A Blood Red Horse

by K. M. Grant

  “Better to drown than burn,” the youth muttered again and again. That night Sir Thomas all but gave up hope, for William began to rave about Hosanna and would not let up. Gavin, still stupid with drink, was slumped in the corner, his mouth half open. William suddenly fixed his eyes on him.

  “Who are you? Why don’t you tell me where Hosanna is?” he complained, sounding twelve years old again. His fingers never stopped pulling at his covers.

  “I know Hosanna is dead,” he went on, his voice rising. “I know you have killed him.” For an hour or more William repeated himself until Gavin, pricked to madness through his stupor, leaped up.

  “Hosanna is not dead,” he bellowed. “I’ll go and get him so that you can see for yourself.” He lurched to his feet, disappeared into the darkness, and returned shortly after, pulling the horse under the awning. Sir Thomas tried to get up but found himself too giddy. He sat down again and held on to his chair. He felt terribly thirsty, but one look at the water made his stomach turn.

  Hosanna, who, under the care of Hal, was still shining, seemed unfazed by the unusual situation, and when he had steadied himself, Sir Thomas leaned forward and put William’s hands on his horse’s head. “What is there to lose, what is there to gain?” he muttered, then thought, I, too, am losing my mind. Hosanna put his nose close to William’s pillow and, when the dust of the tent tickled his nose, sneezed. A thousand little droplets flew over William’s face. Sir Thomas moved slowly to wipe them off.

  Gavin stared at him. “You’re shaking, Father,” he said. “It’s nothing,” replied Sir Thomas. “You’ve had too much to drink.” Then he sat down again. “Take the horse away now, Gavin,” he said. “He can do William no good here.”

  Gavin took Hosanna back to Hal, then like a homeless dog, he found a blanket and fell into a heavy sleep.

  Sir Thomas was wrong. Later in the night the crisis in William’s fever passed. By morning the boy was sleeping easily, and the following day he propped himself up and recognized his father, sitting by his bed.

  William leaned forward.

  “Father?” he said, and touched Sir Thomas’s hand. It was cold. William, weak and pale, went rigid with shock. While he had managed to cling on to life, Sir Thomas, overcome with weakness and fatigue, had not. He was stone dead. William sank back. When he finally managed to wake his brother, Gavin howled like a wolf.

  Once William was strong enough to walk, they buried Sir Thomas’s body in the tunnel dug by French sappers to undermine Acre’s walls. The corpse, surrounded by what brush and timber could be gathered from the plain and surrounding hills, was set alight, and as they watched the walls sink and crumble as the fire took advantage of the sappers’ work, Gavin and William felt that their father would have approved. King Richard, whose own sickness had also passed, told them how much he would miss Sir Thomas and that he would be remembered as a kind and honorable man. Sickness was cruel, but their father had done his crusading duty. William and Gavin bowed when the king had finished, but his words were small consolation.

  Still far from well, William was silent in his grief. He tried to pray, but all he could hear was his father’s voice, joking with Old Nurse or teasing Ellie in the great hall at Hartslove. Gavin, on the other hand, went wild. He blamed the Saracens and cursed them to hell. Night after night he paced the tent, muttering and swearing until his poison slowly seeped into his brother’s soul, too. But in contrast with Gavin’s quick, hot fury, William’s hatred grew inch by inch and was cold as steel. While God might give Sir Thomas due reward in heaven, here on earth the Saracens must pay. When William could once again wield a sword, he rode Hosanna around the camp, exhorting his fellow crusaders to redouble their efforts. Then he took his turn to scale the long ladders now propped up all over the city walls for the Christians to climb and punched and stabbed any of the enemy who came within his reach. His dagger bloody, he told himself he would never look on any Saracen without remembering his father’s suffering and death.

  The end of the siege came suddenly. The Saracens, realizing that Acre could be defended no longer, sued for terms of surrender. After much haggling, an agreement was reached involving the exchange of captives and ransom money, and the Muslim enemy slowly began to emerge from the city. Those acting as hostages were herded to one side, a huge group numbering over three thousand. William, leading Hosanna and Dargent to drink at one of the dirty channels, stared at their thin faces. Why, he thought to himself with surprise, they look quite ordinary. But he hardened his heart and soon turned his gaze elsewhere.

  Richard sent for him. Along with the Duke of Burgundy, he was to go to Saladin’s camp to discuss delivery of ransom money for all the captives—a responsibility earned, Richard said, as a reward for the number of Saracens the boy had killed in the siege. The two sides met in the open. William rode behind the duke and stared at Saladin, whose eyes were dark and inscrutable. The duke was loud in his demands. Saladin was courteous as he denied them. When Richard was told, he seethed with fury. Finally, he sent William to call together his senior knights.

  “Friends and fellow crusaders,” he said, “we can go no further, saddled as we are with all these Saracen captives. Saladin refuses to pay the ransom. So we must now decide. Shall we wait while Saladin marshals yet more forces to defy us, or shall we cut our losses, execute the prisoners, and move on to Jerusalem?”

  There was a moment’s silence before Gavin stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Kill the captives. They are nothing but dogs,” he said loudly and clearly. “Kill them.”

  There was a short pause before Adam Landless, then the Duke of Burgundy, then one influential knight after another, all stepped forward to agree. They began to shout, and William found himself joining in.

  The following afternoon all was prepared. The prisoners were herded into an open space just outside the city walls. They thought they were going home. It was only when faced with a solid and silent battery of mounted Christian soldiers, lances poised and swords unsheathed, that they suddenly realized what was about to happen. Some dropped to their knees, some invoked Allah’s name, while others began to talk fast and loudly, shaking their heads.

  Gavin and Montlouis stood in the first line of soldiers. William, on Hosanna, was behind in the second. In the baking afternoon sun the trumpeter gave the sound, and at first slowly, then faster and faster, Richard’s men, shouting the names of knights already dead, bore down on the unarmed enemy. They rode straight through them, spearing, slicing, stabbing, and slashing. Wave after wave, they charged at the prisoners until not one remained alive. By the end the horses were finding it difficult to keep their feet in the lake of blood.

  But while Montlouis, urged on by Gavin, thundered toward the victims, Hosanna, for the first time in years, refused to move forward at all. It did not matter what William did. As the knights beside him galloped toward the enemy the horse remained stock-still. Hosanna seemed neither angry nor afraid, but nothing William could do would make him carry the boy into the massacre. William’s sword remained unbloodied and his hands clean. Eventually, after a long struggle, William dismounted and threw Hosanna’s reins to Hal in disgust. He shouted for Dargent. Hosanna, who had been such a talisman, was making a spectacle of himself. Shaking with humiliation and fury, William struck the horse with the flat of his sword. It was the first time he had ever raised his hand against him. Hosanna did not flinch, but a long wale arose on his neck and drops of blood speckled the sand as Hal silently led him away.

  By the time Dargent was ready, it was all over.

  Afterward, nobody spoke about either the massacre or Hosanna’s behavior. The dead bodies were dumped in a pyre and burned. Sand was spread over the blood. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

  But not for William. The wale on Hosanna’s neck festered and wept. As William watched Hal try to clean it as best he could, the boy’s conscience hurt him. What was he turning into? Sickened as much by his own behavior as he had earlier been upset by Hosann
a’s, William could not rest.

  Everybody else was happy, rejoicing at the news that the march toward Jerusalem, the event they had all been waiting for, could now begin. Having come so far, they could not afford to be squeamish. They were to go to Jaffa first, another important port, but one which the Saracens were already abandoning because they knew they could not defend it. The Christians could not wait to get going. Gradually, as Hosanna’s wale began to heal and the army was once again on the move, William made a big effort to push his own confusions away. Like the king, he must concentrate on the task ahead. So he joined the queue for fresh supplies coming in from the coast and ate and drank his fill. He talked to Hal and discussed how best to keep the horses healthy. When he heard soldiers and grooms singing as they went about their work, he did his best to join in. He told himself that soon the horror of the massacre would, like the voyage and his illness, recede.

  Before the march to Jaffa began, the king commanded a great feast to be held in Sir Thomas’s memory. All the Hartslove men still surviving were present, and Gavin promised such rewards as were now his to give as their new lord. He also told Adam Landless there would be a place for him in his household. But to the new friends he had made on the journey, Gavin offered nothing. Since his father’s death he could not bear the sight of them. William was relieved. Gavin needed steady companions, for his actions were growing increasingly reckless. After the feast, as the army moved away from the city there were few forage or reconnaissance parties for which he did not volunteer. Occasionally he returned with Muslim heads attached to his saddle, something that sickened William. Displaying heads, even though this was also what the king did, was, to his mind, a mark not of heroism but of barbarism. Could God possibly approve of such things? When Gavin displayed his gruesome trophies, William, although his hatred of the Saracens was as strong as ever, avoided him. Once he asked Gavin if he would tell Ellie the sort of things crusaders did. Gavin laughed. “Women cannot understand these things,” he said.

  “But they can be ashamed,” William answered.

  Gavin just shrugged his shoulders. “Everybody has to get through this in their own way, little brother,” he said, and walked off.

  Gavin soon wore his horses thin through overuse, but the army as a whole, as it marched south, looked in reasonably good shape. The journey was undertaken in strict formation, the spare horses and the baggage train protected by the sea on one side and the great column of knights and men-at-arms on the other.

  Nevertheless, even with the king’s genius for strategy, the route was hazardous. The knights were continually harassed by Saracen archers galloping toward them on their swift ponies, aiming great clouds of arrows with deadly accuracy, then galloping away. It was, William thought after a fifth day spent pulling the darts out of his thick undercoat, like being attacked by a swarm of bees. To save Dargent and Hosanna, he was riding one of his coursers and sat hunched in the saddle. Ringing in his ears was the king’s order, repeated forcefully every day, that nobody was to break ranks unless the trumpet sounded a charge. For the moment the trumpet was silent.

  Gavin, traveling near the rear of the column with a splitting headache, was goaded almost beyond endurance. The men in front of him looked like hedgehogs as the arrows stuck in their woolen jerkins. They had cursed these jerkins for being far too hot, but now they were certainly feeling the benefit. The horses had much less protection and began to fall by the score, not silently but with frantic neighs and terrible groans. Their bodies were left in the blazing sun for the jackals and vultures to dispose of. There was no other option.

  At night there was some respite, and early in the morning, as the Christians began to march but before the Saracens geared themselves for attack, William sometimes looked at the landscape and marveled at its variety. The army traveled through woods and over pleasant-looking rivers. Along the coast the plants grew so luxuriously that it made progress difficult for the baggage animals. Truly, thought William, this could be the land of milk and honey. But then the arrows would start raining down, and it was hell again.

  At the end of a fortnight, the road grew narrow between the mountains, and Richard saw that a major ambush was more and more likely. He ordered his knights to ride their warhorses—the time was coming when the Christians would have to retaliate. William asked Hal to saddle Dargent, but Hal was unwilling. Dargent had cast a shoe and was likely to go lame. William would have to ride Hosanna. Hal put as much armor on the horse as he thought he could bear, and William, his heart heavy, took his place in the column.

  There was no letup from the Saracen attacks. As the Christians approached the forest of Arsuf, despite the king constantly reiterating his order to keep marching straight ahead, tempers were frayed. The enemy edged ever closer and poured out of the hills in increasing numbers. William tried not to hear the pleas of the wounded men or the anguish of the horses left behind to face their fate alone. The order was not to break the column. They must obey the order or all would be lost.

  As the thuds and cries grew ever louder and his eyes, despite his visor, smarted with dust, William felt suffocated by the heat and kept a mailed hand on Hosanna’s neck. The horse stepped out eagerly as the sun rose. The wale on his neck was well healed but had left a permanent ridge of proud flesh. William steadied him with his voice. He tried not to think of what was happening. He tried, instead, to focus on Jerusalem.

  Arrows were now glancing off Hosanna’s shoulders every minute, and William wildly swept them away. Suddenly, a terrible, unbidden thought made him shiver. If Richard ordered a charge now, would Hosanna obey? The horse seemed willing enough, his ears pricked forward. Surely he would. But if he did, did that mean that the king had been wrong in ordering the massacre of the prisoners at Acre, and that Hosanna had somehow felt it?

  William wished he could talk everything through with Ellie. Then he shuddered and ducked to avoid a crossbow bolt. It missed William but hit the next horse, which sank to the ground, its leg shattered. The knight shouted in his distress. Oh God, thought William. No. How could he wish that anybody he loved should see what the crusade was really about? As he rode on through the filthy, choking air William realized that he did not know what he would say about any of it if he ever got home again.

  Then a voice broke through the uproar. It was Gavin’s. “This is intolerable!” he shouted as he pulled another dart from Montlouis’s neck.

  The Saracen war cry of “Allah akbar” was all around them. It echoed inside the steel of William’s helmet. Behind him a rattling grunt signaled the end of another horse, caught by an arrow straight through the throat. Blood spattered all over William’s back, but he dared not look round.

  Then he heard Gavin again, almost screaming. “Tell the king!” he yelled. “Tell the king we can bear this no longer! We will be remembered as cowards if we don’t retaliate before we are all dead. We are losing our horses one after another. Come on, my friends, let’s charge!” William, ignoring the order to face forward, spun Hosanna round.

  “Gavin! No!” he yelled. “No!”

  But Gavin paid no heed. He swung Montlouis out of the column and, raising his lance, swept headlong toward the Saracen horde. Seeing Gavin break formation, other men, also driven to distraction by the mayhem around them, turned to attack. The king realized that he was powerless to control his scattering troops and took the only decision he could.

  “Sound the charge!” he yelled at the trumpeter, and with shouts of “God and Jerusalem!” all the Christians were suddenly galloping after Gavin and toward their tormentors.

  Gavin reached the enemy first. He lost his lance at once and set about with his sword. The Saracens were taken aback by his lunatic bravery and seemed nonplussed until a dark boy on a high-stepping Arab stallion unsheathed his sword and matched Gavin strike for strike.

  Kamil had been waiting for such an opportunity. His horse teased Montlouis like a ballet dancer teasing an elephant, and never changing his expression, Kamil evaded Gavin’s sword
with ease. Only the arrival of the entire Christian army, with Hosanna in the thick of it, saved Gavin from certain death. The impetus swept Kamil away, and Gavin found himself among the group of Hospitaller knights who had reached the Saracens after him.

  As for Kamil, just for a moment in the melee, he found himself galloping by the side of a remarkably beautiful flame-colored horse. As Hosanna swung away, Kamil watched him. Then, knowing that the knights’ charge spelled defeat for the Saracens in this particular battle, Kamil headed back to the hills, but not before he had made a mental note to look for the red horse again.

  Once the Christian charge got under way, the Saracen forces scattered, leaving thousands of dead and dying from both sides in their wake. King Richard, after giving his men a severe lecture about not breaking the rules he had set down, commended many knights for their bravery. When he had been reprimanded for his disregard for orders, even Gavin’s precipitate charge was forgiven, although the king was clearly displeased. It had been Richard’s intention to draw the Saracens to a place where they could have been surrounded. As it was, the king himself, riding the fleet horse he had taken from the ruler of Cyprus, had been forced to pursue the Saracens, leaving his own men vulnerable. It was small consolation that many of the enemy were caught, and disappointing that Saladin was not among them. As for the Christians, they too lost many men, including Adam Landless.

  Gavin bit his lip. As he rode back through the scenes of devastation, at the king’s side, he looked with distaste at the soldiers who had returned to the battlefield and were loading themselves with plunder from the fallen. It was, needless to say, customary. Nevertheless, it was not something Richard encouraged, and when Gavin saw Adam’s looted body, he was, notwithstanding the king’s presence, violently sick. Richard was not sympathetic.