As I walked, I chiselled at my thoughts, trying to shape them into some more familiar form. Rainauld had not been seen since Drogo’s death, and though that was now six days previous my every sense insisted that his death was linked to Drogo’s. Whether it had happened before or after Drogo’s, and by his own hand or another’s, I could not know. Whether Rainauld had lain in that vault for two days or six was an equal mystery, though the decay of his body seemed to bespeak an earlier death. The sight was something I would yearn to forget, but amid the rot and scavenging and torn clothes, I was certain that I had seen something significant. A mark on his back as the Norman turned him. The shiny, puckered skin of a cross-shaped scar.
?
My dreams left me little rest that night and each time I awoke I longed for Anna’s embrace to warm my shivering fears. In the morning I rose early and made for Bohemond’s tent. The chill in the air spurred my steps, but I had no enthusiasm: I feared he would demand many more answers than I could supply. Nor was I even sure what answers he desired, for his shock at the discovery of Rainauld’s body had appeared entirely genuine. If Sigurd and Count Raymond were right, if my role had merely been to name Rainauld as Drogo’s murderer, what then? Would he have me declare that Rainauld slew his friend and then killed himself in a frenzy of guilt? I was not sure that I could say so – but neither was I certain that I could insist on perpetuating doubt so damaging to the army.
As so often, my worries were wasted. Bohemond’s banner was gone from outside his tent, and the lone guard was brusque in his dismissal.
‘There were reports of Turkish raiders in the mountains: Bohemond has gone to seek them. He will not return before nightfall.’
Relief and disappointment mingled in my heart. I had not wanted to confront Bohemond, with his persuasive ways and hidden purposes, but without him I was left adrift. I could not speak to Quino without fear for my life, and I could not seek Odard without risk of seeing Quino. Inspecting tents for leakage with Tatikios attracted me little better. Unthinkingly, I left the Norman camp and walked down to the river.
The Orontes was largely deserted at that hour, save for a few women sitting on rocks upstream, rinsing their laundry where the water was not yet fouled with the effluence of our camp. A few blackened twigs poked out from the surface where they had been twisted into a fish trap, while on the far bank a pair of children tried their luck with lengths of twine. They must have baited their hooks with leaves, for food was too scarce to risk in the river. Otherwise the water flowed on implacably, black as the clouds hanging overhead. I sat on a rock and watched it pass, keeping my back to the looming mountain which overshadowed all behind me.
The minutes passed. Damp began to seep into my cloak; the figures on the opposite shore cast and recast their lines without success. A flock of birds wheeled overhead and a bough from an olive tree drifted down the river, spinning lazily in midstream. Suddenly, I heard a scrabbling sound from beneath the bank. As I watched, a grimy pair of hands reached over the rim and grasped a tree root which the flood waters had exposed. A shock of black hair followed, then a face so dirty that it was unrecognisable, and finally the whole dripping body. He was naked, yet his modesty was preserved by the extraordinary quantity of mud that clung to him. Was this how Adam had looked when the Lord first breathed life into him? For a moment he was oblivious to my presence, reaching under the root to pull out a folded tunic, but as he turned he yelped and almost tumbled back into the river. My own surprise was hardly less.
‘Simon,’ I said, conjuring the name as I at last recognised the face beneath the dirt.
‘What?’ He was bent forward as though he had been kicked in the groin, one hand protecting his privacy. He edged backwards, trying to work his way behind a low boulder. As a servant, in a camp with few partitions, he surely could not be so squeamish. Perhaps he had believed the endless Norman jibes about the vices of the Greeks.
‘Dress yourself,’ I told him. I made great show of prising a few pebbles from the earth and watching them skip across the water while he pulled on his tunic. Lines of mud were streaked across it.
‘What were you doing?’ I asked. ‘The current is strong – you could have been swept all the way to the sea at Saint Simeon. Can you swim?’
He shook his head. Water sprayed from his ragged locks as off a dog. In his hand, I noticed, he clasped a wilted bunch of green plants.
‘What are those?’
‘Mine!’ The fear as he recoiled at the question was evident. ‘They grow in the river bank, in places few can see.’
‘I do not want your herbs,’ I assured him, though it was hard to hide my hunger. I could smell onion grass, and wild sage; the aromas were like hot coals in my stomach. ‘I want to speak with you.’
His gaze darted over my shoulder, back towards the Norman camp. ‘If I speak with you, Quino will beat me. He swore it.’
‘Did he?’ If there were secrets that Quino wanted hidden then I especially wanted to hear them. ‘What will he do if he learns you gather food in his ignorance? That you keep it from him?’
‘He . . .’
‘I am charged by Bohemond, your master’s lord, to discover all I can concerning Drogo’s death. Two men from that tent are now dead, and the longer that rumours persist the worse it will be for all of us. Tell me what you know, and Bohemond will see that no harm befalls you.’
‘What do I know?’ A tear cut a pale scar through the mud on his cheek. ‘If I knew who killed my master, would I hide it?’
‘A man may unwittingly know more than he believes. And a servant hears much. Tell me the truth.’
Simon sniffed, and wiped his arm across his face. ‘You sound like Drogo. He often spoke of truth.’
‘Yes? He was devout? There is no shame speaking of your master’s virtues,’ I encouraged him.
‘He prayed often. Especially after his brother died. He – he was different after that.’
‘How so?
‘There was a burden on his soul. We all suffered on the march, and here at Antioch, but always it seemed that he suffered more.’
‘He was not an easy man to serve,’ I suggested.
‘He was fair.’ Simon looked down at his feet, so that his hair curtained his face. ‘I think . . . I think perhaps a demon assailed him.’
‘A demon?’ I echoed, astonished. ‘Did you see it?’
Simon’s voice was now a whisper, yet it beat with the urgency of confession. ‘Often in the night I heard him wrestle with it. He called out to the Lord God, begging him to see truthfully, but the demon blinded him to light.’
‘The cross!’ I exclaimed, my mind fusing together two thoughts. ‘The cross on his back. Was that part of his penance? His struggle with the demon?’
Simon lifted his head and stared at me. A few solitary hairs hung forlorn from his chin: he must have been trying to grow his beard in mimicry of his elders, yet the effect was only to make him seem younger. ‘How do you know of the cross on his back?’
‘I saw his corpse. And I know that Rainauld bore the same mark. Did Quino and Odard carry it too?’
The boy did not move, yet still he seemed to shrink. ‘I do not know how the mark came to be there. It was in December, near the feast of Saint Nicholas. All four returned to the tent one night with their backs bound in bandages. Next morning, when they dressed, I saw the sign of the cross seeping through. I thought it was a miracle, that God had favoured them.’
‘Did you find out how it happened?’
‘They never spoke of it. Once I asked my master. I thought he would want to celebrate such a sign of divine grace, but he beat me with a stirrup. I did not ask again.’
Behind him the river flowed its course. The two boys opposite had given up their fishing, and were now throwing rocks at some piece of debris floating on the water. A crow flew down and perched on the fish trap.
‘Had they suffered any arguments in the past weeks? Had one taken against the others? Did they quarrel –
