The Book of the Lion (17 page)

A roar, and a crash of iron against leather, and word traveled down the line: skirmishers from Saladin were attacking our flank. A shock rumbled through the army, shield jostling shield.

“They want to distract us,” said Nigel. He gave a dry laugh, like a cough. “And they are doing a fair job of it.”

The catapults worked without ceasing.

 

When the wall collapsed it was a great book falling open, with the satisfying rumble of new vellum. Dust ascended. A pagan army was exposed, tiny men, fine glittering swords.

Stay still, came the command.

 

A goatskin sloshed from man to man, and I drank my share of acid wine. The command traveled down our battle front, a Frankish order, but I knew what it meant. We would stand forward when the king did, and not before.

King Richard took the lead, a stumbling, uneven line of knights under the heavy sun.

 

 

 

 

If there was a battle cry, I could not distinguish it from all the other human tumult.

The pagan army poured through the rubble. Our knights collided with them, and the battle looked already won, our fighting men with huge square bucklers, against their small, round target-shields.

The lightly armored Saracens went down, reeds before a flood. Steel flashed pink and scarlet.

Hubert and I were in the second wave of the attack, immediately following the knights. Already Rannulf and Nigel were lost in the flood of mail and helmets, surging into the multicolored pagans, pushing them back. Stones crashed into the knights from above. We raised our shields, the bucklers clattering, edges overlapping.

A blizzard swept us—arrows, lead darts, spears and spearheads, pebbles and bricks. The wreckage of a city poured into us, lintel shelves, broken urns, and huge, chisel-finished corner stones. Burning embers and sizzling coals darkened the air. Our army was forced together, breath crushed from lungs. We could not go forward; we could not turn back.

I stood on something pillow soft, and looked down to see a bright blue blouse, and a beard and earring, gleaming teeth. Before I could see if the man was alive, wounded or stunned, the army surged forward. I told myself I did not hear a dozen feet crushing the blue blouse into the earth.

The knight ahead of me was held erect by the crush of men, fluid trickling from inside his helmet. We climbed over a mountain of rubble, slipping, clambering, the stones jagged, the sunlight blinding.

My past, my future, consisted of this breathless climb. The rocks were slippery with red soup and broken teeth. I heard—or sensed—a cry, and reached back to offer Hubert the head of my hammer. He gripped the iron, and I pulled him up and over a jagged chunk of black rock.

Crusader knights slashed with the swords, each Christian struggling to win a space. The real danger was from the flanks, arrows and quarrels ripping the wool tunics that covered our mail.

Rannulf cut a Saracen giant across the face. All along the line Christian knights crumpled as bricks the size of Easter loaves crushed a shoulder, flattened a helmet.

The only battle cry I could discern was the high-pitched ululation of the Mussulmen. The crescent swords carved pieces from the wounded knights who stumbled into their line.

A signal passed through the defenders. One moment they fought cautiously, loath to counterattack. And then they rushed forward, into us.

I struck a brilliant red shield with my hammer, brought down a Saracen, and before I could hesitate I kicked him, bellowing and digging hard with my foot.

Hubert struck a scimitar from a fist with his broadsword, but he slipped on a smear of blood. I stood before him, shielding Hubert with my body. I was yelling wordlessly, the sound tearing my throat. I punched at Hubert's assailant with the head of my hammer, and the man flailed with his crescent sword. I punched him in the beard with my weapon, and he fell back.

Someone sliced the chain mail of my collar, the steel grating against the iron links. The force of the blow was so strong color left my vision, all the blood and the battle flags gray in an instant.

The taste in my mouth was gall—my liver, the organ of courage, filling me with anger. I heaved my shield upward to fend another blow. My assailant squinted with the strain of delivering another blow, a man with a henna-red beard. He shifted his attack, lunging at my face, at my eyes. I lifted my hammer.

I brought it down with my full strength, and the man was gone.

 

 

 

 

Quiet.

The city of Acre was half hidden by yellow smoke

Not only this place, this rubble-pocked field, was silent. The entire earth was stunned.

Not perfect silence—a fly buzzed, stuck in a wine jug. A Breton man-at-arms was whispering into the ear of a priest.

Hours had passed. Our army had retreated, and the Saracens had followed. Our pikemen had stiffened into a line, and they had torn into the Saracens in their exposed position, outside the walls. Our bowmen had emptied their quivers. When the pagans, in turn, retreated, taunting, not one of us had fallen into the trap.

So long ago.

I moved my arms, lifted my head, slowly. I drank from a brown, cord-bound gourd, water laced with wine. I was breathless, and could not drink any more. I was splayed out on the ground, unable to move my legs. Each breath was acrid, a lungful of dust. Coughing took too much strength.

An army was lying around me, thousands of men twitching like the mortally wounded. Water-bearers worked among us, and pleasure women sought out their favorites, bathing foreheads with water-and-vinegar-soaked rags.

The city of Acre was as it always had been, the gash in its wall barely visible through the haze. The ground between us and the walls was thick with bodies and torn armor.

Large black birds scattered across the battlefield, and Saracens and Christians searched among the dead, crying out when another breathing man was discovered. Armorers and their apprentices hunted, working their way through the mass of scattered war-stuff.

A man crouched beside me. The knight's dark mail was white with dust. He was bearded, his lips disfigured with a blue scar.

“Edmund?” Rannulf rasped.

“My lord,” I whispered.

Rannulf called to a serving woman, and she hurried with a sloshing leather bottle of vinegar. Rannulf squeezed a cloth, and wiped my face.

I tried to protest, but he told me to keep my tongue silent in my mouth.

Another caked, grimy figure approached and knelt.

“You knocked the arm half off that Infidel, Edmund,” said Hubert's hoarse voice. “Smashed the bone!”

I made a very dry, creaking sound with my voice.

Hubert was all but unrecognizable, his face a mask of wall dust and ash. I coughed. “Did they hurt you, Hubert?” I heard my voice ask.

Hubert laughed wearily. He sounded old, ancient. “No,” said Hubert, raggedly. For a long time he did not speak again. “I fought hard, and I wounded one or two men.”

I nearly said something to Rannulf, but the knight rocked his eyes toward Hubert and back to me. He gave a little shake of his head.

A stranger hobbled over, his face dark as a chestnut. “They want a parley,” said Nigel's croak.

A small troop of Saracen warriors stepped carefully through the rubble, waving a pale blue banner, like house stewards bringing home a sheet of windblown laundry.

“How did you manage to find sword room,” Rannulf was asking Nigel. “Thrust and ward-off, in such a crowd?”

Nigel said, “It was a mistake to try. I did more gouging and elbowing than cutting.”

 

Servants worked the battlefield like serfs at harvest as the council took place in the cleared battlefield, under a wine-red canopy. Sir Guy de Renne sat cross-legged beside one of the pagan deserters from the city. The pagan leaned forward, one hand out, in the time honored pose of the interpreter. The evening grew heavy. Soon illumination was required, smoking lamps that flickered and sizzled, with the smell of olive oil.

 

Hubert cried out during the night, and I reached over to shake his shoulder. He sat up straight, swinging his arm wildly, staring around at the interior of the tent. When I spoke he did not hear me.

I did not dream.

 

The parley went on all night, but by morning, the meeting paused. The canopy fluttered in the weak wind, a luxurious covering, with sun-yellow fringe, large, harvest-auburn pillows on the ground. The battlefield was clear now, entirely stripped, and only a sole dog grazed the empty land.

The dog watched suspiciously, tail wagging very slightly as our camp stirred. A single bowman without mail or helmet, tousle haired and limping, was ordered out into the field, and the bowman made short work of nocking an arrow, and bringing the dog down. The day before there would have been cheers or laughter, but now no one made a sound.

Nigel spread a cloth dyed a rich, indigo blue. No English dyer could match such a dark hue, and no seamstress could have applied such perfect white tassel all the way around the border.

“Gifts from the people of Acre,” said Nigel. “Isn't it wonderful that they feel so generous!” he added with an irony that sounded close to sympathy.

Sunlight winked off a finger ring, green jasper, excellent workmanship. Gold and fine silver gleamed among the colorful collection of anklets and head cloths. Copper abounded, too, and a bastard alloy of tin and silver, rings and bracelets that were pretty to the eye.

 

Sir Guy de Renne resumed his place under the canopy, and a Templar sat beside him. The emissaries from the city joined them, and even at this distance it was plain that Sir Guy de Renne was receiving them on behalf of King Richard and the noblemen.

 

Ships arrived, more wheat from Genoa, goats bleating, hens scratching the confines of their cages. Men rolled casks of red wine up the beach, the barrel staves seeping. Smiths worked in blue smoke, mending shattered sword blades, fitting new steel into hilts.

King Richard strode among us, quaffing wine from a goblet set with beryl and small rubies—showy stones, worth a knight's ransom, but what my master Otto would have called “poor to hand.” I wished I could work a cup for the king, forge it, and set it on his table.

Every Christian had buckets of wine while the parley continued. Horse-leather buckets, goatskin sacks, bronze pails, pink gourds, every imaginable container filled to overflowing with red, and emptied down Crusader gullets. Men fell flat out, half slain by the heat and the new drink. White hen feathers drifted in the hot wind. At first a chorus of goats and lambs bleated. The livestock cry was decimated, then halved, then diminished to a few, querying bleats. And then the last kids were silent. Cooking smoke rose over the camp.

Men ate without speaking. They sucked hot fat from their fingers. Men gave themselves to goat steaks and lamb legs, closing their eyes, stopping only to drink more wine, the red liquid pattering on the ground. There was a trance-like frenzy about the feeding pikemen.

As I sat, my belly full, I felt a step beside me. It was Father Urbino, looking thin and sunburned, his eyelashes white with dust.

The priest put a hand on my arm.

“You help to kill the enemies of our Lord,” he said, in his heavy Paduan accent.

I nodded.

“Be happy, Edmund!” he said with a smile.

 

I assured myself that I was too weary to have any feelings, and if I let myself picture a trampled body, a splash of blood, I pushed the image from my mind—perhaps because I sensed I would see worse.

 

 

 

 

At a distance the sound of skirmishing was much like the sound of boys roughhousing in a brook—the churn of stones, the excited cries, the jeers.

A leather shield clashed with a war hammer, and broke. A horse received the shock of a brace of crossbow quarrels with a sound like a bellows, all the air in his body released in one great shudder.

As the harriers from Saladin's army worried our sentries, the Duke of Burgundy's falconer lost an arm, shaved clean with a stroke of Damascus steel. A few pikemen gut-wounded the pagan attacker's steed, although the heathen knight himself escaped on foot. One of the duke's men carried the severed arm wrapped in vermilion silk.

The parley before the city continued despite the efforts of Saladin to distract both the city fathers of Acre and the Christian army. Sir Guy de Renne could be seen bending forward, gesturing grandly. Nearly all the envoys leaned on pillows, exhausted or at peace. Christian stewards entered the city with pack horses, and some of King Richard's staff could be seen on the city walls, surveying, making lists. Pack horses left the city gates, heavy laden with loads wrapped in richly colored carpets.

One of the carrion birds descended to meet his own shadow not far from the parley, and when he touched earth took a moment to fold his wings.

The bird flew at last, just off the ground, and then banked, spiraling majestically over the gray rubble of the city walls, throwing a shadow over the parley-canopy. A Saracen bowman stepped from the canopy shadow, and fingered resin over his bowstring. A quiet word from a Saracen chief, and the arrow returned to its quiver, the bird unharmed.

 

Nigel was careful to shave each morning, with a razor of Cordovan steel, peering into his shiny metal mirror. He rubbed his cheeks with essence of rose, and wore sleeves of brushed fine wool, sky blue. His town-grimy appearance was forgotten now that we were at war, and even though Rannulf was careless regarding his hair and beard, his chain mail gleamed.