broken heaps around me. A fluted column lay between the two posts of a door that had long since rotted to oblivion. I stepped over it, and looked for any sign that the whore had spoken truthfully.
‘Here.’ Moving more impatiently than I, Sigurd had already reached the back of the ruin. Its rear wall must have been built sheer against the cliff, though it had mostly collapsed now, for I could see square crevices cut in the rock where stones had once been fixed. Where Sigurd stood, a few blocks remained as the ancient masons had laid them, the surrounds of a long-disused fireplace. As I approached, I saw what he had seen: two suns, their rays like spikes, engraved into the wall on either side of the hearthstone.
‘Those carvings,’ I exclaimed. ‘Are there any other markings?’
To my surprise, Sigurd bellowed with laughter. It echoed off the high cliffs above and startled a flock of birds into flight. ‘Truly, Demetrios Askiates does discover what other men do not. Who else would see those scratchings, and miss what lay at his feet?’
I looked down. It had been hidden by the high weeds as I approached, and my stare had then been fixed on the wall, but now I could see what Sigurd meant. On a patch of ground before the hearth, curiously free of any growth or dirt, a broad mosaic of a burning sun gazed up at the sky. Its beams wriggled and twisted like snakes in yellow and orange, trimmed with gold, and from its centre the untamed face of Phoebus Apollo gazed on us. His wild hair branched and forked from his head, spraying out into the surrounding beams, while his plump nose and swollen eyes looked more like a satyr’s than a god’s.
‘This is miraculously preserved.’ I glanced involuntarily at the sky, fearful that I might blaspheme to speak of miracles in the works of the pagans.
‘More than miraculous.’ Sigurd swung an arm in a rough arc about us. A low rampart of earth and dying weeds circumscribed the border of the mosaic, as if it had recently been dug clear. Peering closer, I could see white scuffs and scratches in the tiles where a hoe or spade might have scraped them. And, ringing Apollo’s head, the dark nimbus of a circular crack.
I dropped to my knees and tried to prise my fingers into the gap. My nails were quickly as chipped and torn as the mosaic, but the fit was too snug: I could not work anything loose. Even the blade of my knife was too thick.
‘Look at the eye,’ said Sigurd, staring down from above me. ‘The pupil.’
I twisted about and looked in the god’s eye. It was formed from a dozen or so tiles in whites and blues, but the black circle at its centre was not so solid. In fact, it was a hole, just wide enough for a man’s finger. I poked my forefinger in, and pulled away a round fragment containing the eye and its socket. In the recess beneath, a heavily rusted iron ring lay set in mortar.
‘Help me,’ I called, tugging on it. The broader slab that held the now one-eyed god’s face was too heavy. Sigurd crouched beside me and pulled the ring, lifting the disc free of the ground. Eager Varangian hands slid it away, as a wide black void opened in front of us.
‘We’re not going in there without light.’ Sigurd pulled a dry branch from the undergrowth and wrapped its end in dry grass and leaves. Taking the steel from the pouch on his belt, he struck streams of sparks from the flinty rock until the makeshift torch flared alight.
‘I’ve rescued you from dark holes before,’ he warned me. ‘This time, I go first.’
Even with the added bulk of his armour, he fitted easily through the opening. It was not deep, for as his feet reached the bottom the crown of his head was still level with the ground and he had to crouch to press forward into the tunnel beyond. An isolated arm reached back into the well of sunlight to claim first his axe and then the torch. After a brief interval, and a muffled shout that all was safe, I followed him down.
It must have been a millennium or more since the passage was cut, yet its brick-vaulted roof still held up the weight of the ages. I could see little, for Sigurd had already advanced some way ahead, but I felt the floor sloping gradually down as it led me deeper into the rock, under the cliff. I moved hesitantly, keeping my hands pressed against the mossy walls and wondering what devilment might lurk in the darkness ahead of me. Once, during my childhood at the monastery in Isauria, one of the monks had taken the novices into the hills, to the ruins of a temple where our ancestors had worshipped their false gods and idols. The building had been a wreck, its roof staved in and its marble long since plundered to adorn churches, yet still I had felt the ageless evil lingering in the crumbling stones. As the moon rose, the monk had told us of the blood sacrifices our forebears had made to their gods of violence and vengeance, had spoken such vivid warnings against the long arm of the devil that eventually I became convinced that Satan’s dark fingers were poised behind me, waiting to snatch me away. Although I had since seen more of the works of Lucifer than I dared to remember, in the black confines of that tunnel I once again felt the pricking evil of his hand stretching towards me.
‘Look at this.’
I had at last caught up with Sigurd, some thirty paces down from the entrance, where the tunnel opened out into a square chamber. The bricks which had lined the walls before now gave way to solid rock, except on the far side where a doorway led on to a second chamber briefly visible in the light of Sigurd’s torch. The smoke stung my throat and eyes, but I could see where he pointed. In the middle of the floor at our feet, a heap of ash and half- burned branches.
‘This is recent,’ I murmured. ‘What is beyond?’
‘Come and see.’
I followed Sigurd through the far opening and into the room beyond. It was longer than the antechamber, some fifty feet in all, with a gently curving roof and a floor laid with mosaics. On either side, the rock had been carved into benches worn smooth with use, while the plastered walls were covered in faded paintings. At the back, a stone altar stood raised on a dais.
It was as well that Sigurd held the torch, for I might have dropped it in shock. As it was, even his stout arm wavered. The images on the wall were grotesque, fantastical: processions of men with the heads of beasts and fowl; insects crawling out of the earth; a hand reaching from a tomb. The fiendish iconography continued on the ground, where a simple progression of mosaic tiles showed the silhouettes of more creatures, and dark symbols that I did not recognise. Halfway along the cave they vanished under a dark wave which had evidently been spilled across the floor.
‘It’s as well the bishop can’t see us now,’ Sigurd whispered. His voice was faltering, and it was only with the reluctance of a chained prisoner that he moved forward.
‘What is this place?’ The black veneer cracked and crumbled underfoot, and I could see pale imprints where boots other than mine had trod before it dried. I had a sickening feeling that I could guess its substance; its origin I did not care to guess. I touched my chest, where the silver cross hung under my armour, and prayed for a shield against the evils of this cave.
‘This is a place where we should not be.’ Sigurd held his torch before the altar, illuminating the frieze in its face. A man in a conical cap was wrestling with a bull, one arm grasping its neck while the other plunged a sword into its side. Blood gushed from the wound, while carrion-hungry animals looked on.
‘It must be some temple of the ancients.’ I did not recognise the gods from the poems and stories of the past, but I knew how profligate and varied their pagan deities had been. ‘But what did four knights from the Army of God purpose here?’
Sigurd gave no answer. Resting his axe against the altar, he stepped away into the corner of the cave where he crouched down, reaching for something. As he turned back I almost shrieked, for in his hand he now brandished a cloven hoof.
‘If the devil’s about, he’ll be limping,’ he said, with more cheer than I could summon. ‘Although I never heard that he had the feet of an ox.’
Trembling, I took the hoof from him. It gleamed in the torchlight, shadow deepening the furrow between the two toes. As he had said, it looked as though it had come from a cow or an ox, though in that heathen place I trusted nothing. I passed it back to Sigurd, remembered the harlot’s words by the riverside:
‘What do you think . . . ?’
I could not bring myself to finish the question, but Sigurd was less oppressed by our surroundings. He tossed the hoof in his hand and looked again at the images on the walls. ‘What do I think they did here? I think they did what we all would do with a bullock and a hidden cave. I think they ate.’
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