by Norah Lofts
‘You have come to tell me that Philip of France is abandoning the crusade?’
‘My lord, he is going home. He is a sick man. He has ailed constantly since he landed and he feels that on the march he would be a hindrance.’
‘I was sick a while back,’ Richard said in that same quiet voice. ‘No tears were shed for me. Why do you weep, Guillaume?’
Pontigny did not answer. One of the others said:
‘Our master lacks the vigour that is your good portion, my lord.’
‘True. The same might be said of thousands of others. However, my lords, I can see that he sent you on an errand little to your taste; we will say no more about it.’ He reached out his arm and lifted the silver casket and threw open its lid. His fingers fumbled and brought out a crucifix slung on a thin gold chain. He gave it his meticulous attention, as though he had never seen such an object or even anything remotely like it in all his life before. Then he laid it down on the map that lay in front of him, bent his head and stared and looked up.
‘Many men,’ he said, ‘would take that for an omen. It fell squarely on Jerusalem. My lords, carry my greetings and my thanks to my brother of France and tell him that I will carry his emblem until I can lay it to rest in Christ’s tomb.’
Something like awe checked the tears in old Pontigny’s eyes.
‘Sire, all the French are not retiring. Five thousand men remain.’
‘Under the command of my lord of Burgundy,’ Richard said; not as a question but in the voice of one completing the recitative of a lay.
Pontigny nodded.
What a pity, I reflected. For Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, had a sharp wit and a talent for parodying songs. Immediately after the taking of Acre, when a new song about Richard’s prowess has been on every tongue, he had amused Philip’s supper table by a version in which every compliment had been twisted into an insult. ‘Where he strikes, death follows,’ can be easily made into amusement for the silly if “strikes” is replaced by a simple word for a physical action which even kings must perform. The crude parody appealed to the primitive sense of humour of the very men who had earnestly sung the original song and was soon to be heard all over the camp. Richard listened, laughed and retaliated in kind. It was all very silly and childish but it showed how the land lay. Better for everyone, I thought, if Hugh of Burgundy had gone home with his master.
Richard, however, merely said, ‘Burgundy is a good soldier.’ And when the deputation had taken their leave he leaned over my shoulder and said, ‘Wash out the lilies of France and paint in Burgundy’s sign,’ in a voice which seemed to deny that the change had any significance.
The reluctant admiration with which I was becoming familiar moved in me. I could have taken the hand which he had laid on my shoulder and kissed it and choked out some words of reverence. But, as always, something withheld me.
Later in the evening I heard Hubert Walter, discussing the matter, say: ‘You take this very lightly, my lord.’
‘How would you wish me to take it? It is to his everlasting disgrace, Walter, not mine. And truth to tell, I can bear Philip’s disgrace with equanimity!’
And yet, with the King of France’s going something was broken and something was ended. He and Richard had taken the Cross and made their vows together and however much and however bitterly they had quarrelled amongst themselves, they had always stood together as joint leaders of Christendom against Islam. Now there was not even the pretence at unity.
There is always a moment at the merriest, most blazing feast when the candle in the windiest corner gutters and fails. The others burn brightly, a new one is lighted but there has been that little patch of gloom, that momentary reminder of the engulfing night.
XI
We left Acre at the beginning of July and reached Arsouf in the second week of September and those ten weeks, though they were marked by no major battle, constituted, I think, a test of endurance unmatched in the whole crusade. The well-beloved song, When Richard Marched through Holy Land, always rouses rancour in me because although it takes count of the Saracens—indeed, I think, exaggerates their part in the story—it ignores the other, more insidious enemies: the midday heat blazing down on breastplate and helm, dazzling the eye, drying the throat; the sudden, astonishing chill which comes with darkness, turning the clammy sweat-soaked clothes into cold shrouds and waking a need for blankets which no man, however determined, however foresighted, could have carried through the hot day; the flies, the perpetual torture of the swarming flies, bluely iridescent, bloated ghouls that moved as we moved, lighting now on the steaming mule dung and then on the piece of bread you stuffed into your mouth—and often accompanying it to its destination so that the squeamish, feeling the living, wriggling thing in their mouths, spat out food and fly and the stouter fellows said, ‘All grist to this mill,’ and swallowed both.
There was the dust, too. Mounted men in armour rode in the van, in a long protective column on the inland side of the toiling foot soldiers and at the rear. If you had stood on one side to watch this army pass you would have seen with some clarity the first dozen knights and then a long grey-brown, earth-hugging cloud through which a multitude of ghosts moved. All but that first dozen or so lived, day after day, with dust in their nostrils, dust in their eyes, dust filming and roughening their skins, gritting and souring their mouths. I never turned in my saddle and looked backwards without thinking of the “pillar of cloud” which by day had guided the Israelites across this very land, nor without wondering whether it had indeed a supernatural origin or whether it had been mere dust kicked up by the heels of Moses and Aaron and the dozen favoured ones who walked ahead. So blasphemous a thought would at one time have set me crossing myself contritely; but not now!
I can speak of the dust—and certain other torments—without indulging in self-pity, for I moved “with Richard through Holy Land” more easily and more comfortably than almost any other man. I was mounted but not armoured. I rode as lightly as the Saracens who kept pace with us through the hills on the landward side and swooped down every now and then to make little harrying raids.
I rode the grey horse, Lyard, to begin with. And I rode near Richard in the van where the dust was thin and bearable. But after a day or two Richard said to me civilly indeed, almost apologetically;
‘Blondel, I wish you would change mounts with Raife of Clermont. He is heavier than you are; his mare falls behind every day towards the end. And he knows the country; he is useful to me. Moreover, though lately unpractised, he is a knight and bears arms. I would he were better mounted.’
Very sound arguments. They would have sounded better in my ears, however, if Raife of Clermont had not sought me out at our first halting place, expressed great admiration for Lyard, and asked me where I had obtained such a steed. His envy was as obvious as Mount Carmel.
Neither Richard, who had given, nor Raife, who envied me the grey horse, could know that every time I saw or touched Lyard an old, unhappy memory woke and stabbed me and that, the exchange was welcome. My common sense told me the change was reasonable, yet something in me—pride? the feeling of having been outwitted?—something made me resentful.
‘Sire,’ I said coolly, ‘Lyard was, and is, yours to give.’
Richard looked at me hard for a moment without speaking. Then he said with an underlying savagery in his voice, ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘the useful, arms-bearing man should have the better horse. Anyone could see that.’
(Even if he goes sneaking round, asking for favours, saying, ‘After all, I was a prisoner all the best years of my life!’) I did not mention that I had got myself a sword and that Godfrey of Angers was schooling me in its use and said that my father and my abbot had been wrong in their judgment of my wrist. A born sword wrist, he called it, naturally flexible and capable of becoming strong with practice. Riding in the van with Richard, armed with sword and dagger, I had been prepared to be at least independent, self-defensive, nob
ody’s responsibility. But now, relegated to the plodding brown mare which had been Raife’s mount and which was, in truth, incapable of keeping pace with Flavel, I fell back and generally rode with one of the few other mounted, non-armoured men. Sir Escel, the physician.
One morning as we rode through the burning heat and the stifling dust he began to talk about a fact he had just dredged. up from the vast uncertain seas of old sailors’ lore—the fact that sores which stubbornly resisted all other treatment often healed under the application of a mouldy ship’s biscuit.*
‘Now that sounds like a superstition, does it not?’ he asked. ‘But I have proved its worth. The biscuit must be mouldy and the more mouldy it is, the quicker it works. Why that should be passes my understanding. What are ship’s biscuits made of, would you know?’
‘Dead men’s bones and mud,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘No, seriously. There’s nothing in them but flour and water, is there? Dried out, baked hard. And, but for the omission of yeast, similar to bread. The virtues of a bread poultice are well known but that is mainly because the bread retains the heat long enough to reduce the inflammation. And yet a mouldy ship’s biscuit will heal a sore which a bread poultice leaves untouched.’ He pondered and then reached out his hand to a great sack strapped to the back of his saddle. ‘I have a supply here; I keep them damp, hoping to make them mouldy. The trouble is that in this heat they will dry out so quickly.’ He pondered again. ‘Isn’t it fortunate that His Majesty found me this horse? I should find it almost impossible to carry this sack. Strange to think that I made a little model which kills men, ergo the King mounts me, ergo I can carry a sackful of healing. If only I can keep it damp.’ He turned in his saddle and felt the sack. ‘As I thought,’ he muttered. He took his waterskin from the front of his saddle, untied the string which closed the neck of the sack and poured all the water over the biscuits within. I could hear the little snappings and hissings as the dry hot biscuits drank in the water. I hoped that on the midday halt we should find water near. That didn’t always happen.
‘It’s possible, you know,’ he said when he had closed the sack, ‘that this apparently inanimate mould has a life of its own. If you leave a mouldy biscuit long enough it is consumed, becomes a mass of soft fluff. Is it feasible, do you think, that the mould is vigorous and voracious and eats away the sore as it eats away the biscuit?’ He looked at me sideways, a little shamefaced. ‘It’s very unorthodox to talk of an inanimate thing having life. I should be in bad odour if it were known; it does savour of heresy, doesn’t it? But frankly, that is the only explanation that occurs to me.’
‘Rotten cheese is alive,’ I said, trying to be helpful.
‘Umm’—he nodded—‘even on the Pope’s own plate! And if rotten cheese can develop an undeniable life of its own, why not a rotten biscuit? Thank you, Blondel. That was an argument which I had not thought of. You see, I wanted—after one or two further confirmatory experiments—to send news of this discovery back to my colleagues in Valladolid. Sores—not sand sores but other kinds—are very prevalent there, especially amongst the poor and especially in summer. I would like them to know that a mouldy ship’s biscuit—On the other hand, I have no wish to lay myself open to charges of superstition or heresy. We doctors, you know, work between the flesh and the devil while the churchmen stand between the flesh and God. Dear me, what am I saying?’
‘A very profound truth, I suspect,’ I said. And at that moment a man, labouring in the dust, clutched my stirrup and said:
‘The King is asking for you. He sent me back to find you.’ He spoke gruffly—rudely, in fact—but, looking down at his dusty, sweat-streaked face, I could feel no resentment. He had come back on foot and would have to hurry to regain his place. He had a right to be sour. And I had noticed lately that many men looked at me a little askance. I rode, they walked. They fought, I played a lute and wrote letters.
Blind, blind innocent fool that I was.
I hurriedly detached my waterskin and held it towards Escel. ‘If we find water by midday,’ I said, ‘pour this into your sack of mystery. If not, drink it. I’ll come back for the skin.’ Then I turned to the fellow who had been sent to fetch me.
‘Hop up behind me,’ I said, ‘and I’ll ride you back to your place in the column.’
He gave me a queer look.
‘No, thanks,’ he said, ‘I don’t want my mates laughing at me.’
Perhaps he would have lost dignity, bumping along on a pillion like a market woman behind a farmer.
‘You ride, then,’ I said after a glance towards the head of the column, shrouded in dust and probably by this time a mile ahead, for as the day passed the column stretched out. Poor man, he’d had to cover the same mile three times on my account. ‘The horse is meek as a sheep,’ I said, ‘and I’ll ride behind you.’
‘And His Majesty’d ride me all right,’ he retorted, and some genuine consternation showed on his face. But he said less gruffly, ‘No, you get along fast as you can. I’m a man. I can walk.’
Later I understood the significance of that encounter. At that moment I merely thought: Very well then, walk if you prefer it. I pulled my mount out to the left and, making what speed I could over the bad road, pushed forward and fell in in my usual place, just behind Richard. He beckoned me forward and eased his horse over so that I could ride beside him.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Back with Escel, my lord. Talking to him.’
‘What about?’
‘Mouldy ships’ biscuits.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ he said sharply, casting me a cross glance. ‘The march has taken longer than it should; and they harry us so that we can’t live off the country as we might do. But I was prepared for that and if anybody has to eat mouldy ships’ biscuits there’s something very wrong somewhere.’
‘He isn’t eating them,’ I said, and I would have gone on to tell him about Escel’s, experiments, for that was the kind of conversation in which he delighted, and we might have gone on for an hour worrying out the possibilities of mould on ships’ biscuits. Then I could like him; then I was at ease with him, could see him in a form that was acceptable to me. But he cut me short.
‘Just ahead,’ he said, ‘there’s a narrow defile and Sir Raife, who rode out scouting, says that it is ambushed. There may be some real fighting for a change. Now listen. The safest place for you is with the baggage wagons. They’re well defended. So pull out now and wait for them. When they stop, dismount and stand between a wagon and your horse. Then nothing much can happen to you. Keep your head down.’
He might have been speaking to his grandmother. ‘Sire,’ I said gently, ‘you forget. You left your womenfolk in Acre!’
There was silence that had the same taste as the silence with which he had received my remark about Lyard being his to give. Then he asked sharply:
‘Have you any weapon?’
‘Sword and dagger,’ I said, not without pride.
‘Look to yourself, then! God keep you!’ He turned as far as his mail allowed, raised an arm and with a shout, ‘A moi!’ set spurs to Flavel. The armed and mounted men thundered past and into the defile.
It is a fact, and I challenge anyone to refute it, nobody who has ever taken part in a battle can describe it satisfactorily. If a man could sit suspended between earth and heaven and be endowed with a hundred eyes, he might afterwards give an account of the pattern, the movements; but his account would lack the noise, the confusion of reality. By the same token the single-minded, single-sighted man who is down in that noise and confusion can only tell you what happened to himself.
I found myself between the charging knights and a group of archers and I remember thinking: This is the worst place of all for me; I shall get a Christian arrow in my back. And with that I saw a slim brown man on a slim brown horse making straight for me. He had one of the curved Saracen swords, called scimitars, in his hand and I could see that in a flash of time it was coming down to slice t
hrough my neck just where it joined my shoulders. So I raised my sword, clumsily, desperately, I thought, in a way that was at odds with all Godfrey’s teaching. And I was surprised to feel the jolt which shook my whole arm, surprised to see the slim brown hand, still clutching the scimitar, fall off, severed. Just before they reached the ground the fingers of the hand relaxed and released the scimitar. Blood from the Saracen’s wrist spouted out over me.
So lucky a stroke would, I suppose, have made a soldier of me if anything could have. It just made me sick. I saw that hand, so complete and ordinary-looking, falling through the air in that fantastic fashion; and I leaned forward on the brown mare’s neck and was sicker than I have ever been in my life. My whole stomach turned inside out and fell back like an empty sack. I could hear the arrows hissing over me but I felt too ill to feel fear. Then, quite suddenly, while my eyes were still misted with the water of sickness, I saw another brown man lying on his back on the ground with blood pouring from a wound in his head. He had a dagger in his hand, though, and he was just about to stab up and strike the brown mare between the forelegs. I gulped in a chestful of something that seemed more like thick flannel than air, lifted my sword again and set it, point downward, on his neck. And I pressed, felt the sickening crunch as the blade went through flesh and bone but saw with vast satisfaction the hand which held the knife fall limp and harmless. Two, I thought, two.
And with that the battle was over.
The dust cleared and there were a few horses without riders, a few men in armour on the ground side by side with some white-turbaned bodies. And there was Richard on a wildly prancing Flavel. The edge of his great axe was bloody.
When Richard marched through Holy Land
The infidel dared bid him stand,