4.
Hugh stood on the battlements of the outer wall, looking down at the great Saracen host as it spilled across the wide plains. He had long since given up trying to count their spears. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand…they were as numberless as grains of sand on a beach. The thunder of their drums was like a storm, rising above the distant hills that hovered on the edge of sight, shimmering under the haze. The masonry under Hugh’s feet shivered to the tramp of Saracen legions; the squalling of trumpets, bugles and war-horns; the shrill neighs of thousands of horses.
Acre had fallen silent. The double bank of walls to the north were packed with bodies, soldiers and civilians mingled together, come to witness the doom of their city. Edward had ordered all Englishmen capable of bearing arms to the defence of the outer wall, to stand and die there if necessary. The defence of the inner ramparts was given over to Hugues de Revel, Grand Master of the Hospitallers. He and his warrior-monks formed the solid core of the garrison; a grimly impressive phalanx of mailed knights, every man bearing the white cross of Malta against the padded black linen of his surcoat.
Edward’s face was unreadable as he watched the Saracen host deploy. Hugh noticed the prince’s fingers tremble slightly as they clutched the hilt of his broadsword. Some of the younger knights and squires among the English contingent were openly afraid. They chewed their lips, muttered silent prayers, crossed themselves time and again. One boy, desperately holding back tears, failed to prevent a stream of urine running down his inner leg. He went red with embarrassment as the liquid pooled between his feet.
“You wretched coward,” hissed the boy’s lord, Robert de Bruce, a hard-faced nobleman who held lands in England and Scotland. He cuffed the back of the offender’s head, who yelped like a kicked puppy.
Nobody else noticed. All eyes were fixed on the Saracens, and the lone rider who suddenly broke from the crowd of armoured horsemen in the centre of their battle-line. Like his comrades, he wore a red satin tunic over his mail-lined coat. His head was protected by a broad-brimmed helmet with a pendant aventail, and in his right hand he grasped a short staff.
The rider brought his pony skidding to a halt just a few feet from the base of the curtain wall. He was young, slender and upright as a lance in the saddle, white teeth flashing in a grin as he shaded his eyes to stare up at the battlements. At the same time the youth flung up his left arm and cried a greeting in the Saracen tongue.
Edward glanced at the interpreter he had fetched, a balding, middle-aged Cypriot with a neatly trimmed beard, glistening with oil. The little man swallowed nervously and laced his fingers together before replying.
“He offers greetings and compliments from his master, Baibars, fourth Sultan of the Bahri dynasty, Father of Conquest, to the illustrious Edward, son of the noble and renowned Henry, King of England. May your sojourn in the lands of Outremer be as pleasant as it is brief.”
Edward smiled mirthlessly. “Insolent bastard. Greet his master in return, with all due pleasantries. Add that I hope very soon to have the sultan at the point of my lance. On my vows as a Christian prince, I promise him a swift death.”
This caused a sharp intake of breath from some of Edward’s knights. The interpreter’s bulbous eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Hugh grinned, and the prince gave a shrug.
“Seigneur,” whispered the interpreter through gritted teeth. “I beg you to send a different answer. One does not cast such defiance at the Father of Conquest.”
“He sent a brave message,” Edward replied indifferently. “I respond in kind. If he is a man, he will respect me for it.”
The little Cypriot swallowed again, nervously stroked his beard, and finally leaned over the wall to repeat Edward’s response. The Saracen envoy threw back his head and laughed at it. A fine horseman, he spun his pony round and raised his lance.
This was the signal for a company of Saracen infantry to part. A wide lane opened in the middle of their ranks, along which some men on foot were herded towards the city by a troop of lancers. The men were a rabble of Christian soldiers, most of them bareheaded, their clothing torn and bloodstained. In fear of their lives, wrists bound with leather thongs, they stumbled towards the city gate, prodded along like cattle by Saracen lances.
The lone rider whirled about again to bark another message. “These are the survivors of the garrison of Montfort,” said the interpreter. “The castle fell to the sultan’s army just four days ago. Even now his engineers are at work, demolishing it stone by stone.”
With that, he turned one last time and galloped back to his lines. A groan rippled through the people crowded on the wall, mixed with curses. Montfort Castle, home to the German order of Teutonic Knights ever since crusaders first came to the Holy Land, had fallen to the enemy.
Some of the knights openly wept at the terrible news. “Ah, lord God,” rasped a man to Hugh’s left, wiping his eyes. “We are all undone…the pagans will make a mosque of Holy Mary’s convent, and we shall be forced to comply. Baibars has conquered, he will conquer. Every day the Saracens drive us down…Christ is asleep!”
Hugh’s attention was fixed on the survivors, who were now clustered around the gate, begging for admission. They were a pathetic sight, morale shattered, all the courage beaten out of them. Most carried wounds; one man had lost his sword-hand, which hung about his neck on a bit of string. At a nod from Edward, a door set inside one of the gates was opened and the wretched men allowed to enter.
“Lord,” murmured Hugh, edging close to the prince. “There are only twelve survivors. Where are the rest?”
He soon had his answer. To the rear of the Saracen host were a troop of siege engines, mangonels and a colossal trebuchet. Hugh hadn’t seen the like since the siege of Kenilworth in England, five years gone, when every kind of engine was brought to bear against the castle walls.
Now a drum-beat started, a steady, hypnotic rhythm. It was accompanied by a deep chant from the sultan’s infantry, thousands of voices raised in a hymn, not unlike Christian plainchant.
As this fresh wave of noise echoed back and forth across the plains, the wheeled trebuchet rumbled forward, dragged by a team of sixty oxen. Hugh and his comrades could only watch in appalled silence. After a few moments he screwed up the courage to address his master again.
“Lord,” Hugh whispered urgently. “One shot from that device could bring an entire section of wall down. I urge you to retreat inside the city.”
Edward didn’t even look at him. “The sultan does not mean to throw rocks,” he replied out of the corner of his mouth.
Puzzled, Hugh stared harder at the trebuchet. His jaw clenched when he saw the ammunition being loaded into the net on the end of the massive swing arm. The severed heads, torsos and limbs of Christian soldiers, cut up like animal carcasses.
The drums and chanting abruptly stopped. Baibars’ army stood in absolute silence and stillness, as if carved from stone. Despite himself, Hugh was impressed by their discipline.
His heart beat a little faster when a troop of horsemen cantered forward, just out of bow-shot of the walls. The riders wore coats of overlapping steel plates, painted and burnished to shine like gold. Only their eyes were visible under pointed steel helms, their faces hidden behind ventails of ring-mail. Each man carried a long red lance and round shield, with a wickedly curved scimitar belted at the waist.
Their leader was an imposing figure, even taller than Edward, straight and elegant in the saddle. His helm hung at his saddle-bow, and his long yellow hair was scraped back and tied at the nape of his neck.
Even at this distance, Hugh could sense the power of this man, the sheer force of will and personality that radiated from him.
Baibars…
In the midst of absolute silence, the sultan rode a little way forward from his guards. He was now within range of the crossbowmen on the wall, close enough for Hugh to see his flat, heavy-jawed features and burning blue eyes. Baibars folded his arms across his broad chest and stared at
Acre, waiting.
Blonde and blue-eyed. Hugh had expected a dark-skinned Saracen but then recalled the tales of Baibars’s origins. He had been a slave, once, taken from the steppes of Rus, a long way from the Holy Land, and shipped over to the slave-markets of Egypt. Only a man born with true greatness, infidel though he was, could rise from such lowly origins to become sultan.
“He defies us,” growled William de Valence, his thin face dark with fury. “Shoot him down, lord!”
“No,” said Othon de Grandison. “Saracen dog he may be, but he’s a good fighter and deserves a better end. Let one of us ride out and challenge him to single combat.”
Hugh rolled his eyes at this chivalric bluster. Edward, for his part, looked unimpressed.
“Be silent, fools,” he rasped. “If we slay Baibars, his men will raze Acre to the g-ground. Do you have eyes in your heads? Do you see the size of his host? They could take this city in a single day.”
Hugh was alarmed by these words, though he knew them to be true. Did Baibars know the true weakness of Acre’s garrison? If so, then why did he not move in and destroy the city without delay?
The thought struck him that Baibars allowed Acre to survive because it was useful. Acre’s merchants openly traded with the Saracens, selling them timber and steel and other goods, which the sultan’s men turned into war-machines to destroy other Christian cities and castles. Edward was enraged at the practice but could do little to stop it; when he hanged a few suspected traitors, the city fathers produced a charter from the King of Jerusalem, Hugh of Cyprus, permitting trade with the enemy.
Along with Edward and the rest of the English crusaders, Hugh was baffled by the attitude of the Christians in Outremer. Supplying the enemy with the means to destroy one’s allies was no way to win a war.
Or perhaps it is the price of survival…
Baibars kept his gaze fixed on Acre a few moments longer, then suddenly flung up his arm. The long arm of the trebuchet creaked and swung, whipping its ghastly payload high into the air. Hugh craned his neck to watch the bulging net as it sailed high over the ramparts to splatter against the base of the inner curtain wall. He grimaced as the body parts of slaughtered crusaders burst from the net, leaving a viscous red stain smeared over the masonry.
The screams and oaths that erupted from the city had no obvious effect on Baibars. He drew his sword and slowly lifted it high. Edward did the same, and for a long moment the two rivals gazed at each other.
Then Baibars broke off the salute and trotted away, followed by his bodyguard. Hugh was close enough to hear Edward’s muttered oath.
“Challenge accepted, whoreson.”
5.
Two weeks later, shortly after dawn, the English prince rode out of Acre at the head of three hundred men. He took almost all his knights with him, save a handful to guard Eleanor and her ladies, and all the mounted sergeants who were fit for service.
Hugh rode among the latter on his rouncy, well behind the nobles. Unlike their polished mail, heavy lances and gleaming steel bucket helms, he wore his old padded aketon, stained and patched from long service, and an iron kettle hat. Otherwise his only protection was a pair of heavy leather gauntlets. He carried a falchion, a dagger and a hatchet, with a round shield strapped to his back.
It was over five years since Hugh last rode to war. That was in England, at the height of the rebellion against old King Henry. Barely half an hour had passed before Hugh longed to be riding through green English hills and forests under English rain instead of this parched desert. Even the roughest of English roads were preferable to the hard, sun-baked ground of Outremer. Several times his beast almost turned a leg on potholes or hidden stones. The thought of trudging on foot back to Acre in this hellish wilderness made Hugh sweat with fear.
The crusaders had set off in the coolness of early morning to avoid the worst of the June heat. Their hopes were in vain, as the sun quickly rose into a cloudless blue sky and beat down fiercely. It was like riding through an oven. Hugh baked inside his layers of padded wool and leather, though his discomfort was nothing compared to that of the knights in their mail.
Fortunately the crusaders didn’t have far to travel. Another hour’s riding brought them within sight of their goal; the town of Nazareth, some twenty leagues southeast of Acre.
The crusaders reined in about half a mile north of Nazareth. Every man jostled his neighbours, eager to push forward to clap eyes on the birthplace of Christ. Hugh was no different. Like everyone else, he had been raised on tales of the Nativity. A strange kind of excitement swept through him as he gazed down at the cluster of stone churches and whitewashed, wood and mud-brick houses. The blood pounded in his veins, causing a tingling sensation in his hands and feet. Hugh’s breath came in short gasps, even as his euphoria was tinged with disappointment.
Nazareth didn’t look especially holy. He had seen larger villages, and the settlement was half-deserted. Empty doorways and windows gaped up at the crusaders. Somewhere a dog barked. A few stringy goats wandered about a paddock on the eastern edge of town, pushed about by an equally spare old man with a stick.
A mean, shabby-looking place, Hugh thought with a stab of guilt. If a priest could hear his thoughts, he might be denounced for blasphemy.
Some of the nearer houses bore the scars of old fire damage. One of the three churches was completely gutted and roofless, open to the heavens. Hugh’s memory came flooding back, and with it a rush of certainty. Some years before Nazareth had been sacked by Baibars’ army, the Christian inhabitants of the town slaughtered and the church burnt. That explained why it was in such a miserable condition. The enemies of God had attacked His birthplace!
His gaze was drawn south of Nazareth, to a barren mountain that loomed over the town. Hugh gasped. Mount Precipice, where Christ had rejected the temptations of the Devil. Here the people of Nazareth, refusing to accept Christ as the Messiah, had tried to push him to his death.
Hugh was filled with anger. At the same time Edward rode forward and raised his lance. The morning peace was broken by the shrill blast of trumpets, followed by the rumble of hoofs as the English horsemen spurred forward. A gentle slope lay between them and the outskirts of the town, which was undefended except for a shallow ditch.
“Deus Vult!”
The war-cry rose unbidden from English throats as the crusaders poured down the slope. They quickened from a trot to a full-blooded charge; boot to boot, lances swung down at rest, banners displayed. Edward sped in front, followed by his standard bearers holding aloft the twin banners of the Angevin pards and the blood-red cross of St. George against a white field.
Edward’s orders were simple. Kill every Saracen inside Nazareth; men, women and children. All of them. They were infidels, and no crusader ought to suffer their presence in such a holy place. Baibars had wiped out the Christians in Nazareth. Now it was time to repay the compliment.
The first knights, with Edward at their head, vaulted easily over the ditch. They poured into the streets and began the butchery, setting about the inhabitants with lance, axe and sword. Screams erupted from the town, futile pleas for mercy, the furious shouts of crusaders as they went about their grim work.
Meanwhile the sergeants and lesser man split into two companies and skirted the edges of Nazareth. Hugh rode among those who rode to the northern suburb, there to cut off the escape of any fugitives. He deliberately lagged to the rear and then veered off to the right, leaping the ditch.
Hugh wasn’t content to sit outside the town, like a good little servant, until the slaughter was done. This was his one opportunity in life to walk the streets of Nazareth, where his Saviour was born. He guided his pony down a narrow, shaded alleyway, flanked by rows of lofty white-walled houses. This was the wealthier part of town, where the buildings rose three or four stories high, decorated by wide bow-shaped windows on the upper levels.
He slowed his horse to a trot. The sound of killing lay directly ahead, screams and whimpers and the frightened n
eigh of horses. Hugh’s righteous anger was quelled rather than excited by the noise. He slowly drew his falchion and looked down at the heavy chopping blade, more butcher’s cleaver than sword.
Can I do it? Can I slay innocents in cold blood?
He was under no illusions. Hugh had killed before, several times, though always in hot blood. Watched as men were tortured and done nothing to save them. Burnt with hot irons, or crushed under heavy boards with iron weights placed on their chests. All to extract confessions. All in the service of the crown.
And yet…to strike down defenceless old men, women and children, who had committed no crime, save being infidels. Was this Christ’s intention? The priests thought so. The Italian, Teobaldi Visconti, practically drooled at the mouth as he delivered his fiery sermons, exhorting the crusaders to slay without pity.
“Curse all priests,” Hugh muttered. He rammed his blade back into its scabbard, swung himself out of the saddle and led his horse down a side-alley.
It was quieter, the noise of bloodshed somewhat muffled. Hugh picked his way over scattered piles of rubbish, his mind heavy with sad thoughts. He was baffled. Why should the slaughter of infidels matter to him? They were enemies of Christ, people he was brought up to despise.
The alley opened onto a narrow street. Hugh, trained to be cautious, peered both ways before emerging from the alley. To his left the street ended in a cul-de-sac. The other way led to a broad plaza or market place. He winced at the sight of three corpses, two men and a woman, sprawled on the cobbles. Defenceless peasants, unarmed, their homespun woollen garments soaked in their blood.
One still lived. The woman, a slender youth with long, raven-black hair, suddenly rose onto all fours and scrambled away. Straight towards Hugh. He retreated back into the alley and pressed his back against the rough brickwork.
“Look there – she lives! Don’t let the slut escape!”
Hugh didn’t recognise the cry, though it came from an Englishmen. He laid a hand on his horse’s muzzle, willing the beast to be quiet, as the sound of running footsteps got ever closer.
Holy Warrior Page 4