‘Jerusalem is nothing — a bauble to dangle before barbarians. Alexios thought it would bring them to his aid, but it has served just as well to lead them to their destruction. Now the Fatimids will finish it, and those grain ships you saw by the coast will sail to Alexandria as their reward.’
‘But the Fatimids rejected our bargain — they drove us into the desert. Or was that part of the deception too?’
‘The caliph did not want to make an alliance with Christians. While his vizier was away he tried to sabotage it.’
‘But the vizier had revealed your bargain to Achard.’
‘He thought his interests were best served by discord among the Christians. He would rather have kept us quarrelling far away from his borders. But now the barbarians are here, he will do what he must. He has no choice. That is the simple perfection of the emperor’s scheme.’
He moved closer to me, a pale blur in the gathering darkness.
‘Did you really ever style yourself the unveiler of mysteries?’
A rumble sounded like thunder, and the earth trembled beneath my feet. I stepped back, just as the noise resolved itself into the pounding of many hooves. A column of horsemen swept around the turn in the road. A fiery aura surrounded them from the torches they carried, though I could see little inside it save a host of spears and helmets, flying manes and churning hooves.
‘What is happening?’ I shouted up. ‘Are we under attack?’
One of the knights reined in his horse and drew aside to let the others pass. ‘We are going to Bethlehem.’ He shook his head in wonder at what he had just said. ‘The Christians there have sent messengers: the Fatimids have abandoned it. Come with us and see.’
I glanced at Nikephoros, revealed now in the flaring torches. He shrugged.
‘Go with them, if you like. Stay here and fight for Jerusalem, if that is what you believe in. I give you my permission. Or you can come home with me.’
‘Be quick,’ warned the knight. Most of the column had already passed by, and the light they had brought was fading. ‘I cannot wait.’
I stared at the ground. My cheeks burned with shame; my eyes ached to cry, but no tears would come.
‘I. .’ I could hardly speak. My only solace was darkness. ‘I will go home.’
37
No one slept that night. Like ice after winter, the army had already begun to break up. Some followed Tancred’s men to Bethlehem; others, unable to endure one more hour of waiting, rose from their beds in the middle of the night and hurried on along the dark road to Jerusalem. I lay on my blanket, unsleeping, and heard them go — first dribbling away in their twos and threes, then growing to a trickle which eventually became a flood. I stayed in my bed.
As with all sleepless nights, the darkness seemed to last for ever — and still be over too soon. After so many hours of wretched waiting, no sooner had my thoughts finally quieted into sleep than a dirty light began to spread from the east, and Sigurd was shaking my shoulder, urging me up. Well before the dawn Nikephoros had appointed for our departure, we were ready to leave.
We did not delay; we might have lost our nerve. As we marched through the camp many called that we were going the wrong way, that Jerusalem was behind us. When they realised our purpose their shouts became angrier. They lined the road to watch us go, hurling abuse: we were traitors, cowards who did not dare look upon Jerusalem for fear of God’s judgement. He would find us, they warned. One or two of them threw rocks, and I feared for a moment that in their fervour they might stone us to death, but a few glares from the Varangians cowed them enough and they soon lost interest. They had better things to do that day.
By mid-morning we had gone several miles down our road, unpicking the threads of the previous day’s journey. Nikephoros rode at the head of our little column; the rest of us walked, for I had sold my horse the night before to a Provencal knight who had lost his. The Franks would have reached Jerusalem by now, I thought. I wondered what they had found there.
‘Twenty-thousand Egyptians waiting to massacre them,’ said Sigurd, when I voiced my question aloud.
A fresh stab of betrayal lanced through me and I glanced ahead to Nikephoros. I had not repeated what he had revealed to me, not even to Sigurd. He loved the emperor he served and he loved his honour: I could not imagine how he would accept the ignoble truth of our mission. As for the others, how could I tell them that everything they had suffered for had been a lie? Thomas had not spoken a word since Nikephoros announced we were going home; his face was hard and still as stone. White knuckles clenched the haft of his axe, and several times I saw him angrily kick out at pebbles in the road. I think he would have deserted in an instant if it had not been for Everard, Helena and her unborn baby.
Just before lunch, the road turned into a steep-sided valley. A stream-bed meandered along the bottom of the embankment, though nothing but dust flowed there now, and on the far bank the flat ground was planted with many fruit trees. It seemed an arid sort of garden, but water must have lingered somewhere in the recesses of the earth, for many of the trees had blossomed. Some already even bore fruit. We called a halt and scrambled across the stream, into the welcome shade of the orchard.
Once again, I saw what secret miracles lingered in this land. June was only a week old, but the fruits had swollen so ripe you could not tell if they would break free of their branches or burst from their skins. Anna plucked a pomegranate from a gnarled tree and cut it open. The seeds glistened inside like a cupful of rubies; she scooped them out and fed them to me, and afterwards I licked the red juice from her fingers. Zoe and Helena gathered dates and apples in their skirts, while the Varangians laughed and shied rotten figs at each other.
I could have stayed all afternoon in that drowsy orchard. Leaning against a tree, Anna’s head cradled in my lap, I realised that what I really longed for was not to go home, nor to Jerusalem, but simply to not go anywhere: to lie down and rest and be still. I swatted away a wasp that was buzzing around my ear and closed my eyes, wishing I could stay there for ever.
Anna lifted her head. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’ I stroked the skin on the back of her neck, still smooth and pale where her hair had covered it against the sun. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
She shook my hand away. ‘Listen.’
I listened. The wasp buzzed as it hovered over a fallen apple; further off, I could hear Sigurd’s men laughing, and the enthusiastic babble as Everard chattered away beside Helena. And further still, from up the road, I heard a low rumble, like wind gusting through a rocky cleft. But the day was still, and there was no wind.
I clambered to my feet and stepped out from under the tree, shading my eyes. To my right, Nikephoros had stood up in his stirrups and was waving impatiently, signalling we should be on the march again. Despite the heat, he had chosen to wear his full imperial regalia: the heavy dalmatic embroidered with gold, and the jewelled
‘Demetrios.’ Sigurd’s voice called me from somewhere to my right. ‘
Wrapped in the dust they churned beneath their hooves, a company of horsemen swept around the bend in the road. I could hardly see them at all through the cloud — little more than flashes of spears and armour in the billowing dust — but there was something terrible and hungry in their speed, like an eagle hastening on to devour its prey. I crouched low, frantically waving Thomas and the girls to do likewise.
Perhaps, in their haste, the horsemen might have missed us if not for Nikephoros. He sat on his mount beyond the cover of the orchard, tall in his saddle and shining like a beacon. Even the most casual traveller would have seen him and gawped — these men were looking for him. They reined in on the far bank of the dry stream and pulled around into a loose line opposite us. I counted about twenty of them, and as the dust settled I saw that every one was dressed for battle. They seemed to be Franks, though they carried no standard.
