I made it to the relative cover of the tall facade – marble in front and brick behind. By then, my head was running very fast. I had to hope it was one of John’s arrows. If there were Mamluks loose in the city, the crusade was doomed and so were we. Although there was irony in that.
But odd as it sounds, the dead man with a Mamluk arrow told me what was going on. John and Maurice and George were behind the ambush, wreaking havoc. Otherwise, I’d have been dead in the road, and Gawain would have been filled full of arrows. If they had broken the eastern hinge of the ambush, then I was now moving with them, or behind them.
I offer you my thoughts, because fighting at night in a burning city carpeted in dead men is more difficult than it sounds.
I moved across the tall building’s facade. It was not afire, nor was the next building to the west, which had rose bushes in a hedge around its entrance.
I guessed that the rose hedge was the basis of our ambushers’ position.
And God performed a miracle for us. Fiore stumbled out of the darkness to my right. Never were the Order’s surcoats more valuable.
‘Close your visor,’ he said. There’s friendship for you.
‘Hedge,’ I said.
He nodded. I slammed my visor down, and we went at the hedge.
It may seem impossible to you that our adversaries didn’t see us coming, but they did not. Nor do most men know that, in a full harness, a man is immune to thorns.
I knew, and so did Fiore.
We burst through the rose hedge like the vengeance of the angels. There were three or four of the Hungarian’s men there, and the man himself. I had him immediately. He was in maille, with a black brigandine over it and I saw his face when he turned. I was just pulling my spear out of the crossbowman I’d encountered first.
I thought he’d run. Instead, he stepped back and drew.
To my right, Fiore was fighting three men, one of whom had on a great deal of armour. Another brigand slammed out of the dark and thrust at me with a spear. I slammed the spear clear of me and struck a clumsy blow, made worse by my butt-spike catching in the roses..
The Hungarian struck at me. His edge caught the rim of one of my gauntlets. His timing was perfect but his point control a little awry in the dark.
As a result, the spearman and I went close, and the Hungarian danced away.
In that beat of my heart, I knew he was a good swordsman, and that he was going to kill me. But I had my point under my other adversary’s right arm. I released my top hand – my left – punched him in the head with my mailed fist, reached past his shoulder and caught the point of my spear as his head snapped back, which changed everything. I threw him. In fact, I ripped him off his feet and tossed him at the Hungarian. He went down hard and the Hungarian went down with him.
Fiore put his pommel into one man and pivoted on his hips, parrying his second opponent as if he’d practiced fighting three men all his life. Having made his cover, he brought his sword back up; not a very strong blow, but he made his second opponent stumble even while the first collapsed.
All that while I caught one breath.
I put a steel-footed kick into the downed spearmen and the Hungarian regained his feet while I pulled out my spear point in to finish my foe.
That’s what you do when you are outnumbered. Make sure the men who are down stay down.
The Hungarian had a steel cap on over his maille hood and there was enough light, reflecting off smoke, making everything a ruddy haze except our blades that flickered like red-hot iron, that I could see his face clearly, his high cheekbones, his heavy, long moustaches, and his smile.
‘Ah, Sir William,’ he said.
He cut at me. He made three simple blows – mandritto, reverso, mandritto, just as Fiore drilled us, and I covered all three. I had my spear point low, the butt high in my right hand – one of Fiore’s guards. In this guard, and with my good steel arms, I could ward myself all night, as long as I had the strength to keep the spear steady. With my advantage in distance, the Hungarian was limited to fast attacks and withdrawals.
I thrust low, at his hands.
He leaped back and I stumbled after him – armour is heavy, and I had forgotten the spearman on the ground.
The Hungarian thrust with one hand: I made my cover high and late, and his point slapped my visor.
Dead, except for my armour.
I cut; a simple, heavy fendente with the spearhead to buy time. He was faster than anyone I had ever faced – faster than Fiore, faster than Nerio. As fast as the Bohemian I had fought in Krakow.
But my simple fendente slammed into his outstretched sword even as he was withdrawing it, and knocked it well to the side. I passed forward, and so I was in a good low guard when he hurled his sword like a thunderbolt. Against an unarmoured man, in the darkness, it might have proved decisive, but I slapped it aside with my spear and cut at him.
I was standing at the top of a low wall, and he’d leapt to the bottom.
In the red darkness, I could see him crouch. I was wary; I saw the corpse and then the crossbow.
I ducked back. Behind me, Fiore was down to just two. I turned and stabbed one of Fiore’s opponent’s in the neck. My spear didn’t penetrate his aventail, but I assume I broke his neck.
I turned back to the wall, but the Hungarian was gone.
Fiore and I were still panting like horses after a race when John the Turk rode up outside the rose garden and called out.
He had Ned Cooper and Gawain. He also had a dark bay – someone else’s horse adrift in Hades.
We collected George and Maurice at the back of the tall building that was now shooting flames fifty feet into the air. They were stripping dead men of their purses like the professionals I’d taken them for and I was impressed that Maurice tossed a purse to John.
George nodded to me. ‘Get the Hungarian?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I admitted.
He laughed.
‘And the legate?’ I asked. All my best men except Nerio were there. And the legate was not there.
George just shrugged. But he handed me a gourd canteen, and I drank my fill. John the Turk gave me garlic sausage, good Italian sausage, and I sat there, surrounded by corpses and dying men, and ate sausage and drank water for as long as it takes a priest to say a quick Mass. Fiore joined me and we all ate and drank. The Hungarian could have killed the lot of us, but we were done in like knackered horses, and we had a little hole in the smoke in which to breathe.
But soon, too soon, I could feel the press of my fear for the legate.
We rode with the hot wind of the burning of Alexandria at our heels. We missed our way twice; once where the Avenue turned south and we should have taken a cross street. The second time, we missed the Great Mosque in the smoke.
But the city on fire reflected like dull bronze from the distant pillars of Pompey. We reached the wall in a huddle of hovels. We were nearly lost, desperate – and dawn was close. I was certain by then that Nerio and Miles and the legate were dead or taken.
Every decision I had made all evening came up like bad food.
George climbed the wall, cursed for a while, and climbed down. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘North, or south?’
I hate guessing. ‘North,’ I said. And probably something like, ‘Is that north?’
In the dark and smoke, even with the pillars, everything seemed wrong. Perhaps it was just fatigue. But I was hearing voices – Emile, Father Pierre, my sister. And the endless sound of signing, as if there was a choir in Hell.
Two miserable streets later, we crossed fresh corpses. We followed the trail of dead – there was a spearman, there and archer.
The Customs Gate rose out of the bloodshot murk. And in the relative safety of the tunnel was Nerio, his helmet off, and Miles, supporting the legate.
‘Never do that to me again,�
� Nerio said. He threw his arms around me and tried to crush me – me, and Fiore too. ‘Leave me to die and ride away. It would be kinder.’ He spat, and handed me a canteen. I took a pull. It proved to be Malmsey, but it tasted like the nectar of the gods of Greece.
It also proved to be the last surprise of the night. By the time our exhausted column crossed the sand where the crusaders’ ships were beached, the sky was grey and we could see men asleep on the sand.
We didn’t stop. But neither did we gallop. We didn’t have a horse capable of the effort among us.
The Order’s admiral was awakened at once. I lay down in one of the Order’s tents and slept for perhaps ten minutes. It wasn’t much lighter when I was awakened and Fra Ferlino di Airasca ordered wine brought.
‘We know very little here,’ he said. ‘And the legate took most of the Order away into the city.’
I outlined the facts as I knew them, so tired by then that I was sick to my stomach. But two slaves brought food, fruit, and bread and cheese, and I devoured it.
The admiral said nothing while I spoke, except to curse when I said that Fra Peter Mortimer had been wounded.
‘How is the legate?’ I asked.
Fra Ferlino shrugged. ‘Well enough. Better when we can let him sleep. His eyes are better.’ Knights of the Order have a great many healing skills – the Hospital is as much part of their trade as the sword – and they tended to speak in tropes. But I knew from Fra Peter that a man with a bad blow to the head shows it in his eyes.
He looked at me. ‘Can the Cairo Gate hold? Where is the army?’
I shook my head. ‘The army …’ I was tempted to blasphemy. ‘The army is raping and looting the city. They man no towers, and they kill only—’ I snarled.
Fra Ferlino cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘You are a virgin of sieges? What did you expect? A parade?’ He held out a hand. ‘Yet we must hold those gates if we are to hold the city. And the army of Cairo?’
‘We went out with the king last night,’ I said. I stumbled in my speech – was it only last night?
‘We hear the king is in the Tower of Pharos,’ the Order’s admiral said. ‘But nothing more.’
‘He needs to know that the Cairo Gate is held, and the main enemy army retreated,’ I said.
‘I’ll see that he knows,’ the admiral said.
And then they let me sleep.
That lasted three hours. Perhaps a little more.
I was still in my harness. I had no squire to get me out of it, and I was too tired to touch the laces and buckles. I think I tried – I have the vaguest impression of scrabbling at an arm harness just before collapse and I woke to a variety of aches and pains that I would associate with the results of a torturer’s rack.
The man standing over me was the king. He looked as neat as a newly forged sword. His harness was clean and polished.
‘I’m so sorry, Sir William,’ he said. ‘But the admiral tells me that the Cairo Gate is held, and the enemy army has slipped away. I need to know.’
Muzzily, I told my story again.
The admiral had a quick conference with the king and I caught enough words to know what they proposed. My heart sank: I’ve heard that phrase used a hundred times, but then I knew what it meant.
They needed me to lead a column of reinforcements back through the city.
The king embraced me. I almost laughed. He wasn’t going.
When I got my harness cleaned up a little – the king’s squire came and helped me, bless him – I drank some water and pissed it away, drank some more, and stumbled out into the sun, which hit me like the blows of a deadly opponent. Two serving brothers armed me, and the metal going back over my bones was like the bite of weapons. But when I reached the Order’s parade – really, just a little area of gravel and old kelp in the centre of a three-sided wall of tents – there was Nerio, there was Fiore, and there was Miles.
I don’t remember if I cried. But I do now. By our saviour, we were …
We were. And Juan was dead.
‘Let’s get this done,’ I said.
We rode into Alexandria, and nothing waited for us but the rotting horror of the spectacle. No dogs, no wolves, no brigands prowled, and no feral Alexandrines slaughtered. The streets were dead. And littered with meat that had been men. And women. And children.
When we reached the site of the ambush, Maurice gave me a sign, a wave, and he and George and John rode away without further explanation. I assumed that they were looking for signs of our attackers.
I was wrong.
I rode under the arches of the Cairo Gate with nothing endangered but our sense of man as a redeemable sinner. John and his companions came back an hour later, or so I hear, but I was, thank God, asleep.
I slept in one of the Cairo Gate towers. I slept yet again in my harness, and woke to an alarm that proved false. Then I slept again.
When I woke for the third or fourth time, it was to the terrible realization that I had not unsaddled Gawain, nor seen to him in anyway. Only that would have dragged me from some dead Mamluk’s straw pallet – clean as a whistle, by the way.
Under my sabatons, my shoes were scorched and sticky with blood. My feet hurt – the arches ached. The armour was a worse enemy than the infidel. I felt I’d broken my hips while asleep.
Gawain was in the gatehouse stable, lying in clean straw, exhausted. He opened his eyes, snorted, and closed his eyes again, his derision for the whole of the human race clear to anyone who knows horses. Pressed against him was Fiore’s charger, also curried and clean.
‘Good knight, bad horseman!’ John the Turk said. ‘Jesus love animals. Knights not so much.’
I clasped his hand.
He nodded.
‘Thanks, John.’ I saw that he had Fra Peter’s Mamluk horse groomed. The animal had a headstall and two reins through ring bolts.
‘Stallion!’ John said. ‘Want.’
I’d have laughed, but all I wanted was sleep. John got my armour off me in the straw, and I collapsed by my horse as he told me that Fra Peter had been taken to the ships.
I slept again, guarded by a new Christian convert whose brethren were sitting across the river. Had John not been loyal to his word, I’d have been dead many times, that campaign.
But Tartars – Monghuls – do not lie.
Thanks be to God.
I awoke in the darkness. I could not move: it took an effort of will to make my eyes open, much less to move hands or feet. Straightening my spine was an incredible effort, as was extending my legs.
But, like climbing a mountain, every bit helped. I began to gain control of my limbs, and I rolled to my feet like a badly wounded man. I was not. To crown the miracle of the taking of Alexandria, my fevered wound had closed and gone cold. I think – I like to think – that when I lifted the legate, his flesh healed mine.
Say what you will, Chaucer.
It was almost fully dark outside when I was dressed and armed, filthy, tired, and afire with the pains of two days of combat. John armed me in silence and sent a boy for Fiore. I found Fra William de Midleton in the yard.
‘We are ordered to hold,’ he said heavily.
The city was oddly silent. No cock crowed. No music, no muezzins. Of course. And yet, the silence was terrible.
I think you need to know that despite the encounter in the smoke, I didn’t give a rat’s arse for the Hungarian or d’Herblay in that hour. Essentially, I forgot them. Holding the gate became our goal – there was nothing else. You’ll see.
I looked at the open gate. ‘We should rebuild the gate. The ships have carpenters—’
Fra William shook his head. ‘There is a Moslem army just over the bridge.’
‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘My lord, did no one tell you?’
Fra William started. ‘How do you know?’
I was too tir
ed to argue. ‘Fiore and I rode to find Fra Peter. Then we went and looked at the bridge. The Saracens were fleeing.’ I paused. ‘That was – a day ago? Hasn’t the bridge been burned?’ I asked.
Fra William shook his head heavily. He was as exhausted as I. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Scouted?’ I asked.
‘No, Sir William!’ he said. ‘Nothing has been done. They say that the king is surrounded by counsellors who say the city must be abandoned.’
I think I ignored him or didn’t believe him. I knew, I, a young knight, a Corporal, that by taking Alexandria we had cut the Sultan off from all his trade, shattered his resources, and severed his main link with Palestine and all his garrisons. Saint Louis had never struck such a stroke. Indeed, since the taking of Jerusalem herself, no Crusade had ever accomplished as much. With the fleet in the harbour and possession of the walls, in effect, we had crippled Egypt. And when the rest of Europe heard, when the Green Count came at our backs, we would have the whole of Egypt, and the Holy Land as well. King Peter’s strategy was solid. We had won.
I was also wise enough to see that Fra William was more shattered than I. Even while I stood there in my harness, besmottered with blood and offal, I was growing stronger, as young men do. ‘Let me see to it,’ I said.
He spread his hands. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘I need to sleep.’
We had forty Hospitaller knights in various degrees of fitness at the gates, and another fifty sergeants and turcopoles. By the odd flow of the currents of war, we also had Lord Grey’s retinue without the man himself; Miles Stapleton had taken command of them. That included Ned Cooper and his archers, who had ridden back with us.
‘I ain’t leaving you till I see my ducats,’ Ned Cooper said. The wound in his thigh, so devastating in the heat of the fight, proved to have barely penetrated the skin to the muscle of his leg.
From Ned and John – and Maurice and George, now much less taciturn than they had been before – I learned more of the ambush in the dark. At the same time that John feathered one of the spies following us, Ewan had seen the rose hedge and made the correct assessment. He’d dismounted and put a heavy arrow into the hedge.
The Long Sword Page 50