He’d not been surprised when Balian confided that the Templar grand master had pressured Baldwin into agreeing to fortify Jacob’s Ford, for he knew how forceful Odo de St. Amand could be; his men privately called him the Tempest. Saladin had soon revealed the depths of his own concern, offering one hundred thousand dinars if the Franks would abandon the new castle. Odo’s response was a scornful refusal and the building continued. By April, one tower and the outer walls were completed and Baldwin formally turned it over to the Templars. Jakelin had spent several months at the site, helping to train the hundreds of horses that would be needed, for Chastellet would be garrisoned by eighty of his brother knights and nearly a thousand serjeants. Jakelin was glad that he was not one of them, for he had been attached for several years to their commandery at Acre, and he much preferred that lively coastal city to this bleak border citadel.
His return to Acre had to be delayed, though, once Chastellet’s commander got word that Baldwin was planning a raid into the Huleh Valley to the north of their castle. Jakelin was entrusted with a message for the young king and was delighted when the commander gave him permission to join the royal raid before continuing to Acre.
He’d hoped that he would find Balian with the king, but upon their arrival at Baldwin’s camp, he soon learned that this raiding party was composed of those men with northern lands: the young Hugues of Galilee, Joscelin de Courtenay, and a contingent sent by Denys de Grenier, although he himself was not participating. While Baldwin had the command, Jakelin was pleased that the man in actual charge was the constable, Humphrey de Toron. Jakelin doubted that any lord in Outremer was more respected than Humphrey; even the Saracens held him in high regard.
Humphrey smiled upon learning that Jakelin and his companions—six knights and a dozen serjeants—would be taking part in the raid. He explained that they’d learned the Saracens had driven their flocks and herds into the forest near Bāniās to forage. It was an irresistible opportunity to harass their enemies while gaining valuable spoils, and the mood in the camp was a cheerful one. The rules of the Temple forbade its members from owning any property, but the Templars welcomed the excitement that a raid offered. After making sure that his squires were taking proper care of his two destriers and his palfrey, Jakelin went in search of the king.
He found Baldwin in his tent, looking pale and drawn as Anselm changed the young king’s blood-smeared bedding. Jakelin’s initial alarm eased as he recalled what Balian had recently told him, that Baldwin had begun to suffer from severe nosebleeds. So he asked no awkward questions, instead greeting Baldwin as if he’d noticed nothing untoward. Baldwin gave him a grateful smile for that, interrupting when he started to introduce himself.
“Jakelin de Mailly, is it not? You’re one of Lord Balian’s friends.”
“You have a good memory for faces, sire.” Jakelin returned the smile, for it was always flattering to be remembered by the highborn, and handed over the letter.
Baldwin scanned it quickly, then looked up with another smile when Jakelin said that he and his brother knights would be accompanying them on their raid. “In that case, you’d best try to get a few hours’ sleep. We plan to march tonight.”
Jakelin did as he was bidden and returned to his tent, where he was soon napping, for he’d always had the enviable knack of summoning sleep like a well-trained dog. When his squire awakened him, darkness had infiltrated their camp and the sky above their heads was starlit, a pale waxing moon rising over the high plateau to the north. Had this been a battle march, one of his squires would be astride his second destrier, riding with the squires at the rear, ready to provide him with another mount should the first one be injured. But they did not think this would be necessary on a raid. One reason why they found the prospect of a raid so appealing was that the Templar rules for combat were both detailed and strict; obedience was a cornerstone of their order. Tonight they felt like boys escaping their tutors for a bit of fun.
Most of the men were mounted already. Jakelin noticed that they all glanced away when Baldwin approached his horse, trying to spare him embarrassment; his illness was progressing with such inexorable swiftness that he now needed help from Anselm to get into the saddle. Jakelin had long coveted highly prized stallions like Balian’s Khamsin and Baldwin’s Asad, and his eyes lingered admiringly on Asad’s finely sculpted head and sleek red-gold coat. It took him a few moments to realize he was indeed looking at a chestnut Arabian, but not Asad.
“You are not riding Asad, sire?” he asked in surprise.
“This is Asad’s younger half brother, Comet,” Baldwin said, reaching out to soothe the horse, who sidestepped at Jakelin’s approach. “He has blazing speed, may even be faster than Asad. But he is sometimes skittish, does not have Asad’s calm temperament.”
While Jakelin found it easy to praise Comet’s striking appearance, he wondered why the king was not riding Asad. Baldwin seemed to hear the unspoken question, and after a long pause, he said, “Asad has foundered.”
Jakelin was dismayed to hear that, for the ailment called “founder” or “fever of the foot” was a very serious one. Many horses never recovered. He expressed his heartfelt sympathy, all the while feeling a slow anger beginning to burn. Had Baldwin not lost enough? He knew Baldwin was still two months shy of his eighteenth birthday. But he found himself thinking that the king’s youth was an illusion, for the blue eyes meeting his own seemed older than time.
* * *
Salāh al-Dīn’s rise to power had been hindered by his Kurdish blood; to many, that marked him as an outsider and therefore suspect. His awareness of that had only strengthened his natural instincts, which were to trust his own. He relied upon family first and foremost, and he’d been fortunate, blessed with several kinsmen of uncommon ability. It was true his eldest brother, Tūrān-Shāh, had been a disappointment, so inept that he’d been banished to Egypt. But his younger brother, al-‘Ādil, had shown flashes of brilliance, and his nephews, Taqī al-Dīn and Farrukh-Shāh, had proven themselves to be gifted battle commanders. It was Farrukh-Shāh who had accompanied his uncle when Salāh al-Dīn set up camp near Bāniās. Warned by one of his spies that the Franks were planning a raid, he dispatched Farrukh-Shāh to investigate, under orders to send word to him by pigeon if they encountered the raiding party and then to retreat.
With the tempestuous Taqī al-Dīn, Salāh al-Dīn could not be sure his orders would be obeyed. He had no such misgivings about Farrukh-Shāh, who was a cautious commander, much like the sultan himself. So it came as a shock when a pigeon came fluttering into camp with an alarming message: Farrukh-Shāh’s advance guard been taken by surprise and defeated by the Franks. Farrukh-Shāh was going to their rescue and urgently requested his uncle’s aid.
* * *
Farrukh-Shāh’s men had not anticipated a night march by the Franks. When they materialized out of the dawn and swept down upon them in a thundering cavalry charge, the Saracen line broke and fled. Baldwin’s knights eagerly took up the chase with jubilant shouts of “St. George!” Some stopped to plunder the dead, claim the wounded as prisoners, and turn the captured horses over to their squires. Most continued the pursuit, for their quarry was still in view.
The landscape was rugged, rocky, and strewn with boulders, its hills and canyons offering refuge for men lucky enough to reach them, and the Franks spurred their horses to overtake the fleeing Saracens before they could disappear into those crevices, caves, and ravines. Like the others, Jakelin was caught up in the excitement of the hunt. As they entered a deep, narrow gorge, though, he realized they’d advanced too far, their line dangerously strung out as the faster horses forged ahead. He urged his destrier after Baldwin, shouting to attract his attention, and saw that Humphrey de Toron was also calling out to the king, warning it was time to end the chase. Hearing them, Baldwin started to slow his stallion. It was then that the Saracens struck.
They were never to know if the men above them w
ere fugitives from the battle who’d recognized the sudden vulnerability of their pursuers and rallied for a counterattack, or if Farrukh-Shāh had had the foresight to send archers to claim the high ground. They knew only that suddenly the air was humming with the unmistakable sound of arrows in flight, followed by screams as they found their targets. Saracen arrows rarely had the power to penetrate a knight’s mail hauberk except at close range. So the Saracens aimed at their horses and within the span of seconds, all was chaos, the canyon echoing with the shouting of men and the shrill neighing of their terrified animals as arrows rained down upon them.
Baldwin had given the command to retreat, the trumpet’s notes adding to the din as men struggled to control their panicked mounts. Triumphant cries of “Allahu akbar!” wafted from the heights above them, for the Saracen archers could see that Farrukh-Shāh was coming from the north with reinforcements. The Franks began a hasty, disorganized retreat, slowed by their efforts to save those who’d been unhorsed. The Saracen archers continued to shoot into the gorge, and when an arrow grazed the rump of Baldwin’s stallion, Comet screamed, reared, and bolted. By now the knights were aware of Farrukh-Shāh’s approach, for they saw dust being kicked up at the head of the canyon, and they milled about in confusion, unsure whether to follow the king or confront this new threat.
“Go after the king!” Humphrey shouted. “We’ll hold them here!”
Since it was obvious that Baldwin’s stallion was out of control, Jakelin had already taken off after him, followed by his fellow Templars. As Humphrey’s knights hastened to his banner, most of the other men set out in pursuit of the king. Galloping after Baldwin, Jakelin soon despaired of overtaking him; his comments about Comet’s blazing speed had been no idle boast. No matter how he urged his destrier on, Jakelin could not narrow the gap.
Comet had the bit between his teeth and Baldwin pulled on the reins to no avail, for he no longer had the strength in his left arm to bring the stallion to a halt. He’d almost been thrown when Comet bolted; only years of riding experience had enabled him to remain in the saddle, but he’d lost his sword. They were clear of the canyon now. Ahead of them, bodies of slain Saracens were sprawled in the dirt, the smell of blood adding to Comet’s panic, as did the sight of several downed horses, thrashing about in pain. Baldwin had been taught that a runaway horse should be spurred on until exhaustion prevailed over fear. The stallion had veered from the road, though, onto ground so rough and uneven that Baldwin expected at any moment to hear the sound of a foreleg snapping like kindling. Unable to stop the Arabian’s wild flight, Baldwin could only hold on and curse Comet, curse his own clumsiness in dropping his sword, curse their reckless pursuit of the Saracens, all the while knowing that what he really wanted to do was to curse God.
There was no surprise when Baldwin caught a glimpse of two Saracen archers angling to cut him off. There was no fear, either, even though he was utterly defenseless; in the bitterness of that moment, he didn’t much care what befell him. They were closing fast and their approach spooked Comet again. He’d been shortening stride; now he summoned new reserves of energy, skimming over the treacherous terrain as if he’d suddenly sprouted wings. The Saracens were not about to give up the chase, though. Baldwin did not know if they’d recognized him or merely saw him as easy prey or if it was Comet they wanted. When he heard yelling, he glanced over his shoulder to see them wheeling about to confront charging Templar knights, who dispatched them both with the ferocity that made them so respected as fighters by friends and foes alike.
A steep hill was looming ahead and Comet, who was wheezing like a bellows by now, no longer had the strength or the heart for further mischief. Catching the change in his stride, Baldwin sought again to rein him in and this time managed to bring the stallion to a shuddering stop. Baldwin slumped back against the cantle, yearning to slide from the saddle but knowing his legs would not support him if he did. Then Jakelin de Mailly was there, mercifully asking no inane questions. Glancing from the lathered, heaving Comet, suddenly as docile as a carter’s sumpter horse, to the king, his face deathly white with the sort of rage that scorched the soul, Jakelin instinctively knew there was nothing to be said. Unhooking the waterskin from his saddle, he watched as Baldwin drank in gulps, spilling as much as he swallowed.
Lowering the waterskin, Baldwin then said something that Jakelin never expected to hear from a king’s lips. “I am sorry.”
“For what, my liege?” Jakelin’s puzzlement was not feigned, for he well knew that combat was never predictable, battles sometimes won or lost by luck alone.
“I put you all at risk, forcing you to break off the fight and ride to my rescue as if I were a green, witless stripling, all because I could not rein in my own horse.”
Jakelin had no easy way with words, often finding himself tongue-tied at those moments when eloquence was most needed—like now. He wanted to say that he’d never seen anyone display the courage that Baldwin did, riding out to battle with a crippled arm on a stallion he could control only with his knees, rising each day to fight an enemy that gave no quarter, that never lost. He settled for pointing out truthfully that there was not a knight alive who’d not had a horse run away with him, whilst knowing that this would give Baldwin no comfort, Baldwin who’d learned to ride before he could walk, who’d always prided himself on his exceptional equestrian skills.
Simon de Garnier, the commander of Baldwin’s household knights, had ridden up in time to hear their exchange, and quickly added his voice to Jakelin’s, assuring the king that no harm had been done by Comet’s bad behavior. “We were already retreating, sire. We just speeded it up trying to keep pace with that Arab of yours.” He gave Baldwin a gap-toothed smile. “God’s truth, I’d sooner try to run down one of those African cheetahs!”
Others were in view now, Joscelin giving a joyful cry at the sight of his nephew, alive and unharmed. Anxiety always made Joscelin garrulous and he could not stop talking, but Baldwin was not listening. “How many men did we lose?” he asked, bracing himself for the worst.
Not many, Joscelin assured him, while Simon de Garnier insisted that they’d lost more horses than men. Baldwin looked past them toward the Templar knights, for they were never ones for sugarcoating the truth. As their eyes met, Jakelin admitted that they would not know that until they got back to camp and the stragglers started coming in. Constable Humphrey and his knights had covered their retreat and were likely to have taken some casualties. Others were still roaming the countryside in search of plunder, unaware that another battle had been fought.
Baldwin flinched at this matter-of-fact reminder of how careless they’d been, overly confident, chasing after booty before victory was assured, and then rashly pursuing the Saracens despite knowing that a Muslim retreat was often a feint, bait for a trap. He said nothing, but they knew he was blaming himself and they sought to convince him that he was not at fault, Joscelin arguing that they could not have foreseen Farrukh-Shāh’s arrival with more troops, Simon claiming that they’d been able to retreat ere they suffered many casualties, and Jakelin saying laconically that they’d all joined eagerly in the chase, even men as battle seasoned as Humphrey de Toron. Baldwin found truth in Jakelin’s comments but no consolation, for he was the king and the ultimate responsibility had to be his.
* * *
Baldwin sent several men to ride to the top of a hill that offered a view of the surrounding area, and they soon returned with troubling news; billowing dust clouds to the north warned of an approaching army. The men exchanged grateful looks; had they not retreated when they did, they’d have found themselves fighting both Farrukh-Shāh and his uncle, the sultan. After dispatching scouts to keep the Saracens under surveillance in case they decided upon pursuit, Baldwin ordered some of his knights to escort the injured who could still ride back to their camp and to send wagons for their gravely wounded and their dead.
Joscelin was still shaken by Baldwin’s near disaster
and urged him to return to the camp, too. He backed off hastily, though, when Baldwin turned on him in a rare rage, for he usually kept his temper under a tight rein. Baldwin had dismounted by then, Anselm moving unobtrusively to his side should he need support, for his limp was more pronounced whenever he was fatigued. The sun was directly over their heads by now, and the heat was becoming uncomfortable for the armor-clad men. Thirsty and weary and soaked in sweat, they did their best to hide their unease, feeling very vulnerable with a large Saracen army so close at hand. Baldwin ignored the discomfort, keeping his eyes fastened upon the horizon. A sigh of relief swept through their ranks when they finally saw riders in the distance, their shields emblazoned with the arms of Humphrey de Toron.
They soon realized that something was amiss; the knights were holding their mounts to a slow canter, and as they drew nearer, those watching could see how many were injured. Baldwin’s spirits rose as he spotted the constable. But then he was stumbling forward, his lameness forgotten, for the men riding beside Humphrey’s destrier looked stricken. Humphrey was sagging in the saddle, holding tightly to the pommel as one of his knights led his stallion. His eyes were closed, his face livid, and the surcote covering his hauberk had a dark, spreading stain.
He raised his head once he realized they had come to a halt, his gaze focusing blearily upon Baldwin’s anguished face. Making a great effort, he rasped, “Not as bad as it looks, lad . . .” But he was already swaying. As men ran to catch him, his eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled from the saddle into their outstretched arms, splattering his rescuers with his blood.
* * *
The Land Beyond the Sea Page 36
