Am I English?
We rode all day, to the west, along the Asopus valley, with Mount Kitharon towering on our left, lowering over us like a dragon over the plain below. The slopes of Kitharon stretch out to the skies, and Giannis told us that, in ancient times, men worshipped the mountain as a god, which no doubt sounds pagan and foreign and a little foolish, but when you look up at Kitharon, it has a majesty few mountains possess. And while the plains of Boeotia are a fine patchwork of neat Frankish farms, the mountain is all old woods full of game, or so Sir Giannis assured me. We passed a beehive-shaped structure at the edge of the woods, and I thought it was a chimney or a smithy, but Sir Giorgios told me that it was a tomb, so ancient that it might even date to the Trojan War and Hector and Achilles, and I dismounted for a while. Something made me kneel and pray there; it was like a scene in Giron le Courtois or Lancelot, and I rather expected to find a fountain and a maiden, or perhaps an old hermit to guide me to fight a pagan knight and win a magic sword.
Instead, I prayed in the cool, leafy green, and thought of the Holy Sepulchre, and fighting, and men who fought. And then Nerio came and demanded that I keep moving, as if I was a common soldier.
Ah, the life of chivalric romance.
At any rate, we moved fast. It took me half an hour of hard riding to catch the end of our column, with Nerio nagging me like a fishwife, and then we climbed a steep ridge on a track so narrow that we had to pass one horse at a time. I dismounted and led Gabriel myself, and left Marc-Antonio with his own horse and our riding horses; our two Greek brothers, Stefanos and Demetrios, about whom more anon, led the packhorses. We took almost an hour to ride over that ridge; it looked as high as the heavens but, like most of Outremer’s landscape, proved smaller in fact than it appeared at a distance. The sun was almost destructive: armour burned when it touched you; even a buckle might be as hot as a fry-pan on a fire, and brass buckles got soft and bent. I’ve known knights of the Order who will have none but steel buckles on harness or tack, and in Outremer I learned why.
And while Boeotia and the ‘Dance Floor of Ares’ were criss-crossed with watercourses, wells, and Frankish peasants, the hills were as dry as the desert by the Dead Sea in the Holy Land, and dusty, so we were all parched. The Kipchaks warned us that we were being watched, so we had to close up our long files and look anxiously at the heights above us.
And then we were riding down off the ridge and we could see the Gulf of Corinth.
Nerio reined in with Sir Giorgios, who pointed at an impossibly high mountain at the very edge of the horizon.
‘Acrocorinth,’ he said.
‘Sweet crucified Christ,’ Nerio blasphemed.
I was used to the landscape of Greece by then, but that mountain seemed impossible, and more impossible for standing straight up like a column of rock from the sea, at least, when viewed from a distance of twenty miles.
‘How high is it?’ I asked.
Sir Giorgios shrugged. ‘We will never storm it,’ he said.
Nerio looked at me.
He was, perhaps, my best friend. Who was I to say no?
‘We’ll do it,’ I said.
‘No, you won’t,’ Sir Giorgios said. He smiled, as if to disarm anger. ‘It is like threatening God that you will storm Heaven. If they have twenty men-at-arms, they can hold that mountain top against an army.’
Fiore looked at it under his hand. ‘Too far for any detail,’ he said. ‘So not worth speculating.’
We rode down the ridge and through the brilliant afternoon, right down to the Gulf of Corinth and a tiny fishing village where every door was closed against us and the dogs barked. The Kipchaks stopped them from ringing their alarm bell beyond one clanging peal, and did so without killing anyone.
Sir Giannis found the priest, and arranged for water, and none too soon – we had men and horses already in a bad way. Greece is a cruel place to armies; I wondered why the Persians had wanted it, or why the Turks fancied it as, mostly, it seemed to be steep rock and desert. Beautiful, but hardly profitable.
From our tiny village, we moved rapidly west on a terrible path along the beach, often riding right along the shingle, on sand or gravel. The sand was fine; the round gravel was treacherous for horses’ hooves, and we had to dismount. Now, men in harness are not fond of walking, especially on piles of shifting gravel in a boiling sun. The day stretched on, canteens were emptied, and Nerio kept us at it, and the mountain in the distance grew, sometimes hidden by an intervening ridge, sometimes vanishing behind a promontory.
But as the sun began to set in a western blaze of salmon pink and brilliant scarlet, the mountain was closer, and it seemed even bigger. It seemed impossible – a sheer rise from the ocean. The red sun began to gild the distant walls of the Acrocorinth and her citadel. We were perhaps four miles distant, on the darkling plain, known as the Isthmus of Corinth. The direct sunlight could not reach us to sparkle off our white harness or our spear points, as Nerio had planned.
The notion of a surprise attack seemed … ridiculous. The Acrocorinth was as high as God’s own Heaven. It towered over us like a huge dark cloud, and at the very top we could see, etched against the rose-pink sky, the lines of the walls. If they were visible at four miles, they had to be twenty or thirty feet high, and they went on and on.
At the edge of darkness, we made camp in a small bay on the north side of the isthmus. The base of the incredible mountain was perhaps two miles away; the town of Corinth was visible just over the hill, but Sir Giorgios had planned this part of the approach well, and we were virtually invisible to town and citadel. We had a spot of luck, too: John and our Kipchaks brought in a shepherd boy, who reported that a large force of Turks was moving through the same countryside as we were, a day or two ahead of us, going to raid the Peloponnese. The boy had been left behind. His name was Gregorios; he was fourteen, and my pages took him as one of their own. We ate his sheep. Let me add, if you seek to blacken my name, that he was a Vlach slave, taken captive in war; his owners abandoned him and his flocks to be taken by the Turks.
If they didn’t want him, I certainly did. So did Sir Giorgios, who was happy to have a local guide.
As the moon rose – a summer moon and none too bright – the light shone down on the walls. We craned our necks looking up at the incredible majesty of that fortress. It was as far above us as a cloud in the sky on an English summer day, and I could see that the citadel, the actual Acrocorinth, was as high above the main gate as the gate was above the plain.
We had fires on the beach, screened with cut olive branches to be invisible from the west. The mutton was delicious, and there was bread and two cups of wine per man, knight or page or archer.
I knew we had no food after this. No wine, no fodder.
‘You are staking everything on this assault,’ I said.
Nerio shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hired the best men I could find,’ he said, in Fiore’s direction.
Fiore lay down in the gorse, or whatever Greeks call it – the low scrub full of thorns that decorates the Greek countryside and discourages courting couples, I suppose. Fiore was in a brigandine and was immune from thorns. I still thought him mad, but then I realised that he was studying the lofty fortress from a comfortable pose.
‘We can take it,’ he said.
I sent Marc-Antonio for l’Angars and John and Rob Stone, and we tramped down the low thorn bushes and sat in the darkness. We could see lights across the Gulf, and Sir Giannis pointed out the Vale of Delphi, where the ancients worshipped their pagan gods, and Naupactus, a strong fortress still held by the Emperor’s people, although nowadays it is Venetian.
With the help of Sir Giorgios and the new boy, Gregorios, we drew the fortress in the sand.
Nerio was more subdued than I have ever known him. The fortress had frightened him; I could scarcely blame him. It was odd, though – as he was our patron, he was in charge, a
nd the burden was on him, not me. I looked up at the fortress with some complacence. I know that’s an odd word, but I felt a calm. Because it was clearly impossible, I knew that all I had to do was acquit myself well. It is much easier to fight well than to be in command.
The shepherd boy – let me hasten to add, greasy with mutton and relatively happy with his new masters – was nonetheless not full of answers. He didn’t know of any secret approaches or hidden gates. He had pastured his flock on the lower slopes, though, and he knew paths up to the walls.
‘I’ve pissed on the walls,’ he said. He grinned. ‘I hate fucking Franks.’
We all smiled while he thought of what he’d just said. He looked stricken; Fiore laughed.
As an aside, I remember this night so well because of Fiore. He … how can I put this? He laughed. He laughed at the discomfiture of the boy, in a way that, I swear, he would never have laughed in the year I met him at Avignon. That laugh demonstrated a subtle understanding of the boy and his plight.
Fiore had grown. He knew how to talk to men, aye, and perhaps women. One woman, at least. He wore her favour, and he mentioned her from time to time, as if, by talking of her, he was closer to her. Her silk favour fluttered from his shoulder, catching the moonlight. Ah, love. Even for swordsmen.
I digress, but Fiore’s laughter was not such a common sound that Nerio and I didn’t glance at each other in wonder.
Fiore, remember, was lying in the gorse. He had a small stick, or baton, that he often carried – one of his many affectations, like big hats. He pointed with the baton at the lowering fortress.
‘It is just an escalade,’ he said calmly. ‘If the boy can get us to a section of wall, and if it is unmanned, we’re in. No different from any town in France or Italy. We take a ladder. Once we’re in …’ He shrugged. ‘Well, it’s just fighting.’
‘We clear the gate,’ I said. ‘And open it to Nerio, who has most of the knights, mounted. We make a dash for the citadel.’
‘Christe Pantokrator, we are going to storm Heaven on horseback,’ Sir Giorgios said.
John the Turk raised both eyebrows. ‘If you go to storm Heaven, on horseback is the best way,’ he said.
Nerio looked at me. I understood Fiore immediately; he meant, in his laconic way, that if we made a dash and were quick enough, we might just snap the place up, the way we took Pont-Saint-Esprit and Gallipoli.
I agreed. When someone has a good, simple plan, there’s no need to elaborate or waste time or energy.
‘What if the wall is held against us?’ I said.
‘Take some archers to clear it,’ Fiore said.
‘Just like France,’ said Rob Stone.
A fire burst, like the dawning of a new star, high in the fortress. A signal fire.
Nerio’s head shot around like an owl’s.
‘We are discovered,’ he said.
I scratched my chin. ‘I doubt it,’ I said.
‘They have had a beacon every night,’ the boy said.
‘How many men on the main gate?’ I asked the boy.
‘Many!’ the boy said. ‘All in armour like yours!’
Nerio sank down on his haunches, his face as haggard as I have ever seen.
‘How many?’ I asked. ‘As many as we are?’
‘More than ten,’ the boy replied. He was speaking a very odd Greek, but both Nerio and Giannis understood him well.
‘Twenty?’ I asked the boy.
He counted on his fingers for a while. ‘More than ten,’ he said, with doubt in his voice. ‘Many.’
‘And on the wall?’ I asked.
‘Many,’ he said.
‘You have a spy inside the fortress,’ I said to Nerio.
‘I can’t wait around to contact him,’ Nerio said. ‘And he isn’t really mine. It might take me a week to get him a message. We will be discovered tomorrow. Or we are already discovered.’
I was still scratching my chin under my scraggly beard. I thought of how neat and elegant I had become on Lesvos, with Emile in my arms every day.
‘Our armour and our training will be better, no matter what,’ I said. ‘Our horseflesh is better than anything they’ll have.’
‘Why?’ Nerio said.
‘Don’t interrupt,’ Fiore said. ‘Besides, I agree.’
‘So the risk to us is not that great,’ I continued. ‘If we fail …’ I shrugged. ‘We mount up and ride away. If they pursue, we ambush them and slaughter them.’
‘You are cocky,’ Nerio said.
‘This, from you?’ Fiore said. ‘There’s no one in a thousand miles who can take us in a straight fight.’
‘I feel as if our roles are reversed,’ Nerio said. ‘I am not sure I like being in command.’
‘It grows on you,’ I assured him. ‘Listen, ask any of the veterans. L’Angars, I appeal to you: are we not safe enough, trying the escalade?’
L’Angars shrugged. ‘I’ll say confession first, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘But oui, monsieur. If the escalade fails, most of us will simply ride away. Where are these Turks, though? Surely this beacon is to alert some covering force?’
We all looked at each other.
‘Be bloody annoying to get attacked by Turks while we’re storming the place,’ Rob Stone muttered.
‘John, take your people and perhaps, if Sir Giannis will allow it, his stradiotes, and sweep west; find the Turks and amuse them?’
‘If we fail …’ John said.
‘We’ll need to get water right away,’ I said, ‘How about the town?’
‘It’s my town,’ Nerio said. ‘I don’t want it sacked. Those are my townsmen and my peasants.’
I looked at the ground again. The town was almost a mile from the mountain fortress; the town was placed right on the isthmus, so that ships could approach either beach, from the Gulf of Corinth to the north, the Aegean to the south.
‘We will need the town,’ I said, ‘if we fail – for food and water.’
‘No rape and no theft,’ Nerio said.
I nodded. ‘You do it,’ I said. ‘I know you are the patron, but we don’t need you to storm the citadel. Pick a dozen men, seize the town gate …’
‘Lachlan,’ Fiore said. ‘He’s deadly, but he listens. We need Nerio for his spy.’
‘Perfect,’ I nodded. ‘Send for Sir Hector, with my compliments.’
Nerio was nodding too. ‘If he only takes the gatehouse …’
‘We are covered,’ I said. ‘We wake up tomorrow with water and food. Mayhap we come up with another plan.’
‘Mayhap we learn to fly,’ Sir Giorgios said. ‘I think you are all mad, but then, I saw you take Gallipoli, so perhaps …’
Fiore looked up at the stars. ‘This is a great empris,’ he said. ‘I will wager a clean pair of gloves against a golden-hilted dagger that we take the citadel. This seems fair, as I have clean gloves, and you are much richer than I.’
Nerio managed a nervous smile. ‘So if we fail, I’ll have clean gloves,’ he said. ‘I agree, but that means I’m wagering against my own success.’ His voice tailed into silence, and for a long time the only sounds were the crackle of gorse as one of us shifted slightly and the distant crashing of the waves. I had never seen him so quiet.
It took us most of the night just to climb the mountain.
I took just ten men-at-arms; including Marc-Antonio and Fiore; Nerio took all the rest, save the Irish and Scots. He was not even to leave camp until we lit a torch on the wall, which we thought would be visible for ten miles. When we signalled, Lachlan would go for the gate of the lower town and Nerio would ride for the gate of the fortress – about two miles – which was a ten-minute ride for an armoured man on horseback.
My party rode to the foot of the mountain without a challenge. I felt naked; there were no trees for a mile, the steep slopes were den
uded even of soil, or so it seemed. In the dark, everything made a ridiculous amount of noise, and dogs barked constantly. Morea is full of dogs, scrappy mongrels who are half-wild.
I knew in my head that John and his Kipchaks were off to the west, already moving through the darkness, but that did nothing to cure my heart’s feeling that I was sticking out my neck and some Catalan or Turk was waiting to cut it off with an axe.
We left our horses with pages when the slopes became too steep for them, but a man could still climb them. There was even a sort of goat-path, which the boy Gregorios pointed out. It started above a neat stone culvert to siphon run-off from spring rains away from the old Roman road.
If you have never climbed a mountain in armour, let me recommend that you do it by daylight. At night, you cannot see handholds; if you lose your balance even a little, down you go. L’Angars fell when we were barely ten minutes above the road; he crashed all the way to the road and lay there for a long time while I considered whether I had the strength to go back and look at him. It was like that. He only fell a hundred feet, and at that, it wasn’t a cliff; he rolled over and over.
L’Angars was made of rawhide. After lying on the road for a bit, he got up, shook himself, and started to climb up behind us.
I was tired before we had even made it a third of the way up the mountain, and my upper thighs had that terrible feeling of tight rope before we were halfway. I ordered a rest, mostly for myself. The archers were still fresh, and I wondered about leg harness on a mountainside, but armour, as I have no doubt said before, is the best choice in the dark: you need something to save you from the sword you cannot see. I lay full length as long as I could, and then got to my feet. The moon had moved a long way across the sky. L’Angars caught up with us, and I seemed to be the only one flagging.
This time, I sent Gospel Mark first, with the boy Gregorios, and I followed the archers. This proved to be a foolish plan, as the archers easily outdistanced us and drew further and further ahead.
In minutes, they were too far ahead to stop unless I sounded a horn or shouted, which seemed like a daft idea. So up we went, sometimes on hands and knees. We made a lot of noise, however disciplined we were; men had canteens that rattled, and armour itself is never quiet. The mountain was as still as a grave; the doves, which coo all day in Morea, were silent at night. There were no owls, and the only cries were distant sea birds. And dogs.
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