by Paul Doherty
‘And that truth is?’
‘Ah.’ Nisam closed his eyes. ‘Years ago, when I was a warrior, your great-uncle and your grandfather led raids up into these mountains. During one of these, my brothers were killed in hand combat with Lord Hugh. True, a hero’s death, but blood is still blood. Six months later, Lord Hugh, cunning as a serpent, came again. The winter snow thawed and he launched an ambuscade against a caravan bringing provisions from Ascalon. My wife, the mother of Uthama, was part of that caravan. She was captured. Lord Hugh, however, treated her with every respect. He sent her and her escort safely back to me with a message that the house of the Temple did not wage war on women and children.’ He opened his eyes. ‘So, Templar, where does that leave me? I shall tell you what you are, Edmund de Payens. You are a dreamer in a darkened room. You live in an illusion. You do not realise what is happening in your order. You should open your eyes, draw your knife and keep your back to the wall.’ He plucked a piece of parchment from beneath a cushion and passed it over. ‘Take this, and may your god go with you. My debt has been paid.’
Chapter 5
The enemy, for our undoing, suspended the bodies of the slain by ropes from the ramparts.
Ascalon, which rejoiced in its grandiose titles, ‘The Bride of Syria’, ‘Southern Door to Jerusalem’ and ‘Gateway to the Sea Lanes of the East’, was under siege. At the heart of the magnificent city rose a mosque, its columns of gleaming black marble supporting cavernous stone. It was approached by a lofty colonnaded walk of white limestone with archways and a floor of shimmering marble. The walls around the inner courtyard were exquisitely decorated with mosaics of gold and silver. Fountains of pure water splashed into basins where visitors could slake their thirst. In the shadowy corners of this inner sanctum, the Turkish governor’s Mamelukes, fierce warriors clad in black and silver cloaks, watched the pilgrims throng to worship. All came here: desert wanderers in their camel-skin robes; Turkomen in dark hides; Nubians in flaming crimson; sombre mercenaries with shields slung across their backs; leather-clad kadis shuffling under their parasols; merchants in gaudily striped robes; fly-infested beggars, their spindly legs dependent on their staves, their bellies swollen, wooden begging bowls slung around their necks. Veiled women slipped by like ghosts. Holy men squatted in the shade. Prophets, courtesans and couriers, the arrogant and the woebegone, all flocked to Ascalon before travelling on to Frankish-held Jerusalem, to visit the Dome of the Rock, gather in the Cavern of Souls and worship in the Holy Place of Ascent. Now they were trapped, as were the men and women of the bazaars, where the carpets of Persia were stacked high next to bales of hemp, vases of olive oil, chests of spices and caskets of pearls. All had been caught up in the siege: the Jews in their blue robes, as well as the Armenians and Venetians, who had to wear a noose around their necks to distinguish them as foreigners.
The governor of Ascalon had been astounded. The Franks had abruptly stirred themselves, emerging from their bleak fortresses, a stream of men under their coloured standards, all flocking to the banners of Baldwin III, who was determined to take this vital sea port. The spies and scouts of the governor, riding the swiftest mounts of Arabia, had galloped in swirling clouds of dust up through the great Gate of Jerusalem with the dire news. The cruciferi, the cross-bearers, were on the march again! The hideous mailed cavalry of the Franks was gathering, readying itself to deliver a thundering charge to sweep away any opposition. Hordes of archers, long columns of trudging men-at-arms, hobelars and infantry followed. Behind these trundled a heavy siege train, mangonels, catapults, battering rams and war carts crammed with pitch, tar and firebrands.
Ascalon was to be ringed, battered, breached and torched. Worse, the house of the Temple, those vengeful warrior-monks in their long loose robes of white samite, stole caps on heads now shaven for war, faces masked by rough beards, had joined the siege. Grand Master Tremelai had summoned his veterans, and had emerged as the fiercest of Baldwin’s supporters. The Templars had pitched camp, their dark hide tents grouped tidily around the sacred enclosure containing the blue pavilion of the Grand Master and the scarlet and gold chapel tent, which held the altar and a host of sacred relics. Ascalon was to be stormed. Dominus Tremelai had insisted on this. He’d answered the summons of King Baldwin, stripping the Holy City of virtually every fighting member of his order, as he had the great castles and outposts throughout Outremer. The Templars pressed the siege. Ascalon was blocked, sealed in, and its garrison had no choice but to raise the black banner of war from its towers and walls. The governor had issued his defiance of the cruciferi to rolling kettle drums, clashing cymbals and booming gongs. Already the ground between the city walls and the outlying pickets of the cruciferi was littered with corpses rotting in the heat. A relentlessly scorching sun burned the cream and grey stonework of Ascalon, as it did the tents of the besiegers. The cruciferi hoped for a swift, savage resolution. Ascalon, however, proved stubborn. The besiegers chafed under the ferocious heat, their irritation worsened by a persistent desert wind that wafted in its own feverish restlessness.
Edmund de Payens had also joined the siege. He sat in the shade of a hide awning over the entrance to the tent he shared with Mayele and Parmenio. He was dressed in a simple white linen gown, beside him a pouch of water from a nearby spring as he moodily watched a straggle of skinny black goats being tended back to their pens. A dust haze hung yellow in the air, muffling sound and coating everything with a fine shimmer of sand. De Payens snatched up the waterskin and took a gulp as he recalled his meeting with Tremelai. The Grand Master had received them deep in his blue tent. He’d almost snatched the sealed pouches sent from the Assassins before listening intently as de Payens and his companions delivered their report. The Grand Master’s glistening red face had creased into a smile when he opened the casket and glimpsed the precious stones heaped there. Pleased, yet quietly angry, de Payens concluded, as if their mission to Hedad had not accomplished everything the Grand Master had wished. During the meeting, Tremelai had refused to look him directly in the eye, but seemed distracted by the letter Nisam had dictated. De Payens had kept a close watch on both his companions. They did not know about his secret meeting with Nisam, whilst he had urged them not to reveal what they had discovered at Hedad about Walkyn or the blood feud between the Assassins and the de Payens family. Both Mayele and Parmenio had agreed to this.
Once they had delivered the report, all three were dismissed, given this tent and ordered to be ready for the next assault. That had been five days ago. Rumours were now rife that an all-out attack was imminent. De Payens, Mayele and Parmenio had been ordered to join an advance party shortly after the ninth hour, when the day’s heat began to cool. De Payens unlaced the pouch on a cord around his neck, and took out the parchment Nisam had given him. He studied the neatly transcribed numbers, the message hidden in a secret cipher he could not break, at least not yet. He scratched the sweat on his cheek and curbed his irritation as a page, dirty and dishevelled, screamed at a pup he’d befriended. Then he put away the parchment and stared at the shifting yellow haze, his stomach unsettled, bubbling with agitation. He’d been in the camp for almost a week, yet he remained anxious. He accepted that the comfortable horarium he had woven for himself, the hours of the day intertwined with his duties as a Templar, was now rent like some tapestry drenched with water. Tremelai had to be questioned, but how? To whom could he turn? On his arrival at the camp, he had learned about the sudden death of Trussell. The great hero had contracted a fever and died within a day. De Payens, his mind teeming with suspicion, wondered if the Englishman’s death was by natural causes.
‘It’s time!’
De Payens glanced up, shadowing his eyes. Parmenio and Mayele stood staring down at him.
‘It’s time.’ Mayele patted him on the shoulder.
De Payens joined them deep in the tent. He put on his mail chausses and hauberk, looped his war belt over his shoulder, put on his conical helmet and picked up his kite-shaped shield. He rinsed his
mouth with a gulp of water as he waited for Mayele and Parmenio. Once ready, he muttered a prayer for protection, then all three left the tent and entered the main camp.
The afternoon haze hung more thickly here. They passed a huge cart tipped to the front, its handles being used as a makeshift gallows for two felons caught, tried and hanged that morning. The stench of the rotting corpses had already attracted camp dogs, which were only kept away by an old man, toothless and bleary-eyed, who sat on an overturned basket waving a club. On the other side of the cart, a black-garbed Benedictine monk crouched on the ground, hearing confessions. A group of camp women in their tawdry finery swirled by, shouting and singing. The rich smell of horse manure mingled with the sweaty odour of thousands of unwashed bodies and the strange fragrances from the cooking pots. The three men avoided the glaring heat of the forges and smithies, picking their way carefully around the refuse and impedimenta of the camp. A dream, de Payens thought, a nightmare full of eerie scenes: a man and a woman coupling noisily under the awning of a tent; a preacher standing on a broken tub singing a psalm; relic-sellers offering medals as sure protection in battle; great lords on their gaudily caparisoned destriers trotting by, hawks on their wrists, lurchers yapping noisily around them. A muffled, misty, grotesque world.
De Payens was already bathed in sweat; his sword arm felt heavy. Behind him, Mayele and Parmenio were chattering. They called out to him, but he ignored them. Other figures garbed for war were also making their way to the edge of the camp, climbing the slight rise crowned with sharpened stakes, most of these decorated with the severed heads of executed prisoners. De Payens tried to ignore the dryness of his throat and lips. He followed the path between the stakes along which the waiting mangonels, trebuchets, battering rams, catapults and towers would be dragged for an all-out assault on the city. He stopped for a moment and studied these terrifying engines of war, their keepers busy about them, greasing axles, strengthening ropes, loading the nearby carts with pots of fire, rocks, bundles of hemp and cloth tarred and ready for burning. Ox hides from the siege towers were being stretched out across the ground to be drenched in vinegar, the only protection against the devastating Greek fire the defenders of Ascalon would use.
‘It will happen soon,’ Mayele observed, ‘a full assault on the city.’ He came alongside de Payens. ‘Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after. Tremelai is insisting on that.’
De Payens grunted in agreement. They breasted the rise and went down the steep slope towards the grim walls of Ascalon. The area stretching up to these was bleak and grisly as any dream of hell. The yellowing rocky ground was littered with stinking corpses and the tattered remains of battle. Hordes of vultures, hyenas and the occasional slinking fox or jackal came to feast at night. An empty, soul-harrowing stretch of earth dominated by the battlements of the city, festooned with banners, armour twinkling in the sunlight. Black trails of smoke curled up against the sky, a sure sign that the governor and his troops were preparing the defences against sudden attack.
‘One of the five cities of the Philistines,’ Parmenio declared, ‘a city of the plains, steeped in blood, constantly fought over, seized, captured and recaptured.’
On either side of the Jerusalem Gate, now bricked up, rose lofty, massive towers. Common rumour amongst the troops claimed that despite its formidable appearance, the gate had been weakened and forced. De Payens stared through the heat haze. Templar engineers were busy constructing a giant siege tower, the wood being supplied from the masts of ships. Gossip had it that the tower was now ready and this present foray was to spy out the terrain in preparation for the all-out assault. De Payens joined the rest as they gathered together with engineers and stonemasons behind the great pavise, a lofty barrier on wooden wheels under the blue and gold standard of King Baldwin. About sixty men from various retinues had assembled under the command of a royal knight whose shield boasted a silver griffin on an azure background. A veteran of many sieges, the knight swiftly explained how they would approach the Jerusalem Gate as closely as possible. They were to try and discover the number of siege engines mounted on the walls and check how many guard posts lurked amongst the rocky outcrops that peppered the land between the besiegers and the city. De Payens breathed in, wetting his mouth, pinching his nose at the sandy breeze. He peered through an eyelet of the pavise. The ground ahead seemed empty, the only movement being the great winged vultures sweeping backwards and forwards. He murmured in agreement at the royal knight’s hissed warnings about a possible ambush. The buzzards and vultures kept well clear of the outcrops that dominated the approach to the city gates.
‘Be careful.’ Mayele spoke up. ‘The mounds are fortified.’ He punched the pavise with his fist. ‘I hope this holds true.’
‘Deus Vult!’ the royal knight shouted. ‘Deus Vult!’ The cry was taken up as they all leaned against the pavise, its creaking wheels screeching. De Payens pushed with the rest, ignoring the heat, the curling dust that laced nose and mouth. He glanced over his shoulder. Crossbowmen, Templar serjeants, were following, slightly edged away on the flanks, to watch both the walls and those mounds. Behind the archers, a horde of mounted knights massed ready to charge. De Payens wondered why he and the rest had been chosen for this duty, but then dismissed the thought. Others had also borne the brunt of the siege. He whispered verses from a psalm about walking through the valley of darkness. The pavise reached the bottom of the slope in a rattling clatter, inching its way forward, bumping over rocks and holes. One of de Payens’ companions cursed as his boot became entangled in the rotting remains of a corpse, its bones snapping and cracking under the crashing wheels of the pavise. A serjeant shouted a warning. De Payens peered through the eyelet again. Thick smoke now billowed from the ramparts. Again the warning shout. A whooshing sound split the air, followed by a fire storm of burning pots, flaming tar bundles and oil-drenched boulders. These smashed on to the ground in sheets of fire and dancing sparks. A wall of fiery heat raced towards the pavise, making the men behind it cough and splutter. More missiles followed. Most fell short or on to the flanks. One of them shot over the pavise, crashing into the line of crossbowmen, turning three of them into living torches who screamed and danced in terror until other arbalestiers cut them down as an act of mercy.
The pavise rolled forward again. Another hail of fire. One of the tar bundles hit the side of the pavise, scorching a man’s face, rippling his skin, turning his eyes to water. He sank to his knees, screaming for relief. The royal knight urged them to push faster so as to distract the aim of the watchers on the battlements. They were now approaching the first mounds. Warning cries rang out as those hidden behind the rocky outcrops sprang out, racing towards the pavise. De Payens and the rest staggered away, pulling out their swords to meet the enemy. The crossbowmen hurried forward, knelt and loosed a volley. Some attackers fell; the rest swirled around the pavise. De Payens moved to meet an assailant, a Turk, robes billowing, face and head almost hidden by his spiked helmet with its chain-mail lacings. Armed with a studded spear and rounded shield, the Turk moved to de Payens’ right, lunging crosswise. He missed. De Payens crashed into him, using both shield and sword to batter the man against the pavise. A sweeping blow to his attacker’s face, then he sprang away. Other attackers were being beaten off. The dust swirled. Kettle drums rolled from the battlements, to be answered by the call of Frankish trumpets. De Payens leaned his face against the wooden boards. He turned, and as he did so, a crossbow quarrel struck just above where his head had been.
He glanced around. The battlefield fury was dying, the enemy retreating; nothing but cloying dust. The royal knight roared out orders and the pavise moved forward. The mounds were now deserted, their defenders fleeing back to a postern gate high in one of the towers flanking the Jerusalem Gate. Some reached the lowered ladder; others were caught by the Frankish horse, to be trampled down before being clubbed or speared. Once again screams, yells, battle cries and the scrape of steel shattered the air. Trumpets from the camps sounded the re
call. The leather-clad engineers and stonemasons, their heads protected by sallets, had approached as close to the gates as they could. Now, apparently, they had the information they needed. The pavise was pulled back even as de Payens tried to control his terror and panic, so intense he felt as if his throat was closing up. He could not confess his fear. The stark realisation of how the crossbow bolt might have shattered his skull had all but drained his courage. On the one hand he was certain he’d been deliberately marked, but by whom? The Turks did not carry crossbows, whilst he had been in the centre of the pavise. The enemy had appeared only on the flanks before swiftly retreating; none had broken through to the rear. And yet, de Payens blinked away the sweat, his mysterious assailant had waited for him to move away, aiming slightly too high. Why?