The Lute Player (34 page)

‘Well, what of it?’

‘What of it?’ The man jerked his hand towards the bed. ‘He must stop it, that’s all. He must charge against human nature like a bull charging a wall. He broke his heart first and then his mind gave way. Weeping, fasting, praying and now raving—’

‘The doctors?’

‘What could they do? His ill lay too deep for their probing. He should never have come.’ His shoulders moved again under the rattling mail. ‘In Canterbury,’ he said, ‘he was known for a humane man of tolerant understanding. Here he became a martinet and a saint. God alone knows what I, what we have all borne in these last weeks.’

Richard stood quite still for a moment and then took three strides towards the bed. He lifted one of the limp waxen hands which lay like the hands of a dead man outside the covers.

‘My lord of Canterbury,’ he said in a voice which was quiet and of surpassing sweetness, ‘I am here. Richard of England. Your Grace, I am here; you can tell me whatever it is you wish me to know. My lord, open your eyes. Give me your blessing—and your instructions.’

The discoloured eyelids in their sunken sockets did flutter but there was no recognition in the eyes thus opened.

‘I am writing my last letter,’ the husky voice said, ‘pray do not disturb me.’ The eyelids closed, and the stream of words flowed on ‘… better, my lord, a thousand times better that these holy places remain defiled only by the infidel for whom Christ can plead—O Father forgive them, they know not what they do—than that they should be taken in triumph by men who, bearing the symbol of His passion on their shoulders…’

Richard stepped back from the narrow little bed and stood silent, looking on while the husky low voice continued, denouncing, exhorting, and the clerk scribbled. I could see that he was listening attentively.

‘For delirium,’ he said at last, ‘it makes wonderful good sense and matches exactly some thoughts I have entertained this morning. But he—he’s finished, Walter. And the war only just started. You must take his command.’

‘I’ve had it for some days past,’ Walter said gruffly. Richard looked at him measuringly, approvingly; then he turned and looked at Baldwin in a way which, had Hubert of Salisbury been either more vain or more perceptive, would have galled him.

‘I’m very sorry about this,’ he said, turning back again. ‘He was’—he sought the just word and found it—‘ardent.’

‘He was an idealist. They always break first,’ Hubert Walter said with the air of one stating a plain and incontrovertible fact. In the background the voice went on and on, talking now about sincerity of motive being matched by purity of conduct. ‘The only army he could have marched in step with is that of Michael and all his angels!’ Walter said in a voice which mocked and yet betrayed an inner hurt. Then with a shrug of his broad shoulders he went on: ‘Sire, what is this I hear about a new mangonel?’

With an air of great relief Richard said, ‘It is a fact. A new weapon to our band. A boy—he’s here somewhere, I brought him with me—Blondel, he discovered it—something so simple that it’s unbelievable nobody ever hit on it before. He’ll explain. Get yours altered, Walter, as soon as possible. I intend to strike at once. This army has sat here too long.’

‘It has lacked a leader; there’s nothing else wrong with it at all,’ Hubert Walter said steadily. ‘Now that you are here, my lord—’

No doubt that was just the look which I used to turn on Brother Lawrence.

‘Poor Baldwin,’ Richard said.

‘It is a pity,’ Walter agreed gruffly. ‘And you know, sire, the men greatly reverenced him until he began—’

‘I know,’ Richard said hastily. They stood together for a moment in silent communion. Two strong men mourning one who, though better, was weak.

VI

The move against Acre was not made immediately, however, for Richard lay in his bed, smitten down by a fever which was never entirely absent from the camp and which attacked almost every newcomer. His limbs alternately shuddered with cold and burned with fever; he complained that his head was bursting and he had an unslakeable thirst. He was the worst patient in the world. Twenty times a day he would attempt to struggle out of bed and sometimes succeeded in staggering to the tent door and would stand there swaying, clutching the post or the shoulder of whoever was nearest. Then, cursing horribly, he would allow himself to be led back and covered and sometimes in as short a space as half an hour he would try again. There were times when he lay supine and other times when he would start up and send us running with messages, orders, requests for information. He took it hard that, though he sent messages inviting Philip and the other leaders to come and discuss the imminent assault with him, none came. They had—apart from their own disinclination to invite contagion—the best of excuses for their refusal. Escel forbade all visitors but Richard raved furiously about their cowardice and apathy.

Each day I found time to scribble the latest news of his condition and send it across to the small house by the harbourside where Berengaria had her temporary lodging. I was glad that I did so and that I was in a position to know and report the truth for on the third day a rumour that he was dead spread wildly round the camp. He was certainly quiet on that day for Escel in despair had administered a strong opiate and he slept for fifteen hours.

He was better when he woke and immediately set about the renewal of his plans. He forced Escel to admit Hubert Walter.

‘Tomorrow, Walter, we can at least get the storming towers into position and by the next day I shall be well enough to lead the assault.’

‘I doubt that,’ Walter said bluntly. ‘Your face is the colour of a dirty clout.’

‘You’ll see,’ Richard said. ‘I shall be out and about in the morning.’

And in the morning, despite all protests and expostulations, he had himself carried out on a mattress, after he had proved that his legs would not support him, and throughout that blazing day he lay in the dust and the shadeless glare giving directions and watching the luckless attempts of the men who were manoeuvring the great storming towers into position.

A storming tower—sometimes called “a bad neighbour”—is a light but rigid wooden structure consisting of several platforms one above the other, connected by ladders. It is mounted on wheels and pushed into position against the walls of the besieged town and counteracts the advantages which the besieged derive from their permanent towers. There are three great problems in getting the “bad neighbours” into position. Relatively too high for their bare area, they tend to topple over when pushed, especially on yielding ground such as sand or mud. The men who push them are extremely vulnerable while they are pushing. There is a moment when the tower stands near the besieged walls and is not yet manned. At that moment, while men are mounting the ladders and preparing to defend their temporary tower, really determined defenders thrust out great timbers and often succeed in overturning the whole structure with consequent damage to the men under and within it.

All these problems had to be met and overcome before the siege towers were in position by Acre walls. When three in succession had overturned, owing to the ill balance of the wheels in the sand and dust, Richard called a halt and for the rest of that day and the whole of the next gangs of men toiled at making four comparatively hard roads, one on each side of the town. There was no spare timber, nor tree within reasonable distance, but Richard gave orders that every house in the little colony by the harbour was to be demolished and the stones and beams from them used.

‘That,’ he said as he was carried back to his tent, ‘will take at least a week. I shall be fully restored by that time. Meantime I must think of some means of protecting the men who push.’

For the garrison at Acre was very unlike the defenders at Limassol. From every tower and slit in the walls the arrows poured down, deliberately and carefully aimed, seldom missing their mark. And the one storming tower which had by luck almost reached its position that day had been burned when the defenders had flung out, in the space of two minutes, forty short staves with bundles of flaming tar-soaked tow bound to their heads. Men pushing the tower had been horribly burned and fled screaming; the tower had flared up, a monstrous outline of red fire.

That evening Richard said, ‘Tell Gilles to cut the throats of the thirty worst mules and keep the hides whole.’

The hot fit was on him then and I thought that he was raving so I replaced his covers and said some of the senseless, soothing things one does say in such circumstances.

‘Don’t be a fool, Blondel,’ he said, pushing the covers away. ‘Go do as I say. Do you imagine that you are the only one ever to have a good thought? I want thirty mules’ hides, stretched flat. And don’t look at me as though I were crazy! Go and tell Gilles.’

But mules, I knew, were precious. Thirty mules—God pity and strengthen them—carried an immense amount of baggage. If he were now even ever so little out of his mind and came to clarity to find thirty mules killed with my connivance… But he began to struggle out of bed and I thought: Better at this juncture thirty mules than the King of England—and went and gave the order.

Next day, when the road-making started in earnest, men had been up at first light tearing down the harbour houses and carrying material up to the town—there was fought the short, sharp civil war over the matter of armour.

It was plain from the first moment that the garrison at Acre was not going to stand by tamely and see those roads made. Down came the arrows; out in great flaming arcs came the fire-headed staves.

‘Sound the retreat,’ said Richard from his mattress to the bugler who stood beside him. ‘This road must be made by men in armour.’ He gnawed his thumb. ‘At least hauberk and helm.’

Later on we were all to see armoured men whose horses had died or been killed ploughing along through sand and dust, over rocks; but at that time, when the war was young, an armoured man was a mounted man; and a mounted man was a knight or the son of a merchant or, at lowest, some yeoman’s eldest son whose armour and steed had been bought at the price of his family’s penury for five years; and all such were privileged and proud.

Few of those who had shouted, ‘Richard has come. All will be well,’ had reckoned on a scorching day when he would issue the ultimatum that the armoured men must build the road or lend their helms and hauberks to the unarmoured men. But he gave that order and there was a great confusion.

His understanding was limited and highly eclectic but he did understand men.

‘I have two coats of mail,’ he said, raising himself on his elbow. ‘Blondel, choose me from amongst those buff-coated fellows one about my size.’

‘A difficult task, sire,’ I said without any intention to flatter.

‘The nearest, then. Where is the man who caught the burning brand by its handle and flung it back? He was a stout fellow and I’d lend him my mail with pleasure.’

He noticed everything—within limits.

I found that man—six inches too short and four inches too narrow—and we dressed him.

‘Now help me into my other harness,’ Richard said. And he stood up, donned hauberk and helm and, wobbling like an unweaned pup, went out to the road’s beginning and took up the hammer which one of the men had laid down when the retreat was sounded and began to beat a slab of stone into its bed of sand. An arrow hissed down, struck his helm—the Saracens are marksmen of a quality matched only by the English at their best. Richard, hammering away with his right hand, waved his left with a gesture that said, ‘Ha, missed, you see!’

And within the space of time that it takes for a man to strap on his harness all the choicest knights in Christendom, the very flower of chivalry; men who had never handled any tool save those of war, never done a menial task in all their lives, were out there in the sun and the dust, working like villeins.

Having no mail and failing to borrow, I joined myself to the gang of men who carried stones and timbers up from the demolished houses. I broke all my nails, which are essential for the playing of a lute, and so bruised and lacerated my fingers that it was with pain and difficulty that I wrote my daily report to my lady that evening. And if the bad penmanship was compensated by a somewhat hysterical enthusiasm, I hope I may be forgiven. For I had helped to unharness him. He had risen from his sickbed and worked in hot heavy armour for eight hours. The sweat gathered about his feet in pools as we unlaced him—one would have thought that he had stepped undried from a bath—and he trembled like a poplar. Even hatred and jealousy had, perforce, to give way to admiration.

The hard narrow tracks were made more speedily than seemed possible. And then I saw why he had ordered the hides. Nailed slantwise to the edge of the lowest platform of the storming tower, they afforded almost complete protection for the men who pushed. They were hard enough to repel an arrow and green enough not to flare up under the touch of the flung torches. Fifteen on each side, they gave sufficient shelter and as each “bad neighbour” rolled into position under the walls of Acre the hides were ripped off and nailed onto the next. And the day came when I watched men climb those ladders, muster on the platforms and leap upon the walls, while the mangonels thudded and the arrows darkened the sky.

Twice during the attack the Saracens from the camp in the hills swooped down in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the city. And twice Richard, turning gladly to a form of warfare more to his taste, led the force which drove them off. Those repulses doubtless added to the despair of the besieged and on the eighteenth day after the completion of the roads they hauled down their flags and sent out emissaries to discuss the terms of surrender.

An awed silence fell as the gate of the city opened and closed again behind the three men who emerged. Two were Saracen emirs, turbaned and dressed in fresh white clothing; the third was a Frank with hair so sun-bleached that it was almost as fair as mine. From shoulder to heel he was covered by a long scarlet cloak of a hue so vivid that in the blazing sun it afflicted one’s eyes with pain. When they first emerged he walked a little behind the Saracens but as they drew near to the spot where Richard stood, awaiting their slow and dignified approach, he ran forward suddenly, dropped to his knees at Richard’s feet and seized the hand extended to him, bowing his head over it. The action had enormous significance, the eloquence of the mummer.