01 - Murder in the Holy City by Simon Beaufort Read Free Book Online

own interests.
    Geoffrey waited some time in the shadows before slipping out and making his way stealthily back to the citadel. He did not go by the most direct route, back the way he had come, but took a tortuous journey along the dingy alleys where the traders lived, stopping every so often to listen. Once or twice, he heard sounds, but the first time, it was a scrawny cat scavenging among some offal, and the second it was the furious cry of a hungry baby demanding to be fed.
    At last the citadel loomed ahead of him, the huge Tower of David a black mass against the dark sky. The citadel, called the Key to Jerusalem, was a formidable fortress. It was surrounded by a pair of curtain walls that were each several feet thick, and that were pierced by two gates. The first entrance was the great fortified barbican at the front that led outside the city walls, and the second entrance was a sally port that led onto David Street inside the city.
    Within the lower of the two curtain walls was the outer bailey, where the common soldiers camped, while the more secure inner bailey was located inside the taller curtain wall. It was in the Tower of David in the inner bailey that Geoffrey had his quarters. While many knights had opted to live in sumptuous houses appropriated when the Crusaders had taken the city, others, like Geoffrey, preferred the security and convenience of life in the citadel. It was overcrowded, smelly and noisy, but it was well protected against attack, and there were no neighbours to complain about the peculiar hours working soldiers kept, or the incessant clang of blacksmith’s forges as weapons were honed and armour mended.
    The citadel was rigorously guarded by the Advocate’s soldiers. As Geoffrey approached, basically unidentifiable in standard surcoat and helmet, there came the sound of arrows being fitted to bows by archers along the wall, and the captain of the guard called out for him to identify himself. Geoffrey pulled off his basinet so they could see his face, and told them his name. The captain thrust his torch near Geoffrey’s face to satisfy himself that the sturdy knight who had been walking Jerusalem’s streets in the dark was indeed the English-born Geoffrey Mappestone. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness in his manner, for the captain was a Lorrainer and had no love for the Normans—like Geoffrey and Hugh—who lived in the citadel. Eventually, Geoffrey was allowed past, only to go through a similar process at the gate that separated the outer bailey from the inner bailey.
    The Tower was always rowdy, as would be expected in a building filled with warriors, and even now, in the depths of the night, there were guffaws of laughter and triumphant shouts from some illicit game of dice. Geoffrey, being relatively senior in the citadel hierarchy because of the regard in which Tancred held him, had his own chamber, a tiny, cramped room in the thickness of the wall overlooking David’s Gate. It served Geoffrey as an office as well as a bedchamber and, on occasion, even as a hospital if one of his men were ill and needed rest away from the smelly, cramped conditions of the tents in the outer bailey.
    Gratefully, he pushed open the stout wooden door to his chamber and stepped inside. It was dark, and only the faint shaft of silver moonlight glimmering through the open window offered any illumination. The room was sparsely furnished: a truckle bed that could be rolled up and moved into the short corridor that led to the garderobe; a table strewn with parchment and writing equipment; a long bench against one wall; and a chest that held spare bits of armour, some clothes, his beloved books, and some less intellectual loot from Nicaea. His dog, stretched out in front of the window to take advantage of the breeze, looked up lazily as Geoffrey entered. It gave a soft, malevolent growl, and went back to sleep.
    Without bothering to light the candle that was always set on the windowsill, Geoffrey