Siege of Heaven

Yet even that was not the limit of its defences. At the very tip of the headland, where the path dwindled almost to a sword’s width, our Roman ancestors had built a gate-house to command the road. Its ancient stones were wet and black with age; one wall seemed to grow out of the cliff itself, the other plunged straight into the sea.

‘Raz-ez-Chekka,’ said our guide, pointing to it. He giggled. ‘The Face of God. Only the worthy will pass.’

Duke Godfrey crossed himself. ‘The gates is narrow and the way is hard,’ he murmured.

I shivered, and I was not alone. In that lonely, perilous place I could almost feel the terrifying weight of God’s gaze on me, searching my soul for its infinitesimal worth. The dark gates in the tower opened before me like ravening jaws, and the small windows above watched like eyes. Water bubbled around my feet; gulls called their plaintive song and the waves roared in my ears. Dizziness broke over me, so that even as I stood still the tower seemed to rush closer. Helpless, I stared into its eyes. They were not cruel, nor angry, nor even sad: only unfathomably empty. Then – I swear – one of them winked. I gasped; the world spun away and the sea rushed up to swallow me.

A Varangian hand grabbed my shoulder, and stout arms hauled me back. I blinked, rubbing the salt from my eyes. In front of me, the tower stood where it always had, and a white gull perched on the sill of one of the windows.

‘The Egyptian was right,’ said Sigurd. ‘Six men could hold that tower until Judgement Day.’

But the tower was empty, and the rotten bar that held the gates gave easily under a few blows. Worthy or not, we passed through unhindered.

Perhaps the Franks had been right: perhaps God did will them on. Certainly it felt so during those last weeks of May: after the twenty months we had taken to crawl the hundred miles between Antioch and Arqa, we managed twice that distance in only twenty days. Every obstacle suddenly seemed to fall away from our path, so much that I began to wonder what had ever held us back. Narrow passes through the mountains, which a hundred Saracens could have held against the entire human race, stood undefended; fresh springs flowed with such abundance that the whole army could not exhaust their supply. Even the seasons seemed altered: though it was only the middle of May, the harvest had already ripened. In the orchards, boughs yielded up their fruits, while the wheat in the fields seemed to bow down before our approach, each stalk willingly offering its neck to our sickles. We hardly needed the emperor’s grain ships, whose white sails kept pace with us on the western horizon as we marched down the coast.

I do not mean to give the impression that it was easy – of course there were hardships. The same sun that fattened the wheat burned our skins and parched our throats. The bountiful land could also be treacherous. One evening we made our camp by a stony river bank: in the night, a host of fiery snakes slithered out from the stones and bit many of the army. They died horribly, bloated out so far you could hear the joints snapping inside them. At Sidon, the Saracen garrison sallied out unexpectedly and massacred a company of pilgrims as they foraged. And our holy road was no defence against the usual trials of life. Horses went lame, milk soured, men quarrelled. But against the storms that had ravaged us before, these were nothing: spring squalls forgotten almost before they had passed. They could not stem the confidence and expectation that grew in the army every day.

For, like the Israelites of old, we had come at last into the promised land, a country that had already been ancient when Romulus laid the first stone of the first Rome. Every town we passed resounded with history: Tyre, whose cedarwood Solomon used to build the temple in Jerusalem, and Byblos, whose parchment gave its name to the scripture written on it; Accaron, where the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant, and Caesarea, city of King Herod. Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Saracens – all had possessed this land, or parts of it. Their monuments remained, a palimpsest of the past, though the men themselves had long since rotted to dust.

We celebrated Pentecost and rested a few days. Then, we left the coast and headed inland, towards the spine of mountains that had loomed on our eastern flank every day for the past fortnight.

‘And somewhere in those mountains is Jerusalem,’ said Thomas. It was early June; we sat around the dying embers of our campfire and lay back, looking up at the stars. Anna’s head rested on my chest, while Helena and Thomas cradled the child – no longer a baby – between them.

‘I wonder if it will appear as it does in the Bible,’ mused Helena. ‘Jewelled walls and golden gates and . . . everything else.’

‘It will probably look like any other town we’ve passed,’ I told her, trying to douse the hopes that flared in my own heart. ‘Stone walls, dusty streets, square houses.’

‘It won’t,’ Zoe protested. ‘We can’t have come so far just for that.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘If we make it to Jerusalem.’ Even there, sitting under the same sky that Christ must have seen a thousand years earlier, Sigurd’s pessimism remained unshaken. ‘Why haven’t the Fatimids attacked us yet?’

‘Only you could grumble about that,’ Anna teased him.

‘Either they have some ambush planned or they are drawing us on to Jerusalem deliberately.’

‘Or they’re too weak to oppose us.’ Thomas propped himself up on one arm, using the other to tousle his son’s hair. ‘We’ve descended too swiftly, before they can gather their forces.’

I shook my head. ‘They don’t have to gather their forces – they’re already there, behind Jerusalem’s walls. Why should they confront us in open battle? They know that we will come to them.’

‘And no doubt they’ll be ready for us.’

Later, after the others had gone to bed, Anna found me still lying by the fire. She lay down beside me and burrowed into the crook of my arm, pressing herself against me in a way she had not done in an age. Perhaps I should have shied away from such sinful touch so close to the holy city, but the warmth of her body awoke a craving I had almost forgotten how to feel. I turned her towards me and kissed her eagerly, running my hands over her dress with the awe of fresh discovery.

‘Not here,’ she whispered. She stood, took my hand and led me to a small gully. The night was hot but we did not remove our clothes, nor dare lie on the ground for fear of scorpions and adders. Anna leaned against a boulder, arching backwards as I pressed my kisses against her lips, her throat, her cheeks and her hair. She moaned when I entered her, as hungry for me as I was for her.

Lust made us impatient, and our hasty coupling was over too soon. After we had finished I held her in my arms, still joined with her, breathing in the smoky texture of her hair. Though when I pulled back to look her in the face, her cheeks were wet.

‘Are you crying?’ In the moonlight I could not tell if it was sweat or tears.

‘No,’ she said quietly. Then, after a moment, ‘Yes.’

I touched her dress, dark with sweat where I had pressed against her. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’

‘Is it guilt?’

‘No.’ She turned away and wiped her cheek with her sleeve.

I wrapped my arms closer around her and pulled her into me, cradling her head against my chest. ‘Soon,’ I promised her. ‘In four days, five at the most, we will reach Jerusalem.’ I marvelled that I could say that, and that it could be true.

‘Yes.’ She sniffed. ‘I don’t know . . . perhaps that’s why I feel so tired, suddenly. It’s so close, the hope is almost too much to bear.’

‘Hope of seeing the holy city?’

‘Hope of going home.’ Fresh tears sprang from her eyes, but she ignored them, stroking a finger through my beard. ‘I’m ready.’

‘So am I.’

‘And Helena should hurry home too. Has she told you?’

I started. ‘Told me what?’

Anna pressed a hand over my groin. The smile had returned to her face, and her eyes gleamed with mischief. ‘You and I are not the only ones who have been sneaking away from the camp. Helena is expecting another child.’

I drew back in amazement. ‘When?’

‘Six months from now.’

I counted in my head. ‘How long has she known without telling me?’

‘Two months – and she did not tell me either. But I recognised the signs.’

‘I saw that she looked healthier, that she had grown again,’ I defended myself. ‘I thought it was the abundance of food.’

Anna laughed. ‘She did not tell you because she was afraid it would worry you on the march.’

‘It would have.’ I had to pull away from Anna and lean against the wall of the gully, so bewildered was I by the emotions Anna’s news had unleashed in me.

‘It’s lucky we’re almost ready to go home.’

The next day we came to Aramathea, a prosperous town in the foothills of the mountain range. We approached with caution, for if the Fatimids wished to mount a defence before we reached Jerusalem this was their final opportunity. But when we reached the gates we found the town abandoned, not just by its garrison but by every single inhabitant. They had left behind a great store of grain and provisions, and full cisterns from which we gratefully filled our waterskins. We knew there would be scant water in the mountains ahead.

Of all those days marching, I remember the last one the best. The whole army was awake before dawn, like children at Easter, and before the cool morning could grow stale we were well on our way. We were now deep in the mountains, the first places God made, and the weight of ages was everywhere in the wizened landscape around us. Deep clefts furrowed the faces of barren hills, and desiccated veins of white rock were all that remained of the rivers that had once brought life to the soil. It did not seem like the promised land flowing with milk and honey, but we did not care. Our songs resounded off the crumbling valleys: pious hymns of thanksgiving; proud songs of war; and sometimes more poignant songs of the countries we had left so far behind. Happiness, wonder and laughter bubbled up from the army like fresh springs, and the faces around me seemed to glow with joy.

By midday, the still air had grown thick and heavy. On another day we might have rested through the worst of the heat, but that afternoon there was no thought of delay. I walked between my daughters, Helena on my left and Zoe on my right, glancing at Helena’s belly so often that she scolded me for my unseemly impatience.

‘You won’t see him growing as you watch.’

‘Him? She may be a girl.’ Though I would not tell Helena so, I wanted a girl. Her mother would have wanted a granddaughter, I thought.

A shadow of worry drifted over me, and I looked at the steep valleys around us for any hint of an enemy. It would have been an easy place for the Ishmaelites to ambush us, but once again they chose not to.

I squeezed Helena’s hand – and then, so she would not feel left out, Zoe’s. Of all of us, I think the journey had been hardest for her. Anna had come for me, and Helena for Thomas, but Zoe had come because she had to. Looking at her now, I could see how it had changed her. At home in Constantinople she had been much the livelier of my daughters, teasing Helena and me to distraction, but ever able to defuse our anger with a grin and a hug. Now the mischief and vitality had gone; she spoke rarely and laughed less. Often in our camps she seemed to disappear into the background, not absent in person but not present in spirit. Though her body had grown in the past two years – even the past few months – her face seemed thinner, as if age and experience had somehow pinched it shut.

I smiled at her, trying to prompt the smile I remembered so well. ‘Soon,’ I promised. ‘Soon this will be over.’

The sun waned, breathing its dying light into the dust that surrounded us so we seemed to walk in a golden cloud. I stared forward obsessively; with every turn in the road I expected to see Jerusalem before us, shining on its hilltop, but it did not appear. Then scouts who had ridden forward came back, and announced it was still ten miles to Jerusalem. Many wanted to press on through the night, but the princes would not allow it. Haste was peril, they said: the road was too dangerous, our enemies’ intentions unknown. We made our camp near a village, though few pitched their tents. One word hung on everybody’s lips – spoken with excitement, with awe, with reverence and with fear. Tomorrow.

‘Anyone would think we’re to find Jerusalem as empty as Aramathea,’ Sigurd grumbled. We had built our fire in a rocky circle near the road and sat on the surrounding boulders. Thomas had caught two pigeons, which we roasted on spits over the coals. ‘The journey doesn’t end just because we arrive.’

‘Ours does.’

I looked around. Nikephoros was standing behind us, dim against the twilight. Perhaps because I was in mind of endings, I remembered the first time I had seen him: the magnificence, the power and the arrogance of his presence. The new beard he had worn had grown full; the cushions and gilded furniture that had decorated his quarters then had long since been lost or abandoned on the road. That evening he had not even pitched his tent, but laid out his blankets on the ground like the rest of us. In the soft haze, dressed only in a plain linen tunic, he almost looked humble.

‘Our journey ends here,’ he said again, perhaps thinking we had not heard him. He looked at Sigurd. ‘Have your men formed up to march at dawn. We will make for the coast and find a ship there. Perhaps we will find the grain fleet; otherwise there are English ships in the emperor’s service still patrolling these waters. One of them will take us home.’

For a moment his only answer was the sound of boiling fat sizzling on the coals.

‘But . . . Jerusalem.’ I pointed foolishly, as if it stood not fifty yards up the road. ‘What about Jerusalem?’

‘Jerusalem was not my destination. My orders were to see that the Franks reached it and now, praise God, I have. Even they should be able to find it from here.’

‘And what will they do then?’ asked Sigurd. ‘They have not won any victory yet.’

Nikephoros shrugged. ‘Thirty Varangians more or less will not decide the battle. To fight it would be a waste – it does not even matter who wins now. Be ready to march at dawn.’

I hardly knew what to feel. For two years and more I had longed to see Jerusalem and go home, until the two desires, once contradictory, wound themselves so tight around me that they became inseparable. It had become my purpose: to be denied it now felt almost as though Nikephoros had ripped out part of my soul. Looking at the others, I saw the same disbelief reflected on all their faces – Thomas’s most of all.

Yet in my shock, one part of me still saw clearly. It does not even matter who wins now. Even Nikephoros’ diplomatic guile could not hide the true emotion beneath the words: not indifference, nor resignation, but savage glee.

I ran after Nikephoros, away from the campfire, and halted him.

‘Achard told the truth,’ I said slowly. ‘You did go to Egypt to make an alliance with the Fatimids. What was the bargain? That we would bring the Franks to the altar at Jerusalem if the Fatimids would wield the sacrificial knife?’

Darkness shrouded Nikephoros’ face, but his voice was clear and unrepentant. ‘The emperor was a fool ever to consider taking the Franks as allies. Wise counsellors warned him against it, but he was too weak.’

‘So you took it upon yourself to break the emperor’s alliance, to finish what your wise counsellors failed to do at Constantinople.’

Nikephoros laughed, and the contempt in his laughter told me I was wrong again. ‘I took nothing upon myself. I am the emperor’s obedient servant. There is nothing I have done that he did not order me to do.’

I felt as if I had been dropped into a void without bounds or depth. ‘The emperor?’

‘When the barbarians refused to surrender Antioch, he saw his mistake at last. You can hunt with wild dogs, but you cannot be surprised if they take your quarry for themselves. And when they do, there is only one solution.’

I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion within. Nikephoros thought I was contradicting him.

‘Jerusalem is nothing – a bauble to dangle before barbarians. Alexios thought it would bring them to his aid, but it has served just as well to lead them to their destruction. Now the Fatimids will finish it, and those grain ships you saw by the coast will sail to Alexandria as their reward.’

‘But the Fatimids rejected our bargain – they drove us into the desert. Or was that part of the deception too?’

‘The caliph did not want to make an alliance with Christians. While his vizier was away he tried to sabotage it.’

‘But the vizier had revealed your bargain to Achard.’

‘He thought his interests were best served by discord among the Christians. He would rather have kept us quarrelling far away from his borders. But now the barbarians are here, he will do what he must. He has no choice. That is the simple perfection of the emperor’s scheme.’

He moved closer to me, a pale blur in the gathering darkness.

‘Did you really ever style yourself the unveiler of mysteries?’

A rumble sounded like thunder, and the earth trembled beneath my feet. I stepped back, just as the noise resolved itself into the pounding of many hooves. A column of horsemen swept around the turn in the road. A fiery aura surrounded them from the torches they carried, though I could see little inside it save a host of spears and helmets, flying manes and churning hooves.

‘What is happening?’ I shouted up. ‘Are we under attack?’

One of the knights reined in his horse and drew aside to let the others pass. ‘We are going to Bethlehem.’ He shook his head in wonder at what he had just said. ‘The Christians there have sent messengers: the Fatimids have abandoned it. Come with us and see.’

I glanced at Nikephoros, revealed now in the flaring torches. He shrugged.

‘Go with them, if you like. Stay here and fight for Jerusalem, if that is what you believe in. I give you my permission. Or you can come home with me.’

‘Be quick,’ warned the knight. Most of the column had already passed by, and the light they had brought was fading. ‘I cannot wait.’

I stared at the ground. My cheeks burned with shame; my eyes ached to cry, but no tears would come.

‘I . . .’ I could hardly speak. My only solace was darkness. ‘I will go home.’

λζ

No one slept that night. Like ice after winter, the army had already begun to break up. Some followed Tancred’s men to Bethlehem; others, unable to endure one more hour of waiting, rose from their beds in the middle of the night and hurried on along the dark road to Jerusalem. I lay on my blanket, unsleeping, and heard them go – first dribbling away in their twos and threes, then growing to a trickle which eventually became a flood. I stayed in my bed.

As with all sleepless nights, the darkness seemed to last for ever – and still be over too soon. After so many hours of wretched waiting, no sooner had my thoughts finally quieted into sleep than a dirty light began to spread from the east, and Sigurd was shaking my shoulder, urging me up. Well before the dawn Nikephoros had appointed for our departure, we were ready to leave.

We did not delay; we might have lost our nerve. As we marched through the camp many called that we were going the wrong way, that Jerusalem was behind us. When they realised our purpose their shouts became angrier. They lined the road to watch us go, hurling abuse: we were traitors, cowards who did not dare look upon Jerusalem for fear of God’s judgement. He would find us, they warned. One or two of them threw rocks, and I feared for a moment that in their fervour they might stone us to death, but a few glares from the Varangians cowed them enough and they soon lost interest. They had better things to do that day.

By mid-morning we had gone several miles down our road, unpicking the threads of the previous day’s journey. Nikephoros rode at the head of our little column; the rest of us walked, for I had sold my horse the night before to a Provençal knight who had lost his. The Franks would have reached Jerusalem by now, I thought. I wondered what they had found there.

‘Twenty-thousand Egyptians waiting to massacre them,’ said Sigurd, when I voiced my question aloud.

A fresh stab of betrayal lanced through me and I glanced ahead to Nikephoros. I had not repeated what he had revealed to me, not even to Sigurd. He loved the emperor he served and he loved his honour: I could not imagine how he would accept the ignoble truth of our mission. As for the others, how could I tell them that everything they had suffered for had been a lie? Thomas had not spoken a word since Nikephoros announced we were going home; his face was hard and still as stone. White knuckles clenched the haft of his axe, and several times I saw him angrily kick out at pebbles in the road. I think he would have deserted in an instant if it had not been for Everard, Helena and her unborn baby.

Just before lunch, the road turned into a steep-sided valley. A stream-bed meandered along the bottom of the embankment, though nothing but dust flowed there now, and on the far bank the flat ground was planted with many fruit trees. It seemed an arid sort of garden, but water must have lingered somewhere in the recesses of the earth, for many of the trees had blossomed. Some already even bore fruit. We called a halt and scrambled across the stream, into the welcome shade of the orchard.

Once again, I saw what secret miracles lingered in this land. June was only a week old, but the fruits had swollen so ripe you could not tell if they would break free of their branches or burst from their skins. Anna plucked a pomegranate from a gnarled tree and cut it open. The seeds glistened inside like a cupful of rubies; she scooped them out and fed them to me, and afterwards I licked the red juice from her fingers. Zoe and Helena gathered dates and apples in their skirts, while the Varangians laughed and shied rotten figs at each other.

I could have stayed all afternoon in that drowsy orchard. Leaning against a tree, Anna’s head cradled in my lap, I realised that what I really longed for was not to go home, nor to Jerusalem, but simply to not go anywhere: to lie down and rest and be still. I swatted away a wasp that was buzzing around my ear and closed my eyes, wishing I could stay there for ever.

Anna lifted her head. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘What?’ I stroked the skin on the back of her neck, still smooth and pale where her hair had covered it against the sun. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

She shook my hand away. ‘Listen.’

I listened. The wasp buzzed as it hovered over a fallen apple; further off, I could hear Sigurd’s men laughing, and the enthusiastic babble as Everard chattered away beside Helena. And further still, from up the road, I heard a low rumble, like wind gusting through a rocky cleft. But the day was still, and there was no wind.

I clambered to my feet and stepped out from under the tree, shading my eyes. To my right, Nikephoros had stood up in his stirrups and was waving impatiently, signalling we should be on the march again. Despite the heat, he had chosen to wear his full imperial regalia: the heavy dalmatic embroidered with gold, and the jewelled lorum sparkling in the sun. A few of the Varangians had already answered his summons; others were slowly drifting back through the trees. To my left, Thomas was walking with Helena and Zoe: Everard sat on his shoulders and snatched at butterflies. And beyond him, where the road came around a turn in the valley, a plume of dust was rising into the blue June sky.

‘Demetrios.’ Sigurd’s voice called me from somewhere to my right. ‘Get down!’

Wrapped in the dust they churned beneath their hooves, a company of horsemen swept around the bend in the road. I could hardly see them at all through the cloud – little more than flashes of spears and armour in the billowing dust – but there was something terrible and hungry in their speed, like an eagle hastening on to devour its prey. I crouched low, frantically waving Thomas and the girls to do likewise.

Perhaps, in their haste, the horsemen might have missed us if not for Nikephoros. He sat on his mount beyond the cover of the orchard, tall in his saddle and shining like a beacon. Even the most casual traveller would have seen him and gawped – these men were looking for him. They reined in on the far bank of the dry stream and pulled around into a loose line opposite us. I counted about twenty of them, and as the dust settled I saw that every one was dressed for battle. They seemed to be Franks, though they carried no standard.

‘Who are you?’ Nikephoros’ challenge echoed out – imperious and aloof, but strangely dead in the arid valley. No one answered. At the end of the line, the knight who had led them drew his sword and lifted it over his head. Instinctively, I looked to his shield to see if it bore any tell-tale device.

He did not carry a shield – could not have, for his left arm ended in a grotesque stump barely inches from his shoulder. That told me more than any insignia. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his helmet, but in my mind I could almost see their bulging stare looking down on us in triumph, the veins livid with the joy of revenge.

‘Traitors!’ he shouted, and the valley walls chorused his words so that wherever I turned the accusation bombarded my ears. ‘You abandoned me to the Ishmaelites once before. You will not do it to the Army of God.’

He waved his sword forward. The row of spears swung down. Opposite them, Nikephoros raised a single arm as if he could somehow hold them back. And, for a moment, it seemed that he did – on either side of the dusty stream, not a man moved.

The dark note of a horn blasted through the silence, but not from the Franks. It sounded from high on the hillside opposite, behind us. I turned to look. At the top of the northern slope, facing the noon sun, a new line of horsemen had appeared. The spikes on their helmets and the bosses on their shields glittered like knives. One of them angled forward a spear, and the black banner of the Fatimids unfurled before him.

The horn sounded again.

‘Christ preserve us,’ murmured one of the Varangians beside me.

Perhaps this was the battle we deserved. For so many months Nikephoros had schemed to bring the Franks and the Fatimids into the same place, to destroy each other for his benefit. Now, in that dry valley, they would meet at last – and we would be nothing more than dust to soak up their blood. A cloud of arrows flew up into the June sky and dipped into the valley, gathering deadly speed as they fell. The Egyptians plunged after them, leaning far back in their saddles as they spurred their horses through the gorse and scree, nimble as goats. They might have managed to surprise us, but the Franks were no strangers to ambush. With shouts of ‘Deus vult’ they kicked forward, down the embankment and across the dry stream to the orchard.

‘To me!’ shouted Sigurd. He stood between two trees with his legs apart, his axe swaying in his hands, and for a moment I was not sure if he was calling for help or summoning his enemies. ‘To me!’

I could not help him – I had to get to my family, and I had no weapon except my knife. I held Anna’s hand and dragged her after me as I ran through the orchard, desperately calling for Helena and Zoe. Horsemen closed from both sides. The ground was hard and flat, perfect for them; they came gliding through the trees like snakes, their spears stabbing like forked tongues. There was no time for the Varangians to form a line to resist them – they were scattered through the orchard, mostly unarmed, and could do nothing.

A flash of blue in the yellow grass ahead caught my eye – Helena’s dress – but before I could reach her a rider galloped out between the trees in front of me. It was a Fatimid – not an Ethiopian like Bilal, but lighter skinned, a Turk or an Armenian. He hauled on his reins and swung the horse around, raising his spear over his shoulder like a javelin. I pushed Anna away, hoping the horseman would ignore her, then turned and started running. My heart screamed that I was going the wrong way, away from my daughters, but I had little choice. The sound of charging hooves rose up like a wave behind me, climbing higher until I was sure I must feel the life-ending blow of a hoof smashing open my skull, bone to bone. Still I ran. I shuddered with the tremors rising up from the earth; at the very last moment, when I was sure I had left it too late, I flung myself to my right, tumbling away into the shade of a fruit tree. The horse thundered past me; the Turk gave a howl of anger and tried to reverse his spear for a thrust, but too late – his momentum carried him on. As he tried to turn, another rider rode out of the fray. A sword flashed and the Turk’s head flew from his shoulders, rolling several yards before it finally came to rest among the fallen fruit beneath a tree.

I scrambled to my feet. Damn Nikephoros, I cursed. Damn the emperor and his treachery. This was the world he had wished into being, a world without friends or allegiance, faith or honour. Two horsemen, one a Turk and one a Frank, charged down a fleeing Varangian, riding so close their knees almost touched. The Turk loosed an arrow and the man fell; as they rode over him, the Frank plunged his spear into his back and I saw the two hunters share a look of exultation before galloping after their next quarry. Through the trees a Varangian and a Frank pulled a Turk from his horse and butchered him, then turned their bloody blades on each other. Everywhere I looked the world was spiralling into the chaos from which God called it – and somewhere inside it were Anna and my children.

‘Here.’

The voice spoke behind me and I whipped around, almost plunging my knife into him before I saw who he was. Aelfric stood there, his axe in one hand and a bloodied sword in the other. He offered it to me.

‘I have to find my daughters.’ I had to shout to be heard over the roar of hooves and the hiss of arrows. ‘And Thomas and Anna.’

‘Thomas was in the trees over there.’ Aelfric jerked a thumb behind him. ‘With Beric and Sigurd.’

‘But Helena and Zoe were . . .’ I looked around, disoriented. Where had they been?

The ground rumbled again as another horse cantered by. His rider must have been following some other prey for he did not see us under the tree. Without so much as a glance, Aelfric swung his axe in a low scything arc, straight into the horse’s fetlock. It ploughed into the ground in a spray of blood and braying screams.

Aelfric pressed the sword into my hand. ‘Make sure he’s dead. Both of them,’ he added, as the wounded horse screamed its agony to the sky.

He ducked out under the branches and ran across to where one of his comrades was trying to fend off two dismounted Franks. Too numb to do otherwise, I ran over to the fallen horse. Its master had been a Turk – not that it mattered now. He was trapped in his saddle, his left leg crushed under the horse’s weight. His brown eyes stared up at me, imploring. I raised my sword to finish him, but found I did not have the will. I killed the horse instead.

‘Helena!’ I shouted. ‘Zoe! Anna!’ The only answer was clashing steel and the shouts of men. Somewhere through the din I thought I heard a child crying, and I stumbled towards it. But in the dizzying cacophony of battle I could not follow any sound for long – soon it was gone, leaving me more desperate than ever. Where were they?

Dazed and anguished I wandered through the orchard, slipping on grass that had become slick with blood. Men were dying all around me but I barely noticed – the world was dark to my eyes. Where were my family? My sword hung limp in my hand, unused. Where were they? Two knights chased each other straight across my meandering path, barely a foot away. Though I was an enemy to them both, they did not even look at me. Was I invisible? Had I died and become a ghost?

I had not. I came around a pomegranate tree, and there was Achard staring at me. A broad grin split open the lower half of his face; he looked down, and it seemed all the contempt, resentment, envy and anger that the Franks harboured towards Byzantium was distilled into that triumphant sneer. He pulled back his spear a little, testing his grip. There was nothing I could do.

And then several things happened at once. From somewhere ahead of me, not too far, a girl screamed. Almost simultaneously, a horn sounded from up the valley. And just afterwards, an apple flew out of the sky, arced through the air and struck Achard on the side of the helmet where it covered his ear.

It was not a heavy blow. Even bareheaded it would barely have bruised him. But he felt it – and, not knowing what it was, turned instinctively to see. It was all the time I needed. I lunged forward and grabbed hold of the spear, trying to wrest it from his grasp. Even before he realised what was happening his fingers had clenched around it; for a moment we pulled against each other. But I had two hands to his one, and I was pulling down. With a cry of triumph I felt it slip out of his hand; I stepped back, swung the spear around and lunged for his throat. Blood showered over me, blinding me. I let go the spear, and as I wiped the blood from my eyes I saw his horse cantering away, the one-armed corpse still bouncing in its saddle.

The horn sounded again. Something had changed – I could hear it all around me. The clash of arms had faded almost to nothing, drowned out by the rising drumming of hooves. Through the trees I could see dark shapes rushing by, like a shoal of fish seen from a boat. Then they were gone; the sound faded up the valley, and an unbearable stillness settled on the orchard.

I looked around. Sigurd was standing a little to my right, his axe leaning against his side and an apple in his hand. He waved it at me, then took a large bite.

Through the fog of my thoughts I vaguely understood he must have saved me, but that was of little consequence. I ran over and gripped his arm like a madman, staring in his eyes. ‘Where are they? Where are Anna and the girls?’

All triumph vanished from his face. ‘I thought they were with you.’

‘I couldn’t reach them. I thought Thomas–’

I broke off as I heard footsteps running through the trees. My heart kicked twice – once in fear of some new enemy, once in hope it might be my daughters. It was Thomas. His face was flushed; he had a cut on his cheek and another on his arm, but they were not what troubled him.

‘Helena?’ he gasped. ‘Have you seen her? My son?’

Our eyes met in a moment of shared torment. Then, by spontaneous accord, we turned away and began sprinting through the orchard, shouting their names.

‘Wait,’ called Sigurd anxiously. ‘You don’t know if it’s safe.’

Safe – what was that? All around me, the dappled sunlight shone on the wreckage of the battle: a Frankish knight sliced almost in two by a gaping axe-wound; another crushed under his horse; two Varangians impaled on a single spear, and others still wet with the wounds that had killed them. Panic rose in my soul – now I moved not like a ghost but like a fury, overturning corpses indiscriminately, spilling guts from gaping holes and inflicting fresh wounds on men who had suffered enough. I shouted their names over and over, until the words ran together, lost all form and became meaningless. I shouted them anyway – and did not realise Sigurd had been calling me until he sent one of his men to fetch me.

‘Over here,’ was all the Varangian said. His face was grim. He led me through the orchard to the eastern end, where a low wall divided it from the uncultivated wilderness beyond. Just inside, a thorn tree grew against the stones – and even in my madness I could see there was something different about it. Amid all the gnarled and curling branches, one stuck out longer and straighter than the others. As I came closer I saw it was no branch but a spear, driven into the tree with such force that it had stuck cleanly even after passing through the body it pinned against the bark. The sun shone through the branches and picked out some of the jewels and gold on his robe, but only a few: many of the jewels had been cut away, and the golden threads were soaked with blood. The spear had gone straight through his belly into the tree; it still quivered there, rising and falling each time he breathed.

‘We found this on the ground beside him.’ Sigurd passed me a silk cord, such as a woman might use to tie her dress. Anna’s belt. I snatched it with a cry and pressed it to my face, then knelt beside Nikephoros. His face was almost white, his eyes closed against the sun. With every breath, air and blood bubbled up from around the protruding spear shaft.

‘Anna. My daughters. What happened to them?’ I murmured in his ear. ‘Did you see?’

The eyes blinked open and I held up my hand to shade them. A milky film had begun to cloud his sight; of the raking scorn with which he had watched both princes and pilgrims, almost nothing remained.

‘Hostages,’ he whispered.

My guts clenched within me. ‘They were alive? Who took them? Franks?’ I could not bear to imagine what revenge they might wreak on Anna and my daughters.

But I had asked too many questions – and Nikephoros had neither strength nor breath to answer them. His head lolled to one side; he half raised it again, then let it slump back. I realised he was trying to shake it.

‘Not Franks.’ The dying eyes widened in affirmation. ‘The Egyptians? Where did they take them?’

Afterwards, I wished I had not made Nikephoros waste his last breath saying it. There could only ever have been one answer to that question. Coughing blood into my face, he twisted his head around and – agonisingly slow – lifted his left arm so that it pointed east, back up the valley. A vile soup of blood, bile, air and water slurped out of his wound; I thought I would vomit again, but I could not drop his gaze. He was grasping for breath, his chest heaving as he tried to snatch enough air for one final word.

‘Jerusalem.’

Then his arm dropped, his eyes closed, and the spirit left him for ever. We buried him under one of the fruit trees, then turned back to Jerusalem.

III

Zion’s Gate

June – July 1099

λη

‘Behold Jerusalem, the navel of the world. The royal city that Christ the Redeemer exalted by his coming, beautified in his life, consecrated with his death and glorified by his resurrection. All the lands about it give forth their fruits like a paradise of heavenly delights. Behold it now.’

I sat on the blessed soil of the Mount of Olives and gazed down on the holy city.

Mere reality had not inspired the priests to change their sermons. Perhaps the land around Jerusalem had once been a fertile paradise of delights; now it was barren. From the heights of the Mount of Olives I could see the treeless, lifeless summits of the mountain range stretching far into the distance, rising and falling like waves. The broken ground was parched a dirty white, stippled with scrub and bushes, which produced nothing but thorns and poison. And there in its midst sat Jerusalem.

It was smaller than I had expected – a fraction of the size of Antioch. It spread over two hilltops, Mount Zion to the west and Mount Moriah to the east, lower than the surrounding ridges but divided from them on three sides by deep ravines, so that it stood proud on its promontory, a jewel in the crown of mountains. Just within its walls, on the eastern side nearest where I sat, I could see a vast open courtyard, built so high that its floor was equal with the height of the walls. An octagonal church surmounted by a bulging dome stood in its centre, sheathed in tiles that shone blue and green like the sea. With the still expanse of the courtyard setting it apart, lifting it above the jumbled dwellings in the city beyond, it was the most magnificent structure to be seen; I had assumed at once that it must be the church of the Holy Sepulchre. In fact, I learned, from men who had been to Jerusalem before on pilgrimage, it was the Temple of the Lord, built on the place where the great temple of Solomon had once stood. Now the Ishmaelites had taken it for their own. Beyond the great courtyard the city dipped into a shallow valley, then rose again in the slopes of Mount Zion. A stone bridge spanned the divide between the two mountains.

The holy slopes of Mount Zion had long since disappeared under the city; the buildings were packed so close together that from a distance I could not even tell if there were any streets between them. Christ’s tomb must lie somewhere in that warren – buried, like the cave it had once been. And somewhere near by, amid all the marvels, relics and incense-soaked churches, was my family.

It had been the middle of the night, four days earlier, when we finally reached Jerusalem. Despite the late hour I went straight to Count Raymond’s tent. I had expected to have to wake him – in my grief I would have woken the dead if necessary – but when I got there I found the lamps inside were lit. The guard who admitted me told me the count was with someone, and as I waited in the antechamber, I could hear muffled voices through the curtain that divided the tent into its different quarters.

Despite my surroundings, I found myself suddenly shivering from head to toe. Tears ran down my cheeks and I hugged my arms to my chest, hoping Raymond would not hear. The numbness that had gripped me since the battle in the orchard was wearing off, and the black wave of emotions it had held off now reared over me. Exhausted as I was, I tried to hold it back.

A sound from the next room snatched my attention back. Count Raymond’s voice was suddenly raised, and in the midnight silence his words carried clear through the flimsy curtain which hid him.

‘Have you come this far just to sit on the doorstep? The holy city is over there, barely a bowshot away. Everything we have fought for. Are you now suggesting we should balk at taking it?’

The reply came more quietly. Drawn by instinct, I moved closer to the curtain to hear. It sounded like Duke Godfrey’s voice. A shard of ice froze in my soul to hear it.

‘I want to get inside that city as much as you or any man. But I will not throw away the prize just as my hand is closing around it. Have you forgotten why it took us two years to get here? We needed eight months to reduce Antioch, almost two months to take Nicaea. Even Ma’arat needed two weeks. As for Arqa–’

‘That was different – they were merely waymarks on the holy road. Now we are at Jerusalem, God will surely win the victory for us. Besides . . .’ Raymond lowered his voice. ‘Every man in this army, pilgrim and soldier alike, has waited years for this moment. Many are almost sick with longing. They cannot wait – if we do not lead them, they will take matters into their own hands.’

‘When God made us princes it was so that our wisdom would govern lesser men’s passions,’ said Godfrey scornfully. ‘Wait a few days. Once your men get used to the miraculous fact that they have come to Jerusalem, they will be less impatient. Then we can invest the city properly, prepare siege engines and ballistas–’

‘Siege engines and ballistas?’ Raymond mocked him. ‘And what will we build them out of – dust? There was a reason King Solomon sent all the way to Mount Lebanon for cedarwood when he wanted to build his temple. You will not find timber within twenty miles of this place.’

‘Then we will go further – all the way back to Antioch, if we have to. But we will not risk everything in a premature assault. Patience is the companion of wisdom.’

‘And faith is more important still. God is so powerful that if He desires it, we will scale the walls with a single ladder. He will help us.’

‘Only if we help ourselves.’

I heard a movement and quickly scurried away from the curtain. A second later it pulled back, and Duke Godfrey stepped through. His eyes narrowed with suspicion when he saw me, then widened in surprise.

‘I heard you had gone to Byzantium.’

‘I came back.’

He shrugged, as if to show it was no concern of his. ‘And Nikephoros? Has he returned?’

‘He has not.’

You did this, I wanted to scream at him. My arms ached to strike him, to pound him and kick him until his bones were like wax and his flesh like water, until he screamed for forgiveness for the evil he had done me. But I could not – not there. He left the tent, while by the opening in the curtain I saw Raymond watching me carefully.

‘What happened to Nikephoros?’

He must have guessed from my expression. He brought me into his private chamber and sat me on his couch, calling his servants to bring wine. I held the cup in my hand but barely drank as I told him everything that had happened. Almost everything.

The lines on Raymond’s face deepened as I told my story. When I described how my family had been taken hostage, he rose and stepped towards me as if to comfort me, then turned aside and poured himself another cup of wine instead.

‘That’s all they have in this country,’ he muttered. ‘No water, only vines.’

I carried on. When I had finished, he fixed me with his good eye.

‘But why would Achard have done such a thing?’

‘Because Duke Godfrey ordered him to.’ I blurted it out, my words burning hot with anger. I cursed Duke Godfrey. I cursed Nikephoros, who had refused to confront him after the ambush at Ravendan and had now paid the price. Most of all, I cursed myself. I had known the danger Godfrey threatened, and I had led my family into its shadow.

Raymond started. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because he hates the Greeks. He tried to seize Constantinople from the emperor. When that failed, he tried to kill me at Ravendan. Now he has murdered Nikephoros and sent my family into slavery. I will kill him,’ I raged.

Raymond was watching me closely, and not only with sympathy. ‘But why were you on the road away from Jerusalem? Where was Nikephoros going?’

I could only hope my distraught face hid any guilt. What sort of man have you become, I wondered, using your grief for deception?

‘Nikephoros needed to speak to the supply ships from Cyprus. He thought you would want them to bring siege equipment – timbers for building,’ I added, remembering what Godfrey had said.

Raymond looked at his hand, scraping dirt from under his fingernails. ‘Then he died on a wasted errand. By God’s grace, we will have taken the city by the end of the week.’ He pulled me to my feet and clamped his hands on my shoulders, staring me straight in the eye. ‘I know Achard has done a terrible thing to you, but you cannot lay it at Duke Godfrey’s door, not before the city is taken. We rely too much on his strength. And the sooner Jerusalem falls, the sooner you will be reunited with your family.’

Back on the Mount of Olives, the priest had finished his sermon. His congregation – ten thousand knights and men-at-arms – muttered ‘Amen’, then broke into an excited chatter as they saw a small party walking up to the outcropping knoll that served as a pulpit. The red-headed priest, Arnulf, led them, a golden cross radiant over him; the princes followed and arrayed themselves in a semicircle on the outcrop. Arnulf stood in their centre, turning the cross this way and that so that golden rays flickered over the front ranks of the watching army. An acolyte knelt before him and held up an open Bible.

‘Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound the alarm on the holy mountain! Let its inhabitants tremble, for the day of the Lord is near. A great and powerful army has come: their like has never been seen before, nor will be again in the ages to come.’ He looked around, taking in all the assembled warriors. ‘From the head of His army the Lord shouts out His battle-cry – how vast is His host. Truly, the day of the Lord will be great – and terrible.’

With a heavy slam, Arnulf let the book fall shut. The acolyte scurried away, and Raymond stepped forward. His cheeks were flushed, and an ungainly smile played over his face, as if he wanted to show humility but did not have the patience for it.

‘Three years ago we left our homes, our fields and our families to seek Jerusalem. Here we are. Tomorrow, praise God, it will be ours.’

The congregation cheered and stamped their feet on the ground. A low cloud of dust rose up around their knees.

‘We will attack at dawn. By noon, the city will have fallen.’

Chain mail shifted and clanged as ten thousand armoured heads rose from prayer. In the grim light before sunrise I could make out little more than the coned helmets and spear-shafts that rose around me like a forest – though in the east, a dark shadow was slowly resolving itself into the silhouette of a mountain as the dawn spread behind its peak. Horses galloped up and down our lines, their stirrups jangling as their riders barked the orders they brought. For the third time that morning I checked that my shield was buckled tight, then half-drew my sword and touched my thumb against its edge. I had promised myself that if – when – I ever rescued my family, I would throw it away, or give it to a smith to hammer into impotence.

One of the heralds cantered up to us. ‘Be ready. The front ranks have begun the assault. God wills it.’

‘God wills it,’ the knight who commanded our line replied. After the losses the Varangians had suffered in the orchard, there were no longer enough of us to make our own company: we had had to submit ourselves to a Frankish command. It had almost destroyed Sigurd’s pride – and worse was to follow when we discovered that none of the leading knights would accept our service. The glory to be won by being first into Jerusalem was not a prize they would share lightly, least of all with our tattered band. At last we found a knight from Flanders who had lost half his company in the siege of Ma’arat and did not have the wealth to attract others: he took us happily enough. But he was old, and most of his knights were men he had fought with since boyhood. He was happy enough to bide his time near the back of the army.

‘The vanguard will have marched clear through Jerusalem and on into Egypt by the time we reach the walls,’ I fretted. I could only hope that reverence for the holy city would keep the Franks from the sort of pillage they had inflicted on Antioch. The thought of my daughters and Anna escaping the Ishmaelites only to be slaughtered – or worse – by Franks was like a noose around my heart.

‘And what will we do when we enter the city?’ Sigurd asked. It was the fifth time he had asked that question, and I had no good answer. All I had were Nikephoros’ dying words – and I did not even know how accurate they might be. The Fatimids could have taken their captives to another fortress, or to a cave in the hills, or . . .

I shook my head to clear it of evil thoughts. ‘We will do what we can, and trust to God for the rest.’

On my right, Thomas was staring forward with desperate intensity, his axe ready in his hands. When I touched his arm, he jerked as if I had cut it open.

‘Keep loose,’ I warned him. ‘You won’t be able to swing your axe if your arms are so tense.’

Without a word, he turned back to look at Jerusalem. Not a muscle in his face moved. All his life was in that city: his dead parents, his captive wife, his son – perhaps even his God. I hoped he would find at least some of them beyond the walls that now loomed ahead of us in the blue dawn.

Another herald galloped up the line towards us. ‘The front ranks have reached the outer walls. Prepare to advance.’

I had spent two years and a thousand miles trying to reach Jerusalem. Now, as the sun’s molten rays crept over the ridge and began to touch Mount Zion, I began to march the last few hundred yards. The faces around me were wide-eyed, like men awakening into a dream; many crossed themselves, and some wept openly. The battlehymn of the Army of God resounded in my ears like clashing cymbals.

‘God wills it!’

λθ

λθ

‘It would have been better if God had willed them to bring ladders.’

Sigurd spat on the ground. All his weapons were laid out around him, silver in the moonlight – his great battleaxe, a pair of small throwing axes, a sword and two knives. One by one he polished them with a cloth, rubbed them with oil, then wiped them clean. It was an exercise in futility: I knew for a fact that not one of those blades had touched so much as the beard of an enemy that day.

‘Perhaps our faith was not strong enough,’ said Thomas. He sat on a rock a little distance away from us, resting his chin in his hands. They were almost the first words he had spoken since we returned from the battle.

Sigurd, who had one of the throwing axes in his hand, looked as though he might willingly put it into Thomas’s skull. ‘The only thing that was too weak was the sense of those shit-cursed princes.’

For the Army of God, which had cracked open the greatest fortresses of antiquity and defied the combined hordes of the Ishmaelites, the assault on Jerusalem had been a disaster. Ten thousand men had tried to climb into the city with a single ladder between them. After some hours of fighting they had breached the low outer wall and charged through, only to pass into the dead ground between the curtain wall and the great rampart. Buttresses between the two walls hemmed in their flanks, so that the defenders could rain down missiles from three sides. When the Franks had tried to make a tortoise roof with their shields, the Egyptians had simply broken it apart with rocks and then poured arrows into the gaps. Meanwhile, thinking the city must have fallen, more men flooded through the breaches so that those in the front were crushed against the main wall or trampled underfoot. They had filled the ground between the walls like lambs in a pen, and like lambs they had been slaughtered.

Yet despite all this, they had managed to raise their ladder to the main walls. A Norman knight had started to climb it. The air around him was dark with arrows; the ladder swayed and shuddered as stones ricocheted off it. Still he climbed, somehow untouched by the cloud of missiles. The defenders brought vats of boiling water and tried to pour it over him, but in their haste they tipped it too quickly and it fell on the men at the foot of the ladder instead. No one heard their screams: the entire army was holding its breath, waiting to see if the knight could reach the top. That he had not been plucked from it already seemed nothing short of a miracle – proof, for those who sought it, that God had ordained their victory. The further he went the more they allowed themselves to hope. Weighed down by his armour, his progress was agonisingly slow; once he seemed to slip, and the whole army gasped, but he regained his footing and continued inexorably up. God is so powerful that if He desires it, we will scale the walls with a single ladder, I remembered Raymond had said. Now, before the eyes of all men, his words were becoming manifest, and the army trembled with fearful expectation.

The knight gained the final rung, reached out his arm and fastened his hand on the embrasure between the battlements. For a moment, he must have looked down to see the holy city framed in stone. A great cheer rose up from the army; more men started climbing the ladder, while the rest surged forward. The knight on the ladder glanced back down, and though I could not see his face I could imagine the triumph on it. He waved his sword to rally the army and screamed, ‘Deus vult!’

From the ramparts before him, a heavy sword flashed down. The knight cringed back, flailing his arm, and we saw in horror that the hand that clasped Jerusalem had been severed from his body. He flung away his sword and scrabbled for a grip, but he had no chance. An arrow pierced his side, another his shoulder; he lost his balance and crashed down onto the crowds below, spinning as he fell.

On the walls around us, the Fatimid archers resumed their bombardment. Scores of the Franks had lowered their shields to watch the ascent; now they paid for their carelessness. Mercifully I was too far back to trouble the bowmen: they did not want for targets. From up on the walls, a pair of hands reached through the embrasure and pushed away the ladder. It pivoted back, then toppled down into the fray. Within seconds it had been ground to splinters as the Franks rushed to escape.

‘The only miracle was that the Norman did not die,’ said Sigurd.

Thomas looked at him with the sure contempt of youth. ‘There were no miracles today.’ His voice was hollow, heartbroken. ‘The Norman survived because three corpses broke his fall. There were enough bodies between those walls to clog the gates of heaven.’

I said nothing. I knew some of the anguish he must feel – I felt enough of it myself. But he seemed to have taken the defeat so much to his heart that it consumed him. At the height of the battle, when the Franks were fleeing back through the breaches, he had even tried to rush forward, though it was certain death. Sigurd had held him back, almost breaking his arm to do it. I prayed it had only been the madness of war – not the weight of his sorrows becoming unbearable.

‘I’ve heard that Count Raymond will move his camp around to the south,’ said Sigurd, breaking the awkward silence.

‘I wonder how many will go with him?’

‘Twelve of us, at least.’ Sigurd gestured to the Varangians, all that remained of his company. ‘No one else will have us.’

‘We may be the only ones.’ I knew that several of Raymond’s captains had transferred their allegiance to other princes in the aftermath of the battle. ‘No wonder he wants to move his camp away from the others.’

Sigurd held up his throwing axe to the moonlight, squinting down the blade. He grunted with grudging approval – then looked up in surprise as a shadow fell over him. A youth in a yellow tunic had emerged from the darkness, blocking out the moon. His skin was smooth, his dark hair curly: he might easily have been taken for a Saracen. Perhaps that was why he wore an outsize wooden cross on a cord around his neck. It seemed to cause him some discomfort.

‘Who is Demetrios Askiates?’ he asked, in heavily accented Greek.

‘Who are you?’ I retorted.

He would not say, but reached into the folds of his tunic. Sigurd tensed his arm, the oiled axe gleaming in his hand, but there was no danger. Instead, the boy pulled out a brooch and tossed it across to me. I examined it. The gold was leaden in the moonlight, but the design was clear enough. A tree wrought in enamel – reds, blues and greens – and two birds flanking it.

‘You know whose it is?’

I nodded, dumbstruck. It had been a gift from the imperial treasury to Anna, after she saved the emperor from a spear-wound.

‘Then come with me.’

I wanted to bring Sigurd, but then I would have had to take Thomas, and I did not trust him in his evil mood. So I went alone. The youth walked behind me through the camp, letting me meet the challenges and give the watchwords, then took the lead. Ten minutes brought us to the north-eastern corner of the city: we rounded it, then dropped away from the walls as the ground descended into the steep valley that divided the Mount of Olives from the city. The night deepened as we went down – I clutched the brooch so tight its pin pierced my hand, but I carried on until suddenly I saw a faint light winking in the darkness.

The light drew closer as we reached the bottom of the valley. The ground was broken here, strewn with rocks, though it was only when I stubbed my toe on one and looked down that I saw they were not boulders, but fragments of a shattered building. The remains of toppled columns, tumbledown walls and fallen arches littered the landscape like bones on a battlefield. The destruction must have happened some time ago, for grass and bushes had grown tall around the ruins. Where a solitary piece of wall still stood, a fig tree had twined itself through the empty window.

But the corpse of the building remained, buried in the ground. A flight of open stairs brought us down into an oblong pit lined with stone. Two rows of stumps marked where the columns had once stood, and though most of the ground was covered in earth, in a few places you could still make out the tiles of the mosaic floor. It must have been a church, I thought. And despite its desolation, it still seemed to be in use. At the far end, unhidden by any altar screen, two black-robed priests with long, white beards bowed before a long-vanished altar. It was their light I had seen, a lone oil-lamp resting on a fallen capital. The flame illuminated the face of a high stone mausoleum – the only structure to have survived the destruction.

‘Do you know where you are?’

I swung around. With all my attention on the ghostly scene in the sanctuary I had not noticed the man sitting on the stub of a column to my right. He stood, his cloak rustling around his legs.

‘Bilal.’ I stepped towards him, then checked myself, suddenly overtaken by confusion, fear. I opened my palm to reveal the brooch. ‘Did you send this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they . . . ?’ I could not bring myself to finish the question.

He offered a tired smile. ‘They are safe.’

Relief flooded through me. So much tension had knotted itself around me that week that, in the end, it was all that had held me together. Now it washed away and I dropped to my knees. The poison bile that had filled my body rose in my throat and I let it pour out onto the onceholy ground, praying God to forgive me. In the chancel, the priests continued their low chanting.

Bilal took my arm and pulled me to my feet. I would have embraced him, almost fallen upon him with thanks, but something held me away. There was a distance in his manner that I had not seen before.

‘A squadron of our cavalry surprised a column of Frankish knights,’ he said. ‘There was a battle.’

‘I was there.’

‘But not with your wife and children. They found them with the ambassador, Nikephoros.’

There was no rebuke in his words, but I felt it anyway like a hammer. ‘They fell upon us so quickly there was nothing I could do. I was separated from them. I–’

Bilal held up his hand to still my babble. ‘God is the All-Hearing and the All-Seeing. Perhaps He did not mean you to be with them. Nikephoros fought to protect your family – bravely, they said – and died for it. If you had stood beside them, the same might have happened to you.’

I remembered Thomas’s desperate longing to charge into the battle that morning. You could not escape guilt by dying.

‘As it was, they assumed the women must be Nikephoros’ wife and daughters, and therefore worthy of ransom.’

So Nikephoros’ pride had served a purpose in the end. I remembered the golden robe he had worn that day, the jewelled lorum wrapped around his neck. Perhaps he had already imagined himself back in the perfumed halls of Constantinople, returned from his exile. And he had fought to protect my family. Suddenly, for all his deceits, I found I no longer hated him.

‘But I have no money to ransom them,’ I said, trying to comprehend all this unexpected news. ‘And the Franks will not waste their gold on Greeks.’

‘My masters would not offer them to the Franks. All Muslims may seem the same to the Franks, but we understand the differences between the Christians well enough. When the vizier needs to buy favour with your emperor, then he will offer him the women as part of some bargain.’

‘But the emperor will know they cannot belong to Nikephoros.’ Hope rose within me. ‘Can you help them escape?’

Bilal sighed, and I could see that he wished I had not asked it. ‘I cannot.’

The euphoria that had lifted me subsided. I sank down on one of the stone stubs. Bilal stayed standing, silhouetted against the priests’ lamp at the far end of the nave.

‘At least I know they’re safe,’ I said, when I could control my voice again. ‘Thank you for that.’

‘It is the least I can do. And the most. But for as long as my people control the city, no harm will come to them.’

‘A long time if our attack this morning was any omen. Did you see it?’

‘I was there.’ Bilal looked away, unwilling to talk more of it. Perhaps he was embarrassed by the wanton ease with which the Franks had given themselves up to be slaughtered.

A thought struck me. ‘The vizier must be confident of victory if he is already able to think of bargaining with the emperor.’ No answer. ‘Is the vizier here now?’

Bilal shifted uneasily.

‘Come,’ I urged him. ‘Do you think I’m trying to pry secrets out of you? I want to know, in innocence, if I will ever see my family again. Nothing else.’

‘In innocence?’ Bilal repeated the words with heavy irony. ‘Can there be such a thing? When we fought beside each other in the pyramid, when the Turkish troops tried to harm that boy, we did it because we hated evil, nothing else. When the caliph in his madness threatened to kill you, I warned you for the same reason. But we are in Jerusalem now, and the next time your army charges at those walls you will be on one side and I will be on the other. It will be a battle to the end. So how can you and I speak to each other in innocence?’

Bilal looked away, to the light in the sanctuary of the church. The two priests must know we were there, must have heard us, but they continued with their ritual as if we did not exist.

‘Do you know where you are?’ Bilal repeated the question he had asked when I first arrived. I looked around, then up. Far above us, the fires on the city walls burned bright against the sky from the great courtyard of the Temple Mount.

‘You are in Gethsemane. This was the church of Mary, the mother of Jesus and that tomb’ – he pointed to the stone mausoleum – ‘is hers.’

You could hardly breathe in this place for the weight of history. ‘But Mary was taken up to heaven. When Saint Thomas came to her tomb three days after she fell asleep, her body was gone.’

‘Then the tomb must be empty. But your priests still offer their prayers here.’

I looked up at the walls again, thinking of the other, greater sepulchre within. If we ever reached it, we would find that lying empty too. A desolation swept over me, a feeling of terrible absence. I suddenly knew in my heart that God had departed this place, that these half-buried tombs were nothing more than fossils, footprints left in the clay where He had once walked. ‘So many deserted tombs.’

‘Even the dead cannot bear to stay here,’ said Bilal. I could not tell if he was joking.

‘If your cavalry had not kidnapped my family, I would never have come.’ It was an unfair thing to say, perhaps, but it seemed to pierce the curtain that had descended between us again. Bilal thought for a moment.

‘We cannot speak to each other in innocence, but I will tell you this. If you ever have cause to use it, I will be in God’s hands. You have seen the Noble Sanctuary on the mountain top?’

‘The great courtyard with the octagonal church?’

‘It is a shrine, not a church,’ said Bilal irritably. ‘It was built by the caliph to mark the place where the Prophet, peace be upon him, ascended to heaven.’

‘It is a church, built by Byzantines to mark the place where Solomon’s temple stood and where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac,’ I retorted, repeating what I had heard from pilgrims. ‘It is called the Temple of the Lord.’

‘For the moment it is called the Dome of the Rock. God willing, it will be for ever. But if the day comes when it is not, then your family will be in as much danger as me. So listen. Beyond the Noble Sanctuary lies a valley that divides the two hills, Mount Moriah and Mount Zion. A stone bridge crosses over it. On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door.’ He held up his own hand, palm out. ‘That is where you will find your family – if you take the city.’

‘Do you really think it so unlikely?’

Bilal shook his head – though whether to answer my question or to deny it I could not tell.

‘I will send for the king of Babylon,’ Bilal murmured. ‘I will bring him against this land and its people and I will destroy them utterly. The whole land shall become a ruin, a waste, and its people will be his slaves.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘I heard Achard say it, when we came here on our way north from Egypt. He said it was an ancient prophecy.’

‘It comes from the prophet Jeremiah.’

‘Then perhaps it is true.’ Bilal turned away. ‘I must go – I have already been away too long. Malchus will take you back to your camp.’ He whistled, and the youth emerged from the darkness where he had waited.

‘Goodbye, Demetrios. I would say I hope we meet again, but I fear it will be a terrible day if ever we do.’ He considered this for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Allahu a’alam. God knows all things best.’

He climbed the cracked steps out of the sunken church and vanished into the night. There were no Franks watching this part of the city – the ground was too steep, their numbers too few – and I supposed he would slip in through one of the gates easily enough. Even so, I delayed a few minutes lest anybody see us together. While I waited, I lowered myself to my knees and offered a few, heartfelt prayers – thanks that my family were safe, and intercessions for those who had died that day. Above all, I prayed that all those I loved would escape that place where God had gathered them. Those were the prayers that tested my faith the hardest.

The night was warm, and I had been awake since well before dawn. I must have prayed longer than I thought, for eventually I felt an arm shaking my shoulder and opened my eyes with a start. The youth was looking down on me.

‘You fell asleep,’ he chided me. ‘Come. You must go back.’

Keeping to the shadows once again, we clambered up the valley and followed the walls towards the camp. Behind us, two priests stood in the pit and offered their prayers to an empty tomb.

μ

The next day Count Raymond moved his camp to the south, to a narrow tongue of land in front of the walls on Mount Zion. It was perilously exposed, within easy bowshot of the archers who manned the Zion Gate: the other princes condemned his decision, and many of his knights refused to accompany him. He went anyway and we followed. The failure of the assault had dissolved whatever ties of fealty and honour he still held over his men. He could no longer even garrison his camp, but had to send envoys to his rivals to buy their knights’ service with gold. Each day, I heard, the price went up.

Two days after the battle, the princes held a council and agreed they would not risk another assault without siege engines.

‘If we can find the wood to build them,’ Raymond complained. He had called me to his tent next to a small church on Mount Zion. The air inside was stifling, and flies buzzed about our heads. ‘There’s barely enough wood here to build a campfire. It’s a miracle the Romans found enough to crucify Jesus.’ He stopped, blushing furiously. ‘Christ forgive me, I did not mean that. But we must have wood if we are to get into Jerusalem.’

I could guess why he was telling me this.

‘I want you to take your men west towards the coast and search for wood.’ He swatted at one of the flies. ‘It will do you good to be away from this place for a few days.’

‘Did he say if he wanted us to come back?’ Sigurd enquired.

It was a fair question: for two days our search had taken us ever further from Jerusalem, with nothing except stunted olive trees and shrubs to reward us. The sun burned down on us, parching our throats, and all the time we felt the heavy threat of the Ishmaelites all around us. Several times we came around turns in the road to find dust still lingering in the air where departing hooves had kicked it up; twice we saw their riders silhouetted on distant hilltops, watching us from afar. Though they never came near, their presence stirred a poison in my belly: the fear that I might die in one of these forgotten valleys and leave my family condemned to perpetual slavery. I often walked with my sword drawn from its scabbard; at night I lay awake long after the others had fallen asleep, staring at the darkness and trembling at every sound it made.

Two mornings after leaving Jerusalem, the rugged hills dipped towards the coastal plain. I was worn down to exhaustion; I had hardly had anything to drink, and my tongue had swollen so fat in my mouth I thought it might split my skull open. Sharp pains spiked through my head with every step – steps that only took me further from Jerusalem. The loathsome city had wrapped itself tight around my soul, and the further I went from it the more strongly I felt it pulling me back.

We had just descended into yet another valley when Aelfric, who had gone ahead, came running back to meet us.

‘Three riders coming towards us,’ he said breathlessly.

‘Did they see you?’

‘I don’t think so. But the sun was in my eyes – it was hard to be sure.’

We scrambled up the hillside, hiding ourselves behind boulders and trees. I found a small depression in the slope masked by a bush and lay there. Thomas crouched down beside me, stroking the blade of his axe. In a matter of seconds, all the Varangians had vanished.

We waited. For what seemed an age we heard nothing but bird song and the chatter of insects; once, there was a clatter as one of the Varangians dislodged a pebble, but otherwise no one made a sound. I could almost hear the sweat sliding down my face and dripping onto the stones beneath me. And then, rising slowly beneath the other sounds, the regular clop of horses’ hooves. The noise grew louder, echoing around the valley – and with it came voices.

I edged forward to the lip of the depression, keeping low behind the foliage, and peered out between the branches. The three riders had come level with me. They wore neither helmets nor armour, and if they sat uneasily in their saddles it was only from lack of habit. Otherwise, they talked and laughed like men on holiday; as I watched, one even broke into a song.

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon sele-dreamas?

To my astonishment, another voice answered – not among the riders but from the hillside. It picked up the melody and carried it on. Four more voices joined in, and suddenly the valley was awash with the weird sounds of a song it had never heard before.Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære!

Sigurd stepped out onto the road, still singing. It was he who had first answered the song, I realised, and its foreign sound was his native tongue. He stood in front of the riders, and at last I saw what should have been obvious from the start. The men on the horses were almost indistinguishable from the Varangians who swarmed down the hillside to greet them. All had the same rough red skin that came when pale white skin had been alloyed by the sun, and each face was covered by hair the colour of metal: gold, copper and bronze. Some wore it in braids and some tied with twine; some had beards and others were cleanshaven. Otherwise, they could have been brothers.

The lead rider sang the last verse of the song in unison with Sigurd, their eyes locked on each other. A sardonic grin had spread over the rider’s face, while Sigurd’s remained cool and distrustful. When the song was done, they eyed each other cautiously.

‘You should be more careful, riding alone and unarmed in these mountains,’ said Sigurd.

The rider glanced around at the Varangians. ‘Careful of what?’ he asked insouciantly. ‘I heard there was nothing in these hills except peasants and goatherds. And woodcutters,’ he added, looking at the axes we carried. ‘Have you come to sell us firewood?’

‘Or to cut you down to size,’ Sigurd growled. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here? Have you come from Byzantium?’

I could not understand his attitude. If I had been in their far-flung country and met a fellow Greek on the road, I would have rejoiced. Sigurd, by contrast, seemed to take his countryman’s presence as a personal affront. Perhaps it was the way of their people – certainly the riders seemed unworried by it.

‘Varangians?’ He shook his head. ‘We’re just humble sailors with a cargo to sell.’

‘What cargo?’ Apart from a few panniers and blankets tied to their saddles, the Englishmen carried nothing.

The rider crossed his hands in his lap and stared up at the sky, as if trying to remember. ‘Nails. Ropes. Grease and oil. Saws, planes, adzes and augers. Timber.’

Sigurd flushed and lifted his axe angrily. ‘Do not mock me,’ he warned.

The rider remained infuriatingly calm. ‘Everything I described – and more – is sitting on the docks at Jaffa, waiting for someone to buy it. Come and see for yourself.’ He laughed. ‘Saewulf will be happy to see you.’

On a knuckle of land that pressed out into the Mediterranean, flanked by sandy beaches, we found the port of Jaffa. Its western face descended steeply to the sea, so that from below the houses built on it seemed to blend into a single construct of golden stone, red pantiles and wooden balconies. Only when you looked closer did you see that the picture was imperfect. Many of the buildings were missing their roofs; no washing hung from the houses, no children played in the alleys between them, and no guards paced the badly ruined walls. Even the fortress which should have guarded the town was reduced to a single tower.

‘The city is abandoned,’ said Thomas, as we stepped over a fallen arch into the town’s main street.

Sigurd grunted. ‘There are always rats who’ll move in.’

At the foot of the hill, a dock crooked its protective embrace around a small harbour. White foam ruffled the water at its mouth where a thick hawser had been stretched across it, but it had not kept out the six ships that lay moored against the wharf. Stout masts rose from their decks, and their high prows were carved in the likeness of fantastic beasts. One was shaped like a dragon, another like a monstrous fish, while the largest took the form of a ravening wolf.

I knew that ship, had spent long weeks enduring a difficult winter voyage aboard it, cursing its heaving deck and leaky seams. Bobbing at anchor, bathed in June sunshine, she was almost unrecognisable now. As to what she was doing there, I could no more guess than when I had first seen her drawn up on a beach on the dusky Egyptian coast.

We descended to the harbour. A great quantity of crates, sacks and barrels had been piled on the dock, together with some long timbers. In the corner where the harbour walls turned across the bay, an unused sail had been draped over a frame of lashed-together oars to make a rough awning. As we reached the bottom of the hill and stepped out onto the hot stone of the wharf, the figure resting in its shade rose; he did not approach, but stood there waiting, watching while we crossed towards him. The ships’ crews lounged among the cargo, and the smells of salt and alcohol were thick in the air.

Saewulf had not changed much in the six months since we parted on a freezing January day near Antioch. The leather band was still bound across his forehead, tying back his long brown hair; he had shaved off his beard, though perhaps that had to do with the fresh scar that ran livid down his right cheek. Many men would have been disfigured by the wound, or would have hidden it in self-conscious shame. With Saewulf, it was simply one more line among many. He stood with the same cocky posture, his hands thumbed into his belt and his shoulders thrust back, and still watched the world with the same amused detachment I had seen on that beach in Egypt.

In contrast to his easy confidence, we must have seemed an awkward and ill-tempered group. Gathered behind Sigurd, we shuffled to a stop in front of the awning and waited nervously, our gazes darting about our surroundings, while the two captains stood and stared each other in the eye in some sort of unspoken contest. All around, the sailors put down their tools and cups to watch us.

‘I thought I’d got rid of you twenty years ago, when you deserted Byzantium to go back to the ruin of England.’ Sigurd’s words were slow and clear, carrying to every corner of the harbour.

Saewulf shrugged. ‘If you had stayed in Byzantium, you would have kept rid of me.’ His eyes played across the group of Varangians behind Sigurd; he saw me and Aelfric and smiled.

‘At least two of your men already have reason to be grateful to me. And now perhaps I can help you again – unless you came to Jaffa for fish.’ He swept a hand around the harbour. ‘All the fishermen have gone, I’m afraid. But perhaps I can interest you in my cargo.’

‘Why are you here?’ Sigurd stepped closer, looming over his countryman. The Varangians around me put their hands on their axes. ‘Why has a coward like you happened upon this port, five hundred miles from any friendly harbour, with enough supplies to besiege Constantinople? Are you still working for the Normans – or have you whored yourself to someone else since then?’

Saewulf let Sigurd’s outburst break over him like spray from the bow.

‘I work for myself – as I always have.’

‘I’m sure you’re very good at it.’ Sigurd had not backed away.

‘Good enough to see that when a desperate army besieges a city without any trees, they’ll pay well for wood. Unless, as I said, you came for the fish.’ He squinted at us. ‘What did you do with the men I sent to Jerusalem?’

‘We sent them on to Jerusalem to fetch men to carry back your supplies.’

‘If they can carry the gold to pay for this, they’ll have enough men to carry back what they buy.’ He saw Sigurd’s scowl of disdain. ‘I’m offering them the keys to Jerusalem. They should pay well enough for that. Besides, it wasn’t easy to bring it here. There are Fatimid ships swarming all over these waters. Three nights ago they would have sunk us, if the wind hadn’t turned.’ He patted one of the nearby casks. ‘If God does want the Franks to have this, then He surely wants them to pay for it.’

Saewulf glanced out of a narrow window in the seaward wall. It had taken us most of the day to reach Jaffa and the sun was setting, a golden bowl pouring out its rays on the burnished water.

‘The Franks won’t be here before tomorrow morning. Stay with us tonight, and I’ll tell you about England.’

Whatever quarrels he and Sigurd might have had, Saewulf feasted us royally. His men had been out in the hills that day and brought back two boars and a small deer, which they roasted over a fire at the end of the dock. There was no lack of wood here. Waves lapped against the stone piers, fat sizzled in the flames and wine poured freely into cups, spilling as they clashed in toasts, then draining into thirsty throats. For all their captains’ hostility, Saewulf’s crew and Sigurd’s Varangians met each other with the joy of longlost friends, proving their delight in the quantities they drank. Many of the sailors, like Saewulf, had served in the Varangian guard at one time or another, and the rest all seemed to share cousins, half-sisters or friends in common.

‘To England,’ Saewulf toasted, raising his glance and then emptying it. ‘You should come back, Sigurd – see what a green country looks like. Escape all this dust and rock.’

‘Not while there’s a Norman sitting on the throne,’ said Sigurd. He emptied his own cup and poured another, splashing the wine in his haste.

‘You would never see him. You would walk in English fields, eat and drink English bread and beer, and see your grandchildren grow up where they belong. What does it matter who sits in the castles?’

The wine had infused passion into Saewulf’s usual detachment. His face was flushed, and he waved his hands earnestly as he spoke.

‘The Normans stole our country,’ Sigurd insisted.

‘England is still there. The white cliffs still stood when I sailed away. The only person who is keeping you out of your home is you, sitting here and sulking over injustices you suffered more than thirty years ago.’

‘What should I have done? Surrendered to them like you did?’

‘Surrendered?’ Saewulf laughed, the cup swaying in his hand. ‘Do you think I got down on my knees in front of King William and swore him allegiance? I have never seen him in my life. If I sailed you back to England tonight, do you think he would be standing on Pevensey beach to meet you – to fight you in single combat for the crown of the realm?’ Sigurd made to interrupt, but Saewulf carried on over him. ‘You’re no more to him than the mud on the sole of his boot. The only person who cares about your righteous exile is you. And when you’re on your deathbed, what will you tell your grandchildren? That you wasted your life because you could not bear to let go of your hatred? That your pride would rather you served a foreign king in a foreign land than live in your own?’

‘I would rather serve the man I choose, than the man who tore away my country, who killed my father and raped my family.’

‘That man died twelve years ago. One of his sons rules England now – and another, as I hear it, is a prince in your Army of God. Have you noticed that the emperor you adopted to escape the Normans has now sent you to fight beside them?’

‘The emperor takes his allies as he needs them,’ said Sigurd tightly.

‘And he abandons them when they’re no more use to him.’ Saewulf rose, swaying, though whether that was the effect of wine or his habit of being at sea I could not tell. ‘I know what you think of me – that you stand fast and defend your oaths while I go where the wind blows.’

‘And where the money calls.’

‘And where the money calls,’ Saewulf agreed. He was slurring his words now, slopping wine over the rim of his cup as he waved his arms. ‘But there’s nothing noble clinging to a rock when the tide is rising. Especially if the rock turns out to be nothing but sand.’

Sigurd lumbered to his feet, his face red in the firelight. ‘I came to Byzantium as an orphan: without family, without a home, without even a country. Now I am a captain of the guard in an empire that was young when our ancestors hadn’t even learned to build boats.’

‘An empire that has only survived so long by buying barbarians like you in the dark times – then throwing you out with the night soil the moment they see the dawn.’

‘Liar!’ bellowed Sigurd. ‘The emperor has never betrayed me. I stood beside him at the battle of Paradunavum, when almost every other man in his army had deserted or been slaughtered, and when we took our revenge four years later at Lebunium, I was at his side again. Are you telling me that instead of that, I should have spent those years scratching at soil that the Normans had left barren, grovelling in the dust each time a Norman rode by and praying his eye wouldn’t fall on my daughter?’

‘I’m telling you that when you’re among your own people, you know who your enemies are.’ Saewulf reached out and grabbed the golden ring on Sigurd’s arm, pulling him forward like a bull. ‘The emperor you love so much may have thrown you some crumbs when he was in trouble, but now he has betrayed you. Do you know why I have arrived here with a ship full of siege equipment?’

They were standing almost chest to chest now, Saewulf’s fingers still tight on Sigurd’s arm. I was amazed at his boldness. Sigurd towered over him; for a moment I thought he might slam his forehead against Saewulf’s skull in rage. But the sea-captain’s question had surprised him.

‘Did the emperor send you?’

Saewulf laughed. ‘The emperor sent the siege weapons – but not to Jerusalem, and not on my ship. I took them off a Cypriot convoy we surprised two weeks ago at sea.’

‘Piracy.’ Sigurd almost spat the word in Saewulf’s face. Saewulf shrugged it off.

‘Where do you suppose the Cypriot captain told me he was going with his cargo? To Jaffa, to help the poor Franks? No. He was going to Alexandria, to deliver these supplies to the Fatimid caliph to use against the Franks when he brings his army up to Jerusalem.’

Sigurd tried to pull away, but Saewulf kept a tight hold on his armband. ‘The emperor you love so much has betrayed the Franks – and you. You can hardly move on the seas out there for all the imperial grain ships hurrying to Egypt. The emperor has found new allies; now he will cast his old ones into the fire.’ He laughed again, a taunting, harrowing laugh. ‘At least he has betrayed the Franks because he wants to get Antioch back from them. You, who served him so faithfully, have been discarded simply because he cannot be bothered to save you.’

With a roar of anger, Sigurd tore himself from Saewulf’s grip, picked him up and hurled him against a pile of barrels. They tumbled over and rolled around the wharf like pigs on their backs. Sigurd bounded towards his opponent, but this was not the first dockside brawl Saewulf had fought. He was already on his feet, crouching low; he ducked aside as Sigurd sprang past him, kicking the Varangian’s feet from under him so that he sprawled on the stones.

I looked around. Dozens of ruddy faces were watching the fight, but none moved.

Sigurd got up, brushing dirt from his tunic. ‘Liar,’ he shouted again at Saewulf. ‘Why should I believe the word of a pirate and a traitor?’ He looked around, defying anyone in the crowd to defend Saewulf. ‘Would we be here if the emperor had betrayed us? Would we have spent the last two years fighting beside the Franks, crawling through deserts and over mountains?’ He was staring straight at me, and my face must have revealed the truth for he took a step towards me and demanded again, more loudly, ‘Would we?’

I had never told him what Nikephoros revealed to me the night before he died. I couldn’t have. How can you knock down the pillar of a man’s world? But my silence told him enough. All I could do was shake my head in misery.

Howling like a wounded ox, like Samson chained in the temple, Sigurd raised his arms and charged. Saewulf tried to sidestep him again but was too slow; Sigurd thumped into him and together, grappling and struggling, gouging and biting, they lurched across the dock. The men about them leaped to their feet, but none moved to help. They knew this was not their fight. I stood with them, watching, numb with desolation. How had it come to this?

Sigurd and Saewulf staggered to the edge of the dock. Ripples of light reflected on the water below, as if the sea itself had turned into a pool of fire. For a moment I saw them silhouetted against it, two dark shapes locked in inexorable combat. Then, with a cry and an almighty splash, they toppled off the edge of the wharf and fell into the water.

We rushed to the side and looked down. Two heads bobbed in the harbour, their arms flailing around them to keep afloat. The shock of the water and the risk of drowning had finally driven them apart, each more concerned with saving himself than destroying his opponent. With much splashing and spluttering, they paddled across to the harbour stairs and hauled themselves out.

‘Drowning me won’t change the truth,’ said Saewulf. ‘Nor will drowning yourself.’

Sigurd shook himself like a dog, and stalked away.

There were no more songs that night. The sailors and Varangians scattered around the harbour, making their beds wherever they could or wherever the wine overtook them. Sigurd found himself a niche in the wall and collapsed there alone, cursing away any man who came near him. As for me, the fire had burned low before I got to sleep. But once I did, I found to my surprise that I slept more peacefully than I had in weeks. Perhaps it was the wine; perhaps I had simply reached a place beyond hope or fear. Either way, I lay on the deck of one of the ships, letting it rock me like a cradle, and slept without dreams until the sun had climbed over the knuckle of the hill and started to warm my face.

But perhaps it was just another trick of the fates. For if I had slept less, and listened more closely to the darkness, maybe it would not have been so late before I discovered our new danger.

μα

‘How badly do you want my cargo?’

I opened my eyes. Saewulf was crouching over me, the dawn light soft on his scarred face. Red weals and bruises bore witness to his struggle with Sigurd the night before.

‘How badly do you want your siege equipment?’ he asked again.

I lifted myself on one elbow. My mouth was dry, my head uneasy from too much wine the night before. ‘What do you mean?’ A horrible thought struck me. ‘Do you want money?’ I looked to see if he had a knife in his hands. He did not, but the fish-handled dagger was still tucked in his belt within easy reach. Had Sigurd been right about him?

He bared his teeth at me. ‘This isn’t about money. Come.’

He dragged me to my feet and led me onto the dock, up a crumbling flight of stairs to the rampart atop the harbour walls. He pointed out to sea.

‘That is what I mean.’

It was a scene the ancient poets could well have recognised. The rose-fingered dawn reached down to the water, her caresses stirring rippling waves. The sea shone with a blinding light, and a fresh wind blew in from the west. Birds soared in the cloudless sky, then swooped down in search of fish, barely disturbing the waves as they dived beneath them. And there, black as flies against the shimmering water, a fleet of ships sailed towards the harbour.

‘Are they . . . ours?’

Saewulf shook his head soberly. ‘Egyptian.’

I counted them – eight, against six of Saewulf’s ships in the harbour behind me. Glancing back, I could see his crew still sprawled around the docks, slowly beginning to stir as word of their danger spread.

‘Can we fight them?’

‘Not at sea – not with an onshore wind.’ He turned to me. ‘So, how badly do you want that cargo?’

If it would help me get inside Jerusalem and reach my family, more than life. But I could not carry it back singlehanded – nor stand alone against the Fatimids.

‘How badly do you want your gold?’

Saewulf grinned, though there was no humour behind it. ‘That cargo cost me nothing. I could as easily have thrown it overboard as bring it here.’

‘But you did bring it here.’

‘And now I’m trapped.’ Saewulf looked around, his eyes ever calculating. ‘Each one of those Egyptian ships carries more men than my entire crew. They’re armed with catapults and naphtha throwers. If they get into the harbour’ – he gestured to the hawser, which sagged across the harbour mouth – ‘they’ll burn us down like haystacks.’ He brushed his hand over the rampart. A trickle of mortar and rubble crumbled away at his touch. ‘We won’t get much defence out of these walls. If you value your life, you’ll run inland as fast as you can. They won’t risk straying too far from their ships – unless they’ve got allies on shore on the way.’

‘But we have allies coming too. If your men reached Jerusalem, then the Franks should have sent men to collect the cargo. They might even come this morning.’

‘And if they don’t?’

I shrugged, helplessly. Looking out to sea, I could see the Fatimid ships roving towards us, ever closer. ‘I would not count on them to save us.’

‘Then we’d better fight hard.’

I stared at him. ‘You’ll stay?’

Saewulf shrugged. ‘I’m a sailor – I’ll stay with my ships. And hope your reinforcements come quickly.’

As if to mock his words, a crack echoed from the deck of the foremost Egyptian ship. A clay canister, pink like the sun, sailed through the air over our heads. We spun about to follow its arc, watching it drop into the harbour just past the hull of Saewulf’s flagship. It seemed to bounce on the surface of the water, then slowly sank. Steam blew from its spout as the water met the burning oil inside.

‘Christ’s shit.’ Saewulf looked down at the docks, at the drowsy sailors stirring themselves from sleep. The cargo lay stacked all about them; suddenly all the timber, sacking and barrels looked like nothing so much as piles of kindling waiting for the match.

‘We’re sitting on top of our own pyre,’ Saewulf muttered. ‘We need to clear it off the docks.’

I hardly cared for myself, but the siege materials were our last, best chance of breaking into Jerusalem. If they turned to ash, so did all our hopes. Even as I watched, another oil canister shot out from the Fatimid fleet. This one carried all the way over the harbour and smashed against one of the warehouses that lined the shore. There was a flash as the pottery vessel exploded into shards, and then a burst of oily smoke. Liquid fire slithered down the stone wall. Over my shoulder, out to sea, three splashes rose as a ranging flight of arrows dipped into the water. With the white feathers on their tails, they almost looked like the diving gulls.

Saewulf turned and hurried down the steps two at a time. ‘Have your men move the cargo up the hill, near the gate. It’ll be easier to grab it there when we have to retreat.’

I followed him, trying not to lose my footing on the crumbling stairs. ‘What will you do?’

Saewulf gestured to the warehouse opposite. The naphtha had burned out, leaving scorched tentacles trailing down the wall. ‘I’ll start a fire.’

* * *

Down on the docks, Saewulf’s men had already shaken off their slumbers and were hurrying about. Despite the suddenness of our desperate plight, they seemed calm enough, moving to some purpose they evidently understood. I could not guess it – nor, apparently, could the Varangians. I found them clustered in a knot in the lee of the walls, watching unhappily. Facing an enemy on land they would be fiercer than any man; confront them with a battle at sea, even one contained in the confines of the harbour, and they did not know what to do.

Sigurd had woken and was standing among them, squinting against the light. A black bruise ringed his left eye and his matted hair sprawled untidily over his shoulders. At the sight of me approaching, his face screwed up in disgust. The last night’s quarrel had left us with too many things to say to each other.

I said none of them. As quickly as I could, I relayed Saewulf’s instructions. I thought Sigurd would object, but he simply sneered his approval, then picked up the nearest sack and threw it over his shoulder. It must have held almost twice his weight in iron, but he did not flinch.

‘Where do you want it?’

It was hard work that wanted many men; instead, the twelve of us laboured to carry the sacks and barrels through the deserted streets of Jaffa, up the slope to the fallen arch where the gate had once stood. Each time we reached the gate and deposited another load, we looked out to the east in search of an approaching army. Each time we turned back towards the harbour we looked west, over the harbour walls to the sea beyond. The Egyptian ships had dropped their sails for battle and had their oars out, prowling the water like wolves. For some reason, they did not seem to have fired any more naphtha canisters at us.

‘Why don’t they attack?’ I wondered.

‘Perhaps they’re waiting for reinforcements,’ said Aelfric.

I looked back to the east but there was nothing. Meanwhile, down in the harbour, Saewulf’s men seemed to have started doing the Fatimids’ work for them. On all but one of the ships they had stripped away the rigging and felled the masts; I could see the long trunks lying on the wharf, the sails still wrapped around the yards. Perhaps Saewulf meant to deny the Egyptians a target – though if so, he had forgotten his own flagship, whose green banner still flapped defiantly from its masthead. By the time I had brought my next load up to the gate, the ship had slipped its moorings and was creeping out towards the harbour’s mouth, its banks of oars rising and falling. I could see its crew manning the benches, and Saewulf standing by the tiller in the stern, a coat of chain mail pulled over his green tunic and a helmet gleaming in the sun.

‘But he said he wouldn’t attack.’ I did not understand. The Fatimids would surely burn Saewulf into the water, as he had predicted – or crush him head-on. Their lead ship had neared the harbour mouth and was closing rapidly. Two more followed close behind on its flanks.

‘Perhaps Saewulf found his balls after all.’ Sigurd dropped a sack of trenails with an angry thud. ‘Thirty years too late.’

‘Or perhaps he’s lost his mind.’ No other ships were moving to support Saewulf’s lone charge – in fact, so far as I could see, their crews seemed to be busy dismantling them. One was already at least a foot nearer the water, and I could hear the urgent sounds of saws and hammers reducing it ever further. What was Saewulf doing? I looked at Sigurd, wondering if he understood his countryman’s madness any better than I did. He gave no sign of it.

It looked as though Saewulf meant to ram the Fatimid ship bow to bow. Watching, I felt a memory stir in me, of an October afternoon without a trace of autumn, when Bilal had taken me to see the caliph’s shipyards. Was this one of the boats I had seen drawn up on that island in the middle of the Nile, then a skeleton, now clothed in its full war-like flesh? Had fate been drawing back the curtain that day, offering me an unwitting glimpse of my future?

The two ships were barely a spear’s throw apart now, their collision inevitable. The Egyptian ship was broader, heavier and stronger: with the carved lion’s head on her prow, and the banks of oars like wings, she looked like nothing so much as a griffin in flight. With her copper ram she would overwhelm her adversary in an instant, then overrun the harbour and the cargo. We would save none of it – we would barely have time to save ourselves.

And then something extraordinary happened: a new madness, which made everything else seem almost rational. A cluster of sailors on Saewulf’s deck let go the ropes they held. The square sail they had bound tumbled loose from the yard and was immediately hauled taut. With the onshore breeze almost straight ahead, the effect was dramatic: the ship shuddered to a halt; then, pushed by an invisible hand, began to drift backwards.

Next to me, Sigurd turned away in disgust. ‘Coward,’ he hissed.

Whether a desperate tactic or a sudden loss of nerve, Saewulf’s trick would not save him. The Egyptian ship was too close, the carved lion’s outstretched arms almost ready to maul the retreating wolf. One more heave on their oars would surely bring the two together.

The lion-headed prow passed between the two ruined watchtowers. Saewulf had placed archers in the ruins: they loosed a few arrows, but they were mere pinpricks, fleas against the lion’s side. They would not stop the ship. It ploughed forward, its bow wave intersecting the line of surf across the harbour mouth. The line, I realised, where the water rippled over the submerged hawser that lay there.

The Egyptian ship blundered head first into the snare Saewulf had prepared. The hawser caught in the elbow where the copper ram joined the prow: the ship shook and cracked. Caught off balance and unable to move forward, its momentum instead carried it along the length of the rope, spinning it around. The mouth of the harbour was not wide: before the crew could react, the sliding bow had careered into the end of the pier. Splinters exploded as the bow shattered; the copper ram must have snapped off, or else been driven back into its own ship. With a great tearing of canvas and cordage, the mast broke free of its holding, tottered for a moment like a drunkard, then crashed to the deck. I saw several of the crew crushed beneath it, or floundering in the tangle of rigging it had brought down.

This was what Saewulf had planned, and he was ready for it. Without need for a signal, his men rushed along the docks to the points nearest the stricken ship. The archers in the watch towers – suddenly far more numerous – rose up and began a new, furious assault. This time they had dipped their arrows in burning pitch, bringing a squall of fire rushing down on the stricken ship. The water around it blistered and spat as wayward arrows dropped wide of the mark, but many more struck home. With her loose sail sprawled across the deck where the mast had fallen, it was a matter of moments before she caught light, and her battered crew had neither time nor discipline to quench the flames. Some flung themselves in the water, where Saewulf’s waiting crew speared them like fish; others tried to scramble onto the pier where the ship had run aground, but men were waiting for them there with axes. None escaped.

A column of black smoke rose into the air as fire took hold of the ship, and the water around it began to boil. Beside me, watching up on the hillside by the fallen gate, I heard Sigurd sigh. He had once told me that, in the legends of his people, the bodies of fallen heroes and kings had been sent to their pagan afterlife in burning ships. I wondered if the sight now stirred some deep ancestral memory in him.

But it was too soon to celebrate a victory. Flames and smoke streamed from the dying ship’s hull, her crew were all slaughtered or burned, but still – against all reason – she did not give up. Incredibly, she seemed to be moving again. At first I could not see how; then I realised that the fire at her bow must also have burned through the hawser that held her. Freed of that restraint, she was drifting ever closer into the harbour. A few of the English sailors on the pier thrust out their spears in a vain attempt to catch her, but if they touched her at all they only succeeded in prodding her further away.

Whatever his cunning, this was not something Saewulf had expected. His ship sat in the water barely a boat length away, beam on, and his men had deserted their oars to take up their spears and bows. The wind that pressed the ship towards them also blew its smoke into their faces; by the time they realised the fire was moving towards them, it was too late.

The triumphant cheers that had sounded around the harbour fell silent. I saw Saewulf and his crew stare in confusion at the looming fireship for a moment, then turn and run for the side. The two boats came together, wrapped in smoke; I heard the hollow knock of two hulls embracing, and saw the shower of sparks erupt where they had struck. Flames licked up through the smoke, hungry for the fresh tinder of Saewulf’s ship. The last thing I saw was the green banner at the masthead, billowing out in the hot wind that gusted from the fire below. Tongues of flame reached up to tear it down, shrivelling it black.

‘We won’t escape that easily.’ Sigurd pointed to the harbour mouth. Another Fatimid ship was already nosing through the entrance, no longer barred by the hawser. Another followed close behind it. From the watchtowers and wharves, Saewulf’s men tried desperately to stop them with stones and arrows, but the Fatimid ships rowed stubbornly on. Some of their oarsmen fell, but most did not, while from the wooden turrets amidships their archers were able to direct their fire down onto the men on the docks.

Sigurd threw aside the sack he had been carrying and picked up his axe from where it leaned against the remains of the gatehouse. ‘We’d better get down there.’

It was not a moment too soon. In the few minutes it took us to get down the hill to the harbour, the battle had changed again. Saewulf’s ship had burned almost to the water, but its smoke still clung to the air. Another one of the Fatimid ships had caught fire too, adding to the fog, but that was no victory for it had already managed to dock; its men had spilled out and were fighting their way forward. The English sailors tried to beat them back, but they were heavily outnumbered.

We ran along the dock, making short, darting runs and then ducking behind the crates and sacks that still littered the ground. In places, the stones were slick with blood; in others, pools of oil burned where the naphtha canisters had exploded. I saw Thomas hike up his tunic to try to piss the fire out and dragged him back behind the barrels.

‘That’s sea-fire,’ I warned him, shouting to make myself heard over the roar of battle. ‘Water makes it burn more. You need vinegar’ Sword drawn, I swung out from behind the sheltering barrels and charged forward again. Sigurd was on my left, the harbour’s edge to my right. Glancing down, I saw splintered wood and bodies floating in the water – some were splashing for the harbour stairs, but most lay still. I wondered what had happened to Saewulf – had he escaped his burning ship? I had no time to think about it. An arrow hissed past my head, and I slithered to the ground behind a pile of stones. But my run had taken me too far forward, to the blind chaos where the armies contended. Even as I rolled over on my side, a curved blade swung out of the smoke before me, striking sparks on the quay-stones. I leaped to my feet, staggering back to avoid the swinging cut that followed. I had no shield; all I could do was parry the blow with my own sword and feel the shudder as the heavy blade took the impact. Then it was forward into the smoke, hewing and slicing. At least I did not have to worry about arrows, for we were too close to our enemies for the Fatimid archers to risk shooting into the fray. Everything was confusion: there were too many obstacles scattered across the dock for either side to form a line, and so we battled in our ones and twos between the naphtha pools, shattered crates and corpses. More by necessity than any plan, we found ourselves fighting in pairs, shoulder to shoulder, one man acting as the other’s shield. I fought with Sigurd. At first we tried to shout instructions to each other, or warnings, but the sounds of the battle – the burning ships, the spitting oil, the warcries of both armies and the clash of arms – engulfed us. All we could do was keep our eyes open against the stinging smoke and trust each other.

Perhaps we should have been grateful to the smoke: at least it served to hide our meagre numbers from the Egyptians. Even so, there was little disguising it. Soon our enemies were coming at us from the sides rather than the front; sometimes a few of Saewulf’s men pushed forward to help, but they could not hold their ground. Our only advantage was that with the wall on one side and the water on the other, the dock was narrow enough that even our small force was enough to keep the Egyptians from tearing through us. But still we were ground remorselessly back.

Walking backwards, I did not see the tall pile of sacks until I almost stepped into it. I twisted around to get past it, trying to keep my gaze ahead; unfortunately, Sigurd went the other way and in an instant, we were separated. I looked frantically about to find him again, but at that moment a new wave of Fatimid soldiers charged out from the smoke. Howling like a ghost, one of them lunged his sword at me. I parried it and stepped back, but as I did so I tripped on an iron ring set in the quay. With my hand already numb from the ringing clash of our blades, I let go my sword completely as I lost my balance and sprawled backwards. I rolled over and sprang to my feet as the Fatimid advanced towards me. I could not see the sword, but a broken barrel lay on the ground nearby, its staves spread open like the petals of a flower. A few of them had fallen into a pool of naphtha and started to burn; unthinking, I picked one up and thrust it in my enemy’s face. His eyes widened in horror as his thick beard caught fire; for a moment I saw his face and helmet wreathed in flames – bathed in light, as the apostles must have appeared at Pentecost. He dropped his sword and clutched at his face, then swung away and threw himself over the edge of the quay into the water. I saw him floundering there, clinging to his shield like a raft while the weight of his armour tried to suck him down.

There was no time to savour my victory. By the time I had found my fallen sword and retrieved it I was being forced back again. Even to be armed was a rare advantage now: the sailors around me were having to fight with whatever they could lay their hands on. I saw one pulling iron shackles from a sack and flinging them at the Fatimids using a sling made from his shirt; others wielded shipbuilding tools as weapons. One had even made a rudimentary flail from a plank with three nails hammered through the end. He had stripped to the waist, his tunic folded back over his belt, and his fair skin glistened with beads of water. Despite his crude weapon, he moved with a breathtaking grace, whirling about like cinders floating on currents of air. His wet hair swung behind him, as if to counterbalance the flail in his hands, which clawed and gouged any who came near. Even in battle I had rarely seen such pure, animal ferocity.

As he turned to counter some new attack, I glimpsed Saewulf’s face beneath the whirling hair. The careless detachment had vanished; the cautious man who acclaimed profit and disdained all else had become a warrior in the mould of his ancestors. And beside him, even more remarkable, stood Sigurd, rolling his axe and bellowing defiance at the Egyptians. Watching them, knowing Sigurd’s loathing of Saewulf, you might almost have thought they did not realise the other was there. They stood, half-turned away from each other, ignoring each other completely: it was only after I had watched for a few moments that I realised the unspoken intricacy of their movement. If Sigurd knocked an adversary off balance, he pushed him left so that Saewulf could club him; if Saewulf forced a man backwards, Sigurd’s axe was waiting to sever his neck. It was an awesome pairing.

With Sigurd and Saewulf to anchor us, we had at last managed to regroup behind a makeshift barricade of planks and barrels. The Egyptian attack seemed to be weakening. A few of their soldiers still struggled against the English sailors, but most seemed to have retreated back along the dock, into the swirling smoke. I did not doubt they would return in greater numbers – even Sigurd and Saewulf at the peak of their rage could not defy them all.

Sigurd sent a Fatimid swordsman sprawling backwards with a well-aimed kick, then turned. His face and arms were drenched in blood, but he seemed unharmed. He screamed something unintelligible in his native tongue and swept his arm forward. I did not need to know the words to understand the meaning: desperate though it was, we had to close with the Fatimids before they started to bombard us with their missiles again.

A dangerous lightness overtook me – not light-headedness, but a lightness of spirit, which, at the last, accepted the inevitability of defeat and embraced it. I vaulted over the box that had protected me and charged forward. The weariness of battle seemed to fall away; I was sprinting along the dock, among the rubble and jetsam that the shifting tides of battle had left behind. Sigurd was in front of me and Saewulf beside him, with English sailors and Varangians all around. I saw Thomas to my left and breathed a prayer of thanks that he had survived this long. Still no one opposed us. In the distance, I heard a trumpet sound.

The euphoria that had carried me forward drained as quickly as it had come. I had a cramp in my side, my knuckles were bleeding where I had grazed them on the quay, and my arms were suddenly barely able to hold the sword upright. Seeing no danger, I stopped short, bending double to gather my breath. Only then did I look around.

We had almost reached the end of the harbour where the Fatimid ship had docked, yet we stood there unopposed. Inside the harbour, I could see the dying embers of a ship disappearing beneath the water, hissing and fizzling. Another ship remained afloat and undamaged, but it was not coming towards us: with every stroke of its oars it pulled further away. Fatimid soldiers crowded its deck, while in the water I could see others who had discarded their weapons and armour swimming desperately after the retreating ship.

‘Did we win?’ I wondered aloud.

No one answered. Sigurd, still in the grip of battle, stood on the harbour’s edge and shouted abuse after the fleeing Egyptians. When that did nothing, he picked up a smouldering piece of wood from the dock beside him and hurled it towards the ship. It fell well short, though it did provoke one of the archers on the ship’s stern to retaliate with an arrow. That flew wide, but it was enough to drain the battle lust from Sigurd. He fell silent and stepped into the shelter of the wall, while the Fatimid ship disappeared out of the harbour.

The trumpet I had heard during our charge sounded again. At the time I had thought it must be my imagination, or perhaps a flight of angels come to take me to heaven, but this was different – too clear to be my imagination, too strident for the hosts of heaven. I turned around.

We were not the only men on the docks. At the far end of the harbour, where three of Saewulf’s ships still lay moored, a troop of horsemen had ridden out onto the quay and dismounted. More men were spilling down from the town after them. All were armed and mailed, though even from that distance I could see many were limping or leaning on their comrades for support, as if they too had been in a battle. Their banners were frayed and stained, but there was no mistaking the design on them: a blood-red cross.

‘Thank God.’

The leader of the new arrivals handed his bridle to a companion and came towards us, striding between the host of small fires that still burned around him. The Varangians and sailors around me turned to face him, arms crossed, watching impassively.

He halted in front of Saewulf and removed his helmet, shaking free a mane of tawny hair. I recognised him: he was Geldemar Carpinel, one of the lesser captains in Duke Godfrey’s army.

‘If you came for the battle, you’re too late.’ Saewulf gestured to the debris all about, as if the Frank might not have noticed it. ‘We won.’

Geldemar stiffened. ‘We fought our own battle. Four hundred Arab troops and two hundred Turks. We found them on the plain near Aramathea – coming this way.’

‘I hope you saw them off.’ Geldemar gave a smug nod. ‘You don’t want to run into them again when you leave.’

‘Leave?’ Geldemar sounded peeved. ‘We’ve only just come here.’

As if by way of answer, another naphtha canister sailed over the wall and exploded against the watchtower in a cloud of fire. A fig tree that had grown out of a crack in the wall burst into flame.

‘I thought you said you won your battle,’ said Geldemar suspiciously.

‘There are always more enemies. Unless you want to meet them, we had best get on. Have you brought pack animals?’

* * *

They had, though it was the devil’s own job to load them while the Egyptian ships beyond the harbour bombarded us with fire. We scavenged what we could from the cargo on the dock, while Saewulf’s men methodically dismantled the ships that survived. When they had broken them down to the waterline, they towed them to the harbour mouth and scuttled them. Soon all that remained were bundles of planks and timbers tied to the mules.

By the time we had loaded up the last of the animals, the harbour swirled and glowed with the reflected flames. The wind had carried the fire into the town on the hillside, and that too had begun to burn. In the places where the sea-fire had spread over it, even the water burned.

In my determination to see that we saved every scrap that might help make our siege engines, I was one of the last to leave. Sigurd and I hoisted the last batch of planks onto the mule’s back and tied it tight, then turned to go. I cast a last look at the harbour. Ash and oily scum covered its surface, but the water still drew my drawn and bleary eyes. Soot and dust had mingled with sweat and blood to coat my skin, my hair, my clothes: I could almost feel it cracking when I moved. I longed to be clean – but there was no time for that.

Saewulf slapped the laden mule on the rump, and it trotted obediently away towards the gate. Now there were only three of us left on the dock.

‘There goes your last ship,’ I said to Saewulf. ‘What will you do now?’

He shrugged. ‘A captain should stay with his ship – even if it’s in pieces. Besides, you’ll need someone who knows how to use those tools, if you ever want to build your siege engines.’

μβ

Our return to Jerusalem found the army in grim spirits, which even the arrival of our cargo did little to improve. The streams of living water promised in scripture no longer flowed: the land was parched, and the few wells that lay around the city had been poisoned or stopped up by the garrison. Worse, while we had been away the Franks had intercepted messengers from the Fatimid vizier, al-Afdal. He was coming from Egypt with a great army, he said: he would be there in a month. If the garrison could only hold out until then, the Army of God would be ground into dust. The Franks gritted their teeth and swore it would make no difference: this was exactly what had happened at Antioch, they said, and they had prevailed then. By God’s grace, they would take Jerusalem and then march out to destroy al-Afdal as well. But they spoke too loudly when they said it, and the hands that clutched their crosses trembled.

All our hopes now rested on God – and on the materials we had brought from Jaffa. The masts from Saewulf’s ships were raised again, far from the sea, the cornerposts of the two vast siege engines the Franks had designed. The towers reached higher than the walls themselves, and every day they grew. The wheelwrights gave them feet; the carpenters built platforms and ladders within while the women wove wattle screens to cover them. Finally, the tanners nailed on skins of mottled hides so that fire could not burn them. It gave the machines a monstrous appearance. On each, the drawbridge at the summit gaped like an open jaw, while the arrow slits above seemed like blundering, half-blind eyes. The Franks named them Gog and Magog, the beasts who would come at the end of time to besiege Jerusalem.

A strange mood overtook the army in those last few weeks. They stood on the brink of an impossible victory, and equally on the threshold of destruction, yet to look at their faces you would not have seen much trace of either hope or fear. Even the threat of al-Afdal’s army did little to stir their passions. They had suffered the journey for too long: now that they had arrived, it meant nothing. You could see it in their eyes – the numb awareness that these should be days of passion and drama, of triumph or terror, and the quiet, reproachful despair that they felt nothing. Each day they toiled with willing, dead hands: they lay on their bellies to drink from stagnant pools where animals wallowed; they wandered carelessly within bowshot of the walls and barely murmured when the arrows struck them.

Yet life stirred among the waste and wreckage of our hopes, if you looked carefully. But it was not the fresh, clean life that drives out winter; this was the sort that crawls out of holes and feeds on rot. It did not show itself, but I became aware of it, shadows moving at the fringes of my perception. I saw it in the groups of pilgrims who huddled together, whispering; in sly glances that sidled away when I looked at them; in the mysterious slogans that appeared scrawled on boulders overnight: unsettling verses from the Revelation of Saint John speaking of tortures and trials ahead. I felt it in the brooding presence of the towers, ever-present and stark against the skyline. More insidiously, I heard it from the mouths of the priests. When they opened their Bibles, it was always to Daniel or Ezekiel. I will strew your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass; I will drench the land so that your flowing blood laps the mountain tops, and drowns the streams and rivers. When they preached, they spoke of the kingdom to come with rare urgency, as if they could glimpse the holy city through a tear in the clouds. Though few of them were gifted preachers, their words seemed to touch their audiences like tongues of fire. Dull faces flared with passionate intensity; in those moments, I began to suspect that the army was not exhausted, simply nursing its meagre strength. It improved my hopes of taking the city, but it filled me with foreboding.

Unsurprisingly, in that atmosphere, men started to see visions again. Some saw winged creatures swooping down from heaven; some saw saints in shimmering raiment; some saw magical beasts – griffins, basilisks and unicorns – and no doubt others saw worse visions that afterwards they did not dare voice, but tried to forget in their hearts.

Among these visions, one came with particular authority. A Provençal pilgrim announced that he had seen Bishop Adhemar, who had ordered a penitential procession around the four walls of Jerusalem to free the army from the filth of the world. So, on a Friday afternoon in early July, we marched around the city.

Looking back, it was a miracle we were not all massacred. By Adhemar’s command, given in the vision, every man in the army had removed his boots and walked barefoot. If the Fatimids had sallied out from the city, they could have ridden through us like a field of wheat. Perhaps they could not believe our temerity and assumed it must be a trap; perhaps they simply laughed to themselves and left us to our folly, seeing it as the last throes of an army dying of thirst and madness. Perhaps they pitied us. Whatever their reasons, they stayed within the walls.

And if they thought we were mad, who could argue? We knew the risks, and still we marched blithely on. Fear of death did not deter us; instead, the army seemed to drink it in. The whole procession had the air of a macabre carnival. Seven priests walked at the front of the column with ram’s horns, blasting out a cacophony that filled the valley, from the walls to the surrounding hills. Men and women danced in rapture; they held their weapons aloft and waved them to heaven – spears and swords, but also billhooks, cudgels, even pilgrim staves. The trumpets blasted, and the pilgrims sang so hard they almost screamed. Each time we came near one of the gates the noise rose to a fevered crescendo as we waited to see if it would open for an attack; each time we passed safely, the air shivered with the sound of delight. Drunk on its own daring, the army tottered forward; they had abandoned caution, thrown off the chains of fear that had bound them so long, and every step that they did not fall only convinced them of their invincibility.

‘I once knew a herder who grazed his oxen where wild onions grew,’ said Sigurd. He had to bellow in my ear to be heard. ‘It made them swell up like melons. When they let it go . . .’ He waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘It sounded like those trumpets.’

‘Perhaps they think the walls will fall down if they blow hard enough.’

‘Then there’ll be nothing to stop the Egyptians running out and slaughtering us.’

I shrugged. ‘It worked for Joshua.’

At least Joshua had been allowed to wear his boots. The ground beneath my feet might be holy, but it was merciless. The stones were so hot they raised blisters even through a thousand miles’ worth of callouses, and when once I did not look where I trod I quickly felt the pain of a stubbed toe.

I stepped out of the procession and knelt to rub my toe. The procession flowed past. Seen from below, with the blazing sun above, the pilgrims became little more than barefoot shadows, a jabbering confusion of limbs and blades that writhed like tendrils of smoke over a fire. Or perhaps they were like a thicket of walking trees, their branches rippling as if in a breeze. The spikes of their spears looked more like palm fronds, and the sunlight was so strong the metal seemed to wilt in its glare.

I blinked. Thirst and heat had not made me delusional. The men and women passing by no longer carried weapons, not even the crude tools of the peasants, but palm fronds. They were dressed in white, and they seemed to come from all the tribes of the barbarians – Normans and Provençals, Lotharingians and Flemings – but they all sang the same song.

Salvation belongs to God on His throne, and to the Lamb who is his son.

I stood up. The crowd’s momentum had carried Sigurd on well past me and for the moment I was on my own. I stepped back into the procession, feeling dark and dirty among so much white. Immediately, I found myself in the shade of a broad palm frond, which an old man held aloft with frail but unyielding arms. He turned to greet me, smiling in welcome.

I gestured around. ‘Who are all these people?’

His skin was dark and mottled with liver spots, but his teeth were as white as his robe. ‘We are those who have come out of the great ordeal. We have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ His brown eyes stared at me.

It was the last answer I had expected. Stranger still, I found I knew the words to continue it. ‘They shall hunger and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.’

He nodded approvingly. ‘The Lamb on His throne will be our shepherd, and He will guide us to the springs of the water of life.’

‘I’d be glad to find any spring in this foul heat.’

The pilgrim frowned. ‘The earth’s water is stagnant and stale. Soon we will all taste the sweet water of life.’

Dazed by sweltering heat and sound, stifled by the dust our army kicked up, I almost let myself ignore him. But there was a firmness in the way he spoke that was almost like a promise. Soon we will all taste the sweet water of life. I had heard such sentiments before, but hearing them now, with the walls of Jerusalem looming over me, I could feel their power anew.

The pilgrim looked at me cautiously, as if noticing for the first time the shabby colour of my tunic among the sea of white. ‘Things that were prophesied are now stirring to life. Have you heard?’

My mouth was dry, but once again I found I knew the words he wanted. I loosened a brick in the wall of my memories and reached into the dark crevice within – to a clearing in the woods, and the fat, frightened peasant who had styled himself a prophet.

‘When the Son of Perdition has risen, the king will ascend Golgotha.’

I could not remember any more, but it was enough. The pilgrim recited the rest. ‘He will take his crown from his head and place it on the cross, and stretching out his hands to heaven he will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father.’

‘But the man who brought that prophecy died a terrible death, forsaken by God. I thought his prophecy died with him.’

‘It was not Peter Bartholomew’s prophecy,’ said the pilgrim. His eyes were hidden in the dappled shade of the palm frond, but his face was angry. ‘In his pride, he confused the prophet and that which was prophesied. He thought he was the promised king.’

‘The last and greatest of all kings, who will come at the end of days to capture Jerusalem.’

‘As if that grasping peasant could have been a king. The first time Christ came, He came in humility. When He comes again, it will be with all the majesty He can command.’

My scepticism must have showed. ‘Do you doubt it?’ the pilgrim challenged me.

‘Of the hour of Christ’s coming, no man knows,’ I quoted him.

‘Until He does come.’ He grabbed me by my sleeve and spun me around, staring hard into my eyes. ‘The consummation of the world has already begun. The last and greatest king is here. I have seen him.’

I stared at him. There was no hint of a lie on his aged face. ‘You have seen the risen Christ?’

‘As clearly as you see me now.’

‘But . . .’ I struggled to think, let alone to speak. ‘But . . . why hasn’t the world ended?’

‘Even after He returns, the day of judgement does not come straight away. There is to be an interlude of forty days, so that sinners may repent. But there is not much time. He appeared to us the night we reached Jerusalem, and that was thirty-three days ago.’

This was impossible. Of course I believed that Christ would come again in glory, as the creed proclaimed, to judge the living and the dead – but I had never thought it could come in my lifetime. It was an idea, an abstraction out of time, as far in the future as the creation of the world lay in the past. It was not something I was born to experience.

‘You should not be surprised when God’s promises are honoured,’ the pilgrim reproved me. ‘It has all been written in the prophecy.’

The prophecy. I had only heard it in snatches but I could feel its danger, a dark serpent coiled in the heart of the army. It had poisoned Peter Bartholomew when he touched it, thinking it was meant for him. Who else would it claim? Worse, what if it were true?

‘There is still time to prepare yourself – God is merciful. Meet me an hour after dusk at the church of Saint Abraham, near Saint Stephen’s gate, tomorrow night.’

‘Will the redeemer be revealed there?’

He put a finger to his lips. ‘Be patient. You will meet him soon enough.’

μγ

Did we have seven days to live? It was hard to believe. The following day, Saturday, was almost stifling in its predictability. I rose at dawn and spent the morning carrying wood as we continued the slow business of preparing the siege engine. The sun climbed over us, then began to sink back. The sounds of war echoed off the ancient hills – blacksmiths beating out blades on their anvils, farriers exercising horses, the clatter of rocks as labourers gathered stones for the catapaults – but I barely heard them. Even the noise of my own hammer was dull to my ears, a metronomic beat tapping out the hours in the still air.

When dusk began to chase the sun from the sky, I put down my tools and made my way to the church of Saint Abraham: a small church with a cracked dome, barely a stone’s throw from the city walls. I did not tell Sigurd or Thomas I was going. I half expected – and half hoped – that the pilgrim would have forgotten me, or thought better of his offer, but as I approached the church he stepped out of the shadow of the doorway and beckoned me to follow.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Not far.’ He looked at my tunic, then threw me a white blanket. ‘Wrap this around you.’

The blanket was grubby and smelled of straw, but I did as he told me and followed him. My misgivings grew the further we moved away from the camp, up towards the brow of the ridge that dominated Jerusalem to the north. We were not the only ones on this road: pale figures flitted through the night all around, though I could not make them out. When I looked back, I could see the city laid out beneath me, a chain of watch-fires surrounding the lamplit streets and churches. To my left, on the eastern side, a smaller cordon of light marked out the dimensions of the Temple Mount. From there, I traced the line of the stone bridge, which spanned the valley to the western city. On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door. I stared at the flickering lights. Did one of those lamps burn in the window of the room that held my family? Was Anna looking out of it even now, staring up at the night and thinking of me? My heart beat faster, and I felt the familiar pain tighten in my chest.

‘Hurry,’ hissed the pilgrim. ‘There is not much time.’

I turned back up the slope, leaving the lights behind. But the darkness ahead was not complete: the more I looked, the more I could see an orange glow tempering the air, until suddenly we came over the crest of the ridge and looked down into the hollow beyond.

On the far side of the ridge, the land formed a natural bowl, a steeply sloping amphitheatre of dry earth and grass. It occurred to me that these were the same hills where a thousand years earlier the blessed shepherds must have waited with their flocks and heard the angels’ tidings. A second later, I realised why I had thought of it, for it seemed as though all the intervening ages had collapsed and a parliament of angels had gathered once again. Dim white figures filled the valley, seated on its sloping banks in rows or wandering around its rim. There seemed to be hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. They were singing, a soft and beautiful hymn that barely disturbed the night but seemed to flow like water into the amphitheatre. To Him who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb: blessing and honour and glory and power. Two fires burned in its centre forming the boundaries of an implicit stage, and though they were far enough apart that a man could stand between them and barely break sweat, it reminded me uncomfortably of the twin fires of Peter Bartholomew’s ordeal.

My pilgrim guide found us a space to sit on the hillside. No sooner had we settled, though, than the hymn died away and the entire congregation rose to its feet. In the bowl of the valley, a procession wound its way past the fires and stopped behind them, a shadowy line just out of reach of the light. There were seven of them, all dressed in white and all holding dark objects clutched to their chests.

One stepped forward into the pool of firelight. The flames rippled on his cheeks, misshaping them, though his eyes and mouth remained in shadow. He must have been a priest, for he wore a stole around his neck with a heavy cross hanging over his chest. He took the bundle he held and raised it so all could see – a parchment scroll, fastened with a round wax seal the size of a medallion. Holding it aloft, he snapped the wax like bread at the Eucharist. Crumbs of wax fell to the ground. In a deep, rolling voice he declaimed: ‘Come.’

A sigh went through the crowd like a wind – a wind that seemed to bring with it the chime and jangle of metal. It grew louder; then, from the right of the hollow, I saw the source. A white horse trotted out of the darkness. It seemed to glide through the night: its hooves disappeared in the shadow over the ground, and if they made any noise the dust silenced it instantly. Mounted in its saddle sat a knight, or perhaps a king, for he wore a silver crown. He rode stiff and erect, ignoring the gaze of a thousand silent eyes on him, and on his shoulder he carried a long bow. As he passed behind each fire he seemed to melt into its light and disappear, then reappear as a dim radiance in the darkness beyond.

As he vanished into the more complete darkness on the margins of the valley, a second priest stepped forward to stand beside the first. He too held a scroll; he broke the seal and again said, ‘Come.’

A second horse came out of the night, following in the tracks of the first. This one seemed darker, though when he came close to the fire I could see he was a chestnut colt, his glossy coat so deep it was almost red. Its rider did not wear a crown, but held up a great sword so large I wondered if any man could wield it.

‘He came to take all peace from the earth, so that men would fall on each other in slaughter,’ whispered the pilgrim in my ear. I nodded; I knew. All around me, the standing crowd watched in awe. Did they believe that the horses and their riders were spirits from realms beyond imagining? It hardly mattered. Like icons, the vision it offered transcended any thought for its substance.

One by one, the priests stepped forward to snap the seals on their scrolls and call forth the riders. A huge stallion came, so black it was barely visible but fluttered like a veil against the night. Its rider carried a pair of scales. After him, a pale grey mare whose rider carried a long scythe over his shoulder. It should have been green – but that thought was driven out by the sudden baying of dogs, as a pack of hounds came bounding after the horse across the valley, hunting an invisible quarry. Firelight gleamed on their open jaws.

Those were the last of the animals, for the fifth seal brought not a horse but a company of men and women. Unlike the solemn procession of their predecessors, they staggered like drunkards; their clothes were ripped open to expose their naked bodies beneath, their hair torn, their white faces streaked with blood. They wailed with loud voices, and their plea was at once pitiable and terrible. ‘Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you judge the earth and avenge our blood on its people?’ They too vanished into the night.

The fires had sunk low, and the darkness squeezed closer around the seven priests. It should have made the stars shine brighter, but when I looked up the sky had disappeared. A rising wind blew over the valley, worming its way among the stones and setting up a low, mournful moan that swept around us. The priests were now barely shadows against the red orb of the firelight. I thought I saw one shuffle forward; I did not hear the snapping of the seal, but I knew he must have opened it when a host of tiny fires rose above our heads, arcing up from the rim of the valley like a constellation of artificial stars. They seemed to hang in the sky for a moment, then tumbled towards the earth like a fig tree dropping its fruit. They burned very white, tracing lines of light in the dark air as they fell. The crowd gasped – but before the ground could quench the stars a new light rose in the valley. The two fires had been rekindled: they blazed up like beacons, and in the light I saw that the seventh and last of the priests had stepped forward. The fires banished all shadows and illuminated him like daylight, so I could see his face plainly: Arnulf, the red-headed Norman priest who had denounced Peter Bartholomew. Exultant triumph glowed in his eyes as he surveyed the watching crowd; when he raised his arms the entire congregation sank to its knees. On that steep hillside the effect was giddying, tipping us forward so that we seemed on the brink of falling into darkness.

In one hand Arnulf held a swinging censer, spilling out incense like brimstone; in the other, he clasped a sealed scroll. For the moment, he did not break it. Instead, an acolyte came forward, knelt in front of him and opened a book. It was too dark and distant for me to see its pages, but I could imagine the images that decorated its pages. Monsters with the heads of Saracens and the bodies of lions; locusts with tails like scorpions; a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. And at the bottom of the page, a radiant king on a white horse. The book that Peter Bartholomew had found or stolen, which Arnulf had reclaimed from his quarters after the ordeal. The book in which the prophecy was written.

‘Hear the prophecy of our Lord God,’ said Arnulf solemnly. His voice was far off, too small to fill the cavernous bowl, but it was carried back to me in an instant by the whispered repetition of the crowd. Their voices rippled and rustled like the flutter of wings. ‘Given in secret, in ancient times, and revealed now to His elect at the dawn of His coming. Listen.’

The kneeling pilgrims rocked back on their haunches and bowed their heads.

‘When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison. The sun will grow dark and the moon’s light will fade; the stars will fall from their orbits and the powers of heaven will be shaken. False prophets will arise; they will come in Christ’s name, saying, “I am the Messiah,” and they will lead many astray. The land of promise will be filled with men from the four winds under heaven.’

Arnulf paused. Looking around, I could see the congregation drinking in his words with the delight of familiarity: they had heard it before. Perhaps I had too, but not like this. It was as if all the things I had known formerly had been cut into pieces, then sewn together to give new form, new meanings.

‘Two great prophets, Enoch and Elijah, will be sent into the world. They will defend God’s faithful against the attack of the Antichrist and prepare the elect for the coming storm.’

The whispering in the crowd grew more agitated, like the shivering of leaves.

‘Then the Gates of the North will be opened and the demons will fly forth: Anog and Ageg, Gog and Magog, Achenaz, Dephar and Amarzarthae. They will eat the flesh of men and drink the blood of beasts like water. The Antichrist will gather up the nations for battle, as numerous as the sands of the sea, and they will march from Babylon to the camp of the saints at the beloved city.

‘Then a king of the Franks will again possess the Roman Empire. He will unite the crowns of west and east; he will be the greatest and the last of all kings. When the Son of Perdition has risen, the King will ascend Golgotha. He will take his crown from his head and place it on the cross, and stretching out his hands to heaven he will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father. This will be the end and the consummation of the Roman and Christian Empires, when every power and principality shall be destroyed.’

All I could hear now were the whispers of the crowd, and the flex of chain as the smoking censer in Arnulf ’s hand swung back and forth, a pendulum beating out the rhythm of his words.

‘An angel will appear in the sun, calling to all the birds that fly beneath heaven: “Come and gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, of horses and their riders.” The King will capture the Beast, together with the prophet who deceived with false miracles, and cast them into the lake of fire. All the rest will die by the sword, and the birds will be gorged with their flesh. Not one will survive.

‘Then death shall be no more – nor sorrow nor pain – for all the former things shall have passed away. The holy city, the new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven, and the Lord will dwell with his people. The kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Messiah, and he will reign for ever.’

Arnulf looked up, letting the censer come to rest. Around me, the whispered repetitions rolled away into silence. The acolyte who held the book closed it and shuffled back out of the light.

‘As for the one who reveals these things,’ Arnulf declared, ‘he says: “I am coming soon.”’

The crowd took up his words, repeating them over and again so that the call seemed to whirl in the air like a flock of crows. I am coming. Arnulf let it build, standing in the crux of the valley with his arms spread apart. The six priests behind him seemed to have melted away so that he stood there alone and exultant. Still the chant grew. I am coming.

With a deft movement Arnulf suddenly took a step back, upended the censer and dashed it to the ground. A cascade of glowing coals spilled out. They should have lain there dying; instead, like sparks on tinder, they seemed to ignite the earth. A huge fire erupted from the ground where they had fallen, so vast I thought it must have consumed Arnulf. Even on the heights where I knelt, men cowered back from the blaze. After the darkness before, I felt as if a hole had been burned through my eyes. But still the chant went on. I am coming.

Squinting through the pain and tears, I saw Arnulf on the far side of the blaze. Wreathed in fire, he held aloft his scroll, snapped the seal and threw the parchment on the flames. It disappeared, one more cinder in the inferno. Smoke drifted up to envelop me, choke me; the crackle of flames filled my ears, and with it the blast of trumpets, the ripple of harp strings. The earth trembled beneath me and my flesh seemed turned to water. Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth. The slope fell away, plunging into a bottomless pit; I tottered on my knees, swayed and fell forward.

Thankfully, I had just enough wit or instinct left to throw out my hands. They fell on the stony ground, jarring me to my senses. Crouched on all fours like an animal, I looked down into the pit of the valley. The fire still burned high, and I could still see a figure through the flames. But it was not Arnulf. He wore a dark riding cloak with the hood pulled up, shading his face, but I could see that he stood both taller and broader than the priest. Even in shadow, he radiated power.

Above the trumpets, the harps, the roaring flames, I heard three words echo around the deep bowl of the valley, spoken with the sound of a thousand voices.

‘Here I am.’

I could bear it no more. Stumbling to my feet, I fled.

μδ

I ran back to the camp, scrambling and staggering as if all the forces of hell had already burst their gates to pursue me. I barely knew where I was going until Count Raymond’s pickets challenged me; then, calmed by the feel of familiar ground, I wandered until at last I managed to find my tent. In my madness I almost tripped over Sigurd, lying sprawled in front of the door of the tent.

‘Where in hell have you been?’ he demanded.

‘Closer to hell than you know.’

The tremors in my voice stayed his anger. He stood, and led me to the rocky escarpment on the edge of the camp. The night was warm, but my experience had left me so cold I could not keep from shivering. When Sigurd saw this he left me, and presently returned with a blanket, which he draped around my shoulders, and a flask of strong wine. He would not let me speak until I had taken three large gulps: then, as gently as he knew how, he pressed me for my story.

When I had finished, he grunted. ‘If strife in the world meant the end of it, the world would never have begun. Men have been prophesying its doom ever since they realised it was created.’

I took another draught of the wine, relishing its acid taste on my tongue. That at least felt real. ‘It would almost be better if the prophecy was true. At least Anna and the children would be out of danger.’

I had hoped Sigurd would say something to reassure me against my pessimism. Instead, he stared into the darkness and said nothing. I hugged my knees to my chest. My panic was subsiding, but reason brought a chill clarity that was unrelenting in its grip.

‘It doesn’t matter if the prophecy’s true or not.’

‘It’ll matter if it does come true,’ Sigurd objected.

‘No.’ My voice was thin and hollow. ‘What matters is that there are men in this army who believe that it’s true. There were hundreds there tonight, maybe more.’

‘They’ll have a surprise when they wake up the morning after we capture the city and discover it’s still there.’

‘No!’ I banged my fist on the stony ground. Sharp fragments of rock dug into the side of my hand. ‘They believe that the consummation of the world is at hand. If they capture Jerusalem they will destroy it, fill it so deep with blood that it drowns.’ I pulled the blanket tighter around me: I was shaking so hard I thought my bones might break from their sockets. ‘They will kill every man, woman and child in that city in order to fulfil the prophecy and bring on the apocalypse. Not one will survive.’

Sigurd was quiet. For a moment I wished he would put his arms around me and hug me like a woman, anchor my desolation. But he was captive to his own thoughts and did not move.

‘Then we’ll have to reach Anna and your daughters before the Franks do.’ He looked over his shoulder and pointed at the siege tower, a hulking silhouette against the glow of the city beyond. ‘We need to be the first men onto the walls.’

‘The first men to die with a faceful of Saracen arrows.’

‘Perhaps.’ Sigurd picked up a stone and tossed it down the embankment. ‘What else can we do? If the Franks want to drown the city in blood, all we can do is run before the wave.’

At another time, the thought of putting myself in the front rank of the battle of the ages would have terrified me. Now I accepted it with meek dread. I had never wanted to see Jerusalem; now I would be the first on its walls or, more likely, die in the attempt. Once again, the veil between the worlds drew back and I almost heard the fates laughing. And, in their laughter, I heard a new threat that left me far colder than any thoughts of Saracen arrows and fire.

‘What if Count Raymond doesn’t take the city?’

Sigurd shrugged. ‘Then the world won’t end – and Anna and the others will be safe.’

I shook my head. ‘That was not what I meant. Raymond has lost more than half his army in the last month, and when he launches that siege monster at the walls, he’ll have to push it uphill over broken ground. Meanwhile, Duke Godfrey will be attacking from the north with twice his numbers.’

‘So …’

‘So the first men off Raymond’s tower may not be the first men into the city.’

The white stallion reared up on its hind legs, its front hooves clubbing at the air. The groom who held the halter leaped back, hauling on the rope to bring the horse down. He barely managed to stay on his feet; I was surprised he did not get his head kicked in.

Across the paddock, Duke Godfrey stood by the wattle enclosure and watched, his arms folded across his chest. Four knights stood around him in a wary circle. If any man had benefited from Raymond’s decline, it was Godfrey, and though he had professed indifference it had obviously affected him. He seemed to stand taller, his shoulders broader. There was an authority about him – and, more than that, a knowledge of it – such as I had seen in few other men. Bohemond had been one, but with him power had always been a spectacle. Chasing it, wrestling it, relishing it – he hid nothing, but made a theatre of his ambitions. Some men shrank from their power and others, like Raymond, believed they possessed more than they did, but none seemed so effortlessly comfortable with it as Duke Godfrey.

His guards stiffened as I approached, and moved to bar my way, but Godfrey murmured that I should pass. I walked the few paces across the dusty ground and stood beside him at the fence.

‘I did not send Achard to kill you.’ He did not look at me, but kept his gaze fixed on the stallion in the paddock. ‘He went of his own will, because he hated you for what you did to him in Egypt.’

‘It can be hard to forgive the men who betray you,’ I said coldly.

‘But if you cannot do that, you end up as Achard did: destroyed.’ Godfrey flicked his head. ‘I told you once before that you should leave behind those things that do not concern you.’

‘You told me to go home to my family. And now I cannot, because they are in that city.’ I gestured to the walls a few hundred yards distant. ‘Because of what Achard did.’

At last Godfrey turned to me. ‘Did you come here to hurl your bitterness at me, Demetrios Askiates? What do you want?’

I swallowed, trying to calm myself. ‘I want to be the first man in the city.’

‘Many men want that honour,’ he rebuked me. ‘Many men have begged me for it. But it is not my gift to give. Only God can decide it – if He means us to capture the city at all.’

I nodded, and crossed myself. One thing about Godfrey had not changed: his pedantic piety.

‘Many men have lost their families – I cannot give you my army for that.’

‘I don’t want your army.’ I tried desperately to fight back my temper. ‘I want to join it.’ I had raised my voice, and the guards had noticed. They began to close on me, but Godfrey raised his head a fraction to nod them back.

‘I will submit my men to your authority. Varangian guards, from the emperor’s palace at Constantinople. There is not a king in Christendom who would not want them in his army.’

‘Except perhaps the Norman king of England,’ said Godfrey drily.

‘They will fight to the death for you.’

Godfrey stared out at the paddock. The white stallion had been calmed, and was now allowing the groom to lead him around the ring.

‘Will you be riding him in the assault?’ I asked.

Godfrey laughed dismissively. ‘I would not risk him. He is too good to be felled by an Egyptian arrow.’

‘Then risk me,’ I pleaded. ‘Put me in the vanguard of the battle. When they hurl rocks and arrows and fire at us, put me on the top of your tower.’

‘I think you have spent too long with your Englishmen. I have heard they fight every battle as if they want to die in it.’ He laughed again, the same short laugh as when I had asked about the horse. ‘Perhaps that is a good thing.’

I waited. Godfrey drummed his fingers on the wattle fence. His horse was skittish, tossing its mane and kicking out its hooves as if the meagre business of walking around a ring demeaned it.

At last, without looking at me, Godfrey said, ‘You can go with the tower, if that is your wish. But first you must submit to me and swear your allegiance.’

I dropped to my knees in front of Godfrey and repeated the few words he told me, forgetting them almost as I spoke them. When I had finished, he held out his hand like a bishop so I could kiss his ring. Loathing myself, I pressed my lips to the cracked, black stone that bulged from the worn gold. His ancestors’ ring, I remembered: I had seen it before, in his tent before the council at Rugia. I wondered what had happened to the other ring, the gold seal that had been taken from me at Ravendan. He had wanted me dead, then; now, I feared I would grant him his wish. Fate is inescapable.

I got up, brushing the dust from my knees.

‘All those who will be with me at the top of the tower are already chosen,’ he announced. ‘So are those who will be on the second level, ready to charge over the drawbridge when we lower it.’

‘But–’

‘You and your men will go at the bottom of the tower. We will need strong arms to push it.’

There was nothing I could say. Godfrey knew it.

‘You may go. I suppose you will have to tell Count Raymond how you have changed your loyalties.’ Again that tight smile. ‘No doubt he is used to hearing it by now.’

* * *

I found Raymond in his tent, alone, as he often was in those days. He must have just finished paying his knights and labourers their wages: a broad table laid with a chequered cloth had been set in the middle of the room, piled with small stacks of coins, and a pair of scales sat at rest in its centre. I remembered the scales the third horseman had carried in the ceremony the night before, and shuddered.

‘What do you want?’ He sounded impossibly tired, an old man whose life had become a dispiriting ordeal. Barely looking at me, he dropped a succession of coins into one of the pans of the scale until it sank into balance.

The July sun had turned the tent into an oven. The cloth walls seemed to throb with the light outside and stifle the air, but that was not why I felt ill.

‘It is about the assault . . .’

Raymond swept the coins into his palm and arranged them on one of the cloth squares. ‘The towers are almost ready. The English captain says we should be able to launch our attack on Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, if the priests agree.’ Absent-mindedly, he began arranging the coins in a pattern like a flower. ‘I am glad that you came. I wanted to talk to you.’

The sickness in my stomach seemed to grow. I tried to speak to pre-empt whatever he would say, but my mouth was suddenly too dry.

‘The princes have already begun to discuss who will rule Jerusalem when we conquer it. The kingship of Jerusalem should only be given to the mightiest and worthiest of princes, and I wanted your assurance that the emperor has not wavered from his commitment to me. That when the victory is won and the city liberated, I will have his support for my claim.’

I stared at him, not knowing whether to feel pity or scorn. Even after all his humiliations, his disastrous entanglement with Peter Bartholomew, his stubborn pursuit of the siege of Arqa, the loss of half his army, he had not learned humility. He stood on the diminished rock of his own dignity while the tide washed out, and railed at the waves for going the wrong way. It was so childish as to be ludicrous.

Something of my astonishment must have shown on my face, and perhaps Raymond felt it himself, for he added softly: ‘I was lord of thirteen counties, and I left them all behind to pursue this vision of Christ that the Pope conjured before me. My court at Toulouse was the greatest court west of the Alps – now my court is a tent that smells of horse shit. I am a realist, Demetrios. I know I am nearer the end of my life than the beginning, and I came here knowing I would not go back. But that does not mean I should die without dignity. What are Bohemond and Godfrey? Second sons and bastard sons of worthless lines. Did you know that Godfrey only inherited his dukedom because his hunchback uncle was sterile as a mule? What did they give up to come here? What sacrifices did they ever make?’

Even if there had been an answer, he would not have wanted to hear it – least of all from me. I shrugged, and looked at the floor.

Raymond sat back and fiddled with his coins again, sliding them across the chequered cloth to form the shape of a cross. ‘After all I have suffered, this ordeal will not have been for nothing. You understand.’

A silence fell between us, in which the only noise was the clink of coins as Raymond’s hands knocked them together.

‘I will not be fighting in your army when we attack Jerusalem.’ I rushed the words out, stumbling and mumbling. Only when I had finished the sentence did I dare to look at Raymond. He sat very still: the only thing that moved was the corner of his empty eye socket, which twitched rapidly.

‘Why not?’ The words rasped out like a knife being dragged across a stone. ‘Is it money?’ He scooped a big fistful of coins off the table and shook them at me. ‘I thought you of all men, Demetrios Askiates, were above mere greed.’

You of all men. It was a clumsy attempt at intimacy, no doubt meant to shame me. Instead, it only hardened me against him. If he had known me at all, he would have known how false his flattery was, how often I had fought for money. The fact that for once I cared nothing for money, that I would have given all the gold in his treasury to not have to do this thing, only added to the insult.

‘I have given my allegiance to Duke Godfrey,’ I said shortly.

With a hiss of rage, Raymond rose to his feet and hurled the coins at me. I felt them rain against my face as I threw up my hands to cover myself, as they bounced away to fall on the ground. On the soft carpet that covered the floor they hardly made a sound.

‘Traitor!’ screamed Raymond. ‘You have betrayed me, sold yourself like a whore to my enemies.’ He scrabbled on the table for more coins, pelting me with his pieces of silver. ‘Take them! I took you into my camp and put you under my protection, and this is how you repay me? I stood by your emperor when no one else would. I was his staunchest ally, and all the while Godfrey plotted against him in secret. Have you forgotten that when he was at Constantinople he even tried to wage war on your emperor, he hated him so much?’

‘My family are in Jerusalem,’ I said simply. ‘I have to reach them before they get lost in the slaughter. For that, I must follow whoever will lead me inside those walls soonest.’

‘And you think that I will not?’ Raymond pounded his fists on the table, so that the remaining coins leapt in the air. The scales toppled over with a crash. ‘I will prove you wrong, Greek. I will be over those walls before Godfrey, before Tancred, before all the liars and cowards who have betrayed me. I will seize its strongholds and towers and make myself lord of Jerusalem, though the devil himself come to take it from me. And you will beg me to release your family, Greekling, as I begged you to stand with me now.’

If there had not been a table between us, I think he would have knocked me to the ground. Instead, he hissed between his teeth, ‘Go!’

I went. The last I saw of him, he was kneeling on the floor, gathering up the coins he had hurled at me and weeping.

That was Sunday. On Monday I spent the day trying to avoid Sigurd’s fury: he had not reacted well when he heard I had volunteered us as mules to drive Godfrey’s siege tower. On Tuesday his temper had cooled, at least to the point where it simmered rather than boiled. By Wednesday it was forgotten. Word went through the army that the final assault would begin next morning, and suddenly there was no time for anything. The hours seemed to slip by like water, and still we had blades to sharpen, armour to oil and dents to hammer out of our shields. A troop of women left the camp at dawn and did not reappear until sundown, returning with skins and buckets of water that they had filled from springs many miles away. The priests recited masses and prayers throughout the day for the endless procession of knights and pilgrims who flocked to them seeking communion, confession and blessing. I wondered how many of those gulping down the transubstantiated bread believed their next meal would be in the celestial city in the presence of Christ. Even Sigurd, who had never entirely let go the pagan gods of his ancestors, disappeared that afternoon to make his confession. Thomas went for much longer and returned with a fiery determination filling his eyes.

That evening we gathered around our camp fire for the last time. A red sun flamed in the west; the hot urgency of the day had cooled into stillness, and now we sat and tried to replenish our strength before the onslaught. Sigurd wiped a rag over an axe that was already sharp enough to split a hair in two, while Thomas wound a fresh strip of hide around the grip of his shield. I took two twigs I had rescued from the kindling pile and methodically cut the thorns away with my knife, stripping them smooth. When that was done I laid them across each other at right angles and wound a piece of twine over the join to form a crude cross.

‘Have thoughts of the battle brought you back to God?’ Sigurd asked.

I kept my eyes on my work and did not answer. The truth was that I needed a cross to wear in the battle, to mark myself as a Christian if we succeeded in getting inside the city. Once I had believed in its power to save my soul; now I only saw its power to protect me from the violence of men.

Sigurd took my silence for assent. ‘It’s as well. We’ll need all the help He can give us tomorrow, if He doesn’t damn the Franks for being so stupid as to attack the strongest corner of the city.’

I shrugged. The open ground that divided the armies, barely a bowshot wide, ended in a shallow ditch that then rose into the outer wall, a low barrier designed more to impede an attack than withstand it. The Egyptians would not defend that for long. They would retreat up onto the main ramparts and rain death down on us from there, fully fifty feet high, and guarded on the corner by a vast tower. The tower of Goliath, they called it, and I feared it was with good reason.

‘You won’t topple that with a sling and a stone,’ said Sigurd, following my gaze to the tower. ‘It’s madness to attack there.’

It was, and the Fatimids had had almost a month to prepare for it. They had spent every day of the last four weeks repairing those walls and strengthening them, filling them with arms and men and supplies. They had not even tried to hide it. When we attacked there the next day, it would be against the strongest, best-defended corner of the city. Not for the first time, a shiver of doubt ran through me as I wondered if I had chosen the right path by abandoning Raymond.

I looked at Thomas. Ever since he had returned from the mass he had barely spoken a word. There had always been a distance between us, ever since I first hauled him out of a fountain in Constantinople. His marrying Helena had narrowed it, for a time, but in the past month I had felt it stretch wider than ever.

‘Tomorrow, God willing, we’ll be standing beside the tomb where Christ himself lay.’

‘Or lying in our own graves,’ Sigurd added.

Thomas laid his shield against his legs so that it covered them like a skirt. ‘Better to be dead in the next world than alive in this,’ he said softly.

I stared at him across the fire. The hot haze that rose from the coals seemed to melt his features like wax, so I could barely recognise him. How deeply had the wound of Helena and Everard’s capture struck him that he could say such things? With a crush of shame I saw how little I had noticed him this past month, how superficial my care had been. With my own wounds so raw, it had been too easy.

I crossed myself, more out of habit than belief, and saw Thomas sneer at my false piety. ‘You cannot give up on this world – not while your wife and son are held captive. There is no other.’

‘Lift your eyes higher, old man. Of course there is another world. And it is a better place than this.’ He tossed a leaf onto the coals and watched it curl and shrivel to ash. ‘Our world is a dying ember; that world is the sun.’

‘But there is no point trying to get from here to there.’

‘No!’ Thomas banged his fist on the rim of his shield, like a warrior before battle. ‘The point is not to get from our world to that one. The point is to bring that world here, to remake it on earth.’

I shook my head in disgust. ‘You sound like Peter Bartholomew.’

For a moment Thomas did not reply. In the everchanging firelight, his face seemed to churn with indecision. I could see part of him wanting to abandon the argument, but another part – a stronger part – could not let go.

‘Why did we come here – why did any of us come here – if not to try and make the world more perfect?’

‘You cannot perfect the world with bloodshed,’ I said sharply.

‘No? Then how do you plan to rescue your daughters?’

I shook my head in frustration, trying to sift the sediment that clouded my thoughts. ‘Arnulf and his followers don’t want to perfect this world. They want to throw it all out and start anew, remake it entirely.’

‘And what is wrong with that? That is the inheritance promised in the Gospels. Why not seize it? Why struggle day by day to mend this sick and broken world, when in one glorious moment we could cure it?’

‘You don’t cure something by killing it.’

‘Perhaps the sickness has spread so far there is no alternative.’

‘No!’ I stamped my foot, lifting a cloud of dust. ‘And if it has, it is not for us to decide. Arnulf preaches that we should kill every man, woman and child inside that city in our impatience to bring on the kingdom of heaven. Every one – including your wife and son, my children and grandchildren. Can that be right?’

Thomas looked uncertain. ‘Perhaps that is the price of the kingdom of heaven.’

‘I do not believe that. But even if it was, there is no man alive who could demand payment.’ I tried to calm myself. Speaking more surely than I felt, I said, ‘God made the kingdom of heaven as an ideal, an example for men to dream of. It is not a place that we can reach except when He calls us there. It is certainly not a place we can call into being.’

A tear trickled down Thomas’s face, though I could not tell if it was of rage or sorrow. ‘Then why does He tempt us with it?’

‘Maybe to see if we resist.’

με

‘Wake up.’

I couldn’t wake – I had not been asleep. I opened my eyes to see a Frankish sergeant with a long moustache looking down on me.

‘Is it dawn already?’ It seemed only minutes since I had gone to bed. Around me, all was dark.

‘Barely midnight. Get your armour on and follow me.’

He led us swiftly down the hill to the place where the great siege tower, Magog, stood in its pomp. It disappeared into the darkness, ready to lay siege to the stars themselves for all I could see. Or perhaps that was wrong. As my eyes balanced with the night, it seemed that the tower was shorter than I remembered it. Perhaps it was the night playing tricks on me.

I heard the grate of wood rubbing together, a slither and a thud. And then, in a dialect I did not understand, a succession of short, hard words that sounded like curses.

‘I almost broke my toe,’ complained an aggrieved voice.

‘I’ll break your leprous arm if you’re not more careful,’ retorted the first man. Belatedly, I realised that I knew his voice – it was Saewulf’s. I found him standing at the foot of the tower, while eight Frankish men-at-arms laboured to lift a massive slab of wood.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘Did this come off the tower? Have the Fatimids struck it with their stonethrowers?’

‘Not yet.’ Saewulf turned away to hiss instructions to another team of men, who seemed to be manhandling one of the wattle screens down from the summit of the tower.

‘What then? Are you dismantling it? Have we abandoned the siege?’ Every possibility was dreadful, but that was too much to contemplate.

Saewulf grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. ‘I will tear it down, and rebuild it in three days. That’s what Christ said. But this shouldn’t take more than a night. We’re taking it apart and rebuilding it over there.’ He pointed to the east.

I gaped. ‘In one night?’

‘That’s what we built it for.’ Even as he spoke, another piece of siding slid down from the tower, like a snake shedding its skin.

‘Is Count Raymond doing the same?’

Saewulf shook his head. ‘The stubborn bastard built his tower where there was nowhere else to go. Now he’ll just have to push it up exactly where the Fatimids expect.’ He slapped the side of his tower affectionately, like the rump of a horse. ‘And so will we, if we don’t hurry. Take that, and follow where the others lead you.’

It was an exhausting, eerie night. Hour after hour, we trudged back and forth over the ridge above Jerusalem, ferrying the dismembered machine to its new site. We were forbidden from carrying lights lest we betray our secret, while a choir of priests kept up a chorus of hymns and anthems to mask the clatter of our work from the watchers on the walls.

The night seemed unending – as if day had been abolished, and all nights ran together unbroken. I prayed for it to end, and then prayed for it to last as I watched the achingly slow progress of the tower’s reassembly. My hands grew chafed and numb from manhandling the pieces of the siege tower, my legs were weary and my head ached from lack of sleep. But just as Saewulf’s carpenters were hammering the last few trenails into the uppermost storey of the tower, and the wheelwrights oiling its axles, a bloody smear of red trickled over the Mount of Olives in the east. I thought of Arnulf ’s prophecy, and wondered if this would be the last of all days – and even if it was not, whether I would see another.

Dawn brought fresh urgency to the world. Birdsong was drowned out by the blast of horns and trumpets as the Franks summoned their armies to battle. They assembled on the spur that dropped towards the city, their banners limp above them in the still morning. On the high walls in front of them the sentries from the Fatimid garrison looked out in disbelief. To them it must have appeared as though the land itself had shifted in the night, a mountain erupted and a forest of spears grown in the arid soil.

Once all the army had assembled, the princes rode out. Godfrey came last of all, riding the white horse I had seen in the paddock. He had braided its mane with silver ribbons so that it shone in the morning like dew. Just in front of him, on foot, Arnulf carried a golden cross with fragments of the True Cross embedded in it. I wondered if relics could hold memories, and if so if those few splinters of wood felt the stir of being so close to the place where they had lifted a man to his willing death, a thousand and more years ago.

The princes reined in, turned to face the army and dismounted. There would be no place for horses in the coming battle. Grooms led the animals away, while Godfrey and Arnulf walked towards the hulking tower. Its back was open and undefended, so we could see them slowly climbing the ladders inside all the way to the roof of the machine, as high as the towers that guarded Jerusalem behind them. There Godfrey turned around to face the watching army.

A murmur of awe shivered through the crowd. At that height he was high enough to catch the first rays of the sun coming over the Mount of Olives, and in its pure light he dazzled like a god. His fair hair glowed like a nimbus of pale gold; he wore a white tabard sparkling with five golden crosses for the five wounds of Christ, and a white cloak hung from his shoulders. Even the mail hauberk beneath seemed to have been brushed with silver, and polished so bright it shone white in the dawn. He gazed out on the army and lifted his arms wide. The gold cross gleamed above him like a sign from heaven.

He drew a breath, as if to make a speech, but there were only two words he needed to say that morning and he shouted them with all his voice: two words that had propelled the army all the way to the gates of Jerusalem. Deus vult. The army cheered. They hammered their sword pommels against their shields; they stamped their feet and the butts of their spears on the ground until the dust rose in clouds to their waists. Most of all, they shouted. They roared out the cry until it filled the valleys like the ocean, rolling from the Mount of Olives across Mount Moriah and Mount Zion all the way to the western ridge. They roared until the earth trembled with their noise, until it seemed they might shake down Jerusalem into dust.

Three boulders rose into the air and hurtled towards the walls, flung by the mangonels we had brought up in the night. They struck home against the ramparts, and the rhythmic chant of Deus vult swelled into a chaotic roar of triumph. And so the battle for Jerusalem began.

As Godfrey clambered down from the roof of the wooden tower, Arnulf removed the golden cross from its staff and fastened it to an iron spike that protruded from the top of the tower. It gleamed like a crown. Perhaps it seemed right to him that men would die under fragments of the same wood that had crucified Christ, but I did not think that the man who died on that cross had intended it to be stained with blood again. All around me, men were running about to prepare the assault, while the bombardment from the mangonels flew overhead. I had just started moving towards the tower when I heard a voice calling my name. I turned, to see a Frankish knight looking at me commandingly. His name was Grimbauld, one of Godfrey’s lieutenants. He had lost the lower part of his left arm in the battle for Antioch, but had adapted the slings on his shield so that he could bind it on to what remained. Too unbalanced to wield a sword with skill, he now carried a club-headed mace in its stead.

‘You!’ he barked. ‘Get to the ram.’

I stared at him, my eyes dry and hollow. ‘Duke Godfrey told me my place was on the tower.’

‘I tells you where you go, and that’s where I tell you.’ He took a half-step forward, and one glance into his bullbrown eyes convinced me he would not hesitate to wield his mace on me if I defied him. Cursing my bargain with Godfrey, I led Sigurd and the others towards the ram.

It was a squat, brute thing, built low like an animal crouched to pounce. Because they could not find a tree big enough for their purpose, they had taken three trunks and bound them together into a giant arm, then capped its fist with iron. They had mounted this horrendous weight on a ten-wheeled carriage whose axles were themselves almost as thick as tree-trunks. Wicker canopies covered it from above, protruding like wings, while wooden stakes bristled from its side like arms for men to push it. Ropes had been fastened to it as well, so that the whole machine took on the appeareance of a monstrous beetle, or a scorpion caught in a snare. They called it Apollyon, the angel of hell whose name is Destruction. Now, men flocked to it, lining its sides and taking up the ropes like draught animals. Sigurd and I were lucky: we found spaces by the side of the beast, pushing on its staves rather than hauling on the ropes. That put us under the canopy, which shielded us from the sun and would presently shield us from hotter things, though it also meant we were blind to everything except the stooped backs of the men in front of us. Glancing around, I saw Thomas and Aelfric two rows behind us. I could still hear the crack of the mangonels, the rush as the stones flew overhead and the thud as they collided unseen with the walls. Mercifully, I did not hear any response: as yet, the Fatimids did not seem to have managed to bring their own battery to bear on our new, unexpected position.

Grimbauld lifted his mace. The men on the ropes pulled them taut, while those on the wooden bars tensed their arms against them. Now I could not look at anything except the rough wood beneath my fingers, and the ground below. If I lost my footing here I would be trampled by the men behind me in an instant – or, worse, ground under the wheels.

I did not see Grimbauld’s mace drop, but I heard the command that accompanied it.

‘Begin.’

With a groan that seemed torn from the wood itself, we heaved on the ram. It rocked forward an inch, and for a moment the sum strength of three hundred men held it there. Then it rolled back. A dispirited moan shuddered through us. My arms, already sore from the night’s labours, burned anew.

From the corner of my eye I saw Grimbauld walking back. He disappeared from my sight, but he must have taken up a position at the rear of the machine for a moment later I heard the cry of ‘Ready’, and then the beat as he rapped his mace on the end of the tree-trunks. We hauled again. The ram edged forward, tottering, but fear of failing must have given us new strength, for this time it rolled forward. An inch, no more, before it shuddered to a standstill.

‘I’d like to find whoever made these wheels and tie him to the rim,’ muttered Sigurd grimly.

I had neither breath nor time to answer. The mace struck its beat again, and again we pushed forward with all our strength.

It was not how I had hoped it would be – a headlong charge, a terrifying scramble up the walls, and then victory. It was not even the dense, desperate mêlée of hand-to-hand combat I had feared – not yet, at least. Instead, the battle for Jerusalem was nothing more than drudgery. For what seemed like hours we heaved, hauled and cursed the machine forward, inch by terrible inch. Some men fainted with exhaustion and had to be dragged away, but I stayed in my place, refusing to let go. I was tiring badly, but if ever I failed to move forward with the others I immediately felt the harsh touch of the bar behind striking me across my shoulders. The wheels barely seemed to move – as often as not, we had to drag the ram forward rather than roll it, leaving two great welts in the earth where we had passed. When I looked back, it was pitiful to see what little distance we had come.

Meanwhile, the sparks of battle began to take hold and burst into flame around us. Alone among the Franks, Tancred’s company had kept their horses: they rode in a loose screen on either side of us, shielding us from any counter-attack and peppering the ramparts with arrows. They had to be nimble, for although the Fatimids still did not seem to have brought up their heavy siege weapons, they had by now managed to deploy smaller slings and rock-throwers, which lashed us with well-aimed stones. To all that I had already lost or diminished on that pilgrimage – my family, my strength, my faith – I now added my humanity. I saw the men on the ropes dying, their faces smashed in or their necks broken, and all I felt was relief. When rocks hit the wattle roof above me and bounced away, I did not just feel gratitude for my protection, but jealous pleasure that I had what others did not. And when I saw the arrows begin to fall around me, cutting men down, I was glad, for it meant we must at last be nearing the walls.

The end, when it came, was sudden. We were stooped like slaves, pressing our bleeding hands against the staves to drive the beast forward, except that this time the ram did not stop when we did. It rolled on. Those who held on to the handles were dragged forward, while those who had let go found themselves knocked down by the men behind. Standing at the end of the bar, and far enough forward, I just had time to see what was happening. I jumped clear, pulling Sigurd after me as we stumbled into the fevered mass of men around us.

The Franks had chosen the line of their attack well. The ground here sloped quite steeply to the outer walls: as soon as the ram crossed the rim its head went down, and the full power of its dead weight was unleashed. The men who had given every ounce of their strength to move it that far suddenly found themselves left behind or – unable to move themselves fast enough – trapped beneath it.

It struck home with a thunderclap, shattering the wall like glass and blasting it into a thousand fragments. Through the dust cloud that engulfed it, I saw the ram lumbering on. With a second crash, deeper and more profound than the first, it slammed against the inner wall. Deep cracks exploded through the stone, but it did not break. Only then did the ram come to rest.

The break in the battle lasted a heartbeat longer, while bricks and dust slowly settled. Then, in an instant, the fighting erupted again, fiercer than ever, and this time I had no roof to shield me. Through the choked air I saw Grimbauld standing defiant, his shield held over his head and his mace pointing towards the walls. ‘Forward!’

‘Forward!’ Another voice echoed it in my ear. Sigurd. He ran forward and I followed, craning around to see if Thomas was with us. In the dust, we must have been all but invisible to the defenders on the walls, but they poured their missiles down on us like rain. Several fell near me; one arrow planted itself right between my feet, but I ran on. The ruins of the wall loomed before me. I slid to a halt behind it and huddled close so that the missiles could not strike. Sigurd was with me; a second later, Thomas dived into the shelter as well. A scratch on his face was bleeding, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Nearby, I heard Grimbauld still bellowing us to advance.

‘We won’t get through that gap,’ said Sigurd. He pointed to our left. A little way along the wall, I could make out the rear end of the ram protruding through the hole it had smashed. The inner and outer ramparts were so close here, and the ram so long, that it could not pass all the way through but plugged the very opening it had made.

Grimbauld had seen it too. ‘Back to the ram! Bend yourselves onto those ropes and pull, curse you.’

It seemed almost impossible that anyone could have survived in that storm of arrows, but men came running through the fog and tried to pick up the traces that lay splayed out behind the ram. The dust was settling, but the air was not growing any clearer. If anything, it seemed thicker. And from somewhere beyond the wall, I smelled burning.

‘The ram,’ shouted a voice. ‘The ram is on fire.’

Holding up my arm as a makeshift shield – better to take an arrow in the hand than in the face – I risked a glance over my barricade. With the ram stuck beneath the walls, the Fatimids could drop burning straw and oil on it at will. Flames already licked up from the wattle roof, and a column of black smoke poured into the sky, though it would take an age for the great trees beneath to burn.

‘Get it out of there!’ Ten teams of oxen could hardly have hauled the ram up that slope, yet men still tried, running in to harness themselves to the beast Apollyon. If more did not die, it was only because the smoke from the fire blinded those who had set it. But the ram would be ashes before we dragged it free. Instead of trying to move it, men now clambered around it into the narrow space between the walls. There they tried to smother the fire with dust and earth – but the ground was stony, and there was little they could use. Beside me, Thomas made to follow them, and I had to grab the collar of his hauberk to haul him back.

‘No.’ With the roar of battle in my ears, I put my face an inch from his merely to be understood. ‘Think of Helena and Everard. You will not help them by dying now.’

He shrugged off my hand, but did not go further.

Now a new and terrible thing happened: women began to appear in the battle. They staggered out of the smoke, bent double under the weight of the burdens they carried – vessels of water to quench the burning ram. The sight of the water made my parched throat ache for a sip, even a single drop, but there was none for me. Each vessel was solemnly handed forward to the men at the front, then poured on the tongues of flame that licked the ram. Each time the water touched the fire it vapourised in an instant, hissing up in terrible gouts of steam. It was torment to witness.