Crusade

by Robyn Young

  Will came awake, gasping painfully for breath. After a few moments, staring at the heavy white cloth above him, his heart shuddered down to a brisk trot. He looked around as the tent flaps parted and a man entered. After all this time in his care, Will still didn’t know his name, but called him what the others in the camp did: the sheikh, which meant leader.

  The sheikh nodded to Will. “How is feeling?” Like everyone Will had heard speaking in the tribe, his Arabic was more basic and laconic than the speech of those in Acre or other cities. A few of them were deaf and mute, and as a community they seemed to rely more on unspoken understanding, a mixture of intuition and signals.

  “Better,” replied Will. “It feels stronger.” He studied his right leg, which was bound with hemp to three strips of wood. One, wider and thicker than the others, was strapped to the back of his calf and lower thigh, above the knee join, and the other two were fixed to either side. “I want to try to walk today.”

  “Too soon, I think,” responded the sheikh.

  Frustration rose easily into Will’s tone. “I’ve told you, I must get to Cairo.”

  “Seven days,” stated the sheikh calmly. “You have more strength then.”

  Desperate, Will put his hand inside the collar of the coarse white tunic he had been dressed in. He pulled out the chain with the gold ring and the St. George pendant, forcing aside the loss he felt giving them up. “Take these.”

  The sheikh made a pushing motion with his hand. “No, I do not want.”

  “You saved my life.”

  The sheikh drew in a breath then seated himself smoothly on the mat beside Will, long legs crossed. “Would you leave wounded man to die in desert?”

  “No, but ...”

  “And would you save him for riches? For reward?”

  “No.”

  “Then why you expect such of me? I do not want payment for saving your life, Christian. I am nomad, not mercenary. My people live hard life, but we do not thieve.” The sheikh gave a brief chuckle. “And if we leave you in well and you die, when water comes back it is poisoned. It good for us all that you saved. You lucky well is dry this season and that when my people passed they heard your cries.”

  “I did not mean to insult you.” Will pulled the chain over his head and held it out. “But I’m going to need a camel to get to Cairo. So, please, take this as payment.”

  “Why so important?” asked the sheikh after a moment. “Your heat.” He patted his forehead and Will knew he meant fever. “It only just gone. You still weak, your leg unmended.”

  Will looked to where his belongings had been stacked neatly on the sand. His falchion was in its scabbard beside the clothes he had been wearing when the Bedouin had pulled him, delirious and ranting, from the well, covered in mud and blood and insects. His leg had been broken in two places, the bone protruding, splintered, from the side of his knee. Maggots oozed, white and fat, in the wound. His fingertips had been torn and crusted with blood where he had used them to try to climb the sheer walls. He remembered these things in bright bursts, both awake and in his dreams, but after the Bedouin brought him back to their camp where, between them, the sheikh and two other men had broken his leg again to set it in place, he recalled little. He didn’t know how long he had been in the camp, but guessed it was at least a month. He feared it was longer.

  The sheikh followed Will’s gaze and frowned as his eyes alighted on the silver mask next to Will’s sword and the silver-handled dagger Angelo had dropped into the well. The Bedouin seemed suspicious of the mask. Some of them, Will had noticed, made a gesture with their fingers toward it. He had sometimes wondered if they could sense the evil of the man who had worn it and were protecting themselves. “I fear something bad could happen if I don’t get to Cairo,” Will told the sheikh. “The man who pushed me into the well, he wanted me dead for a reason. Not just revenge, I think,” he murmured, his gaze flicking back to the mask. “Maybe something bad has already happened, maybe I’m too late. But either way I cannot stay.”

  After a pause, the sheikh rose to his feet and crossed to Will’s belongings. Crouching, he picked up the dagger and returned. Will flinched as the sheikh bent over him, but felt relief wash through him as the man deftly cut through the hemp ropes that bound the strips of wood. The sheikh closed Will’s hand over the ring and the pendant. “These are no use to me.” He stood. “I cannot give you camel, but one of my people will see you safe to Cairo. Now.” He held out his hand. “We see if you can walk.”

  THE VENETIAN QUARTER, ACRE, 5 JANUARY A.D. 1289

  It was raining as Garin loitered in an alley off Silk Street. His woolen cloak was sodden, his hood hanging limp in front of his face. Sniffing wetly, he pushed it back, eyeing the men and women who were hurrying home from a day’s work. He didn’t have long to wait. As Elwen moved past him, ducking her head to avoid the streams of water pouring from the eaves, Garin left the alley. He meant to call out, to stop her. But now the moment had come, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he followed her, feeling furtive and on edge.

  For weeks now, he had been watching her, haunting the alleys around Silk Street and her house, lingering in the marketplace where she would come to buy food. It had become an obsession, growing more intense with each week that passed. At first, after he saw her on the day he arrived in Acre, he was irritated by her manner toward him, but his mind soon after had turned moodily to the thought of meeting Will. It was three days before he had been able to muster the resolve to go to the Temple. Having been told that Commander Campbell was away on business and wouldn’t be back for some time, Garin trudged back to his lodgings near the harbor, where he familiarized himself with the dockside taverns and brothels. It was during this hazy, fitful time that he had begun to think about Elwen, and what she had said.

  One muggy afternoon, thrusting listlessly into some despondent whore, he found himself searching for images and thoughts that would bring the act to a swift conclusion, when, to his faint surprise, he conjured Elwen. With the picture of her reclining beneath him behind his closed eyes, the finale proved much more satisfying than the start. But after he was done, the image would not be forgotten, and Garin’s thoughts settled and fixed on her. The day after, he kept his first watch on her house and followed when she and her daughter left for market. The girl, Rose, had skipped along the street beside her, occasionally waving at people she seemed to know. That evening, brooding over a bottle, Garin started to wonder. The golden-haired girl looked like Elwen, without a doubt, but there was nothing of Will’s darkness in the child. He guessed she couldn’t be more than twelve and did the sums, did them till his head ached. And he thought of the look on Elwen’s face when she had seen him; the way she hurried her daughter inside; the words she had spoken. Leave her alone, Garin. We don’t want you in our life, neither of us. Not “any of us,” not “Will and I.” But neither of us. Her and Rose? His mind rolled over the possibilities, gray and ghostly at first, yet brighter, stronger with each day he saw Elwen and her daughter, his eyes sunken from drink and lack of sleep. Until, finally, he was convinced.

  The rain pelted his head as he hastened behind her, splashing through the mud. It was the first time he had been sober in weeks and he was feeling the affects. He hadn’t wanted to be drunk for this, in fact he had even been to a barber’s and had his hair and beard trimmed. But although he no longer looked like a beggar, he felt like one. The words he had prepared in his mind sounded wheedling, pleading, and he wished now, as he pursued Elwen onto the street where she lived, almost slipping in the wet, that he’d had a cup or two to steady him. She was nearly at the blue door. In a moment she would disappear inside and those questions would go round and round in his head again tonight, unanswered.

  “Elwen!”

  She turned quickly, her face gleaming with rain in the gray light. Her eyes locked on his and widened a little. But there was no real shock or surprise in her face, only an agitated resignation, as if she had known this moment would come,
and dreaded it.

  “Wait,” he called, as she reached for the door. Garin sprinted down the street, now committed and impatient, catching her arm before she could go inside.

  “I told you to leave me alone,” said Elwen, shaking her head and sending drops of rain flying from her coif, which was plastered to her head. The material had turned transparent in the wet, and beneath it he could see her hair, coiled and twisted. “I’ve nothing to say to you.”

  “Well, I have something to say to you. That day, Elwen, when you came to me at the palace, when we ...”

  Elwen looked mortified. “Don’t, Garin, please!” she begged, before he could finish. “I can’t bear it.” She tried to draw her arm from his. “Please, just leave.”

  “You never told Will, did you?” Garin said, his tone hardening. He found himself annoyed by her distress. She had come to him! “You never told him that you lay with me.” His fingers pinched into her arm and he drew her toward him, anger getting the better of him. “Did you tell him about Rose? Does he know about her?”

  The blood drained from Elwen’s face as Garin spoke her daughter’s name. Then she raised her hand and slapped his face, hard. In surprise, he let go, and she pulled away, grasping her wrist where he had bruised her. Color sprang back into her cheeks, red and livid. “Don’t ever talk about my daughter,” she said in a steel voice. “I don’t want you near her, I don’t want you speaking to her. Do you hear me? Not ever!” Garin stood there blinking at her. Elwen faltered, her shoulders slumping. “What we did was a mistake, a mistake I’ve regretted every day since. I’m sorry I came to you, but I cannot change what happened. I love Will and we’re happy. I’m not what you are looking for, Garin. I hope you find it. I do. But it isn’t me.” She reached for the door and pushed it open.

  “She’s mine, isn’t she?” shouted Garin, behind her. “That’s why you don’t want me near you both! She’s my daughter!” As the door banged shut, he stepped back into the street, rain dripping from his hood to trickle down his cheeks. His words hung in the wet air. He was about to go to the door, planning to hammer on it until she opened it, when he saw movement in one of the upstairs windows. He looked up, rain falling into his eyes, and saw Rose standing there staring down at him, holding back a curtain. Garin half raised his hand, then a shadow moved in behind her and the curtain was snatched shut. Stumbling backward, his feet sloshing in the mud, he lurched away.

  41

  Tripoli, The County of Tripoli 1 APRIL A.D. 1289

  It was the thunder of God.

  That’s what the Mamluk soldiers called the sound made by the rocks hurled from the siege engines as they struck the city walls. Twenty-five mandjaniks lined up around the southeastern ramparts of Tripoli, the beams swinging up, one after the other, to fling their loads at the city. The Mamluk companies focused grimly on the backbreaking work from behind the safety of the buches: makeshift barriers of timbers lashed together to form a protective barricade. Sometimes, the engines would be loaded with barrels of naphtha, which would explode across the ramparts, torching structures and men, sending black smoke mushrooming into the blanched afternoon sky. Already, the Bishop’s Tower and the Hospitallers’ Tower were blackened and scarred. Inside the city, it was bedlam. No one had been prepared for the assault, even though they had been warned.

  The month before, an envoy had arrived from Acre, on behalf of Grand Master de Beaujeu, to inform the city that Sultan Kalawun was leading his forces against them. But although officials in Tripoli had received reports that the Mamluks were on the move, no one, neither Princess Lucia, the Genoese or the commune, believed that they were the sultan’s target, and the Temple’s envoy was bluntly dismissed. The grand master, the officials haughtily claimed, was stirring up trouble for his own political ends. Kalawun was at peace with Tripoli. He had no reason to attack them! The Venetians were a little more circumspect. They trusted the grand master, and since their consul had heard no word from Benito di Ottavio, it was feared that the sultan might have made plans of his own. But, despite their apprehension, even they hadn’t been fully prepared when, four days ago, the alarm had sounded around the walls.

  Word had come before dawn from farmers in the surrounding countryside, fleeing before a vast, dark tide of men and machines. The Mamluks were coming. Tripoli’s citizens were woken to the frenetic clanging of bells, too early to be for Prime. They watched in dread as the Mamluk force appeared and lined up outside their walls. That afternoon the siege had begun.

  The southeastern walls were the weakest part of the fortifications, and it was here that the Mamluks were concentrating their efforts. After the initial confusion and panic, troops were armed and hastily positioned by the various communities: Templars, Hospitallers, Venetians, Genoese, Pisans, French. Houses were requisitioned and turned into guardposts, armories and stores. Huge sacks of sand, hauled from the beach, were lined up to counter the spread of fires as the naphtha barrels sailed over the walls and crashed down on rooftops in balls of flame. Mangonels and trebuchets were ranged along the ramparts. Some hadn’t been used in years, the wood rotten, useless. These were taken down for the barricades being erected at the city gates, against the continuous booming punches of the Mamluks’ massive battering ram. Crossbowmen took the place of the broken engines, their uniforms dusty, nostrils and mouths smoke-blackened.

  That morning, troops on the walls, hunkered down against the volleys of arrows strafing up from the Mamluk lines, had watched, confused and troubled, as the great Venetian war galleys slowly turned and glided out of the harbor. The banners of San Marco caught and unfurled in the wind, fluttering smaller with every turn of the oars. The word went around quickly. Venetian officials had ordered the evacuation of their citizens. Venice was leaving. This started a general panic among the people of Tripoli, and since the morning, a growing number of citizens, carrying anything they could, had hastened down to the harbor, where now an almost continuous stream of galleys, fishing boats and merchants’ vessels were sailing out. Others, who couldn’t secure boats for themselves and their families, strapped children to their backs and swam desperately to the small island of Saint Thomas, which rose out of the sea just off the peninsula. Camps were being set up there, people said. Many more, however, stayed, trusting in God and the strength of their soldiers. They didn’t know that in their midst an unseen threat was just waiting for an opportunity.

  THE MAMLUK CAMP, OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF TRIPOLI, 1 APRIL A.D. 1289

  Kalawun stood watching the stones fly up, one after the other, to smash against the walls. The sky was overcast, the air stagnant. Over the city hung a fog of dust and smoke. Once in a while, a stone would crash through a section of walkway and men would be crushed, or tossed from the walls. Kalawun wanted to turn around and escape the scene in the cover of his pavilion, to lie down and close his eyes against the pounding in his head and the pounding of the stones. But he made himself stay. His face pale, hands clenched at his sides, he fixed his eyes on the assault of Tripoli. It was his order that had brought this about. He wouldn’t allow himself to hide from that. He would face it; the knowledge that this didn’t have to be. He would suffer it; the seeping, choking guilt that every single man, woman and child that had died and was dying and would die inside those walls died because he had commanded it.

  And he shouldn’t have done so.

  He should have done more to prevent this: should have opened diplomatic channels with Tripoli, or Acre; entered into negotiations; threatened action. But he hadn’t. Instead, he had marched on Tripoli at the head of his army, not because it was the only option or because he believed it was right. He had done so because he was afraid. He was afraid of his men’s response to his unwillingness to act, afraid of relinquishing his position or even his life, and he was afraid of losing the respect of his son. He had lost Ali and Aisha. He couldn’t bear the thought of giving up Khalil. Tripoli was a trade-off; for the fall of the city, he would regain the approval of his court. But with every stone that was hurl
ed against the walls, he felt the peace he had spent half his life struggling to build crumble a little more.

  “My lord.”

  Kalawun turned to see his son approaching with Amir Dawud. Behind them strolled the Venetian, his gaze on the battered walls. As Benito di Ottavio turned, Kalawun saw that the good half of his face was eagerly expectant. He felt bitterness, sour and sick inside him, and focused instead on his son.

  Khalil was clad in black brocaded robes, shot through with scarlet thread, a glittering coat of mail beneath. Under his arm he carried a silver helmet, and a saber hung from his sword belt at each hip. He looked every inch the warrior prince. “Nasir and his men are in place opposite the northeastern gate, my lord,” he told Kalawun. “They are hidden and will not be seen until it is too late. Benito believes the signal will come soon. Most of the defenses are now concentrated in the southeastern quadrant. The city is suitably distracted by the bombardment.”

  Kalawun’s eyes flicked to the Venetian and that self-satisfied expression. “If this plan fails, di Ottavio, I will hold you personally responsible for every man I lose.”

  Angelo Vitturi’s composure didn’t waver. “I promise you, my lord, you will be victorious. My men will obey my instructions.”

  There was a distant crack and a roar as the top section of the Bishop’s Tower collapsed. A triumphant shout went up from the Mamluks around the mandjanik responsible for the stone that had caused the damage.