Seeking Jerusalem

by H A CULLEY

  Turstan was watching the enemy camp from the top of the gatehouse when William’s column arrived. A great tide of relief swept over him as he recognised the three banners and he offered up a quick prayer of thanks as he saw his son riding behind the leaders. He had hoped that Hugh de Puiset might send a negotiating party or even come himself, once he heard what was happening, but he had scarcely thought that Edwin would bring the great William Marshal himself.

  Gilbert d’Umfraville was sitting outside his pavilion gnawing his lip and wondered how best to take the castle quickly when he heard a commotion at the eastern end of his camp. Not bothering to send for his horse he stalked through the tents to see what was amiss. When he saw the column of armed men, who had stopped a hundred yards from his camp and fanned out into line facing him his jaw dropped. Then, when he saw the three banners his heart sank. How could William Marshal have arrived so quickly, and why?

  He waited for his horse to be brought forward then, accompanied by two of his senior knights and his banner bearer, he rode forward to meet William, who waited with the constable of Durham and a very uncomfortable Thomas d’Umfraville.

  ‘My Lord of Pembroke, constable, brother,’ he greeted them, giving his Thomas a look that was part enquiry and part reproach.

  ‘What are you doing here d’Umfraville?’ William began without preamble. Before Gilbert could reply he went on ‘You presumably know that this is the property of a crusader and will be well aware that an attack on it merits the penalty of excommunication for you and all your men by order of the Pope, in addition to whatever secular punishment I and my fellow regent deem fit?’

  ‘I, I . .’ Gilbert was lost for an appropriate reply to this tirade. Meanwhile the news that they were liable to be excommunicated spread like wildfire amongst his men, most of whom, like the rest of the country, were deeply religious. Gilbert knew when his luck had run out.

  ‘My lord I acted with the sanction of Prince John. I meant no disrespect to the papal decree.’

  ‘John of Gloucester doesn’t rule England, I do – with my fellow regent, of course,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘You have until sundown to clear your rabble off de Cuille lands.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Of course.’ He glanced at his brother who was studying the ground intently. He would settle with Thomas later. Surely he could have prevented this happening.

  ‘Wait, I haven’t finished’ William looked at the unhappy baron with his piercing ice blue eyes. ‘You will present yourself before me and the grand council at Westminster Palace in one month’s time so that we can determine what punishment this infringement of the king’s peace warrants. A decision about your excommunication will be made by the bishops at that time. Now get your men moving my lord.’

  With that William turned his horse up the hill towards the castle gates whilst his men went over to camp near the tents of de Vesci and de Muschamp. A fuming d’Umfraville went back to give the order to pack up his camp. Sir Thomas was unwise enough to seek him out half an hour later and received the full force of his brother’s spleen before he had a chance to explain what had happened. So dire was the invective he was subjected to, he turned on his heel and never spoke to Gilbert again.

  ~#~

  John Beauilly was still in a foul mood when he rode back into Peverel Castle a week after his fruitless visit to Scotland. He had paused to look at Craigmor Castle on his way south and the sight of the imposing and impregnable fortress in its magnificent position on the cliffs, with the sea crashing against the rocks below, made his mood even worse.

  As was his wont, he took his temper out on his wife. He had often beaten Margaret and she was used to it, as she was to his way of copulation which others might call rape. Her brother, Waldo, had too large a nose and too high a forehead to be called handsome but his twin sister was decidedly pretty. However, by the time that Beauilly had finished venting his spleen on her she had two fractured ribs, several broken fingers and a splintered cheekbone as well as two black eyes and a badly split lip. She was so badly beaten up that no-one was allowed to see her, not even her maid or the pages. Margaret had to fend for herself, collecting water and food from outside the door when no-one was about and placing the soil bucket there each morning.

  She had no clean clothes to wear after a while and she only had enough water to drink so she soon began to stink. Her injuries went untended and festered so that she developed blood poisoning.

  It was when a page brought her basket of bread and cheese and a flagon of water and found yesterday’s basket and flagon still there and no soil bucket to take away that he realised that something was badly wrong. When he reported this to the page-master, the man told Sir John straight away. Muttering irritably Beauilly eventually bestirred himself and went to check on his wife, silently promising her another beating is she was wasting his time.

  The smell that hit him when he opened the door almost made him retch. Margaret was lying on the bed in a pool of vomit and faeces in a delirium. Her swollen face was radiating so much heat that her husband didn’t even have to touch her to know that she was burning up with fever. He went and bolted the door to keep the curious out and sat down on a coffer trying to think what to do.

  He ought to call the barber-surgeon to treat her but the man was worse than useless. He would only apply leeches to bleed her; that was his remedy for every ailment. She should be washed and changed he supposed but he hated the thought of anyone blaming him for her condition. In the end he left her and locked the door behind him. When he went back two days later she was dead.

  As deputy sheriff, he certified the death as due to a mysterious fever and had two of his most loyal serjeants put her in a lead lined coffin with the soiled bedding and clothing. The mattress was burned and the room fumigated; all normal precautions in case of plague. She was buried the next day with scant ceremony. John Beauilly just fervently hoped that Waldo never found out how his sister had died.

  Chapter Eight – The Road to Jerusalem - Autumn 1191 to Spring 1192

  Waldo had suffered from a high fever after the battle of Arsuf and had also smelled rotten, but in his case it had been gangrene. The blow from the Saracen’s sword hadn’t just broken his arm, it had splintered the bone and it stubbornly refused to mend. The splinters had severed the blood vessels supplying his hand to the extent that the tissue started to die. The only solution had been to take the arm off at the elbow. Even now, weeks later Waldo could still feel the agony he had endured whilst the barber-surgeon sawed through the radius and the ulna just below the elbow. The pain of cauterisation had been even worse initially but, mercifully, he had fainted at that stage.

  Whilst the army moved on to Jaffa and Ascalon Waldo had stayed at Arsuf, initially suffering from a high fever, and then slowly recovering whilst his severed arm healed. The other problem he had to contend with was depression. What use was a one armed knight - and one with only a left arm at that? At first he tried a special shield strapped to the stump of his right arm and trained to use a sword in his left arm but he was clumsy and the youngest squires could best him in a fight. Even if he managed to get as proficient with his left hand as he used to be with his right, he couldn’t fight left handed. The blows against him would always have to be fended off with his sword and the shield on the wrong side would be near on useless, so he could never land an attacking blow. In the end he gave up.

  In view of his injury, King Richard gave him leave to return to England and so he boarded the next ship heading for Genoa. Waldo was accompanied by another wounded knight, who had lost part of a leg, and their two squires. They had left it too late in the year to cross the Alps so they caught another ship to Marseilles and then travelled up through France until they reached Dives in Normandy at the end of January 1192. They had to wait to cross the channel because of storms, so he and Gervaise eventually arrived back at Waldo’s home at Edale a month later.

  As soon as he rode into the bailey surrounding the stone built hall he knew that something was wrong.
His steward would normally have been all smiles at the return of his lord but he was downcast and had difficulty meeting him in the eye.

  ‘It is good to have you back Sir Waldo, but what’s happened to your arm?’

  ‘Never mind about that, something is wrong. What is it?’

  ‘It’s your sister, the lady Margaret, Sir Waldo. She sickened and died just after Sir John returned from Scotland?’

  ‘Scotland? What the devil…’ Then the import of what the steward had said hit him. ‘Margaret dead? How, why? When was this?’ Waldo felt as if a horse had kicked him hard in his guts.

  ‘Several months ago now. I was told that Sir John and your sister had a row and after that she sickened and died. No-one seems to know what was wrong with her, just that she was too ill to see anyone. There were rumours about the plague, but there haven’t been any other cases that I have heard about.’

  The steward found himself talking to empty air as Waldo turned his horse and headed back down the road to Hope, another manor of his, and then to Castleton and up the steep path to Peverel Castle.

  He was disappointed to find that John Beauilly was in Nottingham, but he sought out a knight in the garrison, who he had known since they were both squires together, and asked him how his twin had died.

  ‘Well, no-one really knows, Waldo’ he began.

  ‘You must have some inkling. There must have been rumours.’

  ‘Well, most of think that Sir John was in such a foul mood when he got back from Scotland that he took it out on his wife.’

  ‘I see.’ Waldo’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Did he often beat her? She never complained to me of it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t. She tried to make the best of it, and most times it was just the odd blow or two, by all accounts, but this time he must have really laid into your poor sister.’

  ‘How badly was she beaten?’

  ‘That’s it, not even her maid or her pages were allowed to tend to her. She was confined to her bedchamber alone and food was left outside her door, so no-one saw her after that night.’

  ‘And she was just left to die?’

  The knight just looked at the floor. Waldo was incredulous, and very, very angry.

  He set off again straight away, this time on the road to Nottingham. By this time it was getting dark and he hadn’t eaten so he stayed the night at a small priory. The next day he was nearing Nottingham when he met Sir John Beauilly and his escort coming the other way.

  ‘Sir John, well met,’ Waldo said pleasantly.

  ‘Sir Waldo, you have returned.’ Beauilly couldn’t have been more surprised. He didn’t even notice the maimed arm.

  ‘Evidently. I was shocked to learn of the death of my sister and surprised you have not written to let me know.’ Although the couriers that travelled to and from the Holy Land were mainly intended to carry messages to and from the king, other important missives were allowed. ‘Tell me, how did she die?’ Waldo continued.

  ‘Er, a fever, possibly the plague. I’m not entirely sure.’

  ‘Didn’t the doctors or the apothecary venture an opinion?’

  ‘Look, this isn’t the place to discuss this. Why don’t you ride back with me to Castleton?’

  ‘You didn’t send for one did you? In fact you left her to die alone and uncared for after you had beaten her so badly you daren’t let anyone see her. Murderer!’

  Whilst Beauilly stared at him open mouthed Waldo pulled his dagger out with his left hand and thrust it into his neck. Whatever John might have been trying to say came out as a gurgle and blood gushed out of his mouth as well as spurting out of his neck as Waldo sawed the blade to and fro.

  Initially the escort were taken off guard but then two spurred their mounts forward and one dragged the dagger from Waldo’s grasp whilst the other to support his master. But it was no use; within a minute he was dead.

  The escort made its way back to Nottingham with the body of the deputy sheriff and a prisoner destined for the dungeons below the castle keep.

  ~#~

  Having captured Ascalon, King Richard was having trouble keeping the crusaders together. Saladin had destroyed both it and Jaffa before Richard reached them. This meant that the crusaders had had to spend considerable time rebuilding the fortifications. The campaign had run out of steam and, worse, now that the army was stationery again, the whores and tavern keepers moved their base of operations from Acre to Jaffa. As a result, many were unwilling to trade the fleshpots for the hard campaign trail, especially with winter approaching.

  Moreover the Duke of Burgundy, leader of the French forces, was insisting on advancing on Jerusalem now, whereas Richard was convinced that strategically it made more sense to carry on down the coast, being re-supplied by sea, and capture Egypt first. Egypt was the source of Saladin’s money to pay his troops and most of his supplies came from there, as did many of his reinforcements. Cut him off from these and capturing Jerusalem would be so much easier.

  But Burgundy couldn’t see this. He and his men had come to complete their pilgrimage by recapturing Jerusalem, then go home. They weren’t interested in capturing Egypt. Luckily, Henry of Champagne, a most influential member of the French contingent, backed Richard. The Count of Champagne was a young man of twenty five and, as the grandson of Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was nephew to Philip Augustus as well as Richard through their half-sister Marie, his mother.

  Saladin was also having problems. Many of his men had deserted him after the battle of Arsuf and his defeat there had done serious damage to his reputation. He wasn’t in a position to risk another pitched battle and had to content himself with pinprick attacks on foraging parties and patrols. Those who had stayed after Arsuf now wanted to go home for the winter, as was their custom. The problem was that the crusaders showed no signs of digging in until the spring.

  His emirs were not convinced that Saladin could hold Jerusalem with the forces left to him and they started to clamour for a peace settlement. Once again, Safadin was sent out to negotiate, stall and buy time but, as before, the talks came to nothing.

  King Richard was also determined to deal with the problem posed by the brothels and taverns that had sprung up in Jaffa, having moved there from Acre. One night Richard raised the matter with Berengaria, who had just arrived in Jaffa.

  ‘Well, you can hardly complain about your army enjoying wine and women when you have brought me here to share your bed and you get the best wines shipped in from Cyprus for you to enjoy,’ his queen pointed out quite reasonably.‘ And you live here in a palace, whilst many of them are living in fly infested tents,’ she went on, indicating the marble walls of the palace and the gardens with its many fountains.

  ‘I suppose you have a point my love. But it is going to be difficult to get them to move out on campaign again.’

  ‘At least they are here; before the tavern keepers and the whores arrived you lost more men slipping back to the fleshpots of Acre on the supply ships than you did to the swords of the Saracens.’

  She paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Before I left Acre I heard a disturbing rumour that Conrad of Montferrat had approached Saladin proposing an alliance against you.’

  ‘Really? That’s news to me. What else did this rumour say?’

  ‘In return Conrad wants to keep Tyre. Furthermore, he insists that Sidon and Beirut are handed over to him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past that slimy piece of dung to betray his fellow Christians; and he has no love for me because of my support for Guy de Lusignan as king of Jerusalem.’

  ‘It’s said that Philip Augustus is behind the idea, just to make trouble for you.’

  ‘That I do believe. I seem to have made enemies of half of Europe on this crusade. Philip has always been jealous of me, and the fact that I took Acre when he couldn’t didn’t help, nor did the fact that most of his men elected to serve under me rather than return to France with him. Henry Hohenstaufen hasn’t forgiven me for supporting Tancred’s c
laim to Sicily instead of his own and Leopold of Austria hates me for humiliating him at Acre. Now I hear that John is making trouble for me in England.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Richard shrugged. ‘There’s not much I can do.’ He gave her an appraising look. ‘So I might as well forget my problems, take you to bed and enjoy myself for a change.’

  Berengaria squealed with delight as Richard threw her on the bed and started to tickle her.

  ~#~

  The next day Richard decided to take his queen hawking in the hills inland from Jaffa and invited Count Henry of Champagne and his sister, Joan, to join them. No-one had seen any Saracen patrols for a week or more, so he decided that one conroi of knights and their squires would suffice as an escort. Richard de Cuille was picked for the task and he, Miles and the twenty two other knights of the conroi looked forward to an enjoyable day away from the humidity of the coast.

  Once up in the low hills it was a pleasant day for late September with a cool breeze. Richard and his guests’ hawks had made several kills by the time they stopped in a glade by a small stream at midday for a dinner of bread, cheese, smoked fish and fruit. The party was just thinking about mounting again when suddenly two of the squires, who had been posted as lookouts on a nearby hill, came racing back.

  ‘Saracens, sire,’ one of them yelled breathlessly ‘and lots of them, coming this way.’

  ‘How many and how far away?’ Richard asked succinctly as he helped Berengaria mount.

  ‘Possibly a hundred and a mile away at the most. They suddenly appeared around the side of a hill, sire.’

  ‘Henry.’ Richard beckoned his nephew over as he mounted himself. Like Richard, Henry was tall and well-built. He was known to be attractive to women, though he had avoided getting a reputation as a womaniser so far.

  ‘Take two knights and escort the queen back to Jaffa whilst we deal with these men,’ the king told him curtly. Henry nodded but Berengaria was less than happy.