He looked upstream. “We do need to go across. It will halve our journey to the Danube. It will give us an impenetrable hinterland for taking refuge if we need one. Since we can’t walk across or swim, we need a boat.” He pointed at the small monastery a mile upstream. “All contact involves risk. But the monks won’t ask questions or turn us in. I doubt any foreign interpreters your people bring along will assist in torturing them. We’ll see how far and wide Lawrence has spread the word about us.”
Jennifer looked at the sky. Michael squeezed her hand. “It’s only a crossing. We might be able to get everyone in a single boat.” He stopped again. The question she hadn’t yet dared ask came out as the single word Danube. He understood and nodded. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to break cover. But the Danube is busier than the Rhine, and may be more out of area for your people.”
Jennifer looked again at the busy walled town. “I don’t like this Michael. Don’t you think it’s been too easy?”
He smiled. “I do. Then again, some things just are easy.” They stared awhile in silence into the western sky. For as long as they’d stood here together, it had been almost like a return to their early days in England. Then he took her by the arm. “Shall we go back to the others?”
Chapter Thirty Nine
Michael looked at the watch he’d borrowed from Jennifer—it said just after midnight. Once across the river, they’d pretended a dash north, before turning south east off the road. It had been a hard day’s travel. But for Jennifer, they’d have continued deeper through the night. But she’d been worn out, and the abandoned and derelict hunting lodge had been too good a find to pass up. Now, while she slept, it was time for everyone else to sit together and look over generalities they’d so far avoided. Trying not to make any noise, he put the heavy weapon he’d taken from Count Robert on the table. Alexius and three of their guards looked at it in silence.
“It fires projectiles at great speed and force,” he said, picking it up again and swinging out the chamber that held the projectiles. He let them fall one at a time into the palm of his hand. “You can see that these have a brass body and a pointed lead top. My understanding is that they are filled with some explosive mixture that causes the lead to fly out when ignited. Here is what I take to be the igniting force.” He pushed the empty chamber into place and pulled back the sprung hammer. He held the weapon in his right hand and pulled on a lever beneath the main body. The hammer made a loud click as it hit the main body of the weapon. “You aim and discharge. When the chamber is exhausted, you refill with other projectiles. I have seen weapons similar to these in action. They can be deadly at a great distance. I strongly doubt if there is any armour that will protect against them.”
“And the Turks are being equipped with thousands of these?” Alexius asked.
“There are differences of opinion among the English on this point,” Michael said. “Indeed, given time, we may be able to take advantage in the usual way of their internal disagreements. For the moment, however, we must assume that the Caliph’s army will be given many thousands of similar weapons, and trained in their use.”
“Then, surely, My Lord,” one of the guards broke in, “they will ride straight through us.” Alexius looked down and began muttering a prayer.
Michael focussed on putting the projectiles back into the weapon. “There is a story of how, in ancient times, the Romans made themselves supreme at sea as well as on land. They captured a warship from the Carthaginians, and made copies that were adapted to land fighting tactics. The next time there was a battle, the Carthaginians lost. We must do the same. I’ll grant that many things I saw in England worked on principles we don’t begin to understand. This weapon, however, looks rather simple. It may have taken ages to develop—beginning with very simple and almost useless stages. But I’ll be surprised if we aren’t up to copying this in a couple of months, and turning them out by the hundred. If we can manage that, it’s a fair assumption that the Caliph’s men won’t know more about how to use them than we shall. The English, I do know, are short of fighting men. Those they have will need to be kept at home to protect against the Normans they have, most short-sightedly, armed.”
He paused and looked about the room. Everyone here could be trusted. “The further question is what to do about the Emperor. He was put in because of his alleged military virtues. He’s turned out no better than the idiot he replaced. We need to find someone who can get the Empire into fighting shape. That means someone who can face down families like mine—to restore land to the peasants, and turn the peasants back into soldiers, and pay off all the mercenaries we’ve let ourselves think will save us from the dirty work of fighting. We need a revolution against the current ruling order, as well as a revolution in military tactics.”
Alexius looked doubtful. “There are the Comnenus brothers,” he suggested. “One of them might have some fire in his belly.” He went on to say more, but stopped in mid-sentence. “Did you hear that noise?” he whispered.
Michael had heard it. He also recognised the sound that Jennifer’s feet made on the beaten earth. He was still trying to stuff the weapon back inside its leather sheath, when she walked into the room.
He’d hoped she would only be annoyed that he’d left her alone. But it was plain, the moment she came close enough to the rush light for her face to be seen, that she’d followed the drift of their conversation. “You told me nothing about going home to fight in a war,” she said accusingly. “In England, you were all talk of giving in to the inevitable and trying to survive. You’re now full of talk about war—war preceded by revolution.” The guards knew no Latin. Alexius sat back and stared at the table. But her voice had said it all. Michael had married an exotic barbarian—and she was turning, one day at a time, into a nag.
“Go back to bed, Jennifer,” he said firmly. “This is men’s talk. I’ll be with you soon.” She looked at one of the guards until he stood up to make room on the bench across the table from Michael. She sat down and stared at him. He thought at first she’d start crying. He didn’t want her to do that—not cry, not in front of everyone else. Shrill nagging he could put up with: that was a matter of waiting till she ran out of breath, and a few sideways looks at faces resigned to his ordeal by their own experience of women. Tears were different.
But Jennifer was neither shrill nor weepy. “The English cardinal spoke of war,” she said in halting Greek. “But this is a war that must be won or lost in England. If we lose there, suicide campaigns against the Turks will change nothing.” On second thoughts, Michael would have preferred tears. Still calm, she picked up the weapon and reopened its projectile chamber. “If you think anyone in your world is able to copy this thing, you weren’t long enough in England. You don’t have the tools to make one of these. You don’t have the tools to make the tools to make one. You can’t make steel of the right hardness and consistency. As for the powder, that is a work of art in itself. You can no more copy this than you can copy one of the moving picture machines, or the horseless vehicles.”