He spilled into the stone city.
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
The sound deafened me—so many voices I could not make out a word.
We were all thirsty. Men around us passed leather sacks, drinking with care, lest a drop fall wasted to the ground, then drinking with abandon, guzzling. Hubert was yelling, and so was I, calling for the help of the Holy Sepulcher, for the blessing of Our Lady. As though Our Lord’s hands were being spiked within the walls at that very moment, his ribs lanced.
Knights in battle wear helmets shaped like buckets, some with rounded peaks, some flat, but Hubert and I were dressed like foot soldiers, iron and leather bowls over our heads, chain mail up to our chins, our faces exposed. Hubert was blushing and sweaty with the heat, the pressure of the short helmet forcing his face into a scowl.
The roar continued, an unending cry from the attacking army, a ceaseless howl from the defenders. But it was hoarse, now shrill and not as loud. Crossbow quarrels hummed through the air from the Crusader ranks, shattering on stone, sometimes drilling into flesh. The first time I saw a wrist screwed through by one of these missiles I winced, and closed my eyes.
But soon I saw worse things. Men clambered up the ladders, paused to adjust their helmets, half drunk with wine. Stones and arrows sang off Crusader chain mail. One by one the Christian fighters slumped, laborers overcome with exhaustion, and either fell or were lowered back down, bleeding onto the shoulders of their companions.
When one of the new cat-ladders was pried at last from its grip on the walls, the defenders struggled to shove the contraption further away from the battlements. The ladder was thick with fighting men, shaking their weapons and cursing the defenders, who could not pole the ladder free from the wall. It all looked laughable in a sickening way, a market-day brawl among neighbors.
At last an Infidel with bright yellow sleeves and a white head cloth leaned down over the battlement with a long spear and pricked the face, the cheeks, the eyes, of some of the pikemen, causing them to tumble like scarecrows down to the ground.
It all happened sluggishly, a battle among bees. Now and then helping arms carried someone through the armored men, faces streaming scarlet. Hubert and I lifted our cockcrows in the grand cacophony. Neither of us was close to the fighting, but we were lightly powdered with blood.
Rannulf stood nearby, watching with the calm concentration of a falconer observing his bird. Nigel had joined him, and the two shook their heads, shading their eyes with their hands.
Many of the arrows and leaden missiles that snapped through the air were Crusader in origin, saved up and now used against us. A heavy projectile shaped like a mushroom scarred the ground near Nigel, and he gave it a kick. When a Catalan squire ducked an arrow, Nigel laughed.
The sound of the hoarse cries altered, fell to a deeper timbre. Men turned around, and pushed and cajoled the siege towers slowly back over the now cluttered ground. The defenders showed themselves, shaking spears and fluttering their bright colors in the bronze light of the setting sun.
“A great battle,” snorted Nigel.
I squirted red Tyre wine into Sir Rannulf’s cup.
We sat on a thick carpet Rannulf had bought from a Burgundian, who had purchased it from a Cypriot, who had recovered it from a shipwreck. A clay oil lamp gave off a cheerful, delicately smoky light, and the carpet, a marvel of colors, was lightly glazed with salt and sand.
“I saved a squab for you, Sir Rannulf!” Wenstan stammered.
“It cost a Flemish obole,” said Nigel. “Hard-bargained, but Wenstan would not pay more than that.”
Three days had passed since the battle. Day and night it was too hot to think of further fighting. Hubert and I attended Nigel, which meant that we did little more than drowse in his tent, brushing flies from our eyes. We ate Templar bread and drank inferior wine, fit for squires, a beverage that had almost turned to vinegar. A rash on my skin seethed under my tunic, and I scratched until I bled.
Rannulf stabbed the gold-roasted bird with a knife, and held it into the candlelight. The bird was still spiked with pin feathers, its tiny, fire-withered head dangling. “The hens are gone?”
“Eaten, every one. A squab is fit food for a knight,” said Nigel. “Chew up the little bird, Rannulf, and don’t complain.”
Rannulf pulled off a wing. “The pigs are eaten, too?”
“A Sicilian knight bought them all from our captain,” said Nigel. “He had a plan to render what was left after feasting, paste it on our arrowheads, and cause dismay among the Mussulmen.”
“It would cause them misery,” said Rannulf thoughtfully.
“But the pigs died of a murrain,” said Nigel.
Rannulf had a way of absorbing news as though he had expected it all along. “The Frankish knights have questioned the prisoners,” Rannulf said at last, stripping flesh off a slender, pink bone.
“And cut out their tongues afterwards,” said Nigel, “no doubt.”
Rannulf let the fleshless bone fall.
“Thin little devils, these Acre-men,” added Nigel. “It’s a wonder they fight as well as they do.”
Rannulf concurred, using the Frankish maigre. “And thirsty. For water, never for wine:”
Rannulf and Nigel discussed the mines sometimes excavated during sieges like this, tunnels that could be carved out under the foundations of the wall, and purposely collapsed. “But it will take too long,” concluded Nigel. “The castle walls were built on rock fifty years ago—by Christians. Soon we will be roasting lice on a skewer for supper.”
“Your squire is drunk,” said Rannulf.
“Impossible,” said Nigel, giving Hubert a nudge with his foot.
“I live to serve my lord,” said Hubert thickly.
“I roasted a wood-mole once,” said Nigel. “In the Forest of Galtre. My mount went lame. It was night, and raining, and the blind little creature wriggled out of his hole. I killed it with my glove, whap.”
“One blow?” Rannulf asked.
Both men fell silent at the sound of a distant cry.
Nigel shook his head. “The women,” he said. “Fighting again.”
“We should drive all the camp followers away with whips,” said Rannulf.
“They give us comfort,” said Nigel. “Those of us who enjoy pleasure, Rannulf.”
Several times at night a cry woke me, a wounded man with a fever, or a water boy having a nightmare. The camp stirred, hundreds of men awakened by the sound.
chapter TWENTY-FIVE
Soon, we prayed.
Soon the King of England would set foot on this shore.
Rumor was alive. Richard Lionheart had left Crete, with a force of blue and yellow Genoan galleys. He was one day away, two at the most, with twenty galleys heavy with livestock and grain. He would arrive and attack at once. He would end the siege by midnight.
At the same time a devilish counsel nagged me: a wheedling suggestion that the king might not arrive at all, and that having seen one battle I could leave for home.
The catapults hammered the walls in the early morning, and then again in the late afternoon. One evening a crack appeared in a wall, like a rip in a blanket. Crusader bowmen and pikemen rushed forward with ladders, only to find Saracen masons already at work, hurling some of their building stones down upon our soldiers, more sleepwalker fighting, puppet men fighting men of straw.
Hubert continued to develop an amazing skill—he could imitate people. In the shade between the tents he would chirp, “Who am I?” and do a killing mockery of Guy de Renne’s upright posture, or Nigel’s stiff-legged stride.
He had a further talent. In firelight he would make an animal out of his hands, throwing a shadow against the canvas. Whether hound or a serpent, each animal Hubert made had the same quality of quiet devilment. “What are you doing?” Nigel asked once, then crouched to watch. “A chimera!” he gasped. “Put your hands together like that again! A prime chimera, or I’m a sow.”
“A chimera has three bod
ies, my lord,” said Hubert, making the silhouette sprout ears. “This is only a roebuck. With a long tongue.”
I made a silhouette of my own, a doe. The two shadow creatures goggled at each other, and Hubert and I fell to laughing.
Rannulf and I rode far down the shore, shadowed by the tiny figures of Saracen horsemen exercising their mounts and keeping an eye on us. They made me anxious.
“If they cut us from camp,” said Rannulf, “then you’ll see some fighting.”
Rannulf carried a hunt spear—he had heard that a few lean lions prowled the briars of the Holy Land. “Even a warhorse would shy at the scent of a big cat,” said Rannulf. “It would be hard to run down so much as a cub.”
I had always been fascinated by lion lore. My master Otto had told me that the female lion bears lifeless kittens, and the male lion stands over the litter and roars it into life.
“Surely, my lord, a bow would have better luck.”
“An iron-tipped arrow, it’s true, but where’s the courage in killing with an arrow?”
Rannulf flicked a small yellow flower from the sand with the point of his weapon, and kept it in the air, tossing it with his lance point. He speared a pink flower, and stabbed a spreading mallow weed. When at last he came upon a rodent burrow, a small hole in the dry earth, he stabbed his shaft into it, tearing up the ground. The torn earth had a pleasing odor, both fresh and fermented.
A tiny, tawny creature fled at last, escaping its wrecked home. Rannulf lanced at it, tiny as it was, and toyed with it, but the creature escaped whole and apparently unhurt.
I offered, “It’s all in the balance, my lord.”
Rannulf gave me a long glance, and I looked away, studying the long, straight line of the sea.
Fox spoor peppered a stream bank, delicate footprints and dung no bigger than a ferret’s. A sheep’s skull grinned from the flowering weeds, and the dry flock droppings told a tale of shepherds and a village, all the inhabitants fled.
I had long been tempted to ask, but only now could blurt the question, “Did you really kill so many as five men, my lord, at the famous tournament in Josselin?”
“My old friend Thomas fitzMaurice died of a fractured hip and back—his horse rolled when my charger collided with his. A rank accident. Three of my opponents, all good men, died over months of spoiled wounds, puffed up, turned black, and—” He shrugged heavily, his light leather hunting armor creaking. “I killed one on the field, a youth, younger than you—my horse trod on his chest. I killed five, and yet—” He shrugged.
Was I disappointed to learn that these deaths were not feats of sword?
“Men misjudge me,” he said peacefully. “Inside, I sing songs like the ones Miles used to love, and I offer Heaven my own sort of prayers. Nigel is the one who craves.”
“Craves, my lord?”
“He has an appetite. For women, and for battle.”
Each morning Hubert and I trudged down to the water’s edge, driftwood and shell underfoot, and gazed at the horizon for King Richard’s ships. Often a Saracen galley crawled the distance, guarding the coast. Hubert and I had already adopted the knightly dislike for walking any distance at all. Very soon, Hubert opined, we should be allowed to wear spurs, like the knights from Aragon, who sat drinking claret wine in gold-and-indigo blouses, the rowels of their spurs gleaming.
Sometimes Hubert and I rode south of the camp, all the way to the dunes, and from there, if the wind had carved a hillock tall enough, we could see Saladin’s armies to the east, tent peaks and fluttering standards.
Saladin’s outriders coursed through the brush every day. They called after our Frankish horsemen, who galloped away, reined in, and galloped back in turn. The Saracens never fled quickly, always took their time, and the Franks were careful to stay well out of bow range.
Hubert and I pulled up short, Shadow and Winter Star breathing heavily. Today we had ridden farther south than usual, and the river stones scattered, dry and drought-scabbed. Water gleamed in the shade of a tree, spilling through green stones, and a Saracen knelt there, while his mount drank.
A horse can drink a long time, its belly filling, swallow by swallow. I often find it comforting, this heavy, meditative sound, water rising into the warm barrel of a horse’s frame. The infidel stroked the horse’s neck, smiling lightly, and only when Winter Star made a loud equine sneeze did the horseman glance and stand up, with no show of fear, or even curiosity.
I cleared my throat. “A pleasant afternoon,” I offered.
Hubert looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“And this,” I continued, “is a peaceful place to let a horse take its ease.”
The Saracen wore a deep yellow head covering, with a trailing cloth that hung down his nape. He was darkly bearded, and his teeth were white when he spoke.
Hubert sat tight in his saddle, like a chapel statue.
I made a gesture of apology: I do not understand.
“Francoman,” said the Saracen. He indicated the two of us.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed. “Not Frankish. English. Two English.”
He showed nearly all his fine teeth. English, French, his gesture said, what difference?
He pulled his charger gently from the stream, and indicated the water. Did I care to water my horse?
Hubert did not make a single move, although Shadow lifted his head, sniffing the unfamiliar horse.
I hesitated. If my throat was cut, I wondered, how badly would it hurt?
I dismounted, my feet whispering in the sand among the stones. The flesh of my throat, the pulse that trembled there—that was all I could think about as I led Winter Star to the stream. I let him nose the surface, shake his mane, bridle tinkling.
The Saracen was not as young as he had looked, a few gray whiskers in his beard, a scar like a red earthworm on his sword hand. Winter Star made short work of taking water, snuffled, pawed the sand, and looked intently at the Saracen’s own mount.
The Saracen spoke, and I knew, without understanding the words, what he was saying.
I thanked him, and said that his horse, too, was fine. I added, speaking clear English, that the horse was not, in law, actually my own. It belonged to Sir Nigel, I said, although I myself was squire to—
Hoofbeats approached. The Saracen mounted his horse in an instant, and called out to his distant companions.
I stayed as I was.
Several outriders, from the sound of it, splashed and cantered through the water upstream.
Hubert wheeled, dug his heels into Shadow, so hard that the horse bolted. Hubert fought hard to master him long enough to turn back and call something strained and breathless.
The Saracen made a gesture to his forehead, and spoke. His voice was level, less friendly, now, but reassuring. He wished me well, let his horse mince like a lady’s palfrey across the stream, and then rode hard to catch up with his companions.
“He could have quartered you, arms and legs, and put your head on a willow stick,” said Hubert.
“But he didn’t,” I replied.
“There was your chance to run a pagan through to the heart,” said Hubert, “and you traded by-your-leaves, like two wives at a fair.”
“He was a knight-at-arms, at his ease,” I said, using the lines from a lay about a knight outside his lady’s garden, one of Miles’s favorites.
Hubert urged his mount forward, and I did not follow him.
chapter TWENTY-SIX
A well is a busy place.
No knight or squire, knight’s clerk or priest would want to be seen drawing water. Serving boys carried the buckets, and washerwomen gathered, joking and singing in their foreign tongues.
Hubert ignored me, watching wrestling matches among the pikemen, practicing swordplay with a few Provençal squires. I found myself visiting the well all that afternoon, and much of the next day, and lingering, enjoying the gentle voices of the women.
When a friendship is interrupted, it is a shock, painful, as when the plow
strikes a restharrow root, shaking the plowman to the bone. I consoled myself that I would do as well without Hubert and his piping voice, his eagerness.
But the thoughts were bitter, and they were lies.
I had never felt such heavy heat before, not on the longest summer day. Birds did not sing, and the sky paled, dust lifting to the very apex of the blue dome above. The rumor was that the wells in Acre were down to their last, black bottom moss.
I poured cool well water into a basin, a dented, tinker-wrought vessel. I washed my feet with a rag, and let the water trickle down over my face.
“Washing your skin?” said Nigel, his shadow falling over me.
I admitted that this was water, and that I was washing.
“No good,” said Nigel, “can come of that.”
“It is a hot day, if it please my lord.”
“I knew a summoner who washed his hands and feet,” said Nigel. “He caught a chill, and it went to his lungs, and he died.”
“My lord, it cools the blood.”
“This is what Hubert tells me—that your blood is as cool as a widow’s.”
I set my mouth, determined not to say another word. “If my blood is cool, then why do I feel the sun so?” I heard myself say.
“You have the mind of a shriver, Edmund.”
I continued to rinse the rag in the cool water, and bathe my arms, although I took no pleasure in it, under Nigel’s incurious, disapproving gaze.
“Smiths use water,” I said, amazed to hear myself chatter. “To cool the tongs, Sir Nigel, and the red-hot iron.”
Nigel sat and stuck a finger into the water. “Go to Hubert.”
The Book of the Lion Page 11