The Templar Knight

by Jan Guillou

  The Bedouins fanned out before the advancing column of Templar knights from Gaza. The first of them came riding back in a cloud of dust at top speed even before they were halfway to Ashkelon. Out of breath, he related that in the next village he had seen four Mameluke horses tied outside some clay huts. The village looked deserted, and it was hard to say what the knights were doing inside such miserable dwellings, but the horses were there in any case. Around the village lay a number of goats and sheep that had been shot with arrows.

  At first Arn didn’t want to waste his time on four enemy soldiers, but then Guido de Faramond his weapons master, rode up and pointed out that they could be scouts from the Egyptian siege force, and that these scouts might not be tending to their duties as well as they should. If they took the soldiers by surprise, they would be unable to sound the alarm about the approaching danger from the south.

  Arn agreed with this argument at once and thanked his weapons master for not hesitating to give his opinion. Then he divided his force into four columns, which were soon heading for the village from four directions. By the time they got close enough to see the group of clay huts, they had already passed a number of dead goats and sheep, just as the Bedouin had said. Finally, the four columns of knights merged together just outside the apparently empty village and encircled it. In silence they approached. When they got nearer they could hear what was going on, because two or three women’s voices were emitting heartrending wails. Outside the hut where the atrocities were taking place, four Egyptian horses with expensive saddle tack stood shaking their heads at all the flies.

  Arn pointed to a squadron of knights who dismounted, quietly drew their swords, and went inside. The noise of a brief fight was heard, and then the four Egyptians were cast out into the dust and tied up with their hands behind their backs. Their clothing was in disarray and they tried to shout something about how they were worth a ransom if they were allowed to live.

  Arn got down from his horse and went over to the entrance of the hut, as his knights came out, their faces pale. He stepped inside and saw roughly what he had expected. There were three women. Their faces were bleeding, but none of them seemed to have suffered any mortal injury. They hid themselves with the clothes the Egyptians had ripped from their bodies.

  “What is this village called and to whom do you belong, women?” asked Arn. At first he got no sensible answer because only one of the women seemed to speak understandable Arabic.

  After a halting exchange of words he gathered that both the women and the livestock came from a village that actually belonged to Gaza, but the three women had moved their animals after they were refused entry into the fortress. They had taken their sheep and goats away from one plunderer only to run right into the arms of one that was even worse.

  Since their honor and that of their families had now been offended, there was only one way to redress the wrong, reasoned Arn, once the women had calmed down a bit and understood that he had no intention of continuing what the Egyptians had started. So he would leave the four bound rapists where they were, and the violated women could do with them as they saw fit to avenge their honor. They could also keep the horses and saddles as a gift from Gaza. But he asked them not to release the Egyptians alive, because he would prefer to see them beheaded. The Palestinian women swore that none of the rapists would be allowed to live, and Arn was content with that. He went outside, mounted Khamsiin, and commanded a new tight formation to continue on toward Ashkelon. They would attack one hour before sundown, regardless of whether they had time to prepare or not, because that was the order from the Grand Master himself.

  When they had ridden a way off, desperate screams were heard from the captive Egyptians. No one turned around in the saddle to look back; no one said a word.

  As they neared Ashkelon their approach still seemed to have gone unnoticed. Either they’d had the improbable luck to pass through the enemy’s chain of scouts at the place where those four rapists, now dead, were supposed to stand guard. Or else the Mother of God had led them by the hand.

  Now several other Bedouin spies came riding up and began talking all at once about how the enemy had taken up position outside Ashkelon. Arn got down from his horse and smoothed out some sand with the tip of his iron-clad boot, pulled out his dagger, and began to draw Ashkelon and its walls in the sand. Soon he had deciphered the Bedouins’ reports and knew how the Mameluke siege force was deployed.

  There were two possible choices. Since the woods grew close to Ashkelon, they could get nearer to the enemy if they attacked from the east. With luck they could get within the distance of two long arrow shots before the attack would have to be launched with full force and speed. However then they would be attacking with the setting sun directly in their eyes.

  The second possibility was to move in a wide arc toward the northeast and then west and south. Then they would be coming from the north and avoid having the sun in their eyes. But the risk of discovery would be greater. Arn decided that they should wait where they were and spend the remaining hour before the attack in prayer instead of moving on and risking discovery. They would just have to endure having the setting sun in their eyes during the attack. The enemy’s numbers were ten times their own, so everything depended on surprise, speed, and the force of the first assault.

  After their prayers they rode as quietly and slowly as they could through the thinning woods that stuck out like a tongue toward Ashkelon. Arn signaled his men to halt when he could no longer ride any farther without being seen. The weapons master walked his horse cautiously up alongside him, and they sat in silence for a while, observing the enemy encampment stretching all the way along the eastern wall of Ashkelon. Most of the horses were in large pens out on the flanks, farther away from the city wall than the rest of the siege force. That told them much. It took no time or rumination to know how the attack would proceed. Arn called over his eight squadron leaders and gave them several curt orders. When they had all returned to their places and mounted up, the men prayed together one last time to the High Protectress of the Knights Templar and unfurled Her standard, which was brought to the vanguard next to Arn and raised along with the black-and-white flag of the Knights Templar.

  “Deus vult! God wills it!” shouted Arn as loud as he could, and his cry was repeated instantly back along the whole column.

  Arn and the knights closest to him on either side slowly began to move forward as those farther back trotted up and out to both sides in orderly fashion. When the Templar knights now emerged from the woods it looked as though their center was standing almost still while two mighty wings of white-clad and black-clad knights were unfolded on both sides. When the whole force was arrayed in a straight line, the thunder of the horses’ hooves rose to a mighty rumble as they all increased their speed to a gallop over the last stretch of ground before crashing into the entire length of the enemy camp.

  Few enemy soldiers had managed to mount their horses, and they were the first targets of the attacking Templar knights. At the same time the horse pens of the Mamelukes were attacked out on the flanks and the fences were trampled flat, while the enemy’s horses were stuck with lances so they would panic and direct their wild flight in toward the camp. The area soon became a chaos of panic-stricken horses and Mameluke soldiers running for their weapons or trying to escape the heavy cavalry of the enemy among collapsing tents and cooking fires that spread embers and sparks in every direction as they were overrun by the horses.

  The gates of Ashkelon had been opened, and from there the king’s secular army now attacked from two directions toward the center of the besiegers’ camp. When Arn saw this he yelled to Armand de Gascogne to ride straight south with the flag so that all the Templar knights would follow along in that maneuver and make room for the royal army.

  Soon the Templar knights were in tight formation and riding forward in a long phalanx right through the enemy army, slashing and jabbing and trampling everything in their path. The enemy soldiers never managed
to recover from their fright and surprise, so they never understood that they were being attacked by such a small force. Because few of the Mamelukes had managed to mount their horses, they didn’t have a good overview, and so it might seem that an utterly superior enemy was leading the onslaught.

  The battle turned into a bloodbath that went on until long after sundown. More than two hundred captives were then led in through the gates of Ashkelon, and the battlefield was left to the darkness and the Bedouins, who now appeared out of nowhere like vast numbers of vultures. The Christians closed the city gates behind them as if they wanted to spare themselves the sight of what would now take place all night long out there in the torchlight.

  In the city’s largest market square Arn arrayed his troops and took roll call, squadron by squadron. Four men were missing. Considering the size of their victory that was a very low price, but the important thing for the moment was to find the fallen or wounded brothers. He quickly put together a squadron of sixteen men and sent them out with spare horses to collect the missing brothers for care or for Christian burial.

  Then he went to the small quarter of the city reserved for the Knights Templar and examined his wounds, which were mostly scratches and bruises. He washed himself and asked where he could find the Grand Master. He found him waiting in the chapel dedicated to the Mother of God and together they offered prayers of thanksgiving because God and His Mother had given them a glorious victory. Afterward they went out to talk with each other.

  They went up on the breastwork and sat down a short distance from the nearest guard post so that they would be undisturbed. Down below them in the city the victory celebration was in full swing except in the Templar quarter and in the grain store that had been put at the brothers’ disposal for the night. In those two buildings it was quiet and dark except for individual candles where they were tending to each other’s wounds.

  “Saladin may be a great commander, but he couldn’t have grasped how many of you there were down in Gaza, or he wouldn’t have been content to leave barely two thousand men here to watch Ashkelon,” observed Odo de Saint Amand. That was the first thing he said to Arn, as there was not much need to discuss the day’s victory.

  “All the knights stayed inside the fortress when he came to Gaza. There were only two of us with white mantles up on the breastwork,” Arn explained. “But he has more than five thousand Mameluke cavalry left. How are things in Jerusalem?”

  “The king’s army is here in Ashkelon, as you can see. In Jerusalem, Arnoldo has two hundred knights and four or five hundred sergeants, and that is all, I’m afraid.”

  “Then we’ll have to attack and disrupt Saladin’s army as soon as we regain our strength. And that will be tomorrow,” said Arn tersely.

  “Tomorrow we probably won’t have the king’s army with us, since they’ll still be recovering from the aftereffects of this evening. Not from the battlefield, for they didn’t have to do much before we were victorious, but from tonight’s celebrating,” Odo de Saint Armand said fiercely.

  “We won and they’re celebrating the victory. So we’re dividing the labor, as usual,” muttered Arn, at the same time smiling at his high protector. “By the way, I think it best if we do not proceed too hastily. If we’re lucky, not a single one of the vanquished soldiers trying to flee will make it through the Bedouins’ lines out there, so it will be a while before Saladin finds out what happened. That would be to our great advantage.”

  “We’ll see tomorrow,” nodded Odo, getting up. Arn also stood up to receive the Grand Master’s embrace and kisses, first on the left and then on the right cheek.

  “I bless you, Arn de Gothia,” said the Grand Master solemnly as he held Arn by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “You can’t imagine how it feels to stand up there on the wall and see our men come out in an attack as if there were two thousand of us and not three hundred. I had promised the secular army and the king that you would arrive at the appointed time, and you kept your promise. It was a great victory, but we have a long way to go.”

  “Yes, Grand Master,” said Arn quietly. “This victory is already forgotten. What we have before us is a very large Mameluke army. May God protect us yet again.”

  The Grand Master released Arn and took a step backward. Arn fell to his knees at once and bowed his head as his most exalted leader disappeared into the darkness along the rampart of the fortress.

  Arn rose to his feet and stood alone for a moment, looking out beyond the wall and listening to the occasional screams from the wounded. His whole body was aching, but it was a lovely warm and throbbing ache and except for a scratch along one cheek he was not bleeding. As usual, he felt the most pain in his knees, which had to absorb the impact when he rode into an enemy host on horseback or struck down a soldier by riding right over him.

  In the days that followed, not much happened at Ashkelon. The Mameluke prisoners were chained and set to work digging graves for their dead comrades out on the battlefield. Now and then small groups of Bedouins would bring in new captives to sell, dragging them behind their camels.

  The Bedouins also brought news of Saladin’s army. Contrary to what the Templars had expected, Saladin had not moved off toward Jerusalem; instead he had loosed the reins on his army and let them plunder the entire countryside between Ashkelon and Jerusalem. Perhaps he thought that it was better to plunder now, before his glorious victory. He was obviously confident that they would encounter no enemies out in the field; he knew that the enemy forces were safely bottled up inside their fortresses and behind the city walls of Ashkelon and Jerusalem. Once the hunger to pillage had been quelled in his army, he could take Jerusalem without risk that the holy city would be desecrated after his conquest. No matter what the reason for his course of action, this was still a mistake that he would regret in ten years’ time.

  In the fortress at Ashkelon a war council was held. King Baldwin sat in a litter chair covered in blue muslin so that from the outside he could be seen only in silhouette. It was whispered that his hands were beginning to rot away and that he would soon go completely blind.

  By the king’s right side sat Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand, and behind him Arn and the two fortress masters from Toron des Chevaliers and Castel Arnald. At the king’s other side sat the bishop of Bethlehem, and along the walls of the hall sat the Palestinian barons with whom the king had allied himself in his desperate attempts to wage war. Behind the bishop hung the True Cross, decorated with gold, silver, and precious stones.

  The Christians had never lost a battle when they carried with them the True Cross into the field, so it was precisely this question that took up the most time and was considered the most important.

  Carrying the True Cross, on which Our Savior had suffered and died for the sins of man, into a battle that could not be won was to show irreverence, a sin comparable to blasphemy, in the opinion of the brothers Baldwin and Balian d’Ibelin, who were the most distinguished of the barons in the hall.

  To that the bishop of Bethlehem replied that nothing could more plainly express the prayer for a miracle from God than to take along the True Cross when only a miracle from God could ensure their salvation.

  Balian d’Ibelin said that as he understood it, one could not negotiate with God by using coercion, the way one negotiated with an inferior enemy. In the impending battle the Christians in the best case could hope to disrupt Saladin for an extended period. Then the autumn rains would transform the hills around Jerusalem to a cold, red field of clay with wet snow and strong winds, so that the siege would be halted for reasons other than the defenders’ bravery and good faith.

  The bishop opined that he was probably the one in the hall who fully understood how to talk to God, and he therefore refused more advice from laymen in this matter. The True Cross would be their salvation in a battle that could not be won unless God granted them a miracle. What other relic in the whole world could be more powerful than the True Cross?

  Arn and his two fortress
master brothers never said a word during this argument. For Arn’s part, this was partly because he had to remain silent when the Grand Master himself represented the Templar order. Besides, his two brothers were higher in rank than he was. But even if he were asked his opinion, he would have been hard pressed to answer, since he was inclined to think the bishop was wrong and the knight of Ibelin was right.

  In the end it was the young leprous king who decided the dispute. He took the bishop’s side during the second day of discussion, at the very moment when everyone in the hall had begun to feel despair that they were all wasting their time talking instead of acting. The smoke from campfires had already spread across the horizon to the east.

  Saladin’s army had first headed north toward Ibelin; his soldiers took the city and laid waste to it, then swung to the east and Jerusalem. From the smoke from the fires and from occasional refugees that arrived they deduced that the Egyptian troops had dispersed throughout the areas surrounding Ramle and were now plundering and destroying everything in their path. Ramle was the property of the brothers d’Ibelin, and they demanded to go in the vanguard of the secular army because they had the most to avenge. The king granted their request at once.