Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

The priest looked up. ‘That is all.’

‘May I see the letter?’

Nikephoros took the paper from the chaplain’s hands and read it silently, fingering the seals between thumb and forefinger. ‘You said the messenger who brought it was Greek. Where is he now?’

‘He said he could not delay. He galloped away the moment I had taken the package from him.’

‘Did he?’ There was a dangerous edge in Nikephoros’ voice, but Raymond did not appear to notice it.

‘This is the best news we could have had. How long have I pleaded with Alexios to come to our aid, to prove his loyalty and to silence those who question his friendship? This gives the lie to Achard’s false accusations. At last the emperor’s authority will bring unity to our fractured host.’

‘The other princes will not wait for the emperor,’ said Nikephoros. He strode beside me as we walked back to our tent. ‘Even if they cared about Arqa — or Raymond — they would crawl over coals to reach Jerusalem before the emperor arrived.’ He gave a dry laugh.

‘Strange that a messenger who had ridden all the way from Constantinople should deliver the message to Raymond’s door, and then gallop away at dusk without even looking in on the Byzantine camp,’ I said noncommittally. I had an unpleasant idea that I knew who had written the letter — and it was not the emperor whose seal adorned it.

‘Stranger still that it was sealed with wax. The emperor seals his correspondence with gold. But the seals were genuine. Not the emperor’s personal seal, but one used by the palace.’ He lifted his hand so I could see the gold signet ring gleaming on his finger. ‘I have one. So did my predecessor, Tatikios.’

‘The ring Duke Godfrey stole from me,’ I murmured. Was this why? Surely that could not have been his purpose when he lured me to Ravendan all those months ago.

Nikephoros walked on in silence, so long that I wondered if he blamed me for what had happened. ‘The letter was a forgery,’ he said at last. ‘So obvious I am surprised even the Franks did not see it. There were half a dozen mistakes in the grammar alone.’

‘But if you saw it was a forgery, why not say so to Count Raymond?’

Nikephoros swung around. ‘Because it served my purposes. Do you think I want to spend the next six months rotting outside Arqa because an old man is too stubborn and too blind to give up a lost cause, and because none of his companions has the strength or will to defy him?’

‘But if Duke Godfrey forged the letter, aren’t you curious as to why?’

He shrugged the question away. ‘Probably because he’s as sick as I am of waiting.’ His voice dropped. ‘The emperor did not send me here as a mark of favour. It was an exile, a diplomatic way to remove me from his court for as long as possible. I think it appealed to his humour to send me to Jerusalem as penance.’

Unconsciously, he played with the embroidered hem of his sleeve. ‘Perhaps I deserved it. But I have served my sentence, and I would like to return to Constantinople. So if a letter appears that will force the barbarians to act, however mysterious and fraudulent it may be, I will not question it.’ He touched me on the shoulder, perhaps the most sincere gesture I ever had from him. ‘We have both been away from home too long.’

I could not argue with that, but it did not soothe my worries.

Sigurd threw a handful of dry grass on the embers of the last night’s fire and poked at it with a stick. Even in the dim half-light before dawn, the coals barely glowed.

‘In England, in my father’s time, the kings could only raise their army for forty days in a year. That concentrated their minds wonderfully on the business of making war.’

‘Do you still miss it?’ I asked.

‘England?’ Sigurd sounded surprised by the question. ‘Of course. In the same way that a one-armed man misses his limb.’

‘When you left, did you know you would never see it again?’

‘I …’ Sigurd paused. ‘I don’t remember. There was too much confusion, and I was too young. But I must have thought I would see it again, or I would never have left.’ He grimaced. ‘Even so, I clung to a tree that grew beside the water when it was time to leave. My uncle thought he would need to chop it down I held on so tight.’

‘I would have done the same to Constantine’s column in the forum if I had known it would be so long before I saw it again. I thought I wanted to see my family — but now they are here, I think it was the city I wanted really.’

Sigurd balled his fingers into a fist and stared at it.

‘Don’t worry yourself too much with your family. They don’t know where they are and they’re frightened. Even if we were all in Constantinople, it would not be perfect. Helena would still be struggling to understand where her allegiance to her husband ends and to her father begins.’

‘I would have been happy for her to abandon me for her husband completely, if only he’d kept her safe in Constantinople.’

‘You should watch Thomas. He is too eager for battle.’

‘Whereas you, of course, have harnessed your axe to an ox and made it a plough.’

Sigurd looked serious. ‘I have been in enough battles that I know what to do — and even, though you may not believe it, when to step back. If Thomas charges into his next battle thinking he can avenge his wounds with every sweep of his axe, he will make an easy kill for some Ishmaelite.’

‘He saved my life,’ I said, ducking away from Sigurd’s warning.

‘And you saved his. But it will mean precious little if you and he don’t live long enough to make the debt worthwhile.’

I made a final attempt to reinvigorate the fire, then stood and wiped the ash from my face. Down the slope, I saw Zoe returning from the river where she had been sent to fetch water.

‘Your daughter will be strong enough to join the Varangians soon,’ said Sigurd. ‘Look at the way she carries that water jar — almost as if it was empty.’

It was true: she held the jar one-handed, and it bounced freely as she ran towards us though no water spilled out. Forgetting the fire, I ran to meet her, instinctively checking for any sign of injury.

‘Are you all right?’ I called. ‘Are you in danger?’

She shook her head, her loose hair flying across her face. ‘The camp across the river — Duke Godfrey’s camp.’ She gulped a deep breath. ‘It’s gone.’

Duke Godfrey’s camp, which for the last two months had stood on the southern side of the mountain spur, was a ruin. A film of smoke hung over the ground like a dawn mist: through it I could see scraps of charred cloth hanging from the ribs of tents, beds of ash still smouldering, bare patches in the earth where tents had once stood. I rubbed my eyes.

‘Did the Saracens creep down from the city and burn the camp in the night?’ I wondered. ‘Why didn’t we see any flames?’

Sigurd gestured to the bulk of the spur behind us. ‘That would have hidden it.’

‘But we would still have heard the battle.’

‘If there was a battle.’ Sigurd stepped forward and walked a little way forward. ‘Do you see anything strange about this battlefield?’

I looked closer. Though the embers still smouldered and the ash was fresh, the carcass of the battle had already been picked impossibly clean. There were no bodies.

‘What’s that?’

I looked up. A man in a white cassock was walking towards us between the rows of ruined tents, striding the battlefield like the angel of death — though I did not think the hem of an angel’s robe would have been soiled grey by the ash he kicked up as he walked. Nor, in my image, would he have been old and balding, with a pronounced wart on his left cheek.