Siege of Heaven

by Tom Harper

  Aelfric stirred. ‘Sigurd Ragnarson would disagree with you.’

  ‘Which is why I left the Varangians.’ He saw my look of surprise. ‘Yes, Demetrios Askiates, I have seen your city and stood beside your emperor, in the palace and on the battlefield. As close as I am to you now. But do you know what I realised? That if I was to live under a foreign king, it might as well be in my own country.’

  ‘Even though he raped that country?’ Aelfric murmured.

  Saewulf gave a harsh laugh. ‘Better that than living in perpetual exile, brooding on injustices that will never be undone and pretending that I can atone for my country’s shame by giving my life for a king who cared nothing for it. That was why I left the Varangian guard – it was like living in an open grave.’

  ‘I wonder, was it as hard for you to live under the king who murdered your family?’

  ‘Much harder. But wasting my life with anger would have been too easy.’

  There was no amusement on Saewulf’s face now. He glared at Aelfric, and the Varangian returned the gaze, both men trembling like drawn swords.

  ‘Even so, you are a long way from England.’ Nikephoros spoke with forced calm.

  Saewulf spread out his hands, peering at them as if looking for signs of weakness. ‘I am no longer a soldier. I am a merchant.’

  Mercenary, I thought I heard Aelfric mutter, but the crackling fire drowned it out.

  ‘But I am still in the business of war. Armies need food and weapons. New conquests open new opportunities.’ He nodded to the Saracen camel-drivers, who sat by their own fire a little way down the beach. ‘And in wartime, luxuries become dearer.’

  ‘And tax-collectors less vigilant,’ said Nikephoros.

  The knowing smile returned to Saewulf’s face. ‘New opportunities.’

  ‘And if the opportunity came to earn gold and the emperor’s favour?’

  Saewulf scowled. ‘I told you: I do not serve your emperor any more.’

  ‘But you sail in his waters, where his fleets patrol. One day, it may matter that he looks kindly on you.’

  ‘And the gold?’

  Nikephoros spread open his cloak. ‘You see I have nothing – not now. But when I reach home – ’

  ‘No.’ Saewulf cut through Nikephoros’ calm persuasion. ‘I cannot take you to Constantinople. It would take weeks, and with the winter winds against us we might not even be able to enter the Hellespont. You offer me an opportunity, Greek, but I think there are greater profits to be made elsewhere.’

  Under the chill of his words, the fire seemed to dim and the night breeze grow sharper. Aelfric turned away in disgust, as if he had expected no less, while I held myself still. Only Nikephoros remained unaffected.

  ‘I do not want you to take me to Constantinople.’

  Saewulf looked surprised. ‘Where, then?’

  ‘We are going to Antioch.’

  Saewulf rested his chin in his hands and stared into the fire. ‘And what will you do there? The last time I passed by Antioch, Franks and Normans controlled it.’

  ‘We will prise them out,’ said Nikephoros confidently, ‘and put them on the road to Jerusalem. With the caliph turned against us, there is no alternative.’

  The next day we loaded the Saracens’ cargo onto the ships, and set sail for Antioch.

  II

  The Golgotha Road

  January – June 1099

  ιη

  We returned to Antioch early in January. We were tired from the journey: the endless days beating against sharp winds, the damp and shivering, the constant watch for pirates and storms. It was the very dead of winter, and a freezing rain fell on us as we disembarked at the port of Saint Simeon. On the higher ground there would be snow. We stood by the empty harbour, three bedraggled figures in borrowed clothes, with borrowed horses bullied from the local innkeeper. Somewhere in the gloom, a church bell tolled.

  ‘What now?’

  Nikephoros looked at the dreary town. ‘We must find out how far the Frankish army has advanced and follow. With God’s grace, they may even be at the gates of Jerusalem.’ He gave a cold laugh, like the drumming of raindrops. ‘But we will ask at Antioch.’

  For over a year Antioch had been the pole around which my life turned: by turns unattainable, irresistible and inescapable. Now I reached it for the last time, at a noon that was darker than dusk. The slopes of Mount Silpius rose up into the cloud, its triple-crowned peak invisible, while the city below lay still and sullen in the twilight. Whatever violence had been worked there in the past, it seemed peaceful enough now. That did not lessen my misgivings.

  Though the rain had stopped, there was no break in the cloud, and it was not until we had approached within a bowshot of the gate that we noticed anything amiss. A red banner, as tall as a mounted rider, hung above the gate like a portcullis. Rain had wrung the fresh dye from the cloth, filling the ruts and craters below with crimson pools, but the design still stood clear. A white serpent, writhing down the middle of the banner like a tear or a scar.

  I shook my head in confusion. ‘This was Count Raymond’s gate. Why is Bohemond’s standard over it?’

  Nikephoros trotted forward and thumped his fist on the gate. The age-blackened wood loomed above him, eternal and unmoving, and the sound of his knock quickly died. At the feet of the towers, beside the gate, white gouges pocked the stonework.

  ‘Who are you?’

  A suspicious voice rang in the still air. It must have come from the gatehouse, but even when I craned my neck back I could see no one.

  Nikephoros glanced at me and nodded. I licked my lips, then shouted: ‘Ambassadors from the emperor Alexios.’

  With a crack and a hiss, something ripped through the air and buried itself in the mud. My horse reared up; I flung my arms around its neck and hugged it tight, clenching my knees against its flanks. Beside me, I saw a small feathered arrow sticking up from the ground.

  ‘Antioch is closed to you,’ said the disembodied voice.

  Nikephoros circled his horse back a little, trying to see between the battlements. ‘Antioch belongs to the emperor. Who has closed it?’

  There was no answer except the ominous creak of a bowstring being drawn back and snapped into position. A chill gust of wind blew over us, and the serpent banner flapped against the stone as the breeze lifted it.

  None of us spoke as we rode south. It took all my concentration simply to stay in my saddle: my soul was trembling like a broken sword, while my body shivered in the deepening cold. I could barely keep hold of the reins. We forded the Orontes and rejoined the main road from Antioch, now rising towards the mountains. The rain had eased, but a thick, freezing fog replaced it as we climbed higher, and we had no warning of the men ahead until we saw dark shapes staggering through the fog.

  It could so easily have been an ambush, and we would have been powerless to stop it. On the miry road and with flagging mounts, we could not even have run. But there was something shambolic and frantic in the shadows before us that did not speak of menace. We spurred our horses forward, and a dozen men turned in the mist to look at us.

  They were not brigands. Nor were they Turks. All were dressed in mail hauberks, and most carried weapons, but they posed little danger. Dirty cloths and bandages hung off their bodies like flags; one man’s head was bandaged thick as a turban where he had apparently lost an eye. Their faces were wretched: had they not been armed, you would have taken them for a slave coffle. Only the ragged crosses sewn on their sleeves told their true allegiance.

  I gestured to their wounds. ‘Where have you come from? Was there a battle?’

  The foremost of the Franks leaned heavily on his spear, burying it in the mud. ‘They attacked two nights ago. There was nothing we could do.’

  ‘Where?’ Had the Army of God been routed? Was this its last remnant, a handful of survivors spared to tell of its terrible fate?

  ‘Antioch,’ he mumbled. ‘They have taken Antioch from us.’

  ‘Who?’ I co
uld guess the answer, but I asked it anyway.

  ‘The Norman traitor. Bohemond.’

  Nikephoros twitched his reins. ‘What did he say?’

  I ignored him. ‘And the Greeks in Antioch – what happened to them? What did Bohemond do to them? What – ’ I broke off as I heard my voice become shrill with panic. It did no good; the soldier dismissed my question with a careless shrug that was worse than any answer.

  ‘And you – you are Provençals? Count Raymond’s men?’

  He nodded. Behind him, I could see his men shivering, and trying to keep their sodden bandages in place. There had never been any love between the Normans and Provençals, least of all between their leaders, but could Bohemond really have launched a war on his fellow Christians?

  ‘Where is Count Raymond? Was he at Antioch?’

  The Provençal shook his head. ‘The count is at Ma’arat.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Further along this road.’ Even in his despair, he seemed surprised that I had not heard of it. ‘Two days’ march from here.’

  A cold gust of wind blew rain in my eyes, and my mount pawed at the ground in her eagerness to be moving again. Two days’ march, I thought, listening to my own words as I translated for Nikephoros. We had been away more than four months, seen palaces, kings and wonders; crossed deserts and seas just to return. While in all that time, the invincible Army of God had moved just two days forward.

  Snow fell in the mountains that night. Next morning, a brittle crust covered the ground, and our horses picked their way anxiously over the frozen ruts in the road. The skies above were grey, unyielding, but the air was clear. When we came to an outcrop on the mountain road, we could see a high plateau opening out below us. The whole earth sparkled white, made new by the snow.

  ‘What’s that?’

  While I had been staring into the distance, Aelfric’s practical gaze had been examining the road ahead. Immediately before us it plunged into a pine forest, but it emerged again below, heading south-east across the plain. At the bottom of the slope a river flowed around the mountains’ feet, and where river and road met there stood a small town.

  ‘Do you see there?’ Aelfric was pointing to the meadows just beyond the town. I looked, but saw nothing. Squinting against the sullen winter light, I stared closer until suddenly, like a ship emerging from fog, foreground and background split apart and I saw what Aelfric meant. Tents – scores of them, white as the snow. Deceived by the distance, I had taken them for the furrows of some farmer’s field, and the specks moving among them to be crows. In fact, they were not nearly so far off.

  We had found the Army of God.

  Whatever ordeals we had endured in the past months, the Franks must have suffered worse. As we rode through their camp towards the town we were surrounded by haggard faces and ragged bodies. Even in the midwinter cold, many did not have enough clothes to cover themselves: ribs like curved fingers pressed out against skin, while the bellies of the worst-affected swelled up in cruel mockery of satiety. Black toes and fingers poked from dirty bandages that had long since become useless, while twice I saw bodies so still they must have been corpses, lying unheeded and unburied in the mud.

  Aelfric stared at the miserable faces, which turned towards us as we passed. ‘Has nothing changed?’

  I knew what he meant. There was a horrible familiarity in these scenes: we had suffered exactly the same way a year ago outside Antioch. It seemed almost inconceivable that for all the victories we had won in that time, the miracles that had sustained us, the Army of God now found itself suffering the same torments only a few dozen miles distant. Nothing had changed – except that there were many fewer tents now than there had been a year ago. The river of humanity, which had forced its way across deserts, broken down the walls of Antioch and swept away all opposition, had flowed into the earth. A few lingering pools were all that remained – and soon they, too, would drain away.

  I glanced at Nikephoros, wondering how his life in the immaculate confines of the palace would have prepared him for this. He held his head rigid, his eyes fixed ahead, but it was not shock or compassion that his mask was worn to hide. The corner of his lip twitched, and his pitiless eyes stared on the wretches around us with something like disgust. And, I could have sworn, satisfaction.

  Beyond the camp, at the entrance to the town proper, a guard challenged us. With relief, I saw he was a Provençal, one of Count Raymond’s men.

  ‘Is this Ma’arat?’ I asked eagerly.

  He looked puzzled. ‘Ma’arat? Ma’arat is another day’s march from here. This town is called Rugia.’

  Two days’ progress in four months, and now they had lost one of them. ‘Has there been a battle? A defeat? Why has the army retreated here?’

  The guard laughed at my panic. ‘We have not retreated. The bulk of the army is still camped at Ma’arat.’ He gestured at the rows of tents in front of him. ‘Did you think this was all that survived of the Army of God? These are just the princes’ bodyguards.’

  ‘The princes?’ My hopes rose. ‘Is Count Raymond here?’

  ‘They all are.’ He gave me a crooked look, taking in our travel-stained clothes and weary faces. ‘They’ve come here for a council – though to call it a parley would be nearer the mark. All of them: Count Raymond, the Count of Flanders, the Duke of Normandy, Tancred, Bohemond . . .’ He paused, counting them off on his fingers. ‘And Duke Godfrey.’

  ιθ

  A Provençal knight led us to a high-walled villa in the centre of the town, where the blue banner of Provence and the white standard of the Army of God hung by the gate. Aelfric waited outside, while a small priest with a harelip brought us through many guarded doors to a wide chamber deep in the house. Rich carpets laid three or four deep covered the floor and lined the walls, steaming slightly where the lamps had been placed too close to them. A smouldering brazier filled the room with hot smoke; at the back, on a table of its own amid a constellation of candles, sat the golden reliquary with the fragment of the holy lance.

  The harelipped priest motioned us to stay by the door and advanced to the middle of the room, where a slumped figure sat in a chair beside the brazier. A thick blanket was drawn over him, though he still seemed to shiver underneath it. The priest whispered in his ear, then beckoned us closer.

  Whatever had happened in the months we had been away, it had not been kind to Count Raymond. He had always been the oldest of the princes – twice my age, I thought – but now the years showed. There was little trace of the vigour that had held together his army outside Antioch, and no authority in his bearing. His iron-grey hair had turned white, and his single eye was kept half closed.

  ‘You have returned from Egypt,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought you had died there.’

  Nikephoros did not even bother to bow. ‘We nearly did. What has happened in our absence?’

  ‘Bohemond has taken Antioch.’ The cry rose from within him as if dragged out by torturers’ hooks. Nikephoros remained impassive.

  ‘I know. We were there two days ago.’

  The count leaned forward, spilling the blanket off his chest. ‘Then you know what must be done. In Constantinople, I bowed to the emperor as my liege-lord and offered him homage. Now is the time for him to honour his obligation and come to my aid.’

  ‘The emperor knows you are his closest ally and most faithful servant.’ Nikephoros contrived to look suitably sympathetic. ‘But you forget, my lord count, that we have just returned from four months’ absence. There are too many things we do not understand. Why you and Bohemond and all the Army of God are not at the gates of Jerusalem, for example.’

  Count Raymond stiffened, but ordered his servants to bring us seats and hot wine. Nikephoros took only the merest sip.

  ‘It is all Bohemond’s doing,’ Raymond began. ‘Everything – or rather nothing – that we have accomplished since summer is his fault. It was madness to trust him – a man who came without an acre of land to his name; a man his own
father disinherited. He never meant to go to Jerusalem. He has used us to sustain his ambition, and now that he has his prize he has turned on us.’ Raymond gestured to the gilded casket behind him. ‘He has even questioned the authenticity of the relic of the holy lance.’

  Nikephoros drummed two fingers against his cup. ‘This is not news. Bohemond had more than half of Antioch before we had even left. You were supposed to draw him out by leading the army on to Jerusalem.’

  ‘That is what Bohemond wants!’ Raymond thumped a fist on the wooden arm of his chair. ‘Nothing would satisfy him more than if I set out for Jerusalem now. You have seen the state of my army here – and the rest, at Ma’arat, are no better. The Saracens would massacre them before we even reached the coast. Bohemond would sit safe in Antioch, unchallenged, and your emperor would have lost his last ally.’

  Nikephoros pursed his lips. ‘What happened to Phokas? My colleague, the eunuch? He was supposed to stay here and advise you.’

  ‘Much use he was. He should have advised himself to stay away. The plague took him almost before you’d left for Egypt.’

  And what of Anna and Sigurd? I ached to know. But Nikephoros had already continued. ‘And Duke Godfrey? The other princes? Where do they stand?’

  ‘Hah! Without Bishop Adhemar, each looks to his own interests. Every day they come out and announce they want nothing more than to reach Jerusalem. Then they retire to their tents to sniff their own farts, trying to divine if it will be Bohemond or me they should support. I am sixty-six years old, and I am the only man with the balls to withstand him. Until the emperor comes.’

  ‘No.’ Nikephoros rose. ‘Even if I could get word to the emperor straight away, he would not be able to come until the summer. You cannot afford to wait that long. You are locked in this struggle with Bohemond, but his feet are planted on the rock of Antioch and yours are in the mire of Ma’arat. You will not win this test of strength.’