That made a Cross. Slowly the King drew breath again. This was not so strange. He went in among the knights waiting before the altar.
Some of them were kneeling, saying prayers, and he sank down also onto his knees, and gave thanks to God who had preserved him. He begged God to let him reach Jerusalem before Saladin, to give him the chance to defend his city. He prayed to God that he might die in battle, suddenly and cleanly, and not just rot away.
Then all the knights stood, and gathered close around the altar. In their midst was the young redheaded knight Stephen, whom they called Mouse. He looked frightened; he knew not what they would do to him. The knights said nothing to him, but Bear and the German knight named Felx went to him and took his clothes off, all but his drawers. Then, putting their hands on his shoulders, they pushed him down to kneel on the packed earth before the altar.
Rannulf came up before him, his two hands fisted, and knelt down facing Stephen. Bear stood behind him, and with one hand bowed Stephen’s head.
Rannulf said, “Stretch out your hands, Mouse.”
The knight held out his hands before him, palms up. The knights were gathered very close around him, body to body, like a wall. Rannulf raised one of his fists over Stephen’s left hand, stretched out open before him, and poured dust into Stephen’s palm. “This dust is your dust,” he said. He held up the other fist over Stephen’s right hand, and poured ashes into Stephen’s palm. “This ash is your ash.”
“Amen,” said all the other knights, in their ring around them.
Rannulf took hold of Stephen’s wrists. “Stephen, do you give your life to God?”
“I do,” Stephen said, in an unsteady voice.
Rannulf turned Stephen’s hands over, so that the ash and the dust spilled out onto the ground.
“Now you are already dead. Therefore be unafraid of dying, and when God calls you, go gladly, because a soul freely given is surely saved. Henceforth, turn away from the community of living men, but keep only to us, your brothers, who are dead also.” He put his hands on Stephen’s shoulders and bowed his head down. “Oremus.”
The other knights knelt down close around them, and laid their hands on Stephen, and in one voice, they lifted up the words of the Credo.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in His only Son Our Lord . . .”
The King had watched all this silently, but as they prayed the words came to his lips, and he said them with the knights. His chest was tight. This surely was heresy, blasphemy, damnable sin. Yet he understood it; his heart spoke these same words to him. He was one of them.
The knights stepped back, falling into three rows, in which he stood in the last, and Stephen came up beside him, still all but naked. There was a smear of ash on his cheek. He was weeping; his hands shook. He said his prayers in a voice thick with feeling.
They began to say the Mass, all together. The King joined them, full-hearted, eager. The Mass was straight enough. Some of the knights stumbled through the Latin, obviously knowing it only by rote, and Rannulf, in front of them, said no sermon, but they all recited the miserere, the Kyrie, the Credo, the paternoster. Rannulf said the words of the miracle that brought Christ into their midst. They passed a loaf of bread from hand to hand, and a cup of water from the well.
The King broke off a bite of the bread, and drank a sip of the water; he thought he tasted flesh and blood.
After the cup came Rannulf. He stood before each man in turn, and said, “God gives you this.” Leaning forward he kissed the knight on the mouth. “God gives you this.” He struck the knight a blow across the head. The knight at once knelt, his head bowed, deep in prayer.
The King held fast, his mind churning, wondering if this would come to him. This was certainly heresy. He should turn aside. Shut his eyes, as Rannulf had said. Yet he could not draw back. He belonged with them. Rannulf was coming along the row toward him. Now all the Templars were kneeling down, all but him and Rannulf.
The Templar stopped before him. “God gives you this.” Baudouin felt the jar of the mouth on his, surprisingly hard. “God gives you this.” And the blow knocked him dizzy to the floor.
They slept that night in the church. In the morning, before dawn broke, they went out and found their horses, which the villagers had kept, fed and watered, and they wound their way south over the hills. The rains had brought the new grass up, rising green through the straw, and in the hollows and furrows of the land there was still some water standing, like gifts from heaven. In the evening, they came back at last to the highway to Jerusalem, where it climbed up through a groove between rocky upthrusting hills. At the foot of the long shallow slope leading up into the pass, some great boulders erupted out of the hillside, like roc’s eggs half-buried in the sand, and here the Templars stopped and sheltered, and Rannulf sent two of the knights off to scout the heights.
“You’re so cautious,” the King said, bitterly. “We will never get back to Jerusalem.” He was stiff all over, and his vision kept fading away; he could not see even to unbridle his horse. Rannulf pushed him to one side and undid the latches of the bridle for him. The two scouts were coming back, excited.
One was Richard Bear. He said, half-breathless, “There are forty Turkish bowmen up in the pass.”
The King leaned heavily on his horse. One more obstacle in his way. But at least he was seeing better now.
Rannulf said, “Only bowmen? Horses or camels?”
“I looked over the whole camp. Just archers, light armor, small horses, no pack animals. They’ve been there less than a day, by the looks of their fires. They have no servants and no supplies.”
The King said, “Can we go around them?”
“Probably,” Rannulf said.
Bear turned toward Baudouin and nodded. “Back up, circle around to the east, catch the road at Qonatria. Another day’s ride.”
Rannulf said, “I say let’s take them.”
“What?” Bear blurted out an oath, and crossed himself, as if that canceled it.
“We need to give some wounds. We’ve been run all over hell with our tails between our legs, we can use a little revenge.”
“How do you propose we get it—the twelve of us charge straight uphill into their arrows? That’s a long way with no cover, and our horses are worn out.”
“No no no.” Rannulf s voice was a feline murmur. “Remember those sheep we passed, in the afternoon? Go bring me back a flock of sheep.”
Rannulf had said, “Think about German. Don’t you want to pay them off for German?”
Now Stephen was creeping along on his hands and knees among a flock of smelly sheep, climbing an interminable hill. The sheep, ewes and little newborn lambs, kept bunching together and shying away from him, and from the other men hidden in their midst, and the shepherds kept up a constant frantic whistling and whooping to drive them on. The ground was stony. Stephen’s back hurt from going along bent over.
He poked his head up above the tide of wooly backs. They were still well below the height, where the cliff rose in a spire of rock, stripped of grass, gaunt against the blue sky. Up near the front of the flock, Rannulf walked, a staff in his hand, the hood of his burnoose pulled over his close-cropped hair. Stephen sank down beneath the waves of the sheep again.
This did not seem like the work of knights. His knees were cut from the hard ground, his fingertips were skinned. He had slung his sword over his back, to keep it out of the way, and the belt was strangling him. He could see none of the other men, was glad of that—he felt like a fool.
Up ahead, a sharp, commanding call rang out. Stephen sank down to the dirt, his breath stuck in his nostrils. The sheep baaed and pattered around him. He reached out and clutched a handful of wool. Still clean and white, a lamb climbed over him, bleating, to get to its mother; a foul clotted string hung off its underline.
The commanding bellow sounded again, and another voice answered, familiar: Rannulf.
This was the hard part. Ste
phen’s eyes itched suddenly, his lungs built up a cough, his legs ached. He let go of the sheep he was clutching, slipped around beneath her neck and past the ewe and lamb beyond her, and so made his way toward the edge of the flock, until he could see out past the dirty wool of legs and bellies.
They were in the saddle of the pass. Forty yards up the slope, at the foot of the spire of rock, the Saracen bowmen were scattered around their campfires, most of them sitting and lying on the ground. Only three of them had come down to deal with the flock of sheep. Directly in front of Rannulf stood a big, bushy-bearded man in a leather breastplate, his hands on his hips. His bow, unstrung, was hanging on his back. He gestured toward the sheep, and Rannulf gave a shrug, spread his hands, chattered in Arabic.
The big man stamped past him, toward the sheep, looking them over with a definite appetitive interest. Perhaps he wanted to buy one for camp meat. Or intended just to take it. Rannulf came after him, talking plaintively, but the bowman cut him off with a sweep of his hand, and began to point to the sheep, and then, abruptly, he caught sight of Stephen among the ewes.
His mouth opened, his eyes popped, and he swung around, his arms flailing. As he wheeled, Rannulf closed with him, drawing a long knife from his sleeve. Stephen bolted up out of the flock, his sword already in his hand. On the steep slope ahead of him, Rannulf grappled with the burly Turk, and Stephen rushed to help, but before he could reach them Rannulf drove his knife to the hilt in the Turk’s armpit.
“Take them!” Rannulf’s voice rose in a hoarse bellow. He let the burly Turk drop. “Out! Out!”
Stephen charged past him toward the rest of the Saracens. The two men waiting on the stony hillside had seen their commander die; one was scrambling away back toward their camp, screeching, and the other had jerked a knife from his belt and set himself. Now as the other Templars charged up out of the sheep, he lost heart, and wheeled to run. In three jumps Stephen caught him and clubbed him down with his sword.
For German, he thought. For German.
Up there in the shadow of the spire of the rock, the other Turks were scrambling toward their bows. The slope seemed impossibly steep. He would never reach them before they shot him down. In a row they were flexing their bows to string them, some already kneeling to put their arrows to the nock. But all around him were the other Templars. He felt their strength drive him up, he felt their power in his arms; a fever seized him, and he flung himself onward.
Rannulf howled, off to his left, and the other Templars roared an answer. Stephen clambered the last few yards into the Turkish camp. Before him was the massed enemy, a thicket of arrows. Behind the taut bowstrings, the flexed curves of the bows, he saw the gleam of their eyes, heard the shriek of their voices. The tip of an arrow swung toward him, and Stephen’s sword struck through the bow and the string and the arrow and the arm, and like German the Turk died.
Stephen plunged on past the first campfire. He could hear Bear roaring behind him. The Turks were trying to run. Near the foot of the rock spire, two of them stood fast, and he attacked them. Before he struck a blow three more Templars were leaping in beside him, and the Turks went down before them like corn before the reapers.
A horse galloped down on him, zig-zagging, and he jumped to catch it and the horse dodged nimbly past him and fled away. He saw a wounded Turk limping and struggling toward the rocks, trying to escape, and sprang on him and killed him.
Behind him, someone was screaming, and screaming, and then the screaming abruptly stopped.
He straightened, panting, his sword clutched in both hands. In a daze he looked around him. He was almost to the foot of the rock spire, where a campfire burned. Down the way he had come, the sheep were clattering and blathering away back toward their pastures, their shepherds hasty at their heels. The ground below the rock was spotted with dead Turks.
The other Templars were roaming around picking at the bodies; they clustered around the two campfires, eating whatever they could find. The fighting was over. Stephen crossed himself, his hand shaking.
For German. But German was still gone. A storm of fear swept over him, his mind teemed with broken images, wounded men, and dying men, men like him, dead; he felt sick to his stomach. He managed to get his sword belt around his waist again, and ran the blade into its scabbard.
Rannulf came up to him, carrying a dripping chunk of roast meat. “Here, it’s rabbit.” He held out the joint, with the bare bone sticking out of the end of it; for a moment Stephen saw it as a tiny arm reaching toward him.
“No,” he said. “No.” And sat down hard.
Rannulf said nothing, only stood there by him, eating the roasted meat. They had left the young King and another man at the foot of the slope, with their horses; they were coming up now at a gallop, raising dust. The scent of the cooked meat reached Stephen’s nose, and suddenly he was hungry. He took in a deep breath, feeling better. He remembered striking blows, and knew he had slain men—he had won, he had lived, they had won. His head whirled. A sudden triumph heated him like a flame.
Rannulf was looking down at him.
“Well?”
“I’m hungry,” Stephen said, and the other knight laughed, and held out the joint of meat to him. By the time the horses had reached them, he had gnawed the bone to the bare white. His blood sang. German, he thought. German, I avenged you. With his brothers he bounded into his saddle, and bolted for Jerusalem.
Chapter XIII
Stephen had not changed, but the world had. The world had shrunk down close around him, become no bigger than this moment, this warmth of sunshine on his back, this breath.
Before, in idle times like this, he had daydreamed of distant things: his home, his sisters, and the future, which seemed distant, also, a comfortable space before him, stretching away toward salvation, decked with great deeds.
Now his mind shrank from thinking like that, it made him angry to catch himself at it, as if it were a trick he was too old to fall for. He thought about food, and getting his hauberk down to the armory to be mended, and how he would teach his new horse not to pull on the bit.
Behind him, the city was so quiet he could hear a single persistent vendor calling, streets away. Some carpenters were working inside the gate tower, shuffling and banging wood and rapping with hammers. Stephen leaned against the wall, the stone warm under his hands, the wind soft. The gate was shut and barred on both sides, with the heavy grille of the portcullis lowered, because at any moment Saladin was going to appear before Jerusalem. And none could open that gate, nor go through it in either direction, without the word of Stephen de 1’Aigle, from which he was deriving an outsized satisfaction.
He had just let Rannulf and three sergeants out; in fact, he could still see them riding along the road to the east. Looking for Saladin. Rannulf knew everything first, he remembered, and remembered who had told him that, and turned his head, closing that memory off. The two sergeants assigned to Stephen’s command were pacing in opposite directions along the rampart. Outside on the road a man with a donkey was plodding toward the city, and some fifteen feet behind him, a woman with a basket; because the gate was so hard to open, he would not let them in until more of a crowd had gathered, or someone important appeared. Then, probably, they would have to wait again to pay the toll.
And once being here, they might regret it. Looking east, he scanned the horizon with a keen eye, wondering where Saladin was.
Since the King and the eleven Templars had reached Jerusalem they had heard nothing else of the army that had broken up at the Litani River. There were a few knights and sergeants left in the garrisons of the Holy City, old men, cripples, and sick; they manned the walls, and the King ordered all the gates and posterns closed, and no one to go in or out save by David’s Gate. The churches were filled, and the marketplaces were empty. The vendor crying in the next street was going from barred and shuttered door to barred and shuttered door.
And yet the day was sweet, the wind merry; Stephen leaned against the wall and
watched the hills and knew no more care than a baby.
One of his sergeants called out, and he turned and saw the King riding along the street inside the wall.
Stephen went nimbly down the stairs. The King rode a tall bay horse; after him came half a dozen other riders, all in bright clothes, and Baudouin himself wore a long coat of scarlet silk. He reined his horse in.
“Ho, Mouse, how goes it?”
“All’s well, Sire.”
“I’ll come up and look. Hold.” Throwing his reins to a page, he swung one leg across his horse’s withers and slid to the ground. “Bili, come with me,” he said, and went up the wide stone steps toward the rampart.
There, the carpenters had seen him coming, and all boiled out of the tower, still carrying their tools, and stood there bowing and cheering. The King’s face contorted in a gruesome smile, and he waved a Cross over them. Stephen, coming up the steps behind him, had to move down a little to find room on the crowded rampart; another person had come after him, and he heard the rustle of silk and smelled roses and realized, suddenly, that he was standing in front of the Princess of Jerusalem. He stepped to one side with a murmured apology. The King was thanking the carpenters in terms that had the workmen’s faces red as apples, and they bobbed up and down before him a while longer, swearing eternal fealty, thousands of prayers, all their children named for him, until their foreman hustled them back to work.
The King turned to look out over the wall to the east. “Nothing yet,” he said.
His sister glided up beside him. Her slim white hand was delicately shaped, the knuckles smooth as pearls. Stephen wondered what she was doing here; all the rest of the court had left for the safety of the coast. She looked out toward Judea. “Would they have to come from that direction?”
The King’s shoulders lifted the glossy silk of his coat. “It doesn’t matter, really, once they’re here.” He leaned over the wall, looking down at the road. “Are those people waiting to get in?”
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