Crusade

The most grisly discovery was made at dawn when the son of the pigman went to check on his herd. Mahnoor’s head had been impaled on a lance and stuck in the ground in one of the sties. Her luxuriant jet-black hair now fell in blood-soaked threads down her face, her jaw hung open hideously and trails of dried blood ran from her mouth, nose, ears and eye sockets. Her once captivating eyes had been gouged from her. What was left of her body was strewn around among the pigs, parts of which were still being consumed.

Of course, being fed to swine, the creature most reviled by Muslims, was a horrifying fate to one of her faith, as was the insult daubed in her own blood on the wall of the sty — ‘infidel’.

The most wretched part of it all was the fact that Mahnoor had just discovered she was pregnant. Sweyn’s hunting trip had been intended to put fresh meat and game on the table of a grand feast to celebrate the news.

The hunting party returned the next day, by which time, mercifully for Sweyn, all trace of the barbarism had been removed and Mahnoor’s remains buried. He hid his immediate reaction from everyone by turning his back when Maria and Ingigerd told him what had happened and walking away to the forest, a place he always returned to in times of stress. It was, after all, the place where he had found refuge after the massacre at Bourne.

He asked just one rhetorical question as he left, which was to say that he presumed the band of assassins had spoken Arabic? When Maria confirmed that they had, he hesitated for a moment before continuing his desolate trudge into the wilderness.

It is impossible to imagine what thoughts went through his head in those dark minutes and hours that followed but, just before dusk, he returned and asked to spend time alone at the side of Mahnoor’s grave.

Maria and Ingigerd took him food and a cloak later in the evening, and a fire was built nearby to warm him against the chill of winter. He politely resisted all attempts to comfort him and spent the night huddled next to the grave of his beloved wife, the mother of his unborn child.

The women took it in turns to check on him during the night, but on each occasion he was still in the same position, numb to all entreaties and to everything around him. Just before dawn it started to snow and, within minutes, he was covered in a shroud of snow, but still he did not move. They took him a bowl of game soup and a beaker of mulled wine at sunrise, which he consumed without seeming to taste or savour it.

Then he smiled a mournful, weak smile; for the first time, there were tears in his eyes.

‘I have to go. I know who did this terrible thing. I will avenge my wife and make him pay for what he did here.’

He said nothing more, other than to ask that one of the enclave of Arab merchants in Toulouse be paid to come and read from the Quran over Mahnoor’s grave. By the middle of the day he had loaded a small boat and was rowing himself down the Lot to Cahors.

When Ingigerd and Maria had finished their dreadful account, we immediately began to make a plan. We knew precisely where Sweyn was going and exactly who the culprit was whom he intended to slay. We assumed he would not go to Count Roger, but would want to exact his own revenge, and thus would need all the help we could offer him. Unfortunately, he had a four-day start on us. Ironically, we had almost certainly passed him somewhere on our journey, but on the busy road from Cahors to Toulouse it was easy to pass people unnoticed.

Adela was understandably impatient.

‘We must leave immediately! If we ride like the wind, we can catch him. He will want to get to Sicily as quickly as possible, but not as quickly as we want to catch up with him.’

Adela was probably wrong; a four-day head start for a man with only a single objective in his mind was a lot to make up, but it was worth a try. And she certainly tried.

We bought a string of horses in Cahors and rode them as hard as was humane. She did not want to stop and so, when the horses could do no more, we walked. It was the hardest task I had ever undertaken and my admiration for her grew by the minute. She never seemed to tire.

She was counting the miles and checking them off against the formula she had worked out to measure our progress against his. By the time we got to Narbonne, she had calculated that we were only a day behind him. She was right; we reached the quayside late in the afternoon and were told that an English knight had boarded a Cypriot dhow bound for Palermo that morning. We immediately commissioned a ship of our own at an exorbitant price and just caught the evening tide. We were then only twelve hours adrift.

Our vessel, a modified Norse knaar, rigged for speed — for whatever dubious cargo, we decided it was wise not to enquire — was owned by a Maltese merchant. Adela spent most of the crossing standing at its tall curved prow, peering expectantly out into the Mediterranean, hoping, at any moment, to see Sweyn’s ship.