And there was Robert with his goose, Hortense, who had sneaked into our ranks one day as we passed through Apt. Fresh-faced and chattering, Robert claimed to be sixteen, but it didn’t take a seer to divine that he was lying. “I’ve come to carve the Turks,” he boasted, brandishing a makeshift knife. I handed him a stick that would be good for walking. “Here, start with this.” I laughed. From that moment on, he and the goose were great companions to us.
It was late summer when we finally came out of the mountains.
“Where are we, Hugh?” Robert moaned, as another interminable valley loomed before our eyes.
“By my calculations . . .” I tried to sound cheerful. “A left at the next ridge and we should see Rome. Isn’t that right, Nico? This was the pilgrimage to St. Peter’s we signed up for, wasn’t it? Or, shit, was it the Crusade?”
A ripple of tired laughter snaked through the exhausted ranks.
Nicodemus started to answer, but everyone shouted him down. “We know, Professor, we’re near, right?” taunted Mouse, a diminutive Spaniard with a large hooked nose.
Suddenly I heard shouting from up ahead. Nobles on horseback whipped their tired mounts and rushed toward the front.
Robert bolted ahead. “If there’s fighting, Hugh, I’ll save you a spot.”
All at once, my legs seemed ready to comply. I grabbed my shield and ran after the boy. Ahead of us was a wide gulf in the mountains. Hundreds of men were gathered there, knights and soldiers.
For once, they were not defending themselves. They were shouting, slapping one another on the back, thrusting their swords toward Heaven and hurling their helmets into the air.
Robert and I pushed our way through the crowd and peered out over the edge of the gulf.
Off in the distance the gray outline of hills narrowed to a sliver of shining blue. “The Bosporus,” people shouted.
The Bosporus . . . !
“Son of Mary,” I muttered. We were here!
A jubilant roar went up. Everyone pointed at a walled city nestled into the isthmus’s edge. Constantinople. It took my breath away, like nothing I had ever seen before. It seemed to stretch out forever, glinting through the haze.
Many knights sank to their knees in prayer. Others, too exhausted to celebrate, simply bowed their heads and wept.
“What’s going on?” Robert looked around.
“What’s going on . . . ?” I repeated. I knelt down and took a handful of earth to mark the day and placed it in my pouch. Then I hoisted Robert into the air. “You see those hills over there?” I pointed across the channel.
He nodded.
“Sharpen your knife, boy. . . . Those are Turk!”
Chapter 8
FOR TWO WEEKS WE RESTED outside the gates of Constantinople.
Such a city I had never seen before in all my life, with its huge glittering domes, hundreds of tall towers, Roman ruins and temples, and streets paved with polished stone. Ten of Paris could have fit within its walls.
And the people . . . crowding the massive walls, roaring with cheers. Clad in colorful, lightweight cottons and silks, in hues of crimson and purple I had never seen. Every race was represented. European, black slaves from Africa, yellows from China. And people of no stench. Who bathed and smelled of perfume, dressed up in ornate robes.
Even the men!
I had traveled across Europe in my youth and had played most of the large cathedral towns, but never had I seen a place like this! Gold was like tin here. Stalls and markets were crammed with the most exotic goods. I traded for a gilded perfume box to take back home for Sophie. “A relic already!” Nico laughed. New aromas entranced me, cumin and ginger, and there were fruits I had never tasted before: oranges and figs.
I savored every exotic image, thinking of how I would describe it all to Sophie. We were hailed as heroes and we had fought almost no one. If this was how it would be, I would return both sweet smelling and free!
Then the knights and nobles rallied us. “Crusaders, you are here for God’s work, not for silver and soap.” We said good-bye to Constantinople, crossing the Bosporus on wooden pontoons.
At last we stood in the land of the dreaded Turk!
The first fortresses we encountered were empty and abandoned, towns scorched and plundered dry.
“The pagan is a coward,” the soldiers mocked. “He hides in his hole like a squirrel.”
We spotted red crosses painted everywhere, pagan towns now consecrated in the name of God. All signs that Peter’s army had been through.
The nobles pushed us hard. “Hurry, you lazy louts, or the little hermit will take all the spoils.”
And we did hurry, though our new enemy became the blistering heat and thirst. We baked like hogs, sucking our water skins dry. The pious among us dreamed of their holy mission; the nobles, no doubt, of relics and glory; the innocent of finally proving their worth.
Outside Civetot we had our first taste of the enemy. A few straggly horsemen, turbaned and cloaked in robes, ringed our ranks, lofting some harmless arrows at us, then fled into the hills like children hurling stones.
“Look, they run like grandmothers,” Robert cackled.
“Send Hortense after them.” I squawked about like a chicken. “No doubt they are cousins of your goose.”
Civetot seemed deserted, an enclave of stone dwellings on the edge of a dense wood. No one wanted to delay in our rush to catch up with the army of Peter, but we needed water badly, so we decided to enter the town.
On the outskirts, a grim odor pressed at my nostrils. Nicodemus glanced at me. “You smell it, don’t you, Hugh?”
I nodded. I knew the stench, from burying the dead. But this was magnified a thousand times. At first I thought it was just slaughtered livestock, or offal, but as we got closer, I saw that Civetot was smoking like burning cinders.
As we entered the town there were corpses everywhere. A sea of body parts. Heads severed and gawking, limbs cut off and piled like wood, blood drenching the parched earth. It was a slaughter. Men and women hacked up like diseased stock, torsos naked and disemboweled, heads charred and roasted, hung up on spears. Red crosses smeared all over the walls — in blood.
“What has happened here?” a soldier muttered. Some puked and turned away. My stomach felt as empty as a bottomless pit.
From out of the trees, a few stragglers appeared. Their clothing was charred and tattered, their skin dark with blood and filth. They all bore the wide-eyed, hollow look of men who have seen the worst atrocities and somehow lived. It was impossible to tell if they were Christian or Turk.
“Peter’s army has crushed the infidels,” Robert called out. “They’ve gone ahead to Antioch.”
But not a man among us cheered.
“This is Peter’s army,” Nicodemus said grimly. “What remains of it.”
Chapter 9
THE FEW SURVIVORS HUDDLED AROUND fires that night, sucking in precious food, and told of the fate of Peter the Hermit’s army.
There were some early successes, they recounted. “The Turks fled like rabbits,” an old knight said. “They left us their towns. Their temples. ‘We’ll be in Jerusalem by summer,’ everyone cheered. We split up our forces. A detachment, six thousand strong, pushed east to seize the Turkish fortress at Xerigordon. Rumor had it some holy relics were held ransom there. The balance of us stayed behind.
“After a month, word reached us that the fortress had fallen. Spoils and booty were being divvied up among the men. Saint Peter’s sandals, we were told. The rest of us set out for there, eager not to miss out on the loot.”
“It was all lies,” said another in a parched, sorry voice, “from infidel spies. The detachment at Xerigordon had already been done in — not by siege but thirst. The fortress lacked all water. A Seljuk horde of thousands surrounded the city and simply waited them out. And when our troops finally opened the gates in desperation, mad with thirst, they were overrun and slaughtered to a man. Six thousand, gone. Then the devils moved on to us.”
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“At first, there was this howl from the surrounding hills . . .” another survivor recounted, “of such chilling proportion that we thought we had entered a valley of demons. We stood in our tracks and scanned the hills. Then, suddenly, daylight darkened, the sun blocked by a hail of arrows.
“I will never forget that deafening whoosh. Every next man clutching at his limbs and throat, falling to his knees. Then turbaned horsemen charged — wave after wave, hacking away at limbs and heads, our ranks shredded. Hardened knights fled terror stricken back to camp, horsemen at their tails. Women, children, the feeble and sick, unprotected — chopped to bits in their tents. The lucky among us were slain where they stood, the rest were seized, raped, cut apart limb by limb. What’s left of us, I am sure, were spared just so we could bear the tale.”
My throat went dry. Gone . . . All of them . . . ? It could not be! My mind flashed back to the cheerful faces and joyous voices of the hermit’s army as it marched through Veille du Père. Matt, the miller’s son. Jean the smith . . . all the young who had so eagerly signed up. There was nothing left of them?
A nauseating anger boiled up in my stomach. Whatever I had come for — freedom, fortune — all that left me as if it had never been there. For the first time, I wanted not just to fight for my own gain, but to kill these curs. Pay them back!
I had to leave. I ran, past Robert and Nico, past the fires to the edge of the camp.
Why had I ever come to this place? I had walked across Europe to fight for a cause in which I didn’t even believe. The love of my life, all that I held true and good, was a million miles away. How could all those faces — all that hope — be gone?
Chapter 10
WE BURIED THE DEAD FOR SIX DAYS STRAIGHT. Then our dispirited army headed farther south.
In Caesarea, we joined forces with Count Robert of Flanders and Bohemond of Antioch, a heralded fighter. They had recently taken Nicaea. Our spirits were bolstered by the tales of Turks fleeing at full run, their towns now under Christian flags. Our once fledgling troop was now an army forty thousand strong.
Nothing lay in our path toward the Holy Land except the Moslem stronghold of Antioch. There, it was said, believers were being nailed to the city’s walls, and the most precious relics in all of Christendom, a shroud stained by the tears of Mary and the very lance that had pierced the Savior’s side on the cross, were being held for ransom.
Yet nothing so far could prepare us for the hell we were about to face.
First it was the heat, the most hostile I had ever felt in my life.
The sun became a raging, red-eyed demon that, never sheltered, we grew to hate and curse. Hardened knights, praised for valor in battle, howled in anguish, literally roasting in their armor, their skin blistered from the touch of the metal. Men simply dropped as they marched, overcome, and were left, uncared for, where they fell.
And the thirst . . . Each town we got to was scorched and empty, run dry of provision by the Turks themselves. What little water we carried we consumed like drunken fools. I saw men clearly over the edge guzzle their own urine as if it were ale.
“If this is the Holy Land,” the Spaniard Mouse remarked, “God can keep it.”
Our bodies cried, yet we trudged on; our hearts and wills, like the water, slowly depleting. Along the way, I picked up a few Turkish arrow- and spearheads that I knew would be worth much back home. I did my best to try to cheer other men up, but there was little to find amusing.
“Hold your tears,” Nico warned, keeping up with his shuffling stride. “When we hit the mountains, you will think this was Paradise.”
Nico was right. Jagged mountains appeared in our path, chillingly steep and dry of all life. Narrow passes, barely wide enough for a cart and a horse, cut through the rising peaks. At first we were glad to leave the inferno behind, but as we climbed, a new hell awaited.
The higher we got, the slower and more treacherous every step became. Sheep, horses, carts overladen with supplies, had to be dragged single file up the steep way. A mere stumble, a sudden rock slide, and a man disappeared over the edge, sometimes dragging a companion along with him.
“Press on,” the nobles urged. “In Antioch, God will reward you.”
But every summit we surmounted brought the sight of a new peak, trails more nerve wracking than the last. Once-proud knights trudged humbly, their chargers useless, dragging their armor, alongside foot soldiers like Robert and me.
Somewhere in the heights, Hortense disappeared, a few of her feathers left in a cart. It was never known what became of her. Many felt the nobles had themselves a meal at Robert’s expense. Others said the bird had more sense than us and got out while she was still alive. The boy was heartbroken. That bird had walked across Europe with him! Many felt our luck had run out along with hers.
Yet still we climbed, one step at a time, sweltering in our tunics and armor, knowing that on the other side lay Antioch.
And beyond that, the Holy Land. Jerusalem!
Chapter 11
“TELL US A STORY, HUGH?” Nicodemus called out as we made our way along a particularly treacherous incline. “The more blasphemous the better.”
The trail seemed cut out of the mountain’s edge, teetering over an immense chasm. One false step would mean a grisly death. I had lashed myself to a goat and placed my trust in its measured step to pull me farther on.
“There is the one about the convent and the whorehouse,” I said, delving back to my days as an innkeeper. “A traveler is walking down a quiet road when he notices a sign scratched onto a tree: ‘Sisters of St. Brigit Convent, House of Prostitution, two miles.’”
“Yes, I saw it myself,” a soldier exclaimed. “A ways back on that last ridge.” The peril of the climb was broken by a few welcome laughs.
“The traveler assumes it is a joke,” I resumed, “and continues along. Soon he comes to another sign. ‘Sisters of St. Brigit, House of Prostitution, one mile.’ Now his curiosity is piqued. A ways ahead, there is a third sign. This time: ‘Convent, Brothel, next right.’
“‘Why not?’ the traveler thinks, and turns down the road until he arrives at an old stone church marked St. Brigit. He steps up and rings the bell, and an abbess answers. ‘What may we do for you, my son?’
“‘I saw your signs along the road,’ the traveler says. ‘Very well, my son,’ the abbess replies. ‘Please, follow me.’
“She leads him through a series of dark, winding passages where he sees many beautiful young nuns who smile at him.”
“Where are these nuns when I am in need?” a soldier behind me moaned.
“At last the abbess stops at a door,” I went on. “The traveler goes in and is greeted by another comely nun, who instructs him, ‘Place a gold coin in the cup.’ He empties his pockets excitedly. ‘Good enough,’ she says, ‘Now, just go through that door.’
“Aroused, the traveler hurries through the door, but he finds himself back outside, at the entrance, facing another sign. ‘Go in peace,’ it reads, ‘and consider yourself properly screwed!’”
Laughter broke out from all around.
“I don’t get it,” Robert said behind me. “I thought there was a brothel.”
“Never mind.” I rolled my eyes. Nico’s trick had worked. For a few moments, our burden had seemed bearable. All I wanted was to get off this ridge.
Suddenly I heard a rumble from above. A slide of rock and gravel hurtled down at us. I reached for Robert and pulled the boy toward the mountain’s face, gripping the sheer stone as huge rocks crashed around us, missing me by the width of a blade, bouncing over the edge into oblivion.
We gazed at each other with a sigh of relief, realizing how close we had come to death.
Then I heard a mule bray from behind, and Nicodemus trying to settle it. “Whoa . . .” The falling rocks must have spooked it.
“Steady that animal,” an officer barked from behind. “It carries your food for the next two weeks.”
Nicodemus grasped for the rop
e. The animal’s hind legs spun, trying to catch hold on the trail.
I lunged for the harness around its neck, but the mule bucked again and stumbled. Its feet were unable to hold the trail. Its frightened eyes showed that the animal was aware of the danger, but the stone gave way. With a hideous bray, the poor mule toppled over the edge and fell into the void.
As it did, it caused a terrible reaction, pulling along the animal behind it to which it was tied.
I saw disaster looming. “Nico,” I shouted.
But the old Greek was too slow and laden with gear to get out of the way. My eyes locked helplessly on him as he stumbled in his long robe.
“Nico,” I screamed, seeing the old man slipping off the edge. I lunged toward him, grabbing for his arm.
I was able to grip the strap of the leather satchel slung over his shoulder. It was all that kept him from plunging to his death.
The old man looked up at me and shook his head. “You must let go, Hugh. If you don’t, we’ll both fall.”
“I won’t. Reach up your other hand,” I begged. A crowd of others, Robert among them, had formed behind me. “Give me your hand, Nico.”
I searched his eyes for panic, but they were clear and sure. I wanted to say, Hold on, Professor. Jerusalem is near.
But the satchel slid out of my grasp. Nicodemus, his white hair and beard billowing in the draft, fell away from me.
“No!” I lunged, grasping, calling his name.
In a flash he was gone. We had marched together for a thousand miles, but for him it was never far, always near . . . I didn’t remember my father, but the grief emptying from me showed that Nicodemus was as close to one as I’d ever had.
A knight pushed up the trail, grumbling about what the hell was going on. I recognized him as Guillaume, a vassal of Bohemond, one of the nobles in charge.