Magnussen snorted and gestured for Ibelin to sit down again. “And you say you don’t understand naval warfare? But the outer harbor isn’t good enough. There the Saracens could still bring their greater numbers to bear and force us onto the ledges. We need to lure them into the inner harbor, and that means dropping the chain.”
It was Ibelin’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “That sounds risky.”
“It is—but nothing would be better designed to lure the enemy into a sense of complacency. Furthermore, if morale were to crack in the city, then people would try to flee by sea, and to do that the chain has to be lowered. Load a Pisan merchantman to the gills with ballast so it appears to be carrying hundreds of passengers, then have it demand the lowering of the chain. Ideally we would make it appear that they are violating orders from Montferrat, and panicked people would throw themselves into the water to try to swim to the ship. If the Saracens are smart, they’ll ignore the bait and make a dash into the harbor—at least, one or two of them will. If they do that, we’ll take them, clear their decks, and turn them against their former masters.”
“You have enough men to do that?” Balian asked skeptically.
“Not enough men to man ships for a long voyage—but we don’t need to have relief crews, just a fighting crew. I could man three galleys with my own men and volunteers.”
“So, best case, we capture two additional galleys, and the odds become eight to three. Is that good enough to chase the blockaders away altogether in a second engagement?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you willing to try?”
Magnussen looked around the table at his men. Most of them were nodding. One or two were clearly enthusiastic, but a couple of the others, led by a man of obvious experience, appeared to voice objections. Magnunsson switched to Norse and a short but lively discussion ensued. Ibelin had no choice but to wait with simulated calm. At last Magnunsson turned back to him and declared in French: “We’ll do it—provided you and the Marquis provide the diversion and the Pisan bait.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” Ibelin agreed, getting to his feet and holding out his hand.
Magnussen took it with a smile and closed his grip. “The usual odds, eh?”
“In the name of God and with His grace.”
Tyre, December 31, 1187
Ernoul was no longer any good for fighting; his shoulder was too weak. So while Ibelin with his knights and men-at-arms took up positions at the main landward gate, ready to fight off any assault by the Sultan’s troops, Ernoul stayed down by the harbor. His job, Ibelin told him, was to help create the impression of panic and chaos among the civilians, while Montferrat with the bulk of the garrison stealthily took up positions around the harbor walls and in the towers controlling the chain across the harbor mouth. Meanwhile, the Pisans and the Norse prepared to play their respective roles.
Ernoul was happy to foster the illusion of panic and found ready helpers among the tavern-keepers to whom he explained the plan. His main interest, however, was in finding Alys. She had to live down here somewhere, he told himself, probably among the refugees housed in the warehouses. Thus while going from tavern to tavern to explain the idea of creating the appearance of panic, he was also looking for Alys.
“We want to make it look like the rich have bought off the Pisans—”
“As they probably have!”
“—and the poor are trying to stop them. We want to have men shouting at each other! Brawling a little, even—”
“That shouldn’t be hard!”
“—and it wouldn’t hurt to have a hysterical woman or two. Do you know someone we could dress up as a wealthy merchant’s wife who could act like she’s trying to flee?”
“Oh, my Bess would love that role—I’ll just have to be sure she doesn’t really bolt!” the man laughed.
“She could have a daughter with her and be hysterical about what might happen to the poor girl—”
“Aw, don’t need that. Bess will make a fuss about her own virtue—such as it is.” He guffawed at his own joke.
“But it wouldn’t hurt to have a younger girl with her. What about that girl who was singing here the other night?”
“Who? Oh, you mean Alys? No idea where she sleeps. Probably with whoever fed her last, eh?” The tavern-keeper laughed again at his own joke and Ernoul turned away, disgusted. He was sure Alys wasn’t like that. You could tell just by looking at her.
As darkness fell, Montferrat ordered several bonfires lit in a square close behind the port. From beyond the walls, it would be impossible to tell the smoke wasn’t from burning houses, and the ringing of bells added to the impression that fires had broken out. Meanwhile more and more people converged on the harbor, and an atmosphere of excitement hardly had to be simulated; the growing tension was so tangible even the dogs started barking frantically. Soon Ernoul couldn’t decide how much of what was happening was play-acting and how much was real.
Two Pisan merchantmen lay alongside the quay and while some people tried to board, sailors fought them off, provoking outraged protests that grew in volume as the stars started to fade with the dawn. Then one of the wealthiest Genoese merchants made an appearance on the quay. He rode up on a brightly caparisoned palfrey and began loudly cursing the Pisans as traitors and cowards. While probably part of the script, this action was well designed to provoke fury among the Pisans, and soon genuine fighting broke out between Pisans and Genoese—an occurrence for which it generally took little excuse anyway.
By then the stars were bleached from the sky by the approaching sun, and the features of the people crowding the harbor began to emerge out of the retreating darkness. Ernoul at last located a figure that he thought might be Alys. A slight form in an oversized cloak was cowering near the doorway to one of the warehouses. Dodging the brawlers, Ernoul darted across the head of the harbor and plunged recklessly into the growing crowd of women and children collecting on the fringes of the fight. “Alys!” he called, craning his neck to look beyond the women nearest him. “Alys!”
Sure enough, the figure turned her face in his direction, and it was Alys. She was all frightened eyes in a pale face. “Alys!” Ernoul called again as he shoved his way through the other spectators until he was right before her. As he reached her, however, she seemed to shrink back and looked over her shoulder as if seeking a route of escape.
“Alys! Don’t you recognize me? I’m Ernoul. The troubadour. We met five days ago at the Pig’s Head!”
Suddenly her face lit up as she remembered his generous tip. “Oh! Yes!” But instantly it clouded again as she asked urgently, “What’s happening? Has the Marquis surrendered? What is to become of the poor? We have no money for passage or ransom! We’ll all be enslaved!”
“No, of course not. This is just a ruse!” Ernoul assured her with a dismissive gesture toward the brawl on the quay, where the Pisan ship was starting to cast off, while the Genoese merchant shouted insults from behind a row of Genoese archers with locked arms protecting him from shouting Pisan sailors.
Alys’ expression dismissed Ernoul as mad, and she started to turn away. He caught her arm. “Seriously!” Ernoul had to shout to be heard. “Lord Balian and the Marquis—” His words were cut off by outraged shouting. Someone had started screaming hysterically: “They’re lowering the chain! They’re lowering the chain! The Pisans! They’ve bribed the men on the tower!”
Dozens of voices picked up the refrain: “They’re lowering the chain! They’re lowering the chain!” A stampede of desperate and furious young men surged past, shoving the women out of the way, causing many to stumble and stagger. Alys was flung into Ernoul’s open arms, and he enclosed her in them protectively, while around them the crowd became more agitated than ever.
Women were screaming, “Stop them! Stop them!” to encourage the men already rushing for the tower controlling the harbor chain. Yet other women had become completely hysterical, shrieking in terror, tearing their hair or falling on their knees in fra
ntic prayer.
Alys struggled a little against Ernoul’s embrace, but he stroked her bony shoulders, noting in shock that he could feel every vertebra in her back. He tried to soothe her. “Hush, hush! There’s nothing to fear. I won’t let anything happen to you!”
“Kill the bastards!” The call was one of anguish as others let out a collective groan of disbelief. By craning his neck (without loosening his hold on Alys), Ernoul could just barely see the Pisan merchantman surge forward as the harbor chain sank down into the depths and she was free to sail out.
The angry mob reached the foot of the tower and started hammering at the locked door. So many of them were screaming curses or vehemently promising murder that it took the crowd several minutes to realize that two and then three Saracen galleys were shooting into the harbor. When someone spotted them, the level of hysteria and volume of screaming increased feverishly.
The crowd started to run in the opposite direction. Some men howled in outrage and others screamed in terror. The people still at the head of the harbor began to flee up the streets away from the port to seek cover deeper inside the city, just as the first volley of arrows hissed off the ramparts and clattered on the decks of the Saracens.
Alys was so terrified she put her head down and closed her hands over her head as she sought to make herself as small as possible. Ernoul held her closer than ever, the feel of her bony hips against his own igniting an involuntary reaction from his loins even as his eyes were transfixed by the drama unfolding around him.
There were now five Saracen galleys inside the little harbor, but he was distracted from them by a flurry of shouting and pointing that drew his attention to the harbor chain, which was now being raised again. As he watched, the last Saracen recognized the danger and tried to back out, but failed to reverse direction fast enough.
An instant later, with the chain in place, the Norsemen let out a blood-curling shout, and their snecka shot out of its hiding place behind the breakwater and crashed in among the Saracens.
Ernoul had never seen anything like it. The Norsemen crowded the deck, their axes in their hands, their blond or ruddy hair flowing out from under their helmets. (They wore leather or scaled armor that ended at the base of their necks without chain-mail coifs.) As the Norsemen came alongside the first of the Saracen galleys, men poured over the side of their ship and leapt onto the oars of the Saracen galley. The Saracens at once started to pump or wave their oars to throw the Norsemen off, but the latter wrapped their legs around the oars and hauled themselves forward with their arms until they had reached the side of the ship. Here they hauled themselves up over the gunnel, screaming their war cries and wielding their axes. Gaping in wonder, Ernoul registered that the Norsemen must have practiced this maneuver hundreds of times, learning the hard way by being dunked repeatedly in freezing water—just as he had so often bitten the dust of the tiltyard. There was more than courage on display here: this was competence of the highest level.
While Ernoul admired the men crawling up the oars, the Norsemen on the other side of the ship had flung out a handful of grapples to snare another Saracen galley. They had hauled it beside their own ship and were now springing aboard. As the Norsemen thus took control of two Saracen ships at once, the archers concentrated on the remaining three, pumping so many volleys of arrows onto their decks that they were soon carpeted with corpses and blood.
At last, even the uninitiated of the population began to comprehend what was going on. Outrage was transformed into wild enthusiasm. Men who had been running away turned and surged back toward the quay, waving their weapons and shouting encouragement to the Norsemen. Ernoul heard voices shouting (more than singing) in unison: “. . . We are alive, Salah ad-Din. We are alive and cannot die!”
“They’re singing my song!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Alys, they’re singing my song!”
The Pisans, meanwhile, had launched their modified skiffs and were deftly weaving amidst the apparent chaos, firing their volleys of arrows directly into the oar-decks of the galleys from sea level. Once they were convinced sufficient damage had been done, they started to board three Saracen galleys that had not been taken by the Norsemen.
The Norsemen, in the meantime, had slaughtered the Egyptian crews. The bodies of the dead, dying, and wounded were unceremoniously flung into the harbor, and Norsemen took their places on the bloody oar-banks. Magnussen signaled emphatically for the chain to be lowered as he pointed his captured galley at the harbor entrance.
Along the quay people started cheering and singing in scattered groups: “The day will come, when we will win! When we will take Jerusalem!”
Even Alys risked lifting her head to see what was going on. To Ernoul’s relief, she didn’t let go of him as she did so, but clung all the more determinedly.
For a second time that morning, the chain sank below the waters of the harbor. By now, however, it was broad daylight, and the light of day revealed an inner harbor choked with corpses and slowly turning red.
The first of the captured Saracen galleys shot forward, propelled by oars manned by Norsemen. The second captured galley and the Norse snecka followed within minutes. Within another quarter-hour, the remaining three Saracen galleys had likewise been cleared of their original crews. These, now manned by Pisan sailors, turned to follow the Norsemen, determined not to be outdone in valor. Those left on land could only crane their necks or climb up the walls to see what was going on in the outer harbor.
Ernoul and Alys were not among them. They had no desire to join the crowds or see more slaughter. Instead, Ernoul took Alys by the hand and led her away from the noise, commotion, and violence. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he wanted to take her away from all that, to someplace safe and quiet. Alys followed him unprotestingly, not sure why she trusted him. She just did.
Ibelin had barely three hundred men and just forty-six knights to hold the landward defenses. With that number he could not hope to man all three walls with their six towers and the barbican. Although his first instinct was to man the outer wall and retreat as and when necessary, Montferrat insisted that they abandon the barbican and first wall altogether in order to reinforce the deception. The lack of defenders on the barbican, Montferrat argued, would give the Saracens further “proof ” that at least some of the population was trying to escape the siege by ship.
This, however, put Ibelin and his men in an uncomfortable situation. From the the second or middle wall, they could not see into the Saracen camp as well as from the first wall. Furthermore, leaving the massive modern barbican undefended went against Ibelin’s instincts as a warrior.
From the walls on the eastern edge of the city, it was impossible to know what was happening at the harbor. Although they’d seen the fires and heard the church bells during the night, they knew these were part of the ruse. The first indication that Montferrat and Haakon Magnussen had been successful was a rider who galloped into the Saracen camp from the direction of the beaches south of the city. Soon there was a visible wave of growing agitation in the Saracen camp, and Ibelin thought (but couldn’t be sure) that Salah ad-Din and his staff rode out of the camp heading for the beaches south of Tyre. More riders and then a mass exodus of troops in the direction of the beach finally convinced Ibelin that some sort of sea battle must be raging outside the harbor, and that suggested that Haakon Magnussen had managed to break out with one or more ships.
Before he had a chance to send someone back to the harbor to find out what was happening, however, horns and shouting warned Ibelin of a Saracen attack on his own position. A very large force under the banners of al-Adil poured out of the camp toward the narrow causeway that separated the city of Tyre from the mainland. Cursing inwardly, Ibelin and his men could only watch helplessly as the enemy advanced up the causeway without meeting any resistance. No one manned the barbican to fire crossbow bolts at them, and they quickly realized the barbican was empty. Triumphant shouts marked the Saracen discovery, and a moment later they surged
forward with new élan and confidence.
Although the barbican gates were locked and barred, the absence of defenders on the ramparts made it comparatively easy to scale the walls. Siege ladders were simply stood up against the walls, and men ran up the rungs like sailors hurrying to hand sail in a gale. Soon hundreds of men were spreading out along the top of the outer wall, pumping their arms in the air triumphantly and shouting “Allahu Akbar!”—as if they had already taken the whole town.
“Wait and see what happens next, laddies,” Sir Galvin muttered in a low guttural French, heavily accented by his Scottish roots. His massive hand opened and closed on the thick handle of his battle-ax as he kept his eyes fixed on the enemy collecting jubilantly on the wall opposite.
Ibelin’s gaze was fixed farther afield, to where a messenger was clearly being sent to fetch reinforcements from the troops that had flooded toward the shore. Al-Adil thought he’d discovered the city’s door open, and he was sending word to his brother to forget whatever was happening at sea and come take the unprotected prize.
Meanwhile, however, the Saracens who had already taken possession of the barbican were using their siege ladders and the interior stairways to descend onto the bank behind the first wall facing the moat. Although the drawbridges were raised, it didn’t take the enemy long to realize their siege ladders were long enough to bridge the moat. They lay these horizontally over the muddy water and started to cross their improvised bridges with careful steps.
“Should I take them out, sir?” Sir Roger Shoreham, commanding Ibelin’s archers, asked eagerly. He was a superb commander of archers, and held a crossbow at the ready in his own arms.
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