Wounded and humbled, the Provencal army drifted back to the main column. By noon the sun had burned away the ceiling of fog, so that all could see the hillside strewn with bodies, and the proud castle triumphant on its promontory. Anna and Zoe ran to greet me as we returned, while Helena embraced Thomas without thought for the blood that stained her dress.
As soon as he had removed his armour, Raymond summoned his shamefaced army. Standing on a boulder, his arms spread apart in anger, he looked like nothing so much as Christ on Golgotha.
‘I thought I had seen every piece of cowardice and treachery that men could devise.’ He held his voice calm, but there was a throbbing tremor in the words which threatened to shake it apart. ‘I thought there was nothing shameful on the battlefield that I had not seen. But today. .’ His shoulders slumped; his head dropped, before rising slowly to fix its hate-filled gaze on the watching army. ‘Is this how the Army of God fights? If you were not creatures of lust we would be feasting in that castle this very moment, and I would be drinking to your valour. Now, we have nothing to feast on but our wounds.’
He paused and surveyed his host, daring them to disagree. No one spoke.
‘Where are my bodyguard?’
Half a dozen men shuffled forward from the ranks. They had removed their armour and quilted jerkins, and wore only woollen tunics with crosses sewn on the sleeves.
‘Two hours ago I was lying up there with a Saracen’s sword at my throat. All alone.’ The last two words resonated deep with anger, as if he had had to wrench them from his soul. ‘If not for the grace of God, I would be one more corpse on the hillside.’ He pointed up behind him, where flocks of crows wheeled above the ridge, then looked back at the six men standing before him. ‘Where were you then?’
One of them, a stocky man with a ruddy face, looked up. ‘We lost you in the fog and could not find you.’
‘Really?’ With a coiled energy far beneath his years, Raymond leaped down from his boulder and advanced towards the man. ‘All six of you?’
Six faces stared back at him. Several flushed with something like embarrassment, but none showed shame or begged forgiveness.
‘Have you forgotten your oaths to me?’ Raymond’s voice was sharp as ice. ‘I chose every one of you, to sleep by my bed, eat at my table and fight at my side. You-’ He turned to one of them. ‘Your father served me every day of his life; he fought beside me in seventeen battles, and when the eighteenth claimed him I was beside him. And now, in my greatest danger, you leave me blundering among my enemies like a blind man.’
The ruddy-faced man edged forward a little. ‘My lord, we-’
‘Your lord? Who is your lord? A knight who abandons his lord is no knight at all.’ Without warning that he even considered it, he punched the man square in the face. Age may have lined his skin and stooped his back, but it had not corroded the strength in his arm. The knight stumbled backwards, blood trickling from his nose.
‘Stand up,’ Raymond ordered. ‘Stand fast, if you have not forgotten how.’
The knight shook his head to clear it, licking away the blood that stained his lip. Swaying slightly, he stepped forward again and snapped his feet together.
‘Where was your courage on the mountain?’ Raymond jeered. ‘Did you forget it?’ He swung his fist straight into the knight’s chin. His head spun away with a sickening crack, but still he stayed standing.
‘Do you remember the oath you took to me? To fight as my sword and serve as my shield? To suffer my wounds?’ Raymond clasped his hands on either side of the knight’s bloodied face and held it inches from his own. ‘Why did you betray me?’
The knight looked as if he wanted to clear the blood from his mouth, but Raymond held him so close and tight he could not have done so without spitting in his master’s face. He swallowed, and mumbled, ‘We did not mean to lose you.’
Raymond loosed his grip, running his hand over the knight’s cheek almost lovingly. ‘You did not lose me in the fog — you abandoned me. Admit it.’
The knight whispered something I could not hear. Raymond shook his head, cupped one hand around the back of the knight’s head and smacked him hard with the other.
‘Liar,’ he shouted. Beneath the grey stubble his cheeks had flushed crimson. ‘Who told you to betray me?’ He let go the knight and wheeled round. ‘Was it him? An upstart peasant who thinks himself touched by God? Raymond stepped back, but only to give himself more room to drive his next blow into the knight’s stomach. The man gagged and stumbled forward; Raymond could have caught him, but instead stood aside so that the knight fell at his feet.
‘Was he trying to warn me?’ He lashed out with his boot, kicking the knight in the face. A gasp rose from the watching army, but no one moved. The other five guards stood in a row and stared straight ahead, stiff as corpses. ‘Crawl back to him, worm, and tell him I have heard his message.’ Another kick. ‘Does he think he will usurp my power?’ Another kick, this time so hard that it rolled the knight over with its force. ‘Does he think he will steal my army from me, even my own household?’ A kick. ‘My handpicked knights.’ Kick. ‘My dearest friends.’
He drew back his leg as if to kick the man in two, then instead pivoted away to face the army. No one moved to help the knight, who lay broken and whimpering in a pool of blood and mud.
‘Is there anyone else who questions my authority?’ Raymond demanded. He was breathing hard, spent with his violence. ‘If so, let him see that I am in command here. I am in control.’
He paused, then repeated it more quietly, almost like a prayer.
‘I am in control.’
Raymond’s fury at the men who had deserted him was not matched by gratitude to those who had saved him. He said nothing to me, and I received precious little thanks from Nikephoros when I found him. ‘You were supposed to stop the count ever going up that hill,’ was all he said after I had told him the story. ‘Now he will not leave here until that castle falls, even if he has to spend half his army taking it.’
Thankfully, it did not come to that. Late that night we crept up the hillside once again, clambering between the bodies of the fallen, and as the first smudge of light began to crease the horizon we climbed onto the ridge. Two companies ran forward, carrying their scaling ladders under a roof of shields against the expected onslaught, but it never came. No defenders rose from behind the battlements, and no arrows rained down on the tiled shields.
‘Perhaps they’re still asleep,’ Aelfric suggested.
The assault parties planted the ladders in the ground and raised them to the ramparts. At a sign from Count Raymond, another company of knights ran to the rubble ramp that led to the breach they had attacked the day before. Behind them, our archers waited with arrows nocked and strings tensed. Their arms strained with the effort — too much for one, who lost his grip and sent his arrow aimlessly towards the castle. It clattered into the walls and provoked a furious rebuke from Raymond — but no answer from within.
The first knights climbed tentatively to the tops of their ladders, paused for a moment, then vaulted through the embrasures. More followed on their heels; others ran up the incline and burst through the breach. Still we heard no shouts, no challenge or sound of battle.
‘Is it a trap?’ I wondered aloud.
Raymond waved more companies forward. Their feet fell softly on the dewy ground, and they held their weapons carefully so as not to make a sound. Birds had begun to sing in the grass; a swallow flew up from a tower and wheeled above it, but otherwise the dawn stillness still gripped the hilltop, and men moved as if in a dream.
A rumble from the gatehouse dispelled that. The gates began to move and a ghostly, disjointed clangour rippled through our army. ‘Here it comes,’ men warned each other. A crack of light opened between the gates, widening as they swung out. Every man among us strained forward to see what would emerge.
A single figure in Provencal armour stood framed in the gateway, silhouetted against the grey morning light. Behind him, I could see that the courtyard was empty, save for a single sheep tethered to a stake in the ground, grazing on the weeds that grew between the cobbles.
The knight pulled off his helmet. ‘It’s empty. There’s nothing there but ghosts and the spoils of war.’
Sigurd spat on the ground, then deliberately began wrapping the deerskin cover over his axe head.
‘Let’s hope Jerusalem is as easy.’
It was a strange outcome — to have lost a battle we should have won, and won a battle we did not fight. Every man in the army, from Count Raymond to the humblest groom, seemed disoriented and frustrated. We had prepared ourselves for a great assault, our passions raised high with expectation; without a battle, the passions remained unspent, and curdled in our hearts. Many quarrels broke out that week, even among the Varangians, and a sullen disappointment clung to the army as we plundered the fertile valley for food.
Two slow weeks after the battle we came out between the arms of the mountains and looked down on the coastal plain. From early in the morning I could see the blueglazed expanse of the sea ahead, with a river running eagerly to meet it, while to our left a walled town stood precariously on a narrow spur protruding from the mountain.
‘Arqa,’ said Nikephoros, riding beside me. ‘From here, we can be at Tripoli by nightfall, and then only ten days’ march to Jerusalem.’
A heaviness seemed to lift from my heart. Though it was only the middle of February, I thought I could feel spring welling up in the roots of the leafless trees and vines around me. The sea sparkled in the distance, offering its promise of infinite journeys, and the sun seemed warm on my face.
But we did not reach Tripoli that night. Instead, we made our camp below Arqa, the fortified town on the mountain. And there, Count Raymond decided, we would go no further.