Thankfully, I had just enough wit or instinct left to throw out my hands. They fell on the stony ground, jarring me to my senses. Crouched on all fours like an animal, I looked down into the pit of the valley. The fire still burned high, and I could still see a figure through the flames. But it was not Arnulf. He wore a dark riding cloak with the hood pulled up, shading his face, but I could see that he stood both taller and broader than the priest. Even in shadow, he radiated power.
Above the trumpets, the harps, the roaring flames, I heard three words echo around the deep bowl of the valley, spoken with the sound of a thousand voices.
I could bear it no more. Stumbling to my feet, I fled.
44
I ran back to the camp, scrambling and staggering as if all the forces of hell had already burst their gates to pursue me. I barely knew where I was going until Count Raymond’s pickets challenged me; then, calmed by the feel of familiar ground, I wandered until at last I managed to find my tent. In my madness I almost tripped over Sigurd, lying sprawled in front of the door of the tent.
‘Where in hell have you been?’ he demanded.
‘Closer to hell than you know.’
The tremors in my voice stayed his anger. He stood, and led me to the rocky escarpment on the edge of the camp. The night was warm, but my experience had left me so cold I could not keep from shivering. When Sigurd saw this he left me, and presently returned with a blanket, which he draped around my shoulders, and a flask of strong wine. He would not let me speak until I had taken three large gulps: then, as gently as he knew how, he pressed me for my story.
When I had finished, he grunted. ‘If strife in the world meant the end of it, the world would never have begun. Men have been prophesying its doom ever since they realised it was created.’
I took another draught of the wine, relishing its acid taste on my tongue. That at least felt real. ‘It would almost be better if the prophecy was true. At least Anna and the children would be out of danger.’
I had hoped Sigurd would say something to reassure me against my pessimism. Instead, he stared into the darkness and said nothing. I hugged my knees to my chest. My panic was subsiding, but reason brought a chill clarity that was unrelenting in its grip.
‘It doesn’t matter if the prophecy’s true or not.’
‘It’ll matter if it does come true,’ Sigurd objected.
‘No.’ My voice was thin and hollow. ‘What matters is that there are men in this army who believe that it’s true. There were hundreds there tonight, maybe more.’
‘They’ll have a surprise when they wake up the morning after we capture the city and discover it’s still there.’
‘No!’ I banged my fist on the stony ground. Sharp fragments of rock dug into the side of my hand. ‘They believe that the consummation of the world is at hand. If they capture Jerusalem they will destroy it, fill it so deep with blood that it drowns.’ I pulled the blanket tighter around me: I was shaking so hard I thought my bones might break from their sockets. ‘They will kill every man, woman and child in that city in order to fulfil the prophecy and bring on the apocalypse.
Sigurd was quiet. For a moment I wished he would put his arms around me and hug me like a woman, anchor my desolation. But he was captive to his own thoughts and did not move.
‘Then we’ll have to reach Anna and your daughters before the Franks do.’ He looked over his shoulder and pointed at the siege tower, a hulking silhouette against the glow of the city beyond. ‘We need to be the first men onto the walls.’
‘The first men to die with a faceful of Saracen arrows.’
‘Perhaps.’ Sigurd picked up a stone and tossed it down the embankment. ‘What else can we do? If the Franks want to drown the city in blood, all we can do is run before the wave.’
At another time, the thought of putting myself in the front rank of the battle of the ages would have terrified me. Now I accepted it with meek dread. I had never wanted to see Jerusalem; now I would be the first on its walls or, more likely, die in the attempt. Once again, the veil between the worlds drew back and I almost heard the fates laughing. And, in their laughter, I heard a new threat that left me far colder than any thoughts of Saracen arrows and fire.
‘What if Count Raymond doesn’t take the city?’
Sigurd shrugged. ‘Then the world won’t end — and Anna and the others will be safe.’
I shook my head. ‘That was not what I meant. Raymond has lost more than half his army in the last month, and when he launches that siege monster at the walls, he’ll have to push it uphill over broken ground. Meanwhile, Duke Godfrey will be attacking from the north with twice his numbers.’
‘So …’
‘So the first men off Raymond’s tower may not be the first men into the city.’
The white stallion reared up on its hind legs, its front hooves clubbing at the air. The groom who held the halter leaped back, hauling on the rope to bring the horse down. He barely managed to stay on his feet; I was surprised he did not get his head kicked in.
Across the paddock, Duke Godfrey stood by the wattle enclosure and watched, his arms folded across his chest. Four knights stood around him in a wary circle. If any man had benefited from Raymond’s decline, it was Godfrey, and though he had professed indifference it had obviously affected him. He seemed to stand taller, his shoulders broader. There was an authority about him — and, more than that, a knowledge of it — such as I had seen in few other men. Bohemond had been one, but with him power had always been a spectacle. Chasing it, wrestling it, relishing it — he hid nothing, but made a theatre of his ambitions. Some men shrank from their power and others, like Raymond, believed they possessed more than they did, but none seemed so effortlessly comfortable with it as Duke Godfrey.
His guards stiffened as I approached, and moved to bar my way, but Godfrey murmured that I should pass. I walked the few paces across the dusty ground and stood beside him at the fence.
‘I did not send Achard to kill you.’ He did not look at me, but kept his gaze fixed on the stallion in the paddock. ‘He went of his own will, because he hated you for what you did to him in Egypt.’
‘It can be hard to forgive the men who betray you,’ I said coldly.
‘But if you cannot do that, you end up as Achard did: destroyed.’ Godfrey flicked his head. ‘I told you once before that you should leave behind those things that do not concern you.’
‘You told me to go home to my family. And now I cannot, because they are in that city.’ I gestured to the walls a few hundred yards distant. ‘Because of what Achard did.’
At last Godfrey turned to me. ‘Did you come here to hurl your bitterness at me, Demetrios Askiates? What do you want?’
I swallowed, trying to calm myself. ‘I want to be the first man in the city.’
‘Many men want that honour,’ he rebuked me. ‘Many men have begged me for it. But it is not my gift to give. Only God can decide it — if He means us to capture the city at all.’
I nodded, and crossed myself. One thing about Godfrey had not changed: his pedantic piety.
‘Many men have lost their families — I cannot give you my army for that.’
‘I don’t want your army.’ I tried desperately to fight back my temper. ‘I want to join it.’ I had raised my voice, and the guards had noticed. They began to close on me, but Godfrey raised his head a fraction to nod them back.
‘I will submit my men to your authority. Varangian guards, from the emperor’s palace at Constantinople. There is not a king in Christendom who would not want them in his army.’
‘Except perhaps the Norman king of England,’ said Godfrey drily.
‘They will fight to the death for you.’
Godfrey stared out at the paddock. The white stallion had been calmed, and was now allowing the groom to lead him around the ring.
