Pilgrim

by James Jackson

  Disaffection needed outlet. The hired soldiers would not be paid; the Templars would never reach Jerusalem. It rankled. The Cathars too felt betrayed. Argument quickly escalated, altercation fragmenting into wider trading of blows. A knight was pulled from his horse and put struggling to the knife. He bled and kicked as well as any scapegoat. But it was insufficient to sate desire for vengeance, spawned a myriad further fights. Through the throng, the Grand Master of the Templars rode, his captains beside him, his sword raised high.

  ‘My brethren, we are deceived and undone! Find again our holy cause, commit yourselves to sacred war! The Cathars are our sworn enemy, the allies of Satan and opponents of our Church! Show no mercy in your zeal! Salve your conscience with their blood and restore the Order to its rightful place!’

  They obeyed. The Templars were carving out position, battling for reinstatement and favour in a continued Outremer. No simple undertaking. Yet they could prove themselves through violence, had done so many times before. Saphadin and John of Brienne would observe and marvel at their prowess; the rival Hospitallers and Teutons would for ever show respect. They would massacre with gusto. So it began.

  The Cathars did not go lightly or unprotesting to their deaths. Those who were armed hurled themselves at the advancing knights; those bare-handed threw themselves in the fray with equal vigour. A lance was wrenched from the grasp of a mounted Templar and turned against him until he hung pinned and wriggling like an insect. Atop a cart, a Cathar had lit a wildfire pot, was preparing to fling it at an encroaching mob of mercenaries. A crossbow-bolt through his head bowled him down, drove him among the rest of his incendiaries. Oil, pitch, resin and spirit ignited. Explosion followed. It erupted outward in instant pressure-shock, removing flesh from bone, air from lungs, life from a firestorm radius of fifty yards. Other wagons were consumed, building the chaos, carrying the flame. Another blast.

  ‘Egon, we need weapons.’ Kurt crouched low as a snub-nosed quarrel flew overhead, and squinted through a loose join in the sides of the cart. ‘We cannot defend ourselves as we are.’

  ‘As we are is sitting low and waiting safe.’

  ‘Safety is nowhere here.’

  The blacksmith’s boy placed a restraining arm across his shoulder. ‘No foolish daring, Kurt. We are better together, more able to meet the threat.’

  ‘Unable to greet it with anything more than a cry.’

  ‘Stay with us, Kurt.’

  ‘Should we die, it will be as soldiers and not as children.’

  Without second thought, he slithered over the cart’s shallow walls. Quickly, he rolled beneath the axle, lying flat, scanning the eddying scenes of mayhem. Brute force could be mesmerizing. Horses reared, men screamed, bodies jarred and swayed in endless and ferocious scrimmage. It was reaching close. He reacted as a small figure fell into view and scrambled to his side.

  ‘Zepp, this is no place for you.’

  The youngster disagreed. He was already peering ahead for opportunity in the fire-framed tumult. He spotted it. With soundless energy, he darted into a cavity among the whirling action, disappearing momentarily, re-emerging with a scythe to crawl back to sanctuary. A second time, a third. Kurt joined him, waiting until a Templar was trampled and beheaded before stripping him of his dagger and sword. Hot work among the most hellish of landscapes. Beneath and around them, the ground shuddered and the temperature climbed.

  A dead face landed inches from his own, its eyes confused, its mouth leering. He pushed it away. Zepp was passing another sword upward, adding to the armoury on board the swaying tumbril. The ox had staggered wounded and bellowing to its knees; its driver disappeared through a screen of exploding munitions. The cargo was going nowhere.

  Kurt coughed and wiped his streaming eyes. The curling haze carried the stench of cindered flesh.

  ‘We must climb back, Zepp.’

  In turn they ascended, Zepp in front, Kurt behind, each wrenched upward by willing hands and propelled by shrill exhortation. As he tumbled to the floorpan and a billhook splintered wood where his neck had been, it occurred to Kurt he had turned thirteen years of age. Just a single thought joining others travelling random in his mind.

  He clenched a short javelin in his hand and took up his station as the lookout. At least they had the means to inflict some punishment. The cart lurched on the heavy groundswell. Perhaps matters would be less troubling if he imagined he were on a ship at sea, believed the storm would soon pass. But there was no sign of lessening tempest.

  Kill the young. He had not dreamed the words. Before him, the distant form of the Perfect was growing larger, nearing, pointing in his direction. The Cathar chief would yet have his consolation.

  The moment for it arrived. With religious utterance on his lips, and the strain of destruction on his face, the Perfect leaped from his horse on to the cart. Indecisiveness was not part of his creed. He bore a stabbing-sword, and intended to use it, would slay the children as he had always pledged. Even in these dying hours, when his Believers suffered and fell, he could gain for them everlasting reward. Their God would view them kindly for his act. He had not reckoned on Isolda.

  She tore at him with the ferocity of a protective vixen, her rage boundless, her fingers clawing for his face and eyes. He tried to ward her off. But the attack was unrelenting, came from a girl who had endured enough and who was fighting for her life. It was poor contest. He lost first his sword and then his balance, his feet scraping for purchase, his arm flung out in vain. A puncture-wound toppled him; a blundering and panicked beast towing a burning wagon rapidly broke and buried his remains. The children readied themselves for the next onslaught.

  ‘How easily man may descend to hell.’

  Saphadin was a calm spectator. From his horse he surveyed the apocalyptic tableau, a bejewelled ruler undemonstrative before his troops and yet pleased with the result. As in the last moments on the plateau of the Horns of Hattin, a western army was being annihilated. Unlike at Hattin, the Franks were doing the work themselves. There was much to celebrate. His sultanate was secure, the threat neutralized, the kingdom of Outremer embroiled in its own debilitating and internecine conflict. Status quo had been restored. Allah was indeed Most Merciful.

  Beside him, John of Brienne answered in Arabic. ‘It is ever dismal to witness carnage of such kind.’

  ‘Each thrust of a spear, every dart from a bow, is one less of the foe grasping for my throat.’

  ‘We have both reached old age, al-Adil. That is miracle itself.’

  ‘I know little of miracle and more of how we may be blinded by flattery and trappings of court and betrayed by those within.’

  ‘This time, fate intervenes.’

  ‘Not fate, but an aged holy man they call a Franciscan.’

  The regent nodded. ‘Without him, our bones would now be picked over by rats and scavenging birds in the streets of Jabala.’

  It had been close-run thing. To alter their perception of the Lord of Arsur, to accept revelation of his duplicity, had taken leap of imagination and earthquake in reasoning. This was its consequence. The Holy Land was used to chaos and seismic shock, to the eruption of hostility and levelling of civilization. Strange alliance could also be forged. The two old men continued their arid contemplation of the scene.

  John of Brienne glanced at his counterpart. ‘I trust you shall disband your army, al-Adil.’

  ‘I never broke my word to Cœur de Lion, will not do so to you.’

  ‘Survival gives us new chance.’

  ‘As war creates only piles of ash.’

  ‘The lesson before us is stark, will for a while bring the Templars to heel. Zealots on both sides will be restrained in their ambition and cautious of adventure.’

  ‘No more the use of Assassins, the thoughtless raid, the rapacious quest for land.’

  ‘And no more the setting where infant daughter may be stolen from her father.’ There was slight tremor in the voice of the regent. ‘Christian and Mohammedan may labour together
, al-Adil.’

  ‘For the present.’ Saphadin spurred his horse and wheeled to face his army.

  Smoke drifted, and at the heart of the fires corpses glowed like magma.

  Golgotha, the skull-rock. A place of suffering and absolution, of end and beginning; the site of crucifixion and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. On Christian maps it was the centre of the known world. And here, where the transept bisected the choir, was its very core. Crusaders had fought to defend it, pilgrims endured to reach it. Many thousands had perished with its name on their lips. There was no location more sacred. It deserved something profound.

  The Lord of Arsur stood before the high altar and marvelled at the majesty of the occasion. Deliverance was upon the earth. Against the wall was the empty throne of Jerusalem. He would fill it well, rule with an iron fist that had been lacking for millennia. Some moment; quite a prospect. He breathed in slow, let the pungent aromas of burning incense and juniper oil infiltrate his senses. An intoxicating experience. He was ushering in a new dawn, a fresh reality, a pristine rule. Jesus was no match for it. In this tranquil gloom, among the candle-tinted columns and dark recesses, throughout the ambulatories and hidden chapels, the pious had worshipped and called for the coming of the Lord. He was arrived.

  It had been undemanding effort to relieve the Moslem wardens of their keys to the church, would prove no harder to introduce his forces to the city. His troops were even now marching for the gates of Jerusalem, would bring with them the catapults and mangonels, the paraphernalia of siege-defence, they found concealed at Beit-Nuba. Accompanying them would be his future wife Matilda. Later would be brought the gilt-bound relic of the True Cross. A womb and an icon. Everything dynastic reign required.

  A small cry returned him to his purpose. Nestling in a rush basket placed upon the high altar was the infant queen Yolanda. How fitting she was present at historic point of sacrifice. The spilling of her blood would mark the end of her line and the beginning of his, bring to the world the supremacy of Baphomet. Other victims were journeying by cart and would be dealt with by the Cathars. His focus was on a single life and the one resulting death.

  He moved to the altar, started the ritual incantation that would lead to the downward plunge of his knife. The baby smiled up at him. But he had no pity in his heart, no inclination to release her from her path. Destiny asked much of her. She frowned and began to whimper. He did not pause, for the schedule was imperative.

  Interruption came with the suggestion of a presence behind and the quiet tread of bare feet on flagstone. He turned to see, straining to penetrate the shadowed dark towards the aedicule and holy tomb. Emerging from it was Brother Luke.

  The friar did not approach too close, but loitered still and watchful at fifteen paces. ‘Your army will not come; your followers in Jerusalem are all of them captured.’

  ‘So speaks an ancient beggar and fool.’

  ‘A beggar who travels the earth for this encounter. A fool who outfoxes your ploys and deception.’

  ‘Brother Luke?’

  ‘I answer to that name.’

  ‘The Templars should have silenced you when they had chance in Tortosa.’

  ‘Yet they did not. God is kind.’

  ‘You will find my God is the greater.’

  The eyes of the Franciscan narrowed. ‘Cruelty and base horror are oft founded on such belief.’

  ‘What do you believe, friar? That you will live? That I may be halted?’ The Lord of Arsur waved his blade. ‘Tell me, holy vagabond. Are you angel of vengeance or mere ragged pile of bones?’

  ‘I do as my Father and Saviour commands me.’

  ‘Thus to each of us a plan.’

  ‘You would sully a place of veneration and worship with senseless murder of an innocent?’

  ‘It has happened here before.’ The joke was not delivered with humour or warmth.

  ‘You are the darkness, Lord of Arsur.’

  ‘And you the light?’

  ‘Firmitas et Fortitudo.’ Brother Luke delivered the words with the cool conviction of a mantra. ‘Firmitas et Fortitudo.’

  ‘Neither Latin proverb nor your strength and bravery have consequence at this hour.’

  ‘Though they are words present from my birth, the family motto I have borne on every step since England.’

  ‘I hope they will comfort you in your death.’

  ‘They shall haunt you at yours.’

  Lowering his knife a fraction, the Lord of Arsur examined the obscured and distant features of the old man. The intruder certainly knew how to taunt and provoke, how to upset procedure and tax his patience. Worthy punishment would be later decided for his lies and insult, his rashness in confronting the rightful king of Palestine. That king could show temporary restraint in a trying situation.

  ‘Who are you, Franciscan?’

  ‘A man you betrayed and consigned to die.’

  ‘It does not narrow the field.’

  ‘The field in which I stood at dawn on fifth of July the year of Our Lord 1187 was winnowed enough to a single Templar.’

  ‘Hattin?’

  ‘A battle in which you delivered up our Christian army to Salah ad-Din, from which you rode as my brother knights were beheaded in turn on gathered stones.’ Explanation instead of bitterness pervaded the voice. ‘I was the knight who witnessed you with the True Cross, who raised voice against you.’

  The Lord of Arsur whispered the words, pulled them from an earlier time. ‘Judas. Betrayer of our cause . . . A curse be upon you.’

  ‘Well you remember it.’

  ‘Bygone deed is owned but by the past.’

  ‘I bring it to the present.’ Brother Luke made no attempt to draw near. ‘My vehemence earned me reprieve. The Saracens thought me brave, revoked my execution and sent me in chains and endless caravan to the furthest point on earth. I crossed deserts and climbed mountains, spent twenty years toiling in death and the deepest of mines to hew lapis from the ground.’

  ‘We have each of us been industrious.’

  ‘Not so industrious I was denied thinking each day of such moment as this, dreaming each night of escaping and trailing you to your lair.’

  ‘You find me. Trailing is done.’

  ‘I am not.’

  Threat was implicit though not described. In some subtle way, the confrontation was rising, had become personal. The Lord of Arsur would play for time. Surely his guards would arrive, his hidden cohorts burst through to exact vindictive penalty on this tortured soul. Yet none came.

  Outward composure had acquired a layer of perspiration. ‘Let us call truce, holy friar.’

  ‘Memory relates you use talk to murder those who oppose you, to gather rulers and nobles at a tent in Jabala and there see them slain.’

  ‘Such insight and perseverance in one so old.’

  ‘So much iniquity in one so human.’ The friar seemed to study his subject for deeper revelation. ‘Why did you send killers to Europe to end the life of Otto of Alzey?’

  ‘For the reason that, should he be as good as his father is bad, Palestine would gain to my disadvantage.’

  ‘That is all?’

  ‘Not quite. The Assassins accepted invitation to serve me, and I in turn set them test of loyalty.’

  ‘He was to die for mere trial?’

  ‘Many depart this world for less.’ The dagger edged towards the recumbent child.

  ‘You shall commit no further harm.’

  ‘I am menaced by former Templar?’ The Lord of Arsur turned the steel to catch the light. ‘Does not your sacred oath in the chapter ban violent act against brother Christian?’

  ‘You are no Christian.’

  ‘Yet you are Franciscan, a friar with binding duty against hurt to living soul.’

  The aged wanderer did not answer. There were others less restrained than he. Perhaps a flicker of recognition sprang in the eye of the Lord of Arsur, an emerging realization of his mistake. It was quickly doused. With piercing yells, Assassins em
erged from cavities behind the altar and fell upon the nobleman before he could respond. Brother Luke remained passive and aloof, an observer to justice enacted in a crimson spray and accompanied by garbled shrieks and fevered handiwork. Assassins liked to be on the winning side; their allegiance had been bought with gold taken from the treasury of the Templars on the island of Arwad. Such irony was lost on what was left of the Lord of Arsur.

  Twelve miles from Jerusalem, a troop of mounted Hospitallers clattered through the gateway to the courtyard of Beit-Nuba. At its head was Otto of Alzey. He had come for his beloved.

  Survival was a desolate state. Kurt wandered alone through the deserted tanneries at the edge of Arsur. He had wanted the isolation, had sought out a place where he could forget everything and lose himself. Battle was fought and victory won, he and his sister returned to freedom. But liberation carried price and burden. His bones ached, his spirit was grey, his head drooped beneath the weight of fatigue and the heaviness of a thousand dead. He had seen too much. Maybe here he could find release, replace the smoke of war with the pungent fumes of the dyeing pits, exchange the colour of blood for the rainbow hues of more peaceful trade. The Lord of Arsur was gone, his plot revealed and territories seized. Yet the True Cross went undiscovered. It hardly seemed to matter.

  Some horrors remained. As he strolled among the lead mixing-vessels, shuffled a stone from his path, among the drying-racks, he was confronted by odd and disquieting sight. He stared perplexed. Before him was craftsmanship: a row of severed heads dried and treated and laid out in display. So like the head of St John the Baptist pulled from a sack on the cart in the cathedral square of Cologne. Nothing was sacred.