Adam felt almost like a hardened sailor when he stepped on to the ship that was to carry him to the farthest end of the Mediterranean. The vast empty expanse of water still frightened him, but the little waves lapping against the stone walls of the quay seemed almost friendly compared to the vicious breakers which had crashed with such force against the coast of England.
He found to his dismay that he was on the second ship, with Lord Robert and five of the knights, their attendant squires and grooms, and fifty of the men-at-arms. Lord Guy and the rest of the knights and fighting men were on the leading ship. He would be separated too from Jennet, who was in a smaller ship following behind with the baggage train. Six other ships were in the convoy, carrying men from different parts of England to the port of Acre on the coast of Palestine.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Jennet said to him bravely, as they stood on the quay ready to embark. ‘There’s all the odds and ends on our ship – us women, and the armourers, and some of the hangers-on. You’re going up in the world, Adam. You’ll be with the knights and squires.’
He’d tried to leave Faithful with her, partly to guard her, and partly to keep him away from the sick dogs, but the young mastiff had seemed to panic when Adam had tried to part from him and had even given Jennet a nasty nip on the hand.
‘You take him. He’s a little monster,’ she said, shaking her hand to relieve the pain and frowning down at Faithful, who was hanging his head with guilty shame. ‘A crazy dog’s all I need.’
They’d been separated then, but as he was lifting the last of the sick lymers into a shady corner of the deck, he’d caught sight of the unwelcome figure of Jacques slipping up the gangway behind Jennet. He shaded his eyes to look properly and saw that the pedlar was making up to her, contorting himself like a cat in an effort to please.
Don’t fall for it, Jenny, he muttered to himself. Keep clear of him.
They were well out at sea by the time night fell, and the sun had not long slipped over the purple horizon when Mirre died. Everyone else on board had gone below to stretch out between the chalk lines that marked their sleeping places on the bare boards, but Adam sat on beside the greyhound as she stiffened in death. He didn’t know what to do.
I ought to tell Lord Robert, he told himself. I can’t just throw her into the sea.
The decision was taken out of his hands by a sailor, who saw Mirre’s dead body, drew in a sharp breath, crossed himself nervously and looked over his shoulder, as if expecting the devil to appear. Then he picked the body up and with one swift movement flung it over the side of the ship. Adam didn’t even hear the splash Mirre made against the swish of water cresting against the bows.
Two lymers died the following day. It was almost a relief when the last of the six died. The sickness had been horrible to see and nothing Adam had done had helped. Now only Ostine and Faithful were left. He kept the mastiff tied up in the bows of the ship as far away from Ostine as possible and visited him there whenever he could.
After two weeks at sea Adam was quite used to the motion of the ship, the creaking of the timbers and the flapping of the great white sail with its huge emblazoned cross. Ostine was the only hunting hound left. To his great relief, the dog showed no sign of illness, and Adam was confident enough to release Faithful from his tether and bring him back to share the corner he had found for Ostine.
I’ll have one dog to show Lord Guy, anyway, when we get there, he told himself.
Now that he had only two animals to care for, and no Jennet to talk to, Adam began, for the first time, to feel more at ease with his fellow travellers. It was impossible to stay aloof from them anyway. At night everyone was crammed together in the stinking, stifling lower deck, and by day they crowded above in the open air, spending their time picking lice out of their clothes, grumbling about the food and trying to clean off the sticky tar which clung to every surface of the ship and made black stains on their hands and clothes.
Three or four of the younger men were particularly friendly, though Adam still felt an outsider in their group, as they cracked jokes he couldn’t understand about their officers, or bragged about the targets they’d hit with their arrows.
Lord Robert and the knights spent their days above in the stern forecastle, the coolest and roomiest part of the ship, with their squires running up and down the narrow stairways to provide them with all they wanted. They would lean on the rail to look down on the lower orders on the open deck below, but seldom went down among them, unless they were on their way to the bowels of the ship below the waterline to look at their horses, who were somehow enduring this long voyage in the frightful heat and filth and darkness of the hold.
A build-up of violet clouds on the western horizon was the first sign of the sudden summer storm that roared down upon the little fleet, sending the ships bobbing about on the waves like peas in a pot of boiling water. Struck with terror, the Crusaders huddled together, calling upon the Virgin and the saints for protection. Adam, convinced that he was about to die, sat for hours with his head buried in the soft folds of Faithful’s neck, while Ostine pressed himself against his back, whining and shivering with fear. With each pitch of the ship, Adam had to brace himself against a bulwark, and once, when a huge green wave curled up and over the ship’s side, he was almost washed overboard. The storm seemed to last for hours and Adam, drenched and terrified, was almost ready to give up and let himself roll right over into the sea. But suddenly, the storm was over as quickly as it had come, leaving the decks slippery with vomit.
‘We made it then! We cheated Old Nick,’ Roger Stepesoft, one of Adam’s new friends, said, stepping over a stinking puddle and slapping Adam heartily on the back.
The others had crossed themselves swiftly at the mention of the devil. Adam gave Roger a wavering smile.
‘Thought I was done for,’ he said. ‘Specially when that big wave came over and sent the barrels flying about.’
Roger shuddered.
‘Me too. Can’t believe we’re alive. A miracle, really, ain’t it? Our Lady’s looking out for us. Must be.’
‘Stands to reason,’ his friend, Treuelove Malter, chimed in. ‘We’d be dead otherwise. All of us.’
Adam nodded. He knew they were right. It could only have been by a miracle that they’d been saved. He felt as if he’d come through a great battle with death itself, and that somehow the life to which he’d been returned stretched ahead full of promise.
It wasn’t until two days after the storm that dreadful news ran round the ship. Most of the convoy, scattered by the winds, had managed to straggle together again, but the ship Jennet was on hadn’t reappeared. Treuelove Malter heard about it from one of the squires and came to tell Roger, who was showing Adam how to splice feathers on to an arrow.
‘Gone to the bottom, I’d bet on it by St Christopher,’ Roger said with gloomy relish. ‘Pity. There was good helmets in them baggage weapons, not to mention spare pikes that we’ll be needing.’
Adam stared at him, filled with dread.
‘What do you mean? What are you saying? The ship’s sunk? You mean everyone on it’s drowned?’
Treuelove softened at the misery in Adam’s face.
‘Could have just been blown off course,’ he said. ‘They’ll end up on some island or other, if there are any in this crazy ocean.’
Roger laid a brotherly hand on Adam’s shoulder.
‘Chances are that your girl’s ship . . .’
‘She’s not my girl!’ Adam burst out. ‘You don’t understand anything! She’s – she’s my family!’
‘. . . that your girl’s ship is just fine,’ Roger swept on. ‘Just bobbing along a bit more slowly than us, that’s all. Now, are you going to come and shoot at seagulls, or what?’
Adam tried to smile.
‘No, thanks. I’ll stay with Faithful. He’s still all on edge, the daft mutt.’
He settled himself against a bulwark, one hand on Faithful’s collar, needing to think. He made himself go through
everything that could possibly have happened to Jennet’s ship, trying to imagine wrecks, survivings, pirates, drownings, rescues, sea monsters and heavenly interventions by angels. All of them seemed equally possible. His thoughts were circling more and more desperately, when to his astonishment he heard someone call out, ‘The dog boy! Fetch the dog boy!’
Adam jumped to his feet. A squire was looking over the rail from the raised deck at the stern of the ship into the crowded open deck below. Adam stood up and pushed his way to the foot of the ladder-like stairway.
‘You mean me?’
The squire, who looked no more than thirteen and was a whole head shorter than Adam, nevertheless managed to stare him down haughtily.
‘If you’re the dog boy, of course I mean you. Lord Robert wants you. Bring the mastiff.’
His pulse quickening, Adam followed the squire up the stairway to the shaded upper deck. Lord Robert was sprawling against a cushion in the centre of a circle of three of the knights. The fourth, Sir Raymond de Pommeroy, was quietly strumming a lute and singing as if to himself, while Sir Ivo de Chastelfort, the oldest of the five knights, was sitting upright on a chest, staring thoughtfully down into a goblet.
‘Behold, the dog boy! I summon him and he appears!’ Lord Robert cried, waving Adam back with a disdainful gesture of his hand. ‘By the rood, how these people stink.’
Adam obediently stepped back, keeping Faithful on as short a leash as he could. He could hear the low growl in the dog’s deep chest and sense his unease.
‘I told you, Ivo, what a fine mastiff I have,’ Lord Robert said, his voice high-pitched and excited. ‘You can’t refuse the wager now.’ His thin fair face was flushed. Although it was still morning, it was clear that he was already half drunk. He clicked his fingers towards Faithful. ‘Here, boy.’
Faithful bared his teeth. Adam stood still, not knowing what to do.
‘What’s the dog’s name?’ Sir Ivo asked Adam. He spoke quietly and slowly, as if to calm the tension which Adam could feel crackling in the air.
‘Fai—’ he began.
‘Cutthroat. His name’s Cutthroat,’ Lord Robert said, taking a deep pull at the tankard a squire had been holding out to him. ‘Now, Ivo. You can’t refuse. Your second destrier for my mastiff. One last toss of the dice to decide it.’
‘A dog for a warhorse, Lord Robert, is hardly—’ Sir Ivo began.
‘Then I’ll throw in the laundry slut!’ Lord Robert looked round at the three recumbent knights who let out dutiful guffaws. ‘If her ship is ever found she shall be yours.’
Rage sent a tremor down through Adam’s hand and along the leash to Faithful’s collar. It upset the mastiff even more and his growls turned to deep snarls.
‘You see?’ Lord Robert said delightedly. ‘You’ll make a fortune from him. He’s full of fight. Look at him. Made to bait bears. Three good matches and you’ll win enough to buy two more destriers at least.’
No, no, not the bear pit! I won’t let them. I’ll set you free to run away. I’ll save you, Faithful, I promise! Adam was telling the dog silently in his head.
Sir Ivo turned to hand his goblet to the squire and Adam saw disgust in his face. Without a word he scooped up the pair of dice lying on the boards of the deck and cast them with a casual hand. Lord Robert leaned forward eagerly.
‘A four and a two. I’ll better that!’ he crowed, and threw the dice himself.
Adam couldn’t see what he had thrown, but Lord Robert, having stared disbelievingly down at the dice for a moment, pushed them aside with a petulant sweep of his hand.
‘Take the dog away, and take yourself off too,’ he muttered, a little too loudly. ‘Your long face is depressing me.’
Sir Ivo got to his feet. A tall man, he towered over the lounging knights.
‘You’ll excuse me in future from such games, Lord Robert,’ he said coldly. ‘I took the cross to fight for our Lord and his mother, not to gamble and wench.’
Lord Robert said nothing, but Adam saw the wounded dignity in his face turn to a scowl.
‘Go away, dog boy,’ he snapped. ‘Tie the dog to the chain there. Get back to the filth where you belong. The dog needs breaking in. I’ll see to it myself before I hand him over.’
Adam, stumbling down the stairway, half blinded by the sun, could not take in this fresh disaster that had befallen him. He walked stiffly across to where he had left Ostine. The greyhound whined in welcome, but Adam barely noticed. Ostine wasn’t Faithful. Faithful had gone. His own dog. His own friend. Like Ma and Jennet, Faithful had been snatched away. Nothing was left to him now. His throat tight with unshed tears, he dropped his head on his knees and clasped them tightly.
He was jerked back to awareness ten minutes later by a cold nose thrust into his face and a long tongue licking his chin.
‘Faithful!’ he said, starting up. ‘No, no, you have to go back! They’ll beat you senseless! Go back, Faithful!’
‘So that’s his name, is it? Faithful?’
Adam looked up. His jaw dropped at the sight of Sir Ivo standing in front of him, and he scrambled to his feet.
‘Yes, it’s Faithful, sir, at least that’s what I call him. And he isn’t a fighter. He wouldn’t do anything to bears. He looks fierce, but he isn’t. Soft-hearted, he is, useless for anything except guarding. You could use him to guard your tent, sir.’
He stopped, aware that he was babbling.
‘I’m not sure that you’re right about the fighting bit,’ Sir Ivo said with a half-smile, backing away from Faithful who, having finished his rapturous reunion with Adam, had turned to snarl at him again. ‘Since you left the upper deck not more than ten minutes ago this dog has wrenched his chain out of the bulwark, bitten two squires and knocked over at least one flagon of wine.’
‘Yes, but that’s only because he’s – he’s still a puppy, sir. He’s not used to other people yet. But if he saw a bear he’d run a mile, I know he would.’
‘Then it’ll have to be guard duties after all,’ Sir Ivo said with a sigh. ‘There is one problem still to be solved, however.’
‘What’s that, sir?’ Adam said cautiously.
‘He clearly refuses to be separated from you, and since I hear that all except one of Lord Guy’s hunting dogs have died, you’re likely to be underemployed. I shall have to take you on as my – my what shall we call you now? Ah yes. My dog’s boy. It’s clearly to Faithful that you belong. He’ll have to stay with you, of course, and you’ll continue to care for Ostine.’
A grin spread across Adam’s face.
‘What about Lord Robert, sir?’ he asked daringly.
‘Not your concern,’ Sir Ivo said with a disapproving frown. ‘It so happens that I need another servant in my little household. My groom took sick in Marseilles and I had to leave him there. If you’re half as good with horses as you are with dogs, you’ll do. Now stop your dog – or rather, my dog – from looking at me in that hungry way. He’s obviously planning to take a piece out of my leg.’
It was a fine morning in late October when a long falling cry came from the crow’s nest, halfway up the mast of the leading ship.
‘A-a-a-cre!’
Everyone on board rushed to the ship’s side to look.
Adam, desperate to see, shinned up a piece of rigging to get a better view. Acre was still only a grey smudge, miles away, but the coast was quite near.
That must be the Holy Land, he thought. Right there.
The rocks, beaches, low hills, grass and trees looked strangely ordinary, and yet, Adam felt sure, a kind of light shimmered across the shore. He shivered, half with excitement, half with fear. He almost expected Christ himself to come walking towards him on the water, and to hear choirs of heavenly angels singing. On those very rocks, those ones, not half a mile away, the Virgin herself might be standing, her arms held out in love and welcome, strands of her black hair escaping from her blue cloak and floating freely round her face.
He took a firmer grip on the ropes and sho
ok the foolish thoughts away. Of course Mary and her son could not appear to him. They’d been imprisoned by the evil Saladin. They were chained, weeping, waiting for rescue. Instead of Christ and his Mother on the shore there were enemy infidels prowling, day and night, their eyes flashing fire, their fangs dripping with blood. They had tails, so someone had said, like monkeys. And they ate Christian children. Or was that the Jews? He couldn’t quite remember.
Little by little, in the distance, the city of Acre was growing as the ship approached. The high walls and massive fortifications looked so daunting that the watchers on the decks fell silent. A ragged cheer went up as the banners of the besieging Crusaders came into view along the shore, but it died away as they saw the vast Saracen camp on the hillside above, poised like a hawk above its prey. Murmured prayers could be heard over the swish of water against the ship’s prow, and the sign of the cross was made on every chest.
The sun was setting when the convoy of ships dropped anchor at last in the shallows. The doors in the hull swung open and, not waiting for a gangplank to take them to the beach, the eager men jumped into the water and waded ashore. Adam, with Faithful and Ostine on tight leashes, was one of the first to set foot on firm ground. As soon as he was out of the water he sank down to his knees and kissed the sand, picking up handfuls of it and holding it reverently in his two hands. He sensed, rather than saw, that others all around him were doing the same. Then, feeling the excited dogs tug eagerly at their leashes, he jumped up and let them run, dashing wildly after them, hardly able to believe that he had survived the long journey and the perils of the sea and had landed in the very country whose soil Christ had once trod.
A year and a half later . . .
It was springtime again at last, and nineteen long months had passed since Salim had been bundled so suddenly away from home and had unwillingly walked out of Acre behind the doctor. He had grown a full ten centimetres since then, his voice had deepened and he had acquired broader shoulders and a fine rim of dark hair along his upper lip. It seemed to him sometimes as if he’d been in the Saracen camp forever, and his life at home was a dream from long ago.
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