The Book of the Lion

by Michael Cadnum

  “The speck is still there,” he said. “Maybe it’s a cheese—the gulls are fighting over it.” Cargo did sometimes drift to shore, thrown overboard by ships attempting to outrun raiding galleys.

  The Frankish knights did not see it yet, a small round object at the very edge of the surf. I could already guess what it was, and nearly cautioned Hubert, but he was off, and Winter Star bolted after him.

  Our race had caught the attention of the Franks and they watched, commenting, calling derisively.

  Winter Star did as I wished, ran hard, and stopped when I wanted, with a toss of his mane. Was it possible that Winter Star was showing off, I wondered, aware of the Frankish horses?

  Hubert wrinkled his nose, and at first I thought he might be making a comment about the unseemly catcalls of the Franks. Hubert’s mount was breathing hard. A gull shied away reluctantly, studied us, then flew along the beach.

  A blackened, eyeless human head grinned up at the sky.

  “A Saracen,” I said, “from one of the galleys in the battle last evening.”

  I swung down from Winter Star and knelt, holding my breath against the stink.

  Four Pisan galleys had run in last night, through a screen of Saracen warships Saladin had set up in recent days, hoping to prevent the arrival of King Richard. One of the Moslem ships had caught fire, and burned past midnight.

  I was dizzy, still a little weak from my illness. But I had been much fortified by roasted hen and guinea fowl since our arrival, not to mention chunks of the huge wheels of brown bread the Templar bakers produced every morning. The bread was gritty and blemished with bug larvae baked in with the wheat, but it was delicious.

  Flies were thick. I stretched out my hand, seized the golden ring around a dark nodule, the remains of an ear. I tugged. The head seemed to tug back, and I worried at the gristly lobe, twisting the gleaming yellow earring, until at last it popped free.

  Hooves thudded, and we were surrounded by smiling Frankish knights, four of them, each with a squire. All of them beaming, showing their brown, wine-stained teeth. The broadest and tallest spoke to me in Frankish, and held out his hand, giving his fingers an inward twitch in the universal give it to me.

  I stood, gave a respectful bow, and said, “No, my lord, if it please you.”

  Every Christian fighting man was hollow-eyed. This group was no different than anyone else in the Crusader camp, eager for the siege engines to do their work, and for the siege to break. Or maybe Saladin would bring his army in from the east, and engage in a battle—that was even more desirable. Instead, we exercised our horses, kept an edge on our weapons, and prayed that camp fever would not strike us down.

  Every Englishman and many of the Franks prayed each evening for King Richard’s safe arrival.

  A distant roar made us all turn. Even at this distance we could hear the cheers of anticipation. God’s Own Sling, the catapult owned by the English Crusaders, had been re-employed after a shortage of good-sized boulders, and it was once again cocked, ready to loose its missile.

  When the distant stone left its catapult the black ash rose, and slowly fell toward the tower-spiked walls.

  It struck, and bounded free, and we waited until the sharp tock of the stone-strike reached us, and the cheers of the men. Not to be outdone, Evil Neighbor, the Templars’ magnificent catapult, fired a boulder at the same tower, and we held our breath at this fine, black point of grit, a boulder it had taken three men to load, rose high. Its arc was beautiful, higher than any the English common-fund catapult could reach. The stone struck the same tower.

  Tiny black fleas along the tower brandished weapons. But a fragment of tower—a shard the size of a man-crumbled and fell, and after a long pause the Crusader cheers reached us.

  I had expected the Holy Land to be a place of miracle, angels at wellheads, saints in caves. It was even better than that. This was a land of wild thyme and date palms, huge trees with wooden plumes for leaves. Bees touched the flowering weeds, and hills lifted and fell to the east, bare of forest. The streams were but a trickle through black stones where they touched the sea.

  The Frankish knights rode with us back to camp, bumping us insolently, begging our pardon with exaggerated courtesy. All the way through the women’s camp at the edge, the Frankish knights ignored the dark-haired pleasure women, a dozen voices wishing us a good afternoon, come and stay a while. At the same time washerwomen told us in four different languages how dirty we looked, such strong men, all we needed was a clean vest under our shirts.

  The fighting camp was a city of canvas, man-high tent pegs and taut ropes. The smells of horse, roasting beef, and human habitation met us—feces from the latrine trench, sweat from the laborers wielding mallets and mauls, re-pegging one of the oak-and-cedar siege engines.

  The Duke of Burgundy had designated Sir Guy de Renne chief steward of the camp. Guy de Renne had an amazingly upright posture, all the more remarkable in a man who appeared so quickly in one place and then another. Now he hurried up to the Frankish knights, scolding, wondering where they had been. The explanation they gave made Sir Guy turn to us and say, in a Frankish tongue I was beginning to understand too well, that sport among boys was all very well at home, with our English mothers.

  A Frankish knight spoke, and the duke listened attentively.

  Sir Guy was one of those rare men who look clean-shaven, no matter the time of day, and whose sword pommel is always polished bright. Sir Guy made his eyes round as his mouth, an unspoken Oh! He held out his hand toward me with the slightest smile.

  “The gold, my little pup,” he said. L’or, mon petit chien.

  I was as tall as the tallest of these Frankish knights, and Winter Star, flaring his nostrils impressively, was obedient to my slightest touch—with luck. My master Otto had spoken a smattering of Frankish, and I could at least approximate the accent. But I was aware that these were accomplished fighting men—and I was not.

  Nevertheless, I closed my fist around the golden earring and tried to give these knights a look of disdain. Sir Guy gave me a smile of such coolness—such arrogance—that I melted inwardly.

  Winter Star had kicked him two days before, “near to splitting his brains,” as Nigel had put it. But Guy had not lost a moment of consciousness, stood, brushed himself free of straw and dust, and walked on as though nothing had happened. Hubert was sure Guy never slept or passed water.

  I felt unsteady, perhaps still light-headed from my illness. I was not accustomed to addressing knights. I held up the golden earring, letting the afternoon sun play along its unalloyed perfection, except for a little kiss of black, a touch of Saracen gristle. I made up some Frankish of my own right there, saying that this was mine “By the right of my hand,” le droit de main, although, in the same breath, I begged their pardon.

  Several English had gathered, pikemen, sallow Dovermen, who could hardly make out a word of any Christian tongue. And then two Templars strode into the midst of this small crowd, stern, indifferent men, looking at none of us, dismissing us without a word. The Templars and the Hospitallers, as every Christian knew, were religious fighting orders, knights who had taken holy vows.

  From a far part of the camp an expectant buzz of voices spread. Then, a hush, and tiny, tight creaking of leather and timber as Evil Neighbor stretched, and stretched still farther.

  A whiplash snap, and a boulder whistled upward, a sound like a thousand cock swallows.

  A silence. A horse’s tail whisked flies.

  The boulder glanced off the tower face, with a shower of mortar and stone-sparks. The stone missile bounced away, a faint, spinning shadow. The Christian army cheered, but without as much life as before.

  “Before nightfall” said Hubert, “I’m going to kill my first Infidel.”

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  In the hours before battle we had sport.

  Men wrestled, the stouter wearing down the lean. Men ran footraces, the short and quick outstripping the robust. My favorite contest was c
alled thrashing the cock—a carter would put on a blindfold and lay about him with an ox whip, laughing but intent, and once or twice my ear was singed by the crack of the lash. Hubert was even more nimble, the whip never even close.

  The army loved these games, especially the squires and the yeomen foot soldiers, but as the hour of battle approached our laughter seemed too loud, our smiles too bright.

  Rannulf was in his tent, rubbing oil into the chain mail on his lap. This was my customary duty now that I was his squire, and I flushed with shame. I hurried to tell him why we had been delayed, sporting with the fighting men. I told him about the golden ring, placing it in his hand.

  Rannulf held the circlet to the afternoon sun falling through the tent flap. “They’re forbidden to play dice,” said Rannulf, “and the camp women are cattle, so they look for English squires to stab or bugger.”

  A catapult sang out again, beyond the tent city. A taut, leather hum and a loud whiplash, followed by the audible hiss of a boulder as it rose.

  We were both quiet, waiting. A crack, and the muted cough of wall crumbling just a little further into gravel.

  Rannulf held up the coat of mail, the shape of a man. It made a pleasing, steely whisper as he let it collapse in his lap. “So our Frankish friends decided not to test their steel or their manly parts. That’s a blessing for Edmund, whose sword work will cost him his life.”

  “Morning and afternoon,” I said, “I work at my lord’s pleasure.” This was formula, phrasing I had learned from Hubert. Hubert explained that the great warriors of ancient days spoke thus, Achilles and Hector at the walls of Troy.

  Hubert had been practicing sword fighting with me, teaching me with a weapon with two false edges and a rounded tip. Hubert had told me about the estoc, the knife for piercing mail when the enemy is wounded and lying on the ground. He taught me footwork, and even tried getting me to use a bastard sword, a hand-and-a-half model he thought might suit me better than a single-handed hilt.

  Rannulf often thought for a long moment before he spoke. “Take that monstrous thing wrapped in horsehide, Edmund. See if it might please you.”

  A louse struggled slowly along the back of my hand. I pinched the tiny creature, breaking it between my fingers. My armpits itched ceaselessly, and the back of my neck was sore from scratching.

  What looked like a tree branch sheathed in horse-neck leather rested on Rannulf’s brass-worked war trunk. I lifted the heavy object tentatively, eager, curious and yet unwilling to unwrap it.

  “It belonged to a giant of Saxony,” said Rannulf. “Go on, don’t look so suspicious—do you think I’d give you a gourd on a stick?”

  The Saxons were all giants, armed with huge weapons. The massive men had been struck hard by the arnaldia, a disease that made fingernails fall out and filled the lungs with blood. Most of the Saxons had been shipped north to Constantinople on Venetian freighters, not expecting to survive the voyage.

  I let the sleeve of leather fall free.

  “I was hoping to be a swordsman,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  I was shaken at the scope and menace of the weapon in my hand. A length of black iron was fitted with a massive hammer-head. The head had been polished, and gleamed.

  At times Rannulf’s eyes were full of feeling. Should I have kept my silence? “I won’t be able to fight with this.”

  “Lift it,” said Rannulf.

  I gripped the shaft. “I’ll learn to fight with a sword—just a little more practice,” I protested.

  “Go on,” he said patiently. “Lift it high.”

  I held the hammer upward, the head brushing the canvas of the tent. I swung it, a slow circle. Making a show of how easy it was, gritting my teeth against the effort.

  And it was not so heavy after all.

  Priests said mass that afternoon. The Devil must have wept to see such faith, under the high-lofted clouds. Through it all I tried not to feel what I was experiencing, a simmering fear. The knights looked like strangers, even the ones I knew well, mail skirts down beyond their knees, surcoats of wool emblazoned with the cross.

  Sir Guy de Renne was radiant after mass, gazing Heavenward, tugging on his fighting gloves, finger by finger.

  “A show of force?” Nigel was asking. Chain mail made a gentle, chiming whisper as men moved around us.

  “Eh?” said Sir Guy, making a show of understanding not a word.

  Nigel said a few words of strained Frankish, and Sir Guy smiled in a fatherly manner. “We shall disturb their sleep,” he said in words all too easy to translate. “We shall worry their women—”

  “We’ll see a few of our men lose their lives,” said Nigel.

  “Eh?” Sir Guy wrinkled his nose.

  The knights held back, letting the footmen carry the effort at first. A siege engine’s axles were greased with ox fat, and the workmen stood aside cheerfully as Sir Nigel inspected the workings of one of the wooden structures. “You could put old women in this and it would serve as well,” said Nigel.

  The tower had served well in several assaults before we arrived, but each time the defenders killed the siege engine’s passengers faster than the attackers could disembark through the summit. The last time the tower had been used, three days previously, it had caught fire because of hot coals hurled from iron braziers. The braziers were smoking even now, on the edge of the walls.

  The foot soldiers, few of whom spoke English, stood expectantly.

  “Go on,” said Nigel, with a show of enthusiasm. “To the walls!”

  The footmen gave their shoulders to the wheel and axle, and heaved. The great wooden tower creaked, rocking, crossbowmen standing by to mount the portable edifice.

  It creaked again, timbers reporting up and down the tall shaft. But the wheels did not turn.

  “Again!” cried Nigel. “To the walls!”

  The siege engine rocked forward, and then caught speed, swaying, rolling ahead over the uneven ground, to a throaty yell from the army.

  I reassured myself—this was a battle, and I was still very much alive. More than alive—every color was bright. Hubert was alive, too, breathing hard although he was standing still. The enemy fortifications were dark with men, and a few sling stones pattered on the ground, testing the range, smacking the leather armor protecting the men driving the engine forward. There was a teasing, dreamlike quality about both the Christians and the defenders.

  A splinter of stone bounded all the way to where we stood, and Hubert picked it off the ground. He threw it back toward the city, then dropped his hands, as though he had done a forbidden thing.

  Still alive—the thought in my sinews.

  I knew that Nigel would prefer to wait for the long-expected arrival of King Richard. But the French King Philip and his countrymen, the Teutonic knights, the Templars, and the Hospitallers—the entire polyglot force—were tired of watching their hair fall out in clumps, a symptom of the fever that festered throughout the camp.

  Several men scrambled up the interior ladder, the siege engine trembling like a living thing. Within moments the top of the tower was manned with arbalestiers, crossbowmen armed with short swords. Dozens of common soldiers, freedman haywards and foresters in their ordinary lives, gave a shoulder again to the wooden wheels, and the great tower advanced more quickly over the battle-leveled ground.

  The strong men pushed the siege engine to the edge of the cleared space around the walled city, protected from the eyes of the defenders by wood-and-leather shields.

  Soldiers holding back, in the main force, carried a new device, something the Mussulmen had not seen before, a grappling ladder called “the cat.” There were several similar, long ladders with specially smithed hooks at either end.

  Another sling stone buzzed through the army, and struck a water-carrier on the ankle. The boy hopped on one foot, pretending to be injured, but also not pretending—really hurt. A weapon I had never seen before, a machine like a large crossbow, snapped projectiles high over the city walls,
the leaden shot whistling.

  The siege engine wobbled forward, the men in the top looking back and waving, like city fathers enjoying the view from a belfry.

  Acre’s defenders jeered, and sang challenges across the battered plain. The flattened earth around the city was broader than it appeared at a distance. As the siege engine groaned across the bare dirt, the attackers and defenders cried threats so menacing they sounded cheerful, as though a harmless tournament was being resumed at long last, to the relief of all.

  The tower was moving faster now, the wheels squeaking, chattering.

  Smoking coals spun through the air, and the men in the tower top smothered the embers with sand, stomping methodically. The siege tower was so close to the city now that the shadow of the tower fell over the defenders.

  Arrows showered into the tower, and then, with a timber-splintering whack, the siege engine struck the wall.

  It began to rain stones, glowing coals, arrows, and quarrels—the projectiles fired by crossbows. The siege tower shivered up and down its length, additional men charging across the bare ground, shouldering each other in a stampede to ascend the vault.

  Hubert and I struggled ahead, too far in the rear of the advancing line to be close to the fighting. The ladder gangs attached the hook ends of their equipment to the walls, and then crumpled under the rain of rock and arrows, as though weary and curling up for a nap.

  A dull avalanche of noise shook the air: stone against iron, spear against helmet, swords ringing, every blow striking metal or hard leather.

  In the height of the din, a Frankish knight surmounted the walls from the top of the siege tower, as easily as a man stepping from a boat to a wharf. He stood there in full view of all, handsomely armored, his flat-topped helmet ringing as stones and arrows bounded off the iron.

  There was something womanly, or priestly, about the way the mail shirt hung nearly to his ankles. He raised his sword as though to salute his enemy. He stood on the battlements, took a step, and then wavered, like a man lost in weariness, as spears and bricks bounded from his helm.