‘Back! Get back all of you!’ Hugo de Pomfret was shouting at them. ‘The wall’s going! Get back!’
With a sound like a rumble of the loudest thunder, a section of the great wall of Acre began to collapse, the huge blocks of masonry crashing down on top of each other, rolling outwards in a tide of stone amid a cloud of choking white dust.
All along the Crusader front line, shouts of triumph were raised.
‘Forwards!’ commanders were shouting. ‘Into the breach! For the Cross!’
Adam, his feet leaden, his heart lying like a dead stone inside his chest, found himself pounding towards the enemy. Surrounded by the knights and squires, he was barely aware of what he was doing.
Jenny’s dead, he repeated over and over again in his head. Jenny’s dead. But the words were meaningless. Nothing made sense any more.
They had crossed no-man’s-land now, an area littered with missiles dropped from above and the bodies of the Crusader dead. In front was the pile of rubble where the breach in the wall had been made.
‘Death to the infidel!’ Sir Ivo was roaring beside Adam.
Adam turned his head for a fleeting moment and was astonished to see a fierce joy burn in the knight’s face.
He can’t realize that all those men are dead, he thought.
They’d reached the collapsed wall. The pile of rubble rose above them, higher than the tallest house in Ashton. Knights were scrambling up it, using one hand to climb and holding their swords aloft in the other. Adam caught a glimpse of a row of scarecrow heads appearing on the other side of the rubble, a line of thin, grim faces under ragged turbans. Here was the enemy. He was face to face with him at last. Kill or be killed. This was the moment. Victory or death.
Copying the others, he had already pulled the sword from his scabbard. He pointed it forwards. He must go on now. There was no turning back. But he had to look round once more at the place where Jennet had died. He had to turn back and see the tower, still blazing on the ground below.
He never saw the stone, flung from the claw-like hand of an Acre defender ahead, which hit him a glancing blow on the side of his forehead. He barely felt pain, just a sense of unreality, a strange dreaminess, a sudden absence of sound and a slowing of all his muscles.
The last thing he saw was Sir Ivo bounding over the top of the rubble ahead, straight at a tall thin Saracen, who was whirling a huge double-edged axe round his head. Then he fell backwards, and everything went black.
All day, rumours had been circulating around the Saracen camp. A message had arrived from the besieged city, brought by a heroic swimmer, who had managed to dive under the chain blocking the harbour and slip between the anchored ships of the Crusader fleet without being seen. His words, passed from mouth to mouth, were being chewed over by everyone in the Saracen camp within an hour.
‘I bet you know more than anyone, little brother, seeing you’re in and out of the great pavilion all the time,’ Ismail said to Salim, as they stood together looking out towards the city and the sea.
‘Honestly, Ismail, I don’t know more than anyone else. Just that the walls are crumbling all over the place, and the Franks keep attacking. Everyone’s totally exhausted. The garrison are begging the Sultan to rescue them by tomorrow morning, or they say they’ll surrender.’
‘Surrender?’ Ismail sounded shocked.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ Salim burst out. ‘They’re desperate! They don’t have any food! They must be running out of weapons by now too. And there’s women and little children in there!’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’ Ismail braced his shoulders, as if shaking off an unpleasant subject. ‘What about the Sultan? Has he answered? Are we going to attack again tonight?’
‘He got the scribe to write at once. He said they had to hold on down there. He can’t attack yet. He’s waiting for fresh troops. They’re supposed to be coming from Egypt. He sent the message by carrier pigeon. I saw it fly off myself.’ He lost the effort to sound controlled and his voice rose in anguish. ‘What’ll they do to everyone in the city if it surrenders, Ismail? What’ll they do to Ali?’
Ismail shook his head sympathetically.
‘You know, when a city surrenders, the people, they’re like goods. Something to bargain with. The Franks won’t just kill them. They’ll try to swap them for something from us. Frankish prisoners, or their precious true cross, or something.’
Salim turned hopeful eyes on him.
‘Really? Do you really think that’s what they’ll do?’
‘I’m sure of it, little brother.’
Salim felt comforted.
Ismail’s right, he thought, as he washed for the time of prayer. Bargaining chips, that’s what the garrison will be. They’ll be too valuable just to kill.
He lived through the night and the next day veering between hope and despair. Messengers kept coming and going round Saladin’s pavilion. No one knew what was happening. Everyone’s eyes were straining towards the city and the sea, listening to the relentless boom and crash of the catapults, watching the brilliant flashes of Greek fire exploding, and wincing at the sounds of battle and the screams of the wounded.
And then, at last, came the moment that everyone had been dreading. A great groan went up from the whole Saracen camp as the anxious watchers saw the banners of Muslim Acre being torn from the masts, and in their place fluttered the hideous, garish flags of the Franks, decorated with their hateful crosses. As the evening sun sank into the sea, baying shouts of triumph, the ugly clatter of wooden bells and a horrible cacophony of drums and trumpets told the story. The city of Acre had fallen. The Crusaders had entered and taken it.
‘Ya haram! Ya nakba! It’s a disaster!’ everyone was saying. ‘Satan has defeated us!’
Salim, unable to bear the wails of his mother and the disappointment and grief he saw on every face around him, slipped into the doctor’s tent and sat hugging his knees, rocking backwards and forwards in misery.
I’ll never be able to go home again, he thought. Our house’ll be taken over by a Frank. They’re probably in there already.
The thought of filthy strangers infesting his home, lolling on the carpets where his father had sat with Dr Musa, scratching their fleas on the verandah upstairs where he had always liked to spend the afternoon, using his mother’s water jars, wearing the old slippers from the pile by the door . . .
He wanted to be sick.
Thieves! he raged. Murderers!
Where was Ali now? Had he been taken alive, or was he one of the dying whose dreadful cries had now been stilled? And if he was alive, had he been given something to eat at last?
They’ll have put him in the dungeons, I suppose, he thought with a shudder. With all the rats and scorpions.
Dr Musa, who had been looking for him, came into the tent and found him at last.
‘So, the sick are to look after themselves from now on, are they?’
‘I’m sorry, sidi Musa.’ Salim scrambled to his feet, realizing too late that he should have been accompanying the doctor on his afternoon rounds.
Dr Musa’s voice had been rough but his eyes were sympathetic.
‘Now it begins. The real business,’ he said.
‘What begins?’ Salim asked fearfully.
‘The comings and goings, the embassies, the talks, treaties, negotiations, we’ll give you this, you’ll give us that. Most tiresome. At least your brother will be safe.’
Salim’s heart lightened. ‘He will?’
‘Of course. I’m sure. A most tiresome delay there’ll be now. We’ll be stuck here for months, no doubt.’
‘What then?’ Salim asked. ‘Will we go on to Jerusalem?’
Dr Musa heaved a sigh.
‘How I long for it! My house, my books, my dear Leah, her wonderful cooking! But I fear my home may go the way of yours. Malek Richard will be heading for Jerusalem now. It’s what he wants most, after all. And we have seen what a man he is. It will take all of Saladin’s
strength and cunning to keep him at bay. No, Salim. For the time being we’ll have to stay with the army.’
It was several days before Adam learned of the triumphant taking of Acre. He had lain, concussed and unconscious, on the pile of rubble while the battle had raged around him. Someone must have picked him up at last and carried him here, into this strange room, and laid him on this mattress. He was vaguely aware of other beds in rows along the wall nearby, the moans of other men, and white-robed monks moving quietly between them, but it was too much effort to look round. He kept his eyes closed most of the time, trying to block out the ferocious pain in his head. He slept the days and nights away, rousing only to drink a little of the water or broth pressed to his lips.
When he came to properly, he was aware of someone sitting beside him. He turned his head, regretting it at once as daggers of pain shot through his skull, and saw Sir Ivo. The knight seemed to have been talking for some time. Adam, his mind slowly clearing, tried to pick up the thread.
‘Even then,’ Sir Ivo was saying, ‘when you’d have thought no one could have gone on resisting, they wouldn’t give up. They beat us back again and again. You have to admire the Saracens, devils though they are. Their courage is amazing. They fight like Christians.’
‘Where am I?’ Adam managed to ask. ‘The city, is it taken?’
‘God’s bones, boy, don’t you know? Of course the city’s taken. You’re inside it, in this excellent hospital!’ Sir Ivo exclaimed, raising his voice to a pitch that made Adam wince. ‘The pagans took us by surprise in the end. They surrendered. It was the very day after you fell.’
Adam tried to smile.
‘Oh. That’s good.’
‘The churches in the city are already being restored. The pagans in their wicked pride had torn down the crosses. They’d even scratched out the faces of the Holy Mother and Christ himself on the sacred pictures!’ He shook his head, as if unable to believe such wickedness. He paused, then said awkwardly, ‘Glad to see you restored to your wits, Adam. You’ll be your old self in a day or two, I expect.’
Through the open door leading out of this large vaulted room came the sound of monkish chanting.
‘The Templars,’ Sir Ivo nodded. ‘Singing another Te Deum. Every mass is a true celebration now. The saints have blessed us. We’ll be in Jerusalem before the year is out, I’m sure of it.’
The music was so soothing that Adam’s eyelids drifted down. When they opened again Sir Ivo had gone, and the light penetrating through the narrow pointed windows had turned from the bright white of midday to the soft gold of evening. Someone brought him a bowl of thick lentil soup. He drank a little of it, closed his eyes and slept again.
The next couple of weeks passed in a blur. From the streets of Acre, outside the hospital, came the sounds of drunken carousing as often as the chanting of monks. Titbits of news penetrated his muzzy brain, without making much sense. The King of France, sick and disillusioned, had gone home, though his knights had begged him, with tears in their eyes, not to abandon the quest for Jerusalem. Saladin had agreed to pay huge sums of money, give back the True Cross and free all the Frankish prisoners taken to Damascus in return for the release of the prisoners of Acre, now languishing in the city’s dungeons. Jennet had miraculously walked out from under the burning tower, her clothes unsinged, and was even now coming through the door to visit him . . . No, that wasn’t right. That was only a dream. Jenny was dead. She was dead. She was dead.
He was too weak to wipe away the tear that trickled out of the corner of his eye and ran past his ear on to the straw pillow.
Slowly, Adam’s strength began to return. He found at last that he could lift his head from his straw pillow without fainting. Then the feeling of sickness in his stomach began to go. One day, he managed to sit up for a few minutes, though the effort exhausted him.
A few visitors came. Roger Stepesoft, his normal cheerfulness gone, staggered in one morning in the grip of a blinding hangover, his eyes bleary, his voice cracking when Adam stupidly asked after Treue, forgetting in his confusion the dreadful sight of Treuelove’s dead body slung over Roger’s shoulder. A few of the friendlier squires dropped in briefly to ask how he was, and one day even Jacques appeared, his eyes roving round the sick men in the ward, like a cat sizing up a cageful of birds, until he was sent packing by a monk.
Sir Ivo came regularly, but to Adam’s surprise the knight’s visits depressed rather than cheered him. There was something about Sir Ivo’s diamond-bright faith in the Crusade, his restless energy and his evident relish for the battles to come, that wearied and confused Adam.
I must be a sinner, he told himself guiltily, lying on his back and watching the motes of dust dance around in the ray of sunshine glancing across the room from the window. I don’t even hate the Saracens now. If I’d been one of them, I’d have fought for my city too.
He tried to fan the flames of indignation with thoughts of the old churches of Acre which the Saracens had turned into mosques, and the crosses they’d torn down.
‘It’s the blindness of evil that closes their eyes to the truth of the gospel of Christ!’ he remembered Sir Ivo saying, as he lovingly polished the haft of his lance. ‘They cling to their prophet and worship their book of lies because they’re children of Satan himself.’
But that boy, Salim, answered a small rebellious voice in Adam’s head, he didn’t look like a child of Satan. He didn’t have a tail, or anything like that. And his ma, she was like anyone’s ma, and really brave, walking through the camp. And Saladin himself, he’s supposed to be a demon but he sent his own doctor to Lord Guy, to my father. Even Sir Ivo admits that that was true chivalry.
He was wrestling with these thoughts one hot afternoon when Dr John stopped beside his bed.
‘It’s Adam, isn’t it?’ he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘Adam Fitz Guy. I hardly recognized you when they brought you in. White as your surcoat you were.’
Adam tried to sit up.
‘No, no. Stay still. You had a bad crack on the head. The skull’s fractured. It takes a while to mend, and until it does you must stay where you are. You’ll be on your feet again soon. No long-term ill effects, I trust.’
‘I’m going to get better?’ Adam gave up the struggle to lift himself and smiled waveringly up at Dr John. ‘I was beginning to think – I mean, my head aches all the time and I feel all confused. I can’t think straight about anything. I keep forgetting stuff and get in a muddle.’
Dr John leaned down to feel his pulse, then drew up a low stool and sat down beside him.
‘What do you mean, muddled? You have delusions? Hallucinations?’
‘I don’t know.’ Adam didn’t understand the words. ‘I think it’s the devil coming into me, Dr John, to make me sin. I’m not sure about anything, not even the Crusade. Whether it’s right or not, I mean. I still want to get to Jerusalem, because of my ma, to save her soul from purgatory, but I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s not just being a coward, though I am one, I suppose. I just don’t think it’s right . . .’
He stopped, not daring to express the true wickedness of his thoughts.
‘You don’t think what’s right?’ Dr John prompted gently.
‘Well, it’s like – I mean, it’s not like . . .’ Adam stopped, then started again. ‘The way the monk told it, back in England, when I took the cross, it sounded so simple, that the Saracens were all evil, and killing them was a holy task. But they’re not all evil! Not the ones I’ve met. And the monk, he went on about Our Lady’s tears falling because infidels were trampling on the grave of her Son. I’ve tried to see her. I’ve prayed to her again and again, but when I do I just see my ma. She used to say, “Treat people nice, Adam. Don’t hurt anyone, whoever they are. That’s the right way. It’s worth more than a hundred masses.” And then I remember all the dead people, theirs and ours, and the wounded, and how they screamed in pain, and I don’t think it can be what Our Lady wants.’
He stopped,
afraid that he’d shocked the doctor. There was a short silence.
‘What an amazing thing,’ Dr John said at last, ‘to hear my own thoughts in the mouth of a squire, whose whole life ought to be dedicated to fighting. I fear it’s the knock on the head that’s made a philosopher of you. Once you’re back in shape, wielding your sword, putting on your armour and trying to win your spurs and become a knight yourself—’
‘I don’t want to be a knight!’ Adam interrupted, his brow puckered with the effort of trying to think things out. ‘I’m not even a squire, not really. I’m just – I was – a serf. A nothing. Then a dog boy. Then Sir Ivo’s servant. None of it seems real to me.’
‘Sir Ivo’s a good man,’ the doctor said. ‘You were lucky that he took you on.’
‘I know!’ Adam looked more worried than ever. ‘Sir Ivo, he’s the best knight in the world. He’s kind and wise and fair to everyone. I love him! I owe him everything! And his faith in our mission here, his love of Christ, it’s so strong it makes me ashamed because I can’t feel the same as him.’
Dr John leaned forwards.
‘Sir Ivo’s a warrior,’ he said. ‘He thinks like a soldier. For a military man like him everything’s clear and simple. Black and white. He has one goal, the taking of Jerusalem, and he never lets his mind stray from the task. But I’ve lived in this country all my life. I grew up here, Adam. I’ve known many Jews, and followers of Islam, as well as Christians. Some of them are my good friends. When all this started, I was glad to think that Jerusalem might be taken back into Christian hands, but when I see all the suffering that this campaign is causing, then, like you, I’m not so sure that it is the will of God. In fact, I no longer believe it is.’
‘So the Saracens, then, the infidels, you don’t think they’re demons from Hell and the children of Satan?’ Adam asked anxiously.
‘I think they’re people like us, created by God. Loved by God. I’m content to respect them and wish them well.’
‘So if you were me you wouldn’t want to fight and kill them either?’
Crusade Page 29