The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  Moments after we purchased our horses, John suddenly grabbed my arm.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Don’t stare.’

  A troop of horse, perhaps a hundred men-at-arms, came out the gate at a canter. The leader was mounted on the finest horse I had ever seen, a bright gold horse like Jack, years ago in France, with bronze mane and tail and dark legs and muzzle – I had never seen such markings. The horse’s caparison and tack was all of green and silver, there were jewels on his bridle, and his rider was in green silk. His helmet was a tall, peaked spiral with an open face and a superb aventail of tiny links. His green gown seemed to cover more armour, and he carried a golden axe in his hand.

  The guard at the gate turned out and saluted, more than two hundred men in maille and plate, with heavy bows of horn and sinew and heavy, curved sabres.

  I noted that John’s advice had been exact – almost every man and woman in front of the gate was sitting. Most were silent, and all wore attitudes of respect.

  I watched the men-at-arms, as they were the first Mamluks I had seen. They were well mounted. Most of them had light lances, like our boar spears, and all had a case carrying at least one bow, although some had two, and one big man had three bows. They all carried one bow strung.

  I noted at once that they rode a different saddle from us. Of course I had heard this from Sabraham and indeed from Fra Peter, but their saddles were very small and had no back, and their caparisons, where worn, were only silk, with no mail underneath, though their armour and helmets were heavy enough, by Saint George.

  An old woman sitting next to me in the dust spoke to me and cackled.

  ‘Say nothing,’ John enjoined me. He spoke low.

  The woman’s eyes widened and she shuffled away.

  ‘I told she you are sick,’ he said.

  The Mamluks waited in front of the gate through their lord’s inspection of the garrison. The troopers began to be bored, like soldiers the world over, and the men in the front rank began to examine the crowd.

  The rightmost Saracen in the front rank was a big, heavy man with a henna-dyed red beard. His horse was the biggest there, almost as big as my warhorse and his eyes roved the beggars, and then the merchants.

  I tried to make myself very small.

  His eyes went right over me.

  So did the eyes of the younger man to his left.

  Their lord received the salute of the gate’s garrison, and returned it imperiously with his axe, then he turned and made his horse rear a little, and the crowd almost cheered. It was a curious sound, almost like a whisper.

  He raised his whip – his axe was hung by his saddle bow – and called something in his tongue, and all the mounted men shouted.

  The gates began to open, and the Mamluks began to form in a column with perfect discipline, all except the younger man, one file to the left of the old bastard with the dyed beard. The younger man put his heels to his mount and seemed to fly across the packed dirt. For a few horrifying beats of my heart I thought that he had chosen me, or John, but he went past us, almost over us.

  I turned and saw a group of pilgrims. As it proved, they were a wedding party.

  The young Mamluk rode in among them. He reached down and raised the veil of the bride and came riding back with her over his saddle. She was screaming and reaching for her husband but the young man lay face down in a pool of blood.

  It had happened very quickly, as such things do. I’d seen it done in France.

  I started to rise, and John struck me with his fist. I went down.

  I rose on one knee, as Fiore taught, and John caught me. He wasn’t attacking me – so much for trust – he was restraining me.

  ‘Calm!’ he said. ‘Or we have been dead. All of us.’

  Henna-beard shouted something, and the young man with the bride over his saddle laughed and waved his riding whip. Henna-beard shook his head in disgust and rode through the open gate. About half of the cavalry followed the Green Lord out of the gate and down the road to Cairo, and the rest formed by fours – a beautiful spectacle – and rode back in the gates.

  Well. In those moments, I learned everything about the Mamluks.

  The anger in the market was palpable. The Egyptians were not cowards, whatever my Italian friends said. But they had no weapons; no one I could see had more than an eating knife. There were men shouting, suddenly, and the wedding party was paralysed until one of the women burst into a wailing cry, and instantly it was taken up.

  The garrison had begun to march inside when someone threw a paving stone, and a Mamluk soldier was hit and went down.

  The garrison halted and began to reform. They were in some confusion about whether to reform inside the gate or outside.

  The people in the market were working themselves up to a riot. I had seen it in London and Paris and Verona, and I found it fascinating, in a detached way, how much an Arab mob resembled a good English mob.

  ‘Run!’ John said.

  We caught the bridles of our new horses and ran. The mob was solidifying around us; men were running up from the low shops and stalls along the market, and a farmer bringing produce to sell jumped down from his cart, seized his stick and ran to join the crowd. Men and women – even children – joined the crowd.

  A hail of stones hit the soldiers.

  They drew their bows.

  And loosed. By the wounds of Christ, they killed fifty people in their first discharge, and they nocked and drew again, and the arrows flew. More died.

  Arrows found their way past the front rank. We were fifty paces beyond the front of the mob, and an arrow went over my right shoulder and over my horse’s rump to kill a Jew standing by his stall. He crumpled, a look of consternation on his face. His son stared at me, face white. The boy was ten or eleven and he had no idea what to do with his father suddenly dead.

  They were a horse-length away. Before I had gone another step, two Fellahin, the local Arab peasants, grabbed the Jew’s stall table and overturned it and began to rob it.

  ‘Run!’ said John.

  Men looked at John. He had shouted in Italian. But another flight of arrows came in, and more of the onlookers fell.

  At the forefront of the riot, a woman was screaming in Arabic. She had an arrow in her gut, and she pointed at the Ghulami and shrieked.

  A tide of rioters rolled forward at the thin line of archers, and they shot hurriedly. Most of their arrows carried over the rioters and struck in the market where I was. My horse took an arrow in the muscle above her right front leg but by the grace of God, it went all the way through, and it was a moment’s work to cut the head and extract the shaft while she bit at me the while.

  By the time I had her calm, John was in the saddle.

  There was a cloud of dust where the Ghulami had stood with their bows. And no more arrows.

  They were bad men, and had shot into a crowd of their own people, but they died horribly, and God have mercy on their infidel souls.

  I got a leg over my wounded horse, and we were away. We rode in a long, curving path out and away from the Cairo Gate and back along the shore of the inner harbour.

  I looked back in time to see the mounted Mamluks re-emerge from within the gate to charge the crowd. The roar of the rioters rose to become a scream.

  The Mamluks had sabres in their fists, and they were killing every rioter they caught.

  I didn’t look back again.

  Like most other cities, Alexandria is surrounded by suburbs and some of these are small towns or villages of their own. We entered one, watered our horses, and purchased food; bland food, with no meat or even chicken. And we had an odd bread that seemed to be made of chickpeas that was highly spiced. There was no wine, and heavily sugared hot water with spice was the only beverage.

  We had outrun the news of the riot, but John returned to me after some discussion and
shook his head. ‘The man who cook the food say the Mamluk Ghulami they do bad thing every days,’ he said.

  It occurred to me that under other circumstances, with some gold, I could make trouble for the Sultan here. I resolved to say as much to Sabraham.

  I was also learning that I needed to learn to speak Arabic. I endangered us every moment by my failure to understand what beggars and street people and grandmothers and tea-sellers shouted at me. The combination of being mounted – and thus rich or powerful – and not understanding the language should have led to our instant unmasking, except that the city and its environs couldn’t imagine that they had a foe at all, so rich and powerful were they; and further, although I didn’t know it, many people imagined I was a Mamluk. There were ‘Franks’ among them, Italians and Gascons. Conversion to Islam was not a serious matter to men who had already turned their backs on God and his angels. Nor did the Mamluks make many demands on their soldiers as to religion: so long as a man professed Islam, all was allowed.

  Be that as it may, we rode unharmed out of the riot, broke our fast under palm trees in a small taverna, and then rode along the beach east of the great city.

  After all our trouble, my actual mission took less than three hours. We found the sand of the beaches firm and wide enough to form our army. John found a path that broke the line of dunes and we went inland – to find an open space of mudflats and dry gravel that was large enough to make a camp for the Hosts of the Phalanx of Archangels and all the Company of Heaven, much less our little force.

  We were thorough. This was a task I knew from serving Sir John in Italy, and I knew that a good camp with secure access to the ships would make the siege possible. We found a line of wells, each with a small farm about it, and I confess to some pity for the unbelievers who were about to be driven from their farms or killed so that my crusaders could have water. But not much.

  What I did not see was firewood, nor was I confident that our wells could water an army of ten thousand men and as many animals. So no firewood, and no wood to construct siege engines.

  I didn’t mention any of this to John. He was on edge, but then, why should he not be? I was mostly concerned because I’d noted, as Sabraham had said, that most of the Mamluks were men like John. Kipchaks have a well-deserved reputation for honesty, but I wondered how great the temptation might be to abjure his new religion and go riding in among men of his own kind, men with obvious riches and power.

  For whatever reason, he did not.

  We slept under the stars. Then the stars vanished, it rained, and we were miserable, although I was pleased to see that my chosen camp shrugged off the water easily. Then the moon rose on the world and we were cold – cotton holds no heat when damp. It was a long night, and the first grey light of morning was cheering.

  Meeting Sabraham at the appointed rendezvous, a wrecked ship pulled high up the beach to the west, was even more cheering.

  He looked out to sea. ‘We have missed our day,’ he said. ‘The governor was away visiting Cairo with his bodyguard. Now he is back.’ He looked at me.

  I pointed at John. ‘You should ask John, but I think the governor rode out again this morning.’

  Sabraham turned and spoke in Turkish. They both spoke at once, then John spoke, pointed at me, and smiled.

  ‘The governor is marching to Mecca!’ Sabraham said. ‘Well done, Sir William.’

  I laughed. ‘He might be going to the moon for all I’d know. I need to learn Arabic. I’m as helpless as a babe here.’

  Sabraham asked another question in Turkish. John answered in Arabic. They both looked at me.

  ‘You like it here?’ Sabraham asked.

  It was an odd question. I must have shown this in my face. Sabraham put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Some men can’t stand the foreign. Sights and smells they don’t know seem to anger them, or terrify them. To do this task, you must like the people with whom you mix.’

  I smiled. ‘Oh, as to that,’ I said. In fact, I’d liked what I saw, except the dead beggars. You could walk London from one side to another, and you’d only see a dead man in the gutter on a bad day. That’s what alms and hospitals are for, in London. When rich men die, they endow so many beds for the poor. And the same in Venice.

  ‘Did you learn aught else?’ Sabraham asked.

  I pointed east. ‘We can land anywhere here,’ I said, ‘Except right off the long point, which is all mud and soft sand. There’s good ground for a camp to the south and west. There’s water.’ I was tired, that’s what I remember best about that morning. ‘But no wood.’

  Sabraham laughed. ‘Welcome to Egypt,’ he said. ‘There’s no wood here. Well done. You did well to avoid the riot. I was afraid you were caught in it.’

  I explained how narrowly we had escaped.

  Sabraham didn’t seem to be listening. When I was done, he waved at the walls of the city, a mile distant. ‘Do you think we can take it, with your friends the crusaders?’ he asked.

  ‘How many in the garrison?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘Two hundred per gate. Forty-three gates. A thousand superb cavalry in reserve.’

  ‘Ten thousand men,’ I calculated. ‘We’re attacking a walled city with a garrison almost twice the size of our whole army.’

  Sabraham smiled thinly. ‘Yes.’

  Over the next hour, we built a small fire on the beach from driftwood. The wreck of the ship was stripped, and nothing was left but the heavy timbers of the bow and even they had been hacked at inexpertly. Wood was of utmost value.

  When our fire had been going for a bit, a man on a donkey came to the edge of the beach and watched us.

  Sabraham frowned. ‘Our horses are too good,’ he said.

  John nodded.

  ‘I am keeping mine,’ I said.

  Sabraham looked at me as if I was a fool, but John grinned. ‘Good horse,’ he said. ‘Mine, too.’

  So when Theodore’s round ship came up to the beach, we wasted an hour – with Sabraham cursing us – taking the horses. John was the master at this; he swam each horse out to the ship in a few feet of water and with the help of the master and the yard, he got them over the side into the waist of the ship where he lay them down. The Turks and the Mongols move horses around all the time, even by water, and John seemed much better at it than anyone I had seen.

  At any rate, despite Sabraham’s curses and Theodore’s remonstrations, we saved all four horses, and we were away in the last light, wallowing across the wind. But after an hour the wind came straight off Africa, full of dust – bad for our eyes, but very good for our speed.

  I slept a long, long time, awoke and swam, and slept again. When I awoke, it was to see the whole of the crusade fleet stretched away in the dawn.

  The crusader fleet lay off Crambusa, a tiny islet on the southern coast of Turkey. As soon as we hove in sight, trumpets sounded from the galia grossa that King Peter used as his flagship. Before Sabraham and I scrambled aboard, I had the pleasure of seeing the Venetian admiral wave from his command deck, and agree to take our new horses aboard at the beach. My little Arab had survived two days at sea without showing any temper, and John was smugly triumphant.

  We were rowed over to the flagship in a small boat, and as we approached the stern ladder we found quite a crowd of Venetians and Genoese sailors thumping each other’s boats with bargepoles. But our Cypriote oarsmen made their way through the press and got us up the stern. The king received us, reclining in the stern cabin. He was lying on cushions like a Turk, and de Mézzières sat to his right with two of the king’s other officers, the marshal, Lord Simon, who I had last seen at the Emperor’s banquet, and the admiral, Jean of Tyre. Cramped along the low, carpeted wall was a man I didn’t know at all, but he was introduced as Sieur Percival, a knight of Coulanges who was deeply knowledgeable about Alexandria and served the king. The Hospitaller admiral, Fra Ferlino, was crouched like a s
ervant on a stool. He waved courteously. Wedged in by him and taking up a third of the space in the cabin was the turcopolier, Fra William de Midleton.

  A servant brought me wine.

  Fra William indicated Sabraham. ‘Your Grace, Master Sabraham is a volunteer with the Order, as his Sir William. Together they have visited Alexandria in secrecy.’

  ‘That is a fine deed of arms,’ King Peter said to me. He smiled. ‘I will not forget you, when I come into my kingdom.’

  Sabraham bowed – as much as the low overhead beams and situation permitted. ‘Your Grace, we found the city well-armed, but the governor has just left for Mecca. He took many of his guard with him on his pilgrimage.’

  King Peter nodded, and propped himself up on his elbow. ‘That is good news. What of the garrison?’

  Sabraham let go a breath. ‘Well-armed and well provided. I visited at least twenty of the towers and found them all manned.’ He looked at me. ‘I expect that I saw enough to count ten thousand men.’

  Every man in the cabin twitched. The king glanced at me.

  I nodded. ‘At least, your Grace. The garrison I saw was well-armed in good harness and carried bows as good as John the Turk’s bow.’

  King Peter sighed. ‘Ghulami,’ he said. ‘We have faced them before now.’

  ‘They’re all cowards,’ Sieur Percival said. He shrugged in contempt. ‘I was a prisoner, a slave, in Alexandria. The town wall is enormous – the circuit is almost ten miles. They cannot hold the whole length, not event with ten thousand men. And they will not stand and fight like men.’

  Sabraham raised his eyebrows. ‘They don’t need to stand and fight,’ he said, ‘when they are mounted. They shoot and run, shoot and run.’

  ‘Like cowards!’ insisted Sieur Percival.

  ‘And yet they took you prisoner,’ de Mézzières said.

  Men laughed, and Sieur Percival flushed.