by Tom Harper
Odard’s head snapped twice to the left, as if something had surprised him, though I could see nothing. ‘The prophets of old spoke salvation. I have heard salvation. You, I think, bring only lies and spite.’
‘The prophets say: “You have forgotten the Lord your God, and made adoration of graven idols,”’ I said. ‘Does that not seem worthwhile to you?’
The tic of Odard’s head grew more pronounced, and I saw him flexing his fingers like claws. ‘I have not forgotten the Lord God,’ he protested. He pointed to his chest, where a cross of black cloth was sewn onto his tunic. ‘I live and walk in the name of Christ.’
‘And was it in the name of Christ that you uncovered a pagan temple, an evil place in the valley of Daphne?’
‘I have never—’
‘You were seen, Odard. You journeyed into the valley of sin, and your sin betrayed you. The harlots among whom you walked saw you. They saw you and your companions go down that hole with a bullock – what did you do then? Did you sacrifice it on the altar? Did you make a burnt offering to Baal, or Amun, or Zeus?’ Though I had chafed to escape my childhood in the monastery, it had at least left me a priest’s intimacy with scripture.
Odard recoiled, bunching his tunic in his hand where the cross was sewn. He would not meet my gaze, but sank his chin on his collar and gibbered nonsense to himself. At last, still not looking up: ‘They saw us go down to that hole, yes, and take the bullock too. But they did not see the truth of what we did there, did they?’ I could not tell if he spoke to me, or himself, or some invisible companion. ‘You have found me out, Greek; you have discovered my sin and I will confess it, wretch that I am. Yes, we went down that hole, with a bullock, and before God I confess we sinned. We slaughtered the animal, and burnt him and devoured him, but we did not do it for Baal or Amun, no. We did it for our own appetites, our own gluttonous greed.’
‘You dug out that forgotten cave just to eat in peace?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘Rainauld found the entrance – Rainauld. Other hands had cleared it, not ours, perhaps the whores’ or brigands’. Rainauld saw the opening and went down. We were foraging,’ he said, blinking rapidly. Dark skin ringed his eyes, so they seemed more the hollow sockets of a skull than part of a living man’s face. ‘Foraging in hostile lands we found a bullock. A bullock. In our greed, and weakness, we sinned: we did not bring it back to the camp to share with the Army of God. No. We slaughtered it and devoured it in secret, hidden in the cave where the smoke of our fire would not draw the Turks. We were sinners and we were frail and we succumbed to the urgings of our flesh. Would you do different?’
‘It’s as I told you,’ Sigurd said, never a man to shirk from triumph. ‘They went there to eat.’
We were walking slowly back to our camp through the lines of Norman tents. Dusk was approaching, but though I was left exhausted by the day I could not look forward to the night, for I feared the dreams that would visit me.
‘You believed his story?’
‘It makes sense. They had a bullock; they could not bear to surrender the least portion of it; and so they ate it in secret, hidden from Turks and Franks alike. We saw the blood where they slaughtered it and the ashes where they roasted it. What more do you need?’
‘You do not find it curious that the place they stumbled on to slaughter the animal, a hidden place we only found by great effort, chanced to be a pagan shrine with an altar showing a sacrificial bull?’
Sigurd shrugged. ‘I once knew a man they nicknamed The Boar, on account of his strength. He died on a hunt when he was gored by a boar. Was that significant? A sign of some mysterious, deeper truth? Or simply chance? There were scorpions and ravens painted on the walls of the temple as well – if a scorpion had scuttled out from the stones, would you have thought it a message from the gods?’ He clapped me on the back. ‘I believe in Jesus, the Lord God and all His Saints – and when they fail me, I sometimes turn to older gods as well. But I also believe that men eat when they are hungry, steal when they have nothing, and die when they are stabbed. I do not need ancient demons and pagan forces to explain every coincidence of this world. Speaking of eating,’ he added, ‘I smell meat cooking even now.’
I sniffed the damp air and nodded. We were almost back at the Norman exercise ground now, and though I had intended to avoid it, the aroma was too much for my famished stomach to ignore. Perhaps Sigurd was right about the bullock.
The light was receding, but as we came into sight of the muddy square I saw Sigurd’s nose had played us true. On the far side, dozens of Normans milled about the orange embers of a fire over which a carcass turned on a spit. There was a festive mood, with much laughter and shouting: for most, it would have been weeks since they had eaten a solid piece of meat.
A Norman pilgrim, bent and lined with age, hurried past me towards the fire, a knife and a bowl in his hand. I took him by the arm, flinching to see his anger at being slowed even a second from eating.
‘Has a foraging party come back?’ I asked. ‘Are there fresh flocks to provision the army at last?’
‘Fresh flocks indeed,’ he mumbled. His words were indistinct, for he had lost most of his teeth. ‘Flocks of wolves guised as sheep. They’ll come no more to this camp.’
He shook free of me and hastened on. Now I could see firelight glowing on the black limbs of the animal bound onto the spit. A man brandishing a knife stepped into the glow, his features like rusted iron. It was Tancred, free of his armour and dressed instead in a rich cloak. Bending across the coals, he carved a thick slice from the roasting carcass and gobbled it off the point of his knife. There was a strangely bitter smell coming from the meat, as if it had not been hung properly.
Tancred must have seen us coming for he turned to face me. The skin around his lips shone with a sheen of hot fat, which dribbled unchecked onto the noble cloth of his cloak.
‘Demetrios Askiates,’ he greeted me, merrily waving his knife. ‘Come and join our feast – it is your spoils, after all. There is plenty for all, though it will soon become scarce if these animals learn what fate awaits them in our camp.’
He took another great bite and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. I could see Quino behind him, laughing in the shadows; further back I thought I glimpsed a figure who could have been Bohemond. But I did not look at any of these, for my stare was fixed on the fire, unwilling to believe the sight I beheld. My stomach rose, choking to be free of me, and if Sigurd had not gripped my shoulder I would have collapsed weeping in the mud.
It was no animal they roasted. It was a man. Through a prism of tears, I watched Tancred and the Norman throng revelling in the firelight as Sigurd dragged me away.
ι β
Three weeks passed after that abomination. I did nothing to delve into the deaths of Drogo and Rainauld; I avoided any errand which took me near Quino, Odard or Bohemond, and they for their part did not seek me out. They would have found scant welcome if they had, for every day the memory of the prisoners whom I had betrayed into their care visited torments upon me. Anna and Sigurd tried to plead my innocence, but I did not heed them. I was sullen, ashamed, and withdrew from their company too often. I must have been more irritable even than Tatikios, whose soul seemed daily to shrink within him at the Frankish sneers and threats he endured. Nor could any of us find solace in the affairs of the siege: the walls of Antioch remained as unyielding as the mountain behind, and its garrison safe within. Each morning we woke to the Ishmaelite chants resounding from their church towers, and each night the same sound mocked us to sleep. One day I met Mushid, the Syrian swordsmith, walking by the Orontes, and I asked him what the words said.
‘Our God, Allah, is greatest, and none other is to be praised,’ Mushid told me, translating easily into Greek. ‘It is the second pillar of our faith.’
After that the song rang more bitterly still in my ears, an inescapable, unceasing rebuke proclaiming the triumph of our enemies.
One day, a week after the feast of Easter, Tatikios summone
d me to take a message to Bishop Adhemar in the Provençal camp. The past months had told terribly on him: his hair had thinned, his skin had paled, even the golden nose seemed tarnished. He no longer dared set foot outside the Byzantine encampment; indeed, he could spend days on end never leaving his tent. Once, visiting a nobleman’s house, I had seen a menagerie filled with every manner of exotic beast: it had struck me then that while many of the smaller and humbler creatures met their captivity with philosophy, those who were greatest in the wild became most wretched in the cage. Such an animal was Tatikios: without armies to command and princes to flatter, with no campaigns to direct or enemies to outmanoeuvre, the life was strangled from him.
‘Pay the bishop my respects, and ask him why eighty bushels of grain sent to me by the Emperor from Cyprus have not arrived.’ Tatikios paced before the golden saints and eagles on the wall. ‘Tell him – no, demand of him – that if he and Count Raymond abuse their command of the road from Saint Simeon, I will see to it that the Emperor’s bounty dries up.’
‘Yes, Lord.’ I bowed. The longer Tatikios spent in his tent the more punctilious he became, as if by walls of protocol alone he could protect himself. It did not seem to soothe his worries.
Although Bishop Adhemar travelled and fought as the legate of the Patriarch of Rome, he made his camp with the Provençals of Count Raymond. He was the most exalted man in the army, inasmuch as the bickering princes could acknowledge any one master, yet he did not set his tent away from the masses or take shelter in the comfort of a farmhouse. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking his tent among the muddied and frayed surrounds: the white cloth gleamed as if woven from alabaster, and the pole which held it up stood at least a head taller than the others around. Outside the door two banners proclaimed his faith: one a simple design of a blood-red cross on white cloth; the other his own standard, the Holy Virgin cradling her child. A few beggars and paupers – though who in that army was not a pauper? – knelt hopefully nearby, their bowls poised for any charity that might emerge, but otherwise there was only a single guard in a blue cloak. On hearing my errand, he was swift to let me pass.
‘Greetings, Demetrios Askiates.’ The bishop rose from behind a wooden table and lifted a hand so that the palm faced me. He pronounced a blessing, in Latin words that I did not understand, then waved me to be seated. ‘Have you come to speak of Drogo?’
Even the name of Drogo dredged up thoughts of death and anger. ‘Your Grace, I have a message from my master Tatikios.’
‘He desires to know what I have done with his grain?’ the bishop guessed. He leaned forward, watching for my reaction, and I met his gaze. Though his eyes were kindly, and warm like polished oak, there was a sharpness in them which I fancied might cut through to the soul. Despite his white cassock and crimson cap, he did not have the look of a holy man: his face was taut and cracked, like hide stretched over a shield, and his shoulders seemed more suited to bearing a sword than a staff. He must have been twenty years my senior, the years etched into him, yet there was unbending strength there which I would not want to meet in battle.
‘Tatikios desires to know why eighty bushels of the Emperor’s grain have not reached him,’ I said.
‘Then your errand is futile.’ He smiled at me. ‘If the grain had been in my hands, it would already have passed to his. I can only suppose that some of Count Raymond’s men must have misnumbered the shipment, and taken it by mistake.’
‘Their mistake means we go hungry.’ I was unwilling to accept excuses that we both knew to be false.
‘Every man in this camp goes hungry. But if Tatikios can control his appetite and forgive the injustice, I will see that the deficit is made good in the next shipment.’
I nodded. We both knew that the Franks delighted in denying the Byzantines our rations, and that we could do nothing about it save protest. When the Franks had passed through Constantinople, the Emperor had used his command of their provisions to force obedience; now the trick was revisited on us.
‘And what news of Drogo?’ the bishop asked. He spoke lightly, but did not try to mask his interest.
‘There is no news of Drogo,’ I said harshly. ‘Nor of Rainauld. Bohemond seems to have lost his interest in the question, and even if he had not, I am no longer minded to serve him.’
‘It was an evil thing that his nephew did with the prisoners. If I could have stopped him . . .’ He parted his clasped hands before him, like a man releasing a bird.
‘There seems to be much evil in this army that you cannot stop.’ The memory of Tancred swept aside all caution and respect for rank. ‘Prisoners are killed, food is stolen, and you – you who wield the authority of God Himself – claim impotence. How is it that God’s legate has so little power in the Army of God?’
Adhemar did not flinch. ‘The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Sometimes evils, great evils, must be borne in a higher cause.’
‘The cause of letting thousands die besieging an unbreakable city?’
‘The cause of salvation – and of peace also.’ He leaned forward, his brow creased by intent or sadness. ‘Do not scoff when I say peace. For all my life – and yours also – the peace of God, to which all Christians should adhere, has been nothing more than a dream in Christendom. Norman against Greek, Frank against German, father against son and emperor against king – ambition and greed have stirred every lord against his neighbour. Dukes become kings and earls become counts, but at what profit? A lord may add another country to his estate, but it is a wasted land, its fruits and its people pillaged by war. In such circumstances, famine and pestilence and hate and despair and all other works of the Devil flourish, while faith and justice are obliterated.’ He closed his eyes in pain, and I wondered what images he saw behind them. ‘You have seen the princes, Demetrios, their pride and their jealousies. Only a single power could impose peace on them: God’s power, as vested in the Pope. All my life I have worked to advance that power. Now we are at its crisis.’
His words were heartfelt, supple and strong as steel, but all his preacher’s art could not mask the contradiction at their core. ‘You would make peace by waging war?’ I asked. ‘Truly, it is said: “I bring no peace but the sword.”’
Adhemar shook his head. ‘You do not understand our purpose. Since the time of Pope Gregory, the church has fought with words and swords to bend the princes of the Earth to its rule, so that under one authority there need be no struggle. Now, at last, my lord Pope Urban has united all the tribes of Christendom under the banner of the cross. Their feet tread the road to Jerusalem, and their souls walk the still thornier path to the peace and fellowship of Christ. For the first time in history, the lords of the Earth have willingly submitted themselves to the direction of the church.’
‘Would they have followed you without the prospect of war and plunder?’ Afterwards I might wonder that I had spoken so freely, so intemperately, to a man of Adhemar’s station, but for now his proselytising energy provoked equal response.
‘The church must work in the world God made. And human flesh is weak. But if we can keep hold of their ambitions, and govern their wills, then eventually we may guide them to a higher path. This great project is the crucible in which the power of the church, and the peace of Christendom, will be forged. Do you wonder, then, at the fires that burn us?’
‘I wonder that you claim to govern their wills, yet cannot command eighty bushels of wheat to reach my camp safely. Nor even keep Tancred from committing the foulest abomination. I see no power – only vain words.’
‘There are many powers in this world, visible and invisible,’ said Adhemar patiently. ‘When Christ came, he did not bring an army of angels to smite his enemies. His was the power to teach and to endure suffering; the power of compassion over anger. If I had ten thousand knights at my command I would be a rival to the princes, and they would sift my words through suspicion and distrust. It is only by forsaking the means to their form of power that I gain the spiritual power to engage their so
uls. Moral strength comes from weakness in arms – but it is a transient strength, easily spent, and thus much must be sacrificed to the greater end.’
He sat back, apparently drained by the sermon, while I at last let deference reassert itself. It seemed to me that he spoke in paradox, theological riddles to cloud his impotence, but I did not say so. Instead, his last words had spurred a new thought in me.
‘On the subject of Drogo, your Grace, there is an aspect of his death which goes beyond my understanding.’
Adhemar gestured to me to continue.
‘A month before he died, he and his companions journeyed to the valley of Daphne. I have followed their path and seen where they went. Beneath one of the ancient villas, they discovered a hidden chamber.’ As best I could remember, I described the form and the decoration of the cave. ‘It was as nothing I have ever seen.’ Nor had I discovered anything from the priests in our camp, who had shied away from any report of such pagan evil, enjoining me only to confess and forget it. ‘I wonder whether in learning to combat idolatry, you have heard of anything similar?’
Adhemar scratched his white beard, his eyes apparently fixed on some knot in the wood of the table. ‘A bull,’ he murmured, repeating what I had told him. ‘It was an animal, I believe, much worshipped by the ancients. Stephen!’
He called, and a young dark-haired priest appeared from behind the inner curtain of the tent. I felt a stab of wounded confidence that words I had spoken so intemperately to the bishop had been heard by another. The priest ignored me, however, and inclined his head to his master.
‘Fetch the writings of the fathers from my library,’ Adhemar said.
The priest disappeared and Adhemar looked back to me. ‘We shall see what ancient authorities can tell us of ancient idolatry.’