The Jester

Along the way, I had made two lasting friends. One was Nicodemus, an old Greek, schooled in the sciences and languages, who managed to keep up his steady stride despite a satchel heavy with tracts of Aristotle, Euclid, and Boethius. Professor, we called him. Nico had made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and knew the language of the Turk. He spent many hours on the march teaching it to me. He had joined the quest as a translator, and because of his white beard and moth-eaten robe, he had the reputation of being a bit of a soothsayer too. But every time a soldier moaned, “Where the hell are we, Professor?” and the old Greek muttered only, “Near …,” his reputation as a seer suffered.

And there was Robert with his goose, Hortense, who had sneaked into our ranks one day as we passed through Apt. Fresh-faced and chattering, Robert claimed to be sixteen, but it didn’t take a seer to divine that he was lying. “I’ve come to carve the Turks,” he boasted, brandishing a makeshift knife. I handed him a stick that would be good for walking. “Here, start with this.” I laughed. From that moment on, he and the goose were great companions to us.

It was late summer when we finally came out of the mountains.

“Where are we, Hugh?” Robert moaned, as another interminable valley loomed before our eyes.

“By my calculations…” I tried to sound cheerful. “A left at the next ridge and we should see Rome . Isn’t that right, Nico? This was the pilgrimage to St. Peter’s we signed up for, wasn’t it? Or, shit, was it the Crusade?”

A ripple of tired laughter snaked through the exhausted ranks.

Nicodemus started to answer, but everyone shouted him [28] down. “We know, Professor, we’re near, right?” taunted Mouse, a diminutive Spaniard with a large hooked nose.

Suddenly I heard shouting from up ahead. Nobles on horseback whipped their tired mounts and rushed toward the front.

Robert bolted ahead. “If there’s fighting, Hugh, I’ll save you a spot.”

All at once, my legs seemed ready to comply. I grabbed my shield and ran after the boy. Ahead of us was a wide gulf in the mountains. Hundreds of men were gathered there, knights and soldiers.

For once, they were not defending themselves. They were shouting, slapping one another on the back, thrusting their swords toward Heaven and hurling their helmets into the air.

Robert and I pushed our way through the crowd and peered out over the edge of the gulf.

Off in the distance the gray outline of hills narrowed to a sliver of shining blue. “The Bosporus,” people shouted.

The Bosporus … !

“Son of Mary,” I muttered. We were here!

A jubilant roar went up. Everyone pointed at a walled city nestled into the isthmus’s edge. Constantinople . It took my breath away, like nothing I had ever seen before. It seemed to stretch out forever, glinting through the haze.

Many knights sank to their knees in prayer. Others, too exhausted to celebrate, simply bowed their heads and wept.

“What’s going on?” Robert looked around.

“What’s going on …?” I repeated. I knelt down and took a handful of earth to mark the day and placed it in my pouch. Then I hoisted Robert into the air. “You see those hills over there?” I pointed across the cha

He nodded.

“Sharpen your knife, boy… Those are Turk!”

Chapter 8

FOR TWO WEEKS we rested outside the gates of Constantinople.

Such a city I had never seen before in all my life, with its huge glittering domes, hundreds of tall towers, Roman ruins and temples, and streets paved with polished stone. Ten of Paris could have fit within its walls.

And the people… crowding the massive walls, roaring with cheers. Clad in colorful, lightweight cottons and silks, in hues of crimson and purple I had never seen. Every race was represented. European, black slaves from Africa, yellows from China. And people of no stench. Who bathed and smelled of perfume, dressed up in ornate robes.

Even the men!

I had traveled across Europe in my youth and had played most of the large cathedral towns, but never had I seen a place like this! Gold was like tin here. Stalls and markets were crammed with the most exotic goods. I traded for a gilded perfume box to take back home for Sophie. “A relic already!” Nico laughed. New aromas entranced me, cumin and ginger, and there were fruits I had never tasted before: oranges and figs.

I savored every exotic image, thinking of how I would describe it all to Sophie. We were hailed as heroes and we had [30] fought almost no one. If this was how it would be, I would return both sweet smelling and free!

Then the knights and nobles rallied us. “Crusaders, you are here for God’s work, not for silver and soap.” We said good-bye to Constantinople, crossing the Bosporus on wooden pontoons.

At last we stood in the land of the dreaded Turk!

The first fortresses we encountered were empty and abandoned, towns scorched and plundered dry.

“The pagan is a coward,” the soldiers mocked. “He hides in his hole like a squirrel.”

We spotted red crosses painted everywhere, pagan towns now consecrated in the name of God. All signs that Peter’s army had been through.

The nobles pushed us hard. “Hurry, you lazy louts, or the little hermit will take all the spoils.”

And we did hurry, though our new enemy became the blistering heat and thirst. We baked like hogs, sucking our water skins dry. The pious among us dreamed of their holy mission; the nobles, no doubt, of relics and glory; the i

Outside Civetot we had our first taste of the enemy. A few straggly horsemen, turbaned and cloaked in robes, ringed our ranks, lofting some harmless arrows at us, then fled into the hills like children hurling stones.

“Look, they run like grandmothers,” Robert cackled.

“Send Hortense after them.” I squawked about like a chicken. “No doubt they are cousins of your goose.”

Civetot seemed deserted, an enclave of stone dwellings on the edge of a dense wood. No one wanted to delay in our rush to catch up with the army of Peter, but we needed water badly, so we decided to enter the town.

On the outskirts, a grim odor pressed at my nostrils. Nicodemus glanced at me. “You smell it, don’t you, Hugh?”

I nodded. I knew the stench, from burying the dead. But this was magnified a thousand times. At first I thought it was just [31] slaughtered livestock, or offal, but as we got closer, I saw that Civetot was smoking like burning cinders.

As we entered the town there were corpses everywhere. A sea of body parts. Heads severed and gawking, limbs cut off and piled like wood, blood drenching the parched earth. It was a slaughter. Men and women hacked up like diseased stock, torsos naked and disemboweled, heads charred and roasted, hung up on spears. Red crosses smeared all over the walls-in blood.

“What has happened here?” a soldier muttered. Some puked and turned away. My stomach felt as empty as a bottomless pit.

From out of the trees, a few stragglers appeared. Their clothing was charred and tattered, their skin dark with blood and filth. They all bore the wide-eyed, hollow look of men who have seen the worst atrocities and somehow lived. It was impossible to tell if they were Christian or Turk.

“Peter’s army has crushed the infidels,” Robert called out. “They’ve gone ahead to Antioch.”

But not a man among us cheered.

“This is Peter’s army,” Nicodemus said grimly. “What remains of it.”