Crusade

by Robyn Young

  “We could be brothers, could we not?” said Guillaume with a short laugh, stepping back. “And I am told we also share the same name.” He nodded to the marshal. “You may leave us.” As the marshal bowed, the grand master turned to the infirmarer. “I will drink wine with my supper if it will put you at ease.”

  The infirmarer heard the dismissal in the grand master’s tone. “As you wish, my lord,” he conceded, following the marshal out of the room.

  “You would think they would be thankful I had survived the attack,” Guillaume said to Will. “But I have never seen such solemn faces.”

  “They are just worried, my lord,” said Will, not sure what else to say. The grand master had an energy about him that unnerved him, a crackling intensity that fizzled beneath that unruffled exterior.

  “Well, I myself am deeply grateful for what you did. I am in your debt, William Campbell.”

  “It was nothing, my lord.”

  “Nonsense. If not for you, I would have most likely died today.” Guillaume studied Will. “But I wonder,” he continued, moving over to the table, which he leaned against, folding his arms across his chest. “How, out of one hundred and twenty knights, were you the only one to see the danger?”

  Will averted his eyes. In all the excitement, he had forgotten that he had deserted the ranks without permission and the reason for it. He searched for an answer, but only Catarina’s face came into his mind. He decided something near the truth was better than an outright lie. “I was helping a young girl, my lord. She had lost her parents in the crowd and was upset. I found them for her and was heading back when I saw the man who attacked you.” He paused. “I’m sorry I broke rank.”

  “I see,” said the grand master. His face was unreadable. “And what alerted you to this man? What was he doing that caught your attention?”

  “At first, nothing. It was a boy who signaled me to the danger.”

  “How so?”

  Will explained what he had seen and how he had pursued and lost the boy.

  The grand master looked thoughtful. “What would be your assessment of this? Who do you believe this child was?”

  “Family perhaps? Their ages were too different for them to be likely comrades. He almost certainly knew the attacker and seemed, I would say, to know what was about to happen. As I said, he was terrified.”

  “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Guillaume. He breathed in deeply through his nostrils, unfolded his arms and perched on the edge of the table, his mantle settling around him. “Tell me about the mood here, William.”

  Will was disconcerted by the shift in conversation. “My lord?”

  “I need to better understand this place if I am to command it. I spent half my life in this preceptory, but the view from this position is somewhat different to that which I am used to and I have been away from the Holy Land for some time. Grand Commander Gaudin and Marshal de Sevrey sent reports to me in France and Sicily during my absence, but they too see things from an elevated place. For a more general picture I need to speak with the men of the barracks, the soldiers of the front lines. I want to know how they feel.” Guillaume cocked his head. “How you feel, William.”

  Will was silent, uncertain how best to respond. He knew the answer, but wasn’t sure he wanted to give it. “Obviously,” he began slowly, “we are pleased to have you here. We have been subdued by your absence. But the mood is mostly good. The peace is holding strong.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Guillaume, “the peace.” He fixed Will with a shrewd stare. “Interestingly, yours is somewhat sunnier than earlier reports I received.” He gave a slight smile. “You need not worry about telling the truth to me. I am aware of how despondent the men have been. I only needed to look into their eyes as I entered this place to see that. It is because of the peace that they are dispirited.” Will went to speak, but the grand master continued over him.

  “How many holdings have we lost to the Saracens these past decades? Almost thirty. How many men? Well,” he finished quietly, “they are countless.”

  “It is true,” agreed Will, “we have all suffered hardships during the wars, but—”

  “And you, William? Have you lost anyone dear to you? Comrades? Masters?”

  Will faltered. But the grand master was looking at him intently. “I lost my father.”

  “How?”

  “At Safed.”

  The grand master’s hard face thawed in sympathy. “I was in Acre when the massacre happened. I was deeply affected by the courage our men showed, choosing death over conversion to the Saracens’ faith. I heard too of Baybars’s brutality and his defilement of their bodies. It sickened me to the core. You, however, must live with that hurt even now. How you must despise his killers.”

  Will felt a pain and realized he had clenched his fists so tightly, the nails had bitten his skin. “I did once,” he said, struggling to keep his voice measured. “But not anymore. I forgave the sultan when he allowed me to bury my father.” The words were flame to a wick, and as Will spoke them, memory flared.

  After handing Prince Edward’s peace treaty to Baybars at Caesarea, Will had journeyed to Safed with two Bahri warriors the sultan had ordered to escort him. The huge fortress that dominated the Galilee, standing sentry over the River Jordan, was broken and scarred, its sides pitted with the marks of boulders hurled against the walls from siege engines, blackened by Greek fire and stained with oil. A squadron of Baybars’s Mamluks garrisoned the stronghold, and goats and chickens were scattered about the outer enceinte, where children, sons and daughters of the soldiers and their wives, played in the dust. Despite the inhabitation, it was a desolate place. Too big to be filled by a mere hundred or so men, its halls and passageways were echoing, empty. Will felt the sadness that lingered there, seeped like water that leaves behind a stain, in the deserted court-yards and the gutted interior of the chapel, where a statue of St. George, the Temple’s patron saint, had been pulled from its plinth and shattered with some blunt weapon. On one wall near the barbican, he found several Latin words scrawled in a dark substance that looked like pitch.

  Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name the glory.

  It was the psalm the knights said before they went into battle. Will had passed his fingers across the black letters, wondering who had written them.

  Had it been before the men had left the fortress under Baybars’s promise of amnesty, just before they were led unaware to their executioners? Or was it older? Had they seen it as they had passed out of the gate and been comforted by the familiar markings?

  When Will stumbled over the rocky, scrubby ground at the base of Safed’s hill, the sight of the eighty or so heads stuck on pikes shocked him more than he had been able to prepare for. He had sunk to his knees and stayed there, staring at them for some time, before he was able to rise and do what needed to be done. After six years exposed to the elements, they were mostly skulls, with very little flesh or indication of who they had been or what they had looked like in life. A few had fallen off their pikes or slipped down, the iron tips protruding from repulsively huge eye-sockets. Two were missing. Will had been mortified to learn that the bodies of the knights had been burned after the executions; that only their heads remained in this world. But he still felt that if he could lay a part of the form that had once been his father beneath the ground, then both of them could rest.

  The identity of his father’s head, however, had not yielded to his inspection, and by the time he had gone down the whole line twice, he had given up. In the end, the Bahri warriors watching on in silence, he returned to the fortress and took a shovel from one of the animal pens. Unhindered by anyone, having, after all, the sultan’s permission to be there, he worked his way through the scorching afternoon digging a grave for all of the skulls, until the sweat and the thirst and the pain in his arms left him delirious. Finally, as the sun
had gone down behind the distant pink mountains, throwing the wide plain and the river into hazy shadows, redolent with the scent of the warm grass that hummed with mosquitoes, he turned the last of the earth over the grave. Then he had sat heavily on the ground beside it, too exhausted to think of any prayer to say.

  Will looked up at the grand master. “My hatred toward those who killed my father almost consumed me. If I had let it, I would have lost myself to that darkness. I had to forgive them.”

  “I understand,” said Guillaume. “But that doesn’t change the simple fact that this peace is crippling us. Baybars and his people want us gone. The peace will not last. I can say that as certainly as I can say the sun will rise tomorrow. We need to pull ourselves back from the brink of our own extinction.” His voice was calm, sincere. “If we do not, it will be the end of a Christian Holy Land. And your father and all those brave men before him will have died in vain. I know you do not want that.”

  “No, my lord,” murmured Will. What else could he say? The grand master expected him to hate the Saracens, expected him to want to fight for the Temple’s possessions and for Christendom’s dream. It was the view of most good Christians, all good knights.

  For two centuries they had come, those the Muslims called al-Firinjah: the Franks. After they invaded the great cities of Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem, wresting them bloodily from the Muslim, Jewish and native Christian inhabitants, the First Crusaders settled, establishing four Latin states. Here, they gave birth to generations who would never know the rolling hills of England or the verdant forests of France and Germany, but whose vistas would be the endless, timeless deserts of Syria and Palestine.

  Crusade after Crusade swept out from the West, men and women seeking riches in wealthy Eastern cities and absolution for their sins. But over time, their numbers diminished. Weakened, the Franks tired of the constant struggle to defend Jerusalem from the infidel. The city that had called so many with its siren song to dash themselves against its walls had been back in the Muslims’ possession for thirty-two years. Of the four Latin states established by the First Crusaders, only the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, of which Acre was now the capital, were still in Christian hands. The County of Edessa was gone, and of the former Principality of Antioch only a port remained. The vessels that glided into Acre’s harbor were mostly half-empty, filled with mercenaries and straggling lines of pilgrims, those running from poverty and crimes committed, those running to a new life.

  Will knew the grand master was right. Many of the men were despondent, bitter over what they had lost in Baybars’s campaigns. Despite the Anima Templi’s efforts for peace, the Templars and others still watched the horizon for those kingly ships that would herald a new Crusade and the return of Jerusalem to Christian hands. For the Franks were being forced closer and closer to the sea with every year that passed, their settlements eroded by the Mamluks, and no one knew how long they could remain, teetering on the edge of the Mediterranean’s green-blue line.

  As the grand master began to speak of how he intended to restore their position within the Holy Land, the words of the seneschal came back to Will, heavy with gravity. He could prove to be one of the gravest threats to peace we have faced since the treaty was signed.

  “We must work to unify the territories Baybars has left us with. We are fractured, unwilling to pool resources, weakened. Acre is ...,” Guillaume searched intently for the words, “... a plump worm that wiggles on the end of a hook.” His gaze focused on Will, who had been starting to feel as if he weren’t even in the room; the grand master seemed to be speaking to some larger, invisible audience. “Most of us are too preoccupied with our own internal convulsions to notice the predator that lurks in the water beneath us, waiting to open its jaw and snap,” Guillaume closed his fist, “one last time.” He rose and took a candle and taper to the fire. “We must work together if we are to survive the peril that will inevitably come our way again.” Bending down, he held the taper in the flames. “The enthronement of my cousin should help in this matter. In time, I am confident he will help to unite us.”

  As the grand master lit the candle, Will realized how dark it had become since they had been talking. Soon the bells would ring for Vespers, calling them to chapel. “Is that definitely going to happen, my lord?” he asked carefully. “Will Charles d’Anjou take the throne?”

  “It is my hope, yes. At the Council of Lyons, Pope Gregory arranged for Maria of Antioch to sell her rights to Jerusalem’s crown to Charles. When the sale is completed, which I expect it will be within the year, he will be able to make his claim against King Hugh. And we will be governed once more by a capable ruler.”

  Will didn’t miss the disdain in Guillaume’s tone. He had heard much talk of these matters since word reached Acre of events at Lyons. The current king of Jerusalem was Hugh III, who was also king of Cyprus. The position was obsolete, Jerusalem having been lost to the Muslims, but the title remained and gave the bearer authority over Acre and what was left of the Franks’ lands in Outremer. Rather than remain in Cyprus and let a regent control Acre, as many of his predecessors had, Hugh decided to exercise his authority. Will had noticed increasing complaints about the young king’s interference; the government of Acre, made up of knight-masters, nobles, merchants, the commune of burghers and officials from the High Court, had successfully resisted royal rule for decades and had grown used to their autonomy. Another person opposed to Hugh’s rule was his cousin, Maria, a princess of the vanquished city of Antioch, who believed she held the rightful claim to the throne. Such conflicts had split Outremer apart before, and the lawyers of Acre, aware of the danger the schism posed, had decreed that Hugh should take the crown. Will could understand their decision: the young king of Cyprus was a much surer candidate than an old, unmarried princess, but Maria had reportedly turned up at the Council of Lyons to complain, and the pope had convinced her to sell her rights to Charles d’Anjou.

  Will had heard the seneschal remark that Pope Gregory wasn’t impressed by Hugh and sought the elevation of a stronger leader. But he couldn’t see how Charles, the powerful king of Sicily, could unify things. Hugh was unlikely to yield his throne without a fight, and with the grand master and d’Anjou arrayed against him, old battle lines would surely be drawn up: the Temple and the Venetians banding together under Charles, the Hospitallers and the Genoese under Hugh. Will had the distinct impression that if things did go the way the grand master hoped, they would get bloodier before they got better.

  “Still,” said Guillaume brusquely, seeming to realize he had said more than he should, “such matters should be discussed when there are others present to hear them.” He stood. “I summoned you here to thank you and instead I have talked you deaf.” He spread his hands apologetically and gave Will a charmingly boyish smile. “It was a long journey. I was alone with my thoughts for quite some time. You must forgive me.”

  “There is nothing to forgive, my lord.”

  “There is one last thing.” The grand master clasped his hands behind his back. “I would like you to find out who wanted me dead. My attacker was not an experienced killer, of that I am certain, and as I know of no reason why a young peasant should wish me harm, it is entirely possible that he was acting under the orders of another. Having inspected the body, Marshal de Sevrey believes him to have been an Italian. That and this boy you pursued are the only trails I can see to be followed. But I want you to look.”

  “Perhaps, my lord,” began Will, “the marshal, or the grand commander, might be better suited to organizing such a task?”

  “You are the only one who was aware of my attacker and the only one who saw the boy. I cannot think of anyone better suited.”

  Outside, a hollow clanging informed them that it was time for Vespers. The grand master didn’t take his eyes off Will.

  Will was filled with a sinking feeling. He had more than enough work to do for the Anima Templi. But the grand master was waiting for a response. “Yes, my
lord, of course.”

  Later that evening, Guillaume sat at his desk in his chambers. In front of him he placed a prayer book, bound in leather-covered boards and closed with an ornate gold clasp, that he had just removed from his traveling chest.

  For a moment, he didn’t open it, but simply ran his fingers down the cover, feeling the cracks in the leather. He was tired and his head ached. He was rarely ill, and the unusual pain was distracting. He had given a speech in the chapel after the evening office, which had been gratefully received by the men, who were eager to welcome him. Afterward he shared a meal with them in the great hall, but he had wanted to speak with his officials before retiring and his headache had prevented him. Still, it was only his first day. Any discussions could wait for tomorrow. He unsnapped the book’s clasp and opened a dog-eared page.

  Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us ...

  There was a rap at the door. It opened, and one of Guillaume’s personal guards, a Sicilian with short white-gray hair that made his tanned face appear even darker, entered.

  “What is it, Zaccaria?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, my lord, but there is a man at the gates asking to speak with you. He swears he knows you.”