Crusade

by Robyn Young

  And somewhere in that deep dark, that fathomless space inside him, Kalawun found what he was looking for in the smiling faces of Aisha and Ali, whom he summoned with his last breath to come forward and take him into Paradise.

  Khalil sat beside his father for some time after his chest had ceased to rise and fall. A charcoal in one of the braziers split with a hissing crack and sparks fizzled in the air, brief and bright. Khalil leaned over and whispered the Shahada in Kalawun’s ear. After it was done, he stayed there for a while, smelling the sweet oil in his father’s hair. Then, his grief done, he rose. Outside, the army awaited their new general. But they would not be marching this dawn. Kalawun had believed the army would not be needed, that in the end peace would prevail, and the generals had believed that they couldn’t delay if they were to avoid the harshest months of winter. Because of these things, they had too few troops and not enough siege engines. Khalil knew they would need every possible resource if they had a hope of taking Acre, and not just Acre, but every last castle and town where the Franks still resided. No, he wouldn’t march his men yet. They would wait out the winter here and gather more forces. Then, one final push, one final, massive push, and it would be over. Zengi, Nureddin, Saladin, Ayyub, Baybars: he would follow in their footsteps and finish what those before him had started. It was time to end the Crusades.

  45

  The Venetian Quarter, Acre 30 MARCH A.D. 1291

  “I wish you would listen.”

  Elwen, packing silk sheets into a chest, paused to look at Will. “I am listening. But you haven’t changed my mind. I’m not leaving.”

  Will left the window and crossed to her. “I’m serious, Elwen.”

  She shook her head as she pulled the cover from Andreas and Besina’s bed. “So am I.”

  Will felt his frustration grow as he saw the resolve in her face. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to persuade her and was irritated both by her unwillingness to listen and his own inability to convince her. “Think about Rose,” he said after a moment. “Think about our daughter.”

  “I am,” replied Elwen, folding the sheet. “Andreas’s physician believes she is too weak to travel. We shouldn’t risk it, he said, and I agree.”

  “How much safer will she be here?” Will pushed a hand through his hair. “When they come, I’m not going to be able to protect you, either of you.”

  Elwen placed the sheet on top of the others in the chest and went to him, cupping his cheek with her hand. “We have more than a thousand knights to protect us. Acre is strong, Will. Have faith.”

  “Since the ships have been carrying citizens to Cyprus, our forces have dwindled to fewer than twenty thousand fighting men. You know the Mamluks outnumber us.”

  Elwen frowned at him. “What would you have me do? Take our daughter on a ship for months on rough seas without a physician or proper supplies, or keep her here until she is well enough to leave? Besides,” she added brusquely, “I’m not going without you, and as you’re not prepared to leave, neither am I.”

  “I have a duty to this city, Elwen. I have to stay.”

  “And as your wife I have a duty to you.”

  There was a knock at the door. It opened and Catarina appeared. She smiled at Will, then went to Elwen and spoke softly in Italian. Will, watching them, was struck by the memory of Elwen ushering Catarina out after the girl had caught them kissing. It didn’t seem possible that fifteen years had passed since that day, but the evidence was in front of him in the faces of Catarina, now a grown woman, and Elwen, the mother of his child. It gave him a sense of sadness, but he couldn’t quite say why.

  “Rose is awake,” Elwen told him. “I’ll check on her.”

  When they had gone, Will went to the window and looked out. Two men stood in the street below talking, cloaks pulled tight around their shoulders. It had been a brutal winter, and even now, this far into spring, the air was still chilly. For weeks, sleet and rain had whipped the coastline mercilessly, and March brought strong winds that sent ragged clouds to cast huge shadows across the plains, churned to an icy sludge outside Acre’s walls. Sickness blighted the city and surrounding settlements, with one particularly virulent fever killing over one hundred children. Rose had come down with it last month, and for several weeks, Will and Elwen thought they had lost her. Those nights had been some of the worst of Will’s life; awake and pacing his quarters in the Temple, imagining his daughter lying not half a mile away, shaking and sweating. The pure, maddening fear of it; not being able to be there, or help her, not knowing whether a message would be waiting for him at the gate when he went down for Matins, telling him she was dead. But she was strong and had survived the worst of it. Now Rose was on the mend and the weather was becoming milder, but rather than bringing relief these warmer, drier days and lighter nights held a growing sense of menace. The mud on the roads was drying, hardening, able to take the weight of an army. If Will closed his eyes, he fancied he could hear them: the stamp of thousands of booted feet; the jangle of bridles and chain mail; the rumble of the siege engines’ wheels, the thudding drums.

  Behind him, the door creaked as it opened.

  “How is she?” asked Will, turning. He expected to see Elwen, but it was Andreas who was standing in the doorway. Will nodded to him, feeling awkward in the mercer’s private room. Over the years, he and Andreas had learned to get along, but they had never become close. They only had Elwen in common and were both too protective of their respective roles in her life to ever be able to feel truly comfortable with one another. Will gestured to the door. “Do you want me to wait outside?” He spoke in Arabic; the one language they shared.

  Andreas waved a hand and crossed to his desk, which was empty save for a stack of papers. “No, no. Stay.” He rifled through the papers, then glanced up and gave the bare room a brief inspection. “It isn’t as if it will be mine for much longer. Have you seen Rose?”

  “Not yet. I’ll go up before I leave. Elwen thought it best not to tire her out.”

  Andreas grunted and went back to his study of the papers. “I take it you have talked to Elwen? Tried to persuade her?”

  “Short of knocking her unconscious and throwing her onto your ship, Andreas, I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

  Andreas smiled slightly. “She is headstrong for certain. I cannot convince her either.” He sobered. “She stays because of you, you know.”

  “I realize that. But she does so also out of fear for Rose, as does your physician I’m told.”

  “It isn’t an agreeable choice to make, certainly. But it is surely safer to brave the sea than to stay and await what is coming for Acre? People are saying Sultan Khalil has two hundred thousand men. I am not a soldier, but even I can see that we will be hard-pressed to survive an assault by such a number.” Andreas shook his head when Will didn’t answer. “Well, Commander, it may not be a comfortable situation you are faced with, but one thing you can be sure of is that you have a fiercely loyal woman for a wife.”

  “Too loyal,” responded Will. “I don’t want her to give up her life for me. She has no need to stay.”

  “Love is foolish that way.” Andreas gathered the papers. “As I have told you, I have a good friend who will take Elwen and Rose out of the city on his ship. He is ready to leave and will do so if it the assault goes ill for our forces, although I think, like many in the city, he is hopeful our walls will hold. As long as they get to the harbor, they will be safe. He will bring them to Venice and I will take care of them until you send word. I know that when the assault comes you will be engaged elsewhere, Commander. But make sure they get to the harbor in time.” There were footfalls in the passage and Andreas fell silent as Elwen entered.

  She smiled at the two of them a little quizzically, then looked to Will. “I’ve told Rose that you’ll come up.”

  Will nodded to Andreas, then followed her up the winding stair to the servants’ quarters.

  Rose was swaddled in a large woolen blanket. He felt his he
art wrench as he saw how ashen her skin was. Her golden hair, splayed on the pillow, was dull and limp. He had hoped she would be looking better by now. “Rose,” he murmured, crouching by the narrow bed.

  Rose’s eyes were half-open. “Father,” she whispered, struggling to sit.

  Will put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Don’t try to move, my love. I just wanted to give my beautiful girl a kiss. Then I want you to go back to sleep. You need your rest.”

  “Tell Catarina not to go,” said Rose in a small voice. “I don’t want her to.”

  Will stroked her hair. “You’ll see her again soon, when you’re well. But the more you rest and sleep, the faster that will happen.”

  “Do you promise?”

  Will smiled and put his hand over his heart. “I swear.”

  The corner of Rose’s mouth turned up. “I accept your oath.”

  Will stayed there, stroking her hair, until her eyelids smoothed shut and her breaths evened out. His legs throbbed uncomfortably from the crouch, but still he didn’t move. Presently, he felt Elwen’s hand on his shoulder.

  “You should get back to the preceptory. You’ll be needed there.”

  Will leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on his daughter’s cheek, then stood. On the landing outside he caught Elwen’s arm as she went to descend the stairs. “Andreas has a friend who has agreed to take you out of the city if the defenses are breached.”

  “I know.”

  “If that happens, I want you and Rose to leave with him, even if I cannot. Do you understand?”

  Elwen looked away. “Yes,” she murmured.

  Will pulled her to him, wrapping her up in his arms.

  Elwen closed her eyes. “I’m scared, Will.”

  “We’re going to be all right. All of us.”

  They stayed there for a moment, neither wanting to relinquish their hold, then broke apart and headed downstairs, hands entwined. In the hallway, by a pile of sacks and chests, Catarina was waiting.

  She came forward to take Elwen’s hands. “Papa wants me to go to the ship with the first load. Giovanni and the children are waiting for me there.” She frowned. “Won’t you come with us?”

  “I cannot,” murmured Elwen.

  Will, not understanding the words, but guessing the gist of the conversation, looked away as Catarina began to cry.

  Elwen hugged her. “Rose and I will be fine, I promise. If the fight goes badly, I’ll see you in Venice. If not, no doubt your father will want to return. Either way, this isn’t good-bye.”

  Catarina sniffed, then kissed Elwen on both cheeks. She smiled past her to Will. “Good-bye, Weel,” she said in English. “Make sure she safe.”

  Elwen stood close by Will as Catarina stepped outside and climbed into a wagon loaded with the di Paolo family’s belongings. As the horses pulled off, Catarina lifted her hand.

  “This house is going to feel strange with just me and Rose,” sighed Elwen, as the wagon disappeared from view.

  “I thought Andreas was leaving you with some staff.”

  “His guard, Piero, is staying, but it will not be the same.” She shook her head. “I wish the Anima Templi had succeeded.”

  Will kissed her forehead rather than reply.

  Three days ago he had called a meeting of the Brethren, a final gathering before the war was upon them, ordering them to collect any documents or monies relating to the Anima Templi. In truth, they owned very little as an order, their need for secrecy overriding the requirement for written records. The few documents they did have, guarded, along with their treasury, by the seneschal, were loaded into a crate in the seneschal’s quarters. Will placed Everard’s chronicle, taken from the locked chest in his dormitory, reluctantly alongside their other possessions. It might only be a book filled, for the most part, with the incoherent ramblings of an old man, but it had felt too much like a defeat. It was as though, by sending it away, he believed Acre would fall and that the Anima Templi’s dream had ended.

  “You should just burn it,” the seneschal had said gruffly, seeing his reluctance to part with the tome.

  “No,” Will had replied quickly, “it’s all we have left of . . .” He went to say Everard, but then stopped himself, wary of showing weakness in front of the seneschal. “No,” he repeated firmly. “We’ll send them to Hugues de Pairaud in Paris as we agreed. Have your squires load it onto the ship.”

  The seneschal nodded grudgingly. “As you wish.”

  After that, Will had gone in person to speak with several of their contacts, including Elias, to persuade them to leave the city. The rabbi had laughed good- naturedly and told him that he would go nowhere whilst there was still a chance that peace would prevail. There was a confidence in the old man’s voice and manner that had offered Will a sense of hope.

  Now, as he turned to Elwen, he tried to convey that same optimism. “Maybe we still can succeed,” he said, taking her hand. But inside, a voice told him that his words were only to comfort her. He did not believe them himself.

  Squeezing her hand, he stepped out into the street. He had only gone a few paces when he turned back. Elwen stood on the step, shivering in the cold wind, her eyes pale and bright in the weak sun, watching him go. The sight of her caused a rush of emotion to surge through him and he strode back to her and drew her into his arms. She laughed in surprise, then fell silent. Will felt her hands grip his back fiercely. They stayed there for a long moment, just holding on. “I love you,” he murmured into her hair.

  Finally, they pulled apart and Will headed for the preceptory, leaving the Venetian quarter behind him.

  People loitered in the streets, talking, their faces all cast with the same grim expressions. Others were loading belongings onto carts or slinging panniers over the backs of mules and camels, heading for the harbor. All around the city, people were leaving. But too few and too slowly for Will’s liking. Many simply did not believe that Acre’s walls could be breached, having lived through Baybars’s attacks, and some still had faith in the ability of Acre’s government to negotiate with the Mamluks. Will knew different.

  On receiving the devastating news of Kalawun’s death, which had hit Will hard, Guillaume de Beaujeu sent an envoy to the new sultan, al-Ashraf Khalil, to attempt to enter into fresh negotiations. Will was ill with a sickness of the stomach and was excused from going. This was fortunate for him indeed for the two knights the grand master sent never returned. Instead, a letter came to Guillaume from Sultan Khalil himself advising them not to send any more messages or offer any gifts, for he would not receive them. We are coming into your regions, the letter had stated, to right the wrongs that have been done.

  Following that letter, reports had begun to filter into Acre from the Franks’ spies that Sultan Khalil was organizing an army, the like of which hadn’t been seen since the dawn of the Crusades. Every Mamluk was being consigned, as well as all auxiliary troops. The amirs of Hamah and Damascus were raising their own forces, and many thousands of ordinary Muslim men from across Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria—retired soldiers, farmers, laborers, zealous youths—were coming forward, on hearing the calls to war in the mosques, to pledge themselves to the battle. It was a jihad of terrifying proportions. Further reports came down from Lebanon of trees being felled for siege engines. It was rumored that Khalil had ordered the building of one hundred engines, some of which were the largest ever constructed. One mandjanik, called the Furious, took the entire population of Damascus to move out of the city through mud and snow. Now these men and their engines were coming for the Christians. The cold and the rain that hampered their marches in the early part of the month had died away, and this massive force would reach Acre’s walls in a matter of days.

  Every Western man of fighting age left in Outremer had been called to arms to defend Acre, many soldiers being withdrawn from garrisons in the few Frankish-held settlements left along the coast, leaving these strongholds with little or no protection. Acre was the Crusaders’ last bastion of strengt
h, and every able hand was needed to secure her. For the first time in decades, Acre’s divided communities stood united. The Templars and the Hospitallers worked with the Teutonics to ready the defenses. The French regiment, posted by the late French King, Louis IX, which included more than one hundred crossbowmen, liaised with the royal garrison left by King Henry II of Cyprus and the English order of St. Thomas. The Pisans and the Venetians joined together to build great mangonels for the siege, and all the mercenaries and guard forces of the merchant states and other quarters were drawn up and armed. Whatever happened now, Acre was ready for a fight.

  As Will wandered through the city streets, he could feel this air of determination. Beneath the fear and worry, there was a sense of defiance. It was visible in the faces of the merchants who nailed planks of wood over windows of their stores, refusing to leave, visible in the lines of women and girls, hauling sacks of grain into guardhouses around the walls. It was visible in the fiery glow of smithies, where the clang of iron on iron was like a drumbeat through the days, and in the stables, where farriers nailed fresh shoes on horses. And it was visible in the mangonels and trebuchets, hauled by teams of oxen to the walls, where torches flared every evening, flickering across the shadows of twenty thousand waiting soldiers.

  Will, climbing the hill of Montjoie, which straddled the Venetian and Genoese quarters, halted and looked out across Acre. His gaze moved over the jumbled labyrinth of streets, carved into quarters by walls and gates. He picked out the spires of churches and the domes of mosques, the windswept docks and the iron chain raised across the harbor. He looked north to the grand enclosure of the Knights of St. John with its large infirmary and behind it to the moat that separated the city from the suburb of Montmusart. His gaze moved on, over the rooftops of homes and workshops and the towers of the leper hospital of the Order of St. Lazarus. Beyond Montmusart was a double wall lined with towers that marched all the way around the city on the landward side, encircling the peninsular Acre lay on in a giant girdle of stone. Will looked to the Jewish and Arab quarters, the Italian markets, the cathedral and the royal palace. He stood there for some time, a lone figure in his white mantle that was snatched at by the wind, his black hair whipping in his eyes, beard flecked with the first signs of gray around his mouth. He looked to it all, taking in the silence, the calm before the storm. And as he did so, he felt that sense of defiance swell and rise in him.