Simon Beaufort - Murder in the Holy City

“You say you went out to see your uncle, and when you returned, John-the knight-was dead in your house?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That has not changed since yesterday.”

“Tell me again what you did when you came home.” He wanted to know whether she had pulled the dagger from the body in horror, as suggested by Hugh, or whether it had been beside the body on the floor.

“I went to pour water to clean my feet,” she said, with a heavy sigh, “as I told you yesterday. They were hot and dusty after walking through the city. Then I drank some wine and walked upstairs. The body was, as you saw, lying on its stomach. It was like a nightmare, like something from the scenes when the Crusaders took Jerusalem and killed so many people. I could not believe it was real, and I wondered whether someone might be playing some dreadful practical joke. I took the dagger in my hands and pulled, to see if it were really embedded in his back as it seemed, or whether it was cunningly arranged to look so. I saw it was real, and then I ran outside to call for help.”

“What happened to the dagger?”

She frowned. “I do not remember. Perhaps I dropped it in the bedchamber. No! I must have carried it with me. I think I flung it from me at some point.”

“So where is it now?”

She glanced around, as though it might appear on the ground in the street. “I have no idea. Someone must have picked it up.”

“For what purpose?”

She eyed him sceptically. “I imagine to sell. A year ago, these people lost most of their possessions to looters. Who can blame them if they took the dagger? It was a horrible thing, anyway, covered in big, ugly jewels. Like something a Norman might own,” she added defiantly.

“It had a curved blade,” said Geoffrey, “and Norman blades are generally straight. I would show you mine if I did not think your neighbours would misread the gesture and rush out to kill me.”

She looked at him in surprise and laughed again. Geoffrey looked at her closely for the first time, suddenly aware that she was an attractive woman. She had straight black hair that fell like a curtain down her back, longer than the veil she wore over it, and her eyes were light brown, like honey. When she laughed, and the hard lines around her eyes and mouth disappeared, she looked very young, although Geoffrey judged her to be in her mid-twenties.

“They would not harm you now,” she said. “Your courage in saving your friends shamed them into letting you go.”

“I was sending them for help,” he said. “Do you know no French at all?”

“Enough to know you are not being wholly truthful,” she said. “You must have known that you would have been dead long before your friends had time to run to the citadel and return with help.”

Geoffrey knew no such thing, since he had detected a hesitancy in the crowd from the start, and had been fairly certain he could stall them from attacking until Roger returned. But Melisende’s conviction that he could not made him wonder whether he had been overconfident in his negotiating abilities. Still, he thought to himself, at least he would have delivered Roger and the others from an unpleasant fate had the crowd not shown such unprecedented morality.

“How do you come to know Greek?” Melisende asked. “It is not a skill most of the barbarians in the citadel possess.”

“I learned it in Constantinople,” he said, wondering whether Roger had reached the citadel and thinking that he might well miss him if they chose to travel different routes. Then Roger would attack the street, and there would be more killing and looting.

“While you were sacking it?” she asked, the laughter gone from her face again.

“No. I find learning conjugations while I pillage very distracting,” he replied. “I visited Constantinople long before the Crusaders went there. And why are you here? When did you come?”

“What has this to do with the dead knight?” she said abruptly. She stared at him for a moment. “You may be courageous, and you may be able to learn the languages of the people you oppress, but you are still a Norman, and you still condemned me to the Patriarch’s dungeons without a second’s hesitation. If that poor monk had not been killed when I was incarcerated, I might have been executed as a murderer by now. Had you thought of that? I was innocent! And please do not patronise me by saying that if I were innocent I had nothing to fear. You know as well as I do that innocence or guilt is immaterial once the doors close behind a prisoner in this city!”

“Quite a speech,” he said, deliberately casual to annoy her. The fact that she was correct was beside the point. He wondered what had happened to Melisende Mikelos to make her so aggressive and disagreeable. He had the feeling that she was somewhat disappointed that the crowd had backed away from attacking him, despite her paltry attempts to dissuade them. He had been wrong in arresting her the day before-clearly he had, since she seemed to be innocent of the charge of murder-yet the feeling that she had not been entirely truthful with him persisted. But regardless, he knew he would gain nothing of value from her, and it would be prudent to leave before they annoyed each other any further.

He gave her one of his most winning smiles. “Thank you for your help. I hope this is the last you will hear of this affair. Goodbye.”

He gave her a small bow and turned, leaving her standing on her doorstep, her temper boiling at the way in which he had dismissed her grievance so casually. She watched him walk away, aware that all along the street others watched too, some glad they had not killed a knight with the inevitable retribution it would have brought, and others bitterly resentful they had not dispatched all four of them while they had the chance.

What an irritating, arrogant man, she thought, noting the confident stride all Norman nobles seemed to master from birth. But at least he had talked to her in Greek, and not simply spoken French louder and louder until he thought she understood, as most knights would have done-had they bothered to address her courteously at all.

Geoffrey strode up the street, hoping that the weakness he still felt in his knees was not apparent to the people he knew were watching him. He rounded the corner and was confronted by Roger, who was livid.

“What was all that about?” he demanded. “What were you thinking of, sending us off and facing that mob alone? They might have killed you!”

“I told you to go to the citadel for help!” exclaimed Geoffrey in horror. “Why did you not go?”

He imagined the mob closing in on him, while he had struggled to buy time for Roger to come with reinforcements. And all the time Roger would have been watching from around the corner, not understanding a word that was said. The thought made his blood run cold.

“I had no idea what was going on with all that jibber-jabber in Egyptian …”

“Greek.”

“Greek, then. It is all the same heathen babble.” Roger was silent for a moment, and then relented. “So what did she tell you?”

“Nothing,” admitted Geoffrey. “Nothing that she did not say yesterday. In fact, it was all a waste of time, and we should not have gone there at all.”

“We should have spent the afternoon in one of them cool brothels,” said Helbye. “Or in a drinking house sipping cold ale.”

“Where are we off to now?” asked Roger, slipping into step beside Geoffrey. “An Egyptian encampment outside the city walls, perhaps, or a snake pit? Somewhere as accommodating as the last place we visited?” He grinned; his fury was clearly forgotten, and for him, the business was over. Geoffrey still felt a residual anger that Roger had not done as he had been asked, and he envied Roger’s ability to shrug off ill feelings with such gay abandon.