Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

For a moment Thomas did not reply. In the everchanging firelight, his face seemed to churn with indecision. I could see part of him wanting to abandon the argument, but another part — a stronger part — could not let go.

‘Why did we come here — why did any of us come here — if not to try and make the world more perfect?’

‘You cannot perfect the world with bloodshed,’ I said sharply.

‘No? Then how do you plan to rescue your daughters?’

I shook my head in frustration, trying to sift the sediment that clouded my thoughts. ‘Arnulf and his followers don’t want to perfect this world. They want to throw it all out and start anew, remake it entirely.’

‘And what is wrong with that? That is the inheritance promised in the Gospels. Why not seize it? Why struggle day by day to mend this sick and broken world, when in one glorious moment we could cure it?’

‘You don’t cure something by killing it.’

‘Perhaps the sickness has spread so far there is no alternative.’

‘No!’ I stamped my foot, lifting a cloud of dust. ‘And if it has, it is not for us to decide. Arnulf preaches that we should kill every man, woman and child inside that city in our impatience to bring on the kingdom of heaven. Every one — including your wife and son, my children and grandchildren. Can that be right?’

Thomas looked uncertain. ‘Perhaps that is the price of the kingdom of heaven.’

‘I do not believe that. But even if it was, there is no man alive who could demand payment.’ I tried to calm myself. Speaking more surely than I felt, I said, ‘God made the kingdom of heaven as an ideal, an example for men to dream of. It is not a place that we can reach except when He calls us there. It is certainly not a place we can call into being.’

A tear trickled down Thomas’s face, though I could not tell if it was of rage or sorrow. ‘Then why does He tempt us with it?’

‘Maybe to see if we resist.’

‘Wake up.’

I couldn’t wake — I had not been asleep. I opened my eyes to see a Frankish sergeant with a long moustache looking down on me.

‘Is it dawn already?’ It seemed only minutes since I had gone to bed. Around me, all was dark.

‘Barely midnight. Get your armour on and follow me.’

He led us swiftly down the hill to the place where the great siege tower, Magog, stood in its pomp. It disappeared into the darkness, ready to lay siege to the stars themselves for all I could see. Or perhaps that was wrong. As my eyes balanced with the night, it seemed that the tower was shorter than I remembered it. Perhaps it was the night playing tricks on me.

I heard the grate of wood rubbing together, a slither and a thud. And then, in a dialect I did not understand, a succession of short, hard words that sounded like curses.

‘I almost broke my toe,’ complained an aggrieved voice.

‘I’ll break your leprous arm if you’re not more careful,’ retorted the first man. Belatedly, I realised that I knew his voice — it was Saewulf’s. I found him standing at the foot of the tower, while eight Frankish men-at-arms laboured to lift a massive slab of wood.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘Did this come off the tower? Have the Fatimids struck it with their stonethrowers?’

‘Not yet.’ Saewulf turned away to hiss instructions to another team of men, who seemed to be manhandling one of the wattle screens down from the summit of the tower.

‘What then? Are you dismantling it? Have we abandoned the siege?’ Every possibility was dreadful, but that was too much to contemplate.

Saewulf grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. ‘ I will tear it down, and rebuild it in three days . That’s what Christ said. But this shouldn’t take more than a night. We’re taking it apart and rebuilding it over there.’ He pointed to the east.

I gaped. ‘In one night?’

‘That’s what we built it for.’ Even as he spoke, another piece of siding slid down from the tower, like a snake shedding its skin.

‘Is Count Raymond doing the same?’

Saewulf shook his head. ‘The stubborn bastard built his tower where there was nowhere else to go. Now he’ll just have to push it up exactly where the Fatimids expect.’ He slapped the side of his tower affectionately, like the rump of a horse. ‘And so will we, if we don’t hurry. Take that, and follow where the others lead you.’

It was an exhausting, eerie night. Hour after hour, we trudged back and forth over the ridge above Jerusalem, ferrying the dismembered machine to its new site. We were forbidden from carrying lights lest we betray our secret, while a choir of priests kept up a chorus of hymns and anthems to mask the clatter of our work from the watchers on the walls.

The night seemed unending — as if day had been abolished, and all nights ran together unbroken. I prayed for it to end, and then prayed for it to last as I watched the achingly slow progress of the tower’s reassembly. My hands grew chafed and numb from manhandling the pieces of the siege tower, my legs were weary and my head ached from lack of sleep. But just as Saewulf’s carpenters were hammering the last few trenails into the uppermost storey of the tower, and the wheelwrights oiling its axles, a bloody smear of red trickled over the Mount of Olives in the east. I thought of Arnulf ’s prophecy, and wondered if this would be the last of all days — and even if it was not, whether I would see another.

Dawn brought fresh urgency to the world. Birdsong was drowned out by the blast of horns and trumpets as the Franks summoned their armies to battle. They assembled on the spur that dropped towards the city, their banners limp above them in the still morning. On the high walls in front of them the sentries from the Fatimid garrison looked out in disbelief. To them it must have appeared as though the land itself had shifted in the night, a mountain erupted and a forest of spears grown in the arid soil.

Once all the army had assembled, the princes rode out. Godfrey came last of all, riding the white horse I had seen in the paddock. He had braided its mane with silver ribbons so that it shone in the morning like dew. Just in front of him, on foot, Arnulf carried a golden cross with fragments of the True Cross embedded in it. I wondered if relics could hold memories, and if so if those few splinters of wood felt the stir of being so close to the place where they had lifted a man to his willing death, a thousand and more years ago.

The princes reined in, turned to face the army and dismounted. There would be no place for horses in the coming battle. Grooms led the animals away, while Godfrey and Arnulf walked towards the hulking tower. Its back was open and undefended, so we could see them slowly climbing the ladders inside all the way to the roof of the machine, as high as the towers that guarded Jerusalem behind them. There Godfrey turned around to face the watching army.

A murmur of awe shivered through the crowd. At that height he was high enough to catch the first rays of the sun coming over the Mount of Olives, and in its pure light he dazzled like a god. His fair hair glowed like a nimbus of pale gold; he wore a white tabard sparkling with five golden crosses for the five wounds of Christ, and a white cloak hung from his shoulders. Even the mail hauberk beneath seemed to have been brushed with silver, and polished so bright it shone white in the dawn. He gazed out on the army and lifted his arms wide. The gold cross gleamed above him like a sign from heaven.

He drew a breath, as if to make a speech, but there were only two words he needed to say that morning and he shouted them with all his voice: two words that had propelled the army all the way to the gates of Jerusalem. Deus vult . The army cheered. They hammered their sword pommels against their shields; they stamped their feet and the butts of their spears on the ground until the dust rose in clouds to their waists. Most of all, they shouted. They roared out the cry until it filled the valleys like the ocean, rolling from the Mount of Olives across Mount Moriah and Mount Zion all the way to the western ridge. They roared until the earth trembled with their noise, until it seemed they might shake down Jerusalem into dust.