by Dan Davis
Twice we got so close that we could smell the Holy City. It stank to high Heaven. But we were driven back. First by appalling weather that winter of 1191 and then, when the deluge had ceased, by the squabbles between the lords of Outremer. They despised each other far more than any of them despised the Saracens.
By the second attempt on the Holy City both sides in the war were exhausted. After so many years of constant warfare, even the most battle-hardened and war-mad knight had begun to lose his will to fight.
Saladin and Richard loved war at least as much as they feared God. But by 1192 both men seemed to lose their famed energies. Both seemed willing to accept that though neither had won, neither had lost, either. Both men were also pulled away from the war by internal political problems back in their homelands. Richard was hearing whispers that his brother John was plotting to steal his throne back in England.
The King and Saladin negotiated over the winter and well into the spring but still the war dragged on without resolution.
My wife and her children moved with me to my new estate. In truth it was a somewhat sad little place, much abused by the war but Alice set the servants to work in that way of hers and in a few weeks it was repaired and cleaned and comfortable enough. With my new estate I had income enough to keep four men of my own to fight for me. They would ride with me in battle and guard us while we slept. Franks who had fought in battle and were said to be trustworthy, sober men. Four tough men were enough to protect against petty thieves and perhaps even a middling level of banditry. More importantly, I finally had men to scrub my mail, oil my leather and carry my shield.
It was strange to find myself with a complete family. But I enjoyed it immensely. Emma was a joy because she was a full life and devoid of fear. She was always bringing us every horrific, giant thing that crept or slithered or crawled that she could find for half a mile of our house. I was terrified that she would be killed by some venomous foreign evil thing that she presented to me as though she had discovered the greatest jewel in Christendom.
“Stop worrying,” Alice would say and laugh at me. “She knows which are the dangerous ones.”
I was astonished that a three-year-old child could have such knowledge. “Which are the dangerous ones?”
“Whichever do not run away, of course.”
When I looked at Jocelyn charging about with his wooden sword, his stocky body and fair hair were a vision of my brother Henry from when I was young. Thoughts of Henry lead immediately to the memory of holding his severed head. And fearless little Emma was a vision of Isabella’s little girl Joanna who last I saw as tattered skin and bloody bone. My thoughts ran always to William, intruding upon my happiness. I hated him for that more than anything
So I could not rest. I could not be happy, not ever, until I fulfilled my oath.
I looked for him. I went to Jaffa and asked after him. Many knew of his treachery and everyone told the same story; that he and his men had slaughtered a dozen Saracen nobles held in the chapel of Saint George. The prisoners had belonged to Henry of Champagne and he was furious. And then William and his knights had slipped away after the incident.
William was lord of an estate up in the County of Tripoli, granted to after some service long forgotten before Hattin. I looked for him there.
The steward was bitter and ancient. “He ain’t here,” he said, his voice creaking like dried leather. “My lord ain’t been here for years and years.”
I got the impression that the steward was not unhappy about his masterless existence.
“Where else might your lord be?”
The steward shrugged. “In Hell, I hope.”
“My liege lord is Earl William’s uncle, back in England,” I lied. “I have been sent to bring the Earl home for he has inherited a magnificent castle. There will be coin for the man who united me with William and your lord will be thankful to you for telling me.”
The steward never told me anymore, pleading ignorance. I was unsure whether to believe him but knew not what more I could do to get the truth out of the old man.
Still, I used the same lie or variations of it all over Outremer in the hope that someone, somewhere would reveal the truth of William’s location. That whiff of reward meant I heard many stories from men who would say anything for a dream of silver. The truth was I had exhausted my ideas and pitiful gambits and I had no idea where to look next.
“You are wasting your life and your strength on an old promise made to a dead Aragon whore half the world away,” Alice accused me after I returned from a long foray to the north with Otto, the oldest and steadiest of my men.
“And you are jealous of a dead woman,” I said, angry at her because what she said was true. “My brother’s wife, who I never so much as touched.”
“You love her more than you love me or else why are you out there all the time instead of at home with your wife?” Alice said, her eyes filled with her fire.
“You know why,” I said. “I owe it to my brother.”
“Oh, your oath. Your famous oath,” she said. “You do not even have affection for your brother. What about your oath to me, sworn before God? What about what you owe to us?”
What could I say?
“And,” she said, knowing that she had me on the run. “What if you are called upon to fight while you are away in the north? And also you do not leave enough guards to protect us when you are gone.”
I could no more resist Alice than the sea could resist the moon. She did not have to compel me for I wanted to give up. I never forgot my oath; I simply ceased to act upon it.
And so we had a year of something approaching bliss. We delighted in each other. I belonged to a place and together we were a family. A home of my own and one that had no connection to my father. A home I had won through my own efforts.
A beautiful woman who shaped me with her love and wisdom and discourse. I recognised that my infatuation with Isabella had been a childish fantasy based on nothing more than her exotic mystery. Isabella had been an idea for me, a metaphor for the promise of the great and strange world out there beyond the close horizons of Derbyshire. The lady had shown me kindness and courtesy that was so unlike the simple coarseness of the other girls I had known. Isabella had been a bright bird flying into my drab hall and I was a puppy staring at it, wanting it but not knowing what I would do if I ever caught it.
Marriage to Alice was real. As real as the earth beneath my feet and the sun upon my face. My wife opened my eyes to what sharing your life with another person could be like. She saw me feeling happy and sad and she saw me raging and reflective and still she looked at me with tenderness in her eyes and a smile upon her lips.
“Do not stare at me so,” she said as she dressed one morning, smiling and covering her heavy breasts. “I have the body of an old woman. Your lust is unseemly.”
I grabbed her, then, and pull her back into bed. Her body was full and round and strong and it made me lightheaded just to stroke her pale skin or to grab a handful of her warm flesh and breathe her in.
“Be gentle,” she said and then hesitated. “I may be with child.”
I whooped and leapt up and span her round and round.
“Be gentle,” she shrieked, laughing.
All I had ever been good for was fighting. I had no idea how to assess my income or dispense justice. Alice tried to teach me but I am afraid I was never a good student and she took care of most of the estate management day by day while I did my best to keep up with her and learn by watching the adeptness with which she handled our tenants” disputes and our neighbours” scheming over dinner.
Her children would never truly be mine but I felt I was becoming an adequate father. Whenever he wanted, I instructed Jocelyn in the rudiments of armed and unarmed combat and taught him English words that for some reason he found hilarious. Some of those occasions where our serious training dissolved into laughter are among the happiest and most blissful moments of my long life.
The girl, Emma, was
as full of joy as it is possible to be. She delighted in stories and would happily listen to anyone willing to tell her tales. Although she remained somewhat afraid of me, she began climbing into my lap in the evenings and sleeping there because she knew I would never allow her to be sent to bed once she did so.
It was its own reward but was also good practice. For soon, I would be a father to a baby who would be truly mine.
Of all the hundreds of years I have lived, 1192 was one of the best.
Often since then I have asked myself how I could have continued to underestimate William. I had seen the depths of the evil that he was capable of. I suppose it was just so much easier to pretend otherwise.
They came in the night.
They always do.
***
Something woke me. I sat up in bed listening but there was nothing but the wind against the half-open shutters and Alice’s soft, steady breathing. Disturbed by my movement, she mumbled and rolled over next to me, her body under the sheets a series of waves edged in moonlight.
One of my dogs barked once and then fell silent. Sometimes they would bark themselves into a frenzy at the hyenas in the night. My huntsman swore it was because lions roamed about us in the dark, though I had never seen one. But a single bark was unheard of and the fact that neither my huntsman nor his son was shouting at the dog to be silent sent shivers down my spine.
I slipped from the bed and went to the window. The moon was bright and the sky clear and I could see out across my land. I had no significant defences, merely thorn hedges and stone walls to keep wild animals out and my own animals in. The wall of the stables was picked out clearly but I could hear nothing. A horse snorted and whinnied and then I knew that thieves had come. I took down my sword from the wall, silently cursing my useless bloody men for failing to post a proper guard.
The hills of Palestine could be cold at night but I was naked and looking for something to pull on when screaming started.
It was a throat-shattering scream of agony. Whether of man or woman was hard to tell.
The scream, undoubtedly, had come from within our house.
“Stay here,” I said to Alice. But she leapt from the bed and ran naked by me toward the children’s rooms down the corridor, her feet slapping on the tiles.
Planting my feet in the corridor I stood guard while she gathered the confused children into her arms.
“Take them back to our chamber,” I commanded her and she trotted back with Jocelyn on her hip and little Emma held to her shoulder.
“Where are your clothes, mother?” Jocelyn asked as she dumped him on the bed. Emma was rubbing her eyes.
“What is happening?” Alice asked me.
“Thieves,” I said. “Perhaps raiders.”
“Let us flee through the window,” Alice said to me. “Take the horses and ride for Jaffa.”
“They are already in the stables,” I said, looking out. “I shall discover what is happening. Get dressed and wait here for me to return.”
Fateful words but I believed them to be for the best.
Another scream pierced the night.
“They are in the hall,” I said, guessing but sure I was right.
The children looked terrified, clinging to their mother.
“Let the men earn their keep,” Alice said. “Stay with us.”
“What kind of lord would I be if I allow thieves and robbers to attack us at will?” I said.
She hugged her children to her and nodded.
I ran back down the corridor. In my haste I had still not dressed.
A man in a black surcoat rounded the corridor. He carried a torch in one hand and a mace in the other.
It was Walter the Welshman. I knew him as a nasty piece of shit who terrorised the women and girls of Ashbury after William had brought him back from the Holy Land. As ugly as a man could be, with wens on his face and eyes as black as sin. His face was in shadow and flickering light from the torch that multiplied his hideousness. But I had seen him practice combat back in the yard at Duffield Castle before William had thrown us out and I recalled his speed and viciousness.
The mace in Walter’s other hand glistened and had pieces of skin and hair stuck to the flanges.
Shouts echoed and the screaming began again but this time it did not stop. It did come from the hall, beyond Walter. There was the clashing and ringing of weapons now. My men fighting the attackers.
If Walter was in my house then that meant William was too.
“That’s right, boy,” Walter laughed at the expression on my face. “He has come for you.” Walter stood his ground blocking my way to the hall. “Fall to your knees now and welcome your fate. Come, Richard, come and feed the Angel of the Lord. Offer up your blood. Offer up the blood of your wife and children.”
I leapt forward in a headlong charge but he was expecting to provoke me so I checked my forward motion and ducked under his mace. Fighting had always been easy for me but Walter was faster than any man I had faced. Only by the grace of God did the weapon skim through my hair to smash through the wall plaster above my head.
My sword flicked up into his face but he was so fast. He weaved sideways, dropped his mace and stepped forward while drawing a knife that he slashed low toward my guts and balls. But I was fast, too. And I was unencumbered, young and filled with hatred and vengeance. I twisted from his lunge, stepping sideways to smash my blade into his forearm shattering his bones through the mail. His weight carried him forward while I stepped beyond him. I reversed my sword and ran him through at the base of the spine. I forced my blade through his mail coat so hard the point ran deep into the plaster and pinned him face forward to the wall.
Swooping up his dagger I held the point against his neck under the ear.
“How many are you?” I said, breathing hard. “Are my horses guarded?”
From the cries coming through the walls, my fighting men sounded desperate. I had merely four and one was a boy and one an old man and I knew that they could do nothing more than delay William’s men who were brutal, experienced warriors.
“He has come for you,” Walter said. “Earl William will feast upon your flesh. You are the cup and he shall drink of you.”
“My horses,” I said, hissing in his ear. “How many men guard my stable?”
Walter laughed. “We shall cover the earth with our numbers. You will become one of us or you shall feed us. And you shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. And all shall eat the flesh of their neighbours. For he is the Destroyer, the Angel of the—”
I punched the dagger into the base of his skull – a quicker death than he deserved – and pulled my sword out. Walter collapsed, his dead eyes staring at the Hell that awaited him.
William had come. No doubt there were men in my stable. Unless William had left such a menial task for Hugo the Giant or a gifted swordsman like Roger of Tyre then I would be able to take our horses.
But would I have time to saddle two of them and would Alice and I be able to outrun William’s men all the way back to Jaffa? We would have a child each on our horse and it was a long ride. Our horses would tire or die if we rode hard all the way. And galloping through the moonlight could cause a horse to trip and even a single fall would mean death. I imagined sending Alice with Emma and Jocelyn on his pony off while I kept William’s men fighting but they could have run her down easily while keeping me from leaving.
Perhaps I should have gone back to our room to say farewell to Alice and the children. We could have spent our last few moments together instead of leaving them alone and waiting for a man who would never come.
There seemed to be only one course of action. So I went toward the sound of the screaming with my sword at the ready, fantasising that I might finally have my vengeance.
My hall was where we ate, as a household, and where some of the servants slept. It was where I spoke to my tenants and it was rather finely decorated, though Alice assured me it was terribly old-fashioned. It was t
he beating heart of our home and our estate and it was an almost sacred space.
I found it full of blood and death. Because of the clashing weapons and shouts and screams I expected to find my four men valiantly facing off against William’s knights.
Instead, the fighting was over. Two of my men had been cut into bloody pieces and scattered about the floor, blood soaking into the rushes. The other two men were panting and bleeding from head wounds surrounded by half a dozen of William’s armoured men who were prodding and jeering at them. I did not recognise William’s new men. They were all were in hauberks or the shorter haubergeons and carrying swords, daggers, falchions and axes and a spear.
It was like watching bear baiting. My men were barely defending themselves, resigned to their fate. They were already bleeding to death so they had every right to be. The clanging of weapons was no doubt to encourage me to come running.
Eight of my servants lay bound and beaten on the floor at the centre of the hall by the cold hearth. Ralph the Reaper was torturing them by slashing the soles of their feet into bloody ribbons. The cook and his girl had been murdered. The others were groaning and screaming in pain and terror.
And there was William.
Standing at the head of my hall as if he owned it, leaning against my table. He was in a half-rusted hauberk and helmet. The surcoat covering his mail was of fine cloth dyed a red though it was filthy and stained all over with the brown mottled pattern of old blood. His face lit up with a smile when he saw me.
“I told you he would come,” William cried, clapping his hands together. “What a fine knight you are, Richard, to come save these worthless peasants rather than finish swyving your whore.” He laughed heartily, looking down at my nakedness. His men, too, laughed and stood staring at me, no longer tormenting my own.