Knights of the Cross (16 page)

Adhemar did not flinch. ‘The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Sometimes evils, great evils, must be borne in a higher cause.’

‘The cause of letting thousands die besieging an unbreakable city?’

‘The cause of salvation – and of peace also.’ He leaned forward, his brow creased by intent or sadness. ‘Do not scoff when I say peace. For all my life – and yours also – the peace of God, to which all Christians should adhere, has been nothing more than a dream in Christendom. Norman against Greek, Frank against German, father against son and emperor against king – ambition and greed have stirred every lord against his neighbour. Dukes become kings and earls become counts, but at what profit? A lord may add another country to his estate, but it is a wasted land, its fruits and its people pillaged by war. In such circumstances, famine and pestilence and hate and despair and all other works of the Devil flourish, while faith and justice are obliterated.’ He closed his eyes in pain, and I wondered what images he saw behind them. ‘You have seen the princes, Demetrios, their pride and their jealousies. Only a single power could impose peace on them: God’s power, as vested in the Pope. All my life I have worked to advance that power. Now we are at its crisis.’

His words were heartfelt, supple and strong as steel, but all his preacher’s art could not mask the contradiction at their core. ‘You would make peace by waging war?’ I asked. ‘Truly, it is said: “I bring no peace but the sword.”’

Adhemar shook his head. ‘You do not understand our purpose. Since the time of Pope Gregory, the church has fought with words and swords to bend the princes of the Earth to its rule, so that under one authority there need be no struggle. Now, at last, my lord Pope Urban has united all the tribes of Christendom under the banner of the cross. Their feet tread the road to Jerusalem, and their souls walk the still thornier path to the peace and fellowship of Christ. For the first time in history, the lords of the Earth have willingly submitted themselves to the direction of the church.’

‘Would they have followed you without the prospect of war and plunder?’ Afterwards I might wonder that I had spoken so freely, so intemperately, to a man of Adhemar’s station, but for now his proselytising energy provoked equal response.

‘The church must work in the world God made. And human flesh is weak. But if we can keep hold of their ambitions, and govern their wills, then eventually we may guide them to a higher path. This great project is the crucible in which the power of the church, and the peace of Christendom, will be forged. Do you wonder, then, at the fires that burn us?’

‘I wonder that you claim to govern their wills, yet cannot command eighty bushels of wheat to reach my camp safely. Nor even keep Tancred from committing the foulest abomination. I see no power – only vain words.’

‘There are many powers in this world, visible and invisible,’ said Adhemar patiently. ‘When Christ came, he did not bring an army of angels to smite his enemies. His was the power to teach and to endure suffering; the power of compassion over anger. If I had ten thousand knights at my command I would be a rival to the princes, and they would sift my words through suspicion and distrust. It is only by forsaking the means to their form of power that I gain the spiritual power to engage their souls. Moral strength comes from weakness in arms – but it is a transient strength, easily spent, and thus much must be sacrificed to the greater end.’

He sat back, apparently drained by the sermon, while I at last let deference reassert itself. It seemed to me that he spoke in paradox, theological riddles to cloud his impotence, but I did not say so. Instead, his last words had spurred a new thought in me.

‘On the subject of Drogo, your Grace, there is an aspect of his death which goes beyond my understanding.’

Adhemar gestured to me to continue.

‘A month before he died, he and his companions journeyed to the valley of Daphne. I have followed their path and seen where they went. Beneath one of the ancient villas, they discovered a hidden chamber.’ As best I could remember, I described the form and the decoration of the cave. ‘It was as nothing I have ever seen.’ Nor had I discovered anything from the priests in our camp, who had shied away from any report of such pagan evil, enjoining me only to confess and forget it. ‘I wonder whether in learning to combat idolatry, you have heard of anything similar?’

Adhemar scratched his white beard, his eyes apparently fixed on some knot in the wood of the table. ‘A bull,’ he murmured, repeating what I had told him. ‘It was an animal, I believe, much worshipped by the ancients. Stephen!’

He called, and a young dark-haired priest appeared from behind the inner curtain of the tent. I felt a stab of wounded confidence that words I had spoken so intemperately to the bishop had been heard by another. The priest ignored me, however, and inclined his head to his master.

‘Fetch the writings of the fathers from my library,’ Adhemar said.

The priest disappeared and Adhemar looked back to me. ‘We shall see what ancient authorities can tell us of ancient idolatry.’

In a few minutes the priest returned, bearing two enormous volumes. They were artfully made, stitched with crimson thread and bound with stout iron locks, while the leaves within seemed tinged with a great age. Unlocking one with a key that he took from his robe, Adhemar cracked it open and turned slowly through the pages. They whispered and crackled like fire. I could not read the script but I could admire its beauty: row upon row of words in perfect alignment, broken every so often by oversized letters swirling across the page. So even was the text that it might have been hammered out from a mould, like coins in a mint.

‘His Holiness, my master, foresaw that I might need the direction of wisdom in the wilderness.’ Adhemar licked his finger and turned another page. ‘These are from his own library in Rome. Ah.’ He took a candle from the priest, who had fetched it unprompted, and held it close to the parchment. ‘Here is what Eubulus says of the ways of the pagans. “I have heard that the Persians falsely worship a hero who – they say – sacrificed the Bull of Heaven, by whose blood they believe the world and life were created. They name this hero Mithra; they celebrate his rites in secret caves, so that veiled in darkness they may shun the true and glorious light of Christ. They say—”’

He broke off, snatching the candle away so that the page fell into shadow. ‘There are some lies which a Christian should not hear repeated, lest entering by his ear the Devil poison his heart.’

Being deemed unworthy of secret knowledge was ever a spark to my temper, but I managed to restrain it. The words which the bishop had already confided were portion enough for my mind: what could Drogo and his companions have purposed in a Persian temple?

‘Of course we need not range so far from Truth,’ Adhemar said. He seemed distracted, still leafing through the book in search of something. ‘It is written that when the Israelites were at Sinai, the Lord said to Moses: “You shall slaughter a bull before the Lord; some of its blood you shall smear on the horns of the altar with your finger, and all the rest you shall pour out at the base of the altar.”’

‘It is also written: “I delight not in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats.”’

Adhemar’s face lifted swiftly from his reading and he glared at me. ‘You have no cause to remind
me
what is written in scripture. But among the credulous and wicked, much that is written can be twisted to the purposes of evil. As is warned of here, indeed.’ His finger came to rest on a fresh page of text. ‘From the writings of Tertullian: “The Devil, by his wiles, perverts the truth. The mystic rites of his idols vie even with the sacraments of God. He . . .”’ Adhemar’s aged brow creased as he concentrated on his text, muttering under his breath in unintelligible Latin. When he looked up, the sharp edge of his eyes seemed dulled by confusion.

‘This is remarkable,’ he said, his voice deliberately controlled.

‘What?’

‘In this same passage, Tertullian writes: “The Devil too baptises his own believers; he promises the indulgence of their sins by a rite of his own.”’ The bishop’s fists clenched white around the book, so tight that I feared he might rip the pages from it. “‘
There in the kingdom of Satan, Mithra sets his mark on the foreheads of his soldiers
.”’

All resentment and irritation flooded from me. ‘When we found Drogo, there was a mark on his forehead in blood. A mark in the shape of a Latin sigma.’

‘So I have heard.’ Adhemar closed the book and snapped the iron clasp shut.

‘I thought it might be the initial of his killer – or of a lover whose affections they rivalled. Could it instead stand for Satan?’

‘Do Greeks believe that the Devil writes in Latin?’ Despite his evident shock, the bishop managed a thin smile. ‘The mark may be the shape of an S, but there is another form it resembles. A form much associated with Satan and his works.’

Adhemar’s eyes searched my own. ‘Do you not see it? It is the form of a serpent.’

That night, after supper, I left our camp and climbed a little way up the mountain, to a small hollow in the lee of the tower of Malregard. We had long since driven the Turks from these slopes, and Tancred’s cannibalism had deterred any spies, but there were still enough footpaths and posterns unguarded that I could not be easy in my mind. Yet I needed to escape the confines of the camp, the clamour of men and beasts and arms, to find an expanse in which my mind could wander. Perhaps I had chosen unwisely, for the fear of marauding Turks pressed my thoughts far harder than any distraction in the camp, but I squeezed myself in the shadow between two rocks and let curiosity gradually tease away my fears.

The questions which exercised me offered scarce comfort: it was a lonely place to contend with the ways of the Devil. Several times I tried to reason a path of thought, and each time I found my way barred by some insuperable image: the cave, the bloody mark on Drogo’s face, the flies crawling on Rainauld’s rotted corpse. Rainauld and Drogo had entered the temple of some Persian demon; Quino and Odard too. Had their deaths then been some form of divine punishment for their impiety – or the hand of the Devil reclaiming his own? Suddenly I was assailed by the vision of a diabolical claw, wreathed in smoke, scratching out its evil sign on Drogo’s body. I trembled, and fastened my hand around my silver cross. Such fancy would serve me nothing.

A noise from the slope below broke my thoughts in panic. I leaned forward, bowing my head as I tried to discern the least whisper around me, but it needed little effort. The beat of footsteps crunching into the stony soil was unmissable, coming ever closer, and I cowered back with my cloak thrown over me. ‘Deliver me from evil, Lord,’ I prayed silently, closing my eyes lest they betray me. ‘Have mercy upon me, sinner that I am.’

The footsteps halted, terrifyingly close, though there seemed to be only a single man. I had my knife with me, but stuck in the cleft I could hardly hope to spring on him in surprise. And what if he were a Frankish sentry, one of the tower guards come to relieve himself? I might easily provoke a massacre if I knifed him in the dark.

‘Are you trying to become a hermit, Demetrios, to emulate Saint Antony?’

My eyes sprang open. In the hollow before me stood Anna, her silk belt luminous under the folds of her
palla
. She was turned towards me, and though I could not see her face I could tell there was a smile on it. Abashed, I scrambled out.

‘You should take more care,’ I scolded her. ‘Wandering the mountain at night, you may find yourself emulating any number of saints more gruesome than Saint Antony.

‘Saint Demetrios, for example, stabbed with a pagan spear. Why have you come here?’ The levity in Anna’s voice vanished with the last question, unable to overcome her worry. For weeks now she had fretted at my ill mood, sometimes remonstrating with me, more often just watching me with concern. Far from soothing me, her anxiety only added shame to my misery.

‘I came to find the peace to think. Why have
you
come?’

‘I followed you. I feared you might find too much peace on this mountain in the dark.’

‘No peace at all with you about.’ I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her to show that I meant no anger. She pressed forward, her cheek cool in the spring air, and for a moment we embraced in silence.

‘What thoughts did you come to think?’ she asked, drawing me over to a rocky shelf where we could sit in shadow.

‘Evil thoughts.’ At supper I had avoided recounting my conversation with the bishop, but now I found I could summon the words with ease. At first I spoke to the night, not meeting Anna’s gaze, but as my story continued I leaned ever closer towards her. My eyes began to sift her face from the surrounding darkness, and I slipped my hand into hers so that our fingers wove together.

‘You cannot think Satan himself killed Drogo?’ she said when I had finished.