by Tom Harper
Without another word, he and his companion lifted up the cart handles and pushed it on down the street. Sigurd and I stared at each other, each as confused as the other. Then, because there was nothing else to do, we picked up the two corpses and dragged them in the direction the knight had ordered.
We were not alone. At the top of the road we found many others – Provençals, Normans, Lotharingians and Flemings, as well as Ishmaelite prisoners, even Jews – working to dispossess the city of its dead. Carnage and devastation were everywhere; to look on it was to taint your soul for ever. We followed the procession across Mount Zion to the western gate, where the high citadel rose above the ramparts. No sign of siege or sack marked its massive walls, but it had fallen nonetheless: I could see the blue banner of Provence fluttering from the topmost tower, and Provençal archers patrolling its walls. Jerusalem was taken, but Count Raymond’s jealous eyes still saw enemies everywhere.
We passed through the gate onto the bare mountain beyond. The ground fell away steeply into the valley, with a great crowd of knights and pilgrims milling about at its rim. A soldier shouted at us to bring our burdens there and, numbly, we obeyed. We hauled them to the edge and stared down.
For a moment I thought I truly had witnessed the resurrection. Looking into that ravine was like looking into the bowels of the earth, as if the jaws of hell had opened to disgorge the legions of the dead. The hillside was thick with bodies, their stiff arms outstretched as if trying to haul themselves out. At the bottom, still more corpses were piled up in vast mounds, like fallen leaves ready for the burning. There must have been thousands of them, ten thousands. Small groups of Franks clambered over them, piling cords of wood and dousing them in oil. I could not believe we had killed so many.
A group of pilgrims hauled a cart to the edge and upended it. More corpses tipped out like rubbish, tumbling and sliding down the rocky slope. I stared at them, trying to make out anything that could be Thomas, but it was no use.
‘Come on!’ shouted a soldier impatiently. ‘Plenty more to come.’
We lifted the bodies we had brought and hurled them into the pit. When they had gone I said a brief prayer for Thomas, trying to imagine him lying lost among the naked, unnumbered dead. Then I went to find what we had come for.
After all our struggles, all that time, it was not hard to find. We followed the pilgrims who streamed back into Jerusalem from that open grave – down a sloping street, through the wreckage of what had once been a market or a bazaar, and then along a narrow, twisting alley.
‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ Sigurd asked doubtfully.
I was not sure, but I carried on. Around a corner, through a narrow door in a wall – and suddenly we were there. A shady, colonnaded courtyard, with lofty porticoes to our right and our left opening into dim chambers beyond. The waiting crowds within almost overflowed it, and the red-tiled roofs around the courtyard sagged under the weight of the pilgrims who had climbed up on them. It seemed to take an age to worm our way through the throng; several times our rough manners would have provoked violence if there had only been room to swing a fist. I drew the knife I had kept in my boot and balled my tunic around it. The closer we came the more slowly we progressed until suddenly, at last, there was nothing in front of us except the sweet smell of incense wafting out of the chamber within. We peered over the threshold, into the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre.
It had been an image in my mind so long, but – like so many things – it was not as I had expected it. From my childhood, I had always imagined the sepulchre as a great stone cave, rugged and primal, yawning open in the middle of the church. Perhaps it had been, once, but that had long since been hidden by the artifice of men. It stood in the middle of a broad, semicircular hall, under a lofty rotunda whose centre had been cut out to allow a pillar of light to plunge through. The shrine stood at its foot, so that you could not tell if the tomb was the object or the source of the brilliance. Tendrils of smoke writhed in the bloodred light like souls in torment.
Of the tomb itself I could see very little. The bricks that made its walls were scarred and pocked with holes, while the lead cupola on top was badly scratched and dented. It looked more like a roadside chapel than the tomb of God. But even that I could hardly see, for the inside of the church was as crowded as the courtyard beyond. A phalanx of priests in golden robes circled the tomb, singing a psalm of thanksgiving. In their centre, raised above all of them at the door of the tomb, stood Arnulf. A radiant triumph smirked on his face as he sang:
The Lord rejoices in his people,
and adorns the humble with victory.
Let the faithful exult in their glory;
Let the high praises of God be in their throats,
And sharp swords in their hands.
An acolyte held the golden cross beside him, the fragments of the true cross erected once again on the hill of Calvary. The princes stood in front of him, facing the sepulchre, and their knights packed the chamber around them. Some had their heads bowed, but others stared around in wide-eyed astonishment, unable to believe where they stood. They seemed to have come straight from the battle: many still wore their armour, their tabards soaked with blood like butchers’ aprons. Some were bloodied up to their elbows; others bore open wounds, which wept and bled as they sang the psalm.
Let the faithful wreak vengeance on the nations
And punishment on their peoples;
Let them bind the kings of the earth with chains
And their princes with iron shackles,
To execute on them the judgement of God –
This is the glory of the faithful.
‘Praise the Lord!’ shouted the crowd. The priests had stopped singing but the crowd carried on, repeating the antiphon again and again with such noise and fervour that I feared the dome might crack apart and collapse on them in the moment of their triumph. ‘Praise the Lord.’ It was an awesome sound. Its monolithic unison seemed to ring with everything that was most mighty and terrible in the Army of God. The more often they repeated it, the louder they sang. Confidence became stridence, unison began to shake with disharmony. Looking at the fervent faces that thronged the sanctuary, breathless mouths straining to build the sound ever louder, it suddenly seemed to me that they were not gripped by glory or love of God, but by desperation. The moment of victory had passed and they knew it. They had come to find heaven, to capture God, but the tomb was empty. Soon they would have to leave that sanctuary and venture into the world they had made, a dark and terrible place, but for a little while yet they could delay it. So they sang on, not in joy but in dread of what was to come.
Voices grew hoarse, lungs tired. One by one, the knights at the back of the church fell silent and began to slip away. They pushed past me through the door, but I held my ground, keeping the knife hidden in the fold of my tunic. As the last sighs of the song died away, a troop of knights emerged and forged a way through the courtyard, penning us back with the hafts of their spears. But the crowds had suffered the torments of hell to reach this sacred place – they would not be turned away so easily. They pushed back against the soldiers, squeezing the way shut. Those who had begun to leave the church found themselves suddenly stuck in the midst of the crowd. And there, standing on the threshold not six inches away from me, was Duke Godfrey.
‘Was it all you expected?’ I murmured in his ear. Keeping my arm low, I turned the knife so that the point aimed at his side. I wondered if the blade was long enough to reach his heart.
He was trapped between the men trying to get out of the church and those trying to push in. He could not even turn to face me, but I saw his shoulders stiffen and his head go still as the blade pricked him. I looked down at his hand, at the two rings – one black and ancient, one gold and shining – that gleamed on his fingers.
‘The ring of Charlemagne and the seal of Byzantium. Was that how you thought you would unite the crowns of east and west, as the prophecy foretold? Was that why you contrived to stea
l the ring from me, after you had failed to conquer Constantinople itself?’
Godfrey’s chin lifted and he stared straight ahead. ‘Make way,’ he shouted. ‘Make way for your princes, damn you.’
‘If you move, the last thing you feel will be my dagger in your heart.’ I would have to be quick: his guards would cut me down in an instant. But that did not matter, for they would only speed me to my family. ‘Did you think that you were the one? That you would ascend Golgotha, take the crown from your head and place it on the cross, and hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father? Is that why you destroyed Peter Bartholomew, not because he vied with God but because he vied with you?’
Ahead of Godfrey, the soldiers had at last begun to impose themselves on the crowd. A passage was opening.
‘You thought you could remake the world by destroying it. You envied heaven so much you tried to wrest it from God. What will you say when you see Him now?’
But even as I spoke, the knife wavered in my hand. What did I want from Godfrey? Revenge? There was no revenge in the world that could punish the weight of his sin. Remorse? If he truly comprehended what he had done, he would have snatched the knife from my hand and plunged it in himself. My words would not stir him. As for repentance, that was not mine to demand.
I lowered the knife and let it drop to the ground. In the tumult of the crowd, no one even heard it fall. All that remained now was curiosity.
‘Was it worth it?’
A path opened in front of Godfrey, but he did not move forward. He turned to look at me, and I stared into his eyes. For the merest instant, I looked through them to the soul within. There was no sorrow there, nor guilt: only, for the first time, a thin blade of doubt.
Then his body stiffened, his face hardened and the shutters closed over his eyes. I knew what he would say before he spoke.
‘Deus voluit.’
God willed it.
ν
Sigurd and I stood at the edge of the street in the shade, the last two survivors. Amid all the ruin, Sigurd had found an orange, and his strong fingers dug away the peel to reveal the fruit within. When he had stripped it he pulled it in two and gave me half; I tore the segments off with my teeth, devouring them almost as fast as I could swallow. Juice trickled down my fingers and over my chin, glistening in the sun, but I made sure I licked off every drop. It was almost the first thing I had had to eat or drink since the assault, and it was like the waters of heaven in my parched mouth.
‘What do we do now?’ Sigurd asked.
‘Go home, I suppose.’
I winced, remembering how much I had once desired that. Now fate had made a mockery of that hope, too. What did I have to return to?
‘Will you go back to the palace guard?’
Sigurd frowned and looked away. He was about to answer when something behind me caught his eye, driving the thought from his head. I turned to see. I could not help the spark of hope that flared in me, but I damped it instantly. All it would do was burn me.
We were not the only survivors. A few paces away, looking for all the world as if he had expected to find us, stood Saewulf. One arm was held in a sling, and there was a gash on his cheek that would no doubt harden into one more scar, but he still wore the same crooked smile. It did not entirely disguise the weariness in his eyes.
‘How did you get here?’ Sigurd asked.
‘I followed Count Raymond. He still owes me money for his siege tower – though he was less inclined to pay after the Egyptians destroyed it.’ He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, the acquiescence of a man well used to the whims of fate. ‘He has taken the citadel, the tower of David. Did you know that?’
‘We saw his banner there,’ I answered. There was something in Saewulf’s words that I did not understand, something that he was withholding. ‘How did he take it so quickly?’
‘He promised the captain of the garrison and his men safe passage out of Jerusalem if they surrendered immediately. It was a good bargain – on both sides. I was with him when he made it, and I was there when he entered the citadel. We found something there you should see.’
I looked into his eyes for a hint, but saw only the fathomless blue of the sea.
The convoys of the dead still flowed to the vast grave in the valley beyond the walls. Soon smoke from those pyres would choke the air once more, but for the moment the sky had begun to clear. The rust-red glow that had suffused the city all day hardened to a sharper, whiter light. We came quickly to the great bulwarks of the citadel, its walls laced with lead so that fire and chisels could not penetrate the cracks between the stones. Companies of Provençal knights guarded every gate, but they waved us through without challenge when they saw Saewulf. He led us into a courtyard among high towers, filled with men and horses. For the first time since I entered Jerusalem, I was in a place that did not stink of blood.
‘Over there.’
I blinked, my eyes still struggling with the brightness after so long in the gloom. On the far side of the courtyard, forgotten amid the bustle, three figures sat in the shade of an arched colonnade. With the brilliant sun on my face I could barely see them, but there are some things that can be recognised without sight.
‘Your Egyptian friend brought them here for sanctuary when he saw the city was lost,’ said Saewulf. ‘He went to find you, to tell you, but they said he did not return.’
I barely heard him; I was running across the courtyard, springing forward like a newborn lamb, each stride longer than the last. They saw me coming; they rose and rushed to meet me, their skirts swirling in the dust. They were dressed in strange clothes that I had not seen before, bright garments that seemed alive with the light they reflected. In her haste, the scarf Anna wore over her head blew away and her black hair streamed out behind her. Zoe ran beside her, taller than I remembered, and behind them came Helena with Everard in her arms. He had grown too heavy for Helena; she put him down and let him run free with her. I could hear them shouting; I was shouting too, though I did not know what I was saying. Then we were all in each other’s arms, crying and laughing and repeating each other’s names as if we had never spoken them before. The soldiers in the courtyard stared, disturbed from their grim business, but I did not care.
Everything that had to be said – about Thomas, about Bilal, about Godfrey and Raymond, about ourselves – could be said later. For now, I was ready to go home.
Lux Aeterna
Three weeks after they captured the city, the Army of God took to the field for the last time. At Ascalon, forty miles west of Jerusalem, they met the relief army that al-Afdal had brought from Egypt and, though outnumbered once more, routed it utterly. Many of the Egyptians were driven into the sea and drowned; al-Afdal himself only escaped by fleeing into the harbour and taking ship for Egypt. He never returned. I heard, some years afterwards, that he was eventually murdered by a caliph who had grown tired of his tutelage.
When Jerusalem had been conquered, the princes met in the church of the Holy Sepulchre and elected Godfrey king. But – faithful to his prophecy to the last – he put aside his crown and did not take the title of king, preferring instead to style himself the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. A few days afterwards, the red-headed priest, Arnulf of Rohes, was appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. Raymond got nothing: but true to his vow he never returned to Provence. He died a few years later, once more pursuing a fruitless siege.
Despite the victory, Godfrey’s reign was neither long nor happy. One by one, the other princes abandoned him, either to return to their homes or to make new conquests of their own. The borders of his new realm were weak and fragile; no sooner had one area been secured than another demanded his attention. Almost a year to the day after he marched through the golden gate and processed to Christ’s tomb, Godfrey died in Jerusalem. Some said he had been poisoned, others that he had succumbed to fever; others still said that his heart had simply given up. When I heard that, I remembered the doubt I had seen in his eyes that morning in the H
oly Sepulchre. It had seemed then like something sharp and dangerous; I wondered if it had not twisted in his soul until it cut a wound that could not heal.
Many assumed that Godfrey’s successor should be Bohemond; he was summoned from Antioch, but he was away campaigning. Before he could return, he was captured by Turks and carried away deep into their kingdom where he spent four years rotting in captivity. In his absence, the lordship of Jerusalem passed to Baldwin, Godfrey’s younger brother, who had left the Army of God before it even reached Antioch to carve out his own dominion in the east. He had none of his brother’s pious scruples. On Christmas Day in the first year of the new century, at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he was crowned king of Jerusalem. And so the man who had abandoned the pilgrimage at the earliest opportunity, who never suffered its torments or fought its terrible battles, became its eventual victor.
I did not see any of it. Before Ascalon, before Godfrey had taken his throne, even before the embers from the funeral pyres had cooled, I began the long journey home. Before we left, I visited the Holy Sepulchre. After waiting almost three hours in a line of weeping pilgrims, I stepped inside the cupola, past the stone where the angel had announced the resurrection to the two Marys, and ducked into the small chamber beyond.
It was empty, of course.
We travelled in easy stages back to the coast, walking at dawn and at dusk, resting during the heat of the day. At Jaffa, we found the last ship from Saewulf’s fleet, which had been away on patrol when the Fatimids burned the harbour. As August winds furrowed the sea, it slowly nosed its way west. The sun shone, and I spent the hours reaccustoming myself to food and water, nursing strength back into my limbs. I had not realised how far my body had withered until I tried to heal it. There were days when my joints were so stiff I could barely move; other days when my stomach rebelled against even water. Through all this, Anna was at my side: preparing my food, teasing the knots out of my sinews, or just sitting in the shade of a canvas awning watching dolphins play in the water. We did not speak much. The ordeals we had endured loomed too large, mountains in our minds that we could neither conquer nor comprehend. Only by skirting around them, chiselling away small pieces each day, could we gradually reduce them and build the fragments into the houses of memory. It was as well we had Everard to distract us. If ever thoughts of the past grew too melancholy, there was always the sight of him running up and down the sloping deck chasing after gulls to lift our spirits. Amid thoughts of death and despair, his energy provided a necessary reminder of life.