Siege of Heaven (58 page)

Inside the siege tower, the crush was greater than ever. It was impossible to reach the front of the tower; instead, we pushed each other forward and hoped that would be enough. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how much progress we made, though it felt as if we heaved hard enough to push down the wall and roll the tower over it.

And then, suddenly the press around me melted away. I looked up. From the corner of my eye I could see half a dozen ladders leaning against the wall, bowing in under the weight of the Franks racing up them like flames. The walls themselves now seemed to have caught light: as each man reached the top of his ladder, he passed into a shroud of black smoke and vanished.

I shook my head and looked around. The noise of battle seemed to be fading, and the press of men who had driven the tower forward had vanished. Only half a dozen remained, most of them rubbing their eyes like me. Two others who had been at the front, who must have absorbed the full weight of the crush behind, had slumped to the
ground unconscious, their ribs broken and their chests staved in.

After so many years of suffering, so many months of longing, the last seconds were the most forgettable of all. I was climbing the ladder inside the tower. I had reached the first floor, past the gaping holes torn in its sides, past the corpses piled in the corners, onto another ladder. The rungs were slick with blood; I slipped, and might have broken my neck if my hauberk had not caught on the rung below and given me just enough time to steady myself.

I clambered onto the second level. After the gloom below it seemed almost impossibly bright, for the front wall had been lowered to form a crude bridge to the ramparts beyond. The noon sun shone in my eyes, making the pools of blood that soaked the bridge shine like glass. It loomed before me like a bridge to another world.

I stepped out. For a brief, dizzying moment, I looked down and saw the deep space yawning beneath. Then I passed between the battlements and was on solid stone once again.

I stood there on the rampart, inside the wall, and looked down into Jerusalem.

For a moment, I saw the city spread out before me – a tapestry of narrow streets, flat roofs, awnings, courtyards and turrets. Straight ahead of me, the great dome of the temple rose on the table-top of Mount Moriah; from there the city dipped into a steep valley, then rose again on my right to the heights of Mount Zion. A stone bridge spanned the valley about half a mile distant and I committed its position to heart, for that was where I would find my family. Far in the distance, I could see smoke rising from the southern walls where Count Raymond had attacked.

Then the view was gone. A hot wind fanned my face and a curtain of black smoke drew over the city. My eyes watered as I coughed to clear the fumes from my lungs. To my right, one of the guard towers was burning. The
Fatimids had tied bales of cotton and straw around it to protect it from the blows of our catapaults, but these had caught fire and the whole tower blazed like a candle. The heat and smoke must have driven the defenders back long enough for us to gain a foothold – and once the flow had started, there was no staunching it. The garrison who had defended these walls so doggedly for a day and a half had been swept away by the Franks, who still poured over the battlements and rushed down into the city below.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me about. Sigurd was standing there, his shield discarded but his axe in his hands. It was already smeared with blood. Thomas and Aelfric stood behind him, a poor remnant of the dozen Varangians who had gathered that morning.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Gone,’ said Sigurd. ‘And we’ll wish we were with them if we don’t move quickly. Come on.’

We followed the crowds along the rampart to the nearest tower, where a stair led down to the street. The press of men was almost inexorable, but by the door to the tower, the flow halted for a moment. One man was trying to push his way back. Knights shouted angrily and told him he was going the wrong way, but he persisted, forging through against the tide. The throng on the rampart was so thick that I could barely see him until he was in front of me; then he brushed past and was gone before I had even registered that it was Duke Godfrey. His white tabard was soaked with sweat, his golden hair matted with blood, and he stank of the vinegar he had
poured over the Fatimids’ fire. Craning back, I saw him run across the gangway and disappear down into the siege tower.

‘Maybe he needs to take a shit,’ said Sigurd. ‘Come on.’

All resistance had vanished. The Fatimids fled, and the space they left only sucked the Franks in faster. By the time we had barged down the stairs and gained the street we had slipped well behind the vanguard. Five mangonels lay abandoned behind the walls, one already burning.

I looked around, dizzied by the speed with which the battle had turned. In the back of my mind I tried to comprehend where I was, that I actually stood on the holy soil of Jerusalem. But it was too much to understand – and I had more pressing concerns.

‘Which way now?’ At ground level, with the narrow streets tight around us, I could not even see the dome of the Temple Mount any more. I had a general idea of its direction, but there were half a dozen streets and alleys leading into the city and it could have been any one.

‘That way.’ Before I could stop him, Thomas had decided. He pushed through the crowd and struck out down an alley.

‘Wait,’ I called, but I doubt he heard me in the uproar. Even if he had, he could hardly have stopped, for the flow of the crowd was relentless. Fearful of losing him entirely, we plunged after him, as the first screams began to rise from the buildings around us.

* * *

Whether chance or God or simply the instincts of the crowd guided us, we had chosen well. The road carried us quickly down the slope, and ended in a massive wall at the edge of the Temple Mount. Here euphoria ended and danger returned, for the remnant of the Fatimid garrison had chosen the vast bastions of the temple to make their last stand. They hurled down rocks and arrows – and also pots and pans, chairs and candlesticks, anything they could grab. But it was a desperate hope. They had trusted all their lives to defending the outer walls, and now that those were gone there was no time to erect new defences. Bodies began to fall among the makeshift missiles as the first of the Franks scaled the heights of the temple.

But that was not our battle. We turned right, and skirted the wall to its corner. The city that had hemmed us in suddenly opened out into the valley and there, barely two hundred yards distant, stood the bridge. Terrible shouts and the clash of arms echoed down from the courtyard above us, but I barely heard them. I ran along the base of the great rampart, trying to keep sight of Thomas ahead. The sun glared in my eyes and beat down on me; sweat poured down my face from under my helmet. I wiped it with my hand and tried to lick it off, desperate for water, but it only made me thirstier. All I could taste in my mouth was vinegar.

We came to the foot of the bridge. There was no way onto it from this side of the valley, for it projected straight out from the summit of the Temple Mount above us, but
I could see a flight of stairs climbing to join it on the far side. We stumbled down the valley, through the weeds and wildflowers that grew around the piers of the bridge. For an unreal moment I could almost believe I had left the city, that I was wandering through a pleasant meadow on a sun-baked hillside. Then I heard the clash of devastation rising ahead, and the illusion broke. The Franks had spread through the city like wildfire. Shouts and screams rose from the quarter in front of me; smoke began to taint the air. They could not be far from the house where Anna and the girls were kept, and I did not have to imagine what the Franks would do if they seized them before I got there. I was beyond exhaustion; I could barely lift my sword, let alone carry the great weight of my armour, but still I tried to increase my pace.

We staggered up the slope of Mount Zion, found the stair and clambered to its summit. To our left, the bridge ran back above the valley to the gate in the Temple enclosure; to our right, a dusty avenue led further into the city. I could barely see it for the great crowds that swarmed down it, men and women all fleeing across the bridge to the Temple Mount.
The Noble Sanctuary
, I remembered Bilal calling it, but they would not find sanctuary there.

On the far side of the bridge the street runs west, to a corner where two tamarisk trees grow
. We turned right, against the flow of the crowd. Aelfric battered through with his shield, while Sigurd and I followed in his path. Though the Ishmaelites on that road must have outnumbered us a
hundred to one, they ignored us. All they could think of now was saving themselves.

Thomas was still out in front of us, twisting and weaving through the crowd. Looking ahead, across the sea of oncoming faces, I saw he had reached a crossroads. More crowds poured in from the side-streets, pushing and screaming to get through, but that was not what I saw. On the corner of the streets two spindly trees protruded above the mob, their silver-green leaves preternaturally still in the uproar around them.

If you go right, there is a house with an iron amulet in the shape of a hand nailed to its door. That is where you will find your family.

The force of the crowd was so great we could barely move against it. Several times, even the combined weight of Aelfric and Sigurd could not keep us from being pushed back. My heart tightened, and a trembling seized my limbs: every passing second seemed to spell my family’s doom. Thomas, meanwhile, had vanished from sight completely – all I could do was hope that he had reached the house in time.

At last, with a final heave, we broke through to the crossroads and turned the corner. The crowds were thinner here and we could move more easily. I stared around, desperately searching for the door with the iron amulet.

‘Over here.’

Halfway up the street, Sigurd had stopped outside a square, two-storey house. A wooden balcony veiled the door in shadow, too dark to see from where I stood. I ran
there, urging my floundering limbs into one last effort. There was the door, as Bilal had said, with an iron hand nailed neatly to its centre. An unblinking eye stared out of the palm, surrounded by an inscription in Arabic. I barely noticed it. The door was open: the frame was splintered where it had been kicked in, and one hinge hung loose from its post.

‘Are we too late?’ I croaked the question, barely able to move my cracked lips.

An anguished cry echoed from the darkness inside the house. Before I dared to look, I heard swift footsteps running towards the door. Thomas tore it open, pulling it so hard that it broke free and fell to the ground with a shattering bang. He stepped over it into the light.

‘
It’s empty
.’

The desolation as he howled his discovery cut open my soul like a knife. He shook like a wild animal; tears rolled down his cheeks. He tore his helmet from his head and dashed it to the ground, whirled around and lashed out at the wall with his boot. The ground itself seemed to tremble with the impact. ‘
Where are they?
’ He turned to me in fury. ‘
You promised they would be here
.’

The power of his rage drove me back. I lifted my sword, fearing he might spring on me, and he might well have done if something else had not happened then. Most of the Ishmaelites had fled that street, though we could still see others hurrying past the crossroads towards the bridge; now, suddenly, two more came running towards us from the far end of the road. They were soldiers, the first I had
seen since entering the city. Their scale armour was badly torn, and their faces were black with soot. With a howl of rage, Thomas took up his axe and ran towards them.

They were barely a dozen yards from me when they met: close enough that I could see it all, far enough that I could do nothing to stop it. One of the Fatimids, the taller of the two, raised an arm to ward off Thomas’s assault. For a strange moment it almost looked as if he was offering a salute or a greeting, as if he had seen something he recognised. He did not even lift his sword.

Thomas bore down on him. Still neither man tried to protect himself. Surprise cut through my exhausted anguish and compelled me to see more clearly. It was not just soot that blackened their faces – it was the very skin itself. And there was something wrenchingly familiar in the figure of the taller man – the pride in his stance, even through battle-weariness and defeat.

There might have been hundreds – thousands – of the caliph’s African soldiers in Jerusalem that day, but only one who would have come to that house. I staggered towards them; I tried to call out but my mouth was too dry. I told myself afterwards that Thomas would not have heard me anyway. He was screaming like a demon, a wild gibbering that only rage could interpret. Despair made the axe light in his hands. It flashed in the sun as it swept down against Bilal’s neck, slicing through the collarbone and cleaving so deep it must have touched his heart. Even at the last, Bilal did not try to defend himself. He collapsed without a sound, the axe still embedded in him.