‘You speak sense,’ Yves agreed.
Sense it might be, Josse thought as the silence extended. But it serves our purpose not at all.
He said cautiously, ‘Perhaps there is another way into this maze. Perhaps, Yves, we should look at it from Father’s point of view. Could we not remind ourselves of his life — what he did, whom he knew, that sort of thing — and see whether any sudden shaft of light comes to aid us?’
‘Would that help?’ Yves sounded dubious.
‘Well, it can’t hurt.’ Josse leaned on one elbow and looked across at Yves, on the other side of the little fire. He looked in that moment so like his father that Josse’s heart gave a lurch; they had all loved Geoffroi dearly and Josse, for one, still missed him; the death of a beloved father left a hole that could never really be filled. ‘Would it not be a rare treat,’ he added slyly, after a moment, ‘to lie here in the soft darkness and, with our memories and our love, conjure up our father?’
There was the faint sound of a sniff, then Yves said, somewhat shakily, ‘Aye, Josse. It would.’
PART TWO
‘God has instituted in our time holy wars, so that the order of knights and the crowd running in its wake may find a new way of gaining salvation.’
6
Geoffroi d’Acquin, twenty-two years old, healthy and strong, sang lustily along with the other soldiers as they rode out of Antioch on the long road south to Jerusalem. Many of the soldiers were old campaigners, and were putting their own lewd words to the familiar tune; Geoffroi, who had picked these up months ago, sang them too, laughing as he did so with the sheer joy of being young, fit, mounted on a fine horse and riding to war.
Geoffroi knew, almost as soon as he knew anything, that he was going to be a soldier. His first sword had been a small bolt of wood; not very large but heavy enough to lay open his elder brother’s head when Robert failed to duck out of the way in time. The three-year-old Geoffroi had received a beating — not a severe one, for his parents did not believe that the right way to discipline children was to thrash obedience into them — and, far more painfully, he had been deprived of both his little sword and his hobby horse for a whole week.
Geoffroi would say as he grew up that he had ridden before he walked, although this was a slight exaggeration; the riding in question had been sitting in front of his father on the great bay, Heracles, his shrill, ten-month-old voice screaming with a mixture of excitement and terror. By the time he was five, he was looking after his own pony (with the discreet help of a kindly groom) and was, as his mother used to remark, too fearless for his own good.
Geoffroi had always understood that it was Robert, his elder by three crucial years, who was the heir to the Acquin estates. His parents, Sir Robert and the lady Matilda, encouraged their second son in his military ambitions; Robert was more than capable of inheriting the responsibilities of the landlord’s role, in due course, and it would be better to have his closest sibling and natural childhood rival out of the way when he did so. Besides, there were other children to stay at Acquin and augment its population; there was Esmai, three years Geoffroi’s junior, and the youngest child, William. Born after a gap of six years, he was the baby of the family and its pet.
When Geoffroi was seven, he went away from the family home at Acquin to do his service as a page in the household of one of his father’s oldest friends. Sir Girald, a vassal of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou, was a tough master and, despite his affection for the boy, he showed him no leniency. Geoffroi learned his craft the hard way. In time, and still in Sir Girald’s household, he became a squire; impatient, restless, Geoffroi waited for the chance to put all the skills that he had acquired over the last ten years into practice.
He did not have too long to wait. In 1145, when he was nineteen, he was sent with a detachment of Sir Girald’s fighting men to join the retinue of the young Henry FitzEmpress. Henry, the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and his wife, the Empress Matilda of England, was, through his mother’s line, grandson of Henry I of England. His father had been invested the previous year with the ducal crown of Normandy by his overlord, Louis VII of France. Henry, although still but twelve years old, was already showing strong signs that he would follow in his father’s ambitious and energetic footsteps — Geoffrey’s acquisition of Normandy had been by conquest — and the excitement, daring and ambition of the Plantagenet court suited Geoffroi down to the ground.
He won his spurs in the autumn of 1145.
The timing was perfect.
For the past year, worrying news had been reaching Western Europe from the east. Fifty years ago, the First Crusade had succeeded in wresting the Holy Places of Outremer from the Turks; the four crusader states had then been established, the most important being the kingdom of Jerusalem. In the winter of 1144, however, the city of Edessa, capital of the first crusader state, fell to the Saracens under the command of Zengi, governor of Aleppo and Mosul. Although Zengi did not live to enjoy the fruits of his conquest for long — he died in the following September, assassinated, so they said, by a slave — he was succeeded by his son, Nureddin, whose reputation as a cruel fighter preceded him. A religious fanatic, he made it no secret that he would not rest until he had brought about a full Moslem reconquest of the Holy Land.
The crusader states, hard pressed, sent increasingly desperate pleas for help and, in December of 1145, the new Pope, Eugenius III, responded.
The Pope delegated the great Bernard of Clairvaux to preach the new crusade. At Vezelay, over the Easter celebrations of 1146, his passionate address moved thousands; led by King Louis of France and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, men and women of all stations in life raced to follow their example and take the cross. Such was the demand that the supply of cloth crosses ran out and Bernard had to tear up part of his habit to make more.
Among the enthusiastic press of people, his face alight with a mixture of religious devotion (Bernard of Clairvaux was a charismatic speaker) and sheer high spirits, went the new knight, Sir Geoffroi d’Acquin.
Preparations for the great enterprise took a full year. While the King and Queen taxed their subjects until they squeaked and churches rushed to proffer their treasures, ordinary knights such as Geoffroi hurried home to see how many debts could be called in, and just how much could be sold or bartered, in order that they should set out fully equipped. A good horse, armour and weapons did not come cheap; that his family would have to tighten their belts and make sacrifices, Geoffroi well knew. However, knowing them as he did — as he hoped he did — he also knew that, in this most vital of the services that Christendom rendered unto God, they would do so willingly and give him their wholehearted support. They would also — he did not even have to ask — pray for him constantly.
The vast crusading army — royalty, lords and ladies, noblemen, knights, crossbowmen, foot soldiers, siege engineers, craftsmen, clerics, nurses, cooks, camp followers and general hangers-on, numbering some 100,000 people in all — finally set out from Paris in June 1147. They met up with the Emperor Conrad of Germany in the city of Metz, and the two armies then proceeded by separate routes eastwards and southwards. Geoffroi, marching with the French, travelled down through Bavaria to the Danube, which they followed through Hungary and Bulgaria.
By October they had reached Constantinople. After their long trek down across the continent, the armies were ready for a rest and might have stayed longer — despite the fact that their welcome was swiftly running out — had it not been for an eclipse of the sun in the fourth week of the month. Before the army’s confidence and resolve could be undermined by the swiftly-spreading rumours that this was a bad omen and meant the crusade was doomed, Louis ordered that they strike camp and march on south.