Siege of Heaven

life.’

Dazed by sweltering heat and sound, stifled by the dust our army kicked up, I almost let myself ignore him. But there was a firmness in the way he spoke that was almost like a promise. Soon we will all taste the sweet water of life. I had heard such sentiments before, but hearing them now, with the walls of Jerusalem looming over me, I could feel their power anew.

The pilgrim looked at me cautiously, as if noticing for the first time the shabby colour of my tunic among the sea of white. ‘Things that were prophesied are now stirring to life. Have you heard?’

My mouth was dry, but once again I found I knew the words he wanted. I loosened a brick in the wall of my memories and reached into the dark crevice within — to a clearing in the woods, and the fat, frightened peasant who had styled himself a prophet.

‘When the Son of Perdition has risen, the king will ascend Golgotha.’

I could not remember any more, but it was enough. The pilgrim recited the rest. ‘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.’

‘But the man who brought that prophecy died a terrible death, forsaken by God. I thought his prophecy died with him.’

‘It was not Peter Bartholomew’s prophecy,’ said the pilgrim. His eyes were hidden in the dappled shade of the palm frond, but his face was angry. ‘In his pride, he confused the prophet and that which was prophesied. He thought he was the promised king.’

‘The last and greatest of all kings, who will come at the end of days to capture Jerusalem.’

‘As if that grasping peasant could have been a king. The first time Christ came, He came in humility. When He comes again, it will be with all the majesty He can command.’

My scepticism must have showed. ‘Do you doubt it?’ the pilgrim challenged me.

‘Of the hour of Christ’s coming, no man knows,’ I quoted him.

‘Until He does come.’ He grabbed me by my sleeve and spun me around, staring hard into my eyes. ‘The consummation of the world has already begun. The last and greatest king is here. I have seen him.’

I stared at him. There was no hint of a lie on his aged face. ‘You have seen the risen Christ?’

‘As clearly as you see me now.’

‘But. .’ I struggled to think, let alone to speak. ‘But. . why hasn’t the world ended?’

‘Even after He returns, the day of judgement does not come straight away. There is to be an interlude of forty days, so that sinners may repent. But there is not much time. He appeared to us the night we reached Jerusalem, and that was thirty-three days ago.’

This was impossible. Of course I believed that Christ would come again in glory, as the creed proclaimed, to judge the living and the dead — but I had never thought it could come in my lifetime. It was an idea, an abstraction out of time, as far in the future as the creation of the world lay in the past. It was not something I was born to experience.

‘You should not be surprised when God’s promises are honoured,’ the pilgrim reproved me. ‘It has all been written in the prophecy.’

The prophecy. I had only heard it in snatches but I could feel its danger, a dark serpent coiled in the heart of the army. It had poisoned Peter Bartholomew when he touched it, thinking it was meant for him. Who else would it claim? Worse, what if it were true?

‘There is still time to prepare yourself — God is merciful. Meet me an hour after dusk at the church of Saint Abraham, near Saint Stephen’s gate, tomorrow night.’

‘Will the redeemer be revealed there?’

He put a finger to his lips. ‘Be patient. You will meet him soon enough.’

43

Did we have seven days to live? It was hard to believe. The following day, Saturday, was almost stifling in its predictability. I rose at dawn and spent the morning carrying wood as we continued the slow business of preparing the siege engine. The sun climbed over us, then began to sink back. The sounds of war echoed off the ancient hills — blacksmiths beating out blades on their anvils, farriers exercising horses, the clatter of rocks as labourers gathered stones for the catapaults — but I barely heard them. Even the noise of my own hammer was dull to my ears, a metronomic beat tapping out the hours in the still air.

When dusk began to chase the sun from the sky, I put down my tools and made my way to the church of Saint Abraham: a small church with a cracked dome, barely a stone’s throw from the city walls. I did not tell Sigurd or Thomas I was going. I half expected — and half hoped — that the pilgrim would have forgotten me, or thought better of his offer, but as I approached the church he stepped out of the shadow of the doorway and beckoned me to follow.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Not far.’ He looked at my tunic, then threw me a white blanket. ‘Wrap this around you.’

The blanket was grubby and smelled of straw, but I did as he told me and followed him. My misgivings grew the further we moved away from the camp, up towards the brow of the ridge that dominated Jerusalem to the north. We were not the only ones on this road: pale figures flitted through the night all around, though I could not make them out. When I looked back, I could see the city laid out beneath me, a chain of watch-fires surrounding the lamplit streets and churches. To my left, on the eastern side, a smaller cordon of light marked out the dimensions of the Temple Mount. From there, I traced the line of the stone bridge, which spanned the valley to the western city. On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow. If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door. I stared at the flickering lights. Did one of those lamps burn in the window of the room that held my family? Was Anna looking out of it even now, staring up at the night and thinking of me? My heart beat faster, and I felt the familiar pain tighten in my chest.

‘Hurry,’ hissed the pilgrim. ‘There is not much time.’

I turned back up the slope, leaving the lights behind. But the darkness ahead was not complete: the more I looked, the more I could see an orange glow tempering the air, until suddenly we came over the crest of the ridge and looked down into the hollow beyond.

On the far side of the ridge, the land formed a natural bowl, a steeply sloping amphitheatre of dry earth and grass. It occurred to me that these were the same hills where a thousand years earlier the blessed shepherds must have waited with their flocks and heard the angels’ tidings. A second later, I realised why I had thought of it, for it seemed as though all the intervening ages had collapsed and a parliament of angels had gathered once again. Dim white figures filled the valley, seated on its sloping banks in rows or wandering around its rim. There seemed to be hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. They were singing, a soft and beautiful hymn that barely disturbed the night but seemed to flow like water into the amphitheatre. To Him who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb: blessing and honour and glory and power. Two fires burned in its centre forming the boundaries of an implicit stage, and though they were far enough apart that a man could stand between them and barely break sweat, it reminded me uncomfortably of the twin fires of Peter Bartholomew’s ordeal.

My pilgrim guide found us a space to sit on the hillside. No sooner had we settled, though, than the hymn died away and the entire congregation rose to its feet. In the bowl of the valley, a procession wound its way past the fires and stopped behind them, a shadowy line just out of reach of the light. There were seven of them, all dressed in white and all holding dark objects clutched to their chests.

One stepped forward into the pool of firelight. The flames rippled on his cheeks, misshaping them, though his eyes and mouth remained in shadow. He must have been a priest, for he wore a stole around his neck with a heavy cross hanging over his chest. He took the bundle he held and raised it so all could see — a parchment scroll, fastened with a round wax seal the size of a medallion. Holding it aloft, he snapped the wax like bread at the Eucharist. Crumbs of wax fell to the ground. In a deep, rolling voice he declaimed: ‘Come.’

A sigh went through the crowd like a wind — a wind that seemed to bring with it the chime and jangle of