Knights of the Cross (38 page)

But for once his gloom was misplaced – or Bohemond’s luck too strong. The Turkish army was routed; I could see them vying with each other to press through the citadel’s gate to safety.

‘Listen.’

The pounding on our makeshift barrier had stopped. I crossed to the northern battlements and saw Turks running back along the wall. When none followed, Sigurd and I pulled the bodies and the shields aside, while the Varangians kept crossbows ready against any enemies who remained.

The room below was empty, at least of the living.

‘We had better be swift,’ I said. My voice rang hollow in my ears, as if my soul were watching my body from a great distance. I remembered what the priestess had said of the angelic spark captive within our clay, and shook my head. This was not the time for such thoughts.

As gently as we could, though not nearly so gently as to stop them weeping with pain, we manhandled the wounded down the ladder, then repositioned it against the outer window. Those who were not hurt lowered the injured onto the walls, while Sigurd and I examined the fallen in the guardroom, seeking the living.

There was only one: Quino. We found him slumped in a corner, his tabard soaked in blood where a Turkish sword had pierced his belly. At first I thought he was dead, but some movement of my shadow must have stirred his senses for I heard a gurgling moan. It seemed incredible that there had been anything in him to bleed, so skeletal had he appeared at the top of the tower. Then, he had looked almost eager for death, yet now that it had come for him some stubborn remnant of his soul clung to life. We bound his wound with the clothes of the dead, passed him down through the window, and began our long trudge back across the valley.

Sigurd carried Quino in his arms – he was so frail that he could have weighed little more than a child – while the rest of us bore the other wounded between us. It was a hard journey over the broken landscape, and we jolted them terribly as we picked our way over hummocks of the dead. Once a Varangian’s bandage caught on a briar and was torn from his side, spilling yet more blood into the red earth. Mercifully, no one attacked us. Only scavengers and devourers of carrion shared the field with us: crows and flies and lean-faced women stripping the fallen of their possessions.

Even the Norman lines were deserted. With Kerbogha’s army forced back into its citadel, the Normans had retreated onto the mountain top. We passed in silence through their defences, makeshift barricades of heaped stone and masonry. They would not have served to pen a flock of sheep, but they had been enough to break the Turks, whose corpses in some places were piled higher than the walls themselves.

Pausing for a moment, I looked ahead. The Normans seemed to have gathered in a great crowd on the crest of the mountain, hundreds of them ranged in a circle around a figure I could not see. Were they celebrating the victory? They were remarkably muted – almost solemn.

We laid the wounded in the shade of a boulder, where the women could bring water, and hurried up the slope. The crowd was thick; the blood and sweat that stained their armour almost steamed off them in the heat. Nonetheless, Sigurd and I managed to push through until we found a small rise from where we could see the centre of the circle.

All the princes I had seen earlier were there: Raymond and Bohemond, Hugh, Robert and Tancred – and Adhemar, seated on a rock between them. Beside him stood a priest in white robes, a slight man with a mop of dark hair. Like all of us in those days, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes dull, but there was a twitch in his shoulders that bespoke nervousness, the anticipation of some spectacle to perform. I knew him: he was the priest Stephen, one of Adhemar’s chaplains. I had seen him often in the bishop’s tent.

Adhemar was speaking. ‘Christ has granted you this victory. But like all the works of man, it will soon become dust. Kerbogha’s forces are so legion that he may fling them at us as often as he likes, heedless of loss. We cannot match him man for man. For the eternal victory, we must implore God’s aid.’

A fit of coughing overwhelmed the bishop. At his side, I could see Bohemond with an ill-tempered scowl on his face, despite the battle he had won. Raymond, by contrast, wore a strange smirk.

‘Truly, we have tried God’s indulgence. Some have hidden themselves away, deserting the just battle from craven fear. They tremble to become martyrs to Christ. Some – many – have worked evil pleasures with the pagan women of Antioch, and the stink of it has reached even into Heaven. A few have forsaken God in their hearts. He has made our camp a barren wilderness; He has filled it with scorpions and serpents, and left us to be preyed on by wolves.’

Some of the men around me looked sullen – they could not have expected such a harangue in victory – but many more seemed abashed and afraid. Doubt had fallen over them, and there was a desperation in their gaze which hungered for solace.

‘Yet do not fear.’ Adhemar’s voice rose, carried on a new strength. ‘Our Lord is a merciful god, and He listens to the saints who intercede for us. He has sent a token that He keeps faith with His pilgrims.’

A murmur of wonder rippled through the crowd, and they pressed in closer.

‘Last night, this priest was granted a vision.’

The priest, Stephen, stepped forward. His arms were rigid by his sides, though his left hand flapped involuntarily against his thigh; he looked like a mouse before a flock of hawks. He looked at the ground, and spoke so softly that Adhemar had to urge him several times to raise his voice.

‘It came to me last night. In the fire and the panic, I took refuge in the church of Saint Mary. Many terrors assailed me and I prayed to Christ, imploring His mercy. When I raised my eyes, three figures were before me.’

‘Describe them,’ Adhemar ordered.

‘Two men and a woman.’

‘Did you know them?’

‘Your Grace, I did. But they were not of this Earth.’ He hesitated, as though even he faltered before the wonder of his vision. ‘They were wreathed in a cloud of gold, which shimmered behind them so that they stood out from the darkness. They had the form of humans – but no substance. To the right stood a man, very old. His beard was white. In one hand he carried a staff mounted with a cross, while in the other he bore a ring of keys that jangled as he moved. He was Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles and guardian of Antioch.’

At a little distance from the priest, Bohemond stood fidgeting with the hem of his tunic. One of his red eyebrows seemed inclined upwards.

‘To the left was a woman. Her robe was blue, trimmed with gold, and her face looked as serene as the stars. In her arm she cradled a child, whose countenance radiated the light of heaven—’

‘The mother of God,’ Adhemar interrupted. ‘And the third?’

‘He stood in front of his companions and his face was solemn, though beautiful beyond all men. He clutched a Bible to his heart, and when he spoke it was with the sound of many waters. He asked if I knew him, and I answered no, for I feared to lift my thoughts to such presumption. But even as I denied it, a radiant cross appeared above his head. Again he asked if I knew him.’

There was something pedestrian, almost rote in the way Stephen recited the words, but his speech had drawn in every man among the Normans. They were held rapt by his performance; Count Raymond, standing before us, looked as though he himself could see the vision at that very moment.

‘I replied: “I do not know you, but I see a cross like our Saviour’s.”

‘“I am He,” He answered.

‘My Lords, I fell at His feet and beseeched His mercy, and the loving Virgin and the blessed Peter fell at His feet also, praying Him to aid us in our distress.’

‘What did He say?’

The memory of the miracle, or the attention of the crowd, had filled the priest with confidence. He crossed himself, turned his face to the heavens and closed his eyes.

‘He said, “All along the length of your journey, through every toil and peril, I have walked beside you. I broke open the walls of Nicaea, and I held your lance at Dorylaeum. When you suffered torments before Antioch I grieved, and when you strayed like lost sheep I lamented your wickedness. It was I who brought you safe into Antioch, rejoicing as you drove the pagan host from my house. At that hour, the angels sang in Heaven, and my holy father was well pleased.”

‘Then he opened his book, and it seemed it was written in letters of fire so that I could not read its words. “Tell my people,” He said, “that if they are with me, I am with them. They will fast, and offer penance, and in five days I will grant a miracle that all will see. I am with you, and none in Earth or Heaven shall stand before me.”’

Stephen’s head slumped forward. ‘He closed his book, yet the light did not dim. Indeed, it grew brighter, and brighter still. I lowered my eyes; I closed them, and covered them with my hands, but still I could not shut out His divine light. When I looked again, He was gone, and I was alone in the church.’

The priest stepped away, shrinking back into himself, and the spirit which had animated him departed. It was as if the sun had retreated behind a cloud, though the sky was immaculately clear. A wondrous silence gripped the mountain top.

Adhemar sat still on his rock, his back straight and his hands folded together. ‘Amen.’

His word was like a pebble cast into the middle of a pond, rippling out through the crowd.
Amen. Amen. Amen
.

‘And you will swear that all you have said is true?’ Adhemar asked the priest.

‘Before God and all His saints.’

Adhemar waved his hand, and two more priests emerged into the centre of the circle. One held a book bound with silver; the other an ornately jewelled golden crucifix. Adhemar stood, took them, and passed them to Stephen. His hands, I noticed, were shaking again.

Stephen lifted the book.

‘This is the gospel of Christ,’ said Adhemar. ‘Do you swear by its truth the truth of your vision?’

‘I swear it.’

‘This is the cross of Christ. Do you swear on the pain of our Saviour the truth of your vision?’

‘I swear it.’

Adhemar turned to take back his holy artefacts. But the priest was not yet finished.

‘I will swear by whatever oath will satisfy you. If there is any man here who doubts me, I will climb to the top of that tower’ – he pointed to the tower in the wall, where Bohemond’s banner flew – ‘and throw myself down. If I speak truly, surely I will be borne up on the hands of angels, so that not one toe touches the ground. Or, if you prefer, I will suffer the ordeal of fire. The truth of God’s righteousness will guard me from the flames. Does any man ask it?’

He spoke with fervour, though there was a nervous reticence in his eyes which was at odds with his words. I saw Bohemond open his mouth as if to speak, but he closed it again as Adhemar calmly answered: ‘You have sworn on the gospels. That is enough.’

A murmur of assent rumbled through the crowd.

‘We will—’

Adhemar was silenced as a man broke free of the crowd and ran towards him. He fell to his knees at the bishop’s feet and – in a braying voice which Kerbogha himself must have heard in the citadel – declared: ‘Mercy, your Grace: I too have received a vision of the Lord.’

Confusion and consternation erupted from the massed Franks, but if Adhemar felt any surprise he mastered it quickly. He stooped down and raised the man to his feet, then turned him to face the crowd.

I had thought that I recognised the voice, the self-righteousness and wheedling. The face I certainly knew. His hair had been combed since the night before, and a new tunic put on him, but the crooked nose and sneering lip were the same. Truly, it seemed there was nowhere that Peter Bartholomew might not appear.

‘I have beheld His glory too.’ He thrust out his chest like a cockerel readying its crow. ‘In dreams and in visions, Saint Andrew the apostle has visited me.’

I sensed a certain hostility among the throng. Perhaps they did not like Bartholomew’s sudden arrival, or were unimpressed by the lesser saint he had seen. Perhaps they knew him as I did.

Adhemar, though, was indulgent. ‘How often?’

‘Four times.’

The crowd stirred. This was better.

‘Did he speak to you?’

Peter nodded greedily, then remembered his humility and bowed his head. ‘He did. With words so wondrous that I scarcely dared believe them.’

‘What did he say?’ called a soldier from the crowd.

‘He said: “Know my words and obey them. When you have entered Antioch, go to the cathedral of Saint Peter. There, hidden, you will find the spear of the centurion Longinus, the holy lance which pierced the side of our Saviour as he hung on the cross at Calvary.’

I felt warm breath against my ear as Sigurd leaned close. ‘I have seen the lance of Longinus. It is in Constantinople, in the Chapel of the Virgin at the palace.’

‘I know.’