‘That’s a bonfire,’ I said.
Rob Stone grinned. ‘It ain’t a good fire unless it scares ye a bit,’ he said. ‘All this ’ere cedar will go like torches at home.’
Nerio was trotting out into the setting sun with John and Syr Giorgios and half a dozen stradiotes, and I saluted them as they went by and then made my way to the tent to see that it had been well pitched, but there was no threat of rain at all. I found the ladies and their maids sitting in the last of the sun with a cloak full of flowers at their feet.
‘Lord Renerio brought them!’ Eugenia proclaimed happily, and Arnaud, her brother, met my eye in a way that said ‘You see what I put up with.’
It took me time to understand that ‘Lord Renerio’ was Nerio. You can’t be everywhere; things were happening without me.
There wasn’t enough wine in camp to threaten hard heads in the morning, but I confess that while our maids danced around the bonfire, I watched the hills and twice visited my posts, which were doubled. A bonfire can perhaps hold back the night, and perhaps invite the faeries, but it may invite other, more mortal, foes.
Still, I loved my wife with her hair down and a chaplet of daisies, and I knew a poem or two, courtly poems, and I told her she was the purest flower, and she kissed me and said I would always be a leaf.
I was dancing when the Syrian came to the bonfire. He had with him a handsome older man in Turkish dress – a silk kaftan, tall leather boots with curled toes. The two of them watched us; Arnaud was not yet moved to allow his sister to dance with Nerio, and instead he danced with her himself, and Nerio threw flowers and compliments.
Emile leaned over and breathed in my ear, ‘Don’t let those two alone, or they will bring in the May.’
I laughed, and suggested we could do the ‘work’ ourselves, purely as a service to others.
She sighed. ‘I don’t think the small folk have ever been here,’ she said.
When we had danced, with Rob and l’Angars and John the Kipchak, who was always eager to try anything new, John took me aside and I made a good bow to the Islamic scholar. And he was clearly more than a man of words; he wore a fine sword and a matching curved dagger. He had white in his beard, but he was hale and strong. I think he was no more than forty.
He bowed with his hands together, like a monk praying. ‘I had wanted to give you my thanks in person, Emir of this host,’ he said, in very passable Italian.
I made a good bow in return. ‘Good scholarship is welcome anywhere,’ I said, a tag I’d heard from Fra Peter.
The man smiled in pleasure. ‘This is courteous talk,’ he said. ‘So many Christians are mere brutes.’
What do you say to that? So many Moslems are misguided infidels?
‘May I ask you a question?’ the man said, with another bow. ‘My friend tells me that your soldiers say this is a pagan festival. And yet, as a soldier of your tripartite god, you allow it.’
I should have gone to an astrologer, who could have warned me of this thread in my life.
‘My beliefs are my own,’ I said. ‘My responsibility is that my company – all of you who travel with me – are safe and happy. I will not force my tripartite God on you, my friend. Nor will I refuse my people a small joy.’
‘There is only Allah,’ he said. ‘And while your care for all of us does you credit, your unwillingness to press the truth of your religion only shows me how weak your belief is.’
He smiled, exactly as a superior Roman priest would smile – he clearly thought that I’d be as glib as a beast of burden.
I thought of Ramón Llull, that great knight, who wrote the ‘Livre de Chivalrie’ and who died a martyr for the faith, not sword in hand, but disputing in Algiers.
So I made myself take a breath.
He was going to go on, taking my stupefied silence for granted. John was shuffling, a little embarrassed that the man was so rude, and yet wanting me to dispute with him.
Let me remind you that all this happened while my wife was breathing the fragrance of love five paces away, and we had real fears for our outposts and a Turcoman raid.
I raised my hand for silence.
‘Have you ever seen a boy who parades his bravery and his prowess?’ I asked. ‘While an older man, a proven warrior or an experienced hajj watched in amusement?’
Hafiz-i Abun shrugged. ‘I suppose I have,’ he said. ‘Young men are given to such things.’
‘Are they braver and better for prating and preening, do you think, then the older, wiser men who tolerate them?’ I asked.
Our eyes locked.
‘Well said, Frank,’ he said. And he grinned. ‘You are like an expert swordsman – you lure me, and then the subtle allegory slips through my defence.’ He laughed aloud, and offered me his hand.
Now, there are many reactions a man may make when he is beaten in a contest like this: he can grow angry; he can make excuses; or he can admit defeat – and the last is best done with humour. This man, this infidel, shocked me with the ease of his conciliation.
‘So you would maintain that al-Islam is like a younger brother?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘I would only maintain that those who speak loudest are not always best, and as gentlemen, we both know that sometimes we should speak softly.’
‘Now, Allah be praised, this is wisdom indeed,’ he said. ‘And this is your wife, and you allow her to dance without a veil?’ he asked.
‘She is a great lady,’ I said, ‘greater than I, so I would not order her in any way.’ I shrugged. ‘But you must know that we Franks do not always cover women’s faces.’
‘Nor do the Turks nor the Mongols nor the Persians,’ Hafiz-i Abun said. ‘Women themselves are not united that this is good or bad.’ He smiled at Emile, who took his hand, and through John they managed a few exchanges. I could see that the scholar was charmed.
I thought no more of it. I went out into the darkness and checked my outposts; I enjoyed a single sip of wine from Sabraham’s canteen to mark the night, and took another mouthful in my horn cup to Emile. I found her by the tent; she’d just put Eugenia to bed.
‘If ever a maid wanted a festival of love,’ she said, and rolled her eyes.
‘Not you, though,’ I said. ‘I brought you wine.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I have found my festival of love.’
Well. You can’t let a line like that pass.
We were up with the dawn; some old hands had indeed waited out the whole night to welcome the sun. I know Ewan got no sleep.
And our ladies wore their crowns of flowers all day, and when I saw Sister Marie in a crown of roses, I said nothing, because I am not utterly a fool.
But an hour into our day, we saw dust to the north and east, and the next hour only deepened my apprehension.
Sabraham felt the same. ‘Sixty men,’ he said. ‘And perhaps three times that.’
I began to eye the country for a place to fight.
But morning dragged on until Nones, and we were still riding. The dust was out there, and I was tempted to aggression; my enemy was hanging back.
‘Not Uthman Bey,’ Sabraham said.
‘Because whoever it is doesn’t know what we have and is very cautious,’ I guessed.
‘You are a good student,’ Sabraham said.
Afternoon. The sun beat down on us on the first of May, and it felt like summer along the coast of Syria. We were making excellent time, and I was beginning to wonder if we could simply outrun our Turcoman bandits.
Or buy them.
‘Can we offer them money to leave us alone?’ I asked.
‘You really are thinking like a Hospitaller,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Most knights have to fight everything.’
‘Perhaps my wife makes me cautious,’ I said. ‘But we cannot fight three hundred Turcomans.’
Sabraham nodded.
&
nbsp; ‘My current thought is to locate our camp on one of these little points of land flanked by the sea – easy to guard. And then, as soon as the animals are unloaded, we take all the soldiers out on a sweep.’ I pulled my basinet off and wiped my brow. I remember doing that all day. My helmet liner smelled bad. I wanted a wash. Or five.
‘We can’t catch them,’ Sabraham said.
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
And as it happened, George and Maurice found us a fine camp – an ancient site with two good fireplaces and a broad, flat place with stone walls for animals; quite clearly, other caravans had stopped there. In digging out one of the fire pits, Ned found a coin, and he brought it to me and dropped it in my hand.
‘Proper job,’ he said with a grin.
I took it to Sister Marie. It was copper, and had the head of a Caesar on one side and an inscription in Latin, but all in abbreviations like clerks use.
She looked at it in wonder.
It was twilight, and the tent was going up, and the horse herd was in one enclosure and the camels in another. Horses don’t love camels, but they were growing better. Fires were lit; smoke began to climb to heaven.
‘I don’t like it,’ Sabraham said. ‘Best to sit tight. They won’t attack us here.’
‘There’s not much water in this camp,’ I said critically. ‘And if they moved down from the heights and penned us in here, we’d have to surrender pretty quickly. I want to be sure we can ride away in the morning.’
‘I think it’s too … aggressive. You could lose a dozen men.’ Sabraham shrugged. ‘You are the commander here. Ser Peter was specific.’ Then he looked at the ground. ‘I’ll stay and watch.’
I nodded. ‘I’m sure I can do this,’ I said.
Sabraham nodded. ‘You probably can,’ he replied.
That felt good.
I led all the stradiotes and all the archers out of camp. We were all afoot with our horses, riding and spares, by the reins, and we went along the beach quite a way, almost two miles. Then we rode up to the high ground, and I hoped we’d been invisible to our adversaries.
We swept east first, moving fast; every man had two horses. We moved through the rough ground at the edge of the wooded ridge, often single file until we found a good track.
It was just like hunting.
The light was failing too fast and I’d probably ridden too far along the beach, or so I thought.
And then, there they were.
The range was very close. Our surprise was complete.
So was theirs.
We didn’t run head on to their scout party, either, but brushed the edge of it, so that what I saw was Ned suddenly dismount, and Rob take his reins. Ewan was already moving in some reeds to the north, his horse standing, ears pricked, head up, and reins down.
An arrow came out of the rough ground to the east.
John rose in his stirrups and loosed.
Three men yipped and broke our files, emerging from the rough ground. They were obviously shocked at how many of us there were, and the first man went down with Ned’s heavy war bow arrow through him.
Ned’s bow came up again, but Ewan took another man, and then Rob, mounted, nonetheless got an arrow off his bow, shooting east at a target I couldn’t see.
I got a javelin in my right hand and gave a high-pitched yip of my own. Syr Giorgios looked at me and turned his horse, and his stradiotes followed him. Behind me, Ser Bernard’s horse turned on her front feet and we all burst through the reeds together.
We’d caught a tiger.
There were a hundred men there, just a few paces away.
I threw my javelin into the first man I saw and fetched my second one, already sawing at my reins. Bows were coming up, but our adversaries were in shock, and the stradiotes threaded their column, bursting through.
I remember parrying sword blows with my javelin, jabbing overhand with very little result, and then Gawain did all the work. I threw one of the Turcomans to the ground with my javelin around his neck, and threw it at another man and hit him in the middle of the chest.
I went for my sword, got a scimitar on the head for my pains, and then I was out the other side.
I had taken a stout blow, and I shook my head repeatedly to clear it, and got Gawain around. The way home was through the column again.
Syr Giorgios thought the same, and we went in together, a horse-length apart, and I saw a man who seemed covered in gold, and a woman in a silk kaftan; I saw her in time to pull my blow. Then I crossed swords with another Turcoman, and I let his light sword turn my heavy one so that I could put the pommel into his teeth, and use the pommel as a lever to throw him from his horse.
His horse followed me out of the mêlée. Or ambush. It was all very fast – faster than I tell it. One of the stradiotes was probably done for, with a cut across his face that went through an eye, and blood everywhere; but it seemed he was the only man hit.
My three archers had all dismounted, and they were pouring heavy arrows into the column at forty or fifty paces range. The fringe of brush that had allowed this mutual surprise was now full of dust, rising into the last red sunlight, and the archers weren’t aiming.
‘Let’s get out of here, gentlemen,‘ I said. I admit, I may actually have said something cruder, with the word ‘run’ in it.
I got my archers up and moving, Rob complaining about replacing war arrows in ‘this ’ere ’owling wilderness’ or words to that effect.
The stradiotes were gone; when they burst back through the column, they rode straight for camp. Ser Bernard was the last of us out of the column; he’d had the enormous pleasure, as a knight, of being mounted on a warhorse, in armour, in the midst of a tide of foes on lighter horses, and he’d put down half a dozen before riding clear.
We cleared the next old field, and we all changed horses at my insistence. And then we flew along the open ground, and the Turcomans who emerged from the brush line behind us were minutes late, and had not changed horses, so that, for once, it was a case of the biter bit.
I halted my little party, and John cantered up. The Turcomans were coming on very cautiously, a bowshot away.
Ewan slipped from his saddle and took an arrow from his quiver. It was not a war bow livery arrow, but a long cane arrow of the kind the Mamluks used for long shooting.
‘Wanted to have a go,’ he said, and loosed.
I couldn’t even follow the arrow, it went so far.
He pulled another.
And another.
Night was coming on. John was watching under his hand, and he kept shaking his head.
The cane arrows would leap into the air like fireflies and simply vanish, they were going so far. Two of them flexed so much at launch that they lost power and fell close to us.
One exploded off the bow. That was exciting.
‘That’s a heavy bow,’ John said.
Ned smiled. ‘Proper job,’ he said.
Ewan launched his last Mamluk arrow and got up on his little horse, and John shook his head.
‘Too fuck dark,’ he said. ‘But they gone.’
It was true. There was no further pursuit.
We rode back into our camp in the small headland facing the sea; the fires were banked, and the whole camp was standing to arms – my wife had a spear in her fist, and so did Lady Eugenia.
Fiore had been giving them lessons. I wondered what Arnaud had thought about that, but I had other concerns.
‘I want to move before first light,’ I said.
Sabraham came and held my stirrup while I dismounted.
‘You were successful?’ he asked.
I’d have shrugged, but most of my body hurt. I didn’t feel like raising the weight of my maille and brigantine with my shoulder muscles. ‘We lost one man. They must have lost ten. But I fear they’ll come for us in the morning
.’
Sabraham nodded in the firelight. ‘Hard to guess,’ he agreed.
‘I’m guessing that we can be ten miles away before they’re ready to attack, and then we’re a moving target,’ I said. ‘If we find a place, we leave an ambush.’
Sabraham nodded slowly. ‘This is more like war than pilgrimage,’ he said.
I lay down in Emile’s arms for a moment of peace, and was awakened by her hand on my cheek. Outside, Ewan was clearing his throat, and Marc-Antonio was asking people if they’d seen me.
I kissed my wife, damning the fate that this was our life together. I slithered out from under the tent and walked off to use the cat-hole that we’d dug, and then sauntered back to get armed.
‘Where were you?’ Marc-Antonio hissed as he laid my harness out on the sandy ground by a campfire.
‘Sleeping,’ I said.
John rolled his eyes.
Our little pilgrim convoy was getting good at moving. We were all in our places while the moon was still up, and Syr Giannis rode out into the plain, moving carefully, and reported our area free of Turks.
I had learned something from John’s tactics. I sent John with a dozen archers to move fast along the road to Ladiquiya. When he’d selected a good resting spot, he halted and sent us a rider.
Then the column moved with all the women and camels and a strong military escort – all the knights. We moved very fast, alternating a trot and a canter for the horses, and the camels were moved along smartly. By the time the sun rose we had made ten English miles, and I was waiting in a stand of scrubby oak trees, my reins in my hand and Marc-Antonio beside me cursing the midges, watching our back trail. We had Ewan the Scot, Rob Stone, Bill Vane and Ned Cooper, and all of Emile’s men-at-arms, and we stood or knelt, waiting to see the sparkle of weapons and the sheen of horseflesh in the new light, or dust on the horizon.
Nor were we disappointed. Before my knees could cramp, the earth shook a little, and we could hear shouts along the coast to the south. A rising column of dust showed us – well, I think it showed us – that our Turks had tried for revenge, attacking our empty camp at dawn.
The Green Count Page 21