The Sacred Scroll (2 page)

‘Don’t damage the goods,’ said the woman. ‘Don’t damage anything.’

One of the men came towards Adkins. He flinched, expecting a blow. But none came. Instead, the man shoved a thick bag over his head and pulled it savagely tight at the neck.

Adkins felt panic begin to rise before the man hit him once across the nape of his neck. A clinical blow.

Then the darkness was total.

AD
1204

Constantinople, Monday 12 April, and at last an attack. First, I must write of the noise: the screaming, the thunder, the smell of burning tar and burning flesh, everywhere about us. It was as if the full wrath of the true Catholic Church had been unleashed.

The sun beat down that day, and it was windy. Huge buffets from the north, though at first it kept switching. But a good day for a battle, after so long a wait, and the wind at last swung round to a steady, harsh north, ramming our galleys and transports on to the shore. No way to turn back now, and there on the forecastle of the leading ship, Dandolo, ninety years old and blind, but with his helmet and breastplate shining, his sword aloft. By his side his trusted Viking, an old man too, but tough as hardwood.

We lowered the great assault ramps which were fixed to the prows of our ships so they fell against the two nearest towers of the city walls. We’d been wise to cover them with roofs of cowhide soaked in vinegar because, dark and hot as it was as we swarmed up them to the platforms at their tops, the coverings saved us from the fire and stones the bastards hurled down upon us. And we smashed our way to the top.

The smell of boiling pitch was everywhere in the dark
tunnels of the ramps and we were blinded by the light when we emerged. The first of us were cut to pieces by the Viking Guard, the wretched bunch of Saxons who protected the false emperor, but we kept coming and coming, and our ships spewed and squirted liquid fire through bronze siphons at the pitiful defenders. We watched the fire cling to them. They died screaming as they tried to wipe it off.

The walls of the city stood high and tall, but we knew they were not as good as they looked. They were crumbling; they’d had centuries of neglect, ever since the Great City came to believe itself impregnable, under the protection of the very wing of Gabriel himself. But we could see where the mortar was rotting between the stones and we planted brushwood soaked in naphtha in the hollows we found, and set fire to it to weaken the walls further.

There’d already been two conflagrations in the city during the attacks last year and they’d half destroyed the city then, though much of it was already falling down. Not that it wasn’t magnificent still. It made our Paris look like a village. They said it had stood for nine centuries, ever since the Emperor Constantine had made it the seat of his new Christian Roman empire. It was the gateway to the East and the bastion for Europe against the Seljuk Turks who had taken the Holy Land from us.

Well, we’d deal with them soon enough. Once this business was over. The Byzantine Greeks who rule here still call themselves Christians, but they no longer show homage to the pope, and follow their own barbarous Eastern way of hearing the Word of God. Our job has been to put
that right – these people must be brought back into the True Fold, by force. And by Christ’s Grace and the leadership of our good Lord Dandolo, we will do it!

In time, Pope Innocent will understand, and see why we have had to raise our swords against fellow Christians. He will see the Divine Justice of our action. We’ll finish these bastard Greeks, now our blood is up. Bring them to their knees. Teach them to set themselves up against us, even to permit a mosque within their walls!

But it has been hard. After our very first attack on the Eastern Christians at the city of Zara, Pope Innocent pronounced us excommunicate! That lay heavy on us. Like a bullwhip, a thousand lashes, across your back. He relieved his dread sentence later, as he desired us to continue as Pilgrim Warriors to Jerusalem. And there were letters sent from Doge Dandolo. Those letters must have made him relent. But what power of persuasion could the doge possibly have over the pope?

Still, Innocent did not free the Venetians from excommunication. We marvelled, I remember, that they were unconcerned. Lord Dandolo even scoffed at it. We wondered what enabled him to dare do that. But he told us we had nothing to fear, and we believed him.

We couldn’t disobey Dandolo, even though some of us murmured doubt. A few even tried to stand off from this present battle, but most were not resolute enough for that. There is something about the man, some power he has within him. He commands, and we must obey. And I am a simple Christian knight. I question not my leader.

It’s always seemed a strange thing to me, but the fact is
we’d follow him anywhere. There were times when some of us wondered why. But you can’t think about such things when there’s a war to be won.

The Greeks used scimitars, that vicious sword they got from the infidel Seljuks they allow to live among them. It’s a good sword though, cuts like a scythe, so when even a centimetre of that crescent-shaped blade is in you the rest follows through on the curve, increasing the cutting power, and it slices through bone and muscle without a hitch. My countryman and captain, Mathieu le Barca, lost his sword arm that way in the fighting on the first day. He fought on – the excitement raced through his blood on account of the wound and he felt no pain – but he was on his knees by the time I reached him and there were three men attacking. I brought my broadsword down on the closest, through the shoulder on the shield-arm from the collarbone down to the heart, cut him in two like a side of beef. The others tried to run then, but I got one in the middle of the skull, their Greek helmets no good against French steel, split his head in half, made me laugh to see the mouth open and shut in two bits like that. The third I headbutted with my own strong helmet. Made porridge of his brain.

But did any of us on either side pause to think, We are Christians and they too are Christians? We had gathered as Warrior Pilgrims under the Cross to drive the Turks from the Holy Land, to take back Jerusalem. That was our true mission.

It seemed we had a new mission now: to serve Lord Dandolo and be guided by him in the True Path. And we did not question. We obeyed. We were all in thrall to the old doge of Venice, and most of us trusted him.

As for the Greeks, they’d let things go to seed. They spent all their money on trumpery, nothing on arms and defence. They’d grown too sure of themselves, ruling the roost for nine hundred years. That’s what Dandolo told us.

But I return to the battle. It was now at its height. There was no time for reflection. One of our ships, one that had not beached, we’d tied to one of the towers, but the sea’s ebb pulled the ship back, and the tower was so rotten that it rocked, and we cut it loose for fear it would fall on us. We could see fear, too, in the faces of the Greek defenders on the tower.

The men on the beach sought weak gates, but the defenders hurled down stones and burning pitch with such fury that we had to find shelter, up against the very walls we wanted to bring down. Meanwhile most of our fleet, driven ashore and beached by the wind, disembarked thousands of men-at-arms, who ran up the ramps, stepping over the corpses, and gained a firm foothold. Lord Dandolo cried out that the wind which drove us on was the breath of the Archangel Michael, aiding us in our fight with the Great Satan.

And then we found a gate in their walls. We hacked at it with axes and iron bars and it splintered and fell open. We got some horsemen through, but inside they were ready for us. Brought down the warhorses, the destriers, with kitehead arrows – heavy diamond heads, cut through anything, right into the horses’ flanks, severing muscle joining legs to body. I saw one come down, crush a kid, a little Greek boy there to watch the fun, couldn’t get away in time, yelled like a banshee when his legs smashed. I
went over to him and cut off his head. Put him out of his misery. But the horse nearly killed
me
then, with his hooves. He was in agony too, flailing, poor beast, but there was no saving him, and I cut the great veins in his neck to give him peace too.

With the horses down, the Greeks attacked our fallen knights, like the cowards they were. But we regrouped and we got in there and we fucking crucified them.

Constantinople, Friday 16 April, Year of Our Lord 1204

The monk who’d been reading the document aloud now put down his papers, eased his thin body in his black habit, stretched his bony feet in their soft leather sandals and took a drink from the cup of wine at his elbow. He peered across the room, its stone walls hung with tapestries, to where his employer sat. The stiff brocade robes he was wearing seemed to be all that held the old man upright. A candle guttered in its stand and a draught blew through the room, then the flame grew steady again.

Leporo could sense his master’s feeble eye squinting back at him through the gloom. He had been with the old man for the last forty years, since he was a novice monk, well before the trip to Constantinople three decades earlier which had left his master all but blind. They hadn’t managed to kill his eyesight as completely as they’d intended, back then. Leporo had seen to that. And what gratitude had he been shown?

Leporo prided himself on being one of only two men who stood close to the doge and enjoyed his confidence. Time was he had been the
only
one. He was Dandolo’s confessor, but not that alone. He was his secretary, confidant, eyes and – often – ears. Not much got past him.

But he always remained one step behind his master. With
the passing years, that galled him more and more. Why should he be content with the crumbs which fell from the table when he might have the bread that was on it?

The problem was the other man close to his master. Leporo thought of him now, and hatred crept into his soul, its natural home.

But he kept his counsel. He knew how to bide his time.

‘This knight whose memoirs you are reading from,’ said the old man in a thin voice. ‘Who is he?’

‘Bohun de Treillis. A minor nobleman from Amboise.’

‘He thinks too much. We need to trim his account. Blunt his quill. He reveals too many secrets and he has no business even guessing at them.’

‘He is an ignorant man,
Altissima
. There is nothing to be feared. He writes in the dark.’

‘I’ll decide what is to be feared or not. Anything that bears a hint of my power must be excised. And, now – read on,’ said the doge, peering uncertainly towards Leporo through the gloom. The monk saw the one good eye glint in the candle’s flame.

He cleared his throat.

On the other side of the gate, there was a small square, streets leading off, and a crowd of people, staring at us, pissing themselves in fear. We put a few men in, and the people inside shrank back, all sorts, high and low, mixed up together in the streets, no fight in them, all gaudy clothes for the rich, though. They fell back into the narrow streets. Too narrow – too much risk of ambush. A man could easily get lost in this city; it was like a twenty-square-kilometre maze.

Our men followed the inside of the wall towards the sea, where a great chain had been stretched across the mouth of the big inlet, the Golden Horn, to keep us out. That’d been easy to smash. Bloody thing was half rusted away and, as for their fleet, the galleys were so rotten they were already sunk to their gunnels, and all their so-called grand admiral could muster was a few dozen cavalry who ran away as soon as they saw us!

 

How far into the battle were we? Six hours? Seven? The sun was at its height, beating down, and we would have boiled in our chain mail, but the wind cooled us. And now, at last – a real breach!

 

That was what was happening down near St Barbara’s Gate, on the seaward side. Some of our men who’d got in by the small gate had managed to fight their way round to a big gate on the seaward side, where our transports were, and the Greeks melted before them. Vicious bastards – they ran away into the streets, sure, but that didn’t stop them chucking anything they could find down on us from the rooftops.

 

Our lads got this big gate open, unopposed. It was wide and high; two, three, mounted knights could get through it at once. The transports immediately raised their anchors and beached themselves, throwing their foregates down so the big destriers, already caparisoned with their taffeta coats emblazoned with the knights’ insignias, their steel head-protectors strapped tight, could be led out fast by the squires. The knights, helmeted and armoured, all the colours of the rainbow on their crests and surcoats, were soon ready for the fray.

 

We wore our own battledress because we were fighting
renegade Christians. We reserved the white surcoat with the red cross for the fight against the Infidel in Jerusalem. This, Lord Dandolo ordered us to do.

 

We stormed in. Right through that gate, the green sea glittering in the sun at our backs, the yellow sand, the high grey walls, the Greeks stampeding before us to avoid being crushed by the horses.

 

As for the defenders – well, they’d lost heart. And their new emperor, that traitor who’d killed the man we’d set up as their king – he’d gone AWOL. Well, he’d had his ten weeks. We’d been here the best part of two years, in this weird country, all hand-kissing and smells of strange spices; the unblinking sun in summer, the vicious cold and clinging damp in winter; all that silk and gold. Well, it was our turn now.

 

‘Take that out,’ said Dandolo.