The Varangians returned late, empty-handed and bruised. The siege which had seemed so fruitless from outside the gates had bitten harder than we thought: the city was almost starved. What little food they discovered had been furiously contested, Beric reported, in running skirmishes with the Franks which lasted into the night. It was not an auspicious beginning.
If we were to be trapped together in Antioch, there would have to be an understanding. Next morning, Sigurd and I left the walls to seek out the princes, to learn what arrangement would be made for our common defence and welfare. I had not seen any of the leaders since Bohemond had entered the city, and though I shuddered to meet with the architects of this devastation again we could not ignore each other. Like slaves in a galley, we were chained together by fortune, and one could not founder but the others would follow.
Nonetheless, I would avoid Bohemond if I could. Instead, I sought Adhemar.
I had feared to walk in Antioch again, but the new day brought new life to the city. The world had turned, and if the marks of the sack were still scorched into every street and building there was still a sense that peace and order had begun to settle again. The sun had gone down on the rage of the Franks; when it dawned, they were restored to obedience. Armed knights guarded every corner, while pilgrims and peasants hauled the dead from the roadsides and loaded them onto handcarts. There would be much digging in the fields that day if the corpses were not to fester around us. The frenzy of destruction had passed, the outpouring of seven months of frustration: now the Frankish faces were solemn, some almost stricken, as if they themselves could hardly believe the fury that had owned them. A contrite stillness clasped the city, and few gazes were raised to meet ours.
Brief questions and Adhemar’s name brought us at last to the cathedral, the great church of the apostle Peter, who had been Bishop of Antioch before journeying to Rome. It was a worthy monument, with mighty pillars outside and a great silver dome rising over the centre. The Turks, in their impiety, had desecrated it: next door they had erected a minaret, and within they had defaced all Christian ornament to make it acceptable to their own god of ascetism. Already masons and labourers were busy inside trying to unwork the sacrilege.
I left Sigurd in the square and stepped through the bronze doors, crossing myself as I passed the threshold. In silence, I offered a prayer to Saint Peter, though I doubt he could have heard it over the cacophony of hammers and chisels that rang around the hall. Dust clouded the air, muting my tread and swirling in the columns of sunlight that came through the windows. The Turks had certainly erased every trace of Christ – the icons had been removed, the statues plastered over, and the walls repainted with the twisted, bewitching designs the Ishmaelites favoured. The iconostasis had been torn down and I could see clear to the back of the church, where workmen on ladders prised away the mortar that encased the original carvings in the sanctuary. Keeping a wary eye lest some piece of masonry fall from the roof, I picked my way through the rubble towards them.
‘Is Bishop Adhemar here?’ I shouted up. A mouthful of dust parched my tongue.
‘He left, not long ago.’ The man on the ladder did not look down but continued to pick at the mortar with his chisel. Beneath his blows a solemn face was emerging from the masonry blanket that had buried it.
‘Where did the Bishop go?’
Fragments of plaster trickled down the wall. A cheek had appeared. ‘I did not hear.’
I turned away. Behind me, another labourer was carrying a pile of planks in his arms towards the middle of the hall, perhaps to build a scaffold. As he dropped them under the dome, I accosted him.
‘Do you know where Bishop Adhemar has gone?’
The man looked up. His clothes were ragged, and he stooped even without his burden. Some unkind blow seemed to have broken his nose, though the sores and pimples which pocked his face were the worse disfigurement.
‘He has gone to the palace. He said—’ He broke off, staring at me. ‘You! The Greek.’
I had recognised him a moment sooner and mastered my surprise. ‘Peter Bartholomew. Do you still have that cross carved on your shoulders? Or has it vanished under the pox sores?’
‘You should not speak of such things in a church,’ he hissed. His jaw trembled.
‘This will not be a church again until the bishop consecrates it. When he does, I think it will be you who should fear to enter it. Have you seen the priestess Sarah recently?’
‘I do not know what you speak of.’ With a great heave of his shoulders, Peter Bartholomew set his back to me and hurried out through a side door. For a large man, I thought, he scuttled very much like a beetle.
I did not follow him. It was only four nights since I had talked with the ethereal priestess on the banks of the Orontes, but already she was almost forgotten. Drogo, Quino, the temple at Daphne and the sect they had worshipped – all were like relics of a different lifetime. I would never know how or why Drogo had died, but if I escaped Antioch alive I would not care.
I remembered my confrontation with Quino the day before the assault, at the tower by the bridge.
I rejoined Sigurd outside, and we walked down the road between the cathedral and the palace, a great thoroughfare built straight as a spear through the city. Once, when Antioch was at its mightiest, the colonnades must have run its entire length unbroken; now they only remained in places. Even there, grime and cracks now veined the marble, and several times the path was blocked where the lintels had collapsed under a heap of shattered tiles. For long stretches the ancient design had vanished completely, usurped by squat brick buildings whose wooden balconies pushed out over the street. Lattice screens covered their windows, but I sensed movements within where furtive eyes looked down on us unseen. It would be a long time, I feared, before those who had survived the horrors of the day before would trust us.
At the southern end of the city, where a second road branched away towards the fortified bridge, we found the palace. It barely deserved the name, being little more than a large villa whose grounds had been overlaid with outbuildings and courtyards, but that had not saved it from the looters. The train of its sack ran far down the street: shattered pottery, torn fabrics, broken artefacts and trinkets. There was even a lion’s head carved from stone, which some ambitious thief had dragged almost a hundred yards before abandoning.
‘I wonder what happened to the Turk who owned that?’ Sigurd muttered.
I shook my head. There were things in the debris which looked sickeningly like severed limbs, ignored or forgotten by the burial crews. There might be peace in the city, but it bore little scrutiny.
We came to the palace. Horses stood tethered to the iron rings in its walls, while men-at-arms milled about in the dusty square. From the west, men and mules brought baggage in from the camp that they had dismantled; from the eastern slopes of the mountain there limped a steady flow of battered knights. Clearly not all the Turks had yet been driven from the city.
Unchallenged and unnoticed, we passed through a long, broad courtyard, under an arch and into a second courtyard. A cloister ran around its edges; in its centre a dry fountain stood flanked by cherry trees. There was no fruit on them. In the shade of their branches a handful of Franks stood or sat and argued. As we approached, a knight in the cloister saw us and ran to intercept us, but the bishop, standing by the fountain, had already noticed us. He lifted his hand, half in greeting, half to still the guard, and walked to meet us. His white beard spilled over a full coat of mail, girded with a thick sword belt, but instead of a helmet he wore a crimson skullcap. Despite the burning sun, his face seemed drained of colour and strength.
‘I wondered what had become of you,’ he greeted us. ‘I heard that you accompanied Bohemond when he forced the walls.’
‘I was there,’ I agreed. ‘Since when I have worked to establish a stronghold on the walls, lest the Turks come upon us. What have you done?’
There were many meanings to my question, and I saw in the bishop’s eyes that he heard all of them. His answer was more simple. ‘There is much to do before Kerbogha comes. You missed the fighting in the city, but they did not surrender it easily. The army is drained, and they will find little here to succour them in the short time given us.’
‘Enough time, surely,’ I said. ‘If we have learned one thing in the past seven months, it is that the walls of Antioch are not quickly breached. They will shield us until the Emperor comes.’
Adhemar grimaced. ‘If only that were so. We can shut the door to the city, but without the lock it will not hold long.’
‘What?’
He pointed over my shoulder, up to the furthest of the mountain’s three summits. It thrust out over Antioch like a buttress, and atop it I could see the imposing outlines of walls and turrets. It was the ancient citadel, built
