Authors: Jack Hight
‘Tancred will not want to listen to any of my men, not after today. You are from the Holy Land and archdeacon of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That is why I am sending you. But you are right; rank also has its value. Bishop Walter will accompany you.’ Richard gripped John’s shoulder. ‘Make certain my sister is well and bring her back to me. With her dowry.’
October 1190: Catania
The palace in Catania stood behind tall, strong walls on a cliff overlooking the sea. Behind the palace, gardens had been planted to provide food in the event of a siege. They stretched to the very edge of the cliff, where there was no wall – the sheer slope offering adequate protection. When they arrived, John and Walter were led there. They found Tancred seated in the shade of a lemon tree and looking out to sea. The sun was setting behind them, turning the waters to shimmering gold.
The king had wavy brown hair, a thin nose, pointed chin and shrewd eyes. He stood as they approached. He was a short man, and he stood rigidly straight as if trying to compensate for his stature. His right leg was bandaged around the thigh, and he leaned heavily on a crutch. When he spoke, his voice was tight with pain. ‘Richard has sent you with his terms?’
‘Yes, Your Grace. I am Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, and this is John of Tatewic, formerly Archdeacon of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and at present the secretary to King Richard. We—’
Tancred raised a hand. ‘Let me save time by telling you what you will say. Richard wants Joan, and her dowry and inheritance, too. He will not settle for less. We shall have time enough to discuss what Richard wants. The autumn storms are here, and the seas will be unsafe for months to come. Now, I am sure you will wish to make certain Joan is well. My men will take you to her.’ He turned his back to them and lowered himself on to the bench.
Tancred’s guards led them back to the palace, where bishop Walter excused himself, saying he wished to rest after their journey. John was shown to Joan’s quarters. She looked to be six or seven years younger than Richard, in her mid twenties, but other than that the resemblance between the two was striking. She had his reddish-gold hair, his clear blue eyes framing a straight nose and his prominent cheekbones. Her beauty was only marred by her shoulders, which were broad for a woman. She sat with two maids in a thickly carpeted room, the walls of which were hung with tapestries portraying the goddess Diana at hunt. A single window looked out over the sea. Joan and her maids had been talking, but they fell silent as John entered.
‘My lady queen, I am Father John of Tatewic, secretary to your brother Richard.’
‘You are welcome, father.’ Joan touched her maids lightly on the arm. ‘Leave us. I wish to speak with him alone.’ The maids passed through a door to the next room, and Joan patted one of the seats they had vacated. ‘Sit beside me, father.’
John was careful to move the chair further away before he sat. He was uncomfortably aware of Joan’s beauty. Her lips were full and her fair skin almost luminescent. It had been years since he had been this close to such a woman. It made him feel old. He cleared his throat. ‘Your brother has sent me to see that you are freed, my lady.’
‘My brother cares nothing for my freedom,’ Joan replied curtly. ‘It is my inheritance and dowry that he wants, to pay for his wars. I will be disposed of quickly, married off to a man of his choosing. What sort of freedom is that?’
‘I assure you, my lady, your brother cares for you.’
Joan laughed. ‘You are a fool or an innocent, John of Tatewic. Richard is a stranger to me, and I to him. I came to Sicily as a girl of eleven, to be married to King William. I have not seen Richard for fourteen years and more. Sicily is my home now. I have no wish to leave.’
‘But Tancred holds you prisoner.’
‘I will deal with Tancred in my own way. There is much that he has not told you, or Richard. Roger of Andria has the support of the barons in Apulia, the land across the straits. Even now, he leads an army south, with the backing of the German emperor. He will crush Tancred, and once he does, I will marry Roger’s son Robert. We are of an age, and Robert is to my liking. Our union will solidify Roger’s claim to the throne. He will be king, and in time, I will be queen again. So you see, father, I have no need of my brother, nor of you.’
The guard outside Tancred’s chambers pushed the door open. ‘My lord,’ he declared. ‘John of Tatewic to see you.’
John was ushered into the king’s quarters. Tancred sat before the fire, his injured leg propped up before him. He waved John forward. ‘Sit. Would you like a glass of mulled wine?’ He did not wait for an answer, but gestured to a servant, who brought John a glass of the steaming beverage. It smelt of cloves and orange peel. Tancred sipped at his own wine. ‘You have spoken with Joan?’
‘I have, Your Grace.’
‘So you have seen what a scheming bitch she is. I will be glad enough to be rid of her. I might even pay to have her gone, but I must be certain that Richard will take her from Sicily. She must be married, and not to a German or an Italian lord. I will not have her children coming to seek my throne.’
‘If what Lady Joan says is true, then you are in no position to make such demands.’
‘She only knows half the truth. She believes my chancellor has betrayed me. She gives him letters for Roger, and he delivers the replies. They are forgeries. Roger is dead, betrayed by his friends. The count of Acerra turned him over to me for gold. His son Robert will join him in the grave soon enough. Joan’s would-be husband is besieged at the fortress of Sant’Agata.’
‘If that is true, then why the charade? Why not tell Joan the truth?’
‘Why indeed?’ Tancred sipped at his wine as he stared into the fire. The flames reflected in his brown eyes. ‘Her letters have proved most instructive. In them, she sometimes names fellow conspirators of Roger, men in Sicily who are waiting to join his side when he arrives. Some of them I put to death, others I am content to watch. It is good to know your enemies, John of Tatewic. That is a lesson your King Richard would do well to learn.’
‘What do you mean?’
Tancred waved the question away. ‘Enough idle talk. We have much to discuss. Why have you come here, John?’
‘To treat on behalf of my king.’
‘Yes, yes. To free Joan and take my coin. I know that. But what do
you
want?’
‘I am only a simple priest, Your Grace. What I want is of no importance.’
‘Oh, but it is, John. It is. You are not like Richard. You are older, and wiser, I hope. You are a priest, which I presume means you do not share his taste for bloodshed. You saw what he did to Messina. You have seen the sort of man he is.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me, why do you serve him?’
John was unnerved. Tancred had read him as if he were an open book. Still, he saw no harm in telling the truth. ‘I wish to return to the Holy Land. It is my home.’
Tancred sat back. ‘Ah, yes. I see it now. Then you wish Richard on his way just as much as I. We are of one mind.’ The king smiled shrewdly. ‘So tell me, John, what must I give up before Richard will leave my lands and you can return home? And more importantly, what is your king prepared to give me?’
C
hapter 18
November 1190: Acre
‘Any word from the Almohad caliph?’ Yusuf asked.
Imad ad-Din flipped through the stack of letters at his side. He shook his head. ‘Still nothing, Malik.’
Two months earlier, Yusuf had sent a request for aid to Al-Mansur, who ruled most of North Africa and Iberia from his capital in Marrakesh. With the request, he had sent rich gifts: a Koran covered with jewels; musk, aloe and balm of Judea; a dozen amber necklaces; and a hundred bows, seven hundred arrows, twenty saddles and the same number of sword blades. The gifts looked to have been wasted. Yusuf sighed and rubbed his temples. He could have used those bows. The German army had sacked Konya months ago and was due to arrive at Acre any day. Some said their king marched with twenty thousand men; others said it was fifty thousand or even a hundred thousand – so many men that the line of their march stretched for five miles and the broad trail of trampled ground left behind looked like a huge scar upon the earth.
‘What do you have for me?’ Yusuf asked.
Imad ad-Din had brought the previous day’s correspondence to Yusuf’s tent, as he did every day after noon prayers. He selected a tiny scrap of paper from the pigeon post. ‘Your nephew Taqi ad-Din has reached Aleppo.’
Yusuf had sent Ubadah north to raise troops. When his nephew had taken his leave, Yusuf had embraced him. ‘God keep you safe, Nephew,’ he had told him.
Ubadah had returned the embrace stiffly. ‘Farewell, Malik.’ He had mounted his horse and ridden away without looking back. Yusuf hoped that when they met again, they could put the past behind them.
Imad ad-Din finished scanning the message from Ubadah. ‘He writes that the city is well ordered and that he has been able to secure an additional one hundred mamluks. He is sending them—’ Imad ad-din stopped short as Az-Zahir rushed into the tent.
‘Father! The Germans are here!’
Yusuf rose at once. He stepped out of the tent and squinted against the bright winter sunshine. He could see the Frankish lines – the deep ditch backed by a spiked rampart with a palisade built atop it. He scanned the line but saw nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Where are they?’
‘There.’ Az-Zahir pointed north.
Yusuf could just make out a distant line of men marching along the coast. ‘There can’t be more than five thousand of them. Where are the rest?’
‘That is all of them, Father. You can see better from the tower.’
By the time Yusuf reached the top of the tower, the first Germans had reached the Frankish lines and he had a clear view of them. They stumbled into the camp looking like disinterred corpses. Their cloaks were tattered, and he could see rents in their armour. And they were painfully thin. With each step they took, many of the men’s legs shook, hardly able to support them.
‘What do you think happened to them?’ Az-Zahir murmured.
‘I do not know, but I thank Allah for it.’
This was the first good news in some time. Yusuf had attacked the Franks twice last spring, but his men had broken against their fortifications. The last supply ships to force their way through the Frankish blockade had arrived months ago, and Qaraqush and his garrison must be desperately short of food. Yusuf did not know for sure, because in August the swimmer Isa had washed up dead on the shore, a Frankish arrow in his back. Yusuf now had no way to communicate with the defenders in the city. Worst of all, the Franks continued to come from overseas in wave upon wave. Just after Isa died, three thousand more had arrived with Henry of Champagne. He had taken command of the siege. The cousin of both Richard and Philip, he was a great lord and a clever man, though you would never guess it to look at him. When Yusuf had first met him, he was surprised to see a dough-faced young man with lumpy features and muddy brown eyes.
Yusuf, meanwhile, was struggling to hold his army together. With winter looming, dozens of his emirs had returned home. The emir of Ibril had died of a fever while in camp, and Gökböri had left for Al-Jazirah to take possession of his lands. With Gökböri and Ubadah gone, Yusuf had given his sons Al-Afdal and Az-Zahir command of the right and left wings. They were brave but still young; only nineteen and sixteen. Still, Yusuf had been no older when he won his first battles. If they were not tested, they would never learn to lead.
Yusuf looked back to the Germans. There, at last, was a reason to smile. Yusuf knew that food was short in the Frankish camp. The pyres had been lit again to burn those who had died from disease or hunger. Most days they consumed several dozen corpses, though Yusuf’s men had once counted as many as two hundred men laid upon the pyres. And from the tower, he had seen fights break out at the stew pots as the men accused each other of taking more than their fair share. From the look of them, the Germans brought no food, only more mouths.
Yusuf turned to Az-Zahir. ‘Let us make the new arrivals welcome. Send a messenger to invite their commander to supper. Invite Henry of Champagne as well. And the king, Guy.’
That evening, Yusuf stood in the private section of his tent and examined his reflection in a silver mirror. He had bathed and had his servants oil his hair and perfume him with the scent of jasmine. He was dressed in a black silk caftan with geometrical patterns stitched in gold at the collar and cuffs. He wore sandals decorated with emeralds and sapphires, and tucked into his belt was his dagger with the gold hilt in the shape of an eagle. He would have preferred a simple cotton tunic and leather sandals, but tonight that would not do. He wished to impress his Christian guests. He wanted them to return to their camp with stories of his fabulous wealth. They could not know that the once seemingly inexhaustible coffers of Egypt were now issuing glass in lieu of coin; that he was not sure how much longer he could keep his men in the field on half pay. So Yusuf would dress as a great king, though in truth these robes were the last he had. He had sold the rest of his finery to pay his men.
It was a game, and it was not the first time he had played it. The siege was fifteen months old, and it had long since grown tedious. The winter rains had set in the previous month, turning the battleground into a sea of mud. Both camps huddled behind their barricades and tried to stay warm. Two months ago, Yusuf had decided to invite the Frankish commanders to dine with him in order to relieve the tedium. At first, the Franks had been wary, but now it had become a regular practice. They came for the food, and he was happy to feed them in return for information.