by Tom Harper
‘A rider has just delivered this.’ He held it out; Nikephoros reached for it, but instead Raymond passed it to his chaplain who cleared his throat and began reading.
‘From his most serene holy majesty, the basileus and autokrator, the emperor of the Romans Alexios Komnenos; to his brothers in Christ, the princes and captains of the Army of God: blessings and greetings.’
‘Greetings,’ Raymond muttered, waving him on.
‘Though we have been absent from your campaign, not a day has passed when the great deeds you have worked to the glory of God have not been present in our heart. All our empire rejoices at your victories. And now that we have heard your army is poised on the borders of the holy land, ready to strike towards Jerusalem itself, piety and duty command us to leave the comforts of our city and join you in the holy task appointed. Wherefore we ask you to remain in your camp, to gather your strength, and await our arrival on the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the twenty-fourth day of June. Then Greeks and Romans shall be united in one host, the kingdom of Babylon will tremble, and the arch-enemy’s forces will be scattered and destroyed.’
The priest looked up. ‘That is all.’
‘May I see the letter?’
Nikephoros took the paper from the chaplain’s hands and read it silently, fingering the seals between thumb and forefinger. ‘You said the messenger who brought it was Greek. Where is he now?’
‘He said he could not delay. He galloped away the moment I had taken the package from him.’
‘Did he?’ There was a dangerous edge in Nikephoros’ voice, but Raymond did not appear to notice it.
‘This is the best news we could have had. How long have I pleaded with Alexios to come to our aid, to prove his loyalty and to silence those who question his friendship? This gives the lie to Achard’s false accusations. At last the emperor’s authority will bring unity to our fractured host.’
‘The other princes will not wait for the emperor,’ said Nikephoros. He strode beside me as we walked back to our tent. ‘Even if they cared about Arqa – or Raymond – they would crawl over coals to reach Jerusalem before the emperor arrived.’ He gave a dry laugh.
‘Strange that a messenger who had ridden all the way from Constantinople should deliver the message to Raymond’s door, and then gallop away at dusk without even looking in on the Byzantine camp,’ I said noncommittally. I had an unpleasant idea that I knew who had written the letter – and it was not the emperor whose seal adorned it.
‘Stranger still that it was sealed with wax. The emperor seals his correspondence with gold. But the seals were genuine. Not the emperor’s personal seal, but one used by the palace.’ He lifted his hand so I could see the gold signet ring gleaming on his finger. ‘I have one. So did my predecessor, Tatikios.’
‘The ring Duke Godfrey stole from me,’ I murmured. Was this why? Surely that could not have been his purpose when he lured me to Ravendan all those months ago.
Nikephoros walked on in silence, so long that I wondered if he blamed me for what had happened. ‘The letter was a forgery,’ he said at last. ‘So obvious I am surprised even the Franks did not see it. There were half a dozen mistakes in the grammar alone.’
‘But if you saw it was a forgery, why not say so to Count Raymond?’
Nikephoros swung around. ‘Because it served my purposes. Do you think I want to spend the next six months rotting outside Arqa because an old man is too stubborn and too blind to give up a lost cause, and because none of his companions has the strength or will to defy him?’
‘But if Duke Godfrey forged the letter, aren’t you curious as to why?’
He shrugged the question away. ‘Probably because he’s as sick as I am of waiting.’ His voice dropped. ‘The emperor did not send me here as a mark of favour. It was an exile, a diplomatic way to remove me from his court for as long as possible. I think it appealed to his humour to send me to Jerusalem as penance.’
Unconsciously, he played with the embroidered hem of his sleeve. ‘Perhaps I deserved it. But I have served my sentence, and I would like to return to Constantinople. So if a letter appears that will force the barbarians to act, however mysterious and fraudulent it may be, I will not question it.’ He touched me on the shoulder, perhaps the most sincere gesture I ever had from him. ‘We have both been away from home too long.’
I could not argue with that, but it did not soothe my worries.
Sigurd threw a handful of dry grass on the embers of the last night’s fire and poked at it with a stick. Even in the dim half-light before dawn, the coals barely glowed.
‘In England, in my father’s time, the kings could only raise their army for forty days in a year. That concentrated their minds wonderfully on the business of making war.’
‘Do you still miss it?’ I asked.
‘England?’ Sigurd sounded surprised by the question. ‘Of course. In the same way that a one-armed man misses his limb.’
‘When you left, did you know you would never see it again?’
‘I …’ Sigurd paused. ‘I don’t remember. There was too much confusion, and I was too young. But I must have thought I would see it again, or I would never have left.’ He grimaced. ‘Even so, I clung to a tree that grew beside the water when it was time to leave. My uncle thought he would need to chop it down I held on so tight.’
‘I would have done the same to Constantine’s column in the forum if I had known it would be so long before I saw it again. I thought I wanted to see my family – but now they are here, I think it was the city I wanted really.’
Sigurd balled his fingers into a fist and stared at it.
‘Don’t worry yourself too much with your family. They don’t know where they are and they’re frightened. Even if we were all in Constantinople, it would not be perfect. Helena would still be struggling to understand where her allegiance to her husband ends and to her father begins.’
‘I would have been happy for her to abandon me for her husband completely, if only he’d kept her safe in Constantinople.’
‘You should watch Thomas. He is too eager for battle.’
‘Whereas you, of course, have harnessed your axe to an ox and made it a plough.’
Sigurd looked serious. ‘I have been in enough battles that I know what to do – and even, though you may not believe it, when to step back. If Thomas charges into his next battle thinking he can avenge his wounds with every sweep of his axe, he will make an easy kill for some Ishmaelite.’
‘He saved my life,’ I said, ducking away from Sigurd’s warning.
‘And you saved his. But it will mean precious little if you and he don’t live long enough to make the debt worthwhile.’
I made a final attempt to reinvigorate the fire, then stood and wiped the ash from my face. Down the slope, I saw Zoe returning from the river where she had been sent to fetch water.
‘Your daughter will be strong enough to join the Varangians soon,’ said Sigurd. ‘Look at the way she carries that water jar – almost as if it was empty.’
It was true: she held the jar one-handed, and it bounced freely as she ran towards us though no water spilled out. Forgetting the fire, I ran to meet her, instinctively checking for any sign of injury.
‘Are you all right?’ I called. ‘Are you in danger?’
She shook her head, her loose hair flying across her face. ‘The camp across the river – Duke Godfrey’s camp.’ She gulped a deep breath. ‘It’s gone.’
Duke Godfrey’s camp, which for the last two months had stood on the southern side of the mountain spur, was a ruin. A film of smoke hung over the ground like a dawn mist: through it I could see scraps of charred cloth hanging from the ribs of tents, beds of ash still smouldering, bare patches in the earth where tents had once stood. I rubbed my eyes.
‘Did the Saracens creep down from the city and burn the camp in the night?’ I wondered. ‘Why didn’t we see any flames?’
Sigurd gestured to the bulk of the spur behind us. ‘That would have h
idden it.’
‘But we would still have heard the battle.’
‘If there was a battle.’ Sigurd stepped forward and walked a little way forward. ‘Do you see anything strange about this battlefield?’
I looked closer. Though the embers still smouldered and the ash was fresh, the carcass of the battle had already been picked impossibly clean. There were no bodies.
‘What’s that?’
I looked up. A man in a white cassock was walking towards us between the rows of ruined tents, striding the battlefield like the angel of death – though I did not think the hem of an angel’s robe would have been soiled grey by the ash he kicked up as he walked. Nor, in my image, would he have been old and balding, with a pronounced wart on his left cheek.
He reached us and made the sign of the cross. ‘Good morning, brothers.’
‘What happened here?’ I asked.
He looked around, as if seeing the wreckage for the first time. ‘Praise God, the Holy Spirit moved in the hearts of the faithful last night and roused them like a great wind. As one, they rose from their camp and set out on the road to Jerusalem.’
‘And this?’ I gestured to the ruin.
‘Whatever they could not take they burned. They will not be coming back.’
‘So Duke Godfrey has gone …’
‘And the Duke of Normandy, and the Count of Flanders, and Tancred–’
‘Tancred was in Count Raymond’s service,’ I interrupted.
‘He left it – they all left. I was the only one who stayed behind, to tell you what has happened. And now that I have done so …’ He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. A grey horse, which had been grazing on the sweet grass by the river, trotted over. The priest lifted himself into the saddle, with surprising ease for a holyman, and took the reins. As his cassock rode up over his boots, I saw the glint of spurs on his heels.
He offered a crooked smile. ‘Tell Count Raymond this: the time for vanity and hesitation has passed. If any man from his army, knight or peasant, wishes to see Jerusalem, let him hasten after us: the other princes will welcome his service. But there will be no more delays now. They must come quickly, before the whole world falls away to ash.’
He turned his horse and kicked its flanks. Dust and cinders billowed up behind him as he left, so that the pale horse and its pale rider vanished in the cloud. By the time it had settled again he was gone, though the drum of his hoofbeats seemed to echo for a long time afterwards in the valley. Not only echo, but grow louder, swelling out until they sounded all around me.
I looked around, and saw the reason. It was not the departing priest I had heard, but Count Raymond, galloping down towards us with a score of his knights and nobles behind. They thundered over the bridge, then reined themselves in.
‘What has happened here?’ Raymond demanded. His face was white, glistening with sweat. He gestured up to the promontory behind us. ‘Have the Saracens done this?’
I told him what I had heard, though he barely seemed to listen. He paced his horse around me, this way and that, glancing distractedly at the remains of Duke Godfrey’s camp. His knights kept their distance and watched.
Only when I had finished did Raymond go still, though he would not look at me.
‘Tancred went?’ he said bleakly.
I nodded.
‘He took an oath to me!’ A terrible groan, like the cry of a wounded boar, tore the air. Raymond doubled over in his saddle, clutching his arms to his stomach, then suddenly jerked upright and threw out his hands as if grasping at the air for balance. The men around him drew back.
‘They have abandoned me,’ he whispered.
One of his knights edged tentatively forward. ‘They have only been gone a few hours. If we march quickly we could overtake them by sunset and join our armies for the final charge.’
‘And what about Arqa?’ Raymond looked up at the walled town on its promontory above us, as inviolable as ever; then at the road winding away towards the coast and Jerusalem. A solitary tear seemed to trickle from his eye – though perhaps it was just sweat, for the sun was already hot.
‘Give orders to strike the camp.’
λς
We caught up with the other princes the following day. The Flemings, Normans and Lotharingians embraced the Provençals gladly, rejoicing to see the army reunited, but Count Raymond rode in the midst of his bodyguard and remained unseen. That evening the princes concluded a peace with the emir of Tripoli, and the next day we proceeded on to the coast. This was the place the Fatimid envoy had warned us against, a treacherous spot where the rampart of the mountain met the sea in a dizzying cascade of fractured cliffs and crevices. A stiff onshore wind drove waves against the rocks, filling the air with spray, while sea birds called mournful cries from above. Here the road seemed to disappear into the rock: even standing at the foot of the mountain, we could not see where it went until our guide showed us a path, which the breaking waves had carved out of the cliff. It was little more than a ledge, barely two feet above the surging sea and scarcely wide enough for two men to walk even in single file. The stronger gusts of wind whipped the waves so high that they overflowed onto the path, so that boiling white water foamed about our feet, snatching and sucking at our ankles as it tried to drag us into the sea. When a few men lost their balance and fell screaming into the water, no one dared leap in to save them; we could only watch them drown.
Yet even that was not the limit of its defences. At the very tip of the headland, where the path dwindled almost to a sword’s width, our Roman ancestors had built a gate-house to command the road. Its ancient stones were wet and black with age; one wall seemed to grow out of the cliff itself, the other plunged straight into the sea.
‘Raz-ez-Chekka,’ said our guide, pointing to it. He giggled. ‘The Face of God. Only the worthy will pass.’
Duke Godfrey crossed himself. ‘The gates is narrow and the way is hard,’ he murmured.
I shivered, and I was not alone. In that lonely, perilous place I could almost feel the terrifying weight of God’s gaze on me, searching my soul for its infinitesimal worth. The dark gates in the tower opened before me like ravening jaws, and the small windows above watched like eyes. Water bubbled around my feet; gulls called their plaintive song and the waves roared in my ears. Dizziness broke over me, so that even as I stood still the tower seemed to rush closer. Helpless, I stared into its eyes. They were not cruel, nor angry, nor even sad: only unfathomably empty. Then – I swear – one of them winked. I gasped; the world spun away and the sea rushed up to swallow me.
A Varangian hand grabbed my shoulder, and stout arms hauled me back. I blinked, rubbing the salt from my eyes. In front of me, the tower stood where it always had, and a white gull perched on the sill of one of the windows.
‘The Egyptian was right,’ said Sigurd. ‘Six men could hold that tower until Judgement Day.’
But the tower was empty, and the rotten bar that held the gates gave easily under a few blows. Worthy or not, we passed through unhindered.
Perhaps the Franks had been right: perhaps God did will them on. Certainly it felt so during those last weeks of May: after the twenty months we had taken to crawl the hundred miles between Antioch and Arqa, we managed twice that distance in only twenty days. Every obstacle suddenly seemed to fall away from our path, so much that I began to wonder what had ever held us back. Narrow passes through the mountains, which a hundred Saracens could have held against the entire human race, stood undefended; fresh springs flowed with such abundance that the whole army could not exhaust their supply. Even the seasons seemed altered: though it was only the middle of May, the harvest had already ripened. In the orchards, boughs yielded up their fruits, while the wheat in the fields seemed to bow down before our approach, each stalk willingly offering its neck to our sickles. We hardly needed the emperor’s grain ships, whose white sails kept pace with us on the western horizon as we marched down the coast.
I do not mean to give the impression tha
t it was easy – of course there were hardships. The same sun that fattened the wheat burned our skins and parched our throats. The bountiful land could also be treacherous. One evening we made our camp by a stony river bank: in the night, a host of fiery snakes slithered out from the stones and bit many of the army. They died horribly, bloated out so far you could hear the joints snapping inside them. At Sidon, the Saracen garrison sallied out unexpectedly and massacred a company of pilgrims as they foraged. And our holy road was no defence against the usual trials of life. Horses went lame, milk soured, men quarrelled. But against the storms that had ravaged us before, these were nothing: spring squalls forgotten almost before they had passed. They could not stem the confidence and expectation that grew in the army every day.
For, like the Israelites of old, we had come at last into the promised land, a country that had already been ancient when Romulus laid the first stone of the first Rome. Every town we passed resounded with history: Tyre, whose cedarwood Solomon used to build the temple in Jerusalem, and Byblos, whose parchment gave its name to the scripture written on it; Accaron, where the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant, and Caesarea, city of King Herod. Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Saracens – all had possessed this land, or parts of it. Their monuments remained, a palimpsest of the past, though the men themselves had long since rotted to dust.
We celebrated Pentecost and rested a few days. Then, we left the coast and headed inland, towards the spine of mountains that had loomed on our eastern flank every day for the past fortnight.
‘And somewhere in those mountains is Jerusalem,’ said Thomas. It was early June; we sat around the dying embers of our campfire and lay back, looking up at the stars. Anna’s head rested on my chest, while Helena and Thomas cradled the child – no longer a baby – between them.
‘I wonder if it will appear as it does in the Bible,’ mused Helena. ‘Jewelled walls and golden gates and . . . everything else.’