pack animals. And every day the land around remained unchanged: a waste of dust and thorns, broken only by mountains on a horizon which never approached. None of us who emerged from that desert would ever entirely wash away the dust on our souls.
‘There.’
Thankfully Sigurd’s voice recalled me from bitter memories. Shielding his eyes, he pointed ahead to where a gaggle of low houses had come into view at the top of the ridge. We walked on towards them, crossing a wooden bridge over a stream and climbing to the village between terraced fields overrun with weeds. It was a humble place, a dozen stone cottages built together in pairs and a score of timber shacks surrounding them. Even at mid- morning there was an unnatural quiet about it: no women drew water from the well, no goats bleated in the enclosures, and nothing pulled the ploughs which lay rotting by the barns. Sigurd slung his shield on his arm and lifted his axe in caution.
‘We need to find the house of the sun,’ I said, uneasy at the sound of my voice in the silence.
‘What does that mean?’
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps a house which faces east. Or one with no roof.’
A sudden squawk tore away the stillness. With a ruffling of wings, a brown hen ran around the corner of the nearest house, stopped abruptly, and began pecking at the muddy ground.
‘Get her,’ Sigurd shouted. One of his men was already moving forward, his blade poised to chop away the bird’s head, but at that moment a new voice began screaming abuse. The door to the house had opened and a wizened woman stood on the doorstep, waving her fist and shouting every manner of curse. She ran forward under the Varangian’s axe, scooped up the hen in the folds of her skirt, and stared defiance at us.
‘Why do you do this?’ she spat. Though much corrupted, her language seemed to be Greek. ‘Why do you try to starve us? You have torn up our fields and slaughtered our animals – are you now taking my last hen? In the name of the Christ and his blessed mother, are you not ashamed?’
‘We do not want to steal from you,’ I assured her, though fourteen hungry faces belied my words. I had to repeat myself thrice before she could understand me. ‘We are looking for a house – the house of the sun.
‘In the valley.’ She threw out an arm, pointing further down the road. Her skin was almost black, and wrinkled beyond every vestige of youth, yet the strength of her voice made her seem little older than me – younger, even.
‘You will find it in the valley of the sinners. By the water. The road will take you.’
I wanted to ask for further description, to learn how I might know the house that I sought, but she would give us nothing more. Lifting her skirts, she turned and stamped back into the house, never loosing her grip on the hen.
‘That should have been our lunch,’ Sigurd complained.
‘We cannot steal from these people,’ I snapped. ‘They are Christians – Greeks. These are the people we fight to save.’
Sigurd looked at the desolate village, and laughed.
On the far side of the hilltop, the road descended into a steep ravine. It was as though the lips of the earth had been prised apart, opening a glimpse onto a world utterly removed from its terrestrial surrounds. The slopes were thick with pines, bay trees in blossom and fig trees budding with fruit. In a gully beside the path a multitude of streams tumbled down through moss-covered rocks, touching and parting until they at last united on the valley floor. Wood-birds sang, and the smell of laurel blossom was heavy in the air. It was a garden, as near to paradise as anything I had seen in my life.
‘It doesn’t look like the valley of sin,’ said Sigurd. He had snapped off a sprig of laurel and stuck it into his unruly hair, like a victorious charioteer at the hippodrome.
‘Does that disappoint you?’
Sigurd kicked a pebble from our path and watched it tumble down the slope into one of the brooks. ‘If there’s sin to be had, it’s best to know what I forsake.’
The road levelled out as we reached the bottom of the valley. The vegetation was as thick as ever: broad oaks overhung the stream, and vines trailed in the water. Every few hundred paces, though, there were gaps in the foliage where once the villas of our ancestors had stood. Their ruins were still there, gradually receding beneath the green tide. Some were now little more than rubble under the ferns and ivy; others had walls still standing, or columns poking out of the bushes. There were about ten in total, all shaken down over the centuries by war and time and the tremors of the earth.
I remembered the words of the woman in the village. ‘One of these must be the house of the sun.’
‘None of them has a roof,’ Sigurd observed.
We walked on, scanning the remains for anything that might suggest a sun. Above us the true sun arced in its course, slowly pushing back the shadows cast by the steep walls of the ravine. Different features drew our attentions – a yellow flower with radiate petals, a star carved into a fallen lintel, a fragment of golden mosaic tiles – and we began to drift apart. It was hard to feel danger in the sweetness of that place.
I had just scrambled back to the path, having been drawn away by a stone covered in pine blossom, when I saw her. She was standing on the far bank of the stream: a dark-haired woman, her head uncovered, in a dress which seemed much stained with mud and berries. There were leaves tangled in her hair, and had it not been for the hardness of her face I might have believed her a nymph or dryad.
‘What do you want?’ she called. Her dialect was Frankish, and her voice strangely harsh against the surroundings. ‘Do you want for pleasure, far from home? I can help you forget your suffering, for a little while.’
I closed my eyes. I knew why the villagers called this the valley of sin. Three months earlier, fearing that the impieties of the Army of God might be the reason why its campaign had faltered, Bishop Adhemar had expelled all women from the camp. As an attempt to stamp out sin, it had failed utterly; if anything, it had only spawned worse vices. After a few days the women had begun to drift back into the camp, their presence thenceforth ignored by Adhemar, but there was talk that some had made a new home in the glades of this valley, where the tempted of the army could indulge their lusts more privately.
‘I am looking for a house called the house of the sun,’ I said. ‘Do you know of it?’
She shook her head, her long hair swinging freely behind. ‘I need no houses for my affairs.’
‘May I ask – did four Norman knights come here once, perhaps a month ago?’
‘Many men come here: Normans, Provencals, Franks, Lotharingians. Even Greeks.’
‘These men did not come for such pleasures, I think. There were four of them,’ I said again.
As brazenly as if she were alone, the woman reached into the folds of her skirt and scratched herself between her legs. ‘I saw them.’
My hopes quickened. ‘Where did they go?’
‘They had a bullock with them. It screamed horribly.’ Deliberately ignoring me, she seated herself on a rock and dipped her naked toes into the stream. The water rippled around them. ‘None of us dared go near.’
‘Near where?’
She looked up, coiling a lock of hair about her finger. ‘How much would you value it?’
‘Half a bezant.’ It was the only coin in my purse, and I was loath to spend it on this harlot. But in the pursuit of secrets, even worthless ones, I have ever been spendthrift.
She smiled, though there was no joy in it. ‘For half a bezant, I could give you more than knowledge.’
As she spoke, there must have been a touch of a breeze, for the scents of pine and laurel were suddenly thick on my senses. They cloyed about me, sickly smells bespeaking all manner of sweet damnation. For a moment, even the harlot’s face seemed kinder.
I shook my head, as much to myself as to her, and held up the coin so that she could see it. ‘Where did they go?’
‘There.’ She pointed to a low-lying patch of ruins, further down the valley where the slopes became cliffs. ‘They went in there.’
I threw the coin across the stream. She caught it one-handed, the arm of her dress sliding back as she reached out. ‘They would not lie with me either.’
I called Sigurd and the others to join me, and walked slowly towards the ancient villa. High trees had grown around it, shading it with the canopy of their leaves, while shrubs and flowers flourished among the masonry. Two walls were all that remained standing: the rest, the detritus of atria, baths, colonnades and fountains were piled in
