Knights of the Cross (6 page)

A little way north-east of the tower, beside the stump of a myrtle bush long since turned to firewood, we reached the cave. We had discovered it by chance when a troop of Turks had used it to ambush us; after we had defeated them, Sigurd had put it to use as our armoury. It had only been intended as a temporary expedient, to keep off the rain until the city fell, but as the months passed it had gained lamps, benches, and even a ramshackle wooden door hinged into the cliff. As we approached I saw a Varangian in armour sitting on a boulder before it, spinning his knife in the dirt.

‘Sweyn! Has anyone tried to disturb our Norman?’

The Varangian jumped to his feet at the sound of his captain’s voice. ‘Only one. She said you sent her.’ His words faded as he saw Sigurd’s withering stare. ‘She’s inside.’

Sigurd pulled his helmet from his head, but he still needed to crouch low to pass through the opening of the cave. Even I had to stoop a little. I followed him past the blushing guard, into the damp, stony air within. It was more a tunnel than a cave, extending some thirty feet back into the mountain, and I stepped carefully to avoid tumbling on the shields and quivers of arrows stacked across the floor.

The passage darkened near the middle, where the daylight receded, but it was quickly illuminated again by the lamp which had been lit at the far end. By its light, I could see the body of the Norman still laid out on the bench where we had left him, though the blanket which had covered him now lay in a heap on the floor. Before him, a slender figure with bare arms dabbed at his neck with a cloth.

She turned as we approached. ‘Demetrios. I feared it might be the Normans come to bury him.’

She spoke lightly, despite the debased corpse on the bench – but then, she was a physician, and must have seen equal horror many times in her calling. She was dressed simply, as ever, in a honey-yellow dress tied about her waist with a silk belt, and an ochre
palla
which had slipped to her shoulder to reveal her long black hair. Like all of us, her face had tightened in the past months, yet to me it did nothing to diminish her robust beauty. Though even after a year of intimacy, I still found her brisk manner disconcerting.

‘Doubtless the Normans will come soon, once they discover where we have hidden him,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here, Anna?’

‘Seeing what the dead may tell us. Look.’

I stepped forward, pinching my nose against the odour of the decay which had already started despite the chill surroundings. I had not expected to find the man thus. Anna had stripped him of all his clothes, leaving only a round leather pouch on a string around his neck: the rest of him lay naked, entirely exposed in death. It would have been hard enough to stomach on my own, but to see it with a woman, and with Anna of all women, seemed deep sacrilege. Clearly the fire which had warmed his soul was long extinguished, so that his skin turned blue with cold – could the dead feel cold? – while the drying-out of his flesh had curled his limbs back like the edges of paper before a flame. I could hardly bear to look at the shrivelled, yellow-stained organs of his loins, nor at the blood-crusted rent in his neck, nor yet at the twisted pull of his face. I stared at his feet, and leaned on the cave wall for strength.

‘And what do the dead tell you?’ Sigurd at least could find a voice, though it was far distant from his usual thunder.

‘That he was killed by a mighty blow to the neck.’ Neither of us had the humour to mock the evidence of that statement. ‘What do you think, Sigurd? Was it an axe or a sword which struck that blow?’

Sigurd shrugged, reluctant to look too closely. ‘It seems too clean for an axe wound,’ he said eventually. ‘More like the slice of a sword. It was not a Varangian, though,’ he added more confidently. ‘We would have cut the head clean through.’

‘Only a knight would carry a sword,’ I said.

‘Or someone who had stolen one.’

‘Then there is the purse.’ Anna lifted the leather pouch over the corpse’s mutilated neck and pulled the string open, tipping a handful of silver Frankish denarii into her palm. The broad outstretched wings of angels were stamped on the coins’ faces.

I turned to Sigurd. ‘So much for your thief.’

‘He might have been interrupted by the boy.’

‘The man who inflicted this death on a knight would not have been troubled by a servant.’

‘More curious still are the marks,’ Anna interrupted. ‘Look at his brow.’

I held my hand before me to block the sight of the man’s eyes, which still stared upward at the rocky ceiling, and peered at his forehead. Anna had pulled the hair back, splaying it out on the bench like a radiate crown, and the curve of the brow was plain to see. In its centre, a swirl of dried blood in the form of a writhin eel meandered from the parted hair to the bridge of his nose. At first glance it seemed as though the two halves of his skull had been forced apart, but in truth the skin was unbroken under the mark.

‘What of it?’ I asked. ‘With the force of the blow, some blood splashed onto his face and dribbled down. It left that stain.’

Anna looked at me in scorn. ‘You think that while the man lay on the ground, a single drop of blood curled itself prettily into that shape? Look how broad and smooth the line is.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘And look here.’ She pointed to a spot high on the man’s left cheek, just behind his eye. ‘What is that?’

I cracked open my fingers and gazed between them. ‘It looks like – the imprint of a finger. In blood.’

‘Exactly. The same finger, I suspect, as marked his forehead.’

Now Sigurd sounded incredulous. ‘You think it was drawn as he lay dying?’

‘Or after he died.’ Anna was unperturbed by our doubt. ‘Either by him or by his killer. The latter, I would guess. A man choking out his life might not manage so neat a design upon himself.’

‘But why would anyone mark him so?’ I wondered. ‘Was it some secret sign?’

‘Hah!’

Anna and I stared at Sigurd. ‘It’s not a secret sign. It’s a sigma. In Greek, you’d write it thus’ – he swiped his finger through the air in the form of a Σ – ‘but in the Latin alphabet we write it so.’ He pointed victoriously at the mark on the dead Norman’s forehead.

‘Why—’ Anna began, but my thoughts were faster.

‘S for Sarah.’ Now it was I who sounded triumphant. ‘Drogo’s mistress was called Sarah. If a rival killed him, he might have marked him with the initial of the woman they quarrelled over.’

‘Or S for Simon,’ Sigurd countered. ‘It would not be the first time a servant killed his master. Maybe the boy marked him in boast.’

‘And then ran to tell us of it?’

‘There is more.’ Anna had kept silent while we argued our theories, but now she gestured back to the corpse. ‘Help me turn him over.’

Our joy at the discovery drained away as Sigurd and I rolled the body onto its stomach. This time we needed no guidance from Anna, for the mark was plain to see, and familiar as our own faces. It had been carved, not painted, and though there must once have been blood it was now long gone, leaving only glossy pink scars. Two cuts had been made, lines of awful precision, one from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, the other straight across his shoulder blades: a giant cross of flesh.

‘That would have hurt,’ said Sigurd quietly. ‘I hope his God appreciates it now.’

I breathed deeply, and wished I had not. I had occasionally seen pilgrims cut such marks into their cheeks or shoulders, once even into an Abbot’s forehead, but never so large, nor so deep.

‘He was lucky the wound did not fester,’ Anna said. ‘More than one man has died from similar pieties.’

Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by an onslaught of sensations: the stench, the blueing skin, the grim signs on the corpse that seemed to proclaim horrible warnings. Anna had said that the dead would speak to us, but never had I expected so many confused, clamouring voices. I choked for air and staggered towards the light at the end of the cave, but the edge of a shield caught my leg and brought me to the floor. There was shouting behind me, and ahead of me also, but it took several moments before I could open my eyes to see who spoke.

A face lined with hatred stared down at me, scrawny hair hanging lank about it. He still stank of his horse, still wore his pointed spurs, and still spoke with contempt.

‘Does your Greek stomach fail at the sight of death?’

‘Why are you here?’ Sigurd asked above me.

‘To bury our brother in the name of Christ, not leave him rotting in a Greek hole.’

Behind him I could see another Norman, indistinct in the gloom, and a small company of men bearing a litter beyond. I stumbled to my feet.

‘Take him, if you want.’

The knight, Quino, reached down and pulled an arrow from one of the quivers by the wall. He snapped it in his fists, and threw the pieces at me. ‘I will leave you to your toys, Greek. You will need them when I come to claim my vengeance.’ He looked past me, to where Anna stood beside Sigurd, and laughed. ‘On you, and on your whore.’

They took the body and left, their taunts and jibes echoing back to us from down the path. If this was the company that Drogo had kept, I for one would find it hard to lament his death.

It seemed that I would never escape the Normans that day: in the evening Tatikios summoned me to attend him at a council of the princes. They were never comfortable occasions, for most of the Frankish leaders distrusted the Byzantines, and none of them approved of having scribes present. But Tatikios insisted on it, believing men would measure more carefully words which they knew were recorded. As a tactic, it was never particularly successful.

We met in the house of the Provençal leader Raymond, the Count of Saint-Gilles. His camp was some distance from ours, and by the time we arrived all the other princes had taken seats on the square of benches in the centre of the room. Tatikios had to perch on one end, in a corner, his left leg trembling as he tried to balance himself.

There must have been a score of men in that square, and twice as many watching with me from the surrounding shadows, but only a handful who signified. All save one were unshaven, as was the fashion of necessity, and all wore mail hauberks in protestation of their prowess. Some I had encountered elsewhere – the wan-faced Hugh the Great, whose beard never grew thicker than goosedown; the ruddy-cheeked Duke Godfrey with his eternal expression of disapproval; and of course Bohemond – others I had seen only in council. Chief among them, at least in his own mind, was Count Raymond. By his age, his rank, his wealth and his vast army he ought perhaps to have been general of all the Franks, but none of the other captains would admit to his authority. He sat in the centre of his bench, his grey hair framing the sour, one-eyed face, and if there was no single seat of honour in the equal-sided square then the broad candelabra placed discreetly behind him certainly drew men’s attention first.

‘We meet in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ The man beside Raymond spoke the blessing in Latin, to a muttered chorus of ‘Amen’. Instead of a cloak he wore a crimson cope over his ringed armour, with scenes from the scriptures embroidered into it in gold. The domed cap on his head had the shape of a helmet, but was cut from the same rich cloth as the cope. Beneath it his expression was stern, though I had sometimes seen it soften to a half-smile when, as was common, one of the princes embarked on a long or fatuous digression. His name was Adhemar, the bishop of Le Puy, and though he commanded no army save his own household, his voice was always the first and also often the last at these councils, for he was the legate of the Patriarch of Rome, the Pope.

‘What progress at the western walls, Count Raymond?’ he asked. He always allowed the Provençal leader to speak second, perhaps in deference to his vanity, perhaps because they were of the same country.

‘The tower at the mosque, by the bridge, will be completed in days. After that, we need fear no more attacks on the supply road. Nor will the Turks then manage to bring provisions into the city, or pasture their flocks.’

‘Towers alone achieve nothing,’ said Bishop Adhemar. ‘Who will take on the task of garrisoning it?’

He had spoken to the room at large, yet the question hung unanswered. All around the square men looked to the floor or fidgeted with their belts – none would meet Adhemar’s eye. With good reason, I thought, for after five months of siege who would willingly incur the extra cost in gold and men of manning a fort on our front line?

At length, Count Raymond lifted his chin defiantly. ‘The tower was my idea, and in its wisdom the council agreed it. If none other has the stomach for it, I claim the honour of captaining its defence.’

His words stirred new enthusiasm into the gathering. ‘If you had thought of it sooner, we would not have lost so many lives earlier this week,’ Duke Godfrey complained. ‘We might even now be in the city.’