00 - Templar's Acre (36 page)

‘News spreads quickly when a city is in peril,’ Conrad von Feuchtwangen said. He gave Baldwin a serious stare. ‘Hopefully, we shall prevail against our enemies, be they ever so
numerous.’

‘God be praised!’ Otto said fervently. ‘Baldwin, I will have two men sent to you at Ivo’s house. Wait for them there. Perhaps they can advise on the best locations to aim
for.’

‘I will.’

‘Have you looked at the towers?’ Otto asked.

‘Only the catapult platforms. I have been concentrating on building the machines, sir.’

‘We have been walking the city walls together, and all the towers have their kitchens and cellars ready. The water cisterns have filled over the winter, God be praised! So now we are ready
for an attack.’

Baldwin nodded. Each tower was effectively a self-contained fortress. If an assault succeeded and men gained the walls, the towers at each side of the breach would bar their doors and rally men
ready to return to the walls and throw their enemies to their deaths, but if even that failed, the towers could hold on until the city could send a force to rescue them.

‘What is the mood of the men?’ Otto asked.

‘Keen to fight, sir,’ Baldwin said. ‘If they don’t see a Muslim soon, they’ll start fighting amongst themselves!’

‘Keep them calm. They’ll see their enemy soon enough. And then this Swiss will show how men can fight and keep their honour,’ he muttered, half to himself.

Conrad von Feuchtwangen shot him a cool look. ‘I have no doubt that the Swiss and the German Order will fight bravely, my friend.’

‘With knights such as you fighting for the city, it is difficult to see how we may not win a glorious reputation,’ Sir Otto said.

Later, resting on a bench, his eyes closed, feeling the ache of overworked muscles, Baldwin mentioned that exchange to Ivo. ‘I didn’t understand what they
meant.’

‘Only that both are ashamed.’

‘Why both?’

‘Because of Burchard von Schwanden. He was the leader of the German Order, so his cowardice in leaving now means that they are embarrassed by association. His resignation has reflected
badly on the honour of his whole Order.’

‘I can see that. What of Sir Otto?’

‘Did you not know he is Swiss? So was Sir Burchard. So Sir Otto feels he too has something to prove with his fighting in the coming days, to show that he is no coward.’

‘I see,’ Baldwin breathed.

‘The impressive truth is,’ Ivo said, ‘that while the Genoese pigs have fled across the sea, and while one Grand Master facing the most ferocious battle of his life has resigned
and followed the Genoese, the majority of the men of the city are still here, determined to fight. And more men arrive each day to supplement their numbers. The Venetians and Pisans have not
deserted us. True, they are carting off their best valuables, but they still remain here to protect Acre and the people. I find that reassuring. Perhaps God will give us the means to keep this
city.’

‘Lucia, please, come and sit with us,’ Baldwin said.

It was later in the afternoon and she had been dozing on her bed. Hearing his voice, she sprang up, startled, and followed him into the garden where she found Sir Jacques and Ivo.

‘We were talking about your old household. When you were there, you were happy, were you not?’ Jacques said. ‘Until you were sent away?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you were sent away because your mistress was displeased with you?’

‘Yes. She thought I might have spoken about her to Baldwin.’

‘And did you?’

‘No!’

‘So you have been punished while you were loyal to her?’

‘Yes.’

Edgar appeared, wearing a fresh tunic which Ivo had bought for him. ‘Gentles, I cannot sleep. I have been asleep for a year and a day already, or so it feels. May I join you?’

‘Please,’ Jacques said, motioning to a bench. ‘We were talking to this maid about her mistress.’

‘Ah, I know a little about her, too,’ Edgar said. ‘My last master knew her well, didn’t he, Lucia?’

She looked at him, but said nothing. She couldn’t. While she breathed, she was the slave of Maria, and speaking out against her was a crime that would lead to her being beaten or whipped
again, if Maria learned of it. She found it hard enough merely being here with all these men. It felt wrong. But then she saw the expression on Edgar’s face, and Baldwin’s, and felt
more secure. They wouldn’t see her hurt. Nor would Ivo or Sir Jacques. They were kindly-looking men.

‘What do you mean?’ Baldwin asked.

‘She would visit Master Philip Mainboeuf in his house. They would send away all the other servants, and only have one to serve them – the old bottler whom I still must
“thank” for being evicted in so hasty a manner,’ Edgar said.

‘Mainboeuf was having an affair with her?’ Ivo said, and gave a chuckle. ‘Randy git! Good luck to him. She’ll not see him for a while, though, I’d guess.
He’ll be otherwise engaged in Cairo for some little time.’

‘She is known for her appetites,’ Jacques said. ‘She is young and beautiful. It is hardly surprising.’

Baldwin shrugged. This was the way of people in Eastern lands, he was coming to learn.

Edgar looked at Lucia. ‘Is it difficult to hear us speak of her, maid?’

‘No,’ she answered honestly. ‘She has hurt me so much, I do not think I could be more injured by her.’

‘Why did she send you away?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Had you offended her in some way?’

‘I cannot speak. She ordered me not to.’

Ivo grunted. ‘She is not your mistress. If there was something you wanted to confide, you can.’

Lucia bit her lip, and thought again. ‘It was only this one thing,’ she said. She spoke reluctantly, but in her mind, she felt that as a slave living in Ivo’s house, she must
now answer to him as master. ‘She would visit men. She had me wear her clothing so that her subterfuge would not be noticed. She would have me walk about the city with guards, as though I
were her, and she would slip out later to visit her men.’

Baldwin suddenly had a flash of inspiration. ‘You mean that first time I saw you? In the road, close to the Genoese quarter?’

‘Yes. She had sent me to a house to deliver a message, but the man tried to take me when he found me there. And then you followed me, and I thought you would as well, so I ran from you.
You looked scary. Almost drunk.’

‘Does that mean she was seeing Mainboeuf?’ Baldwin wondered.

Lucia hung her head. ‘She was very fond of Philip Mainboeuf, I think. She wanted to see him most often. She will be sad that he is lost to her.’

‘She should not be
too
despairing on his behalf,’ Ivo snapped. ‘The man was selling us to the Muslims. Al-Fakhri told you that.’

Edgar demurred at this. ‘No. My master was many things, but he was not a traitor. He saw how the city could prosper, and followed that route, but he would not willingly sell his
city.’

‘So you think,’ Baldwin said.

‘Aye. I knew him well.’

‘Then who
would
be the traitor to the city?’

‘The Lady Maria, perhaps?’ Baldwin said. ‘That is what Buscarel told me a little while ago.’

‘You’ve had dealings with him?’ Ivo growled.

‘He and I have an accord,’ Baldwin said. He was struck with a mental picture of Lady Maria. Her cold, unfeeling eyes as she threatened him with torture, or the time she told him he
would never find Lucia. ‘She has a heart of stone.’

‘She seeks to protect her lands,’ Lucia mumbled, head hanging. It was her last betrayal. Now Lady Maria would never forgive her.

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said, thinking how lovely Lucia was, especially when she looked so lost and vulnerable.

That night, he did not sleep for a long time, thinking of her. But the following morning, the first desperate farmers from the environs of the city began to arrive, and he had other things to
concern him.

Baldwin was on the wall when they arrived.

The city had been prepared by the sudden inrush of terrified farmers. There was no need to send patrols to check for the direction from which the attack would come. They had all the intelligence
they needed from the refugees.

‘Here they come,’ said Edgar, standing bareheaded beside Baldwin. He said his head was too painful still to wear a helmet, but Baldwin had a suspicion that it was more his vanity
that prevented him. Baldwin saw him glancing at women wherever they went. Still, whatever the reason, at least he had insisted on coming here and standing at the wall with the other men.

‘Where?’ Baldwin asked.

Edgar pointed languidly at the horizon. And suddenly Baldwin saw through the heat haze to a black line, and a thin mist of dust over it. The young man-at-arms was glad to have a friend at his
side, because this was a sight like no other he had ever seen. A seething mass of men and horses and machines, all crawling along from the south like a massive black centipede, seemingly flat
against the ground. Like a centipede it curved about hillocks and depressions in the ground as if seeking the best route. It was so like a vast, malevolent creature, it was hard to believe it was
composed of thousands upon thousands of men.

‘So here they are,’ the man beside him murmured, and then was quiet, as though embarrassed to have broken the silence, as if his words could bring the rage of the Muslims down upon
them all. No one else spoke. They watched the approach with a kind of resignation. This was the beginning of their battle. The final battle for Outremer, God’s Holy Land, the Kingdom of
Jerusalem.

Drums began to toll.

Over the expanse of beach and flat sands, Baldwin could hear them. And with them came the distant cacophony of cries and shouts, of rattles and squeaks, clattering pots and pans; the inevitable
row of an army on the march.

There was a sudden drift of dust, and a hundred horsemen broke away, to canter towards the city.

‘Patrol of horsemen,’ Edgar said.

They rode across the ground towards the right, where the sea met the Patriarch’s Tower, and there the force stopped, eyeing the walls, trotting up and around them from a distance of five
hundred yards or more, well out of bowshot.

Baldwin watched as the horsemen trotted all the way up to the westernmost tip, and then made their way back again, stopping opposite the Tower of the Legate. There, they halted to take their
rest, while the rest of the men and horses continued their approach at that slow, inexorable pace. They were near enough now that their battle flags could be clearly seen. The sparkle from the
steel tips of their helmets was blinding, as was the glitter and gleam of mail and brightly polished steel lance-points. Wagons lumbered along behind bullocks, and as Baldwin watched, men rode
hither and thither on horses, apparently directing a wagon to this point, another to that. Clusters of wagons collected at each site.

It was a sight to drive a dagger of helpless terror into the heart of the strongest, Baldwin reckoned.

Emir al-Fida took the route allocated, riding slowly behind the Sultan’s messenger, past the wagons and men as the camp was gradually formed. All the way he kept his eyes
on the walls of that infernal city.

The man stopped and indicated where they might set up the machine, and the Emir remained on his horse while the wagons were brought up to his firing-point, still staring at the walls. The men
within had been busy, he saw. The walls had new hoardings that increased their height and guaranteed the protection of the men within. The outer wall, he estimated, was about thirty-three feet
high, while those of the inner were some fifty. Men on the inner wall could loose arrows over the heads of those at the outer, increasing the deadly impact of their defenders’ firepower. Yet
his stones would easily pass over both, hoardings and all.

His servants scurried, and by the time he had checked the position for the catapult and studied his section of the wall with care, his tent was erected. He walked to it with a feeling of grim
pride. Since the riots, all he had felt was misery at the memory of his poor Usmar’s death. While trudging the weary miles to Cairo, while going with the men to Kerak, and during the journey
to reach the city again, he had been filled with melancholy and despair. Now he had arrived, all he could think of was exacting revenge for his son’s murder. All those in the city would
suffer for what they had done to Usmar.

‘God willing,’ he murmured to himself as he sat and his servant brought him a cooled cup of water. It was perfect, and he sipped it as he sat, watching his men pulling the
constituent parts of al-Mansour from the wagons and fitting them together in the order he had prescribed.

He was torn between pride and misery.

There was little for Baldwin and his vintaine to do. There were no enemy machines or soldiers within reach, and the garrison was left to wander the taverns and alehouses,
soothing their fears with strong wines. It was difficult to imagine how they could drink so much and yet not become drunk, but Baldwin saw many men consuming vast quantities and still speaking as
clearly and precisely as a priest at the Mass. Not that he had seen that many entirely sober priests, as he told himself. Not here. Not recently.

The men under his command looked mostly to Hob for their instructions still. It didn’t offend Baldwin, if for no other reason than that he was younger than most of them. On this first day,
the men had been told that they could remain down at their lodgings. Meanwhile Baldwin and Hob went to look at the enemy’s preparations with Ivo.

They made for the angle of the wall, from where they would be able to see the Muslims more closely.

‘What are they doing?’ Hob asked a man on the wall.

The man glanced at Hob briefly. ‘Oh, hello. Didn’t recognise you at first. You had a wash or something?’

‘Yeah. In a pig’s arse,’ Hob said conversationally. ‘So, what’re they up to?’

The man, who was another of Sir Otto de Grandison’s English warriors, Baldwin learned, was thin, with quick, alert eyes. He nodded with his chin towards the barbican.