Templar's Acre

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

In only a week the outer walls were lost.

It began with the Tower of King Hugh. With ever more firepower concentrated on the narrow point of the walls, the stonework could not survive. Daily, as Baldwin peered over the walls at the enemy, he saw more cats and siege shields erected, protecting the miners who were even now trying to undermine all the city’s defences. No matter how many were crushed by the Christian catapults’ rocks or arrows, always more appeared to take their places. The Sultan had an uncountable number of men from which to draw upon, and he spent them recklessly, apparently caring nothing for those who were left broken and wailing on the bloody sands.

Not that the Christians were capable of hurling too many stones. All the hoardings were broken or burned away, and with them much of the protection for the catapults had also gone. Only three catapults remained which could continue any form of barrage: one on a castle tower behind St Anthony’s Gate, one behind the German Tower, and a last one in the Templar’s sector, behind the St Lazarus Tower. These three kept up a sporadic bombardment, but their impact was negligible in the face of so many enemies.

After the collapse of King Hugh’s Tower, the next to fall was the Tower of the English, two days later. It succumbed slowly and majestically, as if reluctantly giving up the battle. Only one day later, the Tower of the Countess de Blois slumped, the outer walls crumpling, and tearing down a mass of stonework from the walls at either side as it went. With these gone, the defence of the outer walls became ever more precarious.

On 15 May, Baldwin was back at his post on the outer wall with his men near the Tower of St Nicholas. Here, too, the walls were beginning to crumble. As had happened with the first sections to fall, as soon as their objective was realised, the Muslims moved their artillery and began to hurl missiles at the nearer targets. As one tower disappeared in a grey haze, the gynours would already be at their crow-bars and ropes, pulling the devices around to point at the next. There was no need to devastate the city with more fire-pots or stones, since the people of Acre were already demoralised enough.

That was the last day before the real storm struck them. Because late on that morning, suddenly the outer wall of the King’s Tower gave a tremendous shudder — and disappeared. With that lost, there was little to hold the enemy at bay.

Baldwin and his men raced to the tower. They ran and ducked over the rubble on the walkways, along the drawbridge towards the tower, and when they reached it, Baldwin and Hob stood with shock, staring out where the front wall should have been. There was nothing, not even a firm floor on which to stand. No defence could hold this, not while the Muslims kept throwing rocks and pouring in arrows.

Pulling his men out to the protection of the remaining wall, Baldwin went with Anselm from one body to another in the devastated chamber, seeing if any were alive. One lad was still breathing, and they dragged the masonry from his crushed legs to haul him to the Temple, but as the last rock was lifted, he gave a long, shuddering sigh, and was dead.

Baldwin stared down at him. The victim was younger than Baldwin himself, and handsome, with fair hair and blue eyes. He could have been a northern man, or German. Just another wasted life. For a moment, Baldwin was overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of this defence, and felt a tear start.

‘What shall we do?’ Hob called from the doorway.

Wiping at his face, Baldwin glanced through the gap in the tower’s wall. He could see more stones being hurled at the tower. One crashed into the upper levels, and he sprang back before a pair of beams holding up the roof fell into the room. ‘Get out!’ he screamed, but it was too late.

Anselm was beneath one, and even though he tried to dart away, the beam threw him to the floor, and Baldwin saw him look up as a massive weight of timber fell upon him, crushing him entirely.

Baldwin gave a cry, and would have run to him, but Hob caught him and pulled him to the doorway. ‘No! We can’t lose you as well, sir. He’s dead — there’s no good will come of pulling a corpse from there. Leave him!’

Baldwin found himself on the walkway again, his arms gripped by Hob and Thomas. The latter was weeping without cease. ‘Thomas, I’m sorry!’

‘He was a good man,’ Thomas sobbed, ‘but he wouldn’t want you to die to pull him out. Leave him, Vinten’ry. There’s nothing we can do for him now.’

‘He’s right,’ Hob said.

Baldwin felt his arms released, and fell to his knees. He could see in through the door from here, and one boot of Anselm’s was still visible. Just discernible behind it was a dark pool of liquid, and Baldwin bent his head in despair, his hands on his face.

He was a failure. He had wanted to come here to protect the city, yet it was being torn down around him. His woman would be left to the savages as they poured into the city, and all his men would die. What was the point of his being here?

‘Sir?’ Thomas said.

Thomas, the son of a peasant from somewhere in England, had lost his brother, and yet was more controlled than him.

Baldwin stood, and gazed about him. None of them would escape the city, but they could help others to do so. The women, the children — perhaps the more elderly men too. That was his duty now, to hold the walls until all those who could, had escaped.

And then sell his own life as dearly as possible.

‘We can’t do anything while they keep this up’, he said decisively. ‘When it gets dark, they may leave it alone. But we’ll have to come back then to defend it in case of night attack.’

Hob nodded, but without enthusiasm. The thought of a night assault was not appealing to any of them. Baldwin didn’t care. He knew his death was approaching. It was merely a case of how long he could survive beforehand.