MILES CHRISTI

Chapter Seventeen

A quirky, polemic, and illusionary chapter regarding the conflict of religions.

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MILES CHRISTI

Chapter Seventeen

Nicaea fell . . . Though not in the manner imagined.

It had surrendered without force of arms. Alexius, that fox, his banners over the city – the goal, but not like this. Surrender, indeed, was preferrable, but Alexius had not informed the seigneurs it had happened, nor had conferred with them the method or plan. And there the pilgrims were, in the siege towers, swords drawn, to go up and over the battlements and serve themselves up whole with trance-like fury that had possessed their Northmen fathers . . .

No looting. No ransoms. A cheat. That a pilgrim should risk life and limb and be denied these.

Tis not honourable.

Looting is honourable. As is Ransom.

We’ve no conception of what this means.

It is consequence. How chaotic life would be without consequence. It is structure and order, mercy and punishment; mercy is not mercy if there is no punishment. What then are the pilgrims to the Byzantines? Hirelings? Paid dogs? . . . Slaves. Indeed, slaves, for slaves receive no reward and are not paid a wage. But they refused the wage; they were not mercenaries . . .

Nicaea would’ve been a husk of itself if the pilgrims had taken it, Alexius was certain. And which prince would’ve claimed it for himself? He knew the Franks, their word, at best, a stipulation, and short-lived . . .

******************

Tìbald’s eyes kept reaching to the ceiling – that a canvas so broad could be pitched so high. Higher than the tallest tree. Verily – tree upon tree – Alexius’ great pavilion where the seigneurs had gathered in the aftermath. Colourful wool rugs of crimson and maze on a polished teak flooring. Brass lamps in the hundreds from the crossbeams with a feathery light. Icons of pressed gold leaf. A traveling city outside of Pelecanum. Massive yet transient. The need to impress. It did impress and could contain with in its span every prince’s pavilion. That ha Shem should’ve had such a canvas in the wilderness, requiring His to be only 30 cubits long. Why ever disassemble it? But that was its purpose – disassembling.

And Tìbald an ant under this artificial sky so white he could go blind staring at it. They all were blind – he and the princes and their retinues before Alexius on his throne, always on his throne when within his presence, and them under his tent. He had assembled them altogether. A mistake? He could no longer wheedle with them one on one for they were different men in each other’s presence like the Achaean chieftains on the plains of Troy. And all the while the Magister Officiorum droned the endless formalities.  

Sing the rage of the son of Peleus, murderous, doomed, that cost the countless losses hurtling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls . . .

Jerusalem and Helen.

Tìbald lost in the tent’s reaches, blind, working his penance – on the Road, in the Fight. He’d killed an innocent man so very long ago. He did not want to go to Hell. Yet, his appetites still. And his voice silent. That Aile and he find rest. Uneven man. What to do? ‘All the things God would have us do are hard. If we obey God, we must disobey ourselves . . . That is hard.’

Sing to me of the Man, Muse, the man of twists and turns . . . driven time and again off course . . .

That he do what he do best . . .

. . . And Priam bade her (Helen) draw nigh . . . Tell me, then, who is yonder huge hero so great and godly. I have seen men taller by a head, but none so comely and so royal.

Surely, he must be a king . . .

Regal Bohemond in the summer of life. In the canon of Polycleitus. Man of destiny – the seigneur men wanted to be. Clean-shaven unlike the other princes, authority defaulted to him naturally, his speech unemotional and to the point. Though he bore no scars, he’d killed many men – shattered their bucklers if they were sticks. None who fought him lived, the cutting a formality, for in facing him, they were already dead. That one so accomplished should be so ill possessed. If the war was Raymond’s child, Bohemond would be its hijacker.

. . . The old man (Priam) marvelled at him . . . ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘who is that other shorter by a head . . . but broader across the chest and shoulders . . . He stalks in front of the ranks as it were some great woolly ram ordering his ewes.’

Tancred, Bohemond’s nephew, could’ve been his son. The most dangerous of the princes with a ruthless upbringing: too often beaten and too often indulged. Tancred did not know what he did not know and it gave him daring. Loyalty, surprisingly, his fiercest virtue – first and foremost to the House of Guiscard, second to the Norman race, and last as a Christian . . . A Christian last, yet a big part as it served him. All three served him as he served them, and in serving them, served himself. Generosity born from greed. What glory if Tancred be for you. What doom the same.

The Magister Officiorum – on and on in Greek, in French, in Latin.

Tìbald still musing in the tent’s high heavens: Nicaea back in Christ’s hands, the Turks on the run, their manifest destiny blunted – the world better for it. What Christian or Jew thinks Islam up to par? There! There! It’s said – with Tancred’s daring . . . So Tìbald mused. Blame it on him . . . Christian and Jew better than Islam.

Think so the Jews? As a race, a faith, a group (Why this now? Though tis a war story – religions against religions . . .). Judeo-Christian, whatever that means. Judeo would do just fine by itself. Some saint invariably seeking Abraham to give his claims weight . . . But in the question of subjugation: if subjugated, and who would ever wish to be subjugated, Islam was preferable . . . Thus far. The Mizrahim and the Sephardim had fought alongside the Sunni Turks; they spoke a common language and Nicaea their city too. In terms of subjugation, better the devils they knew than the crazy Franj. Under Islam, none of this idiocy of three persons in one God. The Jews and Muslims thought the Christians stupid. Mohamed, to Islam, is still but a prophet, though as a religion, of course, they are wrong, but minus Christian enmity . . . Thus far.   

‘People of the Book’ – Islam says, the latecomer cousins. ‘Our Book’ say the Jews with little to fear from these benign sons of Ismael. How benign were they? They could be cruel, and in fact, were cruel. Though as they co-exist – ‘Judeo-Arabic’ culture. The Midrash in Arabic. The Tanakh in Arabic. No mere money lenders as in Frankish kingdoms, ‘but denizens of the Islamic courts’. A Golden Age (as Islam would frame it) of cultural modernity, of great philosophical thought. In the West, the Ashkenazim were restricted to money and usury. What broad strokes. To the East, the Franj were mindless killers, killing anyone who was not them; they’d turn on the Romans if need be . . . Mindless – what is it to be mindless? An ascribed state. The straw man. Who is ever mindless? To everyone, their logic. To everyone their ‘T’. . .

Mad. We’re completely mad . . .

So the rancour between Christians and Jews – an animosity of sisters. In the Talmud stories of a fleckless Yeshu, a vile and stupid creature, noted for his lust and black magic; he sits in Hell in boiling excrement. ‘Yeshu – we know who he is. His mother was that Nazarene whore who slept with a Roman soldier named Panthera – Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera - Yeshu ben Panthera.’ Yeshu the bastard, clever rabbis say. Not so much his was a fool, but he blasphemed the true religion and led the world astray. ‘Son of the Virgin you say? Son of the Panther.’ . . .

But never mind Jews and Christians – the Seljuks, the target of hostilities, the heathen torturers of Christian pilgrims, how the seigneurs’ minds had changed. How could heathens be such a brave and noble race? Valiant warriors. What great Christians they would make if come to the fold. An honour taking their heads. For the head the pilgrim paraded on a pike was that of no coward. Brave, brave heathen! God have mercy on your souls. No wonder the Caliphate feared them . . .

So the disassembling . . . I said the tent was for disassembling . . .

The Magister Officiorum concluded his litany.

Bohemond boldly stepped forward without invitation. “Basileus, I have gathered the princes and nobles upon your request. Nicaea and all its treasure have been delivered into your hand by our efforts. We now defer to you generosity as we have been denied spoils.”

Alexius, upon his throne, nodded and then waved his hand gently to brush Bohemond back. “We are most gratified by the return of Nicaea and glorify God for this wonderous work,” he spoke in Latin. “Greater still is the unity of the Army of Christ, for we are not Roman or Frank, but Christians under one banner, moved by one Mind and fought with one Hand. It is just and holy to show mercy to the vanquished so they may see the love of Christ and their pagan heart turn.” He said this because he had returned the family of Kilij Arslan unharmed and without ransom.

Alexius surveyed the assembly. The suspicious faces, disgruntled faces, skeptical faces. Yet, one overwhelmed by the vast surroundings like an overgrown child. He had to win them back.

“We wish to compensate thee with gold and great gifts,” he announced himself accounting them a privilege as if the seigneurs should salivate like dogs – he could no longer wheedle with them one on one for they were different men in each other’s presence.  

The Magister Officiorum clapped his hands. A procession of treasure chests streamed into the hall, each in the grip of four brawny men straining on the handles. Groups of four shuffled before each of the major princes and laid at their feet not one, but five great chests the height of a man’s waist and long as a bed. They sprang the lids open and out spilled jewels and coin of gold and silver, diamonds clear as ice, gems like ripe fruit and beautiful as a woman’s charms. It weakened them. They sighed like love-starved men. Alexius could not have struck them any harder.

Nobles of secondary titles received a single chest or two or three of smaller size. Still, more treasure than they could’ve imagined. The petty seigneurs received bags of gold; a soft-bellied eunuch placed a head-sized pouch in Tìbald’s open hands. And before they could catch their breaths, silk robes were draped over the treasure chests – marvelous garments of blues and reds sparkling with gold thread and precious stones in swirling patterns. Then came armour – golden cuirasses, ruby and ivory hilt swords, javelins with gold and silver points – all placed in heaps before the seigneurs so they spill out on the floor.

“Glory to God,” Alexius pronounced. Money solves everything.  

Tancred, the new-age man, in his fine silk robe over the latest fashion of lamellar armour, his newly designed fluted helm in the crook of his arm, glared insulted at his single treasure chest.

“You have bound yourselves to Us by oath,” Alexius said. “Though not all of you. On this it was agreed. Be advised to take the oath now as the Bishop of Rome would have you do.”

“I owe allegiance to Bohemond only,” Tancred said, having avoided the pledge to lead their forces to Nicaea while Bohemond had stayed behind. “I refuse this oath. I am pledged to Christ, not to you.”

He said that? Tancred’s daring. The great pavilion became small.

Alexius a frieze, his façade unaltered. Not so Prince George Palaeologus, Alexius’ brother-in-law, who stared Tancred down.

“No, Tancred,” Robert Curthose said. “You offend his majesty, the Basileus.”

“Yes, you have insulted the emperor!” Godfrey de Bouillon scolded. “Apologize and take the oath!”

“As readily as you did?” Tancred sneered and folded his arms. “If you give me . . .

If you give me this tent filled with money, and in addition, all the other presents you gave to all the seigneurs, I too will take the oath.”

George Palaeologus charged off the dais and shoved him. “γουρούνι που τρώει σκατά (shit-eating pig)! Έλα ρε χωριάτη! Οργισμένο σκυλάκι (Come on, you country peasant! Pissing little dog) . . .”

Tancred knocked him back and pulled his sword. Let there be blood.

Tìbald dropped his bag of gold, his own hand to his sword. Protect Curthose!

Alexius, himself, shot off the dais to place himself between them.

Bohemond wrenched Tancred’s wrist behind his back and choked him with the crook of his arm. “It is not fitting to strike the kinsman of the Basileus,” Bohemond seethed in his ear.

Palaeologus, his fists ready, stood before the young Norman. “Δεν φοβάμαι αυτόν τον μικτή, ούτε τον χειριστή του (I fear not this mongrel, nor his handler).”

To which Bohemond replied, “Οπότε λες σε μια γλώσσα που δεν μιλάει (So you say in a language he doesn’t speak).” Not that Tancred could speak at all as Bohemond squeezed his throat. “You will take the oath?” Tancred tapped him out on the shoulder. “You will apologize to the Basileus and his kinsman?”

Tancred nodded, falling to his knees. If not, his uncle would do worse to him.

Without a word, Alexius turned and ascended to his throne to take up Sceptre and Cristobel.

Tancred puffed. He dare not look at Bohemond, his peers, or at George Palaeologus.

And fell to his knees. ‘Loyalty to the House of Guiscard’. “I have sinned against you and Almighty God,” he said to Alexius. “I have sinned against your kinsman who nobly sought to defend your honour.” He paused for a breath. “I have sinned against my brother pilgrims . . . I . . . I swear the oath of fealty to you. I will honour this pledge so help me God.” Alexius stone-faced and Tancred on his knees. Then a sigh: “Father, forgive me.”

Alexius let the entreaty ripen.

“By Our mercy,” Alexius in a measured tone, “and the will of God, We forgive thee. We accept your oath and look upon you as Our own.” He turned to Palaeologus. “Will you forgive Our son, Tancred and receive him as your brother?”

“I forgive our brother,” Palaeologus said too quickly.

“Rise, Our son,” Alexius said, the mercy in his voice unnerving.

Tancred stood looking neither right nor left and backed into the ranks.

“Let us now feast and celebrate the great victory wrought by God,” Alexius said.

“Amen,” Bohemond said.

“Amen,” said the rest.

“Six weeks to Jerusalem,” Bishop Adhemar cried.

“Six weeks to Jerusalem!” they shouted as the expectation seized them. Then to the banquet.

Tìbald shoved food in his mouth without tasting. Before him the sack of coins the size of a head. He pressed his hand to his gut as if it might burst. He pushed his plate away. Yet he took a piece of meat and once again began eating.