Siege of Heaven

TOM HARPER

SIEGE OF

HEAVEN

Also by Tom Harper

The Mosaic of Shadows

Knights of the Cross

so over many a tract Of Heav’n they marched, and many a Province wide

Tenfold the length of this terrene: at last

Far in th’ Horizon to the North appeared

From skirt to skirt a fiery Region, stretched

In battailous aspect, and nearer view

Bristled with upright beams innumerable

Of rigid Spears, and Helmets thronged, and Shields

Various, with boastful Argument portrayed,

The banded Powers of Satan hasting on

With furious expedition; for they weened

That self same day by fight, or by surprise

To win the Mount of God

– Milton, Paradise Lost

History

The fall of Rome was not the end of its empire: it lived on in the east, in the imperial city of Constantinople. A thousand years after the first Caesars, it remained the greatest power in Christendom. But new dangers threatened, and the old empire could no longer defend itself. In desperation, the emperor Alexios turned to the west – to the descendants of the same barbarian tribes which had overthrown the first Rome. He asked for mercenaries; but Pope Urban, seeing an opportunity for the papacy in its eternal struggle with secular authority, responded with something quite different. He preached a holy war, an armed pilgrimage that would fight its way to Jerusalem and free the city from the occupying Turks. All over Europe, men and women answered his call: knights and nobles, but also peasants in their ten-thousands.

The army reached Constantinople in late 1096 and, after negotiations which almost boiled over into war, swore an oath to yield up the lands they conquered to the emperor Alexios. In the summer of 1097 they stormed across Asia Minor, winning victory after victory, until at last they ground to a halt in front of the impregnable fortress city of Antioch. Eight months of gruelling siege followed until, on the cusp of destruction, the crusaders finally took the city. Not a moment too soon: within days, a vast Muslim relief army had arrived and trapped the crusaders in the city they had just laid waste. With no alternative, they broke out and despite overwhelming odds routed the Muslim army, breaking their power for a generation.

The battle for Antioch – the crisis of the First Crusade – had been won. But the Army of God was physically and psychologically exhausted, while its leaders quickly fell out over the division of the spoils they had won. The road lay open, but in August 1098, two years after the army had left home, Jerusalem still seemed as distant and impossible as ever.

I

Wilderness

August – December 1098

Requiem

The crowds gathered early: they did not have long to live. They poured out of their hovels and their plundered homes, lining the street for a full mile to see the corpse. Infants who would soon be orphans sat on their father’s shoulders, while children who would not outlive the harvest chased each other on hands and knees through the throng. Some of the more cautious tied scarves over their faces or bound their hands with cloths, but most people did not believe the threat – yet. They climbed onto the cracked roofs of the old colonnades, raised themselves on broken pillars and crowded the upper tiers of the nearby houses to see better. Many would die in the coming weeks and months, but none would enjoy as grand a funeral as this. Many would be lucky to get even a marker on their grave. So they massed in their thousands, craning for the best possible view, and perhaps understood that this one, magnificent occasion would suffice for them all.

We knew the procession had set out when the bells began to toll. Mothers hushed their children and the crowd turned its eyes to the south. The August sun had climbed over the shoulder of the mountain above the city, and there was no wind to raise the dust that clung to us. I hoped the pallbearers would not linger with the body in that heat.

Four priests swinging golden censers led the procession. Clouds of incense billowed from the wrought aureoles, hazing the fresh morning air and sweetening it. Next came eight more priests with long candles, their flames invisible in the brilliant glare of the sun. Following them, all alone, an oddity: a tall man dressed not as a priest but a pilgrim, the sleeves of his robe falling back where he raised his arms in front of him. He carried a golden casket inlaid with crystal and pearls, and his narrow eyes were closed almost to blindness by its dazzle. All in the crowd crossed themselves as he passed, for the casket contained the relic of the holy lance, the spear that pierced the side of Christ on the cross, and it was only by its divine power that we had conquered the city. So they believed.

Behind him, four knights carried the body on a bier. A white shroud wrapped it, studded with silver light where the shroud-pins fastened it. The sun breathed through the cloth and filled it with radiance, so that it became a gauzy nimbus around the corpse. I could see the outline of his body beneath it, the arms crossed over his chest. A bishop’s mitre and a wooden cross were laid over him.

Unbidden, every man about me sank to his knees and joined the swelling antiphon chanted by the priests.

May angels lead you to Paradise,

May the martyrs come forth to welcome you,

And bring you into the Holy City,

Jerusalem.

Elsewhere, I could hear pilgrims invoking his name in whispered blessings and farewells. Adhemar. God speed you to paradise. God bless you. Adhemar.

A cool tear ran down my burning cheek. I had not known Bishop Adhemar well, but I had been with him when he died and had heard his last confession. I knew the efforts he had made to shepherd the Army of God, to hold together the bitter rivalries and ambitions that drove it. I knew the anguish he had suffered in that cause. That was what had killed him – and why so many men and women who had known him only by his sermons now wept. They mourned him honestly enough, but more than that they feared for what would come after him.

The prayers died suddenly. The catafalque had passed: behind it came a procession of men, each trying to outdo the others in the opulence of his funeral dress. First in rank and precedence came Raymond, Count of Saint- Gilles: a grizzled, one-eyed man with a grey beard that seemed greyer still as he hunched over his staff. He probably meant it to appear as a pilgrim’s staff, a pious crutch, but it owed more to the illness that had recently threatened to speed him to the same fate as Bishop Adhemar. Behind him, almost treading on his shuffling heels and not hiding his impatience, strode a younger man, Bohemond. He stood a full head taller than any of the others; his dark hair was cropped short and his pale face was ripe with unencumbered pride. There was something about him that drew men’s eyes and held them, not just his size but some aura of power or danger. Certainly not love: faces hardened as he passed, and several voices took up another anthem in defiant counterpoint to the priests’ chants. The kings of the Earth are but dust. Bohemond affected not to notice.

The third man in the party walked a little apart from the others, a fair-haired man with broad shoulders and a full beard – Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine. By most men’s judgement he was the most powerful of the princes after Bohemond and Raymond, and more powerful still for being wise enough to keep out of their quarrels. He held himself stiffly, staring past the men in front of him and keeping his eyes fixed on the bier ahead.

The column passed on: counts and dukes, princelings and knights, bishops and priests. The crowds flooded in behind them as soon as they had passed. Ahead, the bier had reached the cathedral, and I could see the great, graven doors swing open to admit the body to the sanctuary. Above it, the church’s silver dome reflected the light of heaven. The priests now had a new song:

You made me of the earth

And clothed me with flesh:

O Lord, my redeemer, raise me up

On the last day.

As the nobles took their places by the open grave under the dome, the mob behind struggled to squeeze through the doors. I was among them. A spiteful frenzy gripped them, more like rats fleeing fire than mourners entering a holy place, but I had earned my living long enough in the crowded streets of Constantinople and knew how to wield my elbows to good effect. Jabbing and poking, I crossed the threshold of the church and jostled my way across the sanctuary until the sheer choke of bodies blocked any further progress.

At the far end of the church, the burial had begun. The body had been lifted off its bier and now lay suspended over the grave on silken ropes, while the assembled princes knelt by the grave. Count Raymond had clasped his hands tight before him and rocked back and forth on his knees; Bohemond bowed his head, though it still twitched with surreptitious, guarded movements. Beyond them, I could see two dark figures waiting in the shadows with spades upturned like reaping hooks – the gravediggers. They would have had an easy time of it, for the grave had been excavated only seven weeks earlier. The relic of the holy lance, now cased in its golden reliquary, had been found at the bottom of the hole, though some said it looked more like a roofer’s nail than the tip of a spear. Adhemar himself had struggled to believe it, had been almost embarrassed to endorse its power. I did not think he would have chosen to spend eternity buried in its place.

A silent chorus of marble saints looked down as the body descended into the pit. A groan rumbled around the silvered dome as the lid of the sarcophagus was drawn into place. At the head of the grave, the patriarch of Antioch made the sign of the cross, then threw a sprig of laurel into the hole, while the congregation sighed a wistful farewell, like the sound of a sword sliding out of a dying man’s chest.

‘May God forgive his sins with mercy,’ the patriarch intoned. ‘May Christ the Good Shepherd lead him safely home. And may he live in happiness for ever, with all the saints, in the presence of the eternal King.’

Amen.

A spade rasped on stone as the gravediggers began filling the hole with earth.

α

They held the funeral feast at the palace, a sprawling accumulation of ramshackle courtyards and mismatched towers at the southern end of the city. A crowd of mourners had already gathered outside the gates, waiting for the scraps and crumbs to come after the feast, while a company of Norman knights leaned on their spears and glared at them. I was more favoured. I passed through the gatehouse into the outer courtyard, drawing mean glares from the Normans. I had my own place in the scheme of their enemies.

Priests and nobles of greater and lesser degrees thronged the courtyard, while smells of roasting meat and burning fat coated the hot air. I took a cup of wine from a servant and sipped it, keeping to the anonymous shade by the wall. I had worn my best tunic and boots, trimmed my beard, oiled my hair and tied a fresh bandage on my arm, but I did not belong among these people. I was too common – and, worse, a Greek. That I was there at all I owed to the cowardice of better men. I had come with the Army of God as an observer – a spy – but when my superior officer, the infinitely more glorious Tatikios, had departed Antioch in haste I had become, for lack of alternative, the emperor’s ambassador. I even wore his signet ring, bequeathed to me by Tatikios before he fled Antioch in fear of his life. I would happily give up the role.

‘Demetrios Askiates.’ I turned at the sound of my name to see the patriarch of Antioch at my side. He had remained in the city throughout the Turkish occupation, even during the eight months that the Franks had besieged it, and he had paid terribly for his faith. At times the Turks had hung him from the battlements and invited our archers to attack; at other times they had caged him atop a tower, or burned him with hot irons. I could not imagine how he had endured it, but once we had driven the Turks from the city he had taken up his cope and staff and returned to his seat in the cathedral. Even the Franks, who despised and distrusted the Greek church, deferred to him.

He looked out across the courtyard. ‘How many more times do you think we will see all the Franks gathered together in peace?’

I shrugged. ‘As long as it takes to reach Jerusalem, I suppose.’

‘I hope so. With Bishop Adhemar gone, they have lost their guiding compass. There are too many among them with power, and none with authority. And they still have far to go.’

‘Too far for me, Father.’

The patriarch lifted an eyebrow. ‘You are not going to Jerusalem?’

‘No.’ I was defiant. ‘By the time I get home I’ll have been away for well over a year. I have two daughters I have neglected and – God willing – a grandson I have never seen. The road to Jerusalem only takes me further from home, and into worse dangers.’

‘What will the emperor say?’

I did not answer. Any excuse would have sounded feeble – shameful, even – to a man who had endured what the patriarch had suffered. Mercifully, he did not judge me.

‘God calls each of us on different paths,’ he said. I could not tell if he meant it as a consolation or a warning. ‘But before He calls you back to Constantinople, I have a task for you. There is someone . . .’ He tailed off as his eyes darted across my shoulder; I half-turned to follow. A pair of Latin bishops were waiting there, evidently keen to speak with the patriarch. He gave them a pleasant smile and steered me aside with a gentle nudge of his elbow. ‘I will find you later.’

I had no one else to speak to: the patriarch and I were the only Greeks there, and I was too insignificant to attract anyone else’s attention. I could gladly have left that moment: left the decrepit palace, the city, the country itself, and run home to Constantinople. I longed to. But I was the emperor’s representative, however humble, and that brought certain obligations. Antioch had been a Byzantine city until thirteen years earlier, when the Turks captured it, and the emperor Alexios had not called this barbarian army into being just so that they should possess it in place of the Turks. He coveted it: partly for the riches of its trade, partly as the key fortress of his southern border, partly for pride. But Bohemond would sooner hand Antioch back to the Ishmaelites than surrender it to the emperor, despite having sworn an oath to do so. As long as I remained there I reminded him of his obligation, a human token for the emperor’s claim. It was not a comfortable position.

I toyed with the signet ring on my finger, watching the sunlight reflect off its broad disc and play over the surrounding faces. I did not doubt the sincerity of their mourning but I could already see it fading, buried in the earth beneath the cathedral. One man looked to have been particularly quick to get beyond his grief – which perhaps explained why he stood alone. Tall, gangly and hooknosed, he might have taken pride of place in the funeral procession, but here he was shunned.

His eyes met mine, narrowed with hostility, then relented enough to decide my company was preferable to his solitude. I might have decided otherwise, but before I could slide away he had ambled over and was peering down on me, hunched over like a crane.

‘Peter Bartholomew.’ I greeted him without enthusiasm. ‘It seems we’re both beggars at this feast.’

He bridled, as I knew he would.

‘On this day of all days, they should remember me. Without the lance – the lance that I found – the bishop’s legacy would be nothing but bones and dust.’

It was probably true. It was Peter Bartholomew who had received the remarkable – some said incredible – vision that told him where the lance was buried, and Peter Bartholomew who had leaped into the pit and prised out the fragment with his bare hands when everyone else had given up. The same pit that was now Bishop Adhemar’s grave.

‘The princes have short memories,’ I said noncommittally.

‘So short they even forget why God called us here. Look at Bohemond.’ Peter gestured to his right, where Bohemond was deep in conversation with Duke Godfrey. Unusually, both men seemed to have dispensed with the hosts of knights and sycophants who usually surrounded them. ‘He has Antioch, and that is enough for him.’

‘Not if the emperor has his way,’ I said. Peter ignored me.

‘The army is greater than any of the princes. You saw the pilgrims at the procession this morning: they are already angry that we have not yet moved on to Jerusalem. With Adhemar gone, who will they trust to speak for them honestly when the princes meet?’

Unlike any army before it, the Army of God had not been summoned by kings or compelled into being by circumstance: it had been preached into existence for a war of pilgrimage. Knights and soldiers had answered the call, but so had peasants, in vast numbers. They offered no service save drudgery, and required far more in supplies and protection than they earned. Yet in the strange world of the Army of God they were esteemed for their innocence; they had a righteousness of purpose that none of the knights or princes could claim, and were thus endowed with a special sanctity.

I stared at Peter. The naked hope was plain on his crooked face, and pitiable. For a few happy days he had been the army’s salvation, the finder of the lance and the saviour of Antioch. Now the memory was fading and he was ebbing back towards obscurity. I could see how it wounded him, how desperate he was to snatch back his waning eminence.

‘Other men have tried to put themselves at the head of the pilgrims,’ I warned him, ‘and it has never ended well.’ The first man to do so, a self-styled hermit also named Peter, had led the pilgrims with assurances of divine immunity from swords and arrows. A single, terrible battle had proven the emptiness of that promise.

‘God made you a vessel for His purpose and granted you a wonderful vision.’ It was hard to believe that anyone would have chosen Peter Bartholomew for such a purpose – but perhaps it was ever so with visionaries. ‘That is more than most men can dream of in a lifetime.’

He bridled again, snapping his head angrily, though this time I had not intended to provoke him. ‘Most men never dream at all. They crawl the earth like pigs, snouts to the ground, never stopping to wonder why the farmer bothers to feed them. God’s plan for me did not end when I found the lance – it has barely begun. And when it comes to His fullness, these fat princes will curse themselves for treating me like a peasant.’

His voice had risen, far louder than was wise in the company of the men he vilified. He realised it now, and stared around in wild defiance to see if he had provoked any reaction. To his immediate relief, and then anger, none of the surrounding lords paid him the least attention.

‘They will notice me soon enough,’ he mumbled. Forgetting me, he pushed away through the crowd.

I sighed. I knew too much of his history – the immoral diseases that ravaged his body, the flirtation with heresy that had almost cost him his life – to be taken in by his delusions, but I still pitied him. I could guess how he felt. Little more than a year earlier, I had walked freely in the halls of the palace at Byzantium – had even, for brief moments, been a confidant of the emperor. Now I lingered in the wilderness beyond the fringes of civilisation, not as punishment or in disfavour but simply because life had brought me there.

Talking with Peter Bartholomew had drawn me out of the shade, into the centre of the courtyard where the sun beat down. I looked for another cup of wine to cure my thirst, knowing I would regret it later, but there was none to be seen. I wandered along the fringes of the crowd, scanning for familiar faces and wondering what errand the patriarch intended for me.

‘And will you go on to Jerusalem?’

The voice was so close, the question so much in my own mind, I thought it must have been spoken to me. It was only when I turned that I saw my error: the speaker was standing with his back to me, oblivious to my presence, while his companion stood beside him. Both were dressed in richly woven robes, and golden threads picked out the sign of the cross on their sleeves. With a start, I recognised Duke Godfrey and Bohemond.

‘I took my oath to pray beside Christ’s tomb,’ Bohemond answered Godfrey. ‘But I am not in a hurry. Too many questions demand my attention in Antioch for the moment.’

‘Count Raymond may have his own answers to those questions.’

Bohemond made a swatting gesture with his hand. ‘There will only be one lord in Antioch, and it will not be Count Raymond. Nor the king of the Greeks either.’

Godfrey made no sound of argument. Instead: ‘The road to Jerusalem will be longer and harder without your army.’

Again, Bohemond waved his concerns away. ‘Our victory over the Turks has broken them for a generation. With a strong Antioch defended at your back, you could be in Jerusalem in a fortnight. If you still mean to go.’

From behind, I saw Godfrey nod slowly. ‘I will go.’

‘To honour your oath?’ There was a taunt in Bohemond’s voice.

‘To honour God – and to answer the destiny written for me.’

Bohemond laughed. ‘Written in your book?’

‘Written in my book,’ Godfrey agreed. There was no laughter in his voice.

‘And what book is that?’

The cheerful question rang out behind me. Godfrey and Bohemond turned with a start, and suddenly I was trapped between them and the patriarch, who had emerged from the crowd unnoticed and now stood there, smiling and expectant.

‘A book of wisdom,’ Godfrey answered brusquely.

The patriarch nodded. ‘Good. We need God’s wisdom to guide us, especially now that Adhemar has gone. He was a good and wise man. Your army will miss him.’

Bohemond pursed his lips and made a noise like a horse farting. ‘A good man? You can’t kill Turks and Saracens with goodness. Or even wisdom.’

‘It takes wisdom to hold an army together – especially if it is to reach its destination.’ The patriarch stared at Bohemond calmly. ‘But perhaps that is no longer your concern.’

‘As if it was ever a concern of the Greeks.’ Without waiting for a reply, Bohemond drained his cup and barged away into the crowd. Godfrey waited a moment, fixing me with a harsh gaze of suspicion, before following. Though it seemed I had not been the only one eavesdropping: as Godfrey moved away, I saw Peter Bartholomew loitering artlessly nearby.

‘Demetrios.’ The patriarch was still there, watching me expectantly. ‘Let me introduce you to . . .’ He trailed off as he scanned the crowd. Whoever he was seeking, he did not find him; instead, on the other side of the courtyard, Count Raymond caught his eye and came limping towards us. The patriarch sighed.

‘But here comes Count Raymond. He is upset to hear you will be leaving us.’

‘I’m glad there will be someone who misses me.’

Count Raymond halted and swivelled his single eye towards me. Even after his illness it still retained a furious power. ‘I have been your emperor’s most constant ally, and it has won me few friends among the other princes. It has even tested the loyalty of many of my own men. If you leave now, you as good as surrender the city to Bohemond.’

‘The emperor has not abandoned you,’ I assured him. ‘He has sent a new ambassador to Antioch. When he arrives, I will go home.’

‘An ambassador? Not the emperor himself?’ For a man who had fought more battles than Caesar, Count Raymond seemed suddenly vulnerable, like an expectant child looking for his father.

‘The emperor has an empire to govern. He is needed in Constantinople, and cannot allow himself the journey to Jerusalem.’

‘Hah. It will be a long time before we see Jerusalem. First we must decide what to do with Antioch. Bohemond will not surrender it easily.’

‘Would you fight him for it?’ I asked.

Raymond’s eye narrowed. ‘I have the noblest title, the largest army and the richest treasury. I have the support of both your emperor and the peasant mob. Most of all, I have the holy lance. It is a compelling claim. Hard to resist, if any man was so foolish.’

In my mind’s eye, I saw Adhemar’s shrouded body in the cold earth beneath the cathedral. These were exactly the wounds he had struggled to bind together: he would be turning in his grave to hear them torn open again so soon.

‘If you are not careful, there will be nothing left to fight over,’ observed the patriarch quietly. ‘Adhemar will not be the last victim of the disease that claimed his life. In the fields outside the city there are already more gravediggers than farmers.’

I had noticed it too. Hardly had we seen off the physical threat of the Turkish army than a new, invisible enemy had insinuated itself into our ranks. At first in ones and twos, then in dozens and scores, men had started to sicken and die. Flush with victory, we had ignored it too long – and soon we would be dying in our thousands. Out of habit, I reached to my chest to touch the silver cross that had hung there but it was gone, gifted to a dead man, and could not help. Grant me time enough to see my family again, I prayed silently. At least that.

‘Even Bohemond cannot fight the plague,’ said Raymond. ‘The rumour is that he will retreat up the coast until it has passed.’

‘It would be unwise to try to take advantage of his absence,’ warned the patriarch.

Raymond laughed, a wet and ragged old man’s laugh. ‘Never fear, Father. I have not survived sixty-three winters to throw my life away conquering a plague city. I will go south a little way, and watch Bohemond from there.’ He swept his arm around the gathering. ‘I will not be the only one. Now that the funeral is done, they will scatter. By nightfall there will not even be a squire left in Antioch.’

He excused himself to go and speak with some of his lieutenants. The patriarch watched him go.

‘The sooner he reaches Jerusalem the better.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘So that he and Bohemond are out of your way?’

The patriarch shook his head. ‘Because otherwise he will tear himself in two. He has sworn to reach Jerusalem and free it from the Turks, and that is a sacred oath. But he cannot bring himself to let go of Antioch. He must choose between his conscience and his pride. I fear the choice may break him.’

‘It had better not, he is the only ally we have here.’

‘Then we must pray for him.’

For a few moments, we both watched the milling crowd in silence. Then, with a murmur of recognition, the patriarch tugged on my sleeve and led me briskly across to the colonnade at the edge of the courtyard. A tall man in a black habit lounged against one of the pillars, stripping a chicken bone with his teeth.

‘This is the man I wanted you to meet – Brother Pakrad.’

The patriarch seemed delighted to have found him; I was more wary. He did not look much like the monks I had known during my own brief spell as a novice, fragile souls with faded eyes and stooped backs from their lifetimes of poring over manuscripts and prayers. The black stains beneath his fingernails and on his cracked teeth were not ink but grime, and there was a strength in his arms that had not come from carrying a breviary. The bald patch of skin on the crown of his skull seemed fresh and livid, with little welts of blood where the razor had cut.

‘Brother Pakrad has come from the monastery of Ravendan. In the mountains, north-east of here.’ The name meant nothing to me. ‘It is in ruins. The Turks sacked it when they captured Antioch.’

I glanced at the monk. He was surely too young to have been even a novice at the time. Nor did the memory seem to stir him much.

The patriarch leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘The Turks razed the monastery and plundered it, but they did not find its greatest treasure. The relic of Saint Paul’s hand.’

‘His right hand,’ added the monk. ‘The same hand that held the pen that wrote the epistles.’

I sighed. I did not want to offend the old patriarch’s faith, but nor could I hide my dismay. ‘I have seen enough relics on this campaign.’

To my surprise, the patriarch nodded. ‘Of course. The hand of a saint, even the greatest of saints, can only point a man towards God. It cannot make him holy. But sometimes we must be shown the way.’ He gave a weary smile. ‘I hold an ancient office, Demetrios, established by Saint Peter himself. Compared to the men who have held this seat, I am like a child scrambling over his father’s chair.’

‘No one could fault you,’ I objected. The words sounded clumsy.

He waved my intervention aside. ‘Who can say how God will judge us? For now, I must try to rebuild the church in this ruined city. There is no lack of piety among the Franks, but they have little faith in Greeks.’ He sighed. ‘Saint Paul’s hand will not make them love us, but at least it will add weight to our cause.’

The crowds around us had ebbed away, drawn towards the hall where the feast was almost ready. The three of us were alone in the sweltering courtyard.

‘I need you to find this relic for me.’ The patriarch fixed me with his tired eyes. ‘Brother Pakrad knows where it is hidden.’ He lifted a hand to halt my argument. ‘Take a dozen men and travel quickly. You will need four days to reach the monastery, and four days to return. By then, God willing, your replacement will have arrived and you can go home.’

A bell tolled, summoning us to the feast.

β

From the moment we arrived in Antioch, we had made our camp on a stretch of the western walls between two towers. At first it had protected us from the besieging Turks, though latterly it was threats from within the city we had to guard against. The walls made austere lodgings, but we had stayed there long enough now that their hard lines and heavy stones had taken on some of the comfort of familiarity. A faded eagle flew on a banner above the northern turret, and the sweet smell of figs was ripe in the afternoon air.

I climbed the stairs at the base of one of the towers, quickening my pace. I reached the guard chamber at the top and was about to step out onto the walls when a challenge rang out.

‘Stop there.’

I stopped still. The voice was not the deep-throated bellow of a guardsman, but clear and delicate, a woman’s voice. She stepped out from behind the door, watching me carefully. Her face was mostly hidden in shadow, but I did not need to see it to know it. The long black hair bound back with a ribbon, the quick eyes that forever seemed to see an inch further than mine, the lips that could smile or frown with equal force: they were all intimately familiar to me from long hours of contemplation. Anna.

She stood about three yards from me, as though an invisible orb surrounded me.

‘You’re late, Demetrios.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Even after eighteen months’ intimacy, there were still times when she assumed the cool detachment of a physician with me. It always unsettled me. I was a widower and she had never wed: we should have married a year ago, but I had been ordered to follow the Army of God and there had been no time. I had gone with the army and she had accompanied me but even that did not soothe my anxiety. Every day we were away only stretched my fear that her patience would wear out.

She took two steps to her right, skirting an invisible boundary. ‘Did you touch anyone?’

‘I was in a crowd. It was impossible not to.’

‘Take off your clothes.’

It would have been a ridiculous demand from anybody else but I did not argue. I pulled off my boots, then unbuckled my belt and pulled my tunic and my undershirt over my head. Meanwhile, Anna had retreated behind the door and now reappeared carrying a wooden bucket and a sponge. Beyond her, loitering on the wall, I saw a group of fair-skinned men gathering to watch. No doubt they found it hilarious.

Anna stepped up to me and dipped the sponge in the bucket. I smelled the styptic fumes of vinegar, and my skin tightened as she began wiping it over my body. The soft brush of the sponge might have been erotic, but for the raw bite of the liquid and the stifled giggling in the background. When she knelt to dab at my groin, the spectators exploded with ribald mirth.

‘If I get the plague, will you wash me like that?’ one of the men called.

‘Only once I’ve amputated the infected organ,’ retorted Anna, who had spent a year living with soldiers and knew how to speak to them. She stood. ‘Open your mouth.’

I obeyed, though I doubt she saw anything but a mouthful of dust. She peered closely at my face, then walked around behind me as if examining a horse at auction. At last she was satisfied.

‘Did you eat at the funeral feast?’

‘I said I was fasting.’

‘Good.’ She took a cloth she had draped over her shoulder and tossed it to me. ‘A new tunic. I’ll wash the other in vinegar.’

‘As if I didn’t stink enough already.’

Barefoot, I followed her onto the wall, into the next tower and up to its summit. A troop of long-haired, pale-skinned barbarians lounged by the battlements. Some still wore their armour, though there had been no fighting in weeks, and most had long-hafted axes lying near them, the precious blades wrapped in fur coverings. They were the Varangians, the emperor’s elite barbarian guardsmen, my companions.

One of the men was standing with a cup of wine in his hand. In a pack of wolves you would have known he was the leader by his size; in this pack of barbarians you could tell it by the easy arrogance of his face, the commanding set of his mighty shoulders and the thick gold band around his left forearm. He had taken it from a Turkish corpse at the battle of Antioch, though I was surprised he had found one that fitted the girth of his arms. He was called Sigurd – named, he had once told me, for a legendary dragonslayer of his ancestors. Looking at him now, his beard the colour of fire, it was easy to imagine.

‘Demetrios. Late, naked and stinking of old wine.’

‘I’d rather be naked than dead.’ I pulled on the new tunic and sat back against the wall. One of the barbarians passed me a flask of wine and I drank it eagerly.

‘How was the funeral?’ asked Anna, sitting beside me and squeezing herself into the crook of my arm. ‘Did many go?’

‘Thousands.’ I wondered how many would die regretting it.

‘And the princes?’

‘They were all there. The one thing they feared more than the plague was failing to parade their piety before the masses. I doubt a single one is left in the city now.’

‘We should follow them quickly,’ said Anna. ‘The plague clouds are already gathering over this city. With no one to govern them, the mob will run riot.’

‘The clergy will stay to minister to them.’

‘Much good they will do. Those pilgrims and peasants have been too far from home too long. They are losing all restraint and reason. You can see it in their faces.’

I stretched out my tired legs. ‘We’ve all been too far from home too long. Did any ships arrive today?’

‘Three from Venice docked in Saint Simeon, I heard. They brought no one but pilgrims.’

I swore softly. Every day it was the same, waiting for the ship from Constantinople that would bring the emperor’s new emissary and free me to go home with Anna. Every day that it did not come, my spirits grew more brittle.

‘The patriarch spoke to me at the funeral feast. He has an errand for me.’ Briefly, I repeated what he had told me. When I mentioned the relic, Sigurd snorted.

‘The hand he used to wipe his shit. If the patriarch thinks that’ll win the Franks’ affection, he’ll be disappointed.’

I had known Sigurd long enough that I should not have been shocked by his irreverence, but it still made me uneasy. ‘It’s a sacred object.’

‘It’s another week before we can go home.’

‘But only a week.’ Besides, in my heart, I knew that Sigurd and I had not distinguished ourselves as guardians of the emperor’s interests at Antioch. The Turks were gone, but to have Bohemond controlling the city in their place was hardly an improvement in the emperor’s eyes. At least if we found the saint’s hand for the patriarch we might salvage something from the campaign.

I looked to Anna, hoping for support. Her face offered nothing.

‘If you die in some folly in the mountains, when you should both be sailing home to your families . . .’ She stood. ‘Anyway, while you go digging out old bones, I have living flesh and blood to attend to.’

I held her sleeve. ‘In Antioch? What about the plague?’

She shook free of me. ‘Even I know better than to imagine I can cure the plague. But there is a woman whose child is two weeks past due, and I promised I would see her.’

‘Be careful.’

‘You too. There are more than dead saints and ruined monasteries in the mountains.’

‘We’ll be back soon.’

‘And gone sooner.’ Sigurd rose. ‘If we leave now, we’ll have the cool of the evening to speed us on. Aelfric!’ He beckoned to a sergeant playing dice on a board he had scratched into the stone rampart. ‘Find a dozen men and have them ready to march in half an hour.’

He turned back to us. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner we come back. And the sooner we leave this cursed city for ever.’

γ

The Varangians could be entertaining travelling companions, but that evening they marched in single file and said little. Perhaps, after all the months spent waiting at Antioch, even they struggled to be on the march again. Perhaps it was the high rampart of the Anti-Taurus mountains looming ahead that dispirited them. Each hour that we marched, the mountains seemed to grow higher, but never closer. As for Brother Pakrad, he struck out ahead of us and stayed there, always fifty yards or so in front, his head bowed and his hands wrapped in his cowl. All I heard from him were occasional snatches of mumbled prayers when the breeze blew them back to us.

On the third day from Antioch, we reached the mountains. The air was cooler now, though the sun was no kinder, and jagged peaks towered over us. Crude terraces embanked some of the lower slopes, and a few hardy goats grazed the grass that pushed through the broken stones, but otherwise there were few signs of life.

‘Are these your monastery’s lands?’ I asked Pakrad, when a particularly steep stretch of road momentarily closed the gap between us.

He nodded. ‘Not rich, as you see. But we are simple men, and like the goats we find our living where we can.’

After a couple of miles, the valley opened out and forked into two still-higher valleys with a ridge of peaks between them. The road divided as well, and a ramshackle village had grown up at the junction. There was no inn, but we found the baker and persuaded him to sell us some bread and cheese for our lunch. We ate it in an empty field, just next to the place where the road forked. I noticed Sigurd looking at it unhappily.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘We’re not the first men to have come this way today.’ He swallowed the last hunk of bread and pointed to the road. A thin stream dribbled across it, and in the surrounding dark earth I could see the churned impressions of many hooves.

I was too far away to see them clearly. ‘Perhaps they were cattle.’

‘Have you seen any cows since we came into the mountains?’ Sigurd gestured a little further up the road, where low mounds rose like molehills in its course. ‘I know you’ve lived in the city for twenty years, but even you must be able to recognise horse shit when you see it.’

I twisted around to look at Brother Pakrad, who was, as ever, sitting a little way apart. ‘Which way to your monastery?’

He pointed right, to the north-eastern fork. ‘At the head of that valley.’

‘The horsemen went the other way.’ I explained what Sigurd had noticed.

‘Probably Franks. Perhaps they have heard of the relic and come for it themselves. We should hurry.’ He looked up. It was only a little past noon, but a haze had clouded the blue sky and our shadows were fainter. ‘It is not far now.’

Perhaps it was not, but it needed several more hours of painful drudgery to reach the monastery. The valley walls grew higher and steeper, funnelling us forward, while the hazy sky thickened into fat, dangerous clouds. We must have been very high, yet the air had not thinned. Instead, it felt heavy, pressing close around us. Pakrad was in a skittish mood, forever dancing ahead to spy out our path, while the rest of us trudged after him without enthusiasm.

After a time, Sigurd dropped back beside me and nodded at our sunken path. ‘The road ended two miles back. We’re walking on a river bed.’

‘So?’

He nodded up to the clouds. ‘So, if the storm breaks, where do you think all the water will go?’

I shouted ahead to Pakrad, ‘How much further?’

In answer, he stopped where he stood and pointed forward. Just ahead, the two sides of the valley curved together to close it off, like a vast natural hippodrome. A sheer buttress protruded where they met, as though the seams of the mountains had been pinched together. Perched on its summit I could see the remains of jagged walls and towers.

‘How do we get up there?’

‘We climb.’ Pakrad laughed, the first time I had ever heard a glimmer of humour from him. ‘It is not as steep as it looks.’

That was true: it was not completely sheer, as it had seemed from the distance, but only immensely steep. A thin path threaded its way back and forth across the mountain face: in many places steps had been carved out of the rock.

‘We’ll never get the donkeys up there,’ said Sigurd. ‘Make them fast to those trees. Everybody else, get your armour on.’ Pakrad made to protest but Sigurd silenced him with a glare. ‘I don’t want anyone losing his balance because he’s got a load on his back. And who’s to say what we’ll find in the monastery.’

The men threw down their sacks and pulled out their armour. High above us, I could see eagles wheeling against the darkening sky. I wriggled into my mail shirt and drew it snug over my shoulders, then helped Sigurd lace his arm greaves. I buckled my sword belt around my waist and slung my shield over my back. Finally, I pulled on my helmet. Suddenly, the world was a confined and muted place – and even more stultifying than it had been before.

Sigurd scowled at the path. ‘Up we go.’

As so often, the last part of the journey was the hardest. Despite the clammy heat inside the helmet, it at least trained my gaze straight ahead, always on the feet of the Varangian in front of me, preventing me from seeing the precipice by my side. The few times I did look out, I did not know whether to be terrified by the drop or dismayed by how far I still had to go. The shield on my back was forever unbalancing me, especially on the steps, which were worn smooth with age. Once the man behind me had to thrust out a palm to stop me toppling backwards.

At last, just when I feared my legs would give out completely and pitch me into oblivion, we halted. I had stopped even hoping for the path to end, and almost collided with the Varangian in front of me. At the head of the line, at the top of a last flight of stairs, Pakrad was standing in front of a door that seemed to lead into the cliff face itself. Only when I looked up did I see that, just above me, the rough rock of the cliff resolved itself into a sheer wall of square-chiselled stone. The masonry was so precise that I could hardly tell where nature’s work ended and man’s began.

‘Is this the monastery’s front gate?’ asked Sigurd sceptically.

‘Sometimes it is wiser to come in by the back door,’ said Pakrad.

With the mordant creak of long-unused hinges, the door in the cliff swung open. Just before I passed inside, I felt the first drops of rain begin to fall.

The Turks might have sacked the monastery but it would be many centuries – perhaps even to the great day of judgement – before the ruins were razed entirely. The foundations had not been erected by men: they had been carved out of the solid rock of the hilltop, so high that they towered over us as we walked through them. Together with the foundations they made a vast stone cauldron, crisscrossed with snatches of walls and strewn with megalithic rubble. They seemed even more mammoth in the wet gloom, while the walls stood stark against the leaden sky.

But someone must have been here since the Turks, for I gradually began to notice signs of repairs clumsily patched onto the mighty foundations. Cracks had been filled with bricks and mortar, while elsewhere wooden stockades had been erected in place of the old walls. A few of the chambers had even been re-roofed, with reed thatch instead of the shattered tiles that lay everywhere. I wandered through the ruins, frightening up a flock of nesting birds, but saw no one.

‘Where is this relic hidden?’ I called. The wind was stronger here on the summit, and colder, whistling through the glassless windows. My tentative words were snatched away almost before they passed my lips.

‘Here.’ Brother Pakrad’s face appeared in a doorway, beneath a broken arch whose two stumps reached towards each other like claws. ‘In here.’

I looked around. The rest of our company had scattered to search the ruins, not trusting our solitude, and I was alone. The rain was drumming harder now. Brother Pakrad beckoned me forward. ‘Come. The relic is in here.’ I ducked under the broken arch, though I did not need to, into a rounded apse where the monastery church had once stood. A part of its domed roof still arced overhead, fractured like an eggshell, but otherwise it was open. Weeds had driven cracks through the tiled floor and the icons on the walls had crumbled, so that they represented not whole men but a dismembered host, the army of the saints as they might have appeared in the aftermath of a terrible battle.

‘Over here.’

At least the remaining portion of the roof sheltered me from the rain. I followed where Pakrad led me, to a pedestal at the back of the church near where an altar must once have stood. It seemed far removed from God now.

‘Pull that stone,’ he ordered.

I knelt. It was easy to see the stone the monk meant. It had been cut to fit its niche, but not so perfectly as to hide the gaps where mortar should have held it in place. It rose slightly higher than the adjoining blocks as well, giving a purchase for my fingertips to press against. A small cross, weathered almost to invisibility, was carved in its centre.

It slid away easily when I pulled, revealing a small hollow behind. I reached in my hand and felt around in the darkness. The chamber was not large, no deeper than my elbow, and it took little time for me to establish its contents.

There was nothing there. The hole was empty.

Before I could wonder at it, a ticklish sensation under my chin caused me to raise my head. I suddenly went very still. Brother Pakrad had approached and was standing over me. He held a curved sword, pressing its blade so hard against my throat that I scarcely dared breathe.

My eyes locked on his. He carried the sword far more naturally than the cross: the blade barely trembled in his grip. In the distance, I heard sudden shouts of alarm, followed quickly by the ring of clashing steel, and the bellow of Sigurd shouting my name.

Pakrad moved the blade against my throat. It cut close as a razor – though thankfully no closer. ‘Answer him.’

I had no time to obey – or defy him. Before I could speak, a barrage of heavy footsteps ran up the passage outside the church, paused, and rushed in. Kneeling with my back to the door I could not see anything, but I heard the commotion that accompanied them, then an abrupt halt and Sigurd’s bewildered voice calling, ‘Demetrios?’

‘Put down your weapons,’ Pakrad shouted. ‘Put them down, or your friend will be the first to die.’

I could not hear if they obeyed, for suddenly the room became a pit of noise. Twisting back my head as far as I dared, I saw a small knot of Varangians surrounded on all sides by a press of armed men. More enemies were perched on top of the walls with bows in their hands, black as crows. Rain poured into the roofless church, plastering men’s hair to their heads and making their weapons slick in their hands. Those bows would be almost useless, but that would not turn the odds in our favour. Above me, the rain drummed on the fractured roof so hard I thought it might crack and bury me.

Sigurd, standing at the head of the Varangians, caught my eye. He gave a resigned shrug, though I saw he had not put down his axe. A nudge on my throat from Pakrad’s sword forced my head back around.

‘Put down your weapons,’ Pakrad repeated. The men who surrounded the Varangians were becoming agitated. ‘Put them down now.’

Over the pelting rain, I heard the defeated clatter of a heavy axe falling on stone. And then, very suddenly, a rushing of air and a sound like damp wood being chopped. The sword that had been against my neck fell to the ground as Pakrad reeled back. Blood cascaded down his cowl, pouring from the gash where a small throwing axe had almost severed his arm from his shoulder.

Instincts learned in the imperial armies and honed fine in the last year took over. I lunged for the fallen sword, snatched it up and swung it at Pakrad. But he had stumbled back, clutching his wound, and the blade swept wide. I had no time to chase him. Every man in that room had been poised a hair’s breadth from violence; now, the battle erupted. I charged back to the centre of the church, ducking away from the blades that stabbed at me, and threw myself into the besieged knot of Varangians.

‘We have to get out,’ I shouted in Sigurd’s ear. I shrugged the shield off my back and slung my arm through its straps. From the corner of my eye I saw a spear-point driving towards me and I rolled my wrists so that my blade knocked it wide. One of the Varangians behind me caught hold of the shaft and pulled it forward, unbalancing the man who held it: as he stumbled forward his head went down and exposed his neck. My sword flashed in the rain and he was gone.

A cold and bloody rage overtook me: rage that I had ignored my misgivings and walked into this trap; rage that I might never see Anna again; rage that Pakrad had betrayed us. I could see him across the room now, whitefaced and bleeding but still shouting orders at his men. They must have outnumbered us at least threefold, but they did not have the discipline of the imperial armies. A wall of shields held them at bay, and the Varangians took savage delight in battering aside the spear-thrusts and chopping off the arms that held them.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Sigurd shouted from somewhere beside me.

‘How?’

‘Back to the gate. We’ll—’

Sigurd broke off as our enemies pressed home another attack. I could hear their spears smashing and splintering on the shield rim that cased us.

Suddenly, a bright chink appeared in the dark world of our defensive circle. One of the Varangians must have dropped his guard, for a spear had transfixed his throat and blood was pouring out of it like a spigot. He dropped to his knees but could not fall, for the spear held him upright like a man at prayer. The men beside him were desperately trying to close ranks but, even in death, he blocked them. It was all the opening our enemies needed: a wedge of men and spears drove in, prising us apart, and suddenly we were in a crazed mêlée of open combat. On my left, two of the Varangians dived towards the door but were stabbed back. I knocked aside a spear-thrust with my shield but did not have the strength to counter-attack; instead, inexorably, I gave ground, my eyes flitting over the battlefield in search of allies. Where was Sigurd?

The winnowing of combat had begun to separate our sides once more. Pakrad’s men had managed to form a loose cordon that blocked off three sides of the room, forcing us back near the altar and cutting us off from the door. Where was Sigurd? The spear-thrusts were less fierce now, as if our enemies knew we were beaten and were content to prod us back into our pen. They were no less dangerous for that, and I was constantly on my guard, swatting and chopping at the stabbing points. Still they forced us back.

I saw Sigurd at last, and in my shock was almost spitted by an oncoming spear. He was not among the few Varangians beside me frantically fending off the closing noose: he was lying on the floor behind the line of our enemies, rolling and screaming in a lake of blood.

An unbidden silence suddenly gripped the bloody chamber. The line of Saracen guards stepped back, keeping their spears angled towards us, while the Varangians and I clustered together and lowered our weapons. There was blood on my hands and my armour – even, when I licked my lips, on my face – but little of it was mine. The coughing of exhausted warriors and the drumming of the rain dinned my ears after the clamour of battle.

Pakrad stepped forward. He had torn a strip from his cowl and tied it over his shoulder to stem the bleeding, though he had to lean on a spear to stay upright. ‘Surrender now.’

I spat a bloody wad of phlegm onto the floor. ‘What terms will you offer?’

That provoked a laugh. ‘Terms? When you are wriggling on the points of my spears, then I will talk of terms. Otherwise, all I offer is that if you surrender, I will spare you – for now.’

I could see by their faces that the Varangians beside me did not like that. ‘These men would rather die now than have their throats cut in your prison. You must offer them more than that.’

‘Would you believe me if I did?’

Behind Pakrad, Sigurd struggled to raise himself on his elbow. He mumbled something that was too faint to hear, though every man among us knew what he meant. More than anyone, Sigurd wanted to die well: he would not surrender. All the time I had known him he had seemed invulnerable, an animal spirit from one of his boreal legends. Seeing him now left me wanting nothing more than to empty my stomach onto the ground and weep.

Pakrad had raised his sword. ‘If you do not surrender now, I will kill the wounded first. Then I will finish you one by one. You, Demetrios, will be the last.’

‘That is barbaric,’ I muttered.

‘It is war.’

Beside Pakrad, one of his men dangled his sword like a pendulum over Sigurd’s throat. ‘Well?’

I dropped my sword, pulled my left arm out of my shield straps and let it fall to the ground. Sigurd groaned; the other Varangians looked at me with despising, hatefilled eyes. One of them – a young man named Oswald – could not stand the wound to his pride: he ran towards the line of Pakrad’s men, bellowing a war-cry and lifting his axe to strike. A long spear ran him through before he was within four feet of his enemies. He was lifted clear off the ground by the force of the blow before falling, gurgling, on his back. A second spear finished him with a thrust between his eyes.

None of the other Varangians had moved to follow him, and none did so now. Whether cowed by his fate or sickened by the waste, they threw down their axes.

With supreme derision in his moment of triumph, Pakrad turned his back on us.

‘Lock them away.’

δ

They stripped us of our armour and herded us out of the church, into a small adjoining room. Once it had probably been a chapel; now, with iron rings driven into the walls and lengths of rope and chain lying in the corners, it had become a prison. The only mercy was that it had a roof. The thatch was black with mould, and allowed a steady dribble of water to drip through, but it kept the worst of the rain off us.

Our captors tied our wrists, then made us fast to the wall on short ropes just long enough that we could sit. They treated the wounded no more gently – even Sigurd, whom they had carried there and who slumped unconscious against the wall. All told, nine of us seemed to have survived. With brusque tugs to make sure our bonds were secure, they left us alone.

I sat in the darkness, tipping my head back against the cool wall to lessen the strain on my shoulders. Despair squeezed me so tight that my body longed to empty itself: the food from my guts, the tears from my eyes, the blood from my veins. Only the presence of the Varangians kept me from collapse. The sour smell of blood overwhelmed the room, and the wounded groaned out their pain. I closed my eyes, though it made no difference.

After about an hour, Pakrad came to visit. The monk’s habit had gone, replaced by a grimy grey tunic and a leather hauberk. Three knives hung from his belt, another jutted from the top of his boot. Of his monastic disguise, only the tonsure remained – an incongruous crown to his vicious appearance.

‘We need a doctor,’ I said. ‘And water.’

Pakrad looked down on me with a sneer. ‘You will get what I give you. After you have given me what I want. He pointed to my hands, tied in front of me like a supplicant at prayer. ‘Give me your ring.’

I looked down at my left hand, to the finger where I wore the imperial signet ring. Was that what this battle was about?

‘Give me the ring,’ Pakrad repeated. He reached out his left hand, while with his right he pulled one of the knives from his belt. The blade was dull in the dim light as he slapped it impatiently against the flat of his hand.

‘Give me it.’

Instinctively, I tried to make a fist, but Pakrad was faster and had pressed his blade into my palm so that I could not close my fingers without cutting myself. He lifted the knife, so that I had no choice but to raise my hand. With a grunt of satisfaction, he twisted the ring off my finger and jammed it on his own.

‘Is that all you wanted?’ I asked in astonishment. A little ring – a ring I would gladly have thrown into the dust at the roadside to be free of my obligation to the emperor. Why had it brought me here?

Pakrad sheathed his knife and stared at the ring on his hand, admiring his trophy. I saw that he winced whenever he moved his shoulder, and I took a small measure of satisfaction from that.

‘We need a doctor,’ I said again.

He looked up. ‘Do you know what dogs do when one of their pack goes lame? They tear him apart and eat him. There is no doctor here.’ He paused, savouring my misery. ‘But I will do what I can for your friend. He will be worth less injured, and nothing at all if he dies.’

‘Worth less to whom?’

But Pakrad only laughed, and left us in our prison.

None of us spoke. A wave of desolation broke over me; I no longer even had the hope to pray. I had abandoned Anna and forsaken Sigurd, the two people I loved best in the world after my children – and all so that a treacherous bandit could steal a worthless ring. I wished he had stolen the ring from my campfire, or even cut it from my finger at Antioch, rather than luring me to die in this remote monastery. Not to die, a voice whispered – if he’d wanted me dead he could have had me impaled on the end of a spear hours ago. But I feared there was little kindness in his mercy.

If I kept thinking those thoughts I would have dashed out my brains on the wall behind me by morning. With a great effort of will, I forced myself to concentrate on my surroundings. It must be night outside: I could hear the tramp of guards on the walls, muttered watchwords and spears clattering against stone; water dripping on the floor and a horse whinnying near by. Around me, the Varangians muttered prayers, though whether for themselves, their captain or their fallen companions I could not tell. I wondered which god they prayed to.

My shoulders were beginning to go numb. I wriggled in my bonds to try and work some feeling into my limbs, and as I did so I noticed something in the corner of my eye. To my right, a small spot glowed silver in the dark wall. I twisted around, trying not to make a noise. There was a hole in the wall, no larger than a walnut, but big enough that if I put my eye to it I could see through into the room on the far side.

It was the basilica, the church where we had fought and lost our battle, now washed in moonlight. I could see the stone I had pulled away on the altar dais still lying where I had left it, and the pile of armour taken from the Varangians. Most of the blood had been cleaned away by the rain, though dark splashes still stained some of the walls. Otherwise, the room was empty.

I rolled away and settled myself in the least uncomfortable position I could manage. Then, God knows how, I slept.

When I opened my eyes, bright light poured through the holes in the thatch, and I could see my surroundings clearly at last. Immediately, I looked across the room to Sigurd. He lay still under his blanket, eyes closed, the only sign of life the shallow rising and falling of his chest beneath it. Thankfully, he did not seem to be bleeding.

Later in the morning, our guards brought breakfast: a cold corn-meal gruel that they slopped into our mouths. At least it seemed they meant to keep us alive – though to what purpose, I did not dare guess. After that, we were left alone again.

The storm the day before might have cleared the air, but the respite did not last long. The thatched roof stifled us like a blanket, heating the dank air until the stench and the steam became almost unbearable. For a time, the Varangians talked hopefully of escape and tugged on the iron rings that locked them in place, but even their strength could not dislodge them. They soon lapsed into silence. We lolled against the walls, occasionally shrugging our shoulders to try and keep some life in them, and sweltered.

With nothing else to do, I spent much of the time peering through the hole in the wall – though always on edge lest one of the guards catch me. There was plenty to see. Pakrad seemed to use the derelict church as his head-quarters. He sat behind a broad table he had erected in the shade of the domed roof, while his men lounged in the sun and a succession of visitors came and went. They spoke Armenian, and though I did not understand a word they said it was easy enough to work out what was happening. Men and women, mostly peasants, would enter the room with eyes lowered and an offering held before them: baskets of eggs or olives, two chickens in a wicker cage, jars of wine and oil, even a full-grown sheep. Every one of them trembled as they came in – particularly the women. They would deposit their gifts in front of Pakrad, bow low, and mumble some plea or homage, which Pakrad would then consider, or debate with his men, or dismiss with a scornful wave of his hand. Some of the petitioners went away smiling with relief, others weeping or with their heads buried in their hands. Some were less lucky. In the middle of the afternoon I watched as a peasant girl harangued and pleaded with Pakrad, refusing to accept his obvious rejections, until eventually his men dragged her away. Her screams echoed through the monastery for a full hour afterwards.

I did not watch any more after that. I had seen enough to get the measure of Pakrad. He took homage and distributed justice like a lord, but in truth he was nothing more than a brigand, and the monastery his ramshackle castle. What had happened to the monks, I did not like to think. Nor could I tell why he should have troubled to lure us there, or what he intended with us.

* * *

Late in the day, when the light had softened to a peachtinged glow streaming in over my head, I heard a shout from the courtyard, the creak of a heavy gate and the clop of hooves. A greeting or a challenge was shouted, though I did not hear the answer.

I twisted around and put my eye to the hole in the wall. A fire had been built in the nave of the church; beyond it, I could see Pakrad pacing behind his table. He was almost unrecognisable from the cocksure brigand I had watched that afternoon. He seemed off-balance, nervous, constantly smoothing down the folds of his tunic.

There was a noise from the unseen door and his head snapped around. I heard footsteps, then saw a dark figure stride past the fire. He wore a riding cloak with the hood pulled up, though he must surely have regretted it with the heat of the fire so close and the heat of the day not yet faded.

Like all the supplicants I had seen that day, he brought a gift: a heavy bag tied with rope, which he deposited on the table. I heard the muffled chink of coins settling as he put it down. It must have been a rich offering, but there was nothing subservient in the man who brought it. He stood tall and superior, surveying the bandit from under the shadow of his hood. Though I could not see his face, there was no doubting his authority over Pakrad.

Pakrad reached into one of the folds of his robe and pulled out something that he handed to his guest. Sparks of firelight reflected off it, and though it was too far and dim to see clearly, I knew what it was. The guest examined it, slid it onto his finger and held up his hand, twisting it this way and that so that light played on the filigrees of the imperial seal. Then he pulled it off and dropped it into a pouch around his neck.

‘That was what you wanted?’ Pakrad seemed hesitant, eager to please, though at the same time jealous of his visitor’s status. With a shock, I realised he had spoken in Greek.

The hooded guest tapped the bag on the table. ‘That is what I paid you for. Did they put up much of a struggle?’

He had spoken in Greek too – but more than that, there was something familiar in his voice. Could I have heard it before?

‘They fought,’ Pakrad admitted.

‘I told you they would. But you overcame them?’

‘You got your ring.’

The guest rounded on him. ‘That was not all we agreed. You swore not one of them would survive.’

‘None of them escaped.’

The evasion was as obvious as it was misjudged. In answer, the guest reached under his cloak and pulled out a long, straight-bladed sword. Pakrad recoiled, reaching for one of the knives in his belt, but before he could seize it the guest had stepped forward, put the tip of his blade against the bag on the table, and whipped it upwards to sever the rope that held it shut. The folds of cloth fell open like the petals of a flower, revealing a small mountain of gold within. Pakrad stared.

‘I paid you and I paid you well. The ring – and no one to tell the tale.’

Pakrad picked up a coin and rubbed it between his fingers. The touch of gold seemed to give him new strength. ‘These are dangerous times. The mountains are full of enemies – Franks, Arabs, Turks from the defeated army …’

‘And thieves,’ said his guest drily. Pakrad ignored him.

‘Those prisoners will fetch a high price in Damascus or Baghdad. Death would be a waste.’

The guest still had his sword in his hand. Though he held it still, the reflected firelight made the blade look as though it danced and writhed in the air. For a moment, I thought he might cut down Pakrad where he stood. Then, to my surprise, he shrugged.

‘Do as you want. They are not my concern.’

‘I promise you they will never be heard of again,’ Pakrad assured him.

The visitor looked around. ‘Are they here?’

It was a casual question, but whether by chance or some devilish intuition, his gaze came to rest right on the stretch of wall that housed my peephole, so that he seemed to be staring straight down the stone tunnel into my eyes. Terror seized me; I almost jerked away, but then he would have seen the movement. I forced myself to stay still and prayed he had not noticed me.

Oblivious to my terror, Pakrad was answering the question. ‘The prisoners have gone. I sold them this morning to an Arab.’ The lie came fluently; I wondered what he would have said if he had known how close his guest was to seeing the truth.

‘Very well.’ The guest nodded at the gold. ‘I will not forget your service.’

‘And you will see that the Franks do not come here looking for the Greeks?’

The visitor laughed softly. He had started to move to the door, was already almost beyond the confines of my view, but he turned back to answer Pakrad. The glowing fire threw up a monstrous shadow on the walls behind him.

‘Nobody will come to look for the Greeks.’

I barely heard the words. The firelight that cast shadows behind him also banished the shadows that hooded his face, so for the first time I could see it clearly. Of course I knew his voice – the only reason I had not recognised it sooner was that I had not heard it speaking Greek before. Nor had I ever expected to hear it speaking the treachery I had just witnessed.

It was Duke Godfrey.

ε

It was hard to fall asleep that night. I squatted by the wall, my arms bound before me, trembling as my mind burned with thoughts of the treachery I had witnessed – the treachery that had snared me. Again and again I saw Duke Godfrey framed in the stone barrel of my peephole, his pale skin and golden beard turned orange by the firelight. Why had he done this? I knew he did not love the Greeks: at Constantinople, his army had even come to blows with the imperial forces. But that quarrel was long settled, and since then Godfrey had seemed a model of restraint, free of the tempestuous ambitions that shook the other princes. Why had he done this to me?

But of course, he had not done it to me – or not for my sake. I was merely a casualty, an inconvenience to be removed. He wanted the ring. For the rest of us, he did not even care enough to have us murdered. The thought only made me angrier: I raged against Godfrey, against Pakrad, against Tatikios who had abandoned me at Antioch and the emperor who had sent me there. But the heat of anger could not burn through my bonds or the walls that trapped me, nor lift the crushing weight of my insignificance. Few things make a man feel more alive than death, but now Duke Godfrey had robbed even that of meaning.

Eventually, fingers of sleep began to creep over me. The boundaries of the world dissolved: the things I saw and the things I dreamed and the things I feared mingled freely together in the dark room. Anna was there, though she would not talk to me, and Zoe and Helena my daughters. Helena held her newborn son and pointed to me, the grandfather he would never meet. Sigurd moaned, while Godfrey bent over him and laid gold coins on his eyes. I could see Antioch in the distance, and a terrible battle being waged before its gates. In an instant, I seemed to be in the midst of the battle, throwing up my shield while my enemies battered it with their blows.

I opened my eyes. Someone was jabbing me in the ribs, though without malice. Aelfric. With his hands bound in front of him, he could not reach me with his arms, but had swivelled himself around to poke me with his foot. Otherwise, everything in the room seemed normal: nine of us tied fast to the walls, moonlight filtering through the thatch, and the door still bolted shut.

‘What is it?’

‘Listen.’

Almost at once, I heard it. Shouts, the pound of running feet, and beyond it the drum of horses’ hooves. A group of men – three or four by the sound of them – ran past our door. I could hear their spear-hafts dragging on the floor behind them.

‘Is it a rescue?’

But even as I said it, I remembered the truth of Duke Godfrey’s words. Nobody will come to look for the Greeks.

Whatever was happening, there was nothing we could do. We were like slaves in a galley, locked in place and powerless against the forces raging around us. We sat in the darkness, pale faces straining to understand the mysterious sounds that drifted down to us, and waited.

Outside, the uproar was rapidly building into the tumult of a full-blown battle. Bows cracked; arrows rattled against stone like leaves before a gale. The pitch of the shouts rose. Then men started screaming, and I knew the battle had been joined.

I wriggled around to see if I could see anything through my spyhole. The church was empty. The sack of gold was gone from the table, and the fire had all but burned out – though not long ago, for even through the dank stone wall I could smell the lingering tinge of smoke.

Another kick in the ribs from Aelfric drew me back to our room. His face was ashen in the moonlight.

‘Do you smell that?’

After a day and a half being confined in that hot room, unable to move more than a few inches, the stench was terrible. But beyond the rank smells of men, there was something new in the air. Smoke – not drifting through my spyhole, but pouring in through the holes in the thatch and seeping through the cracks in the eaves.

In an instant, the sullen resignation in the room turned to panic. The monumental stones of the monastery’s foundations might be immune to fire, but the ramshackle wooden superstructures that Pakrad had built on it would burn like kindling. The Varangians turned to the walls and heaved with all their might on the ringbolts; they flexed their wrists and tried to pull the ropes apart with brute strength. Nothing would give. The smoke thickened; through the hole in the ceiling I could see sparks and embers dancing on air in the night sky. If a single one fell on the dry-baked straw roof . . .

‘At least we won’t be tied up much longer,’ muttered Aelfric. He had lifted his hands to his mouth and was trying to gnaw through the bonds like a rat. He spat out a wad of fibres. ‘If the roof drops on us, it’ll burn these ropes clean through.’

‘And us with them.’ I had found a corner of stone that protruded from the wall and was rubbing my wrists against it, trying to saw through the rope. It did not even dent it.

With a squeak and a bang, the door flew open. A murky, light filled the corridor beyond like dawn, though we were still hours from sunrise: one of Pakrad’s men stood silhouetted in its glow. His hair was dishevelled, his eyes wild with surprise; he had not even had time to put on armour or helmet, but the long, curved knife in his hand was steady enough. He took two steps into the room, towards the nearest prisoner – but whether he came to execute or to free us we never learned. Shouts from the corridor stopped him mid-stride. He turned back to the doorway, but his way was blocked, and this time the man who stood there had not forgotten his armour. He wore the coned helmet of the Franks, though with sackcloth hanging from its rim so that only his eyes were visible, and a loaded crossbow was wedged to his shoulder.

I did not know who fought this battle but it hardly mattered: we were merely spectators. The guard sprang towards the door, then seemed to halt, caught like a spark on a breeze. The crack of the bow still echoed around the chamber as he staggered back, clutching his breast where the bolt had struck, and collapsed. The knife dropped from his hand and skidded across the smooth-worn floor.

The Frank stared into the room. Eight pairs of captive eyes stared back in silence. Behind the sackcloth veil, I felt his eyes fixed upon me as he slowly put the curved end of the bow on the ground, held it down with his foot and leaned over to haul the string back into position. Even in that brief motion, he seemed to fade before me. Tears stung my eyes and I felt ashamed. Was this how I would face my death? At least Sigurd would not see me: through all the commotion he still lay unconscious under his blanket, eyes shut. Though he, too, seemed to be fading away from me. Is this how death comes, I wondered, the world gradually thinning to a mist as we recede from it? Warmth suffused my body; my head felt light, while at the door the knight loaded his bolt.

A ball of fire fell like a star from the sky and I looked up in horror. Death was reaching out for me, but it would not be the quick passage I had hoped for. A gaping hole had opened in the roof, fringed with a jagged halo of burning straw spreading ever outwards as it devoured the thatch. Flames licked high above it.

Whether the Frank with the crossbow decided the fire would do his work for him, or whether he simply did not see us in the smoke and darkness, I never found out. He loaded his bow, then turned and disappeared down the corridor. In the madness of those moments I almost called him back so I could die quickly, but he would not have heard me. And I would die soon enough.

Ash and soot rained down on us, as if we sat in the grate of an enormous hearth. Across the room, I could see one of the Varangians stretching forward like a horse pulling its reins, still trying even now to escape. The swirl of smoke and flame made illusions of the world, so that for a second I could almost imagine that he had managed to free himself. Shadows rose above him so that he seemed to be standing; they moved across the room, shifting and turning as if ducking away from the falling embers.

A hot shard pressed against my wrist, searing flesh already chafed raw by my bonds. The roof-beams had started to burn, and a piece of debris must have fallen on me. I screamed and squirmed, trying to dislodge it, but it had a will of its own and would not go away. It writhed against my skin; it slithered back and forth, so I could almost imagine it was eating away at the ropes that bound me.

‘Get up.’

The smoke and tears that clogged my eyes had all but blinded me. Now I forced my eyes open and looked up. One of the Varangians was standing over me. His bonds were gone, and in his hand he held the long-bladed knife Pakrad’s guard had dropped.

‘Am I dreaming?’

‘You will be if we don’t hurry. Come on.’

One by one, he knelt in front of the others and cut the ropes that bound them. I followed through the heat and flame, trying to coax life into limbs that smoke and despair had left numb. Last of all, we came to Sigurd. His face was peaceful, and he seemed to be sleeping beneath his blanket. We cut through his shackles as carefully as we could, then I gently slapped his cheek.

‘Can you hear me?’

He groaned, but did not open his eyes.

In a torrent of confusion and haste, I beckoned two of the Varangians over. They slid their arms under his shoulders and lifted. As Sigurd rose, the blanket slid away leaving him entirely naked, but there was no time to dress him. Choking and coughing, we stumbled out into the corridor. Aelfric was the last through the door – and not a second too soon, for an instant later the makeshift beams gave way and the entire roof crashed down into our gaol. A cloud of sparks and burning straw blasted out through the door like dragon’s breath, blackening the stones and singeing our heads.

Two of Pakrad’s men lay dead in the passage, pierced with crossbow bolts, but there was no sign of any enemies living. Looking up into the sky, I could see that the ancient monastery had become a cauldron of fire. Even the stones seemed to burn.

‘This way.’ A dark blizzard of ash and soot assailed us as we staggered down the passage into the old monastery church. At least here there was little for the fire to take hold of, and the remaining portion of the stone roof might shelter us from the burning missiles raining down. We hurried into its shadow.

‘Where now?’ I bellowed in Aelfric’s ear.

‘Up there.’

In the curved bay at the end of the church, a high window looked out to the east. Its lower half had been blocked in with stones and mortar, but there was still enough space at the top for a man to squeeze through. If he could reach it.

‘How do we get there?’

‘On the shoulders of better men.’ In a niche in the southern wall, a life-sized statue of the prophet Daniel watched over the monastery’s desolation. Rain had smoothed his features to the primordial canvas of the first man, birds had fouled him, and white pock-marks on his chest showed where Pakrad’s men had used him to practise their archery, but he still stood. No wonder: it took six of the Varangians just to pry him from his alcove and drag him to the space under the window. I watched the door, praying the invaders would not drive Pakrad’s men back to this place. It was hard to believe any could have survived the inferno, though every so often the hot wind still carried the cries of men and horses to my ears.

A thought struck me. ‘What’s on the other side of that wall?’

But there was no time for doubts. One of the Varangians made a stirrup with his hands and lifted me up; another kept the statue from toppling over as I scrabbled for balance on its shoulders. From that height, I could just stretch my hands to the rough lip where the window opened. A day and a half in bondage had left my wrists raw and my arms numb; there was little power in them, but somehow I managed to keep my grip and haul myself up: first my chin, then my chest, and eventually my whole body. Urgent shouts from below spurred me on, though I did not have the strength to care what they were saying.

I reached the crumbling window ledge and crouched under its arch. Behind me, high tongues of flame licked into the night – ahead was only darkness.

‘Go on!’ shouted Aelfric’s voice below. ‘Out of the way.’

I jumped. It was the leap of a madman: from a high window, on a cliffbound mountain top, into darkness. If I had fallen a thousand feet and impaled myself on jagged rocks, it would have been no more than I deserved. But God was with me that night. The ground was hard, but not far. I struck it with a yelp of pain, jarring my knees, feeling my ankle turn beneath me, and rolled away in a cascade of dust and pebbles until a thorn tree brought me to a stop. After the inferno in the monastery, the night seemed cool and quiet. The smell of sagegrass filled my senses.

‘Demetrios!’ A voice from above was calling my name. ‘Is it safe?’

I do not know what I answered – I was almost past thinking. I lay there, while one by one the Varangians crawled out through the window and dropped to the ground. Somehow they managed to manhandle Sigurd’s naked body onto the ledge, and then lower it down. By that time, I had recovered enough that I could stand and hobble over to look at him. His face was deathly pale, scratched and bruised from being squeezed through the window.

‘Sigurd?’

Whether he understood, or whether it was just reflex, his eyes flicked open. They looked vague and distant, but after a moment they seemed to focus on me.

‘Demetrios,’ he said, and I felt a thrill of hope. ‘You shit.’

ς

We had escaped – but not far. In the darkness, our heads still reeling from the smoke we had breathed, we did not dare try to find our way down. Even if there had been a path, we could never have managed to carry Sigurd. We found a small ledge in the mountainside, almost hidden by the gorse bushes that fringed it, and settled down to wait.

The monastery burned on, lighting up the western sky with its glow and filling the night with the crashing sounds of ruination. The noise wrought havoc on my nerves as I sat hunched on my rock: with each falling beam or collapsing wall, I was convinced I heard the footsteps of an unseen enemy about to discover us.

Eventually, when the fresh light in the east matched the sullen glow in the west, I left our hiding place and crawled back up the slope. I could see the high wall of the monastery church and the window we had escaped through towering above me. I skirted around it to the north, then crept up to a hollow just below the summit where a tree-stump offered some cover. Even that was not entirely safe, for a spent arrow, a relic of the battle, lay planted in the earth by my feet. I pulled it out, snapped off the shaft and gripped the arrowhead like a dagger. Then I peered over the rotting tree-stump.

I had come around to the front of the monastery. As we had guessed, the steep path that Pakrad had brought us by was not the main entrance. Here, the mountain sloped away more gradually towards a high valley. A road ran up to a broad gate in the monastery wall; the gates had been thrown down, and through the arch I could see the ruins of the monastery still billowing smoke. Yet for all the desolation, it was not abandoned. Some fifty Frankish knights were arrayed in a wide cordon on the open ground before the gates, some mounted, others on foot; some watching outwards and some facing the centre of their circle, where a knot of men was gathered beside a smouldering heap of coals. Duke Godfrey stood among them. He had removed his helmet, so that his tousled hair blew freely in the morning breeze, and his face was streaked black where he had tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe away the soot stains. I thought of the ring he had taken from me, and wondered where it was now.

In front of Godfrey stood the defeated men from Pakrad’s garrison. A dozen Frankish spear-points held them back, though there was little defiance now in their wretched faces. Many were wounded: one had lost an entire arm, so that his captors could not shackle him but had been forced to tie him to the man next to him.

Two knights dragged one of the prisoners forward and flung him onto his knees in front of Godfrey. It was Pakrad, I realised, though he was hardly recognisable from the cocksure bandit who had betrayed us. He had lost his armour and his tunic, leaving only a dirty cloth around his hips to cover him. Terrible burns covered his naked chest and arms, and flaps of charred skin hung from his body like feathers. He was weeping.

‘Did you think you could cheat our bargain?’

The breeze blew Godfrey’s words over to my hiding place. Beside him, a man with his back to me stirred the coals with his sword. A flurry of sparks flew up, and the air shimmered above it. Pakrad trembled.

‘Please, Lord,’ he pleaded. ‘I did everything you asked. I brought you the ring. I killed the Greeks. I—’

‘You told me you sold the Greeks for slaves.’

‘It is the same thing.’ Pakrad glanced back over his shoulder at the ruin of his fortress; I wondered if Duke Godfrey had noticed. ‘They are surely dead now.’ He lifted his bound hands and pawed at the hem of Godfrey’s tunic, but Godfrey stepped back with a snort of disgust and Pakrad almost fell on his face.

‘You are a worm,’ Godfrey told him. ‘A robber and a villain. This monastery that you made your lair – how many monks did you murder to take it?’ He walked around behind his captive and seized hold of a lock of his hair, jerking his head back. He rapped his knuckles on the bare skin where the tonsure had been, and Pakrad screamed.

‘Does it hurt?’ Godfrey enquired. ‘It should. It is the mark of God on a wicked sinner. You profaned the holy soil of the monastery with your crimes, and you mocked God Himself by putting on the habit of His servants to work evil.’

‘On your orders, Lord,’ Pakrad protested. Godfrey ignored him.

‘Do you know what the crime of Satan was?’ Pakrad shook his head in terror. ‘He knew he could not surpass God, so he sought to overthrow Heaven itself and make himself lord over its ruin. He tried to mimic God, as a chained ape mimics a man. And do you know what befell him?’

Pakrad, his head still pulled back by Godfrey’s grip, made an unintelligible cry.

‘He was cast into eternal darkness.’

Godfrey released Pakrad and turned his back. The bandit’s head slumped, but in an instant one of the knights had sprung forward and clamped it between his gauntleted hands, twisting it up towards the sky. The man by the fire turned towards Pakrad, showing his face to me at last, and I gasped. It was Tancred, the half-Saracen nephew of Bohemond. He pulled the sword from the coals and advanced a few paces towards Pakrad. The tip of the sword glowed a dull red – which bloomed to a burning orange as Tancred held it up to his lips and blew on it. Pakrad started to squeal; his body jerked and writhed, but the iron-clad hands that gripped his skull held it helpless.

Tancred drew back the sword. The red tip hovered in front of Pakrad’s eyes for a moment, darting this way and that. Twice Tancred flicked it forward but checked the blow, laughing to hear Pakrad’s desperate screams. Then he lunged.

My own eyes clenched shut involuntarily a split second before the blow, but I heard the hiss of the iron as it cut through the eyeball, and the shattering cries from Pakrad’s wounded body, which doubled in their agony as Tancred stabbed his sword into the second eye.

‘Take him away,’ said Godfrey. As I opened my eyes I saw that he still stood a little distance from Tancred, his back turned on the torture. Pakrad was being dragged back into the circle of prisoners. He was trying to press his hands to his face, but with the ropes that bound them he could not reach.

I had seen enough: I crawled away, back down the slope to the hidden ledge where the Varangians waited. Even there, the screams from the mountaintop echoed down to us for hours afterwards – and still seemed to linger in the air long after we heard Godfrey’s men ride away. Only near sunset, when we were certain they had gone, did we rise from our hiding place and set out for Antioch.

ζ

A wall of death surrounded Antioch, far stronger than any ramparts of earth or stone, and a foul film hung above the city where the smoke of countless pyres stained the air. We marched along the river bank, barely an arrowshot from the walls, and saw no one. Only the dead were in evidence. The soft earth of the meadow outside the walls had been carved into innumerable graves, some marked with stones but most of them anonymous. One by one, each of the Varangians crossed himself, and then made a surreptitious sign against the evil eye for good measure. I laid a thin cloth over Sigurd’s face so he would not breathe the malignant air. We had carried him back from the monastery on a litter, and though he had gained some consciousness and could occasionally speak a few words, he was still achingly weak. Sweat glistened on his face where the fever boiled it out of him. It was shocking to see him diminished like this – like seeing an ancient oak tree felled for firewood. In the wandering course of my life I had not had to suffer the decline and death of my parents, for I had left them far behind in Illyria and never returned, but I imagined this was how a son must feel to see his father on his sick-bed: an indomitable constant brought down. It was strange, for he and I were the same age.

A few miles west of Antioch, in the hills between the plain and the coast, we found the hilltop where the remaining Varangians – and Anna – had moved their camp from the plague-ridden city. We climbed eagerly, our burdens suddenly much lightened. At the bottom of the valley, far below, I could see the sinuous course of the Orontes hastening towards the coast and the ship that would take me home. The setting sun turned the river gold, while an eagle wheeled silently in the sky above.

We came around a bend in the path and I knew at once something had changed. The guard who blocked our way was not a Varangian – indeed, he probably came from the opposite corner of the earth. His dark face was too wide and too short, like a reflection in a polished shield, with narrow eyes and a broad mouth that almost vanished under the mane of his beard. His helmet tapered to a sharp point like an onion, with a chain hood hanging down behind his neck, while the square plates of his scale armour rasped and chattered as they moved against each other. The long spear in his hands was angled across our path, though it was the horn-ended bow slung across his shoulder that was the real danger. He was a Patzinak, another of the emperor’s far-flung mercenary legions.

‘Who are you?’ he challenged us in guttural Greek.

‘Demetrios Askiates, with Sigurd Ragnarson and what remain of his men.’

The Patzinak nodded, without curiosity. ‘Come through. Nikephoros is impatient to meet you.’

Our fortunes had changed in the ten days we had been away. We had left the company with little more than the blankets they slept on; now, two enormous pavilions with gold-fringed awnings and crimson walls stood surrounded by neat rows of simpler tents. Guards, more Patzinaks, stood at every corner. Judging by the size of the encampment there must have been at least two hundred of them. An old orchard had become an enclosure for a dozen horses, all fine beasts branded with the mark of the imperial stables, while through an open door I saw a store tent piled high with casks of wine and sacks of grain. I had not seen anything so organised in months.

Among the throng of stocky, dark-skinned Patzinaks, I found one of the Varangians we had left to guard the camp.

‘What has happened here?’

The Varangian glanced anxiously at Sigurd’s litter. ‘The new ambassador came a week ago. What happened to you? Where are the others?’

‘The monk betrayed us. The others did not survive it – and Sigurd may yet follow. Where’s Anna?’

The Varangian’s mouth dropped open, as if the sun had fallen out of the sky. ‘Sigurd? Sigurd cannot die.’

‘I hope not. But where is Anna?’

‘Anna?’ Uncharacteristically, the Varangian seemed to be searching for delicate words. ‘She—’

A sharp voice behind me interrupted us. ‘Are you Demetrios Askiates?’

I turned. Another Patzinak, this one with a loaf-shaped cap and gilt edging on the plates of his armour, was watching me.

‘Nikephoros wants you.’

‘Find Anna and get Sigurd into her care,’ I told the Varangian. ‘Tell her I’ll find them afterwards.’

The confines of a former life seemed to rise up and envelop me as I stepped into the gilded pavilion. Ever since my superior, the general Tatikios, had departed Antioch in May, I had lived beyond the reach of the empire – a desperate, untamed life where we had slept rough, killed easily, and obeyed nothing but the dictates of survival and our duty to each other. Now the whole edifice of Byzantine civilisation, vast as the pillars of Ayia Sophia, seemed to have descended on the hilltop. Rich carpets traced designs of lions and eagles on the floor, echoing the mosaics of the great palace, while the silk walls of the tent glowed red, as if we stood inside the orb of a setting sun. Gossamer-thin curtains partitioned the different rooms, so that the slaves and clerks who scurried behind them became pale spectres of themselves. Mahogany trees held golden lamps in their branches, and icons of the saints looked out from their gilded windows. Rich incense filled the air. And, in the centre of the room, two men sat on carved chairs, their feet elevated on cushions, watching me carefully.

I had not changed my tunic or trimmed my beard in almost a fortnight of marching and fighting in the August sun. I had not washed, nor mended the tears and burns our ordeals had left in my clothing. In any company I would have felt filthy and disgusting: here, I felt like a dung-beetle rolling its ball on a banquet table. Too late, I remembered I should probably have bowed, though my back and my pride were both too stiff to allow it.

‘If you have been the emperor’s only representative these last four months, it is no wonder our situation is so desperate.’

The words were spoken with immaculate condescension, but their effect was like a kick in the groin. Fortunately, I was too weary to retaliate in anger. Instead, I looked blankly at the man who had addressed me. Both he and his companion were dressed in long white robes, trimmed with heavy embroidery and studded with coloured stones. There the similarity ended: the man on the left, who had spoken, was tall and strongly built; he kept his hair in studied disorder, and his face would have been handsome but for its arrogance. Only his beard seemed out of place, recently grown and not yet thickened to its fullness, like an adolescent who has not yet summoned the courage to shave, or a guilty man trying to hide his appearance. His companion, by contrast, was slight and clean-shaven, with thinning hair and a permanently worried expression tightening his soft features. I guessed he must be a eunuch. In their company you could believe that the courtyards and fountains of the palace were just beyond the door, not a thousand miles away across mountains and desert.

‘Has the emperor sent you?’ I asked.

The larger man drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘I am Nikephoros.’ He nodded to the eunuch beside him. ‘This is Phokas. We arrived from Constantinople a week ago. Where have you been?’

Evidently I did not merit pleasantries. ‘At the monastery of Ravendan, in the mountains north of here.’

Someone must surely have told him as much already, but he affected indignant surprise. ‘What folly took you there?’

‘A terrible folly.’ I guessed he did not want to hear the whole ordeal, that its filthy details would bore his refined sensibilities. I told him anyway.

‘It was a trap,’ I concluded. ‘Set by Duke Godfrey in concert with the Armenian brigands. Tancred was there too.’

My voice died away. The two envoys stared at me, their faces as flat and all-powerful as the saints in the icons around them.

‘You are sure it was Duke Godfrey?’ the eunuch, Phokas, asked at last. His voice was high, though not shrill, pitched in that indeterminate range between a man’s and a woman’s.

‘I stood as far from him as I am from you now.’

That did not impress Nikephoros. ‘It was a fool’s errand anyway. What did you mean by going to Ravendan?’

‘I was trying to defend the church’s interests – and the emperor’s. I did not know that his so-called allies would use the opportunity to try and kill us.’

‘It hardly matters.’ Acid disdain etched his voice. ‘Though it is a pity you lost the emperor’s seal that was entrusted to you. He will not be pleased.’

Had I been half my age, I would have broken his nose for his snide dismissal of our sacrifices. As it was, the cowardice of wisdom stilled my hand – but I could not keep all the heat from my voice. ‘Six days ago I watched Duke Godfrey and Tancred mutilate the survivors of the battle and leave them to die on a mountaintop. They would have done worse to us, if Pakrad’s greed had not spoiled their plan.’

‘Perhaps you have spent too long with the barbarians – what else did you expect from them? This does not change anything.’

‘Four of the emperor’s men are dead. Does that change nothing?’

‘You cannot cleanse your mistakes by washing them in your friends’ blood,’ Nikephoros retorted coolly. ‘Do you really think the empire’s interests have changed because – you say – a Frankish lord took against you? The emperor does not put down his hunting dogs just because they snap at his slaves.’

An agonising rage gripped me. I clenched my fists and dug my long nails into the palms of my hands trying to force a pain excruciating enough to match the pain in my heart. But the harder I pressed, the less I felt.

The eunuch must have seen my anguish. ‘Do not blame yourself too much. You were swimming in seas too strong for you. You did not have the wit to see what should be done.’

I stared at him, wondering if he had poked my wounds in malice or just in clumsy kindness. His polished face revealed nothing.

‘Have you come to replace me?’ I asked at last. The audience had barely begun, but I already longed for it to be over.

Nikephoros leaned forward in his chair. ‘We have come to supersede you. The emperor has placed you under our command.’

His words struck me like arrows. ‘I thought . . .’ I wanted. ‘I understood I was to go home, once you had arrived.’

The eunuch spoke. ‘Go home? You cannot go home. You have not finished.’

‘Finished what?’

‘Your mission was to see that the Franks reached Jerusalem – not settled themselves in Antioch.’

Nikephoros picked up the thread. ‘That is why your expedition to Ravendan was worthless, even before it proved to be a trap. The emperor does not want relics and trinkets to make the Franks love the Greeks.’ Suddenly animated, he thumped his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘He wants Antioch itself. For its strength, its commerce, its harbours and its lands – yes. But most of all because it is his by right, and the Franks swore to return it to him. If we wanted it owned by a rabble of hateful, godless barbarians, we could have left it to the Turks. The Franks will have Jerusalem, that will be their reward. But Antioch must be ours. That is why it would not matter if Duke Godfrey, Count Raymond and all the Frankish captains hung you from a tree and let the birds devour you inch by inch. The emperor would still smile, and pay them flattery and gold, and pray they dislodged Bohemond from Antioch.’

His smooth neck was suddenly lumpen with taut sinews, and his head jerked with emphasis on every word. The diplomatic reserve seemed stripped away, though I could not tell if that was a calculated effect. Nor did I care. I was still numb from the sting of what the eunuch had said. You cannot go home.

‘I must go home,’ I mumbled, pathetic and uncaring. ‘I cannot stay here.’

Nikephoros gave me a scornful look. ‘Go home – and then what? You will not have the comfortable life you imagine in Constantinople if you return now. The emperor is furious that the Franks hold Antioch. He is famously quick to forgive his enemies, but he does not lightly forgive those who fail him.’

‘How have I failed him? Was I supposed to hold Antioch against the Franks with a few dozen Varangians and the force of an oath the Franks never meant to uphold?’

Nikephoros rolled his eyes. ‘Do you know Pythagoras? With a stave and sufficient distance, a single man can move a boulder that would resist the strength of armies.’

‘Then why does he want me to stay?’ Like a prisoner broken on the rack, I suddenly felt a disgraceful willingness to say anything, to admit any charge and suffer any insult just to go free. I hated myself for it – but I hated the thought of staying more.

The eunuch leaned forward. ‘Because he is merciful.’

Craven desperation kept me from laughing in his face, though my disbelief must have shone through.

‘Your superior, the general Tatikios, made a full report to the emperor after he left Antioch,’ the eunuch continued. ‘He left little doubt where the blame for the Franks’ success should lie.’

I had suffered so many blows to my hopes and pride that I should have been immune, but I still felt the bruise in my gut. ‘He blamed me?’

‘Suffice it to say the emperor felt it would be kinder to you to give you a chance to redeem yourself, rather than allowing your return.’

‘But surely he must know—’

The eunuch raised a sanctimonious hand, as if pushing me back from an unseen precipice. ‘The emperor can only know what his subordinates tell him. Tatikios is a great nobleman: he has many allies at court to support him.’

And I did not. I had seen the emperor many times and inhabited his palace, had saved his life and once or twice even spoken with him almost as an equal. I did not think him a bad man, for what such judgements were worth. But he had not survived eighteen years on his tenuous throne by bowing to sentiment. If Tatikios commanded a faction – and legions to boot – then the emperor could not antagonise him on my account. Perhaps he truly did believe it was kindness to keep me away from Constantinople.

‘If the Franks leave Antioch, there will be no problem and no blame to be attached,’ the eunuch concluded. ‘The only lever we have to prise them out is Jerusalem. We must see that they get there.’

I bowed my head, as if putting it through a noose. ‘How?’

Nikephoros barked orders to his slaves, who scurried from behind the gauzy curtains and brought a map, a table and a low wooden stool for me to sit on. After so long marching, its hard seat was like a feather mattress to me. Lamps were set beside the unscrolled map, flickering over the ragged oblong of the Mediterranean Sea and the three continents that bordered it to the north, south and east. Nikephoros pulled a golden pin from his robes and leaned forward, tapping the pin against the map to illustrate his narration.

‘Antioch is here.’ Tap. ‘Jerusalem here.’ Tap. ‘The lands in between – Syria, Lebanon, Palestine – are controlled by the Turks and Saracens.’ The point of the pin scratched back and forth over the Mediterranean’s eastern coast. ‘They are weakened by the Franks’ victory at Antioch, but they still have castles and fortified cities all along the coast.’ A succession of pinpricks perforated the paper between Antioch and Jerusalem. ‘And, of course, they have Jerusalem.’

That much I knew. Far stranger was the sensation of seeing the canvas of my life laid out before me, my past and future journeys drawn in inky lines. Too often, my eyes drifted north and west to the ornately painted cross at the junction of Europe and Asia. Constantinople.

‘But beyond Palestine, the Turks and Saracens face an older enemy. The Fatimids of Egypt.’ The pin inscribed a circle in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, centred on the cobweb of lines that marked the course of the Nile. ‘You know the Fatimids?’

I had heard of them, but ignorance was easiest. I shook my head.

‘The Saracens consider them heretics – if there can be a heresy against a heresy – and hate them above all others. Once, they drove the Fatimids out of their kingdoms all the way to Libya, but the Fatimids regrouped, invaded Egypt and conquered it. They will not be content until they have imposed their faith all the way to Baghdad and Mecca. The Saracens, likewise, will not rest until they have destroyed the Fatimids.’

I had been drawn into the invisible, eternal quarrel between the different Ishmaelite creeds once before, and the wounds had only recently healed. Even without Constantinople tempting me home, I did not like the sound of this.

‘If we can make an alliance with the Fatimids, then the Saracens will be trapped between enemies to their north and south. We can squeeze them out of Palestine and the way will be open for the Franks to seize Jerusalem. When they hurry south to claim it, Antioch will be ours again. The stain of your incompetence will be wiped clean.’

Whatever bitterness I felt at the jibe, I swallowed it. ‘And how will we achieve that?’

In answer, Nikephoros jammed the golden pin into the map, at the place where the different strands of the Nile delta braided themselves into a single thread heading south into Africa. The pin stuck in the wooden table and stayed upright, its trembling shadow crossing over Egypt and almost touching Jerusalem.

‘That is the Fatimid capital, al-Qahira. That is where we must go.’

η

I came out of the tent in a daze, like a defeated soldier leaving a battle. My soul was falling through an endless chasm, and though it was sickening it did not hurt yet. That would come when I hit the bottom. For now, I wandered across the hill until I found the Varangians’ tents. Aelfric was there.

‘How is Sigurd?’ I asked, forcing the words through my constricted lungs.

‘Unchanged. The fever seems a little less.’

‘Has Anna seen him?’

Aelfric fixed me with his uncompromising blue eyes. ‘She isn’t here.’

My tumbling soul knocked against a looming cliff, careered off it and continued its descent. ‘Where is she?’

Aelfric turned his eyes away, looking over my shoulder and into the darkening east.

‘In the cloisters behind the cathedral.’

I stared at him.

‘In Antioch.’

I ran.

Whatever excesses I had expected from the plague city – baying mobs hunting through the streets, doomed men and women tupping like dogs in doorways, corpses burning on open fires or lying unburied at the roadside – the reality was different. Moonlight washed over empty streets, and most of the houses were dark – though the city was not empty. Unseen creatures scuffled in shadowy corners. Shutters creaked, doors slammed, clay vessels shattered and steel rang on steel. And, more than anything else, there was a constant tapestry of mourning that hung in the background: soft moans of despair, shrieks of anguish, plaintive sobbing and quiet prayer. A profound and angry melancholy gripped the city – it was like walking through the sinews of a broken heart.

At several points along my way, carts and boxes and rubble had been tipped across the street to form makeshift barricades. Some were abandoned, others guarded, but Antioch was not a city made for containment and I always found my way around them, until at last I reached the cathedral and a small door in the wall behind it. A frightened voice behind the door answered my knock.

‘I want to see the doctor – Anna. Is she here?’

‘She’s asleep.’

‘Wake her. Tell her Demetrios is here.’

He did not answer, but beyond the door I heard receding footsteps. I waited in the dark for what seemed an age, each second lengthened tenfold by uncertainty. Eventually I even started to probe the tip of Aelfric’s knife into the door jamb, wondering if I could force it.

I heard the footsteps returning and pulled the knife away. A bolt slid back on the other side of the door, though it did not open.

‘Wait here for a hundred-count, then come through. She will be in the cloisters.’

Once more, the footsteps retreated. I doubted the delay was necessary, but I honoured the doorkeeper’s request and counted to a hundred as quickly as I could. Then I pushed the door open, padded down a short passage and emerged into the broad colonnades of the cloisters. Moonlight shone onto the columns’ faces so that they appeared like steel bars around the square, while behind them all was darkness. On the far side, directly opposite me, stood Anna.

She was thinner than I remembered, though we had been apart less than two weeks. In the hot summer air her white shift clung to her body, divulging every rise and shadow beneath: her dark hair was tousled wild by her pillow. She appeared like an icon of everything I loved and craved; I pulled off the cloth that covered my face and ran towards her.

‘Stop.’

A large figure stepped out of the darkness behind her, levelling a silver-tipped spear towards me. Desperation almost overpowered my instinct for survival, but at the last I reined myself in and halted just short of the spear’s point.

‘Stay there,’ the figure ordered.

I stared at Anna, bewildered. Why did she not come forward? ‘What is this?’

She closed her eyes. ‘My guard.’

‘Against what? Me?’

‘No – he is protecting you.’

‘Against what?’

‘Against me.’

I stumbled back, though the guard’s spear had not moved. There were hot tears on my face.

‘What could you possibly do to me?’ Even as I spoke the question, I began to guess its answer, and dread it.

Anna folded her hands penitently before her. She was crying too: the moon caught her tears and scarred her cheeks silver.

‘I have become a plague doctor.’

The last spark of hope died in my soul. A voice that was hardly my own asked, ‘Have you . . . ?’

‘Have I caught the plague?’ Anna shook her head. ‘God willing, not yet.’

I gestured to the guard. ‘Then why is he here?’

‘They insisted on it.’

‘Who?’

‘The Franks. They would not let me tend the sick without a guard to make sure I didn’t touch the healthy.’

‘You volunteered for this?’

She gave a joyless laugh. ‘Do you really think I’m such a saint? I had no choice. The woman I went to see the day you left, the one whose baby was overdue – she was infected. She was almost dead when I found her – the baby, too. The Franks barred the doors and would not let anyone leave the house. They only allowed me out when I agreed to tend the other victims. Then I came here.’

Anna’s guard had moved around to my left, standing between us and a little way apart with his spear outstretched, while she and I faced each other across the cloistered square. I needed an iron grip over every muscle in my body not to run to her and embrace her, heedless of consequence.

In a firmer voice, she asked, ‘Did you find your relic?’

‘There was no relic. Ravendan was a trap. The monk attacked us and took us prisoner.’ With the guard watching, I did not mention Duke Godfrey’s part. At that moment, it hardly seemed to matter. ‘We only just escaped.’

‘Is Sigurd all right?’

‘Barely.’ I saw Anna gasp. ‘He suffered a blow to the head, and has not risen since. He has a fever. You must see him.’

‘What can I do?’ She opened her empty hands. ‘I cannot leave this cloister, much less the city.’

‘You have to,’ I repeated stubbornly.

‘I can’t.’

‘I could bring him here.’

She stamped her foot in anger. ‘Is that a joke? If Sigurd is so weak, the plague would kill him the minute he looked at Antioch. He must manage without me.’

We stared at each other across the square. The moonlight filled the space between us like glass.

‘If I could, of course I would be with Sigurd this instant,’ she said softly. ‘But I do not have that choice. I chose to come to Antioch and I came freely, because of you. Because I loved you.’ She flicked her hand to shush my embarrassed protest. ‘Now that choice is made, we are each as helpless as the other. We are slaves to powers we cannot defy.’

More tears were tumbling down her cheeks and her eyes were dark with sadness. I longed to run across the courtyard, to hug her to me and crush away the distance between us. But the guard’s spear was steady, hovering like a wasp at the edge of my gaze.

‘The emperor’s new envoy has come,’ I said at last.

Anna brushed away a tear, rubbing her cheek with a loose lock of hair. ‘Then you’re free to go.’

‘He has ordered me to Egypt.’

With all the passion wrung from it, my soul had become dry and calloused. I related Nikephoros’ orders without emotion. Anna listened quietly until I was finished.

‘Will you go?’

I hesitated. I had come there that night with wild plans of escape burning in my heart: I would take Anna out of Antioch, she could heal Sigurd in a secret place until he was well, and then the three of us would make our way back to Constantinople. It was a pleasant dream – but impossible. It was as Anna had said: we had made our choices, or had them forced upon us, and now we would suffer the outcomes.

‘I will go to Egypt,’ I said. ‘Nikephoros has given me little alternative.’ And you have made sure of it, I did not say. To stay in Antioch, waiting to see whether Sigurd’s wounds killed him before the plague killed Anna – it would be like being milled between boulders. Against that, Egypt was almost an enticing prospect.

Anna nodded, as if she had known my decision before I said it.

‘Travel safely,’ she said simply. Her tears had dried up, and her face was calm again.

I could not bring myself to turn away, but stared at Anna as though – by the force and duration of my gaze alone – I could communicate all I felt. She matched my gaze, unyielding. Pity, kindness and desperate sorrow mingled in her face; I thought she might collapse into tears again, and I would have followed suit if she had, but she did not.

Without a word of farewell, she half-raised a hand in mock salute and turned away. The guard followed her as she disappeared between the pillars into the dark cloisters.

θ

We sailed for Egypt the next day. I had never been on a ship before, except to cross the few hundred yards of the Bosphorus, but I had always assumed I would hate it. For some reason, I did not. Perhaps I felt so wretched that the turbulent deep beneath our keel lost its terror, or perhaps the suspension of all cares and duties, forced by the confines of the ship, calmed me. It was as if I had been plucked out of my life, cut free of the ties and obligations that held me there, and set adrift upon the blank canvas of the sea. For the first time in months, or even years, I had nothing to do. I sat in the shade of the turret that commanded the centre of the ship and watched the crew, as idle and superfluous as the cat who ate the galley scraps.

Apart from the crew, we were nineteen passengers: Nikephoros and his attendants; a priest; an honour guard of ten Patzinaks who spent most of their time being seasick; one Varangian and myself. The Varangian was Aelfric, the man who had led us out of the burning monastery. The rest of his company had remained with Nikephoros’ colleague, the eunuch, who had the unenviable task of trying to persuade the Frankish princes to resume their march once the plague subsided.

As for Nikephoros, he did not find the same solace I did in the ship. He had commandeered the captain’s quarters at the ship’s stern, and though it must have been a dark and humid room he rarely ventured out. When he did, he had his servants erect a white silk canopy on the foredeck; he would sit there in regal isolation and watch the waves, or sometimes compose long documents, many pages in length, on his ivory writing desk. Though I was nominally his secretary, he never asked me to write them out or confided their contents to me.

One afternoon, two days out of Saint Simeon, I gained some insight into his foul humour. I was sitting in the turret’s shadow, playing with a rope-end and fretting about Anna, when Aelfric came and sat beside me. That in itself was unusual, for he was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, but I welcomed him. He was small for a Varangian, though large by any other standard. His lean face bespoke a watchful intelligence, and you could see him weighing each word thrice over before he spoke it.

‘I’ve found out why Nikephoros is so grumpy,’ he announced.

I looked up from the frayed fibres I had teased apart. ‘Why’s that?’

‘The emperor’s not pleased with him.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I heard it from one of his slaves. He made the wrong friends at court. He was an ally of the dead chamberlain, Krysaphios.’ Aelfric squinted at me. ‘You knew him.’

‘I did.’ I had witnessed his death – indeed, I had contributed to it. ‘I’m surprised the emperor would trust this mission to someone associated with that faction.’

‘Are you? Why not? If he’s honest, he’ll have to try twice as hard to prove it, and if he’s not honest he’ll be well out of the emperor’s way.’

Another more unpleasant aspect struck me. ‘And if the embassy goes wrong, or if our ship is lost at sea, Nikephoros will be conveniently removed from the court.’

‘No wonder he scowls so much.’

‘The Franks sent ambassadors to the Fatimids once,’ I remembered. ‘Five months ago. I was at the council where the princes discussed it.’

‘What became of them?’

I shrugged. ‘They never returned.’

We put in at Cyprus to take on supplies. The harbour was choked with commerce: it felt as if half the imperial grain fleet must be there, together with transports and galleys so thick you could almost have walked across the bay on their decks. Every deck, wharf, jetty and gangway was piled high with the material of war: barrels of fish, bales of hay, live pigs to feed armies and iron pigs to feed the blacksmiths’ forges. In one corner of the port, makeshift fences had been erected to pen in the vast herd of horses and mules who waited to be embarked for Antioch. The greater part of the goods, though, were inbound, destined to sit in stores and warehouses until the Army of God moved south. It was a vast operation, the fruits of the empire all gathered together to feed the campaign, and I began to realise how far afield the tremors of our war had reached.

From Cyprus we sailed south and then south-east, running before the wind. Now it was the sailors who worked while the rowers rested, and a new urgency gripped the ship. Even with a good breeze behind us, the air seemed to be thickening day by day. Whenever they were off duty the men would gather near the bow and stare out over the waves, waiting for the land to appear. Some of them reported seeing great fish many times larger than a man swimming beside us, though I never saw them.

Like a shadow travelling in advance of its owner, I knew the coast must be close when the sea began to fill with an ever greater number of small vessels. I watched them nervously, but they were merely fishermen and shallow coastal traders who gave us a wide berth. Soon afterwards the land itself appeared: a low and inviting strip of shore that turned out, as we drew closer, to be only the arms of a great inland lagoon. We passed through to a flat sea studded with fragments of islands; on one of these, still some way from the land, was the port of Tinnis.

I had believed that a man who had lived in Constantinople could never find any place exotic, that every race and colour of men, together with all their works and produce, were to be found in that city. Tinnis, though, was different: the dhows and feluccas that swarmed around the island like bees in a hive; long poles with drying flax hanging off them like hair; the slender turrets of the Ishmaelite churches and the mysterious chants of their priests, which echoed across the still water five times each day. But even more strange than that, I suspected, was the knowledge in my heart that this was Egypt, a land that had been ancient even in the time of the ancients. Byzantine emperors had once ruled this land, and Romans before them – but they were mere footnotes in a history of infinite depth and magnificence.

Our unexpected arrival caused considerable stir. Two war-galleys rowed out to challenge us, and our sailors waited anxiously by the naphtha throwers while Nikephoros conducted a brisk exchange with the Fatimid captain through the stammering efforts of our priest. Eventually, we convinced them of our neutrality – though even when one boat returned to the harbour to deliver the news, the other hovered vigilant near by.

For three full days we hung there on our anchor, like a mote of dust caught in a sunbeam. The captain struck the sails and fashioned makeshift awnings to shade the deck, for the planks were beginning to warp apart in the glare. After the second day, I thought the sinews of my mind might be warping too. I watched the sun inch across the sky until my eyes burned, and found myself longing for each repetition of the plaintive Ishmaelite prayer-chant to mark the passing of the days.

By the fourth afternoon I was almost past caring. So I did not hear the measured splash of oars approaching, or the creak of the thole-pins, and only realised that the confines of our solitude had been broken when the sleeping crew about me suddenly leaped up and began to array themselves in formal display. Almost before I realised it, something thudded gently against our hull and dark hands reached over the side. Nikephoros strode out from his cabin, his jewel-crusted lorum draped hastily over his shoulders, as the Fatimid envoy hauled himself onto our ship.

Every man on deck fell silent. Most stared in astonishment, though a few dropped their eyes in shame or embarrassment. The colour drained from Nikephoros’ face so that he seemed even more pale beside the visitor.

The new arrival was an African. To many of our crew that alone would have been an incomparable novelty. I had seen a few of his race in Constantinople – expensive slaves in the noblest households, or porters on the docks – but never any like him. Everything about him marked him as a lord or prince: his proud bearing, his extraordinary height, the rich golden bands around his arms and the yellow robe that hung to his ankles. He was so different to any other man that it would be hard to call him handsome, but there was something in his face – beside his strangeness – that attracted the eye and held it. His scalp was shaved clean and glistened like wet tar in the heat, while his strong features wore authority easily. Strangely, he reminded me of Sigurd, though he could hardly have been more different from the hairy, sallow-skinned barbarian.

He smiled – a broad, white-toothed smile that you immediately wanted to share – then said: ‘Praise be to God, the Lord of the universe – and peace.’

Nikephoros remained obviously unmoved by the man’s smile – indeed, he seemed to be speaking through a mouthful of barely swallowed anger. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I am Bilal al-Sud, captain of the Qaysariyya guard. My master, the caliph of the Fatimids, the Commander of the Faithful, has sent me to greet you. If you come in peace and honest friendship, you are welcome in his realm.’

No doubt he expected some piece of well-honed diplomatic courtesy in reply. In this he was disappointed.

‘You speak Greek.’ Nikephoros’ tone suggested it was more a curiosity, like a dog trained to answer questions, than an accomplishment.

Bilal flashed his brilliant smile again, though this time the white teeth seemed somehow sharper. ‘I learned it from Greek slaves. The caliph has many in his palace.’

The warning had its desired effect. Nikephoros mastered his sneer and assumed a more polished, tactful demeanour. ‘I have gifts and messages for the caliph from my master, the emperor Alexios of Byzantium.’

Bilal nodded. ‘The caliph is eager to see them. He has ordered me to escort you up the river to al-Qahira.’ He looked around. ‘Your ship is magnificent, but she will not manage the bends and shallows of the Nile. You will come in my barge.’

We left the comforting bulk of our ship behind and rowed across the lagoon. The shores drew closer and began to pinch together, though if you looked ahead they never seemed to join. At some point I suppose we must have entered the mouth of the river, though there was nothing obvious to define it: the land off our beams was still as distant as ever, far wider than the Bosphorus at Constantinople. I looked out across the brown waters, curious to see something of this fabled land, but all I saw was water and reeds.

We spent two days and two nights on the Egyptian barge. It was an eerie voyage, more like a dance: we often turned where no turn seemed necessary, so many times around that sometimes the current seemed to be pushing us upstream. I pitied the men on the oars. As the river banks drew closer I began to make out the features of the landscape: a dirty brown soil bristling with the stalks of harvested crops, and divided by low ridges like causeways through the desert. Sometimes, where they intersected, I saw villages, though many were in ruins and I spied few inhabitants.

‘What are they for?’ I asked Bilal, pointing at the ridges. They seemed too regular and evenly spaced to be natural.

‘When the river floods, they are the only way to travel the land. Every year, the Nile bursts its banks and waters the fields enough to sustain a whole year’s crops.’

‘And when does that happen?’

Bilal scowled. ‘August.’

I looked back at the fields. Even from that distance I could see that they were the pale brown colour of clay, not the rich black of wet soil. A skein of cracks had shattered the hard earth, and nothing grew save a few strands of wild grass. Above us, the sun burned down from the cloudless mid-September sky.

‘Sometimes the floodwaters come late,’ said Bilal, unconvincingly.

On the third day, the river widened again as several strands of its delta came together. Just beyond, on the eastern bank, a host of towers rose straight against the desert sky, so many that they clustered together and almost became a perfect whole. White triangles of sail flapped beside wharves that bustled with commerce, and columns of dust billowed up from the heavy-laden roads.

‘Is that . . . ?’

‘Al-Qahira,’ said Bilal, and the sounds took on a deep and savage mystery in his voice. ‘Or, as your Roman ancestors called it, Babylon.’

ι

Until then, I had always imagined ambassadors to be like angels. They were higher beings, of less substance and greater power than mere mortals, flitting about the world impervious to threats of harm. There in Egypt, I realised the truth: ambassadors were little better than prisoners. The moment we set foot on the wharf we were hurried to a caravan of litters borne by bare-chested Nubian slaves, who carried us in curtained blindness to a secluded courtyard, and then up a stair to the quarters appointed to us. There were three interconnecting rooms, spacious and airy and lavishly furnished. But the ornate screens that curved and twined across the windows were iron, and when the caliph’s attendants left us alone I heard the door lock from the outside.

The next day, almost before dawn, a slave arrived to announce that the Fatimid king, the caliph himself, would give us an audience that very morning. I had been lying on my mattress, savouring the feeling of solid ground beneath me and watching the sun stream through the iron screens over the window; with reluctant speed, I rolled out of bed and rummaged through my belongings for my cleanest tunic. Only when I had pulled it on, splashed some water from a bronze basin over my face and ploughed a comb through my hair did I notice Nikephoros. He was sitting on a divan in a plain white under-tunic, while one slave held a mirror in front of him like a votive offering and another trimmed his hair and beard. He was perfectly still, his face a passive mask, yet even that somehow conveyed scorn for the bustle and haste around him.

Thinking perhaps he had not heard the slave’s message, I repeated it. The corner of his mouth turned upward in a sneer.

‘When you have spent more time in palaces, you will realise that courtiers treat hours as you would treat minutes. There is no hurry.’

He kept his head still as he spoke, careless of the sharp razor darting around near his ear. I guessed the slave knew what would befall him if he cut his master’s precious skin.

Without seeming to look at me, Nikephoros added, ‘But if you do intend to be ready, you might dress in something that befits the occasion. I do not want the caliph to think that the emperor Alexios has sent a delegation of slaves and mercenaries to dishonour him.’

His words were cruel and true – it was the truth that stung more. I bit back an instinctive retort and said humbly, ‘I have nothing better.’

‘My attendants will find you something.’ Nikephoros looked in the mirror. ‘I cannot have the caliph judging the emperor by your shortcomings.’

All that morning I experienced the strange urgent indolence that is the lot of ambassadors. Every fifteen minutes another Fatimid messenger would bustle into our rooms to announce, either in broken Greek or by elaborate hand gestures, that the great moment for our audience was nigh, but even after Nikephoros had been shaved, dressed, oiled and perfumed with deliberate care by his slaves, we remained waiting in our quarters. After the first two hours, we learned to ignore the announcements. I stood by the window to breathe what little air blew through it, trying to see something of the surrounding palace and city. The iron screen cut the view into a mosaic of a thousand disjointed fragments: I could see high domes and minarets, corners of courtyards shaded with plane trees, but without any sense of how the pieces joined together. The sun rose high, and the tenor of the messages became more apologetic: the caliph was exceedingly busy, he wanted nothing more than to greet his friends from Byzantium but there was urgent court business he had to attend to; he would certainly see us in the next half an hour, perhaps sooner.

At last, when even Nikephoros’ patience must have worn bare, Bilal appeared. We had not seen him all day, though we had sometimes heard his voice in the passages beyond our room. He strode through the double doors, pushing them back with such force that the dust in the air was swept into great swirling vortices. He wore a ceremonial coat of armour whose silver scales were edged in gold, with a chain mail coif draped over his shoulders like the folds of a cowl. Strange designs were embroidered on the hem of his cloak, jagged lines that cut across the fabric like wounds. I had never seen anything like them, and they only served to heighten his dazzling barbarity.

‘Come,’ he said simply.

Bilal led us through a succession of gates and tiled courtyards to a stifling anteroom where he left us for some minutes. Nikephoros paced the small room without bothering to hide his impatience, and when one of his Patzinak guards ventured a question he snarled his reply. At one point his gaze settled on me, and I quailed, but it was only to bark a reminder: ‘Heed everything the caliph says, and remember it faithfully.’

I nodded. Whatever calm I had found in the broad waters of the sea had boiled away in our confinement, leaving only sharp crystals of misgiving. I longed for this audience to be over so that I could return to Antioch and see Sigurd and Anna – but that was too much to think about now. I squirmed under the unaccustomed weight of the robes Nikephoros had lent me: I could not understand why they should feel heavy, for they were lighter than the armour I had worn often enough. Unease magnified the discomfort. They were too large for me and too grand, though shabby enough to Nikephoros’ eyes, and I felt absurd.

Bilal returned. Without a word, he led us back out through the door, down a short corridor, and into the caliph’s audience room.

I had seen ambassadors received with the full ceremony of the imperial court in Byzantium: I suppose I should not have been overawed by the ritual of a lesser, pagan king. But in Constantinople I had watched from a distance, secure in the knowledge that every piece of pageantry and theatrical trickery only emphasised the grandeur of the Byzantine emperor and – by reflection – his people. Here I stood on the opposite side, and it was not a comfortable place to be. Unlike the open expanse of the emperor’s throne room, the caliph’s hall was supported by a forest of pillars, which stretched away in every direction and cast a maze of long shadows. The spaces in between were crammed with a throng of courtiers who lined both sides of the long aisle that led to the back of the room. There, raised on a stone platform beneath a domed recess, seated cross-legged on a low, bench-like throne, sat the caliph.

Bilal led us forward. It took all my courage, and the sound of the guards advancing behind me, to follow him along the corridor of onlookers, under the weight of their strange and foreign gazes, to the open space below the caliph. Gilded lamps hung from the ceiling, casting a pool of light into which we stepped, but that was a dim hole compared to the radiance that shone from the dais above. It seemed to be bathed in sunlight, though I could not see any windows, so bright that I could hardly look directly at the caliph but had to keep my eyes fixed on the ground at his feet. It was covered in rich carpets, which in turn were strewn with the pale-yellow petals of narcissus flowers. Their ripe scent filled the air.

Whether Nikephoros was cowed by the surroundings, or whether he had mastered his pride in the cause of diplomacy, he showed nothing but deference to the caliph. Without prompting, he dropped to his knees and kissed the ground three times. Clumsily, I and the rest of his retinue, the ten Patzinaks, did likewise. Above us, I could hear someone – Bilal? – speaking solemn words in Arabic. When he had finished, I risked a quick glance upwards. The caliph had stood. A disembodied voice drifted down from the podium, echoed imperfectly in Greek by Bilal.

‘Praise be to God, the Lord of the universe. In the name of God, the lord and giver of mercy, and Mohammed His prophet, peace be upon him, the caliph al-Mustali welcomes the emissaries of the emperor of the Christians. Peace be on you.’

Still on his knees, Nikephoros responded with a recitation of titles and credentials. When he finished, I saw him darting sideways glances to Bilal, waiting for some signal that we could rise. None was given.

‘The emperor Alexios honours us with this embassy,’ said the caliph. His voice sounded surprisingly young for one so exalted, though the foreign language made it hard to be sure.

‘The emperor Alexios has always esteemed your friendship. Now he seeks an alliance.’

The mood in the room tensed as Bilal rephrased this in Arabic. The pillars stretched away all around us, and I began to feel like a lamb caught by wolves in a forest. The caliph leaned forward on his throne, blocking out the light like a cloud covering the sun.

‘Who does he wish to make this alliance against?’

Bilal’s voice was louder than the caliph’s, and the vaulted roof spun his words about so that they seemed to come from all around us.

‘Against the Turks of Palestine.’

A great agitation spread through the crowd of courtiers, as though the surrounding forest had come alive in a breeze. The caliph let it build unchecked for a few moments, then hushed it with an unseen gesture.

‘I have heard rumours of a mighty Christian army,’ he announced. ‘Not Greeks or Rum, but Franj. What do you know of them?’

‘They have come from the west to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem.’

‘They are the emperor’s mercenaries?’

Nikephoros hesitated. ‘His allies.’

The caliph sat down, and let the full radiance of the invisible sun bathe his face. If I squinted, I could just make out his face beneath a white turban. His features were soft, though held fast by a furious effort of concentration. As I had thought, he seemed very young – not much past twenty.

‘If the emperor Alexios has so many allies, why does he seek our help?’

‘Because we have a common enemy.’ Nikephoros rocked forward on his knees, and I wondered if they were beginning to ache as much as mine. Perhaps that was why diplomats wore such thick robes. ‘Because the Turks have stolen their land equally from both of us. Our army is poised at Antioch to strike south; if the Fatimids could come up from Egypt, we would crush them between us.’

This time there was no murmuring from the crowd. All waited to see what the caliph would say.

‘It is easy to speak of crushing the Turks – and far harder to achieve it. They have the full power of the court of Baghdad behind them.’

‘And we have broken it,’ said Nikephoros urgently. ‘You have heard of Kerbogha the Terrible? Two months ago the Franks routed him in battle at Antioch. Palestine is open for the taking.’

The caliph’s face remained impassive – too impassive, I felt, for someone hearing this news for the first time.

‘If Palestine is laid open, why not take it yourself? Does the emperor always seek allies in victory?’

‘All Christians should abhor war and unnecessary killing – as indeed do faithful Muslims.’

‘Fight in God’s cause against those who fight you, but do not overreach yourself, for that is hateful to God,’ the caliph murmured.

‘The stronger our army, the less we will have to use it.’

‘But how, then, will you reward your allies?’

There was an undisguised sharpness in the question. Nikephoros considered his answer carefully.

‘The emperor has no claim on Palestine. The Frankish army want only Jerusalem, and enough land about it to sustain themselves. For the rest, as much as we conquer can be yours.’

The caliph clasped his hands together and pressed them against his chin. He looked down on us from his height, while the crowded nobles around us craned forward. I could not look at the caliph: my eyes ached from the nimbus of light that surrounded him, and the heavy robes pressed down on me like lead.

‘The emperor’s friendship is a prize for any man,’ he declared. ‘But an alliance for war cannot be entered into lightly or in haste. I will think on your proposal, and give you my answer as soon as it is decided. In the meantime, you will stay in the palace. As . . .’ There was a pause in the translation as Bilal – unusually – struggled to find a word.

‘As my guests.’

‘How was the audience?’ asked Aelfric.

I unpeeled my borrowed robe and threw it over a wooden stool. In the adjacent room, I could see Nikephoros’ slaves pulling off his opulent lorum and dalmatica, leaving only a loose white smock beneath. I was desperate to release some of the tension of the audience, but it was not easy with a company of Bilal’s African guards stationed outside our door. And my head still ached.

I shrugged. ‘The caliph saw us in person – he didn’t defer us with some string of lesser officials. I suppose that was good.’

‘Are you so dazzled by royalty, Demetrios?’

I looked up wearily. Nikephoros had left his attendants folding his garments and had come through into our room. He was sipping a cup of sherbet, though it did nothing to sweeten the look on his face.

‘The king is not always the most powerful man at court,’ he said, and I remembered that in Constantinople he had been of that faction that sought to make emperors the tools of their officials. ‘The caliph has barely come of age.’

‘He seemed well enough in command of his court to me.’

‘Because his court wanted you to think so. There is only one man who commands the court, and it is not the caliph.’

‘Who, then?’

‘His vizier, al-Afdal. Nothing happens except by his authority.’ There was genuine respect in Nikephoros’ words.

‘Was he there at the audience?’

‘No. But I do not doubt he will have been watching and listening. He flatters us by granting an audience with the caliph, but it is only the first move of a long game. Knowledge is the root of all diplomacy, no less than war. At the moment, our positions are almost equal – we know as much as he does, perhaps more on some matters. But now he will lock us away – with silk cords and golden keys, of course – and starve us of information, while he learns everything he can and watches how matters develop. He will wait until the situation has swung to his advantage before he seriously negotiates with us.’

‘And how are we to know what is in the emperor’s interest then?’

Nikephoros gave a savage grin, perhaps the first time I had seen him happy. ‘That is the game.’

ια

It was not a game I wanted to play, but I no longer had any choice – if, indeed, I ever had. We lived almost entirely in the three rooms we had been allocated, and wanted for nothing except freedom. After three days we were all like caged beasts alternately sulking in corners and snarling at each other; after a fortnight we had learned to contain our passions enough to feign peace. Occasionally Nikephoros would have me write a dispatch to the emperor, emphasising the Fatimids’ hospitality and his sincere hopes for an honest alliance with them; for the rest of the time, I sat by the window, trying not to think about Anna and Sigurd, and observed the comings and goings of the palace. At first it was merely something to watch, a small corner of movement in an otherwise still existence, but gradually I began to notice patterns: the different attires and the deference each man drew, who bowed and made way for whom, which hours were busy and which quiet. Most of all, I noticed the guards. There were a great many of them: Africans like Bilal, Turkish archers, Armenian cavalrymen, and brownskinned desert-dwellers who carried short, stabbing spears. As with the Franks, or even the emperor’s armies, there seemed to be a great rivalry between the different races – and it seemed to be the Africans who suffered worst. Each time a detachment of Turks or Armenians marched through the courtyard, the Africans were forced out of the way, and if they were not quick enough they often suffered kicks and blows. I mentioned it once to Nikephoros, and drew a predictably condescending response.

‘Of course they beat the Africans – they are the least of races, savages worse than Franks. Why do you think they appointed them to guard us, if not to demean us? Is that all you’ve noticed?’

I hesitated, unwilling to risk drawing his scorn again.

‘Which race do you see least?’

‘The Armenians?’

‘Exactly. The vizier, al-Afdal, is an Armenian, and he rests his authority on a private army of his countrymen. What does that tell you?’

‘That perhaps al-Afdal is not here?’

Nikephoros nodded. ‘And that is more disconcerting than any amount of tedium. Al-Afdal would not remove himself from his capital this long without good reason. But what that is . . . I do not know.’

After that, I watched the numbers of Armenian guards more closely, for it seemed that until the vizier al-Afdal returned we would be condemned to our unchanging, stifling confinement. I never saw any change, but one day we were treated to a rare release – not only from our rooms, but from the whole city itself.

‘The caliph fears you may soon leave us without ever having seen the grandeur of Egypt,’ Bilal announced, with what might have been an apologetic smile threatening to overcome his serious expression.

Evidently the caliph did not count his own capital among the grandeurs of Egypt, for we were taken to the docks on the same curtained litters that had carried us to the palace and loaded onto a gilded barge, which quickly pulled away from the wharf. The other river traffic, I noticed, steered a safe distance away from it. Looking back, I could see the southern edge of the city receding, and the arid fields beyond the walls. A little distance beyond, to the south, I saw a second city, utterly in ruins. Flocks of birds wheeled over the remains, and a few thin trails of smoke told tales of thieves or fugitives squatting inside, but otherwise it was silent, and the fleets of boats that scudded along the river ignored its broken wharves.

I saw Bilal standing alone near our prow. ‘What happened here?’ I asked quietly.

‘This was Fustat. One of our great cities.’

‘Who destroyed it?’

Bilal’s face creased with anger. ‘We did.’ He must have seen my bafflement, for he continued: ‘A civil war.’

‘Recently?’

‘Before you were born.’

I considered this. ‘Then why . . . ?’

‘Why is it still deserted?’ Bilal gave a grim, sad laugh. ‘Before the war we had enough men to fill two cities. Afterwards, we only had enough for one.’

We beached our barge a few miles upriver. A squadron of Turkish cavalry was waiting for us, with half a dozen camels and twice as many slaves. Though I had seen camels often enough from a distance, I had never ridden one, and I must have entertained the guards no end in my undignified attempts to haul myself onto its rolling back. Hardly was I in the saddle than the beast unfolded its spindly legs and lumbered to its feet, tipping me about like a ship in a storm. A small boy, black as Bilal but half his size, held the reins. Beside me, I could see Nikephoros suffering similar indignities; Bilal, evidently more practised, was sitting as calm as a monk in his saddle. Our Turkish escort, all mounted on Arabian horses, watched with grim amusement.

As my seat steadied, I was able to cast my gaze slightly further afield – and gasp in wonder. Now I saw why the caliph had sent us here. A few hundred yards to the west the flat ground of the flood plain ended suddenly in a steep, stony escarpment. Atop it, looming over the river valley, I could see the peaks of fantastic mountains unlike any I had ever seen. They had no foothills, no ridges or ravines, but rose in an unbroken line from the earth. Their long slopes were so vast and perfect that surely only a god could have carved them. They seemed unspeakably ancient.

Bilal saw my astonishment and nodded. ‘There is nothing else like them on earth. Come.’

With the awning slung low over the barge I had not seen the mountains from the river; now I could look at nothing else. Their immensity was hypnotic, and only grew as we approached across the parched flats of the river basin. There were three peaks in total, the third a good deal shorter than the other two. For a brief moment I was reminded of the three peaks of Antioch – though they could hardly have been more different.

I gestured to Bilal, riding between me and Nikephoros, and he guided his camel closer.

‘What are these? Churches?’

‘Tombs.’ Bilal raised his eyebrows. ‘You have not heard of the pyramids?’

‘Of course. They were once reckoned among the wonders of the world.’ Nikephoros swatted his cane at the boy who led his camel, and was obediently led nearer to us. ‘“It is through deeds such as these that men go up to the gods.”’

‘Did the caliphs build them?’

Nikephoros laughed. ‘It was the ancient kings of Egypt. Long before the caliphs, the Caesars or even Alexander. Scholars say that they were built by the Jews before Moses led them out of their bondage.’

We carried on, climbed a narrow path up the escarpment and emerged on the plateau high above the river. Once again, I was dumbfounded. Though parched by the drought, the valley’s inherent fertility was obvious; here, only a few hundred yards distant, we were in a desert, a sea of sand and dust that stretched as far as the horizon and lapped around the base of the pyramids. And rising out of it like a sea monster, straight ahead of us, towered an enormous carved head surrounded by a stone hood. I started, frightening my camel, and the boy with the bridle had to run back and calm it before I was pitched over the cliff.

‘That is Abu al-Hol,’ said Bilal. ‘The Father of Terror.’

I crossed myself, and gave the creature a wide berth as we picked our way across the sands. The head seemed to be attached to a body which, if anything, was even larger – but an animal’s body, not a man’s, stretching out behind the head like a crouched cat or lion. I could just see the ridge of its back bursting out through the enveloping sand. It almost made me forget the grandeur of the pyramids, which seemed even more vast now that I could see how close we were. Until then, I had thought that no man could build anything larger than the cathedral of Ayia Sophia, but these must have been more than twice its height.

And yet, as we came around the side of the middle pyramid I saw that it was neither so perfect nor so permanent as it had been made to look. Scaffolding had been erected up one side of it, and the heirs of pharaohs’ slaves still toiled in the heat with chisels and hammers. But instead of building this monument to eternity, they seemed to be dismantling it. Huge blocks of dressed limestone had been carved away from the pyramid’s side, exposing ragged tiers of crumbling rocks and mortar beneath. As I watched, they slowly lowered one of the blocks down a long wooden slide, straining on the ropes.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked in astonishment.

Bilal shrugged. ‘The caliph needs cut stone for his new city, and it is easier to quarry it from the past than from the ground.’

We made our way into the shade at the base of the largest pyramid and dismounted. Bilal had brought food – figs and dates and cheese – and also wine and sherbet. The slaves laid carpets on the hot sand, and we sat and ate in the shadow of antiquity. Our Turkish guards stayed on their horses and ate in the saddle, watching us from a little distance.

‘Do they expect us to steal a camel and escape into the desert?’ I wondered, pulling a fig from one of the baskets. A little way across the sand, the African boy sat in the shade of his hobbled camel and watched us impassively. Impulsively, I threw him the fig and watched his squinting eyes widen. He snatched it from the air, peeled back the green skin and sucked out the purple flesh and seeds. A trail of dark juice spilled onto the desert beside him.

Nikephoros looked away, bored or embarrassed, and pretended to examine the construction of the pyramid. Bilal glanced at me approvingly. It was a rare moment of empathy after so many weeks of guarded emotion, and I was suddenly desperate to make more of it.

I swept my arm across the desert, and back towards the river valley. ‘Is this your country?’

He shrugged. ‘I was born here.’

That wasn’t what I had meant. ‘Where are your people from?’

‘From the south.’ He spat a date seed onto the sand. ‘But that is not my country.’

‘Why not?’

‘My mother was brought to Egypt when she was a girl. I was born here. I have campaigned in Palestine, in Syria and in Arabia, but I have never set eyes on Zanj, where she came from. How could that be my home?’

It seemed a strange and rootless way to live. ‘I was born in Isauria, but I have not seen it in fifteen years. The Turks have governed it for most of that time – the emperor only reconquered it this past spring. But it is still my homeland.’

‘And when your emperor conquered it – what happened to all the Turks who were born there?’

‘I suppose they went back to their homelands in the East.’ I saw the look Bilal was giving me. ‘They did not belong there. It was Byzantine land.’

‘And Jerusalem. Is that Byzantine land as well?’

‘It’s Christian land,’ I said defensively.

‘And when did Christians last own it?’

‘Hundreds of years ago. But that is no reason why they should not have it again. Otherwise, you have nothing more than the rule of conquest.’

Bilal leaned sideways and sketched an abstract circle in the sand next to our carpet. ‘Of course I believe in the rule of conquest. Show me a soldier who doesn’t.’

‘A defeated soldier,’ said Nikephoros, who had shown every sign of ignoring us until then. Somehow, his attention now cast a chill on the conversation, and we lapsed into silence.

After lunch, I excused myself from the party and wandered across the desert to the northernmost of the pyramids. The Turkish guards watched me go but did not follow. There was nowhere I could have escaped to.

The pyramid was so vast that long before you entered its shadow you ceased to see it for what it was. Its geometric perfection, so obvious from afar, distorted until it became nothing more than a huge wall lifting out of the sand. Only as I reached its foot did it change again, resolving itself into a giant staircase, which seemed to rise to the heavens. Captivated, I began to climb without even thinking. The stripped courses were pitted and irregular, and I had to scramble to haul myself over each tier. Before I was even halfway up, my tunic was filthy with dust and sweat. Too late, I remembered I was supposed to be a representative of the emperor and probably above such things.

I paused in my ascent and looked down, shading my eyes with my hand. The green-brown smear of the Nile valley trailed away to the north, a thin vein of life between two apparently endless deserts. I could see the towers of al-Qahira, and the sprawling ruins of Fustat, the ghost city, beside it. Ahead and to my right, the blows of the masons’ chisels rung in the still air.

It was too hot to sit there long, but I did not want to go back to Nikephoros and Bilal so soon. I rose, and edged my way around the pyramid along the uneven course. As I came around to the western face I looked down, and saw two horses tethered to a fallen rock at the pyramid’s base. Even in this alien place, it seemed the Turkish guards would not allow me too long a leash, though I could not see the riders.

Sweating profusely, I reached the next corner and turned onto the northern side. I paused. A few tiers below me, and not quite in the centre of the face, a large gap broke the regular lines of stone. At first I thought it must just be where the caliph’s workmen had cut away a deeper layer, but as I scrambled closer I saw that it was actually a hole, the mouth of a sloping tunnel leading down into the unseen depths of the pyramid. The stones about it were jagged and raw, as if the pyramid had been smashed open, while the walls of the tunnel within were impeccably smooth, inviting and sinister. I shivered, despite the heat. I had pried into pagan temples once before and found nothing but blood and wickedness. On the other hand, confronted with a dark cave, who does not long to know what lies within?

It was then that I heard the scream. It shrilled out of the tunnel as if squeezed from the ancient stones themselves, as if the ghosts of the pharaohs had stirred in their coffins. I stepped back, almost over the edge of the ledge, and flailed my arms furiously to keep my balance. The effort seemed to right my senses. I believed there were demons in the world, of course, and I believed that evil lurked in the pagan inheritance of our ancestors. Sometimes I had felt it. But along with the scream, just after it, I had heard something else: a voice raised in anger. And as I peered at the sand that had drifted into the entrance, I could see two sets of fresh footprints – and two snaking lines as if something, or someone, had been dragged between them. Ghosts and spirits might dwell in the pyramid, but the sounds I had heard were the sounds of men. Crossing myself twice, I stepped into the darkness.

I had expected that the monumental scale of the building would be matched within: I had imagined cavernous chambers, high galleries and vast columns rising into darkness. Instead, almost immediately, the passage tapered into a shaft so small that I had to first crouch, then crawl – though it was so steep that I was grateful to be able to brace myself against the low ceiling for fear of losing my grip entirely and sliding forwards . . . how far down? My misgivings mounted as the light from outside vanished behind me, but almost immediately my eyes seemed to adjust to the gloom. No – something was illuminating the passage before me. A flickering orange glow, a torch or a fire, licked up the tunnel walls from below. Blood rushed into my head, paining and dizzying me. I suddenly saw what a lunatic mistake this had been; I wanted to turn back, but the tunnel was so thin I did not have the space. Would it ever release me, or would I have to crawl on my belly all the way into the depths of hell? All I could do was hasten my pace.

At last, the passage opened out. The air inside was cool and stale, smeared with the oily smoke of a lamp set in a niche in the wall. By its billowing light I could see I had entered a chamber tall enough that I could stand. At the far end, a black granite boulder blocked the passage beyond, though a heap of rubble suggested someone had once tried to burrow around it. For myself, I no longer had any desire to penetrate deeper into the depths of the pyramid: I would have turned around and counted myself lucky just to see the sky again. But I could not. The smoky lamplight cast three shadows over the polished granite: two were Turkish guards, their swords and belts unbuckled from their waists and their robes hanging open; the third was the black-skinned boy who had led my camel, now lying cowering on the floor. He was completely naked, and I saw a balled-up cloth in a corner where his thin tunic had been ripped from his body.

I spoke without thinking if I would be understood, or what my words would provoke. ‘Stop!’

The two guards turned. The boy, who had seen me first, lifted himself on his hands like a dog scenting his master, though there was little hope on his face.

‘Stop,’ I said again. The sudden act of standing up had left me dizzy, and there was less conviction in my voice this time. The guard to my left scowled, then stepped towards me and spat out a stream of angry words. I shook my head dumbly, understanding nothing but terribly fearful for what I had begun. I glanced back at the boy: he had crawled over to his discarded tunic and reached out for it, but as he did so the second guard stamped a heavy boot on his hand. The gruesome crack of bone echoed around the chamber; the boy howled, and flung himself back into the far corner where he lay, whimpering, not even bothering to cover himself. How old could he be – ten? Twelve?

‘I demand you stop.’

The guards could not understand my words, but the meaning must have been clear enough. An ugly look spread across the nearer man’s face. He stepped forward again, reaching for the sword he had unbuckled. He pulled it from its scabbard and whipped the blade towards me; I retreated, but almost immediately felt the cold stone of the wall against my back. I had no chance of escape. The only way out was the narrow passage, and even if I had managed to squeeze into it my opponents could easily have hauled me back out. And that would have meant leaving the unfortunate boy to his fate. Even as I watched, I saw the second guard lift him off the floor and spin him hard against the wall. Would they make me watch?

The nearer guard was still holding the sword, its point angled towards my heart. A part of my mind refused to believe it: I was an ambassador, after all. Surely they could not afford to sacrifice me so carelessly. But I was alone, deep in a dangerous, crumbling monument. They could kill me, bury me under the rubble and pretend I had suffered an unfortunate accident. Or drag me into the desert and let the sands bury me for ever.

I brushed away those thoughts. This was not the first time I had seen a blade held to my heart, and by more desperate men than these. I tried to swallow the pulsing fear which my heart pumped through me.

‘Let me go,’ I said. ‘I am the emperor’s ambassador. You cannot—’ I broke off as I saw the bored incomprehension on the Turk’s face. He inched closer, and raised the sword a fraction higher. I could hardly look beyond the silver spark of the hovering point, but beyond it I saw the blurry shadow of the second guard approaching the boy with outstretched hands. The muscles in my back tensed, and I had to fight back the urge to hurl myself forward. I would only have impaled myself.

Neither of us moved. The only sound in the chamber was a grunting, fumbling noise by the far wall. I closed my eyes. Then, suddenly, I heard a scraping by my feet, a trickle of cascading pebbles and a half-checked cry of surprise. My eyes flashed open, and before I could even look at what had caused the noise I saw that my opponent’s gaze had been distracted. It was all I needed. I braced myself against the wall and lashed out with my right boot, hammering it straight into his groin. He squealed with pain, though he was too well trained to let go his sword. He bent double, which only served to present his face to my upswinging fist. His nose cracked under the impact.

The guard reeled away, clutching his face with his left hand, and I turned belatedly to see what it was that had distracted him. Even with the blood of battle scorching my veins, I recoiled. A black demon had crawled out of the tunnel, the ghost of some long-dead denizen of this tomb. He stood almost as high as the ceiling; his yellow cloak swirled around him like fire, and his round head was black and featureless as shadow. The sword in his hands smouldered in the lamplight as he advanced into the room.

He turned to glance at me, and I saw with grateful relief that he was no demon. There were white eyes and a mouth in the black face, and the yellow cloak was real enough to have been smeared and stained by his passage through the tunnel. It was Bilal. He strode towards the second guard, spun him around and hurled him against the wall with such force that I almost expected to see the granite crack. He shouted in the man’s face, a furious tirade that needed no translation, and I sagged against the wall in relief.

A shadow fell across Bilal’s back, though he could not see it. The first guard had risen out of the gloom at the edge of the chamber, and if my assault had left him unable to move freely, he still had a sword in his hands and vicious purpose in his arms. I shouted a warning and sprang forward. Bilal turned. The guard heard me too, but that did not matter: he was committed to his attack and too wounded to change course. I struck him and ploughed him to the ground, desperately trying to pin down his sword arm. I could not reach. He reversed his grip and thumped the pommel into my shoulder, loosening my hold. Wet blood streamed over his face where I had broken his nose, but he seemed impervious to the pain as he tried to throw me off. He had almost dislodged me: in a second, I would be on the floor, and he would be over me. I could not expect any help from Bilal, for I could dimly hear him struggling with the other guard behind me.

My tumbling charge had taken us near the pile of rubble at the end of the room. In desperation, I let go with my right arm and flung it out, scrabbling on the ground for a loose stone. One was too heavy, another little more than a pebble. Meanwhile, my one-handed grasp was not enough to hold the Turk. He heaved up and rolled me over, just as my free hand closed around a fist-sized stone. I barely felt the weight; I lifted it, and swung it against the side of the guard’s head with every ounce of strength I could muster. It struck him on the temple and I felt his skull shudder; I struck him again, and this time the stone came away stained with blood. Perhaps the sight should have sickened me, but instead it gave a deeper, savage power to my blows as I struck him again and again, until at last he went limp and fell away.

I stood, trembling, and let the stone drop to the floor – suddenly, it felt like the foulest object imaginable. I looked around. Bilal was standing, wiping his sword on a crumpled object by his feet, the unmoving body of the second guard. The boy, no longer in danger, had crawled away and was struggling into his tunic. Bilal stroked his head and murmured a few gentle words, then turned to me.

‘I followed them when I saw them come after the boy,’ he said. ‘I did not know you were in here too.’

‘I heard the boy’s cry and came to look.’

Bilal crossed to my side and stared down at the guard, though I could hardly bear to look at the matted stew of hair, blood and bone I had pounded out of his skull.

‘Is he dead?’ I asked.

Bilal gave no answer. Instead, he turned his back on me and knelt beside the wounded guard. He lifted the man’s bloody head and cradled it on his knee, staring down into the slack face. He shook his head, then reached across and stroked his hand gently across the man’s neck. It was only as he suddenly leapt back, and as blood and air began bubbling out of a broad cut he had left, that I saw the gleam of a small knife in Bilal’s hand.

‘You – you killed him.’

‘Only to finish what you had begun.’ Bilal removed his cloak and his outer tunic, folded them, and placed them in one of the stone niches in the wall.

‘But what he did is a crime – surely, even here? Better that he should have been punished in public.’

Bilal glanced at me with contempt. ‘Do you think we are barbarians? Of course it is a crime. But it is more . . . complicated.’ He turned away and crouched by the fallen masonry. ‘Help me.’

The air in that deep chamber had become a heady potion of smoke and oil, blood and dust. Together, Bilal and I pulled away some of the stones, laid the two corpses by the foot of the wall, and heaped the rubble back over them. There was not nearly enough to hide them.

‘If they are found, it will look as if they were killed in a rock fall,’ said Bilal.

‘It must have been sharp rocks, to stab one and slit the other’s throat.’

Bilal grunted. ‘The desert is full of scavengers. In two days, all trace of their wounds will have vanished with their flesh.’

‘And their companions, the rest of the guards? What will you tell them?’

‘That the two men deserted.’

Slowly, my wits began to return. ‘But they were criminals. They would have raped the boy and murdered me – and you, when you found us. Why should we have to hide them?’

Bilal was hastily pulling on his tunic. ‘Do you remember Fustat? The ruined city you saw from the boat?’

‘You said it was destroyed in a civil war.’

Bilal wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and clasped it at the neck. ‘That was a war between the black legions and the Turkish legions in the caliph’s army. It raged for years and desolated the country. Eventually the vizier, al-Afdal’s father, stopped it by bringing in his Armenian troops who hated Turks and Africans equally. But the wounds are not forgotten. That is why no one must know that a black man has killed two Turkish guards.’

He spun around and advanced on me. ‘I know it is probably to your emperor’s benefit if we tear ourselves apart, but you must swear not to tell what has happened here. If you had not followed them . . .’

‘Then the boy would have been raped in secret, and no one would have known or cared. Is that what you would have preferred?’

Bilal had come very close to me, blocking the light of the fading lamp. Once again, he looked as he had first appeared in that chamber, a featureless void in the shape of a man. I shivered. Then he smiled, his white teeth breaking the darkness, and touched my arm.

‘I am glad you did what you did.’

‘And I am sorry for what came of it. I will keep it a secret, you have my word.’

‘Then we should leave this evil place.’

Dusk was falling by the time we arrived at the palace. A damask haze hung over the low water, while the sky flushed pink over the western desert. Even so, the royal wharf thrived with activity. A fleet of long ships, easily large enough to navigate the sea, had arrived – so many of them that they had to moor three abreast. Their sailors were still coiling ropes and furling sails, while on shore a great throng of soldiers milled about. There was no sign of the litters that had carried us to and from the palace, and little chance that they could have forged a way through the crowd in any event.

‘We will have to walk,’ said Bilal. ‘It is not far.’

We could not even dock, but had to tie up alongside one of the outermost ships and clamber from deck to deck until at last we reached the wharf. Instantly, we were plunged into the bustle and jostle of soldiers, bewildering after the emptiness of the desert. A babble of voices filled the air – and it seemed to me that the language they spoke was not Arabic but something else, something I had heard before among Pakrad’s men in the monastery at Ravendan. Our guards made a tight circle around us, while Bilal approached one of the soldiers and questioned him. The man answered so volubly that Bilal had to wave him to be quiet, indicating Nikephoros and me with a cautionary glance. The soldier giggled and put a calloused finger to his lips, then wheeled away to join the throng of his fellow soldiers.

‘What was that?’

I suspected I was not supposed to know, and that Bilal would either ignore me or pretend not to have heard. Instead, after a moment’s pause to frown in thought, he looked me in the eye.

‘It is the vizier, al-Afdal, He has returned.’

ιβ

The following evening we had our first glimpse of the man who held sway over the caliph. We were invited to a banquet – to celebrate his latest triumph, said the courtier who brought the summons, though when I asked where the victory had been won he retreated from the room. Meanwhile, I had other concerns: I had not seen Bilal since we returned to the palace, and I feared lest he had suffered some punishment or revenge for what had happened in the pyramid. I tried to ask our guards, but they spoke no Greek and could not answer.

The sun was setting when we left our apartments, though we could not see it for the high walls that surrounded the courtyard. I had spent most of the day beside the window, watching the comings and goings and looking in vain for Bilal. Even if I had not known that the vizier had returned, I would have recognised that something had changed, for there was a new sense of urgency and activity in the palace. Now it had subsided, and the loudest sounds in the courtyard were the muted splashing of the fountains and the slap of our footsteps.

The quiet receded as we climbed a broad flight of stairs. I could hear a babble of voices, and the fragile melodies of flutes and a lyre in the background. The noise grew as we came out onto an open balcony: it was surrounded on three sides by wooden screens in the shape of foliage, while the fourth side offered an unbroken view across the river and the plain beyond, all the way to the high peaks of the pyramids several miles distant. I shivered to see them, and turned away to take the cup of sherbet a slave was presenting to me. I was half a pace behind Nikephoros, as befitted my station, and could ignore the functionary who was busy greeting him in a flurry of solicitudes and bows. The dying sun washed Nikephoros’ face; with his head held proud and stiff, he looked like some haughty, golden statue. I could not see his eyes, but the tight curve at the edge of his mouth suggested he was in his element, basking in the mastic of protocol and courtesy.

It was a scheme where I had little part to play, save to stand behind Nikephoros and make him seem taller by lengthening his shadow. Ignoring the functionaries, I skimmed my gaze across the terrace, searching for the vizier. There must have been well over a hundred courtiers in attendance, some with faces as dark as Bilal’s, others as fair as Sigurd, all dressed in long robes trimmed with gold and embroidered with the sharp-edged letters of their scripture. I could not see the vizier – but at the balcony’s edge I saw four men clustered together, watching the gathering with wary concentration. They stood a little apart from the main assembly, sipping nervously from their silver cups, lumpen and awkward amid the fluid ease of the other guests. They were Franks.

I slipped away from behind Nikephoros and made my way towards them. I lost sight of them in the bustle; by the time I emerged, they had noticed my approach. They turned to face me, squaring their shoulders and watching me cautiously as if I posed some unknown danger.

‘You’re far from home.’ I spoke in the bastardised Frankish that had become the Army of God’s common tongue. At the sound of it, nervous glances flashed between the Franks.

‘Further than you.’ It was the nearest Frank who answered, a strongly built man with russet-brown hair and a face that, while smooth-skinned, appeared neither youthful nor handsome. Perhaps it was because of his eyes, which seemed somehow too large for his face; they drilled into me with such fierce and unhidden suspicion that I was almost embarrassed to look at them.

‘Further than me,’ I agreed. ‘I am Demetrios Askiates, from Constantinople.’

‘A Greek – but you have marched with the Army of God?’

‘All the way to Antioch.’

The intensity in his eyes seemed to focus still sharper. ‘You came from Antioch? What is the news there? We heard that God had given us a great victory over the Turks, but that was months ago. What has happened since?’

‘Little except plague and delay.’ I spoke shortly; Antioch reminded me of too many things I could not bear to think of. ‘But why are you at the caliph’s palace? How long have you been here?’

‘Almost six months.’ He laughed bitterly as he saw my shock. ‘You will soon discover that the Fatimids do not hurry their guests. We were sent here by the princes to make an alliance against the Turks, but so far . . .’ He held open his empty palms. ‘Nothing. We have been feasted and entertained, we have marvelled at the caliph’s new city and the pagan marvels of the ancients . . . Have you seen the pyramids?’

He pointed back over my shoulder, though I did not look. ‘I have seen them. Have you met with the vizier, al-Afdal?’

‘Many times. He speaks constantly, sees everything and says nothing. He is the arch-deceiver.’

It seemed a dangerous thing to say at the vizier’s own gathering, and I glanced around nervously. To my alarm, I saw a Fatimid courtier striding towards us, with Nikephoros close behind him. Although the two men could hardly have been more different, the disapproving scowls on their faces were almost identical.

‘Demetrios.’ Nikephoros twitched his head to order me back to my allotted orbit behind him. ‘The chamberlain was about to present us – but it seems you could not wait.’

I swallowed my pride and stepped back into Nikephoros’ shadow, shaking my head in wonder. Yesterday I had shattered a man’s head with a rock; today I was rebuked for anticipating an introduction. As for Nikephoros, he might stand in front of a burning house and his only concern would be to ensure that the inhabitants escaped in order of rank.

The Fatimid chamberlain had begun to make the appropriate introductions – flattering Nikephoros by presenting him first. Then he turned to the Franks.

‘Achard of Tournai.’ He bowed to the man I had spoken with earlier. ‘He has been our guest some months now.’ He introduced the other three, though I promptly forgot their names. None of them even pretended enthusiasm at meeting us.

‘Why does the Greek king need his own envoys here?’ Achard’s staring eyes were trained full on Nikephoros, who stiffened as I translated for him.

‘The Greek emperor sends his envoys where he chooses. Perhaps together we can succeed where alone we may have failed.’

‘When you have been here six months you can judge who has failed,’ Achard muttered in Frankish. I did not translate it.

‘All that matters is that we reach Jerusalem and that we take it from the Turks.’

‘On that we can all agree,’ said the Fatimid chamber- lain piously. There was something knowing in his eyes, an amusement that I could not understand, though perhaps it was just the studied artifice of a courtier.

Before I could ponder it further, a train of slaves with long tapers appeared at the head of the stairs, and the crowd began to drift down to the banquet.

I did see the mysterious and all-powerful al-Afdal that evening, though only from the distant corner of the banqueting hall where I ate. I suppose, having heard his reputation, I had expected a lean-faced schemer with a predatory hunch and hawkish eyes; instead, he seemed a jovial figure who filled out his robes, lounged easily on his seat and laughed often. He speaks constantly and says nothing, I remembered with a cold chill. The hope I had felt the day before, that al-Afdal’s arrival would hasten my return to Sigurd and Anna, had all but died when I heard Achard’s story. Though I could not deny a small spark of optimism when I learned, next morning, that al-Afdal would receive our embassy.

‘This time, you will do well to keep your eyes lowered, your mouth shut, and your feet planted one pace behind and to the left of my own,’ said Nikephoros, as a slave combed and oiled his hair. ‘The caliph’s palace is not a fairground – you cannot wander about it entertaining yourself as you please.’

I said nothing, but sullenly rinsed my hands in a bowl of rosewater. Nikephoros sighed.

‘I know you have followed paths where aggression is prized. But now you are in a different world, where humility and obedience are the chief virtues.’

‘I didn’t know I had joined a monastery again,’ I said sulkily.

Nikephoros gave a short laugh. ‘You saw how long those clumsy Franks have waited here. Do you want to waste as many months fretting away your life?’

I shook my head.

‘The Franks were fools to send their embassy when they did, when their army was mired in a fruitless siege and faced every prospect of destruction. Of course al-Afdal would not accept their alliance in those circumstances. Now that the Franks have proved their worth at Antioch, our proposal is more compelling.’

‘Do we speak for the Army of God?’

‘We speak for the emperor, and the Franks are his tool. Though it would be easier if their own emissaries were not here.’

‘Strange that we have not seen them before.’

Nikephoros snorted. ‘Do you think it was a coincidence that we met them last night? Al-Afdal permitted it because it suits his purposes. There was no chance in that meeting. Now that we are aware of each other’s presence, al-Afdal will seek to divide us, and profit by our suspicions. That is why we must finish our business as quickly as possible – if al-Afdal allows it.’

Footsteps in the hall outside announced the arrival of our escort to the audience. Bilal’s face appeared around the door; he gave me a sad, private frown, then bowed to Nikephoros, who was straightening the hem of his sleeves and did not notice.

‘The vizier al-Afdal begs you to attend him at his home.’

Whatever schemes he might entertain, al-Afdal had no need of the petty delays that the caliph had inflicted on us before our first audience. The litter-bearers carried us through bustling, unseen streets and set us down in a small courtyard hung with silk awnings to keep off the sun. Four fountains rose in the corners, and ran through green-tiled channels to a shallow pool in its centre. On the far side of the pool, reclining on cushions on a low marble dais, sat al-Afdal, and although he sat in the shade, the golden threads in his ivory robe still caught the sun like ripples on water. The sight was so unexpected and peaceful – a man enjoying the comforts of his garden on a hot day – that for a moment I completely forgot his power. Then I saw Nikephoros stoop to one knee in front of me, and hastily followed suit. Nikephoros did not offer the full proskynesis, I saw – that was reserved for true kings – but he held his bow several beats longer than was necessary.

Slaves brought honeyed wine and almond cakes, and al-Afdal’s chamberlain motioned us to sit. Al-Afdal did not say a word, but smiled kindly at us as he waited for the attendants to finish. I took the opportunity to study him: as I had seen the night before, he had the rounded figure of a man who enjoyed his pleasures unabashedly – though he would still sit easily enough on a warhorse, I guessed. His black beard was streaked with grey; the creases at the corners of his eyes gave him a benign, avuncular air, but the eyes themselves were as dark and impenetrable as onyx. When he lifted the cup at his side, I saw a fresh scar livid on the back of his hand, and I wondered again about the victory he had celebrated the night before.

He murmured something in Arabic, and the chamberlain stood. ‘In the name of the Most Illustrious Lord, the Counsellor of the Caliph, the Sword of Islam, the Commander of the Armies, Protector of the Muslims and Guide of the Missionaries, al-Afdal Shah-an-Shah – welcome.’

I thought I saw a sardonic smile play over al-Afdal’s lips as he listened to his titles – and it grew subtly wider as Nikephoros responded with the full litany of the emperor’s honorifics, taking great care, I thought, to draw them out longer than the vizier’s. When he had finished, al-Afdal sat back. It seemed strange that for all his magnificent titles he should not know Greek, when even Bilal had managed to learn it, but he spoke in Arabic and left the chamberlain to translate.

‘An embassy from the emperor of the Romans always brings honour to our court. And we have much to discuss. I have heard that the emperor wishes to forge an alliance.’

‘We have both suffered many defeats against the Turks – often because we could not unite against the common threat. Now that they are on the brink of defeat, they should not escape on account of our differences. We both have too much to gain.’

Al-Afdal smiled. ‘It is true that we have both allowed the Turks too many victories. But let us be honest with each other. It is neither Byzantium nor Egypt that has now brought the Turks low. According to what I hear, that has been accomplished by this army of Franj – the so-called Army of God.’

Nikephoros shifted uneasily on his cushions. ‘It is true that the Frankish armies have done much of the fighting. But it has all been on the emperor’s behalf. He called them into being, and they have sworn allegiance to him as their ultimate lord.’

‘So do you speak for them?’ Al-Afdal popped a sticky sweet into his mouth, rubbed his fingers together in a bowl of water, and let one of the slaves dry them. The question hung unanswered in the lazy air – though al-Afdal obviously guessed the truth well enough. He had had six months to learn all about the Franks from Achard, after all.

‘Only the Franks can speak for themselves,’ Nikephoros said at last. ‘But the emperor is a valued ally and he has . . . influence. When he speaks, they listen.’

Al-Afdal nodded. ‘It must be hard for an army to provision itself so far from home. And if he asked for Antioch? Would they surrender it?’

‘The Franks do not want Antioch for themselves.’ I marvelled that Nikephoros could say that with such conviction. ‘They only need it as a staging post to Jerusalem.’

‘Ah, Jerusalem.’ Al-Afdal leaned forward and dipped a finger in the tiled pool, swirling it around until he had whipped up a vortex. ‘Have you ever seen Jerusalem?’

‘Not yet, my lord.’

‘I have. Until twenty years ago it was part of our holy empire.’

‘Your kindness to its Christian inhabitants then is well remembered.’

Al-Afdal ignored the flattery. ‘It is a terrible place, without water or comfort. But do you know what it’s greatest problem is?’

Nobody answered.

‘Too many gods. Even the pagan Egyptians would have struggled to squeeze so many deities into such a small space. The city cannot hold them. That is why only a fool would seek to conquer it.’

I could see Nikephoros struggling to measure his words appropriately. ‘The Franks believe they are ordained by God to retake Jerusalem.’

‘So Achard of Tournai has told me – many times.’ Al- Afdal smiled again. ‘And the Byzantine emperor? Does he believe that he too must possess Jerusalem?’

‘He is of one mind with the Franks.’

‘Of course.’

Nikephoros uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘Thirty years ago, before the Turks came, Egypt and Byzantium lived peacefully as neighbours. When our pilgrims travelled to the holy places, you protected them, and when famine threatened the Egyptian harvest we sold you grain. The emperor wishes to return to that happy state.’

‘But only if he extends his lands to Jerusalem.’

‘If the Turks are eventually driven out of Syria and Palestine, it will be the Franks who have struck the most telling blow,’ Nikephoros insisted. ‘They will deserve their reward.’

‘And they will accept nothing other than Jerusalem?’

‘Their ambassadors have surely told you so.’

Al-Afdal furrowed his brow, and stroked his beard in mock concentration. ‘So to enjoy the emperor’s friendship again, I must allow his allies to take and hold Jerusalem.’

‘And then, with your left flank secured, you could drive east to Baghdad – to Mecca, even.’

‘And if I do not?’

To the guards standing by the gates and watching us across the courtyard, it must have seemed that al-Afdal was entirely overwhelmed by Nikephoros. His shoulders were hunched and his head bowed, his hands clasped penitently before him as if hoping for a benediction. I could see Nikephoros was no more deceived by the charade than I, but even so he could not resist raising his voice a fraction to drive home his point.

‘The Franks have proved that there are few who can resist them. They are destined for Jerusalem, and – for all our sakes – the emperor would prefer that they came as your allies, to make the victory complete. But, whatever you choose, they are coming.’

A hot silence hung in the courtyard. Even the fountains seemed to have stopped their flow. Al-Afdal sat very still, while Nikephoros sank back onto his cushions. His diplomat’s face was as composed as ever, but his eyes were strained with anxiety.

Al-Afdal looked up with an apologetic smile. ‘That is a pity.’ With a start, I realised that I was no longer hearing his words through the chamberlain’s translation, but direct from his mouth in fluent Greek. ‘Because, you see, I already possess Jerusalem. I conquered it from the Turks a month ago. That was the victory we celebrated last night.’

I was lucky; in my insignificance, no reaction was demanded of me. Nikephoros had no such comfort. Al- Afdal’s sudden leap into Greek had denied him even the translator’s delay, and every second that he did not respond only doubled the oppressive expectation on him. To his credit, he absorbed the full weight of al-Afdal’s blow with little more than a tightening in his cheeks, and a narrowing of his eyes.