“What’s all this? The poor don’t need to be ashamed of their ignorance, I know that. No one expects a philosophical treatise from you. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they—”
“I am not poor in spirit! And when I don’t know something, it doesn’t bother me until someone insists on rubbing my nose in it, at the same time spouting platitudes such as ‘use your head.’ How can I, reverend sir, when there’s obviously nothing in it? At the moment I don’t even know what to do to survive the next few days. I’m an ignorant fox, yes, or more likely a wretched little squirrel, but I will not accept insults. Not even from you, however many times you boast about wanting to help me.”
His mouthful of wine went down the wrong way; he coughed and gasped for breath. Jaspar looked on, then stretched over and gave him a thump on the back.
“So you really want to know about the Crusades?”
“Yes,” Jacob panted, “why not?”
“A history lesson. Might be a little dry.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Hm. Right then. I’ll have to go back a little. Pour yourself more wine. There’s still some in the jug?”
“Should be enough.”
“Good. You’ve heard of the Holy Roman Empire, I suppose?”
“Of course.”
Jaspar shook his head. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. To be precise, it’s a divided empire; holy or not, it has disintegrated over the centuries. On the one hand there’s the East Roman empire with Byzantium as its center and the West Roman with Rome. If you think things are pretty turbulent now, let me tell you they were much worse when the old empire finally collapsed, about two hundred years ago. The pope inveighed against the supposed depravity of the kings and emperors. The old story. When the spiritual and secular powers are at each other’s throats they like to use our Lord Jesus Christ as a figurehead. The king got them to elect an antipope. Suddenly there were two popes. God had two representatives on earth who couldn’t stand each other and always proclaimed something different from their opposite number. One spoke of the dunghill of Rome, the other of the king’s whore. All very edifying. The Roman pope excommunicated the king. Unfortunately that was only valid for the West Roman empire. There was also the East Roman, with an emperor in Byzantium who didn’t give two hoots for Rome. He was a rather dubious character anyway, who had got to the throne by a bloody intrigue, which had really irritated the Vatican. So what did the pope do in his righteous anger? What do you think?”
Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “Difficult to say.”
“What would you have done as the pope of Rome?”
“I would have excommunicated the other one as well.”
“Very good, Fox. That was exactly what the pope did. Not that the Byzantine emperor cared. He didn’t care about much. Not even about the Seljuks who were at the gates—”
“Seljuks?”
“Sorry. Seljuks, Pechenegs, all Turkish tribes that Mohammed had united with the Arabs. So their empire stretched from Khorasan across Iran and the Caucasus, over Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine as far as the Hejaz. A huge area. And now the infidels wanted Byzantium as well. Given the conflict of interest within Christendom, the most they were likely to be faced with was a few toothless quotations from the Bible. The emperor of Byzantium was as false-hearted as he was weak, which was probably a good thing because it made him easier to depose. There was the usual palace revolution and a remarkable young man by the name of Alexios came to power. Once he was firmly established, he took stock and the result was not encouraging. Many parts of the empire had fallen into the hands of the Turks and the rest threatened to follow suit.”
Jaspar licked his lips and had a drink.
“In addition to which,” he went on, “Alexios had problems with Rome. The excommunication had been passed on to him like foot-and-mouth disease. No hope of help from the West. So Alexios tackled the Seljuks, Pechenegs, and what have you on his own, drove them back and managed to negotiate a peace, a pretty flimsy affair, but still. For the benefit of Christendom, he announced, though basically all he was interested in was regaining his territory. He couldn’t have cared less about the fact that the holy places—Palestine, the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, Antioch, where St. Peter had lived—were under Seljuk rule, which was what the pope was so concerned about. All the horror stories about the ungodly Turks who slaughtered Christian pilgrims by the thousand, cooked and ate them, were products of the overheated imagination of deranged hermits. The Christians in the occupied territories had the advantage of Islamic law, the most tolerant there is, if you ask me. They were allowed to practice their religion and had very few complaints, certainly not enough to send a call for help to the West. Is this all beyond you, or would you like to hear the rest?”
“Of course. Go on.”
Jaspar smiled. “You’re not so muddleheaded as that mat of red hair would suggest. Right then. Back in Rome things were improving. Both the pope and the antipope died and a new one was elected. He called himself Urban II and if I said before he was a blockhead, that was only half the story. He certainly wasn’t stupid, but his indolence was nothing short of blasphemous. He simply had no desire to quarrel with anyone at all. The first thing he did was to lift the excommunication from Alexios, fighting with his back to the wall in far-off Byzantium, and conclude a treaty of friendship with him. Two crooks who deserved each other, ha! Alexios immediately tried to think up ways of winkling a few pious warriors out of his new friend, to help him win back some of the occupied territory, Anatolia in particular. But there were limits to this friendship, since Urban just wasn’t interested in war. He ran his church and that was that. Alexios was unhappy with that. What was the point of an ally who did nothing? So he sent an embassy of twelve ambassadors to Piacenza, where Urban was holding a council, and they went on at great length about the sufferings of the Christians under the yoke of Islam, wailed and gnashed their teeth at the siege of the Holy City, and made a great to-do about pilgrims on their way to Palestine being hung by the feet and chopped into little pieces while still alive and God knows what other nonsense. All hugely exaggerated and full of oriental rhetoric, which they learned down there. But effective. Urban promised help. Promising was one thing Urban was good at.”
“And? Did he send help?”
“Urban? Not straightaway.” Jaspar giggled. “As I said, he was a cleric through and through, and preferred to spend his time in the usual ecclesiastical pursuits. Canonizations, witch trials, that kind of thing. But at least he’d promised. Alexios was rubbing his hands at the prospect of a hundred well-armed knights, and Urban would certainly have sent them, sooner or later—if he hadn’t had that blasted dream.”
Jacob, who was listening fascinated, went to fill his mug, but there was nothing to fill it with.
“Oh,” said Jaspar and teetered off toward the back of the room.
“I’m not bothered,” Jacob called out after him.
“But I am.”
“You can’t just stop like that.”
“Why not?” Jaspar’s voice was already coming from outside. “The story took hundreds of years to become history, but you can’t wait.”
“I want to know what happened next. And you still haven’t told me about the lost children.”
Jaspar was trying to open the trapdoor in the yard. “Well, if you insist, come out here.”
Jacob jumped up and went out into the dark yard. Jaspar had lit a candle and indicated he should go down first. Cautiously they negotiated the slippery steps. Jacob was plunged into the damp, musty smell once more and a strange feeling of timelessness came over him. The darkness in front echoed with the drip of water. Then candlelight filled the immediate surroundings. Jaspar was standing beside him.