’sud rides to the castle to bring Helena, it is likely Basel is there with Adrianna.”

“Yes, so I intend to leave tonight,” said Tancred.

“And I with you. See if the emir knows of Rolf. We must not ride into another trap. It is likely that Walter and your Norman cousins are about.”

Tancred was so encouraged with the news about Helena that he’d discounted the danger of Walter and his Redwan cousins. He spoke again to the emir, but he denied knowing anything about them.

“Are not this Bohemond and his barbarians from the Norman kingdom enough?” the emir inquired with contempt. “You encamp about our city like starving locusts. Do you need this Walter also?”

“Hah!” Count Raymond’s chief captain snarled back with equal contempt. “Listen to his injured dignity! Have you forgotten where you Seljuk Turks first came from? Antioch was never yours until you warred against the Greeks and stole it for your empire! We are taking back what once was the Eastern Roman Empire under Constantine the Roman Emperor!”

Nicholas touched Tancred’s sleeve and gestured his head toward the tent opening. “Let us depart.”