Tom Harper: Siege of Heaven

‘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 — Provencals, 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 Provencal 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.