But Baynard was satisfied. He’d heard enough. And it seemed to him that Pino and Balbo and the sleek Lampreda could make it work.
He would anyway pray so. Or hope.
* * *
He reached for the latch of another, more intimate door.
His attention never far from the walls of Acre – and twice sent running for cover by the arrows, the missiles, the flasks of glutinous flame – he questioned a number of his fellow knights. Had they heard, by chance, of a certain Gilles de Magnat-Vaulmier, Duc de Querinard, Comte d’Almé? Just an idle query. He’d met the nobleman before, that was all, and merely wondered if they knew of his whereabouts.
That’s right, he was one of the Treasurers for the Cause.
With a haughty young daughter? Oh, really? And Baynard Falkan feigned ignorance, unwilling to declare his knowledge of Christiane.
But the answers were unhelpful. Nobody had seen Magnat-Vaulmier at Acre. Though perhaps he was up there at Tyre. Or wintering in Cyprus, awaiting the arrival of King Philip Augustus of France, King Richard of England.
‘That’s the question you should be asking, my Lord Tremellion.
The hell with Magnat-Vaulmier. What we’d like to know is where are our laggard monarchs?’
* * *
He made his way again to the faded scarlet pavilion of King Guy. And, as before, he was told to await his turn. He’d be summoned in the due course of time.
But Falkan had now had enough of waiting. It seemed that all of Christendom was waiting; the siege of Acre turned stagnant through indecision; the various warlords sulking in their tents. With the onset of winter they’d be mired by the mud, shoulders lifted in a ponderous shrug, the Frankish leaders asking what else they could do – but wait?
Sheltered from the October drizzle by a canvas awning, the clerk of lists was peering downward as he snapped at Tremellion to wait his turn. So it shocked him to feel a wiry hand reach beneath his chin and wrench his head upward, Baynard’s wrist hoisting the scribbler’s jaw.
‘You and I,’ Falkan measured. ‘We should get a few things settled. I’ve heard the rumours, the stories of claims and complaints, but it’s time you knew my interest lies elsewhere. You keep telling me there are men of greater rank ahead on the list. So be it. But what are they doing in there, save to moan and—’
Gargling in Baynard’s grasp, the keeper of the lists said, ‘And you? What makes your presence here so different? You’re not so important that—’
‘Not so important in myself? Well, that I’ll grant you. But a weighty leather chest, half-filled with coins and jewels? Or would you rather I lifted the whole damned thing on my shoulders, made my way inland – then spilled it at the feet of the Sultan Saladin? Believe me, your behaviour tempts me to do it!’
‘It seems,’ the clerk said, ‘though you never made this clear – seems your request for an audience – if you’d be good enough to release me – allows you to—’
‘Keep it shorter, man. Much shorter. Do I get to see the Monarch of Jerusalem, or not?’ His grip still firm, he allowed the clerk to peer at the list, invent some gap in the names and say, ‘Fortune favours you, Tremellion. A space in the king’s crowded day. Now, if you’ll permit me—’
At last.
Finally it was to happen.
After the bloody attack on the mill – the storm aboard the Gossamer – the ambushes in Spain – the escape from the Hawksbill – the imprisonment in the Rocca di Losara and their further bloody skirmish in the grounds of Atzeri’s harem – all that, and the attack at Pafos – the siphon of fire from the Saracen galley – and finally, at last, it was to happen.
Baynard Falkan would be greeted in the doorway of the scarlet pavilion by Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, the young knight bowing in respect to his monarch, then the Christian leader bowing in acknowledgement of Sir Geoffrey’s bequest and, if only in part, to his son.
Not before time, Baynard thought. He tugged at his rain-dampened surcoat, settled his sword comfortably at his hip and wiped the mist of drizzle from his face.
He had never in his life spoken to a king, and he tried to imagine what Sir Geoffrey would have said, the young Tremellion drawing knowledge from the old.
* * *
The clerk re-emerged from the extensive, dripping pavilion. Smirking at Falkan, he stepped aside, allowing the household guards of Lusignan to seize their caller, unsheath his sword, slip his dagger from his belt, pull down the tops of his boots and ferret at his spine.
‘Treasure or not,’ the clerk told him, ‘no one carries arms into the presence of the king. Especially not those who tell us they’d be just as willing to offer it to Islam.’
Then he retreated under his open-sided tent, fastidiously brushing rain from the bench. And making a special show of massaging his throat.
Falkan had time to glance at him, then was hustled into the dismal, leaking headquarters of the king who was next to never seen at large in the Christian camp.
* * *
But it was not King Guy of Jerusalem who moved forward to face the caller. Guy was young – a well-known fact – though not so Baynard Falkan’s immediate host. This was a warrior in his fifties – his face no longer handsome, though it might have been once, before life and its lines had channelled him with its marks. Taken unawares by the guards, Falkan yet thought it was a face he could trust. Not unlike Sir Geoffrey’s. Nor as he himself would wish to be, thirty years from now.
The man said, ‘We’ve been told to expect much from you, Tremellion. All kinds of promises relayed by our ill-humoured clerk. I hope to God they’re true, for I’m filled to the gills with talk of banners and palfreys and who-gets-favoured-by-the-cooks. In short, my lord – Falkan, is it? – you stand to make a friend of me. Or a most uncharitable enemy.’
Some way behind the squat, grey-haired warlord, Baynard could see a group of knights clustered around a man who sat, as if imprisoned, in a wide, carved-oak chair. Pinched and sallow, his yellow hair receding, the man seemed further diminished by the outsize throne.
Yet who else could this be but the Commander of the Christian Army, monarch of the overwhelmed city and Kingdom of Jerusalem? ‘You hear me, Tremellion? Which is it to be?’
Returning his gaze to the warrior, Baynard said, ‘You have the advantage, my lord. I’m known to you now by both name and title, though you keep your own a secret.’
An expression, approximate to a smile, touched the man’s lips. ‘You must have reached us very recently, here at Acre.’
‘Not so recently.’
‘Indeed? Then my suspicions are confirmed. I’m fast becoming forgotten; spending too damned long in this tent, that’s the trouble.’ Then he shrugged and went on, ‘I am Jobert de Blanchefort, Marshal of the Kingdom, heaped with more honours than you, or even I, could ever remember. It’s a pity I’m forgotten, for I’m the next best thing out here to the king himself.’
The way he said it made Baynard also risk the vestige of a smile. A well-balanced man, he thought, Jobert de Blanchefort. Aware of his power, though not drugged with self-importance. And possessed of a sense of humour, as rare a thing in the camp as an untainted breeze.
Indicating the clerk, Falkan said, ‘If this man relayed the truth, as I told it, you’ll have no cause to unleash your uncharitable anger on me, my lord Marshal.’
‘So you are bringing us money?’
‘In obedience to my father’s wishes.’
‘And precious stones? The clerk made much of—’
‘Those, too.’
‘Well, now,’ Jobert told him, ‘I’m warming toward you already, Tremellion. But you’re sure you’ve no moans or miseries up your sleeves?’
‘None, my lord. Though two brief requests. The first – and with no disrespect intended – is that I be allowed to present my father’s wealth in person to the king. It is what Sir Geoffrey Falkan would have wanted.’
‘You speak of him as if—’
‘He was murdered, sire.’
‘I see.’ He paused before asking, ‘And the other request?’
And here the young knight faltered. I have gone too far, he thought. Yet I have to know. ‘It is not strictly – That’s to say – Well, there is a certain Gilles de Magnat-Vaulmier, Duc de Querinard—’
‘I know of that man; he is much respected. Though he is not within the Kingdom—’
‘No matter, my lord Marshal. It was only—’
‘and won’t be until the tail-end of the year.’ Then he turned with military precision, nodding the suddenly animated Baynard into the presence of their king.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Remembering it later, he prayed his deportment would have satisfied his father. Or that, anyway, Sir Geoffrey would have viewed the scene with sympathy, from above.
Jobert de Blanchefort had announced the young Tremellion as a caller who was worthy of the monarch’s close attention. ‘And that means, my lord King, that you set aside that pile of churlish petitions. Do we really care if the English claim their lines are overrun with vermin? There are rats throughout the camp. Or that the French continue to moan that they’re unsupported whenever they move against Acre? God knows, it’s the general cry. And has been from the first.’
Guy of Lusignan – a man not only uncertain within himself, but the victim of bullying noblemen, badgering priests – glanced up from the oak and leather prison of his throne.
‘What? Worthy of what? Who did you say he was?’
The presentation was repeated, Baynard kneeling, the fretful monarch mouthing above his head. He’s here for what?
It was left to Marshal Jobert to wave the household guards aside; approach the king and murmur to him; tip his heavy head as Guy responded; then finally turn to Baynard and say, ‘My lord King will send a detachment of his knights to collect the chest. If you’d be good enough to wait over there, Tremellion—’
‘They won’t get it.’
The King of Jerusalem leaned forward, a hand moving as if to brush the strands of a web from his face. ‘What’s this you’re telling me? You’ve brought money for the Cause, but my knights—? I don’t understand this, de Blanchefort.’
The Marshal scowled at Baynard. ‘No more, in truth, do I. Explain yourself, Tremellion.’
‘Quite simply, my lord King, my lord Marshal, whoever you send will not be allowed to remove the chest from my tent. There’s a man who protects it. The Constable of Tremellion. A Saxon named Guthric. It will not be enough for him that your knights lay claim to it. Too many others have tried.’
The troubled and balding monarch glared at Jobert. ‘This is all I could have hoped for! To be told by this – this parvenu – what my own knights may and may not do! If the money’s for the Cause, then it belongs to the Cause, and no shuffling ape of a Saxon—’
Stopping just short of discourtesy, Jobert de Blanchefort gestured at the king to wait, and be calm. Then he asked Tremellion, ‘So what would you have us do? Are there some quaint terms to be met? Documents to be signed?’
‘No, sire, there are not. I only ask that Guthric be permitted to deliver the chest himself. Escorted if you wish. But that it not be wrestled from him half a mile short of its proper destination.’
‘Is that where you’re quartered? Half a mile from the Royal pavilion? I’ll see you’re brought in closer. As for this constable of yours – Is he really a shuffling ape, as his majesty suggests?’
‘He’d pass for one,’ Baynard said calmly, ‘if apes were as large and as loyal.’
King Guy of Jerusalem drummed his fingers on the terminals of his chair. ‘Enthralling though it is, this talk of our simian Saxon, I fail to—’
‘Perhaps you do, your majesty,’ Jobert told him. ‘Very likely you do. But I now see what Tremellion is after. And I agree it.’ Then he nodded at Falkan. ‘Return to us in an hour. You and your constable and the wealth you’ve brought from – Devon?’
‘A few miles further to the west, my lord Marshal. From Cornwall.’
‘A good long way, with such baggage. Be annoying for a fellow to have strangers take it from him, when he was so close to the finish.’ He nodded again, this time in part-dismissal, knowing his next task would be to explain to the king that even apes and parvenus were entitled to deliver their gifts to the door.
* * *
And so it was done; the leather chest lowered on to the carpeted floor of the faded and sagging pavilion; the balding Guy of Jerusalem coming forward from his chair to gaze at the glitter of jewellery, the glint of coin.
The wealth of Tremellion. Reduced in value by Ranulf’s trade with the Levantine in the mill of Tresset. Then increased by the contents of Silvano Atzeri’s cabinet in the Rocca di Losara.
In personal terms, a fortune.
In military terms, enough to prolong the siege of Acre by somewhat less than a month.
* * *
Guthric was thanked in person by the king, the two men keeping their opinions to themselves. Guy had no reason to alter his earlier pronouncement – a shuffling ape.
For his part, the constable concealed a deep, and almost childlike disappointment. Having never before set eyes on a monarch, he’d expected a man who was larger than life, encased in shimmering armour, an aura of light illuminating his presence. His voice – or so Guthric had imagined – would be deep and resonant; his gestures firm, his expression fierce, his gaze formidable; a creature worthy of the name of king.
But this sallow and shrunken backwater of a man? Without even a crown on his head? And no bright garments! No silvered armour! Meet him in the camp – meet him anywhere! – and he’d pass as the brother of that sour-faced clerk who sat outside the pavilion.
With the accurate simplicity of an infant, the scarred and illiterate Saxon told himself it was no damn wonder the army was in such a sorry mess. A king like that? He couldn’t lift fresh-baked loaves from a cooling oven…
* * *
As promised by Jobert de Blanchefort, the Knight of Tremellion was brought closer to the Standard of Jerusalem. He asked his friend and companion, Enrique de Vaca, if he wished to come along, but the Spaniard gently declined.
‘It pleases me to see, my dear Halcón, that it’s not just the English and French and the Northerners who are here. There’s a group of us from the warmer climes of the West; not many, I grant you, but enough to persuade us we’re a force to be reckoned with. I’m welcomed there—’
‘As you would be throughout the camp, Enrique. Most especially by me.’
The Knight of Santiago grinned, his expression combining gratitude with regret. ‘We will not be so far apart, amigo mio. Though remember what I said to you once before. Take care you’re not blinded by the dust of my horse—’
‘Or in this case, the mud.’
‘Si, si. Or in this case mud.’
The young men embraced, pointed out where they’d be in the camp, then quietly, unsmiling now, wished each other the protection of God and the Virgin Mary, of Jesus Christ and the feathered angels of Heaven.
It was no exaggeration to seek the blessing of all that was good, for they both knew how soon they might die.
* * *
‘’Ere,’ Quillon said, ‘you know what I found, m’lord? A bunch of English archers, an’ more than a few of ’em from Cornwall! Now, I know as I should stay with you, bein’ your safeguard an’ all, but I thought I’d ask—’
‘Is your shoulder healed?’ Baynard queried. ‘Are you well enough recovered to draw a bow?’
‘Four out of six on the target,’ Quillon boasted. ‘I spend most of me time lettin’ fly down there at the butts. Another week, an’ I’ll be tellin’ ’em all what to do. That is, if —’
‘Off you go and join them, Master Quillon. Though promise me this. When you loose your shafts at the Saracens, up on the walls, you’ll have the sense to keep your own head down. They’re the finest archers in the world, the bowmen of Islam. Get killed out here and the Hexel River will be overstocked with fish.’
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The leonine Quillon roared at the joke – remembered that poachers could be hanged – strangled his laughter and said yes, he’d promise to be careful, Lord Falkan could rely on it.
Yet he couldn’t quite resist telling Tremellion, ‘After all. When it’s over ’ere, we might go back via Cyprus, ain’t that right? An’ stay in one of them houses, up on the slope? An’ get to see some of them girls again? Like we did before?’
* * *
The group now dispersed, they were each subjected to the harsh realities of life in the Christian camp. Enrique de Vaca and Baynard Falkan were offered the best of the poor, oversalted diet, Baynard ensuring that Guthric ate mouthful-for-mouthful in keeping with the knight himself.
But for Quillon things were harder, the archer forced to employ his special skills in the offshore waters, his popularity increasing as he speared the variety of spiny fish that lurked among the rocks. Without the poacher, his English companions would have been reduced to eating weeds, meat so rotten that it made them vomit, and the only edible part of the vermin that ran through the camp – the hind legs of long-haired rats.
As the Christian winter approached – the Mohammedan season of irrigation – the water-logged plain around Acre became a polluted mire. Disease was rife, the men’s hair falling in tufts, swellings in their groins and armpits, their teeth loose in their sockets. This particular disease was known as Arnoldia, though dysentery and depression ran it close.
Baynard regularly summoned Quillon to his tent, enquired as to the safeguard’s welfare, then forced the young man to eat from his own pewter plate.
He visited Enrique, the knights at first failing to recognize each other; then doing so and grinning as if they’d never been in doubt.
The Edge of the Blade Page 25