The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  The doge had seen to that.

  Dandolo gripped the cold tablet with the curious writing on it tightly in his right hand, under his robe. There was a special pocket in his right sleeve where he could lodge it, but he had learned that it was at its most powerful when he had it in his grip. He had only to think the words written on it and he could feel the minds of men glaze as they passed under his control.

  The most powerful weapon in the world. But he had also learned that it had to be used with discretion, and that it needed a strong will to control it. He could not think that it had a will of its own, but he knew enough to respect the force within it. It wasn’t in the clay itself, but in the writing. But only the most perfect copy could ever replicate that. And who could possibly make a duplicate of anything so complicated? Only someone deeply familiar with the original. The old Armenian? He was dead. The only other people who knew of it were Frid and Leporo. Frid was so loyal he might as well have been part of Dandolo’s own body. As for Leporo … the monk was a follower, not to be trusted as far as you’d trust your own limbs; but he knew only as much as it was necessary for him to know. And his hatred of Frid had endured for decades; it was under control.

  The tablet had served him well so far. The army he needed was gathered. Now it was time to put it to the test.

  Dandolo turned to his companions, wincing as he willed his failing left eye to bring them into focus.

  ‘Is everything going according to plan?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Altissima,’ Leporo replied. ‘We have stopped the supply boats taking food to San Niccolò. It’s been a week now. They have water, but not enough, and with the weather growing warmer, it will be growing stale in the barrels.’

  Dandolo held up a hand. ‘We don’t want to push this too far,’ he said. ‘Biddable is what we need, not resentful. Replenish the water. And keep an eye out for disease. We must tread carefully. Let Frid take charge of it. They trust Frid. He is more like them than we are. Let them continue to want for food. We need dogs that are hungry enough to fight.’

  He nodded at Frid, who stood by the door. The Norseman inclined his head in return, and left. Leporo watched him go. He showed no deference to the doge, and yet the doge treated him more cordially than he had ever treated his faithful monk.

  But his time would come.

  ‘And now,’ said Dandolo, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Now for Zara.’

  Leporo half shrugged. ‘You’ll never get them to agree to that.’

  ‘I’ll get them to do anything I want. Assemble their leaders.’

  Dandolo considered. The game of chess was going as he wished. Since Eastertide, the Crusaders had been arriving in Venice, and the Venetians had billeted them all on the barren little island of San Niccolò. Once there, there was no means for them to get food and drink except by boat – and the Venetians controlled the boats.

  The Crusaders had another problem. As he had planned, the great numbers of men the French leadership had expected had not materialized. There were not enough people to fill the fleet Venice had built for them, let alone pay for it. Even by handing over all their money, and all their gold and silver plate, all their treasures, everything except their horses and what they needed to fight with, Leporo calculated that they were still 35,000 grossi short. But the Venetians had a contract and it had to be honoured.

  No one disagreed with that and, as for the Venetian Council, they ate out of Dandolo’s hand. In the meantime, if the Crusaders refused to join him in his expedition against the City of Zara, he’d keep the money they’d paid him, and the fleet, and they could go hang.

  But they wouldn’t refuse, he reflected with satisfaction as he hugged the tablet, so hard that it bit into his palm. It was as if his hand bore the physical imprint of its symbols. They couldn’t so much as get off the island without his ships. He’d quarantine the place and let them all starve to death, animals and men, knights and squires, cookboys and trollops alike, if they even so much as attempted to stand against him.

  Zara was a Christian city. Dandolo was well aware of how the pope would react if he attacked it. But that didn’t worry him. He knew how much Innocent III wanted this crusade. The tablet – the sacred scroll of Bishop Adhemar – had seen to that. The doge thought of the bishop, who had died locked away from the world. Adhemar had tried to crack its secret but only partially succeeded. And that knowledge had driven him mad.

  He smiled. The beauty of the thing was that he was able to make men do precisely what he wanted them to and, with a little set-dressing and a little acting from him, they did it without ever being aware.

  45

  Dandolo didn’t need the council for this. Flanked by his guards, in their uniform of silver and yellow, he was dressed in black satin robes with a white ducal cap embroidered with gold thread on his head.

  He stood by his throne on a dais in a private audience chamber, lined in dark oak and hung with icons of the Passion of Christ. Leporo sat at the secretary’s desk. Frid stood to the right behind the throne. Incense hung in the air. The high windows let in little light. The precious metals, jewels and the gold leaf on the icons flashed and glittered in candlelight.

  Impressive. Daunting.

  The atmosphere would serve its purpose.

  The Crusaders were ushered in, but found no seats in the central area before the dais. Two of the original ambassadors, Geoffrey and Conon, stood in the company of the leaders of the enterprise, Baldwin and Boniface. They looked shabby. Two months on San Niccolò with no water for washing had seen to that.

  Both the leaders were so tanned they no longer looked like the aristocrats they were. Baldwin – tall, thirty years old, with cold eyes of a blue so pale they were almost white, heavy chestnut hair and beard. Boniface – stocky like a peasant, twenty years older, a seasoned warrior. Someone had once given him a bad wound on the face – a scar testified to that. His black, shrewd eyes were those of a man to be watched. Not a trace of grey in his black hair or beard.

  Dandolo exaggerated, groping as he seated himself on his throne. Make them think he was stone blind. Add to the pathos. These sentimental northerners fell for that, he’d discovered.

  He smiled at them, a smile of wounded sympathy, of pained understanding. Their response to the Zara proposal was exactly as he had planned: confused acceptance. But he saw that he would have to work on them a little more.

  There were powers still within the tablet he had not yet been able to tap. He needed to draw on his own resources now to deliver the coup de grâce.

  Clutching the tablet, running his fingers over its uneven surface, he went to work.

  ‘I can understand your reaction, but I beg you – reflect! This city of Zara was ours, and we treasured it. It was – it is – the most precious jewel of the Dalmatian coast, and it was crucial to our trade route to the East. We nurtured it, we poured our love and affection into it, we aided it, we shed salt tears over it. But –’ the doge made a gesture of regret in the air with his left hand. ‘But, like an ungrateful mistress, the city spurned us and, twenty years ago, rebelled, declaring itself independent and, to make matters worse, sending emissaries to the pope and to the King of Hungary, begging them, and backing up their supplications with lies, to give it their protection. But control of that city is ours by right, and we will have it back.’

  ‘It is a Christian city,’ Count Baldwin said.

  ‘So it is, and so you have pointed out. But was their action Christian? I think not.’ Dandolo sat back. ‘My lords, you know us. We keep our word. Look at the fleet we have prepared for you, dedicating all our resources to the work for these eighteen months past. But my people have sacrificed much to achieve this, and they are still wanting tens of thousands of grossi from you. You must pay us the money you owe.’

  The Crusaders looked at one another. Marquess Boniface spoke firmly for them all: ‘We are in agreement with you, Altissima. But we have given you all we have. All save what we need to fight with, and –’

 
; ‘If you don’t, I must tell you that you won’t move one foot from San Niccolò. And you won’t find one boat come to provision you. Not even with water.’

  ‘If there were some way –’

  Dandolo leaned forward. ‘There is. Help us get Zara back. We can’t do it alone, or we would have done so long ago. But with your help, we can, and will.’

  The Crusaders bowed their heads. It was as if their will were not their own.

  46

  ‘We will be excommunicated.’ Leporo said later, when they were alone together. Despite his neglect of his vows, the monk felt a chill run through him at the thought.

  ‘Pah!’ said Dandolo. ‘Let the pope bring on what he will.’

  ‘I’m thinking about the Pilgrims of the Cross.’

  ‘They will do nothing I do not want them to do!’ snapped the doge. ‘Look: we take Zara. We split whatever we take from that city fifty-fifty with the Pilgrims. With their half, if it’s enough, they pay us the balance of what they owe. Then they have their fleet, and we can overwinter in Zara. In the spring, they’ll be rested, refreshed, full-bellied, they’ll have fucked themselves fit on those Dalmatian whores, and we can pack them off to the Holy Land – or wherever else we may want to send them.’

  ‘What about the Papal Legate?’

  Dandolo eyed his sidekick narrowly. ‘Cardinal Peter can fuck himself,’ he snarled. ‘The man’s as effective as a bladder on a stick, set against an iron mace.’

  ‘But when news of this reaches the pope, or if you defy the cardinal –’

  Dandolo gestured impatiently.

  ‘Innocent has already given the Lord of Zara a letter promising instant excommunication on anyone who attacks the city.’

  Dandolo looked at Leporo with contempt. ‘Let him do his worst. A letter! Let’s be modern, Leporo! A letter from that overdressed cretin in Rome isn’t going to send even a rat kicking down to hell. Now listen. Once I have the Pilgrims’ agreement signed and sealed, send them some food and wine – not much, and not good. Pigs’ trotters and the cheapest Veneto you can find. In barrels, not bottles. They can have the good stuff later. And arrange a Mass in St Mark’s. Get the Pilgrims’ leaders to attend.’

  ‘What’s the Mass for?’

  ‘I’m going to take the Cross.’

  Leporo could barely restrain his laughter.

  ‘I’ll kneel weeping at the altar as the archbishop himself sews the red cross on my cap. Or perhaps I’ll have a blue one. Blue suits me better, I remember. I’d be surprised if half the population of Venice doesn’t take the Cross too.’

  ‘Would that be good?’

  ‘Think, Leporo. We need to leave someone behind in Zara to make sure Emeric of Hungary doesn’t try anything after we’ve moved on.’

  ‘Moved on?’

  ‘Never mind! Do as I say. I want that Mass at dusk tomorrow. Plenty of candles. Adds to the mystique. And incense.’

  ‘Altissima.’ Leporo saw hell’s mouth gape before him.

  Left alone, Dandolo considered. This bit of theatre he had planned was icing on the cake. He pushed aside the gloomy thoughts of mortality. Now, he felt rejuvenated. After all, he reflected, everyone reaches his last Christmas, his last Easter, his last fuck, his last plate of meat, his last glass, his last shit. But until that happens, you get on with it.

  There was much to do.

  Zara. Zara would fall, and be punished for its presumption. He’d kill every pox-ridden Dalmatian he could get his hands on. It’d be good to see this bunch of French louts put through their paces – see what they were capable of. A few of them would die, but the cause was in his interest, and this would be a rehearsal which also brought practical rewards. After they had brought Zara to heel, they could turn from the puppy and curb the dog. Constantinople would cower before him.

  His penis stirred at the thought, a tortoise-head nodding from its antediluvian shell.

  47

  Conon and Geoffrey watched the hurried preparations.

  ‘The Blessed Mary is to be thanked for this! Fever and disease treated, and the camp cleaned up!’ said Geoffrey, hardly able to believe the sudden change of fortune.

  Conon shared his relief. The captive army was still kept on San Niccolò, but they’d been given good wine and the best meat, and whores of course, clean ones, checked and changed every week by the nuns of Santa Clara. The horses got the best oats and the purest spring water, brought in by a never-ending chain of ox carts from the Dolomites. The Pilgrims themselves were galvanized into activity after the long, uncertain, half-starved wait, and any murmur of dissent was absent. Everyone threw himself body and soul into the great victory soon to be gained.

  ‘It will be good from now on,’ Conon said. ‘I feel it.’

  ‘Pray God it be so,’ replied Geoffrey, now more thoughtful again. He was still, deep within himself, unsettled by the secrecy he sensed from the Venetians. Trapped on the island, they had no news of the outside world except what they were fed by the city.

  ‘We must trust Venice,’ said Conon, reading his thoughts. ‘And be of good cheer. Neither Rome nor Zara has the ghost of an idea of our plans.’

  In the autumn all was ready. October crept into Venice from the lagoon, but there were still days of crisp sunshine when the sea was tranquil and the offshore breeze blew into newly rigged sails which flapped eagerly, as if impatient to be off. The sails were white in the sun; the crests painted on them glowed fresh and clean. There wasn’t a heart not full of restless energy.

  At last the final victualling was done, the men marshalled aboard. The vacant places in the ships created by the shortfall in crusading men were filled with volunteers from the bleak Veneto farmlands and from the Serene City itself. There were favourable winds coming from the north-west. The sea rolled itself out like a carpet.

  On the eve of All Hallows the fleet was ready for the voyage south-east to its goal.

  The tide it would take rose at dawn.

  48

  On Monday 11 November, they anchored off Zara, a prosperous city, with white towers and red roofs, lying snug behind stout walls. The bells had already started to ring out their warning before the last of the fleet, nearly five hundred ships strong, heaved to. The doge’s galley, painted vermilion, rode nearest the shore, about a kilometre off. Under a red awning, the doge sat, warming his bones in the autumn sun. In response to the bells from the city’s towers, cymbals clashed and trumpets sounded from the prow of his ship, from many of his ships.

  But apart from sounding its bells, the city did nothing but hunker down. Dandolo smiled at the thought of what must be going through the governor’s mind as the man scanned the fleet anchored on his doorstep.

  Zara could do nothing against such a force.

  Perhaps they would surrender without a fight. Part of him hoped they wouldn’t. These people needed to be punished. Resistance would give him the excuse he needed, and he wanted to see what these Crusaders were capable of. Above all, he needed proof that they would obey him without question. He was not yet confident of his power.

  He wondered what the feelings of the people of Zara were when they saw that Venice had the backing of an army of Christian pilgrims. He wondered how much faith they placed in the pope’s letter now. But even if they didn’t, and sent couriers to Emeric of Hungary for help, it would be too late.

  Nothing could save them.

  The next few days saw the transports taking horses, men, and siege-machines – petraries and mangonels for hurling rocks – to the shore. There were battering rams, and wooden tunnels covered with heavy hides soaked with water to protect those using them from the boiling oil and Greek Fire which would be hurled on the army from the tops of the walls. There were scaling ladders, and towers on huge wheels to be rolled up against the walls for the final assault.

  For another few days the air was filled with the noise of hammering and sawing as the carpenters assembled these, while the troops set up their camps around the walls and honed their weapons. Ladd
ers were mounted on the prows of several ships, which were brought in to invest the seaward walls.

  The governor of the city requested a parley. A side gate opened in the western wall, and he and his party rode out and down to the shore to the Venetian encampment.

  Dandolo was waiting for him.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked the governor.

  The governor, a young man, frail-looking, spread his hands. ‘Peace,’ he said simply.

  ‘You’ll give up your city, just like that? For those are my terms.’

  ‘Zara is a rich city,’ replied the governor, his pride stung. ‘We will pay you a reasonable bounty.’

  ‘But you would be paying us with what is ours by right anyway.’

  ‘We can withstand a siege.’

  ‘For how long? You have eyes. You see that our engineers are already undermining your walls on the seaward side. It would be a pity to see such a fine city as yours crushed like a roach.’

  The governor bowed his head. ‘To withstand you would be as futile as sweeping leaves in the wind. At least order your sappers to stop until we have negotiated. We have seen them set wood for fires. We can smell the naphtha.’

  ‘I have given you my terms.’

  The governor was sweating. His ceremonial robes hung heavy on him, and chafed. The sun was high in the sky and there was no wind. You would have thought the year was just being born, instead of dying.

  ‘At least give us time to evacuate the city in peace. Our people are guiltless.’

  ‘Those under the age of twenty may depart. The rest must take the consequences of your rebellion: those who were alive when the city rebelled against us and arrogantly claimed independence, only to seek the protection of another master.’