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mail, a mail helmet, some gauntlets of tooled red leather and a handful of rubies. He also had a quantity of golden Arab dinars and silver drachmas at his disposal, to use as he saw fit.
    They boarded the two-deck galley and joined the captain on the poop deck. The morning was still and the flag with its red cross pattée hung limp at the stern rail. Their supplies were unloaded from a creaking wagon. The packhorses that would carry them were led up the gangway, followed by the servants he had brought to mind them and cook the food.
    Finally William appeared, a sombre presence on a fine morning in his black-cowled robe. His face was grey.
    ‘I trust this morning finds you well,’ Josseran said to him.
    William produced a perfumed handkerchief from his robe and put it to his nose. ‘I do not know how any man can bear the stench.’
    Yes, the stench. It was true, it was intolerable. It came from below, from the Mohammedans manacled to the oars on the slave deck, their own faeces lapping around their ankles in the bilges.
    ‘I have found since I have been in this land that a man may grow accustomed to any vileness,’ Josseran said. He turned and murmured to Gérard, who stood beside him. ‘Even that of churchmen.’ Well, not quite. The idea of chaining men to galley benches offended him as much as it did the friar.
    ‘I fear my stomach will revolt,’ William said.
    ‘Then it behoves you to remove yourself to the side,’ Josseran said and led him to the starboard rail of the galley. A moment later they heard the friar revisiting his breakfast.
    The sounds of the morning – the booming of a drum, the flat slap of the slave master’s whip, the clank of manacles – mingled with groans. The oars dipped for a moment, seawater glistening on the blades, then moved in time with the great drum as the galley sliced across the smooth waters of the harbour towards the mole.
    Josseran looked back at the colonnaded piazza of the Venetian quarter, its three broad gateways open to the sea, the
fondachi
flying the Golden Lion pennants. Beside the Iron Gate, the old Genoese warehouse presented a sheer wall to the harbour. The chain was lowered and their bow cut between the breakwater under the shadow of the Tower of Flies. Their captain set their course towards Antioch. Josseran stared at the familiar barbicans of the Templar fortress on the Dread Cape. He had the uneasy feeling that he would never see them again.

    Josseran and William spoke little on the sea journey north. There was a palpable air of tension among the crew until they had passed Tyre, for the Genoese and Venetians were still raiding each other’s merchantmen and no one could be sure that even a Templar galley might not be attacked. The soldiers prowled the rigging, crossbows slung over their shoulders, their faces grim.
    Josseran was gratified to note that the good friar spent most of his time bent over the stern, heaving bile into the ocean. He was not accustomed to finding satisfaction in other men’s discomfort but William somehow invited it.
    The Dominican arrived in Antioch stinking and foul. As they stood on the dock at St Symeon even Kismet twitched her nostrils at the smell of him.
    ‘You should have no trouble finding a bath house, even in Antioch,’ Josseran said to him.
    William stared at him as if he had spoken a blasphemy. ‘Are you mad? You wish me to catch the vapours and die?’
    ‘In this climate we find such indulgences welcome, even necessary.’
    ‘Indulgence is all I have found among you and your kind thus far.’ He staggered on to the wharf.
    Is he going to stink like that all the way to Aleppo? Josseran wondered. This is going to be a long journey.

X

    Antioch
    T HE B YZANTINE WALLS had been built by the Emperor Justinian, one spanning the river Orontes, two more winding up the precipitous heights of Mount Silpius to the citadel. In all there were four hundred towers commanding the plains around Antioch.
    Prince Bohemond may have