‘The situation here is no less troublesome,’ Bochard said, again irritably. ‘The king has a truce in place with Egypt, which we will be forced to break if we seek to destroy Saracen power, but which in the meantime has theoretically given us the freedom to consolidate. Yet the Egyptian Sultan has agreed to terms with his neighbouring Saracen princes also, which means that if we launch an attack on Egypt, we risk breaking our truce terms with those same neighbours. We could attack Egypt only to find ourselves with a war on three fronts, fighting on every frontier of Outremer. This is a thorny problem currently plaguing the grand master, though his attention has temporarily been distracted by further difficulties. He has been called north to Antioch, for war has broken out there between Armenian Cilicia and the Antiochene lands. And while they weaken one another, the Sultanate of Rum looks on, anticipating easy pickings among the wreckage.’
‘So the Order is preparing for…?’ prompted Ramon.
‘Anything, to put it simply. Until the troubles around Antioch are resolved – and the king and the Hospitaller master are also there with our own commander attempting to resolve it all – we cannot say for sure where any campaign could be prosecuted, if at all. Everything is in a state of uncertainty at this time. As such, I have been charged with a mission by the grand master, and you shall accompany me.’
‘Mission, sir?’ prompted Arnau.
‘With everything so unstable and troublesome, the court of Jerusalem and our order both have been charged with securing every alliance and border we can. While the masters attend Antioch, brothers of the Temple are on their way as emissaries to the Saracen court in Damascus and even to the emir of Mosul. The support of Aimery of Cyprus is assumed. But even with all those states settled, there is one major worry: the empire.’
Arnau frowned. ‘The Byzantines, Preceptor?’
Bochard nodded. ‘That heathen empire has ever been hard to predict. Their emperors are as often in league with Saracens and Turks as they are at odds with them. Their relationships with the sultanate of Rum and the Armenian king are complex. We cannot, in the current circumstances, afford the let the empire shirk its duty as a bulwark of Christendom. Despite what happened at Zadra and the presence of the exiled prince among the Crusaders, we cannot allow the emperor to focus on internal problems. We need him supporting our efforts if we are to have any hope of success in the East. Do you understand?’
Both men nodded, though Arnau caught Ramon’s eye and knew the older knight was thinking the same as he. How could they hope to persuade the Byzantine emperor to support a Crusade when there was every chance that Crusade would turn on him in favour of his nephew? The very task felt doomed from the outset.
‘Good. The grand master was unwilling to commit knights from the local regions to my embassy, for they will surely be needed here in the coming days, and they are familiar with the region and its people and geography. You being uninformed foreigners will be of more use to me than you would be here.’
His gaze hardened.
‘And I need you to understand and accept something immediately. Your presence is little more than a matter of show. Like the Romans of old, the Byzantines appreciate spectacle, and the larger and more impressive our embassy, the better. Would that we could send a sizeable force. Still, you will look noble and strong, and yet remain silent and unopinionated. I follow the Rule of our order without question, and I expect those with me to do likewise. That includes rule thirty-nine. Do you understand?’ he added, his eyes slits.
Arnau felt a twitch creep into his eyelid at the words.
Rule thirty-nine. He knew very well to which aspects of the rule the preceptor was referring.
…all brothers who are professed strictly obey their Master. For nothing is dearer to Jesus Christ than obedience. For as soon as something is commanded by the Master or by him to whom the Master has given the authority, it should be done without delay as though Christ himself had commanded it.
He caught the eye of Brother Ramon again, and once more noted the same discomfort and worry in his superior’s eye. Yet the rules were there, as Ramon himself had said, to keep wayward brothers in place. They had to be obeyed. It was one key thing to which every Templar agreed when they first joined the Order.
They bowed their heads in unison.
‘Very well. You have conveniently missed the sext service before your arrival, though I presume you performed your devotions aboard your ship. I expect you to attend none, vespers and compline in the church here in the fortress at my side. We will leave for Constantinople by the end of the week. I live in hope that the grand master will conclude his treaties and return before then, for if that is the case and Antioch is settled, then he might perhaps spare me further support for our embassy. But leave then we shall, whether the commander has returned or no. Until that day, I expect you to take an active part in conventual life as if you were in your home preceptory, treating me as your master, for that I surely am until our task is complete and the Order dispatches you elsewhere. For now, you have two hours until none. I advise you to familiarise yourself with the Order’s enclave here in Acre. I also need you to visit the storehouses and arrange everything we need for a month-long journey, since it will certainly take us that long to reach the imperial capital.’
‘A month, sir?’ Arnau asked.
Ramon shot him a look, but nodded slightly and addressed the preceptor for them both. ‘Surely, Master, by ship we can make the journey in a week at most?’
Bochard’s lip rose in an odd twitch, reminiscent of a sneer. ‘Ships will not be available for our journey. You have a horse. Use it. We shall ride for the principality of Antioch and around the coast of Armenian Cilicia into Byzantine lands. Now leave me. I have much to ponder.’
Bowing, the two men left the room, closing the door with a click behind them. Neither spoke until they were at the top of the stairs, far along the corridor, when Ramon paused and grasped Arnau by the shoulder, pulling him into a corner. ‘What do you make of the preceptor?’ he asked in hushed tones.
Arnau pursed his lips. ‘I’m not sure I trust him, Brother,’ he admitted quietly.
‘I trust him to do exactly what he thinks is right,’ Ramon replied. ‘Whether it is sensible or not. I am beginning to see how that disaster on Cyprus might have come about. We shall have a very fine line to walk in the coming days.’
Arnau nodded. ‘We cannot disobey him. It is the Rule, and he is more adamant than most.’
‘Yet it would be unwise of us to walk into catastrophe alongside him without question. A fine line, as I said. And what of our journey, Vallbona? Why a month-long ride instead of a week-long voyage, do you think?’
Arnau huffed. ‘I see no reason. The Order here has its own ships. And even if they are all spoken for, it would not be difficult to secure passage on a private vessel. With the preceptor’s squire, we would still only number five men and five steeds. Most ships would be able to find room for us. The Order could afford the cost, and a good God-fearing sailor would charge little for men of the Order anyway. So no, I see no reason. Unless…’
Arnau tried not to dwell on what was rising in his imagination.
‘Unless?’ Ramon urged him.
‘Unless this is all a lie? We only have the preceptor’s word that the grand master has set him this mission. If it is but a fable, then that might explain why the preceptor cannot utilise a ship or secure adequate funding?’
Ramon frowned. ‘A worrying thought, but I am not entirely sure that Bochard is capable of that sort of lie. I fear he is too rigid. My own notion is that Bochard’s sense of self-importance is a driving force and he feels that we are inadequate as an escort on such a task. I think we ride so that we can pass within mere miles of Antioch and the Order’s grand master. You heard how he delays so that the grand master might return and grant him more brothers. I fear he means to petition for more men even as we travel.’
Arnau shook his head in wonder. ‘Whatever the case, this journey looks troub
lesome to me.’
‘Not as troublesome as the destination. The Byzantine court might not be the best place at the moment, given the threat from the Crusaders. I doubt we sons of the Church of Rome will be wholly popular there.’
Arnau nodded sourly and the two men began to descend the stairs.
‘Come,’ said Ramon, a smile returning to his face. ‘We have two hours to explore. Let us begin with the church.’
The building consisted of a rotunda with a high, pointed roof, from which projected a long and wide nave. A transept jutted off to the north with several side buildings. It was sizeable, though clearly not large enough to accommodate the entire order in Acre.
‘There must be other churches outside the fortress,’ Ramon noted as they made their way inside the ornate arched western doorway. The church was well-appointed and spacious. Three brothers in white mantles knelt before the altar on some unknown vigil, and Ramon put a finger to his lips, reminding Arnau to keep quiet here. Trying not to disturb the praying knights, the two Iberians moved through the church, taking in all aspects of it. The building was probably only a dozen or so years old, though elements of it had clearly been taken from other sources. A Templar flag hung on the nave wall, its lower edge tattered and shredded, showing the stains of battle and blood, and a similar banner hung opposite. A series of stones built into the nave wall were clearly of such antique origin that their presence had to be meaningful.
They passed into the transept and there discovered two knights standing silent and attentive by a heavy door, which was ribbed with iron reinforcement. A priest nearby was cleaning a crucifix. The two men shared a look and crossed to the old man who, when he straightened at their approach, proved to be immensely tall and birdlike.
‘Can I help you, Brothers?’ he asked in a soft voice in Eastern-accented French.
‘We have just arrived,’ Ramon replied in low tones so as not to disturb the praying knights nearby. ‘We’re familiarising ourselves with Acre. Why guards within the church, might I ask?’
The priest glanced at the two knights standing by the door.
‘Our reliquary,’ he smiled. ‘The contents of which are irreplaceable and of inestimable value.’
Ramon returned the smile and nodded at Arnau. ‘My friend here is more than familiar with relics.’
Arnau rolled his eyes. ‘I acquired the arm of Saint Stephen for our preceptory.’
The priest nodded indulgently, as though he held the Holy Grail and Arnau had admitted to acquiring a wicker basket. ‘Our relics at Acre are the envy of the world. When Jerusalem fell to the Saracen, we were careful to remove every relic we had gathered and transport them here. Not one was lost to the enemy.’ A gleam appeared in the priest’s eye. Pride might be a sin, but sometimes it was the hardest one to avoid. The man was almost certainly justifiably proud of their collection.
‘I would show you, but the room is kept locked, and only three people in Acre have a key. Besides, the bulk of the collection is kept secure in the cellars.’
Arnau frowned. Clearly this reliquary could easily hold more sacred objects than he had seen in his life. How many could they have that they needed a cellar for the overflow?
The priest seemed to read his expression and smiled knowingly. ‘We have a number of fragments of the true cross, as well as nails. We have the bones of near a hundred blessed saints, a cross formed from Christ’s own lavatorium, thorns from the Saviour’s crown, two phials of Christ’s untainted and ever-vital blood, a fragment of Pontius Pilate’s sacred stair, splinters from the column of the flagellation, dirt preserved from ancient Golgotha, and so much more.’
Arnau felt his pulse quicken at just the mention of some of those incredible sacred relics. They made his own contribution last year seem more than a little paltry. But then, it was said the Order had been gathering relics in Jerusalem for a century now. They had the largest collection since that begun by the mother of Constantine.
‘Incredible,’ breathed Arnau.
‘We also retain a number of stones taken from both the Temple and the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. You will find them built into the walls of our own church.’
Ramon nodded. ‘I saw them. And the banners?’
‘The flags of our fallen brothers, removed from the field at both Hattin and Cresson.’
Arnau shuddered. Two of the greatest losses in the Order’s history. Over a hundred knights of both the Templar and Hospitaller orders and a thousand of their men, including the grand masters themselves, had died at Cresson. Legend had it that only three knights walked away from the dreadful defeat. Hattin had been little better for the Order, and worse for the Christian world at large.
‘Perhaps, if the Crusade can be guided back to Egypt, Jerusalem might once again be freed, and the Order can return.’
The priest nodded, though his expression suggested he doubted it.
The two knights took their leave and exited the church. Back in the sunlight, Arnau was still shivering at the thought of what those two tattered banners had seen.
‘Come on,’ Ramon said with new purpose. ‘Whatever we might make of it, within the week we will be riding for Constantinople, and you will truly have a chance to practise your Greek. For now, let us gather everything we need for the journey.’
Chapter 4: The Perilous Journey
North of Acre
Late March 1203
The journey was clearly going to be a tense affair, with the presence of Preceptor Bochard and his squire doing little to improve matters. The two visiting Iberian brothers had pored over maps of the region before they left and had been surprised at how fragmented and disparate the various small Crusader states now were since the fall of Jerusalem and the resurgence of Saracen power. They had been even more surprised at the fact that enemy territory seemed to separate many of the states. Even just north of Acre, Saracen-controlled lands came so close to the coast as to make the connection between two parts of the kingdom little more than a stretch of beach.
Bochard had dismissed their concerns out of hand, proclaiming their safety as a matter of course. The king of Jerusalem in his exile city of Acre had temporary treaties and truces with the local Ayyubid Saracen rulers, and Bochard did not believe that anyone would attack Christian knights and risk breaking the truce. When Ramon, still angling to board a ship, pointed out that there would be bandits to be wary of also, Bochard had sneered and replied that the very reason for the foundation of the Order was to protect pilgrims from bandits, and that it would be a poor lookout for Templars everywhere if they started to panic about banditry.
Stripped of excuses, they had had little option but to fall in line with Bochard’s plan for a month-long ride. On the bright side, given their history in Iberia, both men had a little grounding in what to expect. Christian realms with internecine squabbles threatened by a Moorish empire that was more often hostile than pacific described their homeland as easily as it did this region.
So with two horses each and a string of three pack mules, the five men had ridden out from Acre at the end of the week. They had received wishes of good fortune from fellow Templars as they passed through the city, and even odd words of grudging support from members of the rival Hospitaller order and others. They had left Acre in the early morning sunlight after breaking their fast and ridden north along the coast at a steady, mile-eating pace.
The terrain was flat and predominantly brown, with well-farmed land just inshore of golden beaches. Hills rose into what looked like low mountains to the east throughout the day, and they passed a number of small towns and villages that looked as though they had probably changed very little since the disciples of Christ had passed through a millennium ago.
On the morning of the second day they passed the ancient city of Tyre, where a small group of mail-shirted soldiers at a roadside well told them to be watchful and wary further north. Mere miles from Tyre were lands controlled by the Ayyubids of Karak, and they were notoriously lax in keeping to trea
ties. For the next day and a half, they passed through Saracen lands, though there was no clearly delineated border and no clear indication that the area was any different to the Christian kingdom they had just left. The land and people were exactly the same. Arnau knew from bitter experience in Iberia’s border zones how the local populace tended to acquire a jaded fatalism in their approach to authority. Today their ruler was a Saracen. Tomorrow it could be a Crusader king. For them, little else would change.
Mercifully, there was no trouble on that stretch. The only Saracen soldiers they saw were a small troop of horsemen some mile or more distant to the east, and either they held tight to their truce, or they saw little benefit in riding miles out of their way to attack five men who were by their order’s very name ‘Poor Knights’. Thus, as the sun sank the next day, they approached the outskirts of the city of Beyrouth, safe in the knowledge that they had traversed enemy territory safely and reached lands once more controlled by the king.
Miles north during the next morning, they passed the unmarked border with the Christian county of Tripoli. Thereafter things became a little less tense, though apparently not for Bochard, who seemed to become more and more tightly wound as they approached the city of Antioch, where their grand master was said to currently reside with the other leaders of the East, mediating a dispute. They saw no Ayyubid riders or bandits during those next few days, passing the great city of Tripoli in peace.
Some distance further north they passed through an area which displayed the telltale signs of an increased presence of the Hospitaller order, which further vexed Bochard, who held that rival order in even less esteem, apparently, than most Templars. Still no sign of trouble arose. On the seventh day out of Acre they passed the ancient city of Latakia, and on the eighth drew nearer to Antioch.
Nestled between the great Orontes River and a range of high peaks covered with ancient structures and powerful walls, Antioch remained one of the most venerable and important cities in the East. Its control was currently contested, according to the preceptor, by Bohemond the Fourth, Count of Tripoli and second son of the previous ruler, and Raymond-Roupen, the same man’s grandson by his elder boy who was supported by King Leo of Cilicia. A true mess which had brought kings, grand masters, and even a legate of the Pope to the city to mediate.
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