burden.
‘A dishonest man may still be granted a true vision,’ I called, on impulse.
Adhemar did not answer.
‘I thought you were dead.’
It was too hot to sleep. Anna and I lay naked on the tower, alone. We did not touch, but faced each other resting on our sides. The gully of air between us seemed charged with heat, and my chest ran with sweat.
‘Perhaps I should have died.’ So many others had, by my hand or my acts.
Before I could move, Anna had lifted her arm and slapped me hard on my cheek. ‘Never say that. Never.’ Her voice trembled. ‘It is awful enough being in this cursed city. Without you . . .’
‘You do not know what I have done.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘I have killed men, and I have let them die. I have consorted with heretics. I have heard things—’
Anna raised her hand again, and I did not try to avoid the blow. ‘Be quiet. If you must give in to despair, do not try and draw me into it.’ She rolled over, setting her back to me. Now there was only silence between us.
A yearning to confess my part in the downfall of the city, a guilt such as I had not felt since I was a boy, overwhelmed me. In my mind, I formed the words a hundred times over; sometimes I opened my mouth to speak them, but each time fear choked them back. Even as she loved me – because she loved me – Anna hated me for the pain that my absence had inflicted on her. It would be many days, I feared, before she could forgive me, and the vice of Antioch was not a place for loosing emotions.
‘What shall we do?’
‘Await our fate. Face it when it comes. I have overheard Bohemond conspiring with his brother-in-law. He will go to the Emperor, and he will announce that we are slaughtered. The Emperor will not come.’
Anna turned back to me. ‘How can he do that? We are already drowning – must he pile on more stones to speed us down?’
‘He would rather die than give up Antioch.’ I remembered the promise that he had made to the princes. ‘If the Emperor comes, Bohemond’s title will be snatched away.’
I sensed Anna shivering in the darkness – was it fear or rage? At last, in a faint voice, she asked again: ‘What shall we do? How can we await our fate if there is no hope?’
‘How can we do otherwise?’
‘You sound like Sigurd – obsessed with dying.’
‘It is hard not to think of it.’
‘Think of life – think of your children, your new grandchild. Surely you cling to the hope of seeing them again?’
‘No.’ I shook my head, though she could not see it. ‘That would make it unbearable.’
‘For me, it is all that I can bear.’
? ?
Dawn came quickly. In the south-east, smoke still rose from the ashes of the city, and the morning air was bitter. Soon it would boil, for midsummer was ten days hence, and there was no canopy of cloud that day to shield us. It was not a happy thought as I pulled on my heavy quilted tunic, and my chain mail over it. I soaked a rag in water and tied it around my neck so that I would not burn my skin on the iron. I tied my helmet by its chin-strap onto my belt. Whatever enemies the day might bring, I would be ready for them.
I did not have to wait long. As I stepped out of the tower, I saw a Norman standing facing Sigurd in the street below the wall. They seemed to be arguing furiously, but by the time I had descended from the rampart the knight was gone.
‘Who was that?’
Sigurd spat on the ground. ‘One of Bohemond’s lieutenants.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted nothing. He
My pulse quickened. ‘You can’t go.’
‘So I told him. But you know that the Normans are not easily denied. He swore that if we did not come Bohemond would burn us out of our towers and slaughter us for cowards.’
‘Either way we die.’ I felt sick. Bohemond had sent his brother-in-law to cut us loose from the Emperor’s aid; now he would rid himself of the last Byzantine checks on his ambition. Either he would murder us as deserters, or put us in the forefront of the battle, like David with Uriah, and let the Turks achieve his purpose.
Nor could I doubt that Bohemond would make good his threat if we did not go. He had burned down half the city, Franks and his own kinsmen alike, to bolster his army; he would happily add a handful of Varangians to the pyre.
‘At least on the mountain we can die well.’ Sigurd folded his arms. His shield and axe leaned against the wall behind him, and he had a pair of small throwing axes tucked in his belt. ‘I will take a dozen men and do as Bohemond demands. The rest will stay here and defend our camp, and you and Anna.’
‘Not me.’ My stomach churned as I spoke, but I hurried on. ‘I will come with you.’
Sigurd snorted. ‘How long since you left the legions, Demetrios Askiates?’
‘Nineteen years.’
‘And you will march up that mountain, to a battle you have no part in, because a bastard Norman orders it? You will be dead in the first minute.’
‘I will go,’ I insisted.
‘This is my calling, not yours. What would Anna think of you for doing this?’
I scowled. ‘If Anna asked
‘This is different.’ A troubled look passed over Sigurd’s face. Both of us, I think, felt things we wished to say but could not.
He kicked his foot in the dust, and turned to pick up his axe. ‘We should go, before Bohemond murders us from impatience. If you want to march into death, that is your concern.’
It made no difference. Wherever we went in the city, we walked in death, and if it came I felt a strange certainty that Sigurd would guide me to it bravely. Anna would have condemned such a thought, but to me it was reassuring.
The path up the mountain began in the south-eastern quarter. The main avenue, with its long colonnades and broad paving, had served as a noose on the fire: when we crossed it, we stepped into a burnt realm of ash and charcoal. Twisted buildings hung bent and shrivelled like balled-up paper, and smoke belched up as from naphtha pits.
‘This is the kingdom that Bohemond makes for himself,’ Sigurd muttered, awestruck. ‘The cost of his ambition.’
How much else would be felled by his pride, I wondered? I did not speak it aloud, for I had not mentioned Bohemond’s latest treachery to Sigurd. There seemed scant purpose in destroying the last vestiges of his hope. Instead, I grunted my agreement and tried not to breathe the morbid fumes.
It took little time to cross the city. The labyrinth of alleys, which two days earlier had snared me in its endless tangle, had been razed to the ground. As long as we took care to avoid the places where embers burned, or where pieces of iron still nursed the fire’s heat, we could walk the roads we chose.
Too quickly, we arrived at the foot of the path, where the gentle rise of the river valley met the steep slope of Mount Silpius. At first the way was easy, a broad scar rising across the face of the mountain past terraced olive groves and high villas perched on the rock. The pine trees which crowded between them still shaded us from the climbing sun, and it was as well they did, for my armour weighed on me terribly and the shield on my back constantly tugged me backwards. Sigurd had been right: nineteen years out of the legions was too long.
Even at that hour we were not the only ones climbing the road. Ahead of us I could see cohorts of knights
