The White Cross

by Richard Masefield

  ‘There is too little space between the buildings – so hard to get a good cross-draught.’ The old man’s pointing to the vents above the shutters. ‘A south-west breeze is what we need. But as things are – My Lady, Master Kempe – I believe you’ll find the smoke less tiresome if you sit.’

  Sara hurries in with cushions for the bench. I tuck my cloak in and reward her with a smile. ‘The recent persecutions of others of your faith? They do not touch you here in Lewes I suppose?’ (No more than courtesy to ask.)

  ‘More of our race have been slain in Norfolk and the counties to the east, despite King Henry’s charter. Some of the rioters were fined, but not a single Christian hanged.’ The old man is looking sorrowful as well he might.

  ‘But thanks to God, and to my Lord of Warenne, we are safe here for the present, Lady. So long as we agree to stay indoors and never think to venture forth in daylight.’ His smile is painfully awry.

  ‘I’m glad of that.’

  I’ve practiced what to say – pull off my gloves, talk rapidly and fumble for the drawstring bags within the lining of my cloak. ‘Sir Hugh, and my man Kempe here, were greatly in the wrong to withhold any part of the sum we’ve agreed. I wish to tell you that they acted on their own without my knowledge – and now I’ve come to make amends.’

  I have a purse in each hand, both chinking fatly. ‘One pound and fifteen shillings for you, Jacob – four hundred and twenty silver pennies divided into two. I think my calculation is correct, but count it if you will?’ (And what a huge relief to have that said and done.) ‘The sum should cover all the interest to the year end, with three shillings of the principal included as a gesture of good faith.’

  ‘Mistress, I have to say…’

  But Kempe doesn’t have to say it, does he? There are times when I could cheerfully divide him with a meat-axe from his lank crown to horny toe. But this time merely glare him into silence. He scowls morosely, gnawing at his lip – and serve him right for being such a niggard!

  ‘My steward knows as well as I do that we can afford it from our sales last month of grain and beanflour,’ I state firmly, ‘and a good price for our lambswool in July.’

  Although I have to smile, as my hands fly up the moment Jacob takes the heavy little sacs into his own. He’s saying that he has no need to count the coins. The scales will show the sum to be correct – and he’s grateful plainly, hugs the bags of silver pennies like lost children to his woolly chest. The wine that Sara hands me is warm, red, spiced this time and welcome. We’re steaming gently at the fireside like a couple of salt hams.

  ‘Sir Hugh is not a man I care to deal with.’

  Jacob pauses by the staircase on his way through to the scales. I give a little nod across the goblet to show I understand. ‘You will perhaps forgive me for presuming, Lady. But I would advise you to be wary of him. In my experience, a person who proves treacherous in business may not be trusted to act fairly in his other dealings.’

  I nod again – as if I needed telling!

  The last patches of snow have thawed, and it is raining hard. I’ve had the puddled courtyard strawed and planked across to let the maids walk dry-shod, with more planks in the yard behind, to reach the milch cows and the poultry. The ivy garlands are already wilting on the walls. But, thank the Lord, the Christmas feast is over.

  We ate in silence at the high board, Sir Hugh and I, with Edmay and her nurse, Odette – and Hoddie doing all the talking, describing every feast she could recall, and who was drunk and who was sick, and who attempted liberties beneath the cloths. ‘Glory, some soul had to speak,’ she told us afterwards when Hugh had left the board. ‘We can’t all sit like stuffed fowls in gravy with our necks across our backs!’

  Last Christmas, after a church mass to celebrate the coming of the Holy Child, the Yule log was brought in at the commencement of the feast to be set amongst the fragrant juniper and crabwood on the fire. We’d all cried ‘Yole!’ and ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ and begged God to increase our number, while Father Gerard crossed himself and blessed the celebration. But this year, before the log was flamed the priest was upstairs chanting paternosters by My Lady’s bedside. This year there’s no cause for joy, or reason to believe our numbers will increase – rather the reverse, considering that Lady Constance is about to die!

  On Christmas Eve, Sir Hugh brought her to Haddertun in a closed litter. She was too weak to walk. He had to lift her out, and he and Fremund carried her upstairs – her clothing wet with rain and little Edmay crying out pathetically to tell her not to die.

  ‘She started on the coughing fits at Martinmas,’ Sir Hugh said, as he laid her by my own instruction in the bed I share with Hod. ‘But it was not until we’d passed the ford at Uckfeld that she became distressed.’

  He seems disturbed, and at the same time angry with his wife for giving him the cause – and maybe will decide to love her after all when she is dead. He’s only three or four times entered the bedchamber since he laid her there, each time so stumbling-drunk and thoroughly impatient with her case, that the poor woman begged him to depart and leave her to her prayers. She’s asked for the little girl to be kept from her too – and as the dim-witted nurse can only think of weeping (which is no help to anyone, least of all a frightened child), Edmay’s with Hoddie, learning how to twist a yarn (a thing, Hod says, her mother should have taught her years ago).

  So here am I. And there lies Lady Constance propped up on pillows and close to paying her last debt to nature, for the fever is malignant. I know that she’s in pain and struggling to breathe. The poor woman’s laboured to give birth to Garon and to Edmay and the child that died, and now must labour to deliver her own soul.

  A candle burns beside the bed, and has done day and night since she first came. It’s guttering already (I’ll have to light a new one, and the rushes on the floor need changing). Here on his knees is Father Gerard, who’s shriven her and hopes to speed her into purgatory before he falls asleep – and here am I beside a woman I’ve no reason to be fond of or to mourn when she departs – sitting at her bedside like a faithful daughter while her husband drinks himself into oblivion.

  Hod says that like as not I’ll see the Callydus fly in before she dies. ‘A big white bird that flaps in through the window, to perch on her bed tester, an’ turn ’is ’ead away from ’er to show ’er time has come.’

  I’m trying to recall what Mother did when Grandmère died? The coffin’s ready. I have the linen band for tying up the chin. But should we wash her first for decency? Should we clip some hair and fingernails, as Hoddie recommends, to keep her son from harm? Then when we close her eyes, is that the time to place the coins on them to stop the lids from rolling up? Or does that all come afterwards when we have laid her out? Old Agnès, who was here when Garon’s father, Sir Gervase, gave up the ghost, will know what we should do. They say the soul stays near the body, watching for the space of forty days.

  Would it be right to stop the villagers from revelling on Twelfth Night?

  But she’s speaking!

  ‘My son…’ One thin hand’s raised – and now falls back to where her rosary coils like a snake across her wasted breasts. I take it in my own. It’s burning hot.

  ‘My son – wait, wait seven years for his return. Full seven years, d’ye hear?’

  Her lips are dry and cracked, her voice so faint that I must needs bend close. Her breath stinks with the foulness of infection. ‘If he fails ever to return…’

  ‘He will come back.’ (Whatever I may think, it is my duty to convince her, or at least to try.) ‘Believe me, Lady – your son will return.’

  ‘But if he fails,’ she croaks. ‘Don’t, don’t…’

  A fit of coughing overtakes her. I wipe the slime away with the soft cloth that lies beside her. It’s green-blotched and disgusting!

  But she has more to say, braced back against the pillows – another painful breath that rattles in her chest. ‘Don’t let him have you’ – panting, gasping like a landed fish. �
�Not Hugh, don’t let…’ Her pale blue eyes are open, desperate. Bony fingers clutch my hand – surprising strength dragged out from somewhere for a final effort.

  ‘The Church will not allow it – nor will I, my girl,’ she whispers with the faintest echo of her old severity. And then subsides like a pricked bladder.

  So that makes two; two warnings that I’ve had against him – although it’s wrong for her to think such things at such a time, and wrong for me to hear them.

  Forgive her the transgression, Lord. Forgive me mine for listening to her fear and jealousy, for watching the poor creature die while part of me is wondering what I should do – how I should act when it is over. (And pardon me for yawning while I wonder.)

  A sudden screech!

  The Callydus? With his head turned backwards as he flies? Or just a night-owl in the stable yard? I’m shuddering, it gave me such a start. But Father Gerard bends his head to start another paternoster, pretending it means nothing.

  I’m bound to cry when it is over, when her soul has fled. (I’m almost certain that I’ll cry.)

  But should I kneel beside the bed, or at its foot? How many candles should we light? Are we to douse the fire? And should we have the death knell rung down at the church?

  We’ll have to send a message up to Lewes fortress to My Lord and Lady of Warenne…

  But what beasts should I have killed for the funeral repast? (Thank God that we have fodder for the livestock.)

  And will I have to wail and beat my brow? Is that what they’ll expect of me when Lady Constance dies?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Death. Nothing could satisfy its greed for human flesh however many died, and it’s impossible to guess how many thousands did. But all that was later, after our first sight of Acre.

  Our little convoy of five vessels sailed down the coast from Tyre in mid-September, to pass through a fleet of Pisan war galleys blockading the old port. The city of St Jean d’Acre was built out onto a promontory above a long sand bay, surrounded on three sides by water. During their former years of occupation, the Latin Christians had enclosed its port and fortified the city on the landward side with high walls and a moat.

  According to our Tyrian pilot, the Saracens managed twice within a year of siege to breach our sea blockade – and a third time, back in June, had used trickery to bring a quantity of grain and a whole flock of fat-tailed sheep to the starving Moslem garrison. Egyptian sailors disguised as Christians had shaved their beards and sewn red crosses to the sails of their supply ship, so the pilot claimed. They’d even set a crate of live hogs up on deck to signal that they brought relief – not to the Moslems, for whom pork was forbidden, but to the Christian camp. But then as soon as they were near enough, they’d raised the chain that sealed the city harbour, shot through its gate and tossed the pigs into the water of the inner pool. As the poor creatures swam about the boat, they’d stuck them full of arrows, except for a single hog, which somehow managed to escape and paddled to Christian shore.

  ‘Which only goes to prove,’ said Jos when I told him the story, ‘that Mussulmen and even pigs have more wit than Pisanos.’

  We docked alongside a wooden jetty built into the bay. Behind the towering walls of Acre, a second city of Christian tents completed its encirclement – with, less than half a league behind them, another crescent-shaped assembly of pavilions clinging to the slopes above the plain like limpets to a rock. And the men-at-arms sent down from camp to help unload our cargo, could hardly wait to point out for us the individual camps of Bedouin, Egyptians, Mamluks and Turcomans, which taken as a whole made up the army of our enemy, the Sultan Saladin.

  In Tyre we’d rested, stuffed ourselves with food and wine – and now, refreshed and spoiling for a fight, we had expected stirring sounds of battle outside Acre. Screaming voices. Pounding catapults. The clash of steel on steel. Yet all we heard above the normal din of disembarkation were the shrilling of cicadas in the dunes and mewing seagulls overhead. And when I asked the reason for the lull, a weathered little orderly who drew a wage from Count Henri of Toulouse, said frankly that he’d wager we had missed our chance of any kind of action before the autumn rains confined us all to camp.

  ‘We came to Acre in July with orders for our young Count to take command of the whole friggin’ Christian army,’ he told us, ‘being as ’e’s blood related to both kings.’

  All hands were needed for the landing. So Jos and I were hefting sacks of dry stores from the tarida for the orderly to load into a waiting mule-cart. ‘Thousands upon thousands of ’em out there on that plain,’ he said, ‘an’ all the use King Guy could find for the poor sods in near a year of siege, has been to fill the city moat up with their stinkin’ corpses!’

  ‘But then your people came,’ I prompted.

  ‘Aye, and brought the beams for two great rams, an’ all the parts for five siege engines – torsion mangonels, Venetian make, with punch enough to knock a window through ten foot of stone!’

  ‘So why aren’t they in action now?’

  Backturned and busy with his load, the carter took his time to answer. ‘We wheeled ’em out along the ditch for an attack at dawn,’ he said at length, ‘and would’ve breached the wall an’ smashed the city gate for sure. But in the darkness Sarsen-Jack dropped men down the walls, didn’t ’e, with nets of fire-bombs in clay pots around their friggin’ necks. We spit ’em down to the last man. But not before those bastards ’ud set light to all our mangons and both rams – wildfire, an’ no piss to save ’em. An’ no wood anywhere in this forsaken place to make up so much as an axe-haft.’

  ‘You would have thought the Sarsens’ harbour would be the place for an attack.’ An idea rising through a mop of red hair from the far side of a haunch of salted beef. Jos heaved it in and mopped his freckled forehead with a sleeve. ‘For sure our ships could force a way in through the gate?’

  The orderly looked doubtful. ‘’T’ain’t feasible,’ he said, scratching his crotch. ‘Matter of fact, Young Count sent out three fire-ships full o’ pitch to burn the old light-house they call the Tower of Flies, as guards the entrance to the port. But Sarsen-Jack was there before us wasn’t he, with wildfire an’ hand-pumps.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘Aye, an’ scorched our oarsmen to a crisp ’afore they could jump clear.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Pitiful, the way them buggers shrieked.’

  ‘Then why not use our manpower to build a ramp against the city walls?’ I asked, remembering a tale I’d heard somewhere about a Roman siege.

  ‘What, with ten thousand arsewipe Sarsens inside the wall, an’ forty thousand at our back? No chance!’

  The man stooped to lift a walnut from the body of the cart where it had rolled from a split sack, and held it up for us to see. ‘Listen boys, suppose this nut is Acre, see?’ He waited for agreement, then clenched the walnut in his fist. ‘Oh aye, we ’ave the sod in hand aright, but so ’ave they.’

  He brought the other hand across to clamp the fingers of his own fist still more firmly round the nutshell. ‘So’s what we ’ave is Sarsens holdin’ Christians holdin’ Sarsens – deadlock, see? No one moves an’ nothin’s gained.’ He lobbed the nut into the sea.

  ‘So how much longer can the garrison hold out?’

  The orderly shrugged bleakly. ‘No friggin’ idea,’ was all he had to add.

  It was late in the afternoon before we’d landed all our men and mules and horses and the stores we’d taken on in Tyre. The route ashore already taken by Archbishop Baldwin and the other leaders, led up across the plain between the two opposing armies to King Guy’s hill camp of Toron. By then Bertram and John had joined us with the mules. And Raoul, fed all the oats that he could eat in Tyre and freshly shod, was once more fit to ride.

  So how did I feel mounted up and at the head of my own little squad again, knowing that we’d somehow managed to survive and reach the Holy Kingdom?

  I can remember almost everything about our landing in the bay, can still see the
half-breed Pullani children holding out their hands for alms as we passed by, but strangely can’t recapture what I felt. I think I must have turned at some point on the track to look back at the city ringed with ships and congeries of tents – because I have a picture of it standing like a crown of ivory against a sea shot through with the warm colours of a westering sun. But what I felt? I can only think that anything of triumph or achievement that I felt the day we joined the siege of Acre, was blotted from my memory by what we found in camp.

  ‘Toron’ was an ancient word for ‘castle’, we were told, and I suppose the ruined hill town King Guy had chosen for his base was at least moated like a fortress, rising from a stagnant ditch through a series of uneven mounds and terraces to the gold-crossed banner of the Christian Kingdom flying from its summit. Otherwise it looked more like a maxon heap than any kind of castle we had known. Dilapidated campaign tents like those arranged in ranks out on the plain were pitched on level ground about the moat, and at the top amongst the broken fangs of masonry that ringed the King’s pavilion. Elsewhere, a chaotic shanty-town of huts contrived from wattle, reed-thatch, hides of goats and asses and every kind of patch-worked fabric, clung to slopes and ledges and straggled through the ruins, roped or staked or propped against each other. Grown up like mushrooms sprouting out of filth.

  Archbishop Baldwin had sent a guide to find space for us on the far side of the hill with Rob de Pierpoint’s men. Gabbling in some kind of broken French that was impossible to follow, he led us by a sloping thoroughfare between the shelters, passing leaking dung carts set along the way in place of drains. Through doors and openings on either side, we saw men sprawled on pallets, sleeping, drinking, rolling dice. Some called to ask where in Hades we had sprung from. One eager lad begged Bert to tell him if he’d seen the Kings of France or England on their way to save us. A rowdy group of soldiers in ramshackle tavern with a sage bush on a pole outside, whistled at Jos and his red hair and called him poison-pate and rusty bollocks – and shouted after us to bid us welcome to the arsehole of the world.