The Fatimid envoys departed that afternoon: it was not safe for them to stay longer in the camp. Count Raymond sent a troop of cavalry to escort them to a safe distance and I rode with them — though Nikephoros berated me for it afterwards. It was not good for Byzantines and Fatimids to be seen in company, he warned me.
‘Will you return to Egypt?’ I asked Bilal. We rode together, he on his camel and I on the dirty-grey palfrey I had commandeered at Saint Simeon and ridden ever since.
‘No.’ He did not look at me as he spoke; his eyes were forever scanning the road ahead, the undergrowth by the wayside, the slopes above, always searching for danger. ‘I will join the army at Jerusalem.’
‘Then we may meet again.’
‘I hope not. Not there.’
We rode on. ‘If only Christ had gone to die on a rock somewhere out at sea,’ I said.
‘And if the prophet had been taken up to heaven from some scrap of sand in the desert.’
I gave a sad laugh. ‘Then men would have built shrines and castles over those places, and found some reason to fight each other for them.’
‘Truly.’ Bilal’s gaze wandered over the trees to our left. Suddenly, he stiffened. ‘What is that?’
‘Where?’
Without answering, Bilal swung himself out of his saddle and leaped down. His sword seemed to be in his hand before he had even touched the ground. He ran into the forest but did not go far — I could see his yellow cloak bright between the branches. With a great rustling and squawks of protest, a startled flock of crows rose up into the air.
‘Well done,’ I called. ‘You’ve saved us from an ambush by birds.’
‘It wasn’t the birds,’ he shouted back, and the grimness in his voice silenced my humour utterly. ‘Come and see.’
I dismounted and followed cautiously through the gap he had entered. The air was cooler in the forest, and darker: I needed a moment before my eyes could adjust. Though even before I could see, I could smell what was coming.
Bilal pointed into the air, his other hand holding his cloak over his mouth to block out the stench. A few feet off the ground, a foul object hung from the branch of an oak tree. I could not call him a man: the crows and carrioneaters had seen to that. His skin was blackened, his belly bloated and his toes eaten away. A brown tunic, sprayed with blood and soaked with his bile, hung in tatters from his shoulders — it seemed the only things holding the body together were the noose around his neck and the belt about his waist.
Driving back my horror, I looked closer at the belt. It was made of black leather, finely made and with the design of an eagle worked into it. A belt that I had seen before, clasped around a camelskin robe.
‘I knew this. . man. He was. .’ It was too hard to explain. ‘He assisted a holy man in our camp.’
‘Did he owe you money?’
Bilal pointed to the ground. A little distance from the body, a small pool of silver trickled from the mouth of an open sack.
‘Whoever did this, it was not thieves.’ Bilal turned to me. ‘You said you knew him. When did he go missing?’
I thought back to our encounter in the clearing. ‘About a week ago.’
‘Then he must have come here soon afterwards.’
‘He had plenty of reasons to flee. He must have hanged himself in remorse.’
‘Perhaps.’ Bilal pointed to the corpse, twisting this way and that with the flex of the rope. ‘But did he tie his hands behind his back first?’
An impatient voice called from the road in Arabic.
‘I must go,’ said Bilal. ‘We have many miles to travel, and I should not be seen with the body. You will bury him?’
I nodded.
Bilal sheathed his sword and walked back to the road. ‘This is a bad omen at the start of a journey.’
‘I will pray you arrive safely.’
‘And I will pray to God that you travel safely too.’ Bilal clapped me on the shoulder. ‘But not to Jerusalem.’
Sigurd and I buried what remained of John in the forest. I hesitated as to whether to put a cross over his grave, for I was not sure he had been true to Christ either in life or in death, but in the end I decided it was not for me to judge. I tied a branch across the trunk of a tree and let that stand for a marker, though the only rope I had to use was the one that had hanged him. Then I returned to the camp, and went up the hill to pay a last visit to Peter Bartholomew.
It had been a full week since his ordeal. A few of his followers still held vigils outside the tent, but it was easy enough to thread my way through them. The three tents still stood in their rough horseshoe, though the ground around them was churned to dust like a battlefield. Eight knights from Count Raymond’s household guarded the door.
‘I want to pray a while with Peter Bartholomew,’ I told them. A thick spear-point swung down to discourage me.
‘Peter Bartholomew is close to God. No one is allowed in his presence.’
‘I would pay for the privilege.’ I held up the purse and the guard felt it, pleased and surprised by the weight. He did not even trouble to haggle. ‘You are only buying a few moments with Peter Bartholomew,’ he warned me. ‘And no souvenirs.’
I ducked into the tent. The guard watched from the door, though I could hardly have stolen anything. By the light coming in through the open flap I could see that the room was as bare as a monk’s cell. Peter Bartholomew lay on a low bed, covered in a linen sheet that would surely become his shroud. Only his face protruded, swaddled in bandages, which left only his eyes and nose exposed. Even that hardly seemed necessary, for his eyes were shut and his breathing faint.
I looked around, then back at the guard.
‘Where are his possessions?’
The guard stiffened. ‘I told you: no relics.’
‘I don’t want relics. But I heard he had a manuscript, a sacred text that foretold many things to come. I hoped to see it.’ I glanced down at Peter to see if he had heard me, but he had not moved.
‘The priest took all Peter Bartholomew’s belongings for safe-keeping — to protect them from thieves and relic-hunters. You said you came to pray,’ he added pointedly.
I knelt beside Peter’s bed, careful not to touch him, and offered a silent prayer for his soul. He had raised himself up like Lucifer to dizzying heights of pride, until he vied with God Himself. But I wondered if that was truly the cause of his demise — or if it had been brought on not by his threat to God, but to men.
I leaned forward, stifling my nose against the stench of burned and rotting flesh, and kissed him on his bandaged cheek.
‘God forgive you, and bring you to His peace at last,’ I whispered.
Five days later, Peter Bartholomew died. They buried him in the high valley, beneath the scorched earth where he had suffered his passion. Many in the army scoffed and said that death had proved him a fraud, but for every man who disbelieved there was another who held that Peter had survived the fire, that he only died from being trampled by his disciples when he emerged. And every day that we were in Arqa, and for years afterwards, pilgrims would gather at his grave and wait, praying for a miracle that never came.
But by then, I had other concerns.