01 - Murder in the Holy City

by Simon Beaufort

  Geoffrey frowned, discomfited that his men should be telling stories about him. “It is a way of unlocking some of the secrets of Saracen knowledge,” he answered carefully. “They are far ahead of us in so many ways: medicine, astrology, mathematics, architecture …”

  “I understand your admiration,” said Tancred sharply, “although I do not share it. But by your own admission, there is much with which you can satisfy your insatiable yearning for knowledge here, especially if you master Arabic. Stay and learn—I will release you from desert patrols if it makes you happy. And while you learn, you can solve a riddle for me.”

  “What riddle?” asked Geoffrey suspiciously, anticipating a trap.

  “The deaths of these two knights,” said Tancred. “And three priests. I thought perhaps you had solved the case when you brought that Mikelos woman here earlier today, but even as I questioned her, her innocence was being proven, as a fifth victim was killed using these carved daggers. Thus, the killer could not have been her, and it seems she is what she says: an honourable widow whose house was chosen at random for John of Sourdeval’s murder.”

  He perched on the edge of the table and looked solemnly at Geoffrey. “I know I often ask you to do things well beyond any obligation, but our comradeship has benefitted us both at times. And now I need you again. These two knights—Guido and John—were in my uncle Bohemond’s service. Their murders represent an attack against the Normans in Jerusalem, and that includes both you and me. You are good with riddles—you solved the mystery of those thefts back in Nicaea when all the priests and scholars were at their wits’ end. That shows that you can get to the bottom of affairs such as this. You can be subtle, wily, and dare I say, even devious, to find out what you need. I would like you to serve me again and to solve these murders.”

  Geoffrey ran a hand through his hair. He could hardly refuse Tancred—despite his reluctance to undertake such duties, he was still in Tancred’s service and would be until Tancred agreed to release him. He was vaguely amused to note that Tancred was asking, rather than ordering, him to help. In this way, Geoffrey would be his willing agent, not merely a hired hand, which would eliminate any resentment that might have interfered with Geoffrey’s solving of the case. He smiled suddenly, out of respect for Tancred’s transparent, but effective, cunning.

  “What do you know of these murders?” he asked.

  Tancred grinned back, aware that Geoffrey had seen through his ruse, but also aware that he had won his former mentor’s cooperation. He sat on a stool and gestured for Geoffrey to sit next to him. “Little, I am afraid. Five men have died in similar circumstances so far: the two knights and three priests. The three priests seem to have been murdered with a weapon identical to that which was used to kill the knights.”

  He paused for a moment and chewed at his thumbnail. “The first victim was Sir Guido of Rimini, whose body was discovered about three weeks ago under a tree in the gardens of the Dome of the Rock. The second was a Benedictine monk, Brother Jocelyn from France. He died two days after Guido, and his body was found inside the church at the Dome of the Rock. The third was a Cluniac, Brother Pius from Spain, who was found dead in the house of a Greek butcher. His body was discovered the same morning as Brother Jocelyn’s. Then there was John of Sourdeval—a friend of yours, I believe—whom you found in a house in the Greek Quarter earlier today. And news came a short while ago that a Greek priest named Loukas has been killed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So, the priests are not from the same Order, not from the same country, and not even from the same Church, because Loukas is Greek Orthodox and the others are Latin. But both knights were in Bohemond’s service.”

  “Surely the Patriarch is investigating these priest’s deaths?” asked Geoffrey. “After all, they are under his jurisdiction—not yours, not the Advocate’s, and not Bohemond’s.”

  Tancred’s eyes flashed briefly at this impertinence, but his temper cooled as quickly as it had flared. “The Patriarch is having no success at all. I discussed this business with him tonight, after news came of the last killing. I see the murders of these men as a direct attack on our authority here. How do we know it is not a diabolical plan to expose our vulnerability in Jerusalem and to incite our enemies to attack us? We are surrounded by hostile forces, and yet we are so full of factions and rifts that, if struck in the right place, the fragile alliances with our fellow Christians might shatter like glass. And then we will all die, ripped apart by an enemy who is watching constantly for such holes in our armour. There is more at stake than the deaths of two knights and three monks: I believe this business might affect our very survival in the Holy Land, let alone the possibilities of establishing other kingdoms.”

  And there we have it, thought Geoffrey. Young Tancred—who only a few short months before had become Prince of Galilee—wanted a kingdom of his own. And Tancred could never have a kingdom unless Jerusalem was safe.

  Unaware of Geoffrey’s reservations, Tancred continued. “Since the first victim was killed, the Patriarch has had two clerks investigating, but they have come up with nothing. I have acquired a copy of their report, so that you might study it at your leisure.” He handed Geoffrey a scroll. “You may question the clerks further if you wish. Their names are Brothers Marius and Dunstan, and they work in the Patriarch’s scriptorium.”

  Tancred rose, and sensing the interview was at an end, Geoffrey also stood. Tancred gave another sudden smile, one that made him look even younger than his twenty-three years, and gently touched Geoffrey’s shoulder.

  “I am grateful to you for doing this,” he said. “I believe it may be more important than either of us can know.”

  For some reason, his words struck a feeling of cold unease in the pit of Geoffrey’s stomach.

  His mind teeming with questions, Geoffrey made his way back through the deserted streets to the citadel. He had not gone far when he thought he heard a noise behind him, and he immediately sprang into the deep shadows of a doorway, dagger drawn, to wait. He stood immobile for several moments before thinking he must have been mistaken, and cautiously eased himself out into the road again. He looked carefully in both directions, but the street was as silent and still as the grave, and not even a rat disturbed it. Forcing himself to relax, he walked on again, faster this time, and with his dagger still drawn.

  Moments later, he thought he heard a sound again—the soft slither of leather soles on the parched, dry dust of the street. He turned abruptly into one of the many narrow alleyways that turned the city into a labyrinth, and he cut sharply left, then right, and waited. Sure enough, there were footsteps behind him, running, desperate to catch up with him before he became invisible in the complex catacomb of runnels. He listened hard, eyes closed in concentration. Not one set of footsteps, but two, or possibly three. Who could be following him so intently in the middle of the night? It could not be casual robbers: first, his padded surcoat with its faded Crusader’s cross sewn on the back identified him as a knight, a trained warrior whom robbers would be hard pushed to best in hand-to-hand conflict; and second, his pursuers were being remarkably persistent for a chance attack.

  Still listening, Geoffrey weighed his options. He was armed with a short sword and a dagger, and he was skilled in the use of both. He also wore a light mail shirt under his surcoat, and so was reasonably well protected, while still able to move unhindered by heavy body armour. He was in no doubt that he could take on three opportunistic thieves, but not three knights trained like himself. He decided caution was the order of the day, and sank back further into the shadows.

  Within moments, three men shot past, fleet-footed and confident. One skidded to a halt so close that Geoffrey could have stretched out his hand and touched him. The man glared up and down the empty alleyway as if just by looking he could tell which way Geoffrey had gone. The others, seeing their quarry lost, came back shaking their heads, panting hard, and bending over to regain their breath. Geoffrey held his, afraid even the soft sound of his breathing might
give him away, and he felt his heart begin to pound in protest.

  He strained his ears as the men began to talk in low voices. He could not hear what they were saying, but he could hear isolated words, and the language they spoke identified them as Greeks. He released his breath slowly as the three men walked back the way they had come, the last one, judging from his angry gestures, furious that they had been so easily fooled.

  Why was Geoffrey being followed by Greeks? They obviously did not intend to kill him, or they would have done so earlier and avoided the trouble of following him. Were they the murderers of the hapless knights and monks, aware now that Tancred had charged Geoffrey with solving the mystery? But that did not make sense either, for Tancred would not have told anyone what he intended to ask Geoffrey to do, especially because he believed that the murders were threatening his own interests.

  Geoffrey waited some time in the shadows before slipping out and making his way stealthily back to the citadel. He did not go by the most direct route, back the way he had come, but took a tortuous journey along the dingy alleys where the traders lived, stopping every so often to listen. Once or twice, he heard sounds, but the first time, it was a scrawny cat scavenging among some offal, and the second it was the furious cry of a hungry baby demanding to be fed.

  At last the citadel loomed ahead of him, the huge Tower of David a black mass against the dark sky. The citadel, called the Key to Jerusalem, was a formidable fortress. It was surrounded by a pair of curtain walls that were each several feet thick, and that were pierced by two gates. The first entrance was the great fortified barbican at the front that led outside the city walls, and the second entrance was a sally port that led onto David Street inside the city.

  Within the lower of the two curtain walls was the outer bailey, where the common soldiers camped, while the more secure inner bailey was located inside the taller curtain wall. It was in the Tower of David in the inner bailey that Geoffrey had his quarters. While many knights had opted to live in sumptuous houses appropriated when the Crusaders had taken the city, others, like Geoffrey, preferred the security and convenience of life in the citadel. It was overcrowded, smelly and noisy, but it was well protected against attack, and there were no neighbours to complain about the peculiar hours working soldiers kept, or the incessant clang of blacksmith’s forges as weapons were honed and armour mended.

  The citadel was rigorously guarded by the Advocate’s soldiers. As Geoffrey approached, basically unidentifiable in standard surcoat and helmet, there came the sound of arrows being fitted to bows by archers along the wall, and the captain of the guard called out for him to identify himself. Geoffrey pulled off his basinet so they could see his face, and told them his name. The captain thrust his torch near Geoffrey’s face to satisfy himself that the sturdy knight who had been walking Jerusalem’s streets in the dark was indeed the English-born Geoffrey Mappestone. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness in his manner, for the captain was a Lorrainer and had no love for the Normans—like Geoffrey and Hugh—who lived in the citadel. Eventually, Geoffrey was allowed past, only to go through a similar process at the gate that separated the outer bailey from the inner bailey.

  The Tower was always rowdy, as would be expected in a building filled with warriors, and even now, in the depths of the night, there were guffaws of laughter and triumphant shouts from some illicit game of dice. Geoffrey, being relatively senior in the citadel hierarchy because of the regard in which Tancred held him, had his own chamber, a tiny, cramped room in the thickness of the wall overlooking David’s Gate. It served Geoffrey as an office as well as a bedchamber and, on occasion, even as a hospital if one of his men were ill and needed rest away from the smelly, cramped conditions of the tents in the outer bailey.

  Gratefully, he pushed open the stout wooden door to his chamber and stepped inside. It was dark, and only the faint shaft of silver moonlight glimmering through the open window offered any illumination. The room was sparsely furnished: a truckle bed that could be rolled up and moved into the short corridor that led to the garderobe; a table strewn with parchment and writing equipment; a long bench against one wall; and a chest that held spare bits of armour, some clothes, his beloved books, and some less intellectual loot from Nicaea. His dog, stretched out in front of the window to take advantage of the breeze, looked up lazily as Geoffrey entered. It gave a soft, malevolent growl, and went back to sleep.

  Without bothering to light the candle that was always set on the windowsill, Geoffrey unbuckled his surcoat and removed the chain-mail shirt, hanging them carefully on wall pegs. No warrior who valued his life failed to take good care of the equipment that might save it. He tugged off his boots and, clad in shirt and hose, wearily flopped down on the bed.

  And immediately leapt up again.

  “God’s teeth!”

  Pinned to the wall above his head was a heart, dark with a crust of dried blood. And it was held there by a curved dagger with a jewelled hilt.

  In the cold light of morning, Geoffrey could see quite clearly that the dagger was not the same one that had been used to kill John of Sourdeval in the Greek Quarter the previous day: the blade was chipped and bunted, and the hilt was adorned with roughly cut pieces of coloured glass rather than jewels. But it was similar, and its message was clear: someone knew exactly where Geoffrey had been that night, and what he had been told to do. It was a warning that he should not meddle. But it also told him that someone in the citadel was involved in the murders. Security was tight at the Advocate’s stronghold, and no one was allowed in unescorted. And certainly no one was allowed in the knights’ rooms on the upper floors. What little cleaning that took place was performed by foot soldiers, not by local labour. The only people who could have gained access to his chamber, therefore, were Crusaders.

  But what of the heart? What was its significance? Geoffrey frowned as he poked at it with his dagger, turning it over to try to gain some clue as to its origins. The dog watched with greedy attention, licking its lips and salivating on the floor.

  “The kitchens,” announced Hugh, eyeing dog and heart distastefully from the window seat. “Where else could it have come from?”

  “It looks like the heart of a pig,” said Geoffrey, still prodding it. “Pigs are not common here. The Moslems and Jews consider them unclean, and we have learned by bitter experience that their meat becomes tainted quickly in the desert heat. There are simply not many pigs around.”

  “Well, go to the kitchens, and ask whether a pig has been slaughtered recently,” said Hugh, becoming bored by the conversation. “You will probably find that they killed one to make blood pudding or something, and parts of the carcass were left over.”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “That is unlikely. Food is not so abundant in this wilderness that we can afford to discard it carelessly. I imagine all parts of any animal slaughtered will be used, even the bones to make soup.”

  Hugh rose languidly from the window seat. “All this talk of food is making me hungry. It must be time to eat.”

  Abandoning the grisly warning, Geoffrey followed Hugh down the spiral stairs that led to the great hall on the second floor of the Tower of David, with the dog at his heels. On the way, Hugh banged hard on the door of Sir Roger of Durham, an English knight who had elected to stay in Jerusalem after the rest of his contingent had left. The remainder of the knights, about three hundred in all, were mainly Lorrainers in the pay of the Advocate; however, there were also substantial numbers of Normans who were in the retinues of Bohemond—like Hugh and Roger—and Geoffrey’s lord, Tancred.

  Roger emerged from his chamber, and followed them down the stairs. He was a huge man with cropped black hair and a brick-red complexion, and was the illegitimate son of the powerful Prince-Bishop of Durham. Roger was a simple man, blessed with a north country bluntness that Geoffrey assumed he must have inherited from his mother, who had been the Bishop’s robe-maker. Roger had no time at all for the politics and intrigues in Jerusalem, and was always the f
irst to volunteer for expeditions where he would be able to use his formidable fighting skills. Roger’s prodigious strength and honesty, coupled with Hugh’s lugubrious cynicism and Geoffrey’s quick intelligence, made them a force to be reckoned with in the citadel hierarchy. John of Sourdeval, Geoffrey recalled with a pang, had often made a fourth, his gentleness and integrity repressing some of Roger’s and Hugh’s wilder acts.

  “I heard you had a heart delivered last night,” said Roger conversationally, pushing past Geoffrey to be the first to arrive at the meal in the hall. “Do you want it? I have not eaten a heart since I left Durham.”

  “You would be in competition with half the flies in Palestine for it,” drawled Hugh. “It stinks like a cesspool.”

  Roger grinned, showing strong brown teeth. “Picky Frenchman,” he said. Hugh smiled back, while Geoffrey wondered how they could be so complacent about such a breach in security.

  Geoffrey watched Roger clatter down the stairs in front of him. Roger was not a man Geoffrey would have imagined he would have forged a friendship with—he was coarse, loved fighting, and despised anything remotely intellectual. Yet English knights were a rarity on the Crusade, and Geoffrey found himself first drawn to Roger for the simple reason that they were countrymen. Later, however, he had come to respect other qualities in Roger: his honesty, a certain crude integrity, and an absolute loyalty to his friends—chiefly Geoffrey and Hugh. Although Geoffrey had more in common with the quick-witted, sardonic Hugh, Geoffrey admired Roger and felt himself fortunate to have two such friends, regardless of the difference in their personalities.