by Jack Whyte
“Knights have no need to read, or to write. They have no time to waste on such things. They are educated only in warfare and fighting, and they will know nothing else for the duration of their lives. And yet being men, they are too stupid to recognize or accept the frightening vastness of their own ignorance, and so in hope of sounding wise and seeming clever, they quote and misquote their betters and, all too frequently and unfortunately, their benighted peers as well, filling the air with the belching emptiness of bellicose ignorance being misquoted by fools and ignoramuses. That is the grand total, the sum contribution to our existence, of most of the men who compose this army. And set above those, we are asked to believe, are their betters … the makers of military opinion and shapers of belief. But sadly, they, too, are knights for the most part, no better informed or educated than their underlings.” He stopped dramatically, then resumed in a much quieter, deadly serious voice.
“And then there come the clerics, last of all, but powerful beyond credence—the priests, the churchmen, the so-called men of God. More than all others combined, these, I believe, are the true malefactors of our time. Their ignorance is of another order. Malignant, oppressive, and tyrannical, they are consumed by their own self-importance and all too often just as tragically blind and bigoted as the most ignorant of their followers.”
Harry Douglas was looking at Sinclair with rounded, awe-stricken eyes, his mouth slightly open as though he was about to speak but could not move his jaw, which was for several moments exactly true. But then he found his tongue and managed to say, “You told them that? You said that to the priests?”
The beginnings of a grin tugged at the corner of Alec’s mouth. “No, I did no such thing. D’you think me daft? All I did was observe aloud that, having lived for years among the enemy, I had never seen any of them eat human flesh, fornicate unnaturally or with animals, or consort knowingly with devils in order to conjure magical defeats for Christian armies at their hands. I said that Saracens were, in many surprising and enlightening ways, remarkably similar to our own people at home, in loving their children and honoring their elders, attending to their civic duties, producing taxes for their governors, and voluntarily leaving their families behind and riding off to war when they were called upon. And having said so, I refused to change my opinions or my testimony.” He shrugged. “That was sufficient to outrage them and to have me cast from the society of my supposedly civilized cohorts. And so I left, almost three months ago.”
“Would you like to return now, with us?”
Another shrug. “No, I think not. I have been alone now for almost longer than I stayed in camp on my return, and I find I prefer it … Besides, I am not completely alone, not all the time. I have friends who visit me from time to time.” He glanced around. “Look, we are out. That always amazes me, the speed of the change.”
It was true, they had ridden abruptly out from the boulder field and were now in an open desert of sandy ground, thinly scattered with desiccated, long-dead shrubs among which the largest pebble visible was barely the size of a man’s thumb. Ahead of them now, perhaps a mile away, the sand began to slope upward into dunes, but at this point there was nothing beneath them but bare earth and sandy clay, and at their backs a straight line, almost a solid wall, of boulders, seemingly man-made in their appearance of regularity and the straightness of the line of demarcation. St. Clair suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable, highly aware of the openness surrounding them, and involuntarily he sat up straighter in his saddle, dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword and stretching one leg forward to touch the shield that hung from his saddle bow. Beside him, at precisely the same moment, Harry Douglas did the same thing, and Alec Sinclair smiled to himself and peered ahead, to where the distant dunes appeared as a low-lying cloud on the horizon, then flicked at his reins and brought his mount surging to a canter.
Behind him, Harry spurred his horse to catch up, and as he drew alongside, followed by André, he shouted, “Why do you dislike bishops and priests so much? I mean, I have no great opinion of them myself, but you really appear to detest them.”
Sinclair barely glanced at Harry as he shouted back, “You wrong me. I said nothing of bishops and priests. I said men of God. It’s far more complex than priests and bishops.”
Harry reined in without warning and sat frowning until the other two reined in their mounts and rode back to him. “What’s the difference?” he asked when they arrived.
Sinclair made no attempt to pull his mount around again, so that all three of them sat in a mounted triangle, their horses’ heads meeting in the middle.
“Have you ever seen an ants’ nest, Harry?” Sinclair asked him. “A broken one? It is a scene of chaos, with thousands of ants scurrying everywhere, trying to salvage and rescue all the things they feel to be important.”
“Aye. I know what you mean.”
“People are like ants. They are social creatures, and there are certain things they need, and certain things they will go to any lengths to achieve. And of all those things, one of the greatest in importance is a sense of order and design. That is part of the nature of man—an urge to have order and design. It applies in everything we do. And nowhere is that more true than in the worship of God. God may be all-knowing and allpowerful, but His affairs in this world are run and organized by men, and it has always been so. In the beginning was God, and when the first man grew aware of Him, the first priest stepped forward to interpret the One to the other. It may or may not be that the outstretched hand of the priest was incidental, but from that time forth, all priests have subsisted on the largesse of the common people.
“In the security of our homes in France and in England, we tend to think of men of God solely in terms of the Pope and his archbishops, his bishops and his priests. Few of us ever stop to think that in the East, in Constantinople, there is another Church, also Christian but different from that in Rome, yet organized and run by priests like those of Rome. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian—the same God, in virtually all respects, but different in each realm, because the men of God who run the two Churches differ in their beliefs and in their interpretations of God’s will and wishes. Thus we have Christian friends and supposed allies worshipping one God and killing each other for the differences in what they each believe is truth, according to the men of God to whom they look for guidance. God is merciful, we are taught, but men of God need not be. Their task is to convert the world to their particular beliefs.”
He looked from one to the other of his listeners. “So much for Christianity and its supposed unity. But look, too, at Islam. Is it different? No, it is not, not in the sense I am talking about here, because it, too, is run by the men of God. They call themselves imams and mullahs and a range of other names, but they are priests and bishops in every way that we would recognize, in that they seek to control the minds and the lifelong behavior of their fellow men and they live off the goodwill and wealth of the common people. And even they, from the beginning, have fostered divergence in their struggling for power from the outset. No sooner was the Prophet Muhammad declared dead than his followers began to squabble over who would succeed him and control the power of Islam. And mark that word ‘control.’ It is remarkable how often you will find it cropping up, in dealings with the men of God.
“So today, within Islam, you have Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, each tearing at the other’s throat at every opportunity, and each convinced, because their men of God insist it must be so, that Allah is great, as is Muhammad His Prophet, but these others, be they Sunni or Shi’ite, have debased God’s wishes and become the enemy, to be damned and obliterated in God’s holy name. Shi’a Muslim and Sunni Muslim, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian. Bigotry and jealousy and fearful bloodshed entrenched in all four, and four bowed necks beneath the heels of the men of God.
“Would you like to hear more of what I believe, or have I said enough to provoke you, perhaps, into thinking for yourselves?” He looked again from face to face. “Enough?
Excellent. We three may or may not meet again, but if we ever do, I would ask you to avoid directing my thoughts again towards the sweet men of God. Shall we ride on? We are yet far from journey’s end.”
THE FOLLOWING DAY, having found Alec Sinclair and completed the first part of his quest, André talked his new friend Harry Douglas into taking him on a tour of the siege works, which were enormous, far and beyond anything St. Clair had imagined. His focus during his first week in Outremer had been on finding his errant cousin, so that he had really not taken time to look about him and observe the conditions in force here. But now, he was awestricken by the scope of the activities.
Acre had been under siege now for two years, and the assault had long since lost all of its initial excitement and momentum, settling down into grinding routine and the extended periods of boredom common to all static forms of warfare, with only brief and terrifying clashes occurring occasionally between the two opposing forces. And the extent of the siege works was so vast that André had great difficulty in comprehending the complexity of the strategies involved on both sides. Acre itself, now held by a stubborn garrison of mixed Saracen warriors, was one of the oldest ports in Palestine. Built up to prosperity by the Phoenicians hundreds of years earlier, it had developed into a polyglot and extremely wealthy community, attracting merchants and trading fleets from all over the world, and before its capture by Saladin in 1187, it had been renowned as one of the most notorious fleshpots anywhere.
Under the rule of Muslim law, all of that changed. The fleshpots had vanished overnight, the Christian churches were stripped of their crosses and bells, and the mosques of the city were refurbished and reopened, but the conquering Saracen army turned its attention immediately to strengthening the city’s walls and defenses, and for four years now that work had been continuing.
Then, when the original Frankish army had arrived two years later, under the command of Guy de Lusignan, a new momentum had been established. The Christian fleet, composed mainly of Genoese and Pisan fighting ships that dwarfed the Arab dhows and galleys, immediately took command of the seas surrounding the city and established a naval blockade, and it was left to Guy and his small army to blockade the landward side of the city, an undertaking more easily described than achieved.
The city of Acre was vaguely triangular in layout and built on a hook-shaped promontory, its north–south axis tilted slightly to the northeast and southwest, so that the sea fronted it west and south, and it boasted both an inner and an outer harbor, the inner harbor defended by a massive chain that could be raised against incoming ships. On the landward side, the city was protected by a brace of high, parallel walls reinforced by barbicans and towers, the latter spaced closely enough to permit withering crossfire to be laid down against any attacker. These walls had been built by the Templars and the Hospitallers, whose presence in the city in the years before the battle at Hattin was ubiquitous. In the earliest days of the siege, the Frankish attackers came to appreciate how well those walls had been built and quickly learned the folly of attempting to engage the enemy by attacking them directly. Instead, they set up their siege engines and catapults and concentrated all their heaviest firepower on what was estimated to be the strongest but most vulnerable point in the walls, a right-angled corner in the northeastern salient controlled by a high tower known as the Accursed Tower. Settling in to the siege, however, they were acutely aware that their backs were vulnerable, their entire rear exposed to attack should the Sultan bring his armies to the relief of Acre.
It was at that point, Douglas explained to St. Clair, that the Trench was thought of, and for more than a year the Latins labored to build a wide, fortified ditch that stretched two miles inland from the sea and cut off the city from help from the landward side. Saladin’s army began to arrive piecemeal soon after that, but they were unable to challenge the Latin besiegers who sat safely inside their Trench, attacking Acre from the one side and defending themselves against attack by Saladin from the other. But Saladin set up a blockade of his own, on the landward side of the Trench, establishing a heavily manned presence along a three-mile line that effectively curtailed most of the Frankish efforts to bring in supplies. Only occasionally could they land supplies from the sea, because their ditch had a very narrow intersection with the beach, and the Saracen forces concentrated there were constantly on the alert for attempts to smuggle material ashore. Food and supplies did manage to filter through, from time to time, but never enough, and never often enough. In recent months, however, according to Harry Douglas, more and more reinforcements had begun pouring in from every land in Christendom to swell the ranks of the besiegers, and the Christians knew that the city garrison was starving and would not be able to hold out much longer.
On the twentieth day of April 1191, Philip Augustus of France landed in Acre and assumed the overall command of the siege from his nephew, Prince Henry of Champagne. He quickly established his French command post in front of the Accursed Tower and added his own siege machines to the heavy concentration of catapults, trebuchets, and mangonels already in place there, fortifying his own artillery pieces with redoubts made of iron and stone.
That day, having climbed to the highest point of the defensive earthworks on the Trench, facing Acre, André and Harry stood watching the French catapults lobbing horse-sized boulders remorselessly at the walls of the Accursed Tower—so called, Harry said, because legend had it that the thirty pieces of silver used to pay Judas Iscariot had been minted there. But something else caught St. Clair’s attention, a strange-looking device, a long cylinder of sorts, save that it had been cut in half and laid lengthwise on the ground, its far end snug against the wall of the tower that loomed over it.
“What’s that thing, over there?” he asked, pointing at it.
Harry squinted, not quite knowing what he was referring to at first, but then he made a harrumphing sound. “Oh, that. That’s what they call a cat.”
“A cat. It’s obviously a siege engine of some kind, but what does it do?”
“You don’t know what a cat is? Have you never seen one before? They’ve been around since the days of the Caesars, in one form or another.”
André shook his head. “I have heard of them, but I have never seen one. This is my first siege.”
“Well, it works like the old tortoise formations the Romans used to use to defend themselves against falling volleys of arrows. This thing is an armored half cylinder, mounted on wheels. You can see them along the bottom if you look closely enough. The top surface is smooth metal, strong enough to repel anything thrown or dropped down onto it, including Greek fire, the gelatinous mix of pitch and naphtha that clung and burned with a fury unmatched by anything else in nature. Inside, beneath the roof, teams of sappers move it into place, right up against the walls, and then they dig down and in, undermining the walls.”
“Does it work?”
Harry shrugged. “In theory, yes, and I’ve seen it work on several occasions in the past, but not here. These people have been digging away down there for months, since long before Philip arrived, and to this point they have been less than successful.”
“Hmm.” St. Clair turned away and looked to his right, to where the royal standard of France hung limply above Philip’s pavilion. Nothing moved there, and there were no signs that the King might be in residence, although the standard’s presence indicated that he was. “That reminds me,” he said. “Guy de Lusignan arrived in Cyprus a few days before I left. He had a substantial number of knights and nobles with him, but he was most unhappy with Philip.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you? Then tell me why. Some of his knights told me that Philip had chosen to back Conrad against him in this matter of the kingship of Jerusalem. I know the word of that upset Richard and his supporters, but I had my hands full at that time—I was being inducted into the Order—and I did not have time or opportunity to explore what was going on. What do you know about it?”
“Not much. I was he
re throughout the affair, but being an intimate of none of the main players, I know little about what was involved, other than the common barrack-room chatter and the opinions of a couple of knights whom I respect.” Harry paused, considering something, and then resumed. “You know, I presume, that Guy’s claim to the throne was through his marriage to Sibylla? Aye, well, when Sibylla died, Guy’s kingship died with her. Oh, he’s been hanging on to it since for all that he is worth … which, come to think of it, is all he is worth. But the plain truth is that Guy can no longer really call himself King, because the next heir in the legal line is Sibylla’s sister Isabella, and she has been married for years to a husband whom she might already have named King, quite legally, had she been so inclined. Humphrey de Toron. Does the name mean anything?” St. Clair shook his head. “Well, he was stepson to Reynald de Chatillon.”
“Aha! Now there’s a name I recognize. The one Saladin beheaded? They called him the Templar Pirate?”
“That’s him. Saladin decapitated him in person, for just and long overdue cause. The man was a disgrace to everything the Temple is supposed to stand for.”
“So his stepson is to be King of Jerusalem?”
“God, no. Heaven forbid. The man is a bigger disgrace than Reynald ever was. He is a useless, cowardly poltroon already several times disgraced, and atop all that he is an outrageously public homosexual, which might be ignored in practically anyone else, but demands recognition in one who is married to a reigning queen.”
“Oh …” André decided to say nothing of what had sprung into his mind about another similarly married to a queen, and contented himself by asking, “And this man is married to Queen Isabella?”