The White Cross

by Richard Masefield

  The muscles in the French King’s cheeks showed that he’d clenched his jaw. ‘The Holy Father has expressly forbidden women en croisade.’ Startled into speech, it is the first thing he can think of.

  ‘A sick old eunuch in a gilded palace?’ We hardly need to consider his opinion.’

  ‘And I hardly thought you’d break your contract with my sister?’ Philippe countered bitterly.

  ‘Ah, did you not?’ King Richard’s turn to show surprise. ‘Hell’s bells man, did you really think that Eléonore would let her within a half-league of the throne? A girl who’s borne her husband’s bastard?’

  ‘I warn you, Richard – if you scorn Alys for marriage with a Spaniard, you’ll forfeit any claim on Gisors, Châteauroux, Graçy or Isoudun, and with them the goodwill of France. My word on that.’

  ‘Which brings us back to that other word of incest, does it not? Dear man, you know as well as I do that Henry’s is not the only prick that stands between me and your sister. Or if it comes to that, between you and my dear sister’s quim.’ King Richard showed his teeth. ‘We have an interesting history, Philippe, you and I. And have you thought – maybe this Advent we should go further than avoiding drink and bum-boys, and purge our souls of sin before the bishops? The Pope has spies in every port, the Sultan too I hear – we’d have the ears of all the world to hear us in confession, Cousin.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  They weren’t the best words Philippe could have chosen to respond to someone of Richard’s reckless reputation; and within a day the King of England proceeded to make good his threat – by summoning a group of French and English bishops to the harbour chapel for a sensational performance. Dramatically stripped naked for the scourge, crowned with a garland of blue periwinkles to denote repentance, he’d beseeched their Graces at the altar to absolve him of the sin God abhorred above all others – the act of sodomising a young man in Paris three years earlier.

  It was a statement he’d be willing to repeat in public from the steps of the Cathedral, Richard said – and in the next breath (with more frankness than was strictly necessary) supplied the co-respondent’s famous name.

  The embarrassed bishops hastened to lay on the whip (backhanded and slack-wristed to spare the great man pain), to smother the unpleasant nature of the sin in euphemistic Latin, and grant the royal repentant absolution. Queen’s pawn checks king in other words – to leave Philippe with no choice but to retract all his objections to the Spanish marriage

  To all appearances the two Kings parted amicably in Sicily when Philippe left for Tyre. But no one aboard his flagship could fail to gauge the King of France’s temper on the long sea voyage. Bleary-eyed and seasick, hunched in his cabin like a moulting pullet, he plotted his revenge on Richard – spitting chips.

  In April at his camp of al-Kharruba, the agents of the Sultan report the arrival of King Philippe at the port of Tyre with near three thousand men and fifteen hundred horses. In the guise of a silk merchant, Salahuddin’s trusted emissary, al-Harawi, gains audience with the King of France and his cousin, Conrad de Montferrat, in a closet of the Tyrian Palace. No witnesses are present to record their conversation. No documents are signed. But four hours later, al-Harawi leaves without the heavy chest he carried in with him (supposedly containing samples of silk fabric); and it’s further notable that when he moves his army down to Acre ten days later, King Philippe seems in no great haste to prosecute the siege – remaining mostly in his tent, due it is said to a recurring sickness.

  In his celebrated masterwork, ‘Discussion on the Stratagems of War’, al-Harawi is later to record: ‘A Sultan may beguile his enemy by offering whatever he most earnestly desires, and guaranteeing its accomplishment with oaths upon his honour’ – and as he writes, the secret bargain struck between the Sultan Salahuddin and the King of France is what he has in mind.

  In effect, the Sultan’s offered to spare Philippe the effort and expense of a long campaign by guaranteeing its fair outcome in advance. He will support Conrad de Montferrat as ruler of the Latin kingdom, in place of King Richard or his vassal Guy de Lusignan. He will allow the Arab caravans from Egypt and Damascus free access to the port of Tyre, from which Conrad may readily supply the court of France with all the eastern dyes and spices, gems, cotton and brocade they need within a mutually beneficial alliance. Alas, the Sultan cannot yield the Holy City of al-Quds the Christians call Jerusalem. But he will continue to extend protection to any Christian pilgrim who may wish to worship at its shrines. Then, after Richard has exhausted his resources taking Acre, he will negotiate with both kings for a lasting peace.

  To honour his part of the bargain, all Philippe is required to do is to delay the siege until the English King arrives, and when the city falls to ensure a fair exchange of prisoners as part of an agreement to cede further territory to Conrad de Montferrat and Princess Isabella.

  It’s not a bargain that will suit King Guy de Lusignan of course, and on the very day he hears from his own spies of Philippe’s dealings with the Marquess and the Sultan, he sails to intercept the King of England on his way to Palestine and beg for his support. They meet offshore, where Richard is already making headway with his conquest of the Holy Land by capturing the strategic isle of Cyprus. And while they fight to bring the Cypriots to heel, King Richard and King Guy agree their own plans for the resolution of the Kings’ Croisade.

  In the words of his official chronicler, the very hills rejoice the day that Richard comes to meet his destiny in Outremer.

  ‘Pen could not write, nor words describe the people’s rapture,’ the annalist enthuses, before proceeding to describe it anyway in vivid purple prose. ‘Horns resounded, trumpets rang out and pipers added their triumphant sounds,’ he scribbles in his notes for the Itinerarium of King Richard’s Palestine campaign – and then improves the line with an alliteration (cross out triumphant and add shrill – ‘Shrill sounds’ is plainly better. ‘…pipers added their shrill sounds. Drums were beaten, the deep booming of war clarions were heard. But it was as though all these discordant notes combined in perfect harmony; and there were few indeed who did not add to the general tumult of praise and jubilation. To show the gladness of their hearts they toasted one another in the wine that was distributed among them, recounting tales of ancient heroes.

  ‘In unalloyed delight,’ writes Richard’s chronicler, ‘they sang and danced the night away, lighting the darkness with their fires and torches, until the Turks believed they’d set the Plain of Acre all aflame.’

  The spring flowers have long since faded and summer entered its fifth week of drought, before the English fleet put into Acre. One of the first barges to drop anchor in the bay contains King Guy and the royal ladies, sent on ahead as entrées for the pièce de résistance that’s to be King Richard.

  The Sicilian Queen, Jehanne, coined from the same mint as her brother – large, roseate and handsomely well-padded – sails down the jetty in her flamboyant samite silks and muslins and her feathered turban, with King Guy de Lusignan himself to hold her parasol and shade her from the sun. A child of eleven or twelve summers trots to keep pace with the Queen’s ladies; identified as Béatris, Damsel of Cyprus, daughter of the island’s former ruler and now captive to the English king.

  To the general disappointment of the multitudes who’ve come to see her land, the fourth member of the royal party, Queen Bérengère, is glimpsed but for a moment in the distance as she’s carried in her stockings from the ship to her conveyance on the quay – which some might say was the best way to view her. For although the decorations of her curtained litter suggest a form within to match the loveliness of her new Latin name of Berengaria, the Queen’s in fact a stocky, broad-hipped woman with a dark complexion and a long Basque chin, selected by Queen Eléonore less for her looks, than for her stamina and childbearing potential. The romance which has preceded them to Acre, tells of King Richard’s passion for his Spanish bride; an infatuation which compels him to marry her in haste on the e
nchanted seat of love itself – on Cyprus, birthplace of the Goddess Venus. The truth is more prosaic. His mother is the only woman Richard loves or ever listens to; and in the days she spent with him in Sicily, Queen Eléonore impressed upon her son the need to bed the Princess of Navarre as rapidly as possible to seed in her an heir for Aquitaine and England. She hadn’t brought a royal mare for him across the Alps, she said, to see the royal stallion baulk at mounting.

  ‘You could be killed or gelded in the conflict,’ Eléonore told Richard baldly. ‘You never know in warfare, Dickard; and if you’ve the sense God’s given you, you’ll go to work on her this very night.

  ‘Then seal the contract later,’ Eléonore advised, ‘when you are sure the mare’s in foal.’

  Which was precisely how her son had acted, in despite of his own taste. For Bérangère was rather too brown and mature to suit his appetite. So far from home and unprotected, the Spanish princess had no choice but to submit; and when in Cyprus six weeks later her maids reported that she’d missed her monthly course, King Richard married, crowned, and left her – all within a single day. God willing, they’d be in the Holy City of Jerusalem for the child’s deliverance, he told her. Meantime she would be wise to rest and keep it safe within her womb. Her husband smiled on Bérangère indulgently, then waved a meaty hand and rode away from matrimonial drudgery to amuse himself amongst the youngest of his captive Cypriots – female and otherwise.

  The royal smile is once again in place when Richard’s Genoese war galley, Piombone, comes into view at last around the sea wall of Saint Jean d’Acre. Victorious in its encounter with a Saracen troop-ship in the roads to Tyre just sixteen hours before, the galley’s decks have since been cleared of wood-splinters and Arab blood, its bows and gunnels scalloped with gold and scarlet silk to match the colours of the royal banner. Long ranks of oars sweep it ashore. King Richard’s born for great occasions. He shares with other charismatic conquerors of Acre – with Julius Caesar and before him, Alexander – a genius for personal display. As with his coronation at Westminster, as with all his entries and arrivals, he comes to demonstrate that kings are not as other men.

  But if he seems a god to those who crane over each other’s shoulders to see the English King, some hours at anchor up the coast and out of sight have something certainly to do with his magnificent appearance. His entourage of groomsmen, hairdressers and keepers of the royal vestments have all worked ceaselessly that afternoon to massage, to manicure, and to enrich the rosy tints in Richard’s hair. To polish, perfume and bejewel him. Shirt him in silk. Envelop him in velvet – rings on his royal fingers, bells to his royal toes. Over his silver-link parade hauberk (which since Vézelay has come to seem a trifle tight), he wears a supertunic brocaded in the eastern manner and signed with a white cross. His crown’s an areola in the sinking sun. Gilt threads woven in the French style through his tinted hair and beard ensure that they too glitter, underlit by their reflection in the waves. Despite the heat, a cloak of Lincoln scarlet ripples from King Richard’s shoulders, blazoned like his escutcheon with guardant leopardés.

  The reborn Once and Future, now very present King, who’s sold Escalibor in Sicily for twice its weight in gold, now flourishes a new sword as a symbol of his own invincibility. He stands, legs wide-astride (the boastful pose that men adopt to show the muscles of their thighs, and maybe the uncommon bulk of what’s between) – rampant in the prow of Piombone: Richard as Redeemer!

  The King’s reception on the strand is as his chronicler describes – although it’s doubtful if the words of triumph and encouragement he shouts across the water are audible to anyone above the cheers, the drums, the blaring horns. Thousands on the shore applaud him in a fever of delight. A little short of sight, and as ever focussed inwardly upon his own achievement, the King sees those who await him simply as a moving blur. The picture that he makes with sword upraised and legs astride; larger than life, dressed gorgeously to maim if not to kill – backed by a fleet of white-crossed sails against a gold leaf sky – is just the image history needs to confirm his legend as a Christian saviour.

  Seagulls circle Piombone through the warm salt air.

  No bats this time for Richard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  So many people on my travels, hearing that I was in Acre, have begged me to tell them what I saw there, and how I managed to survive. But always I refused to satisfy them, said it was too painful to remember.

  Until the Bérgé dal becce taught me otherwise.

  The whole world knows how King Richard came like Joshua to trumpet down the walls of Acre and win the city back for God. But that was how it ended. Not how it was to be there.

  Guillaume, the arms-master at Lewes who taught us all we knew of warfare, ticked off the crucial stages of siegecraft on his fingers – beginning with Blockading on the smallest, and counting through Bombardment, Escalade and Mining, to finish with Terms for Surrender on his stubby thumb. He was a hard taskmaster who punished inattention with the knuckles of same five fingers clenched into a fist. And yet, perhaps because he had so little use for it himself, Guillaume quite failed to mention what we needed most at Acre – which was Patience.

  After the grain arrived that spring, we had been ordered out of Toron, Jos, John and I, to join the Salisbury bishop, Hubert Walter on the plain – although even after four more months of service, we were still novices in the pursuit of siegecraft. For there were many thousands in the Christian camp who had already waited for three summers and two winters to starve the city to submission. On our first tour of the lower camp we were astonished by its scale. It had become a canvas city through the years; its occupants a plague of locusts who’d long since consumed the fields and gardens of the port. In districts beyond the reach of missiles from the Moslem garrison, King Guy had set the tents in squares, with roads between for horses and wheeled traffic. The outer camp was bordered on three sides by earthen ramparts, with sentry posts at intervals to warn of Saracen invasion. But closer to the walls of Acre, the army had moved underground.

  Everywhere amongst the rubble, tunnels led into a labyrinth of dugouts, reinforced with bolsters of bagged sand and cribbed with olive wood. Soldiers and Pullani squeezed past each other in narrow, rush-lit passagways, connecting caves where everything was sold from water skins and salvaged weaponry, to rows of human ears on strings – even Sarsen heads with eyes and brains removed, hung by their hair as Christian trophies.

  Jos said he’d like to take one back to Haddertun, to use as a lantern to frighten maids with at All Hallows. But I forbade him such a gruesome souvenir.

  Compared with many on the plain, the Bishop of Salisbury’s encampment near the eastern ramparts was orderly and clean. A tall man, dressed more like a soldier than a churchman, His Grace saw to it that any of his men caught fighting, gambling, sodomising or consorting with Pullani whores were flogged and sent to work a fortnight on the shit carts. He personally called the rolls and supervised the rotas for sentry, siege and mining duties, refuse disposal, earthworking and water-carrying. He sent round barbers to ensure that we were trimmed and shaved. He issued combs and jars of horse-sweat to counter lice and fleas, and made it his daily business to inspect his laundry and infirmary and the latrines, to satisfy himself that all was as it should be for his soldiers.

  It was at the washing lines outside the Bishop’s laundry that we ran into our old friend, the washerwoman Guillemette. Not that I knew her at the first, so thin and lined she had become. Her plain old face was hung with empty sacs of flesh, the mountains of her breasts and belly flattened into molehills underneath her homespun gown.

  But – ‘Guilly, my treasure!’ Jos cried out the moment that he set eyes on her. ‘I’d know ye anywhere, you pretty thing!’

  ‘An’ bless ye, Tiddler. I’d of picked that ruddy comb o’yours from any flock o’ roosters!’ The old woman flung the shirt that she was pegging back into its basket, and ran across to sweep my squire into a crushing hug that lifted little Jos a cle
ar foot off the ground.

  ‘Show up? I’ll tell ye, that red knob ’ud stand out like a cock-stand in a convent. An’ prove as welcome too, I wouldn’t wonder!’

  If they’d been made of sugar, the pair of them could not have found each other sweeter – and were off to risk a Bishop’s flogging in the laundry van as soon as I gave them the nod. In return, we were allowed, all three of us, to bath in the grey suds of Guillemette’s last wash. But when Jos whispered later that she’d be willing to relieve me of a little more than sweat and grime, I found that I was able to resist. For somewhere in the deprivations of our Toron winter I’d lost my carnal inspiration, and even Fisty Flora found it hard (or actually the other thing) to get a grip.

  John Hideman made his own arrangements for relief, I never quite knew how – although there was one laundress by the name of Maud, who sometimes helped us when we bathed and was a shade less ugly than the rest. I saw her wash John’s back for him. But if she ever moved round to the front, he never mentioned it, and I was careful not to ask.

  There weren’t too many chances for us to to flex our military muscles either during those final months of siege. Sometimes I rode with other knights at cavalry manoeuvres in one or other of the camp parade grounds. Sometimes before the sun was up too high for comfort, I’d find someone – if not a knight then ever-faithful Jos – to help me practice swordplay and tone my muscles as I put on weight. But there was little room between the tents, and bouts ended all too often in some kind of an unpleasantness involving severed guy ropes and torrents of abuse.

  On Lady Day towards the end of March, the bishop sent me off with Jos for sentry duty on the outworks, and for fourteen days and thirteen nights we strained our eyes for signs of movement in the scrubby hills. From behind a hedgehog fence of sharpened stakes, we scanned the Saracen positions – prepared for, even hoping for an action of some kind. But we saw little other than cloud shadows in the daylight, or passing squalls of rain. At dawn we watched the sunrise. At sunset there were wisps of smoke. Each night while the cicadas shrilled, an arc of red sparks in the hills encircled galaxies of Christian campfires on the plain. But that was all.