Tom Harper: Siege of Heaven

‘As if I didn’t stink enough already.’

Barefoot, I followed her onto the wall, into the next tower and up to its summit. A troop of long-haired, pale-skinned barbarians lounged by the battlements. Some still wore their armour, though there had been no fighting in weeks, and most had long-hafted axes lying near them, the precious blades wrapped in fur coverings. They were the Varangians, the emperor’s elite barbarian guardsmen, my companions.

One of the men was standing with a cup of wine in his hand. In a pack of wolves you would have known he was the leader by his size; in this pack of barbarians you could tell it by the easy arrogance of his face, the commanding set of his mighty shoulders and the thick gold band around his left forearm. He had taken it from a Turkish corpse at the battle of Antioch, though I was surprised he had found one that fitted the girth of his arms. He was called Sigurd — named, he had once told me, for a legendary dragonslayer of his ancestors. Looking at him now, his beard the colour of fire, it was easy to imagine.

‘Demetrios. Late, naked and stinking of old wine.’

‘I’d rather be naked than dead.’ I pulled on the new tunic and sat back against the wall. One of the barbarians passed me a flask of wine and I drank it eagerly.

‘How was the funeral?’ asked Anna, sitting beside me and squeezing herself into the crook of my arm. ‘Did many go?’

‘Thousands.’ I wondered how many would die regretting it.

‘And the princes?’

‘They were all there. The one thing they feared more than the plague was failing to parade their piety before the masses. I doubt a single one is left in the city now.’

‘We should follow them quickly,’ said Anna. ‘The plague clouds are already gathering over this city. With no one to govern them, the mob will run riot.’

‘The clergy will stay to minister to them.’

‘Much good they will do. Those pilgrims and peasants have been too far from home too long. They are losing all restraint and reason. You can see it in their faces.’

I stretched out my tired legs. ‘We’ve all been too far from home too long. Did any ships arrive today?’

‘Three from Venice docked in Saint Simeon, I heard. They brought no one but pilgrims.’

I swore softly. Every day it was the same, waiting for the ship from Constantinople that would bring the emperor’s new emissary and free me to go home with Anna. Every day that it did not come, my spirits grew more brittle.

‘The patriarch spoke to me at the funeral feast. He has an errand for me.’ Briefly, I repeated what he had told me. When I mentioned the relic, Sigurd snorted.

‘The hand he used to wipe his shit. If the patriarch thinks that’ll win the Franks’ affection, he’ll be disappointed.’

I had known Sigurd long enough that I should not have been shocked by his irreverence, but it still made me uneasy. ‘It’s a sacred object.’

‘It’s another week before we can go home.’

‘But only a week.’ Besides, in my heart, I knew that Sigurd and I had not distinguished ourselves as guardians of the emperor’s interests at Antioch. The Turks were gone, but to have Bohemond controlling the city in their place was hardly an improvement in the emperor’s eyes. At least if we found the saint’s hand for the patriarch we might salvage something from the campaign.

I looked to Anna, hoping for support. Her face offered nothing.

‘If you die in some folly in the mountains, when you should both be sailing home to your families. .’ She stood. ‘Anyway, while you go digging out old bones, I have living flesh and blood to attend to.’

I held her sleeve. ‘In Antioch? What about the plague?’

She shook free of me. ‘Even I know better than to imagine I can cure the plague. But there is a woman whose child is two weeks past due, and I promised I would see her.’

‘Be careful.’

‘You too. There are more than dead saints and ruined monasteries in the mountains.’

‘We’ll be back soon.’

‘And gone sooner.’ Sigurd rose. ‘If we leave now, we’ll have the cool of the evening to speed us on. Aelfric! ’ He beckoned to a sergeant playing dice on a board he had scratched into the stone rampart. ‘Find a dozen men and have them ready to march in half an hour.’

He turned back to us. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner we come back. And the sooner we leave this cursed city for ever.’

The Varangians could be entertaining travelling companions, but that evening they marched in single file and said little. Perhaps, after all the months spent waiting at Antioch, even they struggled to be on the march again. Perhaps it was the high rampart of the Anti-Taurus mountains looming ahead that dispirited them. Each hour that we marched, the mountains seemed to grow higher, but never closer. As for Brother Pakrad, he struck out ahead of us and stayed there, always fifty yards or so in front, his head bowed and his hands wrapped in his cowl. All I heard from him were occasional snatches of mumbled prayers when the breeze blew them back to us.

On the third day from Antioch, we reached the mountains. The air was cooler now, though the sun was no kinder, and jagged peaks towered over us. Crude terraces embanked some of the lower slopes, and a few hardy goats grazed the grass that pushed through the broken stones, but otherwise there were few signs of life.

‘Are these your monastery’s lands?’ I asked Pakrad, when a particularly steep stretch of road momentarily closed the gap between us.

He nodded. ‘Not rich, as you see. But we are simple men, and like the goats we find our living where we can.’

After a couple of miles, the valley opened out and forked into two still-higher valleys with a ridge of peaks between them. The road divided as well, and a ramshackle village had grown up at the junction. There was no inn, but we found the baker and persuaded him to sell us some bread and cheese for our lunch. We ate it in an empty field, just next to the place where the road forked. I noticed Sigurd looking at it unhappily.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘We’re not the first men to have come this way today.’ He swallowed the last hunk of bread and pointed to the road. A thin stream dribbled across it, and in the surrounding dark earth I could see the churned impressions of many hooves.

I was too far away to see them clearly. ‘Perhaps they were cattle.’

‘Have you seen any cows since we came into the mountains?’ Sigurd gestured a little further up the road, where low mounds rose like molehills in its course. ‘I know you’ve lived in the city for twenty years, but even you must be able to recognise horse shit when you see it.’

I twisted around to look at Brother Pakrad, who was, as ever, sitting a little way apart. ‘Which way to your monastery?’

He pointed right, to the north-eastern fork. ‘At the head of that valley.’

‘The horsemen went the other way.’ I explained what Sigurd had noticed.

‘Probably Franks. Perhaps they have heard of the relic and come for it themselves. We should hurry.’ He looked up. It was only a little past noon, but a haze had clouded the blue sky and our shadows were fainter. ‘It is not far now.’

Perhaps it was not, but it needed several more hours of painful drudgery to reach the monastery. The valley walls grew higher and steeper, funnelling us forward, while the hazy sky thickened into fat, dangerous clouds. We must have been very high, yet the air had not thinned. Instead, it felt heavy, pressing close around us. Pakrad was in a skittish mood, forever dancing ahead to spy out our path, while the rest of us trudged after him without enthusiasm.

After a time, Sigurd dropped back beside me and nodded at our sunken path. ‘The road ended two miles back. We’re walking on a river bed.’