A Flame Run Wild

by Christine Monson

  Liliane wrinkled her nose. She was hungry, even if the stench of burned mutton was unappetizing. Taking the Byzantine cross from beneath her aba and displaying it broadly, she ventured near a tent that gave off the odor of garlic and other savories. Unfortunately, the delicious odor was that of roast pig, and Liliane's experience was that converted Mohammedans did not usually convert to Christian diet. She prowled a bit farther, but soon thought better of purchasing a meal. Guy's soldiers, more wary of Saracens than the French, gave her dangerously suspicious looks. Being unarmed, she decided that her wisest tactic was retreat. With empty stomachs and without blankets, she and Kiki retired to a chilly night on the beach.

  Chapter 9

  ~

  The Leopard and The Unicorn

  Below the walls of Acre

  April 1191

  Liliane meant to wake before dawn and be off into the harbor streets, where she would draw less attention and be able to buy new weapons; however, she awakened to the rumble of siege engines and the sleepy challenges of King Guy's men to the Moors within the city. New to the game, the French scurried about like nervous fox terriers. King Guy was weary from badgering the Saracens alone for two years, and as he had broken a treaty with them to keep the peace, he was more dogged and desperate than fired by holy zeal. If the Saracens cornered him again, they would claim his head. He began to harass his enemy at first light.

  Liliane ran along the shore to the harbor quarter to buy weapons and a few bland mouthfuls of ganoush for herself and Kiki. Unsure what martial experience she would face, she left the bitterly protesting Kiki with the food vendor. A few coins and a cold warning that she would slit the vendor's throat if he lost the monkey gave her reasonable assurance of retrieving her pet if she survived the next day. If she did not return by sunset, the vendor was to take Kiki to Alexandre de Brueil, the powerful French effendi. Kiki's delivery would assure Alexandre that he had no more need to worry about returning his errant wife to France. For her sake, he would care for the engaging creature.

  When she returned via the dunes toward the battle, she saw that the siege lines were strung from south to north. Guy's flags flew over the south; Philip's white and gold fleurs-de-lis over the north. The bang of hammers and rake of adzes by carpenters laboring to build siege engines roused anyone inclined to loiter. Farther down the beach, squires and hostlers hurriedly led strings of horses to be exercised before the sun rose high enough to sear their skulls. As Liliane neared the battle lines, she saw she must leave the dunes lest she be mistaken for a Saracen scout. Not daring to recross the camp ditch by daylight, she wriggled and scrambled through the dunes to a patch frequented by the grooms. There she waited her chance, then fell in alongside the rear of a passing string as if she belonged to the group. Before the lead groom noticed her, she was back in the camp.

  The archers with their wicker shields were already in place, while scattered knights gave directions to the siege crews and routiers. Alexandre was standing near Philip, who was examining scrolls on a folding table and issuing instructions to the foreman of several carpenters working on an odd-looking catapult. After a glance at the scroll, Alexandre appeared more interested in the points at which sappers were boring beneath the massive city walls. Occasionally, he looked around, his hunter's eyes sharply scanning the alleys of the siege camps, and win a jab of apprehension, Liliane realized he was looking for her.

  She ducked behind a wine cask alongside a driftwood and plank tank near the looming Accursed Tower. Half a dozen doxies appeared with water jugs on their heads and baskets of bread to feed the troops already on the line. They drew immediate attention from the men, and aware that Alexandre's male interest would also be alerted, Liliane hastily deserted her shelter for one less open. A few laggards crawled from their tents to relieve themselves and grab a quick bite from the cooking pots before gathering up their arms and heading for their loosely assigned positions. Liliane was glad her haik hid her expression. She was no prude, but so many men squatting openly with dropped braies was a startling spectacle. So intent was she on not staring that she nearly ran into a large tent jotting info the path. Jacques's banner with his red boar fluttered in the morning breeze from the sea. Her spine pricked as she shrank back into a canvas alley. She was beginning to feel like a silly ewe lamb stumbling about a den of lions.

  Several guards and men-at-arms were gathered about a low fire whose pot emitted a savory odor that knotted her stomach with hunger although she had eaten scarcely an hour before. The soldiers were fine-tuning their weapons as they awaited their master. As so few men were about, Liliane decided the others must have gone ahead to the siege lines with Louis. She soon found out that she was wrong.

  Hearing steps behind her, Liliane moved hastily to clear the path, only to find herself eye to eye with Louis. Hastily, she salaamed, backing away with her head low. Louis flicked a signal to one of his men who snagged her sleeve. "What are you doing hanging about here, you infidel scum!"

  Having learned as a child that Louis respected only strength, she drew herself up with a great show of outraged dignity. She snapped her sleeve from the guard's grasp, then shoved the thumbs of her trembling hands into her waist sash. "I am Jefar el din, Christian prince of the Siwans and counselor to Melek Philip. I go where I like, you insolent dog." She waved an imperious hand. "This tent protrudes into the thoroughfare. If it is yours, see that the error is corrected."

  With tingling shoulder blades, Liliane stalked off. Several alleys away, she finally managed to draw a full breath. By tossing Philip's name at Louis, she had caught him off guard, but he would remember her. Anonymity was her best defense in Acre, but after less than a day, Louis's vindictive attention had been drawn to her. She might as well have angered a scorpion.

  Glumly, she headed for the battle line. Few able-bodied men remained in camp and she would only draw more unwanted attention by wandering.

  Showers of arrows flew from the archers' bows to rain upon Acre's defenders, their helmets glinting orange upon the massive ramparts. From those ramparts, Greek fire spiraled down upon the flimsy siege ladders thrown against the bulky walls. Liliane heard the heartrending shrieks of men falling off the ladders and the howls of burned men rising over the grinding racket of siege wheels, as the threats and curses of men lashing fearful draft animals forward added to the din. Only the veterans were used to the racket. Over the confusion, arrows hummed with the nasty, deep drone of crossbow quarrels.

  Liliane covered her head as the first rock from a siege engine splintered against the Accursed Tower. Shards flew and dust clouded up as the rock's bulk dropped into the yellow earth at the tower's base. A fine ocher haze now hung over the middle line. Coughing, she looked for Alexandre. Philip's command post, had been set up well behind the line, with its lily banners dainty and incongruous above the smoky din. She worked her way to an earthen wall near the post Philip's crested helmet was occasionally visible above the wood-spiked, mobile barricade, but she did not see Alexandre. She might have known that the shelter of a barricade was not for him.

  Although Liliane had heard that Philip was no coward, he seemed to be taking great care not to expose himself. The stories of two Palestine-bent Norman English nobles who had stopped at Castle de Brueil during the past year had shed light on Philip's eagerness to take up the Crusade. According to the nobles, Philip's motives in taking the cross were entirely pragmatic. Philip had once been close friends with Richard and warred with him against his father, Henry. Upon Henry's death, Richard, with an eye" to his back, had strengthened his Angevin strongholds in France and, suspecting Philip of splitting his opposition, had ended their friendship. When Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187, Richard was determined to retake the city, whatever the cost to England. But he was not prepared to leave his Angevin possessions to the quick, ready claws of Philip. To keep Richard from declaring war and securing his claims before beginning the Palestine campaign, Philip took up the cross himself.

  While making her morning purcha
ses, Liliane had also heard a discouraging bit of news from the vendor keeping Kiki. King Richard had not yet arrived at the siege. En route to Palestine, he had decided to conquer Cyprus and make its ruler, Arthur, his heir rather than his brother John, a move Liliane thought was going to cause him a great deal of trouble back home. His absence from Acre would also prolong, if not cripple, the siege.

  In a very short time, Liliane spotted Alexandre's position. His banners flew at center, his tiny force drawing the worst of the defenders' arrows and catapult stones.

  Jacques's force, far more numerous and better equipped than Alexandre's, was on the curved south end,"farthest from the risk of rear attack by Saladin's raiders. Jacques's position was probably as much due to his avoidance of risk as Philip's refusal to trust him at a more crucial point. She grimaced. Philip need not have worried. Jacques's concern for his own skin would incite him to fight like a weasel.

  Liliane took up a strategic position a safe distance to Alexandre's right, between him and Jacques. Her new weapons included not only another crossbow, scimitar and dirk, but a round Saracen shield emblazoned with a Byzantine cross, and a tiny poignant concealed in the snug sleeve at her right wrist. Although her weapons were strong and light for a man, they were weighty for her. The pointed steel helmet and the padded gambeson that she had added to her haik and the used chain mail tabard also added unaccustomed weight.

  She felt clumsy and miserably hot, although the sun was still more than half a span from noon. If not for the haik, perspiration would be streaming into her eyes. The sea looked cool and inviting, and Liliane cursed the pride that brought them all to swelter in the mounting heat. Acre's nearby marshes shimmered with a whir of mosquitoes and a stench of rotting plant life, refuse and a few corpses. The whole battleground was an open wound.

  In 1189, King Guy of Jerusalem had laid-siege to Acre until he had given his word to Saladin that he would desist. So much for chivalrous Christian oaths, Liliane thought wryly; the word given an infidel counted for naught. Guy had wasted no time in seeking an alliance with Richard and Philip. Now his pennants fluttered with the rest. Over the parched earth hovered the reek of death as battered bodies littered the ground. No dogs prowled to scavenge, as all of them had either been eaten by the crusaders or taken by the defenders to be devoured within the city. Even the desert jackals evaded the stretch between the city walls and the ditch.

  This was the corruption Alexandre had endured in Jerusalem, except it must have been much worse confined in a city where food and water were nearly reduced to piles of dust. Liliane had never been able to coax Alexandre to speak much of the siege of Jerusalem; now she saw why. His experience had been unspeakable.

  The sweltering day wore on as the siege engines pounded relentlessly at the wails. Aside from the helmets glinting on the ramparts, little was seen of the enemy. Sporadic crusaders surging up the scaling ladders were thrust away or doused with flaming oil. Having no bone to pick with the Saracens, Liliane fired only enough quarrels from her crossbow to keep from arousing notice and spent most of her time assisting the Knights Templars with the wounded along that section of the line. All the while, she kept alert to the whereabouts of Alexandre in relation to Jacques's men-at-arms. At the moment, she did not think Jacques would send in an assassin from the rear. While there was much confusion and racket, the action was too directed upon the city for an "accident" to excuse an arrow or spear from any other direction. However, that situation did not last.

  As dreamlike as a mirage, a group of horsemen approached the line from the vast gold sweep of the desert. A cloud of sand rising from the hooves of their dainty mares and sunlight glittering from their helmets, breastplates and weapons, the Saracen riders floated unswervingly toward them. The crusaders were being attacked from the rear!

  Liliane's attention darted to Jacques. His fat bulk was stuffed into a hauberk that strained as if it had been twice let out. He wore a boar in gold atop his helmet crest. He looked massively uncomfortable and excited as he waved to Louis and snapped an order she could not hear. Without hesitation, Louis summoned a troop of twenty men-at-arms, and a few minutes later their horses scrambled across the far side of the ditch to encounter the Saracens. The Saracen troop met them with a volley of arrows that took out four riders, then wheeled and headed back into the desert. To the cheers of the watching ranks, Louis's men gave hot pursuit. Then, perhaps a mile and a half from the line, shrieking Saracens boiled over the dunes with eerie whistling cries. Louis's gauntleted fist went up, jerking back in the direction of the line, his men wheeling readily after him. The French destriers were strong and fresh, saving them from the reach of the fleet-footed Saracen mares; however, they were not swift enough to keep stragglers from drawing arrows in their backs. Louis, red-faced with anger and humiliation, led the pack.

  Liliane noticed that Alexandre's attention, like everyone's, was on the chase. Then she saw that a Signe crossbowman was drawing a bead on the breastwork behind Alexandre's back. Her heart in her throat, Liliane swiftly nocked an arrow in her bow. Alexandre turned, redirecting his attention to the siege, just as the bowman fired and her own bow swung up. The bowman's quarrel ripped through Alexandre's breeze-whipped surcoat. He, crouched, his shieldless arm instinctively going up. Liliane's quarrel took the bowman in the neck as he started to aim a second arrow. Paralyzed with fascinated horror, Liliane was unable to take her eyes from the man plucking frantically at the feathered missile, then, dimly seeing Alexandre's head turning toward her, she stumbled away down the embankment.

  The flaw of her light bow was quickly evident when the bowman succeeded in plucking it out. As the quarrel had missed the spine and arteries, he was scarcely harmed. Flinging himself into the melee of besiegers in the trench, he fled back toward the Signe pennants through a rain of arrows from Acre. Praying that Alexandre would follow the assassin, Liliane scrambled toward the maze of tents. As she cleared the line, she heard feet pelting behind her—Alexandre had followed her! She ran into the nearest camp alley, diving into a battered tent. A flurry of shrieks and the clatter of cooking pots scattered a wizened Breton cook and an urchin child. "The infidel!" screamed the old woman. "The infidel is upon us!"

  Ducking a pot leveled at her head, Liliane tore from the rear of the tent and down another alley. A flying lunge from behind caught her at the knees. She fell headlong into the dust. A hard hand dragged her up by the scruff and pitched her into a vacant hovel that stank of rancid grease and jumped with fleas. Before she could scramble up, Alexandre sat astride her hips, his fingers locked about her jaw. "Do you think this is a pigeon shoot? That damned toy bow is going to see you killed!"

  "It stopped your being skewered!" she choked back.

  With a short sound of exasperation, he dropped his punishing grip on her jaw. "My surcoat did as much as your shot. If you had missed him, that bowman would have pinned you like a plaguing moth."

  "I did not miss," she retorted.

  "This time." Shifting his grip to her shoulder, he rolled her over and kissed her firmly. "Dieu, I have wanted to do that for days!" Then, wanting far more than kisses, he swiftly unfastened her sash and threw up her aba.

  Though Liliane's own blood had quickly fired, Alexandre's timing was unnerving. "Alexandre, we must not, not here! What if someone comes . . . those Saracens! What are you . . . you bastard!" Her protests turned to real anger as she realized his real intention of hobbling her knees with the sash.

  Alexandre flipped down the aba and hauled her up. "I must return to the line. You have just enough slack to walk, but not enough to run anywhere, so mind your manners." He prodded her ahead of him out of the tent.

  Liliane would not look at him on the way bade through the line. "You need not sulk," he said dryly. "By now, even you could not pretend you adore Acre."

  "Acre is disgusting," she retorted, "and while you are here, I am staying."

  "I appreciate your loyalty, my love," he replied softly, "but not your impracticality. May I ask where you
slept last night?"

  "In the beach dunes."

  "Where any jackal and Saracen raider might trip over you." He let out a colorful oath.

  "Actually, I was more concerned with being mistaken for an enemy by one of the Christian guards."

  "Our guards?" He laughed shortly. "A conscientious lot, that. More likely, a drunken routier would have wandered out and peed on you." He gave her bottom a less than affectionate pat. "A bit more haste, please. Your cousin Louis should be in a great fluster by now. I would not want to miss it."

  Despite their heated conversation, both had been watching Louis's harried troop spill over the earthwork down the ditch into the camp. Their faces, Louis's in particular, were scarlet as Saracen jibes followed them. The Saracen horsemen reined up just out of bowshot and, jubilantly waving their scimitars and javelins, laughed and hooted insults. From the dunes behind them cavorted half-naked dervishes and perhaps sixty rearguard riders.

  By the time they came in earshot of the rout, the fat had hit the fire. "There are not so many, sire," Louis was protesting to Philip, who had furiously come to deal with the troop sent off without his command. "Let me take a few more riders and go back after the dogs!" His gauntleted hand pulled his roan destrier's head around to turn back.

  "Dismount, sirrah!" snapped Philip, who detested anyone looking down at him. "You have made fool enough of yourself and the rest of us for one day!" When Louis sullenly obeyed, Philip ordered curtly, "Fetch your uncle. Methinks he is due a share of the blame."