Faithful Dead by Alys Clare

although they rode with different contingents, often they sought one another out.
    ‘. . . it’s likely, they’re saying, that she’ll keep her head down now.’ Herbert, craning round to look into Geoffroi’s face, said accusingly, ‘You’ve not been listening to a word I’ve said!’
    ‘Yes I have.’ Geoffroi gave a guilty start. ‘The Queen has eyes for her uncle and Louis no longer goes to her bed. And – er––’
    Herbert gave him a friendly shove that almost unseated him. ‘Go on with you! I’ll warrant you were thinking of the fighting ahead, eh?’
    ‘No, I––’
    But Herbert was not to be robbed of the picture he was forming, of an eager young knight ablaze with ardour for the coming battles. As he set off on another favourite tack – the glory of the fight for God’s Holy Places – Geoffroi went back to his calm contemplation of the scenery.
    The march from Antioch to Jerusalem took over a month. As the army neared the Holy City, fatigue, illness, homesickness and injury were all forgotten as a sort of collective ecstasy overcame the crusaders. When, at long last, they finally had their first sight of the walls of Jerusalem, still far off but shining in the bright light like a beacon to welcome them, many were totally overcome.
    We are so close now, Geoffroi thought as, with his comrades, he knelt in prayer that night. Although not entirely certain what action he would see – Jerusalem was safely in Frankish hands, it seemed, and there would surely be no call to fight there – he knew that he would go into battle, sooner or later. His fingers found and stroked the crusader’s cross sewn on to the shoulder of his tunic. Worn now, fraying a little at the edges despite his mother’s tiny, careful stitches, he would wear it, he knew, until the vow he had made as he received it was fulfilled.
    He recalled the words that had been spoken on that unforgettable day. The crusaders, Bernard of Clairvaux had informed them, were uniquely fortunate in being given this opportunity for salvation. God was doing them the supreme favour of pretending to need their service to win back his Holy Kingdom whereas, in fact, his true motive was to allow the crusaders to fight for him so as to be able to bestow upon them remission of their sins and everlasting glory.
    Geoffroi was not at all sure he had understood that line of reasoning at the time. He was even less sure now. But he told himself it didn’t matter; God had called, he had answered, and now here he was, prepared to do whatever he was told, prepared to give his very life, if it were to be called for, to win back God’s earthly realm. The fact that this supreme act of penance would, or so they promised, absolve him from all his sins – both those he was aware of committing and those he wasn’t – was a sort of ongoing, perpetual reassurance. A comfort. No, he thought, struggling to put his profound emotion into words, more than that. A––
    But at that moment the officiating priest raised his voice and literally cried out to heaven, and Geoffroi, swept along on the huge tide of emotion, had no more time for private thoughts.
    After that night there was a long period of inactivity. The sense of anticlimax was great; as Herbert remarked, they had come all that way and suffered so much to see Jerusalem at last, only to find themselves camped in a field with nothing to occupy them, kicking their heels while endless councils and conferences decided what to do next.
    There was discord among the leaders of the crusade, that much was well known. Queen Eleanor’s Uncle Raymond had declared he wanted no further part in the proceedings, which, Herbert observed, was hardly surprising, all things considered. And the Count of Tripoli, ‘so they said’, had been accused of trying to poison a fellow count and had gone off in a huff.
    ‘You see, your King Louis,’ Herbert pontificated, ‘devout and pious soul that he is – and he is , we all know that!