'It is not myself who has made this command, you understand,' said the worried cleric. 'It is the emperor's envoy. We must do what he says, and -
'I am certain of it,' said Emlyn, breaking in. 'Rest assured, we bear no ill feelings.'
'On the contrary,' said Murdo, stepping up beside him, 'I want the monastery to have this as a remembrance of our gratitude and thanks for your help.' With that, he placed a fine golden bowl into the astonished gateman's hands.
'What is this?' whined the porter. He gaped fearfully at the bowl as if a world of fresh trouble opened before him.
'A gift,' Murdo assured him. 'I want you to take it to your abbot and tell him that this is my thanks for the brief use of the catacombs. Will you do that?'
'It will be in his hands before vespers,' replied the gateman, relieved to have the matter resolved.
'Then we will trouble you no more. Come, brother,' he said to Emlyn, 'we are away.'
They left the gateman standing before his gate, clutching the golden bowl and gawking after them. They passed the church and started back down the hillside. Murdo looked out across the valley to the Holy City, now misty in the haze of a hot day's rosy twilight, and, for the first time since leaving home, felt as if he had finally, at long last, arrived.
They descended into the valley, passing beneath the city walls once more. Upon reaching the Jaffa road, Murdo looked for the last time at David's Tower, and then turned his face to the west and put Jerusalem at his back. 'We will find a place to sleep beside the road,' Murdo said. 'Are you hungry?'
'A little bread and wine would sit nicely with me,' Emlyn said. 'But I am content.'
'Maybe we can buy some bread and wine from a farmer,' Murdo suggested. 'Or find some water at least.'
'If not, we will fast like true pilgrims-until we reach Jaffa,' Emlyn offered amiably.
After a while the road bent a little to the north, and they could see the fires of the crusader camps on the hillsides and in the valley along the northern walls of the city. The sky was almost dark now, and the first stars were glowing overhead. The path began to rise to its climb into the heights, before beginning its long descent to the sea. Once up from the valley floor, the air was cooler, and the light breeze felt good on their skin. Yes, and it felt good to be on the road, thought Murdo, to be going home.
FORTY-TWO
'Most imprudent of you, Godfrey,' observed Baldwin, holding out his cup to be refilled. 'How could you promise to forfeit the treasure to the emperor without knowing what it was you were being asked to surrender?'
'Would you rather have him take Jerusalem?' Godfrey, in a surly humour, glared at his brother and at the noblemen holding vigil with him. The day, begun with a towering victory, had ended in ripe disaster. In his first act as ruler of the Holy City he had succeeded in losing its most holy and sacred relic.
The lords of the West were angry at him, and baying for blood. Some of them were for refusing to honour the promise and declaring war with Byzantium instead. The fact that the empire's troops now outnumbered their own vastly diminished armies had not yet occurred to anyone.
Jerusalem had been won. The heady days following the city's fall were giving way to a season of sober reflection-for Godfrey, Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, if for no one else. In the short space between this day's glorious beginning, and its cruel, regretful end, Godfrey had pondered deeply over his unenviable position; his unhappy meditations had borne bitter fruit. The lords of the West had liberated the Holy City, but the cost had been ruinous. And now, with nearly all the crusaders returning home, he would be ruler of a city surrounded by hordes of crafty and relentless enemies -Turks and Saracens, to be sure, but also Greek and Armenian Christians whose people had been slaughtered in the blood frenzy-all of whom knew the land and tolerated the unbearable heat far better than his own war-weary troops.
The sad truth, and Godfrey knew it well, was that the crusaders would very soon be in desperate want of imperial aid. Continual and close friendship with Alexius was the only way to guarantee that help remained forthcoming. Unless he thought of something now-this night!-tomorrow he must deliver Jerusalem's most valuable object to the emperor's envoy as a peace offering and sign of his reign's good will, and his recognition of Alexius' supremacy. The prospect made him squirm. Why, he would become the laughing-stock of the entire Christian world: the Lord of Jerusalem a mere vassal of the Greeks.
'Oh, cheer up, brother,' Baldwin said over the rim of his cup. 'The night is young. We will yet think of something.'
'So you say,' Godfrey sneered. 'Tomorrow you can ride back to Edessa and begin your reign in all pomp and glory. Meanwhile, I begin mine in shame and disgrace-and all because I must give the Holy Lance to the emperor!'
Baldwin, growing bored with his brother's rant, swigged down another mouthful of wine, and said, 'Then give it to someone else. Give it to Bohemond. Better still, give it to Sultan Arslan. Ha!'
Godfrey stared at his younger brother. 'You are an ass, Baldwin. Worse, you are a drunken ass. If that is the best you can suggest, go back to Edessa. I will face my humiliation alone.'
'Now, see here -' Baldwin made to rise, but found his legs were not as steady as he imagined them. He fell back in his chair. 'I was only trying to help. If you cannot see that, then maybe you deserve your humil…miliation.' He called loudly to the servingman standing by. 'Wine, you sluggard. More wine!'
'You have had enough, brother,' Godfrey said. He put his cup down with a thump, and rose. 'I am going to bed. You would do well to do the same.'
'Splendid,' muttered Baldwin. 'The emperor claps his hands and you cry "Thunder!". Well, if it was my place, I would send the thing away. Let Alexius get it from someone else.'
Godfrey bade his inebriated brother and noblemen good night, left them to their cups, and went to his bed chamber. Dismissing his servant, he lay down on his bed, but found he could not rest. He rose, crossed to the window and pulled it open to allow some fresh air into the stuffy room. He looked out to see the moon was rising over the olive groves; the Jaffa road was a silver river trickling towards the city, and away to the north, low and dark on the ground, lay the camps of the crusaders. In a few days, the soldiers would be gone, and the abandoned camps but one more execrable memory in the long, turbulent existence of this ancient city.
Fool! he thought. Had he come this far, dared this much, only to become the butt of jokes and japes? Feeling the weight of his failure, Godfrey knelt at the window and began to pray. He remained long in this posture, and when he rose at last it was with a better heart. He would accept his indignity and shame as a chastisement from God's hand for the errors he had made on pilgrimage.
Thus resolved, he stretched himself once more on his bed. Night was far gone when sleep finally found him, and then it was an uneasy, fitful rest. He awoke to the croak of crows from the rooftops below his open window, and Baldwin's last words of the previous night tumbling restlessly in his mind: Let Alexius get it from someone else!
For the first time since the council's disastrous conclusion, he saw the palest glimmer of hope: if the Holy Lance must be relinquished, let it be surrendered by another. But who?
The answer burst upon him with all the force and urgency of a battlecry. As on the field of war numerous times, he felt the familiar stirring in his blood. In the space of a single heartbeat, the plan was arrayed before him. Any lingering gloom of doubt was banished by the fierce light of his certainty: there was only one person in all the world able to resist the demands of the emperor, and that was the pope. If anyone could protect the Sacred Lance for the crusaders it would be Pope Urban. Let Alexius get the relic from someone else: let him get it from the pope.