The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  King Peter was never greater than that hour. Tall and slim even in harness, he seemed fired by the same energy that animated Father Pierre, who stood by his side. ‘Now is the time to take the city, my lords,’ the king insisted. ‘Advise me.’

  Percival de Coulanges, the same who had called Sabraham and me liars, stepped forward without hesitation. ‘I know the right gate to attack. This one is too obvious because it is close to our camp. Let’s take ladder and try the Bab al-Diwan. The customs house gate.’

  The king had a heavy gold link-belt on his hips, and his hands rested on it. ‘My lord, you are a good and loyal vassal,’ he said. ‘But your advice on the Old Harbour left something to be desired, and we all almost bleached our bones on your beach.’ He laughed. ‘Are you sure?’

  Percival shook his head. ‘No, my lord,’ he admitted. ‘But when I was a slave here, the Lord of the Customs cast the army forth and said that his gate was his alone, and only his own men could be there. He was such a corrupt bastard that he couldn’t have the Sultan’s men watching him.’

  Fra Robert Hales laughed aloud. ‘I’m glad the Saracens suffer from all the same sins as we,’ he said.

  Raymond Bérenger, the new Master of the Order, nodded. ‘Let us have a go at this gate.’

  Father Pierre sighed. ‘I mislike the – the fractures. Many of our men are wandering like sheep without shepherds.’

  ‘Like wolves without older wolves,’ muttered Fra William Midleton.

  The Count of Turenne, the greatest nobleman present, had fought brilliantly the day before. Now he shook his head. ‘My lords, we have won a great battle and surely shown these Saracen dogs our worth. Should we not withdraw?’

  Up until that moment, no one had suggested withdrawal.

  The king looked up at his banner. ‘My lord, for myself, I go to Jerusalem.’

  Turenne nodded. ‘As you say, your Grace.’ He was not sincere.

  Percival de Coulanges had been utterly wrong about the Old Harbour and the landing, but he had the Customs Gate dead to rights. We rode widdershins round the city until we came to the point where the pillars of Pompey could most clearly be seen, and there was a small gate and an empty market in front of it. Yet behind the gate were two immense towers and a set of walls.

  I have said that the king was not in command of our ‘army,’ but many of the wolves followed us when we moved. The Scots came with us, and some of the French under Turenne and others with de la Voulte. The king had the Order and the legate had all the English under Lord Grey. And hundreds of Venetian sailors and oarsmen came with us, scenting something.

  The king made an excellent plan. He brought up two small scorpions and men who could use them from the Casteleto, and flammables – pitch and naphtha taken at the Pharos. That was, I think, the first time I saw the black powder that men use in cannons. We had had it with the king’s army in the year of Black April, but while I had smelled its hellish scent I had never used it. But the king ordered the captured powder brought forward, and while Cypriote pioneers and Venetian oarsmen wrestled with the barrels and the machines, the king gave us orders.

  ‘The Scots and the English will assault the gate,’ he said. ‘The mounted men will make two bodies, one with me, and one with the Grand Master. We will keep any Saracens from taking the assault to the flanks.’ He looked back and forth among us. ‘If we get the gate open, then summon the army. But in that case, all the mounted men – on me. We will fight our way through the city to the bridge at the Cairo Gate.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, Sir William! So you will help get us there.’ He watched the gate for as long as it takes to say a Paternoster. ‘And we will use the powder to knock the bridge down. I have seen this done. Eh?’

  I had my doubts. I had seen the bridge, and it was big and broad and beautifully built. But dark was an hour or two away and the light was failing. And I didn’t imagine we’d win through, anyway.

  But God, as Father Pierre likes to say, moves in mysterious ways. Sir Walter, determined to avenge the death of his brother, and supported by a dozen Scottish knights, with some wild Irish among them for good measure, assaulted the gate. They were brave, and for some time, while they tried to kindle fire against the wooden doors of the outer sally port, we thought that the gate might be un-garrisoned. But after about ten minutes, there was a sally from the next gate, and we charged them. They were no match for our armour or our horses, and they ran. I began to wonder if the garrison was already having problems of spirit – it seemed to me that only their leader had shown any courage, and he was lying face down in the sand, dead by the hand of King Peter.

  When we got back to the gate, the towers above it were manned, and arrows and javelins rained on our Scottish knights. Sir Walter was wounded, and so was Lord St Clair, and one of the Irish knights took a blow to the helmet that knocked him unconscious. But the other men stayed at their task.

  By that time we had quite a crowd of sailors and routiers about us, and they were prowling the walls. A few were killed – the garrison of the customs house leaned right out over the wall to shoot them. But they had no hoardings, and so the Italian arbalest men and the handful of English and Scottish bowmen began to pick them off.

  John asked my permission to join the archers and I sent him off with my blessing. The loot of the battlefield the day before had yielded him not one but three Mamluk bows, a fine sabre with verses of the Koran in gold on the blade, and a hundred arrows. He was as eager to employ them as a new-dubbed knight is to wear his armour.

  I can’t imagine that there were more than a dozen archers, all told, but they swept the walls. One of the differences I noted between the crossbow and the self bow is that John and the English archers had to draw and loose as a target was revealed, but the Italians could watch a particular crenellation, weapon aimed, waiting for the unlucky Saracen to expose himself.

  Nonetheless, John scored the spectacular success of the afternoon, hitting an officer as he passed between merlons so that he fell with his head over the battlements. After that, the Saracens dared not show themselves, and again I thought they showed a want of spirit. They could have flooded the walls with archers and buried our men in shafts, and instead they allowed a dozen men to clear their walls.

  One of the Italians, a veteran of fifty actions, I’ll wager you, moved forward. He had a light crossbow, the sort lords use for hunting-still a puissant weapon. He moved forward with the crossbow sweeping the walls, and moved all the way to the base of the wall. From there he moved to the gateway, from where he covered the knights, shooting his bolts almost straight up. Two more of the Italians joined him.

  The three Englishman and one Scot of Ettrick – all brilliant archers – grew bored at the paucity of targets and they joined the sailors at the base of the wall. One of the Englishmen found the outlet of a jakes, a shithole so old that it was merely a mound of greenery. He was up on his mate’s shoulders in a moment and I saw this.

  He was too broad to make it in,

  I looked at Fra Peter; he gave me a nod and I rode down to the archers and sailors.

  The archer wrinkled his nose. ‘Old shit, my lord.’ He grinned. ‘I been and used a few shitholes and your pardon in France, if you take my meaning.’

  I laughed. ‘I used an apple tree once,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I know, me lord. I won there. Afore Poitiers, where we took King John.’

  I dismounted and clasped his hand, old shit and all.

  ‘Ned Cooper,’ he said. ‘I was with the Prince at Poitiers. These criminals is Ewen, a barbarous fuckin’ Scot, and Rob Stone.’ He spoke slowly, and blinked a great deal, and I think he’d been hit a little too often in the head. Which is an odd thing for me to say, I admit, having received a few blows myself.

  ‘Which the thing is,’ Ned went on as if we were old comrades … and I suppose we were. He certainly knew me.
‘Which the thing is, that a small man, a really small man or a boy, would go through that hole as slick as …’ He looked around, and came to the unavoidable conclusion, ‘shit.’

  Ewen, the Scot, and obviously not a candidate, shook his head. ‘I ’ate the smell,’ he said.

  Rob Stone stretched his arms. ‘I’d rather roll in the stuff than go up a ladder,’ he said. ‘Methinks I’m too big in the arse, but I’ll have a go.’

  But even as he tried – and failed – John the Turk appeared. He watched Stone struggle to get his shoulders through the hole and frowned. He walked away and I thought that was the end of it.

  By this time the entire garrison of the customs house was in the towers, safe from our archery, lobbing red-hot sand and boiling tar and naphtha and all the weapons of hell on Sir William Leslie and his people.

  The Scots were not getting in the gate. The two highlanders were hacking at the wooden door with axes, but it had been built for such attempts, although perhaps not from two northern giants.

  John the Turk came back with a small boy perched on his saddle.

  Ned Cooper nodded. ‘Now you’re thinkin’, mate. Now you’re usin’ yer noggin. Let the boy ha’ a go.’ He turned and pulled Stone’s ankle. ‘Get thy fat arse out there, Rob Stone.’

  Stone grunted, sneezed, and dropped heavily to the ground. ‘Too bloody big,’ he said.

  John showed the boy two gold ducats and the boy grabbed one, grinned, and stripped naked. John ran, flat footed and ungainly when off his horse, to the Italians. One of the bowmen had a grapple and rope, and John took it. The sailors came trotting back with my Tartar, and they looked up at the hole and did what soldiers do in such situations – they began wagering.

  The boy stared at the rope, and John tied an end to the boy’s ankle. Ewen the Scot boosted the naked boy as if he was weightless and he vanished into the hole like a sword going into a scabbard.

  And the line started to flow up the wall.

  One of the Venetian sailors was a very small man. He stripped to his hose and hung his dagger round his neck and went up the rope. He got a shoulder through, there was a streak of curses and blasphemy utterly unbecoming a crusader, and a chunk of ordure-encrusted masonry fell, and he was in.

  And then … nothing.

  The Scots finally had the sally port alight. The axes of the two highlanders had gouged the surface enough for the fire to take hold, or so it appeared, and I rode back to the king.

  He was eating a sausage. He looked at the sun, two fingers above the horizon, and back at the inferno the Scots had made. They had piled every scrap of wood they could find against the gate, and added some hellish stuff from the Pharos Castle. It burned fast.

  By my estimation, the enemy had had the time to build a defensive ditch and rampart behind the sally port. If we were unlucky, they had a blank wall and false turn to trap a dozen men and drop naphtha on them.

  I would have.

  But the Mamluks were just men, neither better nor worse than ourselves.

  ‘It is now or never,’ the king said, finishing his sausage. He looked at Fra Peter. ‘You heard Sabraham’s report.’

  Fra Peter nodded. He glanced at me. ‘Sir William hasn’t heard. The Sultan in Cairo is marching an army to the relief of his city. Probably here tomorrow. It marched before we came off our ships.’

  I whistled.

  The king smiled at de Mézzières. ‘You know, gentlemen, this was never my choice. But now we are here, I think we should try and make our mark. Let us do something worthy, that our names may live forever.’

  De Mézzières nodded. ‘I am with you, your Grace.’

  The king dismounted.

  To the Grand Master, he said, ‘Give me the volunteers – they are the younger knights. If I have you and the Order at my back and a horse, I will fear no sally.’

  The Grand Master nodded. ‘You are determined to assay this, your Grace?’

  ‘I will take this gate or die in the attempt,’ King Peter said gravely. Then he called forth his squire and knighted him.

  The fire was burning down and the gate was a blackened tunnel.

  ‘One rush, my lords. No one hesitates, and the first man in the city will deserve something precious of me.’ He reached out to de Mézzières and took the great banner of Jerusalem.

  We dismounted and went forward at a trot. You can run in full harness, but we had been on shipboard for a week and we were not at the height of our conditioning. I hurt in a hundred places, and my breastplate rubbed the top of my hipbones because Marc-Antonio was wounded and John didn’t know what holes to use on the straps. My arms ached from fighting the day before and I had a wound that was fevered.

  I was in fine shape compared to some of the volunteers. Juan was pale under his dark skin and Nerio had circles under his eyes.

  Fiore burned with puissance. And so did Miles Stapleton: just knighted, he was ready to take the city on his own.

  We jogged forward.

  Seeing us, the Saracens launched a barrage of arrows and darts. Our Italians shot back, trying to angle their bolts into the slits in the towers. I can’t tell you whether they succeeded or not because my visor was closed and I was breathing the hot air of Egypt in my stifling faceplate.

  We had about four hundred paces to cross. Halfway there I saw the Scots coming in from the side – they’d been huddled under the wall with the archers and the sailors and they were angry at their wounds and their dead.

  I passed the king. In a storm, it is every man for himself, and I was lengthening my stride as I took hits. A heavy spear stuck in the sand in front of me.

  My breath came in gasps, and I hadn’t fought anyone.

  Nerio appeared at my shoulder and Miles began to pass me.

  I was hit again.

  And then I ran into the wall of heat. Even inside my visor, I could not breathe that air. It was appalling. I thought my eyes would burn and I was in armour. I tripped over a fallen beam and stumbled; my shoulder hit a wall and I bounced, shoulder burning. I caught myself left-handed and the stone burned the heavy deerskin off the palm of my hand.

  Sweet Christ, it was hell! The tunnel behind the burned door had caught fire – something had been stored there, perhaps. But the stone was hot, and part of the passage was still burning. It occurred to me that this was the stupidest thing I had ever done.

  I got past the fire. The heat had finally got through my heavy fighting shoes to my feet and then I was in the sun. There were men there, but only twenty or thirty. Not a hundred or a thousand.

  I’m not sure I actually thought anything, then.

  I had the Emperor’s longsword in my hand, and I used it.

  I suppose this is the moment to tell you of my epic duel with the Captain of the tower, my longsword against his spear – and oh, my friends, I’d love to tell you such a tale. But I remember little of it, and mostly they were unarmoured, desperate men. Let no man ever tell me they were cowards. Those men, Alexandrines and not Mamluks at all, hurled themselves at me the way we had thrown ourselves at de Charny.

  Why were there not more of them? Where were the armoured men? The engineers? The burning oil?

  I knew none of these things, and neither did the terrified men facing me.

  I know that I spared no one. I know that I used every weapon and every limb. My sword stabbed and cut, and I used my arms and legs, my elbows, my knees, the pointed steel tips of my sabatons.

  I would say that I was alone against them for an hour, save that Fiore has sworn to me that he was never more than three steps behind me in the tunnel.

  That’s how it is, sometimes.

  But then I knew when Fiore was next to me, because the pressure eased suddenly. Ever play with a child, and she sits on your chest? And then she rolls off … It was like that. And then there was even less pressure as Miles thrust forward, and
then Nerio, and then Juan, and we were pushing forward, step after step.

  Juan died there. He’d taken a wound the day before, and worse, been knocked unconscious, and he was slow and pale, as I’ve said. He got a spear under his aventail and down he went. Fiore stood over him, and his sword flew and he killed men the way a housewife kills flies.

  And then the king was with us, the banner of Jerusalem charred in his fist, and de Mézzières and de Coulanges and a dozen other of the king’s knights, and we burst out of the gate house and into a courtyard. I realised we were between the walls and had it all to do again, but … the far gate was open and there were no more than forty Saracens between us and the city and not a Mamluk in sight.

  There was no time to mourn Juan. I knew he was dead – I’d seen the spear and the sheer amount of blood.

  The Saracens charged us, trying to put the djinn back in the bottle as they might say themselves. And there was a flurry of archery from the inner towers and we were like rats in a trap, surrounded by towers full of enemy archers.

  But the far gate was open and Alexandria, the richest, biggest city in the world, beckoned.

  I suppose I killed my share, but I only remember the late afternoon sun slanting down on the street beyond the gate. That site filled my visor.

  Something was happening beyond my helmet. It took me time, perhaps three exhausted, desperate blows with my longsword, before I realised that the enemy archery had stopped. Had I looked up, I would have seen the cross of St George, the banner of England, flying from the outer towers of the Customs Gate.

  The boy and the thin Italian had got a line over the wall, and the Venetians and the English had taken the towers even as we cleared the yard and occupied the attention of the defenders. John said that they cleared the first tower by running in an open door and all the garrison were shooting down at us, their backs to the door, and John and Ewen stood in the doorway and killed them with arrows.

  About that time, the last men in the yard threw down their scimitars and their spears. And died. We gave no quarter. Chaucer, you have been in a storm. There is no quarter. Sir Walter Leslie killed the kneeling men.