Knights of the Cross (5 page)

Sigurd’s foul temper at last ran silent, and I was able to enquire after Drogo without risking offence. Even so, I was frequently answered with scowls. Often I had trouble making myself understood with those I asked, for none of us spoke a common language. Rather, over the course of months we had learned to barter words, trading and hoarding them. As with all commerce, ill will made it infinitely harder.

After half an hour, I found the tent I sought. There was little to distinguish it, a patchwork cone of mismatched cloths which had been sewn and re-sewn until the neat stripes of its inception became a labyrinth of criss-crossed lines. The flaps were still down against the cold, and I rapped on the stiff fabric to announce myself. A small voice grudgingly called me in.

There were four straw mattresses on the earth floor inside, though only one occupant. It was the boy who had brought us to the body, the dead man’s servant, squatting on the straw and rubbing an oily tuft of wool along a sword blade. In the dusk and confusion of the night before, I had barely had time to look at him: now I noticed how deep-sunken his cheeks were, how the dark eyes seemed held in a perpetual terror. The brown hair which fell well past his shoulders gave him an unsettlingly girlish quality.

Despite the circumstances in which we had met the previous day, he gave no sign of remembering me. ‘What do you want?’

‘My name is Demetrios. This is Sigurd. You brought us to your master’s body last night. Now the lord Bohemond has charged us to discover who killed him.’

He inclined his head close to the blade, as if checking for some imperceptible flaw. ‘I did not kill him.’

So clumsy was the response that for a moment I did not know how to answer it. I crouched before him, trying to look into the downcast eyes, and softened my voice.

‘What is your name?’

‘Simon.’

‘From where?’

‘Cagnano.’

It might have been in Persia for all I knew. ‘How long did you serve Drogo, your master?’

Misery filled the boy’s face as he stumbled to answer my question, tapping his fingers hopelessly. Sigurd coughed impatiently, but I did not press the boy. His soul was brittle, and I sensed that even a little rough usage might snap it. As I waited, I watched the sallow light seeping under the edge of the tent. Every so often a passing shadow would interrupt it, but there was one shadow I noticed which did not move.

‘Since Heraklea. I do not know how long it has been since then.’

‘About six months,’ I guessed. ‘Who did you travel with to Heraklea?’

‘With my master’s brother. He died in the battle there. Afterwards, my master took me into his household.’

I remembered the battle at Heraklea – though in truth it had been barely a skirmish. On a dusty morning, the Turks in the garrison had made one charge at our vanguard, then fled away before us. We lost three men, probably fewer than those who died of thirst that day. I had thought little of them.

‘What kind of master was he?’

The boy sniffed, and wiped his nose with the wool. It smeared black oil over his cheek. ‘Fair. He rarely punished me when I did not deserve it. Sometimes he gave me food, when he could spare it.’

‘Did he have enemies?’

‘No.’

‘Who else sleeps in this tent?’

Did I imagine it, or did the shadow under the hem of the tent move? The boy, who had his back to it, shifted on the mattress and twisted the sword’s hilt in his hands.

‘Three companions of my master.’

‘Servants?’

‘Knights.’

‘Their names?’

‘Quino, Odard and—’

The snapping of canvas broke off the boy’s words, and we all three turned to look at the figure standing in the open door. I could see little more than his silhouette, a black form against the grey light outside. He stank of horse sweat.

‘Whelp!’ he barked, affecting not to notice Sigurd or me. ‘My mount has waited for your grooming for half an hour. If she has grown sores, or gone lame, I will visit her afflictions on you tenfold.’ He stepped into the room, and let his stare sweep across us. ‘Who are these?’

‘Demetrios Askiates,’ I told him. ‘I—’

‘Hah. A Greek. Tell me, Demetrios Askiates, what should I think when I find two Greeks alone in a tent with a boy?’

‘One Greek,’ growled Sigurd, unhelpfully. ‘And a Varangian from England.’

‘A Varangian from England,’ mimicked the knight. ‘A race named for a tribe of catamite slaves. You and the Greeks have the same black soul, and your vices are legendary.’ He turned back to the boy. ‘Get out and see to my horse, or I will whip you into the Orontes.’

‘I have not finished with Simon,’ I said. ‘Nor have you told me your name.’

‘Nor do you deserve to hear it.’ The knight had come further into the tent now, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I could make out more of his appearance. He was neither tall nor broad, but there was a lean strength in his body that a larger man would have done well to beware. His movements were quick and unpredictable, his limbs twitching all the while, and his face was lined well beyond his apparent youth. I did not think he smiled often.

‘You serve the lord Bohemond?’ I asked.

‘I do.’

‘Bohemond has charged me to discover how the knight Drogo came to die.’

I barely saw him move, but suddenly his eyes were very close to mine. His sour breath fanned my face.

‘Even my lord Bohemond can err in his judgement. Or perhaps he believes that the Greek who found my brother Drogo, alone and isolated, may indeed have
personal
knowledge of how he was murdered.’

‘Drogo was your brother?’ I asked, astonished.

‘
As
a brother. We shared a tent, our hardships, our food and our prayers. When his natural brother died he turned to us as his family.’ He stepped back, his spurs dragging scars into the mud floor. ‘But that is no matter for you. Leave my tent, you and your pederast friend, before I avenge Drogo’s death on you both.’

Thus far, Sigurd had kept calm under the knight’s provocation, but he controlled himself no longer. Grasping his axe by its head, he swept the haft like a scythe at the Norman’s knees, meaning to knock them from under him. But the knight was faster: his sword swung before him and parried the blow, biting deep into the wood of the axe-haft. Both their arms must have stung from the impact, yet for a moment they held their weapons clasped together, unbending, each staring into the other’s eyes. Then they pulled free.

‘Next time it will be your neck that tastes this sword,’ the knight hissed. He was breathing hard.

‘Next time, I will break your blade in two and force it down your throat.’

I pulled at Sigurd’s arm. Behind us, I could see the boy hunched over with terror on the bed. It tore at my conscience to leave him with the knight, but I feared worse would befall all of us if we stayed.

‘We should leave.’

Outside the tent the air was hard, and I narrowed my eyes against the sudden light. I had no wish to linger any longer in the Norman camp, for the knight’s anger at us was no more than most of his countrymen felt, but the sight of an old man sitting cross-legged in the doorway of the tent opposite spurred me to one last effort. Sigurd and I crossed to greet him, and I pulled a bloodied bundle wrapped in cloth from the pouch at my belt. I had intended it to encourage the boy, but perhaps I could make it tell elsewhere.

‘The knight who just entered that tent, who was he?’ I let the bundle dangle from my hand.

The man leaned closer and sniffed at the package. ‘Quino.’

I remembered the name, for the boy had spoken it. ‘He was a companion of Drogo?’

‘Alas, yes.’

‘As was . . .’ I searched for the foreign name. ‘Odard?’

‘Yes.’

‘And there was another, also?’

‘Rainauld. A Provençal.’ The old man did not hide his scorn of the foreigner, nor his hunger for what I held.

I did not ask why a Provençal had lived in the Norman camp. Poverty and death had severed many bonds of allegiance, as those who survived flocked to whichever banner offered most hope of reward.

‘Were there other servants, besides the boy Simon?’

‘None who outlived the winter.’

I unknotted the bundle and showed its contents. It was the liver from a hare which one of Sigurd’s men had snared in the night, its fresh blood soaking through the wrapping. Though it was no larger than a nut, the man gazed on it as if it were a full roasted boar.

‘What else can you tell me of Drogo? What company did he keep?’

‘Little.’ The man shuffled back a little as though the smell of the meat was too great a temptation. ‘He was always with one or other of the men from his tent – and rarely with any others. Sometimes one of the captains would visit; sometimes Drogo bought goods from the Ishmaelite traders. Few others.’

‘Did he have any enemies?’

‘Neither friends nor enemies.’

‘And women?’

The man sucked in his cheeks and swallowed, as if there were too much spit in his mouth. ‘One woman, yes. A Provençal. I did not know her. She dressed always in white – a white robe and a white shawl about her head. Her name was Sarah.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because she announced herself at his tent. I heard her. Though whatever business she had inside, she kept quiet about that,’ he added, wiggling the end of his tongue between his lips.

‘When did you see her last?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

The answer stopped me short. Long years of habit had already trained my thoughts in certain directions, and the possibility of a woman’s involvement was prominent among them. That one should have called at Drogo’s tent scant hours before he died . . .

I let the liver drop into the old man’s hand. ‘Did they leave together?’

‘No.’ All his attention was clearly fixed on the meat in his palm, his eyes moonlike in wonder, but the answer was confident enough. As he noticed me staring at him, he added: ‘I saw her go before him, perhaps half an hour.’

‘And when he left, was he armed?’

‘No. No armour at all. Nor his sword.’

I remembered the blade that the bov Simon had been polishing, and wondered whether it had been his dead master’s. ‘Were his companions in the tent when he went?’

The man shrugged. ‘I do not think so. I saw Quino and Odard return later, near dusk. I heard they had been working near the bridge. The Provençal, Rainauld, I have not seen.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘If you remember any other facts which seem important, any other men or women who visited Drogo, you may find me in the Byzantine camp.’

The old man did not respond to my words – I guessed he would sooner seek me at the Caliph’s palace in Baghdad than in a camp full of Greeks. Instead, he gazed at the cloth I held in my hand, still stained with the rabbit’s blood. ‘Will you keep that?’

I looked at it in surprise. ‘If you want it . . .’

Before I could finish my sentence, his clawing fingers had snatched it from my hand. With a glance of gratitude, he pressed it into his mouth and began sucking the blood from the fabric. We left him to his feast.

I did not want to delay any longer in the Norman camp; we hurried away, back towards our own lines. I still had Drogo’s body in my possession, and I suspected it might benefit me to examine it in daylight before his companions buried it. We walked quickly, ignoring the angry glares that followed us.

‘You think the woman has something to do with this,’ said Sigurd.

‘I think the woman
may
have something to do with this.’ I tried to sound less certain than I felt, lest my confidence rebound on me later. ‘The knight left his tent without even his sword: it follows he must have planned to meet someone he knew and trusted.’

‘Someone with whom armour might have got in the way,’ Sigurd suggested.

‘Perhaps.’

‘I guarantee you it was no woman who swung the stroke that killed him. His neck was almost cut clean through. Even a man the size of Bohemond would need a sound arm to manage it.’

‘A man aroused by passion might find the strength,’ I said.

Sigurd tipped back his head and laughed, prompting yet deeper scowls on the faces that we passed. Doubtless they thought we mocked them. ‘I see. Demetrios Askiates, the famed unveiler of mysteries, needs only an hour speaking with two men and a boy to discover all. Drogo and the woman were lovers; she came to his tent and arranged to meet him in that dell; he went there unarmed, but was ambushed by a rival, perhaps with the woman’s connivance. Find the woman, find the rival, and Normans and Provençals and Greeks will all be friends again. Is that your answer?’

‘It seems as plausible as any,’ I said testily. ‘I would have thought you of all men might favour a simple solution.’

‘Indeed I do. And I do not think you need invent a jealous lover to explain why an unarmed man was killed in a place surrounded by thousands who are impoverished, starving, and desperate. Would you ever walk out of the camp alone and unprotected?’

‘Of course not.’

‘He would not be the first from this army to be murdered for whatever gold he carried – he would probably not even be the hundredth. Franks or Turks, Christians or Ishmaelites: there is not one of them within fifty miles who would not kill for food.’

I sighed. ‘Nonetheless, for the good of the army, Bohemond demands that the murderer be found.’

Which in Sigurd’s eyes, I thought, was probably an overwhelming reason not to find him.

We crossed through our camp, to the lower slopes of the mountain which reached into the plain of Antioch. To my left, I could see the vast expanse of farmland stretching flat as marble to the horizon; on my right, on an outcrop above, the tower they called Malregard looked down on the St Paul gate. The Normans had built it soon after we arrived, and though it had been stout enough then, the winter storms had beaten it until its stones were black and skewed. It leaned off the mountain like a falcon on its perch, poised for the hunt, and even four months on I shivered every time I passed under it.