Here begins the story of my pilgrimage to Damnation. Here will I reveal secrets long held. Be warned, it is a truth you might rather not know. Better to prolong your ignorance. Put this book aside, return it whence you found it, and go your way in safety.

Chapter I

To find temptation and the Devil, Jesus Christ had come out into this lifeless place. Now I rode into the same wilderness, hopelessly seeking that which I had lost. Purity. The desert sands might have been clean, but I was not. I despaired of ever feeling clean again.

My shield was slung over my back, my sword in its scabbard slapping against my bruised thigh. I deserved a far crueller flagellation. The oppressive sun blazed down, and sweat trickled beneath my tarnished hood of chain mail, into my squinting eyes. The tread of my steed's hooves flung choking dust into the still, baking air. The strangulation of the dust and the beating of the sun were also well warranted. It was Saturday 15 July in the year of Our Lord 1099. I had already fallen from grace.
I passed along a narrow track, meandering down the base of a rock-strewn wadi. Perhaps a river used to run through here, before the time of Christ. It now wound bone dry, a scar in the barren landscape. The land was dead- dead of anything but the occasional skeletal bush and the yet more occasional bleached skeletons of men or beasts- claimed and cleaned by the sun. I would gladly have joined them. I was aware of the vultures circling in the blue above, the cleansing angels who left nothing behind but bones, pure and white and free of sin. I was also aware of the rider who followed me along the dead river, in the distance. If he planned to speed the vultures banquet then let him. Speed me to Hell.
'D'Ashinvaine!' Came his cry, and my blood name echoed around the wadi, between the steep banks that rose on both sides. It was a friend's voice; that of the worthy knight Philip de Mayenne, but I had come to hate my friends and comrades in arms more than I had ever hated our enemies. I ignored his cry and let my horse carry me on. He had seen me, though, and when I heard him spur his horse to gallop, I had no will to escape him. Soon he caught me up and rode along side. The gleam of his jangling chain mail was dazzling. The banner of the cross hung limp from his tall lance.
'My God, have you lost your mind? You risk death from every quarter riding out alone!'
'So you are my mother now, Sir Philip?' My welcome for him was as dry and harsh as this place.
'Come back, Dash, damn you, stop being a fool!'
'You are my mother, come to get me!'
'It might fall to me to tell her of it, if her last living son gets himself killed out here; by bandits, beasts, the elements…'
'Better that than let her see what he has become.'
'What do you mean?' He reached out to touch my shoulder. I turned to look him in the eyes. He seemed startled and recoiled.
'Leave me alone- to whatever death I choose,' I hissed.
'For Christ's sake, Dash…!'
'For Christ's sake?' I sneered. 'Were our deeds of yesterday for the sake of Christ? Did He say blessed are those who turn a holy place into a bloodbath? What have we done?' I shook my head in disbelief. 'All we endured… all we did to live this long… To stay alive long enough to slay unarmed wretches; women, children, the old, even those sheltering under our pledge of protection in the Lord's Temple. Was all that for Christ's sake?'
'The heathens spat on His cross- you saw them while we suffered under the walls. They abused Christ in his own city- they flaunted their profanity! We did the Lord's will punishing them…'
I pulled away from him, wondering if I was the only one with a troubled mind, with a sense of having awoken from a trance, a fit of madness. 'You want me to go back to that place? This Holy Land is where God himself once walked among mortal men…' I crossed myself with my left hand then held it out to him. 'Look at it! Behold the blood that sticks under the nails of my fingers! Will the stench ever leave me? Am I mad?'
'Only the mad man never asks that.' Philip spoke gravely. 'We have all been through Hell, God knows. But who ever achieved what we have? How could we have done it were it not God's will? The Holy City now belongs to the Holy Church of Christ!'
'Buildings, walls, pavements; puddles of blood. Kill all the people and what is the city? Another feature of this evil desert is all that exists. Piles of stone, that is all we offer Rome.'
Sir Philip scowled. 'Our deeds are over and done, for better or worse. Jerusalem is taken and you should be glad of that. Soon we will go home, and then forget this savage place.'
'It was not so savage before we came.' I sighed. 'For our deeds of yesterday alone I doubt there is enough forgiveness in heaven.'
As I spoke, Philip's small company of foot soldiers caught up with us. 'What is this?' I asked him.
'There are many dangers here, as you should know. Come back with us,' Philip held out his own hand. 'Aylwin, for the last time of asking.'
I withdrew my own, not want to contaminate him with my touch. 'Leave me alone.' I said, shaking my head. 'Let me atone!'
He had not deserved to bear the brunt of my anger. In truth it was my own company that had become intolerable to me. I looked around intending to apologise. The God that I had wronged never gave me a chance.
Philip opened his mouth to say something. Then there was a twang from somewhere, and instead of words my friend ejected a sickening gurgle of red froth. I recoiled in shock, for an arrow had hit him in the back of his head; smashing through his helmet, his skull and his brain and only jamming when it's tip was sticking out through his wide open mouth like a devil's tongue. He dropped his lance. Bursting blood and bits of bone vomited out of him, splattering down his front and all over me. Blood dripped from his teeth and gums as he coughed terribly, before keeling forward, out of his saddle. His heavy armour made a loud thud in the dust.
Then I heard from nearby the Saracen war cry: 'Allah akhbar!'
In the ranks behind, the men started in dismay, one of them was hit in the shoulder by another arrow, which span him around spraying blood, before he too crumpled to the ground. The whooshing sound crescendoed, there was a moment of cool, pleasant breeze, then came screams of agony as the arrows poured down into the crusaders' ranks. One struck the side of my helmet, deflecting, before I could bring about my shield. That shield was emblazoned with a scarlet serpent. My father had carried it into battle at Hastings. Seven more arrows embedded themselves in the old shield as I ducked behind it, while another pierced my leg. My self-pity forgotten for the moment, I realised that my duty was now to lead these men and to avenge Philip de Mayenne, who had been as much a brother to me as the six blood siblings who had perished in succession in the war of the Cross. (Each had carried this shield; I, the last born, was the last left for it to be passed to.) I drew my sword and spun my Norman stallion around on the spit.
'Ambush!' I shouted. 'North ridge!' I used my blade as a pointer, and then marshalled the men with it. 'Dump your baggage and in God's name follow me! Charge!'
These crusaders were ordinary men who had taken the Cross and sworn to rescue Jerusalem from the Turks. It was a vow that two days ago they had kept. Like me they had been seduced by Pope Urban's promise of everlasting absolution: that all their sins would be forgiven and that they would be assured a place in heaven if they died. I had seen them brave unspeakable hardships and fight with passion like you could not believe, sure that they marched towards salvation, with armies of saints and angels. True I had heard them grumble about the unclean things that shifted in these sands- snakes, black beetles and scorpions; and say that if this was God's country then they preferred their own, but their faith had held and sustained them through every trial. Here in the wadi, though, they had fallen back in huddle, leaving the track strewn with the arrow-perforated bodies of comrades. The dead, if their beliefs held true, were now martyrs and to be envied.
'Come on! In the name of Jesus!' I hollered. I instructed the men to the attack, and to spread out. I spurred my horse and galloped up the northern slope. I could make out the archers now, with turbans of different colours wrapped around their sun-scorched heads. Behind me I heard my men cry in zeal or in pain, as they scrambled up the steep side of the gorge. Some stumbled on the loose stones, some slipped on the blood of those who had fallen before them. Then an arrow grazed my shoulder from behind. With it came a horrible realisation.

Chapter II

Another barrage of arrows flew across the gorge, down at my men, spreading out in their ranks. It came from the south ridge, at our backs. I cursed, recognizing that our only chance for survival now lay in getting over this north ridge, and through whatever enemy lay beyond. More arrows struck my horse's rump, making the tormented creature bolt forward in agony, ears back, eyes rolling and foam flying from its mouth. Then I reached the summit! I charged into the massed Saracens. My horse's tormented dance murdered many around, kicking and trampling them, bones crunching under the impact of its flailing hooves. I do not know how I kept in the saddle. I knocked a dozen enemy foot soldiers aside as I swung my shield around. I hacked down at more of them with my broadsword, as they rushed on from the other side- curved swords and long spear tips glinting in the sun. So intent was I on my frantic defence that I almost missed a more dangerous opponent, a man a head taller than the rest.

His ferocious face loomed out of the mass, with bulging white eyes and a broad mouth full of gritted, yellow teeth. Then I saw the rise of a wide curved blade, which swung low at my horse. I somehow pulled the animal about, spinning on the spot, and caused it to jump over the gleaming sweep of the scimitar. My own weapon in turn swept down at the great dark face behind the blade. The face dodged away, but blood misted the air. The wide eyes squeezed in pain, and a giant hand appeared clutching the side of the head.
The elation of the fight had taken me now, sweeping away for the moment my feelings of regret and penitence. I called my enemies God's and, roaring, demanded they die. I cried worse things besides. Blood erupted as I stabbed and hacked to my left and beat my shield down hard on my right. My sword sliced through necks and skulls and faces. I looked around for my men, coming over the ridge. A few had made it out of that hell of crossfire, and were now fighting for their lives against the foe that awaited them here. 'That's it, men! Onward!' I called. As I brandished my sword, a Saracen spear struck up into my raised arm, thrusting through the links of my chain mail armour. I looked up to see my fingers spread in a spasm blood gushing up out of my sleeve around my wrist, and my sword flying up into the blue sky as though pulled from my grasp by unseen hands from on high. Then the leering face from my nightmares reappeared, red with blood, and its blade sliced through one of my horse's legs like the cleaver of some monstrous butcher.
My horse squealed wildly and fell, and I slid out of the saddle and down to the ground, which sloped away from the ridge and seemed to be all sand and loose rocks. I found myself skidding down. The elation had gone now, replaced by a horrible fear. I was groping for a hold as I tried to arrest my slide. The dust blinded me. At last I stopped and opened my eyes, blinking and squinting in the sunlight. One of the infidels bent over me, grinning broadly through the blur. He placed the tip of his scimitar under my chin. He was saying something, but the only word I recognized was kaffir. Their word for us that has the same meaning as ours for them.

The Saracens who had fired on us from the south ridge had crossed the bloody wadi, having exchanged bows for spears and swords. Once they had joined the fighting the result was a foregone conclusion. Surrounded, my men stood little chance. Suddenly it was all over, and the rest of my company found themselves disarmed, kneeling in the dust at sword-point. Not so many, though, as already lay dead or dying in the wadi, their bodies bristling with arrows. The vultures had already descended to claim their pickings there.

Our captors could hardly have known that any crusaders would ride down that wadi that day. I supposed that they must have intended their ambush for some other unsuspecting travellers. Perhaps they sought to rob their own people- anticipating a train of refugees fleeing from the Frankish armies with all their portable valuables. The brigands had been in luck, therefore, when a party of we their hated enemies had fallen into the jaws of their perfidious trap.
Now the Saracens held my eyes open and made me watch as they beheaded those who had survived to be captured. A goliath of man carried out the execution. He was soaked in blood already, some of it his own, from where my blade had recently severed his left ear. As he stepped forward to seize the first of his doomed victims, the prisoner became wild-eyed with fear. He was a broad, ruddy-faced countryman, who would have looked more at home harvesting the Norman fields. His clothing was filthy with blood and sand, the cross sewn over his breast barely distinguishable now. He struggled against the rope with which they had bound his hands behind his back.
'No! Don't kill us, kill him!' His voice was manic, he gestured towards me with his head, glowering hatefully. The giant Saracen, though, was having none of it. He grabbed the prisoner by his sandy hair and pushed his head into the ground. The prisoner spat out sand and glared at me with cold blue eyes. 'Wretched knight! It's your fault that we die, damn you! God damn you to suffer forever! We thought we could go home to our families, but now we have to die, and it's because of you! Damn you, damn…' The executioner's blade cut off the prisoner's words, and his head with them.
The giant gave all my men time to curse me, if they so chose, with their last breath. Some died with courage and dignity, a quiet prayer on their lips. One young pilgrim stared at me, searchingly. I had known him as a friend. Now my selfish madness had lead to his death. The giant swung his sword down with one hand, and held his victims head down into the filth with the other, before tossing it onto a rising pile. The other Saracens looked on, laughing.

They were well armed, these men- no mere brigands. I thought they must be deserters from the Jerusalem garrison, men who had abandoned the city to our tender mercies, and banded together for survival. Perhaps they were gripped now by the same spell of collective bloodlust as had intoxicated my comrades and resulted in the butchery in Jerusalem. What right had we to expect mercy? The scene of slaughter reminded me of what I had tried to flee. Some had imagined that the capture of Jerusalem would open up the gates of heaven for us- that Christ would return in majesty and that his divinity would bathe the world in sweetness and light. Instead, waking in that place, my nostrils had flared at the stench of the aftermath of the atrocity- the stale blood and the mountains of rotting bodies, piled outside the walls, too many to bury.

Yesterday we had butchered. Now this was happening to us. Such was fortune. I knew these Saracens would kill me too, once they had decided how. I dreaded hell. I hoped with the fervour of prayer that religion was all a lie and that there was no God to judge me. The best I could hope for was oblivion- release from this insane and brutal world. But whatever they intended I would accept passively. I owed them their revenge, which in a sense was also God's revenge. This dawned on me as I waited to die.
For the time being, at least, it seemed these Muslims had other plans. When they had killed the last of my men, they brought water and made me drink. They stripped me of my armour, and brought forward one who acted as a doctor. He tended to my wounds, withdrawing the arrowheads with special implements, and applying strange balms and cloth dressings. He also looked at the spear wound to my arm and applied himself to stitching shut the gash in the flesh, before wrapping my arm in bandages. When he was done, they tied up with rope and one of them stood guard over me while the others buried their dead, lying on their right side, facing Mecca. Others, meanwhile, brought their leaders' horses from their hiding place and the whole company readied themselves to move off. Meanwhile the vultures descended on their second course, the decapitated Christian corpses.

They took me over the desert wilderness, tied behind a horse. Memories and regrets found their way through my wall of indifference and resignation. I thought of Anna, my princess, with a painful, hopeless yearning. How right she had been in all she had said, and what a fool was I.

The terrain became more mountainous as the hours passed. As dusk approached, the wind began to sigh through the high mountain gullies like the song of lost souls. Sometimes in the distance we glimpsed an expanse of water- the Dead Sea. We passed through a valley to the abandoned ruins of an ancient town, and here my captors made camp. They lit a fire in the middle of what had once been a house, and sat in grave discussion around its glow. Only three of the building's crumbling walls remained, and these barely shoulder high, but they were enough to offer the men shelter from the now biting wind. From their tone and the few recognizable words I managed to glean the subject of their discourse: how their world had been turned upside down, and what would happen now? I sat with wrists and ankles bound, on some steps away from them, aware of their hostile glances, feigning indifference, keeping my head down. Later their colloquy became grimmer still. They began to talk of jihad and retaliation.
The howling of the wind kept me from sleep, and the close watch of a sentry prevented any attempt at escape that I might have made. The Saracens broke camp early the next morning, and set off over the desert with me in tow when the stars were still effulgent in the sky. We passed the dry ruins of Jericho, and other once great cities- perchance the ones that Satan had promised to Christ if only He would bow to him. Now they were half crumbled away. Sic transit gloria mundi. We trudged also over the countless rough stones, the very stones, it occurred to me, that the Lord had refused to turn to bread.
The sun rose higher, the heat grew ever more severe. My captors passed a leather water bag between them, eventually, against my expectations, they held it up to my parched lips. I thought they would snatch it away, to taunt me, as I had seen my own side taunt their prisoners, but they let me drink. Would they not let me die? I started to laugh. The hot, vile water tasted like Calvados to my dist dry throat.

We travelled through all the day. My captors stopped only to wash themselves with sand before praying according to their custom- each unrolling the mat he carried, kneeling and bowing to the south. The mats were woven with patterns. Each man had his own and the dead had been buried wrapped in theirs. I had heard it sworn that the Saracens could fly through the air carried by these magic rugs (I do not say I believed it).
On we travelled, farther and farther from Christian lands. The following night we crossed the river Jordan, where my captors filled their animal skin water bags. After making the crossing we passed along the plains on the east bank of the Jordan, towards the shimmering Sea of Galilee.

On the sandy shores of the glistening water, at Gergesenes, we joined a great, ragged city of makeshift shelters. My captors displayed me as a curiosity. Here was a blond headed Frank for them to vent their anger against. One young girl stared at me without blinking. Her gaze, almost vacant, reminded her of another child who had stared with unseeing eyes from the pile of bodies outside Jerusalem. I wept. This one, still alive, reached out as though in pity until the old woman with her snatched her away. It seemed the child could not understand why I did not look like a devil. If I were truly a kaffir, where were my horns? Others of her people spat, some threw stones, but most of them seemed to lack the energy. Their eyes, brown, black or hazel, merely stared fathomlessly, and they haunt me still.
We moved again, my captors and their captive. Another day and a half followed, passing through the undulating, brown coloured land north of the great lake, to the volcanic ranges of the Glan Heights. We passed beyind these in the shadows of snow-peaked Mount Mermon. We progressed along a plain dissected with rivers. I had an idea where they were taking me- I had heard them mention a place name familiar from the Bible. I wondered if I was passing the spot on this road where the apostle had experienced his conversion. The ancient bridge spanning the fifth river brought us into a land filled with orchards, and to a great city- Damascus.
Its walls rose above the orchards, mightier than any I had seen since those of Byzantium. The splendours within-fountains, mosaics, domes and towers recalled Constantinople too, and made me miss she who I had left there, in what seemed another life, as indeed it was. The ravaging of Jerusalem and its environs had turned Damascus and its suburbs into a dolorous hive of displaced humanity, into which a steady stream of refugees still flowed. I soon discovered what lay in store for me there.

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For the first time in my life I was caged, and shackled held my limbs. I lay confined in a coffin of darkness, and the ceiling of my cell pressed down on my back. I was free only to look out through the iron grille covering the tiny window. It was at gutter level, and the filth of the gutter obscured half my view. Still I could snatch glimpses, if I brought my eye close. People were suffering out there, too. I saw carts of refugees, listless figures, sorrowful faces, some disfigured, wounded, scarred. I saw gangs of thieves who might once have been disciplined soldiers; I heard the cries of a lost child who sat in the dirt across the road, apparently unnoticed by the tide of humanity that swept by.

For three days I languished in chains, listening to the taunts of my holders, the gang of slave traders to whom my captors had sold me. Eventually the day of the slave auction came. I was brought out of my confinement, squinting against the sun, dragged and pushed through crowds, surrounded by noise. Above the people rose the tower and dome of the Great Mosque. I heard some wine merchants talking in Greek, discussing how the refugees would mean plentiful cheap labour in the vineyards. One alluded to them being in such a poor state that the authorities had permitted the refugees to break the fast of Ramadan. They speculated on how long the crisis would last, and how long it would take the Caliph of Islam to unite the Muslims against the Franks. One expressed the hope that the Muslims would be able to distinguish Orthodox Christians from the Latin barbarians when they came to recover Jerusalem.
I was held back while Akhbar Kazim, the leader of the slaving gang and head auctioneer, stood at the front of a platform before the crowds, and delivered a speech that held the bidders, loiterers and thieves in the market square rapt. Then they took me from a wicker cage, and manhandled me to the front of the podium.

Chapter III
What a place was Damascus, where they could build such fine buildings, yet also sell human life in the market place. There I found myself, standing bound in chains, stripped to my waste, and about to be offered to the highest bidder. As Kazeim spoke to the crowds, I understood enough that I feared for what I might have to endure. The slaver made claims about my youth and strength- and the valour of the men who had captured me. He directed the audience's attention to my muscular physique, my skin as white as salt, my fine teeth, my broad shoulders, my hair like the golden sand and eyes like the sky… my beauty. I shuddered inwardly at the thought of the purpose for which he had in mind to sell me.
There came whispers. 'Yellow hair… blue eyes… look at him!'
At first the hungry stares from some of the rich Saracens among the spectators seemed to bear out my worst fears, and yet I sensed, before Kazeim did, a different passion rising up from the poorer people stood below the stage.
'Let the bidding start at a thousand dinars' Kazeim announced.
'For a murdering Kaffir?' someone shouted with disgust.
'Infidel! Kaffir! Barbarian Nazarene!' A hissing, murmuring prickling, visceral anger spread through the masses.
'Fellows, fellows! Good Muslims! Be calmed!' Kazeim raised his hands, recognizing the changed feeling among the people. 'What better way to redress the balance than buying an infidel as a slave? A thousand dinars is nothing for one so charmed!'
They would have none of it, however. One man in the crowd stooped to take off one of his shoes and then held it up. 'I'll give you this for him!' He called to Kazeim with a sardonic leer.
The rich men began to shrink into the shadows behind some awnings, quietly; their pride would not let them be seen to covet anything the lower orders so obviously spurned. Meanwhile a stone hit me in my unprotected chest, soon followed by other missiles of eggs, vegetables and rotten scraps of meat. I just stared forward, into the air, resigning myself to take whatever might befall me as a self-inflicted penance.

Kazeim shook his head, wiped the perspiration from his faded black silk turban, and yelled at his underlings.
'Ah curse the kaffir to the Iblis,' he hissed. 'The distress of these people is too raw; it blinds them to a bargain. Get him out of here!' He leaned close to me as they ushered me to the back of the stage. 'Fear not my dear Kaffir, in Baghdad they will have no such scruples. You will be worth your weight in gold.'
He shoved me back into the cage and the door slammed as they led out the next auction piece.
Kazeim caught hold of the chain that linked the iron collars encircling the necks of two trembling young girls. He turned back to the populace as his men stepped up to strip the girls of their clothing and to hold their arms so they could neither cover themselves nor reach out to one another. 'Now here is a great treasure for you,' Kazeim announced, 'for the price of one we offer two! Here is quality, lovely twin sisters from far off Astrakhan…'

The slavers joined a caravan passing out of Damascus by Saint Paul's Gate. They trailed some way behind the main convoy, shunned by the merchants dealing in more honourable freight.

We headed east over the wild and rough. I was chained with other slaves, a mixed bag of Armenians, Greeks and Africans, in a sort of cart pulled by oxen. One of Kazeim's men, with a red dyed beard, rode close to the cart. He carried a pronged whip, and warned the captives not to talk or they would have felt its sting. I was in no mood for conversation anyway so it was as well.
After hours of travel the caravan stopped at a brackish spring, where we slaves were led down to be watered. Kazeim and some of his men, meanwhile, had killed a young goat that had trailed after the procession. They sat around a fire cooking its flesh, and watching their pathetic captives. I looked up form the water where a line of us stooped in our bonds. The slavers eyes were on me.
'Brave son of a kaffir bitch,' said a young member of the gang. 'Never flinched when they stoned him.'
'The devil he is,' said another.
'That's not bravery, he doesn't care.' Said the older one with the dyed red beard.
'Uncanny how he revealed no pain, not a flinch,' the first said. 'Nor says a word.'
'By Allah, I'll make him flinch,' swore Kazeim. 'I'll get some sound out of him!'
They came and pulled me from the water, trying to taunt and torment me. I gave them no amusement. To punish me for my poor sport, (and probably also for humiliating Kazeim in Damascus) they uncoupled me from the other slaves. I was to be exiled from the wagon where the rest rode manacled together. Instead I was tethered behind.

As we moved again, I had to walk on, over ground so rocky that it would have torn me open had I fallen. Day after day we trekked, stumbling over the parched desert, between the outpost towers and watering holes that marked the way. The slavers proceeded in battle order, through hostile territory and bandit country- aware, I suppose of how fortune's wheel can turn.

As I marched on, with my hands tied before me, I seethed with anger and hatred for Kazeim and his band. This was not because of what they were doing to me, for even that goat that they had butchered had more right to life and freedom than I. The plight of the two Armenian sisters sold in Damascus had moved me, however, and played on my mind. It had been galling having to watch helplessly as their new master, a lascivious Damascene merchant, had dragged them away to God knows what fate. Not for the first time I asked myself what I had done- I had made myself powerless to right wrongs- what sort of penance was this? I wondered about the sisters- what sort of life they had been wrenched from.
And yet, it occurred to me, at least they still had each other. I thought about all that I myself had loved and lost. I remembered the England of my childhood, the woodland, the gentle, refreshing rain. I remembered games with my brother, the face and voice of my Saxon mother… I remembered the Abbey where the first seed of learning had been sewn in me as a novice among the Benedictines; and how I had thrown it away to join my father and brothers in Spain, and be a knight like them. And then I remembered Byzantium the Queen of Cities, and Anna it's princess, the Queen of my heart. I remembered her pure love, and her deep wisdom, and how I had thrown that too away- for this.
Through the harsh campaigns it had been the thought of Anna that had kept me going. Anna Comnena was the daughter of Alexius who ruled Constantinople and called himself Caesar and Basileus. All the imperial magnificence of Byzantium, for me, had paled in the light of Anna's brilliance. She had been all things graceful and good and calm, and was wise beyond her tender years. She had mistrusted my comrades but had loved me- we had loved each other at first sight. We had talked deeply; and in her bed chamber- oh, sweet dream- oh precious memory- we had taken each other to new worlds. We lost our innocence- yet it seems wrong to say so when we loved so truly. How can it be said that I sullied her? No, it was pure. In every second I revered her!
In the bleak desert I tried to stop thinking of my princess before I would have to dwell on our parting. My captors would have thought my tears a sign of weakness. It was too late. I was on the bustling quayside again, between the domes of Byzantium and the swaying masts of the anchored fleet.
I heard my own words 'Goodbye my love.'
Before my eyes I saw my angel's serene brow crease with a wince of anguish. I saw the tears glistening in her lovely eyes, threatening to overflow her long lashes, as she realized I could not forsake my vow to fight for Jerusalem; but really would board the ship and cross the watery Bosphoros. 'Till God reunites us,' she had said, and kissed my lips for the last time before tearing herself from my arms.
I had hardly noticed my surroundings, lost in my reverie of Anna. We had now passed from open desert into a narrowing valley. A rumbling sound brought me out from my poignant daydreams. I thought it might be distant thunder, or perhaps a rockslide, for the valley seemed almost steep enough. Indeed I saw dust clouds as though from rolling rocks moving down the right hand slope of the valley up ahead. But through the dust now I could see horses- thirty or more, and riders- men in black robes that flew out behind them, carrying bright-tipped spears with fluttering black pennons. On the leader's flag I saw a symbol- a chalice with a dagger above. I did not recognise the device from the banners of friend or foe. The horsemen rode down the hill, charging straight for us, and if they meant to destroy us I could see no way to escape.