'Yes! For the love of God, I only thought to prevent it.'
'Well, you have succeeded. It is prevented. Amir Ghazi will see to that, never fear.'
'The slaughter is not prevented;' I growled, my spirit writhing with guilt, 'it is merely diverted.'
Futility and shame descended in heavy waves upon me. I turned on my heel and fled the room. He called after me, but I made no reply. I quickly retrieved my belongings; there was nothing much to gather -my clothes had been taken away for cleaning, and had not been returned.
Very well, I would escape in what I was wearing, I decided, and leave all else behind. I had half a mind to leave the jewelled bauble Princess Elena had given me -1 wanted nothing from the Armenians. But practicality got the better of that decision; we would need money if we were to reach Antioch in good time, and the brooch was very valuable. So, I took it from its box, and pinned it to the inside of my mantle next to my skin where it would be safe.
Padraig was waiting with Roupen in the stables. The young lord was unhappy to see us leaving with such unseemly haste. 'I wish it could be otherwise,' I told him. He asked me to reconsider, but I declined. Seeing there was no changing my mind, he gave in with good grace and told me how much he valued our friendship, and that he would pray we concluded our pilgrimage safely.
Yordanus and Sydoni appeared in the doorway then, and Roupen went to bid them farewell and to thank them for their inestimable help in getting him home in time to see his father before he died. While they talked, Padraig and I examined the horses and the packs of provisions; satisfied that all was in order, we led the beasts out into the yard, and bade Roupen a last farewell.
We rode through the gates and out onto the road by which we had come, leaving Anazarbus behind. The sun was high onto midday; the weather was fine and bright, and hot, and we made fair speed with Nurmal's splendid horses. I had chosen the same mounts we had ridden before so they would know us: the speckled grey for me, the roan for Padraig, and the two chestnut mares for Sydoni and Yordanus.
When the city was no longer in sight, we paused briefly for water, and then rode on, at a slightly less frantic pace. Once in the saddle again, I felt slightly less apprehensive. Whatever happened, I thought, it was no longer any of my concern. I had done what I could, and my help had been twisted and perverted in its use. I desired no part of anything so nefarious, and was heartily glad not to have to stay another night in that haven of treachery.
Now, at this remove, Gait, I can but marvel at the innocence of my thoughts and emotions on that day. Nurmal spoke the cold heart of the matter, and he spoke the truth. Bohemond had chosen his course; long before he reached Anazarbus, he had committed his life and the lives of his men to his witless plan.
Why did I imagine anything I might do or say could have changed anything? Did I really think I could sway the balance of heavenly justice?
Who was I, after all, but an ignorant meddler in matters too far above me to even contemplate? How in the name of all that is holy did I hope to prevent that arrogant young prince reaping the harvest of his insatiable ambition?
And why, oh why, did I even try?
The answer, I think, is that I could not in good conscience abide the thought of Christians making war on their Christian brothers, of believers pursuing the hateful waste of God's precious gift of life for the most frivolous and imbecilic of reasons. Blind and arbitrary fortune had placed me in a position to know certain things-the movements of armies, the intentions of rulers-and I had somehow concocted the belief that this knowledge brought with it an obligation to use it wisely and for good.
This is emotion, as I say, not reason. If I had stopped, even for a moment, and reflected on the matter, I would have seen grim futility looming starkly before me. If only I had asked myself one simple question: what did I want?
Now, after endless months of sober reflection, I have come to the conclusion that what I wanted was simply for everyone to sit down across the table and work out their differences in a sane and sensible manner. I believed that fellow Christians, Frank and Armenian, could be united against the common Seljuq enemy. In short, I wanted peace to prevail, and saw no just reason why it should not. I believed that one man of good will could make a difference and that God would honour those who strove to honour him.
In the madness that passes for sanity in the East, this belief was pure delusion. An infinitely sadder and wiser man understands that now.
On that fateful day, however, I raced from the city, eager to distance myself from the insidious deceit of the place and for Padraig and me to resume our pilgrimage. I pressed a swift pace along the rough, uneven road, my heart burning within me, wishing I had never heard of Ghazi, Thoros, or Bohemond.
These thoughts were still in my mind a little while later when, as we crested a steep hill, I saw the land fall away and spread out beneath us in a steeply-angled plain. The plain was a rolling, rock-and-thorn thicket wilderness between the rough foothills of the mountains to the north, and the raised cliffs of a deep-chasmed dry river to the south.
Even as I took this in, I pulled on the reins to halt. For there, where the road passed through the centre of the plain, I saw the sprawling mass of what remained of proud Bohemond's army.
THIRTY-ONE
'Christ have mercy,' Sydoni gasped. Padraig began praying aloud in Gaelic, and Yordanus croaked an incoherent oath.
Across the valley far below, a small brave knot of crusaders were yet fighting for their lives. All but lost amidst the swirling, howling Seljuqs, the Christian commanders were desperately trying to form the battle line. The few mounted knights had grouped themselves into a wedge-shaped complement in the vain hope of blunting the attack-a hopeless attempt, like trying to divide a sea wave with the edge of an oar.
Every time the crusaders made to engage the enemy, the swift Seljuqs melted away, only to assail the exposed flanks. When the crusaders turned to protect the flanks, the Arabs drove in upon them from the front. Indeed, the ceaseless swirling and diving looked like restless waves, and the clash of battle sounded like a distant storm far out on the ocean.
The flat floor of the valley formed a narrow plain between the deeply-eroded ravine of a dry riverbed to the west, and ragged, barren hills to the east. Along this plain, the rest of Bohemond's army lay scattered, fallen, still. From the long, spreading swathe of corpses, I could tell that they had marched up through the valley and into the ambush Ghazi had prepared for them. Pinched between the ravine on one side, and the hills on the other, the hapless crusaders had been cut down as they tried to flee back the way they had come.
Not that there could have been any escape. The barren slopes were covered with mounted Seljuqs from one end of the valley to the other. Some in dark turbans, and some in white, red, yellow, or brown so that they seemed a strangely-mottled sea, they surged onto the plain in a great inundating flood. My heart writhed within me to see the last of the poor doomed Franks throwing down their weapons to lend speed to their flight as the merciless Seljuqs swooped to the kill. I could smell the rich, fetid scent of blood on the breeze.
Once, as a boy, I stood on a rock above one of my father's barley fields and watched the low black clouds of a sudden summer storm sweep across the land. The wind struck first, flattening the tall grain with breathtaking violence. And then, before the golden stalks could rise from beneath the initial onslaught, fierce, wind-driven rain and ripping hail drove the overpowered grain into the ground and battered it to shreds.