Pilgrim's War Read online

  For my wife, Jane,

  for her understanding, patience and generosity,

  all of which were sorely needed in

  the creation of this book!

  And

  In loving memory of

  Roy George (Peter) Jecks

  1920–2017

  BOOK ONE

  The Gathering Storm

  CHAPTER 1

  Sens, Monday 24th March, 1096

  The news rippled through the market like a flame running along a strip of cloth. People stopped and listened, and began to leave the stalls of food and wine, and made their way to the square before the great church, where the cool breezes tugged at cloaks and hats. Many looked up at the steeple, struck with the symbolism of that stone finger pointing towards the heavens as they waited. This was a great day, a day no one would forget. They had been waiting six months for this.

  Sybille disliked large crowds. She felt someone jostle her, and slapped the hand at her backside, turning and glaring at the grinning, bearded man behind her. Josse stepped between them, truculently shoving him away with his staff.

  ‘Thank you, Josse,’ she said, shielding Richalda as best she could from others in the square. She wouldn’t put it past these uncouth churls to try to fondle Richalda too, even though the girl was not yet eight years old. There were some who would fondle a flea-bitten cur after too much wine, and the air reeked of sour wine from the breath of those about her.

  Josse nodded; he stood only a little taller than her, with the fair hair of a Norseman and pale grey eyes. He had a slight build, and his face was as lined as an ancient peasant’s. Her husband, Benet, had found him, an unemployed sailor at the Parisian docks, and Josse had been as loyal as only a fellow rescued from a life of poverty could be. His staff whipped out, and a man cursed and took his injured hand away.

  It was the way of things. Women who joined a throng like this were considered fair game, especially in a town square. Sens was a big town, and with the buildings ringing the part-cobbled, part-grassed area, it felt like a huge baiting pit. For a woman, it was dangerous to be in such a crowd alone. Not only humiliating, with men touching and fondling her body like fruit in a grocer’s basket; worse could happen. It was the way of the lower classes that they would view any woman as available if she were to walk among them, which was why Sybille tended to avoid large crowds, but today should have been different.

  They were here to listen to the preacher.

  He had arrived yesterday: a ragged man clad in filthy clothes, with a hunched figure and a face long like that of the donkey he rode. He only ever drank wine and ate fish, apparently, and after his extensive travels he was as emaciated as a scavenging cur, but his piety gleamed in his eyes, so they said, and Benet was determined to come and hear him speak.

  Darling Benet. He was seven years older than her, and since they had married he had aged and looked much older. It was difficult to make money as an apothecary, and several times in the last fourteen months they had come close to having to sell their rooms and find a smaller place from which to continue his profession. No matter what he tried, though they scraped a living, money was always tight.

  Partly, she knew, it was his nature. Of an evening he would gamble with his friends at the taverns, whether on cock-fights, dogs or a game of chance. It was what a man would do when drinking. There was nothing she could do to prevent him. In the past Sybille had rescued her family by pawning or selling her jewels, but there were few enough left of them now. The next time Benet saw a guaranteed opportunity, or a wager that he thought could make them secure, she just hoped he would be right. And that he could stay away from playing dice.

  The crowd began to jostle forward; there were shouts and cheers, and Sybille felt a thrilling in her breast: this was the man they had gathered to listen to, the man who would explain the Pope’s proposal. All wanted to get closer to him, to hear the words that were said to come straight from God.

  She could see nothing over the sea of heads and hats, but the people were moving, and she was sure that the man known as the Hermit would soon be speaking. Where was Benet? She hoped he had not gone to the wine shop to drink and see his friends again.

  There was a sudden clamour, and she glanced about, hunting for Benet. When she looked back towards the church at the farther side of the square, a small man stood on a crate, his arms held up to the sky for silence. From this distance it was hard to see him clearly, and Sybille hoped that he would speak distinctly, but even as she had the thought the crowd was stilled, as though all were simultaneously struck dumb.

  The small figure began to speak.

  For two brothers to appear so dissimilar made many suspicious, especially since their mother had been, as all acknowledged, far too friendly for her own good when a maid. It ensured that they were the source of much quiet mirth while children.

  The folk had some cause for their gossip.

  Odo, the elder, was a full three inches taller than Fulk and ascetic in appearance. He had mousy-coloured hair and green eyes like his father. By contrast Fulk was wiry, with dark hair and pale grey eyes that marked him as different. Still, his fists had a whip’s speed, and he had a temper to match, as many neighbours had learned. In any case, while some declared that Odo’s narrow face and long nose was reminiscent of the local priest when the boy was born, none could say that Fulk’s strong, square jaw was like any man other than his father, the miller. Besides, no one wanted to insult either boy. Early on Fulk was marked out as a fiery spirit who was quick to take offence, whether to himself or his brother – although he was equally swift to forgive and apologise. As he grew older, his stormy temperament was tempered with a generosity and warmth that appealed to all. At the same time Odo grew more serious, a youth whose interest was sparked more by piety than by the pleasures of the flesh that so inspired Fulk.

  Fulk’s engaging smile, quick wit and charm made him known to all the more cautious fathers of young maids long before the two left to travel to Sens: Odo to work in the great church’s bakery, Fulk to learn his trade at a blacksmith’s. Most of the village approved of the brothers’ departure. All the men agreed that Fulk was a wastrel and malcontent who would deprive a score of maidens of their virginity and end on a gallows. Their wives agreed that he was no better than his mother, while casting thoughtful glances at his powerful shoulders, his regular features and ready smile, that had little to do with defending their daughters.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Fulk demanded now.

  ‘I can hardly hear a thing.’ Odo frowned. He burped quietly, tasting sour wine in his throat, staring fixedly at the preacher as the man lifted his arms to signal silence.

  ‘Aye, well, with the noise here, that’s hardly surprising,’ Fulk said. He uncorked his wineskin and took a good gulp. This was a day off for him, and he intended to make the most of it.

  ‘Drinking again?’ Odo said.

  Fulk passed him the skin and Odo drank deeply.

  Fulk grabbed it. ‘Hey! Don’t finish the whole skin!’

  ‘Just saving you from yourself, little brother,’ Odo said loftily.

  Fulk took another swig for luck, and then cast his eye about the crowd. At the fringes of the crowd, he saw her. A tall, dark woman, a young girl before her, and a thin, wiry man behind her who stood close enough to know her, but far enough away that Fulk was sure he was no husband. A servant, then. And a woman like her, with the elegance of a queen, would surely have to be chaperoned wherever she went.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind hearing what she has to say,’ Fulk said with a grin.

  ‘Eh?’ Odo said, distracted.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Quiet, then!’

  ‘All right, Odo. We aren’t in church now,’ Fulk said mildly. He turned his atte
ntion towards the crowd on the steps where Peter the Hermit stood.

  He was an unprepossessing character, in Fulk’s view, even at this distance. A shabby-looking man, thin and wretched, grubby and tatty, like many of the pilgrims loitering behind him. Fulk could easily understand the desire to escape a life of toil and drudgery – there were few jobs more guaranteed to make an intelligent man seek adventure than one which involved rising before dawn, making a fire, and then working hard all day until night-time. Worse, the smith was a lazy, drunken brute who despised all apprentices, and looked on Fulk as nothing more than cheap labour. Fulk was keen to see life, to experience adventure – but Peter the Hermit was not the man to tempt him, he decided. Unlike the woman: she could tempt him any day.

  ‘That’s the Hermit, then?’ a man asked.

  Odo was straining to hear, but Fulk nodded. ‘Yes. That’s the one. What’s he saying now, Odo? Can you hear him?’

  ‘He’s saying that the man to his side is Sir Walter de Boissy-Sans-Avoir, a bold knight who’s keen to serve pilgrims,’ Odo said. ‘Fulk – shut up! He says pilgrims used to be able to travel all the way to Jerusalem, but the last time he tried to go, he was turned back. The heathens who stopped him mocked him, he says.’

  Fulk shrugged, and started to turn back to the woman in the crowd, but something in the speaker’s tone made him frown and peer at the men on the steps.

  The Hermit’s voice was swelling.

  ‘They stop Christians from visiting the site of Jesus’s crucifixion, but that is not the worst of it! These heathens do not stop at that! They persecute the poor Christian souls who live there! These poor people suffer all the cruel privations and torments their cruel rulers can conceive. Some are forced to give up all their belongings and wealth; those in Jerusalem itself are barred from taking part in our holy ceremonies. They are bullied, enslaved, their women taken from them and compelled to consent to all manner of . . .’ his voice dropped to a low growl ‘. . . vicious and unnatural acts. The Christians are taken and have their private parts cut off to make them unsightly in the eyes of God, or have their bowels ripped from their bodies while they are alive, so that the heathens can learn whether they have swallowed gold or jewels. All this in the Holy Land where Christ was born!’

  This last was bellowed in proof of his horror. He stood with his arms upraised, fists clenched as though demanding that God Himself listen. Gradually his taut figure relaxed. His arms fell slowly and he gazed about him with weary insistence. He lifted his hands, now cupped as if begging for alms, and held them out as though pointing at the crowds.

  ‘This is why, my friends, this is why, when the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, our friend in Constantinople, begged that we should help him fight the predatory fiends who encroach ever nearer to his city, our Holy Father, the Pope, became so affected. He hears the voices of our brothers in Christ, and has prayed and reflected hard, searching for an answer. And God has answered him! God has told him what to do! My friends, we shall march on the Holy City itself, and wrest it back from the foul invaders who stole it! Even as I speak, hosts are gathering all over France and the Holy Roman Empire, and will soon make their way to the Holy Land. There they will fight all those who stand against us! We shall fight with these heretics, and kill all those who refuse to submit to God’s will! Men are marching under the banners of bold men like Sir Walter here, for wherever the Pope’s authority is respected, men will obey him. What, are the men of Sens less bold than those of Paris? Of Toulouse? Of Bordeaux? Nay! You will march too, will you not?’

  A roar of agreement and approval came from a thousand throats. Fulk looked about him and saw the poor lifting their fists and shouting, while behind them merchants cast subtle glances one at another. They would be unlikely to risk their own hides, he reckoned.

  ‘Women, children, all will be welcomed, for all your sins will be forgiven if you join this holy endeavour. If you come, be you never so tainted with sin, you will be rewarded in Heaven!’

  ‘He’s a persuasive orator,’ Fulk said cynically. ‘He knows how to get the attention of the townsfolk!’

  The hermit lifted his fist again. ‘Will you join me? Will you help our cause? This is God’s will! God asks it! God demands it! God wills it!’

  His words were taken up as a chant, and Fulk heard it reverberating around the square: ‘Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut! God wills it! God wills it!’

  ‘Very persuasive,’ he said. The sight and the sounds were thrilling, he could not deny it. ‘I feel sorry for the fellows they will attack.’

  ‘Well, they are godless heathens, brother,’ Odo said sharply. ‘They deserve punishment for the crimes they have committed against God.’

  ‘Someone should do something about it,’ a man near Fulk said.

  He was a scruffy tranter or carter, Fulk thought as they introduced themselves. The fellow introduced himself as Gidie. He had a belly like a barrel, which he was filling from the drinking horn in his hand; his other gripped a heavy-looking staff. His hosen were splattered and stained with the mud of a hundred villages, his tunic faded from green to pale brown where the sun had sucked the colour. With a face wrinkled like a prune, but a nose as round and purple as a plum, he looked like any contented villager.

  Fulk nodded to him encouragingly. ‘You want to? March all the way to Jerusalem on this great . . . what does he call it, Odo?’

  ‘He said it is to be a great iter, a pilgrimage, a walk across the lands to Jerusalem, to demand the right to visit the Holy City, and take it back from these heathens so that Christians might live there safely once more,’ Odo said.

  There was a sudden roar from the crowds. It sounded like the massed baying of a pack of hounds, Fulk thought.

  ‘Dieu le veut!’

  Odo added thoughtfully, ‘He said, “All those who march will have remission of all sins.” ’

  ‘That’ll persuade some.’ Fulk shrugged.

  ‘With your lifestyle, I’m surprised it doesn’t appeal to you,’ Odo said tartly.

  ‘Me?’ Fulk said innocently, but Odo wasn’t listening.

  The Hermit concluded: ‘No matter what your age, no matter what your crime, your Pope, your Holy Father, has promised that you will be forgiven. All those who die on this blessed pilgrimage will ascend to Heaven immediately! Dieu le veut; God wills it. Who can refuse such a glorious end? Give your money to support the pilgrims, or join the pilgrims as well! What do you have to lose, compared with all you will gain?’

  ‘Aye?’ Gidie said. He spat eloquently into the street. ‘Reckon there’ll be enough willing to go and do that, does he?’

  ‘He says he is gathering a great army to join him and wrest the Holy Land from them.’

  The tranter looked at his belly, then Odo and Fulk up and down. ‘I think he’s going to be happier with you two youngsters, rather than an old fart like me, don’t you?’

  Emersende listened carefully. A man pressed against her, and she felt his hand on her hip. She turned and grabbed his crotch and laughed. ‘Come on, you want to fuck with me, little man, you need more than a little cornichon like that!’

  The fellow’s face darkened, and he knocked her hand away, bunching his fist as though to attack her, but immediately Emersende tilted her pale face and stood arms akimbo. ‘Try that, and you’ll regret it. I have friends here.’

  Her words were not in jest. Already three men had taken to watching the man. ‘Jacques, you see this man? He likes to touch me up, but doesn’t like me talking about it.’

  The fellow spat a curse at her, and stalked away through the crowds. Emersende chuckled to herself. ‘I think I could let you have a cup or two of wine when you visit us next, Jacques,’ she said.

  He nodded with keen anticipation. Jacques knew he could expect special favours when he went to see her next.

  Emersende rolled her shoulders. Last night she had slept badly, and her muscles were aching. If she could, she would have remained in her cot until later, but today she had been persuaded to c
ome and listen to the preacher. Well, she was here, and frankly she thought she was wasting her time.

  ‘He’s not very impressive. I had thought to find a strong man, a knight, who could gain the attention of the people all about,’ she said.

  Beside her, young Jeanne tucked a stray blonde curl beneath her coif. Guillemette glanced at Emersende and shrugged. ‘You know what they can be like, some of these scrawny types. Look like they’ll die at the first spend, and then keep you rutting all night. Perhaps he has more stamina than you think.’

  ‘He had better, or else he’ll fall over,’ Emersende said dismissively.

  ‘I think he looks quite nice,’ Jeanne said. She was not yet two-and-twenty, a slim, fair woman with a long, heart-shaped face and pale blue eyes.

  Emersende pulled a face. ‘A runt like that?’

  ‘He’s not as bad as some I’ve serviced,’ Guillemette said. She was older than Jeanne, and at the upper limits of her appeal, where her technical skills were beginning to be outweighed by fading looks. She swore that she was but eight-and-twenty years old, but Emersende knew she’d been saying that for at least three years now. If she had to guess, Emersende would think that Guillemette must be at least two-and-thirty, and more likely two years older than that. Emersende had a good eye for the age of her fillies. A woman running a brothel had to.

  ‘He reminds me of a man I knew once,’ Jeanne said. ‘He was kind.’

  There was a reflective tone in her voice, and Emersende knew that she was thinking of her husband, Edmond. He had been kind to her at first. Men often were in the beginning. Sadly it had not lasted; Jeanne still hoped he might revert, but Emersende was better acquainted with his type.

  It was a strange truth that often women with looks as good as hers would marry brutes who would treat their dogs better. Jeanne had been wedded when only sixteen years old. To woo her, Edmond had been charm itself. That ended almost as soon as the priest had folded his alb, yet Jeanne still did not realise that her husband saw her only as a chattel, to be used or sold as he saw fit. She was too trusting.