Siege of Heaven

by Tom Harper

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  I swung around. With all my attention on the ghostly scene in the sanctuary I had not noticed the man sitting on the stub of a column to my right. He stood, his cloak rustling around his legs.

  ‘Bilal.’ I stepped towards him, then checked myself, suddenly overtaken by confusion, fear. I opened my palm to reveal the brooch. ‘Did you send this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they . . . ?’ I could not bring myself to finish the question.

  He offered a tired smile. ‘They are safe.’

  Relief flooded through me. So much tension had knotted itself around me that week that, in the end, it was all that had held me together. Now it washed away and I dropped to my knees. The poison bile that had filled my body rose in my throat and I let it pour out onto the onceholy ground, praying God to forgive me. In the chancel, the priests continued their low chanting.

  Bilal took my arm and pulled me to my feet. I would have embraced him, almost fallen upon him with thanks, but something held me away. There was a distance in his manner that I had not seen before.

  ‘A squadron of our cavalry surprised a column of Frankish knights,’ he said. ‘There was a battle.’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘But not with your wife and children. They found them with the ambassador, Nikephoros.’

  There was no rebuke in his words, but I felt it anyway like a hammer. ‘They fell upon us so quickly there was nothing I could do. I was separated from them. I–’

  Bilal held up his hand to still my babble. ‘God is the All-Hearing and the All-Seeing. Perhaps He did not mean you to be with them. Nikephoros fought to protect your family – bravely, they said – and died for it. If you had stood beside them, the same might have happened to you.’

  I remembered Thomas’s desperate longing to charge into the battle that morning. You could not escape guilt by dying.

  ‘As it was, they assumed the women must be Nikephoros’ wife and daughters, and therefore worthy of ransom.’

  So Nikephoros’ pride had served a purpose in the end. I remembered the golden robe he had worn that day, the jewelled lorum wrapped around his neck. Perhaps he had already imagined himself back in the perfumed halls of Constantinople, returned from his exile. And he had fought to protect my family. Suddenly, for all his deceits, I found I no longer hated him.

  ‘But I have no money to ransom them,’ I said, trying to comprehend all this unexpected news. ‘And the Franks will not waste their gold on Greeks.’

  ‘My masters would not offer them to the Franks. All Muslims may seem the same to the Franks, but we understand the differences between the Christians well enough. When the vizier needs to buy favour with your emperor, then he will offer him the women as part of some bargain.’

  ‘But the emperor will know they cannot belong to Nikephoros.’ Hope rose within me. ‘Can you help them escape?’

  Bilal sighed, and I could see that he wished I had not asked it. ‘I cannot.’

  The euphoria that had lifted me subsided. I sank down on one of the stone stubs. Bilal stayed standing, silhouetted against the priests’ lamp at the far end of the nave.

  ‘At least I know they’re safe,’ I said, when I could control my voice again. ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘It is the least I can do. And the most. But for as long as my people control the city, no harm will come to them.’

  ‘A long time if our attack this morning was any omen. Did you see it?’

  ‘I was there.’ Bilal looked away, unwilling to talk more of it. Perhaps he was embarrassed by the wanton ease with which the Franks had given themselves up to be slaughtered.

  A thought struck me. ‘The vizier must be confident of victory if he is already able to think of bargaining with the emperor.’ No answer. ‘Is the vizier here now?’

  Bilal shifted uneasily.

  ‘Come,’ I urged him. ‘Do you think I’m trying to pry secrets out of you? I want to know, in innocence, if I will ever see my family again. Nothing else.’

  ‘In innocence?’ Bilal repeated the words with heavy irony. ‘Can there be such a thing? When we fought beside each other in the pyramid, when the Turkish troops tried to harm that boy, we did it because we hated evil, nothing else. When the caliph in his madness threatened to kill you, I warned you for the same reason. But we are in Jerusalem now, and the next time your army charges at those walls you will be on one side and I will be on the other. It will be a battle to the end. So how can you and I speak to each other in innocence?’

  Bilal looked away, to the light in the sanctuary of the church. The two priests must know we were there, must have heard us, but they continued with their ritual as if we did not exist.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’ Bilal repeated the question he had asked when I first arrived. I looked around, then up. Far above us, the fires on the city walls burned bright against the sky from the great courtyard of the Temple Mount.

  ‘You are in Gethsemane. This was the church of Mary, the mother of Jesus and that tomb’ – he pointed to the stone mausoleum – ‘is hers.’

  You could hardly breathe in this place for the weight of history. ‘But Mary was taken up to heaven. When Saint Thomas came to her tomb three days after she fell asleep, her body was gone.’

  ‘Then the tomb must be empty. But your priests still offer their prayers here.’

  I looked up at the walls again, thinking of the other, greater sepulchre within. If we ever reached it, we would find that lying empty too. A desolation swept over me, a feeling of terrible absence. I suddenly knew in my heart that God had departed this place, that these half-buried tombs were nothing more than fossils, footprints left in the clay where He had once walked. ‘So many deserted tombs.’

  ‘Even the dead cannot bear to stay here,’ said Bilal. I could not tell if he was joking.

  ‘If your cavalry had not kidnapped my family, I would never have come.’ It was an unfair thing to say, perhaps, but it seemed to pierce the curtain that had descended between us again. Bilal thought for a moment.

  ‘We cannot speak to each other in innocence, but I will tell you this. If you ever have cause to use it, I will be in God’s hands. You have seen the Noble Sanctuary on the mountain top?’

  ‘The great courtyard with the octagonal church?’

  ‘It is a shrine, not a church,’ said Bilal irritably. ‘It was built by the caliph to mark the place where the Prophet, peace be upon him, ascended to heaven.’

  ‘It is a church, built by Byzantines to mark the place where Solomon’s temple stood and where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac,’ I retorted, repeating what I had heard from pilgrims. ‘It is called the Temple of the Lord.’

  ‘For the moment it is called the Dome of the Rock. God willing, it will be for ever. But if the day comes when it is not, then your family will be in as much danger as me. So listen. Beyond the Noble Sanctuary lies a valley that divides the two hills, Mount Moriah and Mount Zion. A stone bridge crosses over it. On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door.’ He held up his own hand, palm out. ‘That is where you will find your family – if you take the city.’

  ‘Do you really think it so unlikely?’

  Bilal shook his head – though whether to answer my question or to deny it I could not tell.

  ‘I will send for the king of Babylon,’ Bilal murmured. ‘I will bring him against this land and its people and I will destroy them utterly. The whole land shall become a ruin, a waste, and its people will be his slaves.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I heard Achard say it, when we came here on our way north from Egypt. He said it was an ancient prophecy.’

  ‘It comes from the prophet Jeremiah.’

  ‘Then perhaps it is true.’ Bilal turned away. ‘I must go – I have already been away too long. Malchus will take you back to
your camp.’ He whistled, and the youth emerged from the darkness where he had waited.

  ‘Goodbye, Demetrios. I would say I hope we meet again, but I fear it will be a terrible day if ever we do.’ He considered this for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Allahu a’alam. God knows all things best.’

  He climbed the cracked steps out of the sunken church and vanished into the night. There were no Franks watching this part of the city – the ground was too steep, their numbers too few – and I supposed he would slip in through one of the gates easily enough. Even so, I delayed a few minutes lest anybody see us together. While I waited, I lowered myself to my knees and offered a few, heartfelt prayers – thanks that my family were safe, and intercessions for those who had died that day. Above all, I prayed that all those I loved would escape that place where God had gathered them. Those were the prayers that tested my faith the hardest.

  The night was warm, and I had been awake since well before dawn. I must have prayed longer than I thought, for eventually I felt an arm shaking my shoulder and opened my eyes with a start. The youth was looking down on me.

  ‘You fell asleep,’ he chided me. ‘Come. You must go back.’

  Keeping to the shadows once again, we clambered up the valley and followed the walls towards the camp. Behind us, two priests stood in the pit and offered their prayers to an empty tomb.

  μ

  The next day Count Raymond moved his camp to the south, to a narrow tongue of land in front of the walls on Mount Zion. It was perilously exposed, within easy bowshot of the archers who manned the Zion Gate: the other princes condemned his decision, and many of his knights refused to accompany him. He went anyway and we followed. The failure of the assault had dissolved whatever ties of fealty and honour he still held over his men. He could no longer even garrison his camp, but had to send envoys to his rivals to buy their knights’ service with gold. Each day, I heard, the price went up.

  Two days after the battle, the princes held a council and agreed they would not risk another assault without siege engines.

  ‘If we can find the wood to build them,’ Raymond complained. He had called me to his tent next to a small church on Mount Zion. The air inside was stifling, and flies buzzed about our heads. ‘There’s barely enough wood here to build a campfire. It’s a miracle the Romans found enough to crucify Jesus.’ He stopped, blushing furiously. ‘Christ forgive me, I did not mean that. But we must have wood if we are to get into Jerusalem.’

  I could guess why he was telling me this.

  ‘I want you to take your men west towards the coast and search for wood.’ He swatted at one of the flies. ‘It will do you good to be away from this place for a few days.’

  ‘Did he say if he wanted us to come back?’ Sigurd enquired.

  It was a fair question: for two days our search had taken us ever further from Jerusalem, with nothing except stunted olive trees and shrubs to reward us. The sun burned down on us, parching our throats, and all the time we felt the heavy threat of the Ishmaelites all around us. Several times we came around turns in the road to find dust still lingering in the air where departing hooves had kicked it up; twice we saw their riders silhouetted on distant hilltops, watching us from afar. Though they never came near, their presence stirred a poison in my belly: the fear that I might die in one of these forgotten valleys and leave my family condemned to perpetual slavery. I often walked with my sword drawn from its scabbard; at night I lay awake long after the others had fallen asleep, staring at the darkness and trembling at every sound it made.

  Two mornings after leaving Jerusalem, the rugged hills dipped towards the coastal plain. I was worn down to exhaustion; I had hardly had anything to drink, and my tongue had swollen so fat in my mouth I thought it might split my skull open. Sharp pains spiked through my head with every step – steps that only took me further from Jerusalem. The loathsome city had wrapped itself tight around my soul, and the further I went from it the more strongly I felt it pulling me back.

  We had just descended into yet another valley when Aelfric, who had gone ahead, came running back to meet us.

  ‘Three riders coming towards us,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But the sun was in my eyes – it was hard to be sure.’

  We scrambled up the hillside, hiding ourselves behind boulders and trees. I found a small depression in the slope masked by a bush and lay there. Thomas crouched down beside me, stroking the blade of his axe. In a matter of seconds, all the Varangians had vanished.

  We waited. For what seemed an age we heard nothing but bird song and the chatter of insects; once, there was a clatter as one of the Varangians dislodged a pebble, but otherwise no one made a sound. I could almost hear the sweat sliding down my face and dripping onto the stones beneath me. And then, rising slowly beneath the other sounds, the regular clop of horses’ hooves. The noise grew louder, echoing around the valley – and with it came voices.

  I edged forward to the lip of the depression, keeping low behind the foliage, and peered out between the branches. The three riders had come level with me. They wore neither helmets nor armour, and if they sat uneasily in their saddles it was only from lack of habit. Otherwise, they talked and laughed like men on holiday; as I watched, one even broke into a song.

  Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?

  Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon sele-dreamas?

  To my astonishment, another voice answered – not among the riders but from the hillside. It picked up the melody and carried it on. Four more voices joined in, and suddenly the valley was awash with the weird sounds of a song it had never heard before.

  Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!

  Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,

  genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære!

  Sigurd stepped out onto the road, still singing. It was he who had first answered the song, I realised, and its foreign sound was his native tongue. He stood in front of the riders, and at last I saw what should have been obvious from the start. The men on the horses were almost indistinguishable from the Varangians who swarmed down the hillside to greet them. All had the same rough red skin that came when pale white skin had been alloyed by the sun, and each face was covered by hair the colour of metal: gold, copper and bronze. Some wore it in braids and some tied with twine; some had beards and others were cleanshaven. Otherwise, they could have been brothers.

  The lead rider sang the last verse of the song in unison with Sigurd, their eyes locked on each other. A sardonic grin had spread over the rider’s face, while Sigurd’s remained cool and distrustful. When the song was done, they eyed each other cautiously.

  ‘You should be more careful, riding alone and unarmed in these mountains,’ said Sigurd.

  The rider glanced around at the Varangians. ‘Careful of what?’ he asked insouciantly. ‘I heard there was nothing in these hills except peasants and goatherds. And woodcutters,’ he added, looking at the axes we carried. ‘Have you come to sell us firewood?’

  ‘Or to cut you down to size,’ Sigurd growled. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here? Have you come from Byzantium?’

  I could not understand his attitude. If I had been in their far-flung country and met a fellow Greek on the road, I would have rejoiced. Sigurd, by contrast, seemed to take his countryman’s presence as a personal affront. Perhaps it was the way of their people – certainly the riders seemed unworried by it.

  ‘Varangians?’ He shook his head. ‘We’re just humble sailors with a cargo to sell.’

  ‘What cargo?’ Apart from a few panniers and blankets tied to their saddles, the Englishmen carried nothing.

  The rider crossed his hands in his lap and stared up at the sky, as if trying to remember. ‘Nails. Ropes. Grease and oil. Saws, planes, adzes and augers. Timber.’

  Sigurd flushed and lifted his axe angrily. ‘Do not mock me,’ he warned.

  The rider remained infuriatingly calm.
‘Everything I described – and more – is sitting on the docks at Jaffa, waiting for someone to buy it. Come and see for yourself.’ He laughed. ‘Saewulf will be happy to see you.’

  On a knuckle of land that pressed out into the Mediterranean, flanked by sandy beaches, we found the port of Jaffa. Its western face descended steeply to the sea, so that from below the houses built on it seemed to blend into a single construct of golden stone, red pantiles and wooden balconies. Only when you looked closer did you see that the picture was imperfect. Many of the buildings were missing their roofs; no washing hung from the houses, no children played in the alleys between them, and no guards paced the badly ruined walls. Even the fortress which should have guarded the town was reduced to a single tower.

  ‘The city is abandoned,’ said Thomas, as we stepped over a fallen arch into the town’s main street.

  Sigurd grunted. ‘There are always rats who’ll move in.’

  At the foot of the hill, a dock crooked its protective embrace around a small harbour. White foam ruffled the water at its mouth where a thick hawser had been stretched across it, but it had not kept out the six ships that lay moored against the wharf. Stout masts rose from their decks, and their high prows were carved in the likeness of fantastic beasts. One was shaped like a dragon, another like a monstrous fish, while the largest took the form of a ravening wolf.

  I knew that ship, had spent long weeks enduring a difficult winter voyage aboard it, cursing its heaving deck and leaky seams. Bobbing at anchor, bathed in June sunshine, she was almost unrecognisable now. As to what she was doing there, I could no more guess than when I had first seen her drawn up on a beach on the dusky Egyptian coast.