The army chafed against restraint, knowing how near was the end, but King Richard would not hurl the host against defensible walls. Ruthless he was, but never prodigal of his men’s lives, and though an impatient man, he possessed the grim patience of the true leader who will not strike prematurely. Hunger, sickness and the gradual attrition of daily casualties were doing his work for him; he would not spend blood unnecessarily. It was rumoured that swimmers had already carried word from the defenders to Saladin that they could hold out no longer, begging his leave to capitulate and save the city from the horrors of the sack that was otherwise inevitable.
No one apparently prayed more earnestly for victory than Robert de Veragny. Daily, Rodriga knew, he made a round of the churches, gaining the respect of all observers for his indefatigable devotions, all his crippled state permitted him to offer for the redemption of Jerusalem. Twice she encountered him in the church where she made her daily attendance at Mass, and on the second occasion he escorted her from it to the Hospital, waited while she visited Juan, and took her back to her father. Although he was but in his middle thirties, he treated her with a paternal kindness that had nothing amorous about it, and his presence restrained his seneschal’s very different overtures. He even, in a moment of sentiment, confided that he envied her father the devotion she showed him.
“Truly exemplary, demoiselle, and great will be your reward in Heaven! I have marked how nobly and uncomplainingly you endure your unhappy plight, following a landless knight through all manner of hardship.”
“My lord, you wrong us both. It is no hardship, and I am content to have it so.”
“Content? That does the more credit to your affection, demoiselle. Yet I must insist that your plight is unhappy. How are you ever to make a fitting marriage, child?”
She flushed a little in embarrassment, and a mischievous voice whispered in her brain, “If he did but know!” The cripple regarded her reddened cheeks and downcast eyes with approval; this was proof of true maiden modesty, of which her unbecoming freedom sometimes made him doubt. She could read his obvious opinion without difficulty, and her blush deepened.
“My child, I would not distress you, but you are of an age to be wedded. Perhaps I may be of assistance in the matter. It would give me great pleasure to aid you, for I have much respect for your valiant father, and a great admiration for your filial devotion.”
Rodriga could not answer for confusion. What was she to say, when the knave she loathed and conspired against professed such sentiments? She murmured something incoherent, and her obvious agitation served her better than composure, as the imp of mischief in her was all the time aware. He smiled genially on her, and then sighed. She had known other abominable scoundrels exhibit similar maudlin sentiment in moments of relaxation, and was not astonished.
“I only pray that my own dear son will feel for me a part of such devotion, demoiselle. He is yet too young to know—”
“To know what, my lord?” she murmured when he halted, her heart-beats suddenly quickening.
“To know that he is more to me than all the world, demoiselle, as you are to your father.” His heavy face was suddenly exalted. “There is nothing I will not do for his welfare, child.”
Including murder, Rodriga reflected. That fanatic devotion made her skin prickle with unease. Forcing the right note of feminine sympathy into her voice, she said without looking at his face, “How this separation must trouble your heart, my lord!”
“It does, my child, it does. He is little and tender yet, and it is my great dread that God may require his life of me, for my sins. For that cause I came on Crusade. Well you know, demoiselle, how many seeds a tree must shed for one to grow and bear fruit; how many babes are born to die for one man that reaches full age.”
He had all but convinced himself that he was justified in aught that he did for his son’s sake, and that was a dangerous frame of mind. Her father emphatically agreed on that. His inquiries had made little progress, though he had encountered most of the elderly Poitevins in Acre. The Archdeacon of whom he had entertained hopes had been sent to Tyre on an embassy of peace to Conrad of Montferrat, and was lost to them for months, to judge by the progress of previous embassies. Landry had traced a kinsman of Melisande de Barroday, who should have known of her child’s fate, but by the time he had caught up with his witness he had been four days under the stony earth of Acre’s cemetery and his evidence lost until the Last Judgment. He limped cursing about his quest, his leg-wound inflamed and painful, heedless of Rodriga’s expostulations, as the siege dragged through its last days.
The Saracens sued for peace, but the terms they offered were rejected by King Richard; it was not to be borne, he declared, that after all their labour and loss, they should enter into an empty city. Resistance was futile, but the defenders resisted desperately, while the inexorable preparations for a final assault were pressed on.
“The next blow will do it,” Landry reported on the eighth morning after the battle, washing his hands before dinner. Wulfric prodded dubiously at still-resistant lumps of goat, and then dropped his flesh-fork with a splash and clatter as sudden tumult struck their ears. Landry flung himself into the tent for his mail and dived into it. Rodriga aided him into the recalcitrant sleeves and coif, clasped his belt round him as he crammed on his helmet, and snatched up her javelin.
“Assault!” he bellowed, and trotted off at a lop-sided gallop, with Esteban, Ramiro and Rodriga at his heels. Dripping with sweat under the merciless sun, they fought their way through streets tangled with men dispersing to their dinners and men scrambling back to the walls, arming themselves as they ran and shouting questions none could answer. Over all the confusion rang the clamour of battle, and Landry thrust for the Accursed Tower and the certain core of the struggle.
They saw the last of a bloody repulse. The half-breached walls and shattered battlements were thronged with screeching Infidels, men were running and stumbling from the choked ditch, and Greek fire flared amid coils of smoke over hideous relics at the Tower’s foot. One twisted to hands and knees, crawled blindly in a half-circle and then flopped flat, a foot still twitching.
King Richard came raging half-armed from his tent, too late to do more than inquire into the disaster. The account was already flying. Some English squires, joined by Pisan sailors, had combined to launch an unauthorised attack on the breaches, timing it very ill for the hour when the army was dispersing for dinner and no support could be rallied to them in time. The King’s denunciation of its folly was echoed by all. Had the attack been properly directed, carried out by an adequate force, the city could have been stormed and carried. The chance was lost. No one now could win through that barrage of Greek fire, and the desperate defenders were solidly massed behind the hurriedly barricaded breaches.
“Ten bezants to a clipped penny the red-headed lion meant to assault this very day,” grunted Landry as the crowds began to depart to salvage what they might of a cooling and abandoned dinner. He swore fearfully at the effect his abortive exertions had had on his wounded leg, and started to hobble back much less rapidly than he had come.
“Hey, you, Enterprise!” shouted an imperative voice behind him. “You with the limp! Halt!”
He spun round. The King was striding rapidly towards him, his rough red-gold head afire in the sun and his blue eyes still sparkling fury. He was beside them, towering above them, before Landry could limp a stride towards him, and he left his companions gaping behind him.
“God’s Throat, were you one of those witless sons of asses?” Landry shook his head.
“Too little wind and too much sense, my lord. Sense only comes when wind grows short.”
The King smiled wryly. “Is that a dispensation of Providence or an affliction of the Devil?” he wondered. “Wounded? When?”
“Last week, defending the trenches, my lord.”
The keen blue eyes searched his face. “You were the knight rallied a rabble of ribalds and held the line, when the Infid
els almost broke through? I heard of that.” He mopped the sweat from his face, which still betrayed that he was barely recovered from his illness, despite the furious energy with which he directed the siege. “You have not yet taken my offer. I have use for enterprise.”
Landry looked slightly embarrassed. When a great King troubled to press such an offer, it was not easy or courteous to decline. “My lord,” he said soberly, with the direct honesty that was always his, “I have taken on me a task which I cannot in honour lay down. Therefore I thank you, and regret that I cannot enter your service until I have accomplished it.”
“God’s Head!” swore the King in lively surprise; he was not accustomed to having such offers promptly rejected. Then, when Rodriga feared he would explode into a right Plantagenet fury, he burst out laughing. “The Saints grant you success!” he wished him genially. “And that loot must have been worth taking!”
Landry relaxed. “It was, fair sire,” he assured him solemnly.
“I ask no inconvenient questions,” King Richard said as solemnly. “No concern of mine. As for this task of yours, bring it to me if you need aid or counsel.”
“M-my lord—”
“Are not Kings also men, to be moved by curiosity?” He grinned and strode away, shouting for Humphrey de Toron.
Landry felt at his neck and drew a deep breath. “Lord Above! Always need to feel if my head is still on after converse with him! But at least when the time comes we are sure of a fair hearing.”
“He would hear you now,” said Rodriga thoughtfully, wondering whether by some miracle the King might be sufficiently interested to conduct his own inquiry.
“Not without some shadow of proof,” Landry answered stubbornly. “Let us go while we have a dinner to go to.”
“Delay is no disadvantage to boiled goat,” Rodriga answered serenely, and lent him her slim shoulder for a prop.
Wulfric, though, might be depended on to do all that was humanly possible even with boiled goat, unlike the unlamented Diego. He was squatting over his banked fire, conversing amicably with Pablo in his own tongue. Both jumped to their feet at sight of their lord, and Rodriga noticed all at once how the last few days had transformed Wulfric. Defiance, shame and misery had gone from his gaunt face; his hair and beard were neatly trimmed, he had put on flesh and vigour, and he showed frank bold eyes and a cheerful grin that lacked nothing in respect. She had liked the look of him as he stood among the beggars, disdaining to grovel for casual charity. Now she saw him restored to manhood and use in his own sight, and thanked God humbly that He had put into her heart the impulse to save him.
“How goes it?” she asked softly, as her father disarmed.
His grin broadened. “Still practice, my lady, but no bellyaches yet.”
“Oh, our bellies are inured to aught. And Urraca?” Her voice dropped.
“If I’d two hands I’d throttle her,” he answered, his cheerfulness proof that he reckoned little to her enmity, “but useful, if her venom don’t poison the broth.”
Landry chuckled as he came forward, his face redder than a setting sun. “Feed it to her first—but no, snakes are proof against their own venom. . . . Ready, lass? The smell is the best of it; I swear that every goat I have so far blunted my teeth on in Acre has been a great-grandfather who never in his mis-spent life chewed aught softer than thornbushes!”
“Thornbushes,” Rodriga shortly made melancholy agreement, “would doubtless prove easier on our teeth.”
Wulfric laughed and promised to make amends at supper-time, and at least everyone’s teeth were capable of dealing with elderly goat. Flesh in Acre was poor and dear; goat, sheep and the occasional draught-ox varied by horse slaughtered at the point of death. Dinner over, Wulfric set Urraca to cut small and pound in a mortar what was left, a task beyond his one hand, while he roasted eggs in the ashes and crumbled bread for a workmanlike mortrewe. He managed very neatly with his one hand. Rodriga dressed his stump every other day, and it was mending cleanly. Raisins, onions, nuts, dates, chopped eggs and herbs went into the pot as he happened to think of them during the afternoon, and by supper-time the dish had reached noble proportions, while its basis of goat was so thoroughly disguised that that circumstance alone warranted the praise it received.
Landry remained in camp all afternoon, resting his wounded leg. Though he denied illness, he did not look well. The wound had closed, but his leg was swollen and red to the knee, and hot to the touch. His only complaint, however, was at the heat and the searing wind, which had blown for more than a week without ceasing from the scorched leagues of desert; the normal wind of high summer, they were told. It lifted the pulverised dust and dung of the camp and carried it through every crevice, filling hair and clothing, powdering sweat-moist skin and griming one’s flesh. Flies swarmed by day in a loathly black haze; by night mosquitoes whined in from the marshes. The water, drawn from those same fouled marshes, tainted the food cooked in it. Fevers, fluxes and agues were inexorably thinning the host, slaying more than all the Saracens’ weapons, and it was no matter for marvel, Landry grimly declared, that there were more Christians under the ground than walking upon it.
He sat contentedly enough after supper with Rodriga while the sunset flared and darkness fell. They sipped the last cups of wine and watched Wulfric, who was burning damp refuse in a desperate endeavour to discourage the mosquitoes. It was doubtful whether it were preferable to be bitten to frenzy or asphyxiated to stupor, but they sat hopefully to leeward of the fire and slapped occasionally at wrists and necks. Then Marco appeared beyond it, giving his usual impression of having risen out of the ground, and loomed tall and dark in the dull glow of the half-smothered coals.
“A word with you, my lady?”
“ ’Save you, Marco,” Landry greeted him amicably, lifting a curious eyebrow. Rodriga felt a reprehensible pleasure stir in her at sight of that lean dangerous man whose arrival promised adventure, and for the first time admitted to herself a certain liking for the renegade.
Landry leaned his head back to look up. “Sit down, man! It is not to my taste to be towered over!”
The renegade hesitated, and turned to him as if surprised. Then he sank down, crossing his legs in the Arab fashion. The move brought his face down to the dim firelight, but there was nothing to be learned from it. He glanced from Landry to Rodriga, ignoring Ramiro and Wulfric who had closed in behind him with ready knives.
“Acre will capitulate tomorrow,” he announced abruptly.
“Capitulate? Tomorrow?" The two-year defence of Acre had been a portent and a marvel, so that even now, when the end could hardly be days away, the word of surrender seemed scarcely credible, a tame ending to the tale of heroism that had fired even the enemy to admiration.
“The city would have been stormed today if those fools had not forestalled Melek Ric,” Marco told them, giving King Richard the name the Saracens had bestowed on him, in a perverse refusal to acknowledge his sovereignty.
Rodriga nodded soberly. Acre was doomed. Capitulation was the only alternative to sack and massacre. She had witnessed the brief sack of Messina last year, and she had heard hideous legends of the First Crusade’s atrocities. She had no desire to see the host loosed in a ghastly orgy of slaughter and rape and looting.
“Then Acre is won for God tomorrow!” said Landry in a tone of marvelling.
“Then you will need a house in Acre.”
For a moment Landry could scarcely bring his enthralled wits to descend as far as mundane matters. “A house?” he repeated blankly.
“I know Acre. I know a house that will please you, if you accept my guidance.”
“Accept—? Lord Above, a house?” exclaimed Landry, as one offered Paradise.
“Whose house?” inquired Rodriga, the possessor of an inconveniently active conscience.
Marco’s lips twitched; he was acquainted with that handicap. “The owner will not object. He was a Genoese merchant who died in Tyre last winter.”
“Diego! M
ore wine!” shouted Landry, delighted as a boy with his first spear. Diego came running with the pitcher, and Marco’s eyes widened in unbelief as, obeying Landry’s signal, the boy thrust a cup into his hand and poured a dark stream of wine into it. He set it down untasted and gazed tensely into the knight’s face. His whole body was gathered tautly for an instant leap, like a wolf’s at the scent of peril. Landry, so pleased that he had probably noticed nothing, grinned at him and lifted his own cup in salutation. “What kind of house?” he asked eagerly. “How large? And where?”
Marco relaxed. Though he stared at him as if he could not believe him real, no one could doubt Landry’s sincerity. He beamed expectantly at him, and the renegade’s voice betrayed nothing of his momentary disconcertment. Perhaps only Rodriga had observed it. “In a quiet street near the inner harbour. Not large, but it has stables and a courtyard. And a stout door in case of need.”
“And what do you mean by that, knave?” Landry demanded, grinning broadly.
Marco’s brows twitched, and then his teeth flashed in the night of his close beard. He checked as though he had surprised himself. “Some day your enemy will know he is that,” he answered.
“You know too much,” Landry told him cheerfully. “Some day your neck will pay forfeit. Drink your wine while you have a gullet left you.”
He lifted the cup to his lips and swallowed once, watching Landry over the rim. “I recommend that you strike camp at dawn,” he said. “You may take possession while the great lords are still arguing precedence. Acre is not large.”
The faint flavour of malice in his pleasant voice set them both chuckling appreciatively. The thought of the great lords’ wrath at finding themselves denied a respectable residence by a masterless nobody appealed particularly to Landry, who had had a bellyful of their arrogance. There were advantages in owing no allegiance. “Possession is nine points of the law, and once I am in none but King Richard shall hale me forth,” he declared.
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