Templar's Acre

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Baldwin was dozing when the shout came. His first, groggy thought was that the enemy had managed to break in through the walls, but as he snapped his eyes open, he saw that the fellows on his section of wall were not alarmed.

‘What is it?’

‘They want tinder and combustibles in the barbican,’ Hob said. There was a deflated look about him, like a punctured pig’s bladder.

‘Why?’

‘They’re going to burn it. The barbican’s too weakened, and the Muslims are tunnelling underneath it,’ Hob said.

Baldwin clambered to his feet and stared at the tower projecting from the middle of the outer wall. ‘Are you sure?’ He could see the men running along the walls even now, carrying bundles of faggots, and already there were wisps and streamers of smoke escaping from the top of the tower. ‘Christ’s bones, they have lit it already,’ he breathed.

‘Aye.’ Hob stirred himself. ‘It’s a good strategic decision. If the enemy’s already tunnelled beneath, better to evacuate before it collapses. Now all those men can be withdrawn safely, and used in the city itself.’

Baldwin looked at the tower, and then at Hob. The barbican had been built to protect the walls here at this point. If deserted, the defences of the city were all the weaker. But the other men of the vintaine were standing about and listening. Baldwin held Hob’s serious gaze.

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘We’ll be safer now.’

But their illusory safety was short-lived.

Baldwin and his men were called to move nearer to the Tower of King Henry II on the same afternoon, and stood to with their weapons ready on the outer enceinte as the last men left the Tower of King Hugh. Smoke was billowing, with yellow-orange flames spurting from the roof, and Baldwin felt a mood of resignation amongst the men of his vintaine. There was no glory in this, any more than there had been in the wild charge of the Hospitallers that night. Baldwin himself still felt that their efforts were not in vain. With such a committed defence, and with their control of the sea, the Muslims must realise they must fail. God wouldn’t allow them to win.

But his exhaustion was eroding even his optimism.

Only a short time after they had reached the tower, the enemy catapults began a heavy assault. From the tower, Baldwin could see the men scurrying at the feet of their huge machines like flies crawling over carrion. It was a picture that sickened him, but then he had to duck as the fresh bombardment began to strike.

The Muslims were aiming directly at the walls now. The number of arrows being fired was reduced, probably because they were saving them for the actual onslaught, when it finally came.

‘Shit my breeches!’ Hob swore as a missile crashed into the wall just below the battlements, and Baldwin and he were thrown to their knees.

The entire wall was rocking and bucking beneath them. They could feel it, all the men in the vintaine, a rippling that shivered along the stones with each new impact. Baldwin could imagine the immense slabs of masonry being pushed inwards with the force of these blows, the rocks crumbling as they were slammed together, until the whole wall was a fluid rampart of broken rocks, gravel and sand. After a month of this bombardment, it was a miracle that any of the stones remained whole.

Another tremendous hammer-blow struck the wall, and suddenly a gush of flame roared up. As Baldwin climbed back to his feet, a foul black slime flew into the air, and then fell onto three men from his vintaine near to his side. It ignited instantly with a loud whoosh, and the three began to scream in agony as they were burned alive. Baldwin could do nothing for them. He only prayed that they would die quickly.

Arrows flew past, but he paid them little heed. The terror of the attacks was diminished with every fresh horror. He sat on the wall beside Hob, and rested. Too many nights with little sleep, too much living with constant fear, had eroded his capacity for feeling. He looked up when Hob rose to peer over the walls, and wondered why he bothered. Standing was not worth the effort. All a man could see was the teeming thousands of their enemies.

Baldwin closed his eyes, lay his head against the wall, and dreamed of England. England, with the cool mists rising from her rivers. The warming sun gradually burning through, throwing long shadows, setting the tree-trunks a-shimmer in her golden light. And the leaves would all be that delicious pale green, almost translucent. England in the spring was a wonderful place.

There was a man up near the tower, and as Baldwin glanced over, a mangonel bolt caught him directly in the breast, and he was thrown back with such force that the bolt penetrated the wall behind him, pinning him there like a doll, his arms and legs moving feebly, his head set at a foolish angle. Baldwin watched as he died, his mouth opening and shutting for some minutes without making a sound.

All around him, men were dying. The walls were assaulted with rocks and fire pots, each hurled with all the ferocity the besiegers could manage, and inside the city of Acre men were crushed, burned, pierced and broken. Their bodies formed mounds down by the gates already, and yet more were being carried away every hour to sit and recover at the Temple or at some other makeshift place of healing. It was all pointless, he thought. Soon they must be eradicated. It was impossible to survive this.

There was a roar, and Baldwin looked quickly up and down the lines of the walls, wondering whether this was a cheer of delight from defenders or enemy.

‘It’s going,’ Hob said quietly.

Baldwin stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then rose and peered over the wall. In front of him, the enclosed wall that led to the Tower of King Hugh was still standing, but the tower itself was gradually collapsing. Baldwin thought at first that it looked as though a missile had struck off the top, along with a section of masonry, but now he saw that the catapults had ceased their endless battery, and the gynours were themselves staring at the damage they had inflicted.

The tower shuddered like a dandelion in the breeze, and then a greyish mist rose. It was paler than the smoke from the fires within, and as it climbed, it seemed to accelerate upwards. Baldwin felt almost dizzy to see it, and then he realised that as the pale smoke left the tower, it hung there, in mid-air. In reality, the tower was shrinking away from the mist, collapsing in upon itself.

In another moment, there was no tower, only the harsh rumble of all the rocks rolling and bouncing away from their foundations, and the mist became a thick cloud of acrid stone-dust that clogged Baldwin’s lungs and made his eyes water. It was like breathing in lime dust. It coated his throat and nostrils until he felt he must choke.

Looking over the wall again, he was astonished to see that there really was nothing left of the tower. The connecting walkway and wall was thrust out like a finger towards the ruins.

And now that finger of rock itself became the target of the catapults. They slammed into the wall, two, three, four at a time — some from the north, some from the south. Those that missed, hummed over Baldwin’s head, to crash into the high walls behind him. Many thudded into the wall below. One jarred his head, throwing him bodily forward from the wall against which he leaned.

All he wanted was to sleep. He closed his eyes, and for a time he knew no more.