by Tom Harper
In one hand Arnulf held a swinging censer, spilling out incense like brimstone; in the other, he clasped a sealed scroll. For the moment, he did not break it. Instead, an acolyte came forward, knelt in front of him and opened a book. It was too dark and distant for me to see its pages, but I could imagine the images that decorated its pages. Monsters with the heads of Saracens and the bodies of lions; locusts with tails like scorpions; a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. And at the bottom of the page, a radiant king on a white horse. The book that Peter Bartholomew had found or stolen, which Arnulf had reclaimed from his quarters after the ordeal. The book in which the prophecy was written.
‘Hear the prophecy of our Lord God,’ said Arnulf solemnly. His voice was far off, too small to fill the cavernous bowl, but it was carried back to me in an instant by the whispered repetition of the crowd. Their voices rippled and rustled like the flutter of wings. ‘Given in secret, in ancient times, and revealed now to His elect at the dawn of His coming. Listen.’
The kneeling pilgrims rocked back on their haunches and bowed their heads.
‘When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison. The sun will grow dark and the moon’s light will fade; the stars will fall from their orbits and the powers of heaven will be shaken. False prophets will arise; they will come in Christ’s name, saying, “I am the Messiah,” and they will lead many astray. The land of promise will be filled with men from the four winds under heaven.’
Arnulf paused. Looking around, I could see the congregation drinking in his words with the delight of familiarity: they had heard it before. Perhaps I had too, but not like this. It was as if all the things I had known formerly had been cut into pieces, then sewn together to give new form, new meanings.
‘Two great prophets, Enoch and Elijah, will be sent into the world. They will defend God’s faithful against the attack of the Antichrist and prepare the elect for the coming storm.’
The whispering in the crowd grew more agitated, like the shivering of leaves.
‘Then the Gates of the North will be opened and the demons will fly forth: Anog and Ageg, Gog and Magog, Achenaz, Dephar and Amarzarthae. They will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of beasts like water. The Antichrist will gather up the nations for battle, as numerous as the sands of the sea, and they will march from Babylon to the camp of the saints at the beloved city.
‘Then a king of the Franks will again possess the Roman Empire. He will unite the crowns of west and east; he will be the greatest and the last of all kings. When the Son of Perdition has risen, the King will ascend Golgotha. 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 kingdom of the Christians to God the Father. This will be the end and the consummation of the Roman and Christian Empires, when every power and principality shall be destroyed.’
All I could hear now were the whispers of the crowd, and the flex of chain as the smoking censer in Arnulf ’s hand swung back and forth, a pendulum beating out the rhythm of his words.
‘An angel will appear in the sun, calling to all the birds that fly beneath heaven: “Come and gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, of horses and their riders.” The King will capture the Beast, together with the prophet who deceived with false miracles, and cast them into the lake of fire. All the rest will die by the sword, and the birds will be gorged with their flesh. Not one will survive.
‘Then death shall be no more — nor sorrow nor pain — for all the former things shall have passed away. The holy city, the new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven, and the Lord will dwell with his people. The kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Messiah, and he will reign for ever.’
Arnulf looked up, letting the censer come to rest. Around me, the whispered repetitions rolled away into silence. The acolyte who held the book closed it and shuffled back out of the light.
‘As for the one who reveals these things,’ Arnulf declared, ‘he says: “I am coming soon.”’
The crowd took up his words, repeating them over and again so that the call seemed to whirl in the air like a flock of crows. I am coming. Arnulf let it build, standing in the crux of the valley with his arms spread apart. The six priests behind him seemed to have melted away so that he stood there alone and exultant. Still the chant grew. I am coming.
With a deft movement Arnulf suddenly took a step back, upended the censer and dashed it to the ground. A cascade of glowing coals spilled out. They should have lain there dying; instead, like sparks on tinder, they seemed to ignite the earth. A huge fire erupted from the ground where they had fallen, so vast I thought it must have consumed Arnulf. Even on the heights where I knelt, men cowered back from the blaze. After the darkness before, I felt as if a hole had been burned through my eyes. But still the chant went on. I am coming.
Squinting through the pain and tears, I saw Arnulf on the far side of the blaze. Wreathed in fire, he held aloft his scroll, snapped the seal and threw the parchment on the flames. It disappeared, one more cinder in the inferno. Smoke drifted up to envelop me, choke me; the crackle of flames filled my ears, and with it the blast of trumpets, the ripple of harp strings. The earth trembled beneath me and my flesh seemed turned to water. Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth. The slope fell away, plunging into a bottomless pit; I tottered on my knees, swayed and fell forward.
Thankfully, I had just enough wit or instinct left to throw out my hands. They fell on the stony ground, jarring me to my senses. Crouched on all fours like an animal, I looked down into the pit of the valley. The fire still burned high, and I could still see a figure through the flames. But it was not Arnulf. He wore a dark riding cloak with the hood pulled up, shading his face, but I could see that he stood both taller and broader than the priest. Even in shadow, he radiated power.
Above the trumpets, the harps, the roaring flames, I heard three words echo around the deep bowl of the valley, spoken with the sound of a thousand voices.
‘Here I am.’
I could bear it no more. Stumbling to my feet, I fled.
44
I ran back to the camp, scrambling and staggering as if all the forces of hell had already burst their gates to pursue me. I barely knew where I was going until Count Raymond’s pickets challenged me; then, calmed by the feel of familiar ground, I wandered until at last I managed to find my tent. In my madness I almost tripped over Sigurd, lying sprawled in front of the door of the tent.
‘Where in hell have you been?’ he demanded.
‘Closer to hell than you know.’
The tremors in my voice stayed his anger. He stood, and led me to the rocky escarpment on the edge of the camp. The night was warm, but my experience had left me so cold I could not keep from shivering. When Sigurd saw this he left me, and presently returned with a blanket, which he draped around my shoulders, and a flask of strong wine. He would not let me speak until I had taken three large gulps: then, as gently as he knew how, he pressed me for my story.
When I had finished, he grunted. ‘If strife in the world meant the end of it, the world would never have begun. Men have been prophesying its doom ever since they realised it was created.’
I took another draught of the wine, relishing its acid taste on my tongue. That at least felt real. ‘It would almost be better if the prophecy was true. At least Anna and the children would be out of danger.’
I had hoped Sigurd would say something to reassure me against my pessimism. Instead, he stared into the darkness and said nothing. I hugged my knees to my chest. My panic was subsiding, but reason brought a chill clarity that was unrelenting in its grip.
‘It doesn’t matter if the prophecy’s true or not.’
‘It’ll matter if it does come true,’ Sigurd objected.
‘No.’ My voice was thin and hollow. ‘What matters is that there are men in this army who believe that it’s true. There were hundreds
there tonight, maybe more.’
‘They’ll have a surprise when they wake up the morning after we capture the city and discover it’s still there.’
‘No!’ I banged my fist on the stony ground. Sharp fragments of rock dug into the side of my hand. ‘They believe that the consummation of the world is at hand. If they capture Jerusalem they will destroy it, fill it so deep with blood that it drowns.’ I pulled the blanket tighter around me: I was shaking so hard I thought my bones might break from their sockets. ‘They will kill every man, woman and child in that city in order to fulfil the prophecy and bring on the apocalypse. Not one will survive.’
Sigurd was quiet. For a moment I wished he would put his arms around me and hug me like a woman, anchor my desolation. But he was captive to his own thoughts and did not move.
‘Then we’ll have to reach Anna and your daughters before the Franks do.’ He looked over his shoulder and pointed at the siege tower, a hulking silhouette against the glow of the city beyond. ‘We need to be the first men onto the walls.’
‘The first men to die with a faceful of Saracen arrows.’
‘Perhaps.’ Sigurd picked up a stone and tossed it down the embankment. ‘What else can we do? If the Franks want to drown the city in blood, all we can do is run before the wave.’
At another time, the thought of putting myself in the front rank of the battle of the ages would have terrified me. Now I accepted it with meek dread. I had never wanted to see Jerusalem; now I would be the first on its walls or, more likely, die in the attempt. Once again, the veil between the worlds drew back and I almost heard the fates laughing. And, in their laughter, I heard a new threat that left me far colder than any thoughts of Saracen arrows and fire.
‘What if Count Raymond doesn’t take the city?’
Sigurd shrugged. ‘Then the world won’t end — and Anna and the others will be safe.’
I shook my head. ‘That was not what I meant. Raymond has lost more than half his army in the last month, and when he launches that siege monster at the walls, he’ll have to push it uphill over broken ground. Meanwhile, Duke Godfrey will be attacking from the north with twice his numbers.’
‘So …’
‘So the first men off Raymond’s tower may not be the first men into the city.’
The white stallion reared up on its hind legs, its front hooves clubbing at the air. The groom who held the halter leaped back, hauling on the rope to bring the horse down. He barely managed to stay on his feet; I was surprised he did not get his head kicked in.
Across the paddock, Duke Godfrey stood by the wattle enclosure and watched, his arms folded across his chest. Four knights stood around him in a wary circle. If any man had benefited from Raymond’s decline, it was Godfrey, and though he had professed indifference it had obviously affected him. He seemed to stand taller, his shoulders broader. There was an authority about him — and, more than that, a knowledge of it — such as I had seen in few other men. Bohemond had been one, but with him power had always been a spectacle. Chasing it, wrestling it, relishing it — he hid nothing, but made a theatre of his ambitions. Some men shrank from their power and others, like Raymond, believed they possessed more than they did, but none seemed so effortlessly comfortable with it as Duke Godfrey.
His guards stiffened as I approached, and moved to bar my way, but Godfrey murmured that I should pass. I walked the few paces across the dusty ground and stood beside him at the fence.
‘I did not send Achard to kill you.’ He did not look at me, but kept his gaze fixed on the stallion in the paddock. ‘He went of his own will, because he hated you for what you did to him in Egypt.’
‘It can be hard to forgive the men who betray you,’ I said coldly.
‘But if you cannot do that, you end up as Achard did: destroyed.’ Godfrey flicked his head. ‘I told you once before that you should leave behind those things that do not concern you.’
‘You told me to go home to my family. And now I cannot, because they are in that city.’ I gestured to the walls a few hundred yards distant. ‘Because of what Achard did.’
At last Godfrey turned to me. ‘Did you come here to hurl your bitterness at me, Demetrios Askiates? What do you want?’
I swallowed, trying to calm myself. ‘I want to be the first man in the city.’
‘Many men want that honour,’ he rebuked me. ‘Many men have begged me for it. But it is not my gift to give. Only God can decide it — if He means us to capture the city at all.’
I nodded, and crossed myself. One thing about Godfrey had not changed: his pedantic piety.
‘Many men have lost their families — I cannot give you my army for that.’
‘I don’t want your army.’ I tried desperately to fight back my temper. ‘I want to join it.’ I had raised my voice, and the guards had noticed. They began to close on me, but Godfrey raised his head a fraction to nod them back.
‘I will submit my men to your authority. Varangian guards, from the emperor’s palace at Constantinople. There is not a king in Christendom who would not want them in his army.’
‘Except perhaps the Norman king of England,’ said Godfrey drily.
‘They will fight to the death for you.’
Godfrey stared out at the paddock. The white stallion had been calmed, and was now allowing the groom to lead him around the ring.
‘Will you be riding him in the assault?’ I asked.
Godfrey laughed dismissively. ‘I would not risk him. He is too good to be felled by an Egyptian arrow.’
‘Then risk me,’ I pleaded. ‘Put me in the vanguard of the battle. When they hurl rocks and arrows and fire at us, put me on the top of your tower.’
‘I think you have spent too long with your Englishmen. I have heard they fight every battle as if they want to die in it.’ He laughed again, the same short laugh as when I had asked about the horse. ‘Perhaps that is a good thing.’
I waited. Godfrey drummed his fingers on the wattle fence. His horse was skittish, tossing its mane and kicking out its hooves as if the meagre business of walking around a ring demeaned it.
At last, without looking at me, Godfrey said, ‘You can go with the tower, if that is your wish. But first you must submit to me and swear your allegiance.’
I dropped to my knees in front of Godfrey and repeated the few words he told me, forgetting them almost as I spoke them. When I had finished, he held out his hand like a bishop so I could kiss his ring. Loathing myself, I pressed my lips to the cracked, black stone that bulged from the worn gold. His ancestors’ ring, I remembered: I had seen it before, in his tent before the council at Rugia. I wondered what had happened to the other ring, the gold seal that had been taken from me at Ravendan. He had wanted me dead, then; now, I feared I would grant him his wish. Fate is inescapable.
I got up, brushing the dust from my knees.
‘All those who will be with me at the top of the tower are already chosen,’ he announced. ‘So are those who will be on the second level, ready to charge over the drawbridge when we lower it.’
‘But-’
‘You and your men will go at the bottom of the tower. We will need strong arms to push it.’
There was nothing I could say. Godfrey knew it.
‘You may go. I suppose you will have to tell Count Raymond how you have changed your loyalties.’ Again that tight smile. ‘No doubt he is used to hearing it by now.’
I found Raymond in his tent, alone, as he often was in those days. He must have just finished paying his knights and labourers their wages: a broad table laid with a chequered cloth had been set in the middle of the room, piled with small stacks of coins, and a pair of scales sat at rest in its centre. I remembered the scales the third horseman had carried in the ceremony the night before, and shuddered.
‘What do you want?’ He sounded impossibly tired, an old man whose life had become a dispiriting ordeal. Barely looking at me, he dropped a succession of coins into one of the pans of the scale until it sank i
nto balance.
The July sun had turned the tent into an oven. The cloth walls seemed to throb with the light outside and stifle the air, but that was not why I felt ill.
‘It is about the assault. .’
Raymond swept the coins into his palm and arranged them on one of the cloth squares. ‘The towers are almost ready. The English captain says we should be able to launch our attack on Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, if the priests agree.’ Absent-mindedly, he began arranging the coins in a pattern like a flower. ‘I am glad that you came. I wanted to talk to you.’
The sickness in my stomach seemed to grow. I tried to speak to pre-empt whatever he would say, but my mouth was suddenly too dry.
‘The princes have already begun to discuss who will rule Jerusalem when we conquer it. The kingship of Jerusalem should only be given to the mightiest and worthiest of princes, and I wanted your assurance that the emperor has not wavered from his commitment to me. That when the victory is won and the city liberated, I will have his support for my claim.’