Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

I gestured to their wounds. ‘Where have you come from? Was there a battle?’

The foremost of the Franks leaned heavily on his spear, burying it in the mud. ‘They attacked two nights ago. There was nothing we could do.’

‘Where?’ Had the Army of God been routed? Was this its last remnant, a handful of survivors spared to tell of its terrible fate?

‘Antioch,’ he mumbled. ‘They have taken Antioch from us.’

‘Who?’ I could guess the answer, but I asked it anyway.

‘The Norman traitor. Bohemond.’

Nikephoros twitched his reins. ‘What did he say?’

I ignored him. ‘And the Greeks in Antioch — what happened to them? What did Bohemond do to them? What — ’ I broke off as I heard my voice become shrill with panic. It did no good; the soldier dismissed my question with a careless shrug that was worse than any answer.

‘And you — you are Provencals? Count Raymond’s men?’

He nodded. Behind him, I could see his men shivering, and trying to keep their sodden bandages in place. There had never been any love between the Normans and Provencals, least of all between their leaders, but could Bohemond really have launched a war on his fellow Christians?

‘Where is Count Raymond? Was he at Antioch?’

The Provencal shook his head. ‘The count is at Ma’arat.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Further along this road.’ Even in his despair, he seemed surprised that I had not heard of it. ‘Two days’ march from here.’

A cold gust of wind blew rain in my eyes, and my mount pawed at the ground in her eagerness to be moving again. Two days’ march , I thought, listening to my own words as I translated for Nikephoros. We had been away more than four months, seen palaces, kings and wonders; crossed deserts and seas just to return. While in all that time, the invincible Army of God had moved just two days forward.

Snow fell in the mountains that night. Next morning, a brittle crust covered the ground, and our horses picked their way anxiously over the frozen ruts in the road. The skies above were grey, unyielding, but the air was clear. When we came to an outcrop on the mountain road, we could see a high plateau opening out below us. The whole earth sparkled white, made new by the snow.

‘What’s that?’

While I had been staring into the distance, Aelfric’s practical gaze had been examining the road ahead. Immediately before us it plunged into a pine forest, but it emerged again below, heading south-east across the plain. At the bottom of the slope a river flowed around the mountains’ feet, and where river and road met there stood a small town.

‘Do you see there?’ Aelfric was pointing to the meadows just beyond the town. I looked, but saw nothing. Squinting against the sullen winter light, I stared closer until suddenly, like a ship emerging from fog, foreground and background split apart and I saw what Aelfric meant. Tents — scores of them, white as the snow. Deceived by the distance, I had taken them for the furrows of some farmer’s field, and the specks moving among them to be crows. In fact, they were not nearly so far off.

We had found the Army of God.

Whatever ordeals we had endured in the past months, the Franks must have suffered worse. As we rode through their camp towards the town we were surrounded by haggard faces and ragged bodies. Even in the midwinter cold, many did not have enough clothes to cover themselves: ribs like curved fingers pressed out against skin, while the bellies of the worst-affected swelled up in cruel mockery of satiety. Black toes and fingers poked from dirty bandages that had long since become useless, while twice I saw bodies so still they must have been corpses, lying unheeded and unburied in the mud.

Aelfric stared at the miserable faces, which turned towards us as we passed. ‘Has nothing changed?’

I knew what he meant. There was a horrible familiarity in these scenes: we had suffered exactly the same way a year ago outside Antioch. It seemed almost inconceivable that for all the victories we had won in that time, the miracles that had sustained us, the Army of God now found itself suffering the same torments only a few dozen miles distant. Nothing had changed — except that there were many fewer tents now than there had been a year ago. The river of humanity, which had forced its way across deserts, broken down the walls of Antioch and swept away all opposition, had flowed into the earth. A few lingering pools were all that remained — and soon they, too, would drain away.

I glanced at Nikephoros, wondering how his life in the immaculate confines of the palace would have prepared him for this. He held his head rigid, his eyes fixed ahead, but it was not shock or compassion that his mask was worn to hide. The corner of his lip twitched, and his pitiless eyes stared on the wretches around us with something like disgust. And, I could have sworn, satisfaction.

Beyond the camp, at the entrance to the town proper, a guard challenged us. With relief, I saw he was a Provencal, one of Count Raymond’s men.

‘Is this Ma’arat?’ I asked eagerly.

He looked puzzled. ‘Ma’arat? Ma’arat is another day’s march from here. This town is called Rugia.’

Two days’ progress in four months, and now they had lost one of them. ‘Has there been a battle? A defeat? Why has the army retreated here?’

The guard laughed at my panic. ‘We have not retreated. The bulk of the army is still camped at Ma’arat.’ He gestured at the rows of tents in front of him. ‘Did you think this was all that survived of the Army of God? These are just the princes’ bodyguards.’

‘The princes?’ My hopes rose. ‘Is Count Raymond here?’

‘They all are.’ He gave me a crooked look, taking in our travel-stained clothes and weary faces. ‘They’ve come here for a council — though to call it a parley would be nearer the mark. All of them: Count Raymond, the Count of Flanders, the Duke of Normandy, Tancred, Bohemond. .’ He paused, counting them off on his fingers. ‘And Duke Godfrey.’

A Provencal knight led us to a high-walled villa in the centre of the town, where the blue banner of Provence and the white standard of the Army of God hung by the gate. Aelfric waited outside, while a small priest with a harelip brought us through many guarded doors to a wide chamber deep in the house. Rich carpets laid three or four deep covered the floor and lined the walls, steaming slightly where the lamps had been placed too close to them. A smouldering brazier filled the room with hot smoke; at the back, on a table of its own amid a constellation of candles, sat the golden reliquary with the fragment of the holy lance.

The harelipped priest motioned us to stay by the door and advanced to the middle of the room, where a slumped figure sat in a chair beside the brazier. A thick blanket was drawn over him, though he still seemed to shiver underneath it. The priest whispered in his ear, then beckoned us closer.

Whatever had happened in the months we had been away, it had not been kind to Count Raymond. He had always been the oldest of the princes — twice my age, I thought — but now the years showed. There was little trace of the vigour that had held together his army outside Antioch, and no authority in his bearing. His iron-grey hair had turned white, and his single eye was kept half closed.

‘You have returned from Egypt,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought you had died there.’

Nikephoros did not even bother to bow. ‘We nearly did. What has happened in our absence?’

‘Bohemond has taken Antioch.’ The cry rose from within him as if dragged out by torturers’ hooks. Nikephoros remained impassive.

‘I know. We were there two days ago.’

The count leaned forward, spilling the blanket off his chest. ‘Then you know what must be done. In Constantinople, I bowed to the emperor as my liege-lord and offered him homage. Now is the time for him to honour his obligation and come to my aid.’