Shadows on a Sword (7 page)

Suddenly, Theo was uncomfortably aware of his dirty, travel-stained tunic and the coarseness of his drab, heavy cloak. He slid one leg in front of the other to cover a rip in his hose, but no one was paying the slightest attention to him. He tore his eyes away from the lords and ladies and dropped to his knees, fixing his eyes on the cross. Emma sank down beside him.

They remained praying for a long time. At last, Theo stood. When he glanced down at Emma, she was still staring at the altar; there were tears on her cheeks. She looked suddenly small and vulnerable, and he felt a wave of protectiveness surge through him as he reached down to help her to her feet.

“It is God’s work we do, is it not?” Her words came out in the barest, but fiercest, of whispers.

“Of course it is. It has to be.” Theo turned his back on the brilliant personages, who seemed to be gossiping with each other as much as praying, and put them out of his mind. It was the crusade that mattered. Nothing else.

On the way out, Theo spied an old woman in the courtyard. She sat hunched under a woollen shawl, warmed only by a small fire. In front of her, spread out on a carpet, were bunches of sweetly scented dried herbs and roses. On an impulse, he stopped. He bent over her offerings and chose one. Gravely, he turned to Emma and gave it to her.

Emma took it with a startled, sideways glance at him. Then she lowered her eyes and buried her nose in the bouquet. “No one has ever …” The words came out muffled. “Thank you.” It was so quiet, he barely heard.

“You should have come with us!” Amalric exclaimed the next morning. “We found a lively tavern, with men who made music and wenches who danced to it. The wine they make here is so strong my head is still spinning! You would have had a far better time with me than you had traipsing around churches with a servant maid!”

Theo smiled, but didn’t answer. He thought not.

At first, Theo welcomed the pause at Constantinople, but as the weeks passed, he became restless again. Some remnants of Peter the Hermit’s forces arrived in the camp. Theo was present when Duke Godfrey interviewed them.

“Treason,” they maintained. “Nothing less than treachery on the part of the imperial forces of Alexius led to our defeat.”

“The duke does not believe them,” Amalric said, “and nor do I. They just seek excuses for their own failure.”

Theo was inclined to agree, but he heard the soldiers around him grumbling. They, too, were becoming impatient with the delay.

“If we could only go on!” Amalric was indignant. “Alexius has no right to hold us up here.”

“But we must wait for the other lords who are coming to meet us,” Theo answered.

“We could wait on the other side of Constantinople.

He could let us pass. The only reason he keeps us cooling our heels here is because Godfrey will not swear allegiance to him.”

Theo knew Amalric was right.

“My lord has only one master, Henry, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He cannot swear loyalty to another,” Amalric growled.

Again, Theo agreed.

Time dragged. Theo took to walking the camp from end to end, usually finishing up at the city walls. They towered above him, blank and forbidding.

It snowed, lightly at first, then more heavily. Theo found it hard to keep himself warm at night in his small tent. He slept wrapped in his woollen cloak and covered with a bearskin, but still woke stiff and cold in the frosty early mornings. Centurion, on the other hand, delighted in the winter weather. His coat grew rough and thick, and he downed the rations of four normal horses.

“Hugh of Vermandois has sworn the oath,” Amalric reported with a sneer as he sought Theo out one morning. “Alexius’s lapdog, that’s all he is. The emperor thought Hugh would persuade the duke to give in and sign as well, but my lord Godfrey sent him back with a flea in his ear, I tell you.”

Perhaps not a wise move, Theo thought. He was proven right when the supplies coming from the emperor suddenly ceased.

Angered by the short rations, the men erupted. Led by Godfrey’s brother Baldwin, they began to raid the suburbs of Constantinople. Alexius reacted quickly.

“We are to move to Pera,” Count Garnier told Theo as they ate together one morning. “The emperor has been most tactful. Pera is only a short distance away, and he suggests that we will be more sheltered from the winter winds there, but I think his real reason is that his imperial police will be able to watch and control us more closely there. I must say I cannot blame him. If Lord Godfrey cannot keep even his own brother in check …”

Theo looked at his foster father in surprise. It was the closest he had ever heard the count come to criticizing the duke. Garnier must be troubled, indeed.

Amalric, of course, was mightily offended. “They think us nothing but barbarians,” he raged. “They treat us like thieves!”

“With good reason,” Theo replied, but the behavior of the Byzantines had angered him as well. He had accompanied Count Garnier to a feast given by some of the nobles in the city, and although the visitors had dressed in their finest, Theo had been painfully aware of the disparaging glances cast their way. More than one elegant eyebrow had been raised at the rude manners of the Frankish knights. The Franks, on their part, spent the next few days mocking the effete manners of the Byzantines, but underlying their jokes was a bitter resentment.

More time passed. Still the other lords did not appear; still the emperor and Godfrey quarreled. Life in the camp around Pera settled into a routine that soon turned to boredom. Godfrey and his men were lodged within the city, but their families and all the others, including Count Garnier and his men, were encamped just outside.

Theo had fallen into the habit of meeting with Emma in the evenings to talk. He knew a few tongues wagged at this, but life in the camp was informal, and he cared little about the opinions of others. The count saw no harm in their friendship, and that was what mattered most to him. Emma always had the latest camp gossip, and she had a way of exaggerating the most trifling of stories until they became so ridiculous that the two of them usually ended up in gales of laughter. It was a relief to Theo to spend time with her after the tension of daily life in the camp. Amalric grew so frenzied with hatred against the Byzantine emperor that he could speak or think of nothing else. He was not alone in his feelings—indeed, most of the camp felt the way he did—but Theo could take only so much of his ranting.

Amalric had also angered Theo by teasing him about Emma, and had made a coarse, insinuating jest. Theo had reacted with an explosion of anger, and they would have come to blows if Amalric had not backed down. After his anger had cooled, however, Theo was shocked at his reaction. He had not thought that he could get so irate over such a thing. Just what did this girl mean to him? She seemed to be on his mind constantly. Somehow, Emma was different from the other girls he had dallied with, and he dared not behave with her as he had with the others. Friendly as she was, she held herself aloof from everyone. He had once seen another young knight throw an arm carelessly around her, only to find himself flat on his back in the mud. Emma was definitely not to be trifled with.

The end of March arrived. Winter was over and the weather began to grow warm; Holy Week was fast approaching. News spread that the other crusading armies were near. The tension in the camp reached an unbearable peak. Surely now, Theo thought, Alexius would let them move on. Instead, feeling perhaps that the other leaders would support him in his demand for oaths of allegiance, Alexius began to restrict the crusaders’ supplies further. First, he withheld fodder for the horses; then, as Holy Week drew nearer, he cut off supplies of fish and bread. This was the final insult. How could they not have fish during Holy Week?

The crusaders exploded. Several of the knights led their men in raids on neighboring villages. Count Garnier kept his own knights and troops in order, but even the most loyal of them, Theo included, began to chafe at the bit.

“Things cannot go on like this,” he told Emma one evening.

“No, they cannot,” she agreed. “I fear for what is going to happen. It cannot be good.”

Theo fell silent beside her.

On the Wednesday evening of Holy Week itself, Godfrey called a conference in his tent.

“Come with me,” the count said to Theo. “I like not the sound of this.”

They arrived to find the other nobles already assembled, Baldwin foremost among them. Godfrey was speaking. Theo had never seen him so inflamed.

“The emperor persists in his impossible demands. He has denied us passage across the Bosphorus, and he insists on my oath. That I will not give. The time has come for force. We attack Constantinople tomorrow.”

Theo could not believe what he was hearing. Attack Constantinople? Constantinople was one of Christendom’s most holy cities, second only to Jerusalem! Attack the emperor Alexius himself?

The next morning as he prepared for battle in the darkness before dawn, Theo moved as if he were weighted down with chains of iron. Again they were to wage war against Christians! The Byzantines were hateful, but they were the crusaders’ own people.
They
were not the enemy he had sworn to conquer!

Centurion’s breath steamed into the cool air. In the darkness around him, Theo could hear the clink of metal, the squeak of leather being adjusted, tightened. The occasional oath broke the stillness, but there was an unusual quiet. No one, it seemed, was going into this attack with bravado. Theo did not speak to William. He had disciplined his groom for not reporting what he had known about the planned outbreak of the count’s and Godfrey’s men, and William had been sullen and resentful ever since.

When all was ready, Theo accepted William’s hand up and swung into the saddle. He reined Centurion in and guided him toward the gathering of Count Garnier’s knights and squires. The count greeted him soberly as Theo fell in between his foster father and

Aimery. In silence, they walked their horses to the edge of Pera to wait for Duke Godfrey.

As they drew near to Pera’s walls, pandemonium erupted. Cries broke out from within. Flames shot into the air. Men shouted; women screamed. The town gates were flung open, and Godfrey galloped out, closely followed by his knights and their squires. They had taken their revenge: the houses they had been lodged in were burning to the ground.

In an instant, all was mad confusion. Trumpets blared, war cries echoed across the hillside. When Count Garnier gave the signal, his trumpeters added to the cacophony, and he charged to join the duke. Belatedly, Theo urged Centurion to follow, and the warhorse burst into a gallop. All around Theo, men and horses jostled and jockeyed for position. The thunder of hooves and the cries of the knights filled the air. Dust rose in choking waves. The men in the crusading army fell in behind their leaders and galloped toward Constantinople.

Theo found himself riding so close to the count that their knees brushed. The crush of other animals and riders beside and around him blotted out all else. Blindly, he gave Centurion his head and concentrated on keeping up with his foster father. His heart was beating so loudly that his ears rang with the force of it, and he thought it would tear through the very walls of his chest. There was no time now to think about what they were doing, no time to think about who they were about to attack. He gasped for breath in the thick, suffocating air.

The army strung out as it thundered across the bridge at the headwaters of the Golden Horn, then reassembled outside the walls of Constantinople itself. For a moment, there was a pause. Theo struggled to calm himself. In front of him the great city slept, seemingly unprepared for attack.

Trumpets split the early morning. Godfrey shouted an order. Chaos erupted around Theo again. Yelling their battle cries, the duke’s men charged the gate that led to the palace. Theo glimpsed Amalric among the foremost. Then, suddenly, as his own group rallied to follow Godfrey, Theo saw archers appear on the walls. Again, he spurred Centurion on and charged forward beside Count Garnier, but this time he held his breath. They were driving straight into the archers. He shrank in his saddle, and his stomach tightened into a ball as he braced himself against the onslaught of arrows that was sure to come. Incredibly, the first volley passed harmlessly over their heads.

When the gate did not give way under the foot soldiers’ assault, Godfrey’s men drew back in confusion. At that moment, all the other gates opened and Alexius’s troops poured out. Again, Theo braced himself, but again, incredibly, the troops did not attack. They halted outside the walls, facing the now flustered duke and his army. Foot soldiers with halberds glinting in the first pale rays of the sun arrayed themselves deliberately in front of their mounted knights. The archers high on the top of the wall above them let loose another volley of arrows. Once more, the missiles flew over the crusaders’ heads.

Godfrey’s army froze, every man in his place, waiting for the duke’s signal. For what seemed like an eternity, Theo watched as the two opposing forces faced each other. Then, instead of crying out the expected command to attack, Godfrey wheeled his mount around and galloped off the field. After an instant of silent disbelief, his men turned their horses and followed him. Aghast, Theo looked at the count. The count returned his stare with his mouth set in a hard, grim line.

As they retreated, Theo looked back over his shoulder. The domes and spires of Constantinople gleamed in the sunlight, unconquered, inviolable. He could make no sense of his feelings. Relief because they had not fought fellow Christians, and because he was alive. But his heart still thudded and his ears still rang. Gradually, the terror of the charge drained away, but in its place rose a vast emptiness.

He felt—cheated

I
n the aftermath of this debacle, Godfrey finally consented to take the oath of allegiance to Alexius. The ceremony was held on Easter Sunday. Godfrey, Baldwin and their leading lords swore to acknowledge the emperor as overlord of the campaign, and to hand over to the Byzantine officials any reconquered land that had previously belonged to the emperor. Theo saw Baldwin’s mouth twist at that pledge, and remembered Emma telling him of Baldwin’s greed. No land would be relinquished by the duke’s brother if he could help it, oath or no oath, Theo thought.