Holy Warrior

by Angus Donald

  I found Robin in his pavilion, seated on an empty box with a drawn sword in his hand.

  ‘What is it, sir,’ I asked as I entered. Robin jerked his chin at the bed, a simple pallet with a rough wool blanket on it. ‘Pull back the blanket, carefully. It’s not a snake this time,’ he said. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. And very cautiously I peeled back the woollen covering. Then I stepped back with a gasp of disgust: a huge, mottled brown furry ball as big as my hand was lying in the centre of the bed, and then, very slowly, it moved one of its many greasy legs.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Robin. He used the flattest, dullest tone possible, the one he used when he was feeling some strong emotion but wished to disguise it.

  ‘I think it is a spider, but I have never seen one so big,’ I said. ‘Reuben would know.’ Suddenly, Robin moved - he stood up, lifted his sword and lunged all in one smooth action, stabbing the great hairy beast through the centre of its body, the blade splitting the canvas of the pallet. The legs writhed as the animal was impaled on Robin’s blade, and biting back my deep disgust, I could see yellow pus seeping from its death wound.

  Reuben was summoned and he hobbled into the tent on a pair of crutches. His broken leg, it seemed, was healing well, and he had suffered no ill effects from his horseback jaunt with Robin on the day of the frankincense raid. ‘It’s a tarantula spider,’ he said. ‘Give you a nasty bite but not fatal. And it was in your bed? Again?’ He sounded incredulous.

  Robin waved us out of the tent - he wanted to sleep, he said, but Reuben stopped me just outside. Taking my arm, he led me out of earshot and said: ‘I understand that you have had a falling out with Robin.’ I made some meaningless grunt by way of reply. ‘He is a hard man, certainly; ruthless, and he can be cold as the grave, but you must try to put yourself in his shoes. He carries the weight of many lives on his shoulders, and he does not complain: his men, his wife Marie-Anne, and their little son, you, and even myself - we all are beholden to Robin. And he does the things he does, even the terrible things, to succour us all.’

  I said nothing. I knew Robin’s philosophy well: he would do anything to protect those inside his familia, his friends, loved ones and retainers, and all the men and women who served him. But anyone outside that charmed circle was nothing to him; enemies, strangers, even comrades of the Cross did not exist as real people for him. They were to be used, lied to, tricked, ignored even killed if it served his aims.

  ‘I am a Jew,’ said Reuben, ‘I understand about family, and about protecting your own. And I know why Robin does what he does. And I can respect that. He is a great man, truly he is. And that is why,’ he stopped for a few moments, ‘that is why, if you know who the person is, within our camp, who wishes to harm Robin in these foul and underhand ways, you must tell me now.’

  He looked at me, his dark eyes catching a hint of firelight, and waited for me to speak. I wondered if he knew that Robin had abandoned his daughter to death in York, and how that would change his opinion of the ‘great man’. Perhaps he had not seen, as I had, Robin make that awful decision. I guessed not. But something stopped me from telling him the truth about Ruth’s death. Instead I said, slowly and clearly: ‘I do not have any idea who it is who wishes to kill Robin.’

  I was lying. I was almost certain who the guilty person was. I just did not know why he wanted my master dead. And a part of me was not sure any more that I wanted to stop him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Saladin had picked his battlefield well: a wide, gently rising plain of short springy turf, which might have been designed by God for horsemen to exercise on. Naturally, he took the higher ground, to the east, farthest from the sea. As we marched out of a deeply wooded area to the north, and on to the wide plain of Arsuf, as this place was known, I saw the whole Saracen host arrayed against us: a great moving smear of black and brown and white, almost a mile long. It was difficult not to be awed by their numbers. Rank upon rank of Turkish cavalry on their small wiry ponies, green and black flags flying above them, helmets shining in the clear air; thousands of warriors in neat rows, bows in their saddle holders, their horses’ heads down cropping the grass. In the centre of the line were the huge Berber horses, their riders’ heads draped with white cloth against the heat, long, sharp lances gleaming in the morning sunshine. Here and there were regiments of footmen, with big swords and small round shields. These were strange semi-naked dark men from the far south of Egypt, I had been told, well-muscled brutes, with faces and skins the colour of aged oak, and brilliant teeth. It was rumoured that they could leap over a horse with a single bound, that they felt no pain, and drank their enemies’ blood from cups made out of skulls.

  The scouts had reported the presence of the Saracen army before we debouched from the forest, and Richard had issued clear orders to the whole army. We were to stay together, all the divisions tightly connected, the rows of men so close together that an apple thrown into the ranks would not hit the ground, and wait for them to attack us. We were to hold fast and not to attack until the King gave the signal. He repeated this point many times. We were to endure their assault until the time was ripe, and then on the King’s signal, we would charge: two trumpet blasts from the first division, two from the second, and two from the third. Robin had issued extra arrows to our bowmen, some of the last of the ones we had brought from England. Then he checked that everybody understood the King’s orders.

  As we filed out from the forest that early morning in September, the King was in the vanguard with his military household and two hundred white-clad knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon. They were followed by the warriors from the wide Angevin lands and Aquitaine; the Normans came next, and we English, and I gazed up at the great red and green Dragon Banner of Wessex that Robin’s men had been personally charged with protecting by the King that dawn. It was strange to see a great Saxon symbol in all this Norman pageantry, but our men were proud to have been chosen as its guardians, and walked all the taller to be carrying the flag that our people had fought so bravely under since the time of King Alfred.

  Behind us came the Flemish under James of Avenses, a great hero to his men, and then the French knights, who had recovered some of their bounce since the disastrous first day of the march and looked eager for a fight, and last of all came the Hospitallers, two hundred and thirty warriors as skilled in war as they were in mending men’s broken bodies, riding close to the precious baggage train. This time no mistakes were made and the ox-wagons, the sides of the great brown beasts trickling with blood from the urging of sharp goads, were hard on the heels of the French. I could have thrown an apple, had I been so inclined, and hit the cheerful face of my clever and kindly friend Sir Nicholas de Scras, who was riding in the front rank of the Hospitallers. Instead, I waved a friendly hand, and received a salute in return.

  When the whole army had emerged on to the plain, nearly twenty thousand men, the King gave the signal for a halt as the vanguard approached a shallow, marshy river that ran directly across our path and down to the sea. The trumpets rang out and a message was passed from commander to commander down the line. We all had turned left to face the vast enemy, who were now less than a mile away, the spearmen and archers on the right of our march, the seaward side, the west, pushing through the horses to form up in front of our cavalry ranks facing east. We were a great, fat line of men and horses and beasts of burden. Our right flank, in the south, the King’s division, was anchored on the river. The left, the Hospitallers and the baggage, received some protection from the woods. A mile away, the enemy sat still on the higher ground to the east, making no advance, content, it seemed, to allow us to make our formations, although I could see units of horsemen and their dust in the far distance moving laterally behind their front lines. For a quarter of an hour nothing happened. There was just the rustle and chink of our men sorting out their weapons and equipment, and the murmur of soldiers talking quietly with their neighbours. ‘Now what?’ said a loud voice from in front of me: L
ittle John, of course. ‘Now,’ said Robin in his carrying battle voice, ‘now, we wait. Stand down, but don’t leave your positions. We wait for them to make the first move.’

  And wait we did, for an hour or more, as the sun rose over the hills to the east and began to burn the joy out of the day. We stood or sat on our horses, all in our full battle gear, sweat trickling down our ribs, staring at the ranks of the enemy in the distance, and trying to guess their numbers, and keep our fears at bay. Saladin had been reinforced, I had been told by Ambroise, and his force was now in excess of thirty thousand strong. It was a daunting thought: we had some fourteen thousand footmen, wielding spears, bows, swords and crossbows - but only about four thousand knights. We were heavily outnumbered and every man in the line knew it.

  Priests moved along the front of the line reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water on the troops who knelt to receive the blessings of the holy fathers. Father Simon was working his way through our ranks, blessing weapons and assuring the men that God and all the saints were on our side and would come to our aid. ‘And any man who dies in this struggle can be assured of a place at the right hand of the Father in everlasting bliss,’ he said. I hoped it was true; that God would welcome all our dead into Heaven, for I felt that my death was close. Once again, the ice-snake of fear slithered in my belly - I had always been lucky in battle, perhaps this day my luck would run out. I mumbled the Pater Noster under my breath, hoping that the words that Christ himself had taught us would give me courage and strength.

  ‘God’s great bleeding arse-grapes, what’s the matter with these people? Are they shy? Don’t they want to fight? What are they doing up there, lined up so pretty and brave if they don’t want a nice battle? Christ on a crutch, this is beginning to get very dull.’ Little John’s blasphemous words shocked me back into reality. And strangely they gave me comfort, too. I had fought beside these men before and triumphed. I could not seriously imagine anyone killing Little John, or Robin for that matter. I looked to my right and saw the Earl of Locksley sitting his horse, as cool and unconcerned as if he were on a picnic. He was humming under his breath, as I knew he often did before battle; his helmet rested on the pommel of his saddle, a slight smile was playing over his face and he was idly twisting a long eagle’s feather in his fingers, admiring the play of sunlight on the tawny colours. He must have sensed me looking at him for he suddenly glanced over at me, and half-smiled. I looked away quickly, ashamed that he had caught me staring at him. Remember: his hands are stained by the innocent blood of Sir Richard at Lea, I thought, furious with myself.

  A messenger came riding down the line, a trouvère whom I knew slightly; I noticed that he stopped and conferred with the commanders of each division in turn, and soon the word was out. We would move on; there would be no battle today. My cowardly heart gave a leap of joy. I had a reprieve. If the Saracens did not want to fight, well, we would just keep on marching down to Jaffa, which was now less than fifteen miles away. As the news spread, the whole column seemed to rise and shake itself like a large, long-bodied dog, a fierce wolfhound perhaps, getting up after a snooze by the fire. A flurry of activity ran all the way down the line, orders were shouted, those cavalrymen who had dismounted pulled themselves back up into the saddle, the footmen who had been seated got up, shouldered their arms and the whole pack of us prepared to march. Trumpets blared, whistles blew, junior officers shouted at their men and the whole massive column began to lumber off the field, away from the enemy, the first units splashing through the wide shallow river to the south of the plain. There would be no battle; we were on our way to Jaffa.

  Just at that moment the enemy drums began to sound; a deep booming noise that vibrated the chest, and put a shiver into a man’s legs. Alien pipes shrieked, cymbals clashed, and brass gongs sounded. I could hear a faint cheer, and there was a ripple of movement in the enemy lines. And for a moment, the whole Christian army seemed to pause. It felt as if I had been sitting in a small room with another person, a stranger, neither of us speaking, and just as I had got up and decided to leave this churlish companion, he had suddenly addressed me. We were wrong-footed, slightly confused by the enemy’s timing. And while we hesitated, and their drums boomed, and their clarions blared, a huge mass of Turkish cavalry on right flank of the enemy, opposite the Hospitallers of the third division, broke away from their line and began to move slowly towards us. We had moved only about a quarter of a mile, perhaps less, when the enemy began to advance, but no one gave the order to halt, and so some of our men carried on marching and some stopped. Suddenly, disastrously, there were gaps appearing all along the column between those who had decided to march and those who had stopped to face the enemy. Men cursed and stumbled, knocking into the men in front; others were buffeted by men from behind. King’s messengers, heralds and trouvères charged up and down the line bellowing that we were to halt, and close up the gaps in lines again - urgent trumpets reinforced this message. And into this mess - an army, strung out on the march, trying to change its mind - charged a thousand highly trained Turkish cavalrymen, bows in their hands, pagan wickedness in their hearts.

  The enemy riders made straight for our extreme left flank: the baggage train guarded by the Hospitallers. Like a wheeling flock of sparrows, but with the noise and thunder of a mountain avalanche, they swooped in, drums booming in unison, like the heartbeat of a giant, coming closer and closer to the slowly moving wagons. A thousand bowstrings twanged as one, a thousand shafts were loosed, forming a black smudge in the pale blue sky, and they descended like a thousand tiny thunderbolts on to the Hospitallers, foot and horse, clattering against arms and armour like a child drawing a stick along the palings of a wooden garden fence; another volley swept up into the air, but lower this time, and smashed into our rearguard, and then the horsemen swung away, turning their ponies as neatly as dancers, and loosing one last volley as they raced away back to their lines. The attack had taken no more time than a Pater Noster: but the effect on us was devastation. The shafts had slammed into the ranks of the footmen guarding the baggage train, spitting Christian limbs and dropping good men in bloody twitching heaps. It seemed the Turks had learnt from their previous failures to pierce our mail and this time they had held their fire until the horses were merely dozens of yards away from the Christian lines. The spearmen of the third division had stood firm; meeting the blizzard of arrows with their teeth gritted and their shields high, and many died for their bravery, pierced with a handful of shafts at the same time; others took horrific wounds to face or neck. A few crossbows answered the arrow storm with a return fire of wicked black quarrels; and when the Turks pulled back, I was glad to see that they left a trail of bodies in their wake.

  I saw a knight in the black habit of a Hospitaller, racing his horse up the rear, seaward side of the line towards the King’s division. ‘That’ll be them asking for permission to charge,’ said Sir James de Brus.

  ‘They won’t get it,’ was Robin’s laconic reply.

  And then the second wave of Turkish cavalry began their charge. While the first wave had been attacking the Hospitallers, a second formation as large as the first had moved forward and, as the first unit sped away from the baggage train, firing backwards from their retreating saddles, another thousand screaming light cavalrymen thundered in their comrades’ hoofprints to bring a storm of death to the battered black knights and their beleaguered foot soldiers. Some Hospitallers led their horses to safety behind the lines and took their place, afoot, long lance in hand, in the thinning line of spearmen.

  And still the drums boomed, pipes squealed, cymbals clashed, and the Turkish arrows thrummed through the air; I could hear the screams of the wounded and the war cries of the knights and footmen above the hellish din - and then I had to tear my eyes away from the valiant defense on the left for, suddenly, we had our own problems. A large force of Saracen light cavalry - some hundreds of them - had peeled away from the main body of the enemy and was trotting directly toward Robin’s men. The
battle was now coming to us.

  ‘Shield wall,’ bellowed Little John. And eighty burly spearmen moved with smooth precision into a formation they had practised a hundred times. They formed a line, standing shoulder to shoulder, fifty paces long, their big round shields overlapping and held tightly together, long spear shafts resting in the dip between adjoining shields, and creating a barricade of wood, muscle and steel; a wall with an impenetrable hedge of spearheads protruding frontwards. If it held firm, no horse would willingly charge that barrier - for the animal to launch itself on those spears would be suicide.

  Behind our wall of spearmen stood a double line of archers in dark green tunics, bows strung, short swords in their belts, their arrows stuck point first into the turf front of them. And behind the archers, twenty yards behind, was the mass of our cavalry, with myself next to Robin and Sir James de Brus in the front line, ready to deliver my master’s orders or relay his messages anywhere on the field.

  Screaming like the demons of Hell, the wiry horsemen raced towards us. At a hundred and fifty paces they pulled back their bow cords, nocked their arrows and prepared to darken the sky with their shafts - but we were much quicker off the mark. Owain the master bowman shouted a command and with a noise like an old oak tree creaking in a gale, a hundred and sixty archers pulled back their bowstrings to their ears and loosed a wave of grey death over our shield wall directly into the surging tide of charging Turks. The arrows smashed into the front rank of the enemy horsemen like a gigantic swinging sword, cutting down the entire forward line, hurling men from their saddles and plunging steel arrowheads six-inches deep into the chests and throats of the charging ponies. The animals tumbled forwards, veered to the side or tried to rear away from the pain, throwing the whole mass of horsemen behind them into confusion. Our bows creaked and the arrows whirred again, and another swarm of needle-pointed death thrummed into the enemy formation. The horses behind the first rank crashed into their dead or dying leaders; delicate equine legs snapped like twigs under the impetus as half-ton charging animals, maddened with pain, barged into one another; men cartwheeled out of their saddles, limbs spread, weapons flying, and landed with a sickening thump on the dry ground; and another volley of arrows scythed into the press of the enemy punching into the third and four ranks and creating yet more carnage. A few hardy souls, still a-horse, nimbly picked their way through the dead and dying men and animals, and tried to continue the charge, but they were soon cut down by the archers, firing at will and picking their targets. The whole charge had come to nothing, destroyed by a few hundred yard-lengths of ash, hurled by a long stick and a piece of hempen string. I could see that the rearmost ranks of the enemy were pulling their mounts around and heading back to their lines. Riderless horses trotted aimlessly across the field: an unhorsed man, his black turban unwound in a long black trail of cloth to reveal a shiny spiked helmet, was cursing and rubbing his bruised body. He shook his sword at us in rage and then, as an arrow thumped into a horse carcass beside him, he backed away, and, looking fearfully over his shoulder, he started to run back up the hill to safety. The archers let him live, and they cheered themselves lustily for having broken the charge - but halfway through the celebrations, the cries died in their throats, for only seventy yards away, coming round the side of the wreckage of the Turkish squadrons, which had screened their advance, and coming on at a canter in perfect order, was the brigade of Berber lancers. Five hundred men advanced, wrapped in fine-mesh steel mail and loose white robes, each armed with two short light throwing javelins and one long stabbing spear, on big fresh horses. And they were coming for our blood. We just had time for one ragged volley of arrows from the archers and these elite and savage horsemen were upon us.