I thought back on my afternoon of scorn and misery in Raymond’s camp, and nodded.
‘Could you defy Bohemond if he claimed the city?’ Raymond taunted me.
Adhemar stirred again. ‘You are lucky, Demetrios, that the Count of Saint-Gilles honours his duty to the Emperor so.’ His bearded face was solemn, yet even with the foreign words I thought I sensed a current of humour, as though he teased Raymond.
The count scowled. ‘I
‘Yes.’
‘And doubtless by the same effort you have discovered that the man has not been seen since Drogo’s death.’
I had, though I was more intrigued by how Raymond came to know it.
‘What do you infer by it, you whom Bohemond hired for your secret wisdom?’
I paused, feeling the full force of Raymond’s eye on me. Even Adhemar watched with interest.
‘He would seem a likely culprit,’ I conceded.
‘He would even now have undergone the ordeal of fire, if only he could be found. Did you know he was one of my men?’
‘I thought he served Lord Bohemond.’
‘He does now. He lost his horse at Albara, and afterwards had to fight on foot. I would have found him a new mount eventually, but Bohemond offered one sooner, so he sold his allegiance to the Normans.’ Raymond swirled the wine in his cup. ‘Bohemond delights in stealing my men, and the winter has sent many opportunities.’
There was silence as I considered this news. ‘What would it profit Bohemond if Rainauld had killed Drogo?’
‘Are you such a fool? I may have a single eye, Askiates, but it seems that I see more clearly than you. If a Provencal, even one who has left my service, has murdered a Norman, then Bohemond will use it to diminish me. My army will not mutiny, and my priests will not excommunicate me, but when I speak in the council my voice will weigh less with other men. Whatever lessens my authority benefits him – that is his purpose.’ Raymond stabbed a finger heavy with rings at me. ‘And you, Greek, you are his willing pawn.’
I looked to Adhemar, but his head was bowed in prayer.
?
Tatikios was in a peevish humour that evening, and spent an hour dictating another petition for relief to the Emperor. Christ help us, I thought, if the Franks ever saw the correspondence. It was well after dark before I was able to return to my tent, damp and famished, to see what humble supper awaited me. Anna and Sigurd were there, with a few Varangians clustered around a single candle. The shadows were deep in the canopy above.
‘Welcome to my mead hall,’ said Sigurd mirthlessly. ‘Have you found out who killed the Norman?’
I lowered myself onto the ground and took the wooden bowl that Anna passed to me. The broth in it was long cold, and the only trace of meat seemed to be the scum of fat on its surface.
‘One of the companions who shared his tent has been missing for two days. Even you, Sigurd, might guess something was suspicious from that.’
Sigurd waved his crooked knife at me, but before he could retort Anna was speaking.
‘If one Norman killed another then there is hardly reason for you to involve yourself. Bohemond must be satisfied – has he paid you?’
After my conversation with Count Raymond, I was no longer so certain what would satisfy Bohemond. ‘The man was not a Norman – he was a Provencal who had taken service with Bohemond.’
‘Hah.’ Sigurd’s knife flashed in the candlelight as he held it up and licked the crumbs off it. I looked for the bread it had cut, but in vain. ‘Bohemond did not hire you to prove that his Normans were ill-disciplined barbarians intent on murdering each other. That we knew. There is an answer he wants you to find, Demetrios, and my guess is that he already knows it far better than you.’
‘And what of it?’ Anna interrupted. Though there were men present, she had unwrapped the
‘This is a war, and men die in it,’ said Sigurd.
‘Of course men die in war. But it should not be because we gorged ourselves when there was plenty, and now suffer famine. Where were the princes five months ago, when our gravest danger was gluttony? Before the orchards were reduced to firewood?’
She looked around, challenging us to argue, but there were none in that group who would defend the Franks. Besides, it was the truth. When we had arrived at Antioch, the land had been fat with fruit: trees bowed with apples and pears, vines dripping grapes, pits and granaries bursting with the newly gathered harvest in every village. Within two months, the fertile plain had become a wasteland. No animals grazed the fields or sat in their barns for they had all been slaughtered, and our horses had devoured the winter hay. The granaries had been ransacked until not one seed remained, and the withered vines had been gathered and burned. We had plagued the land without thought for the future, and the greasy soup now in my hands was our reward.
‘It was not even that their strategy was frustrated,’ Anna continued. ‘There was no plan then for getting into Antioch, any more than there is now.’
‘Enough.’ I raised my arms in barely exaggerated horror. ‘I have just spent an hour hearing Tatikios make the same complaints.’
‘Perhaps they expected God to deliver them,’ Sigurd suggested. ‘They seem to know His mind uncommonly well.’
I thought of Drogo’s naked body in the cave, the long cross scarred into his back. I thought of all the others whom I had seen make similar professions on their bodies, knights and pilgrims alike. ‘You cannot deny their piety.’
Sparks spat into the gloom as Sigurd rasped his knife against a stone. ‘When the Norman bastard came to conquer England he carried a banner of the cross – a personal gift from the Pope in Rome – and the relics of two saints. If you had seen what the Normans did to my country in the name of their church, you would not acclaim their piety.’
‘And the most pious of them all is that dwarfish hermit,’ Anna added. ‘The man who led ten thousand pilgrims to their death, all the while promising them they were invulnerable. That is the sort of piety they practise. They forget that reason and will are divine gifts no less than faith.’
There were times when I thought that Anna had spent so long peering at the blood and flesh of men that she neglected the spiritual realms, yet I never came away the winner when I challenged her.
Sigurd must have seen the darkness that crossed my face. ‘Better not to mention the dwarf priest who orphaned Thomas.’
It was a kind thought, though too late. Thomas was my son-in-law, a Frankish boy whose parents had followed Little Peter to their doom in his expedition against the Turks. After the massacre, a series of misadventures had at last led Thomas to my house. Gratitude for my hospitality – not least for my daughter, though I had not known it then – had driven him to betray his countrymen in the Frankish army, after which I could deny him neither my daughter nor a place in the Varangian guards. He had married Helena three days before I crossed into Asia, at a small church in the city. I had ached to give her up, even to a man who had saved my life, and ached doubly to leave them so soon afterwards. But Thomas was safest where the Franks were furthest away and by staying he had at least saved himself the horrors of march and siege. The Army of God had left too many young widows already: I did not need Helena added to their number.
