LITMIR.BIZ

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to imagine an absence of grass, and the first lesson they had to learn about that was that their beasts, deprived of fodder, died quickly. Thus they ended up eating their own livestock, aware that once the animals were all gone, they would have nothing else to eat—and the animals were dying in large numbers, which meant that most of their dead flesh was going to waste in the desert heat.

      In addition to the famine afflicting the land, they had found the weather there on the plains of Antioch to be foul beyond belief, alternating freezing temperatures with high winds that stirred up suffocating sand storms, and long periods of high humidity that brought insects out by the millions and increased the intolerable discomforts facing the so-called besiegers, who were all by now aware of the ludicrous futility of what they were attempting.

      Sickness had broken out quickly among the starving Frankish army, and once it did, it spread with terrifying speed. No one knew what to call the pestilence, and the few physicians among the Franks were powerless against it. When the scourge was at its height, Hugh, Godfrey, and Payn had all come down with it at the same time, leaving Arlo, who for some reason remained unscathed, to look after all of them. Godfrey had recovered quickly, back on his feet within a matter of days. Hugh had taken four days longer and recovered more slowly, but soon he, too, was strengthening noticeably. Montdidier, however, hovered close to death for more than fifteen days, and three times Arlo thought he had died, so still and motionless was he, his breathing imperceptible. But on each occasion Payn rallied and snatched another ragged breath, and on the eleventh night his fever broke. He had lost almost one quarter of his body weight by then, but once he began to grow stronger, his recovery was as rapid as the others’ had been.

      They had all survived, Hugh knew, because Arlo had somehow managed to acquire a sack of whole grain—half full and obviously stolen—and he guarded it jealously, grinding it in small portions, by hand, between two stones. He offered no explanation of where it had come from and no one asked him for one, all of them too grateful for the bounty contained in that simple jute bag and the bland but wholesome porridge it provided.

      After eight months and a single day of siege, Antioch had collapsed in the course of one night, on the third of June, and it had fallen not through conquest but through corruption and treachery, when one of the tower guards, in exchange for a fortune in bribes, opened the water gate to Frankish infiltrators. By dawn more than five hundred Franks were inside the city, and the sound of their massed trumpets within the walls caused panic. The Muslim governor of the city fled through the rear gates with most of his army. Hugh was thinking of precisely that when Godfrey brought the matter up.

      “I had a long talk with Pepin,” he said. “He had just come off duty and was waiting for one of his friends to join him. I was surprised by what he had to say about our capturing the city.”

      Hugh smirked. “Pepin had thoughts?”

      St. Omer shrugged in mock apology. “Well, you know what I mean … the Count had thoughts. Pepin chanced to overhear them.”

      “So what did he say that surprised you?”

      St. Omer wrinkled his nose. “He said that if the emir in charge of the city had rallied his men and stood his ground, we would not have stood a chance of taking the city, even although we were already inside.”

      “Hmm. He is probably correct. We barely had five hundred men inside, and they were tightly confined in one closed area. There were thousands of defenders in there who could have eaten us alive had they reacted differently. Did Pepin say anything about when we might be moving on, away from this hellhole?”

      “I asked him that, but all he would say was that it won’t be tomorrow or the day after. I think he was really saying that we might be here for a long time, regrouping and gathering our strength.”

      Hugh merely nodded at that, unsurprised, and returned to his musing. The six thousand deaths were now lodged in his mind, and he began to wonder about the numbers of men who had already died on both sides without a single Frankish warrior having yet set eyes upon Jerusalem. And as that thought came to him, he remembered his godfather St. Clair’s suggestion, on the evening of his Raising, that the best thing that the new Pope, Urban II, might do to solve the problem of the knights of Christendom and their ungovernable behavior would be to foment a war. Hugh found himself recalling how Sir Stephen had talked that night about speaking to the Pope concerning the idea because, as St. Clair had observed, Christendom was not all the world and not all the world was Christendom. Now that it had come unbidden to his attention, Hugh found the inference unavoidable, and he was surprised that the connection had not occurred to him before, because Sir Stephen St. Clair said nothing lightly. He was highly placed within the Order’s hierarchy, and he had both the power and the influence to win the Pope’s ear, and the intellect and charm to make his ideas appear attractive to the pontiff.

      There was no denying that Pope Urban’s emotional call to arms had solved his most chronic and pressing problem—and relieved his embarrassment—more efficiently than anyone could have imagined beforehand, by providing Christian knights everywhere with an opportunity to fight in a glorious cause on the far side of the world, and to achieve salvation in a Holy War against the enemies of their Christian God. The Pope had turned an idea into reality, and in so doing had created a ravening monster with a blood lust that threatened to consume everyone exposed to it.

      In spite of knowing that he might never know the truth, Hugh became increasingly certain that his godfather had, in fact, planted the seed in Pope Urban’s mind, and he found the knowledge that he himself, Hugh de Payens, had conceived the original idea to be both appalling and pleasing. Appalling because of the catastrophe that the idea had loosed upon the world and the cataclysmic loss of life on all sides, little of it yet having anything to do with real warfare, and pleasing because he had been instrumental in furthering the objectives of the Order of Rebirth.

      Suddenly uncomfortable with what was in his mind, he stood up and looked about him, sensing the dark bulk of the city’s walls at his back and aware that his friends were watching him curiously. He kept his face expressionless and bade them good night, then made his way to his bedroll, trying to convince himself as he went that he was not being cynical. He knew he had much to be cynical about, witnessing daily the atrocious behavior of the people around him, the so-called Armies of God and their illustrious leaders, and it was plain to anyone who had eyes that there was more fighting for personal gain going on here among the powerful men in Outremer than there was fighting for the glory of God and His Holy Places, for they had not yet even begun to approach the Holy Places, and Hugh feared that he might not be able to conceal his distaste for his fellow travelers for much longer if their behavior did not improve. It would be many more months yet, however, before Hugh de Payens could will himself to acknowledge that the heathens against whom they were fighting were, in many ways, more Christian and more admirable than were their Cross-wearing adversaries, for whom the shouted phrase “Deus le veult!” had grown to mean I want that!

      Hugh’s disenchantment had begun early in their voyage, when the first horror stories of the earliest expeditions began to trickle back to those who followed. Thousands of ordinary people, serfs and peasants, had been caught up in the enthusiasm and hysteria of the Pope’s war, and spurred by visions of salvation through pilgrimage, and an escape from the appalling hardship of their ordinary lives by winning a better life in Heaven in return for their sacrifice, they had immediately left their homes to go campaigning, intent only on traveling to the Holy Land and wresting it, bare handed, from the Turks. But their soaring hopes were soon dashed, for within the distance of a few weeks’ travel from the homes that they had never left before, they had begun starving to death, because the vast numbers on the move, throughout all the lands of Christendom, had been unplanned for, and the hordes of eager, hopeful transients had devoured every scrap of food from every source, leaving nothing in reserve. Thousands died before they even reached the boundaries of their own lands, and within a month of leaving their home in Champagne, the Count’s retainers were listening with horror to tales of cannibalism in the fairest regions of France.

      Until that point, some remnant of Hugh’s boyhood faith and training had kept him clinging to the hope that all might yet be well, and that for this new venture, the Church and the men who ran it might, for once, deny their

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