The Book of Whispers

by Kimberley Starr

  For the safety of its builders, the siege tower is being constructed further than one bowshot from the city walls. Those builders spent the afternoon carting timber and the evening starting to build, and have now crashed into exhausted sleep on hard ground far from the Princes’ glamorous pavilions. Only a few have small, plain tents. This anonymous crowd is likely to be the safest place for us to sleep.

  I sit and then lie down among the sleepers, still concealed by the cloak. Luca keeps his helmet on. He passes me the pouch with his book to use as a pillow. Above all else, we need to stay hidden from Ramberti.

  ‘Can you sleep here?’ he whispers.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Keep your face covered. No one will notice an extra person. I’ll find a small tent tomorrow.’

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  Luca tells me about the conversation he overheard between Thanatos and Ramberti. I’m horrified.

  ‘It’ll be days before it’s safe to go back,’ Luca says. ‘Maybe not until after the invasion.’

  Luca

  The next day, I exchange one of our precious full waterskins for a small, anonymous tent that Suzan can conceal herself in while she reads. The book continues to share its secrets with her while I go out to find more water, and to learn what I can about Ramberti’s plans. At first, I move stiffly. I’m used to sleeping in the comfort I’ve left behind. The ground last night was cold and hard. But my muscles relax as I wander. I’ve never been more grateful for that enchanted helm. With it in place, I’m free to prowl through the Princes’ pavilions. Mid-morning, I watch as pilgrims and Princes alike continue to present Ramberti with precious gifts. All are eager to have his support now his life seems proof of a miracle. At noon, when Ramberti walks through the camp, people cheer.

  Mid-afternoon, I liberate one of the waterskins he’s been gifted. I walk back to the siege tower construction site. The tower is rising with impressive speed. Everyone is aware of how dangerous the food and water situation out here is, and how quickly we need to make our move. At vespers, I return to Suzan and squeeze into the small tent beside her.

  She’s grateful for the water and rewards me with a smile, turning from the book. ‘It’s getting too dark to read. The book’s been telling me about Ramberti and the lance,’ she says. ‘It was poisoned, but the poison didn’t kill him. It sent him to a sleep, one that was like death.’

  ‘That might have been how we looked at Maarrat.’

  ‘It probably was. Ramberti’s been allied with Thanatos for a long time. He knew about the Hydra blood, remember. He knows about the Jerusalem charm.’

  I take a gulp of water myself. ‘I could have made an alliance with Thanatos.’

  ‘Luca! The book’s very clear. We can never trust demons. Ramberti must know he can’t defeat death.’

  ‘Ramberti wants to be king.’ I’m thinking about the Hydra blood, too. ‘Something on his parchment gives him instructions.’

  ‘Something copied from the book?’

  ‘Maybe. In any case, the book has changed.’

  ‘We need to see the parchment—’

  Raucous cries interrupt, too close by. I slide my helm back on, and pass Suzan her cape. Crawling from the tent, I see a group of pilgrims marching towards the siege-tower site, banging pots and pans and drums. They’re all barefoot, obeying some mysterious instruction, and they all carry relics. Peter walks in front, waving a banner that shows an image of the lance. Like a bizarre parade, pilgrims march alongside the city walls.

  And demons march too, leaping and flying over the hungriest pilgrims, and licking their lips as they savour their suffering. Heat radiates off them in foul-smelling waves like rotting fruit.

  ‘I’ve had a vision!’ Peter yells. ‘Make all the noise you can! Celebrate the lance! The Lord is with us!’

  Once again, they are in ecstasy. As in Maarrat, demons brighten the sky with deceptive shapes of the fallen, a ghost army of saints. The ghosts lower their banners in respect when the lance passes and pilgrims cheer, witnessing it.

  ‘Jesus left this to show Ramberti is meant to be king!’ Peter cries.

  The moon climbs higher in the sky while the parade encircles the entire city.

  Suzan and I watch, horrified, as pilgrims gradually return to their campsites.

  ‘Is Peter working with Thanatos?’ Suzan wonders aloud.

  ‘Or is he being tricked by Ramberti?’ I speculate. ‘And why?’

  ‘And Narlo and Thanatos. They’re all caught up in alliances. They all want power for themselves. And there’s only us to stop them…’ Her words fade into despair. We have so many obstacles in our way.

  ‘It could have been harder,’ I point out.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We might not have had each other.’

  She holds my eye for a long time. Long enough that I start to feel hopeful. ‘Suzan—’

  ‘Shhh.’ She uses one finger to brush my lips, silencing me. My skin tingles from her touch. ‘Not now, Luca. Please leave me for a while.’

  I watch her crawl back into the tent then stand and step away.

  ‘She doesn’t love you.’

  I recognise that voice. Ramberti hasn’t found me—but Percy has.

  I turn. He’s standing nearer the half-built siege tower, looking golden and dangerous.

  ‘Suzan wants wealthier and more important men to associate with,’ he tells me. They are words that could come from the darkest parts of my mind. ‘She doesn’t need you.’

  He walks away. Maybe he’s right. Maybe she doesn’t need me. What hurts is how much I need her.

  CHAPTER 22

  The day before

  JERUSALEM

  Suzan

  When matins sounds, the morning after the weird parade, I wake in my small tent, alone. With both of us still hiding from Ramberti, Luca will be nearby, sleeping just in his cloak. I sent him away. I thought he was about to kiss me again, and I sent him away. We’ve already kissed once. Immediately afterwards, Ramberti returned. I can’t let anything else go wrong. The book turns again and again to the siren page. It’s warning me. I wish it wasn’t right.

  For the first time a terrible thought occurs to me. What if the book isn’t right? Could the book be betraying us? The book, after all, has its own demon. Does it aim to deceive us?

  Another day passes, much like the previous one. Hunger has carved such a thin being of me, I imagine winds drifting across camp could lift me up and blow me over the wall. I’m very thirsty, but allow myself only a sip from my waterskin. I’m aware of all the pilgrims nearby who have even less. I read while Luca roams. Around me, the air echoes with the sounds of hammering. The Princes have sent out a decree. No time is to be wasted. Two siege towers will be ready in the morning, put together tonight in secret, and pushed up against the city’s limestone walls. We will surprise the Saracens. Many teams of builders are working on different sections, to finish as quickly as possible. The lack of water means we need to attack tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, war will be upon us.

  I rise before matins the next day. Dawn reveals the completed tower nearest us is many cubits high and covered in wet animal pelts, which will help it withstand flaming arrows. Leaning drunkenly towards Jerusalem’s walls, it contains catapults and bridges that can be lowered over the parapets once a likely place for a breach is identified.

  Luca rises when he sees me watching the tower.

  ‘They’ll have trouble moving that,’ I observe.

  ‘It’ll be fine on those wheels until it gets to the dry moat.’

  The engineer has had the same thoughts as us. The Princes promise one denarius for every three stones thrown into the moat between the siege engine and the wall.

  Already hungry for the riches they expect to win inside the city, pilgrims are excited by the promise of coins. Soon, they have converged from everywhere with rocks to even the ground and smooth the tower’s progress.

  ‘I need to prepare myself for battle,’ L
uca says. ‘That means going back for my armour. Suzan, we can’t go there together. Ramberti will have spies waiting for me. I’ll wear my helm. You’ll have to wait here. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  While he’s gone, I conceal myself once more, and read. Luca returns quickly, wearing the chainmail he wore the first day I saw him and an extra heavy plate over his chest. In all that metal, he can’t stoop to enter my small tent. I hold the flap open and step outside.

  ‘You’ve thought of something,’ he realises.

  ‘I didn’t understand these lines when I first read them,’ I say. ‘The furred-wood tower’s water stroll. But that’s happening now. The covering on the tower is its fur. The next line is lets green flame, blue blood, Holy Lance rend human souls. I don’t know what green flame is, but human souls…I don’t want one of those souls to be yours, Luca.’

  Luca stares up at the newly constructed tower, his jaw clenched. Impulsively, he embraces me, his arms firm, his breath hot in my hair. I cling to him for a moment though his armour creates a distance between us, then push him away.

  ‘Suzan, you know what we have to do. You have to keep hidden from Ramberti and keep the book safe. And keep reading. If not sooner, I’ll meet you on Temple Knoll.’

  The siege tower is quickly filling with soldiers. I have to let Luca go.

  ‘Orestes is with the other horses. Make sure he stays safe,’ Luca tells me.

  How much I want to kiss him again! Just once! He’s off to battle. This might be our only chance. To love a siren means death. If I give in to temptation, I could actually doom him.

  Finally, mid-morning, the moat is levelled with rocks, the pilgrims’ pockets newly filled. Men arrange themselves behind the siege tower. From the camp, I watch Luca climb steps and rope ladders until he’s swallowed whole by one of the tower’s gaping mouths.

  Luca knows me. He won’t expect me to simply sit here waiting. We both know I need to read that parchment. I need to know what it will reveal of Ramberti’s plans. I need to sneak into Ramberti’s tent.

  Luca

  A hail of arrows rains down from the city walls. Overhead in the siege tower, a ceiling of shields and wet cowskin protects us.

  ‘Luca!’ a familiar voice calls.

  I turn to see Mattiolas grinning at me. Battle excites him.

  ‘Hello, bridegroom,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve had a memorable few days. What do you think of the tower? You missed the one at Antioch. It wasn’t as big as this. The engineers are learning.’

  We’re pushed forwards so more men can come up behind. My pouch and secret helm are pressed into my back. Mattiolas rolls his shoulders. He’s secure and confident—and he can’t see the demons squeezing in with us. He can’t see their glee.

  ‘Mattiolas! Careful!’

  Arrows trailing flames stream down suddenly from the city walls. The flames are green. Like the book predicted, even if it couldn’t explain. They let off a poisonous gassy odour. Saracen battle cries sound above us, the ferocious din made still louder when demons join in. I look at the knight nearest me and see my fear reflected in his face.

  ‘If we die today, we meet again in Heaven,’ the other knight says. ‘I’m Henry.’

  ‘Luca,’ I say.

  Some of our knights are hit. A flaming arrow pierces the collarbone of a man I’ve known since Constantinople. He collapses onto the tower’s timber floor and screams, flailing around.

  Henry splashes him with what little water he has, but the flames don’t shrink—instead, they grow bigger and more menacing. This unnatural fire loves water. The knight’s armour reflects green flame as it heats.

  ‘Push him over the side!’ someone yells. ‘Or we’ll lose the whole tower!’

  His comrades have no choice. Two knights recite prayers. Careful arms raise the flaming man up into the air and heave him, screaming, over the tower’s side. He crashes to his death in a burst of green flame.

  ‘It’s Greek Fire,’ someone says. ‘A weapon from Hell itself.’

  From Hell.

  There are more screams and a vivid flash up ahead.

  In our confined space, demons squeal and laugh and stretch their wings out like bats, only to pull them back again. Arrows of fire sprout from the tower’s pelt like spines. Armoured feet stomping on the timber ladders, we continue climbing the stairs and rope ladders, nearing the siege tower’s top. The bursts of green flaming arrows thin out.

  My chainmail feels heavier than usual and the edges of my helmet slice into my ears. Armour is hot to wear and the crowd intensifies the heat. A rivulet of sweat dribbles between my eyebrows.

  ‘Saracen guards are running away!’ Mattiolas says, incredulous.

  I shift my helmet and peer through the tower’s shield roof to the parapets. A few Saracen knights shake in their armour, terrified. They have dropped their maces and quarterstaffs. A bridge is slowly being lowered from the siege tower, connecting it to the wall.

  Before my next blink, the first pilgrim knights have climbed the new bridge and breached the wall. I watch a Saracen guard flee from one of the first pilgrims, flinging himself off the parapet. The nearest demon, trailing the relic it was bound to, throws itself at the Saracen’s back. Wrapping its legs around the Saracen like a rider on a horse, the demon rides him down the length of the wall. The Saracen hits the ground with a scream cut short by a thump, and the demon, bellowing with laughter and immune to the crushing earth, flies off him.

  Mattiolas and I reach the wall and stride from the bridge to the space between the merlons. Constructed to withstand trebuchet fire, the wall is very wide. Here Saracens once waited, bows ready to fire, and watched us. Those archers are now dead, collapsed into pools of blood. Beside their discarded bows, buckets glow greenly, nearly empty of their poisonous, flammable contents. Mattiolas rushes on ahead, looking for a way into the city.

  ‘God wills it!’ Henry cries, beside me.

  The cry is taken up by others. ‘God wills it! God wills it! God wills it!’

  It’s good to feel stable again after the siege tower’s shaking stalk. Pilgrims spread across the top of the wall like fungal spores. We’ve pierced the city’s skin. I peer into the city.

  This is it. Our goal and the demons’ goal: Jerusalem. Below, buildings and archways vault over roads curving like veins through flesh. Minarets point Heavenwards, shooting from the torsos of mosques. Spaces echo with thunderous footsteps: Saracens fleeing up narrow streets to Temple Knoll. Knights roar. I pull out my ivory horn, about to use it for the first time since Dorylaeum.

  But I hear a moan nearby and step back, spying a lone, wounded Saracen huddled against the parapet. Near him, a demon the size of a large dog is attached to a crescent-shaped pendant. The injured man grips the pendant as though it could save him. Quickly, I look away. But not quickly enough. The demon saw me seeing it. It leaps into the air, but is unable to lift the pendant. It bares sharp, wet teeth and raises a claw to point, first at my sword, and then at the cowering Saracen.

  It wants me to kill the man clutching its relic.

  I step closer. The man says something in his Saracen language. Suzan would be able to translate. Fear vomits from him in short, bilious spurts. The Saracen isn’t ready for paradise yet. With no desire to kill a man who looks as tormented as me, I ignore the demon.

  ‘By God, you’ve found a live one!’

  Henry races past, flourishing his sword.

  I raise my hand to slow him. ‘The man is unarmed!’

  Henry doesn’t pause. He’s too excited. ‘He’s a Saracen! God wills it!’ he cries, and lops the terrified man’s head off with one neat blow.

  Suzan

  Ramberti stands with other leaders at a multi-coloured pavilion. I’m hooded like many other women and blend in with the crowd. Not that it would matter. Today, Ramberti has many concerns just as pressing as looking for Luca and me. And today, his tent will be unguarded. All available men have gone to fight. I carry my bow with m
e, just in case. I’ve only ever used it to hunt food, but it offers some protection. And I carry Luca’s book, its covers folded open, in my pouch, not wanting it lost in the morning’s chaos.

  Yells reach me, muffled by distance, as I raise the edge of Ramberti’s tent and slip beneath. I find myself inside a tent more spacious than my mother’s cell. There’s Ramberti’s saddle with the row of waterskins that so taunt the thirsty pilgrims. Though he dresses like a poor priest in a simple cassock by day, by night his bed is a pile of opulent silk, woollen carpets, scarves and blankets, in all the blues and greens and purples of a peacock.

  At each tent corner rests a stool for one of Ramberti’s guards. Only a man who expected to be hunted would need to be watched over by so many men.

  But where is the parchment? I must think quickly.

  Carefully, I step over to the pile of carpets that is Ramberti’s bed. A collection of soft scarves is rolled into a pillow at one end. A large demon reclines beside it, apparently asleep. I lift the package, feeling its weight. Something soft and not very heavy is concealed here. The demon stirs and shifts its wings.

  I pause and listen. This is just a tent after all. It’s easy to know what’s going on outside. All I hear are raised voices and a crackling fire and the murmuring of people who sound like worshippers leaving mass. Some pilgrims still respond to attack with prayers.

  I begin to unwrap the scarves. Please, parchment, be in here. I realise what a foolish prayer that is. However enchanted, the parchment can’t hear me.

  The first scarf falls away in my hand, then the second. They were carefully arranged. Ramberti will know someone touched them. He won’t leave his room unguarded again. This is my only opportunity. Beneath the final scarf, I feel a scroll, and shake it free.

  The single huge sheet of parchment is a mixture of images like those in Luca’s book. The writing is all Latin. It starts with the image of a star and says something about a cow and the number forty-five. I shake my head, not seeing the connections. Near a map of Antioch, there’s a picture of the cave church and a diagram of the floor. Ramberti used that to work out where to dig. It mentions the lance.