Ibelin, however, shook his head without taking his eyes off the approaching enemy. “Let them think there’s no one here a little bit longer. When we start firing, they’ll abandon those precarious ladders and bring up something more substantial. The more of them we lure over now, the more we’ll be able to slaughter in the killing ground,” he indicated the narrow ledge at the base of the wall, “before they can bring up reinforcements.”
“Aye, aye, my lord,” Shoreham answered dutifully, but he looked dubiously over the edge of the ramparts and fingered his crossbow lovingly.
Around him the other knights and men-at-arms squirmed uneasily. It was against their instincts to let the enemy get any closer without any effort at self-defense.
Fortunately, the Saracens were concentrating so single-mindedly on crossing their precarious improvised bridges that they didn’t see the many heads that popped out between the merlons as defenders unable to bear the suspense tried to see what was happening. Sir Galvin was starting to tap the stone flooring with the ball of his foot, and Sir Bartholomew was humming Ernoul’s tune as if to school himself in patience, before Ibelin finally nodded and said to Shoreham, “Open fire.”
Shoreham had been leaning his back against a merlon to disguise his presence. In a single motion he spun around to stand in the crenel, lifted the crossbow to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger, while shouting at the top of his lungs: “OPEN FIRE!”
Along the whole length of the middle wall and from the flanking towers, archers followed his example. The effect was devastating. The Saracens who had gained a foothold on the shelf below the wall were almost instantly slaughtered or wounded, while the men on the ladders lost their footing in their surprise and fell into the moat. The screams of the falling mingled with the groans, cries, and curses of the injured.
The attackers still on the far side of the moat reacted rapidly, however. They dived or ducked for cover and then started returning fire furiously.
Ibelin kept his attention focused on what was happening beyond the first wall, and saw a commotion there. In a short space of time, the inner wall was manned by Saracen archers, and now a fierce duel developed between the defenders, who had the advantage of height, and the attackers, who had the advantage of numbers. Although the Frankish archers at first seemed to be holding their own, Ibelin watched with a sense of déjà vu as a wagon rumbled up from the Sultan’s camp and he recognized Saracen sappers. These were the men who had brought down the wall of Jerusalem and forced him to surrender. Now they were prepared to lay down broad bridges.
Indeed, it took them no more than an hour to get their bridges in place, protected by men with heavy rectangular shields and extra-heavy helmets. Although Ibelin tried to set the bridges on fire with burning pitch, it was soon evident that the Saracen sappers had used green wood, possibly treated with some material to make them virtually fireproof. Without Greek fire (and Ibelin had none), he was helpless.
Once the bridges were in place, the Saracens rolled up a heavy battering ram and started hammering away at the northern gate of the middle wall. The battering ram itself was well protected by animal hides soaked in vinegar, and its deployment against the northern gate had been dictated by the wind direction. A strong northerly breeze came off the Mediterranean. This ensured that Ibelin’s archers, shooting into the wind, could rarely hit their targets. Shoreham finally ordered them to stop trying in order to save ammunition.
The blows of the metal-tipped ram against the studded door were so powerful that they shook the wall from end to end and down to the foundations. Each blow vibrating under the feet of the defenders rattled their nerves a little more. Since they could do nothing to stop the battering ram, it was only a matter of time before the Saracens would break through into the middle line of defense. They had no choice but to pull back to the third and final line of defense: the city wall.
Ibelin could feel the glances from his knights and archers, and he could feel their increasing nervousness. Command, he reflected dispassionately, was mostly about timing. Timing and nerves. But this was a situation where they would gain nothing by delaying, he decided, and nodded once. “Pull back.”
Because his instinct, once the decision was made, was to run for the safety of the next wall, he forced himself to wait almost immobile until the last of his men were safely across the rearward drawbridge. Only then did he duck down into the spiral staircase that led to the westward exit. Sirs Bartholomew and Galvin, waiting at the foot of the drawbridge, gave the order to start lifting it up as soon as the three of them broke for the main gate. As they entered the gate, the drawbridge crashed into place behind them. They started up the stairs, panting from the exertion of their dash.
The archers were already in position all along the length of the wall, and the knights were spaced out roughly ten feet apart. Ibelin settled down to wait as the sun crept up the sky and the hammering of the battering ram continued rhythmically. It was hard to judge the time of day, because the church bells had been silenced on Montferrat’s orders. Nothing was to seem “normal” on this day, he had insisted.
Ibelin frequently looked over his shoulder at the city as he waited. It lay eerily still at his feet. He knew rationally that tens of thousands of people must be waiting anxiously inside its jumble of buildings both proud and humble. Many, no doubt, were praying for a positive outcome to today’s risky stratagem, but from here he could see nothing stirring, not even a stray cat. Straining his ears, he tried to hear the sound of fighting from the harbor, but all he heard was the waves on the north shore and the hammering of the battering ram. Sweat trickled down his face from his already soaked arming cap and drenched the armpits of his shirt under his chain mail.
Then, with a slow, crunching sound Ibelin would never forget, the door of the northern gate gave way and a cheer went up from the Saracens. Soon they could be seen rushing foolishly out of the shattered gate—to be instantly skewered by a dozen of Shoreham’s archers.
“Well done!” Ibelin called over to Shoreham, and saw the Englishman nod, a subtle but unmistakable smile of pride on his face. It was good to see him smile, Balian reflected, after losing two of his sons in the defense of Jerusalem.
But too soon the Saracens had redeployed their bridges. Fortunately, the main gate to Tyre was a dogleg and the battering ram was too long to make the turn. Ibelin was impressed that the Saracen sappers didn’t waste time trying to deploy it, apparently having judged by eye alone that it would be worthless. Instead, more siege ladders were brought forward and the Saracens flung these against the wall, as arrows and boiling pitch poured down on them from the ramparts overhead.
Sir Galvin was the first to note that the ladders were too short. This wall was about ten feet higher than the middle wall, which was twenty feet taller than the outer wall. The siege ladders that the Saracens flung against it all landed a good twelve feet or more short of the top. The gap was too great for a man to bridge, and when they tried to decrease the angle of tilt to reach higher, the ladders simply toppled over backwards, sending the men on them into the moat or to their deaths. “Got wee ladders just like your dicks!” Galvin shouted gleefully. “Too short to be any use!”
Around him the archers jeered at the enemy and the knights cheered Sir Galvin—until Ibelin called them to order. “Don’t be fools! They’ve still got the sappers down there!”
The young knights who had been with Ibelin in Jerusalem sobered at once and looked fearfully over the battlements, but Sir Galvin, who had not, scoffed. “What good are some bloody moles? The water will fill any hole they try to dig. They’ll all drown like the rats they are!”
Ibelin raised his eyebrows eloquently, but inwardly he wondered if he was losing his nerve. Maybe Sir Galvin was right. Jerusalem, after all, was in semiarid country, and you had to dig deep to reach water. Here the water lay close to the surface, and any attempt to dig might indeed only end in the tunnels flooding. Maybe. He cautiously peered out between two merlons to try to see what the sappe
rs were up to at the foot of the wall. An instant later a well-aimed arrow sliced across the top of his shoulder, singeing him.
He dropped down instantly, grabbing his left shoulder with his right hand, and was shocked to see blood glistening on the palm of his leather mitten. At this range, Saracen arrows were usually harmless.
Sir Bartholomew was beside him, waddling forward on his haunches to keep below the rim of the wall. “How bad is it?”
“Nothing serious.”
Sir Bartholomew ignored his words and conducted his own inspection of the broken links in Ibelin’s chain mail that were oozing blood. “That was no Saracen arrow. Someone down there has a crossbow! Traitor!”
“Maybe. Maybe some Turk has learned how to use one of the many they’ve captured in the last six months. One crossbow won’t defeat us. The sappers might.”
“I’ll get something to stanch the bleeding.”
Ibelin supposed he ought to say “no” and scoff off the need for any assistance, but the pain was surprisingly sharp, as if his bone had been nicked. Damn it! He didn’t need this.
Shoreham was beside him with a water skin. “Here,” he offered the still-cool water laced with just a hint of wine. While Ibelin drank, Shoreham called over his shoulder: “Fetch my lord’s squire and tell him to bring wine and bandages!”
The few squires who had survived Hattin and Jerusalem had been deployed at the narrow arrow slits in the flanking towers rather than on the wall walk. These positions offered the most protection, and firing from the arrow slits required less skill. Ibelin thought of countermanding Shoreham and telling him to leave Georgios at his station, but he felt strangely lamed. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment.
With his eyes shut he seemed to hear more acutely. Men were shouting, cursing, and praying as they variously loaded their bows, took aim, or fired. Men also panted from exertion as they wound their crossbows to the ready or drew them taut with the stirrup. Farther away the Saracens were also shouting orders, curses, encouragements, and threats. And beyond all that was the wind and the waves. A gale seemed to be blowing up. Balian wondered how that would affect the naval engagement.
Georgios thumped down beside him, a concerned expression on his face. “My lord?”
“It’s nothing serious,” Ibelin answered, forcing himself to smile.
“It’s the sappers, my lord!” Georgios answered, even as he untied the cord of Ibelin’s aventail and slipped a quilted square of cotton into place over his bleeding upper arm. Ibelin gasped in pain as the squire pressed down briefly on his wound to stanch the bleeding. Then, gritting his teeth, he asked, “What about the sappers?”
“They’re using pickaxes to hack away at the wall right at the base. We can see what they’re doing, but we can only reach them from one or two of the windows. They’re well protected, of course, with shields. If we could sortie out—”
“No!” Was that the pain speaking? Or the fact that the last sortie in Jerusalem had been so disastrous? Was he completely losing his nerve?
“But, my lord, if we don’t—”
“Georgios! Listen! We will sortie out,” Ibelin told him firmly, “but not until there are enough of us to make a difference. That is not you and a score of other squires! Where’s Sir Galvin?”
“Here, my lord.” The big Scotsman sank down on his heels to be at Balian’s level.
“We need to get word to my lord of Montferrat that we are at risk. We’ve held half of Salah ad-Din’s army for half a day now, but we need reinforcements. I don’t know what’s happening at the port, but unless he is fighting with every last man to hold it from being overrun, he needs to spare us everything he can. Tell him that.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And tell him the sappers are chipping away at the inner line of defense.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Ibelin nodded. “Go now.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“My lord!”
Balian reeled as he realized he’d passed out and was being shaken awake. His head felt as heavy as a mace, and he could hardly tear his eyes open. He managed to crack them enough to see light, but then they fell shut again.
“My lord!” The voice was right in his ear. He could feel and smell the man’s breath, but he couldn’t recognize the voice. “That arrow was probably poisoned!” The man was already getting an arm under his shoulder and knees. “We need to get you to a surgeon now!”
Ibelin’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he lost consciousness again as Godwin lifted him in his arms and clattered down from the battlements.
Tyre, January 3, 1188
“He’s coming to, my lady!”
Balian struggled to open his eyes, frowning unconsciously at the effort. He sensed and smelled his wife before he saw her. She leaned over him, kneeling on the edge of the bed in a waft of lavender. “Balian?”
“What happened?”
“Someone tried to assassinate you, my love,” she answered steadily. “But we think we managed to drain off enough of the poison.”
“Your lady is being modest, my lord,” Sir Bartholomew’s baritone rang out. “She sucked it out of the wound herself.”
“Every Comnena is taught how to deal with poison,” she brushed it off.
“Which didn’t make it less risky,” Eschiva pointed out, coming to stand beside Maria Zoë, her eyes seeking reassurance that her uncle was indeed lucid.
“I assure you,” Maria Zoë insisted, “I was not at risk. Sucking blood is simply unpleasant; I’m sure half my reaction was just nerves.”
“She was so ill, we feared we would lose you both,” Eschiva corrected firmly.
Balian looked up at his wife with increased admiration. She was no longer what one would call a stunning beauty. Her facial skin was starting to sag and her waist had thickened, but she was still attractive and, more important, intelligent and intensely loyal. She was—even penniless—his greatest asset. She was what God intended woman to be when he took a rib from Adam’s side and gave him not a slave but a helpmate. He reached for her hand and she took it, smiling with relief. With each moment, however, he was regaining lucidity, and his thoughts went at once to where he had been when he lost consciousness. “The sappers—”
“Montferrat slaughtered them,” Sir Bartholomew told him with evident satisfaction. “Along with three thousand or more of the enemy as he drove them all the way back to their camp.”
“What were our casualties?” Balian asked next.
“Very light. I don’t know the exact number of those with Montferrat, but of our men we lost only one knight, Sir Anthony, no squires, and three archers.”
“What about wounded?” Balian pressed him.
“Aside from you, my lord, nothing that couldn’t be patched up easily.”
“Sip this carefully,” Maria Zoë urged as she put a silver chalice to his lips.
Balian took a sip and immediately protested irritably, “That tastes terrible!”
“It will calm your stomach,” his wife answered reasonably.
“My stomach isn’t upset,” he countered.
“But it will be, if you try to get up too fast.”
Balian didn’t answer directly, but he asked querulously, “What happened at the port? Did Magnussen succeed in breaking out?”
“He did more than that, my lord!” Ernoul moved into his line of sight, looking rather disheveled, for he’d been keeping a vigil along with Sir Bartholomew, Maria Zoë, and Eschiva. Excitedly, he related the outcome of the ruse and ensuing naval battle. “He and the Pisans between them managed to take five of the Saracen ships after they’d entered the inner harbor. Then they chased the others so hotly that the crews preferred to beach their own ships rather than face Magnussen’s men! They scrambled ashore to save their lives, while swarms of Saracen horsemen rushed down to the shore’s edge, threatening to stop our men from coming ashore and taking the ships, but the Norsmen and Pisan landed anyway. Quite a melee en
sued!”
“That was when our messenger got through to Montferrat,” Sir Bartholomew continued, “and he called off his men to come to our aid. They sortied out of the main gate and drove the astonished Saracens all the way back to their camp!” The old knight felt understandably smug about this outcome.
“But the best part is,” Maria Zoë took up the narrative, “the next day Salah ad-Din dispersed his army. They just packed up their tents, loaded their camels, and plodded away with their tails between their legs.”
“Seriously?” Balian couldn’t believe his ears.
“Yes!” his wife, squire, niece, and knight assured him in unison, and he let his eyes sweep across them one after another, seeking the slightest indication of embarrassment suggesting deceit. Yet they were all beaming at him.
“The siege has been completely lifted,” Bartholomew declared. “We’ve sent patrols as far as twenty miles inland without running into any enemy. Reginald de Sidon has taken command at Belfort as well and holds it for Christ. Perhaps more important, two of the Pisan ships sailed for Cyprus to spread the word that it was safe to send supplies again. Meanwhile, we’ve sent out foragers. The Saracens have picked the immediate vicinity clean, but we found some stray cattle.”
“And some of the refugees have moved outside the walls, too,” Eschiva told him, “preferring tents to the squalid conditions down by the port.”
“My lord of Montferrat has won a great victory,” Balian concluded.
“Not Montferrat alone!” Maria Zoë protested loyally. “You played your part.”
Balian smiled cynically. “Do you honestly think he’s likely to mention it?”
“Does it matter? We know what you did. And our enemies know your worth as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Saracens wouldn’t bother trying to assassinate someone inconsequential. That poisoned bolt was meant for you and you alone.” Maria Zoë met his eyes as she spoke.
“You’re sure it was meant for me?”
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