Siege of Heaven

I smiled, trying not to let Sigurd’s pessimism sour the mood in the glade. What he said was true enough. In the nine weeks since we had set out from Ma’arat we had come, by Sigurd’s reckoning, less than a hundred miles. In the past month we had not moved at all. The Army of God’s resolve, once a keen and indomitable blade, had been bent so far that it had snapped. It could not be remade, not with the same strength, and the men who had swung and slashed their way across Asia Minor now prodded forward like blind men. The first incarnation had been terrible, terrifying to witness. This agonising decrepitude was simply a slow, aimless death.

Everard was ready to try again. He pushed off from Helena and ran forward, flapping his arms like an injured bird. Four steps, five, and then — just as it seemed he could defy his limitations no longer, he reached the sanctuary of my knee. He clung on desperately, and I had to prise his little hands away to hoist him up on my lap. I ruffled his hair — fair like Thomas’s, though already growing steadily darker — and pointed through a gap in the trees where the slope fell away to the plain, and the coast beyond.

‘That is where you need to go,’ I told him. ‘To Jerusalem.’

He snatched hold of my outstretched finger and began pulling on it. Anna reached over and tickled his chin, while Helena seated herself on the ground, leaning against the fallen log and chewing on a crust of bread. She looked well, I thought. Her face, sallow during the winter, had begun to brown again in the spring sun, and there was new vigour in her arms when she picked up her son. Anna had told me that Helena had struggled for a long time with feeding the baby, unable to nourish his body without enfeebling her own. It had been worst during the lean weeks at Ma’arat, and our subsequent travels had allowed little chance for recovery.

‘What’s that?’

I craned forward so that I could see what Sigurd had seen from his vantage on the opposite side of the clearing. A disgruntled fist tugged on my finger, trying to recapture my attention, but I ignored it. Thomas was on his feet beside Sigurd and staring over the tops of the pine trees to the west.

‘An army.’

I passed the baby onto Anna’s knee and ran over. My eyes were not as sharp as Thomas’s, but even so I could see the procession winding stiffly out of the valley and down towards our camp. Sunlight gleamed on their weapons like the scales of a snake, with two white banners like fangs at their head.

‘Can you see the device?’ I asked. In the camp below, men were running out of their tents and staring, but I could not tell if they were preparing for battle.

‘The cross of the Army of God,’ said Thomas. ‘And beside that, the banner of the five wounds.’

Godfrey’s standard. I looked at my family in the glade, trembling that he should have come so near them. ‘And the Norman serpent banner? Is that there too?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Not that I can see.’

I pulled on my boots. ‘I had better go. Nikephoros will want me.’

Anna hoisted Everard down from her lap and set him on the ground. He swayed, then dashed resolutely forward towards his mother — as if he had never fallen before, would never fall again. But of course he did.

I was summoned almost immediately. Duke Godfrey’s arrival occasioned a council of the princes, and Nikephoros required me to be his mouth and ears. They met in Count Raymond’s tent — not his great pavilion, with its silk curtains and rich furnishings, but a small, square tent erected in a field a little distance from the camp. The princes watched each other warily.

‘But where is Bohemond?’ asked Raymond. He said it lightly, as if referring to a well-renowned horse he had been curious to see. No one was deceived.

Godfrey looked up. Where the trials of the past two months had slowly twisted the roots of Raymond’s soul, so that his whole body appeared crooked and misshapen, Godfrey seemed to have benefited from the interlude. His bearing was firm, his face bright, his blond hair thick as a lion’s mane and his blue eyes unyielding with purpose.

‘Bohemond set out with us from Antioch two weeks ago. Three days later, he turned back.’

Raymond breathed a slow sigh, like a warm summer wind. His hunched shoulders relaxed and his bearing straightened, so that he seemed taller, more noble again.

‘He will not come,’ he declared softly, almost to himself. ‘He has shown himself at last.’

‘He swore he would honour his oath to worship at the tomb of Christ,’ said Godfrey.

‘When better men have captured it.’ Raymond laughed in savage triumph. ‘Bohemond’s part in this enterprise is over. Our names will ring in history as the conquerors of the holy city; Bohemond’s will be forgotten, or remembered only in the annals of traitors and cowards. As soon as Arqa is taken we will fall on Jerusalem like wolves.’

‘As soon as Arqa is taken? I did not bring my army here at a forced march to defend you against a few Saracen villagers marooned on a hilltop. We should go now.’

Several of the other princes nodded their agreement. Raymond stiffened, bending forward like a bow drawn tight.

‘I have besieged this town for a month; I will not see all that effort wasted now.’

‘Better than seeing it wasted two months from now,’ said Tancred.

Raymond looked as if he might strike Tancred — and Tancred, equally, as if he would relish fighting the old man. Fortunately, at that moment the council was interrupted by a commotion among the guards. A small knot of men were trying to push through, their voices raised in indignant protest. The guards waved their spears and shouted them back; for a moment I feared this might be the moment that the entire army broke apart in open battle. But Raymond must have recognised one of them, for he angrily called the guards to let the newcomer in.

A short, pot-bellied man shrugged his way between them and marched across to the tent. The camelskin tunic flapped around his knees, bulging out over the leather belt that tied it, and his small eyes surveyed us from the illtempered face. He seemed different in daylight, smaller in every part except his belly, but I recognised him at once as the man I had seen in the pilgrim camp — Peter Bartholomew’s self-styled prophet.

He did not have the air of a peasant approaching the great princes of the earth. He held his head high and sure, his fat lips pouting as if he had already detected some slight against his dignity. All the princes stayed seated, save Raymond who was already standing.

‘What is happening here?’ he demanded. He turned on Count Raymond. ‘Why have you summoned secret councils without my lord Peter Bartholomew’s presence, bless his name?’

In any other place, to speak as he did to a man of Raymond’s station would have been death. Instead, Raymond choked back his obvious anger and said simply, ‘This does not concern Peter Bartholomew.’

‘That is for him to judge.’ The prophet’s eyes swept around the gathering, defying them to argue.

Godfrey ignored him. ‘Who is he?’ he asked Raymond. His face was a mask of distaste.

‘I am John, disciple and prophet of Peter Bartholomew, bless his name.’ He rounded on Godfrey, who somehow contrived to evade the accusing stare and fix his gaze just over the man’s shoulder.

Godfrey stood. ‘I thought this was to be a council for princes — not paupers and rabble.’

‘Wait,’ Raymond pleaded. ‘At our councils at Antioch, we always had leaders from the pilgrim host present.’

‘If Peter Bartholomew is their leader, why is he not here himself?’

Raymond was about to offer an excuse, but the prophet John spoke more quickly. ‘The time is not yet ready for Peter Bartholomew to reveal himself. He is preparing for the time to come — the time foretold by the prophecy. The time when the last shall be first and the first last.’ He spun around, fixing his small eyes on the princes. ‘You know what is coming. The King will ascend Golgotha. He will take his crown from his head and place it on the cross, and stretching out his hands to heaven he will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father.’

Godfrey moved so quickly I did not see what he did. One moment the peasant was standing, the next he was writhing on the ground, squealing in outraged agony until Godfrey’s boot on his throat choked off the sound.

‘Who told you that?’ he demanded. ‘Where did you hear it?’

He half lifted his foot from John’s neck so that the wretch could speak. ‘Mercy,’ he spluttered. ‘It is what Peter Bartholomew preaches. It is written in his book.’

‘What book?’

‘The book of prophecy,’ squealed John.

‘Liar!’ Godfrey’s cheeks were flushed; I had never seen him lose his temper like