The Crusader

by Michael Eisner

  We continued our descent, until a terrible explosion knocked both of us off our feet. The stone tablets that lined the walls scraped and screeched against each other. Rocks fell from the ceiling. It seemed an earthquake. As if God Himself had seen enough and decided to bury both armies in the rubble of our war machines.

  When the reverberations subsided, we proceeded downward urgently, anxious to exit the dark tomb that seemed on the verge of collapse. We came upon an opening, a doorway around the bend. I slung the bow over my shoulder. I drew my dagger and walked down to investigate. It was a small balcony facing out into the castle’s courtyard. One Saracen stood guard, looking away, his hands on the railing. I walked back to Andrés. Our best course, we agreed, was to draw the Saracen toward us, into the stairway. With this object, Andrés tossed his sword just outside the open door. It bounced off the stone, the clang echoing through the stairwell. As we anticipated, the noise brought the Saracen guard rushing in from the balcony, his sword at the ready. He looked down first. Then up at Andrés and me. He did not seem surprised. He spoke strange words, perhaps a greeting. I shot him in the chest. He fell backward. After a second, he turned over and began crawling toward the balcony. I shot him again, in the back, between the shoulder blades. His head dropped to the stone floor.

  With our passage cleared, we stood just to the side of the balcony’s entrance and peered outside. We could see clear across the castle to the source of the great thunder. Don Fernando’s battering ram had demolished the castle gates. Knights from his entourage were riding through the gap, trampling the Saracen foot soldiers, smashing skulls, tearing flesh and sinew, dispatching our foes like insects under a boot heel. The Muslim lines broke, their soldiers fleeing for cover.

  Don Fernando himself, the folds of his purple cape buffeted by the wind, led his brigade. His lieutenants surrounded him, but he was riding fast enough to outstrip them. He surged forward, into a horde of defenders, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Don Fernando wielded his sword with a savage expertise, crushing, crashing, slicing his way toward every crevice of that castle.

  Don Fernando approached the mosque, chasing infidels seeking refuge in that imagined sanctuary. One of the Saracens jumped from a second story onto the Don’s horse. I saw the man. I cried out, to warn the Don. My words were lost in the distance, the din of battle. It was a bold, deft move by the Saracen. He ended up behind Don Fernando, his dagger drawn to the Don’s neck.

  Don Fernando must have seen his assailant in the air. With his right hand, the Don had raised his sword in front of him to block the Saracen’s dagger. With his other hand, he drew his own dagger from its sheath. He thrust it behind him, into the ribs of his attacker. The Saracen rode with the Don for several strides before falling off his mount, left in the dust, jettisoned like flotsam on the open seas.

  Don Fernando looked a king, dashing, invincible—Charlemagne, Richard the Lion-heart, King Louis of France.

  For Andrés and me, there was no need for further action. We stood on the balcony, watching the rout, unable to tear ourselves away from the macabre scenes and the satisfaction we felt at the destruction of our enemies—the killers of my comrades—the murderers who had made Alejandro into a human torch and me into his executioner. In the beginning of the siege, the infidels had been offered safe passage in return for giving up the castle. Their leaders had declined. Now their soldiers would live with the consequences.

  I do not know at what point the nature of the rout changed—whether there was a specific act, an order spoken, a signal given, an implicit understanding. Once the boundary was crossed, though, it disappeared forever in a river of hushed screams and ineffable sorrow. Conquest became massacre, and then murder. I know, Brother Lucas, because I witnessed these events.

  The infantry followed our cavalry, a deluge of fury into the dirt courtyard. The Muslim soldiers who tried to resist were quickly overwhelmed and put to the sword. Of those who did not resist, some were killed anyway. Most were taken prisoner, their hands bound by leather cord, their weapons, armor, medallions stripped, stolen, claimed as spoils by the hungered mob.

  Our soldiers formed two parallel lines several feet apart, two Christian columns. They herded their Muslim counterparts, forced to run the lawless gauntlet to the western edge of the castle, just under our position. Every so often the black mark of fate would fall on one of the prisoners—ripped from the grisly parade, set upon, torn to pieces like a rabbit plucked down amidst a pack of wolves.

  Eventually, the living prisoners—perhaps sixty—were collected in the castle corner. They were no longer soldiers, just a huddled, wretched mass. The others, the wounded and dead, lay alongside the bodies of Hospitaller knights and horses from the initial, failed attack. Mounds of flesh littered the courtyard.

  The meridian sun radiated a specious light on the Muslim prisoners. Andrés and I remained riveted on the narrow balcony, dazed sentries, transfixed to our post as if we had stumbled on some ancient, unhallowed coliseum. We were voyeurs, with a perfect window overlooking that dark vision.

  After taking refreshments with his lieutenants in the shade of a small grove of fig trees in the far corner of the castle, the Don strode forth toward the captives. Prisoners and guards turned toward the royal retinue. A dreaded silence descended upon the castle, so that the Don’s deliberate footsteps could be heard even on our perch and seemed to pronounce dire sentence with every measure. His lieutenants organized the prisoners in rows for inspection, the Don just on the outside conversing with his men. Hands were shaken, hugs exchanged, salutations, congratulations, “glory be to God.”

  Six rows of prisoners stood in the courtyard—a heathen, ragged brigade. Don Fernando walked leisurely, examining each man, occasionally asking questions through an interpreter, an Arab Christian from Acre. We could not hear the conversation, but from the Don’s amiable demeanor, he could have been asking their birthplace or the names of their parents. The Don selected five of the Muslims, silver-haired, higher in rank than the others. They were led out of the castle, hostages, who would be ransomed later or killed in the event their value was overestimated. The other prisoners remained standing as the Don’s entourage set up chairs in front of their ranks. The Don sat in the middle flanked by his lieutenants. Perhaps, I thought, we would witness another slave auction. Or maybe Padre Albar, the personal confessor of Don Fernando, seated to his right, would deliver a stern lecture to the infidels on the perils of eternal damnation for those who rejected the Savior. We waited, we and the prisoners.

  Orders were given, indecipherable from our position. One of the Muslims was led just in front of the Don, as if to pay homage. He was pushed to his knees, his mouth moving hurriedly, perhaps begging for mercy or praying to some infidel deity. One of the Don’s knights, his sword unsheathed, glinting, walked slowly behind the kneeling captive. The air was damp and heavy, and I breathed it in shallow, vigilant gasps.

  There was not a sound in the castle when the Don lifted his arm, then brought it down swiftly in a swooping motion. The sword seemed to follow the same arc. A clean strike, sundering neck and head, the blood from the void bubbling, spouting, sprinkling forth like some mountain spring gone awry. One of the squires, a sneering grin, picked up the head, its black eyes bulging in disbelief. The squire raised his arm triumphantly, as if displaying a trophy to the crowd of knights and soldiers, who erupted with a rabid cheer.

  Two more Muslims were already being led to the fore. Two by two. And then two more, the headless bodies dragged off and piled on top of one another, entwined in a gentle, grotesque embrace.

  One of the youngest prisoners, a beardless boy with torn tunic and mournful countenance, looked up to the balcony as he was escorted to the executioner’s ground. Was he looking at me? I could not be sure. I had thought myself invisible, but his gaze, unblinking, seemed to pierce that veil. In his eyes, a knowing accusation, as if I were somehow accountable, as if the bystander had become the executioner. To that spurious charge, I tried to proclaim m
y innocence.

  I am a servant of God, a soldier of Christ. I fight for my brother, for his salvation. Christ’s army stands before you, on a holy mission to wrest from the infidels this sacred ground, this earth soaked in His blood.

  I opened my mouth to speak the words, to shout them. My voice failed, though, drowned in a wave of confusion that rose from my stomach like an arrow shot from inside me.

  I reached into my hauberk for the cloth that held Isabel’s tears—to remember another place; another world. But it was missing, lost in the fighting.

  I looked down at the blood on my sword, my hands, my surcoat. I held my breath and ground my teeth until the ache subsided, until I could breathe again.

  I looked back to the mud pit, to the boy kneeling, like a parishioner waiting for the priest to place the body of Christ on his tongue. The priest as executioner. The sword struck below the neck, embedding itself in the boy’s shoulder. He fell to his side, like a wounded, flailing deer.

  The knight lifted his weapon another time and swung. He missed again, hitting the collar, shattering the bone. The sound reverberated like a stone from a catapult smashing into the castle wall. The boy’s face twitched spastically. He grunted. A leering, vicious laughter burst forth from the Christian troops, who strained to see over their comrades this grim spectacle. The executioner became flustered, and began to hack at the boy’s neck. The crowd howled louder with each blow.

  When the boy’s head rolled forth, the surrounding soldiers roared their approval. The Don, exhibiting the imperious smile of a gracious host, clapped animatedly. The squire playing jester wove his fingers through the dark curls, picking up the boy’s head. He whirled it around like a windmill, heaving it high up into the air. The boy’s head seemed suspended, as if it would take flight. But then it fell back to earth into the crowd of knights and soldiers.

  Two by two. And then two more. I watched, benumbed, unhinged, swept away.

  DON FERNANDO ORGANIZED a midnight Mass in the castle to commemorate the triumph of our forces. Uncle Ramón refused to attend the ceremony. He told Don Fernando that the execution of unarmed Muslim prisoners tarnished the reputation of the entire Christian force and invited retaliation against Christian prisoners in Muslim jails. Under Uncle Ramón’s instructions, the Knights of Calatrava withdrew to our tent headquarters. We sat around a fire, drinking spirits to celebrate our victory. We drank to mark our survival and to dull the images of comrades dead and dying. I rubbed the dried blood from my hands, like copper crystals collecting in my palms. Still dressed in my armor, I fell asleep on the soft ground.

  I woke in the dark, my body tensed, ready to fight, the tinny taste of blood on my tongue. A lantern burned in the corner of the tent. My comrades were asleep. They looked like corpses, gray, open-mouthed, still bloodied from combat. I stood tentatively, my neck stiff, my back aching. I could see Andrés just outside, sitting on the ground, rocking, his knees pulled to his chest. I left the tent and approached him.

  Andrés was gazing toward the castle. I sat near him.

  “Is that how you imagined it, Francisco?” he asked.

  “Imagined what?” I asked.

  “War,” he said.

  “I never imagined anything, Andrés.”

  I touched my neck, tender where the rope had burned my skin.

  “Could we take a walk?” he asked.

  We did not speak of a destination. We headed toward the castle, to the site of our witness. Drawn inexorably to a field of blood. We passed the entrance, nodding brusquely at Don Fernando’s knights, ignoring their hard glances.

  It seemed like daytime in the courtyard, so bright was the fire from torches and their reflection on the yellow stones. We stood in the shadows of an archway, behind the pillars that led to the castle’s mosque.

  Tiny, decrepit, Padre Albar spoke from a wood platform hastily erected in the middle of the castle courtyard. Behind the padre sat Don Fernando, the torchlight casting a fierce glow on his visage.

  As Padre Albar recited passages from the Scriptures, the foot soldiers dragged the headless corpses and other body parts along the side of the castle, just past the mosque, to a bonfire outside the castle walls. The continuous procession splattered a bloody path through the mud. The padre motioned to the fire, preaching a solemn warning, a grave prognostication, a biblical incantation.

  He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable.

  The flames sparked and cackled with the fresh blood and exhaled a sweet, sickening smell of roasting hair and flesh that clung to our clothes and armor for several days. Andrés and I could not eat meat the following week, so pungent was the remembrance of that carnal aroma.

  After his sermonizing, Padre Albar offered communion to the Christian knights, bowed, silent, drinking from the silver chalice the blood of Christ, dark and viscous. Our comrades, a tribe of cannibals, with Don Fernando its chief, his lips smeared red by the sacrifice.

  Andrés and I shunned that ritual. But we watched. From behind the marble pillars that guarded the mosque, we glimpsed the ghoulish shadows of our comrades, forever changed by the dim gloom of the acrid smoke and the dance of a thousand fires.

  PERHAPS FRANCISCO’S ACCOUNT of the execution of infidel prisoners troubles my sensitive reader. Indeed, after leaving Francisco’s cell yesterday afternoon, I found it difficult to eat supper. The red beans that covered my plate resembled miniature heads, the bloody remnants of the beheadings at Toron.

  Abbot Alfonso commented on my loss of appetite.

  “Brother Lucas,” he said, “you have not touched your food.”

  “Indeed, Abbot Alfonso,” I responded, “I have not.”

  Lest my reader feel sympathy for the infidel victims, though, let us remember the systematic atrocities committed by the Muslims not just against Christian soldiers, but also against civilians, as in Antioch, where the Saracens murdered women and children. I have heard numerous accounts of infidel hordes preying on pilgrim caravans, raping, torturing, killing young and old.

  I would not claim that such actions by the enemy justify or excuse excesses committed by Christian armies. Nevertheless, the infidel crimes help us to understand the righteous anger harbored by some Christian knights and the zealous, perhaps overzealous, manner in which they sometimes dispose of their Muslim captives.

  But let us not flinch from the cruel realities that our martial brothers confront in the Levant. Last night after supper, I relayed Francisco’s account of the executions to Brother Vial. He listened patiently, nodding periodically as if the story were familiar. When I finished speaking, he rose and paced a small circle in the parlor.

  “When we captured Beaufort castle,” he said, “we held over two hundred Saracen soldiers. The Christian commanders convened a meeting to decide the fate of our prisoners. The Hospitaller deputy called for their immediate execution. A heated debate ensued. The other generals, motivated by more practical considerations, preferred to ransom the captives. I thought execution an unnecessarily severe measure and cast my vote in favor of ransoming the prisoners. The Hospitaller contingent was outnumbered. The final tally authorized negotiations with the infidels. Eventually, we traded our captives for much-needed food supplies and ten thousand silver dirhams, an amount that could sustain the castle for a full year.

  “Two weeks later, fifty Hospitaller knights set off for Acre for reassignment to the northern territories. The Muslims set an ambush not one mile from the castle. When we heard sounds of battle, I organized a rescue party. By the time we reached the plain, forty-seven knights were dead. The three survivors said that they saw amongst their attackers the same men they had guarded in the stockade.”

  Brother Vial stopped pacing and squinted hard at the craggy rock face just behind me.

  “I never again set an able prisoner free,” he said. “A soldier who releases his enemy only to fight him the next day is a fool.”

  It was rather dis
concerting to hear my mentor, normally so serene, speak in such a bitter tone about such a disagreeable affair. I sometimes forget that Brother Vial spent most of his life as a soldier.

  I have never understood warfare. A thousand times I have read the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill. The mandate seems rather simple. After receiving this injunction, the Israelites went on to slaughter their enemies—razing whole towns and killing all the inhabitants—in order to conquer and then defend the Holy Land. And they did so with God’s blessing and assistance. Perhaps killing is justified when it serves a higher purpose. We, the heirs of the biblical Jews, follow the same path—slaying the heathen in God’s name, redeeming His land with our blood.

  War certainly implicates complex issues. I daresay that we, members of the cloth, who understand most clearly the spiritual parameters of battle between God and Satan, should hesitate before imposing the same standards of conduct on brothers of the sword, who do combat on a very different battlefield. Compassion and mercy, which glorify God in the monastic setting, might have the opposite effect in a theater of war. Perhaps, as Brother Vial suggests, emancipating captured enemy soldiers is neither merciful nor compassionate, but plain stupid. I suspect Richard the Lion-heart understood this harsh truth. After taking Acre in the Year of Our Lord 1191, he ordered the execution of all two thousand five hundred Muslim prisoners. Richard’s army hacked the prisoners to pieces in sight of Saladin and his Muslim armies.

  The Lord knows I am no expert on military strategies against the infidels. It seems to me, though, that once you commit to fight a holy war against Christ’s persecutors, you must kill them. Evidently, this fine point is lost on Francisco, who seems, in his description of the Toron executions, to disapprove of Don Fernando’s actions. I wonder what Francisco expected when he chose to take the Cross. Did he think that God’s army could persuade the Muslims to abandon the Holy Land after a few demonstrations of military prowess? Did he think that if Don Fernando released his prisoners, they would leave the territory and exchange their swords for plowshares? And what difference does it make whether you kill your enemy while storming a castle tower or later after the battle has been won? In either case, you accomplish the same purpose—killing infidel soldiers, freeing the Holy Land of the devil’s children.