by Tom Harper
‘Enough!’ Raymond stepped to the front of the princes and swung around to face them. ‘God has already showed the high favour in which He holds Peter Bartholomew. It was through him that He revealed the holy lance.’
It was not the definitive argument he had hoped. Several of the princes sniggered audibly, and at the back I heard a voice that sounded like Tancred’s muttering something about a roofer’s nail. Raymond’s single eye glared at them, but the insult was too much for Peter Bartholomew. He leaped down from his boulder, almost shouldering Raymond aside in his haste to confront his doubters.
‘Does anyone dare question the sanctity of the holy lance? You all saw it – you witnessed these very hands dig it from the ground. If any man doubts me, let him say so to my face, so that I may know my enemies.’
‘Nobody doubts the lance.’ Raymond made to lay a soothing hand on Peter’s arm, then thought better of it. ‘We all saw the miracle it brought at Antioch, our Godgiven victory against the Turks.’
‘Nobody denies that God granted us the victory at Antioch,’ Duke Godfrey agreed.
‘Through the lance,’ Peter insisted.
Godfrey shrugged. ‘He works in mysterious ways. I do not presume to read them.’
Another man, a priest with bright orange hair who stood beside Godfrey, spoke up: ‘Even Bishop Adhemar, bless his memory, doubted the authenticity of your iron splinter.’
That was almost true: he had certainly doubted the authenticity of Peter Bartholomew. Perhaps Peter knew that, for the priest’s charge only inflamed his temper further.
‘It is not an iron splinter,’ he raged. ‘It is a fragment of the lance of Longinus. That splinter touched the living flesh of our lord Jesus Christ. It was there on Golgotha when the destiny of the world was remade with His blood, and it has come back to us now, after a thousand years buried in the mud of Antioch, to show that the consummation of that destiny is at hand.’
More than once, then and afterwards, I wondered if God – or some other power – truly did speak through Peter Bartholomew. How else to explain the transformations he underwent, the sudden energy that could illuminate his mean body like the sun coming from behind a cloud? One moment he was a braying peasant, the next a pillar of righteousness effortlessly dominating his audience.
‘Did God strike you deaf when I preached my vision? Were you so blind to its meaning? The Lord is not coming to winnow our army, but to reap the whole world. You know what is written: when the Son of Man comes in His glory, He will separate the people one from another as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep at His right hand and tell them, “Come and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But the goats He will send into the eternal fire.’
Such was the force and conviction of his words that it was impossible to tell if he was reciting the Gospels, recounting a past dream, or witnessing the horrors he foretold even as he spoke them. The priests and princes drew back, cowering from the assault of his vision. Raymond seemed bewildered; Godfrey looked shocked, while the other faces watched with doubt, fear, hope and guilt.
The red-haired priest stepped forward tentatively. ‘I did not mean to question the truth of your vision.’
‘Or of the lance?’
‘Or of the lance.’
Peter’s face still blazed with righteous fervour. ‘Does any man?’
None did.
‘Besides,’ said the priest, ‘you were not the only man to dream of the lance. There was a priest at Antioch named Stephen of Valence who also received a vision of it, before we uncovered it.’
‘Stephen of Valence received a vision that promised deliverance to come,’ Peter corrected him sternly. ‘He did not see the lance. That was confided to me alone.’
‘But it corroborated your story.’
Peter sniffed. The radiance had departed again, and he seemed diminished. ‘For most men, my word was enough.’
‘But none doubted Stephen. He was so sure of his truth that he willingly offered to undergo the ordeal of the air or the ordeal by fire to prove it.’
‘I would have done the same if anyone had demanded it. Who says I would not?’
‘Nobody,’ said the priest. He spoke reasonably, earnestly. ‘I only said that Stephen volunteered to suffer the ordeal.’
All the men in the crowd stood silent, watching Peter Bartholomew. A new fire pulsed in his face, different and angrier than the celestial glow when he prophesied. He moved towards us, his arms twitching.
‘Is that what you want? To see me thrown down from a high tower or set on a pyre? Do you think you will see my body destroyed, broken on rocks and burned in flame? You seek to test me, as the scribes and Pharisees tested Christ once before. But I will have the victory. I will fly through the air and walk through fire – let any man who doubts me come and witness it. But let him be warned that when the trial is over, it will be visited on him tenfold for his disbelief.’
Raymond looked appalled. ‘That is not necessary. No man doubts you. We have your word.’
‘And soon you will have the word of God. You know what is written in the psalms: He will command His angels to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up on their hands so that you do not dash your foot against a stone.’
‘It is also written, in the same place: Do not put the Lord your God to the test,’ said Raymond’s chaplain severely.
‘And you should heed those words. Any man who doubts me doubts the Lord himself. Anyone who tests me, tests God.’
Godfrey looked ready to hit him for his audacity. ‘That is blasphemy.’
‘Light the fires and we will see.’
‘No!’ said Raymond. Godfrey rounded on him.
‘Do you have so little faith in your tame peasant that you fear to put him to the ordeal? Do you fear that your authority might die with him, when all men see that the lance was a hoax concocted by charlatans, connived at by princes who should have known better. If you truly wished to preserve your authority you would not be trying to protect this peasant from roasting himself on his own pride – you would lead your army from Arqa this very afternoon, and not halt until you were at the walls of Jerusalem.’
The corner of Raymond’s dead eye-socket twitched, but before he could answer Peter had shouted, ‘Count Raymond protect me? Why should I need it, when I am robed in the armour of God? Build your pyres, stoke them up as high as you can. Two days from now I will pass through the flames and not one hair on my head will be singed. The flames will burn away your lies. The heavens will part with thunder, every element will be dissolved with fire, and all things will be revealed.’
***
They built the fire in the valley, at the narrowest point where its slopes offered plenty of vantage for the curious. Olivewood boughs were stacked four feet high and doused with oil, laid in two parallel rows just far enough apart that a man could walk between them. It was full thirteen feet from one end to the other – more than enough time for God to prove his favour, as Sigurd observed.
Good Friday dawned clear and warm, though it was one of those days when the senses and the soul misalign themselves, and even sunshine feels overcast. A grim expectation gripped the camp – long before the appointed hour, the audience had gathered thick as crows, many thousands of them rising far up the slope like the crowds in the hippodrome. Like the hippodrome, the nobles had the choice places nearest the arena, while the mass of peasants thronged the heights above. A cordon of barefoot priests stood around the pyre and held back the onlookers, singing the psalms appointed for that holy day.
Be wise, O kings,
Be warned, you rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
And trembling kiss His feet,
Or He will be angry, and you will perish,
For His wrath is quickly kindled.
Many of the pilgrims joined in that verse with relish, while the lords touched their swords and looked anxiously around them.
There was no place of honour for me. I sat with my family about halfway up the hill, looking down into the cauldron of the valley. Up there the atmosphere was like a village festival or a fair. Peddlers picked their way through the crowd with trays and baskets of nuts, olives and water. Others offered less wholesome wares: one man carried nothing but an enormous tray of bones. I beckoned him over.
‘What are those?’ I asked.
The peddler, a ruddy-faced man whose rough features seemed set in simple, honest contentment, gave a gaptoothed smile. ‘Relics.’
‘Relics of whom?’
He nodded down to the waiting pyre. ‘Of him. These bones’ – he picked one out and offered it to me for inspection – ‘come from the lepers and cripples who Peter Bartholomew, bless his name, healed with his touch.’
‘Not very well if this is all that remains of them.’
Anna reached into the tray and took another bone, a tiny thing barely larger than a comb’s tooth. ‘Has Peter Bartholomew healed many squirrels?’
Rather than take offence, the peddler gave a broad, innocent grin. ‘He knows all the birds of the air, and all that moves within the field is His.’
Anna rummaged some more in the tray. ‘And these?’ She pointed to an assortment of half a dozen mismatched pebbles.
‘Stones that Peter Bartholomew, bless his name, has himself touched. And here . . .’ The peddler leaned forward confidentially and extracted a thin clay vial from inside his tunic. He uncorked it and held it to Anna’s nose. ‘A few drops of his most precious blood. I was walking behind him in the forest when he pricked himself on a briar; I gathered it fresh from the thorn myself.’
‘I thought it was usual to wait for a saint’s death before distributing his relics,’ I said.
‘Only because you have never been in the presence of a living saint. Although . . .’ He knelt down, rearranging the bones and stones in his tray. ‘I have an agreement with one of the chaplains. If Peter Bartholomew, Christ preserve him, does not survive his ordeal, I am to get a bone from his forearm – and possibly his left hand. A Narbonnese priest offered me ten ducats for the arm, but if you were interested . . .’
I shook my head, smiling to hide my disgust. ‘I’m sure Peter Bartholomew will triumph in his ordeal.’
The relic-seller beamed. ‘I pray he does.’
The sun climbed higher and hotter, so hot that I feared it might set the fire alight before the appointed hour. The still air was drenched with the stink of oil and sweat; flies swarmed all around us. The mood of the crowd grew impatient: some wondered when their saviour would appear, while others taunted them that he had run away rather than be revealed as an impostor. In the sweltering heat the arguments became angry, and several men had to be pulled apart from their quarrels. Others let their purses speak for them, and laid wagers as to whether Peter Bartholomew would survive, how long it would take him to traverse the corridor of flame, and whether the angels who carried him up out of the blaze would be seen by the audience.
A little after noon we heard a shout go up from the camp. In an instant, every man was on his feet, watching the solemn procession climb the valley. A cohort of Provençal soldiers led the way, forcing a path through the throng. Behind them came Count Raymond and a bishop, then a knot of priests huddled around a figure I could not see. They proceeded slowly, in a cloud of foliage where the peasants showered them with olive leaves and wildflowers. The air sang with adoration and the valley echoed with hosannas like the highest sphere of heaven.
At last the procession reached the open space around the fire. The watching crowd fell silent, and the only sound came from the cordon of monks who still sang their psalms. Wicked and deceitful mouths are open against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They beset me with words of hatred, and attack me without cause.
The priests separated. In their midst, revealed like the stamen of a flower, stood Peter Bartholomew. The shining white robe had gone, and he wore only a simple tunic, which barely hung to his knees. His beard had been shaved close to the cheek, no doubt so it did not catch fire, and he had cropped his hair short. I could not see his face, but there was no strut or defiance in his posture, only humble concentration. He did not acknowledge either the praise or the insults of the crowd, but kept his gaze fixed on the ground.
‘For the love of Christ, call it off,’ Anna murmured beside me. ‘You cannot tempt God like this.’
The priests and soldiers who had escorted Peter fanned out, forming a loose circle a little way from the fire. Four men stood at its centre: Raymond; the harelipped priest who served as his chaplain; a robed bishop and Peter Bartholomew. Peter knelt before the bishop, while the chaplain announced solemnly, ‘If Omnipotent God talked to this man in person, and Saint Andrew revealed the true holy lance to him in vigil, let him walk through the fire unharmed. But if he has lied, let Peter Bartholomew and the lance he carries be consumed by fire.’
The crowd bellowed out a resounding ‘Amen’. The bishop snapped open the golden reliquary, and laid the invisible fragment of the lance in Peter Bartholomew’s cupped hands. Impervious to the building tension, the monks still chanted their psalms.
Let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
Let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
So that those who love your name may exult in you.
You bless the righteous, O Lord;
You cover them with favour as with a shield.
Now it was Peter Bartholomew’s turn to speak. On previous occasions before such vast crowds his voice had carried effortlessly, somehow amplified to reach the furthest corners of his congregation. Now, that brightness was gone. I could barely see him behind the monks and priests who circled him, and his mumbled words were inaudible to all save the closest bystanders. The passage between the logs loomed before him like a tunnel.
Search me, O God, and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wickedness in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
The chaplain had carried a clay lamp, its light invisible in the brightness of the day. Now he presented it to the bishop, who spoke a few words of prayer over it and hurled it against the waiting pyre. The vessel shattered; for a second I saw twin tongues of flame racing along the tops of the corded wood, then the entire edifice erupted. A pillar of fire rose up, devouring the birds who had circled too low over it, and black smoke choked the sky. The crackle of wood was like the gnashing of great teeth.
A gust of wind blew smoke in my face, stinging my eyes. I squinted through the tears, so that Peter became little more than a dark blur at the foot of the flames. He must have been touched by God, for how else could he have stood so close to that blaze. Though I heard many things afterwards from those who had stood closer, I did not see him throw out his arms to embrace his fate; I did not see his eyebrows catch fire or his tunic start to smoulder, and I did not hear the last words he said before entering the inferno. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
I do not know how long Peter Bartholomew stayed in that fire. Afterwards, some claimed they could see his shadow through the flames, striding serenely forward and laughing, as if the fire and coals did little more than tickle him. Others swore that he had not passed through the ordeal alone: they had seen dim figures walking beside Peter, holding his hand or leading him on. For myself, I saw nothing but a glowing curtain of flame.
My hands and feet have shrivelled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me,
And divide my clothes among themselves.
Had the monks resumed their chant, or did I merely hear the words in my heart? I no longer knew: everything was ash. I was vaguely aware of Anna’s hands gripping my arm – I saw the bruises later – and a murmur swelling around me as the crowd began to voice their doubts. Where was Peter Bartholomew? Surely he could not have survived in there so long. Had all his boasts been in vain? Had the lance failed
him? Some men dropped to their knees and prayed for his survival; others sat in the grass and wept. Why had God forsaken them?
With a cloud of sparks and a shriek of unutterable pain, a black figure stumbled from the fire. He was naked as a child, his hair and clothes burned away, his skin turned to cinders. He could barely stand; as he stepped away from the flames, he flung out his arms for balance as if he had never stood on his own before.
‘God help us!’ he screamed.
The crowd of pilgrims howled with triumph. As one, they rose up, poured down the hillside and engulfed him.
λα
A pall of smoke from the smouldering fire covered our camp for the rest of the afternoon, shrouding the sky and bathing us in a sickly twilight. That did not deter the pilgrims, who flocked around the dying fire in their thousands. As the heat retreated they would run in and snatch at the coals or charred branches, holding them aloft like trophies, even as the embers burned into their skin. Afterwards, they showed these scars like wounds won in battle. I thought they were trying to find the fragment of the lance, which Peter must have dropped in the flames; Thomas explained that they were taking the ashes as relics of the holy ordeal, fragments of Peter Bartholomew’s own cross. They stripped the fire bare, until by evening all that remained was a black scar on the earth.
‘But he failed the ordeal,’ Sigurd objected as we sat by our tents that night. ‘Who would want a relic of that?’
‘Sometimes the battles you lose are more glorious,’ said Anna – mocking him, for she had never in her life thought any battle glorious.
Thomas did not laugh. ‘Peter Bartholomew did not lose his battle, and he did not fail the ordeal.’ He spoke very deliberately, straining to check his obvious emotion. ‘We saw him emerge from the flames. If he has lied, let Peter Bartholomew and the lance he carries be consumed by fire – that was the test. The flames burned him, yes, but they could not overcome him.’
I sighed. The ordeal was supposed to have been a test, absolute proof one way or the other, yet now it seemed it had only added new layers of doubt and confusion. Was that an admonition that I should have more faith – or a warning against credulity? Show me your way, 0 Lord, I prayed, and grant me wisdom to see. Once I had styled myself an unveiler of mysteries, a seer of truths that other men were too obtuse or blind to see. Now I could not even be sure what had happened before my own eyes.