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intrigue, where either violence or poison lay behind every marble column. He had grown up with tales of both in execution; the deposed ruler if he was not killed was at least rendered harmless by having his eyes put out.
    Alexius Comnenus, now in his fifteenth year of rule, had lasted longer than most. He might have come to power through a kinder deposition, but he had acceded to the throne in a palace coup that saw his predecessor, himself a usurper, despatched with eyes intact to live out his days in a monastery. It was just as likely that there were plots being hatched to remove the present incumbent of the imperial throne regardless of his abilities, which were manifestly high. That was the nature of the polity and had been since the time of Constantine, founder of the city that bore his name.
    Whoever ruled Byzantium was required to be well versed in the devious arts of intrigue as well as deception and Alexius would be no exception. Bohemund surmised he would seek to use the forces granted to him by Western religious fervour to further the aims of the Eastern Empire. That he would do so was not to be despised; no ruler who wished to secure his throne could afford to behave in any other fashion. Yet it was as well to be aware that such priorities would colour every act of Byzantine support; Bohemund was prepared to sup with his one-time enemy Alexius, but he would do so with a long spoon.
    The first task once all the contingents converged would be to push back the Seljuk Turks. They had been advancing west over many decades, as much an enemy to their Mohammedan co-religionists as the Greeks, Jews and Armenians over whom they now ruled. They had steadily eaten into the Eastern Empire, making their most telling gains after the disastrous Battle of Manzikert a quarter of a century previously. There the flower of the Byzantine army had gone down to a disastrous and total defeat that included the capture of the then emperor, Romanos Diogenes.
    That reverse proved so comprehensive that Constantinople had never recovered the initiative, indeed it had struggled to hold on to what it still possessed on the southern side of the Bosphorus and had asked, many times and to no avail, for help from their Christian brethren of the West. These pleas for aid were sent to Roman pontiffs who had enough trouble on their own doorstep, often from the Normans, more regularly from the King of the Germans, to even think of what was happening in the East.
    Added to that there was a definite schism that was far from being healed around certain disagreements about priestly celibacy, the proper way to conduct the Mass and the use of unleavened bread to denote the body of Christ. More tellingly divisive was a refusal from the Patriarch of Constantinople to acknowledge the Vicar of Rome as head of the entirety of the Christian Church, both Orthodox and Latin, these matters now fifty years in dispute.
    Left to its own devices, Byzantium had struggled. The Turks had expanded their gains against a weakened empire to become a threat to the imperial capital itself, in possession of the heavily fortified city of Nicaea, within three days’ marching distance of Constantinople, having established what they called the Sultanate of Rüm, an Arabiccorruption of Rome, which went some way to establish their aims. One day they aspired to take all of the Eastern Roman Empire; what kept them in check now was not Byzantine resistance but their own ability to fall out amongst themselves.
    Pope Urban, in receipt of lurid tales of how maltreated were pilgrims to Jerusalem, mocked, robbed and even forced to convert, called for a crusade to free the Holy Places of Palestine. This could only be accomplished in alliance with Byzantium, for they held the narrow water crossing from Europe to Asia, added to which no military force could invade or move south without their aid and support, both in terms of supply and cooperation.
    Thus the two aims had coincided and set in motion