Pilgrim's War Read online

  Benet felt his legs slow at the sight. It looked as though the fight would go to the locals, and he had a premonition of danger and death, but even as the icy chill of fear assailed him, he lifted his weapon, gave a cry, and launched himself into the fray.

  Fulk pulled Odo away from the figures at the battle site.

  ‘What is it?’ Odo said irritably.

  ‘I didn’t like to see you doing that,’ Fulk said.

  ‘It’s the reality of war, Fulk. Men will die. Men must die.’

  ‘I know. But I don’t expect to see you enjoy killing them!’

  Odo stared at him. ‘Killing the enemies of God and our enemies isn’t cause for celebration? What is the matter with you?’

  Fulk let go of his brother’s tunic. ‘Odo, I don’t understand . . . This isn’t you! You’re no killer, you’re not bloodthirsty, man!’

  Odo pulled his tunic straight and glanced back at Fulk. There was a look in his eyes that made Fulk recoil.

  ‘This is holy war, Fulk. If you don’t want to do God’s will, you should go back home to Sens. What did you think this would be? A pleasant walk in the sun, two Paternosters, a Hail Mary, and all would be done? This is war, Fulk. War! I will do all I can to destroy the scum that stole Jerusalem from us.’

  ‘Odo, these aren’t scum, these are Christians!’

  ‘They cannot be. They are trying to stop us.’ Odo turned his back and walked back to the bodies, but Fulk could not watch.

  He turned away blindly, filled with revulsion. It was Odo who would usually remain calm and prevent a fight. When people squabbled, it was Odo who went to stop them. Fulk had always been the one to ignite passions, but Odo was the brother who smoothed things over again. To see him, Odo, his own dear brother, blithely executing wounded men shocked Fulk profoundly. His legs shivered, but it felt as though the ground under his feet was itself trembling with horror.

  He stumbled on, away from the battle, back down the line of the pilgrim army.

  A voice stopped him. ‘Hello, Fulk,’ Guillemette said.

  He turned to her.

  ‘Fulk, what is it?’

  ‘I . . . Odo, he’s . . .’ Fulk could not find the words, and stammered to a halt.

  Guillemette walked to him, and as he bent his head and began to weep, she put her arms about him and gently placed a hand on his scalp, pressing his face onto her shoulder, stroking his hair until she felt his sobbing abate. ‘This pilgrimage must change all of us,’ she said.

  ‘He’s killing all the injured. I suppose it could be that he’s saving them from further pain, but . . .’

  ‘It is the effect of the battle, I expect. Fighting can make men behave oddly.’

  ‘I never would have thought to see it,’ Fulk said.

  ‘Go back and find the woman Sybille,’ Guillemette said. ‘She is trying to cook. Her daughter needs food.’

  ‘How is she?’ Fulk said, embarrassed by his sudden outburst. He sniffed and cleared his throat.

  ‘Richalda is not well. I have said I’ll do what I can to get more food,’ Guillemette said, and put her head to one side.

  ‘Ah, you want some from me, then?’ he said.

  ‘I can pay you.’

  ‘There’s no need. I have some to spare,’ he said, and reaching into his scrip he pulled out his last pieces of sausage. They were blackened where they had been dried.

  She took them from him. ‘I will repay you when you want.’

  ‘Thank you, but you need not. You shouldn’t be offering yourself while on pilgrimage.’

  ‘If I need food, I would rather pay than be in any man’s debt,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t need to with me,’ he said.

  ‘I must return to Sybille,’ Guillemette said.

  Sybille heard the roar and started to her feet, peering in the direction of the noise. She could see little, only groups of pilgrims walking towards her in dribs and drabs, some limping, others clutching their own bloody wounds, or helping along those who were more cruelly injured.

  ‘Did we lose the battle?’ she asked of one man.

  He had grizzled hair and a cap with a tassel dangling. She recognised him as the man with the bill on the march who said he had been on pilgrimage before. Now he gave her a wolfish grin that for an instant drove away the weariness from his eyes. ‘No, mistress, we killed them all!’

  Sybille was watching the other men and thinking, So this is what a victory looks like, but the thought was soon driven from her mind. She saw the man with the grizzled hair begin to totter. He coughed, his throat sore from shouting, inhaling dust, and the effort of breathing in the fumes of death, and she realised he was desperate for water. She hurriedly picked up her flask and ran to him, setting the bottle to his lips and pouring. He choked a little, and opened his eyes to look at her a moment with a small frown. Then a grin twitched his lips. ‘Is this Heaven?’

  She smiled. ‘No. Your struggles are not yet over.’

  ‘In that case, I thank you, mistress,’ he said. He tried to rise, but coughed again. ‘My head feels like sixteen smiths have used it for their anvil,’ he muttered.

  ‘Lie here and rest,’ she said. ‘Are you wounded?’ There was no sign of blood that she could see.

  ‘No. It is only my pride that is injured. I thought I was young enough to join the youths in the front line, but when the fighting grew more ferocious, I learned that an old man’s arm quickly loses its vitality. I’m exhausted, but only because I am ancient.’

  ‘You are not ancient,’ she said with a smile, and left him to return to Richalda.

  Sybille’s daughter was not improved. Her eyes moved beneath her lids, and she was shivering, although her brow was hot to the touch. When Sybille tried to speak to her, she got no response at all. The girl moved and groaned, but Sybille could get no other reaction, no matter how much she prodded and whispered with increasing agitation. ‘Richalda? Richalda, wake up!’

  ‘Can I help?’

  It was the old man. He had managed to clamber to his feet, and now stood over them, staring down with a frown of concern on his brow.

  ‘My daughter. She has a fever, and I cannot get her to wake,’ Sybille said.

  ‘She looks deeply asleep,’ the man said.

  ‘She always wakes usually when I prod her. She never sleeps this deeply.’

  ‘Do you want to find help? I’ll stay here with her,’ the old man said.

  Sybille ran her fingers through the stray hair that had escaped Richalda’s coif, and felt her chest heave with sobs. ‘I can’t leave her, but I need my husband. He went over there because of Belgradians who came to rob us, and I want to go to find him, but I can’t leave Richalda here alone!’

  ‘Then you go find him, and I’ll sit here with the maid and make sure no harm comes to her, mistress. I swear, no one will come close to her while I’m here,’ the man said.

  Sybille gave him a grateful smile, cast an anxious look down at her daughter, and then fled.

  CHAPTER 16

  Plains outside Belgrade, Thursday 5th June, 1096

  Benet brought his sword down on the bald pate of a Belgrade man, and it sheared through the bone, the sensation jarring his hand like the blow from a cudgel. He pulled the blade free, all the while giving a high, keening sound. It was terror.

  All about him, it seemed, there were men with weapons crowding in on him. He had been mad to attack like that, rather than waiting and trying to join the other pilgrims. Now he was all alone at the rear of a great line of Belgradians, and they were turning to him. Two ran at him on his left, and he wildly flailed with his sword. He was lucky; one tripped over a body on the ground, and the other held back, less enthusiastic to join the fray on his own.

  ‘Pilgrims! To me!’ Benet cried, and saw another man at his right, a sword rising; he blocked it as best he could, and the clash when the blades met was enough to make something snap in his shoulder. He took the sword in both hands, trying to swing it around to defend himself, but a man ran into
him from behind, taking his feet out from under him. A boot stamped onto his sword’s blade, and then a cudgel caught him on the back of the head, knocking his face into the dirt.

  Benet felt his front teeth snap in the moment before blessed unconsciousness overwhelmed him.

  When Fulk reached the edge of the baggage train, he continued on, as though the act of walking could eradicate the images of Odo slaughtering the wounded. But it did not. He was exhausted, mentally and physically, and his legs moved like those of an automaton. Once past the army, he carried on, walking to the copse of trees. In front of it there were the bodies of fifteen men, all cut about and beaten, sprawled in the undignified postures of death. Fulk set his hand to his sword, but there was no sound of murder, no fresh clamour of weapons. Near the copse was a wood, and he peered inside as he walked. He was also moving further from the camp and closer to the town beside the river, for the river curved here.

  Fulk walked into the cool shadows beneath the trees, barely aware of anything but his misery. There, he grew aware of a noise: shouting and taunting cries. He frowned to himself and pressed on, his eyes moving about. There was a thicker barrier of trunks, but then a sudden clearing.

  There was movement. He stopped, sliding sideways in among the trees at the side of the path. He approached, watching and listening carefully.

  He saw the chapel with the struggling men before it. Perhaps a hundred pilgrims assailed by three or four times their number. Soon most were lying and whimpering on the ground, while the few remaining on their feet were beaten into submission. A number of men from Belgrade stood with amusement as others beat the pilgrims with their spear-butts, pushing them towards the chapel.

  Some tried to escape. Fulk saw one man who drew back and screamed for help. He ducked and darted from the line of Belgrade soldiers, trying to run to freedom. He managed only five paces before a spear penetrated his back, and he tumbled to the ground squealing like an injured rabbit. A Belgrade soldier walked to him and pressed the spear down with both hands, twisting it while his victim struggled.

  Benet felt himself being dragged over the ground. His head hurt like the Devil, and he felt sick. When he opened his eyes, the light was blinding and he had to narrow them urgently. He groaned and tried to kick his feet to free them, and he was dropped unceremoniously, then kicked in the flank. He rolled over. ‘What’s going on?’

  Pilgrims were all about him. He clambered to his feet, but even as he gazed around he saw the man bolt, darting between the Belgradians until the spear brought him down.

  To stay was to die. Benet saw a gap and threw himself forward, running swiftly, slipping between two Belgradians, darting around another, then entering an open space. The path was in front of him. It was only a short way to the pilgrims’ camp, and there he would find Sybille, and she would love him again, knowing he was brave, that he had fought for her.

  Fulk saw a second man bolt from the line of pilgrims and try to flee, and recognised him, but the soldier with the spear swung it like an axe as he passed, and Fulk heard the shin bone snap. The man went down, the spear stabbed, and Fulk heard a horrible scream.

  His attention moved back to the chapel. The others were forced inside, to the jeers and taunts of the Belgradians, and then the doors were slammed and wedged closed. Then Fulk saw the soldiers light a fire. As soon as the flames were well lighted, they grabbed torches. They must have had oil on them, because they ignited with a ferocity that mere bundles of twigs would not have had. Hurling them in through the windows, the soldiers laughed to hear screams. The pilgrims were pleading for help, for mercy, as the chapel began to burn, but to no avail. Fulk felt sick. The Belgrade soldiers mocked their victims as the building caught fire. Flames licked from the broken windows and began to curl up from the roof as the timbers caught, and the shrieks from inside rose in intensity as a thudding grew. Fulk realised they were beating at the doors in a vain attempt to escape.

  There was a sudden shout, and the Belgrade fighters turned as one. A force of pilgrim knights was riding towards them at the canter, lances held aloft. In a moment many of the Belgrade men had set off for their own mounts, clambering aloft with desperate urgency, while others without horses formed a square with a bristle of spears jutting like an angry hedgehog. While the riders were soon disappearing in the direction of their city, the pilgrim knights charged the men on the ground. They hurtled past Fulk and their lances speared twelve men in the first pass, and then the knights were hacking down at the men with their great swords and axes. It was all quickly over. The Belgrade men lay sprawled on the ground in the undignified postures of death.

  Fulk pushed his way through the last of the trees and undergrowth as the pilgrim knights paused. One saw him and lowered his spear as though to attack, but Fulk raised his hands and shouted quickly in French, ‘I’m a pilgrim!’

  The knight lifted his pot helm and peered at him. ‘Very well. What is happening here?’

  ‘They shut captured pilgrims in the chapel and set light to it! We have to release them!’

  There was a roaring from the conflagration, and the heat was obscene. Fulk could feel it like the searing of a smith’s forge at his cheek and brow as he ran to the doors. Shrieks and cries came from inside, and although Fulk tried to remove the wedges, they were distorted by the heat and would not budge. The fire was so intense that he could not touch them. He resorted to kicking them away, and then tried the door handle. It was so hot it scorched his fingers, and he snatched his hand away, the searing pain driving out all thoughts for a moment. Then he snatched a spear from one of the riders, shoved the end into the metal ring of the lock and pulled with it as a lever. Gradually, he felt the lock move, and at last the door opened.

  The gust of heat that emanated from within was like the exhalation of the Devil. Inside Fulk could see some men moving about, but they were flaming, like living torches. Even as he stared, they fell.

  The party of horsemen eyed the building one last time, and then trotted off in the direction of the city, seeking someone to punish for this latest horror. Fulk said nothing, but crouched at a tree and watched as the chapel burned and collapsed in on itself. The roof gave way, and then the end wall collapsed, throwing a shower of sparks high into the sky.

  Fulk slumped at a tree trunk near the chapel and covered his face in his hands. He had done all he could to help the pilgrims inside, but it was not enough, and he wept for the poor men who had burned to death.

  Sybille hunted about the entrance to the woods where the initial fight had been, desperate for news of her husband, but he was not among the dead there. She was certain that Benet must have gone into the woods with the other pilgrim fighters. Perhaps the fight had not gone so well? It was likely that he would be somewhere in among those trees, she thought. Perhaps he had been beaten, and even now lay in there, injured and desperate for help.

  She ran on towards the trees, and as she went she saw a column of smoke rising. It was enough to make her hesitate. She felt a clutching in her breast, as though an iron fist had gripped her heart and was squeezing it tight, until she must slow and pause, panting. The thought of Benet drove her on, but her legs were reluctant, and seemed to turn to lead. She feared what she might discover in among the trees. There was a rattle of harnesses and steel, and a troop of men on horseback burst at the gallop from a track that led through the little wood. It made her cringe and throw herself in among the trees, but the men turned their beasts to the city and were swiftly off, their hoofs thundering on the heavy soil.

  Once the noise of their passage was gone, all was still. Not a bird sang, and all she could hear was a crackling and high keening noise.

  She entered the woods, fearful and cautious. No one knew what might lurk in the deep darkness of a forest, whether it was the danger of a vicious boar, a bear, or wolf, or the still more terrifying threat of a witch or spirits.

  Today Sybille forced all thoughts of such superstition to the back of her mind. She pressed on through the trees, all
the while aware of the reek of burning; not the fresh smell of clean, well-cured wood, but the sour tang of old and rotten timbers. The smoke was thinner now, and she could discern the odour of burning meats, as though there was a campfire ahead of her and someone had set the spit too close to the flames.

  She sidled about the track, wary of meeting more men here in the trees where no one could see her and protect her, terrified of what she might find, but more scared of leaving, never to find her husband again. Her eyes hunted among the tree trunks and bushes, searching for a body that could be her man’s, but there was nothing to be seen. Not until she approached a wide clearing.

  The crackling of flames was louder, and she saw, dimly through the trees, the burning chapel. She hurried forward, her mind empty of everything but the need to get to the building. The dangers of the forest fell from her mind as she hurried onwards, and she stopped at the clearing just as the roof finally collapsed with a shower of sparks. A gust of air, hot and foul, wafted past her, and she held up her forearm to shield herself, before peering at the building again.

  That was when she saw Benet at the side of the path.

  He was on his back, and she ran to him. ‘Benet! Oh, God in Heaven, no!’

  There was blood at his mouth, mingling with the blood on his breast. He had a wound in his throat that bubbled as he breathed out, he had lost three fingers of his right hand, and there was a cut over his eye that was as long as her forefinger, but there was also a black hole in the side of his skull. Even as she fell to her knees at his side, his body was racked and he gave one last gasp as he died.

  ‘Mistress, go back!’

  She looked up to see Fulk. At first words failed her, and then she felt a fire of rage engulf her and blazed, ‘I won’t leave him! He’s my husband! My husband! My love! Oh, God, what can we do now?’

  Odo stood, stretching his back, peering about him dumbly. Other men were engaged in a similar fashion, strolling about the battlefield, taking choice pieces of mail, gauntlets, boots or weapons. Many were searching for the easier items: bangles or rings. Many found swollen fingers hard to manipulate, and snipped off the offending dead finger. Odo paid the ghouls no attention. The dead had no need of their wealth.