‘Lucia!’ Baldwin said, and grabbed her.
‘There is a ship. The injured must go first,’ she said, pulling away and staring down at Edgar.
He had fallen to the ground, and now he lay there gritting his teeth against the pain of the two arrow-wounds. ‘Do they think me a pin-cushion that they would prick me so?’ he groaned.
‘You will at least be safe,’ Baldwin said. He took up Edgar’s arm, pushed his head beneath, and hoisted the man to his feet.
‘I’ll wait here,’ Ivo said. ‘We need to hold the door. Get Edgar to the boat, and as many women as you can.’
‘I’ll be back as soon as possible,’ Baldwin said.
He knew the way to the landing-stage from the other night when they had helped the women to the rowing boats. There was a short passage from here that gave out to a small yard, and beyond that lay narrow alley that led to the water.
Baldwin and Edgar got to the alleyway, and slowly negotiated the stairs cut into the rock. With Edgar wincing and sucking in his breath at every step, it was not a fast process. Women and some children were behind them, terrified lest they be too late, and Baldwin waved them on when there was space, letting Edgar rest. Then they were up again, taking the gentle descent, and limping on to the ramp to the boat.
Baldwin handed Edgar to the shipman. ‘Godspeed, Edgar of London.’
‘Godspeed, Master Devon,’ Edgar grinned, his face waxen with pain.
Baldwin turned and began to make his way back, but suddenly he saw the building before him give a dramatic lurch. There was a cloud of smoke, and then a terrifying rumble as if a mountain was collapsing. Before his eyes, the Temple was engulfed in smoke and dust. The wall near him moved, and a stone knocked him from his feet, and he found himself on his rump.
There was shouting, but he could hardly discern anything. The crack had been so loud, his ears were ringing still. He tried to climb to his feet, but an exquisite shaft of agony lanced up from the knee to the top of his head, and looking down, he saw that his foot was twisted at a peculiar angle. His leg must be broken.
He gazed back at the Temple, desperate to return. ‘Lucia! Lucia, I’m coming!’
Ivo and Buscarel held the door with the Templars. A pair of sergeants and a knight joined them as the timbers creaked and moved. The Muslims had found a beam from somewhere, probably the pile of timbers that had been holding the gates shut, and now were assailing the doors with reckless abandon.
‘We should open the doors when they least expect it,’ Ivo muttered. ‘Let the bastards run in, and we cut their legs off when they’re in, then lock the doors again.’
‘I think I’d prefer to keep the door shut,’ Buscarel said.
Ivo nodded. Then he sniffed the air and frowned.
At the farther side of the room, Lucia could smell it too. There was a reek of burning rising from the floor. She knew what that meant as well as Ivo.
There was a last shattering crash, and the doors were flung wide. They could hold the Muslims at bay no longer. Lucia sobbed, but refused to shriek. She saw the men almost falling over themselves to get inside – black-turbanned warriors, one Emir with his white turban. He and the others had drawn swords. She saw Buscarel hacked to pieces at the door, and then a man was running at her, a Muslim with one eye, and in the flash of a moment she saw the Kurd again. The man of her nightmares.
That was when she screamed.
Ivo heard her, and span about to see the man pawing at her. He roared with rage, and ran, slamming into him. More Muslims were pouring into the chamber, and Ivo stared at them, then at Lucia.
‘Girl, go with God,’ he said, and plunged his sword into her heart just before the first blow fell on him.
Only a few moments later, as two thousand Muslim warriors ran through the Temple, chasing women and children before them, whooping and shrieking with triumph, the floors gave way. The Sultan’s miners had done their job too well. As the timbers beneath burned, the Temple shuddered, and when the Muslim army entered, there was nothing to support their weight.
With a thunderous roar, like the sea pounding against rock, the whole Temple collapsed. The roof fell in on to the people inside, and the entire edifice tumbled into the caverns dug out beneath.
No one survived.
EPILOGUE
30 May 1291
He woke again to the creaking of the ship, alongside the sounds of men vomiting and women weeping. His leg was giving him a deal of pain, and he wished he could rise, go to the upper deck and see where he was.
‘Master Baldwin?’
‘Edgar?’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I broke my leg.’
‘And the Temple?’
Baldwin recalled that hideous sight: the collapsing building, the smoke and dust. For a moment he could remember the first view he had had of Acre – the city of gold rising over the seas, a place of elegance and culture. It seemed inconceivable that it could have disappeared in a matter of days. In place of the city of gold was a city of the dead.
And he remembered the slow smile on Sir Jacques’ face, his kindness and gentle humour; Ivo, his good companion, the man who had rescued him on arrival and given him a home; Ivo’s irascible bottler, Pietro; Buscarel, the man who had been Baldwin’s enemy and who became his friend; Hob, and the other men of his vintaine.
And he thought of Lucia. The woman whom he loved.
‘The Temple’s gone. It’s all gone. The city, the people, everything,’ he said, and closed his eyes against the tears that trickled from them, running stickily into his temples. He rolled with the ship, keeping his sobs at bay, thinking life could not hold anything for him that could replace all he had lost.
‘I’d like to kill that bastard,’ Edgar said after a while in a musing tone.
‘The Sultan?’
‘No. He was doing what he had to. No, I meant Roger Flor, taking the ship and all the women. I’d bet he took all their money, too. I wonder what happened to that bastard. Where has he gone?’
Roger Flor at that moment was sitting in a tavern.
Cyprus was an island he appreciated, and rarely more than now. He had a purse full of money, he had a ship, and he had enjoyed the affections of three ladies on the journey here. A man needed such diversions.
‘So, do we sail for France?’ Bernat asked.
‘France . . . Yes, we could,’ Roger Flor said pensively.
‘We could go to the Temple. We do have a ship.’
‘Oh yes, we have a ship,’ Roger Flor agreed, and poured himself more wine. ‘We have a ship, and the ability to sail anywhere. Now that the Muslims have control of all the ports and harbours off the Holy Land, there are ships full of valuables sailing from Cairo each and every day . . .’
‘You want to turn pirate?’
‘No. I want to turn rich.’
Bernat stared, and gradually a smile broke out over his features. ‘I’m in too.’
Roger Flor grinned back and passed a cup to him, filling it.
‘A toast,’ Roger Flor said. ‘To the men of the Temple. They can survive in future without my aid.’
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