The Source: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Count Volkmar retired to draft his next report to the men of Acre, and in it he reported his dismay at the easy collapse of the city wall:

  It was a wall such as I have seen withstand an ordinary army for many days, and it was courageously defended, but the Mamelukes have summoned an army of a size not hitherto known in these parts. At first, our knights estimated them to be near a hundred thousand, but I thought more like sixty. Now we are agreed that they are more than two hundred thousand, with so many engines that they cast solid shadows. They will find our castle difficult indeed and I am not apprehensive about an early defeat. We pray to God each day, and to the sweet Jesus Christ who brought our ancestors to these shores.

  And with this message the next pigeon was dispatched.

  Of the four defenses upon which the castle depended—glacis, town wall, moat, castle wall—the first two had given way, but knights still controlled the three churches and the mosque. Early next morning the Mameluke general inspected the town and gave orders for the reduction of those four religious buildings, and before the sun was well up the attack began. At the same time slaves began throwing rubble into the moat at those points where the wooden assault towers would be hauled into position against the castle wall. Where the moat protected the main tower the outer edge of the moat was chopped away, forming a steep path leading to the bottom of the ditch, and down this path crawled, at a hauntingly slow pace, the ominous turtles.

  They were low sheds, not more than three feet high and neither wide nor long, but of immensely strong construction. Under them miners, protected from rocks or Greek fire from above, could gnaw out a tunnel beneath the foundations of the main tower. An ordinary tunnel would be so narrow that when it opened on the other side of the tower, men crawling through could easily be killed as they merged, but it was not an ordinary tunnel which the men beneath the turtles were digging.

  To the edge of the moat were moved the largest ballistas, and when they were in position they began lobbing huge rocks into the castle buildings, and the Mamelukes cheered as one giant boulder crashed through the stone lacework of the grand hall, ripping away part of the wall. Next the mangonels were cranked up and their lethal arrows placed against the strings, and when the machine let go, the arrows winged with sickening force against the men of the wall, and if a defender was caught by such an arrow it went completely through him and he toppled backward from the parapet.

  Count Volkmar’s men were not powerless. When the slaves approached the moat to cast their rubble, arrows and rocks drove them back and many were killed; when the turtles tried to work their way into the bottom of the moat the defenders dropped large round rocks down the face of the wall, and the flange at the bottom would send the rocks careening through the massed troops, tearing away legs and arms. But their most effective weapons were the clay jugs of Greek fire—naphtha and sulphurous compounds, set ablaze by red-hot flints—that burned even on water and could be extinguished only by vinegar or talc. It blinded soldiers or burned away their faces, and constantly, from each round tower so carefully positioned by Gunter, a stream of iron-tipped arrows sped at any Mameluke who tried to approach the glassy-surfaced walls. At this point Count Volkmar decided to conserve his pigeons, so as midnight approached he directed his men to haul onto the highest tower of the castle a pile of brush, and he and his son climbed the winding stairs with a torch, throwing vast shadows on the rock; and they lit the brushwood in the ancient manner so as to signal throughout the hills of Galilee and across to Acre itself the fact that at the castle of Ma Coeur all was well.

  The arrogant boast of the Mameluke general that he would invest the castle within a week had long since been proved empty: he had leveled the mosque; he had taken the Roman and the Maronite churches and had torn them down, but the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene still resisted, and at the end of the third week the siege had bogged down in the bottom of the moat, except for three towers that had been inched close to the main walls, where for the time being they rested, inactive. Each morning the ballistas would hurl great rocks and the mangonels would let fly their piercing arrows, but the siege seemed to have ground to a halt; so each night at midnight the count and his son sent the signal: “The fires of Ma Coeur are still burning.”

  But the miners were at work. Deep in the heart of old Makor, down below the level of the Roman times, below the potsherds of the Greeks and Babylonians, the Mameluke slaves were digging a tunnel under the main tower of the outer wall. As they inched forward, other slaves came behind bearing stout wooden props which they forced into position to support the tunnel. And at the close of each day one of the Mameluke captains entered the tunnel with a white string to measure how far the digging had proceeded, and when all were satisfied that it must have gone well beyond the inner face of the wall, the general ordered a huge cave to be widened under the tower foundations.

  Now the miners dug rapidly, and hundreds of posts were lugged through the darkness to shore up the cave until the vast emptiness looked like a forest that had died. At this point all work ceased and attacks on the castle were halted, while the three white flags were once more prominently displayed, after which the red-faced Mameluke general and his assistants rode over the drawbridge and into the beleaguered fortress. Nodding gravely he dismounted and ordered the scar-headed captain from Saphet to stretch out the measuring string, while another drew with chalk the circumference of the underground cave. Then he said, “Knight, our cave lies under this tower.”

  Count Volkmar looked at the ominous circle and said, “I believe you.”

  “We have not yet moved in the brush,” the Mameluke said in his broken Arabic. “We offer one last chance. Then the brush.”

  “The terms?” Volkmar asked.

  “As before.” There was a pause. “Your answer?”

  “As before.”

  “Farewell. We shall not speak again.”

  “Yes, we shall,” Volkmar contradicted. “For when you get through that wall you must also get into the castle. And every night at midnight I shall speak to you with my signal fire. It will take you much longer than the week you said.”

  The Mameluke made no reply, and that afternoon the defenders of the castle watched as long lines of slaves carried brush into the cave. But the torment of the digging had stopped, and in the quiet respite Volkmar dispatched one of his last pigeons, bearing fatal news that would be correctly interpreted in Acre:

  The basilica has fallen. The mining has ended, they have shown me the circumference of the cave under the principal tower, and the brush has been moved in. We wait in silence, but we cannot hope. The tower must fall, and then we shall be forced into the castle. Go to the church of SS. Peter and Andrew, the patrons of Galilee, and pray for us. We shall hold out for weeks but seek your plea for divine help.

  That night the Mamelukes lighted the brush in the cave, and in a sighing, smoking fire the wooden posts began to burn away, producing a final blaze that heated the tower walls and cracked them, so that when the under-supports were gone the foundations began to collapse, and there came a shudder in the wall and wild shouting from the Mamelukes as the long-impregnable tower of Ma Coeur came crashing down. Turbaned warriors leaped across the hot stones to drive the Crusaders away from the outer battlements and into the castle; but at midnight from the highest parapet the signal fire blazed forth, assuring Acre that all was still well.

  Now came the grim days when the hand of defeat was close to the throat of the defenders, for the Mameluke general methodically directed his thousands of slaves to smooth out the stones of the fallen tower and to build a level road over which his huge wooden structures could be wheeled, along with the ballistas and the mangonels. Patiently the turtles were moved against the castle itself and miners began their laborious job of undercutting the gate, and with no display of haste or bitterness the Mamelukes proceeded to bite away at the foundations. The siege was now in its fifth week, and since the ballistas and sheitanis were closer, the Crusaders began to lose more men.
Worst of all, throughout the day, throughout the night, those who survived could hear the tapping of the hammers and the picks far below them, while the castle’s supplies of Greek fire diminished and had to be used more sparingly, so that the attackers grew more bold.

  Now came the sickening part of the siege, the subtle, fearful whisper that could creep through the strongest walls of a castle and into the minds of everyone defending it. When this sound first arrived no man was exempt from fear; and later, no matter how casually he came to live with the sound, in the base of his mind there lurked always fear. It was the distant noise of pickaxe against stone, of men digging deep in the earth, and because they tapped against the fundamental wall the sound was carried through all the stones of the castle, not echoing madly as when a rock plunged through a roof, tearing all away with it, but insidiously, like the aching of a tooth that does not yet require pulling but which warns: “This ache is not going to stop.”

  How persuasive the sound became. The count would look at his wife, and she would say nothing, but he could see in her eyes the reflection of each tapping sound as it carried to her feet and up through her chair and into her brain. On some bright mornings, when the tapping stopped for a moment, the Crusaders would look at each other in alarm and then return to normal as the almost noiseless echo resumed.

  So far the great rocks tossed skyward by the Mameluke engines had not penetrated the circular chapel, and here the countess and the women spent most of their days, contemplating the errors which had brought their men into this grave position and wondering as to what might happen in the last hours of the siege, for none had hopes that she would escape; the tapping was too insistent and too close. Countess Volkmar, leaving the chapel now and again to help care for the wounded, thought: It wouldn’t have mattered if I had married into some other castle. They’re all doomed. But I wish we’d sent Volkmar to Germany.

  The boy, less susceptible than others to the psychological pressure of the tapping which echoed through the castle, busied himself about the inner ring of turrets, running from one group of defenders to the next, as the knights fought to keep back the giant wooden towers that seemed to inch forward by themselves and were now almost touching the outer faces of the wall. Several times in recent weeks men had been killed near where young Volkmar stood, and he must have known that his castle was doomed, but he displayed no fear. For him—as for his father—the best part of each anxious day came at midnight, when they climbed together to light the fires which always seemed at first to give only a feeble blaze but which in the end illuminated the countryside in an eerie light, disclosing the Mameluke tents in the olive grove and the rolling hills of Galilee.

  At the end of the fifth week the besieging forces halted offensive operations and once more raised the three white flags, but this time the red-faced general took no part in the parley. He sent the Saphet captain, who said simply, “The tunnel under your gate is ready for its brushwood. Do you now surrender?”

  “Do you guarantee safe-conduct for all to the city of Acre?”

  “Your family and four,” the scar-headed captain repeated. “The rest sold as slaves.”

  “No.”

  The envoy turned abruptly and strode from the castle, making no boast about how quickly it would fall. That night the cave was set afire, and after the blaze had eaten away the supporting logs the gate towers swayed toward the Mamelukes, hesitated, than came apart and crashed grotesquely in the dust. The Crusaders retreated into the central keep while the methodical Mamelukes put their slaves to building the warm rocks into a roadway, and their engineers to the task of pushing the engines of war into position until turbaned faces could look almost into the narrow windows of the keep. The defenders had lost two cisterns and most of the animals but they still controlled the David Tunnel, and their remaining tower contained enough food to sustain them for months in case a miracle was on its way across the Mediterranean. But no ships were coming; the futile Italians had been the last gasp of the crusading effort, and they had destroyed, not helped.

  So at the start of the sixth week the defenders of Ma Coeur were contracted into the final tight knot of men and women protecting themselves inside the enormous walls of the keep itself, and it could be only a matter of time until one of the great Mameluke engines was maneuvered against some door. So sure were the Muslims of victory that they no longer sent miners beneath the walls. Ma Coeur must now fall through sheer brute pressure.

  It was fascinating, hideously fascinating, to watch the first wooden turtle edge forward to perform a new function. It crept ahead until the men beneath could place their hands against the keep. Rocks from above careened down the slanting walls and spurted outward, but the roof of the turtle was so constructed that the boulders skimmed across the top, killing men standing behind but not those crouching beneath. Next Greek fire was poured on the machine, but the Mamelukes had covered this turtle with the bloody hides of freshly slaughtered cattle, so the wood did not burn—and the flames were extinguished with vinegar. And when the turtle had crept into position ropes were passed back and lashed to one of the great assault towers, and by pulling from the turtle and pushing from behind the enormous engine was edged into position.

  A crash. A scream. A cry of “Over here!” and Crusaders rushed to intercept the Mamelukes who had stormed their way into the keep—twenty of them, forty, dropping down from the tower.

  “Protect the gate!” Volkmar shouted, and knights converged suddenly from all sides, fighting the powerful invaders hand to hand; and gaspingly the forty-three Mamelukes were slain and the keep was spared; so that again at midnight the fires of Ma Coeur could be seen at Acre, where men prayed both for the defenders and for themselves.

  Before dawn the defenders beat back that first enemy tower and toppled it into the courtyard, killing many slaves, but with daylight the Mamelukes moved forward two other turtles which in turn started drawing two new towers against the keep. But when these were in position no assault was made, for the turtles crept along the wall to new positions from which they drew up three additional towers, until the keep was ringed. “They will come at us from all sides,” young Volkmar said, more with a boy’s interest in mechanical things than with fear.

  The castle priest, looking at the ominous towers, knew that this day must mark the end of the siege and he summoned Count Volkmar and his family to the roof, where they looked out upon the glorious fields of the Galilee, red and gold in their spring flowers. The olive trees, in which the Mameluke had staked his innumerable tents, were silvery gray, and in the distance beyond the spires and minarets of Acre gleamed the blue Mediterranean. It was an April day, the kind that had always made the hearts of men glad in this region, and the priest told the knights and their ladies, “Beloved children of Christ, we have come to the day when we shall meet God Almighty face to face. We have fought well. We have been crusaders of the spirit, and if there are among you those who ask, ‘Why has this tragedy overtaken us?’ I cannot explain, but centuries ago that great man St. Augustine, surveying a similar period, spoke thus to all who are perplexed: ‘For the world is like an olive press, and men are constantly under pressure. If you are the dregs of the oil you are carried away through the sewer, but if you are true oil you remain in the vessel. But to be under pressure is inescapable. Observe the dregs, observe the oil, and choose, for pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, famine, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures and complain, but they speak as the dregs of oil which later run away to the sewer. Their color is black, for they are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who welcomes splendor. He is under the same pressure, but he does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is the pressure which refines and makes him noble.’ ”

  As the priest finished these words the Mameluke general waved his ebony baton and the final pressure against Ma Coeur commenced, but with an additional terror for which the Crusaders were not prepared. The mango
nels and sheitanis they knew, and when the latter began lobbing bundles of burning fagots onto the roof Count Volkmar helped his men throw down the fiery embers, but in addition to these ordinary machines the Mamelukes had brought a special weapon: a corps of drummers banging nearly a hundred drums of various sizes and constructions, all with animal skins drawn tightly across reverberating heads, and as the soldiers and the slaves began their final push against the walls these drums thundered a wild beat of encouragement and gave a sense of inevitability to the stormy scene, while from the captured basilica bells clanged furiously to mock the doomed Christians.

  In the first terrifying burst of sound Count Volkmar ran back to the center of the roof, where the priest and the women waited, and throwing himself on his knees, cried, “Good Father, bless us now,” and above the throbbing of the drums the priest intoned his last benediction: “Forgiving Jesus,” his thin voice came, scarcely audible above the thunder of drum and bell, “accept our souls this day. In our castle we have been a Godly family and each man has trusted his brother. We have fought as we can, and in our last hour we find great love in the presence of each other. King Jesus, accept us as we are.”

  From behind came a cry: “They are upon us!”

  The fight was hideous. Each of the five towers crawled with archers who fired point-blank at the Crusaders, often from a distance of inches, while powerful Mameluke swordsmen, intoxicated by the drums, leaped like animals from the towers and swept the turrets with their scimitars. This day there were to be no prisoners, not even women to be sold as slaves, for the general had determined to wipe from the earth this annoying castle.

  Count Volkmar would have preferred making his last stand on the ramparts, but the wildly charging Mamelukes forced him below, and with the increased tempo of the drums echoing in his ears he found his wife standing quietly with her son, keeping his hand in hers lest he join the battle. “Let the boy fight with me,” the count cried and he stooped to lift a sword from the hand of a dead knight, and while he was in this position three Mamelukes leaped into the room and stabbed him many times, so that he fell forward without having struck a blow. His death prevented him from seeing the Mamelukes swarm upon his wife and son, after which they sought out the inner rooms, launching a systematic slaughter of the remaining women. As this was happening the first group of drummers climbed the towers and came into the keep, where, over the dead Volkmars, they beat out their triumphant rhythms while bells clanged brazenly from all remaining steeples. Thus ended the Crusades at Ma Coeur. In blood the iron men of Germany had come and in blood they went.