Mamluk

by J. K. Swift

  “The queen has died?” Foulques caught himself before he blurted out more. The love King Edward had for his Eleanor of Castile was the stuff of legends. Foulques had never believed most of what he heard, but he saw the way Sir Grandison’s eyes misted over as he spoke her name. She was “Eleanor” to him, not “the queen”, or even “Queen Eleanor”. Whether the old knight was saddened at her death because of his king’s loss or his own, Foulques could not tell. Perhaps a little of both.

  “My condolences, Sir Grandison. I have heard much about Eleanor of Castile. But she is with God now, and I am sure she is finding it much to her liking after her service here.”

  “Thank you Foulques. Still, I wish I could have been there. I owed it to her and Edward, both. He must be devastated.”

  Both men stopped talking, each leaving the other alone with his thoughts.

  “May I ask you something about the last time you were in Acre with King Edward?”

  Grandison turned to Foulques and smiled. “He was Prince Edward at the time. And you want to know about the assassin.”

  “I have heard so many versions of the story. I cannot pass up the opportunity to know the truth.”

  “Ah, you are after the truth, is it? Perhaps the reason there are so many versions is men, and especially women, have a tendency to believe what they want, no matter what one tells them. I tell you what, Brother Foulques. You ask a question and I will give you a straight answer.”

  “Did an assassin try to kill King Edward?”

  Grandison nodded. “Yes. He was an ambassador of the Saracens. A man we both had come to like and trust.”

  “But the king killed the assassin?”

  Grandison nodded. “Edward can be stubborn that way.”

  “Who sucked the poison from the King’s wound?”

  Grandison let out a sigh. “I do not even know for sure that the assassin’s blade was poisoned. But I had seen Edward wounded before, and never had I known him to be in such pain. I opened the wound slightly with my knife, and before I could investigate it, Eleanor pushed me aside and began sucking and spitting out the prince’s blood on the floor. It was quite the grisly scene.”

  “Was there actually poison in the wound?”

  Grandison shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Foulques was quiet for a moment. “Did you tell me this version because you thought it the one I wanted to hear?”

  “Absolutely not. Though I do admit, on occasion, I have done just that with others. But this, I swear, to be the truth. My truth. The one I shall remember Eleanor by until the end of my days.”

  The two knights retreated once again to silence. Foulques savored the relative coolness of the stone against his back as he looked down the line of English defenders.

  Grandison had brought only a few hundred men with him. Very few were knights, but the rest were archers, Welshmen mostly. They were a hardened bunch, standing there with their six-foot-long bows of yew wood. They looked like simple sticks to Foulques. But they had a certain elegance to them. Carved from a single stave of wood, the back of the bow was pale white, while the belly was a rich honeyed amber color. Foulques recalled seeing Grandison use one of the weapons the night of the catapult raid.

  “What is it like to shoot one of those?”

  Grandison saw what Foulques was looking at and pursed his lips. “It is, honestly, the most frustrating weapon I have ever encountered. Yet strangely addictive, for when the arrow flies true to the exact spot you are looking, there is no better feeling in this world.”

  “Really,” Foulques said. There may have been a trace of doubt in his response.

  “Do not let the simple looks of the longbow seduce you, Brother Foulques. For if she gets her hooks into you, you will never look at another woman again.” He caught himself, suddenly remembering whom he was speaking with. Grandison laughed as he pressed his hands together and bowed his head in apology.

  “I picked up my first longbow over thirty years ago. Still, I am but an amateur compared with these men.” He pointed to a short, wiry man looking out over the ramparts. Foulques recognized him as the man Brother Jimmy had carried back to the Gate of Saint Anthony during the catapult raid. “You and I together could not pull Haydon’s bow. And with it, I have seen him drop men at three hundred paces all day long.”

  Foulques looked at Haydon. He was compact, but not overly stocky. “Impressive,” Foulques said, not quite sure he believed Grandison completely. “You would not think him so strong, by the looks of him.”

  “He is not, really. Until he picks up a bow. He started so young his back and shoulders are unlike that of other men. Like a horseman, good bowmen are made before they are ten.”

  A Saracen horn blew somewhere behind them. Seconds later it was answered by several more in rapid succession.

  “It looks like I will get to see his arrows in action,” Foulques said.

  The two knights nodded at one another and then used the wall at their backs to help them get to a standing position.

  The archers along the wall began readying their arrow bags by untying the waxed cover and leaning them at their feet so the shafts were within easy reach. In the distance, across the open killing field, thousands of enemy soldiers began shouting and shrieking their high-pitched battle cries. Drums began beating somewhere deep inside the endless mass of men. The shrill note of a single horn sounded and the charge began.

  “Easy, lads! Wait for it,” Grandison shouted to be heard over the din.

  Foulques had not yet unsheathed his sword, for the attackers were still hundreds of paces away.

  “Archers to your line!” Grandison said. “We will hit them with one volley together, then I will give you your reins.”

  Foulques could not yet see the individual faces of the men charging. Distance was a tricky thing when standing on a high wall, but he estimated the forerunners of the Mamluk army to be more than three hundred paces away.

  “Nock!” Each man set an ash shaft on the string of his bow but did not yet pull it back.

  “Draw and loose!” Grandison commanded.

  Two hundred bowmen drew back their powerful weapons and let their arrows fly, and all Foulques could hear was a series of creaks and taps as ash shafts touched the sides of the yew bows. Foulques was used to standing in the midst of crossbowmen, and the relative quiet of the longbow men surprised him. And never would he have let his men shoot their quarrels at this range, even from the most powerful Genoese crossbows. As he watched the three-foot-long arrows of the longbows arch toward the enemy, he noticed how they glided on the wind, whereas the much heavier and shorter shaft of a crossbow bolt would have sunk. Foulques’s eyes widened in awe as a long line of Saracen soldiers began to collapse in the midst of their charge, tripping those who followed too close behind.

  “Loose at will!”

  With a calm detachment, the archers nocked arrow after arrow, pulling each one back past his ear before angling it up into the sky and letting the string go. Most wore gloves to protect their fingers from the heavy string, others gripped crudely cut pieces of leather, and a few of the older men used nothing at all.

  Foulques felt a strange peace envelop him as he stood there on the wall, his arms crossed, with nothing to do save watch men die so far away they did not seem like men at all. Again and again, he listened to the whispers of bowstrings and the controlled breathing of men as they released their deadly volleys onto the world below. Until gradually, the world below converged with the one above. Long before the first ladder hit the wall, Foulques had his sword in hand. The almost tranquil scene of mere heartbeats before, erupted into swirling chaos.

  The pointed helmets of Saracen mercenaries began popping up everywhere along the wall. Archers exchanged their bows for swords and maces, while some picked up slightly shorter, more maneuverable bows and began to train them on the men ascending the ladders.

  Foulques thrust his sword into a man’s face as he stepped onto the wall. He tried to kick the ladder aw
ay, but there was already too much weight on it. He had to turn away to ward off an attack on his left, and by the time he turned back, two more men had crested the wall. He caught the scimitar of one of the men in a bind and snaked his blade down to cut his foolishly unprotected forearm. Though only a wound, the set-up allowed Foulques to run the man through with a thrust. He pulled his sword free of the man’s chest and brought it sweeping around in a two-handed swing to the side of a helmeted head belonging to a Saracen locked in battle with a mace-bearing English knight. Stunned by Foulques’s blow, the Saracen staggered to one knee, but the English knight’s mace found him there with a great clanging shower of blood.

  Foulques slid away from that scene and into the next. He found himself having to take great care fighting amongst the English. It was unlike being on the more organized Hospitaller section of wall, where each man was responsible for controlling his specific space. The English seemed to run amok without thought. Or fear. They appeared reckless, charging to and fro, wherever and whenever they were needed. It took a few minutes to get used to, but soon Foulques was caught up in the frenzy. He dodged the weapons of friend and foe alike, going to the aid of any man in need. And more often than he was probably even aware, others came to his aid as well.

  He was not sure how long the battle raged, but by the time his arms had grown heavy and his feet slow, there was suddenly no one left to fight. Like others, he charged along the wall looking for enemies, but they were going down the ladders instead of up. He stood in place breathing heavily, envious of the archers who still had bows in their hands and were able to continue the fray. Gradually, the sounds of battle diminished. Foulques found himself standing once again beside Grandison, his bloodied sword in hand. And like before, all was quiet save for the gentle thrumming of bowstrings.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When Foulques got back to the Hospitaller section of wall, he expected spirits to be high. But for some reason, the somber mood hung in the air like fog. He saw Roderic, Jimmy Goodyear, and Glynn, the Hospitaller Weapons Master from Scots’ Land, looking toward the Mamluk line. Glynn saw him approach.

  “Missed you at the last run o’ the wall, laddie.”

  “I found myself trapped near the English Tower. Ended up fighting with Grandison and his archers.”

  “Did you now? Hope you let your blade slip into a few English arses for me.”

  “That very well could have happened without me even knowing it. They fight like wild men over there.”

  “Bah, those were the Welshmen, then. The English are as soft as they are white and hairless. Easier to mistake one of ’em for a big loaf of unbaked bread than a soldier.”

  Jimmy and Roderic both shot him a look.

  “You do realize we are both English,” Jimmy said.

  “So?” Glynn asked. “Look at the goosedown on Rod’s face and tell me I am lying.”

  Foulques decided a change of topic was in order before Glynn got too far down his lane of hatred for the English.

  “What are they up to over there?” He said, stepping to the wall.

  “They just put the last braces on the big engines. Expect them to be slinging houses at us by morning,” Jimmy said.

  Jimmy the Neckless was rarely wrong when it came to building anything. Unfortunately, this was one of those times. Within minutes, not hours, a murmur began in the enemy lines, where the northernmost trebuchet was set up. The voices converged into a chant, and as more and more voices joined in, Foulques began to make out the words.

  “Al-Mansuri! Al-Mansuri! Al-Mansuri!”

  From the southern trebuchet, a new raucous chant began. It took some time, but within minutes it too drifted on the wind and Foulques recognized the words.

  “Al-Ghadibah! Al-Ghadibah! Al-Ghadibah!”

  “What are they on about?” Roderic asked.

  “Looks like a competition of sorts between engineers,” Jimmy said. “I think it is a race to see who can put their machine to task first. Can you twist your ears around what they are saying, Brother Foulques?”

  “They have named the engines. The one in the north is ‘al-Mansuri,’ which means ‘the Victorious.’ The other is ‘al-Ghadibah,’ ‘the Furious.’”

  Jimmy crossed his arms over his broad chest. His war hammer rested against the wall in front of him. “I do not suppose that is Mohammed-speak for, ‘we will be furious when we are not victorious.’”

  No one laughed.

  Thirty minutes later, the Furious won the race. Its operators, a long line of fifty men, heaved on heavy ropes rigged around pulleys and gears to crank its arm into place. Extra material was thrown into the counterweight box and a stone as big around as a man’s chest was loaded into the sling dangling off the trebuchet’s long arm. A torch was touched to the giant missile and it erupted into flames. The torchbearer jumped back and the missile was immediately released.

  Its arc was low and fast. Whether by design and skill, or just plain luck, the flaming boulder smashed into the exact center of the Tower of the Countess of Blois. With a stunning display of fire and smoke, the tower took the hit, and survived, but Foulques doubted it could take another and remain standing. The entire Mamluk army roared with satisfaction, and then quieted down in eager anticipation of the next show, which was performed at dusk.

  The Victorious overshot the wall by a tall margin, missing all of its towers as well. The flaming missile flew high into the sky, competing with the setting sun. Every defender on the wall turned his head and followed its path. It seemed to descend slowly, as though made of air, but it did eventually come down. And when it did, it crashed into one of the many churches in the city. One second the church was illuminated in its light, the next its bell tower was sheared off like it had been cut with a giant blade. Then the entire building exploded, sending flaming splinters of wood and stone into the sky.

  Foulques shut his eyes, and then quickly brought a hand up to wipe at them before anyone saw. He need not have. All along the walls of Acre, from one end to the other, hardened Christian men who had spent a lifetime at war, dropped to their knees in terror and despair.

  For the next week the Mamluk leadership contented itself with conducting the war at a distance. The siege engines roared to life at dawn and continued every day until dusk. Occasionally, deep in the night, the Victorious, or the Furious, would be called upon to deliver a flaming message from hell. These unpredictable attacks set the entire population of the city on edge. With the constant bombardments, the war had moved from only the walls to every square inch of the city. No place was safe.

  This was a point Foulques had become painfully aware of. Every time he saw a missile fly over the walls toward the district of Montmusart, he thought of Najya. He wanted to go check on her. It was not as though he did not have the opportunity, for all the Hospitallers took shifts on and off the wall. When off shift, they would return to the Hospitaller compound to get a good meal and some much-needed sleep. During one of these times, Foulques could have easily taken the time to search Najya out. But in truth, he was afraid of seeing her when he had nothing to tell her, and no plan to get her out of the city. He thought back on how sure he had been that the Mamluks could never take Acre. He had allowed his ignorance to cause him to commit the sin of pride. How could he have been so foolish?

  When the Saracens finally came at the walls after eight days, Foulques, and many others, found it almost a welcome relief. Finally, they had a purpose, a target for their anger. They fought with a pent-up rage that lent them strength and sent the Saracens fleeing back to their lines. The enemy suffered great losses in that assault, and the two that followed the week after.

  Foulques stood on the wall watching the Saracens scramble back to their lines after their most recent failed attack on the wall. Beside him, Marshal Clermont stared after the enemy with a troubled look on his face. Foulques slapped Roderic on the back as he walked past, congratulating him on a job well done.

  “You should not be so pleased with your
selves,” the marshal said to Foulques.

  Foulques looked at his superior and decided not to voice the obvious. They had turned back wave after wave of the infidels in the last few weeks. They were doing far better in this siege than he had thought possible. Why should they not celebrate their victories?

  “Have you not noticed,” the marshal began, “that they are not sending any of their Mamluk warriors at us? This riffraff we keep turning back is mostly ill-equipped mercenaries and conscripted commoners. The Mamluks are being purposely held back.”

  “For what?” Foulques could not resist asking.

  The marshal shook his head.

  Once the remnants of the attacking force had retreated back behind the main lines, the siege engines wasted no time in starting back up. The defenders’ good mood turned sour almost immediately. But then a shout went up somewhere along the wall and men started talking in excited voices while they pointed out over the city. Foulques and the marshal followed their outstretched arms with their eyes. There on the water, approaching the harbor was a long line of sails flying the colors of King Henry, the King of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  As men began cheering and waving, Foulques shielded his eyes with one hand and counted sails. There were over thirty ships coming to their aid. He found himself joining in the celebrations erupting all along the wall.

  The only one not cheering, Foulques noticed, was, of course, Marshal Mathieu de Clermont.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The strategy room was so crowded by the time Foulques arrived, he had no choice but to stand just inside the door, squeezed between a commander of the City Watch and a man wearing the green cross of the leper knights, the Order of Saint Lazarus. He bore no outward signs of the holy disease but the room was stiflingly hot, and the man still wore heavy gloves. Since Jesus himself was said to have appeared as a leper at times, caring for those so stricken was considered a great act of charity, one that would not go unnoticed at the gates of Saint Peter. Hospitallers, as well as Templars, who contracted the disease were expected to join the ranks of the Knights of Saint Lazarus. All the same, Foulques was in no hurry to exchange his white cross for one of green. He found himself leaning toward the City Watch commander.