proceeded on to the coast. This was the place the Fatimid envoy had warned us against, a treacherous spot where the rampart of the mountain met the sea in a dizzying cascade of fractured cliffs and crevices. A stiff onshore wind drove waves against the rocks, filling the air with spray, while sea birds called mournful cries from above. Here the road seemed to disappear into the rock: even standing at the foot of the mountain, we could not see where it went until our guide showed us a path, which the breaking waves had carved out of the cliff. It was little more than a ledge, barely two feet above the surging sea and scarcely wide enough for two men to walk even in single file. The stronger gusts of wind whipped the waves so high that they overflowed onto the path, so that boiling white water foamed about our feet, snatching and sucking at our ankles as it tried to drag us into the sea. When a few men lost their balance and fell screaming into the water, no one dared leap in to save them; we could only watch them drown.
Yet even that was not the limit of its defences. At the very tip of the headland, where the path dwindled almost to a sword’s width, our Roman ancestors had built a gate-house to command the road. Its ancient stones were wet and black with age; one wall seemed to grow out of the cliff itself, the other plunged straight into the sea.
‘
Duke Godfrey crossed himself. ‘The gates is narrow and the way is hard,’ he murmured.
I shivered, and I was not alone. In that lonely, perilous place I could almost feel the terrifying weight of God’s gaze on me, searching my soul for its infinitesimal worth. The dark gates in the tower opened before me like ravening jaws, and the small windows above watched like eyes. Water bubbled around my feet; gulls called their plaintive song and the waves roared in my ears. Dizziness broke over me, so that even as I stood still the tower seemed to rush closer. Helpless, I stared into its eyes. They were not cruel, nor angry, nor even sad: only unfathomably empty. Then — I swear — one of them winked. I gasped; the world spun away and the sea rushed up to swallow me.
A Varangian hand grabbed my shoulder, and stout arms hauled me back. I blinked, rubbing the salt from my eyes. In front of me, the tower stood where it always had, and a white gull perched on the sill of one of the windows.
‘The Egyptian was right,’ said Sigurd. ‘Six men could hold that tower until Judgement Day.’
But the tower was empty, and the rotten bar that held the gates gave easily under a few blows. Worthy or not, we passed through unhindered.
Perhaps the Franks had been right: perhaps God did will them on. Certainly it felt so during those last weeks of May: after the twenty months we had taken to crawl the hundred miles between Antioch and Arqa, we managed twice that distance in only twenty days. Every obstacle suddenly seemed to fall away from our path, so much that I began to wonder what had ever held us back. Narrow passes through the mountains, which a hundred Saracens could have held against the entire human race, stood undefended; fresh springs flowed with such abundance that the whole army could not exhaust their supply. Even the seasons seemed altered: though it was only the middle of May, the harvest had already ripened. In the orchards, boughs yielded up their fruits, while the wheat in the fields seemed to bow down before our approach, each stalk willingly offering its neck to our sickles. We hardly needed the emperor’s grain ships, whose white sails kept pace with us on the western horizon as we marched down the coast.
I do not mean to give the impression that it was easy — of course there were hardships. The same sun that fattened the wheat burned our skins and parched our throats. The bountiful land could also be treacherous. One evening we made our camp by a stony river bank: in the night, a host of fiery snakes slithered out from the stones and bit many of the army. They died horribly, bloated out so far you could hear the joints snapping inside them. At Sidon, the Saracen garrison sallied out unexpectedly and massacred a company of pilgrims as they foraged. And our holy road was no defence against the usual trials of life. Horses went lame, milk soured, men quarrelled. But against the storms that had ravaged us before, these were nothing: spring squalls forgotten almost before they had passed. They could not stem the confidence and expectation that grew in the army every day.
For, like the Israelites of old, we had come at last into the promised land, a country that had already been ancient when Romulus laid the first stone of the first Rome. Every town we passed resounded with history: Tyre, whose cedarwood Solomon used to build the temple in Jerusalem, and Byblos, whose parchment gave its name to the scripture written on it; Accaron, where the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant, and Caesarea, city of King Herod. Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Saracens — all had possessed this land, or parts of it. Their monuments remained, a palimpsest of the past, though the men themselves had long since rotted to dust.
We celebrated Pentecost and rested a few days. Then, we left the coast and headed inland, towards the spine of mountains that had loomed on our eastern flank every day for the past fortnight.
‘And somewhere in those mountains is Jerusalem,’ said Thomas. It was early June; we sat around the dying embers of our campfire and lay back, looking up at the stars. Anna’s head rested on my chest, while Helena and Thomas cradled the child — no longer a baby — between them.
‘I wonder if it will appear as it does in the Bible,’ mused Helena. ‘Jewelled walls and golden gates and. . everything else.’
‘It will probably look like any other town we’ve passed,’ I told her, trying to douse the hopes that flared in my own heart. ‘Stone walls, dusty streets, square houses.’
‘It won’t,’ Zoe protested. ‘We can’t have come so far just for that.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘If we make it to Jerusalem.’ Even there, sitting under the same sky that Christ must have seen a thousand years earlier, Sigurd’s pessimism remained unshaken. ‘Why haven’t the Fatimids attacked us yet?’
‘Only you could grumble about that,’ Anna teased him.
‘Either they have some ambush planned or they are drawing us on to Jerusalem deliberately.’
‘Or they’re too weak to oppose us.’ Thomas propped himself up on one arm, using the other to tousle his son’s hair. ‘We’ve descended too swiftly, before they can gather their forces.’
I shook my head. ‘They don’t have to gather their forces — they’re already there, behind Jerusalem’s walls. Why should they confront us in open battle? They know that we will come to them.’
‘And no doubt they’ll be ready for us.’
Later, after the others had gone to bed, Anna found me still lying by the fire. She lay down beside me and burrowed into the crook of my arm, pressing herself against me in a way she had not done in an age. Perhaps I should have shied away from such sinful touch so close to the holy city, but the warmth of her body awoke a craving I had almost forgotten how to feel. I turned her towards me and kissed her eagerly, running my hands over her dress with the awe of fresh discovery.
‘Not here,’ she whispered. She stood, took my hand and led me to a small gully. The night was hot but we did not remove our clothes, nor dare lie on the ground for fear of scorpions and adders. Anna leaned against a boulder, arching backwards as I pressed my kisses against her lips, her throat, her cheeks and her hair. She moaned when I entered her, as hungry for me as I was for her.
Lust made us impatient, and our hasty coupling was over too soon. After we had finished I held her in my arms, still joined with her, breathing in the smoky texture of her hair. Though when I pulled back to look her in the face, her cheeks were wet.
‘Are you crying?’ In the moonlight I could not tell if it was sweat or tears.
‘No,’ she said quietly. Then, after a moment, ‘Yes.’
I touched her dress, dark with sweat where I had pressed against her. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’
‘Is it guilt?’
‘
I wrapped my arms closer around her and pulled her into me, cradling her head against my chest. ‘Soon,’ I promised her. ‘In four days, five at the most, we will reach Jerusalem.’ I marvelled that I could say that, and that it could be true.
‘Yes.’ She sniffed. ‘I don’t know. . perhaps that’s why I feel so tired, suddenly. It’s so close, the hope is almost too much to bear.’
‘Hope of seeing the holy city?’
