imagine in Constantinople if you return now. The emperor is furious that the Franks hold Antioch. He is famously quick to forgive his enemies, but he does not lightly forgive those who fail him.’
‘How have I failed him? Was I supposed to hold Antioch against the Franks with a few dozen Varangians and the force of an oath the Franks never meant to uphold?’
Nikephoros rolled his eyes. ‘Do you know Pythagoras? With a stave and sufficient distance, a single man can move a boulder that would resist the strength of armies.’
‘Then why does he want me to stay?’ Like a prisoner broken on the rack, I suddenly felt a disgraceful willingness to say anything, to admit any charge and suffer any insult just to go free. I hated myself for it — but I hated the thought of staying more.
The eunuch leaned forward. ‘Because he is merciful.’
Craven desperation kept me from laughing in his face, though my disbelief must have shone through.
‘Your superior, the general Tatikios, made a full report to the emperor after he left Antioch,’ the eunuch continued. ‘He left little doubt where the blame for the Franks’ success should lie.’
I had suffered so many blows to my hopes and pride that I should have been immune, but I still felt the bruise in my gut. ‘He blamed me?’
‘Suffice it to say the emperor felt it would be kinder to you to give you a chance to redeem yourself, rather than allowing your return.’
‘But surely he must know-’
The eunuch raised a sanctimonious hand, as if pushing me back from an unseen precipice. ‘The emperor can only know what his subordinates tell him. Tatikios is a great nobleman: he has many allies at court to support him.’
And I did not. I had seen the emperor many times and inhabited his palace, had saved his life and once or twice even spoken with him almost as an equal. I did not think him a bad man, for what such judgements were worth. But he had not survived eighteen years on his tenuous throne by bowing to sentiment. If Tatikios commanded a faction — and legions to boot — then the emperor could not antagonise him on my account. Perhaps he truly did believe it was kindness to keep me away from Constantinople.
‘If the Franks leave Antioch, there will be no problem and no blame to be attached,’ the eunuch concluded. ‘The only lever we have to prise them out is Jerusalem. We must see that they get there.’
I bowed my head, as if putting it through a noose. ‘How?’
Nikephoros barked orders to his slaves, who scurried from behind the gauzy curtains and brought a map, a table and a low wooden stool for me to sit on. After so long marching, its hard seat was like a feather mattress to me. Lamps were set beside the unscrolled map, flickering over the ragged oblong of the Mediterranean Sea and the three continents that bordered it to the north, south and east. Nikephoros pulled a golden pin from his robes and leaned forward, tapping the pin against the map to illustrate his narration.
‘Antioch is here.’ Tap. ‘Jerusalem here.’ Tap. ‘The lands in between — Syria, Lebanon, Palestine — are controlled by the Turks and Saracens.’ The point of the pin scratched back and forth over the Mediterranean’s eastern coast. ‘They are weakened by the Franks’ victory at Antioch, but they still have castles and fortified cities all along the coast.’ A succession of pinpricks perforated the paper between Antioch and Jerusalem. ‘And, of course, they have Jerusalem.’
That much I knew. Far stranger was the sensation of seeing the canvas of my life laid out before me, my past and future journeys drawn in inky lines. Too often, my eyes drifted north and west to the ornately painted cross at the junction of Europe and Asia. Constantinople.
‘But beyond Palestine, the Turks and Saracens face an older enemy. The Fatimids of Egypt.’ The pin inscribed a circle in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, centred on the cobweb of lines that marked the course of the Nile. ‘You know the Fatimids?’
I had heard of them, but ignorance was easiest. I shook my head.
‘The Saracens consider them heretics — if there can be a heresy against a heresy — and hate them above all others. Once, they drove the Fatimids out of their kingdoms all the way to Libya, but the Fatimids regrouped, invaded Egypt and conquered it. They will not be content until they have imposed their faith all the way to Baghdad and Mecca. The Saracens, likewise, will not rest until they have destroyed the Fatimids.’
I had been drawn into the invisible, eternal quarrel between the different Ishmaelite creeds once before, and the wounds had only recently healed. Even without Constantinople tempting me home, I did not like the sound of this.
‘If we can make an alliance with the Fatimids, then the Saracens will be trapped between enemies to their north and south. We can squeeze them out of Palestine and the way will be open for the Franks to seize Jerusalem. When they hurry south to claim it, Antioch will be ours again. The stain of your incompetence will be wiped clean.’
Whatever bitterness I felt at the jibe, I swallowed it. ‘And how will we achieve that?’
In answer, Nikephoros jammed the golden pin into the map, at the place where the different strands of the Nile delta braided themselves into a single thread heading south into Africa. The pin stuck in the wooden table and stayed upright, its trembling shadow crossing over Egypt and almost touching Jerusalem.
‘That is the Fatimid capital, al-Qahira. That is where we must go.’
8
I came out of the tent in a daze, like a defeated soldier leaving a battle. My soul was falling through an endless chasm, and though it was sickening it did not hurt yet. That would come when I hit the bottom. For now, I wandered across the hill until I found the Varangians’ tents. Aelfric was there.
‘How is Sigurd?’ I asked, forcing the words through my constricted lungs.
‘Unchanged. The fever seems a little less.’
‘Has Anna seen him?’
Aelfric fixed me with his uncompromising blue eyes. ‘She isn’t here.’
My tumbling soul knocked against a looming cliff, careered off it and continued its descent. ‘Where is she?’
Aelfric turned his eyes away, looking over my shoulder and into the darkening east.
‘In the cloisters behind the cathedral.’
I stared at him.
‘In Antioch.’
I ran.
Whatever excesses I had expected from the plague city — baying mobs hunting through the streets, doomed men and women tupping like dogs in doorways, corpses burning on open fires or lying unburied at the roadside — the reality was different. Moonlight washed over empty streets, and most of the houses were dark — though the city was not empty. Unseen creatures scuffled in shadowy corners. Shutters creaked, doors slammed, clay vessels shattered and steel rang on steel. And, more than anything else, there was a constant tapestry of mourning that hung in the background: soft moans of despair, shrieks of anguish, plaintive sobbing and quiet prayer. A profound and angry melancholy gripped the city — it was like walking through the sinews of a broken heart.
At several points along my way, carts and boxes and rubble had been tipped across the street to form makeshift barricades. Some were abandoned, others guarded, but Antioch was not a city made for containment and I always found my way around them, until at last I reached the cathedral and a small door in the wall behind it. A frightened voice behind the door answered my knock.
‘I want to see the doctor — Anna. Is she here?’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Wake her. Tell her Demetrios is here.’
He did not answer, but beyond the door I heard receding footsteps. I waited in the dark for what seemed an age, each second lengthened tenfold by uncertainty. Eventually I even started to probe the tip of Aelfric’s knife into the door jamb, wondering if I could force it.
I heard the footsteps returning and pulled the knife away. A bolt slid back on the other side of the door,
