Holy Warrior

by Angus Donald

  ‘She would not tell me who inflicted those grievous wounds but I got the impression it was some of our knights - have you offended anyone recently? She had been raped, too, very brutally - our brother-physicians had to sew up her nether regions.’ He was entirely matter of fact about this most intimate of operations. ‘But there is nothing seriously wrong with her, Alan. She is a healthy girl and her injuries are mainly to her vanity. She should recover in time, with God’s mercy - and your loving care, of course.’

  What the Hospitaller said was no doubt true. But for one who had been so beautiful, what sort of life would she have as a freak: a hideous curiosity that would have children running from her in terror? And what about me? I had sworn that I would always love her: could I love her so brutally stripped as she was of her beauty? I didn’t want to think about it.

  I felt a white-hot wave of fury for Malbête; for I was certain it was he, or his minions, who had mutilated her. I could hear his words in my head: ‘It seems you have cut up another one of my people, singing boy. I think perhaps I shall now cut up one of yours.’ In that moment, I’m ashamed to say that I felt self-pity, too. He had taken away the one truly beautiful thing in my life, and perverted her into a monstrosity. And I felt guilt, too. Most of all guilt. If I had not tried to kill Malbête in that cack-handed fashion, she would not have been harmed.

  More guilt, too, for in my secret heart, I knew I could never truly love Nur looking as she now did.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I awoke the next morning clear-headed but weak - knowing exactly what I must do. It would be humiliating, but I must go to Robin and beg his forgiveness. Without his help and protection I would have no chance of taking the fight to Malbête and revenging the awful hurt done to my poor girl.

  There was no sign of Nur in the women’s quarters, and Elise told me that she had taken all of her belongings and left at some time during the night. Will Scarlet was with his wife when I spoke to her and they both seemed pleased to see me much recovered from my fever. However, I was shamefully relieved that Nur had fled. I had no idea what I would have said to her. I had promised to love her always, and to protect her, but I knew what the truth was: I could do neither. She was gone, and to be honest, a part of me was glad. Another part of me ached for the beautiful girl who had shared my bed these past few months; the first girl who ever truly owned a piece of my soul.

  Elise knew the secrets of my heart, I don’t know how. Perhaps it was just ordinary women’s insight, maybe her special gift. ‘I grieve for your love, Alan,’ she said. ‘It entered by the eyes, as I said it would, and I see that it has flown the same way. But do not blame yourself, such is the fickle way of men; you cannot love truly, the way a woman loves, with the whole of your heart. But that is how God, in his great wisdom, has made you.’

  I presented myself to Robin in his harbour-side palace, and went down on one knee before him. I had prepared my speech as I walked there, but when I delivered it to him, I realised that it was not half as eloquent as I had hoped, and not a quarter as sincere. I finished by begging his pardon for the things I had said during the attack on the camel train, and saying that if I had not been out of my head with fever I would never have said them.

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ said Robin coolly. ‘I think that fever or no, you meant every word you said. I think that you want me to help you to kill Sir Richard Malbête, and that is why you are here, on your knees, abjectly begging my pardon. But no matter. We shall call it the fever speaking, if you wish. But I tell you now that if you ever speak to me like that again - fevered or well - I shall have you roasted to death for your insolence. Now go and begin gathering your things; we leave tomorrow. This Great Pilgrimage’ - there was a hint of a sneer in his voice - ‘is taking the road to Jerusalem.’

  I turned to go, but he stopped me, and said in a different, quieter voice: ‘Alan, I am truly sorry about what happened to Nur.’ I said nothing for I could feel tears forming behind my eyelids, a knot in my throat. ‘If there is anything I can do ...’ he said and tailed off.

  Then Robin sighed and said: ‘Alan, you said a while back that you thought you knew who it was that was trying to kill me. Of your goodness, tell me his name.’

  I turned back and looked at my master. His silver eyes were boring into mine, willing me to reveal what I knew. I shrugged and wiped my wet face: ‘I thought it was Will Scarlet, with help from Elise, who is now his wife,’ I said, looking at the floor and sniffing loudly.

  Robin considered for a while, tapping his chin with a finger. ‘Yes, I can see it,’ he said at last. ‘He resented being punished and demoted, although he deserved it. I humiliated him in front of his men, which was perhaps a mistake. And he has always had open access to my apartments. She loves him, and knows the countryside, the ways of serpents and poisonous plants. Yes, I can see them as my murderers.’

  ‘But it is neither Will nor Elise,’ I said flatly. Robin stared at me, his eyes glittering dangerously. ‘Do not make sport with me, Alan. I warn you.’

  ‘It cannot be Will or Elise because they were being married at noon on the day after we took Acre, the day that someone showered broken masonry around your head. I asked Elise for the exact day and time of her wedding, and I checked the truth of it with Father Simon, who performed the service. They were in the porch of a church in the southern part of Acre at the time you were attacked, with a dozen witnesses. It cannot be them.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Robin, disappointed. ‘But you will continue to make enquiries?’ I nodded. ‘If you give me the name of the guilty man, you will have my complete and utter forgiveness for your intemperate words the other day, and I will help you to destroy Malbête as swiftly as you like,’ he said. It was a good bargain and, as we clasped hands to seal the deal, I was surprised to find that I still felt some warmth towards the man, greedy, Godless, murdering monster that I now knew him to be.

  The army assembled the next day on the plain outside Acre where, two days before, Malbête and his men had taken so many innocent lives. Great barrels of sand had been brought up from the sea shore and spread over the worst of the blood, but the stink of slaughter hung in the air like a curse.

  Earlier that morning, I had been pleased to run into Ambroise, my tubby trouvère friend, as I was hauling my gear to the stables. After an exchange of pleasantries, I asked him what had driven King Richard to make that awful decision to kill all the Saracen prisoners; I was still shocked by my sovereign’s actions, and I admit my faith in him as the noblest Christian knight of all had been shaken.

  ‘It wasn’t a pretty affair, I know,’ said Ambroise, ‘but it was necessary. Quite apart from revenge for all the Christian blood spilled by these people during the siege, all those crossbow bolts fired from the walls into our camp, what was Richard supposed to do with them?’

  ‘He could have waited until the ransom was paid,’ I said, ‘and then released them. Saladin has the reputation of a gentleman, a man of his word; he would surely have paid up given enough time. Wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, Alan, you are naïve sometimes. Yes, they say Saladin is a gentlemen, but he is also a soldier, a great general. While Richard held those captives, our King could not move from Acre. And Saladin knew that, which is why he delayed the payment for as long as he could. Richard was, in effect, pinned down here by the prisoners. He could not afford to let them go; they would merely swell the enemy ranks; he couldn’t take them with him on the road south to Jerusalem - think of the men required to guard nearly three thousand people on a long dusty march, and feeding and watering them would be an expensive problem, too. No, he couldn’t let them go, and he couldn’t take them with him. He waited for Saladin to redeem them, but when it became clear that the Saracen lord would not pay up - or part with the piece of True Cross - Richard had no choice but to do what he did.’

  I shook my head. I was sure that there must have been another way.

  ‘There is one more point to make in this bloody affair,’ said Amb
roise, ‘no less important. We have captured Acre, but that isn’t the last fortress we have to take on the road to the Holy City, not by a long chalk: there’s Caesarea, Jaffa, Ascalon ... and many more before we take Jerusalem. And all those cities are watching very closely how Richard behaves here at Acre. And what have they learnt? That Richard follows the rules of warfare: he will accept surrenders, and spare the inhabitants of cities, as long as the bargain made for their surrender is kept. But he will have no qualms about slaughtering anyone who stands in his way or who breaks a bargain with him. Those cities have seen what Richard will do, if necessary, and I’ll wager his actions here at Acre will make the taking of them a whole lot easier.’

  I shuddered slightly, as if a goose had stepped on my grave. King Richard’s attitude seemed to me to be uncannily similar to Robin’s ruthless approach to life and death.

  Later that morning, mustered with Robin’s cavalry and awaiting orders, I looked down at the brownish, clotted sand as it crunched under my boots, and wondered if all that blood really would make the battles for other cities easier for our men. It seemed unlikely to me: surely if I were defending a city and I knew I was likely to be executed by Richard if I surrendered, I would fight all the harder to defend my walls. But what did I know?

  The King had ordered the army into three great divisions, each roughly containing five or six thousand men, for the march south. In the lead division were the King’s chosen men, among them Sir Richard Malbête, the knights Templar and Hospitaller, along with the Bretons, the men of Anjou and the Poitevins; in the second division were the English and Norman contingents, who guarded King Richard’s personal Dragon Banner, and the Flemings under James of Avesnes; and in the third division came the French and Italians, led by Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, the most senior French noble in the Holy Land. We were to hug the coast, with our fleet shadowing us on the march, the great ships which would haul the heavy equipment and supply us with provisions along the way. Thus, with our right flank guarded by the fleet, we only needed to worry about the left.

  Before we set off, Robin called all his lieutenants and captains together to give us our orders. ‘We are heading for Jaffa, which is eighty miles from here and the closest port to Jerusalem,’ said Robin when his senior men were gathered around him in a loose circle. ‘It will not be an easy march. We must take Jaffa if we wish to take Jerusalem, and Saladin, of course, aims to stop us.’ He looked around the circle to make sure everyone was paying attention.

  ‘Our position is to the rear of the central division; cavalry will form up in the centre with a screen of infantry, bowmen and spearmen, on the left and right of the horsemen. We stay together, we all march together, I can’t emphasise that enough. Any stragglers are likely to be cut up by Saladin’s cavalry. So, if you want to live, don’t get left behind, is that clear? The infantry’s job is to protect the cavalry. At some point during this march we will face Saladin’s main army and in order to beat him we must keep our heavy cavalry intact. So I say again: the bowmen and the spearmen are to act as a screen against their light cavalry, and their job is to protect our heavy cavalry at all costs. Sir James de Brus has more experience of our enemy, so I think it would be helpful to hear his views. Sir James...’

  The Scotsman scowled and cleared his throat. ‘According to the few reports we have, Saladin fields some twenty to thirty thousand men, mostly light cavalry, but he also has two thousand fine Nubian swordsmen from Egypt, and a few thousand superior Berber cavalry - lancers, for the most part. In numbers alone, his force over-matches ours but his main arm, the Turkish light cavalry, is weaker, man to man, than our own horsemen. They are fast, much faster than our destriers, but only lightly armoured, and they use a short bow that can be shot from the back of a horse; secondary weapons are the curved sword or scimitar, the light lance and the mace. One on one, our knights will always beat their horsemen, but that’s not how they fight. They don’t stand and slug it out against single enemies.’

  Someone muttered: ‘Cowardly scoundrels,’ and Sir James stopped and glowered round the circle of hard men. ‘These men are no cowards,’ he said. ‘Their tactic,’ and he gave special weight to the word, ‘is to ride in close to the enemy, loose their arrows, kill as many as they can, and ride away again before they can be challenged. That way their enemy gets hurt but they don’t. It is not cowardice, just good, plain common sense. But they have another tactic too, when facing Christian knights, which is to harass the enemy with their arrows, and try to provoke a charge. When our knights attack, the Turks disperse in all directions, and the heavy charge suddenly finds itself with no target. It’s like a big man trying to punch a swarm of wasps. Our knights become separated from each other, the force of the charge has been dissipated and the individual knights, scattered all over the field, can then be surrounded and slain by a dozen lighter, faster cavalrymen.’

  Robin took over the briefing once again: ‘So we do not charge them. Our cavalry does not charge until we can be sure of landing a heavy blow on their main force and smashing it. And when they attack us, the infantry must soak up the punishment. The archers, of course, will take our revenge at a distance; but the spearmen must stand firm and take what they have to give us.’ Here Robin gave a wintry smile. ‘It is not all bad news for the footmen,’ he went on, ‘they will be divided into two companies, each taking a turn to defend the cavalry for one day on the left flank, the flank nearest the enemy; on the second day they will march between the cavalry and the sea, on the right, and enjoy a delightful stroll with hardly any danger at all. Anyone lucky enough to be wounded gets to ride in one of our nice comfortable ships.’ The men laughed, more as a release of tension than because the jest was a particularly good one.

  ‘Is everybody clear?’ said Robin. ‘If so ...’

  ‘What if we are directly attacked? Surely we can charge then,’ asked a dim-witted cavalry veteran named Mick.

  Robin sighed: ‘They will feint at you often, but your job as a horseman is simply to march, march, march southward to Jaffa; try to understand this, Mick. The enemy wants you to charge him because he is faster than you and so you cannot catch him, and it will break up our formations. Once our cohesion is broken, and the men are scattered, the enemy has us at his mercy. So what will we do, Mick?’

  ‘Ah, oh, I suppose we should march, march, march all the way to Jaffa,’ said Mick, slightly embarrassed. There was more laughter, in which I was glad to see Mick joined.

  ‘Good man,’ said Robin.

  It was truly a wondrous sight: like a gigantic glittering snake, nearly a mile long, the Christian army set out from Acre, pennants flying, clarions crying, the hot sun reflecting shards of light from thousands of mail coats, shields, buckles and spear points. We left behind a strong garrison; most of the young women we had accumulated in our travels, including Richard’s new bride Queen Berengaria and his sister Queen Joanna, and two or three thousand or so sick and wounded. I wondered what had become of Nur, whether I would ever see her again - whether I wanted to - and then pushed that thought away: this was not a time for self-pity.

  King Richard, splendid in his finest gilt-chased armour, a golden crown on the brow of his steel conical helmet, rode up and down the line all that first day with a company of knights, exhorting the commanders to keep their companies close together and not allow any to lag behind. He seemed to be brimming with energy, now that we were finally setting off towards our destination, and his strong voice could be heard in snatches up and down the column, over the immense tumult of nearly eighteen thousand men on the move.

  We marched in the rear part of the second division, myself riding Ghost at a walk in a double column with eighty-two surviving mounted men-at-arms, led by Robin and Sir James de Brus. Like all the other troopers, I carried shield and lance, and wore an open-face helmet, knee-length hauberk and felt under-tunic beneath the mail, despite the blistering heat. We were plagued by huge clouds of flies that buzzed and crawled over our faces, drinking the sweat and as we wer
e for ever slapping and brushing at them, we must have looked like and army of lunatics, twitching and flapping and sweating as we ambled along in the harsh morning sunshine.

  To my left walked Little John’s company, a mixture of archers and spearmen. To my right, past the other line of cavalry troopers, marched Owain’s men on the seaward side. We had one hundred and sixty one archers fit for duty and eighty-five spearmen - I knew this because Robin had asked me to make an accurate tally before we left. Some of our men had died en route to Outremer, some perished in the siege, and some were sick with fever and had to be left at Acre, but ours was still a formidable force. The archers and spearmen had been divided between two companies: one commanded by Owain, and the other by Little John. If attacked, the spearmen were to form a shield wall and stand firm, and behind them the archers were to shoot down the foe. We cavalrymen were not to take any offensive action, unless absolutely necessary: as Robin had hammered home to us, our job was to march, march, march - and stay together.

  Behind us came a small force of belligerent Flemings, and then the French knights of the third division. They were the rearguard, and also had charge of protecting the baggage train: forty lumbering ox-carts, several strings of pack horses, and three dozen mules. Most of the baggage was on board the galleys of the fleet, which could just be seen, keeping pace with us out on the calm blue water to our left, wet oars dipping and flashing like freshly caught mackerel in the sunlight.

  By mid-morning it was already evident that the column had problems. The gap between our second division and the Frenchmen of the third seemed to grow larger with every step. And we were reluctant to slow our march because it would mean losing touch with the Norman knights in front of us. So we stuck rigidly to our pace and the space between our company and the French grew wider. At one point, King Richard came thundering past with a tail of sweating household knights, and I could hear him shouting angrily at the French commander, Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, telling him in no uncertain terms to keep up. I could not hear the Duke’s reply, but the harangue seemed to have no effect at all, as the hole in the marching column continued to grow. At noon, having covered no more than five miles, we stopped for a meal and a much-needed drink of lukewarm water from our skins. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the enemy scouts.