MILES CHRISTI

Chapter Twenty-Three

If you’ve recently joined or are checking things out, start at MILES CHRISTI’s description (https://timosner.substack.com/p/miles-christi), then go to Chapter One below. Thanks.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The diabolical mountain.

October. Romantic October. Golden trees. Winterfylleth (first winter moon). Winmonath (wine month). Let us be drunk. Harvest. Fat pigs. Fat sheep. Fat fields. A beautiful landscape on its way to desiccation, then snow-covered once a corpse – a purity when the things that were, are gone . . . All things wise in October. Mystical. Magical – for us, not them. October is labour. The villeins in Sainte Cecilia working hard? Aile and Tíbald not there to watch them. But October is a liar; its name proclaims the eight month when it’s the tenth, and to the Medievals (dare I use the word) no more consequential in Church days than August or March. It is we who infer. Us, the individuals, the universal Me. For everything relates to me. The real clash is not Tíbald and God, Tíbald and Aile, or Marin, or the princes, but you and me. We’re competitors in a chess game. I am white. You are black. I have the first move; the words are the moves with preconceived meanings. Are you manipulated? You must figure them out. The knights do not move in straight lines. What have you concluded about the pilgrim army? Are the princes vain and selfish? Is the Milities Christi bad? Have you determined the innocent and victims? They are not the same, though violence is in both of them (I’m a clod to say it). Is Tíbald an outlier, his judgments too harsh? . . . What has this to do with October? Other than your romantic whims, it's a time for reaping. I imagine when the Lord comes to separate barley from chaft, it will be at the time of colour and light breezes, when mankind has fully ripened and there’s nothing left to do but rot . . . But how will we know that? The road here is smooth.

They took Taticius’ route.

The villages along the way welcomed them. Gifted them with harvest and supplies amidst the snap of colour and chill. But the frost more accommodating than heat, they knew it well. Ahead, the blue/gray Ala Mountains – a sleeping giants. They will slumber as they climb. Christ will keep the passes clear and guide their feet over it. And then, Antioch.

But the Lord of the Air would not permit it; he rules the earth and sky . . . least till Christ throws him down. He watched from the mountaintop, the scarlet crosses on their iron coats winding through the valley, the iron crosses of their broadswords, a top their destriers with their proven tactics, confident, arrogant in their faith in Christ . . . And the LORD said unto Satan: ‘Behold, all that he hath is in is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand.’ So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD. He will test them hard, this Job of an army and will rock them. Come out of the boat and walk upon this water.

The Franks stopped in an orchard to gather fruit for the climb. A clear day and beautiful; God is with us.

Satan jabbed his talons into the land.

It crumbled.

He flayed the weather with his pointed tail.

Storm clouds gathered, angry and ravenous, waiting for the Christians to come into their grasp. The peaks, themselves, transformed, rising like spines of a dragon.

It drizzled at first, a filmy mist like a feather. Then turned cold, leaching through the mail and gambesons, creeping down to the bone. Once the Franks began their ascent and fully off the plain, a wall of rain knocked them. The seigneurs dismounted. The highway began to twist and turn. Torrents rushed, knocking Pilgrims off their feet, the once dry path a slippery grade.

Tíbald pressed forward, his cloak about his shoulders. Aile in his right hand, the destrier’s reins in his left, inching their way up. Aile, bent low, clung to stones on outcrops to keep herself steady. The destrier too, its head lowered, took its steps slowly, its eyes big.

“One at a time,” the captains shouted as a seigneur or his horse would slip and pile on those behind them.

Joceran struggled following Tíbald with a laden ox reluctant to move. The column stalled. He tugged the beast with both hands on the rope through its nose ring, his heel sinking into the road. One step. A pede lashed it from behind. Two steps. Only twenty feet ahead the route turned to more even ground.

“Help me,” Joceran cried.

Tíbald grasped a protrusion and pulled himself onto the porch. Behind him the column snaked up from the plain a thousand feet below. A thousand feet above, on the switchback, the procession struggled. And for the first time, he saw the sheer drop on the road’s outer edge. God’s Face, he gasped! Give me Tancred and the Cilician Gates. Aile plastered against the path’s wall. Tíbald, tied the destrier’s reins off on a crag, and reached back to hook Joceran’s arm and haul him to the terrace. The ox, nailed to the incline, refuse to go higher. Tíbald and Joceran yanked on the nose ring. The ox took a tentative step, then slipped, yanking the tether out of their hands. It slid down the mushy surface, its black eyes bulging, crushed the pede behind it while still gaining speed. It tumbled onto its side, its hooves flailing, ploughed into the next ten men, pinning then against a horse and cascaded down the trail, until it knocked into the mountainside and hurtled off the edge, men and beasts head-over-heels in the open air in a thousand-foot fall. They tumbled in silent disbelief while those on the ledge watched. How slow their fall. So it seemed. Their voices they found at the end, cut short.

Tíbald and Aile sank to their knees to peek over the edge but saw nothing. A newly formed mist consumed them.

“God have mercy,” Joceran trilled.  

Aile crossed herself. The worst type of death – one you cannot struggle with. Terror. She pressed the Trinity into her and stared back at the imprint on the incline, a smooth trough veering right then left till off the edge. As frightening as the fall itself; to look at it, is to be ever falling.

Soon shouts could be heard from below. Soldiers who had barely escaped found themselves being pushed up the grade.

“Wait! Wait!” they cried as they fell face down. A pede in front churned his feet as he was pushed toward the lip. He shrieked as he dipped into the gully made by the ox.

“Stop! Stop!” Tíbald and Joceran cried.

The soldier gripped in vain as he slipped off the side. His was a scream: “Jēsu! Jēsu!” as he fell headlong down the mountain face. The men behind him saw the same fate. “Jēsu! Jēsu!” And threw their hands skyward for Christ to save. Christ did, but not their bodies.

“God’s Face!” Tíbald cried, wanting to rush down and toss the offenders over himself.

The rain stiffened and the column halted, water gushing down the incline. Tíbald called up ahead for a rope. He wound it around the trunk of a young tree growing out where the mountain face meets the road. How convenient. He tossed it to the soldiers down the line.

Soldiers inched up, one foot after the other, for the sergeants and seigneurs a more difficult go in their heavy armour. The Lord of the Air swatted them. Certainly, he must come on the scene. He spat on their crosses. Lashed at their eyes. Tíbald saw his outline in the rain. Is it so? God in Heaven save me. That Tíbald stab him with his crimson lancehead. But alas, it was packed away. As all things are packed away when you need them. The Devil laughed and pulled up the sapling, and it and the rope and those who held it went over the side.

Tíbald grabbed the seigneur closest to him, Joceran on Tíbald’s shoulder, they hauled him up – Gìrard de Gournay, who had chided Tíbald at Nicaea. He gripped Tíbald’ hand as a child would his father’s.

Aile continued to cross herself. She saw not the Devil like Tíbald but felt him.

Why’s the Devil more real? Mimicking powers not belonging to him? As if he’s omniscient, omnipresent? He shrieks. He howls. And God is silent. The Devil’s works are not miracles, but sleight of hand. What does he look like? Whatever he wants to look like. Wings of a harpy. Tail of a snake. For he exists on the elements’ surface while God’s manifesto resides in Natural Law . . .

And they fall off the mountainside fighting for Christ . . . Did Tíbald only see him?  More went over. A lifetime in the long fall. The Devil laughing. Tíbald’s heart in his throat still clutching the seigneur’s hand – Gìrard de Gournay. He did not like the man. He would save him with all his might.  

The army split – half down the lower mountainside, half on the rising switchbacks. More rope. Those climbing the lower part, pushed through the watery cataracts one at a time. Those ahead must keep moving. Like de Gournay, no one else may fall. On the climb, each life sacred. The climb itself sacred, Abraham and Isaac rolled into one. But no one knew that. Not yet. Some never . . . Maybe those who fell.

Aile, separated from Tíbald, struggled up the trail ahead, her feet in muck to feel the gravel bedding. Cold rain like darts, drumming off her shield and helm. It leached through her hauberk and gambeson. Before her, seigneurs and pedes who struggled with their balance. At times, when recovering their feet, they’d inevitably peer over the edge and freeze. Aile too would stiffen but would force her eyes back to Tíbald then to Marin and Esmè just ahead. Marin, in fact, plodded, the same labouring pace as when climbing steps. Esmè the same – it was more toil than danger. Strange pair – Marin and Esmè in their bubble. That Aile could be with them. For the trail ever narrowing and the clouds settling till the scene transformed from deathly expansiveness to closeness. Walking in a dream. Marin and Esmè in their bubble.

They finally reached an even stretch and their pace quickened. The trail turned a corner and terraced out wider. As a donkey train made the outcrop, the outer expanse gave way. One by one the donkeys plucked in a crash of arms over the cliff. The last donkey brayed and gone. Aile found herself standing on a ledge of wet stone half the trail’s width.

The seigneurs and the men-at-arms sunk to their knees. “Buy my shield,” one begged a pede. “It is new and made for this Holy War.” The foot soldier blinked. “It will save your life,” the seigneur cried.

“How can it save me from a fall?”

The seigneur thrusted it into the pede’s hands. “I sell it to you for a tenth of its worth.”

Others did the same. And the armour that could not be sold or given away was tossed down the mountain.

Aile fingered her mail shirt. Its scarlet cross soaked in the rain to mix with iron’s surface rust, a colour of brownish blood. She unbuckled her shield and considered it.

“Père,” she called out to Marin who turned to see her entreating eyes. Is she not strong? Is she not worthy? There, the narrow passages where she could plummet in full armour but also plummet naked as well. A brief imperviousness. What is best when in terror?

Marin opened his mouth when she let the shield go. She released it as dropping a flower in a stream. It fluttered in the currents of rising air and vanished in the cloud. She cast off her helm before she could think. She lifted the hauberk over her head (miraculous), her shoulder wound singing, and tossed it cross and all. No . . . threw it as one pitches a javelin at an enemy. God must understand. Did she pitch her soul as well? There was no sound of its hitting bottom. On the shoulder of her gambeson a stain from the cross. She rubbed it with her fingers. It would not be gone. A lightness took her. She wavered. Marin caught her and guided her across the rim; the path broadened once in his grip.

Tíbald, back with his cohort, prayed against any urge to discard weaponry. The Devil in this. How could he free Jerusalem without arms? He’d fallen behind and had missed Aile’s actions; the destrier had slowed him down. He demanded God keep Aile safe . . .

Enough. Enough. No more appeasing and scraping.

Snap.

God to do his bidding – Jēsu his deity. He kept Him in his pocket. So too today’s believers.

The destrier kicked up, big, ornery; it was of no advantage here. Was anything? Should Tíbald hurtle him down? Cancerous the mountain, malignant and rendered essentials useless. The past had no value. The future did not exist.

I have you, the mountain says. I consume you. Cast away all and despair.

Be not afraid, a voice in him.  

He was afraid. Even with an angel at his side. A legion of angels floating beyond the precipice to prevent a soul from falling. Though souls fell of their own accord. And the clattering of their iron over the side served them no better. What should he do? ‘Do nothing,’ Marin’s voice in his head. Act, his opposite cognition. He clinched the horse’s bridle at the bit and covered its eyes with a towel. The horse had saved him time and again . . . as it was trained to do without loyalty or affection. An animal is an animal, a weapon, to discard when not useful. But on the mountainside, it was kin.

“My fine boy. Fine boy.”

It nickered anxiously. Tíbald jerked on the bridle and cuffed its jowl. Better.

They came to where the trail had collapsed. On the rim scratches where the wretches went over.

Tíbald pulled the horse, keeping its eyes covered. “Have mercy on me and mine,” he prayed. “Deliver us to safety.” Tancred and Baldwin, he wondered. Could they be in more danger? And this the main road. The great military highway . . .

Over halfway across.

. . . No wonder the Greeks can’t hold what is theirs.

He stepped over impressions – charged places of final moments. Though no more treacherous than others. Some, in fact, benign.

He reached the summit by midday, an unremarkable plateau compared to the mountainside. The warhorse clip-clopped across the stone table. The rain slackened to a fog. Within the mist, sat groups of pilgrims. There was Aile with her chin on her knees, and though bereft of armour, she still had her sword. She gripped its scabbard with both hands. Odd she should keep it. Marin and Esmè sat nearby. At the plateau’s far end where the trailhead commenced, centurions roused the men to get moving. That the decent be not so wicked. But even worse on the plateau, mountain sickness. At the top of the world, it spun. In Heaven there’s no air which is why one must be dead to enter.

Tíbald broke into a dry cough as he bent over her. “Let’s go,” his words halting. She rose with her sword and he knew, but that was an issue for later.

Esmè and Marin rose too (why are they untouched?) And with Joceran and the rest of their cohort started the descent.

Clouds enveloped them. A blessing. They could not see the fall. On a climb, one need look at their feet only. On decline, the next step could mean your end. But the soothing cloud . . .

O immunity to danger when God blinds us; He throws the cloth over our eyes. We see not the immutable dangers on the mild day and on smooth land. We dodge without knowing because of God’s cool towel over our eyes.

Aile lighter on the way down. Tíbald held her hand till she no longer allowed it. Her iron gone. Not by choice, but confusion. What one does the first time. God still marked her. She’s still His, she can’t escape Him.

Tíbald and the cohort still had their armour. He still had the beast.

I will buy another set, Aile’s determined remorse. We still have loot from Kilij Arslan’s camp . . . Though not the same; we purchased the first iron by faith. The sword, she still had the sword. It would consecrate its workmates. The sword is my commitment and the next iron devotion.

She walked with ease. The trail pulled her and the clouds broke. Before her, a beautiful valley afire with copper and gold leaves amidst tall pines of deep green. Cold flowing streams from the mountainsides and grassy meadows still verdant. And waiting near the base, a quaint city with open gates, Marasch.

The army wept in the safety of the valley, whose sound slapped against the hills and mountain face. Ire. Fury. Madness. They shook like an overpowered bear. Had God just done this to them? . . . That He led them on the safe path . . . with His love, His protection . . . to their deaths. They prayed, but He had other plans. How can one put Him in his pocket? The mountain was His servant. The sea can drown thee, but one may grasp a piece of debris and float. But a fall from the mountain heights . . . And yet, God delivered them.

God endangers. God delivers. God retracts. His servants – fires, drought, storms; wicked leaders, them to us, us to them; prodigal children, profligate parents; the tiny cell within the organ wall that surges to a tempest – all on the safe path. Have we not met on the misty mountain? Are we not in their world? The pilgrims did fall. Faceless. Nameless. Like us in a thousand years – silly, illogical people. Our earth is flat as we fly among the planets   . . . Our justice. Their justice. Greed . . . What person knows they’re greedy? Does the greedy man traverse the peak? Keep God in his pocket?

******************

‘Let me go. It is dawn,’ God said as Tíbald struggled with Him in a dream (Tíbald, exhausted, sleeping on the meadow grass). ‘How spiritual passages alters. Never the same as from the start. Little man, I belong to no one and you belong to Me.’

‘Give me your blessing,’ Tíbald begged, holding Him with both hands.

God laughed, ‘I know you – Abandon all for Me?’

Tíbald let Him go and woke up on his back. The sun upon him from head to hip, cooled by an autumn breeze and the dream vanishing as life, cold, hard, and relenting, crashed through. How we love our prison. But one thing clung – the climb sacred. Even in the twilight between sleep and awake, he betrayed Him as the dream said he would.

He found Aile sitting against a cypress tree. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, and wrists as she’d been the one to save them. As if she, in her imperfection, in her lability, was the source of redemption. For whom better personified God’s love and anger. The beautiful face. Tíbald knew better. Beauty will not save thee. Aile declined the burden; she would not compete. Though, in truth, some want to (you bristle) – they plucked the Fruit first. What patriarch despite his patriarchy did not serve his wife initially? Did not Jēsu appear to a woman first, Mary Magdalene? And why not? The first to fall. Her’s was the greater sin. What was the mountain – the woman – the maiming, killing woman . . . on the smooth road. From the beginning, the corruption, from Torah to Apocalypse, was female in origin. That Mary, Ever Virgin, should not tempt man, even her husband, Joseph. Jēsu – our Lover. Mary – our Mother. Batter my heart three-person’d God . . . ‘o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new . . . But am betroh’d unto your enemy . . .’ A grace that Man and Woman marry not in Heaven – another rebellion would form. We are single believers, as are we born singly, fall from the mountain singly, judged or redeemed singly. The pilgrims fight as penance for individual sins. And the new sins they create are their sins.

******************

The citizens of Marasch greeted them with carts of bread, fruit, and meats. Wine and bier of all blessings. In defiance of the great mountain, a great market sprang. They embraced the Franks who recounted their terror.

“Why would you travel such a route this time of year?” the Armenians asked. “Why would the Greek general guide you there? The highway has been in disrepair for over fifty years?”

Why indeed, the Franks wondered, even more so when Baldwin rejoined after an easy passage through the Cilician Gates. While the army struggled, Baldwin and Tancred wrangled over Tarsus, which Tancred captured only days before. Baldwin’s superior forces established him as ruler without conflict, and Tarsus was liberated, the birthplace of Sainte Paul. Not only that, but Baldwin refused to admit three hundred of Tancred’s seigneurs who arrived late as reinforcements and forced them to camp outside the walls. That night they were attacked by the ousted Turkish garrison.

“Save our brothers!” Baldwin’s own men begged him. He would not (whatever his reason), as they watched breathless from the parapets the Normans fall (whatever route, they fall), shrieking like boys beaten; the Turks cut them into pieces and threw them against the walls. They jeered at the Militas Christi for being cowards. On the mountain pass, they could not strike the enemy. At Tarsus, they would not.

Baldwin rejoined the army, Tancred with him. At last they were up to strength, but Baldwin clearly suzerain of Tarsus . . . and other cities – Baldwin, Count of Edessa – liberator of Armenians. He came only because his wife was dying. Back to the road – Jerusalem; it was her fight too. Once dead, he would shed his tears . . . as true of tears as he was capable for a young girl at seventeen with money and lands in Normandy to support him – a marriage of state, the best of all marriages. Then off to win new kingdoms. God wills it – for Himself and Baldwin – his destiny. Jēsu in his pocket?