Several of William’s men followed suit with similar tricks, showing off their horsemanship. Then William took a lance and performed several skilled maneuvers with Ancel at a canter, riding on the edge, swirling and turning in precision but still keeping in line with the column. William deliberately chose Ancel from the men because he wanted to show Mahzun that his brother was accomplished and capable of defending himself. Ancel might not have Eustace’s lithe skills on a horse, nor William’s natural talent with sword and lance, but he was dogged and thorough, and once a technique was learned, it was mastered for life. Of them all, Ancel was the one who needed to practice least to maintain his edge.
Mahzun made a deliberate show of ignoring their performance, but William knew he had seen it, and the point had been made.
* * *
Kerak rose before them in great golden blocks of stone, the walls battered and pockmarked from the pounding meted out by Saladin’s siege machines, which were now ablaze around the base of the fortifications. Some had clearly been demolished and transported away with the Saracen army, but many had been set on fire as time ran out. The ditch protecting the inner defenses had been heavily filled in, and it was clear that their arrival was timely, for Saladin had made far deeper inroads than his previous assault and had been on his way to victory.
The garrison, commanded by Reynald of Châtillon, welcomed the army from Jerusalem with relief, but there was no celebrating. After thanksgiving prayers had been said, the horses seen to, and food eaten, repairs to the fortress were immediately set in hand and the ditches cleared and deepened. King Baldwin had his litter carried around the walls to inspect the damage and discuss the repairs required. Once again, Saladin had retreated rather than engage in a pitched battle, and William could see that the ailing young king was frustrated. Both Gerard de Ridefort and Guy de Lusignan opined that they should give chase, but Baldwin shook his head when they suggested it in counsel on that first evening.
“We would have to push the men and horses hard to catch up. Kerak must be fortified. I too am disappointed, but I will not allow that disappointment to breed recklessness. We must make this place secure first.”
William realized he was right. De Lusignan and de Ridefort were exasperated, especially Guy, who was spoiling for a fight. Others were more philosophical, and Baldwin was still trusted enough by the majority to hold all together.
* * *
Two days later, William was toiling with the other men, helping to clear the ditch of the rubble and detritus that the Saracens had thrown down in order to fill it, when he saw a messenger arriving in a cloud of red dust.
Ancel blotted his brow on his forearm and pushed back the brim of the straw hat protecting him from the sun. “Trouble,” he said.
“Certainly urgency,” William replied.
The king was unwell and intended retiring to Acre to attend his mother, who was seriously ill herself, and to recuperate in the care of the Hospitallers in a place where the sea breezes would be kinder to his condition. A detail of men was being left to fill in the ditch, and the rest were to return to Jerusalem with Gerard de Ridefort and the Bishop of Lydda. William and his knights had volunteered to stay a few extra days with the ditch diggers before returning to Jerusalem. While William longed to be with Paschia, this hard physical activity was both penance and abstinence. He was putting distance between himself and a temptation he could not resist.
The news swiftly emerged that Saladin was making his way toward Damascus, raiding as he went, and that he had sacked Nablus, although its population was safe within the citadel, defended by Maria Comnena, Balian of Ibelin’s wife.
A contingent was organized to pursue the raiders and chase them off. It had to be swift, and the king was in no condition to command, whatever the pace. William volunteered to go; so did Zaccariah, because Nablus was his native city and he still had important business interests there, and he took Mahzun as his personal bodyguard. Balian of Ibelin, Lord of Nablus, whose wife was conducting the defense, was also riding north, and although Gerard de Ridefort was accompanying the king to Acre, Onri was to lead a conroi of Templars.
William and his men swiftly collected supplies from the stores, donned their armor, saddled their horses, and rode out of Kerak, heading north on the tail of Saladin’s army.
“Of course, again, it will only be to chase him away,” Onri said to William as they rode side by side at a trot. “We do not have enough men for a pitched battle, and Saladin will not stand and fight either. He is just raiding and attacking to bite us as he returns to Damascus. But at least people will see that we have come to their relief, and we are marking our boundaries.”
“The same happens on the borders between France and Normandy,” William responded. “There are always threats and skirmishes but seldom full battles, because neither king will risk all.”
Nablus had been burned, looted, and sacked. Paschia’s uncle was enraged to find his family premises in smoking ruins, although his mood improved when he discovered that his relatives had survived by retreating into the citadel, bringing with them most of their rich silk cloth, so at least their livelihood and his share in its profits had been saved.
Saladin had sacked the town and moved on, and as at Kerak, there was no fighting to do, only sifting through the ashes, tallying the losses and damage, and clearing up. The Lord Balian remained in Nablus to see to the city repairs and reassure the people that Saladin would not be returning. Onri, however, had to ride on to the border to ensure that the latter was true and to check up on the small Templar castle and farming settlement at Petit Garin, on the road to the Hospitaller fortress at Belvoir, and William and his men rode with him.
As they left the ruins of Nablus behind, William dreamed of Paschia with longing and wondered how she would react to hearing that her birthplace had been burned to the ground. He imagined her running around the town as a little girl with long dark plaits, and then as a young woman, and wished he had known her then. He wanted to fold her in his arms and protect her from everything that had ever hurt or damaged her and promise it would never happen again.
Onri and his troop struck out along the road in the direction of the Hospitaller castle of Belvoir, which stood at the eastern edge of a plateau high above the Jordan valley, guarding two fords that led into the Turkish-held interior, controlled by Saladin.
Along the way, the knights came upon destroyed Samaritan villages plundered with swift efficiency, the livestock taken and the people slaughtered if they had not been swift enough to flee. As in Nablus, the houses had been ransacked and fired, and the water courses were polluted with the corpses of pigs and sheep.
The men rode on from these places having garnered what information they could. There was nothing they could do for the villagers and nothing the villagers could do for them. William had seen such sights regularly when serving his young lord in Limousin. Sometimes he had even been the cause of such devastation. Destroying the enemy’s lands and resources took away his means of livelihood and stamped his territory like a dog pissing up a wall.
The Templar settlement of Petit Garin lay close to the River Jordan and, like the other villages, had been raided and destroyed, the crops and vines burned in the fields, and the animals slaughtered or driven off. A few villagers who had made their escape before the attack were stumbling around the ruins of their homes, dousing the flames, salvaging what they could, wailing over the dead and the missing. The small fortified castle had not withstood the Saracen assault; the door to the fortress had been burned and then smashed open by a ram, and the Templar knight and sergeants defending the place had been decapitated, their heads thrust on spears at the edge of the village. In the strong September sun, the flies had already begun their work and the bodies were swarming. The Templars’ weapons had been taken, as had their horses and the strong box.
William was a soldier accustomed to chevauchée, but this was on a greater lev
el than he had experienced before. His gorge rose and he had to swallow hard. Eustace had given up the struggle and was kneeling on the ground, vomiting.
Onri knelt and bowed his head to honor his fallen brethren, then stood straight and looked at William, his expression set and hard. “We must bury them decently,” he said bleakly. “We are Templars, and that means we are afforded no mercy nor do we ask for it. Our order began as knights dedicated to protecting ordinary folk on the pilgrim roads, but we could not protect these people from the might of Saladin’s army, although they relied on us to do so.”
William laid his hand on Onri’s shoulder in support. “There was nothing anyone could have done. They stood in the path of the Saracen army, and the numbers were too great.”
“Yes,” Onri said grimly, “and that does not sit well with me either.”
The soldiers set to and began digging graves for the dead Templars and all the villagers who had been killed. Another man had suffered a severe sword cut to the shoulder and was unlikely to survive, although he was able to tell them how the Saracens had come down on them like a swarm of locusts out of a dust cloud. Many of the villagers had been taken as slaves—the younger women, the older children, and the strong youths. The rest had been slaughtered. Unless settlers were found to repopulate Petit Garin, it would become yet another derelict settlement.
Ancel worked beside William as they dug. His stocky strength and pragmatism suited the task, and the brothers drew sustenance from each other in the rhythmic toil, the sudden touching of a shoulder, an exchanged glance. Eustace dug beside them, his movements jerky.
“Steady lad.” William put a hand on his arm and handed him the water flask. “Rinse your mouth.”
Eustace gave a wordless nod and did as William bade him. Then he spat to one side of the trench and wiped his hand across his face. “I am all right,” he said hoarsely.
William nodded in a brusque, man-to-man fashion. “Yes, I know.”
There were no shrouds and the bodies had to be laid to rest as they were. William held a small child in his arms, a little boy no more than three years old, and set him gently down beside his fly-blown grandmother with grief, with tenderness, with a heartsick burning anger that went too deep for the swift fire of rage. This belonged to everyone—not just the men who had committed the atrocity, but as part of a longer chain in which each and every one of them was a link all the way back to Cain.
The Templars were buried side by side, their heads removed from the spikes and restored to their bodies. Onri had insisted on performing the terrible task himself and, gray faced, saw to the burial service over the long, dusty mound of heaped earth. And then he entered the church to pray and prostrated himself before the altar and wept.
After a while, William followed him and knelt at his side, saying nothing, quietly sending his own prayers to God for the souls of the people they had just committed to the earth. The long silence forged the bond between the men into a stronger link of shared experience, and William remembered the moment on their pilgrimage when Onri had come to him and undertaken a vigil at his side in a wayside village church.
The silence of the chapel was suddenly riven by a shout and the clatter of hooves and jingle of harness. William and Onri hurried outside ready to draw their swords and were met by a group of Hospitallers from Belvoir, also intent on discovering how Petit Garin had fared as the Saracen army came through.
“Saladin crossed the Jordan at the ford below the castle yesterday at dusk,” said the knight leading the contingent as he looked at the grave mound and crossed himself. “He was moving swiftly, even with the spoils of his raids. We sent out knights and archers to harry his flanks, and we picked off a few of his warriors, but he kept his distance from us. We knew from his direction that Petit Garin must have lain in his path.” He grimaced. “We’ll succor the survivors at Belvoir until we hear from your order what is to be done—whether you will put in a new garrison.”
Onri shook his head. “That will be for our grand master to decide. We drove Saladin off from Kerak, but he has sacked Nablus and every village between here and the Jordan crossing.”
“But since he has crossed the river, it seems that the danger has passed.”
“Probably,” Onri agreed, and wearily pinched the bridge of his nose. “We have a moment to recuperate and prepare for the next assault.”
The Hospitallers made ready to return to Belvoir, taking with them the surviving villagers, and Onri’s party took the road to Jerusalem, leaving the remains of Petit Garin to its ghosts.
“We build settlements,” Onri said, riding beside William, “but it is a constant struggle to keep them occupied and productive. We have to provide men to guard the villages and convince people to settle in the first place. The larger fortresses can hold out for years and, to an extent, protect the smaller ones against Saracen raids, but when an army comes through, then the small links break and the big links can do nothing. And Saladin knows this. To him, these raids are but small fish in his net. Kerak was the big one, and he will be back to challenge for it.”
“But not yet,” William said.
“No, not yet,” Onri said dourly. “He has to share out his plunder and deal with whatever he must at home. His men will have their own business to attend—wives and families, crops and trade. But it will not be for long—not without a miracle, and miracles are in short supply these days.”
* * *
They had been riding for less than half a day when they came upon a Saracen camel train bearing sacks of frankincense, colored leathers, and woven woolen rugs. The two groups considered each other warily. The caravan was sufficiently armed to see off ordinary brigands but not a troop of seasoned knights on warhorses.
Onri contemplated the train with a taut jaw while fingering his sword hilt. “There is always temptation,” he said, “but every day, I pray to God to give me the strength to resist it.”
William gave him a questioning look. The men were restive, and by the clink of armor and harness and the stamping of the horses, William could tell they were eager to be unleashed. Just one word…just one move.
“If we attack them, then we make ourselves outlaws and jeopardize the entire kingdom,” Onri said. “They journey under King Baldwin’s protection and ours, and they have the right to camp and trade along their designated routes.” He gave William a look both cynical and resigned. “Towns might burn, people might be slaughtered and enslaved, but the exchange of goods continues, because where else would the riches come from in order to build the towns and assemble armies in the first place? Under the king’s orders, we leave them in peace, and in turn, although they may burn our villages in war, our own merchants may ride through Saracen territory unhindered. That is the nature of balance. It is not a delicate thing in itself; indeed, it is very crude, but all it takes is a single stroke to begin Armageddon.” He eased his hand off his sword hilt and made a horizontal gesture with his hand, palm flat, indicating to the soldiers that they should keep their weapons sheathed. The moment passed, and the camel train moved on, slow stepping along the well-worn track.
* * *
Perspiration cooling on his body as he recovered, William lay on his back and gazed up at the dome where the moonlight streamed in upon him and Paschia lying together in their haven from the world. They had come here at sunset and now it was close on midnight, and all they had done was make love and sleep and make love again. The intensity of the sensations still flickered through his body like the last of a storm rolling away to the horizon. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to move but knew he ought to.
“Stay,” she said as he gathered himself, and she pressed him gently back down before leaning over and lightly biting his chest. “My uncle is not here, and neither is most of the household. No one will know. Even if people notice your absence, they will think you have gone to one of the places in the city.”
He resis
ted for an instant and then lay back, capitulating. It would be very pleasant to spend the night here and the opportunity might not arise again. But it was a risk. He had ridden in with his men just ahead of the twilight and seen to the stabling of the horses. Ancel had gone to visit Asmaria and would not be back until the morning, and the other men had their own business to attend, now they had returned.
She kissed him again and moved lower, sweeping her hair over his body. William was amused and rueful. If she continued on her path, he would have to cry quarter rather than agree a truce. But she stopped when she reached his stomach and, laughing, raised her head. “I think you are indeed a lion,” she said. “Or else you have swallowed one because I have never heard such ferocious growling before! When did you last eat?”
“Saddle rations about two hours before we arrived.” He stroked her face. “Food was not the first thing on my mind.”
“And now it is?”
“Not entirely,” he conceded, “but more than it was.”
“And you need to keep up your strength.”
He raised his brows, and with a laugh, she leaned toward the plinth running around the edge of the dome and lifted from it a flagon and a platter of dates, bread, and honey.
William pushed himself upright against the pillows. She lit the candles, and as the moonlight bathed the room, they fed each other, nibbling and touching, making a playful jest of each mouthful.
Eventually, the edge taken off his appetite, although he was still hungry, William washed his face and hands in the brass bowl that also stood on the ledge. “After Kerak, we went to Nablus.” He knew he had to tell her before they slept or made love again; otherwise, it would seem like an afterthought.
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