Knights of the Cross

by Tom Harper

  In a few minutes the priest returned, bearing two enormous volumes. They were artfully made, stitched with crimson thread and bound with stout iron locks, while the leaves within seemed tinged with a great age. Unlocking one with a key that he took from his robe, Adhemar cracked it open and turned slowly through the pages. They whispered and crackled like fire. I could not read the script but I could admire its beauty: row upon row of words in perfect alignment, broken every so often by oversized letters swirling across the page. So even was the text that it might have been hammered out from a mould, like coins in a mint.

  ‘His Holiness, my master, foresaw that I might need the direction of wisdom in the wilderness.’ Adhemar licked his finger and turned another page. ‘These are from his own library in Rome. Ah.’ He took a candle from the priest, who had fetched it unprompted, and held it close to the parchment. ‘Here is what Eubulus says of the ways of the pagans. “I have heard that the Persians falsely worship a hero who – they say – sacrificed the Bull of Heaven, by whose blood they believe the world and life were created. They name this hero Mithra; they celebrate his rites in secret caves, so that veiled in darkness they may shun the true and glorious light of Christ. They say—”’

  He broke off, snatching the candle away so that the page fell into shadow. ‘There are some lies which a Christian should not hear repeated, lest entering by his ear the Devil poison his heart.’

  Being deemed unworthy of secret knowledge was ever a spark to my temper, but I managed to restrain it. The words which the bishop had already confided were portion enough for my mind: what could Drogo and his companions have purposed in a Persian temple?

  ‘Of course we need not range so far from Truth,’ Adhemar said. He seemed distracted, still leafing through the book in search of something. ‘It is written that when the Israelites were at Sinai, the Lord said to Moses: “You shall slaughter a bull before the Lord; some of its blood you shall smear on the horns of the altar with your finger, and all the rest you shall pour out at the base of the altar.”’

  ‘It is also written: “I delight not in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats.”’

  Adhemar’s face lifted swiftly from his reading and he glared at me. ‘You have no cause to remind me what is written in scripture. But among the credulous and wicked, much that is written can be twisted to the purposes of evil. As is warned of here, indeed.’ His finger came to rest on a fresh page of text. ‘From the writings of Tertullian: “The Devil, by his wiles, perverts the truth. The mystic rites of his idols vie even with the sacraments of God. He . . .”’ Adhemar’s aged brow creased as he concentrated on his text, muttering under his breath in unintelligible Latin. When he looked up, the sharp edge of his eyes seemed dulled by confusion.

  ‘This is remarkable,’ he said, his voice deliberately controlled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In this same passage, Tertullian writes: “The Devil too baptises his own believers; he promises the indulgence of their sins by a rite of his own.”’ The bishop’s fists clenched white around the book, so tight that I feared he might rip the pages from it. “‘There in the kingdom of Satan, Mithra sets his mark on the foreheads of his soldiers.”’

  All resentment and irritation flooded from me. ‘When we found Drogo, there was a mark on his forehead in blood. A mark in the shape of a Latin sigma.’

  ‘So I have heard.’ Adhemar closed the book and snapped the iron clasp shut.

  ‘I thought it might be the initial of his killer – or of a lover whose affections they rivalled. Could it instead stand for Satan?’

  ‘Do Greeks believe that the Devil writes in Latin?’ Despite his evident shock, the bishop managed a thin smile. ‘The mark may be the shape of an S, but there is another form it resembles. A form much associated with Satan and his works.’

  Adhemar’s eyes searched my own. ‘Do you not see it? It is the form of a serpent.’

  ι γ

  That night, after supper, I left our camp and climbed a little way up the mountain, to a small hollow in the lee of the tower of Malregard. We had long since driven the Turks from these slopes, and Tancred’s cannibalism had deterred any spies, but there were still enough footpaths and posterns unguarded that I could not be easy in my mind. Yet I needed to escape the confines of the camp, the clamour of men and beasts and arms, to find an expanse in which my mind could wander. Perhaps I had chosen unwisely, for the fear of marauding Turks pressed my thoughts far harder than any distraction in the camp, but I squeezed myself in the shadow between two rocks and let curiosity gradually tease away my fears.

  The questions which exercised me offered scarce comfort: it was a lonely place to contend with the ways of the Devil. Several times I tried to reason a path of thought, and each time I found my way barred by some insuperable image: the cave, the bloody mark on Drogo’s face, the flies crawling on Rainauld’s rotted corpse. Rainauld and Drogo had entered the temple of some Persian demon; Quino and Odard too. Had their deaths then been some form of divine punishment for their impiety – or the hand of the Devil reclaiming his own? Suddenly I was assailed by the vision of a diabolical claw, wreathed in smoke, scratching out its evil sign on Drogo’s body. I trembled, and fastened my hand around my silver cross. Such fancy would serve me nothing.

  A noise from the slope below broke my thoughts in panic. I leaned forward, bowing my head as I tried to discern the least whisper around me, but it needed little effort. The beat of footsteps crunching into the stony soil was unmissable, coming ever closer, and I cowered back with my cloak thrown over me. ‘Deliver me from evil, Lord,’ I prayed silently, closing my eyes lest they betray me. ‘Have mercy upon me, sinner that I am.’

  The footsteps halted, terrifyingly close, though there seemed to be only a single man. I had my knife with me, but stuck in the cleft I could hardly hope to spring on him in surprise. And what if he were a Frankish sentry, one of the tower guards come to relieve himself? I might easily provoke a massacre if I knifed him in the dark.

  ‘Are you trying to become a hermit, Demetrios, to emulate Saint Antony?’

  My eyes sprang open. In the hollow before me stood Anna, her silk belt luminous under the folds of her palla. She was turned towards me, and though I could not see her face I could tell there was a smile on it. Abashed, I scrambled out.

  ‘You should take more care,’ I scolded her. ‘Wandering the mountain at night, you may find yourself emulating any number of saints more gruesome than Saint Antony.

  ‘Saint Demetrios, for example, stabbed with a pagan spear. Why have you come here?’ The levity in Anna’s voice vanished with the last question, unable to overcome her worry. For weeks now she had fretted at my ill mood, sometimes remonstrating with me, more often just watching me with concern. Far from soothing me, her anxiety only added shame to my misery.

  ‘I came to find the peace to think. Why have you come?’

  ‘I followed you. I feared you might find too much peace on this mountain in the dark.’

  ‘No peace at all with you about.’ I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her to show that I meant no anger. She pressed forward, her cheek cool in the spring air, and for a moment we embraced in silence.

  ‘What thoughts did you come to think?’ she asked, drawing me over to a rocky shelf where we could sit in shadow.

  ‘Evil thoughts.’ At supper I had avoided recounting my conversation with the bishop, but now I found I could summon the words with ease. At first I spoke to the night, not meeting Anna’s gaze, but as my story continued I leaned ever closer towards her. My eyes began to sift her face from the surrounding darkness, and I slipped my hand into hers so that our fingers wove together.

  ‘You cannot think Satan himself killed Drogo?’ she said when I had finished.

  ‘No.’ It was true – I did not think so, though I could not entirely disbelieve it either.

  ‘Even if the murder was the Devil’s work, he need not have troubled to stir himself. There are many acolytes too ready to hear his bi
dding.’ Anna paused. ‘What did Bohemond say?’

  ‘I have not told him. I have not spoken with him since I saw the cave.’

  ‘He has lost his enthusiasm for finding Drogo’s killer?’

  ‘Yes.’ I remembered the Count of Saint-Gilles’s cynicism. ‘When it seemed a Provençal might have been the murderer, Bohemond was eager to prove the man’s guilt. Now that Rainauld is beyond suspicion, his interest wanes.’

  ‘It will wane still further if he discovers that his men worshipped at the shrine of a Persian demon. That will not enhance his standing in the Army of God.’

  ‘His standing matters nothing while the army wastes itself against this city.’ Again, my anger welled within me. ‘For what he and his nephew have done, I would happily see their heads impaled on Turkish spears. If his men have communion with the Devil, if Satan has come to claim them for his own or if God has wreaked his vengeance, so be it. I no longer care what befalls them, nor even whether Antioch falls or stands. I would like to see Jerusalem, but not in the train of this army of thieves and murderers. That is no pilgrimage.’ I lowered my voice, aware that my words might carry too far in the quiet of the night. ‘Let them all kill each other, the sooner that I can return to my family.’

  My face had grown hot with anger. Then, suddenly, there were cool lips against my own, drawing the fever from me. I started, then pressed forward in haste to meet her kiss. For long moments we said nothing.

  ‘Whatever befalls the Normans, you won’t stop seeking Drogo and Rainauld’s killer,’ Anna said, pulling her hood back over her hair.

  ‘Because Bohemond has bought me?’ I challenged her.

  ‘Not at all.’ She set her finger against my mouth to hush me, then stroked it over my cheek and into my beard. ‘In part, because Bohemond may find the truth unwelcome. But mostly, I think, because you cannot let a mystery be until you have torn off its veil and revealed it to the world.’

  Anna spoke truthfully, and I opened my arms to acknowledge it. Somewhere in the night an owl was hunting, while insects chittered and water dripped from a mossy ledge nearby. Down on the plain the Army of God would be dousing its fires and settling onto muddy straw and reeds. But up on the mountain, under a starless sky, Anna and I sinned in silence on the rocky bed we had made.

  ι δ

  Anna’s embrace comforted me that night, but stark guilt gnawed at me next day. The memory of the cave had weighed heavy on me for weeks: my soul could hardly bear further sins. I was in a black humour as Sigurd and I walked the road on the west bank of the Orontes, checking all who passed for hoarded food or treachery. The worst straits of our famine had abated in the month gone by, as spring had opened the mountains and the seas to the Emperor’s convoys, but a little food had proved almost worse than none. Our grain became the seed of a thousand quarrels, envy and greed flourishing on its stalk, and it took frequent patrols to keep peace in the camp.

  ‘We would do better,’ said Sigurd, ‘turning our efforts against the city.’

  We would indeed. With sun and food, the army’s strength had begun to recover, but the spring had produced no thaw in the Turkish defences. Across the sparkling river, beyond the tents, Antioch’s long walls faced us as stoutly as ever. From the heights where we stood I could see the red-tiled roofs of the houses within, and the terraced orchards climbing up the slope behind. In the fields to the north tiny figures steered ploughs and oxen, tilling the ground for the new season’s crop. They could be confident, I feared, of still being there to reap the harvest.

  ‘If I were the princes, I would grow more nervous every day,’ said Sigurd. ‘Once their armies find their health, they’ll turn to greater mischief if they cannot spend their vigour in battle.’

  ‘There’s little danger of mischief, then.’ A stone had worked its way into my boot, and we paused while I extracted it. ‘It’s been two months since Bohemond defeated the last relief army. There are more Turks left in Asia, and the news of our siege will have travelled far. If they come again in strength, we will be hard pressed to defeat them.’

  ‘Then perhaps they’ll allow us to go home.’

  Sigurd might joke, but we both knew the danger. Rumours of impending Turkish armies swept around the camp every day, but recently they had become more consistent, more specific. Only that morning an imperial courier had brought Tatikios a message. He would not divulge its contents, but it had left him pale. As long as we had none save the city’s defenders to oppose us, the priests could preach that time was of no import in the service of the Lord. But that delusion was folly. Sooner or later, it would be exposed on the spears of an approaching army.

  ‘Demetrios!’ A Varangian, his fair hair blowing out behind him, came running up the road. ‘The doctor has sent me – she says you must come. She has discovered something about the dead Norman.’

  ‘Drogo? What is it?’

  ‘She would not say.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In her tent, treating a Frankish pilgrim.’

  I left Sigurd and ran back. Anna had caused her tent to be set on the southern edge of our camp, facing the open ground that separated us from the Normans. A narrow stream ran off the mountain nearby to give fresh water, and nourished a plentiful supply of reeds for the patients’ rest. As was her custom when the sun shone, Anna had rolled up the walls of her tent. Underneath the canopy were four crude beds, planks raised on stones and covered with rushes; three were empty, but a half-naked figure was lying face down on the fourth, apparently asleep. A poultice bound in cloth oozed green fluid onto his back. On a stool beside him Anna kept patient vigil, her dress covered by a much-stained apron.

  ‘What have you found?’ I asked, panting with the effort of running.

  She looked up from her patient. ‘I wondered whether Drogo’s name would bring you.’

  ‘When you call, of course I come immediately.’

  She wrinkled her nose in mock disbelief, then gestured back to the bed. ‘Look at this.’

  As soon as I looked, I saw why Anna had summoned me. From the poultice, I guessed there must have been some cut or boil on the man’s neck, but that was not the first wound he had suffered – nor what drew my gaze. Among the warts and freckles and pimples, a long scar ran up his spine, disappearing under his dishevelled hair; another intersected it just below the shoulder. The skin was puckered tight, with none of the glossy sheen of a freshly healed cut, but the lines were straight and clear as the day they were carved, unmistakable in the cross they made.

  ‘I see why you thought of Drogo.’

  ‘He came to me to lance a boil. He was reluctant to remove his tunic, but the pain was so great that at last he surrendered.’

  ‘This was cut some time ago. He—’

  Something of my voice must have penetrated the man’s dreams, for he shuddered, and turned his head abruptly towards us. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Peter Bartholomew.’ He winced as his movement strained the burst boil. ‘A pilgrim of the Lord.’

  I could have guessed from his ragged clothes that he was no knight. Nor was there any nobility in his face: his nose was crooked, as if it had been broken in a fight, his teeth were cracked, and the skin was pocked with sores. ‘Do you follow Christ faithfully?’

  ‘As faithfully as I may.’

  ‘Really?’ Anna pointed to the base of his spine, just above the folds of his tunic. The skin around it was covered with blisters, some bubbling up, others long since burst and crusted with pus. I grimaced; I had been in the army long enough to know the symptoms of an immoral disease.

  Bartholomew’s ratlike eyes blinked at us. ‘Even Job, who was perfect in the Lord’s sight, was smitten with sore boils from head to toe. I endure my trials as best I can.’

  ‘Doubtless the Lord will judge you as you deserve. Was it He, pilgrim, who carved His sign in your flesh?’

  Bartholomew yelped and tried to leap up from the bed. The poultice tumbled from his back, spilling pu
lpy leaves over the soil, but I had expected his move and clamped my hand on his shoulder to hold him down. He writhed and twisted like an eel in my grip until Beric, the Varangian who had summoned me, stepped forward and pinned down his arms.

  ‘Who put that mark on your back?’

  ‘I did it, as a mark of my piety before the Lord.’

  ‘You did not carve it by reaching your hands over your shoulder. Who helped you?’

  ‘A . . . a friend.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘He is dead now.’

  ‘Is he?’ Trying to ignore his stink, which was very great, I leaned close to Bartholomew’s ear. ‘You are not the only man to bear that cross, Bartholomew. I have seen it on two others, though their piety earned them no favour from the Lord. They were dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Spit drooled out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘You have heard of Drogo of Melfi? Or Rainauld of Albigeois?’

  ‘I know of the knight Rainauld. He was a Provençal, as I am.’

  ‘Then you know what befell him, how his broken body was found ravaged in a culvert.’ I pulled out my knife and laid the flat of the blade against his neck. He shivered at the touch of the cold iron. ‘You would not wish to suffer the same fate.’

  The pilgrim’s ugly face creased into sobs. ‘Have mercy,’ he wailed. ‘I came here for healing, and now I will be murdered. Have mercy on Your servant, Lord. Deliver me from my enemies, from the workers of bloody iniquity who set snares for my soul. O Lord my shield, God of mercy, You alone are my defence and my refuge, have mercy—’

  ‘Silence,’ I snapped. ‘Do not pretend to invoke His name, lest hearing you He visits still more afflictions upon you. Why did you have the cross carved?’

  ‘To show my piety.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To the Lord God.’

  I slapped my knife against the raw skin of the boil that Anna had lanced, and he screamed. ‘When two or three men bear exactly the same mark, I think it is more than personal piety that moves them. You were part of some secret order or brotherhood, were you not, and this was your sign?’