by Simon Acland
On the far side a scene from Hell unfolded. It reminded me of the paintings on the wall of my old abbey’s church showing the awful fate awaiting sinners after the Last Judgement. Now those moral pictures were cruelly perverted, for the devils here were visiting their atrocities on the innocent. Against a background of leaping flames the black silhouettes of Baldwin’s frenzied troops ran amok. Already a twisted pile of bodies lay heaped on the ground in front of the church. More townsmen shouted desperately for mercy as their assailants dragged them from their homes. Their pleas went unheard. Baldwin’s fiends hacked them to pieces. A dark pool of lifeblood spread viscous across the packed earth. Groups of soldiers held down screaming women, ripping the clothes from their bodies, and taking turns to violate them. When the soldiers, their red sullen faces sneering and snarling, had their fill, they threw the objects of their brutal lust to one side to visit on them the same fate as their men. Staved-in wine barrels rolled empty on their sides, giving a clue to one of the fuels for this depravity. I stood frozen for a moment by the horror of this scene. Then I found my sword suddenly in my hand, without knowing what I was going to do with it.
My attention was caught by a woman running in my direction. She mothered a small girl in front of her. Terror etched itself across her face as she panted to escape the two soldiers pursuing her. She mouthed some words in my direction. I could not hear over the crackling flames and the animal roars from all around, but I imagined ‘Please…. Please.’ At least I could do something to save her. I jumped forward but was too far away to stop the dogs catching their quarry. One wrenched the girl away and struck her head from her small body, which folded to the ground like a puppet whose strings are cut. Blood pumped from her severed neck, spraying up to soak her mother’s dress. As I ran closer I now saw that the woman was heavy with child. Her tormentors, perhaps angry at being cheated of rape, slashed open her round belly and reached forward as if to pull her unborn child out before her dying eyes. It cannot have taken more than a few seconds for me to come up with them but my feet felt like lead and would not move fast enough. I slashed at the nearest man, catching him a vicious blow up through the base of the nose so that his face split across into a second, red, grinning mouth. His companion turned in alarm towards me and I recognised Bagrat. His alarm became angry recognition and then fear again. I thrust my sword through my enemy’s belly with such force that the point pushed out through his back. Agony now chased surprise across Bagrat’s face as I pushed him back with my left hand on his chest and wrenched my weapon out of his guts. He toppled slowly backwards. I felt purged. For a moment I watched him writhing there on the ground, and venomously mouthed the words “May you die slowly.”
So far nobody else had noticed me in the mêlée. What should I do now? What else could I do? I could not take on all of them. I had to escape. I turned and ran from the inferno into the outer darkness, stumbling in the murk, my only thought to get away. Back in the camp, I found a half groomed horse, and with what little presence of mind was left to me I grabbed the leading reins of a pack mule, before riding off into the night. I moved as fast as the moon and starlight allowed, desperate to put as much distance as possible between myself and those diabolical scenes. I had no idea in which direction I headed. I just rode, until dawn began to streak with pink the sky in front. Then I knew that I must have travelled east. My horse and mule could go no further. I tottered into a small wood at the base of a hill, from which ran a stream, and tied them nearby so that they were able to drink. I fished some rye bread from my mule’s pannier. Noticing that it was mouldy, I grimaced but ate it nevertheless, before collapsing unconscious to the ground.
The next days were a dream. I do not know how far or how long I travelled, nor scarcely whether I woke or slept. Hordes of monsters chased each other through my head: black hissing serpents, fire-breathing demons with leering red faces, great bears which suddenly grew human heads, satanic figures with empty eye sockets seeping blood, sometimes dressed in a Benedictine’s black habit. The one thing that I knew in my delirium was that I must keep moving, ever moving. I had to escape.
But escape from what? My conscious mind said that Baldwin was far behind and could no longer catch me and punish me for killing his friend, even if my act of retribution had been seen. I was just running from my dreams, from my conscience and the images that kept forming in my head. I saw strange villages of mud-cracked houses shaped like tall round beehives but kept away from them and whatever creatures lived there. I could not imagine facing a human being again.
I had killed for the first time. I had sinned by putting to death two Christian soldiers unshriven and in a state of mortal sin. Evil men perhaps they were, but my act had condemned them to burn in hell for eternity. Hatred and the deadly sin of anger had fuelled my wrongful deed. I had sinned by failing to protect those innocent villagers, by failing to prevent the unholy crimes visited upon them by the so-called soldiers of the Cross. I had sinned by joining a Holy War which had been twisted into a campaign of evil. I had surely sinned by leaving the Abbey of Cluny and my life of prayer and by ignoring the wise advice of my abbot. But worst of all I had sinned because I had felt a tingle of gross excitement from the scenes in the square; a thrill at the memory of my sword crunching through flesh and bone; a rush of pleasure at the pain and shock in Bagrat’s glazing eyes.
Then I filled instead with anger – rage that man could visit such suffering on fellow man, woman and child – fury that God could allow such evil – wrath that I should have been dragged into such an abyss. Why had He taken from me the girl I loved? Why had He laid low the duke I served? Then my anger became self-pity, feeble tears, and then fear again as I sank down into the turbulent violence of my lurid dreams.
At first I wandered at night and slept by day, feeling cloaked in the darkness and safer from the eyes of man and God alike. The stars and the moon provided just enough ghostly light for my horse and mule to find their footing. Once I passed through a boggy marsh, where the way was lit by wispy green flickering lights, dancing in the distance as if luring me on. There, my mount stumbled, throwing me off in my reverie. I found myself looking down into a noisome pool of water from which a dead white face stared back up. Terrified, I scrambled back onto my horse before I realised that I had seen my own reflection. But I travelled more by day thereafter, to avoid other ghostly apparitions.
I remember two visions of lucidity and peace from those days in the wilderness. Once, I happened upon a tiny church, half ruined, high up a hillside. I tied up my long-suffering mounts and went inside. Damp had grown patches of dark mould on the ceiling. But still, the frescoed figure of Our Lord looked down from the little semi-circular apse. His gentle almond eyes gazed out with infinite pity, and His hand was raised in the sign of benediction. I touched my forehead to the cool floor and prayed for forgiveness and understanding. That moment of peace quietened my turmoil for a while and gave me enough strength to go on.
In my next vision I sat beside the shore of a vast lake, so vast that I could not see its other side. I thought I might have come back to the sea until I tasted the sweet water. Out on an island stood a chapel, a cross topping its small dome, a symbol of suffering, peace, and reconciliation. I sat there and wept. My heart was heavy that the narrow stretch of water cut me off from this holy place of prayer; my head told me it was just that one in a state of sin should be denied its solace. I filled my water skins from that unkind lake, and drinking found that I was as hungry as if I had not eaten for days. I took from my mule’s saddle pouch a tough morsel of salted meat and some hardened flatbread, which I softened in the limpid water. The sustenance restored me and returned some clarity to my thoughts. I was completely lost, utterly alone. I had no idea of whence I had come, of how far I had travelled, nor of where to go. I just moved on in the same direction, possessed by the belief that I might find some goal to end my quest.
The landscape was now rougher and more mountainous. The weather turned cold and the sky changed fr
om blue to grey. The wind rose, blowing hard into my face, and driving snow at me so that I could scarcely see my way. I could go no further and stopped, dismounting and taking shelter as best I could behind my shivering mounts. For two, three, four hours or more we remained motionless in the storm, unable to see anything beyond a blank expanse of whiteness. Then at last the storm died down, and I was able to move forward again, chilled, now across a frozen landscape. Some way on, at the bottom of a rough slope of scree, powdered with snow, I saw the body of a man beside a dead horse. It looked as if the unfortunate animal had lost its footing on the loose rocks at the top of the slope and had tumbled down. Either it had broken its neck in the process or, unable to get up after its fall, had just frozen to death in the blizzard. I could see too that its rider was dead or badly hurt. One leg bent at an unnatural angle as if the bone were snapped.
As I came closer, the turban and robes, and the swarthy complexion, told me that a Moslem lay there defenceless. I stood over him; I had the man in my power. I could do what I liked and no-one would see. This was the heathen enemy which I had come so far to kill. But some human instinct, some feeling of compassion stayed my hand in that frozen waste. My head cleared, and I just saw a fellow human being lying there in distress and in need of succour. I bent down to straighten the broken leg. I tied the shaft of my lance to it as best I could as a makeshift splint. I struggled to lift the unconscious body, as gently as possible, over the saddle of my pack mule. Fearing lest my new companion die from the cold, I took Saint Martin’s example and covered him with my own cloak. Then I shivered onwards.
To my relief the track now began to wind downhill, and the snow became thinner, although the blizzard had clearly blown hard over a wide area. Rounding a blind corner, I saw to my consternation a group of riders galloping at me. The sound of their hooves had been muffled by the snow, otherwise I might have had warning of their approach. Wearily I pulled my horse to a halt. I was too tired to turn and run even if my mount had had it in him. I abandoned myself to my fate. The riders were six in all, dressed after the same custom as their supine compatriot, and fiercely armed with curved swords and spears at the ready. They surrounded me in a threatening circle. One dismounted to check what I carried on my pack mule. He rolled back the cloak. What he saw beneath provoked an excited gabble to his comrades in a guttural tongue which sounded to me like another dialect of the language that I had begun to learn after Dorylaeum. Fortunately, the man I had rescued began to stir and raised himself painfully to a sitting position with help from his fellow-countryman.
A harsh debate began. I gathered that my life hung in the balance. One of the Saracens showed angrily the red cross on the shoulder of my white cloak, exclaiming, “Al-franj, Al-franj.” They obviously knew this as the mark of their Christian enemies and they shook their spears and turned dark looks upon me. One made a cutting gesture across his throat and raised his guttural voice, arguing for my death. To my disappointment the man whose life I had saved nodded his head up and down, clicking with his tongue, as vigorously as his weakened state would permit. My death sentence was sealed. His robes, and the curved gold-embroidered dagger sheath that he wore round his waist, were finer and more elaborate than his colleagues’. He must be their leader. Surely his word would prevail.
“So my reward for mercy is to have my throat slit like a sheep,” I thought and mouthed some silent prayers to commend my soul to God. Nevertheless, I felt no sense of unfairness, for I knew that were the roles reversed, and were I a captured Moslem, I would die on a Christian blade. The angriest one, the one who had been arguing hardest for my death, inclined his head forward slightly, touching his extended fingers to his brow in what I took to be a gesture of respectful obedience. Completely drained, I sat on my horse trying not to flinch or show fear, hoping that the blow which would send me to my Maker would be quick and true. The executioner dismounted, and roughly lashed my feet together under the belly of my steed, who hung his head, soft nostrils steaming in the cold air. Then my hands were tied behind my back. I tried to hold the eyes of my imminent assassin, but the man turned away and remounted. The whole troop wheeled and rode off the way they had come, with me surrounded in their midst. I sagged like a sack, expecting the riders to stop at any time to effect my execution.
It was only later, when I was familiar with their language and their customs, that I learnt that when a Persian nods he means no. It was a shake of my captor’s head that I should have dreaded as confirmation of the sentence of death.
South we now rode through mountains dusted with snow, lower but no less rough than before. Then we began to climb again, and from time to time to the left I caught glimpses of another great lake or sea. Riding with hands and feet tied I suffered torments again. My ankles were chafed by the rope, my body was jolted by the horse’s movement and my muscles protested as I struggled to hold myself upright in the saddle. At the end of the day, untied, I could neither dismount nor stand, and like Baldwin’s men my captors derived some amusement from watching me flop to the ground like a fish gasping for breath on dry land. But their treatment of me was otherwise kinder. They shared their food – mostly flat bread and some spicy paste. It was clear that they were rushed and anxious to reach their journey’s end, for they rode as long and as hard as our harsh road would permit.
On my third day with these new companions, we entered a defile from which no path appeared to lead, a dead mountain mouth of carious teeth. But at its end a track led up a narrow crack in the rock to a long valley. Perched on a great rock above, I saw a fortress, impregnable, an eagle’s eyrie. The slopes were scattered with great stones, like tumbled graves about a chapel. A thin path spiralled round the rock, and as they made for it I guessed correctly that we had reached our destination. But the fate that awaited me there I could not have possibly predicted.
SAINT LAZARUS’ COLLEGE
“Well, if you ask me I think our writer has taken too many painkillers.”
A fierce argument was raging about the merits of the latest chapter, which the Professor of English found too melodramatic and psychologically unconvincing.
“Actually you do him a bit of an injustice.” The History Don was feeling rather smug. “All that stuff at Tarsus did really happen – and the subsequent struggle at Mamistra between Baldwin and Tancred. It may be hard to believe that the Crusaders fought between themselves and betrayed each other like that but it is all clearly documented in the Chronicles. Just wait until we get on to the siege of Antioch – what went on there was stranger still. And I find Hugh’s hallucinations really interesting – I wonder how those were described in the original manuscript. It is an area where I have been doing a bit of work. You see, the mould that grows on rye bread secretes lysergic acid…LSD to you and me. Medieval man ate a lot of that, and other wild materials like poppies, hemp and darnel, especially when they were short of food. Some old documents refer to ‘crazy bread’, which must have been some sort of ancient hash cake. I am thinking of writing a short paper about hallucinogenic drugs and their unpredictable impact on crowd behaviour at important medieval events.”
The Chaplain spluttered. “That really is a bit far-fetched. I don’t see any problems with Hugh’s crisis being purely spiritual. After all, the poor fellow had been under a prolonged period of acute stress. He has just seen some horrific violence and broken one of his main taboos – if you ask me, it is not surprising that he went into a bit of a tailspin. After all, how would you feel if you had killed for the first time?”
This last remark was addressed to the Chaplain’s neighbour, who unfortunately happened to be the Modern Languages Tutor. His eyes bulged behind his thick glasses and he stood up and rushed from the room without saying a word. The other Fellows looked at each other in surprise.
“He seems to be becoming more and more eccentric.”
“Perhaps like a medieval peasant he is on something else in addition to all that alcohol and nicotine.”
“If you ask me, it’s a jol
ly good thing he is leaving us at the end of the year.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LA TOUR ABOLIE
I had escaped from the clutches of one set of enemies only to fall into the hands of another. The first at least I knew and understood; the second was foreign and strange. I will leave it to you to judge whether my position had become better or worse, and to guess whose hands were pulling the strings of my fate.
Unseen eyes must have watched us wind up that spiral path, or some magic was at work, for as our winded horses reached the top the gate swung wide. We passed under a pointed arch topped by fine stonework. I noted a delicately carved inscription in the Arab script. Was it a warning, a spell, an imprecation, a prayer? I was momentarily angry with myself for my lack of understanding. Then I was enclosed by the high walls of a long narrow courtyard. Behind, strong square towers guarded the only gate. In front stood the tall keep. The shape of its windows was unfamiliar to me, the round arches sharply pinched in below each shoulder. Their size, larger than was the custom in the West, said that the owner here feared no assault, protected by the remote location, the impossible approach, and the power of the place. Nothing moved. A singular aura of arcane authority hung in the chill air.