It was cool inside the house after the intense heat of the sun, and dark, too. Geoffrey paused to give his eyes time to adjust, and looked around him. The house was no different from many he had visited since arriving in Jerusalem, where the luxury of even the poorest houses provided a stark contrast to the hovels on his father’s manor in England. The floor was paved in stone of attractively contrasting colours, and furniture was sparse, but elegant: a narrow couch, some stools, a large table. A large jug of water stood near the door, and a shelf revealed cooking utensils of pewter and pottery, all spotlessly clean. But there was no dead knight. He turned to Melisende Mikelos with raised eyebrows.
“Upstairs,” she said in a whisper.
Still maintaining his grip on her arm, Geoffrey propelled her toward the stairs and pushed her in front of him. Slowly, after throwing a tortured glance at him, she began to ascend. The house was simple: just one room below, and a second, for sleeping, above. The upper room had wide arched windows, draped with patterned cotton to allow a cooling breeze in and keep the burning sun out. The floor was of pale wood, and the only items of furniture were a bed, strewn with brightly coloured covers, and shelves on which various items of clothing were neatly stacked. Like the lower room, it was perfectly tidy-except for one thing.
The dead knight lay on his stomach, and the back of his grimy grey shirt was red with the clotting blood that had trickled to form a dark, irregular circle on the wood beneath him. Melisende inhaled sharply and turned away. Geoffrey saw her begin to cry. He looked back to the body, recognising with dismay the fair hair and delicate features of Sir John of Sourdeval. Geoffrey’s stomach knotted painfully, and he found himself unable to move. Then the moment of shock passed, and Geoffrey rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger and looked away. John, a soft-spoken, thoughtful Norman, had been a good friend; Geoffrey had often sought out his company when the other knights had become too rowdy and debauched.
“How did he come to be here?” Geoffrey asked, taking a deep breath and hoping Melisende Mikelos was too wrapped up in her horror at the body to be aware of his own. He went to the window to see whether it was possible to climb up from the outside. It was not.
She shrugged, her back still turned to him. “I do not know. I went out to visit my uncle, who lives near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and came back a few moments ago, intending to rest until the heat of the day was past. I drank some wine downstairs, bathed my feet, and then came up here to lie down. He was there …” Her explanation was concluded with a sob.
“Do you know him?”
She shook her head, turning slightly so she could look at Geoffrey without seeing the dead man. “I have never seen him before,” she whispered. “And I do not know how he came to be here. The door was locked, and my neighbours have just told me they saw no one enter.” She gazed at him with enormous gold-brown eyes. “You must believe me! What reason could I have for a knight to be in my sleeping chamber?”
Geoffrey could think of one, but said nothing. He studied her intently. Younger than he had first thought, she was wearing the black that indicated she had been widowed, probably in the carnage of July 1099, he thought, when so many had been killed-Christian and Moslem alike-as the Crusaders took Jerusalem.
Nodding to one of his men to ensure Melisende did not run away, Geoffrey bent to examine John’s body. The young knight was most assuredly dead, and his stiffened limbs and the dryness of the blood around the wound in his back indicated that he had been so for some hours. Geoffrey made a slit in the shirt, and looked at the single puncture mark that had killed him. It was a wide wound, and it could very well have been made by the curved Arab-style dagger Melisende had been clutching in the street.
Geoffrey sat back on his heels and reflected. Knights were not popular among the citizens of Jerusalem: it had been the knights who had led the slaughter that followed the city’s fall. But while there were many knights who bragged about the number of people they had butchered, John was not among them. And besides, that was a year ago-if the motive were revenge, why should a killer decide to strike now?
Geoffrey glanced up to where Melisende regarded him with huge eyes that brimmed with tears. Her hands were stained with John’s blood-either from the dagger she had been holding in the street, or from when she had murdered him.
“I did not kill this man,” she whispered. “Please believe me.”
“What I believe is irrelevant,” said Geoffrey, trying to ascertain whether she was lying. “I am merely a knight. It is the Advocate you will need to convince. John was a favourite of his.” And of mine too, he added silently, looking down at the lifeless body in front of him.
“I see,” said Melisende, her voice suddenly hard. “You are yet another Norman incapable of independent thought, unless it is for repressing the local population. You are undoubtedly a nobody, some penniless younger son of an equally insignificant knight, who thinks to make his fortune from our land.”
Geoffrey met her eyes, but did not answer-her accusation was true, at least in part. He was the youngest son of Sir Godric Mappestone, a knight who had followed William the Conqueror to England in 1066, and who had been rewarded for his bravery at the Battle of Hastings with a manor on the Welsh border. But, unlike most men in his position, Geoffrey cared little for making his fortune-indeed, he was generally indifferent to amassing wealth, and he usually found looting was more trouble than it was worth. Geoffrey’s motive for joining the Crusade had been that it afforded him an excellent opportunity to travel. He had set out in high spirits, dreaming of the great libraries of the Arab world, and of an entire new culture of philosophy and literature about which he might learn. It was not a motive approved of or understood by his fellow knights, however, and Geoffrey had been regarded as something of an oddity from the outset.
John de Sourdeval had understood, though and had spent many hours discussing Arab writings with the scholarly English knight. Geoffrey’s glance slid down to Melisende’s bloodstained hands. Was she telling him the truth? Or had she murdered his gentle, honourable friend?
He shook his head impatiently. Now was not the time for speculation, not with his men travel-weary and a potentially hostile crowd gathering around. He grabbed a blanket from a neatly folded pile near the window, wrapped John in it, and told his men to carry the body downstairs. He glanced around quickly, but there was nothing else in the sparsely furnished chamber to give him any further clues. There was only one way into the room-up the stairs the way he had come-and if John had had any belongings with him when he was dispatched to meet his maker, they were not with him now.
Geoffrey took Melisende’s arm again and led her out of her house into the street. His first thought was to find the knife she had hurled away from her, but there was no sign of it. He glanced at the crowd and was not surprised. The dagger had been a fine weapon with a jewelled hilt that looked valuable. It would doubtless fetch a good price at the market.
Sergeant Helbye was haggling with a scruffy-looking fig seller for the loan of his cart to transport John’s body back to the citadel on the other side of the city. The citadel was where the Advocate, Jerusalem’s military leader, had his headquarters, and where many of the knights, including Geoffrey, chose to live.
The crowd in the street was becoming larger with each passing moment, despite the searing heat of the early afternoon sun. Geoffrey saw his soldiers’ increasing alarm: two had unslung their bows and had arrows at the ready. He overrode the indignant protestations of the fig seller and heaved John’s blanketed body onto the cart. Seizing Melisende by the wrist, he shouted orders to his men and set off, the disconsolate fig seller trotting along beside them, bewailing the fact that his fruit was being crushed.