Holy War

by Hight, Jack

  The pain in John’s leg and side vanished and the sounds of battle faded until all he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears. He sprinted forward. A mamluk appeared before him, and John deflected the man’s blade and then slammed his shoulder into him, knocking the man aside. Al-Mashtub was raising his sword to finish Richard. John stumbled and lunged forward swinging. He caught Al-Mashtub in the side of the knee. The huge mamluk crumpled, screaming in pain.

  Richard had grabbed his axe and pushed himself to his feet. He looked about at the Saracens swarming from all sides. ‘There are too many! We must fall back.’ He raised his voice. ‘All together, men! Fall back! Fall back!’

  John and Richard fought side by side as they retreated towards the gap. They were the last of the Christians through. As they emerged on the other side, men surrounded them. They were shouting, their voices so loud that it took John a moment to understand them. ‘Lionheart!’ they screamed. ‘Lionheart! Lionheart!’

  Richard swayed and leaned against John to keep from falling. John noticed that the mail at the king’s shoulder was rent and bloody, but the king was grinning despite his injuries. ‘Sieges sap men’s courage, John. These men need only shed a little blood to become brave again.’ Richard pushed away from him and started down the slope unaided. Men lined the path back to the camp. ‘Lionheart!’ they cheered. ‘Lionheart!’ As they passed through the gate in the rampart, John looked up and found Philip. The French king stood with his arms crossed, scowling as he looked down upon Richard.

  Yusuf stood atop the tower and chewed on a piece of flatbread. It was all he could stomach. His gut had been troubling him ever since the breach was opened in the wall. That had been a week ago. He looked to Acre. The night after the breach was made, the garrison had built a wooden wall atop the rubble, behind the line of mantelets. The Franks had burned that wall the next day. The garrison built a new one, and that, too, had been burned. Another wall now protected the gap, but it would not last long. Even now, Franks bearing torches were launching another attack.

  Yusuf knew the garrison could not hold out for much longer. They were losing hundreds of men each day. Yusuf had kept up a steady attack on the Frankish lines to draw some troops away from the battle, but yesterday he had pulled back his men and sent a messenger to the Franks, offering to start negotiations for the surrender of the city. If he could not save Acre, he at least wanted to see that its garrison was spared. His messenger had been sent back with no answer.

  The Franks were hurling their torches at the base of the wall. The defenders were prepared. Some met the Franks with arrows while others poured buckets of water to extinguish the flames. A jar of naphtha flew from behind the wall and shattered amongst the Franks, covering half a dozen men with clinging flames. The rest scattered. Acre would hold a little longer.

  Movement along the Frankish line caught Yusuf’s eye, and he turned his gaze in that direction. A gate opened in the barricade, and two men rode forth under a white flag of truce. Yusuf could not see their faces from this distance, but they were clearly not Philip and Richard. He scowled. He turned to the messengers who waited at the rear of the tower. ‘Go to my brother. Tell him the Frankish negotiators are coming, and he is to treat with them.’

  Yusuf already had a tent prepared for the negotiations. The men at the line had been instructed to lead the Franks there. Yusuf would not go. He had asked to speak king to king, and he would not lower himself by meeting with their representatives. He left the tower and returned to his tent to await Selim’s report. His stomach was twisting with nervous tension. He tried to read the Hamasah to settle his nerves. He had not finished the first poem when Saqr stepped into the tent.

  ‘Your brother has sent one of the Franks to you, Malik.’

  Yusuf’s brow creased. ‘I instructed him to treat with them.’

  ‘He thought you would want to meet this one in person. It is John.’

  Yusuf thought John had returned to England. Had he come with Richard? Or had he been in the enemy camp all along? He set the book aside. ‘Show him in.’

  It had been four years since Yusuf had last seen him, but John seemed to have aged more than that. His hair was more silver than blond now, and the lines on his face had deepened. He still stood straight-backed, though, and walked with a firm step.

  ‘Ahlan wa-Sahlan,’ Yusuf greeted him.

  John gave a small bow. ‘As-salaamu ‘alaykum. Thank you for seeing me.’

  Yusuf gestured for him to sit. ‘I had thought you in England.’

  ‘I was.’ John sat across from Yusuf. He smiled ruefully. ‘I spent so many years dreaming of home. But when I finally reached Tatewic, I realized my home is here. I joined Richard’s crusade so I could return.’

  ‘And now you fight by his side.’

  ‘God help me, but I do.’

  ‘What sort of man is he?’

  ‘He is a bastard. He can be cruel and impulsive, headstrong and hot-tempered. And he is worse when he drinks.’ John met Yusuf’s eyes. ‘But I have never seen a braver warrior, nor a better leader of men. Not even you, Yusuf.’

  ‘Can he be reasoned with?’

  ‘You cannot buy him off, if that is what you mean. Richard has set his sights on Jerusalem. He has vowed not to stop until he has taken it.’

  ‘I will stop him.’

  ‘Do not be so sure. I would not lie to you, Yusuf. Richard is unlike anyone you have faced. There was a prophet on Sicily who predicted Richard would not lose a battle in the Holy Land. I thought those were just words, but after seeing Richard at Messina, then on Cyprus, and now here at Acre . . . I believe him.’

  ‘Allah is my shield, John. Prophecies do not frighten me.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but Richard should.’

  Yusuf sat back and stroked his beard. He could tell that John was in earnest, and it troubled him. Until now, he had hoped this most recent flood of crusaders would be content with Acre. Even if Yusuf lost the city, and all the gold and weapons it contained, he would retake it once the Franks returned overseas. But if what John said were true, then the Franks would not return to their homes, not until they had taken everything that Yusuf had sacrificed so much to gain.

  ‘Let us speak of Acre,’ he said. ‘I will offer Richard the town and everything in it if he spares the defenders.’

  ‘He will not accept. He will have Acre anyway, and he knows it.’

  ‘And if I offer the True Cross?’

  John shook his head. ‘Richard may lack cunning, but the French king Philip does not. He is negotiating directly with Al-Mashtub and Qaraqush in Acre. He believes they are more desperate than you, and so will grant better terms.’

  And he is no doubt right. ‘Acre is not yet in Frankish hands. You will lose many more lives to take it. And even if it does fall, my army is still here. If your kings will not make a reasonable peace, then we shall have war.’

  ‘That is precisely what Richard wants,’ John said grimly.

  ‘If war is all Richard wants, then why did you come here, John?’

  ‘To warn you, and to ask you something. They say you threw the bodies of the dead in the river to poison the waters.’

  ‘I did.’

  John grimaced. ‘There is no honour in that.’

  ‘Such things do not please me, John, but dead is dead. An arrow to the gut or a sword to the throat kills as surely as the flux. What does it matter?’

  ‘It mattered to you once. It should still.’

  Yusuf sighed. John had only voiced his own doubts. He had missed him. No one else would speak the truth to him. ‘Perhaps you are right, friend.’

  ‘Am I still your friend, Yusuf?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Then heed my warning. The garrison will surrender soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Do not think to save Acre. It is lost. Now, you must do all you can to save your kingdom.’

  ‘I see.’ Yusuf rose, and John did likewise. ‘Thank you for coming, John.’

  John nodded. ‘Allah
yasalmak, Yusuf.’

  When he had gone, Yusuf stood alone for a moment, considering what John had told him. Then he raised his voice. ‘Saqr!’

  The head of his guard stepped into the tent. ‘Yes, Malik?’

  ‘Have the emirs come to my tent. We attack tonight.’

  Sunrise found Yusuf standing atop the Muslim ramparts. As the sun crested the horizon at his back, his shadow stretched out towards Acre, running down the side of the rampart and on to the ground between the lines. It stretched over the body of a dead mamluk, the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from his eye. It ran over a severed arm; over another dead man, lying face down on ground muddied by his blood. The shadow stopped short of the real carnage. Bodies were piled up against the Frankish palisade. There were more than six hundred dead, and all for nothing.

  Yusuf had sent his men against the Frankish line again and again. He had held no one back. Twice, his men had made it past the palisade. The first time, they had scaled the wall with ladders and gained a foothold. Over a hundred mamluks had got behind the Frankish lines. But Richard had rallied the enemy. When the mamluks tried to open one of the gates in the barricade, they were surrounded and slaughtered.

  The second time, Yusuf’s men had managed to set fire to a portion of the Frankish palisade. A stretch ten men wide had burned. It was still smoking now. That was where the fighting had been at its fiercest. Yusuf’s men had charged the gap more than a dozen times. Each time, Richard had thrown them back. Dozens of corpses lay all around.

  Aah-hoo! A horn sounded in Acre, and Yusuf looked to the walls. He saw his eagle standard hauled down and Frankish flags begin to go up. He recognized Philip’s flag – rows of golden fleur de lys on a field of blue. And there were the three gold lions passant on a field of red – the flag of Richard. Yusuf had come to hate that flag.

  There were shouts of alarm amongst Yusuf’s men on the barricade. They rushed to take up their spears and string their bows. A gate in the Frankish barricade was swinging open. Two men walked out. The taller one limped heavily and was leaning on the shorter man. The gate closed behind them, and they set out towards the Muslim lines. Yusuf squinted. He knew those men.

  ‘Qaraqush! Al-Mashtub!’ He strode down the face of the rampart to meet them. The two emirs looked grim. Al-Mashtub’s jaw was clenched in pain, and he winced with each step. Qaraqush was a shadow of his former self, his flesh hanging in loose folds from his face. Yusuf embraced him and then Al-Mashtub. ‘Thank Allah you have lived.’

  ‘I wish I had not.’ Qaraqush’s voice was hollow.

  Yusuf squeezed his shoulder. ‘You did all you could.’

  The grizzled old emir shook his head. ‘I failed my men. I left them.’

  ‘Their King Philip made us go,’ Al-Mashtub explained. ‘We agreed to terms with him this morning. He feared you would not believe the terms of the surrender unless they were delivered by men you trust.’

  ‘What are these terms?’

  Qaraqush grimaced. ‘The Franks are holding all three thousand men of the garrison for ransom. You are to pay two hundred thousand dinars. You must also release five hundred common Frankish prisoners and one hundred nobles to be named. And you must turn over their True Cross. You have two months to deliver all this, or the men of the garrison will be sold into slavery.’ He hung his head. ‘Forgive me, Malik.’

  ‘You did what you had to do, Qaraqush. Better that than sacrifice the lives of your men. I would have done the same.’ Though that did not make it any easier to stomach. He was already short of coin to pay his men. Where would he find another two hundred thousand dinars?

  ‘Come,’ he told them. ‘You look like you need a good meal, Qaraqush. And you shall have a doctor see to your leg, Al-Mashtub.’ He led them up the rampart, where mamluks took the two emirs and carried them into camp. Yusuf stayed to watch the Franks enter the city. A new flag had appeared above one of the towers on the wall. It was a field of red bisected by a thick white horizontal stripe. It had hardly been unfurled when it was pulled down again. Richard’s standard took its place. He wondered why.

  ‘Brother!’ It was Selim, approaching along the barricade. ‘A dark day.’

  Yusuf nodded.

  ‘Some of your emirs have asked leave to depart. They say they have been too long gone from their lands.’

  It was starting already. His men had followed him without question so long as he led them to victory after victory. Now that he had been defeated, they were scattering like birds fleeing before a sandstorm. ‘Tell them they may go when the first rains fall, not before.’

  ‘I will tell them, Brother . . . But some have already left.’

  Yusuf’s hands clenched at his side as sudden blinding anger swept through him. How dare they? How dare they leave now, when he needed them most? He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was even. ‘Tell them that the next emir to leave without my permission will forfeit all his lands. And tell them that this battle is far from over. It has only begun. Richard did not come for Acre. He came to retake the Holy Land. He came for Jerusalem. I mean to stop him.’

  Chapter 21

  August 1191: Acre

  John heard shouting as he approached the council chamber in the palace at Acre. ‘It must be Jaffa!’ It was hard to tell who was speaking through the thick wood of the door. ‘It is the most direct route to Jerusalem!’

  A quieter voice replied, ‘You will never take Jerusalem without food and water. We must head east. The lands are rich in the valley of Jezreel.’

  ‘If you wish to conquer villages and fields, then go. I have come for Jerusalem!’

  ‘Have you not heard a word I said? If you march south, you will never take the Holy City!’

  The guard outside the chamber nodded to John. ‘They are in fine form today, father,’ he said as he opened the door.

  John stepped into a tense silence. The lords standing around the council table turned from glaring at one another to stare at him. To his right were the grim-faced native lords: Reginald, Balian and Garnier of Nablus, the new Grand Master of the Hospitallers. Nablus was a tall, powerful man with thick black hair and bushy eyebrows that formed a single bar over his green eyes. Conrad stood at his side. Guy stood across the table from Conrad. This was no surprise; the two had been at one another’s throats over who was the rightful king of Jerusalem. Guy gave John a sour look. Hugh of Burgundy – a man with a great belly and bulging eyes – stood with Guy. He had taken charge of the remaining French knights following Philip’s departure, and Guy had been cultivating his support. Richard’s men – Robert Blanchemains, Bishop Walter, de Chauvigny, his cousin Henry of Champagne and de Ferriers – lined the table between the two factions. De Ferriers scowled. He was the one who had called for John’s head back in London.

  Richard stood on the far side of the table. He swatted at one of the flies buzzing about his head. The king’s face had gone from bad to worse; the sunburnt skin was now peeling and blistered. Juice from the aloe plant provided relief, but it also attracted flies. When he spoke, there was an irritated edge to his voice. ‘Where have you been, priest?’

  John went to stand with Reginald and Balian. ‘At the gates, Your Grace, meeting with Saladin’s emissaries. They have delivered one hundred thousand dinars.’

  Guy’s eyes widened at mention of the sum. ‘His coin is most welcome. My men have not been paid in years.’

  ‘The money is not yours to dispose of,’ Bishop Walter countered. ‘It belongs to the King.’

  ‘I am king. I began this siege and—’

  ‘And Richard finished what you could not,’ Walter concluded.

  Guy was red-faced. He opened his mouth, but Richard spoke first. ‘One hundred thousand dinars. That is only half the sum agreed upon.’

  ‘It will take time to raise the full amount, my lord,’ John replied. ‘Saladin still has three weeks before the rest is due.’

  Blanchemains shook his head. ‘Three more weeks here will be the death of us. We are
short of food. Most of the coin Saladin sent us will only go back to him to purchase grain.’ A week ago, Saladin had opened the market in his camp to the Franks. He was as desperate for gold to pay the ransom as they were for food. ‘God help us if the Saracens close their markets to us.’

  De Ferriers rubbed the stubble on his hollow cheeks. ‘The food we have would go further without three thousand extra mouths to feed. If we executed the Saracen prisoners—’

  ‘We gave our word those prisoners would be spared,’ Balian said coldly. ‘I do not know your customs in France, sir, but here in the Kingdom, that means something.’

  ‘I am a man of my word, Lord Balian,’ de Ferriers replied, his voice rising. ‘I swore to deliver Jerusalem, and I will kill as many infidels as needs be to do so.’

  ‘Then you lack brains as well as honour,’ Reginald replied in his gravelly voice. ‘Slaughter those prisoners and you turn them into martyrs. If you wish for fewer mouths to feed, then I say we start with yours.’

  De Ferriers looked to Richard. ‘You hear, Your Grace? This brute dares threaten me. I would not be surprised if he were responsible for my murdered men.’

  De Ferriers was not the only one at the table to have lost men. The lords of France, England and the Kingdom were constantly at one another’s throats, and the quarrels were taken up by their men. Drunken brawls were common, and each morning men were found dead in the streets of Acre.

  ‘I am no murderer in the night,’ Reginald growled. ‘I too have lost men.’

  Guy pointed across the table. ‘Conrad is to blame. Last night, I lost a dozen men to his troops.’

  ‘Your men struck first,’ Conrad said evenly, ‘yet I lost only five men-at-arms. I cannot be blamed if my soldiers bested yours.’

  ‘Your men lay in wait for mine. You speak nothing but lies, usurper!’