by Tom Harper
‘There was a Saracen. For a time, Drogo had lapsed into heresy. This Ishmaelite preyed on Drogo’s doubts and seduced him into worse error. First idolatry, then apostasy. He wished to make Drogo his creature, his spy. He had Drogo lure Rainauld to the dell and kill him, to test his loyalty.’ It was a bitter truth that the man I had sought to avenge had himself been a murderer.
Deep in his pillows, Adhemar nodded. He shuffled deeper under his blankets, turning this way and that in search of comfort. Even when he lay still he looked in pain, though it would not be for long. The breaths that hissed through his dry lips grew ever more faint.
‘I was walking in the fields,’ he whispered. His thoughts were dissolving; I could not tell if it was a month earlier or a lifetime he remembered. ‘Walking, and praying. I found them in the dell, alone.’
Seated low on my stool, I stiffened. What memory was this?
‘They embraced as brothers. As he stepped away, he kissed Rainauld on the cheek. Then he stabbed the knife in his heart. He fell without a word.’
Now there was no sound in the room. Even the murmur of the guards outside had ceased, though they could not have heard Adhemar’s frail words. The sound barely reached my own ears.
‘I saw the Saracen.’ Adhemar’s eyes were open again, but staring away into time. ‘He hid behind a boulder. When it was done, he took Rainauld away and left Drogo.’
‘You saw Drogo murder Rainauld?’ I breathed.
Adhemar’s gaze came back to focus on me. ‘Demetrios. Bring me my cope. In the chest.’
Fighting back the questions which demanded to be asked, I opened the iron-bound chest he indicated and dragged out the great crimson cope. Images of Christ and the apostles and prophets were stitched into it in gold, and its weight was immense, heavier than armour. As best I could, I wrapped it around Adhemar’s shoulders.
‘Now lift me in my bed.’
I crooked my arm about him and raised him so that his head came above the ledge of the window. His eyes were in shadow, but he slowly turned his face until it gazed onto the hills beyond.
‘That way lies the promised land, the land of Israel. I will not cross over there, but the Lord has granted me to see it.’
Unsure what he wanted, I continued to hold him up.
‘I went to him,’ Adhemar whispered. ‘Perhaps I should have stayed hidden, but I could not. I could not . . .’ The faint voice tailed away, and I almost shook him in desperation. ‘I could not comprehend why he should kill without mercy. Without passion.’
He leaned back in my arms, and I lowered him to the cushions. His neck had become so thin that I feared I might snap it in my impatience. I heard a gurgling in his throat and feared the end had come; I prayed God to spare him, not from mercy but from a compulsion to hear his secret, to know.
‘Do you know what he told me?’ Adhemar’s face had slackened. The wrinkles unwound themselves, and he looked almost like a child.
‘That there is no God?’ I guessed reluctantly.
Adhemar’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘Yes. That there was no God. That priests were liars, and the faithful fools. That it was no evil to kill, because none would punish it. He laughed in my face and called me a charlatan.’
‘And you slew him.’ There were tears on my cheek, though I did not notice them.
‘I slew him. I slew him, because it was too terrible to hear his words. Because he was a murderer. Because after all the agonies and battles we had suffered in Christ’s name, Drogo forsook Him. He stood there, smiling and bloodied and unrepentant, and I knew evil.’
More coughing racked Adhemar’s body. ‘He denied God, and declared himself almighty. He killed, because there was none to judge him. But I was there. I judged him. In the flower of my anger, I became the angel of vengeance and struck him down. I put the mark of Cain on his brow, so that men might know him as a murderer, and left his body to be devoured by carrion-eaters. Then I fled from that awful place.’
‘Where I found him.’
Adhemar nodded, and seemed to drift into sleep for a while. I put my hand on his throat, but the life still beat in him, however faint. I looked around the room and out of the windows, trying to numb my troubled soul. For a year my faith had endured famine and slaughter, pain and despair. Now, I did not know what to believe.
I felt a hand on my wrist and looked down. Adhemar was trying to speak, though he could barely form words. ‘Water?’
I stood, glad of any movement, and crossed to a table in the far corner which held a stone jug and a cup. The water splashed my fingers as I poured it, warm and brackish, but it seemed to suffice for Adhemar. I held the cup to his lips and let him drink, then wiped his mouth on the hem of my sleeve.
‘I repent it, Demetrios.’ His hand still gripped mine, with all the strength within him. ‘I killed Drogo because he offended God, yet in my rage I committed the same offence. Worse. He killed denying God; I killed in His name. I saw evil and I tried to destroy it. Instead, I let it consume me. He will judge me harshly when I come before His throne, and I will deserve it.’
I tipped the cup to his mouth again, unable to speak. Outside the window a flock of birds wheeled in the sky, while from the courtyard I could smell the smoke of a fire being kindled. Dusk was coming on.
‘What?’
I thought I had heard a whisper from the bed, and looked down to see what Adhemar had to say. But my ears had deceived me: he had not spoken, and he would not speak again. His unseeing eyes were open, and his head was crooked to one side, as if at the last he had recognised some long-forgotten face. With trembling hands, I pulled the cope around him, then took the silver cross from my neck and laid it on his chest. Perhaps he would find some use for it where he had gone.
Outside the room, a cluster of priests and knights were waiting in the corridor. Suspicious stares fixed themselves on me as I passed.
‘He is asleep,’ I told them. ‘He desired half an hour in peace.’
More crowds had gathered in the courtyard beyond, pacing fretfully over the sea-blue tiles. News of Adhemar’s condition must have spread through the city, for there were many nobles, as well as priests and pilgrims. I saw Bohemond standing among a knot of his retainers, a head above them all, and Duke Godfrey whispering with Robert of Normandy in a corner. Even Count Raymond had come, ashen-faced and sour. I ignored them all, and pushed through the gate to the hillside beyond.
The path to the city lay before me, but I was not ready to go back. Instead, I climbed a little way up the hill, picking my way between thorns and rocks. On a small outcrop on the shoulder of the mountain I found a boulder and seated myself against it, looking out over the hills. The land below was in shadow, though the tips of the hills and the mountain above were still tinged with gold.
For a long time – an hour, perhaps, though I did not count – I sat in silence. Sometimes my eyes gazed on the landscape, sometimes to the far horizon where thought and memory and sight converged. There were questions in my soul which would not soon be answered, but what solace I could find I found in their contemplation. How much suffering and death had been worked in this place in the name of God, of gods, of all gods and none? Had it redeemed our souls, as Christ’s suffering had redeemed His? I did not think so. We had built our own cross and nailed ourselves to it, exulting in our piety even as we bled, then wondered why our god had forsaken us. We had set ourselves tests of faith, and failed them. Adhemar, at his end, had seen clearly: God would judge us harshly, and we would deserve it.
The last light had sunk behind the western hills, and a grey haze embraced the air. I rose. I had abandoned Anna and Sigurd long enough. I should go down.
As I turned to go back, I glanced over my shoulder. The mountains were little more than purple shadows against the deepening sky, and the valleys between had vanished. The course of the Orontes was hidden, and darkness covered the road beside it.
The road we had fought so long to clear.
The road to Jerusalem.
&n
bsp; Τελος
Historical Note
The battle for Antioch is perhaps best understood as the Stalingrad of the First Crusade. In both cases, invading armies made rapid progress across enemy territory before becoming mired for months outside cities too large and tenaciously defended to be taken. In both cases, the besiegers were then themselves surrounded, with the crucial difference that the crusaders were eventually able to break out and raise the siege. Had they failed, Pope Urban’s vision of conquest would have foundered as surely as did Hitler’s in 1942. It is hardly surprising, then, to discover the catalogue of greed, intrigue, treachery and extraordinary violence that attended the siege. In general facts and chronology, as well as in the characters of the leaders, I have tried to be as faithful as possible to the (often contradictory) sources. The privations that the army suffered, the sudden taking of the city two days before Kerbogha arrived, the finding of the Holy Lance, and the extraordinary victory against overwhelming odds in the final battle, all happened much as I have described. Contemporary chroniclers could find no explanation other than the miraculous, and modern historians offer few more solid answers.
The one area where I have taken substantial liberties with history is in the matter of the heretics. The sources make no reference to the appearance of heresy among the crusaders – as you would expect from a group of clerical chroniclers glorifying the papacy’s great achievement – but we know that the crusaders did encounter local heretics en route. There was a strong puritanical element among the mass of non-combatants, and it frequently voiced itself in opposition to the decadence of their leaders. Given how disastrously awry those leaders seemed to have led the crusade during the terrible winter of 1097–98, and how impossible it was to disentangle the spiritual and political spheres in the medieval mind, it seems entirely plausible that social protest would naturally have led some pilgrims to more radical theologies. In a group of exceptional piety, enduring extraordinary suffering and finding themselves beyond all bounds of their known world, it seems reasonable to suppose that some would have looked beyond the confines of orthodoxy for relief – particularly in the spawning ground of faiths that was and is the Middle East. The heterodox beliefs I describe are based on ideas that were both contemporary and enduring, but are not meant to reflect the precise tenets of any particular sects.