The Templar hesitated, then whispered, ‘God save you, Captain,’ and ran with Reynald.
The Saracens were surprised to find the Crusader in their path. He fought like a trapped boar, giving ground a foot at a time. He accounted for two of them, and looked set fair to block the path indefinitely, when the swordsmen retreated a few steps, making way for the archers. They fired seven arrows at him, and all save one found their mark. The swordsmen moved forward again, slashed at his body as they passed and ran on in pursuit of their prey.
Reynald and Gerard helped Amalric along the wadi, then pushed him aside as several figures loomed out of the darkness. The Crusaders’ swords were cutting circles in the air when a voice hissed, ‘Lord Prince, is it you?’ Members of the north garrison hurried to assist Amalric, while Arnold of Toroga shook hands briefly with Reynald and the Templar. The Grand Master asked, ‘Are they close?’
Reynald nodded and pushed Gerard toward the postern. Then he looked back along the wadi and spat contemptuously. ‘Another time, you pigs! Try for me another time.’
‘Come,’ Arnold told him. ‘You are vulnerable here.’
‘Pigs.’ ~;~
‘Yes. Go through, Prince.’
‘They’ll not bring me down. Nor will they ever take Kerak.’
‘I pray you, get on. Same qui peut! They are coming!’ He sheathed his sword and scrambled up the bank to the postern. Reynald followed, almost reluctantly. Four of the garrison stayed to hold the Saracens at bay until the inner door was closed. They died there, while the Red Wolf re-entered his lair.
* * *
Inside the walls, the natural leaders had assumed command. Women and civilians had been herded into the nearest cellars and passageways. The south garrison remained under the control of Aegelric’s cousin, Captain Azo. Joscelin of Courtenay put himself in charge of the north garrison, while Balian organized the defence of the eastern fortifications. The west wall had not yet come under attack, but when Arnold and Gerard returned through the postern they sent men pouring up the narrow stairways to the western ramparts. Amalric retired to have his leg wound dressed. Reynald joined Joscelin in one of the north towers.
The buildings had taken a terrible battering. The roof of the Great Hall was holed in five places. Two of the windows in the main chapel had sustained a direct hit. Many of the pews were crushed to kindling. The altar rail was bent, the solid silver crucifix scarred by fragments. Half the buildings around the inner and outer baileys had been damaged, and huge stones littered both yards. No count had been taken of the dead and wounded, but thirty or forty bodies lay on the steps and ramparts, most of them victims of the whirling missiles. Bales of burning straw had also been sent over, and small fires raged among the demolished wooden out-houses. The leaders detailed men to draw water from the central reservoir and dampen all the inflammable structures.
Isabella, Maria, Stephanie and Agnes were all safe in the round tower. Humphrey stood with Balian on the curtain wall. Both men were armed with swords and Norman shields, though neither had found time to don a helmet or hauberk.
Humphrey asked, ‘Is it Saladin?’
‘It’s his work, I’d say, and he’s probably down there directing it. That raiding party we heard of—’
‘It must have been a scouting party.’
‘Yes. We jumped too quickly to conclusions. We should have sent the women on with the escort, and stayed to investigate.’
‘But we were not to suspect,’ Humphrey retorted. ‘We have had no trouble from him since Tubanie.’
‘Nevertheless, that’s exactly what we should have done, sus— For your life!’ They threw themselves flat as a wad of flaming tar flew between them, scraping the inner lip of the wall. The tar stuck for an instant, then fell into the bailey. Men ran out to hurl sand on it. Balian grabbed a crossbow, wound it and fired a bolt into the darkness.
‘This is not good,’ he snapped. ‘All the light is on us. Humphrey, collect some men and set them to extinguishing the torches. The enemy can see us clearly, while we remain blind. Get to it, kinsman.’
Humphrey crawled away, pleased that Balian had called him kin.
In another part of the castle, Fostus and Ernoul helped prepare one of Kerak’s own mangonels. In this way, most of what was catapulted into the castle could be retrieved and thrown back. Little damage could be inflicted until the Crusaders learned where the enemy machines were placed, but it cheered the garrison to see that a reply was being drafted for the Saracens. In fact, Ernoul was not much help. He was wiry, but lacked the bullish strength that was needed if the rocks were to be collected and stacked for loading. Recognizing this, Fostus indicated a darkened part of the wall, from where a watcher could estimate the enemy positions.
‘Climb up there,’ he said. ‘When you see them, we’ll fire a shot. Mark where it lands, then guide the next flights. But stay low, or I’ll have that girl of yours after me.’
Ernoul nodded and was about to run for the steps when Fostus grabbed his shoulder, jerking him back beside the mangonel. A rock landed twenty feet away, sprang up and flew within inches of the machine. It smashed through a row of horse troughs, then spun away in the direction of a wrecked guard-house. Fostus hauled the young squire to his feet, growled, ‘Scale that wall!’ and pushed him forward. Ernoul ran.
He reached the steps unhurt and started to climb. Midway up he came across the corpse of a soldier, the body and head cruelly broken. Stifling his revulsion, he rolled the corpse from the steps, trying not to hear as it landed with a dull sound in the yard. He went on, his hands wet with blood.
The lights were going out all over the castle. It made movement difficult – one false step could send a man over the wall, or off the edge of a stairway – but they no longer felt exposed to the enemy’s gaze. The archers fired tar-tipped arrows and the men-at-arms hurled barrels of Greek Fire in an attempt to locate their attackers. The Greek Fire smeared the slopes of the wadis with liquid flame, and they could see men running or on horseback. It was the consensus of opinion that Kerak was ringed by a major Saracen force and that Emir Saladin was in command.
In the round tower, Stephanie of Milly posed an ingenious scheme whereby the attack might be delayed.
She said, ‘Perhaps he does not know of the wedding. If we were to send out meat and drink, if we were to appeal to him as an honourable man … He’s a strange one. It might work with him.’
Had she suggested that, at the height of the battle, they exchange courtesies with anyone but Saladin, she would have been scorned, or ignored. But, as she had said, Salah ed-Din Yusuf was a strange one. He forgave penitent murderers and then, having pardoned them, gave them money from his own coffers. He made treaties and held to them. He released high-born prisoners so that they might return to their lands and raise their own ransom, and he was genuinely shocked when they failed to do so. He gave his word and kept it more often than any Frankish leader, and the Crusaders made much of this self-restricting weakness. He prayed regularly, studied foreign languages and wrote poetry. He was indeed a strange one to Christian eyes.
The attack continued for the next hour, but in that time the Emir’s headquarters were located and Saladin himself was contacted by a deputation from the castle. He listened patiently to what they told him, then accepted the token food and asked, ‘Which part of al-Kerak do the young couple occupy?’
They said, the north tower.
‘Then that shall be sacrosanct. And when I have taken this dreadful place I will give them safe passage from Moab. I have heard of them. Allah grant that there were more of their kind. Tell the Ladies Stephanie and Maria and Agnes that they, too, are safe, and that I will deal with their husbands fairly in due time. Now leave me and make your defence.’
The deputation retired, awed and frightened.
Reynald left his watchtower and went among his men. He carried no shield and moved openly along the ramparts, roaring, bellowing proof that a Christian hide was impervious to Moslem darts. Men died around
him, but their deaths changed nothing; they expected to die, for they were not touched with immortality. Two arrows flew close to him, and by word of mouth became twenty that bounced harmlessly from his chest. Nothing, they knew, could hurt their Prince, the master of Oultrejourdain…
While Ernoul directed the aim, Fostus and others loaded and fired the mangonel. The first six missiles hit nothing they could see. The seventh scored a glancing blow on one of the Saracen machines. After that, they smashed the machine to splinters.
Azo and the south garrison repulsed two attacks on the wall. On the eastern ramparts Humphrey returned to help Balian reposition the thinning line of soldiers. He was some twenty feet from the Lord of Nablus when he stumbled and knocked himself cold. Balian was glad – now, in all honesty, he could have his son-in-law carried to the round tower and given over to Isabella. He had already decided to engineer something of the kind, but this way, with the accident witnessed by several men-at-arms, he could not be accused of favouritism.
Then, to make this night one of the most incredible in the history of the forty-year-old fortress, the surprise Saracen attack was balanced by an equally unlooked for interruption.
The soldiers on the west wall and in the high towers there saw a distant smudge of light between the castle and the Dead Sea. Gerard of Ridefort shouted for his Grand Master, who in turn shouted for Reynald. By the time he reached them, the lights had spread into a wide, snaking column.
‘Sweet Christ,’ he breathed. ‘This cannot be. It’s some devious trick.’
Suddenly men on the north wall were also shouting. ‘Prince! Leaders! They withdraw! They withdraw!’
‘No,’ Reynald muttered. ‘They fool you. Don’t be hoodwinked. It’s an easy trick.’
But it was no trick. Within less than an hour the Saracen force had disappeared into the hills, leaving behind them broken equipment and a scattering of dead. And before another hour had passed the Christian army was under the walls, flares showing where Raymond of Tripoli stood beside the litter that bore King Baldwin IV.
Leaving Kerak to his commanders, Reynald went down to meet them.
Addressing Raymond, he demanded, ‘In God’s name, how did you know of this?’
The Regent merely nodded at the king, redirecting the question. ‘How did we know?’ Baldwin whispered, in no hurry to satisfy Reynald’s curiosity. ‘You ask us how?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘We heard that a raiding party—’
‘So did we all! Yet it aroused no suspicions.’
Baldwin smiled. ‘So I see. For myself, I am not so trusting.’
‘But why you? You heard something we did not—’
‘No. They reported sighting, that’s all.’
‘Then why you?’
‘I will tell you why, Chatillon. Because I am the king, and because it is the king’s part to sense these things. In my place your suspicions would not have been aroused, and all this would be razed to rubble. But you are not in my place, thank God, and so you and yours have been saved.’ In the silence that followed, the young leper’s heart burned with the knowledge that he had magnificently justified his crown.
Chapter Eleven
Toron
May, June 1184
They were six months older. Humphrey was now eighteen years and a few days; Isabella had turned twelve, claiming, ‘I am in my thirteenth year.’ Now, too, they were almost one hundred miles by road from Nablus, and more than twice that distance from Kerak. They had left the old world and embraced the new.
Both revelled in their new-found freedom. Humphrey proved himself a judicious overlord and a capable administrator, while, at home, Isabella wrote in her diary, ‘There can be no more attentive a husband,’ then, in a code she had devised, ‘nor inventive a lover.’ He was not unable. He did not maltreat her, nor did he wish her to hit him with sticks. There was no reason whatsoever to send him to Lord Balian, unless it was to parade him as a perfect knight. She remarked openly to her handmaids that she sometimes wished she were a dog. Then, like a dog, she could follow him around all day. As a princess, she was content to fill her diary in clear and in code and write long letters to Balian and Maria, a sheet of general information for her stepfather, another of more intimate comment for her mother. She felt sure that they both read each sheet, but she continued to divide the letters in case Balian admonished her for her unladylike disclosures.
One morning, for the sake of amusement, she showed part of a coded entry to Humphrey. He broke the code within five minutes and blushed at what he read.
‘Did I really say that?’
‘You did. The other night. Do you remember, I was on this side of the bed, and you were over there, and you took off your tunic and said—’
‘Yes, well, I don’t think you should record such remarks.’
‘But nobody can read them.’
‘I can, now.
‘Ah, but you have a brilliant mind, sweet. Who else could make sense of it?’
‘I don’t know, but if it was to fall into the wrong hands—’
‘Then it could only enhance your reputation. Here, read this passage.’ She smiled and pulled the covers around them. They both realized that the day would start late for Lord Humphrey of Toron and Princess Isabella of Jerusalem…
One week later, Ernoul sent word that he and Idela would soon reach the castle. Balian’s squire was now a month short of his nineteenth birthday, Idela some three years younger. This time there had been nothing to prevent her coming with him. Aunt Ermengarde had recovered from her stomach pains and was busy gardening and bottling fruit. Idela’s father had employed another assistant and did not disguise the fact that he found the new girl quicker and more hard-working than his daughter. He wanted to ask Ernoul if he intended to marry Idela, or merely take pleasure in her, but commented instead on the dilapidated state of the awning above the stall. He feigned surprise when the young man purchased a replacement, then gave the pair his paternal blessing and went back to work.
On their way to Toron they spent two nights beside the road, but because it was necessary to keep watch for wild animals and brigands, they did not take pleasure in each other. As a result they arrived in the seigneurie tired and tense and Ernoul refused to go on to the castle.
Idela said, ‘But we are expected. Didn’t you say we would arrive tonight?’
‘I didn’t say tonight for certain. Tomorrow will be soon enough.’
‘Then where will we stay?’
‘In a hostel, or a tavern. I’ll find somewhere. We’ll feel better when we’ve eaten.’
‘And slept,’ she said. ‘I could sleep the sun round.’
He did not pay particular attention to the remark until he had found a travellers’ hostel, ordered food and a room for two. Then Idela said, ‘No, I would prefer a room of my own.’
‘What? But you can’t! I mean, you didn’t think that after all this time—’
‘Listen,’ she sighed. ‘Sit down here by the fire and listen to me.
‘I don’t understand you. I thought—’
‘I know what you thought, and you are right to think it. But now think of this. If we are together we will want to have love—’
‘Of course. I do want it.’
‘And I, dear Ernoul. So together we will try, hollow-eyed and snappish.’
‘Who’s hollow-eyed? I feel as well as, as—’ He clasped a hand to his mouth, but was too late to stifle the yawn.
‘Just so,’ Idela said, ‘and it will be unsatisfactory, and we will remember it with shame.’
‘Shame?’ he gaped. ‘I’m not ash – ashamed.’
‘With sorrow then. But when we have slept and recovered—’
She smiled at him, and after a moment he nodded wearily.
‘You are probably right.’
‘It will be better, I promise you. And in a castle! The very thought of it excites me.’
He wondered what difference a castle would make, but saw the light in her eyes
and said nothing. He, himself, had always wanted to have love with a girl beside a river, so supposed it was much the same thing.
The hostel keeper came to tell them that the food was ready and to make sure that they did, in fact, want separate rooms. Ernoul nodded, and they left the fire and ate in silence, the only couple in the wood-walled dining room. Then, still silent, they mounted the stairs to their rooms. The hostel keeper watched them and shook his head in disgust. Two rooms. In his day he would never have allowed a pretty girl to escape so easily. If necessary he’d have broken down the door to reach her. Then he remembered that the door was hostel property and reminded himself to check for damage in the morning. Young people today were all the same. They had no respect for persons or property…
* * *
In December, 1183, when Humphrey and Isabella had arrived at Toron, they had decided to put into practice much of what Humphrey had learned from Reynald of Chatillon. The young nobleman was so terrified of what his stepfather might do once he realized that he was to receive no lands or income from the seigneurie, that he planned to increase the garrison of the castle twofold and, at whatever the cost, to extend the fortifications in the form of a vast outer wall.
But by the end of January, 1184, they were less frightened. The inhabitants of the county were a friendly lot; they had lived too long without a father in the family, and they welcomed the grandson of the great warrior Constable Humphrey II. They found Humphrey IV different in many ways, yet bearing the same ideals and aspirations. And, glory of glory, after a lifetime spent in Kerak, he was still loyal to the crown.
Humphrey was profoundly glad that they did not continue to draw comparisons between his grandfather and himself. Humphrey the Constable had been a man of stature, God knew it, but Isabella’s husband had no wish to step from the shadow of Chatillon into that cast by an earlier Toron. He encouraged the populace to assess him on his own merits, and before many weeks they were telling their friends, ‘We are of Toron, Lord Humphrey’s seigneurie. He has forsaken Moab, he and his little princess, to be with us.’
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