them, threw down the plundered shield and stamped on it. Even his strength could not crack it.
‘Five months,’ he growled. ‘Five months and we’ve learned nothing more than how to kill ourselves.’
The clanking tread of men-at-arms silenced the recriminations. A company of Lotharingians were approaching along the muddy track, their long spears clattering against each other over their heads. I was grateful for the relief, for it had been a hateful day. By my feet the rubble of broken tombs was at last beginning to fill the foundation trench, but it would be a week or more before the tower was completed – if the Turks did not first find a way to destroy it. Even then it would take us no closer to the inside of those unyielding walls.
As the Lotharingians took up their watch Sigurd mustered his troop. They were Varangian guards, pale- skinned northmen from the isle of Thule – England, in their tongue – and most fearsome among the Emperor’s mercenaries. Yet today their bellicose posture was tamed and the usual clamour of their conversation silenced. Battle was their living; months of labouring, guarding, digging and burying had drained it from them.
The Provencal cavalry trotted away, and we followed them towards the boat bridge back to the camp. With only scant food and guilty dreams awaiting us we marched in silence, without haste. Around us, though, the road thronged with life. The peasants and pilgrims who followed the armies hurried about with whatever they had foraged that day: firewood, berries, roots or grains. One lucky man had trapped a quail, which he dangled from a stick as he proceeded with a phalanx of triumphant companions around him. No less protected were the merchants who bartered with our army, Syrians and Armenians and Saracens alike: they drove their mules amid trains of turbaned guards, stopping only to force harsh bargains with the desperate and hungry. Grey clouds began massing over the mountain to our right, and I quickened my pace lest the rains come again.
We had reached the place where a steep embankment rose above one side of the path when I heard the cry. It was a place that had always made me nervous, for the ground rose higher than my head and any enemy from the west could approach entirely unseen; at the howl that now rose above the earthen parapet I froze, cursing myself for abandoning my armour. The slap of stumbling footsteps came nearer. Sigurd crouched well back from the embankment, his axe held ready. The rest of the company were likewise poised, their eyes searching the edge of the little cliff for danger.
With a stuttering shout, a boy reached the slope and plunged over it, flailing his arms like wings as his feet fell away beneath him. He was lucky we were not archers or he would have died in mid-air; instead, he collapsed onto the road and lay there sobbing, a heap of cloth and flesh and dirt. Sigurd’s axe-head darted forward, but he checked it mid-swing as he saw there was no threat in our new arrival. His clothes were torn and his limbs daubed with mud; his beardless face seemed pale, though we could see little enough of it under the arms which cradled it.
He pressed himself up on his hands and knelt there, his head darting around to look at the fearsome Varangians surrounding him.
‘My master,’ he gulped, pulling a scrawny lock of hair from over his face. Recognising perhaps that I alone held no ferocious axe, he fixed his eyes on mine. ‘My master has been killed.’
?
I pulled the boy up by the neck of his tunic, though he still had to tilt his head back to look me in the eye. ‘Where? Killed by the Turks? Who is your master?’
He wiped a sleeve across his face, smearing it with more grime than he removed. I kept my grip on his shoulder, for there was no strength in his shivering legs. ‘Drogo of Melfi,’ he stammered. ‘In the lord Bohemond’s army. I found him . . .’ His words gave out and he pulled from my grasp, sinking to his knees. ‘I found him over there.’ He pointed back to the top of the embankment whence he had come. ‘Dead.’
I glanced at Sigurd, then at the darkening sky. Part of my mind scolded that too many men had died already that day without taxing my conscience; that a sobbing servant and a dead Norman knight were no concern of mine, especially when Turkish patrols might yet skulk in the countryside. Perhaps, though, it was the accumulation of so many deaths which weighed most on me: confronted by a snivelling boy grieving for his master, I was defenceless.
‘It would be best if your men accompanied us,’ I told Sigurd.
‘Best for whom?’ he retorted. ‘The best course for my men is to return to our camp, before night brings out the Turks and Tafurs and wolves.’
‘Any wolves near here will have been eaten long since. As for the others—’ I turned to the boy. ‘Is it far?’
He shook his head. ‘Not far, Lord.’
‘Then take us quickly.’
We found a path up around the embankment and followed the boy over the broken ground that rose towards the hills on the far side of the plain of Antioch. The red earth was sticky underfoot, and all the grasses sprouted spikes and prickles which tore my legs. We came over a low ridge and looked down into a small hollow in the hillside. It was perhaps fifty feet across and formed like a natural amphitheatre in the rising ground. Perhaps it had once been a quarry, for the surrounding walls were pitted and bitten, but the ground underfoot was soft. In its centre, unmoving in the grey dusk, lay the body of a man.
I crossed quickly and crouched beside him while the Varangians fanned out, sniffing for danger. Behind me I heard Sigurd hiss with disapproval.
‘You found him here?’ I asked the boy, who had knelt opposite me. Tears were running down his face, bright in the gloom, but he seemed to me more frightened than sorrowful.
‘Here,’ he mumbled. ‘I found him here.’
‘How did you know he would be here?’
He looked up, the terror now plain on his face. ‘He was gone from the camp for many hours. The lord William, lord Bohemond’s brother, he told me to find him. I looked everywhere in the camp, and then here. And I found him.’
‘And what made you think he would be here?’ I repeated. We must have come half a mile from the road at least, and none of our army would have been so foolish as to wander here alone.
The boy closed his eyes and squirmed his fingers together. ‘He came here often. Many times I had seen him.’
‘Why? What brought him here?’
My questions were reflexive, the natural consequence of seeing too many men unnaturally dead, but their brusqueness must have alarmed the boy. He trembled in silence, unable to answer.
‘Was this how you found him?’
He nodded.
I stared down at the body before me. Drogo, the boy had called him – and a Norman of Sicily, I guessed, if he had served the lord Bohemond. He lay on his belly in the grass, still and silent as the twilight around us, and for a moment I wondered if he had not been stricken by some ailment, for there were no marks of violence evident. He had not even worn his armour, only a quilted undercoat stained with many weeks’ wear.
But the sour smell of blood in the evening air belied innocent hopes. I put my hand to his shoulder and lifted, pushing him over onto his back. The heavy body fell flat against the ground, and an involuntary whimper breathed through my lips. The Norman Drogo had not died a natural death: he had died because a heavy blade had cut open his throat, pouring out his blood into a puddle on the grass below. It must have been a savage blow, for it had sliced more than halfway through his neck, so that as I moved him his head lolled back to let fresh rivulets of blood trickle down to his collar. It had stained everything: matted the dark hair of his beard, dyed the wool of his quilted tunic, and dashed across the cheekbones that framed the gaping eyes. Some had even splashed onto his forehead.
I saw all this, and doubtless a hundred other aspects of the horror, but one thought drove me above all others.
‘The blood is still wet – still flowing. This happened only a few minutes since.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘If this was the work of a party of Turks, they cannot be far away.’
