Tom Harper: Siege of Heaven

A silent chorus of marble saints looked down as the body descended into the pit. A groan rumbled around the silvered dome as the lid of the sarcophagus was drawn into place. At the head of the grave, the patriarch of Antioch made the sign of the cross, then threw a sprig of laurel into the hole, while the congregation sighed a wistful farewell, like the sound of a sword sliding out of a dying man’s chest.

‘May God forgive his sins with mercy,’ the patriarch intoned. ‘May Christ the Good Shepherd lead him safely home. And may he live in happiness for ever, with all the saints, in the presence of the eternal King.’

Amen.

A spade rasped on stone as the gravediggers began filling the hole with earth.

They held the funeral feast at the palace, a sprawling accumulation of ramshackle courtyards and mismatched towers at the southern end of the city. A crowd of mourners had already gathered outside the gates, waiting for the scraps and crumbs to come after the feast, while a company of Norman knights leaned on their spears and glared at them. I was more favoured. I passed through the gatehouse into the outer courtyard, drawing mean glares from the Normans. I had my own place in the scheme of their enemies.

Priests and nobles of greater and lesser degrees thronged the courtyard, while smells of roasting meat and burning fat coated the hot air. I took a cup of wine from a servant and sipped it, keeping to the anonymous shade by the wall. I had worn my best tunic and boots, trimmed my beard, oiled my hair and tied a fresh bandage on my arm, but I did not belong among these people. I was too common — and, worse, a Greek. That I was there at all I owed to the cowardice of better men. I had come with the Army of God as an observer — a spy — but when my superior officer, the infinitely more glorious Tatikios, had departed Antioch in haste I had become, for lack of alternative, the emperor’s ambassador. I even wore his signet ring, bequeathed to me by Tatikios before he fled Antioch in fear of his life. I would happily give up the role.

‘Demetrios Askiates.’ I turned at the sound of my name to see the patriarch of Antioch at my side. He had remained in the city throughout the Turkish occupation, even during the eight months that the Franks had besieged it, and he had paid terribly for his faith. At times the Turks had hung him from the battlements and invited our archers to attack; at other times they had caged him atop a tower, or burned him with hot irons. I could not imagine how he had endured it, but once we had driven the Turks from the city he had taken up his cope and staff and returned to his seat in the cathedral. Even the Franks, who despised and distrusted the Greek church, deferred to him.

He looked out across the courtyard. ‘How many more times do you think we will see all the Franks gathered together in peace?’

I shrugged. ‘As long as it takes to reach Jerusalem, I suppose.’

‘I hope so. With Bishop Adhemar gone, they have lost their guiding compass. There are too many among them with power, and none with authority. And they still have far to go.’

‘Too far for me, Father.’

The patriarch lifted an eyebrow. ‘You are not going to Jerusalem?’

‘No.’ I was defiant. ‘By the time I get home I’ll have been away for well over a year. I have two daughters I have neglected and — God willing — a grandson I have never seen. The road to Jerusalem only takes me further from home, and into worse dangers.’

‘What will the emperor say?’

I did not answer. Any excuse would have sounded feeble — shameful, even — to a man who had endured what the patriarch had suffered. Mercifully, he did not judge me.

‘God calls each of us on different paths,’ he said. I could not tell if he meant it as a consolation or a warning. ‘But before He calls you back to Constantinople, I have a task for you. There is someone. .’ He tailed off as his eyes darted across my shoulder; I half-turned to follow. A pair of Latin bishops were waiting there, evidently keen to speak with the patriarch. He gave them a pleasant smile and steered me aside with a gentle nudge of his elbow. ‘I will find you later.’

I had no one else to speak to: the patriarch and I were the only Greeks there, and I was too insignificant to attract anyone else’s attention. I could gladly have left that moment: left the decrepit palace, the city, the country itself, and run home to Constantinople. I longed to. But I was the emperor’s representative, however humble, and that brought certain obligations. Antioch had been a Byzantine city until thirteen years earlier, when the Turks captured it, and the emperor Alexios had not called this barbarian army into being just so that they should possess it in place of the Turks. He coveted it: partly for the riches of its trade, partly as the key fortress of his southern border, partly for pride. But Bohemond would sooner hand Antioch back to the Ishmaelites than surrender it to the emperor, despite having sworn an oath to do so. As long as I remained there I reminded him of his obligation, a human token for the emperor’s claim. It was not a comfortable position.

I toyed with the signet ring on my finger, watching the sunlight reflect off its broad disc and play over the surrounding faces. I did not doubt the sincerity of their mourning but I could already see it fading, buried in the earth beneath the cathedral. One man looked to have been particularly quick to get beyond his grief — which perhaps explained why he stood alone. Tall, gangly and hooknosed, he might have taken pride of place in the funeral procession, but here he was shunned.

His eyes met mine, narrowed with hostility, then relented enough to decide my company was preferable to his solitude. I might have decided otherwise, but before I could slide away he had ambled over and was peering down on me, hunched over like a crane.

‘Peter Bartholomew.’ I greeted him without enthusiasm. ‘It seems we’re both beggars at this feast.’

He bridled, as I knew he would.

‘On this day of all days, they should remember me. Without the lance — the lance that I found — the bishop’s legacy would be nothing but bones and dust.’

It was probably true. It was Peter Bartholomew who had received the remarkable — some said incredible — vision that told him where the lance was buried, and Peter Bartholomew who had leaped into the pit and prised out the fragment with his bare hands when everyone else had given up. The same pit that was now Bishop Adhemar’s grave.

‘The princes have short memories,’ I said noncommittally.

‘So short they even forget why God called us here. Look at Bohemond.’ Peter gestured to his right, where Bohemond was deep in conversation with Duke Godfrey. Unusually, both men seemed to have dispensed with the hosts of knights and sycophants who usually surrounded them. ‘He has Antioch, and that is enough for him.’

‘Not if the emperor has his way,’ I said. Peter ignored me.

‘The army is greater than any of the princes. You saw the pilgrims at the procession this morning: they are already angry that we have not yet moved on to Jerusalem. With Adhemar gone, who will they trust to speak for them honestly when the princes meet?’

Unlike any army before it, the Army of God had not been summoned by kings or compelled into being by circumstance: it had been preached into existence for a war of pilgrimage. Knights and soldiers had answered the call, but so had peasants, in vast numbers. They offered no service save drudgery, and required far more in supplies and protection than they earned. Yet in the strange world of the Army of God they were esteemed for their innocence; they had a righteousness of purpose that none of the knights or princes could claim, and were thus endowed with a special sanctity.