Piers drew Rodriga to the tent doorway and reached for her hands. “Rodriga, promise me you will never again risk yourself among the Saracens! Promise!”
“How can I?” she asked coolly, though her heart beat faster for his nearness and his earnestness. “I go with my father.”
“He has an odd way of showing a father’s care for you! Rodriga, I cannot bear to think what might have befallen you! A battle is no place for a tender maid! Promise me!”
“Oh, we are not likely to try another raid. But I stay by my father.”
The distracted young man loosed her hands to tear at his tousled hair. “What is this mad idea that you are safer in battle than in your own camp?”
“The last time my father left me with Urraca,” she explained, “a knight broke in and tried to ravish me.”
“Ravish! Rodriga—but—what—what happened?” he stuttered in blank horror.
“He and his men battered down the door. They stunned Urraca and left her for dead,” she told him dispassionately. “I climbed up into the hay-loft—we were living in a peasant’s cottage—and kept the ladder with a boar-spear until help came.”
“A boar-spear—you? And the recreant—but your rescuers avenged you? Or did your father challenge him and slay him?”
“There was no need. He was dead already.”
“Dead? You mean—Rodriga, you cannot mean that you killed him?”
“What else was I to do?” she asked, so reasonably that he could only gape at her. “I warned him that if he came up I would kill him —I warned him twice. I did not stab him until he reached to drag me down. And I sent for a priest immediately my friends came, so that he did not die unshriven.”
“You—you, a young maid—you killed a man with a boar-spear!” he gasped incredulously.
“Anyone thrust through with a boar-spear is not likely to survive long,” she pointed out very justly, “and though I had not particularly intended to kill him, the earth was sweeter for his going.”
“But—dear God—for you to kill him, Rodriga! You, a maid—”
“What else was I to do and remain a maid?” she asked, wondering why he, who had cheerfully and without apparent burden to his conscience split a man’s skull in her presence, should manifest such dismay at the despatch of a ravisher whom no honest man regretted. Obviously he knew little of the tumultuous sordid life among the mercenaries, routiers, ribalds and camp-followers who scavenged after wars across the face of Christendom, vermin the lordly only heeded when they destroyed them. She said nothing of a trapped girl’s desperate terror, frantically threatening the jeering brute mounting towards her; of the wild lunge under clutching paws into soft flesh and the shock of realisation striking the glee from a gloating face, or of the curdling sickness that had assailed her as he crashed backward clawing at his belly with blood gushing between his fingers. Piers stared at her in horror.
“I—I know—doubtless he deserved death—but that you should kill and speak as if it were nothing—”
“You would have me collapse in remorseful tears, or scream in a hysterical passion?” she asked dryly. She had done her weeping in that red dawn, on her father’s shoulder.
“Ah, no! You are all valour, Rodriga. But—”
He could not approve the killing or her unfeminine lack of squeamishness. He would discover, she reflected with dispassionate clarity, other unfeminine aspects of her character that he could not approve, before he was done, but she only gazed thoughtfully at him with her steady dark eyes and said nothing.
“Was nothing done—nothing said?” he asked, in revolted curiosity.
She shrugged. “His friends murmured that my father was conveniently rid of an enemy, but they could disprove nothing of what was plain truth. A man does not commonly choose his friends’ daughters for ravishing. Also his friends were fewer than his foes.” He might have asked more, but at that moment they heard Landry whistling his improper ditty as he limped to the tent. His tact was as heavy-handed as his sword-strokes. Piers took hurried leave of them both, and carried away his perplexities and doubts to chew them over at leisure.
“What scared the pup away?” asked Landry genially, dropping to the cushion and pouring himself a cup of wine. “Have to fend him off with your knife?”
“I told him of Fulk Dog-tooth, and it sat ill on his stomach.”
“Jolted him like a kick in the guts, eh? Not in accord with his notion of womanly graces—Devil knows what use you would have for them in a war-camp! Only argument old Dog-tooth understood was a boar-spear, and then not until it was in his belly. He will be back, Rodriga. Never be ashamed, my lass, that you kept your body clean though you had to kill a swine twenty years over-ripe for a hanging. I was proud of you. So should he be too.”
Rodriga chuckled, yawned and stretched. “To be honest, my lord, I care nothing what he thinks. The Saints send him a man’s sense to match his inches, because until he grows up he will be somewhat tedious company.”
“You do not mislike him?” Landry asked anxiously, lowering his last draught to look at her over his cup.
“Oh, I like him very well. He is brave and kind and courteous. But he seems very young and over-indulged, and rigid in his views.”
“Cold-blooded little fish, assessing the poor lad like a horse you do not mean to buy!” he exclaimed, grinning appreciatively. “What the poor cub chiefly lacks is imagination, but no use praying to the Saints to endow him with it; they do it at birth or never.” With a practised flip of his wrist he sent the last of his wine down his throat, and hoisted himself up, plucking at his tunic-laces. “Lord Above, girl, let us find the sleep we missed last night! If King Philip means to call down upon us the wrath of Saladin by blast of trumpet in the morning, we had best get in trim for it!”
But as she listened in the darkness to his heavy breathing an unwelcome thought came to nag at Rodriga’s incorrigible honesty. Would she like Piers de Rionart so well if he had not shown from the start that he found her attractive, she who was dark and plain and skinny and had never before been admired by a young man of her own rank?
CHAPTER VII
The first sunlight was pitilessly lighting the battered trenches when they stood to their chosen posts. Trumpets and horns brayed insistently over the deeper roar of many voices, signalling King Philip’s assault on the walls, and as Rodriga looked about her, a new metallic clamour of bells and cymbals and gongs summoned Saladin’s host to aid the defenders of Acre. Coloured specks were already massing on the edge of the sandhills. Other forethoughtful men were preparing for the inevitable counter-attack along the line of earthworks, a few knights commanding men-at-arms, arbalesters and archers, with a sprinkling of knifemen and even slingers. Landry finished placing his little troop, issued his last stringent warning against leaving their posts and took his own station in the centre.
Rodriga moved to the highest point of a little ridge which let her see over the men’s heads. Behind it Diego squatted with water, wine and old linen, ready for tending the wounded when the battle was joined. She crossed herself, commended herself to the protection of the Saints, and calmly strung her bow. In emergency she would use it; for desperate need she had her javelin thrust into the hard soil by her hand, but her duty was to bind wounds. She looked back at the Accursed Tower and prayed for the French forces assailing it. Though it still stood, its outline had sagged inward; its undermined walls had partly collapsed but had not been breached. Against the blue sky the banners flapped and tiny dark figures moved. The tumult had swelled to a hideous din. Stones from the engines streaked back and forth across the sky. Screwing up her eyes against the glare, she saw part of the battlements shatter and fly apart, and a body sprawl outward and plummet from sight.
“Should ha’ waited to make a fair breach,” an English voice growled at Rodriga’s left, and she glanced at the speaker, a brown burly spearman. “Crackbrained loon, throwing men at sound walls! Get good men slaughtered for folly!”
“You thank Saint
Edmund you are fighting on firm ground, not on a scaling-ladder with Greek fire in your eyes!” another recommended placidly.
“Have done already.”
She smiled crookedly as she looked from the Tower to the camp below it and the littered space between her and the nearest tents. A few latecomers were hurrying to join them, and for a moment she frowned incredulously, thinking that she had seen a slight upright figure which was becoming unpleasingly familiar. Then she shrugged, telling herself that the renegade was so much in her thoughts these days that her mind was playing tricks on her eyesight. A stir of movement along the trench brought her head round.
Rodriga shaded her eyes to peer under the morning sun which glared full into her face, feeling curiously empty inside. Her mouth was dry, and her heart-beats thudded through her hollow body as though it were a drum. Her hand was cold on the grip of her bow as she watched the flickering, skirmishing Saracens swarm to the attack. She wondered if the men felt as she did. The waiting was the worst, that and the strangeness of the enemy; elusive, speedy, numberless as the sands they sprang from.
Pablo nocked an arrow, and her father restrained him with a little gesture of his shield-arm. Then he glanced back, and lifted a hand to her, his teeth flashing briefly in his sunburned face. She waved back. Horns were sounding a summons, newcomers hastening to strengthen the line, and not too soon. Out of the sandhills the Infidels were advancing, green banners floating and crescent standards flashing above a rising storm of dust. Wild, eerie cries, the beating of drums and clashing of cymbals filled the air. Then they were coming like a wave of the sea, fluttering robes, glittering mail, flashing steel and fierce dark faces; a wave that surged up to the trenches and broke there. All at once Rodriga was no longer afraid. She lifted her bow, nocked and half-drew, watching over the men’s heads for a mark.
Among the horsemen ran near-naked dark-skinned creatures, bounding, spinning, screeching on the name of Allah and brandishing huge knives. As the riders whirled up to the edge of the trench and checked, launching a hail of arrows and javelins, these fanatics hurled themselves into the trench and up the scarp at the Christian throats. She saw her father’s sword fall, a spurt of crimson and naked limbs plunging from sight. Then the clamour died to sudden stillness, the Saracens had withdrawn beyond bowshot and were massing for another, charge, and the defenders were wiping sweat from their eyes and lustily cursing the climate. Rodriga drew a hard breath of relief. Landry and all his folk were still unhurt. Then a man came silently to her side, within arm’s length, and she glimpsed him out of her eye-corner and spun round. She glared up into Marco’s dark lean face.
“What devil brought you here?” she snapped in outrage.
“The devils who watch over Acre are too busily engaged this day to find work for me, my lady,” he answered pleasantly, “so I came to see the battle.”
“If you were a true man you would be fighting in it!”
“My lady, it is no battle of mine.”
“It is every Christian’s battle! And also your only chance of achieving redemption for your sin-stained soul!”
“For those who believe, my lady.”
“And by God’s Holy Mother, if you are Muslim you should be among them yonder!”
“To be a mark for your arrows, my lady?” The lash of her indignation had no effect on his armour of indifference; he seemed mildly amused.
“Are you Muslim, you treacherous renegade, or do you still hold by your baptism?”
“Since I am doomed to Hell by either faith, my lady, what matter?”
She ground her teeth in impotent fury. “Go watch the battle elsewhere, you shameless recreant, and rid me of your company!”
“But this is an excellent vantage-point,” he replied reasonably, his black eyes glinting under thick dark lashes. He made Rodriga feel very young and silly, and baffled rage filled her. Every blow she aimed glanced from his defences, and goaded her to strike again.
“What profit do you seek here? Are you come to strip the dead— a hyena picking the bones of another’s carrion?” she taunted fiercely.
“I assure you, my lady, I am not too proud to disdain small profits.”
A renewed clamour of drums and cymbals saved her from trying to answer the unanswerable. The Saracens were charging again, and all along the earthworks commands rang out and bows were levelled. A scattering chorus of harp-notes, and the shafts leaped away like streaks of sunlight. Saracens spilled from the saddles, horses reared up screaming and fell with their riders under the hooves of those behind, so that gaps and tangles broke the rushing mass. On the verge of the trenches the foe loosed a flight of arrows and darts and wheeled about, shooting still. They swooped back, and the howling footmen swarmed between the horses, flung stones, earth and brushwood into the trench, leaped down and up at the defenders like angry cats. Rodriga’s heart bounded in her breast as her father sprang to the edge of the rampart and struck. A dark face lifted at his knee, white teeth and eyeballs gleaming, and a curved sword slashed at him. He smashed the blade aside with his own and crashed past it into the yelling face, that vanished backward. A half-naked body leaped under his arm and grappled with him, and she saw a knife slide on his mail. She drew and loosed without conscious thought, and her feathered butt stood under a brown armpit. The Saracen slid down, and Landry flung him aside and hewed at screaming faces and spiked helmets wound with bright turbans.
The wave of attack spent itself and receded, leaving a ghastly tide-wrack of dead and wounded at the trench. Men were already scrambling in the ditch, finishing the wounded and snatching accessible articles of loot. Landry turned to wave at Rodriga, and she assured herself that he and the Catalans were all unhurt. A few wounded men were being carried out of the line, or struggling on their feet to the rear, and already the black tunics of the Hospitallers were in evidence. She ran to help, caught a stumbling archer by the arm and steered him behind the little ridge. Marco followed silently, and Diego came running with wine and torn linen as she sat the man down and dealt with his cracked head.
There were not many hurt, and most of the damage had been done by the Saracen archers among the unmailed soldiery. Rodriga did what she could. Arrow-wounds of the limbs were a simple matter; one forced the point through, if it had not completely pierced arm or leg, cut it off and jerked out the shaft. Wounds of the trunk were grave, and she knew too much to meddle with them; the barbed heads could only be withdrawn by a chirurgeon using the long forceps designed for that purpose.
The next attack came while she still knelt over her last patient, pouring wine into his wound, and the noise swelled deafeningly about her. She was vaguely aware that Marco came round her to stand between her and the rampart, and inwardly spared a curse for his callous curiosity. A battle was not a spectacle provided for his idle entertainment. She fastened the last knot and reached for her bow. The Saracens swarmed at the trench, and the sky was filled with whistling shafts. Scimitars, knives and great spiked clubs swung at the defenders. They came in their hundreds, leaping into the ditch, bridging it with their bodies for their comrades who followed to avenge them. There was no end to them, and the shouts and screams and wild cries mingled with the clang of steel and the tumult of hooves in one savage din. Then that assault was spent, and the defenders could draw breath, ease their aching arms and wipe the dust-clogged sweat from heated faces.
Again Landry lifted a hand to his daughter in reassurance, and she muttered a prayer under her breath, commending all to the care of God. Then Diego made a small sound of surprise, and she turned her head at sight of his grin to see an incredible procession approaching.
At its head rolled an enormous brute who must overtop King Richard, a black-browed, balding fellow with a compensating tangle of curly beard that rioted to his cheekbones and was split by a great red-lipped grin. He carried a wine-barrel under each huge arm, without apparent effort, and hitched to his belt was a shipwright’s adze. Behind him came a sickly looking man and a couple of haggard women bear
ing armfuls of torn linen; then a score or so of handsome wenches in gaudy gowns, armed with pitchers, cups and baskets of food; and at the rear skirmished a tail of assorted ribalds, most of them already pot-valiant, brandishing an amazing array of weapons and yelling in all the tongues of the Levant what execution they would do upon the Saracens.
Marco moved to stand between her and the giant, and Rodriga, too curious to remember that she was not in charity with him, asked, “Who under Heaven is that?”
“Giacomo. He keeps the House of the Black Girl, my lady,” he answered harshly.
The House of the Black Girl was the most celebrated brothel in Acre, as even Rodriga knew, but the monster with the jovial grin and the intimidating eye was outside her usual experience of whoremongers. She watched him set down his wine-barrels and break in their heads with his adze, gesture to the frail-looking fellow to take charge, and then send his wenches abroad with cups and pitchers to serve the fighting-men. Distant clamour heralded another Saracen onslaught, and he whirled his adze in one hand as though it weighed no more than a clerk’s quill, urged his gallows’-fruit warriors in a voice like a bull’s bellow to seize this last chance of snatching their sin-blackened souls from the grids of Hell to the portals of Paradise by dying gloriously at the Saracens’ throats, and plunged to the ramparts. She saw him shoulder between Pablo and Esteban, spit on his hands, and take a trial swing or two with his adze, a formidable weapon with its transverse cutting-blade backed by a long spike.
Rodriga looked into Marco’s rigid face. “Whore-monger he may be,” she lashed at him, “but today he stands nearer Heaven than you, who will not strike a blow for the Holy Sepulchre!”
“For an empty tomb?”
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