Knights of the Cross (42 page)

And there, even the most fervent advocates of the lance began to lose faith. Kerbogha’s new strategy saved us from the press of battle, but nothing could cure the misery of our condition. Famine consumed us. Each day it seemed there was nothing to eat, yet each day after there was less. Limbs shrank into themselves until skin and bone fused together, while bellies – by some cruel junction of humours – swelled as if we had gorged ourselves. Men pulled apart dung with their bare hands, seeking even a single grain which might remain undigested. We stripped the trees of their leaves and ate those, boiling them into green soups to stretch them further. Afterwards it looked as though winter had come to the orchards. The few who still had horses cut open the beasts’ veins, draining their blood into cups and drinking it. One day I saw a Lotharingian knight lead his horse through the streets, shouting that for a bezant any man could buy the cup of salvation. Later, I saw a mob chase him away, hurling abuse and stones and beating on his heels with sticks. I could not tell if it was the greed or the blasphemy which had offended them.

Such was our hunger that time itself seemed to contract. Counting now, it seems impossible that a mere twelve days passed from taking the city to finding the lance but that we endured a full two weeks of starvation afterwards. With no battles, and no strength, the period passed like a dream. My sight grew hazy, as if I was fading from the world, and my mouth was filled with a sweetness like ripe fruit, though I had eaten none in months. Every day I sat on my tower, half-asleep, staring out on the vastness of Kerbogha’s camp, the opulence of his tents and the brilliance of the horsemen who rode between them. At night, I lay half-awake on my stony bed, listening to the bleating of the herds that Kerbogha’s army had brought to feed themselves. I remembered the pagan legend of King Tantalus, neck-high in water but ravaged by an unquenchable thirst, and wondered if the lance had brought us not to Heaven but to Hell.

One evening, while Anna and I lay sleepless in the tower, I confessed the secret of my part in the city’s downfall, my guilt for the slaughter that followed. It had weighed so heavy on my soul that I feared it might be too enormous to reveal, but now I did not have the strength to withhold it. It poured out, almost unbidden, and Anna listened in silence. When I was done, I could hardly bear to hear her response.

Again she surprised me. Her words were neither harsh nor angry, but gentle. ‘It was not your doing. If we had not come into the city, Kerbogha would have crushed us in our camp. What happened afterwards, the slaughter of the Ishmaelites – that is for the Normans to repent, if God will forgive them. You cannot take the burden of their sins upon yourself. There was only ever one man who did that, and he died a thousand years ago.’

Reason told me that she spoke truly, but reason alone could not wash my conscience clean. Yet her words proved to be a balm: at first they made little difference, but over time, working their way into the wound, they began to knit together the lacerations in my soul, to heal me. Even so, the scar would remain.

The Army of God was dying. Day by day, life by life, we withered on the famished vine of Antioch. If the miracle had come, it had not been enough. So, thirteen days after the finding of the lance, two days before the high feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Adhemar summoned every man in the army to the square in front of the church. The casket which held the holy relic of the lance was placed on a table before him, open to view. The princes, Bohemond and Tancred, Hugh, Godfrey, and the two Roberts lined up behind him. Only Raymond was absent. Whatever miraculous powers the lance held, they had not helped him. Nor, if he had hoped to use it to prick Bohemond’s swelling ambition, had it served his purpose. All his might and riches could not ward off the wasting disease that ravaged the hungry in their weakness. He had kept to his bed for a week, and there had been no others with the power or the inclination to check Bohemond. He was undisputed master of the army; Raymond, it was rumoured, was close to death.

Adhemar fared little better. His health had been failing for months, and though he could still walk and ride, the pain of the effort was clear each time I saw him. Only the need to keep his flock together, the knowledge that his presence alone could unite the princes and reassure the pilgrims, gave him strength to continue. Looking up at him now, I could see little remnant of the kindness and patience which had once animated him. He had given his soul to nourish the army, and there was nothing left of him.

‘Brothers in Christ,’ he began. ‘Pilgrims on the holy road to Jerusalem. Truly it is written, “The Lord scourges with whips every child whom he loves.”’

A thousand skeletal faces stared lifelessly back at him.

‘But it is also written, “There is a time for peace, and a time for war.” Look around you. If the time for war is not now, it will never be. Our strength fades, our hopes die. In another month, Kerbogha will march into Antioch and find only the dust of our bones. Have we come so far, for that? Has the Lord brought us into this wilderness to kill us with hunger?’

Adhemar lifted his gaze above the crowd, stretched out his staff and spoke to the heavens. ‘Lord, why should your wrath burn so hot against your chosen people? By your mighty hand were we led from the lands of our birth: will Kerbogha the Terrible now boast that you brought us here only to kill us in the shadow of the mountain, to tear us from the face of the Earth? Avert your wrath. Do not wreak disaster on us in the sight of our enemies.’

A strange energy seemed to course through Adhemar; his whole body shook with reverence. He turned his gaze back to the masses in front of him. ‘What fools are we who question God’s divine purpose? How far beyond our mortal sight are His plans? If He has brought us here to die, then it is to die in His name, to His glory, the beautiful deaths of the martyrs. How can we fear so holy and wondrous a fate? If we strike forth from this city, this holy city where the saints Peter and Paul first preached the true gospel, and die in battle, how great will be our reward in Heaven? Merely to think on it would make one long for death. Fight the Turks in the name of Christ, and however the battle falls, our sins will be washed clean in blood.’

He dropped his voice. ‘But if we win – if we drive Kerbogha from the field and trample the ruins of his godless army under our feet – our glory will echo down the ages with the greatest heroes of old. Think of it. The Lord has blessed us with this holy relic, the very lance with which Christ’s blood was shed. If we turn it against our enemies, feeble and hungry though we are, how will they stand against it?

‘God’s promise is plain. If we stay, if we hide behind these walls of despair until famine takes us, we shall die the deaths of sinners. But if we take up our crosses, if we march onto the plain and fight, then whether we live or die the victory shall be ours. We cannot rest but we will lose. We cannot fight but we will win.’

Like a storm gathering its winds, Adhemar’s voice had risen to a thunderous roar far beyond the frailty of his body. Now, suddenly, his strength departed and he slumped forward on his staff. A chaplain rushed to his side and took his arm, trying to steer him back into the shelter of the church. But the bishop had not finished.

‘We are the Army of God, and the people of God. We have journeyed together, we have suffered together, and if God wills it so we shall die together. No prince or bishop will force you into this battle: we must decide together. What do you say?’

For long moments, an utter silence gripped the square. Then, starting from the back and sweeping forward, like a squall over water, a single phrase.
Deus vult
. God wills it. The shout rose; men who a moment earlier had barely had the strength to breathe now bellowed it forth. God wills it. God wills it. The princes on the portico took up the cry, the priests prayed it like a hymn, until even Adhemar’s lips moved to its simple rhythm. God wills it.

I did not like their chant: as far as I could see, nothing had come of it save ambition and murder. I turned to leave. I did not think that there was any part for me in the coming battle.

A hand touched my elbow and I looked back. A priest, a short man with a balding head and a harelip, was staring at me. He seemed familiar – one of Adhemar’s chaplains, perhaps.

‘Demetrios Askiates?’ The name was unfamiliar to him, and his cracked voice struggled to pronounce its foreign sounds.

‘Yes.’

‘My lord the bishop Adhemar asks that you join him tomorrow. The fighting will be fierce, and your company of axemen will be much sought after.’

‘Tell him . . .’ I paused, not knowing what to say. To the depths of my soul, I had seen enough of slaughter and the Franks’ battles. Whatever Adhemar might say, I was not of their race, and I would not choose to share their fate. But nor could I deny the simple truth of his proposition: if we did not fight, we would die in the city.

‘I know what Sigurd would choose,’ I muttered, to the confusion of the priest.

‘Shall I tell him that you will come?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ His deformed lip stretched into a mulish smile. ‘God wills it so.’

‘We will find out tomorrow.’

We mustered at first light, a wraithlike army gliding through the grey streets of Antioch to the appointed places. Count Hugh, who had surprised all by volunteering to lead the vanguard, assembled his troops at the bridge gate; Duke Godfrey, with the greater force, came behind him, while Adhemar waited in the square by the palace. He must have been awake for hours, perhaps all night, but he gave no sign of it. Mounted on his white charger, he rode along the ranks, reassuring the waverers and blessing the penitent; he received messengers from the other princes and answered them; he conferred with his knights and agreed their strategies. I remembered the last surge of Quino’s strength before he died, and wondered if it was the same spark of a fading light that now animated Adhemar.

‘To think this rabble once threatened an empire.’ Sigurd rubbed his axe for the dozenth time that morning, and stared unhappily at the men around us. ‘Now half a legion of Patzinaks could sweep them away in an hour.’

‘Let us hope that sixty thousand Turks cannot.’ It was hard to deny Sigurd’s judgement. Among the hundreds gathered in the square, there could not have been two who bore the same arms. More than half wore Turkish armour, or carried the round Turkish shields that we had captured with the city. Some – the unhorsed knights – had swords, and many carried spears, but there were still too many more with nothing but billhooks and sickles. They might have been going to harvest rather than a battle.

Almost alone in this multitude, the Varangians kept their discipline and their pride. We had spent the night hammering dents out of our helmets, repainting the golden eagle of Byzantium on our shields, and polishing every speck of rust from our armour. When the trumpets summoned us, we had marched down in a double column, thirty of us, with a measured tread which would not have sounded amiss in the halls of the Emperor’s palace. I had walked beside Sigurd at the head of the column, though I did not deserve the place. Above us we carried not the standard of the cross but that of the eagle. Sigurd had insisted on it.

‘The body of Christ.’

I looked down. Priests were moving along the line, offering us consecrated bread from small silver caskets. I had taken it in my mouth and swallowed it before I even realised it was unleavened, after the Latin usage. At that moment it did not matter. I wondered where they had found the grain to bake it.

‘Brothers in Christ.’ Adhemar reined in his horse in front of us and looked out over the ranks. A helmet had replaced his mitre, though he still wore his cope over his armour. Beside him, also mounted, the harelipped priest carried the holy lance in its reliquary.

Adhemar opened a book. ‘Remember the words of the angel to the meek, and do not be afraid. We do not struggle against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the powers and dominions of darkness in this world. If you would stand fast against them, take up the armour of God: gird on the belt of truth and the mail of righteousness. Lift the shield of faith, which quenches every burning arrow that Satan may throw at you. Put on the helmet of salvation and draw the sword of the spirit, for that is the word of God.’

From the road behind him, towards the gate, the sound of a great shout and a blast of trumpets echoed back to us. Murmurs of apprehension ran through the crowd, but Adhemar lifted a hand to stay them.

‘The gates have been opened, and the battle is nigh. Hold fast to all that is true, look to your swords, and by God’s grace, by God’s will, we will prevail. Every death that we die echoes into Heaven, the perfect sacrifice of the martyrs. Every drop of Turkish blood we spill makes atonement for our sins. For long months we have been chained in hunger, suffering and siege. Today we break free.’

An uneven cheer rose from the army, but it soon faded away. The most they could expect from the day was a swift death; words merited little now.