For quite a few years, I had this scene in my head, for reasons I cannot fathom. A collection of monks, anonymous in their cassocks and hoods, come chanting around a hill at the bottom of a field. Who were they? What were they doing? I had no idea, just this image.

And then, more recently, I became interested in moral injury. The term was developed by Jonathon Shay, a psychiatrist working with Vietnam veterans. It refers to a deep psychic wound caused when someone witnesses or does something that violates a strongly-held moral value, especially when ordered to do so, and especially when in what is supposed to be a good cause. In short, moral injury happens when good people do bad things. Very bad things. And the wounds so caused are just as real, just as damaging as physical wounds, even though you can’t see them. Shay doesn’t go into this, but one question that intrigues me is how a good person gets to the point that they’re capable of doing bad things. What pressures might force a decent person to do something they know to be wrong? How do they rationalise it? Do they, or do they start to think that heinous acts are normal, nothing to get excited about? How does their character unravel?

The Road to Jerusalem opens with monks coming around a hill at the bottom of a field, and closes with the consequences of moral injury.

The First Crusade provides the narrative backbone for the book. But, while the reader will learn about the events and some of the leading characters of the Crusade, the story is less about the Crusade per se, and more about the personal journeys of the three main protagonists. They each have different but overlapping experiences of the Crusade, but they all confront a variety of moral and ethical challenges. How they deal with them is the real subject of the book.

Cedric of Matour is a young knight, idealistic and a bit naïve. He desperately wants to prove himself as a knight worthy of respect – that’s the only way he can hang on to his family estate when he inherits it. His story is told by Howard, a farmer who acts as his servant. Brother Thomas is a monk, who is ordered to go on Crusade as scribe to Count Raymond of St Gilles, appointed by the Pope as leader of the expedition. Thomas likes his orderly, routine life; not surprisingly, he finds plenty to challenge him on his journey. Between Howard and Brother Thomas, we see the Crusade at both the strategic and on the ground levels.

And then there’s Ravid of Ascalon, a professional messenger, who carries messages between various Muslim leaders. Through him, we see how the Turks and Saracens react to the arrival of the Crusade armies and why they were ultimately defeated. His professional detachment, so important when conveying messages, becomes a handicap as the Crusader armies approach Jerusalem.

Howard, Brother Thomas, and Ravid all tell their stories in the first person. 

I wrote the second half of the book in 2020, an extraordinary year by any measure. Events kept intruding, and I was constantly being jolted into a recognition of how many of them were echoes of events of 1096-1099. No spoiler alerts here, but I invite you to see the parallels for yourselves.