Siege of Heaven

by Tom Harper

  Anna laid a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Time will tell. If Peter–’

  She broke off. All evening the camp had murmured with the songs of lamentation for Good Friday. Priests and pilgrims had gathered in their congregations, as the disciples must have gathered in their homes one evening long ago, after they had come down from Golgotha. The music filled the air with melancholy; they wept for themselves, as much for Peter. But now one sound grew louder, a solemn chant swelling above the rest. I jumped to my feet. A train of lights was snaking its way down from the valley and I ran to the road to watch them pass.

  It reminded me of a funeral, of that procession I had seen in Antioch half a lifetime ago when they laid Bishop Adhemar in the ground. Barefoot priests led the way with veiled crosses, and acolytes carried long candles beside them. Behind came Peter’s prophet John, his camelskin coat covered with a black gown that had been artfully torn in many places; after him a dozen men I did not recognise, and then the mass of pilgrims. Not just pilgrims, I saw – many knights and soldiers walked among them too. Candlelight flickered on their faces, windows in the darkness revealing their grief: cheeks smudged with soot, eyes shining with tears, hearts stricken with disbelief. They carried a bier, and for a shocked moment I thought it must be Peter Bartholomew’s corpse. Then it came past me, and I saw it was only an effigy of Christ’s tomb, with a high crucifix towering above it. They had garlanded the crucifix with flowers – poppies, narcissi, dandelions and roses; the flowers shivered and swayed as the bier moved, so that with the colours of their petals it appeared that the cross was wreathed in flame.

  ‘The dead shall live,’ they sang, ‘their corpses shall rise. Awake, you who dwell in dust, and sing with joy.’

  Peter Bartholomew was not dead, but he barely lived. According to rumour he lay in his tent on the hill, a burnedout ember of a man, and awaited God’s judgement. That was not enough for Anna, who insisted on going to him to see if she could ease his suffering. ‘He was my patient once before,’ she reminded me. But the crowds about his tent were so great we could not get within two hundred paces of it – and anyway, we were told, he had refused all salves and ointments, saying that the Lord alone would decide his fate.

  ‘If he spurns medicines, he has made Christ’s decision for Him,’ Anna complained. But every hour on Easter Saturday the crowds around his tent grew, so many that the pilgrim camp could barely contain them. The surrounding tents were stripped back to make room, first from the top of the hill, then ever further down the slopes, until Peter’s tent stood in solitude on the bald summit.

  Unexpectedly – for he had not even attended the ordeal – it was Nikephoros who showed the greatest interest in Peter’s fate. He summoned me to his quarters on the Saturday morning and questioned me at length; he even asked what Anna thought, which was extraordinary, for until then I had not realised he knew she existed.

  ‘She is certain that without a doctor’s attention he will die of his wounds?’ he pressed me.

  ‘Even if he did accept it he would hardly have much hope. Any other man would have died already of those wounds. That he has survived until now is . . . fortunate.’ I could not bring myself to say miraculous.

  Nikephoros seemed satisfied. ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘But if Peter Bartholomew dies, and the lance is discredited, Raymond will be much weakened.’

  Nikephoros dripped wax on the dispatch he had just written. ‘Raymond is weakened anyway. He built his house on shifting sands, and now they have swallowed him. No doubt he will salvage what he can by claiming that the peasant in fact survived the ordeal, but few will believe him once they see Peter Bartholomew laid out in his tomb.’

  ‘But then–’

  ‘Peter Bartholomew’s death will weaken Raymond. As he is the only barbarian who even pretends to support the emperor, that would be a setback. But if Peter Bartholomew survives, if tomorrow he appears to his peasant congregation resurrected . . .’ Nikephoros pressed his seal into the soft wax. ‘What do you think will happen then?’

  I rose early on the Sabbath just as the day was dawning. Helena wanted some herbs for the Easter lamb, and I had said I would find them. I slipped out of our tent alone and walked quickly towards the mountain. I told myself that I remembered seeing some wild rosemary growing in the forest there, though I might not have remembered it so well if the path had not led close to the pilgrim camp. Though I had heard Anna’s diagnosis, a deep and unanswerable part of me still whispered that the Lord made all things possible. I scanned the hilltop, seeking a sign: thousands of pilgrims still kept their vigil on its slopes, many of them prostrate with prayer or exhaustion, and the faint melodies of hymns drifted down to me in the dawn stillness. But the songs were scattered and tentative, their message nothing more than fading hope.

  Disappointed, and disgusted with myself for it, I turned away towards the place where I thought I had seen the rosemary. I was not alone. As Easter dawned without its Messiah, men and women had begun to trickle down from the hill and return to their camps. I tried not to look at them – the disappointment in their faces was too painful to see – but one caught my eye. Despite the warmth of the April morning he wore a cloak that hung to his ankles, its hood raised to cover his face. As I watched, his course seemed to drift imperceptibly towards the forest on the mountain ridge to the north-east, gradually taking him away from the army.

  Perhaps he was no more than a pilgrim looking to relieve himself in private; perhaps he wanted to pick herbs too. But there was something surreptitious about him, something deliberately evasive that I had seen before in men who had had good reason to avoid discovery – the same reason, most often, as I had had for finding them. And so, more from habit than anything else, I followed him into the forest.

  It was not difficult. The trees were thick enough that he could not see me, and my footsteps were silent on the thick carpet of pine needles. Thin columns of sunlight filtered through the foliage; if I had not been so intent on my pursuit, I might have paused to marvel at the simple beauty of a spring morning. But I pressed on, pausing twice when the fluttering of birds in the branches above temporarily frightened me – and a third time when I came to a bend in the path and heard voices ahead.

  ‘He hasn’t recovered?’ As the voice spoke, I heard the abrupt bite of a shovel breaking earth, and then the rasp of iron on loose stone.

  ‘There’ll be no resurrection for him.’ The shovel dug into the stony ground again, harder this time. ‘If I could have tied a rope on him and dangled him in front of the crowds like a puppet, I would have. That would have been enough. But he won’t get up from that bed again, except to fall into his grave.’

  The second voice sounded familiar, though I could not place it. I crouched low and moved off the path into the undergrowth, trying to find a place to see. Every branch I touched or leaf I brushed caused a stab of fear, but the sounds of digging drowned out any noise I made. I came closer, and eventually found a place where if I lay on my belly I could just see through the gap beneath a squat bush. I had brought a knife with me to cut the herbs; I pulled it from my belt, and watched.

  Two men stood in the clearing with their backs to me, one in a brown tunic and the other in blue. They had already dug out a sizeable pile of earth. As I watched, one of them knelt and reached into the hole with both hands, pulling out a bulging sackcloth bag. Its contents shifted and clinked as he set it on the ground and brushed the dirt from it.

  ‘Where will you go?’ asked the man in the blue. He drew a knife and sliced through the cords that tied the neck of the bag.

  ‘North to Tortosa. I can find a boat there to take me home. I’ve had enough of this adventure.’

  The man in the brown tunic pulled out an empty sack he had kept looped over his belt. He held it open while the other shared out the contents of the buried bag. I heard the trickle of a stream of a coins.

  The man wrapped a rope around the neck of the bag and tied it fast. ‘It may not be eternal life, bu
t at least we have some inheritance from Peter Bartholomew.’

  ‘Bless his name,’ added his companion instinctively.

  ‘Curse his name! He would have ruined us – and might still, if anyone thinks to look for us. He may have convinced us he was the one foretold in scripture and the prophecy; he may even have convinced himself. But he did not convince God.’ He lifted the two sackcloth bags in his hands. ‘Thank Christ he convinced men with deeper pockets.’

  He tested the weight of the bags. ‘This is fair.’

  ‘Then we should go. Before the others think to look for us.’

  The two men embraced. ‘God go with you.’

  ‘And with you.’

  They spoke the farewells quickly, mechanically. Then, without a second glance, they parted and left the clearing, one taking a path to the north and the other heading east. I counted towards twenty under my breath, wondering which to follow. I had only reached eighteen when I heard a sound from ahead. Dropping down on my stomach again, I saw the man in the brown tunic re-emerge from the path he had taken. He looked around cautiously, then hurried over to where the shovel still lay on the ground. As he bent down to take it I saw his face for the first time: only for a second, framed between branches, but I knew it at once. The prophet John. He had lost his camelskin robe and cut his hair much shorter than before, but the puffy face was as unpleasant as ever. It was his voice I had remembered.

  He walked across to another place in the clearing, a few yards away from the first hole, and began digging. I edged around through the undergrowth so that I was behind him again, trying to time my movements to the strokes of the shovel, and waited until he had finished his hole. It did not take him long – whatever he was excavating was not buried deep. He put the shovel aside, glanced over his shoulder, then dropped to his knees and scrabbled in the earth.

  I only needed four strides to cover the distance between us. Distracted by his buried treasure he barely heard me coming: the first he properly knew was when he felt my weight pinning him down, one hand on the back of his head and the other holding a knife to his throat.

  ‘Did you forget something?’

  ‘Thaddaeus?’ His voice was frightened, pathetic – not the voice of a man who had presumed to lecture princes. ‘I forgot about this bag, Thaddeus; I would have come after you to give you your share, I swear to you.’

  ‘I do not want your gold.’

  Through his terror, he must have realised I was not his cheated companion returning for vengeance. ‘Who are you?’

  I didn’t answer. ‘You were Peter Bartholomew’s selfannointed prophet.’

  ‘No,’ he squealed. ‘No!’

  I twisted the knife so that the flat of the blade was against his throat, and pressed hard. ‘Liar. I saw you with him.’

  I loosed the pressure a little so he could breathe to answer. ‘I never knew him.’

  ‘You stood in his tent and told me that no one came to Peter except through you.’

  I doubt he remembered me from that, but it was enough to puncture his feeble resistance. All energy left him and his body sagged forward, so limp that I had to pull the knife away lest he slit his own throat.

  ‘Why were you stealing away so fast?’ I demanded. ‘Shouldn’t you be at your master’s side, in the hour of his greatest suffering?’

  ‘Peter Bartholomew is dead!’ He cried out the words like a wounded animal.

  ‘When I left the camp, Peter Bartholomew still lived.’

  ‘Yes – if you can say a man lives because his heart beats and his lungs breathe. He will cling to life as long as he can, and who can blame him? He knows what awaits him in the world to come.’

  ‘Angels and seraphs hymning his praise, and a seat at the right hand of the Father? Or is he bound for the dark places where false prophets and deceivers languish?’

  John mumbled something I could not hear. I made him repeat it.

  ‘For what he has done, he will be cast in the deepest pit of hell.’

  Even for one bent on apostasy, it was a terrible thing to say – and spoken with savage hurt.

  ‘Why? What lies did he tell you?’

  John writhed and whimpered in my grasp but did not answer.

  ‘Was it the lance?’

  He nodded eagerly. ‘Yes – the lance.’

  ‘What else? Did he claim he was a saint? A prophet?’

  ‘At first he said he was only a messenger sent to proclaim the things to come. But the more the Lord spoke to him, the greater his claims grew. First that he was a saint – then that he had been possessed by the spirit of Elijah to prepare the world for its tribulations.’

  ‘Did he tell this widely?’

  John shook his head. ‘Only to us, his closest disciples. He said the time to reveal himself had not yet come.’

  He spilled out his words, unburdening himself with the eager gratitude of the penitent. But I had heard enough confessions to know when a heart had given up all its secrets – and when it had not.

  ‘Elijah was not the limit of Peter Bartholomew’s ambition,’ I guessed. ‘He went further.’

  I twisted John around so that he lay on his back. I wanted to look in his eyes. I took the knife from his throat and stepped back, though not so far that he could hope to escape me.

  ‘He told us he was the one foretold by the prophecy.’ John whispered the words, as if afraid to hear himself saying them. ‘The last and greatest of all kings, who will come at the end of days to capture Jerusalem.’

  ‘The son of God?’ Even I was whispering now.

  John did not answer directly. ‘When the Son of Perdition has risen, the King will ascend Golgotha. He will take his crown from his head and place it on the cross, and stretching out his hands to heaven he will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father. This will be the end and the consummation of the Roman and Christian Empires, when every power and principality shall be destroyed.’

  His gaze was distant, and he recited it with the familiarity of well-worn verses of scripture. But I had spent my youth in a monastery, had heard every word of the Bible so many times it was as familiar as my own name – and I had never heard that passage.

  ‘What is that?’

  John’s eyes refocused on me. ‘The prophecy,’ he said simply.

  ‘Whose prophecy? Peter Bartholomew’s? Was it another thing revealed in his dreams?’

  He thought for a moment, as if he had never questioned its provenance before. ‘No. It was written down in a book – and Peter could not write.’

  ‘But he could read.’

  John gave a sly smile. ‘He pretended he could not, but I often saw him alone in his tent poring over the book. And how else would he have known what it said?’

  ‘Did he show it to you?’

  ‘Only once.’ John shrugged. ‘It made no difference – I do not have to pretend to be illiterate. But I saw the images that illuminated it. Terrible things. Monsters with the heads of Saracens and the bodies of lions ripping women’s bellies with their claws and devouring the unborn children. Locusts with tails like scorpions; a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Men dressed as women lying unnaturally with each other in pools of blood, even as the carrion birds picked out their entrails.’ He trembled with the memory. ‘And at the bottom of the page, a radiant king on a white horse. He wore two crowns; his left hand wielded a lance with which he dispatched the Saracens and Ethiopians who assailed him, while his right stretched out to the cross on Golgotha.’

  I knew what they illustrated. ‘The last days. And how did Peter Bartholomew come by this manuscript?’

  ‘He said he found it in a cave after a dream.’ Again that sly, slightly rueful smile. ‘But I also heard that he stole it from one of the princes.’

  I remembered Godfrey’s sudden fury when John had quoted a passage of the prophecy at him in Raymond’s council. ‘Do you know who he stole it from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he came to believe that he was the ki
ng foretold.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ John sat up, raising his hands in ignorance. ‘By the end, I do not know what he believed. The way he walked into that fire, he might have thought he was Christ himself reborn. He fooled us all – even me, who knew better than most what he was.’

  His voice faltered. It might merely have been self-pity, a lament for the power he had lost, but I thought I detected grief as well for the visionary betrayed by his own dreams. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered that this was the man who half an hour earlier had spoken of stringing up Peter like a puppet to preserve his authority. I remembered the woman caught in adultery, so bewitched and brutalised that she had plunged the hot brand into her breast; the knights from Count Raymond’s bodyguard who had broken their oaths and abandoned their lord in the fog. There had been no pity in the faith Peter Bartholomew preached.

  I jerked my knife at the fallen prophet. ‘Go.’

  He scrambled to his feet. One hand reached for the sack of coins he had taken, then paused as he caught my eye. He contrived a pitiable, beseeching gaze.

  ‘Take it.’ I would have liked to count out thirty pieces of silver for him, but at that moment I only wanted to be rid of him. He snatched up the bag, took a last look around the clearing, then crossed quickly to its edge. Just before he disappeared into the trees, he looked back.

  ‘The prophecy says that the king will come when we wrest Jerusalem from the forces of Babylon.’

  ‘So?’

  His fat face twisted in an unpleasant smile. ‘Don’t you wonder? If Peter Bartholomew was not the promised king, who is?’

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