Knights of the Cross

by Tom Harper

  Anna stroked my cheek, her expression now recomposed. ‘Helena will be well protected,’ she said. ‘Thomas will see to it.’

  ‘If he hasn’t beheaded himself trying to wield his axe,’ said Sigurd, trying – in his own fashion – to lighten the mood.

  With a glance at how low the candle had burned, Anna rose. ‘I should return to my tent. No doubt the sick and the hungry will be there before dawn, seeking succour.’

  A glance passed between us: mine half pleading, hers half regret. Perhaps in a different year we would have been married by now, but I had not wanted to diminish Helena’s wedding with another ceremony so soon afterwards. Then we had left for war, where marriage seemed inappropriate, and so we lived more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Though not entirely without error.

  ‘I will see you tomorrow.’

  The next day I went again to look for the missing Rainauld, and the following day as well, but each time there was nothing. On the third day I did discover something of him, though not from his friends. Instead, I found an Ishmaelite waiting at his tent. I saw him from some distance as I approached, and was instantly confused, for he neither skulked like a spy nor guarded himself like a merchant. He stood alone outside Drogo’s tent, his turbaned head proclaiming his faith to all yet apparently careless of his safety.

  ‘Demetrios Askiates?’ he asked as I drew near. It took me a moment to realise that he had spoken in Greek.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Mushid, the swordsmith.’

  ‘A Turk?’

  ‘An Arab.’ In addition to the white turban knotted over his head, he was dressed humbly in a brown robe with a red belt. His dark-skinned face was unlined by age and framed by a beard whose hair was black as tar. It was a little longer than mine, and split in the middle where it had grown unevenly, but otherwise he might have passed for a Greek. His brown eyes were clear and round, with neither malice nor fear disfiguring them.

  ‘You’re brave. Not many Saracens would walk unarmed into this camp.’

  He smiled, his teeth very white. ‘A swordsmith is never unarmed.’ He tapped his hip, and I heard the rap of something solid under the robe. ‘I do not provoke battle, but I defend myself if it comes.’

  His voice was light, and his smile constant, yet something in his words made me wonder how much more steel was hidden under the plain cloth. ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘They say you come here every day. They say you are looking for the man who killed Drogo of Melfi.’

  He did not explain who ‘they’ might be, and I did not ask. There was no shortage of ‘them’ in the camp. ‘What do you know of Drogo?’

  ‘When he was penniless, he sold his sword to eat. Then, when his fortunes improved, he needed another blade. I made it for him. Later we became friends. He had lost a brother – and mine too died last year. When they told me he was dead, I . . .’ For the first time, he seemed to hesitate over his words. ‘I was sad.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘A week ago. On the day he died, I think.’

  ‘Where? What time?’ Suddenly I was alive with hope. Bohemond had promised to ask through his army whether anyone had seen Drogo in the hours before he died, but thus far none had admitted it. Doubtless they feared blame. If this swordsmith had met him, he must have been among the last to see him living.

  ‘On the road, at about the ninth hour – three hours past noon. He was happy with me; his new sword had slain three Turks in the battle the previous day.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going? Whom he purposed to meet?’

  ‘He had been at the mosque, building your tower. He felt guilty that you had desecrated the dead.’ The swordsmith fixed me with an earnest stare. ‘Even in war, the dead should be honoured.’

  ‘He did not say where he was going?’

  ‘I did not ask. I thought he went back to the camp – where else?’

  ‘Indeed.’ I paused, feeling certain that I should put more questions to this Saracen who had fallen across my path, who might remember something significant of that afternoon. To fill the silence, I asked: ‘What do your fellow Ishmaelites think of you, that you sell the blades by which they die?’

  The swordsmith shrugged. ‘What they say in their thoughts, they keep there. What they speak with their tongues is that trade affords no enemies. Many, after all, supply the food which sustains you, the horses you ride to battle. Why not your weapons?’ He laughed. ‘Besides, we are not all as one in Islam because we all wear turbans and beards.’ He jerked his head towards the triple peak of Mount Silpius, and the walls that ringed it. ‘The Turks in the city, they are Ahl al-Sunna. I am of the Shi’at ’Ali, like the Fatimids of Egypt. We believe differently – as Rum and Franj do.’

  ‘The Byzantines and Franks are united in Christ,’ I protested, though I knew it to be scarcely true.

  Mushid frowned. ‘But you believe it is ordained to eat leavened bread, not unleavened. And that your priests should marry. And that . . .’

  I held up my hand. ‘Enough. I am neither monk nor theologian. Indeed, I wonder if you know more of my religion than I do.’

  ‘Only two kinds of the Nazarenes pass through my country: merchants and pilgrims. I speak with both, and learn their ways.’

  ‘And you are of a different faith to the Turks? A different party of Ishmaelites?’ I could not quite comprehend how I had come to debate religion with a Saracen swordsmith outside Drogo’s tent, but I remembered the Emperor’s exhortation to learn their divisions.

  ‘Our differences would seem as obscure to you as yours do to me. Yet they can bring us to war against each other. The Fatimids of Egypt have fought the Turks for decades.’

  ‘And you are one of them?’

  ‘No. I—’

  He broke off as a figure in mail came striding up between the rows of tents. With a coif about his neck and a helmet on his head, he was almost unrecognisable, but there was something familiar in the sharp, snapping movement of his limbs. Behind him, I could see the boy Simon leading a grey palfrey.

  ‘You,’ he barked, raising a gloved fist. The voice was Quino’s. ‘I ordered you never to come here again.’

  For a moment both Mushid and I hesitated, neither sure whom he addressed. As he drew too near to ignore I said at last, ‘I was seeking Rainauld.’

  ‘Rainauld is gone. Do not use him as your excuse for spying. I have been out on the plain harrying. Turkish foragers; what have you done, Greek? Nothing but prying and lying, I would say.’

  ‘Prying where the lord Bohemond sends me.’

  ‘And you,’ he continued, turning to Mushid. ‘Do not come here.’ Twisting awkwardly in his armour, he pulled the helmet from his head and fixed the Arab with a look of pure venom. As he disappeared through the flaps of the tent, I heard him shouting for the boy to attend him or feel the flat of his sword.

  I glanced at Mushid. His eyes registered neither anger nor fear, but only sadness. ‘Quino seems as fond of you as he is of me,’ I said.

  Mushid gave a small laugh. ‘He and Drogo suffered many adventures together. I think Quino was jealous of our friendship – and I am, of course, infidel. He did not like me. I thought—’

  For the second time that afternoon, our words were interrupted by a sudden arrival. We did not see him coming, for he burst around the edge of the tent and ran almost straight into Mushid. It was a Norman, a thin man whom I did not recognise. His tunic was dark with sweat, and he could barely gasp out: ‘Quino. Is Quino here? Or Odard?’

  I nodded my head at the tent. ‘In there.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mushid.

  If the Norman was surprised to be questioned by an Arab in the heart of the Christian camp, the urgency of his errand drowned it. ‘It is Rainauld. They have found him.’

  I knew the moment he spoke that it was not good news. From the land of the missing, the living ‘reappear’ or ‘return’. Only the dead are ‘found’.

  ‘Where?’ I demand
ed, snatching the Norman’s arm before he could enter the tent. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In an orchard, near the Alexandretta road.’

  I did not wait for Quino to emerge, but started running. It was a full two miles to the road, through the Lotharingian and Fleming lines, across the shifting timbers of the boat bridge, and up the far slope of the valley to the first ridge. My lungs burned with the effort, and my enfeebled limbs could barely keep me upright after so many months of hunger. I had to stop at the road and bend double to try and restore some order to my body.

  As soon as I looked up, though, it was plain where I should go. There were as many wayfarers and draught animals on the road as ever, but a little way along a great number seemed to be drifting from the path, drawn up the hill by some invisible power.

  ‘That must be the way,’ said a voice beside me.

  I looked to my left, to see Mushid staring up the road. I had not noticed him following me, but the run did not seem to have troubled him much.

  ‘I think I see the orchard.’

  He ran on, and I forced myself after him. My bones felt empty, my sinews tight as bowstrings, but I managed to keep sight of him as we sprinted along the road and then up the scrubby slope. The broken ground was treacherous, not least because I could not summon sufficient care to look where my feet fell, but at length it flattened into a terrace cut out of the hillside. Once it had perhaps supported a grove of apple trees, but now there were only stumps and wild grasses. At the far end, where a low wall of broken stone embanked the hill, a crowd several score strong had gathered.

  I pushed my way through the gaunt faces, feeling the cruel hope abound in them. Like our pagan ancestors in the amphitheatres of old, they had come for death. They would not be disappointed.

  When I had first seen Drogo’s body I had seen no marks of violence: here, the violence was everywhere, splashed across the tawny grass and the weathered stones of the wall. I stepped forward, past the anonymous safety of the ringed crowd and into the human arena they had created. Before me, a solitary man knelt on the ground, blood covering his arms as far as his elbows. I did not recognise him, though his ragged tunic made him look more a pilgrim than a knight. With one hand, he jerked a knife at the surrounding throng.

  ‘I killed him,’ he shouted defiantly. ‘I claim him.’

  I stopped, overwhelmed by the confession and the dizzied pounding in my head. The air about me seemed suddenly dark.

  ‘Why did you kill him?’ I asked.

  ‘I have not eaten in nine days,’ he shrieked. ‘I hunted him, and I slew him.’

  ‘What?’ I could not comprehend this.

  With a grim cackle, never taking his gaze from his audience, the man reached into the grass and raised the corpse to view. The breath that had clung in my throat at last escaped. Hanging from his hand, its mangy fur matted black with blood, was the lifeless body of a wild dog.

  ‘With this knife I killed him,’ the man shouted. He plunged his knife into the dog’s belly, and a fresh trickle of fluid oozed out. ‘See? See?’

  A wave of jealous hunger seethed through the crowd, and they began to press forward. No wonder the pilgrim was so desperate; they would never let him keep the meat for himself.

  But I had no interest in battling for a dog’s carcass – or at least, my will to find Rainauld was stronger. ‘Where is the Norman?’ I called, keeping clear of the pilgrim so as not to provoke him. ‘Did you find him too?’

  ‘Over here.’

  I looked around. A little distance away, unnoticed by the famished crowd, Mushid was standing by the stone wall. As the man and his dog disappeared in the mob, I squeezed through to see what he had found. A low brick archway was set in the wall to allow drainage, its mouth almost entirely obscured by weeds and flowers. The Arab was squatting before it, pulling back the foliage to allow in more light. As I joined him, I wished he had preserved it in darkness.

  There was no blood, but that was no mercy. The corpse that lay under the crumbling vault must have been there for days. Wild animals had ripped the clothes from it, chewing and tearing terrible rents from the body. What flesh remained was black and swollen; his limbs lay splayed out at unnatural angles, while the smell in the untouched air of the culvert was unbearable. I could not number the dead or dying I had seen in the past months, but they were nothing compared with this horror. I staggered away, and gasped out what little was in my stomach onto a patch of poppies.

  When I turned back, a small crowd had gathered by the arch. I recognised Quino’s compact shape and half a dozen other Normans in armour. Two of them held the hapless pilgrim who had killed the dog, while the rest watched a trio of men-at-arms drag Rainauld’s body into the open. Mushid, prudently, had vanished.

  Quino had his back to me, his face hidden, but I could see clearly as he slammed a fist into the pilgrim’s cheek. ‘What did you do?’ he hissed. ‘Why did you kill him?’

  The man groaned, and spat blood onto the ground. ‘Please,’ he mumbled. ‘Please. I found him. The dog led me to him. I did not touch him. Please, my Lord, have mercy. I have not eaten in nine days. I have not—’

  I stepped forward. ‘He did nothing, Quino. Look at the body. It has been there for days – weeks, even.’

  Such was the anger on Quino’s face as he spun around that I was driven backwards a pace. His voice, though, was almost imperceptibly soft. ‘You would do well to go far from this place, Greek. Two of my closest companions, my brothers, lie dead, and each time it is you who finds them. Next time it will be you who feeds the crows and carrion-eaters. I, Quino of Melfi, swear it.’

  ‘Demetrios is charged by me to find who killed your companion. You will not hinder him.’

  I looked up to the voice which had spoken above us. He sat atop a warhorse so white that it was almost blasphemous in this place of death, so tall that even its saddle was above the height of my eyes. It was Bohemond. At his side an attendant carried the red banner emblazoned with the silver serpent, while behind him a company of mounted knights pushed back the crowd of onlookers.

  ‘You,’ said Bohemond, pointing to the pilgrim still held by Quino’s men. ‘You found the body?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’ The man was weeping openly, though whether from gratitude or fear or horror none could tell. ‘I was hunting a dog. Please, my Lord, I have not eaten in nine days.’

  ‘Then you will eat tonight.’ Bohemond reached into the velvet bag on his belt, and tossed something glittering at the man’s feet. The guards let him go as he fell to snatch it.

  ‘Is the corpse Rainauld of Albigeois?’

  Quino, his face contorted with anger, nodded. ‘So far as any man can tell.’

  ‘Turn him over.’

  One of Bohemond’s knights rode forward and slid the end of his lance under the corpse until it toppled onto its back. Narrowing my eyes, as if by doing so I might diminish the sight, I peered at it. Thankfully, I did not have to look long for the cause of his death. Plunged into his chest at the centre of a bloom of dried blood, I could see the leather-bound stump of a knife handle.

  Bohemond saw it too. ‘What do you say, Demetrios? Did he do this himself?’

  The final, guilt-ridden act of a murderer? ‘I cannot say,’ I answered truthfully.

  For a moment, Bohemond said nothing. His face was tied in concentration; he did not seem to notice as his horse skittered beneath him. At last: ‘Bury him. I will think on this in the night, and pray for God’s wisdom. Attend me in the morning, Demetrios.’

  He rode away, and I followed him towards the road, keeping among the knots of men and women drifting back to the camp. If Quino discovered me alone, I doubted Bohemond’s name would be any shield.

  As I walked, I chiselled at my thoughts, trying to shape them into some more familiar form. Rainauld had not been seen since Drogo’s death, and though that was now six days previous my every sense insisted that his death was linked to Drogo’s. Whether it had happened before or after Drogo’s, and by his own hand o
r another’s, I could not know. Whether Rainauld had lain in that vault for two days or six was an equal mystery, though the decay of his body seemed to bespeak an earlier death. The sight was something I would yearn to forget, but amid the rot and scavenging and torn clothes, I was certain that I had seen something significant. A mark on his back as the Norman turned him. The shiny, puckered skin of a cross-shaped scar.

  η

  My dreams left me little rest that night and each time I awoke I longed for Anna’s embrace to warm my shivering fears. In the morning I rose early and made for Bohemond’s tent. The chill in the air spurred my steps, but I had no enthusiasm: I feared he would demand many more answers than I could supply. Nor was I even sure what answers he desired, for his shock at the discovery of Rainauld’s body had appeared entirely genuine. If Sigurd and Count Raymond were right, if my role had merely been to name Rainauld as Drogo’s murderer, what then? Would he have me declare that Rainauld slew his friend and then killed himself in a frenzy of guilt? I was not sure that I could say so – but neither was I certain that I could insist on perpetuating doubt so damaging to the army.

  As so often, my worries were wasted. Bohemond’s banner was gone from outside his tent, and the lone guard was brusque in his dismissal.

  ‘There were reports of Turkish raiders in the mountains: Bohemond has gone to seek them. He will not return before nightfall.’

  Relief and disappointment mingled in my heart. I had not wanted to confront Bohemond, with his persuasive ways and hidden purposes, but without him I was left adrift. I could not speak to Quino without fear for my life, and I could not seek Odard without risk of seeing Quino. Inspecting tents for leakage with Tatikios attracted me little better. Unthinkingly, I left the Norman camp and walked down to the river.

  The Orontes was largely deserted at that hour, save for a few women sitting on rocks upstream, rinsing their laundry where the water was not yet fouled with the effluence of our camp. A few blackened twigs poked out from the surface where they had been twisted into a fish trap, while on the far bank a pair of children tried their luck with lengths of twine. They must have baited their hooks with leaves, for food was too scarce to risk in the river. Otherwise the water flowed on implacably, black as the clouds hanging overhead. I sat on a rock and watched it pass, keeping my back to the looming mountain which overshadowed all behind me.