Pagan's Crusade Read online

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘That’s why I’ll be putting you in front when we approach the Valley. You will not be required to stay near me. I shall be stationed behind, on the right flank. You are not to turn back on any account: you will form part of our arrowhead, and you must cut straight through. Do you understand?’

  Oh, I understand, all right. Can’t handle a sword, but good enough for target practice. Same old story.

  ‘Yes, my lord. I understand.’

  He falls silent. Not a single bead of sweat on his brow, though it’s as hot as hell’s kitchen. Not a breath of wind. Fans flap. Children whine. Horseflies drone like monks at prayer. If I was a brigand, I wouldn’t be out boiling my brains in this sun. I’d have my feet up in some nice, cool cave, with a jug of lime juice and a damp cloth over my eyes.

  ‘Pagan?’

  (What now?)

  ‘I heard you say something to those pilgrims . . .’ Pause. ‘Am I to understand that you can read?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. I can read.’

  ‘And write, too?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Another brief silence. That wide, blue stare: wide, blue and empty, like the desert sky.

  ‘I suppose you were taught at the monastery, when you were a child?’

  (Well I certainly didn’t learn it in the guardroom.)

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He nods. Behind us, the pilgrims are growing restless. Agnes, especially. There’s no mistaking those dulcet tones.

  ‘Let’s sing!’ she squawks. ‘I always like a good sing-along.’

  ‘What about Psalm Forty-Six?’ (Frogface.) ‘What about “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the City of God”?’

  ‘No, no.’ Naturally Joscelin has to put his word in. (Poisonous little scorpion.) ‘We should sing Psalm Fifty-Three. “Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity.” After all, we’ll be passing the ruins of Gomorrah, soon.’

  Gomorrah! Thrills! Excitement! A babble of questions! Where? Where is it? Can we see it? Can you show it to us?

  Meanwhile Joscelin – the expert – takes it all in his stride. If anyone knows about Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s the man who should have been born there.

  ‘No, it’s not far. It’s down to the south,’ he says. ‘You can see the Pillar of Salt two parasangs from the Dead Sea.’

  ‘The Pillar of Salt? You mean Lot’s wife? The real Lot’s wife?’ Corba can’t believe her ears. ‘Where she was turned to salt for gazing at God’s vengeance on the Cities of the Plain?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you can see her?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Awestruck silence – but not for long.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  The scorpion rolls his eyes skyward like a dying cow.

  ‘She looks brave and tormented and beautiful,’ he drivels – forgetting the fact that he’s never been farther south than Hebron in his entire life. I have, though. I’ve also seen the Pillar of Salt. And if that was Lot’s wife, she was a midget hunchback with one leg missing.

  ‘Can we visit her?’ Frogface inquires.

  ‘Alas no.’ Joscelin shakes his head. ‘The Infidel lurks in that region during the warm months. But miraculously, although the sheep are always licking it, the pillar always grows back again. So you can take as much salt away as you like. And I happen to know a man who can sell you half a pound of Lot’s wife, beautifully presented in a hand-crafted salt cellar made from the famous Tyrian green ware –’

  Christ in a cream cheese sauce. Doesn’t he ever give up? Saint George clears his throat, loudly. I suspect it’s the closest he’s ever come to shoving his fist down a pilgrim’s throat and ripping his tonsils out.

  ‘Sergeant Gildoin!’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘We’ll call a rest break, I think. Women to the north, men to the south.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘And make it fast.’

  Which is easy enough for him to say. If you ask me, Saint George the Man of Marble doesn’t even have a bladder. If you ask me, he doesn’t perform any natural functions at all.

  Some people seem to think you can’t drown in the Jordan.

  It’s quite shallow now, of course – thick and sluggish between stretches of dry, brown mud – but it’s still water. If God had meant us to inhale it, He would have given us gills. You can’t tell that to the pilgrims, though. It’s like reasoning with a herd of mad donkeys.

  ‘God’s pilgrims!’ Saint George makes a futile attempt to stem the tide. ‘Please dismount and proceed in an orderly fashion to the riverbank, taking care to remain within calling distance . . .’

  Pointless, of course. Might as well ask an avalanche to please turn round and go home. The hairy fanatic is first off the mark: heads straight for the shallows and keeps running. Gildoin gives chase on horseback. Meanwhile Agnes has hit the water (whoosh! like a sheep in a well), followed by Corba and Radulf and a gaggle of children. The force of the rearguard push throws some of these children completely off their feet. Mothers lurch in after them. Old men go under. A blind girl panics. Elbows connect violently with foreheads.

  Last one in’s a dirty Infidel!

  No wonder the brigands didn’t attack us in the Valley of Running. Why bother, when all they have to do is sit back and wait for us to commit suicide?

  ‘Pagan! Over here!’

  Saint George to the rescue. He’s already thigh-deep in a boiling mass of water, mud and bodies, fishing out toddlers by the hair. Very calm, of course. Takes more than forty drowning pilgrims to panic the Man of Marble.

  ‘Nun, Pagan!’

  Nun, Pagan. Four steps to the right, flat on her face, too weak to haul herself out of the mud. Pulled down by the weight of her wet robes. Hard to get a firm hold – and the mud is like glue. One step (slurp). Two steps (slurp). Drag her up by the wimple. Half dead already. Gasping for breath and groping for support. Old and fat and hard to move.

  ‘Oi! Hey! Can I have a bit of help here?’

  Sergeant – what’s his name? Gaspard? Gregory? – staggers over to lend a hand. Takes the feet while I take the shoulders. (Hups-a-daisy!) Six steps to dry land. Drop her like a sack of bricks. Then back to the battle. But what’s left to do? The children are safe, restored to their mothers. Gildoin’s rescued our hairy fanatic. The last old man’s being hauled ashore. No casualties, by the look of it. Saint George is collecting the bottles and rags still afloat on the choppy water. A very smart move. Leave them to drift and we’ll have the whole lot in again, trying to rescue their precious possessions.

  Quick glance around: no lurking brigands. No wolves. A guard’s been mounted (when did he give the orders?) and Welf’s rounding up stray donkeys. Someone’s thumping an old woman’s back. Father Raimbaut in shock. Frogface. Radulf . . .

  Joscelin.

  Hasn’t lifted a finger. Still in the saddle, calm, cool, collected.

  If only I’d moved faster, he could have been drowned by now.

  ‘God’s pilgrims!’ Saint George dumps an armload of wet luggage onto the riverbank. He looks a little grim around the mouth. ‘There is a belief held by some ignorant people that only Infidels drown in the Jordan, because these are the waters wherein stood the feet of the priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant. Unfortunately, such people are seriously mistaken.

  ’ Gerald starts to cry, setting off a whole, dismal chorus. It’s hard to believe that most of the Templars in this escort actually volunteered their services.

  ‘Many Christians have drowned in the holy river you see here,’ Saint George continues (raising his voice), ‘so for your own safety I am not permitting anyone to enter the water any higher than their knees. Is that understood?’

  Despondent murmurs. No one’s going to argue, though. You don’t feel too assertive when you’re sitting in a puddle of mud.

  ‘When the sun moves behind that tree we’ll be leaving,’ Saint George concludes. �
�Kindly stay between the two guards on horseback. And remember that each pilgrim is allowed no more than eight full bottles of holy water. Sergeant Maynard will be counting each load before we depart.

  ‘Thank you – that is all.’

  Pilgrims, pilgrims, pilgrims. You wonder what they expect to find here. You wonder if they’re ever disappointed. Do they know about the Patriarch of Jerusalem? Do they know that this so-called man of God chases after every woman in sight? Do they know that every second blind man begging on the streets around here can see just as well as I do? That for every genuine saint’s relic on sale, there are five hundred worthless bits of rag and bone selling for the same price?

  Look at them, filling their bottles. Bathing their crippled limbs. So pathetic, really. Too dense to be afraid, even in the Valley of Running. Singing cheerful little psalms as we wind our way through that steep-sided gorge, where the earth is black and salty with the blood of dead pilgrims.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  A woman, heading my way. Skinny, squinting, face like a trip to the city dump. Frankish, by the sound of it. Slopping around in unsuitable footwear.

  ‘Excuse me, Master Templar, it’s about those bottles. The bottles of holy water we can take back with us . . .’

  Deaf, perhaps? Or just a bit simple?

  ‘You’re allowed eight.’ (How many more times?) ‘Eight bottles each.’

  ‘Yes, but – I have a sister, you see. She’s ill. And I promised to bring some holy water back for her.’

  ‘Well you can, can’t you? Or don’t you have a bottle?’

  ‘Yes, I have many bottles. So does my husband. But I already promised my aunt. And her son-in-law. And my mother and my husband’s stepbrother and our parish priest, and my cousin, because he gave us money for the pilgrimage –’

  ‘All right. So what’s the trouble?’ (Afraid of draining the river? It’s not the Red Sea, you know.)

  She sidles up like a hungry dog, all grinning teeth and pleading eyes.

  ‘Can’t we take just one extra bottle?’ she whines. ‘Just one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s only small, look –’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The hackles rise.

  ‘We come all this way across the ocean, and now you say we can’t take a drop of holy water back to my suffering sister?’

  ‘Listen. I don’t give the orders, understand? It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘And what if my sister dies? If my sister dies, God will know who killed her!’

  Christ in a cream cheese sauce. I don’t have to listen to this.

  ‘Lady, if your sister’s so damned sick, why can’t your husband’s stepbrother do without?’

  ‘When his poor wife’s as barren as a beef bone? I promised him some genuine Jordan water –’

  ‘Dame Helvis.’

  Joscelin. Sneaking up from behind like a cutpurse. Angelic smile on his face. No mud on his clothes. Mischief on his mind.

  ‘Dame Helvis, you can still have your genuine Jordan water.’

  She turns. ‘I can?’ This has got to stop. Right now.

  ‘March, maggot.’

  ‘You see, I too am allowed my ration of eight bottles.’ Joscelin ploughs on, ignoring me. ‘So I can take some of the precious liquid back for you. And it will only cost you three dinars a bottle.’

  ‘Three dinars? But I can get it here for free!’

  ‘Only eight bottles, though. You heard what Master Pagan said. And you must realise there’s a very great demand for Jordan water – especially now that the trip here is so perilous. Demand is outstripping supply. I can get five dinars for every bottle I bring back from this journey. So you see, I’m making a very generous offer.’

  She looks him up and down, spits at his feet. No sale.

  ‘Call yourselves Christians!’ she hisses. ‘You filthy hypocrite Turcopole soft-bellied traitors!’ And she waddles away through the mud, puffing and blowing like an angry plough-horse.

  Joscelin smiles at her retreating back.

  ‘Stinking brainless slug-faced bitch,’ he mutters. ‘Of course you know what she wants it for, don’t you? That holy water. She wants it to sell when she gets back home. She can recoup her outlay threefold, if she does. It’s quite common.’

  ‘Take a walk, maggot.’

  ‘You surely don’t believe that tale about the sister?’

  ‘I said take a walk. Now.

  ’ ‘Before I do, Pagan, there’s something we ought to discuss. And I promise I’ll make it worth your while.’

  ‘There’s nothing we have to discuss.’

  He grabs my arm as I turn away. It’s like having a leech crawl down the back of your neck.

  ‘Get off me!’

  ‘All right, all right. Don’t upset yourself. I just want to make a proposition. A paying proposition.’

  He leans so close that I can feel his hot breath on my face. Still gargling perfume, to judge from the stink. Still using scent in his hair oil. Sweet and sickly, like the smell of gangrene. So strong I can hardly draw breath.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay downwind?’

  ‘Listen, Pagan. You need cash, or you wouldn’t be playing mother to a lot of half-wits. Now I can help, if you’d just lend me an ear.’

  ‘An ear? What would you do with an ear, sell it off as a relic?’

  ‘Pagan –’

  ‘I’ve had your kind of “help” before, you bloodsucker. And I don’t want any more of it.’

  ‘All you have to do is put in a good word for me, Pagan. That’s all.’ He’s like a wasp, hovering and buzzing. ‘You’re on pilgrimage escort, aren’t you? Well I need pilgrims. It’s the perfect relationship. You recommend me to your pilgrims as a guide, and I’ll give you a cut of their fee. Say, twenty per cent. You’ll have all the money you need in a month. Under a month. We could make a fortune. You know how everyone trusts a Templar . . .’

  Buzz, buzz, buzz. I can hardly hear him through the hum of the flies. It’s still stinking hot, and you can smell the river. The sweat’s stinging my sunburned neck. My boots are full of mud. I’m in the dead heart of brigand country, shackled to a herd of blind cripples.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  ‘. . . could even make it official, perhaps. Get me appointed. Official Escort Guide. Ask your knight what their position is . . .’

  My knight is mounting guard. Thought I’d lost him, for a moment, but he’s up on the rise behind us, strategically stationed. Sitting up there on his white horse like a statue at the Gates of Paradise, all white and gleaming gold. Scanning the horizon with his blue hawk’s eyes. Any moment now he’s going to see who I’m with.

  I must be mad, listening to this rubbish.

  ‘. . . make it thirty per cent, if you like. Thirty per cent for practically nothing. What have you got to lose? Think about it, Pagan . . .’

  ‘I’ve thought about it, bog-breath. And do you know what I think?’ Slowly. Quietly. ‘I wouldn’t ask for your help if I was drowning in a vat of manure. Understand? So get your festering carcass out of my way, or I’ll slice it up and feed it to the vultures.’

  Nice to have a good, solid piece of metal at your hip, in these situations. Nobody argues with a Solingen sword. I don’t even have to unsheathe it and he moves aside, swallowing the poison on his adder’s tongue.

  Time to go and pull a bit of weight. Round up a few stray pilgrims. After all, that’s what I’m here for.

  Chapter 3

  Squeak, squeak, squeak. Chink of harness. Smell of hot leather. One stupid fly that’s on a fast horse to hell, if it so much as sets foot on my bottom lip again. Slumping in the saddle with a pain in my back, because I haven’t ridden this kind of distance in two years, minimum.

  Saint George up ahead, sitting as straight as an arrow.

  You’ve got to admit he rides well. Probably born with a horse between his legs. Fully armed. Hard to imagine what kind of parents could have produced such a paragon. Lord Valiant and Lad
y Virtue. Most courteously married in the Castle of Chivalry. Baby Roland, tutored by twelve wise men (Patience, Courage, Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Wisdom, Etiquette, Cleanliness, Thrift, Good Taste and Perfect Table Manners), piously raised as a living dedication to God. Weaned on the sacred host and holy water.

  His only playmate, a statue of Saint Sebastian.

  Saint Sebastian, the Roman soldier. Killed by arrows. Saint George’s wound is a fearsome thing – though he seems to sit quite easily in the saddle. A terrible scar, red and brown, still leaking onto a linen pad under his clothes. Across the right flank and into the stomach. Probably would have killed anyone else.

  The hand of God, I wonder?

  ‘Pagan.’

  Whoops! ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘What are you doing? Concentrate, Pagan, we’re almost at the Valley.’

  So we are. Should have felt the tension. Saint George has fallen back to keep pace with me.

  ‘A trick for the future, Pagan. If you’re on a long ride and you feel your mind wandering, start counting the bends in the road. Or the trees you pass – if there aren’t too many. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘It’s wise to keep alert.’ He glances over his shoulder. ‘I should tell you,’ he adds (lowering his voice), ‘that if the brigands attack, they attack on the return journey. After they’ve judged our strength, and when the pilgrims are tired and weighed down with holy water.’

  Terrific.

  ‘We’ll take our positions now. Gildoin!’ A nod. (Gildoin pulls back a little, signals to the rearguard.) ‘I want you in front with the shields again, Pagan, only this time remember to keep your shield right up, please. I don’t want to see any face exposed. They’ll be shooting from above, remember.’

  He reins in, slowing, so he can fall back and join the middle escort behind us.

  ‘My lord –’

  ‘What?’

  What? Good question. I don’t know.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He waits for a moment.

  ‘Is your shield too heavy?’