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. Thanks.
Note: This is a short but dense chapter that should not be read without context. It’s been a while since I posted last and a reread of Chapter Twenty-Five would be very helpful.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She vomited. The contaminant in her. That flesh. Not that it tasted so, but Anti-Christ in matter, and no sacrifice. Could the Agulani imagine before mounting his horse his rump would sit in Aile’s stomach, salted and greased? A rare cut and an object of derision . . .
Aile had danced robbing the graves – the gold in her purse, her shoulder sack, her tied-on pockets. Gold an emollient, soothing the skin, its touch palliative. What scruples could resist? No loyalties: it was yours, until it was not. In it, you could do all things. It jingled to speak and carried no sense of previous holders. You could touch it. You could feel it . . . this world. For where thy treasure is, there also will thy heart be. There her heart had been and she had danced.
Another vomit.
It’s this world. And what’s in this world? Sin and death and rot. Why do we cling? . . . Beauty. Pleasure. So many pleasures. Our delight . . . We’re afraid.
More vomit.
Wash, her sudden compulsion. Wash until the world cannot tell. Glow like things are bright and good . . . She’s afraid now . . . The fever dream – thrust where neck and shoulders met. A punch with the hilt then a cut into their collar.
Wash.
******************
Stephan de Blois leaving. Down came his tents and banners folded and packed into his baggage train. Mercurial princes.
“How can this be?” the Norman pedes cried. “He is the best of us. To think he is a coward.”
“I’m not leaving,” he assured Robert Curthose and Bohemond. He shivered, weak and pale. “I’m withdrawing to the coast for my health.”
“The dominus should be in bed,” Stephan’s chaplain defended, “but he will not. We love him and convinced him to withdraw to a healthier climate.”
“I will come back,” said Stephan most sincerely as his entourage prepared to
march. “My centuries will be under my brother-in-law’s command.”
Thank God for that.
“He must come back,” Curthose quipped. “My sister would murder him. The Saracens are a feather compared to her.”
Bohemond nodded.
Thank the Virgin, Curthose was there to witness what was said.
“Go And recover,” Bohemond said. “We are not whole without you,” and thought, good, one less prince to hamper his plans.
******************
Aile waited in her blue gown, surprised it fit, like armour now, the woven fibres thick. Foreign though a memory. Her iron, hauberk and helm, in the back of the tent on its cross pole like a scoffing manikin . . . Her faces – that, which she showed the world; that, which she showed herself. A distraction. How much it was supposed to do . . . but a murderous distraction.
Tìbald on duty. That he return soon. She’d been drinking – a cloudy liquor of anise, like wormwood. A punch to the head. O’, not to think. Thinking’s the enemy. The enemy? Our thinking the enemy? Does not the Holy Ghost touch our thoughts? The Devil too though obtuse? Ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα συναντιλαμβάνεται τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ ἡμῶν· τὸ γὰρ τί προσευξώμεθα καθὸ δεῖ οὐκ οἴδαμεν, ἀλλὰ αὐτὸ τὸ Πνεῦμα ὑπερεντυγχάνει στεναγμοῖς ἀλαλήτοις·.
A pressure in her breast. She spat. Whose cloud wrapped her? Flee to holy Church before she makes God her own and He is no longer His and all can be justified . . .
But God is not hers. She can only make idols.
A sign. A sign. Give her a sign. But all about are signs – the gospel, the Eucharist, the suffering, . . . the silence. Amidst chaos’ roar, how does she battle silence? When alone, against who can one rage?
The alcohol fortified.
Did God indeed say, ‘You shall not eat of any of the trees of the garden?
More drink.
Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may. But the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God said, “You shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.”
In her gown she did not feel naked, not like in iron.
You will surely not die. For God knows that on that day you eat . . . your eyes will be open, and you will be like angels, knowing good and evil.
Did she?
. . . that it was a delight to the eyes . . .
She had danced. She had vomited.
. . . and the tree was desirable to make one wise . . .
She waivered and sat. The myopia. All shall be well with drink – the early drink before the long drink that plunges one into darkness. She never knew, as it took her and changed her moment by moment keeping her from that silent place . . .
Tìbald returned in his iron, sword and spear, his buckler strapped to his back; partially cover by the helm, the long nasal split his face in half. He too, a two-faced man.
She smiled, though her lips and eyes not in conjunction, and held her hand out, palm up. Take it.
Aile? He stopped. This Aile? He saw that look on a thousand other faces, not hers.
She pulled him as their fingers touched. Sucked him into the canvass room clinking in his iron, both in iron – her in cloth and him in chain – her bewildering smile. She stripped him: helm first, belt and sword, the iron shirt – the scarlet cross frayed and faded on the right breast – his heart quickening, she could feel it. He stood in his shirt watching, wanting the liquor as well.
She undressed and laid in bed.
He did not go to her. He wanted to but did not go to her.
Behind him Antioch rose. Stolid. Not far from tent entrance, Marin and Esmè appeared bending down and looking in.
Aile, in her intoxication, threw her arm across her face and laughed before passing out.
Marin and Esmè whispered.
Tìbald slumped in a chair staring at her naked form. Aile, Aile, a piece he missed . . . He thought he understood. He wished he understood . . .
As do I. She escapes me. And who to better say?
The liquor. He would join her. Yet the presence outside the tent. He turned about and the pig girl and the priest were gone. Not that he knew they were there . . . Aile knew. They heard her laugh.
******************
Count Stephen left the next morning, Aile in her blue gown accompanying his band. She packed her sword. She hid it.
******************
Did she leave him? No. In the back of their tent her armour with its meaning. Its meaning . . . Only she knew . . . But to him it signified. What Christian woman fights? . . . Lest she be a wife of a baron . . . Repentance? He didn’t believe that. An oddity. So odd for him all this time. Was he patient or was he mad? Or a coward playacting? That he could have her spine and rebellious nature . . . She’ll come back. He took up a crossbow. Made his way to the siege line. Come to Jerusalem and meet me there. Found himself a protective ditch. No wonder there’s no marriage in heaven. He would’ve gone with her if she’d let him . . . And the man said, “The woman whom You gave me [to be] with me she gave me from the tree; so I ate” . . . Had he? Many ways to eat. He aimed at a guard on the wall, so very much alive. If not, why rob him?
He fired. The bolt clanged through the helm and into the man’s brain. Blood flowed over his ears, down his forehead and into his eyes. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t see and fell not knowing what hit him.
******************
Bohemond – his spies everywhere. Silver-tongued. Sicilian-Norman. Soul of the princely council. Raymond, for his part, ever stalwart – storm the walls – faith like a box of rocks doubters would say – but so too Abraham and from him – the sand and the sky; who would be waring now? . . . Raymond needed a prophet, but Little Peter disgraced. Bohemond needed no prophet, aligning miracles of his own – a disgruntled emir named, Pirus.
“Yield the city to me and I will make you rich with much honour,” his message to Pirus. “You will save your life and the live of your family. What is Yaghi Siyan to you? Should you not be his lord and master? Why are you, a Latin, worshipping a pagan Bedouin god? Was not your father a Christian before, converted by force with a blade at his throat and circumcised in a most cruel manner? Doesn’t Yaghi Siyan see you as inferior to his other Seljuk lords? You and I are noble enemies. We have fought each other in battle. You are true and brave. I honour you. If not for this conflict, we should be friends. Be my friend now. My brother. Comeback to Christ as your ancestors had been since ancient times.” Bohemond speaking of Christ! . . .
“I guard three towers,” Pirus replied. “I will hand them over to you at whatever hour you wish. Receive my son as pledge to this agreement.”
Bohemond assembled the princes. “I have a plan to take the city tonight. With God’s help, it will be delivered into our hands and it will be the pagans locked outside its walls. Our armies must withdraw as if marching away to plunder Saracen lands. The Turks will think it’s because of the army coming to their aid. But we go no further than beyond the hills and be ready. I will remain with a cohort hidden and will gain entrance to the city through our ‘friend’. For His glory.” How very regular, yet he shuddered . . .
Did Bohemond not believe? His motive unmitigated power? Could he not think his course better? Is he such a shallow foe? Two-dimensional we style our opponents. We can better know them . . . Christ would use him.
“For His glory!” the princes repeated, though Raymond prayed Bohemond be cut down.
******************
“God is great!” Antioch’s walls rattled as they beheld the Franj’ backsides, the colour out of them. Not only them, but the whole great panoply, until the scene was awash in monochromatic forms. Cold and unreal. The world on its head. Do the devils just withdraw like that? Shouldn’t they sacrifice themselves up? What they do – not the typical raiders with a foot in both worlds. They came for repentance it is said. Tawbah? Truly? A glorious thing to die for Jerusalem – their good works? Trust them not . . . But God is great and maker of miracles. Not to accept is bad faith. Celebrate! The sky alight with flaming arrows! That God run them headlong into Kerbogha and they tear each other to pieces. May God grant this miracle and we remain as we are now.
Not to be. Bohemond, with handpicked men, slipped up to the wall with scaling ladders under the cover of darkness. Up into a tower they went, Pirus’s men mixed in with the unsuspecting Saracen watch waiting for them. A fight ensured – a muffled battle of grunts and shock and close quarter daggers. In the blackness, friend and foe look the same. All are dark. The pilgrims couldn’t tell the difference. They wouldn’t tell the difference.
And for all the months, it was done. Just like that – the bleeding, privation, the misery. Bohemond in control of the tower, stole down to the gates it guarded, and opened them. In rushed the van of the army, the city sleeping. Sleeping . . . There’s your miracle – to be foolish enough to sleep. The pilgrims killed them in their beds. Not with war cries or madness, but workman-like fashion. Antioch’s’ women screamed. Alarm. Those near the garrison, spreading like fire. Slaughter – Saracens, Christians, Jews – in the confusion; townfolk murdering each other, though in cases, they were citizens they knew. “Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt!” They fled to the basilicas to kill each other there. None so vicious as neighbours. Tolerance, theretofore, be damned; children did not fare well, the brats, reflecting the thoughts of their ugly parents . . .
Yaghi Siyan, awakened, fled as the Franks forced the palace doors. Out through St Simon’s Gate he galloped wide of Tancred’s tower with his escort. Then up the mountain trails, pleading with God for his life. This his reward for being just? Give him darkness. How we plead when desperate and know what we didn’t know . . .Too late. It falls apart. Deceptive tolerance and gray is bits of black and white. A hard master, truth. Quid est veritas? Ride Yaghi Siyan, sensible leader. Find Kerbogha and submit. Isn’t that what the tolerant do – summit. Tolerance once was a position of power. There are swaths of reasonable men – Christians, Muslims, Jews . . .
A dark, rocky climb to a mountain village. A moonless night, his horse slipped and tumbled. Yaghi Siyan broke his leg. His escort abandoned him. The mountain villeins, Muslims and Christians, came from their houses to see. They cut his head off – a gift for Bohemond. They sawed it from the front with a pruning hook, Christians and Muslims working together, not that their faiths mattered; Yaghi Siyan would be dead when his horse threw him. Bohemond would be dead too if it was him. As said: violence needs not religion. It need not power, envy, laziness, passion, though anyone will due. So much comes from desperation. It comes from good – one is hurt and one is not, and the hurt one will hurt others. How ferocious creation. What violence in separating Light from Darkness in just a word? The Tanakh does not say, but it was good . . . All this from Yaghi Siyan’s killing? What believe and think now. Not in your histories or interpretations.
Excellent chapter! The story teaches so much history of The Crusades. I find myself researching many of the people and historical events I had not known about before reading Miles Christi. The story of Yaghi Siyan is chilling.
"As said: violence needs not religion. It need not power, envy, laziness, passion, though anyone will due. So much comes from desperation. It comes from good – one is hurt and one is not, and the hurt one will hurt others. How ferocious creation. What violence in separating Light from Darkness in just a word? The Tanakh does not say, but it was good . . . "
I have really appreciated going on the journey with the characters. I was struck by the truth in this thought Aile has:
"A sign. A sign. Give her a sign. But all about are signs – the gospel, the Eucharist, the suffering, . . . the silence. Amidst chaos’ roar, how does she battle silence? When alone, against who can one rage?"
As I have read this story - it has made me reflect on faith. While the testing of the human condition the Crusaders have been going through is not the same as my life - all of it is relatable - in that we all experience intense moral challenges.
After reading this chapter - I found myself revisiting Leonard Berstein's opera Mass. It is about a person's struggle with faith. Near the beginning of the opera - is a beautiful song (Devotions Before Mass, Hymn and Psalm - "A Simple Song"). Some of the lyrics are:
"Sing God a simple song...Lau da lau de...Make it up, as you go along...Lau da lau de...Sing like you like to sing...God loves all simple things. For God is the simplest of all. For God is the simplest of all."
Just like in Miles Christi - the main character of the opera Mass - is best trying to know, understand and serve God. He goes through a difficult journey. There is the simple, pure grace of God and then there are the challenges of being a human being existing in the world.
I could relate to Aile's thoughts in this section:
"Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may. But the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God said, “You shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.”
In her gown she did not feel naked, not like in iron.
You will surely not die. For God knows that on that day you eat . . . your eyes will be open, and you will be like angels, knowing good and evil.
Did she?
. . . that it was a delight to the eyes . . .
She had danced. She had vomited.
. . . and the tree was desirable to make one wise . . ."
I am wondering how Tìbald and Aile will feel about God when this story ends?
If this was a spiritual test - they have both committed mortal sins. But they are still alive. They have survived. They might still free the Church of The Holy Sepulchre. Some people are put in positions where they are more challenged in terms of their role in life. Will they be able to find God's simple grace and love? At the end of the story - will they be able to see what the angels see - what is good and what is evil?