Knights of the Cross (17 page)

‘No.’ It was true – I did not think so, though I could not entirely disbelieve it either.

‘Even if the murder was the Devil’s work, he need not have troubled to stir himself. There are many acolytes too ready to hear his bidding.’ Anna paused. ‘What did Bohemond say?’

‘I have not told him. I have not spoken with him since I saw the cave.’

‘He has lost his enthusiasm for finding Drogo’s killer?’

‘Yes.’ I remembered the Count of Saint-Gilles’s cynicism. ‘When it seemed a Provençal might have been the murderer, Bohemond was eager to prove the man’s guilt. Now that Rainauld is beyond suspicion, his interest wanes.’

‘It will wane still further if he discovers that his men worshipped at the shrine of a Persian demon. That will not enhance his standing in the Army of God.’

‘His standing matters nothing while the army wastes itself against this city.’ Again, my anger welled within me. ‘For what he and his nephew have done, I would happily see their heads impaled on Turkish spears. If his men have communion with the Devil, if Satan has come to claim them for his own or if God has wreaked his vengeance, so be it. I no longer care what befalls them, nor even whether Antioch falls or stands. I would like to see Jerusalem, but not in the train of this army of thieves and murderers. That is no pilgrimage.’ I lowered my voice, aware that my words might carry too far in the quiet of the night. ‘Let them all kill each other, the sooner that I can return to my family.’

My face had grown hot with anger. Then, suddenly, there were cool lips against my own, drawing the fever from me. I started, then pressed forward in haste to meet her kiss. For long moments we said nothing.

‘Whatever befalls the Normans, you won’t stop seeking Drogo and Rainauld’s killer,’ Anna said, pulling her hood back over her hair.

‘Because Bohemond has bought me?’ I challenged her.

‘Not at all.’ She set her finger against my mouth to hush me, then stroked it over my cheek and into my beard. ‘In part, because Bohemond may find the truth unwelcome. But mostly, I think, because you cannot let a mystery be until you have torn off its veil and revealed it to the world.’

Anna spoke truthfully, and I opened my arms to acknowledge it. Somewhere in the night an owl was hunting, while insects chittered and water dripped from a mossy ledge nearby. Down on the plain the Army of God would be dousing its fires and settling onto muddy straw and reeds. But up on the mountain, under a starless sky, Anna and I sinned in silence on the rocky bed we had made.

Anna’s embrace comforted me that night, but stark guilt gnawed at me next day. The memory of the cave had weighed heavy on me for weeks: my soul could hardly bear further sins. I was in a black humour as Sigurd and I walked the road on the west bank of the Orontes, checking all who passed for hoarded food or treachery. The worst straits of our famine had abated in the month gone by, as spring had opened the mountains and the seas to the Emperor’s convoys, but a little food had proved almost worse than none. Our grain became the seed of a thousand quarrels, envy and greed flourishing on its stalk, and it took frequent patrols to keep peace in the camp.

‘We would do better,’ said Sigurd, ‘turning our efforts against the city.’

We would indeed. With sun and food, the army’s strength had begun to recover, but the spring had produced no thaw in the Turkish defences. Across the sparkling river, beyond the tents, Antioch’s long walls faced us as stoutly as ever. From the heights where we stood I could see the red-tiled roofs of the houses within, and the terraced orchards climbing up the slope behind. In the fields to the north tiny figures steered ploughs and oxen, tilling the ground for the new season’s crop. They could be confident, I feared, of still being there to reap the harvest.

‘If I were the princes, I would grow more nervous every day,’ said Sigurd. ‘Once their armies find their health, they’ll turn to greater mischief if they cannot spend their vigour in battle.’

‘There’s little danger of mischief, then.’ A stone had worked its way into my boot, and we paused while I extracted it. ‘It’s been two months since Bohemond defeated the last relief army. There are more Turks left in Asia, and the news of our siege will have travelled far. If they come again in strength, we will be hard pressed to defeat them.’

‘Then perhaps they’ll allow us to go home.’

Sigurd might joke, but we both knew the danger. Rumours of impending Turkish armies swept around the camp every day, but recently they had become more consistent, more specific. Only that morning an imperial courier had brought Tatikios a message. He would not divulge its contents, but it had left him pale. As long as we had none save the city’s defenders to oppose us, the priests could preach that time was of no import in the service of the Lord. But that delusion was folly. Sooner or later, it would be exposed on the spears of an approaching army.

‘Demetrios!’ A Varangian, his fair hair blowing out behind him, came running up the road. ‘The doctor has sent me – she says you must come. She has discovered something about the dead Norman.’

‘Drogo? What is it?’

‘She would not say.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In her tent, treating a Frankish pilgrim.’

I left Sigurd and ran back. Anna had caused her tent to be set on the southern edge of our camp, facing the open ground that separated us from the Normans. A narrow stream ran off the mountain nearby to give fresh water, and nourished a plentiful supply of reeds for the patients’ rest. As was her custom when the sun shone, Anna had rolled up the walls of her tent. Underneath the canopy were four crude beds, planks raised on stones and covered with rushes; three were empty, but a half-naked figure was lying face down on the fourth, apparently asleep. A poultice bound in cloth oozed green fluid onto his back. On a stool beside him Anna kept patient vigil, her dress covered by a much-stained apron.

‘What have you found?’ I asked, panting with the effort of running.

She looked up from her patient. ‘I wondered whether Drogo’s name would bring you.’

‘When you call, of course I come immediately.’

She wrinkled her nose in mock disbelief, then gestured back to the bed. ‘Look at this.’

As soon as I looked, I saw why Anna had summoned me. From the poultice, I guessed there must have been some cut or boil on the man’s neck, but that was not the first wound he had suffered – nor what drew my gaze. Among the warts and freckles and pimples, a long scar ran up his spine, disappearing under his dishevelled hair; another intersected it just below the shoulder. The skin was puckered tight, with none of the glossy sheen of a freshly healed cut, but the lines were straight and clear as the day they were carved, unmistakable in the cross they made.

‘I see why you thought of Drogo.’

‘He came to me to lance a boil. He was reluctant to remove his tunic, but the pain was so great that at last he surrendered.’

‘This was cut some time ago. He—’

Something of my voice must have penetrated the man’s dreams, for he shuddered, and turned his head abruptly towards us. ‘Who are you?’

‘Who are
you
?’

‘Peter Bartholomew.’ He winced as his movement strained the burst boil. ‘A pilgrim of the Lord.’

I could have guessed from his ragged clothes that he was no knight. Nor was there any nobility in his face: his nose was crooked, as if it had been broken in a fight, his teeth were cracked, and the skin was pocked with sores. ‘Do you follow Christ faithfully?’

‘As faithfully as I may.’

‘Really?’ Anna pointed to the base of his spine, just above the folds of his tunic. The skin around it was covered with blisters, some bubbling up, others long since burst and crusted with pus. I grimaced; I had been in the army long enough to know the symptoms of an immoral disease.

Bartholomew’s ratlike eyes blinked at us. ‘Even Job, who was perfect in the Lord’s sight, was smitten with sore boils from head to toe. I endure my trials as best I can.’

‘Doubtless the Lord will judge you as you deserve. Was it He, pilgrim, who carved His sign in your flesh?’

Bartholomew yelped and tried to leap up from the bed. The poultice tumbled from his back, spilling pulpy leaves over the soil, but I had expected his move and clamped my hand on his shoulder to hold him down. He writhed and twisted like an eel in my grip until Beric, the Varangian who had summoned me, stepped forward and pinned down his arms.

‘Who put that mark on your back?’

‘I did it, as a mark of my piety before the Lord.’

‘You did not carve it by reaching your hands over your shoulder. Who helped you?’

‘A . . . a friend.’

‘His name?’

‘He is dead now.’

‘Is he?’ Trying to ignore his stink, which was very great, I leaned close to Bartholomew’s ear. ‘You are not the only man to bear that cross, Bartholomew. I have seen it on two others, though their piety earned them no favour from the Lord. They were dead.’

‘Dead?’ Spit drooled out of the side of his mouth.

‘You have heard of Drogo of Melfi? Or Rainauld of Albigeois?’

‘I know of the knight Rainauld. He was a Provençal, as I am.’

‘Then you know what befell him, how his broken body was found ravaged in a culvert.’ I pulled out my knife and laid the flat of the blade against his neck. He shivered at the touch of the cold iron. ‘You would not wish to suffer the same fate.’

The pilgrim’s ugly face creased into sobs. ‘Have mercy,’ he wailed. ‘I came here for healing, and now I will be murdered. Have mercy on Your servant, Lord. Deliver me from my enemies, from the workers of bloody iniquity who set snares for my soul. O Lord my shield, God of mercy, You alone are my defence and my refuge, have mercy—’

‘Silence,’ I snapped. ‘Do not pretend to invoke His name, lest hearing you He visits still more afflictions upon you. Why did you have the cross carved?’

‘To show my piety.’

‘To whom?’

‘To the Lord God.’

I slapped my knife against the raw skin of the boil that Anna had lanced, and he screamed. ‘When two or three men bear exactly the same mark, I think it is more than personal piety that moves them. You were part of some secret order or brotherhood, were you not, and this was your sign?’

‘Yes,’ shrieked Bartholomew. ‘It is true – there was a brotherhood. You could not understand it for it was a fellowship of purity, of sanctity.’

‘A fellowship of purity?’ I repeated. ‘Why should that have been kept a secret?’

‘Because the Devil has many spies lurking to snatch us. Because the Army of God has become corrupted. Our leaders have forgotten Christ and are fallen prey to selfish greed; our camp festers with vice and blasphemy. Why else has God deserted us before this city? Voices cry out to them to straighten their ways, but they suppress us. That is why we meet in secret and hide the marks of our faith, lest the ravening wolves of Satan consume us.’

‘And Drogo and Rainauld were adepts of this group?’ I did not know whether to trust him, but there was a terrified force in his words that betold their truth.

‘I cannot say.’

‘You
will
say.’ I tapped him with my knife again, though this time on unbroken skin.

‘I cannot. We are sworn to secrecy – and even if I have betrayed that, I cannot betray my companions. I do not know their names.’

‘You must have seen some whom you recognised.’

‘My eyes were only focused on God.’ Having revealed his secret and survived, Bartholomew seemed to be finding new strength.

‘How did you discover the group, if you knew no one in it?’

‘My friend – who is dead – brought the priest to speak with me. She spoke with me for many hours, opening my eyes to truth and repentance. Afterwards—’

So confused were my thoughts that it took a full sentence for me to hear the meaning of his words. ‘
She
?’ I exploded, spinning him round so that he stared up at me. ‘The priest was a
woman
? What sort of heresy was this?’

‘No heresy but the truth of Christ. Consider the Holy Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus – she was a woman made a vessel of God’s purpose. Why not another? Sarah lived—’

‘Sarah? Her name was Sarah?’ I felt like a man flailing on the edge of a cliff, snatching at branches not knowing if they would snap or hold. ‘She was a Provençal?’

Bartholomew shook his head, plainly terrified by my frenzy. ‘She was not a Provençal. I thought she was a Greek, though she did not speak of it. Her name was Sarah.’

‘Demetrios!’

The sound of my name spun me around in redoubled confusion. Stooped under the tent flaps, a Patzinak behind him, Sigurd was watching me. His face was grim.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Tatikios has summoned us.’

‘Tatikios can wait,’ I insisted. ‘My business is urgent.’

‘You must come. He has decided to leave Antioch.’