by Tom Harper
A strange mood overtook the army in those last few weeks. They stood on the brink of an impossible victory, and equally on the threshold of destruction, yet to look at their faces you would not have seen much trace of either hope or fear. Even the threat of al-Afdal’s army did little to stir their passions. They had suffered the journey for too long: now that they had arrived, it meant nothing. You could see it in their eyes — the numb awareness that these should be days of passion and drama, of triumph or terror, and the quiet, reproachful despair that they felt nothing. Each day they toiled with willing, dead hands: they lay on their bellies to drink from stagnant pools where animals wallowed; they wandered carelessly within bowshot of the walls and barely murmured when the arrows struck them.
Yet life stirred among the waste and wreckage of our hopes, if you looked carefully. But it was not the fresh, clean life that drives out winter; this was the sort that crawls out of holes and feeds on rot. It did not show itself, but I became aware of it, shadows moving at the fringes of my perception. I saw it in the groups of pilgrims who huddled together, whispering; in sly glances that sidled away when I looked at them; in the mysterious slogans that appeared scrawled on boulders overnight: unsettling verses from the Revelation of Saint John speaking of tortures and trials ahead. I felt it in the brooding presence of the towers, ever-present and stark against the skyline. More insidiously, I heard it from the mouths of the priests. When they opened their Bibles, it was always to Daniel or Ezekiel. I will strew your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass; I will drench the land so that your flowing blood laps the mountain tops, and drowns the streams and rivers. When they preached, they spoke of the kingdom to come with rare urgency, as if they could glimpse the holy city through a tear in the clouds. Though few of them were gifted preachers, their words seemed to touch their audiences like tongues of fire. Dull faces flared with passionate intensity; in those moments, I began to suspect that the army was not exhausted, simply nursing its meagre strength. It improved my hopes of taking the city, but it filled me with foreboding.
Unsurprisingly, in that atmosphere, men started to see visions again. Some saw winged creatures swooping down from heaven; some saw saints in shimmering raiment; some saw magical beasts — griffins, basilisks and unicorns — and no doubt others saw worse visions that afterwards they did not dare voice, but tried to forget in their hearts.
Among these visions, one came with particular authority. A Provencal pilgrim announced that he had seen Bishop Adhemar, who had ordered a penitential procession around the four walls of Jerusalem to free the army from the filth of the world. So, on a Friday afternoon in early July, we marched around the city.
Looking back, it was a miracle we were not all massacred. By Adhemar’s command, given in the vision, every man in the army had removed his boots and walked barefoot. If the Fatimids had sallied out from the city, they could have ridden through us like a field of wheat. Perhaps they could not believe our temerity and assumed it must be a trap; perhaps they simply laughed to themselves and left us to our folly, seeing it as the last throes of an army dying of thirst and madness. Perhaps they pitied us. Whatever their reasons, they stayed within the walls.
And if they thought we were mad, who could argue? We knew the risks, and still we marched blithely on. Fear of death did not deter us; instead, the army seemed to drink it in. The whole procession had the air of a macabre carnival. Seven priests walked at the front of the column with ram’s horns, blasting out a cacophony that filled the valley, from the walls to the surrounding hills. Men and women danced in rapture; they held their weapons aloft and waved them to heaven — spears and swords, but also billhooks, cudgels, even pilgrim staves. The trumpets blasted, and the pilgrims sang so hard they almost screamed. Each time we came near one of the gates the noise rose to a fevered crescendo as we waited to see if it would open for an attack; each time we passed safely, the air shivered with the sound of delight. Drunk on its own daring, the army tottered forward; they had abandoned caution, thrown off the chains of fear that had bound them so long, and every step that they did not fall only convinced them of their invincibility.
‘I once knew a herder who grazed his oxen where wild onions grew,’ said Sigurd. He had to bellow in my ear to be heard. ‘It made them swell up like melons. When they let it go. .’ He waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘It sounded like those trumpets.’
‘Perhaps they think the walls will fall down if they blow hard enough.’
‘Then there’ll be nothing to stop the Egyptians running out and slaughtering us.’
I shrugged. ‘It worked for Joshua.’
At least Joshua had been allowed to wear his boots. The ground beneath my feet might be holy, but it was merciless. The stones were so hot they raised blisters even through a thousand miles’ worth of callouses, and when once I did not look where I trod I quickly felt the pain of a stubbed toe.
I stepped out of the procession and knelt to rub my toe. The procession flowed past. Seen from below, with the blazing sun above, the pilgrims became little more than barefoot shadows, a jabbering confusion of limbs and blades that writhed like tendrils of smoke over a fire. Or perhaps they were like a thicket of walking trees, their branches rippling as if in a breeze. The spikes of their spears looked more like palm fronds, and the sunlight was so strong the metal seemed to wilt in its glare.
I blinked. Thirst and heat had not made me delusional. The men and women passing by no longer carried weapons, not even the crude tools of the peasants, but palm fronds. They were dressed in white, and they seemed to come from all the tribes of the barbarians — Normans and Provencals, Lotharingians and Flemings — but they all sang the same song.
Salvation belongs to God on His throne, and to the Lamb who is his son.
I stood up. The crowd’s momentum had carried Sigurd on well past me and for the moment I was on my own. I stepped back into the procession, feeling dark and dirty among so much white. Immediately, I found myself in the shade of a broad palm frond, which an old man held aloft with frail but unyielding arms. He turned to greet me, smiling in welcome.
I gestured around. ‘Who are all these people?’
His skin was dark and mottled with liver spots, but his teeth were as white as his robe. ‘We are those who have come out of the great ordeal. We have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ His brown eyes stared at me.
It was the last answer I had expected. Stranger still, I found I knew the words to continue it. ‘They shall hunger and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.’
He nodded approvingly. ‘The Lamb on His throne will be our shepherd, and He will guide us to the springs of the water of life.’
‘I’d be glad to find any spring in this foul heat.’
The pilgrim frowned. ‘The earth’s water is stagnant and stale. Soon we will all taste the sweet water of life.’
Dazed by sweltering heat and sound, stifled by the dust our army kicked up, I almost let myself ignore him. But there was a firmness in the way he spoke that was almost like a promise. Soon we will all taste the sweet water of life. I had heard such sentiments before, but hearing them now, with the walls of Jerusalem looming over me, I could feel their power anew.
The pilgrim looked at me cautiously, as if noticing for the first time the shabby colour of my tunic among the sea of white. ‘Things that were prophesied are now stirring to life. Have you heard?’
My mouth was dry, but once again I found I knew the words he wanted. I loosened a brick in the wall of my memories and reached into the dark crevice within — to a clearing in the woods, and the fat, frightened peasant who had styled himself a prophet.
‘When the Son of Perdition has risen, the king will ascend Golgotha.’
I could not remember any more, but it was enough. The pilgrim recited the rest. ‘He will take his crown from his head and place it on the cross, and stretching out his hands to heaven he will hand over the k
ingdom of the Christians to God the Father.’
‘But the man who brought that prophecy died a terrible death, forsaken by God. I thought his prophecy died with him.’
‘It was not Peter Bartholomew’s prophecy,’ said the pilgrim. His eyes were hidden in the dappled shade of the palm frond, but his face was angry. ‘In his pride, he confused the prophet and that which was prophesied. He thought he was the promised king.’
‘The last and greatest of all kings, who will come at the end of days to capture Jerusalem.’
‘As if that grasping peasant could have been a king. The first time Christ came, He came in humility. When He comes again, it will be with all the majesty He can command.’
My scepticism must have showed. ‘Do you doubt it?’ the pilgrim challenged me.
‘Of the hour of Christ’s coming, no man knows,’ I quoted him.
‘Until He does come.’ He grabbed me by my sleeve and spun me around, staring hard into my eyes. ‘The consummation of the world has already begun. The last and greatest king is here. I have seen him.’
I stared at him. There was no hint of a lie on his aged face. ‘You have seen the risen Christ?’
‘As clearly as you see me now.’
‘But. .’ I struggled to think, let alone to speak. ‘But. . why hasn’t the world ended?’
‘Even after He returns, the day of judgement does not come straight away. There is to be an interlude of forty days, so that sinners may repent. But there is not much time. He appeared to us the night we reached Jerusalem, and that was thirty-three days ago.’
This was impossible. Of course I believed that Christ would come again in glory, as the creed proclaimed, to judge the living and the dead — but I had never thought it could come in my lifetime. It was an idea, an abstraction out of time, as far in the future as the creation of the world lay in the past. It was not something I was born to experience.
‘You should not be surprised when God’s promises are honoured,’ the pilgrim reproved me. ‘It has all been written in the prophecy.’
The prophecy. I had only heard it in snatches but I could feel its danger, a dark serpent coiled in the heart of the army. It had poisoned Peter Bartholomew when he touched it, thinking it was meant for him. Who else would it claim? Worse, what if it were true?
‘There is still time to prepare yourself — God is merciful. Meet me an hour after dusk at the church of Saint Abraham, near Saint Stephen’s gate, tomorrow night.’
‘Will the redeemer be revealed there?’
He put a finger to his lips. ‘Be patient. You will meet him soon enough.’
43
Did we have seven days to live? It was hard to believe. The following day, Saturday, was almost stifling in its predictability. I rose at dawn and spent the morning carrying wood as we continued the slow business of preparing the siege engine. The sun climbed over us, then began to sink back. The sounds of war echoed off the ancient hills — blacksmiths beating out blades on their anvils, farriers exercising horses, the clatter of rocks as labourers gathered stones for the catapaults — but I barely heard them. Even the noise of my own hammer was dull to my ears, a metronomic beat tapping out the hours in the still air.
When dusk began to chase the sun from the sky, I put down my tools and made my way to the church of Saint Abraham: a small church with a cracked dome, barely a stone’s throw from the city walls. I did not tell Sigurd or Thomas I was going. I half expected — and half hoped — that the pilgrim would have forgotten me, or thought better of his offer, but as I approached the church he stepped out of the shadow of the doorway and beckoned me to follow.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘Not far.’ He looked at my tunic, then threw me a white blanket. ‘Wrap this around you.’
The blanket was grubby and smelled of straw, but I did as he told me and followed him. My misgivings grew the further we moved away from the camp, up towards the brow of the ridge that dominated Jerusalem to the north. We were not the only ones on this road: pale figures flitted through the night all around, though I could not make them out. When I looked back, I could see the city laid out beneath me, a chain of watch-fires surrounding the lamplit streets and churches. To my left, on the eastern side, a smaller cordon of light marked out the dimensions of the Temple Mount. From there, I traced the line of the stone bridge, which spanned the valley to the western city. On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door. I stared at the flickering lights. Did one of those lamps burn in the window of the room that held my family? Was Anna looking out of it even now, staring up at the night and thinking of me? My heart beat faster, and I felt the familiar pain tighten in my chest.
‘Hurry,’ hissed the pilgrim. ‘There is not much time.’
I turned back up the slope, leaving the lights behind. But the darkness ahead was not complete: the more I looked, the more I could see an orange glow tempering the air, until suddenly we came over the crest of the ridge and looked down into the hollow beyond.
On the far side of the ridge, the land formed a natural bowl, a steeply sloping amphitheatre of dry earth and grass. It occurred to me that these were the same hills where a thousand years earlier the blessed shepherds must have waited with their flocks and heard the angels’ tidings. A second later, I realised why I had thought of it, for it seemed as though all the intervening ages had collapsed and a parliament of angels had gathered once again. Dim white figures filled the valley, seated on its sloping banks in rows or wandering around its rim. There seemed to be hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. They were singing, a soft and beautiful hymn that barely disturbed the night but seemed to flow like water into the amphitheatre. To Him who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb: blessing and honour and glory and power. Two fires burned in its centre forming the boundaries of an implicit stage, and though they were far enough apart that a man could stand between them and barely break sweat, it reminded me uncomfortably of the twin fires of Peter Bartholomew’s ordeal.
My pilgrim guide found us a space to sit on the hillside. No sooner had we settled, though, than the hymn died away and the entire congregation rose to its feet. In the bowl of the valley, a procession wound its way past the fires and stopped behind them, a shadowy line just out of reach of the light. There were seven of them, all dressed in white and all holding dark objects clutched to their chests.
One stepped forward into the pool of firelight. The flames rippled on his cheeks, misshaping them, though his eyes and mouth remained in shadow. He must have been a priest, for he wore a stole around his neck with a heavy cross hanging over his chest. He took the bundle he held and raised it so all could see — a parchment scroll, fastened with a round wax seal the size of a medallion. Holding it aloft, he snapped the wax like bread at the Eucharist. Crumbs of wax fell to the ground. In a deep, rolling voice he declaimed: ‘Come.’
A sigh went through the crowd like a wind — a wind that seemed to bring with it the chime and jangle of metal. It grew louder; then, from the right of the hollow, I saw the source. A white horse trotted out of the darkness. It seemed to glide through the night: its hooves disappeared in the shadow over the ground, and if they made any noise the dust silenced it instantly. Mounted in its saddle sat a knight, or perhaps a king, for he wore a silver crown. He rode stiff and erect, ignoring the gaze of a thousand silent eyes on him, and on his shoulder he carried a long bow. As he passed behind each fire he seemed to melt into its light and disappear, then reappear as a dim radiance in the darkness beyond.
As he vanished into the more complete darkness on the margins of the valley, a second priest stepped forward to stand beside the first. He too held a scroll; he broke the seal and again said, ‘Come.’
A second horse came out of the night, following in the tracks of the first. This one seemed darker, though when he came close to the fire I could see he was a chestn
ut colt, his glossy coat so deep it was almost red. Its rider did not wear a crown, but held up a great sword so large I wondered if any man could wield it.
‘He came to take all peace from the earth, so that men would fall on each other in slaughter,’ whispered the pilgrim in my ear. I nodded; I knew. All around me, the standing crowd watched in awe. Did they believe that the horses and their riders were spirits from realms beyond imagining? It hardly mattered. Like icons, the vision it offered transcended any thought for its substance.
One by one, the priests stepped forward to snap the seals on their scrolls and call forth the riders. A huge stallion came, so black it was barely visible but fluttered like a veil against the night. Its rider carried a pair of scales. After him, a pale grey mare whose rider carried a long scythe over his shoulder. It should have been green — but that thought was driven out by the sudden baying of dogs, as a pack of hounds came bounding after the horse across the valley, hunting an invisible quarry. Firelight gleamed on their open jaws.
Those were the last of the animals, for the fifth seal brought not a horse but a company of men and women. Unlike the solemn procession of their predecessors, they staggered like drunkards; their clothes were ripped open to expose their naked bodies beneath, their hair torn, their white faces streaked with blood. They wailed with loud voices, and their plea was at once pitiable and terrible. ‘Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you judge the earth and avenge our blood on its people?’ They too vanished into the night.
The fires had sunk low, and the darkness squeezed closer around the seven priests. It should have made the stars shine brighter, but when I looked up the sky had disappeared. A rising wind blew over the valley, worming its way among the stones and setting up a low, mournful moan that swept around us. The priests were now barely shadows against the red orb of the firelight. I thought I saw one shuffle forward; I did not hear the snapping of the seal, but I knew he must have opened it when a host of tiny fires rose above our heads, arcing up from the rim of the valley like a constellation of artificial stars. They seemed to hang in the sky for a moment, then tumbled towards the earth like a fig tree dropping its fruit. They burned very white, tracing lines of light in the dark air as they fell. The crowd gasped — but before the ground could quench the stars a new light rose in the valley. The two fires had been rekindled: they blazed up like beacons, and in the light I saw that the seventh and last of the priests had stepped forward. The fires banished all shadows and illuminated him like daylight, so I could see his face plainly: Arnulf, the red-headed Norman priest who had denounced Peter Bartholomew. Exultant triumph glowed in his eyes as he surveyed the watching crowd; when he raised his arms the entire congregation sank to its knees. On that steep hillside the effect was giddying, tipping us forward so that we seemed on the brink of falling into darkness.