Those who had interred it knew the dangers that would be faced by such a holy object over a thousand years, knew that the lance had a purpose and the day of that need would come just as spiritual guidance would be required to exhume it. They would not burrow a shallow hiding place, but one so deep that only a person of true faith and divine resolve could find it.
‘Then I suggest you do so, Bartholomew,’ Raymond growled finally, his sombre tone of voice made more ethereal by being echoed off the walls of the cave church. ‘For if it is a lie I will not be alone in wishing to flay the skin from your back and see your entrails in your hands before we set light to the faggots around your body.’
‘Give me the means, My Lord, and I will expose it myself.’
‘You men cease digging and help this miscreant down.’ Raymond then fixed his Provencal peasant with a basilisk stare. ‘Dig well, Peter Bartholomew, for what remains of you should you fail will aid us in refilling this.’
The diggers needed a ladder now to allow them both into the hole and out. Gathering his monkish garment around him Bartholomew disdained any aid as he clambered down into the small area lit by a single guttering oil lamp, taking up one of the spades left and beginning to slash at the earth with fury. The clang as he hit rock reverberated up and out to fill the chamber, which had Raymond’s diggers looking at a lord who would not return their stare, he too busy in contemplation of the problems of being made to look like a credulous fool.
Judging by the sound now coming from below, Bartholomew had taken up a pick, also left below, and was hacking at the rock, which tempted one of those standing above to snigger, that dying as the Count gave him a black look, which seemed to deepen with each blow of that instrument, now a rhythmic ringing that might have passed for a church bell, given the mountains on which Antioch had been built were made of near indestructible stone.
‘Hallelujah!’
That cry had all pressing forward, lanterns in hand, to gaze down at the dirt-blackened face of Peter Bartholomew gazing up, his eyes seeming to glow and in his hand an object too indistinct to identify.
‘God be praised!’ was his next cry, before he sunk to his knees so that the sounds of his loud and thankful prayers now rose up to the waiting ears.
‘What have you found?’ Raymond demanded.
The response was slow in coming; Bartholomew was too busy thanking God. ‘That which I was sent to discover, My Lord.’
The temptation to blaspheme with impatience had to be curbed. ‘Get up here and at once.’
Bartholomew’s ascent was slow and what appeared before him, held aloft in one hand, did not look in any way divine: was it even metal, for time and burial had dimmed its shine with rust and grime? What became apparent when examined more closely, as Bartholomew held it out for inspection, was its shape, it being very like the partial tip of a Roman pilum, a finger width at the base and reducing to the point, the very form of a weapon that truly might have been carried by a legionary on the Mount of Calvary.
‘Where is the shaft?’ Raymond demanded, only to be met with a look of disdain, with a manner to match, by a man now confident of his safety.
‘Who would bury that, and if they did, would the timber not rot?’
If Raymond missed the tone of voice, as well as the lack of acknowledgment to his title, the others present did not and one spoke up to tell Bartholomew of whom he was addressing, only to be reminded, and with discourtesy, that the man he was talking to was blessed by God and to mind his manners.
‘Pass it here.’
The pointed metal shard, a hand and a half in length, was passed to Raymond who took it gingerly, as if expecting the contact to scorch his flesh. Instead it was cold, as it should be, which sent a look of doubt across his face, noted by the man who had found it and responded to swiftly.
‘Do not expect it to glow or burn your skin, My Lord, the force it carries is in the flesh of whom it once pierced. Underneath that dirt and rust — who can tell? — may still lie the dried blood of Jesus.’
Raymond recoiled at that and he was not alone; those who had been digging previously stood back in near horror at being perhaps so close to such a liquid, even if dried. These were men who believed that when shriven by a priest what they received in the Eucharist was the very blood of Christ transformed; to be in the presence of reality was overpowering.
The noise from the mouth of the cave church began to grow, for there had been believers as well as doubters gathered there throughout, diminishing in numbers as time went by, it was true, but never so few that one or two were not keeping vigil. Bartholomew’s cry of hallelujah had echoed out of that hole in the ground, bounced off the walls of the tiny cave church, flying out to those waiting ears.
Those lacking faith crossed themselves but the greater effect was on the devout: their wailing and gnashing of ecstasy had brought many more running to see what they hoped would be a sure sign of their deliverance. The man who carried it out into daylight and a now milling crowd was not the man who found it, though the dirt-covered Bartholomew was close on his heels.
It was Raymond of Toulouse, eyes alight and gait steady, who held it aloft to the gathering throng and he who paraded it through the streets, where likewise all who observed it, be they knight, fighting foot soldier, camp follower, pilgrim or Armenian Christian, fell to their knees and sent up a keening sound of worship that was, in truth, mass entreaty.
It was no surprise, then, that the work of Peter Bartholomew in actually disinterring the relic was overborne by the spreading fame of the man who had possession and was eager to show it off. The relic was hailed wherever Raymond went, for he never subsequently moved without it — rumour had it that he took it to his bed with him that first night — and it was not long, those who shared his rank thought, before he seemed to confuse worship of the Holy Lance with praise for his own person.
With the whole city in a spasm of religious fervour, Peter Bartholomew called for the sinners to fast yet more vigorously and to give up to God alms that would be used to aid their deliverance, and thousands complied, it being noted that such coins as were gifted ended up with Raymond of Toulouse to swell his coffers to such an extent that he was soon far ahead of his peers in wealth and therefore influence.
‘I wonder,’ Bohemund opined, ‘if anyone thought to search this Bartholomew before he entered St Peter’s Church?’ That Tancred doubted the wisdom of such an enquiry was plain to see; his faith had always been stronger. ‘Examine the tale, nephew, and ask yourself if it is not a miracle too far?’
‘Miracles happen, Uncle.’
‘So I do believe, even if I have never witnessed one. But the convenience of this troubles me.’
‘Do you intend to question and deny it?’
‘No. Ademar, I suspect, thinks as I do, Robert of Normandy also, but if anyone is going to doubt it is a true relic let it be a consecrated bishop.’
‘Is he not a Provencal bishop?’
That got a meaningful shrug, for Ademar and Toulouse came from the same part of Christendom. ‘If he is careful not to cause Raymond offence, for the sake of harmony, that is an attribute he applies to us all. He will not show partiality.’
‘Ademar dare not say it is false when all of Christian Antioch thinks it genuine.’
‘Not all, Tancred, but that is less important than that he stops anyone from using it to guide our actions. Let the ones who hold it to be a true point of the Holy Lance take what comfort they need from it being in their midst. But it will not feed them nor will it drive off Kerbogha and his thousands.’
‘My Lords,’ Raymond said to the assembly of his peers, this accompanied by an arch look of triumph, ‘who can not welcome the prospect of divine intervention?’