Tom Harper: Siege of Heaven

Pakrad reached into one of the folds of his robe and pulled out something that he handed to his guest. Sparks of firelight reflected off it, and though it was too far and dim to see clearly, I knew what it was. The guest examined it, slid it onto his finger and held up his hand, twisting it this way and that so that light played on the filigrees of the imperial seal. Then he pulled it off and dropped it into a pouch around his neck.

‘That was what you wanted?’ Pakrad seemed hesitant, eager to please, though at the same time jealous of his visitor’s status. With a shock, I realised he had spoken in Greek.

The hooded guest tapped the bag on the table. ‘That is what I paid you for. Did they put up much of a struggle?’

He had spoken in Greek too — but more than that, there was something familiar in his voice. Could I have heard it before?

‘They fought,’ Pakrad admitted.

‘I told you they would. But you overcame them?’

‘You got your ring.’

The guest rounded on him. ‘That was not all we agreed. You swore not one of them would survive.’

‘None of them escaped.’

The evasion was as obvious as it was misjudged. In answer, the guest reached under his cloak and pulled out a long, straight-bladed sword. Pakrad recoiled, reaching for one of the knives in his belt, but before he could seize it the guest had stepped forward, put the tip of his blade against the bag on the table, and whipped it upwards to sever the rope that held it shut. The folds of cloth fell open like the petals of a flower, revealing a small mountain of gold within. Pakrad stared.

‘I paid you and I paid you well. The ring — and no one to tell the tale.’

Pakrad picked up a coin and rubbed it between his fingers. The touch of gold seemed to give him new strength. ‘These are dangerous times. The mountains are full of enemies — Franks, Arabs, Turks from the defeated army …’

‘And thieves,’ said his guest drily. Pakrad ignored him.

‘Those prisoners will fetch a high price in Damascus or Baghdad. Death would be a waste.’

The guest still had his sword in his hand. Though he held it still, the reflected firelight made the blade look as though it danced and writhed in the air. For a moment, I thought he might cut down Pakrad where he stood. Then, to my surprise, he shrugged.

‘Do as you want. They are not my concern.’

‘I promise you they will never be heard of again,’ Pakrad assured him.

The visitor looked around. ‘Are they here?’

It was a casual question, but whether by chance or some devilish intuition, his gaze came to rest right on the stretch of wall that housed my peephole, so that he seemed to be staring straight down the stone tunnel into my eyes. Terror seized me; I almost jerked away, but then he would have seen the movement. I forced myself to stay still and prayed he had not noticed me.

Oblivious to my terror, Pakrad was answering the question. ‘The prisoners have gone. I sold them this morning to an Arab.’ The lie came fluently; I wondered what he would have said if he had known how close his guest was to seeing the truth.

‘Very well.’ The guest nodded at the gold. ‘I will not forget your service.’

‘And you will see that the Franks do not come here looking for the Greeks?’

The visitor laughed softly. He had started to move to the door, was already almost beyond the confines of my view, but he turned back to answer Pakrad. The glowing fire threw up a monstrous shadow on the walls behind him.

‘Nobody will come to look for the Greeks.’

I barely heard the words. The firelight that cast shadows behind him also banished the shadows that hooded his face, so for the first time I could see it clearly. Of course I knew his voice — the only reason I had not recognised it sooner was that I had not heard it speaking Greek before. Nor had I ever expected to hear it speaking the treachery I had just witnessed.

It was Duke Godfrey.

It was hard to fall asleep that night. I squatted by the wall, my arms bound before me, trembling as my mind burned with thoughts of the treachery I had witnessed — the treachery that had snared me. Again and again I saw Duke Godfrey framed in the stone barrel of my peephole, his pale skin and golden beard turned orange by the firelight. Why had he done this? I knew he did not love the Greeks: at Constantinople, his army had even come to blows with the imperial forces. But that quarrel was long settled, and since then Godfrey had seemed a model of restraint, free of the tempestuous ambitions that shook the other princes. Why had he done this to me?

But of course, he had not done it to me — or not for my sake. I was merely a casualty, an inconvenience to be removed. He wanted the ring. For the rest of us, he did not even care enough to have us murdered. The thought only made me angrier: I raged against Godfrey, against Pakrad, against Tatikios who had abandoned me at Antioch and the emperor who had sent me there. But the heat of anger could not burn through my bonds or the walls that trapped me, nor lift the crushing weight of my insignificance. Few things make a man feel more alive than death, but now Duke Godfrey had robbed even that of meaning.

Eventually, fingers of sleep began to creep over me. The boundaries of the world dissolved: the things I saw and the things I dreamed and the things I feared mingled freely together in the dark room. Anna was there, though she would not talk to me, and Zoe and Helena my daughters. Helena held her newborn son and pointed to me, the grandfather he would never meet. Sigurd moaned, while Godfrey bent over him and laid gold coins on his eyes. I could see Antioch in the distance, and a terrible battle being waged before its gates. In an instant, I seemed to be in the midst of the battle, throwing up my shield while my enemies battered it with their blows.

I opened my eyes. Someone was jabbing me in the ribs, though without malice. Aelfric. With his hands bound in front of him, he could not reach me with his arms, but had swivelled himself around to poke me with his foot. Otherwise, everything in the room seemed normal: nine of us tied fast to the walls, moonlight filtering through the thatch, and the door still bolted shut.

‘What is it?’

‘Listen.’

Almost at once, I heard it. Shouts, the pound of running feet, and beyond it the drum of horses’ hooves. A group of men — three or four by the sound of them — ran past our door. I could hear their spear-hafts dragging on the floor behind them.

‘Is it a rescue?’

But even as I said it, I remembered the truth of Duke Godfrey’s words. Nobody will come to look for the Greeks.

Whatever was happening, there was nothing we could do. We were like slaves in a galley, locked in place and powerless against the forces raging around us. We sat in the darkness, pale faces straining to understand the mysterious sounds that drifted down to us, and waited.

Outside, the uproar was rapidly building into the tumult of a full-blown battle. Bows cracked; arrows rattled against stone like leaves before a gale. The pitch of the shouts rose. Then men started screaming, and I knew the battle had been joined.

I wriggled around to see if I could see anything through my spyhole. The church was empty. The sack of gold was gone from the table, and the fire had all but burned out — though not long ago, for even through the dank stone wall I could smell the lingering tinge of smoke.

Another kick in the ribs from Aelfric drew me back to our room. His face was ashen in the moonlight.

‘Do you smell that?’

After a day and a half being confined in that hot room, unable to move more than a few inches, the stench was terrible. But beyond the rank smells of men, there was something new in the air. Smoke — not drifting through my spyhole, but pouring in through the holes in the thatch and seeping through the cracks in the eaves.