The Crusader

by Michael Eisner

  When he saw that they had not moved, his tone became more severe. “Listen, my beauties. I have grown weary of your company. Perhaps you can use your charms to captivate other masters. Leave me now.”

  The two women laughed uneasily, perhaps hoping the Don was playing an elaborate but harmless jest. As the Venetians moved closer, though, the two courtesans recognized the gravity of their position.

  “But Don Fernando,” one of the women said, faltering slightly, “we are your courtesans, royal courtesans.”

  He looked at the speaker thoughtfully. “No,” he said, “you were royal courtesans. Now you are the property of these gentlemen. I advise you to make the best of your new condition. You were whores anyway. Remember that. And remember to have faith. Circumstances can change. Isn’t that so, young Montcada?”

  Don Fernando glanced at me, a smile, almost compassionate, if not for the edge of his lips, downturned, mocking, and a glare in his eyes that expressed a lifetime of unwholesome yearning, unsated ambition, and unspoken fury. I looked only a moment into the furnace of those eyes until I could hold his gaze no longer.

  The women prostrated themselves, falling to their knees, clutching the legs of Don Fernando. He looked down at them, a vague sense of disappointment crossing his face, a beleaguered distaste for the whole affair. Then he motioned for the Venetians to enter his circle and take the women away.

  The two women refused to retreat. One of them shrieked hysterically. The other appealed to one of the Venetians, who looked at her blankly. She kept repeating details of her lineage, maintaining that she was third cousin to the Bishop of Barcelona, as if that fact would immunize her from such an undignified fate. The Venetians finally picked the two women up, carrying them over the shoulder toward the back of the stage.

  As this drama unfolded, there was a furtive laughter from the royal entourage. The remaining courtesans laughed the hardest, perhaps in relief that they had not been picked by their master. Don Fernando was straightening out his tunic, ruffled by the clutching of the two sold women. In his party, he alone was quiet, his expression transformed, calculating, apprehensive once again, as if he were contemplating vital affairs of state or perhaps matters of succession. When one of the Venetians brought down the document of exchange, Don Fernando signed as if it were a treaty between Aragón and Navarre. When he was done, his entourage departed with the new acquisitions.

  I had the absurd impulse to buy the two women back and send them home to Aragón. Absurd it was because Andrés and I had left most of our coins back at the Hospitaller Ward. The two of us rummaged through our pockets but could come up with only four silver pieces. Despite our lack of funds, I asked the slave master how much he wanted for the “Catalán virgins.” He looked at us keenly, suspiciously, as if we were meddling in affairs in which we had no business. After this short perusal, he chose to ignore my entreaties altogether. Within minutes, the two women were resold to a merchant for sixty-three gold coins.

  The bidding began immediately on the next group of slaves. I turned toward the sea, my fists clenched, the chill of the westerly breeze on the cold sweat that cloaked my body.

  THE NEXT WEEK, Uncle Ramón called the Calatrava to a meeting in the Hospitaller Ward. Flanked by his bodyguards, Bernard and Roberto, Ramón stood in the corner of the courtyard under the refectory. The smell of pressed olives wafted down from the open windows.

  “My brothers,” he said, “soon we go to battle. The bastard Don Fernando has grown impatient in this den of debauchery. He has consulted with the Deputy Grand Master of the Hospital, Baron Bernières, and persuaded him to strike at the infidels. After all, we did not come halfway around the world to sample the whores, did we?”

  I let out an inadvertent laugh. Don Fernando, eager to strike a blow against the infidels, the sword of Christ, protector of Christendom. It was amusing.

  “Do you have anything to add, Francisco?” Ramón asked.

  “No, Uncle,” I said. “Please excuse me.”

  “Baron Bernières and Don Fernando,” Ramón continued, “have decided to attack Baibars where he is most vulnerable—the castle of Toron, thirty miles march from Acre. The Muslims seized the fortress three years ago. Today, only a small garrison holds it.

  “Conquering the castle would be a great victory for Our Savior. Its possession would provide our armies a base of operations to protect the kingdom and to strike at the infidels farther east.

  “Don Fernando and his forces—two hundred knights and more than one thousand foot soldiers—will depart for Toron tomorrow. We will accompany Baron Bernières and his four hundred knights the next day.

  “Our combined forces will lay siege to the castle. We will not starve the castle’s inhabitants into submission. We know from our spy, a Christian Arab who resides in the fortress, that the castle’s reserves of food and water could last several months. The Baron hopes that the stranglehold will convince the entrapped populace and soldiers of the inevitability of the castle’s fall, so that their commanders will negotiate a bloodless surrender. The Baron will offer safe passage for all the inhabitants in return for the complete evacuation of the castle.

  “The Baron, as the commander of the largest force, will assume overall command of the Christian armies. He has requested that the Knights of Calatrava join the expedition.

  “Prepare yourselves, my friends. We march on Toron in two days’ time.”

  It was decided then. I yearned for battle, for the taste and smell of war to liberate Sergio’s soul and lift the shadow of my burden.

  CHAPTER IX

  A FIELD OF BLOOD

  THE MOUNTED SOLDIERS made the journey to Toron in one day. We rode horses provided by our Hospitaller brethren. Don Fernando’s squires transported our armor.

  At Toron, the Hospitallers and Don Fernando’s army laid siege to the castle—surrounding its walls, preventing entry or exit. The Calatrava set our tents one mile from the other Christian camps. We were situated on the edge of a forest, just out of sight of the castle. Uncle Ramón had volunteered our services in helping construct a siege tower. Our Grand Master seemed to have expertise in all aspects of combat, including engineering. For two weeks, Ramón directed the Hospitaller engineers and their crews, some five hundred men, in designing and building the tower.

  The Hospitaller engineers had transported from Acre fifty iron rods and the four corner beams of the tower—thick wood, over one hundred feet long, long enough to reach the tallest tower of the castle. The Hospitallers had received the measurements of Toron’s towers from the Christian knights who had surrendered the castle three years previously.

  In a flat field, the Hospitallers set out the materials. The first day, under Ramón’s supervision, the engineers fit the iron to the wood. The rods held the beams apart, making a square. Ropes tied around the four corners held the beams together. The engineers tightened the ropes toward one end, the wood bending, the four beams straining toward each other. Laid out near the forest, the frame of the tower resembled the carcass of a giant beast, with iron ribs and the ropy residue of hanging flesh.

  The Hospitallers distributed axes. The Knights of Calatrava found ourselves cutting down trees in some remote forest in Syria. Teams of two worked each side of the trunk. We cleared whole groves, then moved on to the next. My back and shoulders burned from the toil.

  The Hospitallers carried the felled timber to another workplace. There the engineers cut, sawed, and shaped the trees into solid beams. The rasping sound of the saws mixed with the coughing of workmen inhaling the dry sawdust.

  Another group carried the cut wood to the skeletal tower, as if providing food to the dead beast. In the main camp, Ramón consulted with the master engineer of the Hospitallers, perusing sketches, inspecting the labor, shouting instructions. The constant thud of hammers made it difficult to hear Ramón. Spikes carried in the teeth of the engineers were soon fed to the machine, swallowed whole. The wood planks spread out each day, concealing the empty insides of the tower.
The animal came to life slowly.

  In an adjoining field, the engineers had placed long vats of vinegar. Animal hides from Acre lay soaking in the tubs. When the hammering subsided, the skeleton no longer visible, the Hospitallers carried the hides to the tower. They nailed the skins to the smooth wood, making a fur coat that eventually covered the entire structure. Ramón said it would prevent or at least slow the spread of flames from burning arrows.

  On the last day of construction, another contingent of Hospitaller engineers arrived from Acre with four wooden wheels, each as tall as my chest, and iron axles. The Hospitallers fixed the wheels to the flat end of the tower, providing legs to the engine.

  As the final work proceeded, Ramón sent the Calatrava into the forest to clean ourselves. We bathed in the river, washing away the grime of our labors, preparing ourselves for an altogether different task. We returned a couple of hours later and beheld our creation—the tower standing vertical as if it had waked from sleeping. Andrés said that he had not thought a whole army could raise the tower. Ramón later told us that a mechanical contraption, an invention of the infidels, had borne most of the weight.

  We stood there for some time, examining the soaring edifice, paying homage to the colossal creature. It was in fact a death machine, a carriage to transfer the Christian soldiers onto one of the castle towers. More than one hundred knights would approach the castle in midday protected by this wood and iron shelter. The interior of the engine had three stories connected by two openings and rope ladders nailed to the uppermost ceiling. The top floor had a plank that would drop to the surface of a castle tower, a ramp from which the knights would charge the Muslim defenders. The forty knights on the top floor would be the first wave to attack, reinforced and replaced by the knights below. Under fire from the Muslims manning the walls, hundreds of foot soldiers would wheel the tower so that the four wooden wheels would move us into the battle.

  And battle there would be. Uncle Ramón had met with Baron Bernières and Don Fernando that morning. The two other commanders had lost patience with the infidels. The Muslim generals had rebuffed the generous offers of safe passage. The latest indignity enraged all the Christian knights. The infidels had stripped naked our emissary and sent him tied and blindfolded on the back of an ass trotting to the Christian forces.

  The three commanders decided to attack the castle in two days’ time. That gave us one day to wheel the engine to the front lines. Ramón relayed the battle plans. Following an artillery barrage from the catapults, the three armies—the Calatrava, the Hospitallers, and Don Fernando’s force—would attack simultaneously. The Calatrava and Hospitallers, would join forces against the western walls of the castle. Our combined force would rely on the siege engine to lead us into battle. Don Fernando’s army would strike from the east.

  Five hundred Hospitaller engineers spent that night with spade and hoe, leveling a wide path for the siege engine to travel straight to the castle. At dawn, they attached ropes and pulleys to the great machine. Hospitaller crews took turns hauling the tower toward the castle.

  The Calatrava had armored before daybreak. On our warhorses, we guarded the tower, providing protection in the event the infidels tried to send a raiding party to fire or dismantle the machine. They sent no one, though. We spent a full day and the better part of a night watching the grueling struggles of the Hospitaller crews, the slow movement of the tower—step by step. Every quarter hour, the Hospitallers suspended their efforts in order to clean the mud from the wheel axles.

  A light rain began to fall at dusk. One of the engineers slipped in front of the tower. I could hear his ribs collapse, crushed like a bundle of twigs on an anvil. Just before dusk, we reached Baron Bernières’ camp. It had taken twenty-two hours to move one mile. As our squires pulled off our armor, we could smell the remnants of meat roasting on the spit from the previous night’s supper. Looking in the distance, we could see the outline of the fortress, but we paid no mind to that stone apparition. Our bodies craved sleep, our eyes closing fast.

  We lay but a couple hours under the canvas tents that were set up before our arrival. One of the Hospitaller foot soldiers woke us with sorrowful melody on his flute—a siren’s elegy—a solemn call to battle. We yawned and shook our heads to drive away the troubled spirits that visited us in our sleep. The rain had ended, and a rainbow appeared—“Noah’s golden rainbow,” Uncle Ramón called it. The burnt reds, emerald green, the blue and yellow streaked across the valley.

  Through a delicate fog, we glimpsed the castle. The gray stone appeared aloof, indifferent, as it had seen soldiers from many nations march before its walls, only to be buried in the shadows of its formidable facade. The walls reached to the sky, anchored by round, open towers, manned by Saracen archers. Standing on top of the parapet of one of the towers, a man peered out toward our encampment. Perhaps he was a knight just like me, or maybe one of their commanders counting our numbers, measuring our strength. It was my first sight of an individual enemy, an infidel, admittedly from a distance—more a silhouette than a man. But even so, I felt a wave of apprehension and excitement—that very day, I might come face to face with this nameless soldier.

  Arrow slits—thin, vertical holes—graced the stone walls in horizontal rows, a menacing pattern that would enable the Saracen archers to shoot at the approaching enemy while remaining hidden. There were larger slits for the mechanical crossbows that would be used against the siege engine and catapults. Sheltered galleries ringed the walls, making it possible for infidel patrols to circle the entire castle and gauge an enemy’s vulnerability. At points the galleries jutted out, concealing large slots in the floor from which burning oil or rocks could be dropped on soldiers attempting to scale the walls.

  The squires carried our armor to a patch of dust and gravel just beside our tent. They helped us dress for battle—smoothing the kinks in our chain mail, fastening buckles, tightening straps. Ramón told us not to wear our leggings. The heavy weight of the chain mail would restrict our movement on foot.

  French Hospitaller servants served us a breakfast of bread and wine, a wretched, lukewarm concoction, tasting more like vinegar than spirits. The servants looked disdainfully at us, as if it were we who should be serving them. After tasting that foul liquid, I emptied my cup into the earth.

  “This wine tastes like shit,” Galindo Fáñez said.

  “Ça va,” one of the French servants made the mistake of responding.

  “Merde, merde,” Galindo said with a thick Catalán accent, pointing to his cup.

  “N’importe quoi vous dites, vous allez mourir avant midi.” This second mistake was near fatal for our French server.

  Whether, as a general matter, Galindo understood French, I do not know. But he understood the gist of those words—no matter what you say, you will die before noon. Galindo grabbed the speaker by the hair, twisted him to the ground, and pressed his sword to the Frenchman’s neck.

  “I may die in the coming battle,” Galindo said, “but not before I get a decent cup of wine.”

  The sneer vanished from the Frenchman’s face. His cheeks blanched. His eyes wide, fastened on the fist that held the sword before him.

  No doubt if the Frenchman had understood Galindo’s sensitive nature, he would have chosen his words more carefully. Galindo had revealed this nature the first day of our training in Calatrava. We were in the barn, hanging on a metal bar placed across the stalls. It was a test of strength. Ramón himself counted off the seconds as we clasped the bar. Galindo was one of three trainees who fell before thirty.

  “Do not worry, girls,” Ramón said to this group of three, “Bernard and Roberto will get you into shape.”

  Grand Master or no, Ramón had insulted Galindo, who took off, rushing headlong toward our master. It seemed he would tackle Ramón from behind. Ramón must have heard the footsteps or sensed Galindo’s approach. He rotated his body and brought down his elbow on Galindo’s head just before their collision. Galindo went sprawling, hi
s face planted in a pile of mud.

  “Galindo,” Ramón said, “one day you will be a Knight of Calatrava. Until then, try to remain on your feet.”

  In our makeshift camp at Toron, Galindo was on his feet. He was standing on the Frenchman, dumping a jar of wine on his head.

  “Kill him,” Enrique Sánchez said. “Kill the bastard.”

  All of us, including Galindo, turned to Enrique in surprise. He was the youngest of the knights, barely eighteen. He was amiable, well liked by all our comrades, known more for his exploits in love than in our martial contests.

  He had almost been expelled from the Order several months before our departure. It was the feast of the Assumption. Many of the knights visited the town’s festivities, some the local tavern. We made our way back to the fortress after nightfall, singing ballads and dancing. Enrique could not be found. We thought he had returned with an earlier group. He had—a group of two. We came upon them in the refectory. Esmeralda, a whore from town, rushed to greet Ramón.

  “What sweet boys you hide up here, Ramón,” Esmeralda said.

  We were in the company of the head priest of the Order, Padre Dioniso, who had been awakened by our singing. Barefoot, his pale, bony shins sticking out from his robe, the padre was lecturing us on the evils of consuming spirits when even he was silenced by the scene before us. Enrique was lying flat on his back on one of the wooden tables—naked, except for a leather pendant around his neck, a gift from his companion.

  “Padre Dioniso,” Ramón said, “may I introduce Esmeralda, one of Calatrava’s most beloved residents. Of course, you know Enrique.”

  That Enrique would be expelled from the academy the next day was assumed by all in the company. The other soldiers, including me, retreated hastily to our quarters, leaving Ramón, Enrique, and Esmeralda to face Padre Dioniso’s wrath. We learned what happened several days later. According to Galindo, Esmeralda was well acquainted with Padre Dioniso. She referred to him as “el lobo,” the wolf, and snarled playfully. Despite Esmeralda’s familiar salutation, the padre maintained that he had never met the girl. The padre launched into a diatribe against fornicators, bringing Esmeralda to tears with a vivid description of the torments that awaited her in hell. When he was done, he began slapping his own face. He did so repeatedly, red welts rising on his cheek, until Ramón stayed his hand. Sobbing, the padre fell to his knees and confessed to an illicit liaison with Esmeralda. He kissed Uncle Ramón’s feet and begged him to be merciful. Uncle Ramón agreed to keep Padre Dioniso’s secret on condition that Enrique be allowed to remain at Calatrava. In order to maintain appearances, Padre Dioniso pleaded with Ramón to allow a minimal punishment for Enrique. Ramón told the padre that, given the unusual circumstances, he would need the permission of Enrique, who magnanimously agreed to the imposition of an extra hour of silent prayer in the afternoon for one month.