The Mosaic of Shadows

‘What did you do with the Immortals?’ Sigurd demanded. ‘Why, after the barbarians had surrendered did you order our cavalry to destroy them, when it was the Emperor’s dearest wish that they should be spared?’

I saw Krysaphios glance to his side and tilt his head a little, as if beckoning someone. Guards, I guessed. ‘The Emperor is dying, and whoever succeeds him will rely greatly on his chamberlain as he accustoms himself to rule. If you disagree with my policy out of sentiment for a weak-willed fool, whose nerve failed in our darkest hour, you would do well to reconsider. I will have need of strong warriors when I serve the new Emperor, but only those who obey.’

The circle surrounding him had eased a little, for many were clearly uncomfortable with our talk and uncertain where to display their loyalties. I tried to discomfort them further. ‘Did you ally yourselves with the barbarians from the beginning, Krysaphios? Did you really mean to give our empire over to their tyranny, until you saw just now that they were defeated?’

Krysaphios’ cheeks swelled out like a serpent’s. ‘That is treason, Demetrios Askiates, and you will not escape its penalty this time. Nor will you have even the consolation of righteousness when your daughters are screaming in my dungeon, for none have worked against the barbarians more diligently than I. Would I give over the triumph of our civilisation to a snivelling race of animals, scarce fit to tup in the gutters of this city? I will be remembered as he who saved the empire, while the Emperor Alexios will be anathemised as a godless traitor, a lover of barbarians.’

I heard a commotion in the crowd behind me: the eunuch’s guards, I presumed, coming to drag me away. Sigurd was lifting his axe, though he could hardly have wielded it in that room, but I was still. The jibe about my daughters had shattered my will, for they were still in the palace, and if I resisted the eunuch he would surely visit unthinkable horrors on them.

‘Tell me,’ I said brokenly. ‘Did the Emperor die of his wounds?’

‘He will.’ Krysaphios raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘We searched, but his physician could not be found to heal him.’

The last words of his sentence seemed unnaturally loud, but it was only as he stopped that I realised it was because the rest of the room had fallen silent.

‘And who sent my physician away this morning?’ Though slowed with exhaustion, and more strained than before, the voice was undeniable. I forgot Krysaphios, and turned in wonder to the bronze doors. They were flung open, and between their mighty posts, leaning on a stick and with a bandage for a crown, there stood the Emperor Alexios.

All in the room fell to their knees, then scrambled from his path as he advanced on the throne. He walked stiffly, and his eyes were clenched with pain, but his words rang clear as ever. ‘Who ordered the hipparch to send a hundred men when my brother ordered ten? Who ordered the Immortals to massacre the barbarians when they had surrendered the field? Who now stands beside my throne and schemes to fill it with his puppets?’ He reached us, and I saw a phalanx of Varangians drawn up beyond the doors behind.

‘You are recovered, Lord.’ Krysaphios alone had not bowed to the Emperor, and he did not do so now. ‘Thanks be to God. But your mind is clouded. The daze left by the assassin’s blow cannot be bound up with linen.’

‘Nor can his spear-thrust, if there is no physician to call on. If the chamberlain has ordered him to count herbs in the Bucoleon while the Emperor lies bleeding. Thank God indeed that I found another in my palace.’

At last I understood how the Emperor had outlasted the innumerable reverses of his reign, why his armies’ loyalty had never wavered in defeats which would have ruined his predecessors. Even now, limping and gasping, there was a power in his face which was more than mere authority: perfect certainty, the unanswerable knowledge that he would prevail.

Even so, Krysaphios resisted it, flicking his eyes over the room in a search for allies. None showed themselves. ‘Lord,’ he pleaded, ‘let us not quarrel in victory. If I have erred, it was in the service of the empire. Surely such sins can be forgiven.’

‘You conspired with the barbarians to murder me,’ said Alexios. ‘You of all my counsellors. What did they promise you? That when they had sacked our city, and ravaged our women, and carried off our treasure, you would be left as their regent? Or did you think you could . . .’

‘No!’ Krysaphios almost screeched the denial. ‘How can you call me a traitor, when you yourself would have given half the empire to those demons?’ He crouched down, as if to perform homage or kiss the hem of the Emperor’s robe, but instead he lifted his own garments high over his waist. There was a gasp of disgust from the crowd, and many hid their eyes, but many more stared in ghoulish fascination at the eunuch’s exposed loins. His organs were entirely absent, as a carzimasian, but the horror of his unnatural flesh was magnified still further by the brutal mesh of scars which covered it.

‘Do you see this?’ he screamed, pointing crudely. ‘This disfigurement? This is what the barbarians do to their enemies – for sport! Give them a captive and their evil minds turn only to cruelty and torture.’ Mercifully, he let his robes drop back to the floor. ‘I would give my last breath of life to save the empire from their violence – and yours also, if you would not heed my warnings.’

‘You tried to kill me.’ Alexios’ voice faltered with pain. ‘You would have unleashed civil war, and opened the empire to the worst depredations of all our enemies.’

‘If I conspired with the barbarians, it was only to lure them into revealing the black truth of their hearts, so you could witness their evil. But you would not see it. Your love of conquest blinded you, for you would rather rule a despoiled empire than protect your people. And now, because I guarded the people you would have forgotten, I will be sacrificed.’

‘As you never tired of telling me, I am merciful – too merciful – to my defeated enemies.’

‘You lie.’ All this time Krysaphios had been edging back through the crowd, retreating from the Emperor’s gaze; now he found himself at the brink of the room under the windows. ‘You will cast me into the dungeon for your torturers to unleash their craft upon.’ He snapped his head up and met the Emperor’s eyes. ‘But I have been a prisoner before, and I will not submit to that mercy again. Let the barbarians come, and let them tear the flesh from your empire: I will not see it.’

With a final, sobbing sneer, he bowed his head and stepped off the parapet. Alexios started forward, one arm half raised, but Krysaphios would have hit the ground before he had covered half the distance and he went no further. A great sadness shrouded his face.

I ran to the window and looked down. The walls were high here, and sheer, dropping unbroken to the rocks below. The ground was blurred in the fading light, its details indistinct, but amid the muted stones I could still see the eunuch’s body. It lay stretched out like a fallen angel, a fragment of gold against the darkness.

κ θ

A web of incense hung under the great dome of Ayia Sophia, its curling tendrils caught in the sunlight which fell through the windows. One shaft struck just behind the Emperor’s head, shining off the back of his throne and illuminating the hazy air like a nimbus. On his right sat the patriarch Nikolas, on his left his brother Isaak, a triumvirate of unyielding glory. Elsewhere in the city they would be ringing bells and singing songs for the great feast of Easter, but here the vast crowd was silent, watching the ceremony unfold.

At the front of the hall, the barbarian captains sat in a line on chairs inlaid with silver. Duke Godfrey was there with his brother Baldwin, and the three ambassadors I recognised from the day of Aelric’s treachery; others whom I had not seen before were there also, and, at the far end of the row, Count Hugh. He was apparently reconciled now with the kinsmen who had mocked and despised him, though he seemed uncomfortable in their company. His companions looked no happier, every one of them sour-faced with suspicion.

Trumpets sounded, and as the heralds recited Duke Godfrey’s name and titles, he rose and approached the throne. From my position in the western aisle I could not see his face, but the silence of the congregation left his words perfectly audible in that cavernous hall. Prompted by the interpreter, he spoke the words of the oath that had been agreed the night before: he swore to respect the ancient boundaries of the Romans, to serve the Emperor faithfully in battle and to restore to him all lands which his ancestors rightfully held. Seven scribes sat at a table recording every word, and when the oath was taken the Emperor’s son-in-law, Bryennios, stepped forward to present a golden garland. There would be much more gold to follow, I knew, for the Emperor was ever generous to his defeated enemies.

Duke Godfrey retook his seat gracelessly, wearing the garland like a crown of throns. Then the heralds called his brother and I tensed, while across the hall seven pens sat poised in the air to see what he would say. For a second I thought he had stepped too close to the throne, that he would bring the Varangians rushing down on him, but now he was on one knee mumbling indistinct allegiance. He did not wait for Bryennios when he was done, but marched back to his seat stiff with shame. A rash of pink scarred his cheeks like plague-spots.

The oaths took almost an hour, followed by anthems of acclamation and the liturgy of Easter. When the patriarch put the cup of Christ to Baldwin’s lips I feared he would spit it back, but he managed to choke it down under the stern eyes of his brother. Then there were more hymns of praise and unity – the message doubtless lost on the barbarians – and at last the long procession into the cheering crowds of the Augusteion. A double line of Varangians had parted the mob, forming a human corridor between church and palace, and as I emerged into the sunlight I saw the last of the Emperor’s retinue disappearing within. The Emperor might be generous to his enemies, I reflected, but not kind: three hours in church followed by the rigours of an imperial banquet would reduce the Franks to the utmost misery. Doubtless they would find compensations.

‘Weren’t you summoned to feast at the Emperor’s table?’

I looked up. Sigurd was standing by a pillar beside me, surveying his men with quiet pride. ‘I’ve spoken enough with barbarians,’ I told him. ‘And not nearly enough with my daughters.’

Sigurd nodded. ‘There’ll be more barbarians soon enough. The logothete reports that the Normans will be here in a week.’

‘They won’t cause trouble.’ Weariness spurred my hope, but reason agreed. ‘Word of the Franks’ humiliation will spread to them; they will think again before defying the Emperor openly.’

‘And this time there’ll be no mad eunuch urging them on. Though if there is,’ Sigurd added, ‘he’ll know better than to draw Demetrios Askiates into his schemes.’

I smiled at the compliment, though I did not deserve it. ‘I served Krysaphios’ purposes all too well – he could have no complaint of me. He wished me to discover that the monk was in league with the barbarians, that they plotted to usurp the Emperor, so that he might have a pretext for insisting on their destruction. He judged me perfectly – it was the Emperor’s stubbornness he underestimated.’

Sigurd bridled with mock temper. ‘It was the Varangians he underestimated,’ he told me, waving an arm at the burnished cohorts before him. ‘If not for my sword in that throne-room, Demetrios, your head would now be raised on a Frankish spear. And the Emperor’s beside it.’

I laughed. ‘You are restored to favour now. And the eunuch is gone.’ In my heart I could still find pity for Krysaphios, for the terrible wounds he had suffered and the treachery they had driven him to, but I could not forgive him for balancing the empire on a sword edge.

‘Krysaphios had not learned the lesson of the past,’ I mused aloud. ‘He was of a generation who believed that the imperial office was their tool, to be filled, used or discarded as they saw fit. A generation who turned all-conquering glory to invasion and rebellion in fifty meagre years. They never saw that the throne is too much like a serpent’s egg – most dangerous when it is empty.’

To my chagrin, the Varangian laughed at my melancholy reflections. ‘Will you use the Emperor’s reward to retire and write epigrams? And can this be the same Demetrios Askiates who four months ago was so reluctant to tie his fortunes to those of the Emperor?’

‘Now I have no choice. I am marked as the Emperor’s man, with all the advantage and prejudice that brings.’ When you save a man’s life, I thought, you buy it with a small piece of your own.

In the sky above, a breeze pushed away the scrap of cloud which had covered the sun and I smiled. ‘And you, Sigurd? Are you invited to the Emperor’s banquet, or will you join me for the Easter meal?’

Sigurd swelled. ‘Do you believe that the Emperor would allow himself into a roomful of his enemies without due precaution? I will be in the Hall of Nineteen Couches, watching for any Frank who waves so much as a quail-bone at him.’

I left Sigurd shouting orders at his company, and pushed my way gradually out of the Augusteion towards the Mesi. It felt strange to be watching the Emperor from a distance again, the untouchable statue I had always known; those few days when I had fought and argued and battled with the greatest men in the empire already seemed far removed. Now the crisis was past and his orbit would draw apart from mine, into the rarefied circles where even the most magnificent moved with caution. He would be locked behind a hundred doors, every one watched jealously by an army of functionaries, and his words would come from the mouths of others. Through every tribulation he would maintain a perfect stillness, for he was the keystone of the empire, locking in the vaulting ambition of his nobles and keeping it off the shoulders of the people below. Though a single gem from his robes would have supplied a year of my needs, I did not envy him it.

I turned off the Mesi and followed the road towards my house. The streets were filled with families and children and roasting lambs fresh from the market. The smell made me hungry after long hours standing in the church, and I was glad to see my own family already had the coals dutifully glowing under the meat.

‘Did the barbarians behave?’ Anna stepped away from the spit, leaving Zoe to turn it. ‘Or am I called to the palace to bandage the Emperor again?’

‘Sigurd should see to it that you aren’t needed. Except perhaps to sew up some barbarian skulls. I fear your career at the palace may be finished.’

Anna lifted her eyebrows. ‘For a man who claims to be a master of unveiling mysteries, you can be unduly ignorant, Demetrios. My career at the palace is barely begun, for the empress herself has sent word that she requires a physician to attend her. I think the Emperor will be keen to keep me near, now that he has found me.’

‘I thought you found him.’ The smoke of lemon and rosemary played in my nose, stirring new hunger in my stomach. ‘Bleeding and dying in the corridors of the palace, while his attendants fluttered helplessly.’

Anna poked a knife into the lamb, and watched the oily juices dribble down its side. They spat and popped in the fire. ‘I think this is cooked. Helena is just fetching some bread from the house.’

I rasped my knife over a stone, and began slicing meat off the bones. It was troublesome work, for heat rose off the coals and fat splashed my hands, so I did not hear the footsteps behind me, nor even look when the shadow fell over me.

The sound of a plate crashing against my doorstep drew my attention though. Helena was standing there amid shards of pottery, staring at something past my shoulder like Mary in the garden. I turned, and almost dropped my knife in the fire in astonishment. It was Thomas, seeming taller and broader than ever as he stood over me, yet with a nervous hesitancy in his face.

‘I come back to you,’ he said simply.

I could see he did not speak to me, and I was about to launch a hail of questions when I felt Anna’s hand against my arm.

‘You’ll need another plate,’ she said, nodding to Helena’s feet. ‘At least.’

‘I will bring two.’

Thomas had suffered the murder of his parents, the abuse of the monk and now, I guessed from the scabbed blood on his cheek, the betrayal of his race. He had also saved my life. Sharing my table was the least he was due. How much else he desired I could guess from the silent, awkward looks which he and Helena exchanged, but I would address that later. Now I served him the thickest cut of the meat, filled his cup to overflowing and did not say a word when I saw his hand entwined with Helena’s, nor even when they mumbled an excuse and walked down the street to where the cypress tree grew. It was not a day for argument.

Much later, after the sun had set, I climbed to the roof with a flagon of wine. The streets below were dark, save a few patches of glimmering embers, but the sky was laden with stars. I squinted at them, picking out the ancient constellations which governed our lives. There was Lyra, and Krios the ram and Argo, and a hundred others I had forgotten or could not piece together. When I had named all I could I gave up, relaxed my eyes, and watched the fragmented lights swirl together in patterns of my own imagining. Sometimes beasts and heroes would emerge, sometimes the shapes of leaves or fruits, but most often they were simply the formless weavings of fancy.

Drawing my eyes down, I looked out over the roofs and domes which surrounded me, and let my thoughts descend from the stars to the lands beyond the empire. From the west, I knew, the Normans were coming, and behind them the Kelts, while to the east and south lay a wilderness of Turks, Fatimids, Ishmaelites and Saracens. No wonder the Emperor had more than once nearly died holding their dangers in balance. Doubtless while his empire provoked the lust and envy of the world he would do so again. But tonight his power endured, and under the heavens the queen of cities slept.

Tελoς

Read on for an extract from the thrilling new

Tom Harper novel, Knights of the Cross,

now available in Century

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

I

Besiegers

7 March – 3 June 1098

α

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

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

I looked up from the tombstone that I was trying to dislodge and stared at my companion, trying not to see the desecration behind him. An unrelenting season of cold and rain had returned his stout features to the sallow colour of his ancestors, while his unkempt hair and beard were almost of a colour with the rusting links of his armour. Like all who had survived the winter horrors, his skin hung loose from his bones, his shoulders seemed too narrow for his mail coat, and the tail of his belt flapped from being drawn so tight. Yet still there was strength in the arms which had once seemed like the columns of a church, and a gleaming edge on the axe which leaned against the wall of the trench.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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