The Fools’ Crusade

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  After the dead men, the sickness caught hold in earnest. We were still being supplied from Damietta, and boats would appear unpredictably but reassuringly, often bringing olives, flour and casks of salted meat. But it was Lent, and such was the piety of the king that he would not eat red meat of any kind, not the water rats or duck or bustard, but only fish. And fish meant eels. It seemed incredible to me then, and indeed it does today, but the great part of the army followed suit, even while the eel-ravaged corpses still lay along the river banks. I would not touch them. Instead I went hunting out in the reed beds, spearing frogs, catching crabs in the countless little streams and ditches, setting snares for wild birds. Every now and again I would find a turtle. The birds I would cook and eat out of sight of my fellows, for I did not wish to be seen breaking the Lenten rules, and the meat from Damietta, even if it had not been placed off limits, was usually vile, rancid stuff. But my other finds – those which were fishy enough to be eaten by the pious – I tried to share, though they were not welcomed. There were a few of us who supported ourselves thus, solitary hunters all. We would run into each other sometimes, and warily compare our catch, and slink away. So I kept the scorbutus from ravaging me, but the marks of the disease appeared anyway, slowly, growing as my strength ebbed. I knew them all too well. I had met the scorbutus before, on a long sea-journey to the shores of Greenland, and I had gaps in my teeth to remember it by. So it was with a weary resignation that I saw the purple blotches appear on my legs and arms, felt my tongue swell and my teeth loosen. By Easter I could taste gangrene in my mouth, and knew that, along with the army, I was a dead man if I did not leave soon. But then it was far too late to go anywhere.

  Two weeks after the bodies appeared in the river, a little fishing boat of the sort the Saracens call felucca arrived in our camp. A ragged knight, whom I recognised as one of the Comte de Flandres’s men, jumped out and hurried to the king’s tent. It was not long before the whole camp found out what had happened.

  While we had buried our dead, chewed our eels and shot useless arrows at Mansourah, the Saracens had been dragging a small fleet of galleys through the reeds out of sight and earshot of our guards. They had refloated them downstream of our camp and flung a blockade across the river. A Christian relief force had been slaughtered. The little fleet of galleys that had come upstream with the army was not strong enough to force a way through. We were as good as cut off.

  The knight had brought a package of letters, and though I was wishing with every grain of my being that there could be one for me, I almost blacked out when my name was called. I saw Iselda’s writing and staggered off into the reed beds to enjoy it in private.

  My dearest, she wrote,

  There has been something of a calamity.

  Oh, good Christ. I knew Iselda’s voice; it spoke to me through the ink as though she were talking in my ear. My hands began to shake.

  But I have matters in hand. Read now, and do not worry about me. Here is the tale:

  It was in late October, about the Feast of Saint Luke. I had received the letter you sent telling me about the battle before Damietta, so I knew you were safe. And I had just written to you about the old Doge. The time had passed most tediously, my love, since you set off. I had no companions in Venice save for your hated ledgers, and God! how I have come to hate them too. The old Ca’ Kanzir began to seem more and more like a cave, a cold, mossy cavern. There was no bad news from any of our agents to liven things up, and no splendid news either.

  Until, that is, the cleric paid me a visit. He brought letters of introduction from someone whose name was familiar to me: a Cardinal John of Toledo. This cleric’s name is Matthieu d’Allaines, and he is a plump little fellow. If you should ever chance to meet him, and I hope you do not, you will see that while he seems to be kindly, all smiles, that is but an ill-fitting mask. There was something about him I did not like particularly, and he was quite put out that he had to deal with a woman, though he knew you were gone on crusade. He must have expected some sort of secretary, but I told him he must make do with me. The mask slipped a little bit, but I gave him to know I was head of the Banco di Corvo Marino in your absence – that, in fact, we were partners. That shocked him, I can tell you! But I think that he thought that now he had the advantage of me. He began to grow in confidence, so that, while the man who had first come to our door seemed like a fat little parish priest, I saw that he was something entirely different. I have come on the business of the Holy Father himself, he said, and produced a letter from the good Innocent. A pious housewife might have been somewhat overawed, but I have seen many such, and told him so. The mask slipped again. So, to business. The Curia was requesting a loan. Delighted to accommodate, I said, and took the letter he was thrusting at me. Now then, do not forget that I was alone with this man on a quiet morning. Marta was in the kitchen and the servants were about the place, but there were no shipments going in and out and Paolo was visiting his mother on the Lido. So when I saw what was written there on that letter I was, to all intents and purposes, alone. And maybe – no, not maybe, my dear man, for your heart and your mind are as one with my own on many things – you can imagine what came over me when I saw the figure at the bottom of the page. It was for the precise amount – to the last denarius – held in our bank’s treasure houses. You are jesting with me, I said. Oh, no, not at all, he said. You wish to serve God, do you not? The Holy Father requires this money.

  It is a huge sum, I protested. I had not expected to find your loyalty in question, he said to me, oily and venomous. I denied that it was, but he began to rail about Ghibbelines and about the emperor. What have you loaned to Frederick von Hohenstaufen? he demanded, and I told him that our clients’ privacy was more important to us than their gold. To cut a few unpleasant minutes short, he pressed me, and I danced around the matter, until he lost his patience entirely. If you refuse you will regret it, he said. You and your husband. I came here alone in good faith, as I did not expect to be greeted by a poisoned tongue! I protested, and tried to soothe him. It was simply a matter of the size of his request, I said, but he was not to be mollified, and then he showed his fangs, I can tell you. There is a party on its way from Rome, he fairly hissed, and with them is one Peter of Verona. The name is familiar to you … Oh, he was cruel, dearest one. I speak of the Inquisitor of Lombardy, he said. There are many whispers about you and your bank. If you refuse to give the Holy Father the satisfaction of this loan, there is no power on this earth great enough to protect you from Brother Peter, and from the wrath of the Lord God Almighty.

  There is no need to threaten, I insisted. As you say, I cannot refuse the Holy Father. But this cannot be done in a day, or even a week. Because I love Holy Mother Church, though, in a week I shall have it done, I assured him. And what, I threw in, can the Banco di Corvo Marino expect in return? Our good opinion, he said, and he knew what a dry old bone he had thrown me, and how well he had cowed this presumptuous bitch. But – and were I a superstitious fool like Father Matthieu I might discern the Lord’s hand in this – so puffed up with his own victory was the horrible little man that he strode out wreathed in triumph, his round nose in the air, without demanding a guarantee or advance.

  I told one of the serving lads, a quick little boy from Dorsoduro I hired after you left, to follow the priest. And I sent another off to fetch Piero back from the Lido. Then I went and called on Dimitri. He has grown so gouty that he finds it quite hard to walk, you know, but when I told him what I needed he seemed to shake off the years like a dog shakes off water. I told him to take command of one of our merchant galleys, the fastest, and make her ready to leave the next day. But my work was only just begun. A messenger was sent down to Florence, and I told him to kill as many horses as he needed to get there on wings. With him went a letter to Blasius, ordering him upon its receipt to suspend all business and take all the money to a place of safety away from the city and from strange eyes, ready to bring it down to the coast, to a good and secret port I recall
ed you talking about from the old days with my father. The business and quite possibly our lives were at risk, I let him know, and also that I was aware how much I was trusting him.

  And, my dear husband, you were right about Blasius. Dimitri brought us to our meeting place in ten days. We had a brave crew, and I paid them for the journey what they might hope to make in a year, but I fear some of them will not pull an oar again, and have been well provided for. Blasius was waiting with a line of asses weighed down with bags of coin. All was loaded safely on board, and I asked Blasius if he would come with us, but he said he would take his chances in Florence, and that now he would not have to hide his Ghibbeline colours any more. He is a brave young man, and I hope we can reward him.

  Somewhat in fear of pirates – a great irony, that, and not lost on either Dimitri or myself – we made haste down the coast, stopping only in Naples to take on some fresh souls to man the oars.

  The letter broke off, and then started up again in a rushed, scratchy hand that was still Iselda’s.

  Forgive me – this last in haste. We are lying up in Palermo, and I have found a man leaving today for Damietta. I shall follow: it may well be folly, but my reasoning is that the bank has no better friend, or any other friend, maybe, than King Louis, and even if his friendship is only with our gold, that in itself may provide me a safe haven. And perhaps I will persuade you to come away with me …

  I pray this reaches you in haste! The next part of my tale will follow close behind this.

  With all my heart!

  Your wife

  Matthieu d’Allaines. I cursed him aloud, calling down the plagues of Egypt upon his pink head, and a bittern, startled by my croaking, rose booming in terror from the reeds in front of me. I looked at the letter’s date again. The vile little goblin had known all this when he had come to me in Damietta. Indeed, he had come straight from Venice. So where was Iselda now? I did not like the way the letter ended, and then my thoughts shifted, quivering like a compass needle, to Remigius. The pope’s reach was vast and secret but … No, Remigius would have boasted if something had become of Iselda. That seemed clear, but I could not trust a dead man.

  I am ashamed to relate it now, but I did not worry about Iselda very much after I had tottered back to camp, for by that time I was far too weak and ill. The scorbutus had began to suck out my life in earnest, and I had been suffering from the flux for two days. I clung to the image I had formed of my wife safe with Dimitri, and in my mind I surrounded her with the protective ghosts of her father and his old crew. I tried to convince myself that she was, beyond doubt, safer than me, and the thought cheered me somewhat. As I grew weaker, I imagined that as I decayed, Iselda grew more secure, and when I started to piss blood, I almost prayed out loud with gratitude, so addled were my brains. I hardly thought of the gold. What could it buy me, here? Not even a grave: we had long since stopped burying our dead.

  There were no more letters, no more supplies. Easter came and the Christians no longer had to chew carrion-gorged eels, to eat their fellow soldiers transubstantiated into the meat of fishes. But now the food that was left became more precious than gold. The few pitiful oxen who still roamed about the camp, eyed murderously by every hungry man, were now worth eighty livres. A pig – and there were some hogs that had grown as fat as German cardinals on the Saracen bodies that had washed up downstream – could be had for thirty livres, more than most men made in a year of toil. Even a plain egg was changing hands for twelve pennies. My purse, all the gold and silver I had brought from Damietta, was still untouched, and so I bought two pigs and three barrels of wine, and gave them to the men-at-arms who had come with the English knights. That cost me most of my silver, but the gold I wrapped in a silken stocking and tied round my waist. I might say I had a premonition that it would be needed soon, but in truth it would not have taken a Sybil to predict that things were coming to an end here, and not a good one at that.

  Very soon, the army began to starve. The scorbutus began to ravage its victims without mercy. Men dropped dead where they stood, or walking to the privies. The weather was growing hotter, and with it came a redoubled attack by the marsh flies who brought quartan fevers with them. Not one man in the Christian army was spared. The barber-surgeons were busy from morning to nightfall, cutting dead flesh from men’s mouths so that they could chew the pitiful crumbs left to us.

  Jean de Joinville had been unable to leave his bed for weeks. His wounds had suppurated, he had the scorbutus and a quartan fever, and he could barely swallow water, let alone food. His mood had not been helped when his priest dropped dead while singing mass in his tent. The king was almost as ill, for the bad water had turned his guts and he was growing thinner by the day. I will admit that I spent a great deal of time in his tent, for I knew that I would be given a little wine for courtesy’s sake, and wine made my rotting gums feel better, at least for a while. That, and salt, kept the black rot from my mouth, and I was lucky, for the camp was full, all day long, with the whimpers and screams of men who had opened their mouths for a surgeon’s razor. As I sat with Joinville one day in the close and foul air of his tent, he sat up on his cot and clapped his hands to his ears.

  ‘Dear Christ! It sounds like a thousand women giving birth!’ he said, trying to be jovial. But then he caught my eye, and the strained smile vanished from his lips. ‘But that signifies the coming of life, and this …’

  There was no need to say more. It was soon after that, I think, when the king announced we would be moving the camp to a more defensible position across the water. There was much confusion for a brace of days, and a sharp rearguard skirmish in which we lost good men, but I was not caught up in it. I do not remember why – much of that time has gone from my memory, washed away in sweat and flux – but when the army was settled in its new position, I was called, along with the other surviving nobles, to attend the king. I had somehow come to be thought of as one of those nobles, perhaps because I was the one surviving Englishman, but when every man’s clothing is stiff with his own waste, the finer points of courtly rank become somewhat meaningless. The king had propped himself up in the high-backed seat that served as a throne. He was horribly thin, and his face was all nicked and raw where the barber had tried to shave his failing skin. A knight called Geoffroy de Sargines, who was a close companion of the king’s and a brave, friendly soul, was standing at his side, and the other councillors were arranged in a ragged arc, shuffling their feet and looking, to a man, like foxes who have been ravaged by the mange.

  ‘My dear friends,’ said Louis, and his voice was weak but calm, ‘I will not risk the lives of you or your men any longer. It is we who are besieged. We do not have the strength any more to break through to Cairo. We are cut off from Damietta. The ships we have here cannot break through. We are starving – God love you all for your fortitude, but as a Christian king I cannot drag out your suffering for no purpose. So let it be known that my councillors’ – he nodded in their direction, and they winced and shuffled as though afflicted with the stone – ‘have gone to treat with the Saracen queen. I have some terms to report. The first is that we will surrender Damietta in return for Jerusalem. The second is that the queen will take care of our sick and wounded, here and in Damietta, until they can be brought to the Holy Land. And the Saracens agree to keep our stocks of salt pork for us – they will not be tempted by them, at least!’

  It was the feeblest of jokes, but we managed an equally feeble titter in its honour. We were all looking at one another with narrowed eyes, trying to work things out. Had we, in fact, won? The Saracens were going to let us go, and give back Jerusalem? Perhaps they were as sick as we were. They did not seem that sick – their arrows still went straight, anyway. But the king was speaking again.

  ‘The queen wants surety for these generous terms,’ he said. ‘To be plain, she wants me.’

  There was a roar of outrage. ‘And I say the Turks shall not have him!’ cried Geoffroy de Sargines. ‘I would rather they killed me …
’

  ‘And I!’ shouted the man next to me, who could barely stand, and whom the Saracens, in a roundabout way, had already all but killed. But they took up the call, until de Sargines held up his arms.

  ‘They shall kill us all, or take us all captive, before we give up our beloved king!’ he yelled. There was a sort of enfeebled pandemonium: I saw a man, a count from Burgundy, keel over in a faint, and others sink to their knees either in prayer or because they no longer had the strength to stand. One of the king’s servants was holding up a cloth of blue silk in front of the king, and because I was near I heard the sound of strangled puking from behind it.

  Something had been decided, at least it appeared so, but as I wandered off in search of shade and something clean to drink, I realised that we had decided to do nothing. I picked my way through the piles of shit and thrice-chewed bones, past a bowman jibbering in his final delirium; past a priest, his face black with scorbutus, closing the eyes of a dead boy who would never have his first shave. It was the first week of April. Easter had come and gone, but there was no spring, no hope, no matter how much the priests waved their incense. The muddy Nile seeped by, and the strange, black-headed birds with their long beaks watched us from the reeds. In my fevered state I saw that they were the spirits of this place, waiting to suck out our souls. But they were patient, even kindly, and I took to muttering at them, broken prayers and incantations, as I sat doing whatever pointless tasks I thought might speed time on to its end. Today I was polishing my sword, rubbing tallow into the grained metal until it caught the pitiless Egyptian sun. My eyes could not take the glare, and so I closed them, watching the light play in shades of red through the thin flesh of my eyelids.