Antichrist

by Cecelia Holland

  “When we return, do you think we’ll need an army to meet the Pope’s, Sire?”

  “No. Only the soldiers on the galleys.” His throat tightened up, and he shut his eyes against the stinging tears. “Piero . . . Piero said the people are so much against him that all I have to do is come home.” She didn’t even wait to see me before she left.

  The Grand Master stopped talking; Frederick could feel his eyes on him and even sense that the old man was puzzled and startled. He couldn’t speak, and there was nothing to say in any case. The pages darted around the room, and Corso shouted to someone to bring in fresh flowers, and in the midst of it Frederick turned his head away and wept.

  No lights showed on the shore; in the darkness the only sound was the slap and suck of the water against the side of the galley. Frederick leaned on the railing and stared toward Brindisi. The moist heat made his shirt cling, sodden, to his back. Looking around the sky, he found the Dog Star, burning hot and red low in the sky. A pirate taught me about that star. It was impossible not to think of Theophano—whenever he was alone with nothing to do, he thought of her—and he sank his head down between his shoulders and remembered her eyes and the sheen of her skin. Everything worth knowing I’ve learned from outlaws.

  “We could sail to Monopoli if Brindisi isn’t friendly to us,” Enrico said, coming up behind him.

  “If Brindisi isn’t open, we may as well go back to Jaffa.” The Pope would have use of the Pisan fleet, and as soon as they knew he was in Sicily, the swift galleys of the Pisans would be rowing up and down the coast. There is Sicily, right there, so close I can smell the shore. What does it mean that they’ve chained off the inner harbor? He strained his eyes, trying to see what he’d stared at all afternoon—the logs, half submerged, that held up the chain over the mouth of the canal, rolling sluggishly like the backs of sea dragons in the wash of the tide. “Can they know we’re coming?”

  “We made the fastest run here from Acre I’ve ever heard of,” Enrico said. “We outsailed our own fleet. They can’t know we’re here.”

  “But they know we’re coming. They would have sent word when I came into Acre from Jerusalem.”

  And they would know he’d try first for Brindisi. His throat tightened. In his mind’s eye Theophano’s face dissolved—this at least was a problem he could attack, with enemies, with tactics and necessary points to cover. Abruptly he gave a choked cry—down where he knew the chain to be, a light bobbed.

  “Yes,” Enrico said, and turned and bellowed for the Captain. “Can you see? They’re taking up the chain.”

  Frederick couldn’t see, not clearly; the light danced on the water, moving gradually from the left to right, and his body grew stiff with eagerness. He’d know in a few moments—they could be enticing him inside, where they could capture him at their leisure, trapped in the narrow bay. The Captain of the galley ran up, and Enrico gave him quiet orders. Other feet pounded on the decking—Fulk and Ezzo and the Saracens came running, pulling on their clothes. Frederick caught his breath.

  “Enrico—”

  “I’m taking her in, Sire, restrain your impatience.”

  Frederick banged his fist on the railing. Enrico had the nicest ways of telling him to shut up. He leaned forward, straining to see—the light was almost halfway to the other side of the canal. With a harsh rattle, the sailors began to turn the capstan, drawing up the anchor, and all over the ship small noises grew steadily toward an uproar—the slaves talking on their benches, the oars running out.

  “Anchor up.”

  They would have taken down the chain even if they were enemies, to lure him inside. Take the risk. He was dizzy with excitement, with anticipation—in a little while he’d know for sure, he’d know at last. All the long voyage, thinking of Theophano: she had left him, she had found something lacking in him. The galley glided forward, the oars grating and splashing down, and his heart lifted. They’d reached Brindisi at sunset, and now it must be past midnight—all that waiting. I’ve always been bad at waiting. He found himself pushing against the railing, as if by that he could make the ship go faster.

  The bouncing light grew more distinct—now he could see the men in the boat, resting at their oars, the chain looped over the stern so that the bow thrust awkwardly into the air. The even rhythm of the oars filled him. They glided through the opening in the chain, into the inner harbor of Brindisi. Only a few other ships lay in the harbor, and the town was dark—he could see the campanile of the cathedral. The galley skimmed through the water, swerving around toward the wharf below the castle, and no ships moved out to meet them, no lights showed anywhere. The feeling grew swiftly in him that he was safe, that he’d beaten them, at least for the moment. He leaned forward, forcing his eyes to see the wharf beneath the dark bulk of the castle—the raging excitement shortened his breath and brought him close to giggling. Alarmed, he made himself calm down.

  The wharf came steadily nearer. Now he could see men waiting, with horses and a banner. God, he thought wildly, I’m my own banner, how many redheads are there in Brindisi? Enrico was speaking to the Captain, who bellowed orders into the waist. All Frederick could hear was a roar in his ears. He thought, I have to calm down or I’ll never be able to—never be able to— The galley rasped against the wharf and rattled down its length, grinding wood on wood, and a lanky man on the dock ran to catch the rope.

  “Sire—”

  There were horses waiting in the dark, and a mob of people standing around them, their faces turned up to the ship. Frederick moved down to the ladder, and suddenly a cheer rose, muffled and full of relief. He climbed awkwardly down, groping with his feet for the rungs of the ladder, and descended into a sea of arms, all reaching to touch him, hands gliding over him, as if he had climbed down into a warm sea. When he turned, the eyes of the men around him aimed at his face, and with a rustle they all knelt.

  “Your Majesty—”

  Hurry, he thought. Hurry. He walked through them toward the horses. All the furious eagerness died down into a cold implacable purpose. But nothing seemed real, it seemed to him as if he’d brought it to life from his own mind. When he took hold of the reins of the nearest horse it surprised him to find them solid, stiff leather in his hands. He mounted, and above them, sitting in the saddle, he looked across a sea of swaying bodies, all their eyes fixed on him. Now others were mounting—Fulk and Ezzo, Enrico, his Saracens. He looked around, and what he had to do fell into place with a click.

  “Ezzo. Go to Lucera and tell the Qadi that I’m back. Bring them all to Troia—I’ll meet them at Troia. Fulk, go to San Martino and call up all the knights loyal to me in the area and bring them to Troia. Enrico, you’d better sail to Palermo.”

  “My Lord,” a man said softly at his stirrup. “There are many men loyal to you in Brindisi—hundreds.”

  “Raise them. I’ll be at the castle for as long as it takes me to get fresh horses and eat something.”

  “Where are you going?” another voice said.

  “To Troia.” He turned the horse into the mob, and they divided to give him a path through. The horse’s hoofs boomed on the wharf, and the others, mounted, followed him, raising a clatter. When he reached the solid ground the sound of the horses muted, and his mount stretched out, more confident. He headed up through the groves of olive trees toward the dark castle.

  Enrico cantered up beside him. “They say that the castle was garrisoned with the Pope’s troops, but that they’ve fled now that they know you’ve come back.”

  “The cowards.”

  Enrico laughed. The branches of the trees stirred in the wind; at the end of the road Frederick saw the gate of the castle, standing open, and a mass of people before it. Kicking his horse into a gallop, he rode into their midst. Their voices rose around him, soft and full of his name.

  “Sire.” A man pushed up to catch hold of his stirrup. “Sire, let me welcome you back from your glorious and wonderful—”

  “Are there any troops of the Pope here
?” Frederick half dragged him through the gate—the courtyard was empty, all the doors standing open. In the darkness the wind rustled through the trees along the inside of the wall and around the arch into the inner ward.

  “There is no one here but loves the Emperor,” the man at his stirrup said.

  “Get me something to eat—and to drink, I’m thirsty. Get me fresh horses. I can’t wait, I’m going to Troia.” He looked around for Fulk and Ezzo, but they were gone.

  The castle servants rushed off, scattering. Through the gate behind, more men pressed, mounted and leading horses and on foot, until the courtyard was packed. Lights shone in the towers over his head. He thought, I have to hurry—catch them before they can . . . A plate of hot meat was thrust into his hands and he took a fork and began to stuff food into his mouth. Someone else held up a tankard of beer.

  “There are thirty knights here already,” someone told him in a confidential tone. “If you wait until daybreak, we can raise a hundred men or more.”

  “I can’t wait.” He looked around—a troop of knights was gathering in the court, most of them in armor and carrying lances. Some of them even had their squires with them. Looking down, Frederick gave the plate and the cup to the first hands he saw. “Who is the captain of those knights?”

  “Asclettin,” someone told him, and he nodded and swung his horse, pressing it with difficulty through the crowd struggling around him, to touch him, to see him, their eyes and hands raised. I have to catch an enemy somewhere, they can’t all run. Some of them will stand and face me. After all the honeyed words, the juggling, the careful pressure on the minds of the men he needed, he wanted to fight outright. I will teach them to . . . He rode out into the open ground, the cool wind and wide road north, and the knights behind him let out a harsh cheer. Give me some clean action with an obvious victory at the end. The moon was rising, dead and old, faintly orange; he started down the road at a lope, headed for the next fortress on the road to Troia.

  “They’ve gone,” Asclettin said, expressionless. “They heard you had landed and they have all gone north.”

  Frederick bit his lip. Above them the castle thrust out from a cliff’s rock face, and the winding road to it looked like a thread drawn on the sheer stone. No banners flew from the tower and the gate stood wide open. “Is there anyone there?”

  “A few servants,” Asclettin said. “Twenty men and women.”

  “No horses.”

  “They took them all. They . . . stripped the castle bare, in fact. I have men bringing in more from the countryside.”

  “Jesus in heaven. Am I to ride a plow horse into Troia?” He looked around. The road was clogged with his men—more than five hundred now, and more joined him every day, knights coming all the way from the southern tip of Apulia, some even from Calabria, and still they hadn’t fought, not one battle, not even an ambush. He felt cheated and humiliated.

  “Sire, they have food for us, if we go up there.” Asclettin was watching him, almost imploring.

  Frederick nodded. He hated the time spent on eating, on drinking and sleep and finding fresh horses, because surely the garrison could not have left too long before he reached this castle, the news couldn’t have traveled so fast. . . . Yet villages they had traveled through were filled with people who cheered and called his name and the word Jerusalem, and who said they had known for days that he was back. He nudged his horse into a jog up the road toward the castle.

  They hung back when he rode in—he’d noticed that before, that the people would not come near him but stayed in the background, hid behind one another; their children with their bright eyes would run laughing in front of his horse, but the older people seemed afraid to come near him. He looked around the courtyard—in the middle stood a well covered with climbing roses, all in bloom, turning the gray stone pink. He thought, I have to sleep. But the urgency riding him struggled to keep him going, because once he held Troia he held Apulia and the pass into the west, and the Pope could no longer resist him. They weren’t resisting him now. They were running, every troop, every soldier of the papal army, giving him nothing to fight. If I fight no one, how will I know it has ended? He dismounted, and when his feet hit the ground, nearly fell.

  “Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Sire, we have—”

  He couldn’t remember how long he’d been back, how many days—he’d stopped at four castles, never for more than a few hours, sleeping in the saddle or in a strange bed and waking up with the sun glaring through a strange window. This was bad, this was base, to want to catch them and kill them before they could flee. They only did what they were told was right. But this far from Brindisi they’d had time, before they fled, to loot, and all that day he’d seen the vineyards stripped and burned, the fields trampled under hoof, and the villages full of sullen faces: Is it over? Are you back forever now, and no one will come to steal, and destroy what is ours, because of you? I’m tired, that’s why I’m thinking this way. He stumbled on the stair but thrust away the men who tried to help him. It was like a nightmare, in the faces of the servants he saw the same accusation: You delivered us up to save yourself. It wasn’t there. In the moments when his lack of sleep wasn’t riding him like a weight on his shoulders he knew that it wasn’t so, but he remembered Theophano’s face and that meant the same thing to him, that for all his justifying what he had done, all the elegant abstractions, it had been to save himself. He had loved her to save himself. The bedchamber they took him to was empty, a perfect square. They had stolen all the furniture. Men spread straw on the floor and blankets on the straw and threadbare linen, borrowed from the villagers, on the blankets. Even if they don’t know, I know. His fingers pulled ineffectually at his shirt, but other hands were there, they undressed him, and he lay down on the straw and put his head down, asleep although his mind went on thinking, longing for an enemy to fight.

  “The town is in the hands of the Lancias,” Asclettin said, impassive. “The garrison has fled.”

  Frederick lifted his fist with the reins and let it fall again to his saddle pommel. “God. Have they no courage at all?” But the name tugged him off course. “The Lancias? Manfredo?”

  “The men I spoke to wore his livery, Sire. I don’t know who— Here comes someone to welcome you.”

  Frederick looked around him down the road. The music of flutes and tambourines reached him, jangling in the hot, windless noon. Behind him the knights sighed and murmured, and his horse took a step to the side and lowered its head, relaxing. Amazed, Frederick saw a parade moving down the road toward him—silk ribbons floated from the manes of white horses, and canopies of red and green, sewn with the insignia of the Lancias, swayed above the musicians. Frederick made a small noise in his throat. Baskets of flowers on their arms, pages ran alongside the horses. The sunlight flashed, on gold and jewels, on the broad banners spread over the arched necks of the horses: the Lancia pennon, the banner of Jerusalem, and his own, above them both, not the imperial standard but the red and gold of the Hohenstaufens. He looked once more at the city on its spur of rock, from which this pretty cavalcade had come, and watched the rider under the center canopy approach.

  Veering off, the musicians and the pages with their flowers lined up on either side of the road, and down the middle of them, flanked by Saracens, rode Bianca Lancia, her face grave and her eyes on Frederick’s. He thought, I hope they have prisoners—the ritual wants a blood sacrifice. But he couldn’t help laughing, delighted.

  “Your Majesty,” Bianca said. “We bring the welcome of Troia for the triumphant Crusader.”

  He grinned—he could think of nothing to say. In her heart-shaped face her blue eyes were steady, and older than he remembered, full of secrets. She smiled, and that drove him to laugh again. “Did you chase out the Pope for me, Lady?”

  “You chased the Pope out, Your Majesty, when you entered Jerusalem.” Her eyes shone, fixed on his face. Lifting his reins, Frederick nudged his horse on down the road, and when she tried to ride behind
him, he caught her rein.

  “No. Stay here, with me.” All around them the flutes and tambourines started up again; he glanced around at them and turned back to her. “Tell me what went on while I was gone.”

  Cecelia Holland

  Cecelia Holland was born in Nevada on New Year’s Eve, 1943. Raised in Metuchen, New Jersey, she now divides her time between New York City and California. A graduate of Connecticut College, she is the author of four earlier novels, The Firedrake (1967), dealing with the Norman invasion of England, Rakóssy (1967), a novel of the Turk-Magyar wars of the early sixteenth century, The Kings in Winter (1968), the scene of which is Ireland in the early part of the eleventh century, and Until the Sun Falls (1969), about the Mongol invasion of Russia and Europe in the thirteenth century. She is also the author of a book for children, Ghost on the Steppe.