00 - Templar's Acre (46 page)

And then he realised he was weeping as he buried his face in Lucia’s shoulder.

The days following the arrival of King Henry were happy ones, Baldwin thought afterwards. Whereas before, all had begun to give up any hope of the city’s survival,
suddenly there was renewed optimism. The sea could bring them reinforcements along with food, and the sight of the bright blue robes of the King’s guards and his footsoldiers gave a fillip to
all those who had already endured a month of siege.

It was not merely the sight of new warriors walking about the city, men with clean clothing who were not bandaged and foul with lice, it was the confidence that they radiated, and the ideas that
they brought.

King Henry’s first proposal was that an embassy should be sent to the Sultan.

‘It will not hurt us to ask whether the Sultan has a legitimate grievance for breaking his peace treaty. We can investigate whether there is any restitution the city can offer, while also
delaying further offensives,’ he said.

That at least had been the hope.

Baldwin heard of the failure when he spoke with Sir Jacques. That morning, Baldwin and his men were stood down from the walls, while newcomers from King Hugh’s entourage took their places.
They were nothing loath. Baldwin stretched his legs walking about the city, and when he returned, he found Sir Jacques talking to Ivo.

‘The King sent Guillaume de Canfran, a Templar, and Guillaume de Villiers to speak with the Sultan,’ Sir Jacques said. His face was still twisted where the gauntlet had hit him two
weeks before, but his smile was still there. ‘And they did as they were bid. De Villiers is a mild-mannered fellow, but de Canfran is, I fear, one of the old breed, who learned no humility
when a child. His arrogance must have been difficult to curb. Not that it mattered.’

‘What happened?’ Baldwin asked.

‘They reached the tent and waited. The Sultan demanded to know whether they had brought him the keys to the city, and they said that they couldn’t, and when they asked whether he
would accept redress for any imagined grievance, he reminded them that it was their people who had murdered Muslims in the market during the riots. When they asked what he wanted, he said that his
father had said he wanted the city, not the people. Just as he had said to the Templars last year. So, there you have it. A pleasant chat all round, I think. Almost convivial.’

‘Really?’ Baldwin said.

‘Baldwin, you need to learn about sarcasm, lad,’ Ivo grunted.

Sir Jacques’ twisted smile grew. ‘There was an unfortunate incident. While they were talking, the Muslim artillery was continuing to fire their weapons at us. One of our catapults
retaliated, and flung a stone that landed near the tent where they were speaking. It sent the Sultan into a rage, and he had men grasp the shoulders of the two Guillaumes and force them to their
knees while he drew his sword to despatch them. It was only the intervention of one of his men that saved their lives.’

The three men fell into a gloomy silence. It was clear that there would be no further negotiations. Baldwin thought he had never see Sir Jacques so sunk in gloom, and Ivo sat scowling at the
mazer in his hand as though searching for the future in the wine’s depths.

‘Well, at least we know where we stand,’ Baldwin said.

‘Aye,’ Ivo breathed. ‘On the brink of Hell.’

Baldwin was dozing when the shout came. His first, groggy thought was that the enemy had managed to break in through the walls, but as he snapped his eyes open, he saw that the
fellows on his section of wall were not alarmed.

‘What is it?’

‘They want tinder and combustibles in the barbican,’ Hob said. There was a deflated look about him, like a punctured pig’s bladder.

‘Why?’

‘They’re going to burn it. The barbican’s too weakened, and the Muslims are tunnelling underneath it,’ Hob said.

Baldwin clambered to his feet and stared at the tower projecting from the middle of the outer wall. ‘Are you sure?’ He could see the men running along the walls even now, carrying
bundles of faggots, and already there were wisps and streamers of smoke escaping from the top of the tower. ‘Christ’s bones, they have lit it already,’ he breathed.

‘Aye.’ Hob stirred himself. ‘It’s a good strategic decision. If the enemy’s already tunnelled beneath, better to evacuate before it collapses. Now all those men can
be withdrawn safely, and used in the city itself.’

Baldwin looked at the tower, and then at Hob. The barbican had been built to protect the walls here at this point. If deserted, the defences of the city were all the weaker. But the other men of
the vintaine were standing about and listening. Baldwin held Hob’s serious gaze.

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘We’ll be safer now.’

But their illusory safety was short-lived.

Baldwin and his men were called to move nearer to the Tower of King Henry II on the same afternoon, and stood to with their weapons ready on the outer enceinte as the last men left the Tower of
King Hugh. Smoke was billowing, with yellow-orange flames spurting from the roof, and Baldwin felt a mood of resignation amongst the men of his vintaine. There was no glory in this, any more than
there had been in the wild charge of the Hospitallers that night. Baldwin himself still felt that their efforts were not in vain. With such a committed defence, and with their control of the sea,
the Muslims must realise they must fail. God wouldn’t allow them to win.

But his exhaustion was eroding even his optimism.

Only a short time after they had reached the tower, the enemy catapults began a heavy assault. From the tower, Baldwin could see the men scurrying at the feet of their huge machines like flies
crawling over carrion. It was a picture that sickened him, but then he had to duck as the fresh bombardment began to strike.

The Muslims were aiming directly at the walls now. The number of arrows being fired was reduced, probably because they were saving them for the actual onslaught, when it finally came.

‘Shit my breeches!’ Hob swore as a missile crashed into the wall just below the battlements, and Baldwin and he were thrown to their knees.

The entire wall was rocking and bucking beneath them. They could feel it, all the men in the vintaine, a rippling that shivered along the stones with each new impact. Baldwin could imagine the
immense slabs of masonry being pushed inwards with the force of these blows, the rocks crumbling as they were slammed together, until the whole wall was a fluid rampart of broken rocks, gravel and
sand. After a month of this bombardment, it was a miracle that any of the stones remained whole.

Another tremendous hammer-blow struck the wall, and suddenly a gush of flame roared up. As Baldwin climbed back to his feet, a foul black slime flew into the air, and then fell onto three men
from his vintaine near to his side. It ignited instantly with a loud whoosh, and the three began to scream in agony as they were burned alive. Baldwin could do nothing for them. He only prayed that
they would die quickly.

Arrows flew past, but he paid them little heed. The terror of the attacks was diminished with every fresh horror. He sat on the wall beside Hob, and rested. Too many nights with little sleep,
too much living with constant fear, had eroded his capacity for feeling. He looked up when Hob rose to peer over the walls, and wondered why he bothered. Standing was not worth the effort. All a
man could see was the teeming thousands of their enemies.

Baldwin closed his eyes, lay his head against the wall, and dreamed of England. England, with the cool mists rising from her rivers. The warming sun gradually burning through, throwing long
shadows, setting the tree-trunks a-shimmer in her golden light. And the leaves would all be that delicious pale green, almost translucent. England in the spring was a wonderful place.

There was a man up near the tower, and as Baldwin glanced over, a mangonel bolt caught him directly in the breast, and he was thrown back with such force that the bolt penetrated the wall behind
him, pinning him there like a doll, his arms and legs moving feebly, his head set at a foolish angle. Baldwin watched as he died, his mouth opening and shutting for some minutes without making a
sound.

All around him, men were dying. The walls were assaulted with rocks and fire pots, each hurled with all the ferocity the besiegers could manage, and inside the city of Acre men were crushed,
burned, pierced and broken. Their bodies formed mounds down by the gates already, and yet more were being carried away every hour to sit and recover at the Temple or at some other makeshift place
of healing. It was all pointless, he thought. Soon they must be eradicated. It was impossible to survive this.

There was a roar, and Baldwin looked quickly up and down the lines of the walls, wondering whether this was a cheer of delight from defenders or enemy.

‘It’s going,’ Hob said quietly.

Baldwin stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then rose and peered over the wall. In front of him, the enclosed wall that led to the Tower of King Hugh was still standing, but the tower
itself was gradually collapsing. Baldwin thought at first that it looked as though a missile had struck off the top, along with a section of masonry, but now he saw that the catapults had ceased
their endless battery, and the gynours were themselves staring at the damage they had inflicted.

The tower shuddered like a dandelion in the breeze, and then a greyish mist rose. It was paler than the smoke from the fires within, and as it climbed, it seemed to accelerate upwards. Baldwin
felt almost dizzy to see it, and then he realised that as the pale smoke left the tower, it hung there, in mid-air. In reality, the tower was shrinking away from the mist, collapsing in upon
itself.

In another moment, there was no tower, only the harsh rumble of all the rocks rolling and bouncing away from their foundations, and the mist became a thick cloud of acrid stone-dust that clogged
Baldwin’s lungs and made his eyes water. It was like breathing in lime dust. It coated his throat and nostrils until he felt he must choke.

Looking over the wall again, he was astonished to see that there really was nothing left of the tower. The connecting walkway and wall was thrust out like a finger towards the ruins.

And now that finger of rock itself became the target of the catapults. They slammed into the wall, two, three, four at a time – some from the north, some from the south. Those that missed,
hummed over Baldwin’s head, to crash into the high walls behind him. Many thudded into the wall below. One jarred his head, throwing him bodily forward from the wall against which he
leaned.

All he wanted was to sleep. He closed his eyes, and for a time he knew no more.

In only a week the outer walls were lost.

It began with the Tower of King Hugh. With ever more firepower concentrated on the narrow point of the walls, the stonework could not survive. Daily, as Baldwin peered over the walls at the
enemy, he saw more cats and siege shields erected, protecting the miners who were even now trying to undermine all the city’s defences. No matter how many were crushed by the Christian
catapults’ rocks or arrows, always more appeared to take their places. The Sultan had an uncountable number of men from which to draw upon, and he spent them recklessly, apparently caring
nothing for those who were left broken and wailing on the bloody sands.

Not that the Christians were capable of hurling too many stones. All the hoardings were broken or burned away, and with them much of the protection for the catapults had also gone. Only three
catapults remained which could continue any form of barrage: one on a castle tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, one behind the German Tower, and a last one in the Templar’s sector, behind
the St Lazarus Tower. These three kept up a sporadic bombardment, but their impact was negligible in the face of so many enemies.

After the collapse of King Hugh’s Tower, the next to fall was the Tower of the English, two days later. It succumbed slowly and majestically, as if reluctantly giving up the battle. Only
one day later, the Tower of the Countess de Blois slumped, the outer walls crumpling, and tearing down a mass of stonework from the walls at either side as it went. With these gone, the defence of
the outer walls became ever more precarious.

On 15 May, Baldwin was back at his post on the outer wall with his men near the Tower of St Nicholas. Here, too, the walls were beginning to crumble. As had happened with the first sections to
fall, as soon as their objective was realised, the Muslims moved their artillery and began to hurl missiles at the nearer targets. As one tower disappeared in a grey haze, the gynours would already
be at their crow-bars and ropes, pulling the devices around to point at the next. There was no need to devastate the city with more fire-pots or stones, since the people of Acre were already
demoralised enough.

That was the last day before the real storm struck them. Because late on that morning, suddenly the outer wall of the King’s Tower gave a tremendous shudder – and disappeared. With
that lost, there was little to hold the enemy at bay.

Baldwin and his men raced to the tower. They ran and ducked over the rubble on the walkways, along the drawbridge towards the tower, and when they reached it, Baldwin and Hob stood with shock,
staring out where the front wall should have been. There was nothing, not even a firm floor on which to stand. No defence could hold this, not while the Muslims kept throwing rocks and pouring in
arrows.

Pulling his men out to the protection of the remaining wall, Baldwin went with Anselm from one body to another in the devastated chamber, seeing if any were alive. One lad was still breathing,
and they dragged the masonry from his crushed legs to haul him to the Temple, but as the last rock was lifted, he gave a long, shuddering sigh, and was dead.

Baldwin stared down at him. The victim was younger than Baldwin himself, and handsome, with fair hair and blue eyes. He could have been a northern man, or German. Just another wasted life. For a
moment, Baldwin was overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of this defence, and felt a tear start.