The Sixth Key(32)

Matteu could barely watch as each man took his turn upon the girls. One was already dead from loss of blood; the other, who had fought and kicked and bit, had a boot stomped into her face and her head dashed onto the cobbles. Sated, the men moved on. Their festival of carnage and rape over, they now turned their business to plunder.

Matteu’s mind was hollow – even his life in the violent hovels and bars of Barcelona had ill prepared him for the sight of so much blood and savagery, and he felt gall rise to his throat, which he tried, with all his might, to stifle.

The mercenaries were hauling great chests and barrels and trunks out of the houses to prise them open, overturning them and spilling out their contents: bolts of green silk shimmered in the sun; bags of grain, pepper or salt came open and overflowed onto the cobbles; parchments were scattered about. Clothing was ripped up and thrown around; furniture was broken to pieces; pots and pans and iron candlesticks were tossed onto the blood-soaked bodies of the dead. The routiers trampled over the carcasses, slipping on the blood and tripping over the dismembered parts to get at what they wanted. They beat at one another with fists or sword butts, fighting over the spoils. Pilgrims and camp followers, themselves looking for plunder, were run through if they happened to get in the way. The men were like wolves, their faces dark with war lust.

A thunder now came from the city gates: it was the sharp-edged hoofs of the great French warhorses. Upon them were the Crusaders who had by now bested the city garrison and were seeking their plunder with a fury, beating pilgrim and routier alike with their swords or boots or shields. After ordering the mercenaries to take anything of value to the French camp or face the sword, the Crusaders galloped away towards the upper parts of the city. The world was drowned out by the solemn ‘Te Deum’ they sang as they headed for the churches where the people of the city had fled in their desperation.

The routiers, angered by this insult, proceeded to put the city to the torch. After lighting the houses, they too moved closer to the upper city and now it seemed there was a moment of quiet, the only sounds the groans of the dying and the burning and crackling of the fires. Matteu came out from his hiding spot into the long, narrow street. It reeked of faeces and was buzzing with flies. He walked among the blood and brains, legs and arms and trunks either ripped up or stove in that lay in the infested gutters, littering the ground as though rained down from Heaven.

He looked about him at the tide of pain and misery and houses on fire, to the great panels of smoke that were blocking out the sun, attacking his dust-filled nostrils and snaking into his aching lungs.

He realised he was standing near the corpses of the two girls, splayed out, naked, on the cobbles. He tried to look away but could not prevent his eyes from finding their faces. They were his age, he was sure of it, or a little older: fifteen, maybe sixteen. Their eyes lifeless, the soft milky parts of their young bodies stained red and blue with bruises, violated and exposed. To see it filled him with vacant loss. The mouldy bread he had eaten for breakfast began to turn cartwheels in his guts and the world made its rounds over his head and the buzzing grew louder in his ears. In a rush, a sour plug of gall rose up to his lips and he bent over, coughing and retching until the beast in his stomach unclenched its jaws and he stopped, his tongue a bed of fiery acid, more acid dripping from his nostrils.

He lay on the ground and waited for the world to stop spinning and for the misery of this new understanding of war to settle into his bones, where it might hurt less. Such was his state that he did not notice until too late that a knight on horseback was galloping in his direction with sword held high in one hand and a shield in the other bearing the device of the Temple. The knight was standing over him before he could get up and he pierced the skin on the back of Matteu’s neck with the tip of his weapon.

‘Who are you?’ the great and awesome knight said loudly, letting the sword’s tip draw blood. ‘Well?’

Matteu trembled beneath that blade and found to his utter terror that he was unable to speak.

The tall knight told the boy to turn over and he put a foot to his chest. He pulled up his visor. ‘Are you Cathar or Christian?’

Matteu’s words, dammed up, came tumbling out like wine out of a barrel: ‘My master is the captain of the Mercenaries . . . I came to see the war . . .’

Something flickered in the knight’s pale eyes, a passing thought, perhaps an estimation of the boy’s worth. The Templar sheathed his sword then and made for his horse. ‘Now you have seen it,’ he told Matteu, pulling himself into the saddle and looking about at the slaughter-ruined streets. As if he were speaking not to Matteu, but to some aspect of himself to which he must answer, he said, ‘There is no glory in it.’