Chapter Two #6
“What do I tell your father, Rico?” a man asked, his voice hoarse from age and drinking. He was handing more sacks to the stableboy to buckle onto the horse.
“Whatever pleases you, uncle. Anything that would please my father,” one of the cloaked riders answered and Dulior’s step faltered. That voice and its ring of mirth sounded familiar.
The older man laughed, loud and raw, his laughter startling the animals.
“We would not be standing here if we knew what pleased my brother.”
The rider shrugged.
“Take care of your cousin, Rico. Keep him safe. I am entrusting him to you.”
“If God wills it, uncle.”
The man frowned and opened his mouth to reply but stopped.
His head turned to look at the house. A young man—a child, really—stepped out and awkwardly made his way to the group.
He nodded at the mounted riders and stood expectantly next to his father.
Dulior was tempted to look into his mind but decided that warriors were the least of her concerns.
Let them all go into the desert and perish, she cared not.
Disgruntled, she continued on her way, mindful of the horses as she passed them.
The sky above had started to crack. A rooster crowed in the distance, soon joined by the toll of bells.
The men paid no attention to her, oblivious to her presence, far too occupied with saying their goodbyes and the older man’s barrage of instructions and threats.
The horses tossed their heads impatiently; their hooves scraping against the cobblestones.
“I will watch over both of them, Lord Damiano. Rest assured.”
At the sound of this voice Dulior froze.
“Of course you will,” the man, Lord Damiano scoffed. “That is why I am entertaining this madness. You are the only one with a good head on your shoulders. These two will be lucky if they get out of France, let alone reach Constantinople.”
“We will find the way, father. We will ride with the rest of the knights and—”
“No, you will follow your cousin and Silvio,” his father interjected. His words were followed by groans and complaints in an accent that Dulior recognized as the melodious banter from so many nights ago.
She wanted to turn and look at these men, pierce into their minds and confirm if it was really him. If one of the riders had eyes as green as spring leaves, skin kissed by the sun. The horses began to move, the men yelled out their farewells. They galloped past her in a cloud of dust.
The sun was rising. The man she had been seeking after had plunged himself into a crusade for the Holy Land, his silhouette grew smaller and smaller.
DULIOR, 1098
Eager for news of the crusade, Dulior began attending gatherings and made quick friends with other noble ladies.
She passed reluctantly through the threshold of churches and made donations, listened to the daily sermons and prayers, hoping her wait would soon end.
The priests beckoned and pleaded with people to join the cause, to partake in restoring the faith throughout the East. A Holy War, they called it.
Dulior was losing patience. It had been two years already, and for a while no riders bearing news had come through the city gates.
She began to take her frustration out on her husband.
Gustave watched his wife wither and slowly lose her reason.
Sometimes he would catch her harassing the servants or staring unblinking at candle flames, night butterflies crushed between her palms.
Through the butcher she found out that Silvio Bracci had been a servant in the house of Lord Damiano Gabrielli.
Lord Damiano, once a hired sword from the Kingdom of Naples, was now too old to answer the call to arms himself.
He had sent forth his son, only for the boy to die less than a year into the conquest. Had there been other deaths in the family?
Dulior pressed, asking both aloud and forcing herself into the mortal’s mind.
Is Silvio alive? The butcher did not know.
Did the boy die because Silvio failed to protect him or was it ill fortune?
What if he was alive but could not return out of shame; his word debased to nothing?
Dulior stalked the hallways of her home, imagining him somewhere under the sun, sword in hand, fighting his way through ranks of combatants.
Other times she envisioned him in the beds of foreign beauties, the holy mission abandoned for the comfort of an easy life.
“More men will ride out East,” Gustave said one night, more to himself than to her. They were sitting next to each other in the dining room, the table arranged with a few dishes, the goblets waiting to be filled with wine.
Dulior looked up at him, noticing how his face had aged from worry.
Light grey peeked around his temples and in his beard.
She used to like his beard, how it brushed against her skin, tickling her when he leaned in for a kiss.
Now it repulsed her and she averted her face, denying him this intimacy.
Upon his departure, Silvio did not have a beard but in the months of travel and fighting maybe he would have let it grow out.
What would he look like—older? Crueller?
No, she shook her head, he could never be cruel. Not with me.
“..for months.”
She realized with a start that the Count had been talking for a while, telling her something. She blinked, forcing herself to push away the memory of her beloved.
“Husband?”
“They have been trying to take Antioch for months,” Gustave repeated.
“The citadel’s walls are impregnable. They cannot move forward without first capturing the city.
I hear supplies are scarce, so they might turn back and try a different route later…
or maybe never. God may have willed it, but the Seljuk have not. ”
They wore the sign of the Cross and knew it was the will of God which had driven them here.
For months they had stood in this forsaken land, waiting for reinforcements as they besieged the stronghold.
The stench of blood and gore covered their skin and clothes, following them as they walked around the city.
In the days before they had ventured into the desert their supplies and strength felt endless.
But in the days to come, they had abandoned their honour, taking upon themselves to forge new laws and codes.
Driven by their hunger, anger, madness, they had struggled with the lack of provisions, drunk foul water and suffered beneath the scorching sun, becoming the very savages they had claimed to civilize.
They turned to devouring what was left of the dead.
No longer did they carry back the sick and weak.
And amidst their holy madness, Antioch was going to fall and the Kingdom of Heaven would descend upon all.
*
Dulior spat the blood, the taste putrid around her gums. The blood was getting fouler with each deserter that came her way.
She was far away from any village and the creatures living in the desert could not sustain her.
Her clothes had been reduced to rags, fraying and tearing from the long trek and freezing nights.
She restrained herself from spitting more of the blood and shoved the corpse away.
Her victims always told her the same; the citadel was still standing and the besiegers’ morale was crumbling. The god of famine reigned in the encampment. Many had fled, unable or unwilling to continue making offerings at the altar of ruin.
“Where is he?” she whispered against the blood, forcing herself to swallow. “Show me my husband.”
Desperately she rummaged through her victims’ minds for a glimpse of Silvio, for a familiar face among the faceless.
By day, she would bury herself in the ground, digging holes deep enough to hide from the sun, and would rise like a shadow as the night fell.
She followed the trail of carnage and destruction these godly men had left as a gaping wound across Europe.
With each city and village, each pile of corpses and hollowed out animals, she hoped to find him and bring their pilgrimage to an end.
The only solace she found was in the warm embrace of the earth, the peace there was intoxicating.
There was no more waiting in the darkness for the one destined to be hers, no more wandering.
She need not recall the nights spent roaming Paris, breaking into churches looking for him, but oh, what beautiful altars she saw.
She longed to lay his body under the painted glass and bind them there.
For him to swallow all of her and share an eternity of bliss.
With each nightfall Dulior got out of the earth, the hunger pushing her forward, her eyes eagerly searching for the next deserter.
Sometimes when the desperation caught up with her, she sank her teeth into the warm flesh of her captive’s horse.
The poor animal was all skin and bones, barely standing on its legs, begging for release.
She would hush the creature and feed as much as she could stomach from it.
She needed her strength, every drop of blood mattered.
Every drop for her new husband.
“What do you have for me, my little moth?” Dulior cooed, pushing one foot in front of the other, feigning exhaustion. A rider was coming her way in the distance.
She was getting close, she could see it in the man’s mind.
Her vision exploded with images of carnage, rape and looting.
Men sank their blades into every body that stumbled their way.
Screams and shouts set ablaze the masses.
In the night a betrayer had opened the gates and they had spilled inside, blood-drunk.
Antioch had fallen.