Siege of Heaven

At length, a knight came running back to Grimbauld, crouched near us in the lee of the wall, and shouted that the fire had been put out. All around, the bodies of women – girls, some of them – lay strewn with the men, promiscuous in death.

Grimbauld glanced over his shoulder. ‘Go back to Count Godfrey,’ he told the knight. ‘Tell him to bring up the siege tower. We’ll never get close without men on the tower to cover us.’

The knight saluted and ran off, weaving his way through the maze of corpses at his feet. After what seemed an age – though on a battlefield, time stretches as long as a man’s life – I saw him return. Instead of a sword he carried two shields; he scuttled forward like a crab, creating an impenetrable wall against the arrows that swarmed about him. He crawled down the embankment to where Grimbauld waited and raised the two shields as a roof over them.

‘Duke Godfrey says he cannot bring up the tower while the ram is blocking the breach,’ he stammered. ‘He orders you to drag it back – or, if that is impossible, to burn it out of there.’

Grimbauld stared at him with wild eyes. ‘Burn it out?’

The knight nodded glumly. Even as he did so, another column appeared at the top of the slope and began shuffling towards us. These men carried bales of hay and armfuls of firewood, piled so high they almost bent double with the weight. At the sight of them, a trumpet whooped from the walls, and a fresh burst of arrows showered down on them. Many fell clutching their burdens like children, but some managed to reach the ram and stack their kindling around it. When there was enough, Grimbauld lobbed a burning brand onto the makeshift pyre. Flames swept up around the great tree-trunks at the heart of the ram, and we cheered it, even as we stood on the corpses of those who had given their lives to prevent such a thing.

Cheers turned to disbelief as a torrent of water gushed from the sky, drowning out the fire in an instant. Gleeful shouts of triumph erupted from the wall; I looked up, and saw the Fatimids hauling back a great cauldron they had poured out. Some of them waved; I even saw one jump into an embrasure, pull up his tunic and – to the cheers of his companions – send a contemptuous stream of piss spattering down on the ram. An outraged volley of arrows pricked him back, but was immediately answered in kind as the Fatimids unleashed a new onslaught on the despairing Franks.

Grimbauld turned to the pilgrims. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he screamed. ‘Bring more wood!’

The battle raged all afternoon. Each time we piled on fresh kindling, the Fatimids retaliated with a new torrent of water. With each subsequent attempt, the pile of wood and straw around the ram grew higher, until its vast bulk was almost buried, but even then it could not overcome the Fatimids’ defence. There seemed no limit to the water they had in that city – and that, too, drove us to despair. The air was thick with smoke and hot steam that scalded my lungs; I felt that I must have fallen inside a vast black cauldron and be boiling inside it. Only when we managed to bring up jars of oil and soak the wood with that did we at last make a fire that the Fatimids could not quench. The flames licked up high over the wall: I doubt there was a man in the garrison who could have endured the heat and smoke, but though the wall sat undefended we could not go near it. The fire for which we had fought so hard, first to quench and then to light, had become our enemies’ best defence. As the shadows lengthened and darkness fell, we left the walls behind and limped back to our camp.

μς

Another day dawned – Friday. This time there was no great rallying of the army, no processions or speeches. We crawled up from the places where we had fallen asleep and massed around the base of the tower. I did not even need to get dressed, for I had slept in my armour on the ground where I collapsed, dead to the world until the trumpets summoned me. Pain racked my body: my limbs felt as though they had been disjointed and then hammered together with iron nails, and my hands were still bloody and raw from pushing the ram. Worse than that was the thirst: my mouth felt as though it had been swabbed with quicklime, but there was no water to slake it. We had spent all our supplies putting out the fire on the ram.

‘Friday in Jerusalem. I suppose it’s a good day to die,’ muttered Aelfric as we mustered at the tower.

‘Or to defeat death,’ Thomas reproved him. His cheeks had sunk in and his beard was ragged, so that he looked like a prophet stumbling out of the wilderness, far older than his years.

‘Better to defeat the Egyptians,’ said Sigurd. ‘It has to be today. The army won’t stand any more.’

‘Has anybody heard how the battle went for Count Raymond yesterday, in the south?’ I asked.

‘Badly. Saewulf told me. He tried to bring his tower up to the walls but had to withdraw it. The defenders knew exactly where he was coming – they had ten mangonels waiting to bombard it with stones and fire. They say that afterwards the count could not persuade any of his knights to enter it again.’

In the mean, shrivelled husk that had become my heart, I thanked God for that.

A quarter of an hour after dawn, Duke Godfrey and his retinue mounted to their positions within the tower. I watched them jealously, wishing myself in their place. As well as his regular arms, Godfrey carried a broad crossbow to use from the top deck of the tower, and the sight of it reminded me of a similar weapon, many years and miles ago, that had first coaxed me onto the road to Jerusalem. I looked at Thomas to see if he remembered, but his eyes were dull and fixed elsewhere.

When Godfrey and his knights were in place, and the priests had mumbled a quick prayer, we took up the strain on the hawsers fixed to the base of the tower. My hands were still too sore to grasp it; I knotted the rope around my chest, harnessing myself to the beast behind and making myself its slave.

As heavy as the ram had been, this was worse. The tower stood almost ten times taller, so that every time we hauled I felt that we might pull the entire edifice crashing down on us. The halter around me dug into my chest, and there was no roof over my head to protect me from the sun or the rain of missiles. Whereas the previous day we had at least been able to make the first part of our approach in safety, this time we had no relief. The advantage of surprise we had gained two nights earlier was gone, and no sooner had the tower started to stagger forward than a volley of stones rose up from behind the walls. They spun slowly in the air, seeming to float so gently that I thought they might never land. And then suddenly they were almost upon us, dropping down with ravenous speed, rushing towards us. Watching in horror, I could see that these were not the pebbles and rocks that had harried us the day before, but full-sized boulders, heavy as a man, flung from mangonels. The defenders must have moved them up in the night – and ranged them with deadly accuracy. All three of the missiles in that first wave struck within a dozen yards of the tower, tearing into the lines of men who drew it. One struck a man’s head and pulped it like a melon; another toppled five men in a row before it came to rest. Men ran to move the boulder out of the path of the tower, while the bodies of the fallen were left to be crushed under its wheels.

Now it became a war among giants, a titanomachia between the tower stumbling forward like a blinded Cyclops, and the invisible arms behind the walls, which hurled out boulders as children skip stones on a pond. From our own lines, the Franks’ mangonels answered with fire of their own. I was merely a beetle scuttling about at their feet, while flights of rocks raced across the sky above. Death was sudden and everpresent. Several stones struck glancing blows on the sides of the tower, ripping away the skin. Another actually passed clear through one of these holes, plucked one of the knights inside from his perch and dashed him to the ground. But it was we on the ground who suffered most – crushed, shattered, torn apart or simply bowled over. Some of the soldiers who followed tried to help us: they brought up wooden hurdles covered with wicker and skins and held them in front of us. But those were designed to stop arrows, not rocks; they added nothing but debris to the battle. The soldiers’ bodies made better shields.

All I could do was keep my head down and pray for mercy. Even if I could have picked out the boulders flying towards me, I could not have done anything to avoid them. The taut rope that tied me to the tower also tied me to whatever fate God granted me. Perhaps I grew numb to the fear, or perhaps the mere fact of survival when so many around me were dying gave me courage, but gradually – against all reason – it seemed that the bombardment was lessening. I could still hear boulders hurtling through the air – could even hear the snap of the mangonels behind the walls now – but they did not seem to be striking us with such frequency or ferocity.

I risked a glance up. The bombardment still went on, but now the missiles sailed over our heads – almost over the tower itself. We had come through the onslaught, and were now so close to the walls that the missiles could not strike us. The Fatimids had not moved their catapaults to adjust for the change: perhaps they could not.

A ragged cheer went up from our ranks – and died as swiftly. Our progress had not made us safe, merely exposed us to new danger. Now we were in range of the walls, and the defenders unleashed a storm of small stones and arrows against us. They filled the air like locusts, preying on the men who strained to pull the tower forward. Our auxiliaries ran forward with the hurdles again and tried to shield us, though they could not guard every man. More useful to us was the tower. It stood a good six feet higher than the walls, offering the men on its top storey a commanding platform from which they could rake the ramparts with their arrows.

A horn sounded from its height. ‘Into the breach!’ bellowed Grimbauld. An arrow stuck from his shoulder, another from his leg, but they had not felled him. While those of us on the ropes strained to pull the tower closer, a tide of pilgrims swept around us and poured through the gap in the outer wall that the ram had made the day before. I could see its charred remains, still breathing wisps of smoke, beneath the inner walls. The pilgrims swarmed over it with hatchets and axes, pulling apart the burned wood and scattering the ashes. I heard several screams of pain as men grabbed pieces where the fire had not yet cooled – and more screams as the Fatimids on the wall tipped down stones and boiling water. At least the water must have doused what remained of the fire. The wreckage of the ram was pulled free, and the way lay open for the tower.

‘This is it,’ said Sigurd next to me. He had not bound himself to the tower as I had; he carried his rope over his shoulder, his vast arms bulging with the strain. His shield and his axe were slung over his back, ready for the moment when we could put down this terrible burden. ‘Stay beside me.’

I nodded, unable to speak. We had reached the place where the incline steepened, where the ram had run away from us the day before, and I wondered how we would ever get the tower down it. If we let it go here, it would surely either topple over or career into the walls and shatter. But once again, the land had changed. A company of masons had come out in the night with picks and hammers to level the path, which now led gently down to the breach in the outer wall. We rolled the tower down the incline. A firestorm of arrows, balls of blazing pitch, hammers wrapped in burning rags and jars of flaming oil engulfed it, but the great beast Magog rolled on impervious as they slid or bounced off the skins that covered it. It passed through the breach, and came to rest at last in the space between the walls, a few yards from the inner rampart. For an instant, an awestruck silence gripped the battlefield as the men on the tower and the men on the walls stared at each other, almost face to face.

‘Deus vult!’

The silence broke; the battle resumed. With the tower so close to the walls we could no longer pull it from the front, only get behind it and heave. But having been near the vanguard, I could not now get around the scrum of men who surrounded the tower. For a terrible moment, I found myself exposed in that lethal enclosure. A firm hand grabbed me and tried to pull me away – but I stayed rooted to the spot.

‘For Christ’ sake, let go of that rope.’

I still had the hawser tied around my waist. Fumbling, I drew my sword and managed to slice through the strands. Before I had finished, two hands had reached in and ripped the remainder apart.

‘Get down.’

The same hands pushed me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. Aelfric crouched beside me, covering me while I twisted my shield around and pulled it off my back. Only when I had it in place did I have a chance to look around.

‘Where’s Sigurd?’

He jerked his head to his right. Peering out from behind my shield, I saw Sigurd on one knee with his shield raised, while Thomas squatted behind him and hurled stones at the battlements with a sling he had torn from a dead man’s tunic. To my left, the tower still crawled forward. Now that I saw it from a distance I could see it had suffered terrible punishment in the approach. Several of the wicker panels had been torn off, and one of its corner-posts actually seemed to have splintered in two, so that the upper levels sagged alarmingly. Miraculously – there was no other word – the golden cross at its peak remained unharmed, gleaming in the sun that now shone almost directly above.

Inch by inch, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, it ground forward. Up on the walls, the defence seemed to waver. Fewer arrows filled the air: I thought perhaps the Fatimids had lost heart at the sight of our progress. But they had prepared for this moment. They seemed to be lifting some massive object up over the battlements, hauling it out on pulleys that hung from the adjacent towers. At first I could not see what it was; then, as it swung free of the ramparts, it became clear. It was a long tree-trunk, suspended by chains and bristling with iron. Swords and knives, sickles and spikes, nails and hooks all sprouted from its sides like branches, while the wood itself was covered in a black coat of oily slime. It fell to the ground as the men above let go the chains, bounced once, then slid down the slope until its iron claws dug into the front of the siege tower. In an instant, a volley of burning arrows flew into it. A wall of flame rose up in front of the tower, engulfing it, and I groaned. No one could survive that inferno. Nor could they extinguish it with water, for when a nearby knight tried to throw some on the fire it merely exploded back at him in a massive gout of flame. This was a diabolic fire that could turn even opposing elements to its purpose. At the top of the tower I could see Duke Godfrey and his knights frantically pulling open the walls and looking down in terror, while at the bottom the men inside found they could not get out through the crowd of men who were still trying in vain to push the tower forward.

But Godfrey was not trying to escape. Instead, so far as I could see through the smoke, his men were manhandling some heavy object to the opening they had made in the side of the tower. Had they not noticed that this was a fire that could not be drowned?

A torrent of water cascaded down the front of the tower and the barrel tumbled after it, one more morsel for the fire. I closed my eyes. There was a hiss, as if all the waters of the earth boiled, and a wall of heat blasted over me. It seared my mouth, my hands, even my closed eyes. And yet – I lived. My hair had not caught fire, nor was my skin peeled away. I opened my eyes and peered out through my fingers. Incredibly, though the spiked tree-trunk still burned, it had not erupted into the pillar of flame I had expected. Nor had the fire taken hold of the siege tower. And the hot, moist air was saturated with the tart smell of vinegar.

The men on the tower pushed another barrel to the edge of the platform and tipped it over. Now that the flames were lower it did not evaporate in an instant but splashed around the wood. Some of it settled in a small pool in a hollow in the gound. Without thinking, I ran there and knelt beside it, scooping up the vinegar into my mouth before it could melt into the earth. It burned my tongue like acid, but it was the first moisture I had tasted in hours. Meanwhile, a team of Franks picked up the chain that had held the tree-trunk and dragged it away. The spikes and blades ploughed sharp furrows in the ground.

Now the battle took on a new, more dreadful intensity. The Fatimids had tried to break the tower with rocks and burn it with fire, and none of it had worked. Now they had nothing to rely on but their desperation. It might still be enough: they knew what vengeance the Franks would take on them in defeat, and they fought as only condemned men can. I thought of Bilal, and – even in the fury of battle – hoped he was not on those walls.

The siege tower was so close that the men at the top could almost stab their enemies with their spears, but they were still too far out to bridge the gap. The Fatimids redoubled their efforts, hurling fire against the tower even as they bombarded those of us on the ground with arrows, while we tried to shield ourselves from the onslaught and retaliate in kind to force them back off the rampart. With no more firepots to hurl, they fashioned crude balls of hair and wax, doused them in oil and set them alight. Most of them slid off the slick hides that dressed the tower and bounced down into the crowd at its base. One fell on the back of my hand, scorching a livid blister into the skin; I screamed, but did not drop my sword. I was lucky: some men found that the fire fell into the folds of their tabards or lodged in the gap between helmet and hauberk, setting them ablaze.

There were fewer arrows falling on us now, but more stones. One struck my shield and deflected harmlessly away; when I glanced at it, I saw in surprise that it had the crisp edges and smooth face of a brick. In their desperation, the Fatimids seemed to be tearing down the very walls that defended them in order to hurl them at us. But we were hardly better off: we could do little more than pick up the pieces and hurl them back. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Thomas whirling his sling at the battlements. I wished he would take cover, for he made a tempting target.

Another rock struck me, this time on my shoulder, and my arm went numb. I could not stay out there. To my left, a hole gaped in the side of the tower where one of the panels had been torn off. Shouting over my shoulder to Aelfric, I ran to it, ducked underneath the splintered lintel and stepped inside. Instantly I was in darkness – a sweaty, heaving crush of men all pushing blindly forward, trying to drive the tower those precious final feet to the wall. Unthinkingly, I threw myself into the effort. Other men piled in behind me, but through the open hole in the side I could see the battle still raging. For all the Fatimids’ frantic defence, the tide seemed to be turning against them. The ditch between the walls was filling with men, and though the Fatimids killed many, they could not turn back the inexorable swell. Ladders came forward and were lifted to the battlements; the defenders were quick to shatter their rungs with rocks before any man could climb them, but the Franks had learned their lesson from the first assault and had more in reserve. In perhaps the most unnatural sight of all that day, I saw a column of priests, all dressed in white, marching forward with a ladder held above their heads as they sang the words of the psalm:

You will not fear the terror of the night,

or the arrow that flies by day,

or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

or the destruction that wastes it at noon.

Not one of them lived to see the ladder touch the wall.

Inside the siege tower, the crush was greater than ever. It was impossible to reach the front of the tower; instead, we pushed each other forward and hoped that would be enough. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how much progress we made, though it felt as if we heaved hard enough to push down the wall and roll the tower over it.

And then, suddenly the press around me melted away. I looked up. From the corner of my eye I could see half a dozen ladders leaning against the wall, bowing in under the weight of the Franks racing up them like flames. The walls themselves now seemed to have caught light: as each man reached the top of his ladder, he passed into a shroud of black smoke and vanished.

I shook my head and looked around. The noise of battle seemed to be fading, and the press of men who had driven the tower forward had vanished. Only half a dozen remained, most of them rubbing their eyes like me. Two others who had been at the front, who must have absorbed the full weight of the crush behind, had slumped to the ground unconscious, their ribs broken and their chests staved in.

After so many years of suffering, so many months of longing, the last seconds were the most forgettable of all. I was climbing the ladder inside the tower. I had reached the first floor, past the gaping holes torn in its sides, past the corpses piled in the corners, onto another ladder. The rungs were slick with blood; I slipped, and might have broken my neck if my hauberk had not caught on the rung below and given me just enough time to steady myself.

I clambered onto the second level. After the gloom below it seemed almost impossibly bright, for the front wall had been lowered to form a crude bridge to the ramparts beyond. The noon sun shone in my eyes, making the pools of blood that soaked the bridge shine like glass. It loomed before me like a bridge to another world.

I stepped out. For a brief, dizzying moment, I looked down and saw the deep space yawning beneath. Then I passed between the battlements and was on solid stone once again.

I stood there on the rampart, inside the wall, and looked down into Jerusalem.

μζ

For a moment, I saw the city spread out before me – a tapestry of narrow streets, flat roofs, awnings, courtyards and turrets. Straight ahead of me, the great dome of the temple rose on the table-top of Mount Moriah; from there the city dipped into a steep valley, then rose again on my right to the heights of Mount Zion. A stone bridge spanned the valley about half a mile distant and I committed its position to heart, for that was where I would find my family. Far in the distance, I could see smoke rising from the southern walls where Count Raymond had attacked.

Then the view was gone. A hot wind fanned my face and a curtain of black smoke drew over the city. My eyes watered as I coughed to clear the fumes from my lungs. To my right, one of the guard towers was burning. The Fatimids had tied bales of cotton and straw around it to protect it from the blows of our catapaults, but these had caught fire and the whole tower blazed like a candle. The heat and smoke must have driven the defenders back long enough for us to gain a foothold – and once the flow had started, there was no staunching it. The garrison who had defended these walls so doggedly for a day and a half had been swept away by the Franks, who still poured over the battlements and rushed down into the city below.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me about. Sigurd was standing there, his shield discarded but his axe in his hands. It was already smeared with blood. Thomas and Aelfric stood behind him, a poor remnant of the dozen Varangians who had gathered that morning.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Gone,’ said Sigurd. ‘And we’ll wish we were with them if we don’t move quickly. Come on.’

We followed the crowds along the rampart to the nearest tower, where a stair led down to the street. The press of men was almost inexorable, but by the door to the tower, the flow halted for a moment. One man was trying to push his way back. Knights shouted angrily and told him he was going the wrong way, but he persisted, forging through against the tide. The throng on the rampart was so thick that I could barely see him until he was in front of me; then he brushed past and was gone before I had even registered that it was Duke Godfrey. His white tabard was soaked with sweat, his golden hair matted with blood, and he stank of the vinegar he had poured over the Fatimids’ fire. Craning back, I saw him run across the gangway and disappear down into the siege tower.

‘Maybe he needs to take a shit,’ said Sigurd. ‘Come on.’

All resistance had vanished. The Fatimids fled, and the space they left only sucked the Franks in faster. By the time we had barged down the stairs and gained the street we had slipped well behind the vanguard. Five mangonels lay abandoned behind the walls, one already burning.

I looked around, dizzied by the speed with which the battle had turned. In the back of my mind I tried to comprehend where I was, that I actually stood on the holy soil of Jerusalem. But it was too much to understand – and I had more pressing concerns.

‘Which way now?’ At ground level, with the narrow streets tight around us, I could not even see the dome of the Temple Mount any more. I had a general idea of its direction, but there were half a dozen streets and alleys leading into the city and it could have been any one.

‘That way.’ Before I could stop him, Thomas had decided. He pushed through the crowd and struck out down an alley.

‘Wait,’ I called, but I doubt he heard me in the uproar. Even if he had, he could hardly have stopped, for the flow of the crowd was relentless. Fearful of losing him entirely, we plunged after him, as the first screams began to rise from the buildings around us.

* * *

Whether chance or God or simply the instincts of the crowd guided us, we had chosen well. The road carried us quickly down the slope, and ended in a massive wall at the edge of the Temple Mount. Here euphoria ended and danger returned, for the remnant of the Fatimid garrison had chosen the vast bastions of the temple to make their last stand. They hurled down rocks and arrows – and also pots and pans, chairs and candlesticks, anything they could grab. But it was a desperate hope. They had trusted all their lives to defending the outer walls, and now that those were gone there was no time to erect new defences. Bodies began to fall among the makeshift missiles as the first of the Franks scaled the heights of the temple.

But that was not our battle. We turned right, and skirted the wall to its corner. The city that had hemmed us in suddenly opened out into the valley and there, barely two hundred yards distant, stood the bridge. Terrible shouts and the clash of arms echoed down from the courtyard above us, but I barely heard them. I ran along the base of the great rampart, trying to keep sight of Thomas ahead. The sun glared in my eyes and beat down on me; sweat poured down my face from under my helmet. I wiped it with my hand and tried to lick it off, desperate for water, but it only made me thirstier. All I could taste in my mouth was vinegar.

We came to the foot of the bridge. There was no way onto it from this side of the valley, for it projected straight out from the summit of the Temple Mount above us, but I could see a flight of stairs climbing to join it on the far side. We stumbled down the valley, through the weeds and wildflowers that grew around the piers of the bridge. For an unreal moment I could almost believe I had left the city, that I was wandering through a pleasant meadow on a sun-baked hillside. Then I heard the clash of devastation rising ahead, and the illusion broke. The Franks had spread through the city like wildfire. Shouts and screams rose from the quarter in front of me; smoke began to taint the air. They could not be far from the house where Anna and the girls were kept, and I did not have to imagine what the Franks would do if they seized them before I got there. I was beyond exhaustion; I could barely lift my sword, let alone carry the great weight of my armour, but still I tried to increase my pace.

We staggered up the slope of Mount Zion, found the stair and clambered to its summit. To our left, the bridge ran back above the valley to the gate in the Temple enclosure; to our right, a dusty avenue led further into the city. I could barely see it for the great crowds that swarmed down it, men and women all fleeing across the bridge to the Temple Mount. The Noble Sanctuary, I remembered Bilal calling it, but they would not find sanctuary there.

On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. We turned right, against the flow of the crowd. Aelfric battered through with his shield, while Sigurd and I followed in his path. Though the Ishmaelites on that road must have outnumbered us a hundred to one, they ignored us. All they could think of now was saving themselves.

Thomas was still out in front of us, twisting and weaving through the crowd. Looking ahead, across the sea of oncoming faces, I saw he had reached a crossroads. More crowds poured in from the side-streets, pushing and screaming to get through, but that was not what I saw. On the corner of the streets two spindly trees protruded above the mob, their silver-green leaves preternaturally still in the uproar around them.

If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door. That is where you will find your family.

The force of the crowd was so great we could barely move against it. Several times, even the combined weight of Aelfric and Sigurd could not keep us from being pushed back. My heart tightened, and a trembling seized my limbs: every passing second seemed to spell my family’s doom. Thomas, meanwhile, had vanished from sight completely – all I could do was hope that he had reached the house in time.

At last, with a final heave, we broke through to the crossroads and turned the corner. The crowds were thinner here and we could move more easily. I stared around, desperately searching for the door with the iron amulet.

‘Over here.’

Halfway up the street, Sigurd had stopped outside a square, two-storey house. A wooden balcony veiled the door in shadow, too dark to see from where I stood. I ran there, urging my floundering limbs into one last effort. There was the door, as Bilal had said, with an iron hand nailed neatly to its centre. An unblinking eye stared out of the palm, surrounded by an inscription in Arabic. I barely noticed it. The door was open: the frame was splintered where it had been kicked in, and one hinge hung loose from its post.

‘Are we too late?’ I croaked the question, barely able to move my cracked lips.

An anguished cry echoed from the darkness inside the house. Before I dared to look, I heard swift footsteps running towards the door. Thomas tore it open, pulling it so hard that it broke free and fell to the ground with a shattering bang. He stepped over it into the light.

‘It’s empty.’

The desolation as he howled his discovery cut open my soul like a knife. He shook like a wild animal; tears rolled down his cheeks. He tore his helmet from his head and dashed it to the ground, whirled around and lashed out at the wall with his boot. The ground itself seemed to tremble with the impact. ‘Where are they?’ He turned to me in fury. ‘You promised they would be here.’

The power of his rage drove me back. I lifted my sword, fearing he might spring on me, and he might well have done if something else had not happened then. Most of the Ishmaelites had fled that street, though we could still see others hurrying past the crossroads towards the bridge; now, suddenly, two more came running towards us from the far end of the road. They were soldiers, the first I had seen since entering the city. Their scale armour was badly torn, and their faces were black with soot. With a howl of rage, Thomas took up his axe and ran towards them.

They were barely a dozen yards from me when they met: close enough that I could see it all, far enough that I could do nothing to stop it. One of the Fatimids, the taller of the two, raised an arm to ward off Thomas’s assault. For a strange moment it almost looked as if he was offering a salute or a greeting, as if he had seen something he recognised. He did not even lift his sword.

Thomas bore down on him. Still neither man tried to protect himself. Surprise cut through my exhausted anguish and compelled me to see more clearly. It was not just soot that blackened their faces – it was the very skin itself. And there was something wrenchingly familiar in the figure of the taller man – the pride in his stance, even through battle-weariness and defeat.

There might have been hundreds – thousands – of the caliph’s African soldiers in Jerusalem that day, but only one who would have come to that house. I staggered towards them; I tried to call out but my mouth was too dry. I told myself afterwards that Thomas would not have heard me anyway. He was screaming like a demon, a wild gibbering that only rage could interpret. Despair made the axe light in his hands. It flashed in the sun as it swept down against Bilal’s neck, slicing through the collarbone and cleaving so deep it must have touched his heart. Even at the last, Bilal did not try to defend himself. He collapsed without a sound, the axe still embedded in him.

I ran towards them, too slow and too late. Thomas put his boot against Bilal’s side and hauled on the axe haft, his rage not yet satisfied. But he had cut too deep, and it would not come loose. He tugged again, screaming at it to come free as he kicked Bilal’s lifeless corpse. I doubt he saw anything else. Certainly he did not see the soldier who had accompanied Bilal. If he did not understand why his captain had died, he understood enough to avenge him. He lifted his short stabbing spear and lunged. With no shield, no axe, not even a helmet to protect him, Thomas never had a chance. The spear entered under his chin, drove through his skull and erupted through the top of his head with a burst of blood. His screaming choked off and he fell instantly.

The man who had killed him whipped around, saw he was outnumbered and fled down the street. I would have let him go, but before I could speak a small curved axe had flown from Sigurd’s hand, overtaken the unfortunate Egyptian and planted itself in the base of his neck. He stumbled, fell, but did not die. Like a butterfly without wings he tried to pull himself forward, wriggling on his belly as the life gushed out of him. Then, mercifully, Aelfric ran to him and ended it with a blow of his axe. For a moment, silence descended on the street.

I reached Thomas and crouched beside him, though one glance was enough to tell I was too late. He must have died instantly. His blue eyes were wide, defiant to the last, but his face seemed strangely tranquil. Perhaps it was a trick of my disordered mind, but what I saw most in those last moments was his youth, as if his beard had receded and the angry furrows softened to give a glimpse of the boy he had been when I dragged him from a fountain in Constantinople. I had saved his life then; now it was gone.

I reached out two fingers and pulled his eyelids closed. At least he lived to see Jerusalem, I thought, and wondered if that was enough.

A gurgling moan intruded on my grief, and I turned. Bilal lay behind me – not dead, but dying rapidly. The axe was still stuck in his shoulder, its haft standing erect and casting a long shadow. I twisted around to kneel at his side. There were so many things I wanted to say to him – my guilt, my gratitude, my bitter anguish that I had failed his kindness – but need beat back all care with one overwhelming question.

‘My daughters,’ I whispered. ‘Anna. Where are they?’

Blood dribbled from Bilal’s mouth and seeped from his wound. I would have pulled the axe free but I did not dare: I feared it was all that wedged open the door between life and death. Reaching under him, I tried to lift his shoulders to make it easier to speak, but that only twisted the blade in his body and brought fresh screams of agony. I whispered in his ear again. ‘Is my family safe?’

Bubbles rose from the crack where iron and flesh met. Bilal convulsed as he tried to gulp more air, but it was escaping far faster than he could regain it.

‘Where are they?’ I hissed, and for all my compassion I would have shaken him if I did not think it would have killed him.

He closed his eyes. And then, just before he gave up his spirit, he whispered a single word: ‘Sanctuary.’

‘What sanctuary?’ In this city of churches there must have been a hundred sanctuaries. But even as I saw that my question was useless, that Bilal would never speak to me or any other again, I saw the answer. For him, there could only be one sanctuary in the city.

‘Mount Moriah,’ I said. ‘The Temple Mount – the Noble Sanctuary. That was where the Fatimids would have made their last defence.’

‘Then let’s hope they’re still making it,’ said Sigurd. He had retrieved his throwing axe from the corpse of Bilal’s companion and wiped it on the quilted tunic he wore beneath his armour.

I leaned over and kissed Bilal on the cheek. Laid out in the sun, his flesh was still deceptively warm – as warm as life – but I could feel the death creeping through beneath.

‘What shall we do with the bodies?’ asked Aelfric.

‘Leave them.’ I made the sign of the cross over Thomas and offered the briefest prayer. I did not know what to do for Bilal, so in the end I did nothing. I hoped God would take pity on him.

We left the dead to bury themselves, and went in search of the living.

μη

We turned back towards the bridge, but we had barely gone ten paces when a great uproar stopped us. At first it sounded like waves surging over rocks; a second later it resolved into the shouts and cries of a great host. They came into sight at the end of the street and poured through the crossroads, the fleeing remnant of a routed army. Count Raymond must have broken through on the southern walls at last.

‘We won’t get through there,’ said Aelfric. Indeed, while most of the army seemed to be retreating to the Temple Mount, several men had broken away and were streaming towards us. There was no thought of resisting them.

‘This way.’

We turned north and ran. Shouts rose as the Fatimids saw us and followed. Perhaps they thought they could still save the city, or that they might yet blunt our triumph; maybe they just wanted to die with honour. We fled from them, up the street, down an alley, through a gate that turned out simply to be a house built over the road, and into the heart of Jerusalem.

If I learned one thing that day, it was that Peter Bartholomew, Arnulf, even Saint John the Divine had all been wrong. The world did not have to end with tenhorned beasts and dragons, angels and fantastical monsters. The prophets who foretold those things had succumbed to the extravagance of their imaginations, and it had played them false. Nothing on earth could be so terrible as men. The whole city shook to the sounds of pain and torture as the Franks wrote their triumph in the blood of its people. They did not just murder the populace: they destroyed them. They tore them apart, child from mother, husband from wife, limb from limb until not one morsel of humanity remained. Not content with mere slaughter, they made games of their cruelty; they inflicted pain and studied it, then marvelled at their own ingenuity until even the most savage degradation bored them. Then, when there was no one left to kill, they fought each other for the division of the spoils.

Perhaps it would be kindness to say that they did not know what they did – that a madness had seized them, or blood-lust overwhelmed them, or that the many terrors of their pilgrimage had warped their souls. I do not believe it. They entered Jerusalem in full knowledge of what they would do. They came to end the world, impatient with the world allotted them, and if, in fact, it did not end that day it was not for want of their trying. They came in Christ’s name, every one of them marked with the cross, but they had forgotten the sacrifice He offered and made a new god for themselves – one who could only be satisfied with blood. Like the rebel angels in the first age of heaven, they reached for a thing they could not possess, and in doing so forsook it utterly.

Through all these horrors, Sigurd and Aelfric and I tried to find a path back to the Temple Mount. Frenzied crowds of Franks and Saracens filled the streets; in some places we could barely get through for the great heaps of corpses that choked the way. In one place, I saw a group of men and women who had stacked pillaged furniture and timbers around a tall basilica. They danced around it, singing obscene songs about Jews, while the fire they had set billowed up through the house. A child was wailing inside, and I could hear his mother singing to comfort him even as the flames reached in through the windows. The sound made me think of Helena and Everard: for a moment, I wanted to rush in to the house and snatch the child and his mother away. But as soon as I stepped towards it, the joyous faces in the firelight became threatening, turning angrily towards me. I hurried on my way, though not so quickly that I did not hear the screaming as the first people began to burn.

But in all the slaughter, there was one man who did not take part. We met him by chance, in a narrow street that descended what I thought must be the western side of the valley we had crossed earlier. The pitch of destruction here ran high as ever: blood sluiced through the gutters like rain in a storm, spilling out over the road whenever a body or a severed limb clogged its path. With my eyes to the ground, as much to pick my way over the human debris as to avoid seeing the abominations around me, the whiteness of the horse as it made its way through the stream of blood was almost unnatural. Blood had splashed over its hooves and fetlocks, staining the white hair red, but its flanks and mane remained ghostly white, untouched by the massacre. It was the colt I had seen Duke Godfrey training in his camp. Now, in the hour of his triumph, he rode it along the same road that Christ had walked with his cross to Calvary. He had abandoned his hauberk and his linen battle tunic, replacing them with a robe of shimmering white silk. His eyes were fixed ahead, impervious to the atrocities that surrounded him, his face set with furious concentration. On the hand that held the bridle I saw that he wore two rings: the ancient black gemstone of his ancestor Charlemagne, and a brighter, gold ring with the seal of the emperor Alexios engraved on its face.

Men paused in their labours as he went by, watching the strange procession wend its way up the bloody street. He had few attendants – only three knights, and Arnulf the priest carrying the gold cross, which he must have rescued from the siege tower. He wore a white cassock, though blood spattered it almost up to his knees.

They passed out of sight and we hurried on down the road. At the foot of the hill I could see the great ramparts of the Temple Mount rising up to the sky. We came through a devastated market and arrived in an open courtyard at its base. There must have been a cistern beneath the square, for the paving was riddled with dozens of open holes where the people could draw water. The plaintive moan of drowning souls echoed up through the well holes. On one side of the square a flight of steps led down into the cavern, where laughing Franks forced their victims into the water at spear-point. It was one of the myriad small cruelties of that day that some drowned while others burned.

On the far side of the square, a flight of steps led up into the heart of the Temple Mount. The gates that held it had been smashed in, and the only men who guarded it now were corpses littered on the stairs. We ran up, and emerged at last in the great courtyard of King Solomon’s palace.

The first thing that struck me, even then, was its size. It must have been a full quarter of a mile long, and wide in proportion. Broad arcades lined its sides, hiding the rest of the city from us, while the courtyard itself was dominated by the octagonal Temple of the Lord, and the Temple of Solomon beyond. After the narrow maze of streets below, it was like coming out into a high valley among mountains – like ascending to the court of heaven from the confines of the world. But this was a heaven to make men weep to reach it. It had been overthrown: the Franks had broken in and, at last, brought their impieties back to the place where the first foundation of the world was laid. Mutilated corpses strewed the sacred ground, and the gentle arcades echoed with screams.

‘There’s no sanctuary here,’ murmured Aelfric.

I found one of the Franks, a Norman knight trying to drag away a golden lamp half as high as he was himself. ‘Where are they?’ I shouted. ‘Are there any left alive?’

He started like thief; if he had not been burdened with the lamp he might have drawn his knife and run me through. ‘I’m alive,’ he answered proudly. ‘Praise God.’

Sigurd stepped forward and grabbed the knight’s shoulders. He dropped the lamp, howling to see a crack appear in its crystal window. I glanced around nervously, hoping none of his companions would come to his aid, but they were too busy with their own treasures to notice or care.

‘What about the prisoners?’

The knight laughed, careless of his danger. ‘Prisoners? Look around you.’ The sneer died on his lips as Sigurd’s axe caressed his throat. ‘Some took refuge on the roof of the Temple of Solomon. Tancred gave them his banner for protection.’

I stared at him. ‘Tancred offered to protect them?’

‘He thought they might fetch a ransom.’

I ran. It was like running in a dream, every stride falling short of where I stretched it, while the pursuing terror grew ever closer behind me. The Temple of Solomon was at the furthest end of the great courtyard, on its southern side – though near to the bridge, I saw with hope. If Anna and the girls had managed to cross it, they might have found their way to safety. But for how long? The Franks had been too perfect in their slaughter: I could not see any Saracens left alive in the courtyard now, and groups of knights were milling about in angry confusion. It would not be long before they went in search of new violence.

Seven arches loomed before me as I reached the Temple of Solomon at last. Compared with the intricacies and beauty of the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of Solomon was a squat and solid building, with nothing but a single dome at the far end to ornament it. I barely noticed it. A ladder at the side led up to the roof, from where a host of terrified faces peered down. Three Norman knights guarded the ladder, but they did not hinder us when they saw we wanted to go up. They waved us on with mock bows and false smiles. ‘You can go up if you like,’ they told us. ‘It’s the coming down that’s hard.’

‘That’s what Jesus said,’ said one of them, and his companions laughed wickedly.

We climbed the ladder, and came out at last on the roof of the temple. It felt like standing on the roof of the world. We were above the enclosure now, so I could see the entire city below rising to the western summit of Mount Zion. Screams filled the air, and the thick smoke from a thousand fires rose overhead so that – though it was only afternoon – darkness seemed to cover the earth. I wondered that there should be any light at all, but there was: a red, sickly glow that could only come from a withered sun. A warm breeze blew smoke and ash in my eyes, and I wept.

I turned away from the scene and looked behind me. Hundreds of cowering faces stared back. What must they expect from us? I began pushing through them, frantically calling for Anna, for Helena and Zoe, for Everard. To my right and left, I heard Sigurd and Aelfric calling the same. No one hindered us, but no one answered. Though they packed that rooftop so tight that many were piled on top of each other, they still contrived to part before me like lilies in water. All I saw was a sea of unknown faces, the last citizens of a dying world awaiting their judgement.

‘Demetrios!’

From the far side of the roof, Sigurd called me. I stumbled over to him, tripping and kicking my way through the crowd, too impatient to wait for them to move. Agonising hope burned in my heart, but I saw quickly that there was no one with him. Instead, he was staring down into the courtyard.

‘We don’t have much longer.’

Looking down, I could see a crowd of Norman knights beginning to gather at the base of the temple, pointing and laughing. Behind them others were bringing up more ladders. Many had their swords out; others carried slings and bows.

The crowd on the roof had seen them too. One of their number, a statuesque woman with a baby still suckling at her breast, stood and began to remonstrate with them. No one could understand what she said, but the passion in her voice was such that at last two of the knights did run back towards the Temple of the Lord. I saw them accost Tancred in the middle of the courtyard; I did not hear what they said, but I saw him shrug and open his arms wide in abdication.

The woman with the child continued her pleading. She got down on her knees and shook her hands imploringly at the men below; she pulled a gold coin from her dress and threw it down, begging them to save her. The knights rushed forward to where the coin had fallen and scuffled for it like dogs. Others shouted back at the woman, beckoning to her, calling that if she only leaped down they would catch her in their arms. ‘Save yourself,’ they urged her, but she would not go. They grew angry; they said that she must jump to see if her god would save her, and if He did not then she was a heretic and would be put to death. Of course she did not understand a word, but she could see the cruelty building around her. Her pleas grew more frantic. She pulled down her dress and offered her naked body to them, any degradation simply to live. That only drove the Franks to new heights of mockery. They whistled and demanded to see more, shouting obscene suggestions.

At length, one of them must have tired of the sport. I did not hear the bow loose, but I saw the arrow strike. It pierced straight through the child at her breast and pinned it to her heart. With a slow scream, she toppled forward and plunged to the ground.

Her death unleashed the frenzy that had been simmering among the Franks. Those who had bows shot them high in the air so that the arrows would rain down from above, while the men with ladders rushed to lay them against the temple. Some of the men on the roof tried to push them back but the Franks were too strong. They swarmed up the ladders and began the killing, stabbing and hacking or simply pulling their enemies off the roof to break on the stones. Such was the thirst for slaughter that some died in the hail of stones and arrows that their companions still launched from the courtyard below.

For one more moment, I searched the crowd for my daughters, praying that if I had to die I might at least die with my family. Then something hard struck me on the side of my head, and I sank into oblivion.

μθ

Perhaps the world did end. How else to explain the place where I woke? If it was not hell, then there are worse places of which even the Bible does not speak. A dull light filled the air, and carrion birds wheeled overhead. The dead were all around me. Heaps of broken bodies, broken limbs, broken faces. Their eyes stared at me in unceasing reproach but thankfully they did not speak.

‘Anna.’ I pushed myself to my feet and staggered to the nearest corpses, rummaging through them like a pile of old clothes. ‘Helena. Zoe.’ The bodies were stiff; their blood had flowed together and hardened into a bond that seemed impossible to pull apart. Their faces stared up at me, frozen into the moment of their death: in anger, in despair, even in hope – pleading with me, even now, to rescue them.

‘They’re not here.’

I heard the voice but I ignored it, still clawing frantically through the dead, until a gentle hand on my shoulder pulled me away. Sigurd stood over me, a dark silhouette against the amber sky.

‘They’re not here,’ he said again. He had removed his helmet so that his copper hair hung loose over his shoulders. Blood streaked his face and beard, and stained his arms all the way to the elbows.

‘Helena, Zoe, Anna, Everard – they’re not here.’

A great wave of emptiness broke over me and I slumped back. I did not feel empty, for I could not feel. I did not understand it, for I was past understanding. Instead, as some men know pain and others know God, I knew – nothing. Sigurd crouched beside me and put his arm around me.

‘They weren’t on the roof?’ Twisting around, I could see the squat bulk of the Temple of Solomon across the courtyard. The ladders still leaned against it, while workers on the roof rolled down the bodies of the slain. Memories of that last battle suddenly flashed in my mind. ‘How did we escape?’

Sigurd did not answer, but pointed to my chest. The crude wooden cross I had carved beside the campfire on the eve of the assault still hung there, two small twigs bound together with twine. The mere sight of it filled me with revulsion; I snatched at it, ready to tear it off. But the habits of a lifetime are hard to dislodge, and a prick of faith stayed my hand. It had saved me, after all, even if the men it saved me from wore the same emblem. I left it, for now.

‘What about Aelfric?’

Sigurd shook his head. ‘You and I were the only ones.’

I brushed my hand against the cross and whispered a prayer for Aelfric. Even in the midst of so much death I felt his loss.

‘But the girls, Anna – they weren’t up there?’

‘Not that I saw.’ He jerked his head, as if trying to dislodge something from his thoughts. ‘It was hard . . . to tell.’

We sat there in silence for a moment, two living souls dwarfed by the death around us.

‘What do we do now?’

Sigurd stood. ‘We should find Thomas. At least we know where he is. He wanted so much to see Jerusalem – the least we can do is bury him here properly.’

It did not take long to find our way to the street where Thomas had died. We left the great enclosure of the Temple Mount and walked across the valley on the high bridge, staring down into the city. The slaughter had finished. The Franks had done everything in their power to bring paradise to Jerusalem and they had failed. They had washed the city in the blood of its people, but that had not cleansed it. It stank. Now they were faced with the wreckage and ruination of their efforts. I could see small groups of them below slowly beginning the wretched business of clearing the city.

‘What time is it?’ I asked. The bronze light made it feel like dusk, or perhaps dawn, but I could not see any sign of the sun. It was the smoke in the air, I realised, clouding the sky so that only dark light bled through.

‘Saturday morning. You were unconscious all night.’

I rubbed my temple, flinching to feel the bruise where the stone had struck. ‘Did it hit me that hard?’

Sigurd shrugged. ‘There are some times when it’s better to be asleep.’

Just for a moment, I glimpsed the torments Sigurd must have suffered during that lonely night, the horrors he must have witnessed as he stood watch over me. I did not ask; I did not have the strength for pity.

We crossed the bridge and walked west, to the crossroads where the two tamarisk trees grew. The flies were thick on the ground, rising up in clouds as we passed. The heat and the stench were almost too much to bear. At the crossroads, I shed my armour and my quilted coat and abandoned them in the street, keeping only the thin linen tunic I had worn underneath, and the dagger tucked in my boot. It was a relief to be free of the burden. My whole body felt lighter, freer; I moved so easily I thought I might float away into the hazy sky.

I turned right, ran up the street and stopped. There was the house with its shaded balcony, its splintered doorframe and the door lying flat on the ground. There was the helmet Thomas had torn off in his fury, a round dent showing where he had hurled it against the wall. There were the two dark stains in the dusty road where Thomas and Bilal had died, with a third a little further off where Thomas’s killer had met his end. But the bodies were gone.

At another time, in another world, I should have dropped to my knees and wept that of all my family, not one could be found even to bury. On that day, overwhelmed by death, I just stood and stared.

‘He’s not here,’ I mumbled to myself. Then, to Sigurd, ‘Could he have lived?’

‘No.’ Sigurd spoke brusquely, refusing any compromise with hope. ‘I saw him as well as you. He was dead.’

My chin sank against my chest in despair. Looking down, I saw the wooden cross still hanging there, jerking like a marionette as I moved. Its impossible promise of the miraculous dangled before me, taunting me. I hated it.

I heard a sound from the road and looked up. Two Frankish knights had come around the corner, wheeling a creaking barrow between them. A tangle of arms and legs dangled over its sides, the corpses piled so high they threatened to topple out. I stared at them, sucking back the bile in my throat, but I could not see Thomas’s body among them.

The barrow stopped in front of us and one of the knights stepped out from behind it. His face was scarlet with sunburn, his moustache shaved short for battle. He was sweating.

‘What are you doing?’ he shouted at us. ‘Who told you to linger around with so much work to be done?’

I stared at him vacantly. ‘We . . . We were looking for a body.’

‘And you couldn’t find one in this shambles?’ The knight turned to the barrow and tugged on a loosehanging arm. Two bodies tumbled off and fell on the ground with a flat thud. A man and a woman, both Ishmaelites, both horribly ravaged by the wounds that had killed them. They fell one on top of the other, a casual piece of innuendo that seemed almost more horrible than the wounds themselves.

‘There you go,’ said the soldier. ‘There’s bodies for you. Take them away.’ Still I stared at him. ‘Left at the end of the road. Follow the others.’

Without another word, he and his companion lifted up the cart handles and pushed it on down the street. Sigurd and I stared at each other, each as confused as the other. Then, because there was nothing else to do, we picked up the two corpses and dragged them in the direction the knight had ordered.

We were not alone. At the top of the road we found many others – Provençals, Normans, Lotharingians and Flemings, as well as Ishmaelite prisoners, even Jews – working to dispossess the city of its dead. Carnage and devastation were everywhere; to look on it was to taint your soul for ever. We followed the procession across Mount Zion to the western gate, where the high citadel rose above the ramparts. No sign of siege or sack marked its massive walls, but it had fallen nonetheless: I could see the blue banner of Provence fluttering from the topmost tower, and Provençal archers patrolling its walls. Jerusalem was taken, but Count Raymond’s jealous eyes still saw enemies everywhere.

We passed through the gate onto the bare mountain beyond. The ground fell away steeply into the valley, with a great crowd of knights and pilgrims milling about at its rim. A soldier shouted at us to bring our burdens there and, numbly, we obeyed. We hauled them to the edge and stared down.

For a moment I thought I truly had witnessed the resurrection. Looking into that ravine was like looking into the bowels of the earth, as if the jaws of hell had opened to disgorge the legions of the dead. The hillside was thick with bodies, their stiff arms outstretched as if trying to haul themselves out. At the bottom, still more corpses were piled up in vast mounds, like fallen leaves ready for the burning. There must have been thousands of them, ten thousands. Small groups of Franks clambered over them, piling cords of wood and dousing them in oil. I could not believe we had killed so many.

A group of pilgrims hauled a cart to the edge and upended it. More corpses tipped out like rubbish, tumbling and sliding down the rocky slope. I stared at them, trying to make out anything that could be Thomas, but it was no use.

‘Come on!’ shouted a soldier impatiently. ‘Plenty more to come.’

We lifted the bodies we had brought and hurled them into the pit. When they had gone I said a brief prayer for Thomas, trying to imagine him lying lost among the naked, unnumbered dead. Then I went to find what we had come for.

After all our struggles, all that time, it was not hard to find. We followed the pilgrims who streamed back into Jerusalem from that open grave – down a sloping street, through the wreckage of what had once been a market or a bazaar, and then along a narrow, twisting alley.

‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ Sigurd asked doubtfully.

I was not sure, but I carried on. Around a corner, through a narrow door in a wall – and suddenly we were there. A shady, colonnaded courtyard, with lofty porticoes to our right and our left opening into dim chambers beyond. The waiting crowds within almost overflowed it, and the red-tiled roofs around the courtyard sagged under the weight of the pilgrims who had climbed up on them. It seemed to take an age to worm our way through the throng; several times our rough manners would have provoked violence if there had only been room to swing a fist. I drew the knife I had kept in my boot and balled my tunic around it. The closer we came the more slowly we progressed until suddenly, at last, there was nothing in front of us except the sweet smell of incense wafting out of the chamber within. We peered over the threshold, into the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre.

It had been an image in my mind so long, but – like so many things – it was not as I had expected it. From my childhood, I had always imagined the sepulchre as a great stone cave, rugged and primal, yawning open in the middle of the church. Perhaps it had been, once, but that had long since been hidden by the artifice of men. It stood in the middle of a broad, semicircular hall, under a lofty rotunda whose centre had been cut out to allow a pillar of light to plunge through. The shrine stood at its foot, so that you could not tell if the tomb was the object or the source of the brilliance. Tendrils of smoke writhed in the bloodred light like souls in torment.

Of the tomb itself I could see very little. The bricks that made its walls were scarred and pocked with holes, while the lead cupola on top was badly scratched and dented. It looked more like a roadside chapel than the tomb of God. But even that I could hardly see, for the inside of the church was as crowded as the courtyard beyond. A phalanx of priests in golden robes circled the tomb, singing a psalm of thanksgiving. In their centre, raised above all of them at the door of the tomb, stood Arnulf. A radiant triumph smirked on his face as he sang:

The Lord rejoices in his people,

and adorns the humble with victory.

Let the faithful exult in their glory;

Let the high praises of God be in their throats,

And sharp swords in their hands.

An acolyte held the golden cross beside him, the fragments of the true cross erected once again on the hill of Calvary. The princes stood in front of him, facing the sepulchre, and their knights packed the chamber around them. Some had their heads bowed, but others stared around in wide-eyed astonishment, unable to believe where they stood. They seemed to have come straight from the battle: many still wore their armour, their tabards soaked with blood like butchers’ aprons. Some were bloodied up to their elbows; others bore open wounds, which wept and bled as they sang the psalm.

Let the faithful wreak vengeance on the nations

And punishment on their peoples;

Let them bind the kings of the earth with chains

And their princes with iron shackles,

To execute on them the judgement of God –

This is the glory of the faithful.

‘Praise the Lord!’ shouted the crowd. The priests had stopped singing but the crowd carried on, repeating the antiphon again and again with such noise and fervour that I feared the dome might crack apart and collapse on them in the moment of their triumph. ‘Praise the Lord.’ It was an awesome sound. Its monolithic unison seemed to ring with everything that was most mighty and terrible in the Army of God. The more often they repeated it, the louder they sang. Confidence became stridence, unison began to shake with disharmony. Looking at the fervent faces that thronged the sanctuary, breathless mouths straining to build the sound ever louder, it suddenly seemed to me that they were not gripped by glory or love of God, but by desperation. The moment of victory had passed and they knew it. They had come to find heaven, to capture God, but the tomb was empty. Soon they would have to leave that sanctuary and venture into the world they had made, a dark and terrible place, but for a little while yet they could delay it. So they sang on, not in joy but in dread of what was to come.

Voices grew hoarse, lungs tired. One by one, the knights at the back of the church fell silent and began to slip away. They pushed past me through the door, but I held my ground, keeping the knife hidden in the fold of my tunic. As the last sighs of the song died away, a troop of knights emerged and forged a way through the courtyard, penning us back with the hafts of their spears. But the crowds had suffered the torments of hell to reach this sacred place – they would not be turned away so easily. They pushed back against the soldiers, squeezing the way shut. Those who had begun to leave the church found themselves suddenly stuck in the midst of the crowd. And there, standing on the threshold not six inches away from me, was Duke Godfrey.

‘Was it all you expected?’ I murmured in his ear. Keeping my arm low, I turned the knife so that the point aimed at his side. I wondered if the blade was long enough to reach his heart.

He was trapped between the men trying to get out of the church and those trying to push in. He could not even turn to face me, but I saw his shoulders stiffen and his head go still as the blade pricked him. I looked down at his hand, at the two rings – one black and ancient, one gold and shining – that gleamed on his fingers.

‘The ring of Charlemagne and the seal of Byzantium. Was that how you thought you would unite the crowns of east and west, as the prophecy foretold? Was that why you contrived to steal the ring from me, after you had failed to conquer Constantinople itself?’

Godfrey’s chin lifted and he stared straight ahead. ‘Make way,’ he shouted. ‘Make way for your princes, damn you.’

‘If you move, the last thing you feel will be my dagger in your heart.’ I would have to be quick: his guards would cut me down in an instant. But that did not matter, for they would only speed me to my family. ‘Did you think that you were the one? That you would ascend Golgotha, take the crown from your head and place it on the cross, and hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father? Is that why you destroyed Peter Bartholomew, not because he vied with God but because he vied with you?’

Ahead of Godfrey, the soldiers had at last begun to impose themselves on the crowd. A passage was opening.

‘You thought you could remake the world by destroying it. You envied heaven so much you tried to wrest it from God. What will you say when you see Him now?’

But even as I spoke, the knife wavered in my hand. What did I want from Godfrey? Revenge? There was no revenge in the world that could punish the weight of his sin. Remorse? If he truly comprehended what he had done, he would have snatched the knife from my hand and plunged it in himself. My words would not stir him. As for repentance, that was not mine to demand.

I lowered the knife and let it drop to the ground. In the tumult of the crowd, no one even heard it fall. All that remained now was curiosity.

‘Was it worth it?’

A path opened in front of Godfrey, but he did not move forward. He turned to look at me, and I stared into his eyes. For the merest instant, I looked through them to the soul within. There was no sorrow there, nor guilt: only, for the first time, a thin blade of doubt.

Then his body stiffened, his face hardened and the shutters closed over his eyes. I knew what he would say before he spoke.

‘Deus voluit.’

God willed it.

ν

Sigurd and I stood at the edge of the street in the shade, the last two survivors. Amid all the ruin, Sigurd had found an orange, and his strong fingers dug away the peel to reveal the fruit within. When he had stripped it he pulled it in two and gave me half; I tore the segments off with my teeth, devouring them almost as fast as I could swallow. Juice trickled down my fingers and over my chin, glistening in the sun, but I made sure I licked off every drop. It was almost the first thing I had had to eat or drink since the assault, and it was like the waters of heaven in my parched mouth.

‘What do we do now?’ Sigurd asked.

‘Go home, I suppose.’

I winced, remembering how much I had once desired that. Now fate had made a mockery of that hope, too. What did I have to return to?

‘Will you go back to the palace guard?’

Sigurd frowned and looked away. He was about to answer when something behind me caught his eye, driving the thought from his head. I turned to see. I could not help the spark of hope that flared in me, but I damped it instantly. All it would do was burn me.

We were not the only survivors. A few paces away, looking for all the world as if he had expected to find us, stood Saewulf. One arm was held in a sling, and there was a gash on his cheek that would no doubt harden into one more scar, but he still wore the same crooked smile. It did not entirely disguise the weariness in his eyes.

‘How did you get here?’ Sigurd asked.

‘I followed Count Raymond. He still owes me money for his siege tower – though he was less inclined to pay after the Egyptians destroyed it.’ He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, the acquiescence of a man well used to the whims of fate. ‘He has taken the citadel, the tower of David. Did you know that?’

‘We saw his banner there,’ I answered. There was something in Saewulf’s words that I did not understand, something that he was withholding. ‘How did he take it so quickly?’

‘He promised the captain of the garrison and his men safe passage out of Jerusalem if they surrendered immediately. It was a good bargain – on both sides. I was with him when he made it, and I was there when he entered the citadel. We found something there you should see.’

I looked into his eyes for a hint, but saw only the fathomless blue of the sea.

The convoys of the dead still flowed to the vast grave in the valley beyond the walls. Soon smoke from those pyres would choke the air once more, but for the moment the sky had begun to clear. The rust-red glow that had suffused the city all day hardened to a sharper, whiter light. We came quickly to the great bulwarks of the citadel, its walls laced with lead so that fire and chisels could not penetrate the cracks between the stones. Companies of Provençal knights guarded every gate, but they waved us through without challenge when they saw Saewulf. He led us into a courtyard among high towers, filled with men and horses. For the first time since I entered Jerusalem, I was in a place that did not stink of blood.

‘Over there.’

I blinked, my eyes still struggling with the brightness after so long in the gloom. On the far side of the courtyard, forgotten amid the bustle, three figures sat in the shade of an arched colonnade. With the brilliant sun on my face I could barely see them, but there are some things that can be recognised without sight.

‘Your Egyptian friend brought them here for sanctuary when he saw the city was lost,’ said Saewulf. ‘He went to find you, to tell you, but they said he did not return.’

I barely heard him; I was running across the courtyard, springing forward like a newborn lamb, each stride longer than the last. They saw me coming; they rose and rushed to meet me, their skirts swirling in the dust. They were dressed in strange clothes that I had not seen before, bright garments that seemed alive with the light they reflected. In her haste, the scarf Anna wore over her head blew away and her black hair streamed out behind her. Zoe ran beside her, taller than I remembered, and behind them came Helena with Everard in her arms. He had grown too heavy for Helena; she put him down and let him run free with her. I could hear them shouting; I was shouting too, though I did not know what I was saying. Then we were all in each other’s arms, crying and laughing and repeating each other’s names as if we had never spoken them before. The soldiers in the courtyard stared, disturbed from their grim business, but I did not care.

Everything that had to be said – about Thomas, about Bilal, about Godfrey and Raymond, about ourselves – could be said later. For now, I was ready to go home.

Lux Aeterna

Three weeks after they captured the city, the Army of God took to the field for the last time. At Ascalon, forty miles west of Jerusalem, they met the relief army that al-Afdal had brought from Egypt and, though outnumbered once more, routed it utterly. Many of the Egyptians were driven into the sea and drowned; al-Afdal himself only escaped by fleeing into the harbour and taking ship for Egypt. He never returned. I heard, some years afterwards, that he was eventually murdered by a caliph who had grown tired of his tutelage.

When Jerusalem had been conquered, the princes met in the church of the Holy Sepulchre and elected Godfrey king. But – faithful to his prophecy to the last – he put aside his crown and did not take the title of king, preferring instead to style himself the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. A few days afterwards, the red-headed priest, Arnulf of Rohes, was appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. Raymond got nothing: but true to his vow he never returned to Provence. He died a few years later, once more pursuing a fruitless siege.

Despite the victory, Godfrey’s reign was neither long nor happy. One by one, the other princes abandoned him, either to return to their homes or to make new conquests of their own. The borders of his new realm were weak and fragile; no sooner had one area been secured than another demanded his attention. Almost a year to the day after he marched through the golden gate and processed to Christ’s tomb, Godfrey died in Jerusalem. Some said he had been poisoned, others that he had succumbed to fever; others still said that his heart had simply given up. When I heard that, I remembered the doubt I had seen in his eyes that morning in the Holy Sepulchre. It had seemed then like something sharp and dangerous; I wondered if it had not twisted in his soul until it cut a wound that could not heal.

Many assumed that Godfrey’s successor should be Bohemond; he was summoned from Antioch, but he was away campaigning. Before he could return, he was captured by Turks and carried away deep into their kingdom where he spent four years rotting in captivity. In his absence, the lordship of Jerusalem passed to Baldwin, Godfrey’s younger brother, who had left the Army of God before it even reached Antioch to carve out his own dominion in the east. He had none of his brother’s pious scruples. On Christmas Day in the first year of the new century, at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he was crowned king of Jerusalem. And so the man who had abandoned the pilgrimage at the earliest opportunity, who never suffered its torments or fought its terrible battles, became its eventual victor.

I did not see any of it. Before Ascalon, before Godfrey had taken his throne, even before the embers from the funeral pyres had cooled, I began the long journey home. Before we left, I visited the Holy Sepulchre. After waiting almost three hours in a line of weeping pilgrims, I stepped inside the cupola, past the stone where the angel had announced the resurrection to the two Marys, and ducked into the small chamber beyond.

It was empty, of course.

We travelled in easy stages back to the coast, walking at dawn and at dusk, resting during the heat of the day. At Jaffa, we found the last ship from Saewulf’s fleet, which had been away on patrol when the Fatimids burned the harbour. As August winds furrowed the sea, it slowly nosed its way west. The sun shone, and I spent the hours reaccustoming myself to food and water, nursing strength back into my limbs. I had not realised how far my body had withered until I tried to heal it. There were days when my joints were so stiff I could barely move; other days when my stomach rebelled against even water. Through all this, Anna was at my side: preparing my food, teasing the knots out of my sinews, or just sitting in the shade of a canvas awning watching dolphins play in the water. We did not speak much. The ordeals we had endured loomed too large, mountains in our minds that we could neither conquer nor comprehend. Only by skirting around them, chiselling away small pieces each day, could we gradually reduce them and build the fragments into the houses of memory. It was as well we had Everard to distract us. If ever thoughts of the past grew too melancholy, there was always the sight of him running up and down the sloping deck chasing after gulls to lift our spirits. Amid thoughts of death and despair, his energy provided a necessary reminder of life.

We put into Cyprus and Rhodes, then turned north. One day we sailed past Patmos, the island where Saint John the Divine received his revelation of the world’s end. I stared at it, a rocky outcrop barely distinguishable from the mainland behind, and wondered how much evil had come from the visions he saw in that cave. I was glad to see it slide into the distance behind us. The days were getting shorter now, the winds fresher: the sea was crowded with ships all hurrying to their harbours before the onset of autumn. The urgency affected all of us, and instead of watching the wake or the waves we began to gather in the bow, staring at the sea ahead.

At the beginning of October, we reached the port of Tenedos. According to some authorities, it was where the Greeks had hidden their fleet during the siege of Troy, but there were few ships there now – only a gaggle of merchantmen waiting for the wind to change so they could navigate through the Hellespont and up to Constantinople. Here, Saewulf announced, he would leave us.

‘I could spend a month waiting for the wind to change,’ he explained. ‘And another month waiting to get out again. You can get a boat to the mainland and be home in half that time.’

I looked at the grey sky and the white wavecaps beyond the harbour. ‘But you can’t take to the seas again now. I thought they were closed in winter.’

He grinned. ‘The seas are never closed to an Englishman. And I’ve been away from home too long. Even if it’s cold and wet and stinks of Normans.’

His was not the only farewell we had to make on Tenedos – nor the hardest. On the night before we parted, I was sitting by the mast with Everard on my knee, pointing out the constellations to him, when Sigurd and Saewulf came on deck. In a few short words, Sigurd told me his plans.

‘I’m not going back to Constantinople.’

I looked up in surprise. ‘Where will you go?’

‘To England – with Saewulf.’

On my knee, Everard tugged at the sleeve of my tunic, peeved to find himself forgotten. I ignored him. The delicate peace in my soul, so patiently stitched together on the voyage, was torn apart again. ‘To England?’ I stared from one to the other. Neither looked happy with the decision. ‘I thought you swore you would never return while the Normans ruled.’ Every atrocity, every insult, every obloquy that I had ever heard against the Normans raced through my mind, and I wanted to hurl each one back at him. ‘You’re a captain of the palace guard. Would you give all that up to live the life of a peasant in a captive land?’

Sigurd sighed. ‘The emperor doesn’t need me – any more than he needed Aelfric or Thomas or Nikephoros – or even you. If anyone asks, tell them I died at Jerusalem.’

Saewulf looked no happier than I did. ‘It’ll break your heart,’ he warned. ‘The country you remember vanished a long time ago. Better to stay here and cherish it as it was.’

Sigurd shook his head. ‘If you believed that, you wouldn’t have gone back yourself.’

‘But Constantinople is your home,’ I said.

‘Constantinople is your home,’ he corrected me. ‘It was mine, too, for a time. Now I must go back. When you get to Constantinople, find my family and tell them to follow as soon as they can. They’ll understand.’

I realised then that I could not dissuade him. I pulled myself to my feet and embraced him. As ever, it was like putting my arms around an oak tree.

‘Try not to kill the first Norman you see.’

He grunted. ‘Try to keep out of trouble yourself. Remember you won’t have me to protect you any more.’

They sailed away next morning. I sat on the quay, watching the ship diminish until it slipped over the horizon. Then, surrounded by my family, I turned east and set out on the final stage.

* * *

Those last two weeks were the happiest of the entire journey. Though we were late in the year, the weather blessed us with a succession of clear days, each more brilliant than the last. The sun shone, and in the evenings a dewy haze descended to cloak the world in soft mystery. All around us we could see the world gathering itself in for the winter. Fields had been harvested and ploughed, flocks brought down from the summer pasture, firewood piled up ready for burning. If we did not speak much now, it was because we did not need words to describe how we felt. Each of us was seized with hope, and with sweet anticipation.

It was evening when we arrived at Constantinople. We came over a hill and there it was – the eastern suburbs of Chrysopolis falling away to the Bosphorus beneath us, and the domes and towers of the city rising in their splendour across the shining water. I could see Ayia Sophia, majestic on its promontory, and the many terraces of the palace cascading down the hill. The autumn sun was setting behind a cloud in the west, casting the sky, the water, the city, the whole world in molten gold. From across the strait, I thought I could hear the chant of the priests at vespers.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen it from this side before,’ murmured Helena. ‘It’s beautiful.’

We went down to the water’s edge, and waited for the boatman to ferry us across.

Tελos

Historical Note

The capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade in 1099 stands as one of the great cataclysms of history. Through a potent combination of zealotry, pent-up frustration and greed, the crusaders massacred more or less every man, woman and child in the city, depopulating it for generations to come and leaving a legacy of hatred whose effects are still being felt today.

As always, I have tried to be as faithful as possible to the facts and chronology of established events, while putting my own interpretation on the motives, meanings, and the gaps in the record. If the story seems to meander in places, it may be because the crusaders, who had been so brutally single-minded in rampaging across Asia Minor and grinding out victory at Antioch, dithered for months when the road to Jerusalem lay open. The princes seemed to lose interest completely, preferring to nurse their jealousies and quarrel over the spoils they had won that far. Even when they did manage to move on, first to Ma’arat and then to Arqa, they quickly stalled.

In those circumstances, the emergence of Peter Bartholomew as the angry voice of the frustrated poor is hardly surprising. My own sense, which I have tried to convey in the book, is that he was a charlatan who stumbled onto an unexpectedly successful ploy, who grew ever more extreme as he tested the limits of his newfound power, and who eventually came to believe his own hype, to suicidal effect.

But Peter had tapped into one of the most powerful forces at work in the crusade The historical debate over the crusaders’ motives is as energetic as it is futile, but it seems clear that a strong thread of millenarianism inspired many of them. The key biblical text used to preach the crusade – ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16:24) – is drawn from a passage where Jesus foretells the imminent second coming, and several chroniclers of the crusade show the link was clear in their minds when they begin their narratives with the omnious phrase, ‘When that time [i.e., the last days] had already come . . .’ The recapture of Jerusalem by God’s elect has always been seen as a precondition for the end of the world (which is why Christian Zionists today encourage the Jewish diaspora’s return to Israel), and in 1099 the time must have seemed particularly ripe. To the cosmopolitan armies of the crusade, fighting an exotic range of Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Berbers and Africans, it must truly have felt as though God had gathered up all the nations of the earth to wage war for Jerusalem. The fact that they were actually fighting to liberate the city from the forces of Babylon (as Cairo was inaccurately known) only added to the sense of destiny. In this context, Duke Godfrey’s decision to leave the assault just as the city fell, strip off his armour and enter the city through the Golden Gate on the Mount of Olives looks less like humility and more like a conscious evocation – or consummation – of Ezekiel’s prophecies: this was how Christ would return at the end of time.

The First Crusade effectively ended with the victory at Ascalon, three weeks after the capture of Jerusalem. But that was merely the opening chapter in the two-century story of the crusaders’ attempts to master the Holy Land – and, some historians have argued, a far longer saga of western conquest and colonisation generally. Today’s map of the Middle East contains plenty of borders as artificial and fragile as those of the crusader kingdoms, while from Tehran to Baghdad to Jerusalem, the region still draws zealots of many faiths trying to build their paradises on earth. At the time of writing, none has yet succeeded.

Acknowledgements

This was not an easy book to write, but it would have been infinitely harder without the tremendous generosity of others. I owe an enormous debt to my editor, Oliver Johnson, who watched deadlines fly by with cheerful stoicism, and managed to keep my head when I was in danger of losing it. His insights on the first draft were key to shaping the final book, and gave me one of my most enjoyable days working on it (and a fine lunch to boot). Meanwhile, it would need more words than are in this book to justly describe how much my wife Marianna contributed to it: from tramping around Jerusalem to teasing out plot tangles, she endured every step of the journey with good humour and much-tested patience. I was and am lucky to have her with me.

I’m grateful as ever to the British Library, both in London and at their Boston Spa redoubt, and to the Minster Library in York. Susan Edgington generously supplied a pre-publication copy of her translation of Albert of Aachen’s chronicle, which once again gave me access to a wealth of material that would have been otherwise unavailable. The prophecy in the book is adapted from a variety of contemporary sources, but chiefly from translations of the letter of Adso of Montier-en-Der and the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius by Bernard McGinn. The biblical excerpts are generally adapted from the New Revised Standard Version, whose copyright is held by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

Ariel and Sigal Knafo were wonderful hosts on my research trip to Israel, while Emma Pointon kindly showed me her holiday snaps. When inspiration ran dry at home, I found a happy substitute in the Danish Kitchen tearoom in York. Particular thanks go to my agent, Jane Conway-Gordon, and to all the people at Century who worked on giving form to the book: Charlotte Haycock, Richard Ogle, Rodney Paull, Alison Tulett and especially Steve Stone for his magnificent artwork.

The First Crusade ended in victory, but the crusaders’ work had barely begun. The atrocity at Jerusalem left a hunger for revenge across the Muslim world, while in Europe a new order had begun to assert itself. Demetrios’ journey may have ended, but the story goes on.

Tom Harper

July 2006

tom@tom-harper.co.uk

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