Templar's Acre

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It had been a nightmare journey for the pilgrims who arrived at the city that November. The seas had been storm-tossed, and some ships had been wrecked, killing passengers and crew alike; fortunately, many had got through, and as the cogs docked in the harbour or beached on the sands outside the city, a thirsty, ill-disciplined rabble was disgorged.

Edgar Bakere was among them.

A tall fellow with a lazy smile, Edgar had been apprenticed to a London baker, but he had never enjoyed the trade. His mind was not attuned to kneading and setting dough to rise, nor to wakening a little after Matins to set the fires in the ovens, ready for a long day of sweating exhaustion. He had long dreamed of leaving England’s damp chill, and making his fortune in a land where the sun shone. A place where he would not have to slave, where others would do the menial work for a change.

No, he was not going to be a baker. He was determined upon that. It was why he had invested what little money he had in taking lessons from a Master of Defence, learning how to handle a sword, a stick, or even his fists. while doing this, he had heard of Outremer, the land where men could go and find themselves a patch of land, and where, if they could hold on to it, they could become barons.

It was such a relief to be off the ship and on stable ground again that Edgar could have kissed the sands. He and the other men were only the advance: thousands more were being recruited from Lombardy to London, and before long more transports would reach this shore, full of men eager to protect Acre.

Their ship was a heavy-built transport, and to allow the horses to disembark, the master had beached the vessel. While the passengers copied Edgar and descended the ladders to the shore, shipmen were hacking at the caulking about the door in the hull. There were two other ships beached alongside, and Edgar eyed them without affection. It would, he decided, be many long years before he would willingly submit to sailing again.

Three bodies were being removed from the ship now. He saw the first thrown over the side to dangle from a rope under the arms, gradually being lowered. That was the man who had got into a fight after a gambling dispute. He had been stabbed, and bled to death in front of everyone. No one had gone to his aid. Then there was the body of the young mother, who had simply gone to sleep and not woken up. Even now her child, a boy of perhaps ten years, was wailing as his mother was let down. Why she had sought to come here, Edgar had no idea. Perhaps she was a prostitute, and believed the tales of a land flowing with milk and honey? A whore could make a good living in a town like this, especially with an army arriving. Women of that profession always followed an army.

The third man to be set down on the sandy shore was the kindly-faced old fellow who had befriended Edgar on the first day, and who had slept at Edgar’s side, eaten with him, and shared biscuits with him during their passage.

Edgar watched the body being deposited alongside the others, and then rose, looking about him. The city lay a scant half-mile distant, and he hefted his pack, adjusted the knife at his belt, and set off. He didn’t think of the man in the sand again. The man whom he had discovered in the middle of the night going through his pack searching for money or gold, and whom he had strangled.