Pillars of Light (35 page)

“Until we break these
putain
walls down and get at the treasure inside we’re here for nothing. Of course we rob the fools who are stupid enough to go out and fight the enemy.”

“But you’re paid to fight them too,” Will persisted. “And they’re infidels. We’re morally bound to fight them.”

“Oh shut up, Will,” Quickfinger growled. “This treasure, tell me more.”

“There’s a hoard of gold behind the walls of the city, all the gold that came out of Jerusalem. Why else do you think we’ve spent a year besieging the wretched place? Saladin’s got his armoury in there. Why keep it there unless you’re defending something valuable?”

“It might just be relics,” I suggested smoothly, though my heart had begun to skip. “They’re a holy lot, these Muslims, or so I hear.”

“Relics!” The
routier
snorted. “Who wants a load of bones
et merde?
No, it’s gold they’ve got. Gold and gems, pearls and rubies—all the riches they robbed out of Jerusalem. Why’d you think King Guy attacked Acre in the first place? It’s the contents of his treasury Saladin’s stashed in there, looted from the coffers of the Holy City.”

“I thought the sultan’s palace was in Damascus,” Hammer said suddenly, surprising us all.

Damascus? The name rang a bell. I remembered the Moor and Bishop Reginald talking their endless talk of church architecture, the Moor declaring, his eyes burning with passion, that he dreamed
of visiting the great mosque in that city. I was so sure I had spied him that day in Lisbon: was he on his way to Damascus, pursuing his dream, even now? A thrill ran through me. I turned a bland face to the mercenary.

“Perhaps Saladin robbed so much treasure from Jerusalem that he decided to spread it around. Better to have two sheepfolds if the wolf’s on the prowl.”

“Exactly. There’s something in that city worth saving, and it ain’t the poxy inhabitants.”

I went to relay the nub of this conversation to Savaric. Despite the filth of its surroundings, his tent was a handsome one, patterned inside and out in different colours. He called it a pavilion. Baldwin of Canterbury had come past while we were putting it up and Savaric had had the misfortune to emerge while the archbishop was still there and caught the brunt of the old man’s contempt.

“What does a man of God have to do with such ostentation? Oh, vanity, vanity, thy name is Savaric Fitzgoldwin!”

Savaric’s chest had swelled as if he might explode. He watched the archbishop go, a sour look on his face. “Sanctimonious old bastard. I bet his pavilion’s twice the size of my poor dwelling.”

But it wasn’t. We passed it later that day: plain canvas, marked out from the common soldiers’ tents only by the bright standard of Saint Thomas pitched outside. Savaric skulked past it like a beaten dog.

Being Savaric, he soon recovered. I found him that evening lounging in his great wooden chair, his feet propped on a stool, a brazier warming his soles. Beside him was a small, round wooden table in the local style, bought in the market at Tyre, all pretty wooden patterns and shell inlays. On it sat a flask of wine. He waved me to sit down, and with a grunt moved his feet from the stool. He saw me eyeing the wine but did not offer me any.

Thus it starts
, I thought.
As soon as there are shortages, it’s the poor who go without
.

I told him what the
routier
had said and watched as he took it in. His thoughts were obviously the same as mine, for he nodded and sat up straighter, suddenly alert. “Makes sense. Why else tie your army up here for more than a year?” His black eyes gleamed. “Remember what the Lady Eleanor told Richard in London: ‘Recapture the True Cross, my son, and the whole Christian world will open to you as easily as a whore spreads her legs.’ Imagine the king’s gratitude to the man who saved the True Cross from the Saracens and put it in his hands. Imagine the debt that king would owe, the rewards he would give to such a man—or men. Enough to make them rich beyond dream! Enough for Reggie to build his cathedral—and surely there would be no better church in which to house the world’s greatest relic? Just think of the queues of pilgrims who would come to venerate it—”

“Enough!” I cried. “We don’t even know it’s in there.”

He wagged a finger at me. “Spies. That’s what we need, from inside the city, who know their way around.”

I laughed, largely out of relief. “But no one goes in or out. That’s the whole point of a siege, as you explained it to me.”

The look he gave me was similar to the one the routier had given me earlier: an incredulous adult to a naive child. “Believe me, John, there are those who pass between the camps.” I had no idea what he meant by this. But as long as it didn’t mean me, I didn’t care.

The weather worsened, and even our own food supplies began to run short. A combination of gluttony, poor husbandry, pilfering and rot had done for us. The mud had deepened and the flux had us by the throat; every day there were more deaths. Every day, raiders
from the army on the hill harried our lines, forcing watchfulness and rebuttal, but I had yet to draw my weapon in anger. Life was dull and grim, but at least it was life.

More troops poured in, but there was still no sign of Richard. We began to wonder if he would ever arrive. There were calls for reinforcements to the front lines to hold off the Saracens, but Savaric kept us back: we were there to guard his person and enable him to impress the new king with his valour and resourcefulness. What was the point of heroism if Richard was not there to witness it?

The longer we spent in the besieging camp the clearer it became that it was no unified army of God but a fractured and bitter collection of rival lords who would rather be at each other’s throats than unite against the common enemy. The Germans hated the English; the French hated the Anglo-French; the Pisans and Genoese hated each other so much that they had to be kept at opposite sides of the encampment. The French and the Germans had allied with Conrad of Montferrat, but we were supporting Guy, the ousted King of Jerusalem. Until recently, Conrad’s supporters had greatly outnumbered Guy’s, but English ships were blowing in day by day. And so was the rain.

One morning, Ezra and I were sitting outside the billet trying to get a brew going over a recalcitrant fire. The little fuel we had was soaked through; it smoked but refused to burst into flame. Eventually I leapt to my feet in frustration, with the intent of booting the pot up into the sky. A pair of men on big horses came lumbering into view—one in the bright white surcoat of the Templars, the other older, slab-faced …

“Shit! Turn your head, Ezra!”

“What?”

“It’s Geoffrey de Glanvill!” I moved so that I was shielding her. “Put your helm on.”

She jammed the iron cap on her head; the noseguard made for
anonymity. Their gaze swept over us: just common soldiers, beneath their regard. Then Savaric’s voice boomed out a greeting to us.

“Christ’s teeth!” I swore at him. “Look, it’s de Glanvill.”

“Oh … 
merde
.”

Over his shoulder I saw the Templar stare hard, turn and say something to his companion. And then suddenly I recognized the first chevalier as Ranulf de Glanvill, Geoffrey’s brother, once the King’s Eye.

“Go away, Ezra,” I whispered. “Just get up and walk away. Fast as you can. Find Florian, make sure he keeps you out of sight.”

Ranulf de Glanvill turned his horse’s head in our direction. Savaric, black eyes hooded, turned to meet them.

“Good day, Ranulf. A pleasure to see you join our siege. Sorry about your … troubles with the king.”

Enthroned upon his impressive warhorse, the slab-faced man drew himself up. “The king and I have reconciled our differences. All is very well between us now.”

“Though I hear your coffers are somewhat lighter,” Savaric said, and I am sure I was not the only one who caught his gloating tone.

“Who was that man with you?” Geoffrey demanded, squinting at the retreating back of Ezra.

“One of my sergeants,” Savaric replied, as if he were a man of great substance. “Recently taken on.”

“He was not with you in Lisbon?”

“No,” Savaric returned smoothly. “I acquired him here. Part of a dead lord’s retinue. The nobility are falling like flies in this place, it’s a most unhealthy environment. Best take care of yourselves. And your mounts—there’s plenty here have a taste for horseflesh: good men starving while others ride.”

The air was charged with violence. The black eyes gave us a hard look. Then Ranulf barked some dismissive response and they moved off, their horses picking their way between the pits and ruts.

Savaric looked drained. He sat down beside me where Ezra was sitting before, as if his legs had given out.

“Why must you taunt them?” I asked.

He gave a small, mirthless laugh. “They’re bullies, the pair of them. If you let men like that bully you they will destroy you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s Ezra.”

There was soon more to worry about than the de Glanvills. The Archbishop of Besancon had constructed at great personal expense a huge battering ram. Acre was not his objective, but it stood between him and the Holy City. Not a subtle man, he had decided to take matters into his own hands and batter down the doors to the besieged port so that he could get on with the business of winning his place in Heaven.

Massive beams of timber had been strapped into a monstrous, sharpened head of iron. The thing would take hundreds to shift it, up over the filled-in ditches to the great east gate. We had watched smaller rams have no effect against these sturdy walls and gates, even those with “sows” built over them to provide shelter for the men who wielded them from the missiles hurled from the walls. This ram had no need for such shelter: the archbishop had declared that he would stride along beside it bearing the relics of some obscure French saint, roaring prayers and exhortations, which amused us until we heard that we were to be among the men subjected to this harrowing. Even Savaric was not sure, or claimed not to know, how we had been volunteered for this suicidal task.

“I’ve never seen a prayer stop an arrow,” Hammer muttered.

“And we know all about the efficacy of saints’ bones.” I sighed.

But there was no avoiding the task. We donned our fighting kit in unaccustomed silence: padded leather jerkins to slow and stop an arrow, bits of mail scavenged from the field, steel caps and
helms, shields strapped across our backs. By the time I was fitted out I could hardly move, but still I felt naked.

Red Will appeared, looking ashen, his hair dripping. He stank.

“Christ on a stick!” Ned blasphemed. “Did you fall in the latrine?”

“It stops Greek fire taking hold,” he explained. “Florian said so.”

“Aye, and shit’ll stop an axe blade.” Quickfinger guffawed.

Ezra was drafted to the company of archers. As she was about to leave, she grasped my hand. “Be careful, John.” And then she was gone.

We pushed that monster up to the no-man’s-land between the encampment and the walls of the city. If I looked up I could see all the defenders’ bright banners flying and even make out individual faces among the men on the walls. I was oddly reassured to see they did not all resemble the Moor but were each as different to him as were the fellows around me—stout and thin, light-skinned and dark, though all of them bearded.

Their archers started to wind their crossbows. “Shields!” the officer in charge of us cried, and we swung our shields overhead, trying to interlock them with our neighbours’ as we’d been told. Bolts rattled down, mostly harmless, though a man three ranks in front of me cried out and fell down. “Now, PUSH!”

We had a minute or more while our archers kept them busy and the Muslim archers recharged their crossbows, and so we pushed, and the wheeled monstrosity moved ponderously forward. The archbishop roared out some Latin prayer and I found myself hoping the next round of quarrels would stop his bellowing.
If I am to die, please don’t let it be in this awful place with some mad French bastard chanting gibberish in my ear
. Such a pettish entreaty, but fervently meant.

Then other engines were moving up alongside us.
Good
, I thought.
More targets for those wretched bolts, better odds for me
. It was an uncharitable thought, but I was sure I wasn’t alone in thinking it.

When the bombardment started it was thunderous. The great ram swung back and then we propelled it forward. What could withstand the impact of such a monster? Apparently, the gates of this godforsaken city. Three times the ram struck with such force that the whole earth seemed to tremble; three times it recoiled, leaving no more than a dent in the iron-bound doors. Rocks were falling around our ears—misfired by our own side or cast down by the garrison’s own engines, who could tell? A rock was a rock when all was said; if one fell on your head it didn’t matter who was hurling it.

This is hell
, I thought. I’d thought the same about the Mount, about being in the charnel pit, about waiting to hang; in the middle of a sea-storm; in this filthy wasteland with mud up to my knees and my belly, howling for food. It just went to prove that each time you thought your life had reached its grimmest point, Fate showed you worse, for suddenly there was fire raining down upon us and men were screaming and tearing at their hair and beards, which were in flames. Their hands came away coated in the sticky stuff propelled from the walls, and then their hands were on fire too. The noises they made as the conflagration ate them alive were the worst noises I had ever heard.

Then the ram was afire as well. I watched in horrified fascination as the searing stuff crept up the beams towards me. Choking black smoke engulfed me and we were all coughing, tears running from our eyes.

“Fook, I’m out of here,” said Quickfinger, abandoning his post beside me with all the conscience of a jackrabbit.

Why did I not follow him? I don’t know, but when the officer yelled at us to push, I pushed as if I were a donkey trained to push a millwheel, without question, without thought, even though a voice in the back of my head chattered at me to drop everything and run.