The Fools’ Crusade

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Another soldier grabbed the man next to Matthieu by the hair, hauled him upright – his spindly legs could barely support him, and his face and arms were daubed with the black spots of scorbutus – and dragged his pitiful frame down the river bank. He was sent sprawling at the water’s edge, and as he raised himself up on his hands and knees the Saracen drew his sword and swung it at the man’s neck. The blow was lazy and deflected off a neck-bone, and it took the Saracen two more hacks to take the head off, the Frank howling piteously in the meantime. The man sitting next to me turned away and vomited. But a Saracen prodded him with a spear point and forced him to his feet. Another did the same to Gautier de Châtillon’s man. Without a doubt they expected to die and began to say their prayers as loudly as their strength allowed. But they were pushed and prodded onto the path down which we had ridden the night before, and made to shuffle off in the direction of our camp.

  I was left in the dirt with Matthieu d’Allaines. There was little doubt what was planned for us. Summoning every dust mote of strength I still possessed, I scrambled onto my knees and pushed myself upright, wobbling like a newborn calf. As soon as my feet were planted I shook myself and raised my chin. Swallowing a draught of revulsion, I reached for Matthieu and tugged at him until he too staggered to his feet. Only then did I realise that the Saracens were laughing at us. But we were not slaughtered. Instead we were pushed, none too gently, down the path in the opposite direction from the camp, downstream.

  The sun raked my exposed skin, burning into every slash and cut, drumming on my skull, sucking the last hint of moisture from my eyes and mouth. I stumbled along, seeing nothing but the man in front of me, through a dazzling nightmare-scape of reeds and crying water-birds. My legs felt numb, hollow, but with each step they filled with blazing pain. The Saracens were chattering, laughing. I caught a word here and there, but my mind could not hold on to thoughts long enough to string them together. Time stretched, then contracted, then stretched again …

  Something hit me hard in the small of the back and I pitched sideways and slid down the bank at the side of the path. I’m dying, I’m dying … I thought, without surprise, expecting to feel a spear or an arrow. I came to rest face up, head down, cradled in a reeking mat of dead reeds. The sky glared, pure blue. Then something was hurtling towards me. I got my arms up and caught hold of cloth, and a man’s face was suddenly an inch from my own, panting charnel air.

  ‘Where is it? Where is it, you pig?’ Matthieu d’Allaines was fumbling for my neck with his stubby fingers.

  ‘What?’ I croaked, trying to heave him off. There were shouts from above us.

  ‘The letter! Give it to me! Curse you, give it to me!’

  I started to laugh. Incredibly, my chest heaved and I laughed in the priest’s face as I held him easily away from me. ‘Help us! My friend slipped!’ I shouted in Arabic to the soldier who was standing above us, and I pushed Matthieu aside and held out my hand. The soldier hesitated, and I saw his hand shift minutely on the haft of his spear. He cursed and spat wetly onto my chin and neck, but he bent down and took my hand.

  I helped the priest back onto the path, though the soldier had started to beat me on the back of my thighs with his spear. But they let us start off again with only a few more kicks and oaths. Now I could feel the priest close behind me.

  ‘If you came all this way to kill me, priest …’ I coughed, tasting blood. ‘All in vain, eh? A wasted journey. Innocent will be happy with this, though, won’t he? Of course, my journey was wasted too – so Remigius told me, before I killed him.’

  ‘If Remigius is dead … then he is at the Lord’s side. And his blood will weigh you down even more swiftly to hell. But give me the letter. Give it to me and I will—’

  ‘Spare my life? Not really in your remit any more, is it, Father?’

  ‘I will absolve you!’

  ‘The fuck you will! Remigius—’

  ‘Remigius did his duty!’

  ‘And here is the result. Pope Innocent has defeated a crusade. God is just!’

  ‘God is finishing my work,’ he wheezed. ‘I ask only that I see you die.’

  ‘So God in His infinite mercy sent a priest to commit murder, so that His servants … so that the truth would never be known, eh? The pope scheming with a Mussulman to destroy a Christian king. They should make you a saint, Father Matthieu.’

  ‘Blaspheme some more, servant of Antichrist. Then I can be sure your torments will be the worse, when you find yourself in hell with your heretic friends. I walk in the sure knowledge of His mercy, and His justice.’

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of God’s mercy lately,’ I muttered. ‘But then I suppose I would have to be a priest to understand, eh? Too bad you didn’t come earlier. You could have explained why God chose to turn His crusaders into eel-bait. Or why William Longspée’s children have no father.’

  ‘You mock what you do not understand.’

  ‘I understand that this letter I carry will see your master the pope knocked off his throne and fighting the dogs for scraps in a Lyon gutter. If I live beyond tomorrow’s sunrise, it is because I have pledged to destroy every one of you pious murderers.’

  ‘Still very proud, my son. But your wife—’

  ‘If you speak one more word about my wife, I will kill you.’

  ‘The hounds are out!’ He cackled, an obscene noise. ‘The hounds are out!’

  ‘What, priest? What are you talking about?’ And then, in the midst of all my pain, another, worse pang struck me. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘The heretic asks me! All your scheming, all your pride … Oh, you are right: God is just!’ He broke off with a cry. One of the guards had lashed him on the back of his legs, and after that he could not speak, though I could hear his mouth working, trying to cough up more words.

  We walked for what seemed like a week, under the savage eye of the sun, in heat that seemed to lick at us like a vast and hungry beast. Flies swarmed in my wounds. Iselda appeared in my mind, and I tried to think about what Matthieu had said, but my head could not hold anything except the will to keep my feet moving. I asked for water but whenever I opened my mouth I got a kick in the shins, and so I gave up. Matthieu walked behind me, for which I was grateful. I did not want to look at him, although it seemed I had saved his life.

  But it was probably not yet noon when we reeled past the first sagging huts of a little hamlet that squatted among the tall reeds surrounding a narrow creek that flowed sluggishly into the river a few paces away. It seemed deserted, but as soon as we reached the open space in the middle of the huts we were surrounded by a company of Saracen foot soldiers, all fresh and unbloodied. Plainly they had not been in the battle, but they made up for that. First they jeered at us as they closed in. Then one lad punched me on the shoulder, knocking me back into Matthieu. At that, they all began to rain blows on us. I tried to defend myself, clasping my arms about my head, but a kick in the ballocks put me on my knees, and then I was lost. A boot found my chin; fists were pounding on the back of my head and neck. It did not hurt any more. I felt myself buffeted, as if by a strong wind. I tasted blood, and felt a little spark of joy as some blessed wetness dribbled down my desiccated throat. Then I seemed to be floating, except that by the way the ground was moving I saw I was being dragged. A door creaked, there was a rush of air and my face was full of straw. Then darkness. Numb and beyond caring, I wriggled myself into the damp, prickly bed and fell like a lead weight into a deep, damaged sleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  Something was scrabbling at my chest. A rat? A fat Nile rat. I flailed at it and opened my eyes, only to find I was blind. No, not blind … I had expected the musty half-dark of the stable, but instead I was wrapped in white light. My thoughts swam backwards, upstream. The courtyard, the executioner, Matthieu … Ah. Of course: I was dead. And it was not so bad, apart from the rat. There was no pain to speak of. Something formed out of the glare, faded, established itself again. An angel – no, these must be the beings of pure l
ight that Gilles and the Cathars believed in. So Gilles had been right after all. Was he here? I opened my mouth to call him, but nothing came out but a wasted hiss. There was the rat again. It had got underneath my tunic. I batted it again but it did not stop. I blinked, and blue, purple, green blots swirled, pulsed, and became the face of my executioner. The rat was his hand, and it was holding Iselda’s golden stag.

  ‘Rob me after I’m dead, you bastard,’ I croaked in English.

  The man’s face came very close, very suddenly, and I flinched. He looked puzzled, even concerned.

  ‘Are you alive, Frankish man?’ he asked me, in Arabic. And to my amazement he tucked Iselda’s pendant back inside my clothes.

  ‘I think so,’ I answered in his own language.

  ‘Good.’ He clapped his hands and suddenly I was being lifted. Four of the soldiers who had just been baying for my blood were hoisting me onto their shoulders. My head lolled and I saw Matthieu’s body and the wide fan of his blood, already turning black. Then I was back in the realm of the beings of light, and then nothing.

  When I woke up I was lying in a bed, in a whitewashed room into which a soft light was creeping through fretwork shutters. There was a strange smell in my nostrils. It troubled me, and I lay there sniffing until I understood. It was not a smell so much as the lack of one. I was clean. I was lying in clean linen. And then I saw the hands. They lay, brown, scratched, every nail black and broken, wizened as old sticks or dead blackbirds against the flawless sheets. I thought for a moment that they were some hideous talisman put there to ward off sickness, for I had seen their like before: the hand of Saint Euphemia, and a hundred others I had sold to churches and cathedrals, not holy, of course not, for they had all been hacked from ancient corpses in the deserts of Egypt, and, as I now remembered, was I not in Egypt? My scalp started to itch and I made to scratch it, and as I did so the hideous relics began to twitch and flutter and to my horror I saw they were attached to my arms.

  I held them up. Old man’s hands, not mine. But there were my rings. Dear God. I gingerly held them against my face. They were rough against my skin, but at the same time my fingers were not recognising the features they were exploring. Whose were these sunken cheeks, these sharp bones, the beaky nose? I sat up and looked around. On a carved and painted stand sat a wide copper dish of water and a dish of polished silver holding a little pile of figs. Swinging my stiff legs off the bed, I stood up and almost fell. My knees could barely support me and I swayed, coughing. I discovered that I was wearing a long white robe, very plain, with a slit down to my breastbone through which I could see the glint of gold. Iselda’s stag was still round my neck, clicking against the old cross from Byzantium, and the silver amulet, still wrapped in its seal of rawhide. The discovery lent me a little strength, and I was able to totter over to the stand. I grasped the edges with both hands, washed my face, then picked up the dish, scattering the figs, held it up and peered into its mirror.

  A stricken face looked back at me. My hair was short, though it had grown out a little since I had hacked it off before the retreat. But it was streaked with grey, and hanks of it had fallen out, revealing scabbed patches of scalp. The face beneath it was little more than sunburned skin stretched tight over the skull beneath, save for my nose, which jutted disturbingly from between my sunken eyes. A fading bruise stretched from my right eye across the temple to my ear, and there was a gash on my chin, a fat black scab surrounded by shiny, dark red skin. There was another deep cut across my brow below the hairline, and my lower lip was cracked and scabbed. Pewter stubble blotched with white encrusted my jaw. I opened my mouth in shock, and saw dark gums mottled with black. I had lost two teeth almost at the front of my lower jaw, and my tongue found another hole further back. Had I lost these before, in the camp? I could not remember.

  But it was my eyes that had made me gasp. They had sunk far back into their sockets, which were themselves haloes of crinkled shadow. The whites were no longer white, but a dirty, clotted ivory. The pupils were so wide that they had all but erased the green that surrounded them, and I stared into two voids – into myself. And inside me there was nothing. I had been hollowed out. The mirror rippled again, and again. Tears were dripping down my nose and blurring my vision. I stuck my bony knuckles into the sockets of my skull and felt the wetness pooling between them. Then I was sobbing, huge, gulping sobs torn out from deep inside my ribcage.

  I staggered back to bed and threw myself onto the sheets. The little golden stag was in my fist, and I gripped it as if it were the only thing keeping me alive. Hinges creaked, and there was a rustle of clothing. Cool hands stroked my brow and straightened my limbs, drawing the linen over me. I could not bear to see another face staring into the ruins of mine, so I turned over and burrowed into the pillows, biting back the sobs, willing my visitor to leave me be. But long fingers slid under my cheek and turned my face upwards. I kept my eyes screwed shut as something cold touched my lips and a thick, bitter liquid trickled through them.

  ‘Swallow,’ said a woman’s voice softly. I did as I was told, and almost at once a slow warmth began to spread beneath my breastbone, numbing, soothing. The hand stroked my hair. I took a deep breath and the pain inside faded. And I slept.

  When I woke again it was morning. One shutter was open, and the fierce light of Egypt was lancing through it. I sat up, realising that I felt better. My hands no longer scared me. I got up, pissed in a pot that stood in the corner, and steeled myself to peer into the dish again.

  It was bad, yes. I had suffered. But now at least I recognised myself. Perhaps sleep, or the drug I had been given had relaxed my skin, for I no longer looked like a desiccated corpse. Every morsel of fat, every layer of the easy life I had lived since Montségur, had been burned away. I was starved, but I had gone hungry before. For that matter, I had lived through a siege before, though Montségur had not reduced me to quite this state. To my relief, the pupils of my eyes had shrunk back to something like their usual size, and the shadows around them had been lifted, a little. I bared my teeth and inspected my horrible gums. I had lost three teeth, and two more were loose, though they would settle in again soon enough with good food. Cupping my hand, I sniffed my breath warily. The spoiled-meat reek of scorbutus was almost gone. I had been shaved, I found – some steady hand had guided the razor around all the ruts and divots while I slept.

  And someone had fed me, I guessed. My stomach growled lazily, but that was all – none of the griping, tearing panic of desperate hunger. This was good, very good. I stretched, carefully. A saltarello of pain skipped and danced up and down my limbs and through my body, but I was healing. Through the open shutter came the sound of voices. Shielding my eyes against the sun, I peered out.

  I was high up, looking out through an arched, unbarred window over a courtyard surrounded on all sides by walls that rose up to delicate crenellations. In the middle of the yard was a fountain, and around its edges ran a colonnade of scalloped arches. Orange trees were growing out of brightly glazed urns, and palms cast their frondy shade on the tangled patterns of the tiled walkways. A swarm of small brown birds were busy in the branches. Figures were moving to and fro in the shadows beyond the colonnade. As they passed in and out of brief strips of sunlight I glimpsed high turbans and long robes caught at the waist with sashes of vivid colour. I looked up, past rows of windows all screened with intricately fretted stone or wood, to where the crenulations seemed to bite into the blue sky. But this did not seem like a fortress – or a prison, for that matter. And as if to prove me right, the door handle turned and the door opened. It had not been locked. I turned, guiltily, to find a slender man with very light brown eyes and a carefully trimmed beard standing in the doorway. He had his arms folded across his chest and one eyebrow was raised reproachfully.

  ‘You should be in bed, my dear patient,’ he said sternly, in perfect French.

  ‘I am sorry. I … I have the feeling I have been in bed for rather a long time, and so …’

&nbs
p; ‘You got up. And how has that turned out for you?’

  ‘Well, I am still alive, though perhaps I’ve been asleep for longer than I thought. I looked into the dish over there and saw an old man looking back at me.’

  The man laughed and stepped lightly across the tiled floor. He was not very old, and his face was smooth and quite unlined. He was wearing a very fine silk robe of pale green the colour of new beech leaves in springtime, and a sash of black silk shot with silver and gold was tied round his waist. His turban was white, tied in the fashion of Damascus.

  ‘May I?’ he asked with a slight bow, and without waiting for a reply he took my left hand, pinched my wrist very gently between thumb and two fingers, and cocked his head as though listening for something. The birds twittered below us in the courtyard. Finally he released me.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, approvingly. ‘You are strong. And fortunate.’

  ‘Sir, you must forgive me, but I do not know who you are.’

  ‘I am your physician!’ he said, as if that were obvious, as if I should have known from the wrist-pinching business.

  ‘Then I thank you.’ I bowed. ‘I’m sure you have saved my life. My name – as you must know – is Petrus Zennorius of Venice.’

  ‘Ah! I did know. I am delighted to meet you, Messer Petrus. And my name is Ala al-Din Abu al-Hassan Ali ibn Abi-Hazm al-Qarshi al-Dimashqi.’ He grinned. ‘That is rather a – what is the expression? – a mouthful for a Frank, so you may call me Ibn al-Nafis.’