Faithful Dead

7

The short-lived and ill-conceived assault on Damascus was a fiasco.

Not that Geoffroi and his fellow knights could know that as, in late July, they approached the city and prepared for battle. Taking communion that morning, after humbly confessing his sins, Geoffroi had prayed for the success of the engagement.

Then, in an action which swiftly turned from an ordered attack into a rout, he rode into battle.

Beside the crusading army rode contingents of Frankish settlers but, even with this welcome addition to their numbers, the task seemed daunting. Unable to gain entry to the fiercely defended city, the army laid siege.

Stalemate.

Rumours began to circulate.

Someone within the city — maybe even the Emir — had bribed the Jerusalem lords to give up and retreat. Reinforcements had been sent for, and a vast Muslim army was even now heading for Damascus, intent on slaughtering every Christian they laid hands on. Nureddin himself was on his way, his fanatical eyes alight at the thought of heaps of Christian dead. The Frankish settlers were planning to abandon their newly arrived comrades and, even worse, turn them over to the Turks. Or the Muslims. Or both.

Morale plummeted.

On the fourth day, the siege was lifted and the Christian army was ordered to retreat.

Then all hell broke loose.

Fighting for his life, with no clear idea of what his orders were or, even, of what was the most sensible thing to do, Geoffroi copied his fellow knights and battled his way out through the surging throng of the enemy. Whether the swarthy, dark men he fought were Turkish Damascenes who had ridden out to send the invaders packing, or crack Muslim troops under the command of Nureddin, he did not know.

All he did know was that the enemy fought with an efficiency and a ferocity that he, a fighting man himself, could not help but admire. Professional soldiers, many used the bow — of a peculiar, curved shape — as a cavalry assault weapon, firing it from horseback with a skill born of long experience and endless training.

The effect on the Christian army was devastating. All around him Geoffroi saw men fall, some shot with the awful, penetrating arrows that flew off those strange bows, some dragged from their horses to be cut to death by knife or sword.

Geoffroi thought suddenly, I may be about to die.

As he thought this, a peculiar sense of detachment came over him. I cannot avoid what lies in store for me, he reflected fatalistically. I must do my best — of all things, a picture of his family sprang to mind, making sacrifice after sacrifice in order that he should be here, fighting before Damascus — and, if my best does not result in my escape, then I shall die and, with my sins absolved, go to Paradise.

Then he spurred his horse, screamed aloud and, with his sword held high, rode into the fray.

An unknowable time later — it could have been one hour or several — Geoffroi found himself in a press of Frankish knights fighting their way out of what appeared to be an attempted ambush. Some enemy troops had tried to corner them but, in this instance, it was the Christians who outnumbered the Turks, or Muslims, whoever they were, and the enemy soldiers were steadily being massacred.

Geoffroi, attracted by a sudden high-pitched wailing, spun round and saw the slight figure of a Muslim youth, quite short in stature, staggering into the path of a mounted Frankish knight who was bearing down on him.

In a peculiar moment of stillness, the youth turned his head and his terrified eyes met Geoffroi’s. But he’s a child! Geoffroi thought, aghast. He’s nothing but a little boy! ‘Wait!’ he yelled, waving his sword towards the charging knight, ‘stay your hand!’

The knight, who either did not hear or chose to ignore Geoffroi’s appeal, spurred his horse.

The boy had been injured; a cut to the head was bleeding profusely, and the entire right side of his face looked as if it had been painted scarlet. In addition, he seemed to be concussed; he was running round in circles, stumbling, pushing himself upright only to fall again.

Geoffroi could see an obvious way out for him; if he turned sharp right, he would be facing the entrance to a sort of tunnel between two rocky outcrops where, for a precious life-saving moment, he would be out of the charging knight’s reach.

Geoffroi waved at him, kicking on his horse and galloping towards him. ‘Go in there, boy!’ he cried. ‘Quickly! Get under cover!’

But the boy’s wide, panicking eyes looked blank; he had not understood.

The knight was almost on him.

Geoffroi, screaming now, yelled out, ‘NO! He’s a child; he’s no soldier! Leave him! Leave him be!’

The knight charged on.

Drawing in his horse’s head so sharply that the animal all but tripped, Geoffroi changed direction and flew forward on a path that would cross that of the knight. Passing in front of him so closely that he actually saw the knight’s eyes behind the slit of his visor — dark eyes, narrowed, intent — Geoffroi then wheeled again and, bending down out of the high saddle and lowering his left arm more in hope than in expectation, scooped the child up and out of the knight’s path.

Then, before the knight could slow down and turn, Geoffroi spurred his horse and, weaving and swerving, raced from the scene.

He was so charged up that, for a few minutes, all he could do was cling on to the child — whose terror seemed to have totally paralysed him — and urge his rapidly tiring horse onwards. So it was that, after some time, he suddenly realised that he had left the fighting behind.

The three of them, lathered horse, panting man and catatonic boy, seemed to be entirely alone.

They were in a shallow valley — little more than a depression — and cut off from the carnage they had left behind them by a short range of low hills. Hurriedly — this respite could last but moments, he knew — Geoffroi slid down from the saddle, still holding the child, and deposited him on the ground.

The boy immediately fell over.

Kneeling at Geoffroi’s feet, face in his hands in the sand and small bottom stuck up in the air, he began to cry. Amid the tears he managed to splutter out a few words, but they were in a language that Geoffroi did not understand.

Squatting down beside him, Geoffroi said gently, ‘I am not going to kill you, child! Is that likely, when I’ve just risked life and limb to save you?’

The boy raised his head. Cautiously, as if he were not at all sure it was wise. He said something, but, again, Geoffroi didn’t understand.

Geoffroi stood up and went over to his horse, reaching up for a water bottle and a strip of cloth. Then, returning to the boy and sitting down beside him, he made gestures of face washing, pointing at the child.

The boy — he looked no more than six or seven — watched him out of terrified eyes. This, Geoffroi thought in exasperation, is getting us nowhere. Very gently, careful to make no violent move, he ran water on to the cloth and began to clean up the child’s face.

The boy seemed to comprehend, at last, that this strange, sweaty man on the big horse was actually trying to help him. Submitting obediently to Geoffroi’s ministrations, he sat quite still while Geoffroi wiped away what seemed like several cupfuls of blood.

The cut itself — on the boy’s forehead just below the hairline — did not look too deep; in the manner of head wounds, the amount of blood was not indicative of the severity of the wound. By the time Geoffroi had finished mopping up, the bleeding had all but stopped, so he made a pad out of part of the cloth and tied it firmly in place with the remainder.

‘That’s the best I can do for you, young man,’ he said, sitting back to study the results of his nursing.

The boy ventured a small smile; his teeth were very white and even. Some rich man’s son, Geoffroi thought, if I do right to judge by the standards of my own people, for no poor child of the north has such a dazzling array of clean, white teeth. The child’s clothes, too, under the blood and the dust, were of fine quality.

‘What am I to do with you?’ Geoffroi asked, knowing that the child would not answer. ‘Take you into the city? No, they’d kill me long before they saw what I was carrying. Leave you here? No, for there is no guarantee that our forces might not arrive before your own people, whoever they are, and undo all my good work.’

He sat there, frowning, for some moments.

Then, for want of a better plan, he put the boy back on to his horse, swung up behind him and, keeping a very careful look out, rode along to a gap in the line of low hills and stared out over the plain before him.

The battle was still raging. The Christians, he saw clearly, were in retreat; the Turks and Muslims were chasing them ever faster from the walls of the city.

If he were to be very quick, it might just be possible. .

Since further thought was probably a mistake — he might come up with serious flaws in his plan — Geoffroi waited no longer. Kicking his horse to a canter, keeping as well within the feeble shelter of the hills as he could, he circled round in a wide sweep, behind the pursuing Muslims and in towards the city.

Then, again without pausing to think, he stopped, carefully lowered the child on to the ground, and pointed at the city.

‘Go on,’ he urged.

The child did not move.

‘Go ON!’

Frightened by the sudden loud cry, the child, with one last look from those huge dark eyes, turned and ran.

Geoffroi, who had meant to keep his voice down and generally maintain a low profile, galloped off in the opposite direction. Quite sure that he could hear startled Turks yelling after him, that he could feel the drumming of their horses’ hooves as they pursued him, notching arrows to the string as they did so, he made for the shelter of his hills.

And, in time, unsullied and probably even unnoticed by the enemy, he caught up with his own retreating army.

Many of the Christian army had been killed in the melee of the retreat from Damascus. Many more had been wounded; back in camp, Geoffroi saw that a large number of hospital tents had been prepared and were busy treating the worst of the injuries. Moans, cries and screams rent the air, and he could smell blood. The heat and the insects were turning the suffering of the wounded into torture; black flies kept alighting in swarms on open wounds, bringing with them at best a nightmare of tiny, stabbing pains as they repeatedly landed, were wafted away and landed again. At worst — and this the wounded must have realised — they brought the dreadful threat of infection.

Once the terrible yellow pus filled an open cut, as every crusader knew, it was but a short step to the hot, scarlet pain of inflammation, the sweet-sour stench of gangrene and, once that had set in, amputation.

Geoffroi had become separated from his own company, and, try as he might, he could not find them.

In the midst of his searching, he came across a familiar face: a short, swarthy knight from Lombardy — or was it Liguria? — with whom, lounging on the banks of a small tributary of the Danube, he and some fellow Frenchmen had once placed bets on who would be first to catch a fish.

A lifetime ago.

‘Lost?’ the dark knight asked. ‘You certainly look it.’

Geoffroi explained.

‘Ah, then you won’t have eaten.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

The dark knight took no notice. Grabbing Geoffroi by the elbow, he led him away to his own camp, where he fed him with slices of some salty meat and a hunk of dry bread, washed down with a thin, fairly sour red wine.

Then, when Geoffroi had thanked him, he pointed out the way back to the French troops’ lines.

He got back to be told that Herbert of Lewes was dead.

He had been struck in the neck by one of those arrows. Although the wound in itself had not been fatal, Herbert had, in trying to pull it out, snagged its tip against a main artery.

Still astride his horse, he had bled to death.

Numb, Geoffroi whispered, ‘I liked him. He was my friend.’

‘Aye,’ said the knight who had broken the news. ‘I know that.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘We have a small packet of his belongings. Someone said he’d spoken to you of his home — where he came from, his family, that sort of thing. So we wondered. .’ He trailed off, as if what they had been wondering was too outrageous to be spoken of.

But Geoffroi was holding out his hand for the package. ‘Of course,’ he said quietly. ‘I will see that they receive it.’

Then he crept away to grieve alone and to pray for the soul of his bluff and kindly Englishman.

Sleep did not come readily to Geoffroi that night. Although he was exhausted and sore from bruises, small cuts and aching muscles, his mind refused to switch off and allow him to rest. Images of the day flashed repeatedly before his eyes. A Turk’s face, brown under the vivid purple and red of his headdress, teeth bared in a howl of fury as he charged. A French knight staring down, with a bemused expression, at the place where his right forearm used to be. A group of Muslim horsemen who seemed to move as one, galloping on such a beautiful, smoothly curved path that the movement could have been choreographed.

A child, lost in the midst of a battle, with wide brown eyes and half of his face stained bright red.

Herbert of Lewes bleeding to death from a severed artery in his neck.

For all that Geoffroi had not been a witness to the last scene, it was the one that haunted him most.

He had lain down to sleep a little apart from the other men; he had felt the need for solitude, or as near to that state as you could get in a camp full of soldiers. Now, listening to the steady breathing and the snores of those lucky enough to be fast asleep, and to the cries and muffled shouts of those in the throes of nightmare, Geoffroi turned his back on them all and closed his eyes.

He must have slept because, when some small sound alerted him, he woke from a dream.

He lay absolutely still and listened.

Nothing.

Hunching his blanket over his shoulder — the night was totally dark and quite chilly — he settled down again.

Then, shocking him so profoundly that he felt his heart leap against his ribs, a hand came down tightly and firmly over his mouth. He cut off short his instinctive lurch as he felt a steel point at his throat and a deep, hoarse voice, heavily accented, hissed right in his ear, ‘If you move I shall kill you. If you do exactly as I say, I swear you shall come to no harm.’

Very aware of the knife’s point, Geoffroi gave a very small nod. Then a hood or a bag of some sort was put over his head, his hands were tied behind him and his assailant took firm hold of his elbow and helped him to his feet.

He was led, he presumed, the short distance to the edge of the sleeping enclosure, and made to exit it by rolling over on the ground so as to pass beneath the rope which cordoned off the area. Then, still with the knifepoint at his throat and his abductor’s tight grip on his arm, he was taken to a horse and bundled on to its back. Somebody was astride it already, and this someone wordlessly hauled him up and settled him. Now another knife was at his throat; he did not, for the moment, see any way of escape.

So he just sat there.

The two horsemen quietly moved off. Geoffroi was aware of some small sounds — what had happened to the watch, for the good Lord’s sake? Where were the guards? Why had nobody spotted two men on horseback abducting a Frankish knight? — but then, after a time, there was nothing but the sound of the horses’ hooves cantering over the ground.

They rode for some time. Then Geoffroi was aware of a light ahead; it was no more than a glow that he could vaguely make out from beneath whatever it was they had used to cover his head. The light steadily grew in brightness, resolving itself into two, three and then four separate glowing patches.

Then the horses’ hooves were clattering on stone. Someone called out — another added his voice — and the men on horseback called back. They spoke in a language or dialect that Geoffroi did not know. Geoffroi’s horseman reined in his mount, and hands were suddenly around Geoffroi’s waist and helping him — surprisingly gently — down to the ground.

He sensed the presence of other people, but none of them spoke. His horseman said something to the man who had taken Geoffroi from his tent, and he answered. One of them laughed briefly.

Geoffroi thought, if they have brought me to my death, then they seem very relaxed and cheerful about it. He remembered the careful hands that had helped him off his horse and decided that it could just be possible that they weren’t going to kill him.

But if not, why had they brought him here?

And where exactly was here?

Then the man who had come into the tent said, ‘Come. You come with me now. I shall take you.’

Once again he took hold of Geoffroi’s elbow and led him away. Their boots rang out on some hard stone floor, or at least Geoffroi’s did; his companion seemed to be wearing soft-soled shoes. Geoffroi became aware of a scent. . sweet, slightly spicy, not at all unpleasant. . and he thought he heard the faint crackling of a fire.

They walked for some time, in darkness, in light, in darkness again. Then they must have emerged from a passage, perhaps, into a larger area, because Geoffroi was suddenly aware of a sense of space around him and a lot of light. He could hear the sound of running water. The sweet smell was stronger now, and slightly different. . there was a tangy, musky element to it now. . was it sandalwood?

The man beside him was saying something — a greeting? — and he pushed Geoffroi’s head down so that he bowed.

That was the final indignity.

To be forcibly removed from his tent in the middle of the night with a knife at his throat and taken miles away on a fast, silent-footed horse was one thing. To be marched through long passages with a hood over his head was just about tolerable.

But to be made to bow to someone he couldn’t even see, well, that was too much.

Geoffroi wrenched himself away from the pressure of the man’s hand and stood up tall and proud. In a loud voice he said, ‘Let me see who it is to whom you would have me bow, and judge with my own eyes whether I deem him worthy.’

There was a stunned silence. For a dreadful moment, Geoffroi thought he had gone too far. He could almost hear the soft scrape of a sword drawn from its sheath, the muted whistle as it descended to sever his head from his neck. .

But then somebody laughed. A rich, happy sound.

And a deep voice said cheerfully, ‘Quite right, sir knight. Why should a valiant man bow to an invisible shadow?’

He must have made some gesture, for immediately the rope binding Geoffroi’s wrists was cut and the hood was taken off his head.

Blinking in the sudden bright light — there must have been thirty or more candles burning in glass lamps — Geoffroi stared around him. He was in a cool, marble hall, with arches along two sides open to the night air, and in the middle of it a fountain played. There was a small fire in some sort of brazier, and the sweet smell seemed to emanate from the soft coils of smoke rising from it.

There were about a dozen people in the hall. Some, standing perfectly still in the shadows, appeared to be servants, or perhaps guards. The two men either side of Geoffroi, dressed in heavy hooded cloaks, must be the pair who had brought him here.

In front of him was a set of pure white marble steps, on top of which stood a divan covered in rich burgundy-coloured cloth. Extending down from the divan and down the centre of the steps was a runner of fine carpet, decorated with a geometric pattern in shades of purple, violet, rich yellow and dark red. Two more servants sat at the foot of the steps. Another stood at the top, beside the divan, holding a tray on which was a brass pot, a tiny cup and a plate containing small titbits of some sort of food.

On the divan, beringed hand extended to take one of the titbits, sat a plump man of perhaps sixty years. His round face under the elaborate, multicoloured headdress was beaming, making his small, dark eyes all but disappear behind the bulges of yellowish flesh around his eyelids. The wide skirts of his garments — made of rich, vivid silk, shining in the candlelight — had been carefully arranged on the divan around him.

He sat quite composed under Geoffroi’s scrutiny for a moment or so. Then, the laughter clearly not far away, he said, ‘Now you see me, sir knight.’ His voice suddenly becoming serious, he said, ‘But, indeed, it is not you who should do honour to me.’

With some effort, he slowly rose to his feet and, to Geoffroi’s amazement, made him a low reverence.

Straightening up and flopping down once more on the divan, he said, ‘I am Mehmed. I have had you brought here to thank you because, this afternoon, you saved the life of my grandson.’