Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  Massive beams of timber had been strapped into a monstrous, sharpened head of iron. The thing would take hundreds to shift it, up over the filled-in ditches to the great east gate. We had watched smaller rams have no effect against these sturdy walls and gates, even those with “sows” built over them to provide shelter for the men who wielded them from the missiles hurled from the walls. This ram had no need for such shelter: the archbishop had declared that he would stride along beside it bearing the relics of some obscure French saint, roaring prayers and exhortations, which amused us until we heard that we were to be among the men subjected to this harrowing. Even Savaric was not sure, or claimed not to know, how we had been volunteered for this suicidal task.

  “I’ve never seen a prayer stop an arrow,” Hammer muttered.

  “And we know all about the efficacy of saints’ bones.” I sighed.

  But there was no avoiding the task. We donned our fighting kit in unaccustomed silence: padded leather jerkins to slow and stop an arrow, bits of mail scavenged from the field, steel caps and helms, shields strapped across our backs. By the time I was fitted out I could hardly move, but still I felt naked.

  Red Will appeared, looking ashen, his hair dripping. He stank.

  “Christ on a stick!” Ned blasphemed. “Did you fall in the latrine?”

  “It stops Greek fire taking hold,” he explained. “Florian said so.”

  “Aye, and shit’ll stop an axe blade.” Quickfinger guffawed.

  Ezra was drafted to the company of archers. As she was about to leave, she grasped my hand. “Be careful, John.” And then she was gone.

  We pushed that monster up to the no-man’s-land between the encampment and the walls of the city. If I looked up I could see all the defenders’ bright banners flying and even make out individual faces among the men on the walls. I was oddly reassured to see they did not all resemble the Moor but were each as different to him as were the fellows around me—stout and thin, light-skinned and dark, though all of them bearded.

  Their archers started to wind their crossbows. “Shields!” the officer in charge of us cried, and we swung our shields overhead, trying to interlock them with our neighbours’ as we’d been told. Bolts rattled down, mostly harmless, though a man three ranks in front of me cried out and fell down. “Now, PUSH!”

  We had a minute or more while our archers kept them busy and the Muslim archers recharged their crossbows, and so we pushed, and the wheeled monstrosity moved ponderously forward. The archbishop roared out some Latin prayer and I found myself hoping the next round of quarrels would stop his bellowing. If I am to die, please don’t let it be in this awful place with some mad French bastard chanting gibberish in my ear. Such a pettish entreaty, but fervently meant.

  Then other engines were moving up alongside us. Good, I thought. More targets for those wretched bolts, better odds for me. It was an uncharitable thought, but I was sure I wasn’t alone in thinking it.

  When the bombardment started it was thunderous. The great ram swung back and then we propelled it forward. What could withstand the impact of such a monster? Apparently, the gates of this godforsaken city. Three times the ram struck with such force that the whole earth seemed to tremble; three times it recoiled, leaving no more than a dent in the iron-bound doors. Rocks were falling around our ears—misfired by our own side or cast down by the garrison’s own engines, who could tell? A rock was a rock when all was said; if one fell on your head it didn’t matter who was hurling it.

  This is hell, I thought. I’d thought the same about the Mount, about being in the charnel pit, about waiting to hang; in the middle of a sea-storm; in this filthy wasteland with mud up to my knees and my belly, howling for food. It just went to prove that each time you thought your life had reached its grimmest point, Fate showed you worse, for suddenly there was fire raining down upon us and men were screaming and tearing at their hair and beards, which were in flames. Their hands came away coated in the sticky stuff propelled from the walls, and then their hands were on fire too. The noises they made as the conflagration ate them alive were the worst noises I had ever heard.

  Then the ram was afire as well. I watched in horrified fascination as the searing stuff crept up the beams towards me. Choking black smoke engulfed me and we were all coughing, tears running from our eyes.

  “Fook, I’m out of here,” said Quickfinger, abandoning his post beside me with all the conscience of a jackrabbit.

  Why did I not follow him? I don’t know, but when the officer yelled at us to push, I pushed as if I were a donkey trained to push a millwheel, without question, without thought, even though a voice in the back of my head chattered at me to drop everything and run.

  The ram rolled forward again, gathering speed all the time, and then suddenly there was no resistance and we were hurtling forward … through the gate!

  Through the billows of smoke suddenly I could see the interior of this foreign city: ochre buildings, square and flat-roofed, distant slender spires rising over the heads of the men swarming out. And abruptly it dawned on me that they had opened the gates. Confusion swept over me. Why would they do this? But there was no time to dwell on this question for the garrison of Acre was now barrelling out of the city, curved swords raised and glinting in the tainted light.

  It was a lot harder to run away now. I couldn’t see anything but bodies and smoke, and wherever I turned there was someone in my way. And then there was a man right in front of me—black hair, wild black eyes. If he had a helmet he’d lost it—and he was yelling, something I couldn’t understand. I wrestled with the horrible falchion, sure that any second he was going to split me from shoulder to hip, but it was impossible to get it free, there was no room, and something was caught up with it, my jerkin, or something else: another man, a body, the ram. For a moment I closed my eyes, expecting death to come for me, and felt piss run down my leg. Not the way I’d expected to go, amidst chaos, ignominiously, without a weapon in my hand. But all that happened was that someone shoved me out of the way and I stumbled and almost fell, and as soon as I got my feet under me again I turned to find the ram disappearing—between the open gates! Pushed and dragged by the city’s defenders with the strength of the truly desperate. Moments later, the gates clanged shut and the garrison was gone, and the ram, and those of us who had been manning it, found ourselves standing in a void. In front of me was Will, his face blackened by smoke, but otherwise apparently untouched, his blue eyes stark in his sooty mask. So maybe the urine had saved him after all.

  Without a ram to push, I reckoned I’d done my bit. Turning away from the city, I made my way back to camp, sidestepping knots of fighting men, ducking when arrows flew overhead. Back there, I found Quickfinger.

  “You took your time.”

  I had no words.

  He sobered. “Tell you summat, we’re in for a long haul. They’re hard bastards, these Saracens.” It was the highest praise I’d ever heard him offer.

  25

  Two days later we were sitting around, bored half to death and frozen by the wind that had decided to rush in at us off the sea. It was Saint Martin’s Day, we’d been told by Savaric, Saint Martin being one of the great saints of France, a holy man much given to mortification of the flesh.

  “He’d be right at home here, then,” Little Ned grumbled, lack of good food having caused several of his teeth to fall out.

  Hunger was cutting deep. Many of the nobles were hoarding, making little or no provision for their men: the poorest ended up eating grass, worms, even their own boiled boot leather. To avoid mutiny, a supply run was being made to Haifa, led by Henry of Champagne and Conrad of Montferrat.

  Between sharp showers, we swore as we tried to get the wet timber to light.

  “I thought it was all going to be glory and treasure,” Saw complained.

  Red Will looked as if he might weep—or maybe that was just the perennial ague he had, his eyes pink-rimmed, his nose dripping.

  Hammer blew on his hands. “Coul
d have stayed at home if I’d wanted to starve and freeze and stink.”

  His brother grunted. “So much for exotic climes.”

  “Aye, a grand opportunity to travel overseas, meet new folk and kill ’em.” Quickfinger laughed humourlessly.

  “I didn’t think it was going to be like this,” Ezra said. She’d lost weight; her eyes looked huge as she hunched over her knees.

  “You’ll be wishing you’d stayed at home and married your farmboy,” I teased her.

  The gaze she turned on me was unsettling. “Never,” she said. “Never, never and never.”

  Further discussion was curtailed by a messenger galloping in from the forward column, crying for reinforcements. “Our troops have been set upon by that devil Saladin. They’re facing each other off down at the Spring Head, six miles south. Muster quickly and get down there!”

  Savaric volunteered to stay behind and guard the camp and engines, but our commander was no fool. “You’ll go with de Lusignan’s force. We’ve set the Flemings to guard the camp.”

  I felt sick, remembering our last outing.

  Ezra checked the string on her bow a dozen times, counted her arrows, got Hammer to sharpen her knives. The twins bristled with all manner of mismatched weapons, some French, mostly foreign. We would be fighting on foot: we were down to three horses, since there wasn’t enough food to keep the great beasts alive, and so only Savaric and the routiers would ride.

  A hasty mass was held before we marched.

  “That means they expect us to die,” Little Ned muttered.

  “Best confess our sins, brother,” Hammer said to Saw.

  “We’ll be here till Christmas!” They laughed—graveyard humour.

  Savaric rode out in style, determined to make an impression on his fellow nobles. He had even brought along his falcons and the falconer, in case there was game to be had on the way. He was himself adorned in red and gold; red and gold was the caparison of his warhorse. The rest of us wore his livery, rather the worse for wear now, but we were resplendent in comparison with our fellow soldiers, many of whom had dwelt in filth and hardship a year and more. I felt a fraud, and also terrified, never less so than when Baldwin shrove our souls, en masse, and sent us on our way.

  Hubert of Salisbury had armed himself with a greatsword and a giant stave. The Bishop of Rouen took him by the arm. “A shepherd of the cross should preach, not fight!”

  Hubert shook him off. “Heaven has been taken from us by violence; only by violence may we seize it back.”

  I fell in beside Quickfinger and was surprised to catch him crossing himself. “Do you believe our souls will be weighed in God’s balance?” he asked.

  “The Moor used to say that every act of kindness we do in this world will outweigh a sin in the next.”

  The corners of Quickfinger’s mouth turned down. “I wish I’d led a better life,” he said quietly. “I should ha’ treated Mary more kindly.”

  By the time we reached the Spring Head we found ourselves meeting the retreat. The men falling back looked like walking corpses: faces gaunt as bone, empty eyes, blood all over. Some limped; others were carried by their comrades. I saw Savaric in animated discussion with Robert de Sable and for a brief, heady moment believed we would turn back too, but no, on we went. Why are we doing this? I thought in sudden desperation. Are we all such sheep?

  Then the noise of the battle ahead of us became distinct: cries and the clash of weapons, screams and screeching steel. My guts felt like water. I looked back over my shoulder, but even if I could have brought myself to break rank suddenly there was nowhere to flee, for back the way we came I could now see Muslim cavalry—men in spiked helmets and coloured robes, their small, round shields and curved swords catching the last light of the sun. Up on the inland hills there was a sea of them, a tide rushing down upon us. Thousands of them, ready to drown us in our own blood.

  My God, is this how I will die? In the mud of this foreign place? This thought perversely put some backbone in me, and when at last I found myself facing my first Saracen, who came hurtling down upon us shrieking like a demon, I raised my heavy falchion and hacked and screamed in a sort of frenzy until he was down, to be replaced by another, and another. I fought without any sophistication and with terror bubbling beneath my skin. Just hacked and parried and pushed and dodged and kicked and cut and brained like some mindless beast, dealing horrible wounds to others for fear of the horrible wounds they would otherwise deal to me.

  As the sun set we fought on; as the light died we fought on; and as the moon rose, until there was not enough light to see who was enemy and who not; and then the Saracens were moving back into the hills above and we were hastily regrouped and marched out. I did not recognize any of the men who surrounded me, and not just because they all wore masks of blood that glittered strangely in the moonlight. Where was the rest of my troupe? I should have looked for them. But I feared what I would find.

  I felt battered from crown to heel, but at least I was still in possession of all my limbs, which could not be said for many of the fallen, whose bodies and bits of bodies we were too tired to bury and flung instead, with no ceremony, into the river. None of those I handled looked familiar, and anyway the gloom made them all alike. Too exhausted even to feel relief at my survival, I trudged in silence back towards Acre with my head down, breathing heavily, trying to make an inventory of my pains, then giving up as they all merged into one. Numbed as I was by my ordeal, still, I could not help but feel a tightening of dread as I neared the camp in the small hours of the morning.

  I found our quarters empty save for Ezra, who was sitting outside the tent with her legs straight out in front of her like a poppet thrown down by a bored child. She looked up, her drawn features illuminated by the dancing light of her lantern.

  “John!”

  And then she was laughing and I was laughing. She got to her feet and launched herself at me and we engaged in a ridiculous, lumbering jig with the mud sucking at our feet and Ezra chanting, “You’re alive, alive, alive-o!” And there was such glee, such mad triumph in my own survival surging inside me that I thought, I will kiss her.

  And just as I was about it, fool that I was, there was a commotion and she broke away from me with an appalled look on her face, and when I turned it was to see Quickfinger and Hammer carrying a slumped form between them, and Red Will limping along behind.

  It was Saw they carried. It was clear he was dead, for no one could survive such a wound. Cleaved through shoulder almost to his waist, the body was obscene in the detail it revealed, things that should be inside and kept in, secret and contained, left out in the air. Beneath the gaping jerkin, bones glinted, viscera gleamed. Laid across his ruined chest, his fingers were curled around the hilt of a dagger. And then his eyelids fluttered and I almost fell down in shock.

  Will went running to find a chirurgeon while Hammer knelt beside his twin, tears making clean runnels through the gore that covered his face. He mumbled and nonsense came out: their strange twin-talk, like childish babble. But Saw’s face twitched into a grimace, or maybe a smile, and he tried to say something. An awful noise came out—a sort of gurgling rasp, followed by a pinkish froth that bubbled on the lips.

  Ezra burst into tears and buried her face in my shoulder. Quickfinger shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, alternately staring around for Will’s return and gazing down in horror at his friend. Then he got on his knees and put his hands together and started fervently praying, calling on every saint whose name we’d ever taken in vain to perform miracles, to knit up Saw’s broken body, to restore him to if not health, then life, at least.

  There was such anguish in his eyes I couldn’t say what I was thinking: namely, that he knew as well as I did what nonsense it all was. That nothing could save Saw now, not prayer, not doctors, nor relics or miracles. But instead I turned to walk to Savaric’s pavilion, only to come upon the disgraced churchman heading our way with Will—with no doctor in tow, but carrying a box which I recog
nized as one of the Glastonbury reliquaries.

  “I will call upon the power of Saint Beonna,” Savaric told us. He was half in, half out of his battle gear; he clanked when he walked. He went with difficulty down on his knees beside our stricken friend, laid a hand upon his filthy brow. Then he gently uncurled Saw’s fingers from the hilt of the dagger and laid it aside, wiped the blood-covered hand clean on his own tunic before placing it upon the carved reliquary and intoning solemnly, “O Beonna, most ancient father of the monks, look with favour on this poor soul who has done much to help honour your memory and cherish your remains. Let the grace of your divinity flow out upon him and restore his body to this world so that he may fight on to restore the Holy City to Christendom in your name. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

  We all said “Amen” and waited for the body to bloom forth, smoothing the organs back into their casings, knitting up the shattered bones, resheathing them in unmarked skin. And when the body twitched suddenly, we all gasped. But the gasp became a moan, for all that issued from Saw was a gush of fresh blood that spilled from his mouth. And then he was entirely still, as if all that Savaric’s prayer had done was to violently free his soul from some cord that was keeping it anchored inside.

  Savaric uttered the prayer for the dead over him, then had to be helped to his feet. I retrieved the remains of Saint Beonna and followed him back to the pavilion, leaving Hammer to grieve over his lost twin with the rest of the troupe.

  “Did you really think that would work?” I asked him.

  He turned a weary face to me, his black eyes empty of thought, empty of hope. “It was worth a try.”

  It was only later, back in camp, when Saw had been decently buried and his brother’s grief dosed with the strongest brandy we could lay hands on, that I asked the question that had been niggling at me.

  “Where is Little Ned?”

  Will said, “He was just in front of me. I turned away for a moment and … we got separated. I didn’t see him again.”