Shield of Three Lions (50 page)

“Boot …” He bit his lip and his eyes were a startling blue in the clear light. “Boot it doesna apply yif one or tother be bewitched.”

“You mean has a spell put on him by a witch?”

“Alex, doona lat anyone touch ye. Do ye hear? No one! Yif sum painted Willie tries, come right to me!”

Again I nodded.

He stared at my face, my figure, and seemed bewildered. “Ye’re … tempting.”

I cleared my throat, waved to the field. “I would have thought the Christians would have won by now.”

“No,” he said with relief, “ ’twas not that simple …”

Despite numerical superiority and greater mobility, the Christians were also entrapped. They, too, depended upon the outside world for food, and the only Christian stronghold capable of supplying them was Tyre; yet last year Conrad of Montferrat had refused to send grain, with the result that over thirty thousand Crusaders had starved. That’s why Richard had taken the time to secure Cyprus, a grain-rich island close by. Furthermore the fortress of Acre was formidable. The inner city—where we could see spires and waving poplars—was not only protected by two walls, the outer one measuring fifteen feet in depth, but also by a moat which was too deep and wide to span. The Crusader assault against the wall was concentrated in the valley below us and while we could see many pockmarks where our stones had hit the outer wall, no real progress had been made in four years of trying.

Nor were the Christians the only aggressors. Far in the distance, we could see the smoke of another tent city called Tel-Ayadiyeh
where Saladin had his headquarters on the road to Damascus. The Christians’ greatest dread was that he would attack their rear and push them into the sea. Our men had built a huge trench around our entire area, but it was nothing that a nimble horse couldn’t jump. And while Christians outnumbered Arabs in this small valley, Saladin could call on eight hundred thousand allies or more.

“How do you know so much?” I asked Enoch in awe.

“Waesucks, lad, ’tis fundamental to survey the country around ye. A good part of victory be in the choice of battleground.”

“Think you this was a good choice for the Crusaders?”

He didn’t answer at once. “Depends. In any case, ’twas the anely spot Saladin didna take so I reckon ’twere good. Now let’s talk of strategy.”

I gazed down on thousands of crouched figures in their trenches shooting haphazard arrows at Turks well beyond bowshot. “They look like so many dung beetles,” I said.

“Aye, yif human dead be dung. The burial squads cannot keep up with the supply, as ye can tell by yer nose.”

“Where are the knights?”

“What could knights do? They be trained for hand-to-hand combat, ye know that. They’ll be good when the wall tumbles, nocht before.”

“I don’t see any signs that it will ever tumble. When was it built?”

“I canna say, but I’ll find out. But we air assaulting the wall e’en so. See there, that stone caster beyond the rock.”

“I can hear it anyway.”

“And another on yer left. See?”

Indeed the field was dotted with machines of various designs, called
petrariae
by some,
beliers
by others, in any case different-size catapults (or mangonels) which fell into two groups no matter how they were named: the smaller ones designed like giant crossbows with low trajectories, best for hurling huge spears; the larger more like slingshots with high trajectories, best for throwing stones and casks of boiling oil over the wall.

“What exactly is Greek fire?” I asked.

“We doona have the exact formula, but we knaw it has naphtha and sulfur in an oil mix. It explodes upon contact and canna be put out by water. It clings to whatever it touches, like burning glue.”

As he spoke, a small machine burst into flames right before our eyes and covered the field with a thick black smoke.

“They’ll beat us in the air!” I cried.

“Nay, lad, the battle will be won underground. We mun mine the wall and make a breach.”

“How is that possible?”

“Some luckless wight will dig a tunnel to the foundations, fill the hole with oil and brush, light it and blow himself and the wall to Hell. A martyr for king and country.”

I shuddered for this poor unknown mole.

“I mun gae work on the king’s machines,” Enoch said abruptly. “Will ye be all right here alone?”

“Of course.” In fact, I couldn’t wait to be alone.

“I’m nocht sure. Bairn, ye would tell me yif …” He stopped, uncertain and a little embarrassed.

“You could come back for me at the end of the day,” I said.

“I mane to. All right, then …” He climbed down the ladder.

I took my parchment and stylus in case he looked back on me before he left and wrote a description of the terrain. Then I walked to the window to gaze across to where King Philip was preparing to attack, despite King Richard’s warning. At that point—I know not whence, or how I could not have seen the varlet—something whizzed by my ear and rattled on the floor behind me. Puzzled, I turned and saw an arrow lying at my feet!

It was a Norman arrow.

I picked it up in wonder, still not grasping its significance. I thought it was a mistake; someone had bad aim. Only slowly did I realize that no one has such poor aim that he shoots an arrow backward over his shoulder! Acre’s wall stood in the opposite direction. Furthermore, no arrow yet made could whiz from the field below to where I stood.

Someone had shot at me intentionally. And at close range.

Instantly I fell to the floor. Nothing more happened. I listened
for sounds. With Enoch gone, I was vulnerable both from the window and from below. I crept on my stomach to the edge of the platform and with enormous effort pulled the ladder up to my floor. There, anyone wanting to approach would have to shout.

A pox on writing about King Philips attack. By the end of the day he would have won or failed, and I would make up what happened between. Nothing would make me expose myself at that window again.

I then took the secret cache of materials I had gathered this morning and began laboriously to construct a new prick.

DID ENOCH NOTICE my new shape?

I thought he did, but knew not whether that was good or no. For the first time, I wondered if I’d erred in judgment. True, the new member I’d devised was more clever by far than my former models, its subtle swelling much closer to the real shape, but ’twas also true that it hadn’t been there this morning.

If he noticed at all, Enoch immediately forgot my transformation when he saw the arrow.

“Yif ye’re right, someone wants ye dead,” he said. He sighed deeply. “Alex, air ye sure we must crusade to get Wanthwaite? We could leave for Paris—there be many ships sailing til and fra—pick up our writ, and git rid of Roncechaux through Assize court.”

“Not with Osbert as judge,” I reminded him. “Northumberland won’t give up his own land.”

“I’m willing to do the ordeal,” he reminded me in return. “I’ll fight Roland in single combat.”

And leave me with half an estate. Besides, I’d made a promise to Richard … I turned away.

When I turned back, he was still studying me. “Be it the king quhat keeps ye?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

KING PHILIP HAD LOST HIS BATTLE. His favorite machine called “Bad Neighbor” had been destroyed by Greek fire. Whether from disappointment or God’s vengeance, the French king now became
sick with King Richard’s malady. The loss of both leaders cast a terrible pall on the fighting. Then through sheer force of will, King Richard rallied and took over the leadership, though he couldn’t walk or ride. He governed from an improvised hammock with a webbed canopy, which he called a
testudo.
His first order was to raise the foot soldier’s pay from three aurei to four aurei per month, thus wooing the volunteer army from Philip.

His second command was to swale the orchards and groves around the city in order to starve the men of Acre. Soon smoke and soot garbed us so we looked like Bedouins.

His third, and most ominous, was to summon Enoch.

“Lord Enoch, you have the best engineer’s mind in my entire company.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” the Scot answered warily.

“You are also acute and brave.”

Enoch merely nodded.

“Therefore I would like your opinion. How can we best break the stalemate of Acre’s battle?”

“You have to lower the wall,” Enoch answered promptly.

I began to get the drift of Richard’s questioning and suddenly recalled:
I’ll get rid of the Scot.
And Enoch:
Some luckless wight will blow himself to Hell.
How diabolical of the king!

“Exactly.” The king nodded approval. “At what point?”

The Scot studied the situation briefly in the field below us. “ ’Tis obvious. The largest tower at the corner there, on the southeast.”

“Right again, what we call the Accursed Tower. And how should I proceed?”

Don’t answer
, I signaled mentally.
Pretend you don’t know.

This time Enoch frowned for some time. “You’ll tunnel in a northeasterly direction at least twenty feet under, for the girth of the wall indicates a base of fifteen feet or more. Then you fire the tunnel and collapse the wall’s foundation.”

Richard gave the Scot a fixed look. “Do it.”

“
Me
, Your Highness?”

“My best engineer.”

“Except that I’ve had no experience in sapping, Your Grace. With your whole strategy riding on its success, and with the considerable risk of life to your men both above and below, I humbly suggest that there may be someone better for the task, someone more knowledgeable.”

The king became as angry as his depleted energies allowed. “Someone with courage, you mean. You have your order: see to it! And don’t lag your foot unless you would lose a foot. I mean to be in Acre within the month.”

Enoch’s lips pressed tight, he bowed and walked quickly away.

I ran after the Scot as he strode and caught him at our tent where he swilled a methier of ale, his eyes blank.

“
I’ll
speak to him!” I cried. “You’re right, ’tis woodly to attempt such a task for the very first time. And you told me yourself that ’twas sure death!”

Enoch shook his head. “Spare yerself the blither, bairn. The king knows what he wants. There’s an expression among these kings of chivalry in breme battle; I believe ’tis
‘enfants perdus,’
meaning that some men be ‘lost children,’ expendable. I be yer lost child.”

NEVERTHELESS, I DID SPEAK TO Richard the very next day.

“You show your ignorance, boy. I’ve given your brother an opportunity for great glory. By George, I envy him! I can’t imagine a better way to die.”

“I don’t want him to die!” I protested without thinking.

Instantly the king’s visage froze. “The Scot is expendable; Acre is not. His sacrifice can serve double purpose.”

I looked at him, appalled. Could he possibly believe that I would want the Scot
murdered
? For I clearly saw now that that was what the king was about, the deliberate slaughter of my Scottish friend. Didn’t he know that I needed Enoch?

I started again to speak, saw the king’s eyes as he looked around, and fell silent. But I prayed, Please God, don’t let Enoch die. God had so favored me in my recent prayers that surely He must grant this.

I DECIDED NOT TO TELL ENOCH of my failure with the king but to try to cheer him however I could. When I returned to camp with this intention, I found him standing by the tent, a puzzled expression on his face; in his hands he held two dead pigeons.

“Are you going to make pigeon pie?” A great favorite of mine.

He spoke portentously. “Alex, these birds be murdered.”

“Of course, but that’s a strange way to say it. We don’t eat live birds.”

“Murdered,” he repeated. “Poor little martyrs fer our sakes.”

I thought the strain of being Richard’s sapper had made him woodly

“Sit down, Enoch,” I said as kindly as I could. “Let me cook the pigeons for a change, and you talk to me about the history of Scotland.”

“The dinner be prepared,” he said stiffly. “There, liver and oats, but doona touch it yif ye value yer life.”

“What?”

“I’m tellin’ ye, these birds ate of our meal and promptly died. Someone hae poisoned our food.” He tossed the pigeons into a ravine. “By the smell, I’d say with monkshood.”

I sat down weakly. “The Saracens. Aye, ’tis said they sneak into camps and pick off one Crusader at a time by all sorts of devious means—poison, scorpions, snakes.”

“Aye, mayhap.” Enoch remained standing. “Anely I be not so sure that the Saracens be the best suspects.”

King Richard?

No, the king would never stoop to such lowly perfidious tactics. Nor would he chance that I might eat the poison instead of Enoch.

It must be the Saracens who’d chosen our camp by chance. I sighed with relief. Terrible as it was, it was not likely to happen again.

DEO GRATIAS
, KING RICHARD wanted his tunnel to succeed more than he wanted Enoch to perish. Therefore he selected another group of
enfants perdus
to sacrifice so that his own sappers could work in peace, namely King Philip’s sappers who dug in another direction. He explained exactly how he was doing it.

“Now, see there, Alex, to your left, the entry into Philips tunnel. He’s chosen the wrong goal so it’s expendable, and a concentration of fighting close to his tunnel will distract the Saracens from our more important digging.”

He thereby ordered four lords to assemble their knights and make a foray in a manner which pointed like an arrow to King Philip’s men.

“But won’t they die, Your Highness?”

He shrugged impatiently. “Probably, but that’s the difference between strategy and random death. Hundreds die here daily, but if we carefully select which men will die and for what purpose, we make their deaths a stepping stone to victory. Diversionary tactics lose men, but don’t waste them. You see?”

I wondered if men so used would agree, but I kept my counsel. The king glanced at me obliquely.

“I spoke to Enoch, by the way. Since you were so vehement, I gave him a choice.”