East & West- Catharsis

by David Capel

  I even considered trying to find a ship in Laodicea that would carry me straight back to Constantinople. I could not be sure that Antioch was still held by the Empire. Worse, it could be in the midst of a siege. The idea of fleeing Erkan only to find myself in a city that was under attack from the Turks was alarming. But I had not forgotten the letter carried by the murdered Artabazes. It seemed to me that now I had an opportunity to use that information to my advantage, and that Antioch was the place to begin my search for the mysterious castle it described.

  Hama lies on the Orontes river, which flows westward from the town before bending north on its journey to Antioch and the sea. I followed a road that ran along its south bank for some miles through groves of fruit and olive before it crossed the river and bent northwards, apparently to rejoin the main highway from Hama to Aleppo. At that point I left it, and headed due west, staying on the south side of the river and following a track that ran along its bank towards a range of hills that loomed ahead of me.

  For the greater part of that morning I walked, leading the horse to give it time to recover from the exertions of the long ride the day before. It was a pleasant enough journey in that fertile river valley, and to take my mind off Safia I recited the words of Artabazes’ letter. To my relief they had not disappeared from my memory.

  I camped that night among some palm trees not far from the river bank, and in the morning took to my horse again, judging that it should have regained its fitness. I wanted to take full advantage of the flat ground in valley, and we made good progress as the river bent slowly north-westwards away from the range of hills that were now on my left side.

  In the early afternoon the track divided, with a smaller path heading west into the hills. I decided this was the moment to leave the Orontes, which was now flowing almost due north, and to strike out for the coast. Steadily the ground rose, and I could see that in this region the hills ahead were covered in thick woods. To the right of the path at this point was a craggy knoll, an outlier of the range, and I decided to scale it to take one last look back at the Orontes valley before I left it.

  I tethered my horse and clambered up the rocks. It was a stiff climb, and I was bathed in sweat by the time I reached the top in the early afternoon sunshine. But the effort was worth it, for there was a magnificent view, and I sat on a boulder, panting and gazing at the broad green strip of the Orontes as it wound its way north towards Antioch and east towards Emath and the desert beyond.

  I fancied that I could just make out the town where I had abandoned Safia through the haze. I wondered what had become of her, if she had been caught yet, and whether or not she had succeeded in leading our pursuers far up the road to Aleppo. I scanned the land laid out like a map beneath me, trying to pick out the path that I had followed. And then it was that I noticed it – a whisper of dust kicked up that showed up here and there along the route like the smoke of candle that has just been snuffed out.

  I stared at it for a long time, marking its slow movement along the valley. Then, where the path passed through some open fields I saw them clearly, tiny but unmistakable, two black horsemen cantering along at speed, not five miles from my vantage point.

  I stood and gazed at them in horror. The thoughts went through my head: it could not be them. The chances were that it was someone quite unconnected to me.

  But I knew who it was, even as I uttered his name under my breath. It was Erkan and his nasty looking friend, for sure.

  Jesus Christ, how did they follow me so quickly?

  As I scrambled down the hill I cursed myself for idling along the track so slowly. I should have broken that horse in my haste to reach the coast. By God, if I had repeated that marathon from Nabuk today I would be nearly there, in Laodicea, not fleeing once more for my life in this lonely place!

  My only consolation was that there were only two of them, so my flight from Safia had apparently been not wholly in vain.

  I reached my horse and slung myself aboard. My only chance now was to outpace them. If they were as exhausted as they should be after such a pursuit, then I might be in luck. I spurred my beast into a canter and damned Erkan and his persistence. How on earth had he managed to follow me so unerringly? I looked down at my striped cloak, that I had hoped would conceal me as a merchant. Had its distinctive pattern betrayed me? Certainly once he first established my disguise, Erkan would find it easy enough to seek word of a lone rider wearing such a colourful garment. As I rode I tore the cloak awkwardly from my shoulders and cast it into a ditch by the side of the road.

  The path wound its way into the hills, and soon I was surrounded by thick forest. I resumed my old routine, trotting for the most part, but cantering whenever the ground allowed. There was not a soul to be seen, and I made good progress so that by dusk I must have covered at least a dozen miles from where I had seen the two horsemen.

  I dared not go further in the dark, for the path was too narrow and I could easily fall into a gully by the road or lose my way. So I climbed a little way into the trees and there made a miserable camp, not risking a fire. I slept not at all, but maintained an anxious vigil, straining my ears in the darkness for the sounds of hooves or voices on the road below.

  At the first glimmer of dawn I went on my way, hurrying my mare along the path as quickly as she could manage. After about an hour I noticed smoke rising above the trees ahead. I paused in thought for a moment. On the one hand if this was a village I would obviously be seen and my presence and timing reported to my pursuers. On the other hand there could well be a parting of ways at the settlement, in which case there would be an opportunity to shake them off. I could perhaps play a ruse, making as if to head in one direction, then doubling back through the trees to another.

  I decided to get there as quickly as possible to see how the land lay, and that is how disaster struck. I spurred my horse forward, and almost immediately she stumbled and pulled up. I kicked her on, but she whinnied and would not move, and when I looked down I saw that one hoof was dangling in the air. The horse was lame.

  I cursed aloud in fear and anger, and scrambled to the ground. I tried to lead the animal off the road, so that she could hide amidst the trees, but she would not move. I hadn’t the spirit to put her down, as perhaps I should, so I rummaged in the saddlebags to fetch what essentials I could – my money, some bread, the bow and the dagger.

  Then I ran on down the road in the direction of the village. It was further than I thought, and I soon ran out of breath, unaccustomed as I was to using my legs for their true purpose, and hindered by my awkward burdens. But fear drove me on, and after a mile or so I passed the first rude house and the trees cleared to reveal a scattering of low buildings around a dirty square where chickens pecked and a mule was tethered.

  At first I could see no-one in the silent space, but then a dog barked and I saw movement in the doorway of one of the larger hovels opposite. There stood a burly man wearing an apron, holding what looked like a large pair of tongs. My heart leapt, for it seemed he must be a blacksmith or farrier of some kind, and indeed the smoke I had seen issued from a stone chimney at the back of his dwelling where there might be a forge.

  I hastened over to him and asked him if there was a horse available to buy in the village. He looked at me dumbly and said nothing.

  “Horse, horse!” I said with growing impatience, but he just stared, his brow furrowing, and crossed his burly arms. With a flash of insight I realised that the man could speak no Greek, but I had no idea what the word for ‘horse’ might be in Syriac or Armenian. I tried Arabic, but he shrugged. So I resorted to an absurd mimic of the animal, prancing and pawing frantically as I cursed at the delay in growing panic.

  He smiled in dawning realisation and turned and disappeared into his hut. A moment later he returned and brandished something in the air. It was a horseshoe.

  “Yes, yes”, I cried, “I want to buy one”, and I rummaged in my purse for gold, any amount of it.

  He stared wide-eyed at the c
oins and then at me, then pointed at the mule standing only a few yards away.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” I asked helplessly, but he just shrugged and pointed insistently at the lugubrious animal and then tugged at my sleeve to pull me over to it.

  I looked at the mule, which was saddled with a filthy woollen blanket with large pockets stitched in the sides. My mind was racing in thought. Absent mindedly I handed him over the handful of coins – more than he would see in a year of iron-mongery – and he started to count them greedily. Though I could not use the mule to flee, it might serve me in other ways.

  But now it came to this: I must try to hide, and prepare to fight. I pondered my conundrum, and surprised myself with the clarity of my predicament. My fear had been replaced by another sensation. Excitement, I suppose it is – not the joy of anticipation, but at least the knowledge of a hard task ahead, and the desire to tackle it and deal with it. It is the sensation of the soldier.

  A thought sprang unbidden into my head. “What is the name of this place?” I asked the man. And indicated all around.

  He looked puzzled for a moment, and then seemed to understand.

  “Haffe.”

  I gaped at him for a moment as the realisation of where I was washed through my consciousness.

  “Haffe?” I said stupidly.

  He looked at me suspiciously then shrugged his shoulders and muttered something in his own tongue. He was anxious to get away from me now, and turned to walk away, but I grabbed his shoulder.

  “Wait”. I wanted to ask him if there were any ruined castles thereabouts, but I knew my pursuers would question him in their turn, and they might know more of his language than I did.

  I strained to remember the contents of the message. “Which is the road to Laodicea?” I asked eventually, and repeated the name “Laodicea?” He pointed towards some trees, then shook himself free.

  I gazed that way, trying to work out my bearings. The description in the Antiochene document had been indistinct, but had mentioned a spot to the north-west of Haffe. It had to be the same place, some thirty miles from Laodicea! I started in the direction the man had indicated, dragging the mule with me, and I saw that a track led off from the village that way through the trees.

  I hurried along it, and in moments my thoughts turned to what I would do if I could not find the place. In essence it mattered not: I must lie low in the trees and seek to ambush my opponent if he found me.

  Whether I found this ruined castle or not made not much difference to my chances of escape, and if I were found I must make some kind of stand to have any hope of survival. Something told me that Erkan and his competent friend would track me down.

  Nonetheless I hoped to find what I sought. Not that I was as naive as to dream yet about what I might discover there. But because I hoped it would give me something of an advantage in the struggle to come.

  In the event I had no trouble finding Sayan. The rather vague sounding directions from the letter held true. Just two miles from the village I came across a dry track that lead off to the side into a stony valley. It narrowed into some trees some distance thence. I stared up it for a few moments and thought I discerned some stonework on the crags beyond. I decided to gamble on this diversion. I guessed that I might be at least an hour ahead of a determined pursuer. This was no margin for exploration, but I reminded myself that running was no option. To hide and ambush was my only hope, and this looked like as good a place as any for the trap.

  After only a few hundred yards through the trees the valley opened up again and branched off to the right. In front of me was a low, crag-sided embankment crowned by the unmistakable masonry of a Roman fortification.

  I had found the castle of John Tzimisces.

  I saw immediately that the embankment tapered down to my right and the valley seemed to bend round it in that direction. In front of me a transverse ditch appeared to cut off the main cluster of buildings from the land to my left. I suspected that the crag was in fact a spur with the valley curving round on both sides and the ditch cutting it off at the join to make an isolated hill.

  It was a superb site, with the potential to make it near impregnable if the fortifications were extended to make the most of its position. There was a path clearly picked out with occasional steps that ran up the hither side of the embankment. It zig-zagged up to a buttress in the wall that looked as though it sheltered a gate facing flush with the walls.

  Instead of taking that, I turned right and led my mule along the valley, inspecting the walls above me carefully as I went. I noticed that in a few places they were breached, perhaps intentionally to prevent the castle from being easily re-used after Imperial forces had abandoned the place. For the site had the feeling of complete desertion, set there in the forest with nothing but the sound of crickets to disturb it. I could see why it might seem a good place to hide some monastic treasure, at least temporarily. For the time being I felt entirely alone, even though the main track to Laodicea was only a mile or less behind.

  The walls did not line the full extent of the spur, but ended in a tower perhaps half way to its end. I rounded the corner, and the narrow valley doubled back the other side of the hill as I had suspected. The castle walls continued on that side, so that the building formed a kind of plug, stopping the spur at its neck like the cork of a bottle.

  I tethered my mule among some bushes on the further side, so that the animal would be concealed by the bulk of the spur from the track as it approached the entrance to the castle. Then, taking my weapons with me, I scrambled up the side of the embankment and entered the castle through a tumbledown breach.

  In the century since its abandonment, nature had invaded the yellow-grey stones. The interior was a mass of weeds, with thorn bushes splitting apart the masonry and saplings taking root in the door frames. Rapidly I explored cisterns and store houses and the tumbling wooden lean-to sheds that must have sheltered the garrison.

  On the southern wall near the gate I found the chapel, its door ajar. I looked carefully for signs of recent entry and saw no footprint bar my own. Cobwebs masked the shadowy entrance, and I concluded that the place had remained undisturbed in recent months.

  I scraped open the door. Inside all was cool, the bare stone walls unpainted, with no wooden panelling. Only the altar betrayed the chapel’s purpose. The place was dimly lit by slender windows that overlooked the valley below.

  As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw a narrow aperture in the far corner. I paced over and saw that it led to a ladder-like staircase descending into the rock under the chapel floor. I had no means of making a torch, and there were no candles in the bare room, but peering down I could see that the stairs levelled out after only a few feet into a low, crudely cut chamber more like a drainage culvert than a crypt. I lay on the dusty floor near the head of the stair and stared into the black pit.

  Even after allowing for my eyes to adjust I could make out nothing more than some vague shapes in the blackness. There was nothing for it but to feel my way in. I crept down the steep stairs and crawled tentatively under the flagstones of the chapel, holding out one arm in front of me.

  In moments I scraped my hand against the roughly hewn stonework in front of me. The cave seemed barely to extend more than the length of a man. To my relief the place was bone dry. I had half expected to encounter mud and worm-infested slime. Feeling around with growing confidence my knuckles suddenly rapped against the hollow sound of wood. With growing excitement I established that a box had somehow been manoeuvred down here and shoved into one corner.

  I pulled at its sides, but my fingers slipped before they could find sufficient purchase to move the thing.

  My muscles ached in the confined space, and it grew increasingly hot down there as I grappled at the box. I forced my fingernails into what I hoped was a crack under the lid and painfully tried to lift it. Again my hand slipped, catching my nail in the wood. But for a fraction of a second the plank had shifted, and I clawed away at it wit
h renewed vigour, ignoring the splinters that jabbed into my fingertips.

  At last I worked the lid free and reached my hand inside. There was something solid there, the same temperature as the wood, but smoother, and I fondled it for a moment before withdrawing my hand in shock as the realisation that I was feeling the bone of a man.

  But my sudden movement disturbed the contents inside, and there was not just the rustle of some crude textile, but the unmistakable chink of metal. Heedless now of the gruesome skeleton, I thrust both my hands into the box and felt the rough texture of sackcloth covering hard metal shapes that clanked together under my searching fingers.

  Buried treasure!

  I laughed out loud at the thought, and pulled at the sackcloth.

  The bag was heavy with lumpen implements, and it was a struggle at that awkward angle to free it from the coffin, but my excitement gave me strength, and within a minute I had dragged it to the top of the stair.

  I heaved it behind the altar and then drew my dagger to cut the string that fastened it at the neck.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes as I gazed at the bounty I had found. It was an extraordinary trove, and as I sifted through it, spreading it out on the flagstones and handling the more precious objects, it seemed entirely plausible that here was the fruit of John Tzimisces’ raids further south into Palestine and the borders of Egypt.

  Realising that he would never reconquer the southern lands, had the great soldier brought back what he could from the monasteries of the Holy Land itself, fearing for their well being as his soldiers retreated?

  It seemed more than possible. Here was a gold censer with silver chains. There a silver paten, decorated with the images of the apostles in hammered gold. I fingered a dozen precious rings that must once have adorned the fingers of abbots or bishops, each fitted with a precious stone of ruby or ebony, cunningly embellished with intricate carvings.