Siege of Heaven

by Tom Harper

  ‘Their catapult is stronger than yours,’ said Nikephoros, stroking his agitated mount.

  ‘Then we will break it,’ snapped Raymond. His face was pale, his single eye roving over the chaos behind him. ‘We will break this feeble town, and make such an example of it that every lord from here to Jerusalem will grovel in the dust as we pass by. Godfrey and Bohemond will see they have no choice but to hasten here and submit to my standard, and you’ – he jabbed a finger at Tancred – ‘will have your gold.’

  Behind him, two knights began rolling another rock up the slope to load into the catapult’s sling.

  ‘Raymond is more visionary than Peter Bartholomew if he thinks besieging Arqa is the answer to his troubles.’ Nikephoros strode across the carpeted floor of his tent. In the lamplight, monstrous shadows mimicked his movement on the wall behind. ‘He does not know what he wants.’

  It seemed to me that Raymond knew too much what he wanted: to be master of Antioch, unrivalled captain of the Army of God, impregnable warlord and conqueror of Jerusalem. I kept silent.

  ‘And meanwhile, his gamble – our gamble – has failed. Bohemond, Godfrey and the others say they will follow Raymond south – but they do nothing. Bohemond is waiting for Raymond to overreach himself and tip into disaster, while Godfrey watches to see which way the dice will fall. Who can blame him? While they wait, Raymond can go no further. If they come, he will lose his cherished authority over the army. So he waits here, throwing stones at Arqa like a boy at a bird’s nest.’ He kicked the table in the corner of the room, shaking the candles on it. A shower of wax fell like snow. I had rarely seen his passion so unreined.

  ‘If we are not careful, Raymond’s army will wither at Arqa and Bohemond will have all the excuse he needs to stay at Antioch for ever. Do you know what the emperor would say to that? We have to break this stalemate.’

  Nikephoros dropped into his ebony chair and slumped back, more like a soldier in a tavern than an imperial dignitary. ‘You must speak to Peter Bartholomew.’

  I had not expected it, though perhaps I should have. ‘Raymond hates Peter Bartholomew now. He will not listen to him.’

  ‘Raymond hates Peter Bartholomew,’ Nikephoros agreed. ‘But only because he fears his power. And because he fears him, he will do what Peter demands.’

  Despite the heat of the bygone day, the night was cold as I crossed our small camp to my tent. Thomas and Helena were inside, Helena with the baby gurgling at her breast. I dropped my eyes: even after a month living and travelling together, I was still not used to the sight of her nursing. Thomas sat beside her, running a whetstone along the rim of his axe. He still concentrated hard at the task, I noticed, squinting and frowning, though his fellow Varangians could do it with no more thought than breathing. The weapon looked vast and ravenous beside the tiny child in Helena’s arms.

  ‘Where are Anna and Zoe?’ I asked.

  Helena lifted the baby away, flashing a view of shining raw-red skin before she pulled her dress closed.

  ‘Anna took Zoe for a walk.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have.’ Why did I always sound so humourless with my children? ‘Not after dark. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Aelfric went with them.’ Thomas kept his head down as he spoke, rasping his axe and concentrating more studiously than ever.

  That could be dangerous in different ways. ‘I hope I won’t have another daughter marrying a Varangian.’ It was supposed to be a joke, but no one smiled. I reverted to the task at hand. ‘Nikephoros has ordered me to visit Peter Bartholomew’s camp.’

  ‘That could be dangerous,’ said Helena sternly. She wiped the baby’s mouth.

  ‘That’s why I want Thomas to come with me.’

  Thomas took two more long strokes with the stone before looking up. Even then, he did not look at me but instead glanced at Helena. She nodded, and he rose.

  ‘Leave the axe,’ I told him. ‘I doubt the pilgrims will welcome it in their camp.’

  Thomas scowled, but laid it back down on the blanket. Its blade winked as it caught the flame of the solitary candle in the tent.

  We did not speak as we climbed the hill to the pilgrim camp. Thomas had always been quiet, but I felt a growing distance between us now and I did not have the words to bridge it. Perhaps there were none that could. He walked one step behind me, never complaining, but his very presence seemed a constant reproach.

  A line of stakes marked the edge of Peter Bartholomew’s domain. Crude axe blows had sharpened their tips to points, which seemed sharper still in the flickering light of the watch fire. A guard challenged us as we approached the opening in the fence: he wore no armour, but his spear was real enough. So was the laugh that answered my demand to speak to Peter Bartholomew.

  ‘Do you want to speak with Saint Michael and all the angels as well? Peter Bartholomew’ – the guard crossed himself with his free hand – ‘does not receive visitors.’

  As if to encourage us away, the guard stepped towards us, into the firelight. Thomas gasped, and I had to hold my face stiff to hide my shock. Even with the fire plain on his face, more than half of it remained dark – not in any shadow, but stained with bruises as if someone had tipped a bottle of ink over it. Scars and scabs rose among the bruises, and thick welts lay open on his cracked nose.

  ‘Count Raymond did this to you?’ I murmured, taking in the stocky figure and the matted hair that had once been fair.

  The guard grimaced, making his face even more grotesque. ‘It is better to suffer for doing good than evil. That is what Peter says.’

  ‘Raymond has expelled you from his service?’

  ‘He stripped me of my rank, my armour, my servants. He says that when we return to Provence he will take away my lands as well.’ He cracked a ghastly smile. More than half his teeth were missing, and blood still oozed from his gums. ‘But that will not happen. Not once we reach Jerusalem.’

  ‘If we reach Jerusalem.’

  He leaned forward on his spear. ‘We will reach Jerusalem. It has been prophesied.’

  I stared him in the eyes – one swollen and half-shut, the other wide open. Perhaps Raymond had kicked out more than his teeth, for I saw no craft or machination behind them, just innocent faith. I leaned closer.

  ‘If you want to reach Jerusalem, you will let me speak to Peter Bartholomew.’

  He shook his head, though this time with some semblance of regret. ‘I cannot. He will not be disturbed.’

  ‘I will not disturb him,’ I lied. ‘But you can see that our path is faltering again.’ I pointed up behind me, where the watch-fires of Arqa burned high on the mountain spur. ‘Count Raymond will not give that up lightly. What I have to tell Peter Bartholomew could change his mind.’

  The guard hesitated, but I could see the doubt I had sowed. He glanced at me and Thomas, then back to the encampment, then to us again.

  ‘Peter Bartholomew will not see you,’ he reiterated. ‘But I will take you to him.’

  He called another guard to take his place, and led us up the hill into the heart of the camp. Raymond’s beating had broken more than his face: he walked with a heavy limp, dragging his foot and learning on his spear like an old man’s staff.

  ‘I have a friend who would make sure that mended properly,’ I told him. But he only muttered something about the healing of Christ, and shuffled on through the camp. Though it must have been a camp of thousands, sprawled all down the slope, there was neither sound nor light save the flap of our footsteps, and a golden glow from the very top of the hill.

  ‘Are all the pilgrims in their beds?’ I wondered.

  The guard touched a finger to his cracked lips. ‘Peter Bartholomew has ordered it.’

  The camp thinned as we neared the top of the hill. By some twist of the landscape the summit was hidden until we were almost upon it: then, suddenly, I could see three solitary tents set to form an open-sided square, with the vast cross I had seen from the mountain at its centre. The tents on either side flickered dimly with t
he light of lamps within, but the third shone like a beacon. A regal light burned through its delicately spun walls so that it appeared as a pyramid of light, celestial in its radiance. I could hear a soft song rising within, like a psalm or a lullaby – many overlapping voices, though no shadows darkened the golden walls save for the black silhouette of the cross.

  ‘Is that Peter Bartholomew’s tent?’ Thomas’s voice rang with suspicion and wonder.

  The guard did not answer, but took me by the arm and pulled me towards the dim tent on the left. Even he seemed awestruck to be there: his grip was slack, and the light beamed on his shattered face to make it seem almost whole again. He lifted the flap of the tent, called something inside, then beckoned us in.

  After the still beauty outside, the tent we entered was a mean and shabby place. Its lamps hissed and spat, filling the space with an oily smoke; the cloths that divided the apartments were stained yellow, and hung crooked from the ceiling. Tangled heaps of carpets and furs lay discarded on the floor, and at least half the furniture seemed to have been knocked over as if in a brawl. An unpleasant odour hung in the air, despite the oversweet perfumes that tried to mask it.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the guard. His ease had vanished, and he scuttled out of the tent before we could answer. Through the cloth partition I could hear rustles and a low grunting, like a pig rooting in the ground – and occasionally a high-pitched whimper. I did not dare look at Thomas.

  The grunting stopped. I looked to the canvas flap, expectant and dreading, but there was no sign of anyone emerging. And then, suddenly, a voice from the tent door behind us.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Thomas and I spun around. He had arrived with startling silence, but he did not look like a quiet man. His pockmarked face was bloated and heavy, his belly likewise, though the rest of him was meagre enough. His eyes were too small for his face and his mouth too large. Something sticky seemed to be smeared on his chin. He wore a long camelskin robe tied with a leather belt: he hooked his thumbs in it, and puffed out his chest.

  ‘I have a message for Peter Bartholomew,’ I said. ‘It will help the army reach Jerusalem.’

  The man’s eyes fixed on me. ‘Peter Bartholomew, bless his holy name’ – he tapped a perfunctory sign of the cross across his chest – ‘is at prayer. He will not be disturbed.’

  ‘He will want to hear my message.’

  ‘Then you can tell it to me.’ His voice was coarse, even by the standards of the Provençals. There was no poise in his manner, only blunt strength.

  ‘It is for Peter Bartholomew alone,’ I insisted.

  ‘No one comes to Peter Bartholomew, bless his name, except through me.’ He gave an ugly smile. ‘I am his steward and his prophet.’

  ‘I have seen him many times.’ I spoke mildly. Despite his obvious dissolution, there was a menace in the man’s face I did not want to provoke.

  ‘That was in the past. Now that the time of trial is coming, he must gather his strength and devote himself to God. If he saw every disciple who sought his blessing he would never sleep.’

  ‘I am not his disciple.’

  The steward gave what was meant to be an indulgent look; it emerged more like a leer. ‘We are all his disciples – though some do not know it yet.’

  ‘Then will you tell him Demetrios Askiates has brought a message for him.’

  He shook his fat head. ‘Tell it to me.’

  ‘It is for him only.’

  My obstinacy was beginning to irritate this selfproclaimed prophet: his small eyes narrowed, his hands began to ball into fists by his side. Thomas saw it too and edged closer, but I flicked my head to keep him back.

  ‘Raymond cannot advance to Jerusalem unless Bohemond and Godfrey come to reinforce him. But they will not come until Raymond asks – and his pride will not bend to that.’

  The prophet folded his arms across his chest. ‘So?’

  ‘Peter Bartholomew–’

  ‘Bless his name.’

  ‘. . . has influence Raymond cannot ignore. If he commands Raymond to send for Bohemond and Godfrey, to ask for their help, Raymond will do it.’

  The prophet stared at me. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It is enough.’ I hoped that was true. I had little faith that the fat prophet would relay what I had said, and less still that Peter Bartholomew would act on it.

  But the next day, Aelfric reported he had seen a knight leave Count Raymond’s camp and ride north to Antioch.

  κη

  The boy stood between his mother’s bare legs, his arms wrapped around them. His young face was screwed into a mask of concentration as he surveyed the ground in front of him. Worry furrowed his face like an old man’s – though these furrows were plump and fertile, ripe for planting, not the arid, barren lines of age. With a hiccup of resolve, he suddenly unlatched himself from his mother and lurched forward, flailing his limbs like a newborn foal. One step, two, three – and the beginnings of a fourth before the momentum undid him. He sprawled face-first into the carpet of pine-needles, a plaintive bawl lamenting his failure. Helena ran forward and picked him up, dusting the pine needles off his blue tunic.

  ‘Soon he’ll walk better than his grandfather,’ said Sigurd.

  I picked up a pinecone and threw it at him, but he swatted it away with the palm of his hand. The boy – my grandson – stopped wailing as he watched it fly into a patch of tall grass.

  ‘With an arm like that, you should be throwing rocks at Arqa,’ Sigurd teased me. ‘You’d do no worse than the catapaults.’

  I waved the insult away. We were sitting in a glade in the forest that covered the lower slopes of the mountain – Thomas and Helena with the baby Everard; Zoe, picking the scales off pinecones to get at the nuts within; Sigurd, and Anna sitting on a fallen log beside me. We had brought baskets of bread and fruit, for it was a rare escape from the grim confines of the camp.

  ‘There was a full moon two nights ago,’ said Sigurd. ‘A whole month we’ve been here now.’ He pointed to Everard, who had balanced himself against his mother and was teetering forward, summoning courage for his next advance. The anticipation and delight in his young face seemed to have forgotten all memory of ever having fallen, though his knees were black with earth.

  ‘If that boy set out for Jerusalem now, he’d still be there before this army.’

  Everard obliged Sigurd’s pessimism by choosing that moment to launch himself into another doomed run. This time he only managed two steps before the inevitable collapse. Helena stepped forward and wrapped him in her skirt, hushing the cries.

  I smiled, trying not to let Sigurd’s pessimism sour the mood in the glade. What he said was true enough. In the nine weeks since we had set out from Ma’arat we had come, by Sigurd’s reckoning, less than a hundred miles. In the past month we had not moved at all. The Army of God’s resolve, once a keen and indomitable blade, had been bent so far that it had snapped. It could not be remade, not with the same strength, and the men who had swung and slashed their way across Asia Minor now prodded forward like blind men. The first incarnation had been terrible, terrifying to witness. This agonising decrepitude was simply a slow, aimless death.

  Everard was ready to try again. He pushed off from Helena and ran forward, flapping his arms like an injured bird. Four steps, five, and then – just as it seemed he could defy his limitations no longer, he reached the sanctuary of my knee. He clung on desperately, and I had to prise his little hands away to hoist him up on my lap. I ruffled his hair – fair like Thomas’s, though already growing steadily darker – and pointed through a gap in the trees where the slope fell away to the plain, and the coast beyond.

  ‘That is where you need to go,’ I told him. ‘To Jerusalem.’

  He snatched hold of my outstretched finger and began pulling on it. Anna reached over and tickled his chin, while Helena seated herself on the ground, leaning against the fallen log and chewing on a crust of bread. She looked well, I thought. Her face, sallow during the wi
nter, had begun to brown again in the spring sun, and there was new vigour in her arms when she picked up her son. Anna had told me that Helena had struggled for a long time with feeding the baby, unable to nourish his body without enfeebling her own. It had been worst during the lean weeks at Ma’arat, and our subsequent travels had allowed little chance for recovery.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I craned forward so that I could see what Sigurd had seen from his vantage on the opposite side of the clearing. A disgruntled fist tugged on my finger, trying to recapture my attention, but I ignored it. Thomas was on his feet beside Sigurd and staring over the tops of the pine trees to the west.

  ‘An army.’

  I passed the baby onto Anna’s knee and ran over. My eyes were not as sharp as Thomas’s, but even so I could see the procession winding stiffly out of the valley and down towards our camp. Sunlight gleamed on their weapons like the scales of a snake, with two white banners like fangs at their head.

  ‘Can you see the device?’ I asked. In the camp below, men were running out of their tents and staring, but I could not tell if they were preparing for battle.

  ‘The cross of the Army of God,’ said Thomas. ‘And beside that, the banner of the five wounds.’

  Godfrey’s standard. I looked at my family in the glade, trembling that he should have come so near them. ‘And the Norman serpent banner? Is that there too?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘Not that I can see.’

  I pulled on my boots. ‘I had better go. Nikephoros will want me.’

  Anna hoisted Everard down from her lap and set him on the ground. He swayed, then dashed resolutely forward towards his mother – as if he had never fallen before, would never fall again. But of course he did.

  I was summoned almost immediately. Duke Godfrey’s arrival occasioned a council of the princes, and Nikephoros required me to be his mouth and ears. They met in Count Raymond’s tent – not his great pavilion, with its silk curtains and rich furnishings, but a small, square tent erected in a field a little distance from the camp. The princes watched each other warily.