01 - Murder in the Holy City Read Online Free PDF Page B

spiced wine and then abandoned. He looked around him. The little room was a far cry from the sumptuous hall below: worn carpets of faded colours replaced the glorious mosaic of the hall floor, and instead of the fabulous gilt-painted murals and Byzantine pillars there were plain whitewashed walls. Under the window was a roughly made table, piled high with parchments and scrolls. Naturally curious, Geoffrey unrolled one and began to read.
    “Do you possess a knowledge of astronomy, as well as your other skills?”
    Geoffrey turned with a smile of greeting to Tancred, and replaced the scroll on the table. Tancred, like his uncle Bohemond, was a formidable figure—tall, broad-shouldered, and with massive chest and arms. He kept his fair hair unusually short for a western knight, and like Geoffrey, he was clean-shaven. He came toward his old tutor with a welcoming grin.
    “I heard you returned today from the desert. Any news?”
    Geoffrey shook his head. “We found several abandoned camps and were attacked twice, but we uncovered no evidence that Arab forces are massing in the east. I suppose an attack, if there is one, will come from the Fatamids in Egypt.”
    Tancred shrugged. “You are probably right, but it is best to be sure. You were gone so long, I wondered whether you were coming back.”
    Geoffrey looked at him sharply, wondering whether this intelligent, perceptive young man was aware of his misgivings about remaining in Jerusalem. Most of the Crusaders had gone already—either back to their homes in the West or to richer pickings in lands more prosperous than the parched, arid desert around the Holy City.
    He raised his hands in a shrug. “Perhaps it is time to be thinking of returning home.”
    “Home?” echoed Tancred. “Home to what? Your sheep-farming brothers, who regard you with such suspicion, because they think that you have come to wrest away their meagre inheritance with your superior fighting skills? To those monasteries and their dusty books?”
    “Why not?” asked Geoffrey, irritated that the younger man should be questioning his motives. “I am tired of trudging around baking deserts weighed down with chain mail looking for phantom Saracens. I would not mind sitting in the cool of a cloister reading mathematics or philosophy.” He paused. “And I miss England. I find myself longing for the green of its forests, and the heather-clad hills of autumn.”
    Tancred gaped at him in disbelief. “My God, man!” he breathed. “Have you become a poet all of a sudden? Where is your manhood?” He gestured with his hand. “There are riches for the taking in this land, and you hanker after the wet trees and flowers of England! You have not even lived there for twenty years!”
    Geoffrey felt his temper begin to fray. He was tired from his patrolling, and his reasons for embarking on the Crusade had already been well and truly aired by Hugh that evening. He had no wish to be ridiculed a second time within the space of an hour.
    “I do not want riches, and I grow sick of the slaughter here.”
    Tancred made an exasperated sound. “And here we reach the nub of the issue: the slaughter. You were always squeamish about such matters. I have heard how you declined to slay the infidel when we took Jerusalem.”
    “The infidel we found were mostly women and children,” objected Geoffrey hotly. “And, besides, not all who were slain were infidels—many were Christians. In the frenzy of killing, even some of our own monks and soldiers were slaughtered. The massacre was so indiscriminate that it included anyone unable to defend himself. What man would want to take part in so foul a business?”
    “Most of your colleagues,” said Tancred dryly. “Why not, when the rule of the day was that plunder belonged to the man who killed its owner?”
    “It is exactly that kind of lawlessness that I find repellent,” said Geoffrey wearily. “Perhaps you are right, and I have lost my spirit. But I have had