01 - Murder in the Holy City (6 page)

He strained his ears as the men began to talk in low voices. He could not hear what they were saying, but he could hear isolated words, and the language they spoke identified them as Greeks. He released his breath slowly as the three men walked back the way they had come, the last one, judging from his angry gestures, furious that they had been so easily fooled.

Why was Geoffrey being followed by Greeks? They obviously did not intend to kill him, or they would have done so earlier and avoided the trouble of following him. Were they the murderers of the hapless knights and monks, aware now that Tancred had charged Geoffrey with solving the mystery? But that did not make sense either, for Tancred would not have told anyone what he intended to ask Geoffrey to do, especially because he believed that the murders were threatening his own interests.

Geoffrey waited some time in the shadows before slipping out and making his way stealthily back to the citadel. He did not go by the most direct route, back the way he had come, but took a tortuous journey along the dingy alleys where the traders lived, stopping every so often to listen. Once or twice, he heard sounds, but the first time, it was a scrawny cat scavenging among some offal, and the second it was the furious cry of a hungry baby demanding to be fed.

At last the citadel loomed ahead of him, the huge Tower of David a black mass against the dark sky. The citadel, called the Key to Jerusalem, was a formidable fortress. It was surrounded by a pair of curtain walls that were each several feet thick, and that were pierced by two gates. The first entrance was the great fortified barbican at the front that led outside the city walls, and the second entrance was a sally port that led onto David Street inside the city.

Within the lower of the two curtain walls was the outer bailey, where the common soldiers camped, while the more secure inner bailey was located inside the taller curtain wall. It was in the Tower of David in the inner bailey that Geoffrey had his quarters. While many knights had opted to live in sumptuous houses appropriated when the Crusaders had taken the city, others, like Geoffrey, preferred the security and convenience of life in the citadel. It was overcrowded, smelly and noisy, but it was well protected against attack, and there were no neighbours to complain about the peculiar hours working soldiers kept, or the incessant clang of blacksmith’s forges as weapons were honed and armour mended.

The citadel was rigorously guarded by the Advocate’s soldiers. As Geoffrey approached, basically unidentifiable in standard surcoat and helmet, there came the sound of arrows being fitted to bows by archers along the wall, and the captain of the guard called out for him to identify himself. Geoffrey pulled off his basinet so they could see his face, and told them his name. The captain thrust his torch near Geoffrey’s face to satisfy himself that the sturdy knight who had been walking Jerusalem’s streets in the dark was indeed the English-born Geoffrey Mappestone. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness in his manner, for the captain was a Lorrainer and had no love for the Normans—like Geoffrey and Hugh—who lived in the citadel. Eventually, Geoffrey was allowed past, only to go through a similar process at the gate that separated the outer bailey from the inner bailey.

The Tower was always rowdy, as would be expected in a building filled with warriors, and even now, in the depths of the night, there were guffaws of laughter and triumphant shouts from some illicit game of dice. Geoffrey, being relatively senior in the citadel hierarchy because of the regard in which Tancred held him, had his own chamber, a tiny, cramped room in the thickness of the wall overlooking David’s Gate. It served Geoffrey as an office as well as a bedchamber and, on occasion, even as a hospital if one of his men were ill and needed rest away from the smelly, cramped conditions of the tents in the outer bailey.

Gratefully, he pushed open the stout wooden door to his chamber and stepped inside. It was dark, and only the faint shaft of silver moonlight glimmering through the open window offered any illumination. The room was sparsely furnished: a truckle bed that could be rolled up and moved into the short corridor that led to the garderobe; a table strewn with parchment and writing equipment; a long bench against one wall; and a chest that held spare bits of armour, some clothes, his beloved books, and some less intellectual loot from Nicaea. His dog, stretched out in front of the window to take advantage of the breeze, looked up lazily as Geoffrey entered. It gave a soft, malevolent growl, and went back to sleep.

Without bothering to light the candle that was always set on the windowsill, Geoffrey unbuckled his surcoat and removed the chain-mail shirt, hanging them carefully on wall pegs. No warrior who valued his life failed to take good care of the equipment that might save it. He tugged off his boots and, clad in shirt and hose, wearily flopped down on the bed.

And immediately leapt up again.

“God’s teeth!”

Pinned to the wall above his head was a heart, dark with a crust of dried blood. And it was held there by a curved dagger with a jewelled hilt.

In the cold light of morning, Geoffrey could see quite clearly that the dagger was not the same one that had been used to kill John of Sourdeval in the Greek Quarter the previous day: the blade was chipped and bunted, and the hilt was adorned with roughly cut pieces of coloured glass rather than jewels. But it was similar, and its message was clear: someone knew exactly where Geoffrey had been that night, and what he had been told to do. It was a warning that he should not meddle. But it also told him that someone in the citadel was involved in the murders. Security was tight at the Advocate’s stronghold, and no one was allowed in unescorted. And certainly no one was allowed in the knights’ rooms on the upper floors. What little cleaning that took place was performed by foot soldiers, not by local labour. The only people who could have gained access to his chamber, therefore, were Crusaders.

But what of the heart? What was its significance? Geoffrey frowned as he poked at it with his dagger, turning it over to try to gain some clue as to its origins. The dog watched with greedy attention, licking its lips and salivating on the floor.

“The kitchens,” announced Hugh, eyeing dog and heart distastefully from the window seat. “Where else could it have come from?”

“It looks like the heart of a pig,” said Geoffrey, still prodding it. “Pigs are not common here. The Moslems and Jews consider them unclean, and we have learned by bitter experience that their meat becomes tainted quickly in the desert heat. There are simply not many pigs around.”

“Well, go to the kitchens, and ask whether a pig has been slaughtered recently,” said Hugh, becoming bored by the conversation. “You will probably find that they killed one to make blood pudding or something, and parts of the carcass were left over.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “That is unlikely. Food is not so abundant in this wilderness that we can afford to discard it carelessly. I imagine all parts of any animal slaughtered will be used, even the bones to make soup.”

Hugh rose languidly from the window seat. “All this talk of food is making me hungry. It must be time to eat.”

Abandoning the grisly warning, Geoffrey followed Hugh down the spiral stairs that led to the great hall on the second floor of the Tower of David, with the dog at his heels. On the way, Hugh banged hard on the door of Sir Roger of Durham, an English knight who had elected to stay in Jerusalem after the rest of his contingent had left. The remainder of the knights, about three hundred in all, were mainly Lorrainers in the pay of the Advocate; however, there were also substantial numbers of Normans who were in the retinues of Bohemond—like Hugh and Roger—and Geoffrey’s lord, Tancred.

Roger emerged from his chamber, and followed them down the stairs. He was a huge man with cropped black hair and a brick-red complexion, and was the illegitimate son of the powerful Prince-Bishop of Durham. Roger was a simple man, blessed with a north country bluntness that Geoffrey assumed he must have inherited from his mother, who had been the Bishop’s robe-maker. Roger had no time at all for the politics and intrigues in Jerusalem, and was always the first to volunteer for expeditions where he would be able to use his formidable fighting skills. Roger’s prodigious strength and honesty, coupled with Hugh’s lugubrious cynicism and Geoffrey’s quick intelligence, made them a force to be reckoned with in the citadel hierarchy. John of Sourdeval, Geoffrey recalled with a pang, had often made a fourth, his gentleness and integrity repressing some of Roger’s and Hugh’s wilder acts.

“I heard you had a heart delivered last night,” said Roger conversationally, pushing past Geoffrey to be the first to arrive at the meal in the hall. “Do you want it? I have not eaten a heart since I left Durham.”

“You would be in competition with half the flies in Palestine for it,” drawled Hugh. “It stinks like a cesspool.”

Roger grinned, showing strong brown teeth. “Picky Frenchman,” he said. Hugh smiled back, while Geoffrey wondered how they could be so complacent about such a breach in security.

Geoffrey watched Roger clatter down the stairs in front of him. Roger was not a man Geoffrey would have imagined he would have forged a friendship with—he was coarse, loved fighting, and despised anything remotely intellectual. Yet English knights were a rarity on the Crusade, and Geoffrey found himself first drawn to Roger for the simple reason that they were countrymen. Later, however, he had come to respect other qualities in Roger: his honesty, a certain crude integrity, and an absolute loyalty to his friends—chiefly Geoffrey and Hugh. Although Geoffrey had more in common with the quick-witted, sardonic Hugh, Geoffrey admired Roger and felt himself fortunate to have two such friends, regardless of the difference in their personalities.

The great hall was already heaving with men. The window shutters had been thrown wide open, but the air inside was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, Jerusalem dust, and oiled leather. Geoffrey immediately felt the prickle of sweat at his back, and pulled uncomfortably at his clothes. Even within the great walls of the citadel, the knights wore armour—mostly light mail tunics over their shirts. When they left the citadel, they wore heavy chain-mail shirts that reached their knees; over the shirts, they donned padded surcoats emblazoned with a Crusader’s cross on the back and their lord’s insignia on the front. Added to this were thick mail gauntlets, a metal helmet with a long nosepiece, and weighty boiled-leather trousers.

The hall was a rectangle, so large that there were two—not one—hearths to warm it in the brief winter months. There were round-headed windows on the west wall, which looked out across the inner bailey, but none in the east wall, which faced the outside, to render it more secure against attack. The end nearest the kitchens was marked by a brightly painted screen that hid the movements of the servants preparing the food behind it, while a dais at the opposite end bore a table at which the Advocate sat with his younger brother, Baldwin. At right angles to the table on the dais were four massive trestle tables, set up at mealtime and then dismantled. The more senior knights sat at the ends nearest the Advocate, while the lesser ones sat farther away.

Geoffrey, Roger, and Hugh found places near the head of the nearest table and helped themselves to watered wine, overripe figs, and hard bread. Two of the Advocate’s knights came and settled opposite them: Warner de Gray and Henri d’Aumale, both of whom Geoffrey loathed almost as much as he did the cunning Hospitaller Courrances. Geoffrey stifled a sigh and began to discuss the sword drill planned for that afternoon with Hugh. Meanwhile, Warner began to describe an encounter he had had the day before with a small group of Arabs who had ambushed his scouting party. Geoffrey tried to ignore him, but Warner’s voice was strident, and he and Hugh were eventually forced to abandon their own discussion.

When Warner saw he had an audience, he began to elaborate. In many ways, he looked like his cousin the Advocate: both were tall, well-built, and fair-haired. But whereas the Advocate was a thoughtful man and, rumour had it, religious, Warner was brash and arrogant, and he encouraged a lawlessness among his knights that Geoffrey found reprehensible.

“How many of those Saracens were there?” asked Roger, interested as ever in matters military.

“Ten,” responded Warner. “Each one armed with a great scimitar and holding a golden idol of Mohammed in the air as they attacked.”

Geoffrey stared at him with undisguised dislike. “Moslems do not make idols of Mohammed,” he said disdainfully. “They consider it blasphemous.”

Warner turned to him with a look of loathing that equalled Geoffrey’s own. “I am not conducting a theological debate on Mohammedanism. I am describing an encounter in which I was forced to fight for my life against a band of Saracen fanatics intent on butchering me,” he said haughtily.

“No soldier so intent would impair his fighting skills by holding an idol aloft,” persisted Geoffrey. “That would be foolish. The whole scene you describe sounds most unlikely.”

He felt Hugh’s warning hand on his arm, while Roger unsheathed his dagger and casually used it to hack a lump of stale bread from a loaf on the table.