Simon Beaufort - Murder in the Holy City

The citadel was rigorously guarded by the Advocate’s soldiers. As Geoffrey approached, basically unidentifiable in standard surcoat and helmet, there came the sound of arrows being fitted to bows by archers along the wall, and the captain of the guard called out for him to identify himself. Geoffrey pulled off his basinet so they could see his face, and told them his name. The captain thrust his torch near Geoffrey’s face to satisfy himself that the sturdy knight who had been walking Jerusalem’s streets in the dark was indeed the English-born Geoffrey Mappestone. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness in his manner, for the captain was a Lorrainer and had no love for the Normans-like Geoffrey and Hugh-who lived in the citadel. Eventually, Geoffrey was allowed past, only to go through a similar process at the gate that separated the outer bailey from the inner bailey.

The Tower was always rowdy, as would be expected in a building filled with warriors, and even now, in the depths of the night, there were guffaws of laughter and triumphant shouts from some illicit game of dice. Geoffrey, being relatively senior in the citadel hierarchy because of the regard in which Tancred held him, had his own chamber, a tiny, cramped room in the thickness of the wall overlooking David’s Gate. It served Geoffrey as an office as well as a bedchamber and, on occasion, even as a hospital if one of his men were ill and needed rest away from the smelly, cramped conditions of the tents in the outer bailey.

Gratefully, he pushed open the stout wooden door to his chamber and stepped inside. It was dark, and only the faint shaft of silver moonlight glimmering through the open window offered any illumination. The room was sparsely furnished: a truckle bed that could be rolled up and moved into the short corridor that led to the garderobe; a table strewn with parchment and writing equipment; a long bench against one wall; and a chest that held spare bits of armour, some clothes, his beloved books, and some less intellectual loot from Nicaea. His dog, stretched out in front of the window to take advantage of the breeze, looked up lazily as Geoffrey entered. It gave a soft, malevolent growl, and went back to sleep.

Without bothering to light the candle that was always set on the windowsill, Geoffrey unbuckled his surcoat and removed the chain-mail shirt, hanging them carefully on wall pegs. No warrior who valued his life failed to take good care of the equipment that might save it. He tugged off his boots and, clad in shirt and hose, wearily flopped down on the bed.

And immediately leapt up again.

“God’s teeth!”

Pinned to the wall above his head was a heart, dark with a crust of dried blood. And it was held there by a curved dagger with a jewelled hilt.

In the cold light of morning, Geoffrey could see quite clearly that the dagger was not the same one that had been used to kill John of Sourdeval in the Greek Quarter the previous day: the blade was chipped and bunted, and the hilt was adorned with roughly cut pieces of coloured glass rather than jewels. But it was similar, and its message was clear: someone knew exactly where Geoffrey had been that night, and what he had been told to do. It was a warning that he should not meddle. But it also told him that someone in the citadel was involved in the murders. Security was tight at the Advocate’s stronghold, and no one was allowed in unescorted. And certainly no one was allowed in the knights’ rooms on the upper floors. What little cleaning that took place was performed by foot soldiers, not by local labour. The only people who could have gained access to his chamber, therefore, were Crusaders.

But what of the heart? What was its significance? Geoffrey frowned as he poked at it with his dagger, turning it over to try to gain some clue as to its origins. The dog watched with greedy attention, licking its lips and salivating on the floor.

“The kitchens,” announced Hugh, eyeing dog and heart distastefully from the window seat. “Where else could it have come from?”

“It looks like the heart of a pig,” said Geoffrey, still prodding it. “Pigs are not common here. The Moslems and Jews consider them unclean, and we have learned by bitter experience that their meat becomes tainted quickly in the desert heat. There are simply not many pigs around.”

“Well, go to the kitchens, and ask whether a pig has been slaughtered recently,” said Hugh, becoming bored by the conversation. “You will probably find that they killed one to make blood pudding or something, and parts of the carcass were left over.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “That is unlikely. Food is not so abundant in this wilderness that we can afford to discard it carelessly. I imagine all parts of any animal slaughtered will be used, even the bones to make soup.”

Hugh rose languidly from the window seat. “All this talk of food is making me hungry. It must be time to eat.”

Abandoning the grisly warning, Geoffrey followed Hugh down the spiral stairs that led to the great hall on the second floor of the Tower of David, with the dog at his heels. On the way, Hugh banged hard on the door of Sir Roger of Durham, an English knight who had elected to stay in Jerusalem after the rest of his contingent had left. The remainder of the knights, about three hundred in all, were mainly Lorrainers in the pay of the Advocate; however, there were also substantial numbers of Normans who were in the retinues of Bohemond-like Hugh and Roger-and Geoffrey’s lord, Tancred.

Roger emerged from his chamber, and followed them down the stairs. He was a huge man with cropped black hair and a brick-red complexion, and was the illegitimate son of the powerful Prince-Bishop of Durham. Roger was a simple man, blessed with a north country bluntness that Geoffrey assumed he must have inherited from his mother, who had been the Bishop’s robe-maker. Roger had no time at all for the politics and intrigues in Jerusalem, and was always the first to volunteer for expeditions where he would be able to use his formidable fighting skills. Roger’s prodigious strength and honesty, coupled with Hugh’s lugubrious cynicism and Geoffrey’s quick intelligence, made them a force to be reckoned with in the citadel hierarchy. John of Sourdeval, Geoffrey recalled with a pang, had often made a fourth, his gentleness and integrity repressing some of Roger’s and Hugh’s wilder acts.

“I heard you had a heart delivered last night,” said Roger conversationally, pushing past Geoffrey to be the first to arrive at the meal in the hall. “Do you want it? I have not eaten a heart since I left Durham.”

“You would be in competition with half the flies in Palestine for it,” drawled Hugh. “It stinks like a cesspool.”

Roger grinned, showing strong brown teeth. “Picky Frenchman,” he said. Hugh smiled back, while Geoffrey wondered how they could be so complacent about such a breach in security.

Geoffrey watched Roger clatter down the stairs in front of him. Roger was not a man Geoffrey would have imagined he would have forged a friendship with-he was coarse, loved fighting, and despised anything remotely intellectual. Yet English knights were a rarity on the Crusade, and Geoffrey found himself first drawn to Roger for the simple reason that they were countrymen. Later, however, he had come to respect other qualities in Roger: his honesty, a certain crude integrity, and an absolute loyalty to his friends-chiefly Geoffrey and Hugh. Although Geoffrey had more in common with the quick-witted, sardonic Hugh, Geoffrey admired Roger and felt himself fortunate to have two such friends, regardless of the difference in their personalities.

The great hall was already heaving with men. The window shutters had been thrown wide open, but the air inside was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, Jerusalem dust, and oiled leather. Geoffrey immediately felt the prickle of sweat at his back, and pulled uncomfortably at his clothes. Even within the great walls of the citadel, the knights wore armour-mostly light mail tunics over their shirts. When they left the citadel, they wore heavy chain-mail shirts that reached their knees; over the shirts, they donned padded surcoats emblazoned with a Crusader’s cross on the back and their lord’s insignia on the front. Added to this were thick mail gauntlets, a metal helmet with a long nosepiece, and weighty boiled-leather trousers.