Knights of the Cross

About the Author

Tom Harper is also the author of The Mosaic of Shadows and Siege of Heaven.

He studied medieval history at Oxford University and now lives in London.

Visit Tom Harper at www.tom-harper.co.uk

For my parents

who gave me afterward every day

For lo I raise up that bitter and hasty nation,

Which march through the breadth of the earth

To possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.

They are terrible and dreadful,

Their judgement and their dignity proceed from themselves.

Their horses are swifter than leopards,

And are more fierce than the evening wolves.

Their horsemen spread themselves, yea,

Their horsemen come from afar.

They fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour,

They come all of them for violence;

Their faces are set as the east wind,

And they gather captives as the sand.

– Habakkuk

(adapted C. V. Stanford)

Having sworn allegiance to Byzantium, the army of the First Crusade crossed into Asia Minor in May 1097. At Nicaea and Dorylaeum they won two resounding victories against the Turks, capturing their capital and opening the road south towards Jerusalem. Through July and August, in the face of burning heat and hunger, the crusaders swept aside all resistance as they marched almost a thousand miles across the steppes of Anatolia. Outside the ancient city of Antioch, however, their progress halted: the Turkish garrison was all but impregnable, and as winter drew on the army was devastated by rain, disease, starvation and battle. By February 1098 they had suffered five months of attrition to no discernible gain. Rivalries festered between the different nations of the crusade – Provencales from southern France, Germans from Lorraine, Normans from Sicily and Normandy, and Byzantine Greeks. Fractious princes grew jealous of each others’ ambitions, while the miserable mass of foot-soldiers and camp-followers seethed at the failure of their leaders to deliver them. And in the east, the Turks began to assemble an army that would crush the crusade once and for all against the walls of Antioch.

Acknowledgements

In trying to make sense of the tangled history of the First Crusade, I have relied principally on the judgements of two clear-thinking historians: Steven Runciman’s A History of the Crusades (Penguin) and John France’s Victory in the East (Cambridge University Press). Elsewhere, the heretical ritual and creation myth in chapter 26 are adapted from translations in Walter Wakefield and Austin Evans’ Heresies of the High Middle Ages (Columbia University Press); the passage from Tertullian in chapter 12 is adapted from a translation in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (www.ccel.org); and the visions of Peter Bartholomew and Stephen in chapter 31 are adapted from translations by August Krey in The First Crusade (Princeton). Most of all, I am indebted to Dr Susan Edgington, who very generously gave me access to the draft typescript of her translation of Albert of Aachen’s narrative. When it is eventually published by Oxford University Press, it will fill one of the great remaining gaps in the historiography of the First Crusade. I have used the work of all these historians and many others; sometimes I have probably confused their scholarship, and sometimes I have deliberately abused it for my own purposes. Any errors or distortions in this book are of course my own.

I am particularly grateful to all those who helped me on my research trip across Turkey, especially Ohrlan Pammukale, who taught me the true meaning of Turkish hospitality. My wife Marianna stoically shared the heat, the driving, the dodgy kebabs and the language barrier; then came home and offered me her usual unstinting support. Helen, George, Iona and my mother read the first draft: their enthusiasm and criticism was a great help. As ever, my agent Jane Conway-Gordon moved in mysterious ways and performed wonders.

At Random House, I owe a great many thanks to my wise and patient editor Oliver Johnson, his assistant Emily Sweet, my publicist Emily Cullum, Richard Ogle and the long-suffering design department, Chris Moore for the artwork and Rodney Paull for the wonderful maps – as well as all those whom I never see working behind the scenes.

I

Besiegers

7 March – 3 June 1098

α

It was a restless day for the dead. I stood in a grave before Antioch, and watched the Army of God dig the corpses of their enemies from the fresh earth where they had been buried. Men half-naked and smeared with grime worked with passionate intensity to dispossess the dead, plundering the goods they had taken to the afterlife: unstrung bows curled up like snails, short knives, round shields caked with clay – all were dug out and hurled onto the spoil pile. A little further away a company of Normans counted and arranged more gruesome trophies: the severed heads of the corpses we had recalled from death. The day before, an army of Turks had sallied from the city and ambushed our foraging expedition; we had driven them back, but only with a great effort that we could ill afford. Now we opened their graves, not from wanton greed or cruelty – though there was that also – but to build a tower, to watch the gate and keep the city’s defenders penned within their walls. We made a quarry of their cemetery, and the foundations of our fortress from their tombs.

The giant who stood with me in the grave shook his head. ‘This is no way to wage a war.’

I looked up from the tombstone that I was trying to dislodge and stared at my companion. An unrelenting season of cold and rain had returned his stout features to the sallow colour of his ancestors, while his unkempt hair and beard were almost of a colour with the rusting links of his armour. Like all who had survived the winter horrors, his skin hung loose from his bones, his shoulders seemed too narrow for his mail coat, and the tail of his belt flapped from being drawn so tight. Yet still there was strength in the arms which had once seemed like the columns of a church, and a gleaming edge on the axe which leaned against the wall of the trench.

‘You’ve served twenty years in the Emperor’s army, Sigurd,’ I reminded him. ‘Would you have me believe that you never plundered your enemies, nor took booty from the battlefield?’

‘This is different. Worse.’ He wormed his fingers into the earth and began tugging on the stone, rocking it back and forth to loose it from the mud that held it. ‘Looting the fallen is a warrior’s right. Looting the buried . . .’

His arm tensed and the flat stone toppled out, splashing into the puddles on the floor of the pit. We crouched, and lifted it like a bier between us.

‘The Turks should have buried their dead within their walls,’ I argued, as though that could forgive such savagery. Why they had buried their losses from the previous day’s battle here, beyond the city and near our camp, I could not guess: perhaps, even after five months of siege, there were yet some barbarities they thought beyond us.

We slid the stone over the lip of the hole and hauled ourselves out, scrambling for purchase on the clammy earth. Standing, I tried to brush the dirt from my tunic – unlike Sigurd, I could not wear armour for such work – and looked at the labour going on around us.

They styled themselves the Army of God, but even He in His omniscience might not have recognised them. This was not the Divine Saint John’s vision of St Michael and all the angels, clothed in white linen and with eyes like flames of fire: these men were the wasted survivors of untold ordeals, little more than a rabble, their eyes filled only with suffering. Their skins were as stained and torn as their clothes; they staggered rather than marched – yet fearsome purpose still consumed their souls as they dug and tore at the bones, stones and plunder of the Ishmaelite cemetery. Only the crosses betold their holy allegiance: crosses of wood and iron strung from their necks; wool and sackcloth crosses sewn into smocks; crosses in blood and brutalised flesh painted or burned or carved into their shoulders. They seemed not the army of the Lord but rather His herd, branded with His mark and loosed to roam the Earth.

As Sigurd and I crossed the graveyard with our stone held between us I tried not to see the impieties around us. A small and lonely corner of my thoughts marvelled that I could still feel shame at this, after the myriad horrors that I had seen in the months since we arrived at Antioch. I turned my gaze away, to the impenetrable city barely two hundred yards distant and the broad green river which flowed before it. At this end of the city the river was almost against the foot of the walls; further north it meandered away, leaving a wedge of open ground between the ramparts and the water. It was there, on marshy land and barely beyond bowshot of our enemies, that our army was camped. From the hillock I could see the jumble of unnumbered tents strung out like washing on a line. Opposite, the many-turreted walls of Antioch stood as serene and inviolate as they had for centuries past, while behind them the three peaks of Mount Silpius towered above the city like the knuckles of a giant fist. For five months we had stared at those walls, waiting for them to crack open with hunger or despair, and for five months we had starved only ourselves.

Crossing a ditch, we climbed towards the low summit of the mound that the Franks had thrown up after the rudimentary fashion of their castles. A Norman sergeant wearing a faded tabard over his armour indicated where we should place our burden, while around us sailors from the port of Saint Simeon laid out planks of timber. At the bottom of the slope, towards the river, a screen of Provençal cavalry sat on their horses and watched for a Turkish sortie.

‘I’ve suffered wounds for the Emperor in a dozen battles.’ Sigurd’s voice was brittle. ‘I’ve struck down men within an arm’s length of ending his life. But if I had known he would have me robbing graves to please a Norman thief I would have cast aside my shield and hammered my blade into a ploughshare long ago.’

He leaned on the long haft of his axe, like an old man on his stick, and stared angrily at the land before us. ‘That city is cursed. The city of the cursed, besieged by the army of the damned. Christ help us.’

I murmured my agreement. It was only as my gaze swept back down to the river that I realised what his last words had signified, what he had seen.

‘Christ preserve us.’ Where the river met the walls, a stone bridge spanned its course – the sally port that our new tower was intended to guard against. Now, I saw, the gates had opened and the drum of hoofbeats echoed from under the arches. Even before our sentries could move, a thin column of Turkish horsemen emerged and galloped forward. Their bows were slung over their shoulders, yet they did not hesitate in charging straight up the slope towards us.

‘Bowmen!’ shouted the Norman sergeant. ‘Bowmen! A bezant for any rider you can unhorse.’

Between what we carried and what we had dug out, there was no shortage of arms among us, but the appearance of the Turks struck panic into our ranks. Some threw themselves into the excavated graves or upon the stones in the shallow foundation trench; others surrendered every defence and fled up the hill behind us. I saw Sigurd snatch one of the round shields from the spoil pile and run forward brandishing his axe. His shame forgotten, the war cry rose from his throat.

He would have little say in this fight, though. The Provençal cavalry had spurred to meet the Turks, desperate to close within spear-length. But rather than engage them the Ishmaelites loosed a rapid flight of arrows and turned back towards their walls. I saw one of the Franks grasping his stomach where a shaft had penetrated it, but otherwise the Turks looked to have done little damage. It was no more than a prick, a gnat’s sting such as we had endured almost daily since investing the city. At least, it should have been.

But the swift retreat of the Turks had brought new courage to our cavalry and they charged down towards the river after their fleeing quarry. Behind them, I saw Sigurd lower his axe as he slowed to a halt and started screaming unheeded warnings.

The Provençals would never listen to advice from an English mercenary in Greek employ, certainly not when presented with a broken line of their enemy to ride down. There was little that Sigurd or I or any man could do save watch. As the Turkish horsemen reached the mouth of the bridge, they executed the drill for which they were famed and feared across Asia: at full gallop, they dropped their reins, twisted back in their saddles, nocked arrows to their bowstrings and loosed them at their pursuers. Throughout the manoeuvre they neither wavered in their course nor slowed their pace. In an instant their horses had carried them into the safety of the city.

I shook my head in awe and anger. All winter, men from every nation had sought to mimic the trick, galloping up and down the meadows outside Antioch until their hands were raw and their horses half-lame. None had mastered it. Nor was it merely vain display, for I saw now that several of the shots had hit their mark, while the rest of our cavalry stood halted by the attack.

And, too late, they noticed how close they had come to the city. A hundred Turkish archers rose from the ramparts, and in an instant the air was thick with arrows. Horses screamed and reared while riders tried desperately to turn their heads to safety. I saw two animals go down, blood streaming from their sides: the rider of one managed to leap clear and run back but the other was trapped under the flanks of his steed and could not move. A fistful of arrows plunged into his body within seconds. His companion, on foot, was luckier: one arrow glanced off his coned helmet, another struck his calf but did not bite, while a third lodged in his shoulder but did not bring him down.

As he passed beyond their reach, the Turks on the walls put down their bows and took up a great shout, praising their God and mocking our impotence. If they hoped by their taunts to provoke us into another futile charge they were disappointed, for the survivors of our cavalry were limping back to our lines. There seemed to be more horses than riders among them, and a dozen beasts and men were lying motionless near the bridge. A small party of Turks emerged from the open gate to plunder them. A few of the men around me grabbed bows and loosed shots, but they fell short and did nothing to deter the looters. Sickened, I watched as two of the fallen were dragged back into the city. There would be no mercy or ransom for them.

‘Fools!’ the Norman sergeant raged as the Provençals reached our position. ‘Knaves and cowards! You lost good horses there – and for what? To hearten the Turks at the sight of your witless sacrifice? When my lord Bohemond hears of this, you will wish yourselves in the infidels’ houses of torture with the men you left behind.’

The Provençal leader’s eyes stared down from either side of the strip of iron covering his nose. His ragged beard sprang wild beneath his helmet. ‘If the men of Sicily could build this cursed tower and not waste time pillaging the dead, then the men of Provence would not have to waste their forces protecting them. That is what your lord Bohemond has commanded.’

I turned my attention away from them, for Sigurd had returned. He strode past the bickering officers, ignoring them, threw down the plundered shield and stamped on it. Even his strength could not crack it.

‘Five months,’ he growled. ‘Five months and we’ve learned nothing more than how to kill ourselves.’

The clanking tread of men-at-arms silenced the recriminations. A company of Lotharingians were approaching along the muddy track, their long spears clattering against each other over their heads. I was grateful for the relief, for it had been a hateful day. By my feet the rubble of broken tombs was at last beginning to fill the foundation trench, but it would be a week or more before the tower was completed – if the Turks did not first find a way to destroy it. Even then it would take us no closer to the inside of those unyielding walls.

As the Lotharingians took up their watch Sigurd mustered his troop. They were Varangian guards, pale-skinned northmen from the isle of Thule – England, in their tongue – and most fearsome among the Emperor’s mercenaries. Yet today their bellicose posture was tamed and the usual clamour of their conversation silenced. Battle was their living; months of labouring, guarding, digging and burying had drained it from them.

The Provençal cavalry trotted away, and we followed them towards the boat bridge back to the camp. With only scant food and guilty dreams awaiting us we marched in silence, without haste. Around us, though, the road thronged with life. The peasants and pilgrims who followed the armies hurried about with whatever they had foraged that day: firewood, berries, roots or grains. One lucky man had trapped a quail, which he dangled from a stick as he proceeded with a phalanx of triumphant companions around him. No less protected were the merchants who bartered with our army, Syrians and Armenians and Saracens alike: they drove their mules amid trains of turbaned guards, stopping only to force harsh bargains with the desperate and hungry. Grey clouds began massing over the mountain to our right, and I quickened my pace lest the rains come again.

We had reached the place where a steep embankment rose above one side of the path when I heard the cry. It was a place that had always made me nervous, for the ground rose higher than my head and any enemy from the west could approach entirely unseen; at the howl that now rose above the earthen parapet I froze, cursing myself for abandoning my armour. The slap of stumbling footsteps came nearer. Sigurd crouched well back from the embankment, his axe held ready. The rest of the company were likewise poised, their eyes searching the edge of the little cliff for danger.

With a stuttering shout, a boy reached the slope and plunged over it, flailing his arms like wings as his feet fell away beneath him. He was lucky we were not archers or he would have died in mid-air; instead, he collapsed onto the road and lay there sobbing, a heap of cloth and flesh and dirt. Sigurd’s axe-head darted forward, but he checked it mid-swing as he saw there was no threat in our new arrival. His clothes were torn and his limbs daubed with mud; his beardless face seemed pale, though we could see little enough of it under the arms which cradled it.

He pressed himself up on his hands and knelt there, his head darting around to look at the fearsome Varangians surrounding him.

‘My master,’ he gulped, pulling a scrawny lock of hair from over his face. Recognising perhaps that I alone held no ferocious axe, he fixed his eyes on mine. ‘My master has been killed.’

β

I pulled the boy up by the neck of his tunic, though he still had to tilt his head back to look me in the eye. ‘Where? Killed by the Turks? Who is your master?’

He wiped a sleeve across his face, smearing it with more grime than he removed. I kept my grip on his shoulder, for there was no strength in his shivering legs. ‘Drogo of Melfi,’ he stammered. ‘In the lord Bohemond’s army. I found him . . .’ His words gave out and he pulled from my grasp, sinking to his knees. ‘I found him over there.’ He pointed back to the top of the embankment whence he had come. ‘Dead.’

I glanced at Sigurd, then at the darkening sky. Part of my mind scolded that too many men had died already that day without taxing my conscience; that a sobbing servant and a dead Norman knight were no concern of mine, especially when Turkish patrols might yet skulk in the countryside. Perhaps, though, it was the accumulation of so many deaths which weighed most on me: confronted by a snivelling boy grieving for his master, I was defenceless.

‘It would be best if your men accompanied us,’ I told Sigurd.

‘Best for whom?’ he retorted. ‘The best course for my men is to return to our camp, before night brings out the Turks and Tafurs and wolves.’

‘Any wolves near here will have been eaten long since. As for the others—’ I turned to the boy. ‘Is it far?’

He shook his head. ‘Not far, Lord.’

‘Then take us quickly.’

We found a path up around the embankment and followed the boy over the broken ground that rose towards the hills on the far side of the plain of Antioch. The red earth was sticky underfoot, and all the grasses sprouted spikes and prickles which tore my legs. We came over a low ridge and looked down into a small hollow in the hillside. It was perhaps fifty feet across and formed like a natural amphitheatre in the rising ground. Perhaps it had once been a quarry, for the surrounding walls were pitted and bitten, but the ground underfoot was soft. In its centre, unmoving in the grey dusk, lay the body of a man.

I crossed quickly and crouched beside him while the Varangians fanned out, sniffing for danger. Behind me I heard Sigurd hiss with disapproval.

‘You found him here?’ I asked the boy, who had knelt opposite me. Tears were running down his face, bright in the gloom, but he seemed to me more frightened than sorrowful.

‘Here,’ he mumbled. ‘I found him here.’

‘How did you know he would be here?’

He looked up, the terror now plain on his face. ‘He was gone from the camp for many hours. The lord William, lord Bohemond’s brother, he told me to find him. I looked everywhere in the camp, and then here. And I found him.’

‘And what made you think he would be here?’ I repeated. We must have come half a mile from the road at least, and none of our army would have been so foolish as to wander here alone.

The boy closed his eyes and squirmed his fingers together. ‘He came here often. Many times I had seen him.’

‘Why? What brought him here?’

My questions were reflexive, the natural consequence of seeing too many men unnaturally dead, but their brusqueness must have alarmed the boy. He trembled in silence, unable to answer.

‘Was this how you found him?’

He nodded.

I stared down at the body before me. Drogo, the boy had called him – and a Norman of Sicily, I guessed, if he had served the lord Bohemond. He lay on his belly in the grass, still and silent as the twilight around us, and for a moment I wondered if he had not been stricken by some ailment, for there were no marks of violence evident. He had not even worn his armour, only a quilted undercoat stained with many weeks’ wear.

But the sour smell of blood in the evening air belied innocent hopes. I put my hand to his shoulder and lifted, pushing him over onto his back. The heavy body fell flat against the ground, and an involuntary whimper breathed through my lips. The Norman Drogo had not died a natural death: he had died because a heavy blade had cut open his throat, pouring out his blood into a puddle on the grass below. It must have been a savage blow, for it had sliced more than halfway through his neck, so that as I moved him his head lolled back to let fresh rivulets of blood trickle down to his collar. It had stained everything: matted the dark hair of his beard, dyed the wool of his quilted tunic, and dashed across the cheekbones that framed the gaping eyes. Some had even splashed onto his forehead.

I saw all this, and doubtless a hundred other aspects of the horror, but one thought drove me above all others.

‘The blood is still wet – still flowing. This happened only a few minutes since.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘If this was the work of a party of Turks, they cannot be far away.’

The boy, still on his knees, stared around in terror. ‘We must find them,’ he mumbled, biting a knuckle until the finger turned white. ‘We must avenge my master.’

‘We must get back to the camp,’ I snapped. I had seen scores of men die similar deaths – many worse – since we left Constantinople; I would not join their number in this lonely place. Night was drawing in from the east, and the rocky walls of the hollow grew evil with shadow.

‘But we will take his body,’ I added. Soon the night’s carrion-eaters would emerge, and the body would become more terrible still if we left it behind.

Sigurd must have shared my thoughts, for he made no complaint as the Varangians formed a rough stretcher from their axe-hafts under the corpse and bore it back to the city. The darkness was complete by the time we reached our lines, and nervous sentries challenged us at every step. Our Byzantine camp was at the north-eastern walls, just behind the Normans of Sicily, and we must have passed through more than a mile of tents and pavilions, of makeshift paddocks, blacksmiths, farriers, fletchers, and armourers, all lit in the irregular glimmer of innumerable campfires. Gaunt faces on swollen bodies begged for food, money or compassion; haggard women asked after lost lovers, or sought new ones; children clawed each other in vicious sport, as the Army of God prepared for the night.

I chose a path which skirted the edge of the Norman encampment, for I did not wish to walk through their midst with one of their dead. Among them were too many veterans of their wars against us, and a Greek carrying a Norman body might be too obvious a provocation.

The boy, who had lagged behind us, now tugged on my arm. ‘Where shall I go?’

I looked into his forlorn eyes. ‘To your master’s tent. Were there any family who accompanied him?’

The boy shook his head, sniffling. ‘A brother, but he died on the march.’

‘Any other companions? Others of Melfi?’

‘Three knights who shared his tent.’

‘Then tell them that we have his body for safe keeping. They may come and claim it from us for burial.’

If we could find space in this land for yet another tomb.

After a meagre supper, I picked my way through the maze of cloth and ropes to a clearing in the heart of our camp where a single tent stood in dignified isolation. Its size, and the richness of its fabric, bespoke a noble occupant, yet it was the solitude and space around which were the true extravagance in that place. Two guards, squat Patzinaks from Thrace, stood by the torches which illuminated the door. They did not challenge me as I stepped inside.

Within the tent the luxury was greater still. Silk curtains of red and gold, woven through with images of eagles and saints, hung from the ceiling to form discreet partitions; thick carpets hid the mud under the floor, while oil lamps on silver tripods gave a steady light to the scene. In the centre of the room stood a broad chair of gilded ebony; behind it, on a stand, three candles burned before a triptych icon of Saints Mercurios, George and Demetrios, each on horseback and wielding his lance. I touched the silver cross that I wore on a chain about my neck and offered a silent prayer to my namesake.

The whisper of parting silks broke the stillness.

‘You are late, Demetrios Askiates,’ said a petulant voice.

I bowed my head. ‘There was a skirmish at the bridge, Lord. And afterwards I had to recover a Norman corpse.’

The general Tatikios stepped into the room and seated himself on the ebony chair. Though none would deny his knowledge of the lands of Asia, I doubted whether the Emperor could have chosen a commander more certain to rile the Frankish allies whom he had been sent to support. Against a race which wished death on any dark-skinned foreigner, Tatikios was a Turkopole, a half-breed whose Turkish blood was evident in his smooth, olive-shaded cheeks and dark eyes; where the Franks deemed headlong charge the only honourable form of war, Tatikios was a subtle tactician who judged any battle a failure of strategy. Worst, in the eyes of men who worshipped brute manhood, Tatikios was a eunuch. And deformed elsewhere, too, for he had lost his nose in combat and now wore a sharp-edged golden prosthesis, giving him something of the aspect of a haughty bird of prey. The barbarians thought him a freak, an effeminate clown, and treated him accordingly. As his nominal servant, I owed more deference.

‘Take a pen,’ he commanded. ‘I must write to the Emperor.’

I did not argue that it would be easier to wait until daylight, for Tatikios, like so many in power, thought only of his own convenience. Nor did I argue that I was not in truth his scribe, for it served both our interests that he should treat me so. I sat down on a stool, hunched by its low height, and took the ivory writing desk from under it. The reed pen was slight between my callused fingers, and I feared that I might snap it merely by touching the paper.

‘To his most serene holy majesty, the Basileus and Autokrator, the Emperor of the Romans Alexios Komnenos: greetings from his servant Tatikios.’

The eunuch frowned to see that my pen could not keep pace with his tongue.

‘The situation at Antioch worsens daily, and is almost intolerable. In the past month, since the Franks defeated the emir of Damascus in battle, their arrogance and insolence has surpassed all bounds. Your noble army and her general are reviled by these barbarians; they speak openly of foreswearing their oaths to you and seizing the land which is owed you for themselves. Now that the winter is past, I urge your holy majesty to hasten to our aid, to take up the leadership of this quest which is rightfully your own and to force the barbarians to obey your commands.’

The air in the tent, heated by its oil lamps and its brazier, was warm about me. As Tatikios continued to speak the sinews between my ear and my hand seemed to dissolve, so that I wrote his words unthinkingly. Released from the moment, my mind turned back eleven months and countless miles, back to spring in the great palace of the city.

‘The Emperor will not go.’

I was standing in one of the lesser courtyards, its pillars wreathed in green ivy. A shallow pool in its centre reflected the clouds of the uncertain sky above, while a bronze Herakles looked down in silence. My companion had just joined me from the hall within and still wore the ceremonial camisia with its gold lion’s-head clasp, and a robe set with many jewels. It might have seemed cumbersome on his young frame, but with the confidence of his stature, and the untroubled certainty in his eyes, he wore it easily. His name was Michael, and the rumour in the palace was that few knew the Emperor’s mind as well as he.

‘The Emperor will not accompany the barbarian army to Asia,’ he elaborated. ‘The council has decided it. He will send gold, and food and men – but not his person.’

I nodded slowly. I had not expected to be summoned to the palace that afternoon, certainty not to hear the outcome of the Emperor’s deliberations. I had not thought that they would concern me.

‘The empire would not benefit. It would be imprudent for him to abandon his capital when his duties demand so much attention. Especially after the tragic loss of his chamberlain.’

I met Michael’s guarded smile, acknowledging the deeper truths behind his words. We both knew why the Emperor could not leave the queen of cities, and it had nothing to do with gathering taxes or attending the business of government. If he absented himself from the throne of power there would be many swift to claim it for themselves, and he would not be the first Emperor returning to the city to find it barred against him.

‘The wise emperor holds the rudder of righteousness against waves of injustice and lawlessness,’ I quoted.

Michael laughed. ‘The wise emperor holds tight to the arms of his throne lest he be swept away.’

‘And will he allow a hundred thousand Franks to march across our lands in Asia, trusting in their oath to restore their conquests to him?’ I had seen the Franks swear it in the great cathedral of Ayia Sophia; rarely had I witnessed an oath that its professors would more readily abjure.

‘He will allow the Franks to march across the Turkish lands of Asia,’ Michael corrected me. ‘If they are successful, and honest, he will gain. If they are unsuccessful, he will have no part of it – he will not become another Diogenes Romanus, tempted into battle too far from home and made captive.’

‘While the loss of a hundred thousand Franks and Normans will not sorrow him too greatly,’ I suggested.

‘When you make allies of your enemies, every battle is a victory.’

I picked a pebble off the ground and tossed it into the pool, sending waves rippling across the reflected sky. ‘And what if the Franks are both successful and dishonest?’

Michael smiled, and eased himself down on the marble parapet surrounding the pool. ‘An Emperor’s mind has many eyes and is ever-vigilant. As a token of his faith with the Franks, the Emperor will send an army of his own to aid them. A small force, but enough to report it if the Franks forget their oaths. The council has appointed Tatikios to command it.’

I sighed, sensing this was more than gossip. ‘Then the Emperor will not need to drag me across Cappadocia and the Anatolics protecting him. I shall say a dozen prayers of gratitude tonight.’

‘Save your prayers: you will soon have greater need of them.’ The humour was gone from Michael’s young face. ‘The Emperor desires you to accompany Tatikios, to serve as his scribe and to report back all you see. They are wild dogs, these barbarians, and the Emperor hunts with them at his peril. He will need swift warning if they turn on him.’

‘And if they turn on me?’

Michael grimaced. ‘While they are hungry, they will obey the hand that feeds them. But if they meet with success, and can feed their appetites themselves – then, Demetrios, be on your guard.’

‘I fear, my lord, that under the present circumstances success remains as impossible as ever. If you are unable at this time to join us, then I beg you give me leave to return to the queen of cities immediately. I can accomplish nothing while these barbarians quarrel and thwart—’

Save for the rasping of my pen and the drone of Tatikios’ voice, the tent had been quiet; now he broke off as urgent voices sounded at the door. I heard the Patzinak outside issue a challenge, and a loud reply which was too fast and foreign to understand. In a moment, the flap was pulled open and the guard’s face appeared with the draught of cold air.

‘Your pardon, General,’ he said gruffly.

Tatikios’ gold nose seemed to twitch in irritation. ‘Yes?’

‘The lord Bohemond demands to see you.’

γ

I had seen the lord Bohemond many times since we had left Constantinople – debating at councils, leading raiding parties, walking the lines to rally his men – but every time it was as if I saw him anew. Partly it was the effect of his physique, for he stood a foot taller than most men, outstripping even Sigurd, with immense breadth in his shoulders and arms like a mangonel. His hair was cropped very short, and though like all the Franks he had abandoned the habit of shaving, his beard was trimmed close to the cheek. Yet it seemed that the elements of his body were not at one with each other, for his skin was mottled red and white, his hair brown but his beard russet. Only the pale blue eyes remained identical in their unyielding stare.

But it was not merely Bohemond’s physical aspect that drew men’s eyes. Whether by his strength or by some infernal blessing, he was possessed of an energy which no man could ignore. In a busy room, the loudest conversation clustered about him; in war, the fiercest fighting was at his standard. Though he dressed every inch the sober prince, his simple armour now worn over a wine-red tunic, he conveyed somehow a reckless, unpredictable air which seduced the affections of men and women alike. He had neither lands nor title, yet he had gathered an army which was the sinew of the campaign. After every battle his was the first name spoken, and in ever louder tones.

Tatikios was one of the few wholly immune to his charm. ‘I did not expect you, Lord Bohemond. Have the Turks surrendered the city?’

Bohemond gave an easy smile. Perhaps it was the way the rings of his mail caught the light, but the tent seemed brighter where he stood. ‘They will, General. Once we have our towers at their gates, the city will starve.’

‘No army has ever forced the city walls from without?’

‘No army has ever fought with the hand of God guiding them.’

‘You would be wise to offer the Lord the humility which is His due.’ The reflected lamp-light flickered on the eunuch’s nose, making it almost impossible to heed his words seriously. ‘So far He has visited only famine and pestilence on us.’

Bohemond shrugged. ‘I would not have it otherwise. What glory would we win marching with full bellies against armies of women? What glory would the Greek way win us?’

‘The glory of life preserved rather than wasted.’

‘The glory of an empire lost? When the Greeks have the strength to reclaim their own lands, when their King dares to lead his army without fear of falling into captivity, then you may extol the Greek way to me.’

The discipline of a lifetime in the palace kept Tatikios’ smooth face impassive. Indeed, I thought I glimpsed a smile on his lips. ‘As you say, we Byzantines are a feeble nation, scarce able to master an army of children. Doubtless your father said the same twenty years ago as he defecated out his life on Kephalonia, once we had destroyed his fleet and driven his army into the sea.’

Bohemond went very still, all the more striking for his usual unceasing momentum. The contrasts of his skin seemed to heighten, like an alloy heated in the fire, and his fingers scratched at his sword hilt. ‘There are some matters that you would do well to forget, eunuch, far from home as you are and surrounded by warriors ten times your strength. My father was worth a legion of your Greeks – and had you challenged him on the battlefield, rather than corrupting his allies with gold and lies, he would have walked across the Adriatic on your corpses.’

‘Of course,’ said Tatikios. ‘But history should not stand between allies.’ He clapped his hands, and a slave appeared from behind one of the folds of the tent. ‘Wine for the lord Bohemond?’

‘No.’

‘As you wish. What brings you unsummoned to my tent tonight? What do you want of me?’

The vigour was returning to Bohemond’s body. He stared down on Tatikios through narrowed eyes. ‘You presume too much. I did not come to discuss anything with you, eunuch, but with your servant.’

Visibly confused, Tatikios looked to the slave who still waited in the corner. He seemed about to speak, but a soft laugh from Bohemond checked him.

‘Not your slave; your scribe. Demetrios Askiates. Alone.’

The air outside was cold, sharp after the warmth of the tent, but the pace I needed to keep up with Bohemond drew heat into my limbs. He seemed impervious to all discomfort and danger: few Franks would have ventured into our camp without a troop of guards at their backs, thinking us little better than craven traitors, but he walked alone, his arms bared beyond the short sleeves of his tunic. My breath emerged in clouds as we strode between the lines of tents, heading gradually up the slope towards the northern arm of the mountain, and somewhere to my left I heard the melancholy notes of a lyre plucking at the night.

Gradually the tents thinned and the soft ground grew harder. We passed through the pickets and climbed to a stony outcrop on the side of the hill. Looking down, I could see the campfires of our army strung out in an enormous arc, and the torches on the watchtowers mirroring it. The moon shone through a tear in the clouds and illuminated the city cupped between the mountain and the flames. I seated myself on a cold rock beside Bohemond, and for a moment we gazed at the scene in silence.

‘From here, you could almost forget the suffering among those fires,’ Bohemond said at last.

‘Indeed, Lord.’

He looked at me. ‘I will be honest with you, Demetrios. The army is close to collapse. Perhaps your general was right – perhaps we have tempted God’s patience too long in this place.’

‘God’s purpose is inscrutable, Lord.’

He did not seem to notice my words. ‘Nor is it even the Turks who will be our downfall. We weaken ourselves too much with unnecessary strife. Provençal against Norman, Lotharingian against Fleming – even, I confess, Norman against Greek, when our past quarrels are resurrected.’

Puzzling that he should bring me to this remote place to mourn the failings of his allies, I murmured something vague about our fellowship in the body of Christ. Again, I was ignored.

‘How can we fight as one while we divide ourselves with a host of petty allegiances? You cannot conduct a war by council. When my father went to war, he did not barter its course with his vassals: he commanded them.’ He rested his chin on his hand, and stared down again. ‘They tell me that you found the body of my liegeman, Drogo of Melfi.’

I felt a fresh pang of discomfort, and he must have sensed it for he touched my arm in reassurance. ‘No doubt there are some who would work mischief with that fact, but I am certain that you discovered him in innocence. Happenstance.’

‘His servant sought help. By chance, I was nearest.’

Bohemond straightened. ‘Even chance may have her purposes. That it should be you whom the boy found, and none other . . . How did Drogo’s death strike you?’

Unsettled by the sudden change of conversation, I fumbled for words. ‘A tragic loss, Lord – no doubt his comrades will mourn him deeply.’

‘No doubt – but you misunderstand me. How do you think he came to die?’

‘His throat was cut open. Probably by a sword, to judge by the depth of the wound.’

‘So they told me. A Turkish blade, you think?’

I hesitated. ‘I cannot say.’

‘But others will. If a man dies in battle, his friends honour him. If he dies unarmed and alone, far from his enemies, then they will suspect treachery – and will seek to avenge it. Already I can hear the whispers in my camp: that it was a Provençal, or a jealous rival, or a creditor – or even a Greek.’

I took the news in silence.

‘If these rumours are sustained, some in my army may strike precipitately against those they blame.’

‘I will pray for temperance.’

‘Pray rather for deliverance.’ Bohemond slid down from the rocky seat and turned to face me, blocking the moonlit city from my sight. ‘Now is the moment when we must unite under the banner of God, or fall divided by our folly. The fate of Drogo cannot be a wound which festers among us.’ He slapped his fist into the palm of his hand, startling a nearby owl into flight. ‘If we allow feuds to rise among us, we will become mere pickings for the Turkish scavengers.’

‘You could announce—’

‘There is nothing I can announce that will calm my men – nothing save the truth. That is our only salvation. That is why I spoke earlier of providence. I have seen you often, Demetrios Askiates, lurking behind Tatikios, scribbling with your pen while your eyes and ears recorded all. I know there is more to your service than most – perhaps even that fool of a eunuch – suspect. I know that in your city you had a reputation for unveiling the truths to which other men were blind.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘The Duke of Lorraine and his brother positively swear to it.’

‘I only serve—’

‘Demetrios, you would see the siege ended, the famished fed and the city restored to your Emperor?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then help me.’ I heard the jangle of his armour as he tapped a fist against his heart. ‘Help me root out the canker of Drogo’s death before it poisons us all. Discover who murdered him, so that rumours and speculation and recriminations do not cleave our army apart.’

His eyes, grey in the moonlight, fixed on mine. ‘Please?’

δ

A chill dew still lay on the ground when I reached the Norman camp next morning. It soaked my boots and shrivelled my feet, yet it was the stares of those we passed which truly discomfited me. Their drawn faces looked up from steaming pots of boiling bones, examining the Greek interloper with his giant companion, and I saw only hatred. A few even summoned the strength to spit as we passed.

‘You should have worn armour,’ said Sigurd, unhelpfully.

‘I don’t want to appear a threat.’

‘Better a threat than a target.’

‘Trust has to begin somewhere.’

‘Far from here.’ Sigurd took a rag from his belt and ostentatiously wiped some imagined moisture from his axe-head. ‘Have you forgotten that these are the same Normans who spent four years trying to defeat the Emperor whose gold they now take? Or that leading their kinsmen at the coast is the son of William the Bastard who stole my country? These men are the thieves of kingdoms, and I would want three hauberks and a stout wall at my back before I trusted myself to their company.’

Thankfully he spoke in Greek, which none of the Franks had troubled to learn.

‘And now you’ve pimped yourself to Bohemond, the thief of thieves,’ he continued.

‘Surely you agree that a suspicious death should be laid to rest. Distrust and dissension among us will be fatal.’

‘It was a Norman death; we should be thanking God and praying for more.’

Sigurd’s foul temper at last ran silent, and I was able to enquire after Drogo without risking offence. Even so, I was frequently answered with scowls. Often I had trouble making myself understood with those I asked, for none of us spoke a common language. Rather, over the course of months we had learned to barter words, trading and hoarding them. As with all commerce, ill will made it infinitely harder.

After half an hour, I found the tent I sought. There was little to distinguish it, a patchwork cone of mismatched cloths which had been sewn and re-sewn until the neat stripes of its inception became a labyrinth of criss-crossed lines. The flaps were still down against the cold, and I rapped on the stiff fabric to announce myself. A small voice grudgingly called me in.

There were four straw mattresses on the earth floor inside, though only one occupant. It was the boy who had brought us to the body, the dead man’s servant, squatting on the straw and rubbing an oily tuft of wool along a sword blade. In the dusk and confusion of the night before, I had barely had time to look at him: now I noticed how deep-sunken his cheeks were, how the dark eyes seemed held in a perpetual terror. The brown hair which fell well past his shoulders gave him an unsettlingly girlish quality.

Despite the circumstances in which we had met the previous day, he gave no sign of remembering me. ‘What do you want?’

‘My name is Demetrios. This is Sigurd. You brought us to your master’s body last night. Now the lord Bohemond has charged us to discover who killed him.’

He inclined his head close to the blade, as if checking for some imperceptible flaw. ‘I did not kill him.’

So clumsy was the response that for a moment I did not know how to answer it. I crouched before him, trying to look into the downcast eyes, and softened my voice.

‘What is your name?’

‘Simon.’

‘From where?’

‘Cagnano.’

It might have been in Persia for all I knew. ‘How long did you serve Drogo, your master?’

Misery filled the boy’s face as he stumbled to answer my question, tapping his fingers hopelessly. Sigurd coughed impatiently, but I did not press the boy. His soul was brittle, and I sensed that even a little rough usage might snap it. As I waited, I watched the sallow light seeping under the edge of the tent. Every so often a passing shadow would interrupt it, but there was one shadow I noticed which did not move.

‘Since Heraklea. I do not know how long it has been since then.’

‘About six months,’ I guessed. ‘Who did you travel with to Heraklea?’

‘With my master’s brother. He died in the battle there. Afterwards, my master took me into his household.’

I remembered the battle at Heraklea – though in truth it had been barely a skirmish. On a dusty morning, the Turks in the garrison had made one charge at our vanguard, then fled away before us. We lost three men, probably fewer than those who died of thirst that day. I had thought little of them.

‘What kind of master was he?’

The boy sniffed, and wiped his nose with the wool. It smeared black oil over his cheek. ‘Fair. He rarely punished me when I did not deserve it. Sometimes he gave me food, when he could spare it.’

‘Did he have enemies?’

‘No.’

‘Who else sleeps in this tent?’

Did I imagine it, or did the shadow under the hem of the tent move? The boy, who had his back to it, shifted on the mattress and twisted the sword’s hilt in his hands.

‘Three companions of my master.’

‘Servants?’

‘Knights.’

‘Their names?’

‘Quino, Odard and—’

The snapping of canvas broke off the boy’s words, and we all three turned to look at the figure standing in the open door. I could see little more than his silhouette, a black form against the grey light outside. He stank of horse sweat.

‘Whelp!’ he barked, affecting not to notice Sigurd or me. ‘My mount has waited for your grooming for half an hour. If she has grown sores, or gone lame, I will visit her afflictions on you tenfold.’ He stepped into the room, and let his stare sweep across us. ‘Who are these?’

‘Demetrios Askiates,’ I told him. ‘I—’

‘Hah. A Greek. Tell me, Demetrios Askiates, what should I think when I find two Greeks alone in a tent with a boy?’

‘One Greek,’ growled Sigurd, unhelpfully. ‘And a Varangian from England.’

‘A Varangian from England,’ mimicked the knight. ‘A race named for a tribe of catamite slaves. You and the Greeks have the same black soul, and your vices are legendary.’ He turned back to the boy. ‘Get out and see to my horse, or I will whip you into the Orontes.’

‘I have not finished with Simon,’ I said. ‘Nor have you told me your name.’

‘Nor do you deserve to hear it.’ The knight had come further into the tent now, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I could make out more of his appearance. He was neither tall nor broad, but there was a lean strength in his body that a larger man would have done well to beware. His movements were quick and unpredictable, his limbs twitching all the while, and his face was lined well beyond his apparent youth. I did not think he smiled often.

‘You serve the lord Bohemond?’ I asked.

‘I do.’

‘Bohemond has charged me to discover how the knight Drogo came to die.’

I barely saw him move, but suddenly his eyes were very close to mine. His sour breath fanned my face.

‘Even my lord Bohemond can err in his judgement. Or perhaps he believes that the Greek who found my brother Drogo, alone and isolated, may indeed have personal knowledge of how he was murdered.’

‘Drogo was your brother?’ I asked, astonished.

‘As a brother. We shared a tent, our hardships, our food and our prayers. When his natural brother died he turned to us as his family.’ He stepped back, his spurs dragging scars into the mud floor. ‘But that is no matter for you. Leave my tent, you and your pederast friend, before I avenge Drogo’s death on you both.’

Thus far, Sigurd had kept calm under the knight’s provocation, but he controlled himself no longer. Grasping his axe by its head, he swept the haft like a scythe at the Norman’s knees, meaning to knock them from under him. But the knight was faster: his sword swung before him and parried the blow, biting deep into the wood of the axe-haft. Both their arms must have stung from the impact, yet for a moment they held their weapons clasped together, unbending, each staring into the other’s eyes. Then they pulled free.

‘Next time it will be your neck that tastes this sword,’ the knight hissed. He was breathing hard.

‘Next time, I will break your blade in two and force it down your throat.’

I pulled at Sigurd’s arm. Behind us, I could see the boy hunched over with terror on the bed. It tore at my conscience to leave him with the knight, but I feared worse would befall all of us if we stayed.

‘We should leave.’

Outside the tent the air was hard, and I narrowed my eyes against the sudden light. I had no wish to linger any longer in the Norman camp, for the knight’s anger at us was no more than most of his countrymen felt, but the sight of an old man sitting cross-legged in the doorway of the tent opposite spurred me to one last effort. Sigurd and I crossed to greet him, and I pulled a bloodied bundle wrapped in cloth from the pouch at my belt. I had intended it to encourage the boy, but perhaps I could make it tell elsewhere.

‘The knight who just entered that tent, who was he?’ I let the bundle dangle from my hand.

The man leaned closer and sniffed at the package. ‘Quino.’

I remembered the name, for the boy had spoken it. ‘He was a companion of Drogo?’

‘Alas, yes.’

‘As was . . .’ I searched for the foreign name. ‘Odard?’

‘Yes.’

‘And there was another, also?’

‘Rainauld. A Provençal.’ The old man did not hide his scorn of the foreigner, nor his hunger for what I held.

I did not ask why a Provençal had lived in the Norman camp. Poverty and death had severed many bonds of allegiance, as those who survived flocked to whichever banner offered most hope of reward.

‘Were there other servants, besides the boy Simon?’

‘None who outlived the winter.’

I unknotted the bundle and showed its contents. It was the liver from a hare which one of Sigurd’s men had snared in the night, its fresh blood soaking through the wrapping. Though it was no larger than a nut, the man gazed on it as if it were a full roasted boar.

‘What else can you tell me of Drogo? What company did he keep?’

‘Little.’ The man shuffled back a little as though the smell of the meat was too great a temptation. ‘He was always with one or other of the men from his tent – and rarely with any others. Sometimes one of the captains would visit; sometimes Drogo bought goods from the Ishmaelite traders. Few others.’

‘Did he have any enemies?’

‘Neither friends nor enemies.’

‘And women?’

The man sucked in his cheeks and swallowed, as if there were too much spit in his mouth. ‘One woman, yes. A Provençal. I did not know her. She dressed always in white – a white robe and a white shawl about her head. Her name was Sarah.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because she announced herself at his tent. I heard her. Though whatever business she had inside, she kept quiet about that,’ he added, wiggling the end of his tongue between his lips.

‘When did you see her last?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

The answer stopped me short. Long years of habit had already trained my thoughts in certain directions, and the possibility of a woman’s involvement was prominent among them. That one should have called at Drogo’s tent scant hours before he died . . .

I let the liver drop into the old man’s hand. ‘Did they leave together?’

‘No.’ All his attention was clearly fixed on the meat in his palm, his eyes moonlike in wonder, but the answer was confident enough. As he noticed me staring at him, he added: ‘I saw her go before him, perhaps half an hour.’

‘And when he left, was he armed?’

‘No. No armour at all. Nor his sword.’

I remembered the blade that the bov Simon had been polishing, and wondered whether it had been his dead master’s. ‘Were his companions in the tent when he went?’

The man shrugged. ‘I do not think so. I saw Quino and Odard return later, near dusk. I heard they had been working near the bridge. The Provençal, Rainauld, I have not seen.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘If you remember any other facts which seem important, any other men or women who visited Drogo, you may find me in the Byzantine camp.’

The old man did not respond to my words – I guessed he would sooner seek me at the Caliph’s palace in Baghdad than in a camp full of Greeks. Instead, he gazed at the cloth I held in my hand, still stained with the rabbit’s blood. ‘Will you keep that?’

I looked at it in surprise. ‘If you want it . . .’

Before I could finish my sentence, his clawing fingers had snatched it from my hand. With a glance of gratitude, he pressed it into his mouth and began sucking the blood from the fabric. We left him to his feast.

I did not want to delay any longer in the Norman camp; we hurried away, back towards our own lines. I still had Drogo’s body in my possession, and I suspected it might benefit me to examine it in daylight before his companions buried it. We walked quickly, ignoring the angry glares that followed us.

‘You think the woman has something to do with this,’ said Sigurd.

‘I think the woman may have something to do with this.’ I tried to sound less certain than I felt, lest my confidence rebound on me later. ‘The knight left his tent without even his sword: it follows he must have planned to meet someone he knew and trusted.’

‘Someone with whom armour might have got in the way,’ Sigurd suggested.

‘Perhaps.’

‘I guarantee you it was no woman who swung the stroke that killed him. His neck was almost cut clean through. Even a man the size of Bohemond would need a sound arm to manage it.’

‘A man aroused by passion might find the strength,’ I said.

Sigurd tipped back his head and laughed, prompting yet deeper scowls on the faces that we passed. Doubtless they thought we mocked them. ‘I see. Demetrios Askiates, the famed unveiler of mysteries, needs only an hour speaking with two men and a boy to discover all. Drogo and the woman were lovers; she came to his tent and arranged to meet him in that dell; he went there unarmed, but was ambushed by a rival, perhaps with the woman’s connivance. Find the woman, find the rival, and Normans and Provençals and Greeks will all be friends again. Is that your answer?’

‘It seems as plausible as any,’ I said testily. ‘I would have thought you of all men might favour a simple solution.’

‘Indeed I do. And I do not think you need invent a jealous lover to explain why an unarmed man was killed in a place surrounded by thousands who are impoverished, starving, and desperate. Would you ever walk out of the camp alone and unprotected?’

‘Of course not.’

‘He would not be the first from this army to be murdered for whatever gold he carried – he would probably not even be the hundredth. Franks or Turks, Christians or Ishmaelites: there is not one of them within fifty miles who would not kill for food.’

I sighed. ‘Nonetheless, for the good of the army, Bohemond demands that the murderer be found.’

Which in Sigurd’s eyes, I thought, was probably an overwhelming reason not to find him.

We crossed through our camp, to the lower slopes of the mountain which reached into the plain of Antioch. To my left, I could see the vast expanse of farmland stretching flat as marble to the horizon; on my right, on an outcrop above, the tower they called Malregard looked down on the St Paul gate. The Normans had built it soon after we arrived, and though it had been stout enough then, the winter storms had beaten it until its stones were black and skewed. It leaned off the mountain like a falcon on its perch, poised for the hunt, and even four months on I shivered every time I passed under it.

A little way north-east of the tower, beside the stump of a myrtle bush long since turned to firewood, we reached the cave. We had discovered it by chance when a troop of Turks had used it to ambush us; after we had defeated them, Sigurd had put it to use as our armoury. It had only been intended as a temporary expedient, to keep off the rain until the city fell, but as the months passed it had gained lamps, benches, and even a ramshackle wooden door hinged into the cliff. As we approached I saw a Varangian in armour sitting on a boulder before it, spinning his knife in the dirt.

‘Sweyn! Has anyone tried to disturb our Norman?’

The Varangian jumped to his feet at the sound of his captain’s voice. ‘Only one. She said you sent her.’ His words faded as he saw Sigurd’s withering stare. ‘She’s inside.’

Sigurd pulled his helmet from his head, but he still needed to crouch low to pass through the opening of the cave. Even I had to stoop a little. I followed him past the blushing guard, into the damp, stony air within. It was more a tunnel than a cave, extending some thirty feet back into the mountain, and I stepped carefully to avoid tumbling on the shields and quivers of arrows stacked across the floor.

The passage darkened near the middle, where the daylight receded, but it was quickly illuminated again by the lamp which had been lit at the far end. By its light, I could see the body of the Norman still laid out on the bench where we had left him, though the blanket which had covered him now lay in a heap on the floor. Before him, a slender figure with bare arms dabbed at his neck with a cloth.

She turned as we approached. ‘Demetrios. I feared it might be the Normans come to bury him.’

She spoke lightly, despite the debased corpse on the bench – but then, she was a physician, and must have seen equal horror many times in her calling. She was dressed simply, as ever, in a honey-yellow dress tied about her waist with a silk belt, and an ochre palla which had slipped to her shoulder to reveal her long black hair. Like all of us, her face had tightened in the past months, yet to me it did nothing to diminish her robust beauty. Though even after a year of intimacy, I still found her brisk manner disconcerting.

‘Doubtless the Normans will come soon, once they discover where we have hidden him,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here, Anna?’

‘Seeing what the dead may tell us. Look.’

I stepped forward, pinching my nose against the odour of the decay which had already started despite the chill surroundings. I had not expected to find the man thus. Anna had stripped him of all his clothes, leaving only a round leather pouch on a string around his neck: the rest of him lay naked, entirely exposed in death. It would have been hard enough to stomach on my own, but to see it with a woman, and with Anna of all women, seemed deep sacrilege. Clearly the fire which had warmed his soul was long extinguished, so that his skin turned blue with cold – could the dead feel cold? – while the drying-out of his flesh had curled his limbs back like the edges of paper before a flame. I could hardly bear to look at the shrivelled, yellow-stained organs of his loins, nor at the blood-crusted rent in his neck, nor yet at the twisted pull of his face. I stared at his feet, and leaned on the cave wall for strength.

‘And what do the dead tell you?’ Sigurd at least could find a voice, though it was far distant from his usual thunder.

‘That he was killed by a mighty blow to the neck.’ Neither of us had the humour to mock the evidence of that statement. ‘What do you think, Sigurd? Was it an axe or a sword which struck that blow?’

Sigurd shrugged, reluctant to look too closely. ‘It seems too clean for an axe wound,’ he said eventually. ‘More like the slice of a sword. It was not a Varangian, though,’ he added more confidently. ‘We would have cut the head clean through.’

‘Only a knight would carry a sword,’ I said.

‘Or someone who had stolen one.’

‘Then there is the purse.’ Anna lifted the leather pouch over the corpse’s mutilated neck and pulled the string open, tipping a handful of silver Frankish denarii into her palm. The broad outstretched wings of angels were stamped on the coins’ faces.

I turned to Sigurd. ‘So much for your thief.’

‘He might have been interrupted by the boy.’

‘The man who inflicted this death on a knight would not have been troubled by a servant.’

‘More curious still are the marks,’ Anna interrupted. ‘Look at his brow.’

I held my hand before me to block the sight of the man’s eyes, which still stared upward at the rocky ceiling, and peered at his forehead. Anna had pulled the hair back, splaying it out on the bench like a radiate crown, and the curve of the brow was plain to see. In its centre, a swirl of dried blood in the form of a writhin eel meandered from the parted hair to the bridge of his nose. At first glance it seemed as though the two halves of his skull had been forced apart, but in truth the skin was unbroken under the mark.

‘What of it?’ I asked. ‘With the force of the blow, some blood splashed onto his face and dribbled down. It left that stain.’

Anna looked at me in scorn. ‘You think that while the man lay on the ground, a single drop of blood curled itself prettily into that shape? Look how broad and smooth the line is.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘And look here.’ She pointed to a spot high on the man’s left cheek, just behind his eye. ‘What is that?’

I cracked open my fingers and gazed between them. ‘It looks like – the imprint of a finger. In blood.’

‘Exactly. The same finger, I suspect, as marked his forehead.’

Now Sigurd sounded incredulous. ‘You think it was drawn as he lay dying?’

‘Or after he died.’ Anna was unperturbed by our doubt. ‘Either by him or by his killer. The latter, I would guess. A man choking out his life might not manage so neat a design upon himself.’

‘But why would anyone mark him so?’ I wondered. ‘Was it some secret sign?’

‘Hah!’

Anna and I stared at Sigurd. ‘It’s not a secret sign. It’s a sigma. In Greek, you’d write it thus’ – he swiped his finger through the air in the form of a Σ – ‘but in the Latin alphabet we write it so.’ He pointed victoriously at the mark on the dead Norman’s forehead.

‘Why—’ Anna began, but my thoughts were faster.

‘S for Sarah.’ Now it was I who sounded triumphant. ‘Drogo’s mistress was called Sarah. If a rival killed him, he might have marked him with the initial of the woman they quarrelled over.’

‘Or S for Simon,’ Sigurd countered. ‘It would not be the first time a servant killed his master. Maybe the boy marked him in boast.’

‘And then ran to tell us of it?’

‘There is more.’ Anna had kept silent while we argued our theories, but now she gestured back to the corpse. ‘Help me turn him over.’

Our joy at the discovery drained away as Sigurd and I rolled the body onto its stomach. This time we needed no guidance from Anna, for the mark was plain to see, and familiar as our own faces. It had been carved, not painted, and though there must once have been blood it was now long gone, leaving only glossy pink scars. Two cuts had been made, lines of awful precision, one from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, the other straight across his shoulder blades: a giant cross of flesh.

‘That would have hurt,’ said Sigurd quietly. ‘I hope his God appreciates it now.’

I breathed deeply, and wished I had not. I had occasionally seen pilgrims cut such marks into their cheeks or shoulders, once even into an Abbot’s forehead, but never so large, nor so deep.

‘He was lucky the wound did not fester,’ Anna said. ‘More than one man has died from similar pieties.’

Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by an onslaught of sensations: the stench, the blueing skin, the grim signs on the corpse that seemed to proclaim horrible warnings. Anna had said that the dead would speak to us, but never had I expected so many confused, clamouring voices. I choked for air and staggered towards the light at the end of the cave, but the edge of a shield caught my leg and brought me to the floor. There was shouting behind me, and ahead of me also, but it took several moments before I could open my eyes to see who spoke.

A face lined with hatred stared down at me, scrawny hair hanging lank about it. He still stank of his horse, still wore his pointed spurs, and still spoke with contempt.

‘Does your Greek stomach fail at the sight of death?’

‘Why are you here?’ Sigurd asked above me.

‘To bury our brother in the name of Christ, not leave him rotting in a Greek hole.’

Behind him I could see another Norman, indistinct in the gloom, and a small company of men bearing a litter beyond. I stumbled to my feet.

‘Take him, if you want.’

The knight, Quino, reached down and pulled an arrow from one of the quivers by the wall. He snapped it in his fists, and threw the pieces at me. ‘I will leave you to your toys, Greek. You will need them when I come to claim my vengeance.’ He looked past me, to where Anna stood beside Sigurd, and laughed. ‘On you, and on your whore.’

They took the body and left, their taunts and jibes echoing back to us from down the path. If this was the company that Drogo had kept, I for one would find it hard to lament his death.

ε

It seemed that I would never escape the Normans that day: in the evening Tatikios summoned me to attend him at a council of the princes. They were never comfortable occasions, for most of the Frankish leaders distrusted the Byzantines, and none of them approved of having scribes present. But Tatikios insisted on it, believing men would measure more carefully words which they knew were recorded. As a tactic, it was never particularly successful.

We met in the house of the Provençal leader Raymond, the Count of Saint-Gilles. His camp was some distance from ours, and by the time we arrived all the other princes had taken seats on the square of benches in the centre of the room. Tatikios had to perch on one end, in a corner, his left leg trembling as he tried to balance himself.

There must have been a score of men in that square, and twice as many watching with me from the surrounding shadows, but only a handful who signified. All save one were unshaven, as was the fashion of necessity, and all wore mail hauberks in protestation of their prowess. Some I had encountered elsewhere – the wan-faced Hugh the Great, whose beard never grew thicker than goosedown; the ruddy-cheeked Duke Godfrey with his eternal expression of disapproval; and of course Bohemond – others I had seen only in council. Chief among them, at least in his own mind, was Count Raymond. By his age, his rank, his wealth and his vast army he ought perhaps to have been general of all the Franks, but none of the other captains would admit to his authority. He sat in the centre of his bench, his grey hair framing the sour, one-eyed face, and if there was no single seat of honour in the equal-sided square then the broad candelabra placed discreetly behind him certainly drew men’s attention first.

‘We meet in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ The man beside Raymond spoke the blessing in Latin, to a muttered chorus of ‘Amen’. Instead of a cloak he wore a crimson cope over his ringed armour, with scenes from the scriptures embroidered into it in gold. The domed cap on his head had the shape of a helmet, but was cut from the same rich cloth as the cope. Beneath it his expression was stern, though I had sometimes seen it soften to a half-smile when, as was common, one of the princes embarked on a long or fatuous digression. His name was Adhemar, the bishop of Le Puy, and though he commanded no army save his own household, his voice was always the first and also often the last at these councils, for he was the legate of the Patriarch of Rome, the Pope.

‘What progress at the western walls, Count Raymond?’ he asked. He always allowed the Provençal leader to speak second, perhaps in deference to his vanity, perhaps because they were of the same country.

‘The tower at the mosque, by the bridge, will be completed in days. After that, we need fear no more attacks on the supply road. Nor will the Turks then manage to bring provisions into the city, or pasture their flocks.’

‘Towers alone achieve nothing,’ said Bishop Adhemar. ‘Who will take on the task of garrisoning it?’

He had spoken to the room at large, yet the question hung unanswered. All around the square men looked to the floor or fidgeted with their belts – none would meet Adhemar’s eye. With good reason, I thought, for after five months of siege who would willingly incur the extra cost in gold and men of manning a fort on our front line?

At length, Count Raymond lifted his chin defiantly. ‘The tower was my idea, and in its wisdom the council agreed it. If none other has the stomach for it, I claim the honour of captaining its defence.’

His words stirred new enthusiasm into the gathering. ‘If you had thought of it sooner, we would not have lost so many lives earlier this week,’ Duke Godfrey complained. ‘We might even now be in the city.’

‘And if we had waited for you to conceive it, our grandsons would still be besieging Antioch fifty years hence.’ Count Hugh jerked his head emphatically, so that his fine hair tumbled over his face. He pushed it back, but it would not stay. ‘I propose we should reimburse Count Raymond from the common fund, as a signal of our gratitude.’

Raymond raised his hands in deference, while his single eye fixed Duke Godfrey with malice. ‘Keep the common fund for the poor and feeble. I have money enough for the task.’

‘So be it,’ said Adhemar. He turned to Bohemond. ‘What are the reports from your camp?’

Though the only man at the council with neither lands nor titles, it was Bohemond alone among them who looked a prince. He stood, letting the blood-red folds of his cloak hang free so that the swirling weave of the silk shimmered in the candlelight. It must have been a gift from the Emperor, for there was not a craftsman in the west who could have wrought it with such subtlety.

‘The report from my camp, your Grace, is that only the Turks could rejoice at our progress. What of it that my men routed a thousand of them three days ago on the road to Saint Simeon? They have more. Their walls stand as tall today as yesterday. And we bicker in our tents because we cannot scruple to let one man shine above the rest.’

He had advanced into the centre of the square now, pacing and turning as he addressed his audience. Of those faces I could see, none looked sympathetic. ‘You know, Bishop Adhemar, that there can only be one head of the church. Why do we suffer many heads in our army, pulling in so many different directions that we tear apart?’

‘We acknowledge one captain over our armies, and His name is Jesus Christ,’ said Adhemar. ‘Before the Lord, every one of us is equal. It would be the sin of Lucifer to overreach God’s order.’

‘We acknowledge one Lord over our church. But we also acknowledge His ordination of a single man to govern that church, your master the Pope, the better to accomplish His divine purpose.’

That provoked mutterings among the council, particularly in Duke Godfrey’s corner. Bohemond ignored them.

‘Why, then, should one of us not have primacy, even for a short time, in directing our affairs? Let one who has distinguished himself in battle, whose army has proved itself time and again against the Turks, be appointed to break this city open before we are slaughtered.’

‘And I suppose,’ Count Raymond interrupted, ‘that such a man might then claim the city as the fair spoils of his victory.’

‘Why not? He would have earned it.’

That brought Tatikios to his feet, though it was Raymond again who spoke first. ‘Have you forgotten your oath to the Emperor, Lord Bohemond? To restore all the lands of Asia that are rightfully his? Would you so happily perjure yourself to your greed?’

‘When the Greek King comes in person to share our sufferings and our war, then perhaps he will earn the honouring of my promise. But for now, he sits in his palace surrounded by the eunuchs while we – all of us – fester and perish in misery.’

His words drew many nods of agreement, though not from Raymond or Bishop Adhemar. But at last Tatikios was able to speak.

‘Perhaps, in the folly of youth, Lord Bohemond still believes that it is only the point of the sword, where blood is spilled, that matters. The wiser among you, my lords, will know that no sword will cut true without a strong hand on the hilt. If the Emperor Alexios does not share your burdens here it is because he campaigns in our rear, guarding our supply lines and preventing the Turks from surrounding us.’

‘Where else would you find a Greek but in the rear?’ Bohemond asked, to widespread laughter.

‘Where else would you find a Norman but banging his head against impenetrable walls, too dull to notice he had tipped out his brains? If you had heeded my plan, to hold back from the city and choke it from afar, then you would not now waste your forces in fruitless attrition.’

‘If the Emperor had sent the men he promised, we would have had the strength to take the city. His treachery consigns us to failure.’

‘His generosity keeps you from dying of famine.’

Bishop Adhemar clapped his hands. ‘Enough. Be seated – both of you,’ he added, with a pointed glance at Bohemond. ‘Quarrelling among allies will profit us nothing. You are right, Lord Bohemond, that the Turks rejoice at our lack of progress. But how much more would they rejoice if they could hear your quarrelling now.’

With an unrepentant sneer, curiously satisfied for one so rebuked, Bohemond seated himself in silence.

It had not been unforeseen. On the day we left Constantinople, the Emperor had gathered the princes together on the shores of the Bosphorus. It had reminded me of a fair or a market, for the air was sweet with the sounds of harps and lyres and laughter, the smells of blossom and roasting meat. At the top of the slope, beneath the high bluffs, the Emperor had caused pavilions to be erected, each sewn with the standards of the princes. I still remembered the stupefied grins on their faces as they emerged, each from his own tent, marvelling at the treasure that they had found within. Bishop Adhemar and our own Patriarch had celebrated the Eucharist on the beach, handing the cup to each of the princes in turn, and they had sworn that the blood of Christ would be as the blood of brothers among them. Ladies from the palace had woven their hair with garlands of gold which gleamed in the May sun, and the sea had sparkled with promise. Afterwards, after the feast, the Emperor had summoned them to a council.

‘You have come far,’ he announced. The purple walls of his tent glowed like embers, rippling in the fresh breeze. Inside, the air was close and warm. ‘But the holy road to Jerusalem is longer still – and harder. You will need clean hearts and pure souls if your pilgrimage is to succeed, if the lands of Asia are to be reclaimed for Christendom. Remember that you walk in the footsteps of Christ: be strong as he was strong, but also merciful as he was merciful.’

He paused, sipping from a great golden chalice. I fancied that there was more grey in his beard now than there had been six months earlier, and a slight shrinking of the stout shoulders beneath the gems on his robe. Even the act of breathing seemed to spur a dull pain: for all the attention of Anna and the palace doctors, it was still only weeks since he had suffered an almost fatal spear wound.

‘The cares of my people prevent me from leading you, and I would not steal the least portion of the glory that you will undoubtedly earn. But I send you off with as much food and gold as you require, with my strongest general’ – Tatikios, seated to the Emperor’s left, inclined his head – ‘and also with some advice. Twenty miles inland from that far shore, my domains cease. Beyond, you will find only Ishmaelites. But do not make the mistake of thinking that all who wear turbans and pray to Mahomet are as one: between Nicaea and Jerusalem there are more tribes and factions than there are birds in the air. Every one of their emirs and atabegs eyes his neighbours with jealousy, and plots the increase of his own realm. Every city is a province, and every province a kingdom. There are not two brothers who do not conspire against each other. Learn their ways, their allegiances and their feuds, and exploit them. If they unite, they will sweep you from their shores like grains of sand; while they are divided, they can be conquered. Send embassies to the Fatimids of Egypt, if you can, for though they are Ishmaelites they are of a different race and creed, and will fight the Turks with more ferocity even than you.’

The Emperor paused again, surveying the barbarian faces. Standing at the back, I could not tell what he saw – the salvation of his empire, an army ordained by God, a troop of barbarian mercenaries – but it seemed to sadden him. His voice was slower when he spoke again.

‘You are tens of thousands marching against hundreds of thousands. You will pass through trials and battles too terrible to imagine. Many of you will doubtless die, others will wish themselves dead. Whatever your suffering, remain constant to each other, and to our God. The Devil will seek to work division and hatred among you, and if he succeeds you will die in the dust of Anatolia. You are entering a desert, a wilderness of dangers and temptations. You must not succumb.’

Somewhere near the back of the tent, someone sniggered.

‘Another fleet will come from Cyprus next week with grain,’ Tatikios was saying.

‘We will see that it feeds the hungriest first.’ Bishop Adhemar turned to his right. Despite the crowding on the benches, there was one place where the princes had pushed apart, leaving a few inches of clear space flanking the figure in their midst. Even by the debased standards of the siege he was exceptionally filthy; his clothes were rags seemingly sewn together with grime. His bare feet were hairy and callused, the horny nails yellow, while his long, twisted face resembled a mule’s more than a man’s. He sat in his isolation hunched over, his eyes closed, muttering words which none could understand.

‘You will distribute food to the pilgrims, Little Peter?’ Adhemar asked.

The man’s eyes flicked open, their blue pupils fixing on something invisible to the rest of the council. I felt unease course through the assembled princes.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’

To look at him, you would have expected a braying voice, or perhaps a haggard croak, but when he opened his lips the words were gentle, sweet, as though he had been waiting all his life to say them. It was the sort of voice that made men want to listen, even if they did not understand what it said. Among the pilgrims he was worshipped as a saint, though when he had led his own army his innocent followers had been slaughtered in their thousands, convinced to the last that his spirit would ward off Turkish arrows. All the Franks paid him respect, even those who distrusted his power. For my part, I hated him.

He had shut his eyes again, but still held the gaze of the room. ‘When the people are diminished and brought low, the Lord pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes. But the needy he raises from their distress; he blesses them with a fruitful house.’

It seemed that he spoke to himself, almost in a whisper, yet his words were clear across the tent. Anger and fear flitted over the watching faces, but none dared speak. None save Adhemar.

‘The day is tired, and the hour late.’ He stood, and the rest of the assembly followed in grateful release. ‘Sound rest and fresh hearts will profit us more than words tomorrow. My Lords, goodnight.’

A handful of priests and knights followed him out of the tent, while the other princes drifted into small groups of urgent conversation. Only Little Peter, the mystic, did not join them: he stayed seated on his bench, staring at Heaven and mumbling incoherently.

A broad shoulder interrupted my view as Bohemond appeared beside me. He gestured at my ivory writing tablet. ‘Did you find much worthy of recording, Demetrios?’

‘A scribe must listen and write; he does not have to judge.’

‘Then have you found anything else worth recording since last we spoke? Anything to explain the death of my liegeman Drogo?’

I detailed what I had learned that day.

‘So he was killed by a knightly blade, and not for gain if his purse was untouched. You do not think it was a Turk?’

‘A Turk would have robbed him.’

Bohemond scratched his beard and affected to think, though there seemed little doubt behind those pale eyes. As I waited, my gaze drifting over the room, I thought I saw Count Raymond’s single-eyed stare fixed suspiciously upon us, though he turned away as he saw me.

‘You think this Provençal woman, this Sarah, might have been the cause of the feud?’ Bohemond asked at last.

‘It is possible.’

‘A Norman knight and a Provençal woman. A dangerous union.’ He swept his arm in a circle around us. ‘You have seen tonight how fragile our allegiances are. The death of Drogo cannot be another wedge between us.’

Having witnessed the distrust, intrigue and venom in the tent, I doubted it would make much difference.

ς

It was the next afternoon before my duties allowed me to seek the woman Sarah. As the path to the Provençal camp took me through the Norman lines, I risked a second visit to Drogo’s tent. Sigurd and his men were working at the tower that day, but the need to know more of the dead man’s companions drove me to attempt it alone.

The skeletal man still sat cross-legged opposite, the mud pressed smooth under his legs. He might never have moved since the previous morning, though he waved a ragged arm in greeting as I passed.

‘Is Quino there?’ I asked.

The old man shook his head.

I tried to resurrect the other names in my mind. ‘Rainauld?’

He was not, but I must have spoken more loudly than I intended, for suddenly a voice behind me demanded: ‘Who asks for Rainauld?’

‘Demetrios Askiates, on behalf of the Lord Bohemond.’

The man who stood in the doorway of the tent seemed vaguely familiar – he had been with Quino at the cave, I thought, when they had reclaimed Drogo’s body. Lying dazed on the floor I had not marked his appearance; even now there was something about him which seemed to shrink from observation. His legs were thin as a crow’s, his arms little better, but it seemed to be the form of nature rather than starvation, for the rest of his body was as slight, bony and frail. Only the ebony black of his hair showed any evidence of health.

‘You are the man who stole Drogo’s body.’ His voice was shrill, accusing.

‘I am the man who would find Drogo’s killer. Who are you?’

‘Odard. A friend of Drogo.’

It seemed that I had not wasted my time coming here. I chose to be direct. ‘Is there any man whom you suspect of his murder?’

He recoiled a little and glanced over his shoulder. His movements were as quick and graceless as Quino’s, but while the larger man insinuated unpredictable strength this Odard showed only anxiety.

‘Drogo was a strong knight, and pious. It would have taken a mighty enemy to overcome him.’

‘He had neither sword nor armour. Who were his enemies?’

Odard wove his fingers together and pressed them into his stomach. ‘Drogo was much loved. Only a Turk would have done such a thing.’

‘But I believe he knew his killer. Was it a rival? An envious neighbour? A friend?’

Odard shook his head despairingly. ‘None. None of them.’ He sounded close to weeping, though my questions were mild enough.

‘Do you know who killed him?’ I persisted.

‘No! Quino and I were building the tower by the bridge all that day. Only when we returned to the camp did I hear the rumours, that a company of Greeks had been seen with his body. I did not believe it until the lord Bohemond confirmed it – and when I saw the corpse in the cave.’

I knelt down and drew the ‘S’, the barbarian sigma, in the mud. ‘Does this sign mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What of a cross carved in Drogo’s back? Did you make the cut?’

‘No.’ Odard had wrapped his arms around himself in a feeble embrace, and rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘No.’

‘But you had seen it. You cannot have shared his tent so long without noticing it.’

‘I had seen it.’

‘Why did he disfigure himself so?’

‘Drogo was a man of exceptional piety. He sought to know God in all His works, and to prove his devotion to the Lord. It is written: “Peace He brings through the blood of His cross.”’

‘Then perhaps he has found peace now. Did a woman named Sarah ever visit your tent?’

The question prompted fresh turmoil in Odard’s expression. As if he had suffered a blow, he staggered back a few steps, then almost fell on the ground as he collided with a figure emerging from the door of his tent. It was the boy, Simon, looking almost as wretched as his master. The sight of me did nothing to cheer him.

‘Get back in the tent,’ Odard squeaked. ‘Your clumsiness would shame a leper. And you, Master Greek: leave me to my peace. I do not know the men you seek. I do not know who killed my friend, nor why the Lord God chose to take so devoted a servant. Go.’

‘I would value words with Rainauld, your other companion, before I go.’

Odard stamped his foot, squelching it in the damp earth. I feared the shock might break his stick of a leg. ‘Rainauld is not here. He has not come back these two nights.’

‘Two nights?’ Suddenly, my mind was awash with suspicion. ‘Not since Drogo’s death.’

‘Perhaps he wanders witless with grief. Perhaps he has gone to Saint Simeon for food. Perhaps he has returned to his kinsmen in the Provençal camp. Seek him there, if you must.’

In council, Count Raymond had been one of the few princes to speak in defence of Tatikios and the Emperor, but the enthusiasm did not extend to his Provençal army. Everywhere I turned among the endless rows of tents, his followers seemed to delight in refusing me. Some pretended not to understand my efforts at their language, for even among the Franks their dialect was considered outlandish, but I could see in their eyes that they understood me. Others directed me falsely, often to the mute or blind, while most just looked away when I spoke of Sarah or Rainauld.

Throughout the fruitless afternoon, my mood worsened. Rain started to fall again and I cursed myself for having attempted the errand with neither guide nor cloak. I tried to believe that sufficient time would eventually yield something, but as the hours wore on and the mud climbed up my legs I made no headway.

Eventually, in a forlorn corner of the camp near the river, something found me. I had been sent there by my last informant, who swore that a woman named Sarah lived there, but it was merely another ruse to mock me. There were few tents, none occupied, and by the smell in the air I guessed it was where the Provençals made their latrine. The river bank had been gouged out with the tracks of men and beasts going down to drink or defecate, and the ground was soggy with the rising melt water. I almost lost a boot in the mire. Glad at least of the solitude, I spent a couple of minutes watching the traffic on the road on the far bank. The men and horses were barely two hundred yards away, yet the green waters of the Orontes between us could have been an ocean.

I turned to go back, and stopped. The soft earth had hushed their footsteps, and they had approached to within a stone’s throw: five knights, swords hanging at their sides, unsmiling. They had spread out into a loose line before me, so that I could run nowhere save into the fast-flowing torrent of the river. I dropped my hand to my belt and fumbled for the knife that Sigurd had given me, but it would avail nothing against armed knights.

They halted a little distance away and eyed me grimly. ‘Demetrios Askiates?’ their leader challenged.

I tried to meet his gaze, though his eyes were in shadow under his helmet. ‘I am Demetrios.’

‘My lord the Count of Saint-Gilles will speak with you.’

As befitted the richest man in the army, Count Raymond had not spent the winter shivering in a leaky tent. He had made his billet in an abandoned farm in the midst of his camp, where the council had been held the night before. It was a crude building, its rubble walls bound with timber, but its roof tiles must have been sound enough. A thick plume of woodsmoke rose from the chimney, sharpening the air.

We crossed the courtyard formed by the house and the barn, threading our way between the grooms, heralds, horses and soldiers who thronged it. Two guards with long spears flanked the door, but they did not delay me. I ducked under the lintel, grateful to have relief from the rain outside, and found a stool in the dim room within. Tables and benches were pushed back against the walls, and the floor was covered with mouldering reeds. In the corner a fire hissed and crackled, though there were so many servants and petitioners gathered in the room that we could probably have warmed it ourselves.

After some minutes a scribe emerged from behind and oak door. All in the room fell silent and tensed themselves in hope as his gaze skimmed the assembled faces. I wondered whether he could distinguish one dirty, dark-haired, bearded face from another but his look settled on me and an arm reached out. ‘You. Come.’

The inner room was much the same size as the first, though it seemed at least twice as spacious simply by its emptiness. On a wooden bed in one corner sat Bishop Adhemar in his red cap and cope; behind a table, staring at him with his single, unyielding eye was Count Raymond. He neither stood nor offered me a seat, but contented himself with a grunt.

‘My men found you.’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Hah! More than they manage with the Turks. One of their spies broke into our camp and drove away seven horses last night. Many more and we will have to walk to Jerusalem.’

‘Your garrison in the new tower will deter them,’ suggested the Bishop. He made me uneasy, for I did not know what to expect from a prelate of the Latin church, yet his manner was calm, almost gentle.

‘Little will deter the Turks while they see how feeble we are.’ Raymond stood, and walked to a small window in the wall. Through it I could see the sheer slopes of Mount Silpius rising to the clouds. ‘Doubtless the thieves will be back tomorrow dressed as merchants, to sell our own beasts back to us and observe our strength. Wine?’

I was slow to realise that he was offering the drink to me, and fumbled my words trying to accept too hastily. His face twitched with impatience, unbalancing my thoughts still further, and it was only once a servant had brought two cups that I began to settle. The wine was warm, and I gulped it like a camel. It had been many months since I had enjoyed such luxury.

‘Sit,’ said Raymond. There were no other seats, so I had to perch on an unsteady leather saddle beside the door.

‘You are working for Bohemond. He wishes you to discover who killed the Norman Drogo.’

I could not tell if these were questions or accusations. I answered with an indistinct murmur.

‘Do you know why he would have you do this?’ The count stroked a finger over his cheek. Almost uniquely among the Franks, he had continued to shave throughout the siege, but he often allowed his beard to grow as far as a silvered stubble, as though iron sprouted from his very skin. ‘Do you guess his purpose?’

The eye fixed me with a hostile stare.

‘I . . . He is keen that there should be no unanswered crimes to fester among the army,’ I stammered, clenching my hand about the cup.

‘Of course. Bohemond’s care for the unity of the army is well known. Doubtless you noticed it at the council last night.’

‘I . . .’

‘He would see the armies united under a single general. Whom do you suppose he intends?’

I struggled for an answer that would not draw contempt, but the count sneered at my delay and continued unchecked. ‘The mightiest?’ Raymond thumped a fist against his chest. ‘The holiest?’ He pointed to the Bishop ‘No. That Norman upstart, whose own father deemed him unworthy of the least inheritance, would subordinate the armies of the greatest lords in Christendom to his ambition. And why?’

‘The better to prosecute our war against the Turks?’ I hazarded, sinking under the onslaught of his bile.

He pushed himself out of his chair and leaned forward across the table. ‘If you believe that, Master Greek, then Drogo’s killer can indeed sleep peacefully. Bohemond is a brigand, a pirate like his bastard ancestors. He has already tried to seize your country; when that failed, he rebelled against his own brother.’ He gestured to the window. ‘Look out there. An impregnable city, a fertile valley, a port at the mouth of the river and command of the spice roads east. Who would not want this for his kingdom?’

‘Would you?’ I asked. It was an unthought response, and I regretted it the moment I said it, yet its temerity seemed to provoke some spark of respect in Raymond. He seated himself, and waved the servant to splash more wine into my cup. When he spoke again, it was with more restraint.

‘I am master of thirteen counties, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence. In my own country I am Caesar, and I have earned my due: now I am willing to render the Lord God His. Of course I would covet Antioch for myself, but I do not forget the oath I swore to your Emperor to return the lands that are rightfully his. I will not dishonour my oath while I wear the Lord’s cross.’

The bishop, who had attended our conversation in silence, now stirred. ‘Bohemond swore the same oath.’

Raymond snorted. ‘And you trust him? To Bohemond, oaths are mere vessels for his ambition.’

‘There is still Tatikios to watch him,’ I said.

Whatever regard I had earned from Raymond vanished. ‘How many men does your eunuch have? A thousand? Half that?’

‘Three hundred,’ I admitted.

‘Bohemond has ten times that number. And there would be more than just his army to oppose you. The men of Flanders, Normandy, and Lorraine would stand beside him – even among my own Provençals, your Emperor is not well-loved.’

I thought back on my afternoon of scorn and misery in Raymond’s camp, and nodded.

‘Could you defy Bohemond if he claimed the city?’ Raymond taunted me.

Adhemar stirred again. ‘You are lucky, Demetrios, that the Count of Saint-Gilles honours his duty to the Emperor so.’ His bearded face was solemn, yet even with the foreign words I thought I sensed a current of humour, as though he teased Raymond.

The count scowled. ‘I do honour my duty, Bishop. To the Emperor, to Pope Urban, and to God. But I need not answer for it to a Greek hireling. I summoned you to speak of Drogo. You have discovered – or perhaps Bohemond has graciously told you – that one of his companions was a Provençal, Rainauld of Albigeois?’

‘Yes.’

‘And doubtless by the same effort you have discovered that the man has not been seen since Drogo’s death.’

I had, though I was more intrigued by how Raymond came to know it.

‘What do you infer by it, you whom Bohemond hired for your secret wisdom?’

I paused, feeling the full force of Raymond’s eye on me. Even Adhemar watched with interest.

‘He would seem a likely culprit,’ I conceded.

‘He would even now have undergone the ordeal of fire, if only he could be found. Did you know he was one of my men?’

‘I thought he served Lord Bohemond.’

‘He does now. He lost his horse at Albara, and afterwards had to fight on foot. I would have found him a new mount eventually, but Bohemond offered one sooner, so he sold his allegiance to the Normans.’ Raymond swirled the wine in his cup. ‘Bohemond delights in stealing my men, and the winter has sent many opportunities.’

There was silence as I considered this news. ‘What would it profit Bohemond if Rainauld had killed Drogo?’

‘Are you such a fool? I may have a single eye, Askiates, but it seems that I see more clearly than you. If a Provençal, even one who has left my service, has murdered a Norman, then Bohemond will use it to diminish me. My army will not mutiny, and my priests will not excommunicate me, but when I speak in the council my voice will weigh less with other men. Whatever lessens my authority benefits him – that is his purpose.’ Raymond stabbed a finger heavy with rings at me. ‘And you, Greek, you are his willing pawn.’

I looked to Adhemar, but his head was bowed in prayer.

ζ

Tatikios was in a peevish humour that evening, and spent an hour dictating another petition for relief to the Emperor. Christ help us, I thought, if the Franks ever saw the correspondence. It was well after dark before I was able to return to my tent, damp and famished, to see what humble supper awaited me. Anna and Sigurd were there, with a few Varangians clustered around a single candle. The shadows were deep in the canopy above.

‘Welcome to my mead hall,’ said Sigurd mirthlessly. ‘Have you found out who killed the Norman?’

I lowered myself onto the ground and took the wooden bowl that Anna passed to me. The broth in it was long cold, and the only trace of meat seemed to be the scum of fat on its surface.

‘One of the companions who shared his tent has been missing for two days. Even you, Sigurd, might guess something was suspicious from that.’

Sigurd waved his crooked knife at me, but before he could retort Anna was speaking.

‘If one Norman killed another then there is hardly reason for you to involve yourself. Bohemond must be satisfied – has he paid you?’

After my conversation with Count Raymond, I was no longer so certain what would satisfy Bohemond. ‘The man was not a Norman – he was a Provençal who had taken service with Bohemond.’

‘Hah.’ Sigurd’s knife flashed in the candlelight as he held it up and licked the crumbs off it. I looked for the bread it had cut, but in vain. ‘Bohemond did not hire you to prove that his Normans were ill-disciplined barbarians intent on murdering each other. That we knew. There is an answer he wants you to find, Demetrios, and my guess is that he already knows it far better than you.’

‘And what of it?’ Anna interrupted. Though there were men present, she had unwrapped the palla from her head so that her black hair hung loose behind her neck. It shimmered in the candlelight, but her face was firm with anger. ‘What does it matter if it was a Norman or a Provençal or a Turk or even a Nubian who killed that man? Bohemond and Raymond and the other princes have killed far more men by their impatience and ambition.’

‘This is a war, and men die in it,’ said Sigurd.

‘Of course men die in war. But it should not be because we gorged ourselves when there was plenty, and now suffer famine. Where were the princes five months ago, when our gravest danger was gluttony? Before the orchards were reduced to firewood?’

She looked around, challenging us to argue, but there were none in that group who would defend the Franks. Besides, it was the truth. When we had arrived at Antioch, the land had been fat with fruit: trees bowed with apples and pears, vines dripping grapes, pits and granaries bursting with the newly gathered harvest in every village. Within two months, the fertile plain had become a wasteland. No animals grazed the fields or sat in their barns for they had all been slaughtered, and our horses had devoured the winter hay. The granaries had been ransacked until not one seed remained, and the withered vines had been gathered and burned. We had plagued the land without thought for the future, and the greasy soup now in my hands was our reward.

‘It was not even that their strategy was frustrated,’ Anna continued. ‘There was no plan then for getting into Antioch, any more than there is now.’

‘Enough.’ I raised my arms in barely exaggerated horror. ‘I have just spent an hour hearing Tatikios make the same complaints.’

‘Perhaps they expected God to deliver them,’ Sigurd suggested. ‘They seem to know His mind uncommonly well.’

I thought of Drogo’s naked body in the cave, the long cross scarred into his back. I thought of all the others whom I had seen make similar professions on their bodies, knights and pilgrims alike. ‘You cannot deny their piety.’

Sparks spat into the gloom as Sigurd rasped his knife against a stone. ‘When the Norman bastard came to conquer England he carried a banner of the cross – a personal gift from the Pope in Rome – and the relics of two saints. If you had seen what the Normans did to my country in the name of their church, you would not acclaim their piety.’

‘And the most pious of them all is that dwarfish hermit,’ Anna added. ‘The man who led ten thousand pilgrims to their death, all the while promising them they were invulnerable. That is the sort of piety they practise. They forget that reason and will are divine gifts no less than faith.’

There were times when I thought that Anna had spent so long peering at the blood and flesh of men that she neglected the spiritual realms, yet I never came away the winner when I challenged her.

Sigurd must have seen the darkness that crossed my face. ‘Better not to mention the dwarf priest who orphaned Thomas.’

It was a kind thought, though too late. Thomas was my son-in-law, a Frankish boy whose parents had followed Little Peter to their doom in his expedition against the Turks. After the massacre, a series of misadventures had at last led Thomas to my house. Gratitude for my hospitality – not least for my daughter, though I had not known it then – had driven him to betray his countrymen in the Frankish army, after which I could deny him neither my daughter nor a place in the Varangian guards. He had married Helena three days before I crossed into Asia, at a small church in the city. I had ached to give her up, even to a man who had saved my life, and ached doubly to leave them so soon afterwards. But Thomas was safest where the Franks were furthest away and by staying he had at least saved himself the horrors of march and siege. The Army of God had left too many young widows already: I did not need Helena added to their number.

Sigurd was watching me. ‘Has Thomas sent word recently? Have you become a grandfather yet?’

I shrugged, though the question weighed keenly on me. ‘There has been nothing from Constantinople in weeks. Winter has closed the passes, and who knows what storms have wracked the coasts?’

A frown of concern was on Anna’s face. ‘The child will come any day now. I should be there.’

‘Helena will be perfectly safe.’ Though Sigurd’s voice never lacked force, this time I thought he seemed a little too insistent. ‘You will worry Demetrios needlessly if you think otherwise. Helena will have her sister present, and her aunt, and probably a legion of other women to assist the birthing.’

Anna nodded, though to my mind it was without conviction. I knew she fretted about my daughter’s child, so much so that she could not hide it from me. It did nothing to soothe the tension every man feels when faced with the mysteries of birth. Nor could I forget the sight of Maria, my late wife, lying white in a lake of her own blood as she tried to bear me a third child. She was often in my dreams now.

Anna stroked my cheek, her expression now recomposed. ‘Helena will be well protected,’ she said. ‘Thomas will see to it.’

‘If he hasn’t beheaded himself trying to wield his axe,’ said Sigurd, trying – in his own fashion – to lighten the mood.

With a glance at how low the candle had burned, Anna rose. ‘I should return to my tent. No doubt the sick and the hungry will be there before dawn, seeking succour.’

A glance passed between us: mine half pleading, hers half regret. Perhaps in a different year we would have been married by now, but I had not wanted to diminish Helena’s wedding with another ceremony so soon afterwards. Then we had left for war, where marriage seemed inappropriate, and so we lived more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Though not entirely without error.

‘I will see you tomorrow.’

The next day I went again to look for the missing Rainauld, and the following day as well, but each time there was nothing. On the third day I did discover something of him, though not from his friends. Instead, I found an Ishmaelite waiting at his tent. I saw him from some distance as I approached, and was instantly confused, for he neither skulked like a spy nor guarded himself like a merchant. He stood alone outside Drogo’s tent, his turbaned head proclaiming his faith to all yet apparently careless of his safety.

‘Demetrios Askiates?’ he asked as I drew near. It took me a moment to realise that he had spoken in Greek.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Mushid, the swordsmith.’

‘A Turk?’

‘An Arab.’ In addition to the white turban knotted over his head, he was dressed humbly in a brown robe with a red belt. His dark-skinned face was unlined by age and framed by a beard whose hair was black as tar. It was a little longer than mine, and split in the middle where it had grown unevenly, but otherwise he might have passed for a Greek. His brown eyes were clear and round, with neither malice nor fear disfiguring them.

‘You’re brave. Not many Saracens would walk unarmed into this camp.’

He smiled, his teeth very white. ‘A swordsmith is never unarmed.’ He tapped his hip, and I heard the rap of something solid under the robe. ‘I do not provoke battle, but I defend myself if it comes.’

His voice was light, and his smile constant, yet something in his words made me wonder how much more steel was hidden under the plain cloth. ‘How did you know my name?’

‘They say you come here every day. They say you are looking for the man who killed Drogo of Melfi.’

He did not explain who ‘they’ might be, and I did not ask. There was no shortage of ‘them’ in the camp. ‘What do you know of Drogo?’

‘When he was penniless, he sold his sword to eat. Then, when his fortunes improved, he needed another blade. I made it for him. Later we became friends. He had lost a brother – and mine too died last year. When they told me he was dead, I . . .’ For the first time, he seemed to hesitate over his words. ‘I was sad.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘A week ago. On the day he died, I think.’

‘Where? What time?’ Suddenly I was alive with hope. Bohemond had promised to ask through his army whether anyone had seen Drogo in the hours before he died, but thus far none had admitted it. Doubtless they feared blame. If this swordsmith had met him, he must have been among the last to see him living.

‘On the road, at about the ninth hour – three hours past noon. He was happy with me; his new sword had slain three Turks in the battle the previous day.’

‘Did he say where he was going? Whom he purposed to meet?’

‘He had been at the mosque, building your tower. He felt guilty that you had desecrated the dead.’ The swordsmith fixed me with an earnest stare. ‘Even in war, the dead should be honoured.’

‘He did not say where he was going?’

‘I did not ask. I thought he went back to the camp – where else?’

‘Indeed.’ I paused, feeling certain that I should put more questions to this Saracen who had fallen across my path, who might remember something significant of that afternoon. To fill the silence, I asked: ‘What do your fellow Ishmaelites think of you, that you sell the blades by which they die?’

The swordsmith shrugged. ‘What they say in their thoughts, they keep there. What they speak with their tongues is that trade affords no enemies. Many, after all, supply the food which sustains you, the horses you ride to battle. Why not your weapons?’ He laughed. ‘Besides, we are not all as one in Islam because we all wear turbans and beards.’ He jerked his head towards the triple peak of Mount Silpius, and the walls that ringed it. ‘The Turks in the city, they are Ahl al-Sunna. I am of the Shi’at ’Ali, like the Fatimids of Egypt. We believe differently – as Rum and Franj do.’

‘The Byzantines and Franks are united in Christ,’ I protested, though I knew it to be scarcely true.

Mushid frowned. ‘But you believe it is ordained to eat leavened bread, not unleavened. And that your priests should marry. And that . . .’

I held up my hand. ‘Enough. I am neither monk nor theologian. Indeed, I wonder if you know more of my religion than I do.’

‘Only two kinds of the Nazarenes pass through my country: merchants and pilgrims. I speak with both, and learn their ways.’

‘And you are of a different faith to the Turks? A different party of Ishmaelites?’ I could not quite comprehend how I had come to debate religion with a Saracen swordsmith outside Drogo’s tent, but I remembered the Emperor’s exhortation to learn their divisions.

‘Our differences would seem as obscure to you as yours do to me. Yet they can bring us to war against each other. The Fatimids of Egypt have fought the Turks for decades.’

‘And you are one of them?’

‘No. I—’

He broke off as a figure in mail came striding up between the rows of tents. With a coif about his neck and a helmet on his head, he was almost unrecognisable, but there was something familiar in the sharp, snapping movement of his limbs. Behind him, I could see the boy Simon leading a grey palfrey.

‘You,’ he barked, raising a gloved fist. The voice was Quino’s. ‘I ordered you never to come here again.’

For a moment both Mushid and I hesitated, neither sure whom he addressed. As he drew too near to ignore I said at last, ‘I was seeking Rainauld.’

‘Rainauld is gone. Do not use him as your excuse for spying. I have been out on the plain harrying. Turkish foragers; what have you done, Greek? Nothing but prying and lying, I would say.’

‘Prying where the lord Bohemond sends me.’

‘And you,’ he continued, turning to Mushid. ‘Do not come here.’ Twisting awkwardly in his armour, he pulled the helmet from his head and fixed the Arab with a look of pure venom. As he disappeared through the flaps of the tent, I heard him shouting for the boy to attend him or feel the flat of his sword.

I glanced at Mushid. His eyes registered neither anger nor fear, but only sadness. ‘Quino seems as fond of you as he is of me,’ I said.

Mushid gave a small laugh. ‘He and Drogo suffered many adventures together. I think Quino was jealous of our friendship – and I am, of course, infidel. He did not like me. I thought—’

For the second time that afternoon, our words were interrupted by a sudden arrival. We did not see him coming, for he burst around the edge of the tent and ran almost straight into Mushid. It was a Norman, a thin man whom I did not recognise. His tunic was dark with sweat, and he could barely gasp out: ‘Quino. Is Quino here? Or Odard?’

I nodded my head at the tent. ‘In there.’

‘Why?’ asked Mushid.

If the Norman was surprised to be questioned by an Arab in the heart of the Christian camp, the urgency of his errand drowned it. ‘It is Rainauld. They have found him.’

I knew the moment he spoke that it was not good news. From the land of the missing, the living ‘reappear’ or ‘return’. Only the dead are ‘found’.

‘Where?’ I demanded, snatching the Norman’s arm before he could enter the tent. ‘Where is he?’

‘In an orchard, near the Alexandretta road.’

I did not wait for Quino to emerge, but started running. It was a full two miles to the road, through the Lotharingian and Fleming lines, across the shifting timbers of the boat bridge, and up the far slope of the valley to the first ridge. My lungs burned with the effort, and my enfeebled limbs could barely keep me upright after so many months of hunger. I had to stop at the road and bend double to try and restore some order to my body.

As soon as I looked up, though, it was plain where I should go. There were as many wayfarers and draught animals on the road as ever, but a little way along a great number seemed to be drifting from the path, drawn up the hill by some invisible power.

‘That must be the way,’ said a voice beside me.

I looked to my left, to see Mushid staring up the road. I had not noticed him following me, but the run did not seem to have troubled him much.

‘I think I see the orchard.’

He ran on, and I forced myself after him. My bones felt empty, my sinews tight as bowstrings, but I managed to keep sight of him as we sprinted along the road and then up the scrubby slope. The broken ground was treacherous, not least because I could not summon sufficient care to look where my feet fell, but at length it flattened into a terrace cut out of the hillside. Once it had perhaps supported a grove of apple trees, but now there were only stumps and wild grasses. At the far end, where a low wall of broken stone embanked the hill, a crowd several score strong had gathered.

I pushed my way through the gaunt faces, feeling the cruel hope abound in them. Like our pagan ancestors in the amphitheatres of old, they had come for death. They would not be disappointed.

When I had first seen Drogo’s body I had seen no marks of violence: here, the violence was everywhere, splashed across the tawny grass and the weathered stones of the wall. I stepped forward, past the anonymous safety of the ringed crowd and into the human arena they had created. Before me, a solitary man knelt on the ground, blood covering his arms as far as his elbows. I did not recognise him, though his ragged tunic made him look more a pilgrim than a knight. With one hand, he jerked a knife at the surrounding throng.

‘I killed him,’ he shouted defiantly. ‘I claim him.’

I stopped, overwhelmed by the confession and the dizzied pounding in my head. The air about me seemed suddenly dark.

‘Why did you kill him?’ I asked.

‘I have not eaten in nine days,’ he shrieked. ‘I hunted him, and I slew him.’

‘What?’ I could not comprehend this.

With a grim cackle, never taking his gaze from his audience, the man reached into the grass and raised the corpse to view. The breath that had clung in my throat at last escaped. Hanging from his hand, its mangy fur matted black with blood, was the lifeless body of a wild dog.

‘With this knife I killed him,’ the man shouted. He plunged his knife into the dog’s belly, and a fresh trickle of fluid oozed out. ‘See? See?’

A wave of jealous hunger seethed through the crowd, and they began to press forward. No wonder the pilgrim was so desperate; they would never let him keep the meat for himself.

But I had no interest in battling for a dog’s carcass – or at least, my will to find Rainauld was stronger. ‘Where is the Norman?’ I called, keeping clear of the pilgrim so as not to provoke him. ‘Did you find him too?’

‘Over here.’

I looked around. A little distance away, unnoticed by the famished crowd, Mushid was standing by the stone wall. As the man and his dog disappeared in the mob, I squeezed through to see what he had found. A low brick archway was set in the wall to allow drainage, its mouth almost entirely obscured by weeds and flowers. The Arab was squatting before it, pulling back the foliage to allow in more light. As I joined him, I wished he had preserved it in darkness.

There was no blood, but that was no mercy. The corpse that lay under the crumbling vault must have been there for days. Wild animals had ripped the clothes from it, chewing and tearing terrible rents from the body. What flesh remained was black and swollen; his limbs lay splayed out at unnatural angles, while the smell in the untouched air of the culvert was unbearable. I could not number the dead or dying I had seen in the past months, but they were nothing compared with this horror. I staggered away, and gasped out what little was in my stomach onto a patch of poppies.

When I turned back, a small crowd had gathered by the arch. I recognised Quino’s compact shape and half a dozen other Normans in armour. Two of them held the hapless pilgrim who had killed the dog, while the rest watched a trio of men-at-arms drag Rainauld’s body into the open. Mushid, prudently, had vanished.

Quino had his back to me, his face hidden, but I could see clearly as he slammed a fist into the pilgrim’s cheek. ‘What did you do?’ he hissed. ‘Why did you kill him?’

The man groaned, and spat blood onto the ground. ‘Please,’ he mumbled. ‘Please. I found him. The dog led me to him. I did not touch him. Please, my Lord, have mercy. I have not eaten in nine days. I have not—’

I stepped forward. ‘He did nothing, Quino. Look at the body. It has been there for days – weeks, even.’

Such was the anger on Quino’s face as he spun around that I was driven backwards a pace. His voice, though, was almost imperceptibly soft. ‘You would do well to go far from this place, Greek. Two of my closest companions, my brothers, lie dead, and each time it is you who finds them. Next time it will be you who feeds the crows and carrion-eaters. I, Quino of Melfi, swear it.’

‘Demetrios is charged by me to find who killed your companion. You will not hinder him.’

I looked up to the voice which had spoken above us. He sat atop a warhorse so white that it was almost blasphemous in this place of death, so tall that even its saddle was above the height of my eyes. It was Bohemond. At his side an attendant carried the red banner emblazoned with the silver serpent, while behind him a company of mounted knights pushed back the crowd of onlookers.

‘You,’ said Bohemond, pointing to the pilgrim still held by Quino’s men. ‘You found the body?’

‘Yes, Lord.’ The man was weeping openly, though whether from gratitude or fear or horror none could tell. ‘I was hunting a dog. Please, my Lord, I have not eaten in nine days.’

‘Then you will eat tonight.’ Bohemond reached into the velvet bag on his belt, and tossed something glittering at the man’s feet. The guards let him go as he fell to snatch it.

‘Is the corpse Rainauld of Albigeois?’

Quino, his face contorted with anger, nodded. ‘So far as any man can tell.’

‘Turn him over.’

One of Bohemond’s knights rode forward and slid the end of his lance under the corpse until it toppled onto its back. Narrowing my eyes, as if by doing so I might diminish the sight, I peered at it. Thankfully, I did not have to look long for the cause of his death. Plunged into his chest at the centre of a bloom of dried blood, I could see the leather-bound stump of a knife handle.

Bohemond saw it too. ‘What do you say, Demetrios? Did he do this himself?’

The final, guilt-ridden act of a murderer? ‘I cannot say,’ I answered truthfully.

For a moment, Bohemond said nothing. His face was tied in concentration; he did not seem to notice as his horse skittered beneath him. At last: ‘Bury him. I will think on this in the night, and pray for God’s wisdom. Attend me in the morning, Demetrios.’

He rode away, and I followed him towards the road, keeping among the knots of men and women drifting back to the camp. If Quino discovered me alone, I doubted Bohemond’s name would be any shield.

As I walked, I chiselled at my thoughts, trying to shape them into some more familiar form. Rainauld had not been seen since Drogo’s death, and though that was now six days previous my every sense insisted that his death was linked to Drogo’s. Whether it had happened before or after Drogo’s, and by his own hand or another’s, I could not know. Whether Rainauld had lain in that vault for two days or six was an equal mystery, though the decay of his body seemed to bespeak an earlier death. The sight was something I would yearn to forget, but amid the rot and scavenging and torn clothes, I was certain that I had seen something significant. A mark on his back as the Norman turned him. The shiny, puckered skin of a cross-shaped scar.

η

My dreams left me little rest that night and each time I awoke I longed for Anna’s embrace to warm my shivering fears. In the morning I rose early and made for Bohemond’s tent. The chill in the air spurred my steps, but I had no enthusiasm: I feared he would demand many more answers than I could supply. Nor was I even sure what answers he desired, for his shock at the discovery of Rainauld’s body had appeared entirely genuine. If Sigurd and Count Raymond were right, if my role had merely been to name Rainauld as Drogo’s murderer, what then? Would he have me declare that Rainauld slew his friend and then killed himself in a frenzy of guilt? I was not sure that I could say so – but neither was I certain that I could insist on perpetuating doubt so damaging to the army.

As so often, my worries were wasted. Bohemond’s banner was gone from outside his tent, and the lone guard was brusque in his dismissal.

‘There were reports of Turkish raiders in the mountains: Bohemond has gone to seek them. He will not return before nightfall.’

Relief and disappointment mingled in my heart. I had not wanted to confront Bohemond, with his persuasive ways and hidden purposes, but without him I was left adrift. I could not speak to Quino without fear for my life, and I could not seek Odard without risk of seeing Quino. Inspecting tents for leakage with Tatikios attracted me little better. Unthinkingly, I left the Norman camp and walked down to the river.

The Orontes was largely deserted at that hour, save for a few women sitting on rocks upstream, rinsing their laundry where the water was not yet fouled with the effluence of our camp. A few blackened twigs poked out from the surface where they had been twisted into a fish trap, while on the far bank a pair of children tried their luck with lengths of twine. They must have baited their hooks with leaves, for food was too scarce to risk in the river. Otherwise the water flowed on implacably, black as the clouds hanging overhead. I sat on a rock and watched it pass, keeping my back to the looming mountain which overshadowed all behind me.

The minutes passed. Damp began to seep into my cloak; the figures on the opposite shore cast and recast their lines without success. A flock of birds wheeled overhead and a bough from an olive tree drifted down the river, spinning lazily in midstream. Suddenly, I heard a scrabbling sound from beneath the bank. As I watched, a grimy pair of hands reached over the rim and grasped a tree root which the flood waters had exposed. A shock of black hair followed, then a face so dirty that it was unrecognisable, and finally the whole dripping body. He was naked, yet his modesty was preserved by the extraordinary quantity of mud that clung to him. Was this how Adam had looked when the Lord first breathed life into him? For a moment he was oblivious to my presence, reaching under the root to pull out a folded tunic, but as he turned he yelped and almost tumbled back into the river. My own surprise was hardly less.

‘Simon,’ I said, conjuring the name as I at last recognised the face beneath the dirt.

‘What?’ He was bent forward as though he had been kicked in the groin, one hand protecting his privacy. He edged backwards, trying to work his way behind a low boulder. As a servant, in a camp with few partitions, he surely could not be so squeamish. Perhaps he had believed the endless Norman jibes about the vices of the Greeks.

‘Dress yourself,’ I told him. I made great show of prising a few pebbles from the earth and watching them skip across the water while he pulled on his tunic. Lines of mud were streaked across it.

‘What were you doing?’ I asked. ‘The current is strong – you could have been swept all the way to the sea at Saint Simeon. Can you swim?’

He shook his head. Water sprayed from his ragged locks as off a dog. In his hand, I noticed, he clasped a wilted bunch of green plants.

‘What are those?’

‘Mine!’ The fear as he recoiled at the question was evident. ‘They grow in the river bank, in places few can see.’

‘I do not want your herbs,’ I assured him, though it was hard to hide my hunger. I could smell onion grass, and wild sage; the aromas were like hot coals in my stomach. ‘I want to speak with you.’

His gaze darted over my shoulder, back towards the Norman camp. ‘If I speak with you, Quino will beat me. He swore it.’

‘Did he?’ If there were secrets that Quino wanted hidden then I especially wanted to hear them. ‘What will he do if he learns you gather food in his ignorance? That you keep it from him?’

‘He . . .’

‘I am charged by Bohemond, your master’s lord, to discover all I can concerning Drogo’s death. Two men from that tent are now dead, and the longer that rumours persist the worse it will be for all of us. Tell me what you know, and Bohemond will see that no harm befalls you.’

‘What do I know?’ A tear cut a pale scar through the mud on his cheek. ‘If I knew who killed my master, would I hide it?’

‘A man may unwittingly know more than he believes. And a servant hears much. Tell me the truth.’

Simon sniffed, and wiped his arm across his face. ‘You sound like Drogo. He often spoke of truth.’

‘Yes? He was devout? There is no shame speaking of your master’s virtues,’ I encouraged him.

‘He prayed often. Especially after his brother died. He – he was different after that.’

‘How so?

‘There was a burden on his soul. We all suffered on the march, and here at Antioch, but always it seemed that he suffered more.’

‘He was not an easy man to serve,’ I suggested.

‘He was fair.’ Simon looked down at his feet, so that his hair curtained his face. ‘I think . . . I think perhaps a demon assailed him.’

‘A demon?’ I echoed, astonished. ‘Did you see it?’

Simon’s voice was now a whisper, yet it beat with the urgency of confession. ‘Often in the night I heard him wrestle with it. He called out to the Lord God, begging him to see truthfully, but the demon blinded him to light.’

‘The cross!’ I exclaimed, my mind fusing together two thoughts. ‘The cross on his back. Was that part of his penance? His struggle with the demon?’

Simon lifted his head and stared at me. A few solitary hairs hung forlorn from his chin: he must have been trying to grow his beard in mimicry of his elders, yet the effect was only to make him seem younger. ‘How do you know of the cross on his back?’

‘I saw his corpse. And I know that Rainauld bore the same mark. Did Quino and Odard carry it too?’

The boy did not move, yet still he seemed to shrink. ‘I do not know how the mark came to be there. It was in December, near the feast of Saint Nicholas. All four returned to the tent one night with their backs bound in bandages. Next morning, when they dressed, I saw the sign of the cross seeping through. I thought it was a miracle, that God had favoured them.’

‘Did you find out how it happened?’

‘They never spoke of it. Once I asked my master. I thought he would want to celebrate such a sign of divine grace, but he beat me with a stirrup. I did not ask again.’

Behind him the river flowed its course. The two boys opposite had given up their fishing, and were now throwing rocks at some piece of debris floating on the water. A crow flew down and perched on the fish trap.

‘Had they suffered any arguments in the past weeks? Had one taken against the others? Did they quarrel – over food, perhaps, or spoils? Or a woman?’

Simon’s gaze dropped again. ‘There was no quarrel.’

‘A disagreement?’ As he spoke, I had heard the sharp edges of words carefully chosen.

‘No.’

‘But there was some discord among them.’

‘There was . . . anger.’ Still refusing to meet my gaze, Simon reached up and pulled a piece of dried mud from his skin. It came away smooth as a scab.

‘Why?’

‘I do not know!’

I had grown so used to Simon’s mumbling and whispering that his sudden shout stunned me. The crow on the fish trap fluttered squawking into the air.

‘Five weeks ago they went to Daphne. They were gone all day. When they came back, they were different. They would not speak to each other, but cursed me for every straw that was out of place in their beds. I have never seen Quino so angry.’ Simon trembled as the torrent of words poured out of him. ‘After that day, they did not often come in the tent together. They ate apart, and chose different watches. I rarely saw Quino and Odard – that was good. Drogo found other friends.’

‘A swordsmith?’ I hazarded.

Simon looked at me curiously. ‘A swordsmith, yes. He was a Saracen, an Ishmaelite. It was another thing to make Quino angry.’

‘And they never spoke of what had passed at Daphne?’

‘Never. One or two times, I heard Rainauld mention a house of the sun. I think it was a place they had been that day, for always it drew the same silence from the others.’

‘“The house of the sun.” It meant nothing to you?’

‘Nothing.’

He paused, looking at the wilting herbs in his fist. ‘I should go back. Quino is not as good a master as Drogo.’

‘Come with me.’ I spoke on impulse: I did not know how I could pay the boy, and I could not even feed myself, but the pain in his face was more than I could ignore. I took his arm. ‘Come and serve me, and I will see you are kept safe from Quino’s rages.’

He shook free of my grasp. ‘I am bound to Quino. If I left him, he would think it a betrayal. His vengeance would be unforgiving. I must go.’

At that I wanted to snatch him by the shoulder and drag him away from the Normans. But I resisted the impulse. However miserable the fate he chose, I could not compel him. ‘A final question. Did you ever see a woman named Sarah visit Drogo?’

Simon’s head jerked up like a rabbit’s; his stare fixed on my face, then swiftly switched to my boots. ‘Never.’

He was lying, I was sure of it, but I could not in conscience risk causing more delay and provoking Quino’s wrath. I watched him run across the field, back towards the grey ranks of canvas, and wondered what malevolent power swayed the occupants of that cursed tent.

That evening I went to see Tatikios. The lamplight was bright on the gilded fabric of the room, but he was in a dark mood. He paced before his ebony chair, muttering to himself and constantly darting glances towards the door. In every corner a Patzinak stood holding a spear.

‘Demetrios,’ the eunuch snapped. ‘Did you see anyone outside the door?’

‘None worth remarking. Why?’

‘Bohemond came here. He warned that sentiment in the armies turns against us.’

Irreverently, I thought that Tatikios ought to find a goldsmith to recast his golden nose in a more imposing form. At present it only served to make him seem petulant.

‘The Franks have ever been jealous of our civilisation,’ I answered. ‘When the war goes amiss, it is natural that they blame us.’

‘My position is impossible.’ Tatikios had not paid me the least attention. ‘The barbarians blame me because the Emperor does not join their siege, but I can achieve nothing. With less than half a legion at my disposal I am forced to follow a strategy I did not recommend. And the Emperor is deaf to my pleas for aid.’

I thought back to the courtyard in the palace. When you make allies of your enemies, every battle is a victory. Whom did the Emperor truly wish to see broken by the siege, I wondered?

‘I am between Scylla and Charybdis,’ the eunuch continued. ‘And now Bohemond warns that the barbarians may purpose violence against us.’

‘Did he name any conspirators?’

‘No.’

‘Then it is nothing more than gossip. I walk daily through the Norman camps and I see the hatred they bear us. That does not mean they will slit our throats in our beds.’

Tatikios slumped into his chair. ‘This is no place for a general of Byzantium. I should be at the Emperor’s side in the queen of cities, or commanding great armies on the frontiers. Belisarios did not conquer Africa with three hundred mercenaries and a horde of murderous barbarians. Will my exploits here ever be carved on the great gate of the palace, or lofted high on a column? I do not think so.’

He fell into silence. After a minute to allow his self-pity free rein, I said: ‘I would like to take a troop of Varangians to Daphne tomorrow. There may be food there as yet untouched.’

Tatikios waved an arm dismissively. ‘As you wish, Demetrios. We will not need the men here. The city will not fall tomorrow, nor any other day if this course persists. Go to Daphne, if you will. I doubt that you will find anything.’

θ

We had to walk to Daphne, Sigurd and I and a dozen Varangians, for our horses were too few and feeble to waste. We passed the new mound opposite the bridge, where two wooden towers had now risen on the rubble of the cemetery, and followed the Saint Simeon road south-west until we had left the city well behind us. By a plane tree a path forked down to the ford, and we splashed our way through the waist-deep water. The river was cold and urgent, harrying our steps and always threatening to dislodge our feet from the weed-green rocks, yet there was something pleasing in its eagerness. Though I was not thirsty, I stopped midstream where a boulder gave me purchase and scooped a palmful of water into my mouth. The chill trickling down my throat was exhilarating, though it stirred my stomach to fresh pangs of hunger.

As we climbed the slopes of the far shore, my mood sobered. None of the lands south of Antioch were safe, but the eastern bank of the Orontes especially was the preserve of the Turks. I had chosen a minimal company to escort me, for I had little confidence in my errand, but I regretted it ever more as we advanced down the empty road. The rising sun crossed our path so that we could see barely more than the stony ground at our feet, while the flashing bows of light from the Varangians’ axes would have acted as a clear beacon – or target – to any spies in the hills.

Sigurd, whose own axe twitched in his hands, gestured down the long valley to where the river now turned towards the sea. ‘It could be worse,’ he grunted. ‘The march from Dorylaeum – that was bad.’

It had been. For six weeks in high summer we had limped across the Anatolian highlands, chasing a beaten army which spoiled or destroyed every living thing in its path. Without food or water, men and beasts had died in unnumbered thousands, their bones left by the wayside because we were too weak to dig graves. We could not travel by night for fear of ambush so the July sun shrivelled our bodies as hard as olives, the sweat wrung from us until we could sweat no more. The jaws of cisterns gaped empty where the Turks had cracked them open; we lacerated our cheeks trying to chew the spiny bushes for moisture. My tongue had become like a splinter in my mouth, so dry that I had imagined I might snap it in two between my teeth. In the evenings we did not pitch camp but fell where we stopped. Not all of us rose in the mornings. Oxen became the steeds of lords, and dogs were our pack animals. And every day the land around remained unchanged: a waste of dust and thorns, broken only by mountains on a horizon which never approached. None of us who emerged from that desert would ever entirely wash away the dust on our souls.

‘There.’

Thankfully Sigurd’s voice recalled me from bitter memories. Shielding his eyes, he pointed ahead to where a gaggle of low houses had come into view at the top of the ridge. We walked on towards them, crossing a wooden bridge over a stream and climbing to the village between terraced fields overrun with weeds. It was a humble place, a dozen stone cottages built together in pairs and a score of timber shacks surrounding them. Even at mid-morning there was an unnatural quiet about it: no women drew water from the well, no goats bleated in the enclosures, and nothing pulled the ploughs which lay rotting by the barns. Sigurd slung his shield on his arm and lifted his axe in caution.

‘We need to find the house of the sun,’ I said, uneasy at the sound of my voice in the silence.

‘What does that mean?’

I shrugged. ‘Perhaps a house which faces east. Or one with no roof.’

A sudden squawk tore away the stillness. With a ruffling of wings, a brown hen ran around the corner of the nearest house, stopped abruptly, and began pecking at the muddy ground.

‘Get her,’ Sigurd shouted. One of his men was already moving forward, his blade poised to chop away the bird’s head, but at that moment a new voice began screaming abuse. The door to the house had opened and a wizened woman stood on the doorstep, waving her fist and shouting every manner of curse. She ran forward under the Varangian’s axe, scooped up the hen in the folds of her skirt, and stared defiance at us.

‘Why do you do this?’ she spat. Though much corrupted, her language seemed to be Greek. ‘Why do you try to starve us? You have torn up our fields and slaughtered our animals – are you now taking my last hen? In the name of the Christ and his blessed mother, are you not ashamed?’

‘We do not want to steal from you,’ I assured her, though fourteen hungry faces belied my words. I had to repeat myself thrice before she could understand me. ‘We are looking for a house – the house of the sun. Helios,’ I emphasised, pointing to the sky.

‘In the valley.’ She threw out an arm, pointing further down the road. Her skin was almost black, and wrinkled beyond every vestige of youth, yet the strength of her voice made her seem little older than me – younger, even.

‘You will find it in the valley of the sinners. By the water. The road will take you.’

I wanted to ask for further description, to learn how I might know the house that I sought, but she would give us nothing more. Lifting her skirts, she turned and stamped back into the house, never loosing her grip on the hen.

‘That should have been our lunch,’ Sigurd complained.

‘We cannot steal from these people,’ I snapped. ‘They are Christians – Greeks. These are the people we fight to save.’

Sigurd looked at the desolate village, and laughed.

On the far side of the hilltop, the road descended into a steep ravine. It was as though the lips of the earth had been prised apart, opening a glimpse onto a world utterly removed from its terrestrial surrounds. The slopes were thick with pines, bay trees in blossom and fig trees budding with fruit. In a gully beside the path a multitude of streams tumbled down through moss-covered rocks, touching and parting until they at last united on the valley floor. Wood-birds sang, and the smell of laurel blossom was heavy in the air. It was a garden, as near to paradise as anything I had seen in my life.

‘It doesn’t look like the valley of sin,’ said Sigurd. He had snapped off a sprig of laurel and stuck it into his unruly hair, like a victorious charioteer at the hippodrome.

‘Does that disappoint you?’

Sigurd kicked a pebble from our path and watched it tumble down the slope into one of the brooks. ‘If there’s sin to be had, it’s best to know what I forsake.’

The road levelled out as we reached the bottom of the valley. The vegetation was as thick as ever: broad oaks overhung the stream, and vines trailed in the water. Every few hundred paces, though, there were gaps in the foliage where once the villas of our ancestors had stood. Their ruins were still there, gradually receding beneath the green tide. Some were now little more than rubble under the ferns and ivy; others had walls still standing, or columns poking out of the bushes. There were about ten in total, all shaken down over the centuries by war and time and the tremors of the earth.

I remembered the words of the woman in the village. ‘One of these must be the house of the sun.’

‘None of them has a roof,’ Sigurd observed.

We walked on, scanning the remains for anything that might suggest a sun. Above us the true sun arced in its course, slowly pushing back the shadows cast by the steep walls of the ravine. Different features drew our attentions – a yellow flower with radiate petals, a star carved into a fallen lintel, a fragment of golden mosaic tiles – and we began to drift apart. It was hard to feel danger in the sweetness of that place.

I had just scrambled back to the path, having been drawn away by a stone covered in pine blossom, when I saw her. She was standing on the far bank of the stream: a dark-haired woman, her head uncovered, in a dress which seemed much stained with mud and berries. There were leaves tangled in her hair, and had it not been for the hardness of her face I might have believed her a nymph or dryad.

‘What do you want?’ she called. Her dialect was Frankish, and her voice strangely harsh against the surroundings. ‘Do you want for pleasure, far from home? I can help you forget your suffering, for a little while.’

I closed my eyes. I knew why the villagers called this the valley of sin. Three months earlier, fearing that the impieties of the Army of God might be the reason why its campaign had faltered, Bishop Adhemar had expelled all women from the camp. As an attempt to stamp out sin, it had failed utterly; if anything, it had only spawned worse vices. After a few days the women had begun to drift back into the camp, their presence thenceforth ignored by Adhemar, but there was talk that some had made a new home in the glades of this valley, where the tempted of the army could indulge their lusts more privately.

‘I am looking for a house called the house of the sun,’ I said. ‘Do you know of it?’

She shook her head, her long hair swinging freely behind. ‘I need no houses for my affairs.’

‘May I ask – did four Norman knights come here once, perhaps a month ago?’

‘Many men come here: Normans, Provençals, Franks, Lotharingians. Even Greeks.’

‘These men did not come for such pleasures, I think. There were four of them,’ I said again.

As brazenly as if she were alone, the woman reached into the folds of her skirt and scratched herself between her legs. ‘I saw them.’

My hopes quickened. ‘Where did they go?’

‘They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly.’ Deliberately ignoring me, she seated herself on a rock and dipped her naked toes into the stream. The water rippled around them. ‘None of us dared go near.’

‘Near where?’

She looked up, coiling a lock of hair about her finger. ‘How much would you value it?’

‘Half a bezant.’ It was the only coin in my purse, and I was loath to spend it on this harlot. But in the pursuit of secrets, even worthless ones, I have ever been spendthrift.

She smiled, though there was no joy in it. ‘For half a bezant, I could give you more than knowledge.’

As she spoke, there must have been a touch of a breeze, for the scents of pine and laurel were suddenly thick on my senses. They cloyed about me, sickly smells bespeaking all manner of sweet damnation. For a moment, even the harlot’s face seemed kinder.

I shook my head, as much to myself as to her, and held up the coin so that she could see it. ‘Where did they go?’

‘There.’ She pointed to a low-lying patch of ruins, further down the valley where the slopes became cliffs. ‘They went in there.’

I threw the coin across the stream. She caught it one-handed, the arm of her dress sliding back as she reached out. ‘They would not lie with me either.’

I called Sigurd and the others to join me, and walked slowly towards the ancient villa. High trees had grown around it, shading it with the canopy of their leaves, while shrubs and flowers flourished among the masonry. Two walls were all that remained standing: the rest, the detritus of atria, baths, colonnades and fountains were piled in broken heaps around me. A fluted column lay between the two posts of a door that had long since rotted to oblivion. I stepped over it, and looked for any sign that the whore had spoken truthfully.

‘Here.’ Moving more impatiently than I, Sigurd had already reached the back of the ruin. Its rear wall must have been built sheer against the cliff, though it had mostly collapsed now, for I could see square crevices cut in the rock where stones had once been fixed. Where Sigurd stood, a few blocks remained as the ancient masons had laid them, the surrounds of a long-disused fireplace. As I approached, I saw what he had seen: two suns, their rays like spikes, engraved into the wall on either side of the hearthstone.

‘Those carvings,’ I exclaimed. ‘Are there any other markings?’

To my surprise, Sigurd bellowed with laughter. It echoed off the high cliffs above and startled a flock of birds into flight. ‘Truly, Demetrios Askiates does discover what other men do not. Who else would see those scratchings, and miss what lay at his feet?’

I looked down. It had been hidden by the high weeds as I approached, and my stare had then been fixed on the wall, but now I could see what Sigurd meant. On a patch of ground before the hearth, curiously free of any growth or dirt, a broad mosaic of a burning sun gazed up at the sky. Its beams wriggled and twisted like snakes in yellow and orange, trimmed with gold, and from its centre the untamed face of Phoebus Apollo gazed on us. His wild hair branched and forked from his head, spraying out into the surrounding beams, while his plump nose and swollen eyes looked more like a satyr’s than a god’s.

‘This is miraculously preserved.’ I glanced involuntarily at the sky, fearful that I might blaspheme to speak of miracles in the works of the pagans.

‘More than miraculous.’ Sigurd swung an arm in a rough arc about us. A low rampart of earth and dying weeds circumscribed the border of the mosaic, as if it had recently been dug clear. Peering closer, I could see white scuffs and scratches in the tiles where a hoe or spade might have scraped them. And, ringing Apollo’s head, the dark nimbus of a circular crack.

I dropped to my knees and tried to prise my fingers into the gap. My nails were quickly as chipped and torn as the mosaic, but the fit was too snug: I could not work anything loose. Even the blade of my knife was too thick.

‘Look at the eye,’ said Sigurd, staring down from above me. ‘The pupil.’

I twisted about and looked in the god’s eye. It was formed from a dozen or so tiles in whites and blues, but the black circle at its centre was not so solid. In fact, it was a hole, just wide enough for a man’s finger. I poked my forefinger in, and pulled away a round fragment containing the eye and its socket. In the recess beneath, a heavily rusted iron ring lay set in mortar.

‘Help me,’ I called, tugging on it. The broader slab that held the now one-eyed god’s face was too heavy. Sigurd crouched beside me and pulled the ring, lifting the disc free of the ground. Eager Varangian hands slid it away, as a wide black void opened in front of us.

‘We’re not going in there without light.’ Sigurd pulled a dry branch from the undergrowth and wrapped its end in dry grass and leaves. Taking the steel from the pouch on his belt, he struck streams of sparks from the flinty rock until the makeshift torch flared alight.

‘I’ve rescued you from dark holes before,’ he warned me. ‘This time, I go first.’

Even with the added bulk of his armour, he fitted easily through the opening. It was not deep, for as his feet reached the bottom the crown of his head was still level with the ground and he had to crouch to press forward into the tunnel beyond. An isolated arm reached back into the well of sunlight to claim first his axe and then the torch. After a brief interval, and a muffled shout that all was safe, I followed him down.

It must have been a millennium or more since the passage was cut, yet its brick-vaulted roof still held up the weight of the ages. I could see little, for Sigurd had already advanced some way ahead, but I felt the floor sloping gradually down as it led me deeper into the rock, under the cliff. I moved hesitantly, keeping my hands pressed against the mossy walls and wondering what devilment might lurk in the darkness ahead of me. Once, during my childhood at the monastery in Isauria, one of the monks had taken the novices into the hills, to the ruins of a temple where our ancestors had worshipped their false gods and idols. The building had been a wreck, its roof staved in and its marble long since plundered to adorn churches, yet still I had felt the ageless evil lingering in the crumbling stones. As the moon rose, the monk had told us of the blood sacrifices our forebears had made to their gods of violence and vengeance, had spoken such vivid warnings against the long arm of the devil that eventually I became convinced that Satan’s dark fingers were poised behind me, waiting to snatch me away. Although I had since seen more of the works of Lucifer than I dared to remember, in the black confines of that tunnel I once again felt the pricking evil of his hand stretching towards me.

‘Look at this.’

I had at last caught up with Sigurd, some thirty paces down from the entrance, where the tunnel opened out into a square chamber. The bricks which had lined the walls before now gave way to solid rock, except on the far side where a doorway led on to a second chamber briefly visible in the light of Sigurd’s torch. The smoke stung my throat and eyes, but I could see where he pointed. In the middle of the floor at our feet, a heap of ash and half-burned branches.

‘This is recent,’ I murmured. ‘What is beyond?’

‘Come and see.’

I followed Sigurd through the far opening and into the room beyond. It was longer than the antechamber, some fifty feet in all, with a gently curving roof and a floor laid with mosaics. On either side, the rock had been carved into benches worn smooth with use, while the plastered walls were covered in faded paintings. At the back, a stone altar stood raised on a dais.

It was as well that Sigurd held the torch, for I might have dropped it in shock. As it was, even his stout arm wavered. The images on the wall were grotesque, fantastical: processions of men with the heads of beasts and fowl; insects crawling out of the earth; a hand reaching from a tomb. The fiendish iconography continued on the ground, where a simple progression of mosaic tiles showed the silhouettes of more creatures, and dark symbols that I did not recognise. Halfway along the cave they vanished under a dark wave which had evidently been spilled across the floor.

‘It’s as well the bishop can’t see us now,’ Sigurd whispered. His voice was faltering, and it was only with the reluctance of a chained prisoner that he moved forward.

‘What is this place?’ The black veneer cracked and crumbled underfoot, and I could see pale imprints where boots other than mine had trod before it dried. I had a sickening feeling that I could guess its substance; its origin I did not care to guess. I touched my chest, where the silver cross hung under my armour, and prayed for a shield against the evils of this cave.

‘This is a place where we should not be.’ Sigurd held his torch before the altar, illuminating the frieze in its face. A man in a conical cap was wrestling with a bull, one arm grasping its neck while the other plunged a sword into its side. Blood gushed from the wound, while carrion-hungry animals looked on.

‘It must be some temple of the ancients.’ I did not recognise the gods from the poems and stories of the past, but I knew how profligate and varied their pagan deities had been. ‘But what did four knights from the Army of God purpose here?’

Sigurd gave no answer. Resting his axe against the altar, he stepped away into the corner of the cave where he crouched down, reaching for something. As he turned back I almost shrieked, for in his hand he now brandished a cloven hoof.

‘If the devil’s about, he’ll be limping,’ he said, with more cheer than I could summon. ‘Although I never heard that he had the feet of an ox.’

Trembling, I took the hoof from him. It gleamed in the torchlight, shadow deepening the furrow between the two toes. As he had said, it looked as though it had come from a cow or an ox, though in that heathen place I trusted nothing. I passed it back to Sigurd, remembered the harlot’s words by the riverside: They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly.

‘What do you think . . . ?’

I could not bring myself to finish the question, but Sigurd was less oppressed by our surroundings. He tossed the hoof in his hand and looked again at the images on the walls. ‘What do I think they did here? I think they did what we all would do with a bullock and a hidden cave. I think they ate.’

ι

We left the valley, so full of fruit and sin, and hurried back towards the city. For a time, the mysteries of the cave had numbed me to the danger of the Turks, but now I was forever glancing behind me, starting at every brushed leaf or snapping twig in the undergrowth by the roadside. I could not shake the fear that I had entered where I should not have gone, and that I might yet pay a divine price.

‘You saw the image on the altar,’ I pressed Sigurd. ‘A man killing a bull, doubtless in some pagan rite. If Drogo and his companions went down there with a bullock, it can only have been to one purpose.’

Sigurd shook his head, though his eyes never left the road ahead. ‘At least two of them loved Christ so much that they had themselves carved head to toe with crosses. Do you think they would be the kind of men to make sacrifices to gods who have been forgotten for a thousand years?’

‘Do you rather think that they travelled miles into a dangerous land, happened upon a secret temple that had been buried for centuries, and used it to cook lunch?’

‘I can think of other pursuits they might have enjoyed down there – and better reasons for going to a valley full of eager women.’

‘Even for men who had carved themselves with pious crosses?’

Sigurd snorted. ‘Perhaps . . .’ He paused. ‘What’s that?’

I stopped, my hand dropping to my sword. ‘What?’

Even as I asked the question, I heard it myself: a rumble in the air, as of distant thunder or tumbling rocks. But it did not cease or fade; instead, it grew ever louder, more ominous, the rushing approach of pounding hooves. I looked at the shallow valley around me, but the scrubby vegetation was too sparse to hide us and we would never reach the ridge in safety.

‘Form line!’ Sigurd wheeled about so that we faced back towards Daphne and dropped to one knee, setting his huge shield before him. His men fanned out beside him, locking their own shields into a wall, though it was barely enough to span the road. I squeezed in beside Sigurd, drawing my sword and thinking feverishly of Anna, of my daughters Zoe and Helena, and of the malignant curse which had attached to me in the cave.

‘We should have spears,’ the Varangian on my left muttered. ‘With spears, we might have a chance against them.’

‘Not against their arrows.’ Sigurd dug the butt of his axe into the ground and seemed ready to say something more. But at that moment the debate was cut short as horsemen cantered into view. Peering over the rim of Sigurd’s shield, I could see their horses’ gaunt necks thrusting forward, the spray of mud they kicked behind them, and the long spears their riders held erect. My low vantage kept me from seeing any but the leading riders and the churning mêlée of legs beneath, but the raised spears seemed to stretch too far back for hope.

‘Tancred!’

Sigurd spoke as the cavalry slowed their advance, and the momentum which had pulled their standard out behind them gave way to a breeze which whipped it into our sight. All of us recognised it, the blue and crimson stripes surmounted with a rearing bear. It was the banner of Tancred, Bohemond’s nephew and lieutenant. Not one of the Varangians relaxed his guard.

The Normans stopped a few paces away, grim figures in their coned helmets and mail. After a discomforting pause, their leader trotted forward.

I had heard it rumoured, once, that he was the half-bred son of a Saracen, and there was certainly nothing in his features to deny it. Unlike most of his kinsmen, his hair and eyes were dark, the former spilling out in curls over his coif, the latter still immature, lacking confidence. Even after all the privations of the siege he still filled his armour, though he was smaller than Bohemond or Sigurd. At the age of twenty, his face had taken on the set of command but had not yet left behind the scars and pimples of youth. On the battlefield, I knew, his recklessness made men fear to serve him.

‘Greeks,’ he said, staring down on us. Despite the bear on his banner, his voice was more a chirrup than a growl. ‘You are far from home.’

‘Nearer than you,’ I answered.

‘What brought you here? I did not expect to find a Greek risking his skin where the Turks prowl.’

‘Foraging.’

Tancred’s horse, a dappled stallion, skittered uneasily. ‘Did you find food?’

‘Only this.’ Sigurd picked up the bullock’s hoof from where he had dropped it and tossed it up to Tancred. With a spear in one hand and a heavy shield on the other, Tancred could do nothing but watch it fall to the ground. He laughed.

‘Is that all? We have been foraging too – but to greater avail.’ He gestured forward with his spear arm. One of the men behind him loosed something from his saddle pommel and threw it forward, sniggering as it landed in front of us. I closed my eyes, trying to stop up my throat as the lifeless eyes of a Turk’s head gazed at me from the mud.

‘We have a score more, if you wish to see them,’ Tancred bragged. ‘Tribute to my uncle.’

‘Doubtless he is worthy of the gift.’

‘Worthier than a eunuch and his army of catamites and traitors.’ Tancred kicked his horse forward and reined it in just above us. ‘What are so few Greeks doing so far from the city, so feebly armed?’

‘Get off your horse and I will show you how feeble we are,’ Sigurd challenged him.

‘Perhaps you have an understanding with the Turks? Perhaps you have the safe passage of ambassadors?’ The bite in Tancred’s taunts seemed yet more dangerous because of the childish voice in which he spoke them. ‘What business does the King of the Greeks have with the Sultan? Would you make an alliance with him against us, divide up our lands as the wages of treachery?’

‘We came only to forage,’ I repeated. I could see the Normans growing restless, the spears inclining towards us.

‘I will leave my uncle to judge the truth of that. Unless I choose to bring him a dozen more trophies.’

‘He would prefer me alive.’ I needed all the strength of Sigurd’s shield to keep from shaking as I tried to deflect the murderous Norman. ‘Indeed, I am in your uncle Bohemond’s employ.’

‘Why would my uncle waste one bezant on a Greek?’ The disbelief was plain on Tancred’s young face. ‘What is your name?’

‘Demetrios Askiates.’

‘I have never heard him speak of you.’

‘He asked me to find the killer of Drogo of Melfi.’

‘Drogo?’ The name was clearly known to Tancred, but I never discovered whether it would have provoked aid or anger, for at that moment – for the second time in the afternoon – we were interrupted by the noise of galloping hoofbeats. They came from the direction of the city, and in an instant Tancred’s lieutenants were shouting at their men to form a rough line across the valley. Sigurd and I and the rest of the Varangians loosed our ranks, so as not to block the way, and turned to face the new danger.

‘There should be no other Christians in these hills.’ Tancred stared down the road. ‘It must be Turks.’

‘If we’re lucky, it may be a grain caravan,’ said one of the Normans nearby.

Tancred looked at him in scorn. ‘Do you think that is the sound of laden mules?’

It was not. Hardly had the words been spoken when the horsemen came around the bend at the bottom of the valley, a squadron of twenty or so Turkish cavalry. The brass inlay on their helmets, poking out from the turbans wound about them, gleamed in the sun; some carried spears, while others had bows slung across their shoulders. They could not have expected to meet us, for they rode unprotected in a loose column.

‘Charge!’ shouted Tancred, tucking his spear under his arm. He spurred his horse, and the Norman line swept into motion, gathering pace as it advanced down the slope. There must have been fifty of them, and if they could close swiftly enough they might yet trap the Turks in their column. Sigurd and our company stayed where we were.

The Turkish horses were smaller than the Normans’, but they had an agility and an affinity with the uneven land which their adversaries could not match. The moment they had come within sight of the Normans, the Turks had wheeled about and begun their retreat. Already they were almost at the steep bluffs around which the road disappeared, though the curve seemed to slow them, allowing the Normans to close.

‘If Tancred gets any nearer, he’ll have to duck,’ Sigurd observed.

Sure enough, a second later three of the Turks swivelled in their saddles and loosed a volley of arrows at the leading Normans. The horses swerved and shied, almost throwing their riders, and the distance between the two forces widened. Once they were past the cliff the Turks would have an almost straight road back to the city, and the Normans would be hard pressed to catch them.

Looking down the valley after the fleeing horsemen, I let my gaze wander. In the gap where the road rounded the cliff I could see the green valley descending towards the river beyond; up on my right, the ridge of the valley followed the line of the road until it ended in the bluffs.

I paused, keeping my gaze fixed on the cliff. The main body of the Normans were under it now yet it seemed I could see something glinting above. It could not be the Turkish riders, for they would have needed winged steeds to climb it. Perhaps it was a spring, or a puddle.

‘Christ’s shit.’ Sigurd spoke it so mildly that at first I thought he must have dropped his shield on his toe, or pricked himself on a briar. Then I saw where he looked, and the obscenity was on my lips also. As if smitten by an unseen hand, two of the Normans had fallen from their horses at the foot of the cliff. Even as I watched, one of the other animals collapsed onto its knees. The heights above, where I had imagined I saw a puddle, now bristled with archers who were pouring arrows over the precipice.

‘Come on.’ Shouldering his shield, Sigurd grabbed my arm and dragged me after him, running across the slope of the valley towards the cliff. His men followed as we stumbled through the gorse and rocks, the sound of our bouncing armour jangling in my ears. My thighs burned with the effort; with every step my legs had to be kept from sliding away down the hillside. With the footing so treacherous I could risk only the briefest glances forward, and I prayed that the Turks on the cliff ahead were too preoccupied with their attack to look back.

Following Sigurd, we came around the crook of the valley and crested the ridge on its northern arm. From where we stood, it ran down gently to the head of the cliffs where the Turkish archers still loosed their arrows on the unseen Normans below. We crouched in the shadow of a boulder as Sigurd swiftly counted them.

‘Twenty-three,’ he announced.

‘Two to one,’ I said.

‘Not if you count a Varangian worth three of them. We’ll advance in line, quietly. If they see us, close ranks and make the shield wall. They’re isolated on that promontory, and without their horses. Get close enough, and we’ll deny them their favourite tactic.’

‘What’s that?’

Sigurd grinned. ‘Running away.’

It was a tactic I would happily have embraced myself, but I had no choice. Already we were moving on, spilling out from the shelter of the rock and advancing slowly down the loose scree towards the enemy. Mimicking the Varangians around me, I dropped into a low crouch with my shield held before me. Sweat trickled from under my helmet, running down behind the nose-guard, while I fervently wished I had painted my shield some colour other than red. Still the distance between us closed, and still they did not see us: I could hear their bowstrings snapping now, and the screams of men and horses echoing up from the road below.

‘Now,’ said Sigurd from my right. ‘We’ll sweep them off that cliff. Just be sure you don’t get between them and the edge. We—’

Whether the Turks heard him, or whether one of them turned back, I did not see, but no sooner had Sigurd spoken than a great infidel shout rang out from the cliff. Some already had arrows nocked, and they turned in an instant to loose them at us. From either side of me came the ringing crack of iron embedding itself in leather.

‘Come on,’ bellowed Sigurd. He was on his feet, drawn up to his full size like a bear facing its hunter. The axe seemed to dance in his hands. He ran down the last few yards of the slope while the arrows swarmed towards him, and slowed not an inch as he punched his shield into the face of his first adversary. The arrows which stuck from it snapped with the impact, and I saw their splinters tear great rents into the Turk’s skin as he collapsed backwards.

The rest of our company met the enemy, a crimson line of swinging axes and barbarian cries, and I realised too late that the drama of the spectacle had stilled me in my place. In every battle I had ever fought, from the mountains of Lydia against imperial usurpers to the alleys of Constantinople against mercenaries and thieves, I had begun with the same alloy of dread and anger molten in my heart; in every battle, I had forced the fury to vanquish the fear. It seemed to grow ever harder as I grew older, but still I could not fail before God and my friends. I charged forward.

No arrows flew now, for the Turks had abandoned their bows for spears and knives, but the air was still clouded with blades swooping, stabbing, hacking and biting. I threw up my shield as a spear lunged out of the fray, and managed to deflect it past my shoulder. The man who held it stumbled on, too committed to break off his attack, and in a second an almost forgotten instinct had swung my sword into his jaw. Blood gushed out of his mouth as he sank to the ground, and our stares met in shared disbelief. Then his head slumped forward, and mine jerked up to seek the next threat.

But already the battle had passed me. On horseback, or with the bow, few could equal the Turks, but on foot and face to face they were no match for the raging Northmen. A slew of their dead lay scattered on the rocky ground before me, while their last remnants made a desperate stand on the brink of the cliff. Even as I watched, Sigurd kicked one in the ribs so that he staggered back, lost his footing and flailed over the edge. Seeing the cause was lost, that they could retreat no further and fight no longer, his companions threw down their weapons and dropped to their knees.

I joined Sigurd at the cliff edge. Both of us were breathing hard, both dashed with blood and the grime that fixes itself to men in battle, both still too much in thrall to the frenzy of war to speak. Below us, I could see Tancred’s Normans huddled into a grove of pine trees just off the road. Several of them, men and horses, lay sprawled out, pierced with arrows. A little further down the road the company of Turkish archers they had originally pursued sat mounted in a line, looking up at our cliff uncertainly.

‘Get those bows,’ Sigurd barked. ‘Let them see they’re defeated.’

The Varangians, who had already begun stripping the dead of their armour, were quick to obey. Kneeling by the cliff, they loosed a desultory volley of arrows towards the mounted Turks. They did not fly with any great accuracy or range – only one struck within twenty paces of its target – but it was enough to convince our enemy. Before the last arrow had dropped, they had turned their backs to us and cantered away towards Antioch.

Suddenly I felt my limbs go as weak as straws. I sat down on a rock and surveyed our bloodstained promontory. One of the Varangians was down, his shoulder gouged by a Turkish spear, but his companions were giving him water from a flask and I guessed he would live at least long enough to see whether the rot set in. Otherwise, we had suffered few injuries. Of the Turks, meanwhile, I counted eleven dead or dying among us; some had been forced over the cliff, while others must have managed to squeeze around our line and run for safety. We would not pursue them.

Sigurd caught my gaze. Even his arm did not seem so steady as it had before. ‘Another bloody skirmish,’ he said, kicking at a loose helmet on the ground. It clattered like a cymbal as it bounced over the cliff and down to the road. ‘More scars to no purpose.’

‘We saved Tancred and his men,’ I reminded him. ‘Their gratitude may yet serve us in its turn.’

‘Their gratitude. They will feel no gratitude – only envious shame that they owe their lives to a rabble of womanly Greeks.’ Sigurd turned away. ‘And when we get back, Demetrios, we will find that this bloodshed has not loosed one pebble from the walls of Antioch.’

ι α

Sigurd’s glum prophecy proved all too accurate. No sooner had we regained the road, leaving the Turks unburied on the cliff top, than we were facing the sneers of Normans whose sudden rescue only sharpened the barbs they threw at us. Their temper was improved somewhat by the discovery of a herd of horses tethered in the next valley, doubtless left there by the archers on the cliff, but we almost started a fresh battle quarrelling over whose spoils they were. Tancred, invoking the precedence of nobility, claimed them for himself, while Sigurd bluntly reminded him what we had achieved while the Normans had been cowering in the trees. In the end, as voices rose and swords edged from their scabbards, I forced them to agree that we would take only as many mounts as we needed for ourselves, and let Bohemond adjudge the final division.

Though I was never a natural horseman, it was a blessing at last to have a beast to carry me. The long day in hostile lands, the trials of the pagan cave, and finally the murderous terror of battle had drained the strength from me, so I was content to slump in the saddle, my legs hanging loose, and let the horse walk me home. The Turkish prisoners we had taken, five of them, straggled behind us under the gaze of the Varangians.

At the ford we encountered more horsemen. Tancred spurred to meet them, churning a foamy path through the water, and greeted them as friends. Drawing near, letting the river ride up over my boots, I heard them exchange greetings in the Norman tongue.

‘You have returned safely, praise God,’ said one. ‘Three hours ago, we saw a company of Turks ride out from the St George gate. We feared you might meet them. An hour since, they returned, fewer in number.’

‘We met them,’ Tancred said. ‘And by the grace of God, we taught them that there is not one inch of this land where they can walk in safety. But how did they know to seek us? We left last night, and travelled in the dark.’

‘The enemy has many spies,’ the Norman offered.

It seemed more likely that they had seen our company of Varangians leaving in the morning, but I did not say so.

‘Too many spies,’ Tancred agreed. ‘And even now they may be watching.’ His stare seemed to settle on me. ‘We had best hurry on to the camp. Doubtless my uncle will want to know of my victory.’

We rode on, dismounting to lead our horses across the boat bridge and continuing along the well-worn path around the walls. As the crowds thickened near the camps, Sigurd had to order his men to close ranks around the Turkish prisoners, in an effort to ward off the jeers and mud and stones that the Franks hurled at them. Several times I felt my shield shiver with the impact of pebbles, and I had to stroke my horse’s neck to calm her skittish nerves. The laughter of the Normans ahead did nothing to dim the taunts.

We halted in the forlorn square of mud which served as the Norman exercise ground. Bohemond was waiting there atop his white warhorse, surrounded by a clutch of his household knights.

‘You have been in battle,’ he said coolly, his gaze darting over Tancred’s depleted company.

‘We encountered a troop of Turks,’ Tancred answered. There was still that wheedling petulance in his voice which, despite his broad frame and high charger, made him sound like a child. ‘When we gave chase, they led us into a trap. It was only by ferocious effort that we escaped it. We captured two dozen of their horses,’ he added, sensing that his story had inspired little avuncular pride.

‘How many did you lose?’

‘Eight,’ Tancred admitted.

‘Horses?’

‘Men.’ He paused, blushing. ‘Eleven horses. But I have made good the deficit, uncle. And I cannot be blamed for our losses when spies and traitors infest our camp. They knew to expect us there – and they laid their trap accordingly.’

‘Fool.’ Bohemond trotted forward until his mount was beside Tancred’s, then reached out of his saddle and slapped his nephew across the cheek. ‘A hunter may set a snare, but he cannot force his quarry to spring it. For that, he relies on the animal’s own brute stupidity.’ He kicked his horse away and stared at the Varangians. ‘And if you fought so valiantly to rout your enemy, why is it Greeks who carry the spoils and guard the prisoners?’

Tancred chose to ignore the question. ‘Why, after five months in this cursed place, are the Turks still free to ride in and out of their city as they please, and to swamp our camp with their spies?’

Bohemond looked in scorn on his nephew. ‘First learn to fight a skirmish, and leave wiser heads to govern the war. As to the spies, we will see what your prisoners can tell us of that.’

‘My prisoners,’ I corrected him. ‘We took them in the battle.’

‘While your nephew cowered behind a pine tree,’ Sigurd added, unhelpfully.

Tancred spat at him. ‘Because you were too cowardly to charge the Turks with us.’

Sigurd tapped a fist against the side of his helmet so that it rang like a bell. ‘Not cowardly – clever. Perhaps when you reach your manhood you will understand.’

‘Enough!’ Bohemond raised a fist to still us, his eyes pale with anger. ‘These prisoners will avail you nothing, Demetrios. Look at them – do you think they will command a penny’s ransom from the Turks? All they will bring you is five more mouths that you can ill afford to feed. Leave them with me, and I will see they are treated according to the laws of Christ.’

He spoke truthfully, at least as regarded their value, yet I was uneasy at consigning any man, even an Ishmaelite, to the care of the Normans. Sigurd growled a warning under his breath, while the five Turks looked on hopelessly, unable to understand the men who haggled over their fate. I caught one of them staring at me, his dark eyes wide with uncomprehending fear, and felt fresh qualms assail me.

But Bohemond would not be denied. Before I could forestall him, he had ordered his men to surround the prisoners and lead them away. A crowd of soldiers and pilgrims had gathered around the exercise ground, drawn to a quarrel like flies to a wound, and I dared not provoke any further fight. As the Turks disappeared between the tents, staring helplessly back at us, the most I could do was touch my chest where my cross hung – for the dozenth time that day, it seemed – and pray that they would be treated mercifully.

Sigurd watched them go. ‘It dishonours a man to be robbed of his prisoners,’ he said sourly.

‘It dishonours him worse to disobey his betters,’ Bohemond snapped.

‘When I meet a better man, I shall be sure to obey him.’

There was no profit in arguing further with the Normans. As ever, they gave the sense of men poised on a knife-edge, waiting for the least excuse to fall into a quarrel. Sigurd sent his company back to the camp with the horses, while he and I went in search of Quino and Odard. It seemed an age since we had stood in that pagan cave, with its blood-soaked floor and terrible altar, yet it had been only a few hours ago. Four Normans had entered that cave and only two still lived: I was eager to question the survivors before any further misfortune befell them.

The boy, Simon, was sitting outside the tent cradling a shield in his lap as he worked fat into the hide covering. For the briefest second, his eyes flickered up to greet us, then fixed back on his work.

‘Is your master present?’ I asked.

Without answering, he laid the shield on the grass and hurried through the canvas door. He did not reappear; when the flap opened again, it was Odard who emerged. Unlike most men, who had shrunk within their clothes in previous months, he seemed still too large for his tunic. It rode high above his knees and elbows, showing off limbs that were little more than bones.

‘Greek,’ he said, in his high, pecking voice. ‘You are not wanted here.’

‘Nor were the prophets in Israel – but they spoke words worth hearing.’ It was a response I had honed in many years of knocking on unwelcoming doors. It had yet to persuade anyone.

Odard’s head snapped twice to the left, as if something had surprised him, though I could see nothing. ‘The prophets of old spoke salvation. I have heard salvation. You, I think, bring only lies and spite.’

‘The prophets say: “You have forgotten the Lord your God, and made adoration of graven idols,”’ I said. ‘Does that not seem worthwhile to you?’

The tic of Odard’s head grew more pronounced, and I saw him flexing his fingers like claws. ‘I have not forgotten the Lord God,’ he protested. He pointed to his chest, where a cross of black cloth was sewn onto his tunic. ‘I live and walk in the name of Christ.’

‘And was it in the name of Christ that you uncovered a pagan temple, an evil place in the valley of Daphne?’

‘I have never—’

‘You were seen, Odard. You journeyed into the valley of sin, and your sin betrayed you. The harlots among whom you walked saw you. They saw you and your companions go down that hole with a bullock – what did you do then? Did you sacrifice it on the altar? Did you make a burnt offering to Baal, or Amun, or Zeus?’ Though I had chafed to escape my childhood in the monastery, it had at least left me a priest’s intimacy with scripture.

Odard recoiled, bunching his tunic in his hand where the cross was sewn. He would not meet my gaze, but sank his chin on his collar and gibbered nonsense to himself. At last, still not looking up: ‘They saw us go down to that hole, yes, and take the bullock too. But they did not see the truth of what we did there, did they?’ I could not tell if he spoke to me, or himself, or some invisible companion. ‘You have found me out, Greek; you have discovered my sin and I will confess it, wretch that I am. Yes, we went down that hole, with a bullock, and before God I confess we sinned. We slaughtered the animal, and burnt him and devoured him, but we did not do it for Baal or Amun, no. We did it for our own appetites, our own gluttonous greed.’

‘You dug out that forgotten cave just to eat in peace?’ I asked in disbelief.

‘Rainauld found the entrance – Rainauld. Other hands had cleared it, not ours, perhaps the whores’ or brigands’. Rainauld saw the opening and went down. We were foraging,’ he said, blinking rapidly. Dark skin ringed his eyes, so they seemed more the hollow sockets of a skull than part of a living man’s face. ‘Foraging in hostile lands we found a bullock. A bullock. In our greed, and weakness, we sinned: we did not bring it back to the camp to share with the Army of God. No. We slaughtered it and devoured it in secret, hidden in the cave where the smoke of our fire would not draw the Turks. We were sinners and we were frail and we succumbed to the urgings of our flesh. Would you do different?’

‘It’s as I told you,’ Sigurd said, never a man to shirk from triumph. ‘They went there to eat.’

We were walking slowly back to our camp through the lines of Norman tents. Dusk was approaching, but though I was left exhausted by the day I could not look forward to the night, for I feared the dreams that would visit me.

‘You believed his story?’

‘It makes sense. They had a bullock; they could not bear to surrender the least portion of it; and so they ate it in secret, hidden from Turks and Franks alike. We saw the blood where they slaughtered it and the ashes where they roasted it. What more do you need?’

‘You do not find it curious that the place they stumbled on to slaughter the animal, a hidden place we only found by great effort, chanced to be a pagan shrine with an altar showing a sacrificial bull?’

Sigurd shrugged. ‘I once knew a man they nicknamed The Boar, on account of his strength. He died on a hunt when he was gored by a boar. Was that significant? A sign of some mysterious, deeper truth? Or simply chance? There were scorpions and ravens painted on the walls of the temple as well – if a scorpion had scuttled out from the stones, would you have thought it a message from the gods?’ He clapped me on the back. ‘I believe in Jesus, the Lord God and all His Saints – and when they fail me, I sometimes turn to older gods as well. But I also believe that men eat when they are hungry, steal when they have nothing, and die when they are stabbed. I do not need ancient demons and pagan forces to explain every coincidence of this world. Speaking of eating,’ he added, ‘I smell meat cooking even now.’

I sniffed the damp air and nodded. We were almost back at the Norman exercise ground now, and though I had intended to avoid it, the aroma was too much for my famished stomach to ignore. Perhaps Sigurd was right about the bullock.

The light was receding, but as we came into sight of the muddy square I saw Sigurd’s nose had played us true. On the far side, dozens of Normans milled about the orange embers of a fire over which a carcass turned on a spit. There was a festive mood, with much laughter and shouting: for most, it would have been weeks since they had eaten a solid piece of meat.

A Norman pilgrim, bent and lined with age, hurried past me towards the fire, a knife and a bowl in his hand. I took him by the arm, flinching to see his anger at being slowed even a second from eating.

‘Has a foraging party come back?’ I asked. ‘Are there fresh flocks to provision the army at last?’

‘Fresh flocks indeed,’ he mumbled. His words were indistinct, for he had lost most of his teeth. ‘Flocks of wolves guised as sheep. They’ll come no more to this camp.’

He shook free of me and hastened on. Now I could see firelight glowing on the black limbs of the animal bound onto the spit. A man brandishing a knife stepped into the glow, his features like rusted iron. It was Tancred, free of his armour and dressed instead in a rich cloak. Bending across the coals, he carved a thick slice from the roasting carcass and gobbled it off the point of his knife. There was a strangely bitter smell coming from the meat, as if it had not been hung properly.

Tancred must have seen us coming for he turned to face me. The skin around his lips shone with a sheen of hot fat, which dribbled unchecked onto the noble cloth of his cloak.

‘Demetrios Askiates,’ he greeted me, merrily waving his knife. ‘Come and join our feast – it is your spoils, after all. There is plenty for all, though it will soon become scarce if these animals learn what fate awaits them in our camp.’

He took another great bite and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. I could see Quino behind him, laughing in the shadows; further back I thought I glimpsed a figure who could have been Bohemond. But I did not look at any of these, for my stare was fixed on the fire, unwilling to believe the sight I beheld. My stomach rose, choking to be free of me, and if Sigurd had not gripped my shoulder I would have collapsed weeping in the mud.