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groom, but the rhythmic motion of his arm working the comb over the glossy black hide and the rich, warm stallion smell were comforting.
    Adam had gone to Jerusalem and he had begun to make his own preparations for leaving Antioch. An Italian galley was anchored at St Simeon, bound for Brindisi once she had been refitted for the voyage, and her master had been willing to take him, Adam and their retinues providing they could be ready within five weeks.
    A chapter of his life was ending with the same scrambled haste in which it had begun. It was an interlude, already almost a dream. He put down the comb and wiped his brow on his forearm. Outside, the light was hot and somnolent. Gorvenal whickered and nudged him imperatively. Renard fondled the stallion’s plush muzzle and smiled, knowing full well that the horse was snuffling around him for the dates he adored.
    ‘It is a taste you will have to forget,’ he told the stallion with a hint of wistfulness as he threw the embroidered saddlecloth over the glossy back.
    Ancelin arrived in search of a halter he had earlier been mending. ‘You’re not going out in this heat, surely?’ he asked in amazement.
    Renard shrugged. ‘I’ve a sort of pilgrimage to make.’
    ‘Oh yes?’ Ancelin gave a knowing grin.
    ‘Not that kind!’
    ‘You’ll fry your brains.’ Shaking his head, the knight departed with the halter.
    Renard finished saddling Gorvenal and picked his tunic off a pile of straw. It was made of the finest white cotton, stained now with the marks of the stable and sweat, but it was only an undergarment to the dark Arab robe that he donned on top of it to quench the sun’s rays. For further protection, he wound a turban round his head in true eastern fashion.
    When he rode out into the city, he more resembled a native of the land than a Norman lord. Foreigners who stayed beyond the length of a pilgrimage were wise to adapt their ways to suit the climate. Those who did not, frequently died.
    Following the line of the high city wall, Renard rode past St George’s Gate and the Tower of the Two Sisters until he reached the lower slopes of Mount Silipus, its summit crowned by Antioch’s vast citadel. His destination was the grotto of St Peter, a cave shrine frequented by pilgrims in droves, but quiet now and cool in the scorching midday heat. The priests there knew him and did not intrude as he dismounted, flipped a coin to one of the regular horse boys, and entered the dim, candlelit cave.
    Genuflecting, Renard knelt to pray. He had come to worship in this tiny chapel on the evening of his first arrival in Antioch, the stars like spangled embroidery on a royal gown, the citadel a crown thrusting to meet them. The grotto had been silent then too, steeped in ancient tranquillity and aglow with the pinprick candles of a thousand hopes and prayers. He often came here in the quiet times, drawing on that tranquillity as if it was cold water from a well in the desert.
    Renard was not of a particularly pious nature but he had always found himself genuinely moved by this littlemountainside chapel where St Peter and his disciples had met and prayed in persecuted secret and where the word ‘Christian’ had been coined. It gave him a sense of continuity, breathed life into the dry words of sermons that usually sent him to sleep and brought him much closer to God than he was ever aware of feeling on other, more grandiose occasions.
    He emerged from the grotto refreshed and filled with a sense of well-being and peace. The sun made him blink, but it was not as fierce as before and the light had mellowed from white to pale gold. He walked down the slope to where Gorvenal was tethered in the shade, spoke briefly to the lad and, without mounting, led the stallion by a goat track further up the mountainside.
    Wild thyme, crushed by his boots, scented the air. A goatherd passed him, urging his small flock downwards, and their pungent ammoniac aroma added evocatively to the smell of the