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Cathedral of Clermont, Auvergne region of central France

27 November 1095

H
is knees ached from three hours of prayer on a freezing stone floor. As Otho de Lagery, revered by much of the Catholic world as Pope Urban II, rose to his feet, his sacristan and his confessor both rushed over to grasp him under his arms and aid his standing.

Pope Urban was successor to Pope Victor III. His predecessor, who had spent most of his time running away from the papacy and hiding in a Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino, had been faced with many of the same problems that now beset Urban. Troublesome monarchs such as Henry IV and their contesting of Rome's control, wars with Germany and France, and even rival false, self-declared popes.

Yet, had his thoughts been confined to these problems, Urban might have been more composed. But recently his worries had been compounded by a letter from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, Alexios the First Komnenos.

Komnenos was the successor to the caesars of the Eastern Roman Empire and in his correspondence had begged Urban to send help in repelling the invading Seljuk Muslim Turks.

As Pope it was his role to hear the will of God. And when
no voice was forthcoming from the heavens, it was his role to decide the will of God. But divine directives could have practical and political outcomes and in the letter from Constantinople, Urban saw an opportunity to galvanise the warring and fractious children of Europe into something more coherent.

What was required was a common cause. The defence of Constantinople would be the beginning but Urban saw a larger prize that could empower the Church to levels it had never known. Once their mission had been successfully completed in Constantinople, the armies motivated by the Church would march on to Jerusalem and free the holy city from the contemptible grasp of the Muslim heathen.

For two months past, Urban had let it be known through the complex but highly effective communication system that was the Church hierarchy, that when the Great Council met in session, he would make a pronouncement that would change the course of the world.

And people had come, in their hundreds and thousands, to hear his words. Knights and barons, ladies in their finery and peasants from the fields. So vast was the crowd that had assembled in Clermont, fitting them into the cathedral would be impossible. Instead, Urban ordered the construction of a huge platform in the fields behind the church from which he would make the proclamation that he had spent so many hours on his knees formulating.

As the sun began to climb to its zenith above the wintery horizon, Pope Urban II left the home of Bishop Guillaume de
Baffie, where he'd been staying, and walked the short distance towards the field and the platform through the massive crowd that had formed.

Urban was surrounded by his ecclesiastical servants, carrying his shepherd's crook, with his chaplain carrying before him an open illuminated manuscript of the Gospel according to St John. Surrounded by the trappings of his station, Urban knew that he was an impressive figure. His vestments were of the very finest of silk from China, gold thread made by Italian craftsmen and sewn into the chasuble by the sisters of the Nunnery of the Virgin of Madrid, a mitre in the form of a triple crown. To all who saw him, he was, on earth, the representative of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Urban climbed the steps of the platform, his gown dragging on the wood in soft folds hiding his feet so that he appeared to almost float upwards. Spread before him were representatives of the greatest of all the kings and rulers of Europe and their retinues, surrounded by swathes of loyal peasant Christians. The crowd slipped into a hush and people fell to their knees and crossed themselves.

A huge illustrated Bible had been placed on a lectern upon the platform, open at the page of the Prophet Micah, which Urban would take as his text. Elevated far above even the tallest peasant, Urban could see how huge the crowd was, and hoped that his voice would carry to the back.

He'd made notes about his speech, but instead trusted to God and his memory that he wouldn't need to read what he was about to say. As a man who sought out the pleasant company of actors when he was appointed the Papal Legate in Germany a decade ago, he'd learned how to hold the attention of an audience, how to pause to make them concentrate and how to stress his words.

And so he began, reading from the great book before him.

‘For behold, the Lord comes forth from His place, and He shall descend and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall melt under Him, and the valleys shall split, as wax before fire, as water poured down a steep place. All this is because of the transgressions of the Jews and the Arabs, and because of the sins of those who do not worship Jesus as the Son of God.'

He looked up from the text and shouted, ‘Brothers in Christ, I speak to you today of a grave matter. Not a matter of the flesh, of kings or of governance of our Holy Roman Congregation. But today I must address you all, even the most lowly among you, the congregation of the faithful, concerning the very survival of our mother Church itself.'

When his words settled on the multitude he heard gasps and even some cries from deep within the audience. It was a good reaction. The weather was freezing cold, yet there were no murmurs of dissent. All had come from far and wide to hear his voice and, like an actor delivering rehearsed lines from a morality play at Easter, he waited for a reaction.

‘The Muslim is now at our door; the very Saracen himself, with his vicious scimitar and his leering countenance, killing and maiming in the name of a false god, spreading like the very plague through the lands of the East. And how long, brothers and sisters, will it be before he is here – in Rome or Paris, Hungary or Bavaria, even Clermont itself, raping and killing and forcing your children to bow to his Prophet in his mosque? To turn aside from the true cross of Christ and instead worship the evil crescent of Islam, a pointed thing like the horns of a devilish goat.'

There were screams of fear. Had he gone too far? He looked at the three hundred clericals who had accompanied him and saw that they were looking at him in horror. Good. He had their attention. He looked beyond them, into the crowd of thousands, and was pleased to see that they were terrified.

‘The Muslim is knocking on our door in his wild and unruly haste and he desires to take our house, our chattels, our very God and Almighty Jesus Himself. So now, today, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to issues that involve both yourselves and Almighty God directly. For your brethren who live in the East are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid that has often been promised them. For the Turks and Arabs, the Saracens and the Seljuks, have attacked them and have conquered much Christian land. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue in their pagan brutishness with impunity, then they will take this as a sign of our weakness, and they will be heartened and so will attack even more of the faithful of God.

‘Because of this, the Lord beseeches you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of Christ to raise up their arms, sharpen their swords, carry aid promptly to those Christians living under the threat of the Muslim invaders, and to destroy that vile race who has stolen the lands of our Lord.'

The air seemed to be heating up before him as the fanatics that inhabit every group of sane men began to whip up their brothers. Urban saw before him the beginnings of a frenzy. This was good, but to be victorious he would need the dukes and the earls, the kings and their knights, to galvanise the forces of the Church.

‘We must raise an army and create a new pilgrimage to go to Constantinople and then on to Jerusalem, and rid our lands, our holy lands, of this plague among mankind. I will call this pilgrimage a Crusade, named after the very cross on which our Christ suffered for our sins.'

Ever the strategist, Urban knew that war needed to make promises to those who partook in it; war needed to speak to both greed and aspiration.

‘Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war that should have been started long ago. Let those who for a long time have been robbers now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honour. For all who join in my Crusade and wear the cross of a fighting pilgrim, for those who take up sword and lance, bow and arrow and fight against the heathen, you will be absolved of all of your sins, and when you die, you will pass through the golden gates of heaven and live an eternal life.'

And now the crowd was his. The ruling class saw in the Crusade power and profit; the masses saw advancement and absolution.

‘Some of you may ask by what authority I call you and your congregants to arms. To those who dare to question me, I say that it is I, Urban, by the Grace of God Almighty, Pope and Pontiff and Vicar of Christ, who commands this. For in my prayers I heard the voice of God demanding the cleansing of His house in Jerusalem. And so I say to you
Deus Vult
! God wills it.'

As one, the three hundred clerics, scores of dukes and kings' envoys, and thousands of laymen and women, fell to their knees on the frozen ground of the field, their voices reaching to heaven, and shouted aloud, ‘
Deus Vult!
'

Deep in the crowd were two white-haired men, bent from a lifetime of service They fell to their knees with the crowd but they were not Christians. Jacob and Nimrod were Jews in the service of the Duke of Champagne, Meaux and Blois. They were listening to the Pope at the duke's request and were to report back to him.

As they knelt on the ground with the echoes of ‘
Deus Vult
' around them, they looked at each other, fear for the future clear on each of their faces.

Moscow, USSR

1947

W
hen she was dragged out of her class of students in the basement Hebrew school years earlier, she was Judita Ludmilla Magidovich, daughter of Abel Abramovich Magidovich and his wife Ekaterina Davidovna Magidovich. Six months of training in Moscow and Leningrad transformed her into another person altogether, one called Judita Magid, daughter of Muscovites who had escaped the Stalin regime and who was making her way out of Russia, south to Palestine and a new life.

It had been no direct route. To ensure that her travel documents held up to scrutiny, Judita travelled from Leningrad to Moscow so that her passport and other papers were properly stamped, then by train to the Ukraine before a boat from Odessa, through the Black Sea, to Istanbul. From there, she'd travelled by train north through Bulgaria to the most northerly part of the Adriatic Sea, and the international port of Trieste, where she presented herself as a Jew fleeing the aggressions of totalitarianism and the privations of a Russia bruised and battered by a murderous war against the Nazis.

In Trieste, she had joined hundreds of German, Austrian, Polish Jews and a menagerie of other nationalities trying to board a boat bound for Palestine. It took her three weeks of queuing, negotiating, demanding and begging, but eventually she managed to find passage with dozens of other refugees fleeing the remnants of war-ravaged Europe.

During that journey, Judit's intense training as a spy transformed her. She metamorphosed slowly and cautiously from an angry young Jewish girl, demeaned by a society that hated her, to a woman of stature, potent and commanding.

But since then, her identity had changed yet again. Today she was Judit Etzion, a married woman, a mother and a citizen of a Palestine that would soon become Israel.