Soldier of Crusade Read Free Page A

body of knights amongst those he had led to the East, the mass was an unruly mob containing, amongst the pious majority, some of the dregs of Europe. This host had come to the capital of Byzantium in their onward search for absolution for the entirety of their sins, this to be granted to them when Jerusalem was once more a Christian city.
    From what Alexius Comnenus knew – he would admit his knowledge was incomplete and would remain so until a papal legate arrived – Pope Urban had talked only of the remission of past sins for those who took part in his Crusade. Peter, in his enthusiasm for the cause, had elevated that promise to a guarantee of entry to paradise for any who took up the challenge, which, if it had enthused many thousands of the genuinely devout, had also gathered to him those with a great deal to gain from such a pledge, a mass of ne’er-do-wells with crimes against their name from which they needed pardon if they were not to burn for eternity in the pits of Hell.
    ‘My people are good simple folk, Your Eminence, easily led astray.’
    They are not all that, Alexius thought, though he was too much the diplomat to say so. There are murders, rapists, thieves of every sort included in your rabble and they are beyond control even by a saintly fellow such as yourself. That was not a criticism of Peter, who saw only good where other men saw a less palatable truth, andthe evidence of his error had reached imperial ears long before his followers saw the walls of the city.
    Peter’s so-called ‘People’s Crusade’ had left a swathe of destruction all across the lands of middle Europe – the Jews in their path had suffered most, with much slaughter of those who refused to convert added to the burning of synagogues. It had even led to armed conflict once they were inside the boundaries of the empire as they ravaged the countryside through which they passed. On coming to Constantinople they had posed a threat to the city itself and even more to the public peace, added to which Alexius had been required to feed them while they committed arson as a cover for their manifest transgressions.
    He was still doing so but now at a pleasing distance; recognising that matters would not improve he had them shipped across to the town of Civetot, on the southern shores of the Gulf of Nicomedia where their depredations were out of his sight as well as those of the inhabitants of his capital. Yet it was far from being without concern given their continued dismal behaviour; he felt a responsibility, if not for their well-being at least for their survival, and the reports he had told him that their conduct had not changed – they were doing to northern Bithynia what they had been stopped from doing within the walls of Constantinople.
    Having made his statement in support of the masses he had led here, Peter was obliged to wait for a spoken response – that was the way it should be: no man, however saintly, had the right to hurry a Roman emperor in his musings.
    ‘It concerns me,’ Alexius said finally, ‘that your people do not confine themselves to the area around Civetot that I have granted to them and in which they may reside till the crusading armies arrive. They raid out from the lands around the port and risk, in theirforaging and, dare I say it, plundering, to upset the Turks of Nicaea, who will not sit idly by and let the lands they control be ravaged.’
    ‘
Your
lands, Eminence, Christian lands.’
    Tempted to underline the nature of possession, Alexius demurred; Peter held a simple view that all lands were the property of his Christian God, while the Emperor knew that the sword of Islam held greater sway.
    ‘While the supplies you send us are adequate,’ Peter continued, ‘and you are to be thanked for your Christian charity in providing such, there are those who have come to expect, given they are set upon God’s work, that they deserve more.’
    ‘What is it you require, Peter?’ Alexius asked suppressing