Templar's Acre

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

The gatehouse collapsed all of a sudden. The gates moved apart slightly, there was a crack like a plate of steel hit with a maul. . and a moment later, a cloud of fine dust arose and the gatehouse was — gone! Only a mass of rubble remained, with here and there the timbers of the roof jutting up, as if a forest had been burned, leaving only bare trunks.

Guillaume de Beaujeu lifted his sword. ‘Templars! Lances and spears: kill as many as you can! Remain shoulder to shoulder; if they want to reach us, they will die first!’

‘Men of the Hospital! No quarter! No quarter!’ yelled the Marshal. ‘Acre! God is with us! God is on our side! You fight for Christ and the saints! Sell your lives dearly!’

And Ivo smiled, and lifted his sword as he heard the roars of the Muslims running across the plain to the ramp of rubble where the gates had been, and shouted, ‘For my Prince, my King! For England! For Rachel and for Peter!’ and began to charge in the wake of the Templars up the rampart, and stood at the top, behind the knights, waiting for the clash of arms.

For Baldwin, as the rubble fell and the cloud of greyish dust wafted away, there was a sense of relief. At last, the battle for the survival of the city was real. There was no more pretence: fighting remotely, waging war by straining catapults and bows. This was real fighting. He kissed the cross of his sword, eyes closed, and then scrambled and clambered up the rubble to the top. Only a few feet away, he saw Ivo, and in the moments they had left, Baldwin smiled at him. Ivo returned his grin, a wildness in his eyes, but then he clapped Baldwin on the back, and the two turned to face their enemy.

The arrows failed to strike them because the outer gatehouse remained intact. It was only as the Muslims came in beneath it that they could loose off their bolts and arrows, and already the men of Acre had gathered together a strong force of Pisan archers, who stood on the surviving walls at either side and kept up a withering flank attack. Sir Otto sent some of his English archers in support, who managed a faster rate of discharge. Soon many bodies lay beneath the gatehouse, and the way past was so narrow that the Muslims could only approach by clambering over the bodies of their comrades. Yet still they came.

Baldwin saw the first ranks of the Temple almost overwhelmed. The Hospitallers turned to their aid, and a shoving, heaving mêlée ensued, with the two Orders bound together, hacking, stabbing and thrusting, and then Baldwin saw Edgar throw himself in from the right flank, as he had when Baldwin was fighting in the alley for Lucia. Seeing more Muslims rushing up near Edgar, Baldwin ran to his side to help keep them back.

His entire consciousness was concentrated on avoiding weapons while trying to kill the men clambering up the rampart. A spear jabbed his flank, and he grabbed it, pulling hard, and bringing his blade down on the man’s exposed wrist. A horrible jarring, and the spear was released. He turned it on his enemies, left-handed, over his head, thrusting downwards — and caught a Muslim’s face, then stabbed at another. It sank in, and the spear was plucked from his fist. He grabbed his sword again, the bent blade gleaming weirdly as it caught the light.

It was dark before they could stop. As night began to fall, the Muslims fell back, called by blasts of trumpets, and relinquished the rampart but not the outer walls. Those were manned, and the old outer gate blocked with three mantelets. They had guards on duty all night.

Baldwin fell to his backside as soon as the last enemy ran. He was so weary he could not even weep or praise God for their delivery; for this was a delivery of sorts. They had held back the vast army today, and who could tell what the morrow might bring? For now, all Baldwin wanted was a chance to rest his head — just for an hour or two, without interruption. It had been so long since he had been able to sleep without being woken.

‘Baldwin?’

He looked up to see Ivo holding out some bread and a pottle of water.

‘Too tired,’ he mumbled.

‘You need to eat, boy. You haven’t eaten or drunk all day,’ Ivo said wearily. He looked about him at the destruction. ‘You’ll need it for the morning.’

Pietro and Lucia had cowered in the house listening to the battle raging.

‘I cannot bear it any longer,’ Lucia burst out.

‘Mistress, you can’t do anything,’ Pietro said. He had a gauze bandage wrapped about his head, but his scowl spoke of the pain he still felt from that blow. ‘A rock, and I was too slow to dodge it,’ he said again bitterly. It had been his constant refrain since waking late in the afternoon.

‘You stay here,’ she said with determination. ‘I am going to find out what is happening. I cannot stay here while Baldwin fights for me!’

‘Eh? You think it’ll help him to see you?’ Pietro said.

‘Yes,’ she snapped, and was gone before he could rise to his feet or admonish her further.

The streets came as a shock. Rocks lay strewn, and dead buildings stood black and charred against the sky. It made her feel as though she was walking through a city of the dead. Shouting came to her, and the sounds of fighting: the clash of weapons, screams and cries of pain, and over all the sounds of splintering wood and rock.

Turning the corner near the castle, she saw before her the barricades blocking the street, and men struggling fiercely at the top of the rampart of rubble where the gatehouse had once stood. She could do nothing but stand and stare as the men fought, every so often one of them losing his footing and sliding down the ramp, sometimes rising immediately, but often remaining on the ground. She saw a man at the top who collapsed, falling back instantly to lie with an arrow jutting obscenely from his face.

Pietro was right. There was nothing she could do here. It was stupid to think she could help. She was a woman, and the thought of fighting like this, in a pack, shoulder to shoulder with other men, was appalling. She wanted to turn and flee, but something held her rooted to the spot. Why on earth had she come back with Baldwin? If she had remained at the farm, she might have been assaulted again, but even rape was better than this. If only she was strong enough to wield a sword or axe herself, and could join those men up there, bravely keeping the enemy at bay.

‘Mistress?’ A woman was at her side, peering at her. She was a well-to-do lady, with greying hair under her wimple, and her face was pale, like a woman who had never worked in the open air.

‘Yes?’

‘There are holes in the walls, and fresh cracks appearing. They must be filled, and our men cannot do it. They needs must rest tonight, not toil. It is work that we can help with.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Lucia said eagerly. ‘I would do anything to help!’

‘I know. It’s the waiting, isn’t it? Being incapable of doing anything while our men fight and. . and die.’ The woman had a catch in her voice, and Lucia guessed what was going through her mind.

It was the same as had passed through her own mind every few moments of the last day: was her man still alive, or had he died hours before?

Baldwin came to in the middle of the night, not because of any alarm he could discern. And then he felt a pain in his leg.

He was sitting with his back to the city’s inner wall, and there was a stiffness in his neck and torso. His right shoulder and forearm were a mass of strained and tortured muscles, not ripped or broken, but simply over-weary. Never before had he wielded a weapon for so long a time. He stretched his hand, staring at it as he did so, marvelling at the way that the tendons stood out, how the fingers curled and uncurled. So many men today had lost their hands. He had been fortunate. There was a scratch, literally, on his neck, he was bruised badly under his left armpit where a spear had caught his mail, and his foot hurt where it had been stamped on three times in the previous day’s efforts.

There was also a soreness in his thigh. His wound had more or less healed, but with the efforts of the last days, it was aching constantly.

Men were resting all about him. He felt that he could have been lying in a mass grave. Men lay curled up, or sprawled on their backs; some men huddled up while others lay sobbing, some moaning. One was calling for his mother. Most, however, were snoring. Even the terror of invasion could not keep them awake any longer. Baldwin glanced over them all. Hundreds of men, some in the colours of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, some English archers from Sir Otto’s force, mingled with the brown tunics of Templars, and one knight.

He stared more closely. That was not a Templar, it was Sir Jacques d’Ivry.

The older man had his twisted smile still from his injury, but at least he was smiling, and as Baldwin watched, he opened an eye. ‘So, my friend, you are not asleep either?’ he whispered.

‘I couldn’t,’ Baldwin said. ‘How did you know?’

‘I felt someone else was awake.’ The older man rolled over onto his backside with a grunt and bent at the hips, stretching himself, before standing. ‘I think it is time to check our defences.’

‘I will join you.’ Baldwin was not fully refreshed from his sleep, but he reckoned he would be unlikely to get more rest tonight. In any case, he was sure that soon he would die, and to squander even one precious moment in sleep seemed a crime.

There was a heaviness in the air as the two walked away from the sleeping men and up to the wall. There, Sir Jacques leaned on the remnants of the parapet and stared out at the Muslim camp.

‘They’re dancing and singing again,’ Baldwin said.

It was so much like being at home, he thought. The sounds of cymbals and tambours, a reedy piping, all were reminiscent of a village party back in Devon, and he was suddenly oppressed by a sense of loneliness. This land was so strange, so malevolent. ‘You know, you once said to me that if I came to understand God’s purpose here, I would understand the country and the people. I don’t think I ever shall.’

Sir Jacques turned to him and smiled. ‘Perhaps you’ve come to understand more than most pilgrims do when arriving here, then. There is no secret, my friend. The Holy Land is holy because we hold it as such.’

He crouched and scraped his hand over the stones of the walkway. ‘Look! All this stone has become sand from our tramping feet, but it is what the land here is made of. If you walk over it, you find more and more sand everywhere. But the people, my friend, they are resilient. They have been attacked and lost their lands to so many enemies over the centuries. Christ did all He could for them, but when He ascended, the Romans still held the land. And then others took it from them. This land, it is nothing without the people. You must remember that.’

‘And now the Muslims want to take it.’

‘And they may succeed. But God will not forget it. He has greater plans, perhaps. When peace truly does reign over the world, perhaps it will start here. Right here, in Acre. Or in Jerusalem. Would that not be a wonderful day? The day that all fighting and wars were stopped, because all accepted the one God as their own?’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said. ‘But too many have died already in defending this city. How long before we can have peace?’

Sir Jacques shook his head. ‘Perhaps you and I shall not see it. Perhaps it will come soon after the Christians have left this land. Perhaps that is God’s plan, to see all Christians forced from here so that our brothers in England, in Normandy, in Angoulême, in Lombardy and Tuscany and the Holy Roman Empire, will all rise up to come and regain the whole of the Holy Land. A holy host coming to retake Acre, Tripoli, Bethlehem, Jerusalem — all the lands which once Jesus looked out upon. Now that would be a wonderful plan.’

‘After we are dead.’

‘Ah, well, that is the risk with great schemes,’ Sir Jacques said lightly. He was looking out over the enemy camps. ‘It would require a large force to take on all these fellows.’

Baldwin was about to agree, when he saw women at the base of the wall and the rampart. ‘What are they doing?’

‘Did you not know? While we rested, the women have been filling in the holes in the walls. Is it not a joy to see them join in our efforts?’

Baldwin nodded, a lump in his throat, as he watched the lines of women. They walked with wicker baskets on their backs, or cradling stones, and went with quiet dignity to the wall, where they set their stones down, rebuilding the walls, filling in the rampart where the gatehouse had stood. Already there was a row three deep and two high along much of the rampart. Others were setting their stones between the baskets.

Then he saw her.

‘Lucia!’

Lucia set the basket down and stood straight as she made her way down the rampart, her back muscles complaining. She heard him, but didn’t turn immediately. Not until he was at her side.

‘Lucia, please, stop.’

‘I must get on,’ she said.

‘Are you all right? Where’s Pietro? Isn’t he here?’

‘No, we are working on our own. We do what must be done for the city,’ she said.

‘I wish I could take you away from this place. I want to be with you,’ he said miserably.

She put her hand on his cheek. ‘Baldwin, I am happy here. I am free. You have shown me affection, and there is nothing more I could have asked for.’

‘I wanted more.’

‘I know, but I am a slave. I have learned never to want. Slaves don’t receive what they want, only what others see fit to give,’ she said, a trace of hardness in her voice.

There was a call from the walls. Baldwin put his own hand over hers, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

‘Lucia, I love you,’ he whispered.

‘I know,’ she said, gently removing her hand.

He watched as she walked away along the street with the other women, past the barricades and into the city. It felt as though his heart was going with her.