The Long Sword

ALEXANDRIA

1365

We sailed in early July. My body was healed, and I left behind me my revenge on d’Herblay, my fears for the Bishop of Geneva, my new-found love of Venice, and my hatred of Genoa. I had had this experience before, leaving London to go to France. War is always a sea voyage — if you return, everything is changed. Even you.

We had perhaps four thousand men-at-arms, the cream and the riff-raff of all the men-at-arms in Europe that summer. We had the best of the Italian knights and many of the best French professionals; there was a rumour, right until we sailed, that du Guesclin would join us, and I wished for him. We had some very good English knights, as I have said before, and a surprising number of Scots and Irish — not that I can always tell the two apart. But the Leslies had brought men from the isles west of Scotland. They were, every one of them, as good as Kenneth MacDonald and his brother and Colin Campbell.

Mostly, we had the scrapings of Poitou and Gascony, desperate men in armour whose outward rust belied the state of their souls, their purses, and their general discipline. Yet these same men were as tough as old saddle leather and as careless of danger and pain — vicious old mongrels who would bite any hand if paid. What the masters seemed to ignore is how they behaved when not paid.

But just then, between Venice, Cyprus, the Pope and the Accaioulo, we had gold.

Sabraham used some of the gold to buy informers within the brigands, so that we might work out any plots against the legate. He was thorough, and he trusted no one. Even me. Later, as you will hear, he shared some information with me, when he had no choice.

Ah, Chaucer. You know Sabraham, eh?

Later, in June, I heard that there had been a mysterious riot among the Gascons, and three men had died — with crossbow shafts in their heads. An odd sort of riot; Sabraham’s sort.

We left the lagoon, and loaded the ships, and I relaxed.

After all, we only had to fight the Saracens.

After a day at sea, it became clear to me that our hosts, the Venetians, had very different goals than the Pope, the legate, or the king. This didn’t surprise me unduly; I was a professional soldier, and I was aware that employers were often at odds with their own soldiers over strategy — but having Nerio in the next hammock on board the Saint Niccolo gave me direct access to his Florentine perspective on the Venetians and the Genoese, the Pope and the French. He knew more of Venetian policy than Ser Matteo Corner, who commanded our magnificent galley. Every night, whether we were in one of the small ports of the Adriatic or nestled stern first on a beach cooking on the hard-packed gravel, we’d debate the possible targets of the crusade.

Miles Stapleton assumed we’d go directly from the rendezvous at Rhodes to assault Jaffa, the port for Jerusalem. He described this one night, and Fra Peter laughed aloud. He was sitting on a folding stool, checking the leather straps on his harness and rubbing oil into them to protect them against the salt air.

‘Jaffa isn’t so much a port as an open beach,’ he said. ‘It’s unprotected in bad weather.’

Miles nodded. ‘Ah, but God will provide us good weather. And it is the closest port to Jerusalem.’

Fra Peter shook his head. ‘We need a good port where we can take water and food; a port that can be defended from the Egyptian fleet.’

One of the French Hospitallers looked up from his own armour. ‘Acre?’ he asked.

The older men debated Acre and Tyre, both ports that had been held by Christians, almost within living memory. Acre had fallen almost eighty years before, to the Mamluks. Tyre had been lost through infighting and sheer foolishness.

I had never even seen a map of the Holy Land. I suppose that I thought of the world as a vast plate with Jerusalem at its centre, and I assumed that, like any great city, it would be easy to reach.

Fra Peter scratched his chin and went back to his leather. But another night, in a waterfront taverna on Corfu, he sat tapping his teeth with his thumb, clearly impatient at my poor geography. He took the hulls of pistachios for cities and used wine to draw coastlines.

‘Look,’ he said, as much to me as to Miles or Lord Grey. We were all shockingly ignorant of the Levant. ‘This is Anatolia, which juts like a sore thumb out of Asia. Two hundred years ago it was all in the hands of the Greeks and many Greeks live there yet. Here’s Greece and Romania … here’s Venice.’ He drew the coastlines in broad sweeps. ‘Under Anatolia’s thumb, the coast of Syria runs almost straight south.’ He placed pistachios. ‘Here is Venice, up in the armpit of the Adriatic. Here’s old Athens, out at the end of Greece. Here’s Constantinople, where Asia and Europe meet. The Dardanelles, the Pontic Sea, the Bosporus, the Euxine, which is ruled by Genoa and the Bulgarians, these days. Here to the south of the Dardanelles are a mess of Greek islands, some held by the schismatic Greeks, some by the Genoese, and a few by our Order — Lesvos, Chios, Rhodos. South on the coast of Asia-Syria is Tyre. South of Tyre is Acre. South of Acre is the open beach of Jaffa near Jerusalem.’ Fra Peter clicked down the last city, and a silence fell.

Matteo Corner was nodding along. There were twenty of us sitting in the July heat, most of us the legate’s men. Corner put a finger on the pistachio hull for Jerusalem. ‘You have been?’ Corner asked.

‘I’ve made a dozen caravans,’ Fra Peter said. ‘It is the ultimate duty of our Order, to escort pilgrims to Jerusalem.’

Corner smiled cynically. ‘I have been as well.’ He shrugged.

His shrug was dismissive, and I was as shocked as if he’d blasphemed. ‘Surely, messire, it is a fine city?’

Fra Peter sighed. ‘Do not confuse the earthly Jerusalem with the Heavenly, young William. The earthly city is neither very large nor very holy. And it’s only trade is the pilgrim trade.’

But Fiore leaned forward. ‘And then comes Africa?’ he asked, tracing the outline of the Syrian coast in red wine on the table.

Matteo Corner nodded. ‘Yes. This triangle is the Sinai.’

I had a pleasant shock. To hear the names of places from the Bible as real landmarks!

Corner kept sketching. ‘This is the Nile delta. The delta is enormous — a hundred leagues across, with several cities and three or four navigable branches. This is Cairo, where the Sultan lives, here at the base of the delta. Here is Alexandria.’ He placed another pistachio. ‘Here is Damietta, where Saint Louis met defeat.’

Alexandria. If Jerusalem was the holiest city in the world, Alexandria was the greatest, founded by the mighty conqueror himself on the burning sands of Africa. I had grown to manhood listening to the Romance of Alexander; indeed, there were men singing verses from it in the fleet. And in Sienna, in Genoa, in Venice and in Verona we heard constantly from merchants who had sailed there of it’s fine harbour and magnificent waterfront, of the power of the Sultan, the ancient library and lighthouse, the early Christian churches now used by heretics.

Matteo Corner shook his head. ‘When I first saw Alexandria, I thought I was seeing the heavenly Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘It must be ten times the size of Venice.’

Fra Peter nodded. ‘You could fit London in it over and over,’ he said. ‘The whole of the new city is walled, and the walls have forty great gates, and every one of them as well-fortified as the gate castles of London, or better.’

Sabraham nodded. ‘Their customs take is greater than the whole income of the order,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Nerio leaned back. ‘Have you gentlemen read any of the crusading manuals?’

It turned out that most of the Knights of the Order had, although I had not. I had read Llull, though.

Fra Jean, a Provencal knight, nodded, and leaned forward eagerly. ‘Saint Louis thought the same as the author, that the Holy Land could only be conquered by way of Egypt.’

Fra Peter said nothing, but tapped his teeth with his thumb and stared at the candle on the table.

Nerio smiled his careful smile. He flicked a look at me and when he spoke his voice dripped with an entirely false adolescent innocence. ‘Is it possible we will attack Alexandria?’ he asked.

I thought Fra Peter might break his teeth, he tapped them so hard.

Fra Jean shrugged. ‘We do not have the men, even if we had God’s fortune and the best knights in the world, to take Alexandria.’

Lord Grey, who was usually the most reticent of English gentlemen, leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘I believe, gentlemen, that with such a legate and such a king to lead us, we might accomplish something.’

Fra Ricardo Caracciolo joined us and added his weight to the argument. ‘The best crusade launched in a hundred years — and we will fall like a lightning bolt wherever we land,’ he said.

Fra Peter glanced at me. ‘What happened when you attacked Florence last year, Sir William?’ he asked.

I was knighted. But I knew where his thoughts lay. ‘We had fewer than four thousand men-at-arms, and we assaulted the barricades,’ I said.

Every head turned.

‘We seized the barricades of one gate, and held them for a time,’ I went on. ‘But Florence is a city with fifty thousand men in her, and so great that we could not be serious about a siege; we could not surround her walls, nor seriously threaten her. Had her population sallied, we might all have been taken or killed.’ I smiled at Ser Nerio, because I knew the Florentine had been present.

He laughed. ‘Indeed, unless one was told that the English were at the gates, it was hard to know. Farmers brought their goods, the wine was cheap, and the money markets almost unaffected.’ He shrugged and smiled at me. ‘I mean no offence.’

‘None taken,’ I said.

Fra Peter nodded. ‘But this is what I meant. Six thousand men do not even offer a threat to a city of a hundred thousand or more. I suspect even Acre is out of our reach. We might do better seizing a city or two on the Asian shore to secure the Order’s islands.’

Nerio smiled cynically. ‘The king would like that,’ he said.

Fra Peter narrowed his eyes.

Nerio shrugged. ‘The King of Cyprus has made his reputation seizing small Turkish ports in Cilician Armenia and the Levant,’ he said. ‘It is good for Cyprus, good for trade.’ He sighed, blowing out his cheeks theatrically. ‘You needn’t worry — Alexandria is safe from the force of our arms. Genoa is sending a contingent, and Genoa is the Sultan’s ally. The Genoese would never allow us to attack Egypt.’

Indeed, the Genoese contingent did not meet us at Corfu, as they had promised, but sailed for the Peloponnesus and thence to the Genoese possessions on the coast of Asia. We discovered this while lying in a small port on the west coast of the Morea, my first visit to Greece.

It was fine country, with rich farms and splendid weather, if hotter than a blacksmith’s shop, yet dry and with a breeze. And Nerio took us all to see the ruins of an ancient temple close by the beach where out ships floated.

When we returned to the beach, several of the Venetian ships were like beehives for their activity. Venetian oarsmen are citizens, and they camp on shore under awnings when they can, and it takes time to unrig these awnings.

I found Fra Peter with the legate and the king. He waved me to him, and I approached them, made my bows, and received Father Pierre’s warm smile as a reward.

‘The very man,’ Fra Peter said.

Lord Contarini was one of the two Venetian admirals in charge of the ships. He was remarkably old for a knight, with one eye milk white, a long brown scar across his forehead and wispy white hair. He was sixty-five years old. He turned his good eye on me.

Father Pierre caught my hand. ‘Listen, Sir William. The Turks are at sea — indeed, they have taken a series of towns facing Negroponte. A Venetian colony.’

Contarini laughed. ‘Not a colony, or I’d have more authority there. An ally.’

Fra Peter nodded. ‘Be that as it may, the Venetians feel that they need to-’

Father Pierre shook his head gently. ‘Venice, the Emperor of the East and the Pope have a treaty for the mutual protection of Christians in the East,’ Father Pierre said. ‘I helped to negotiate this treaty, and now, I’m afraid, we need to give it some …’ he paused.

‘Teeth,’ snapped the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He grinned at me. ‘The Venetians would like to take their galley fleet and sweep for the Turks. They swear they will still make the rendezvous at Rhodes.’

‘What of the pilgrims? And the soldiers?’ I asked. In fact, I cared little for the mercenaries in the holds of the great Venetian round ships, packed like armoured cordwood. But I was worried about Emile, who was aboard one of the two ships that carried non-combatants, most of whom were wives of the crusaders.

King Peter nodded. ‘They should go the shortest route to Rhodes, my lords.’ He glanced at me. ‘The Venetians don’t want to pay the routiers. So they won’t take them to relieve Negroponte.’

Ah, Christendom. We had an army of excellent professional soldiers under our hatches, but Venice didn’t want to pay. Venice wanted the Pope to pay.

I bowed to Fra Peter. Very softly, I said, ‘I can’t see how this involves me, Sir Peter.’

He scratched under his chin, thought the better of it in such august company, and looked at Father Pierre. And tapped his teeth with his thumb.

The legate nodded his head to Lord Contarini.

The elderly Venetian sighed. ‘Misericordia! You gentilhommes would like the Serenissima to pay your mercenaries, and I, too, would like such an army, but I have not been given a ducat. I am commanding the largest fleet that Venice has one the seas, and if you gentlemen,’ he nodded to me, ‘would volunteer, I believe that I could run the Turks out of the Ionian. At least for long enough to cover the rendezvous of the allied fleet at Rhodes.’ He shrugged. ‘If they are left uncontested, surely it is to the disadvantage of all of us?’

‘There is the Roman fleet at Constantinople,’ the legate put in.

‘Six galia sottil,’ Contarini said with something like contempt. ‘In bad repair. They will cower inside the Golden Horn until their brothers, the Genoese, come to rescue them.’

Father Pierre showed some of the strain he was feeling by shrugging. He rarely indulged in displays of temper or even impatience, but the near-defection of the Genoese contingent, sailing its own route to the rendezvous with an unknown number of French and Imperial men-at-arms, and now the possible desertion of the Venetian military fleet, was sapping even his boundless good humour.

I bowed to Lord Contarini. ‘May I have leave to consult with my friends?’ I asked. I looked pointedly at Fra Peter, who followed me out of the meeting. To my surprise, so did the king.

I found Fiore, Miles, and Juan at a fire, cooking bacon on sticks. Nerio’s squire was doing it for him — Nerio was watching a woman bathe.

There was some consternation when my friends discovered that they had the king and Philip de Mezzieres in attendance. We provided wine as well we could. In the background, our galia grossa was repacking her stores at a great rate, surrounded by a fleet of small craft who were loading bulk cargo over the side. The oarsmen were assembled on the beach in neat rows, every man with his javelins and his sword and coat of mail. Venetian oarsmen are excellent soldiers as well as providing the motive force for their fleet.

‘The Venetians are mounting a subordinate expedition to chastise the Turks who are attacking Christian shipping,’ I said.

‘Where?’ asked Nerio, suddenly interested.

I probably showed the depth of my ignorance on my face, having little idea where Negroponte was. But the king came to my aid.

We recreated the wine-shop map with sand and pebbles. ‘East of Attica is an island that is rich and well-castled,’ he said. ‘It is allied to Venice.’

Nerio whistled. ‘My father has manors there,’ he said. ‘By the devil, gentlemen, I have a manor there, on the coast of Thebes facing Euboea.’

‘Kindly do not swear by the devil while you wear the cross of Saint John,’ Fra Peter said.

Nerio flashed an eyebrow. ‘But of course, and I was foolish to speak so,’ he said in a tone that robbed his words of any conviction.

I looked at the king.

Mind you, you must imagine my friends all bowing or kneeling in the sand.

He glanced at Nerio. I think he was amused by the young Florentine’s bluster. Perhaps it was like calling to like. His mouth wrinkled in a wry smile, almost like a sneer.

‘I would like you gentlemen to stay with the Venetians as volunteers,’ he said. ‘I would esteem is as a great favour — the more especially if, having chastised the Turks, you ensured that Lord Contarini continued to Rhodes. Without these galleys, I lack the strength at sea to accomplish anything of this empris.’

I snuck a glance at Fra Peter, but there was no help coming from that quarter. Fra Peter didn’t have to worry about King Peter’s attempts to woo Emile; on the other hand, he was charged with protecting the legate, which was probably a more worthy concern.

‘Your Grace,’ I said. ‘Yet I am a mere knight, and not a great magnate of France or England. I have not power to keep a lord of Venice to his promise.’

Fra Peter allowed himself a smile. ‘You are, however, the officer of all my volunteers, and if I send you — or rather, if the legate sends you, and the other volunteers of the order, it seems to me unlikely that the admiral will maroon you or strand you far from the crusade.’ He nodded to me. ‘Sir William, you have a famous name. Contarini asked for you.’

Well. There’s fame for you.

Nerio nodded vehemently. ‘Is this a council of war? Sir William, are you asking my humble opinion?’

The king and Fra Peter frowned at Nerio’s open derision. But I nodded.

Nerio bowed. ‘I, for one, would be delighted.’

Fiore made an Italianate motion of his head, one that had as much pitch and toll as a ship in a storm. ‘If there is fighting?’ he said, as if that summed up all that needed to be said.

Miles Stapleton grinned. ‘Against the Turks?’ he said.

Juan beamed. ‘I will fight the Turks,’ he said.

In fact, we had twenty more donats, knights and men-at-arms. But their enthusiasm was unanimous.

Nerio and Fiore went to the great ships, the round ships, to see if we couldn’t find a few ‘volunteers’ from among the so-called ‘crusaders’, the routiers and mercenaries in the holds of the great ships. Men like me. Or like the man I had been.

I returned to Contarini and swore to follow his orders. We brought him almost forty armoured men, stiffening his marines. They were a mixed bag of crusaders, routiers and volunteers, and included some famous men — we had the Baron Roslynn from Scotland, who is today the Earl of Orkney.

I didn’t see the king again. As you can imagine, I had some thought that I had been used as Uriah by King Peter. I tried to get aboard the pilgrim ship to see Emile, but there wasn’t time. Lord Contarini ordered me aboard his flag, the Christ the King, a galia grossa of magnificent size, with the broadest top deck of any galley I had ever seen. Her hull was scarlet, and she had enough gold-work on her sides to support every gilder in London for a year. He took all five of us and our squires and pages to augment his marines.

As an aside, a Venetian usually ships noble ‘marines’ from Venice; gentlemen-marines are allowed cargo space and decent living quarters. But to press more of the crusaders aboard, Lord Contarini had left all but three of his gentleman-marine berths open.

He put to sea with fourteen galia sottil and two more galia grossa stretching away behind us down the coast of the Morea. I saw Emile and waved.

She blew me a kiss. She said something, and I couldn’t hear it, and we were past. I watched her for as long as I could, but our deep rudder turned us out of the line and I lost her behind Turenne’s galia sottil. And there on the bow was the Hungarian from Mestre, with his long hair wrapped in pearls. I would not have seen him except that I was staring after Emile. And then he too was gone.

I had thought the admiral a quiet, dignified old gentleman, but on board his flagship he was a tartar. He was always on deck; often, he would take the helm of his ship and steer her personally. Of course, as I knew, it was his ship — he owned the vessel, her cargo, and most of the standing rigging, the arms, and tools. It was from watching him, and talking to him, when the mood was on him, that I learned how little he relished taking the Venetian squadron to sea in pursuit of the Turks.

‘They sprout ships like mushrooms in a rainy winter,’ he said. ‘If we beat them, they will be back directly. If we lose?’ He looked up from the rail. ‘I’m ruined, and so is every man who outfitted a ship.’

I learned a great deal from him, and from listening to him discourse to Nerio. He often forgot we were not Venetians and he freely discussed his orders and his reasoning. Not, I suspect, because he sought our opinions: in terms of naval tactics, none of us had anything useful to offer. But as I have found since, it is often useful to speak to intelligent men — ay, and women! — if only to clarify your own point of view.

I had little experience of the sea, beyond, as I have said, crossing the channel, running up and down the Thames, and the recent voyage out to Greece from Venice. Yet now that the Venetians had left the king and the crusade behind, I discovered a whole new level of hurry, of hard-pressed sail, and hard-pressed mariners.

Admiral Contarini might have been hesitant about meeting the Turks in battle, but he was in a great hurry to reach the point where the decision would have to be made, and he pressed us hard. We had the great lateen sails rigged on both the foremast and the mainmast. When the wind was right, on her quarter, we could rig a lateen to the stubby stern mast. When the wind was dead astern, we’d rig ‘gull winged’ with one great lateen out over each side. The great galleys were odd cross-breeds, with heavy masts and a sail rig, yet the long hulls and oar banks of a galley, and I lacked the knowledge of ships that would allow me to know if they were good ships or not. The passage of time has made me a better sailor, aye, and a better judge of ships, and now, of course, I know that the great galleys of Venice are one of the handiest and most dangerous warships afloat, but they looked so little like the King of England’s warships that I had my doubts.

You may imagine that I did not express those doubts. Instead, I accepted orders and instructions and listened to the irascible old man scold his subordinates, curse his sailors and woo his oarsmen through two long weeks of Ionian summer. During that time we learned that on a Venetian galley, in a long row, the gentlemen are expected to put in their time at the great oars, and we rowed almost every day. It was excellent exercise, and the hard bellies and heavily muscled arms of the Venetian courtiers I knew were explained.

Often, Venetian gentlemen-marines are also men in training to command galleys, and as the admiral tended to forget that we were foreigners, we received instruction every day on the rudiments of navigation and operations at sea. I learned a little about taking the helm and steering the ship, enough to know that it would require a lifetime of practice to be proficient. Still, in two weeks, the group of us learned a fair amount, all except Fiore, who had at last found an element that was not his own. The sea defeated him, and he didn’t stir from his hammock except to lose his latest attempt at a meal over the side.

During these lessons I got to know Contarini’s Venetian gentlemen better. His captain was Messire Vettor Pisani, a famous sailor and merchant. Pisani had a great name as a fighting sailor, and we heard tales from the sailors about his exploits against the Turks, the Egyptians, and most especially against the Genoese. He was in his forties, tall and weather-beaten, with a great nose like the prow of a ship and cheekbones so high and sharp he might have been a Tartar. He had a vast dignity, for a man of his age; he seldom spoke unless he had something to say, and his silence was sometimes more effective than Contarini’s diatribes.

I learned about him and his history from Carlo Zeno, one of the Venetian gentlemen. Zeno didn’t like me when I came aboard, and I heard him, at meals, make slighting reference to my poor Italian. I might have bridled, but I was working very hard on my temper, and Pisani gave me yet another example of a dignified chivalry. So I smiled at Zeno whenever we met, and refused to accept his ill humour. When the officers began my sea education, he mocked my ignorance.

I was, I confess, angry. I’m sure I showed it, and his mockery continued. I bit my lips and tried to listen when Messire Pisani showed me how best to grasp the tiller and taught me some of the Italian words of command. A galley is strange animal, which is a country of its own. It speaks Italian, but does so with both Greek and Arabic words thrown atop the Italian.

I walked about the ship after exercise each day, chanting my new words to myself. I’d say them to Marc-Antonio when we wrestled, or to Fiore when we fenced. Zeno would walk along the corsia, the central gangway, with his hands behind his back, saying the same words — aping me, in other words, while the oarsmen laughed.

I bit the insides of my cheeks.

Nerio laughed at me. ‘Smack him,’ he said. ‘He’s a Venetian — he’ll resent it the rest of his life, but that will be the end of this.’ Nerio grinned. ‘Venetians are good haters.’

Fiore was no use; he was virtually prostrate with seasickness.

Use, however, made him master, and by the time we reached Piraeus under the magnificent hill of ancient Athens, Fiore was at least able to keep his feet at sea and could engage in some practice of arms. The Venetian gentlemen, Carlo Zeno and Gianni di Testa, were both young men, but they had each served in a sea fight, and had participated in many drills and exercises at sea, and with their help we practiced clearing the central gangway, repelling boarders, clearing the little poop behind the ram — the spur — and protecting the helmsman’s station.

The Venetian marines both used spears in sea fights. We practiced with spears and with longswords. As far as we could tell, each weapons offered some advantages. The spear gave you reach, and offered no threat to your oarsmen — remember, in a fight on a galley, your own motive power is sitting in vulnerable rows not more than a few inches on either side of where you set your feet. On the Christ the King the rowers were set low, so that the benches were below the height of the gangway and the rowers’ heads came up to the marines’ knees or slightly higher. This required a man using a longsword to be judicious in wielding his sword from the lower guards.

I know this, as I clipped a rower in the head with a wooden waster one afternoon off the Hand, south of the Peloponnesus. He was quite kind about it when he came to, but the incident made me more wary of heavy blows from low guards. And of course, Messire Zeno mimed my bad sword cut and made the rowers laugh.

It was not all bad. Several times Zeno held forth, very intelligently, on matters of navigation, or on history, ancient or modern. He knew the Levant well, having served all over for Venice or as a mercenary for the Turks, who he rather admired. He’d been an exile for some time. I had a hard time hating him, even when he was mocking me.

It was also during this voyage that I fell in love with the stars. At sea, you can see them all, thousands and thousands of them. It is not like watching the stars on land. It is, instead, like communing with God. At first I dreaded night watches, but I fell in love with stars, and then the watches passed in learning their names.

At Athens we paused to take on water and dried food, and the admiral had most of the Venetian ships sell off their heavy cargo, if indeed they had shipped any. We were told to take a few days to rest.

Nerio explained that the Duke of Athens — also the King of Sicily — was not always a Venetian ally, but that summer, with the crusade at sea and the Venetian fleet supporting the Achaean lords in their attempts to stem the Turkish tide, the Duke of Athens was very friendly to Venice indeed.

We had the pleasure of riding up to the great and ancient citadel of the Acropolis, which some men call ‘the castle of Athens’. Many of the antiquities are in ruins, of course, but the magnificent church of Saint Mary is in the ancient temple of the Virgin Goddess of the Greeks, and part of it is now the ducal palace.

I had never seen anything so moving in my life. I have seen Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople and my beloved London, Venice and Baghdad and Vienna and Krakow and Prague, and to me, none of them have the ancient majesty of the citadel of Athens, which seems to me to be as ancient as man’s presence on the world of sin. And it makes me feel odd … small, and somehow weak, to imagine that this was built by men like me, so long ago that we have lost the crafts by which it was made.

Bah! My views on ancient architecture bore you. So be it. The King of Sicily was, at that time, the Duke of Athens, and the city was held by the bishop — an Italian. He was, to all intents, at war with the Duke of Thebes, who was French: Roger de Luria, of whom I might say more later. Suffice it to say that this man, the Marshal of Achaea, was, despite his high-sounding title, a routier, and was in league with the Turks. Nerio seemed to know everything about Greece and I learned from him many a curious fact, not least of which was that his father already owned land all over Romania (as we call it) or Greece.

He gave his lopsided smile. ‘I am myself the Baron of Vostitza,’ he said, waving a hand airily toward the Morea.

I wanted to ride farther afield. Greece is rich; the farms on the plain behind Athens are magnificent and well-tilled, yet a third of them stood fallow and the castle at the edge of the plain was burned.

Nerio shrugged. ‘Romania is falling apart,’ he said. ‘Bad government, greed — mostly our own greed.’ He looked at me. ‘My father has strong views on how Greece should be ruled. You should ask him.’ He looked out over the plains. ‘For myself, I love it,’ he said.

I was falling in love myself. The air was so clear, and the overwhelming sense of the ancient was very beautiful to me.

It must have been that night — I suppose we were only in Piraeus three days — when we went up to the town of Athens that nestles under the castle. Everywhere you can see the ancient city, like bones of soldiers long dead on an old battlefield. Some bones were well preserved — a Greek priest told us that the temple with a church that we admired had once been dedicated to Hephaestus, the smith god of the ancients. But the town was very small, with fewer than five thousand people. Nerio said it was so small for the same reason that the castle on the plain was burned — the constant state of war.

‘The Frankish lords fight each other,’ he said. ‘And the Franks fight the Despot at Mistra. And the Greeks fight among themselves, and fight the Vlachs and the Albanians. The Genoese fight the Venetians. The Turks attack everyone, but no one fights them.’ He spread his hands. He might have said more, but we were climbing in the last light into the occupied parts of the town on the slope of the acropolis, and he saw a girl leaning over the door of her house, and he smiled at her, and she probably smiled back and I lost him.

I might not even remember that evening, except that Fiore felt better and my friends ordered a dinner from a big taverna, perhaps the only taverna, almost directly under the walls. It was a pleasant building and had tables out on the roof of the next building down the steep slope, and we seemed to be sitting among the stars while we ate lamb and rice. The local wine was good, but Nerio was anxious to be away; we all knew him by then, and Miles smiled at me.

‘He wants to get to church,’ I said.

There was, in fact, a pretty little church, a Greek church, but we were not so choosy in those days, and the Greek priest rang the bell himself and welcomed us to compline. Nerio had chosen the taverna and seemed very eager to be at Mass.

I had never been in a Greek church before. Everyone calls them schismatics and heretics — I once asked Father Pierre to explain how they were heretics, and he laughed.

‘My son, it is all too possible, that it is we who are the heretics. Peter wrote letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalians, but none whatsoever to the French, the Italians, or the English.’ He laughed his lovely laugh and then looked directly at me. ‘Don’t tell the Pope,’ he said. And changed the subject.

At any rate, we all had dispensations, from Father Pierre as legate, to hear Mass under the Greek rite, and I had never done so, so we went to Mass. The singing was very different from our own, but beautiful, and Fiore said it was like masses he had heard in Venice.

We were in the church just long enough to admire the lamp, a magnificent hanging lamp of silver, when Nerio’s sudden burst of religious enthusiasm was explained by the arrival of the girl from the doorway down the hill, wearing a veil. I didn’t know her, but Nerio beamed at her — oh, that man!

At any rate, immediately after Mass, all the Greeks went out into the tiny square and drank wine, and Nerio sat with his lady. He had a little Greek and she had a little Latin, and they conversed with long looks that smoked and smouldered.

We heard the shouts and did nothing, because we were a little drunk and the Greeks were being very friendly, but when one of the shouts became a scream, Fiore was on his feet, sword in hand. I suppose I should say that, in Romania, men openly wore swords, even longswords, and all of us had ours by our sides.

I followed Fiore when he ran past the church and plunged into the darkness. The streets were narrow, wound like a tangled skein of yarn, and were as steep as a mountain. As we ran, we heard shouting again. This time, we could clearly perceive that the shouting was Italian and the screaming was from a woman. We cut down another street and came out above a round tower and found four men fighting one while another fumbled at a screaming woman’s clothes. He had her on her back.

There was another man down, but in the darkness, it was very difficult to make out who was who.

The single man fighting four had his back to the tower — they call it the ‘Tower of the Winds’ — and he would charge out into them, swing wildly, and then back away. The four were cowards: they would not close with him.

I became convinced that the single man was Carlo Zeno. Some combination of movement and the tone of the shouts.

Zeno — if it was he — was trying to cut his way through to the woman. She, in turn, was resisting her would-be rapist with spirit. She kicked him in the head, and when he tried to raise her skirts, she got them over his head and stabbed him with a knife. I know this, because by then I was upon them, running full tilt. I gave him the pommel of my sword in the back of his head and left him to his tender victim.

I passed them and pressed into the back of Zeno’s melee. He was beside himself, and he used his sword two-handed, sweeping it back and forth, trying to make a hole in the four men facing him.

I kicked one in the back of the knee. He went down and I stamped on him while thrusting at a second man, and Fiore passed his blade over the head of a third and threw the man into the wall of the tower so hard that he died.

The fourth man fell to his knees. He wept and begged — attacker to victim in a matter of moments.

Zeno stabbed him through the mouth as he begged. It was a pretty thrust.

The failed rapist was thrashing his heels on the ground in his death throes. His intended victim had cut his throat.

Miles Stapleton ran up behind us, but it was done.

Gianni di Testa was lying at the foot of the tower, his head broken by an iron club. We carried him to the priest’s house and then bought wine for the woman. She was Greek, and possibly a prostitute. The men were foreign scum, waterfront workers from Piraeus. If anyone knew them, no one claimed their corpses.

The rest of the evening was not very pleasant.

The next day, we received further news of the presence of the Turkish fleet, which had raided Negroponte for twenty days, so that the smoke of the Turkish fires could be seen in the north. The Venetian lords in the area and their feudal subordinates, as well as the bishop of Athens and his allies, had rallied a dozen galleys of the smaller size, and there were two Greek galleys in Piraeus. Syr Giannis Lascarus Calopherus and Syr Giorgos Angelus had accompanied us from Corfu, aboard the Corner galley, and they came aboard to inform us that these were Katakouzenos galleys from Mistra and not to be trusted.

The politics of the schismatic are as depressingly convolute as our own, and it transpired that the current Emperor had been ruled as a child by a regent, John Kantakouzenos, who had as so often happens, taken the throne for himself. When he abdicated in favour of his lawful charge, he had granted to his own children the Despotate of the Morea, a string of Greek states carved out of the Latin dominions in western Greece. Despite which, Lord Contarini was delighted to accept their service: the two Greek galleys were large and well-built, and well-crewed.

I watched Lord Contarini spend all his effort on food and water, and I learned much. War at sea is like war on land, except more so. A general can allow himself to believe that his men can live off the land, and most armies can do so for a few days at least, although the results can be catastrophic for discipline. But an admiral cannot believe any such thing — there is neither food nor fresh water at sea, and an admiral must carry every scrap of food and water his men will consume; and he can count the number of days his men will be able to maintain the campaign before a single arrow is loosed or his ships have even left the beach.

Any road, by the end of three days we put to sea with thirty-one galleys. The Venetians were the core of the alliance, but provided slightly fewer than half the ships.

At the south end of the strait between Negroponte and the mainland, we found, not the Turks — though we spent the better part of a day creeping over the ocean to reach them as stealthily as possible — but a pair of galleys belonging to my own order. They were part of the Christian League squadron that covered Smyrna, and they had shadowed the Turkish squadron for twenty days, doing what damage they could.

The commander of the galleys was an Italian, Fra Daniele Caretto. I sent my respects to him by a note when the admiral sent Messire Zeno aboard his ship, but he didn’t send a response. He knew, of course, that the crusade was at sea. He said the Turks were equally aware, and that their campaign on Negroponte was probably an attempt to pre-empt our attack and force us on the defensive.

Contarini laughed. ‘They imagine we are all allies,’ the old man said bitterly.

‘As we imagine of them,’ Pisani added.

With thirty-three warships, Contarini was, if not eager to engage, at least far more willing to seek out the enemy. We cruised up the channel between the great island and the mainland of green Boeotia practicing all of his fleet manoeuvres, most of which consisted of making various half-circle formations of ships and the vital art of backing water. Because the rowing was endless, all of us took part, day after day.

I confess that I hated it. It was as hot as my image of hell, with burning winds blowing along the Greek coast and the smell of thyme in the air with animal manure and sea salt. I had a touch of something, from Athens, bad food or bad air, and I was as weak as Fiore had been. But rowing every day in the sun made me better, and stronger, and eventually I began to feel something of the strength I had had before the beating.

We took our ease the third night on the beaches of northern Negroponte. And there our Greeks — and especially Giorgos Angelus — entertained us with stories of the days of greatness in Greece. They told us of a great sea battle fought for four straight days between the fleets of all the Greek cities and the Persians, right there, at the bend in the strait. After dinner we took our cups of wine and climbed the headlands to see the columns and collapsing roof of the temple to the Greek goddess Diana.

‘In our tongue, Artemis,’ Syr Giorgos said. ‘And this headland, Artemesium.’

His companion nodded. ‘It was one of the greatest battles of the ancient world,’ Syr Giannis said.

‘Who won?’ Miles asked.

Syr Giannis shook his head, the wide head shake of the Greek. ‘No one,’ he said. He pointed to the south and west. ‘The King of Sparta died over there, at Thermopylae. When he died, the Greek fleet retreated.’ He smiled. ‘It is a famous place, to Greeks. I wish to go to Thermopylae someday.’

I had heard of the death of the Spartan king — there was a romance about the Persian Wars making the rounds in Venice. The current fashion for aping the ancient world was just in its infancy then; men like Petrarch and Boccaccio were reading the ancients and even translating them. So I was enthusiastic.

‘Perhaps we could arrange a passage of arms!’ I said enthusiastically.

The idea caught everyone’s imagination, and we drank a toast to the notion.

But first we had to fight the Turks.

Dawn brought us a fair wind and the labour of getting our ships off the beach. But as soon as we were underway — and we were moving before the red disk of the sun was free of the eastern horizon — we could see the Turks moving toward us under bare poles. I’m going to guess that the admiral had received scouting reports the night before — why share them with me? — because he seemed unsurprised.

We stayed with the wind under our quarters while we armed. Most of us had squires by then, but what I remember about that morning, my first sea fight, is Nerio, the proud, buckling the armour for Marc-Antonio, perhaps the humblest squire. We all served each other.

I had commanded men before, and yet that morning, when we formed in two dense and iron-clad ranks, knights in the front, squires in the back, it made my heart soar with joy.

I had never seen a sea fight before. I had some idea, from all the order’s drills and the Venetian drills, too, but I hadn’t experienced how different it was from a land fight. Perhaps the most difficult difference — hard to explain, and hard to endure — is the waiting and the interludes. The ships determine the pace of combat, not the knights. A battle is usually a single long grind of action and terror and amidst the terror, most men fight using nothing but their training and their fear. The grind of battle makes men tired; their armour makes them tired, their fear makes them tired, and their fatigue makes them afraid, until they conquer or die.

At sea, it is different. At sea, battle is episodic. You face an enemy, ship to ship, and when you conquer one, you have time to breathe, to rest — and to be afraid all over again; too much time to think before the next foe. Sea battles can go on for hours, where a land battle would have been resolved at the first encounter.

Perhaps I can sum it up like this. At sea, you have nowhere to run. And neither, under the pitiless Mediterranean sun, does your foe. There you are, locked together in a close embrace of timber and hemp, and you fight until one side is massacred.

At any rate, the Turks came at us. I thought there were too many of them, but I was officer enough by then to mind my tongue.

I clanked my way back to the command deck. On a galia grossa, the command deck was in the stern, raised three steps above the catwalk over the rowers, and covered by a screen of leather against archery. Even as I mounted the steps, the admiral was ordering the screen cleared away.

He glanced at me. ‘I’d rather be able to see,’ he said. ‘You know why old men are sent to command fleets?’

That’s one of those questions you shouldn’t answer.

Marc-Antonio was arming him. He wore full harness, despite his years, but he winced as the chain haubergeon went over his head.

‘Because our bodies hurt so much we don’t care whether we live or die — curse you, boy! I only have six hairs left — no need to pull them out.’ He cuffed Marc-Antonio, but the Chioggian boy seemed to take it in good part.

His own slave, a Circassian, handed him a spear so beautiful that I still remember it, with the Virgin rendered in carved steel on the head, and a verse of the Bible inlaid in gold. He glanced at me with an eye undimmed and full of humour.

‘See that I don’t have to use this, Sir William! I’m not quite the deadly hand I once was.’ He looked grimly under the leather screen and called to the helmsman, ‘Get this fucking thing sheeted away or I’ll have your hide, timoneer!’

‘We’ll fight, then?’ I asked.

The admiral didn’t savage me for my temerity. Instead, he looked under his hand at the Turks, still a league downwind.

‘I have every advantage but numbers. Their ships are full of loot and they’ve been at sea too long and I have the wind.’ He raised an eyebrow. His left eye trembled — sheer age — but his right eye was merciless. ‘With the wind, I can swoop on them like a hawk, and they lie there-rowing into the wind’s eye, wasting their men.’ He looked aft, looked at the sun, and looked at the Turks. ‘They have almost twice our numbers, ship for ship. We’ll need to be very careful.’

I never did learn what he meant by careful, because despite being over eighty, an age at which in most men, daring is dead, and timorousness is its own form of stubborn accomplishment, he swept down on our foes like the falcon he had himself named. A quarter league from the foe, the Venetian ships furled their lateens; the great yards came down on every deck, covering the rowers with canvas as the first Turkish arrows fell.

I had never faced a barrage of arrows. In the first heartbeats of our combat, I got a taste of what our English archers send to the French, and I confess I did not like it. The Turks mix screaming arrows with their deadlier brethren, and I, the veteran of ten battles, was afraid of the harsh screaming.

I was struck five times in the first three breaths of the action. Each arrow struck like a punch. None of them touched me, but they brought with them a wave of fear that cancelled much of my exhilaration at entering battle.

Marc-Antonio took an arrow all the way through his bicep — it went under his spaulder and right through his maille.

Juan caught him, cut the head, and extracted the arrow. Marc-Antonio’s face was tracked with tears of pain, but he blinked furiously and insisted he was well enough to fight.

The rowers were protected for a hundred heartbeats by the sails on deck, but even as the oars went in and dipped in response to the oar master’s rhythm, the sailors were clearing the sails off the yards and the yards were rotated amidships and laid along the edges of the catwalk.

One of our advantages was our three great galleys. The Turks had nothing like them. Even our ordinary galleys were bigger and often longer than the Turks, but our great galleys towered over them.

Even as the third and fourth volleys of Turkish arrows flashed in the sun, our centre was again gathering speed. I was no sailor then, but even I could see that we had not lost way as we’d coasted during the brief transition from sails to oars, and now the oars were sweeping like wings, or the legs of a mechanical centipede.

The Turkish centre attempted to back water, but their flanks carried forward, sweeping like arms to surround us. In a few moments, we could see Turks on almost every hand, and the sky was full of arrows.

My heart almost failed me. On land, to be surrounded is to be defeated.

I didn’t know much about the sea.

The master mariners at the steering oars gave us a slight turn to starboard, the oars frothed the sea in a massive effort, and we shot forward like a gargantuan crossbow bolt. We struck a Turkish galley and trod him down entire — our vast weight pushed his ship down into the water, the near gunwale went under, the lighter galley filled with water instantly and went down, so that as we swept over the wreck we could see men drowning under our feet, and her mast caught in our steering oars for a moment.

I looked aft, and the admiral was pointing at something aloft, a flag out of place, perhaps.

We turned again. I saw that the dying enemy had ripped away our starboard steering oar, and that limited our ability to turn. And a small cloud of Turkish galleys came at us.

Now, every ship carried a ram — not under water, like the ancients, but a spur above the water for breaking oars and fouling the enemy cathead and his rowing benches. Nonetheless, such was my experience that I assumed that the ram was the principle weapon and could sink us.

Even as I watched, two Turkish galleys turned nimbly out of their crescent formation and charged us. Their archers loosed and loosed, so that there seemed to be a continuous stream of silver-lit shafts in the early morning sun dazzle. But it is very different to shoot up than to shoot a bow down. Our rowers were not directly exposed, and at first we took few losses.

But we could not steer and I prepared for death.

The oar-master roared a command I didn’t know, and then all the great oars began to fly inboard. Under my very feet, the big oarsmen were crossing the shafts of their oars, wedging the handles under the opposite bench so that the oars stood proud of the water like cocked wings. This brought the outboard portion of the oars above the ram of the enemy, so that they struck — when they struck — only Dalmatian oak.

The hull rang, and I was knocked from my feet. I was praying to the Virgin.

I got to my knees and the second blow knocked me flat — again.

Practically at the end of my nose, three oarsmen on a bench were grinning like savages as they pulled maille haubergeons over their canvas rowing shirts.

The nearest one, a gap-toothed giant with a gold earring, grinned as he pulled a wicked axe from under his bench. ‘Eh, messire!’ he shouted to me. ‘Easier to fight on your feet!’

The benches were emptying.

I got my feet under me to find the rest of my marines similarly employed. And forward of us, every Turk ever birthed was pouring over the rails from both sides into the waist of our ship.

Sometimes, when you fight, you are in command of the army that is your body. You parry and snap blows, you deceive and you thrust and you counter as if on the practice field.

Whatever men say, such encounters are rare.

The Turks who got aboard didn’t pause to sweep the benches. They came straight up the companionway, aiming to kill the admiral and sweep the helms clear and take the ship.

I have a memory of the moment before the wave of Turks broke on my line. I had a spear in my hand, held underhand, blade up, as Fiore recommended if one was fighting in line with companions. And I had the man himself on my right and Nerio on my left, and Marc-Antonio pressed so hard at my back that he was pushing me forward.

I remember a man in plate and maille and a pointed helm, with a sword as long as mine and curved like the Crescent of Islam. He was grinning.

And then I was panting like the bellows in a forge, and I hurt: my arms would scarce obey my command. The great scimitar was on the deck at my feet, and my spear was shattered, and the end with the sharp point was reversed in my hand like a thick dagger and sticky and red.

Fiore’s spear was red from iron to point.

Nerio had a dagger in each hand, one his own, one Miles’s.

Miles stood with his longsword upright between his hands.

Juan was on one knee, panting, and he, too, had his sword in his hand.

We had held.

I was just letting thoughts filter into my head — really, there was nothing there. Men call it ‘the black’ or ‘the darkness’ but for me it was just an emptiness, a void that was suddenly filled with noise and light.

The admiral was pounding my backplate with his armoured fist.

‘If you’re done resting, take their fucking ship!’ he screamed. ‘Or do I have to do it myself?’

The last Turks were scrambling over the side, and their sailors were trying to pole off, but our oarsmen were having none of it. I was lucky to be a marine on a veteran ship: I should have led the boarders, and instead I was perhaps the tenth man on to the enemy deck.

And friends, I had to make myself leap.

Perhaps the beating ruined me as a knight. Or perhaps time, training, and a better life gave me more reason to live. But I hesitated at the rail.

Bah! Then I leaped over the sea — instant death for a man in harness should he fall in.

I injured men just by falling among them. I went down, and the Turks piled on me, but they were unarmoured sailors, not armoured marines.

A steel harness is a cruel weapon.

A steel gauntlet can do ten times the damage of a fist, and mine had heavy brass studs on every knuckle. The knees and elbows were hardened steel and had sharp ridges and protective flanges that themselves could flay a man’s unguarded flesh. I lost the remnants of my spear and by the time I was on my feet with my dagger in my right fist, the deck around the mainmast was a slaughterhouse and the Venetian oarsmen were killing the survivors with a ruthlessness that would have been a crime on land, even among brigands. Teams of men, bench mates, would grab a Turk, stretch his neck and cut his throat while the third man riffled his body for gold and coins before they all three lobbed him, dead and robbed, over the side.

They took no prisoners. Neither did the Turks take any.

I have hear men speak of decks slick with blood, and that is a lie. The decks were sticky with blood. My harness was coated with the stuff, and my sabatons jammed with it.

And that was one ship.

We took three.

By the second ship, I could not really breathe. At some point, I drew the Emperor’s sword. And used it in clearing the third ship. The pretty grip, which even the brigand who stole it hadn’t fouled, became a clotted mass of brown gore in my fist.

And then we were done.

But we were not. The Turkish fleet broke, though still two-thirds intact, and ran. But the old admiral knew his business; had known it, indeed, from the moment he looked at the sun. By the wounds of Christ, messires, he was a great knight, the old devil. He fought the Turks with all of us as his weapon. Not for him the void and passion of combat, although his beautiful Virgin spear was red. But he fought more like Miles played chess — with his head and not his heart.

And he didn’t intend to have a partial victory. I hobbled aft — I had a wound in the sole of my left foot, nothing glorious, I do assure you, but the product of stepping on a Turk’s axe. I remember that my left arm harness had taken so many blows that Marc-Antonio, who’d lost the use of his right arm altogether as the fights pressed on and on, had to cut the straps and drop the harness in among the row benches.

Contarini glanced at me and went back to shouting orders at his helmsman. His voice was thin, but he never lost his force all that long summer’s day.

He helped me get my bassinet off and his slave gave me water.

‘Give you the honour of a noble victory,’ I said.

He raised an eyebrow. His trembling eye moved so violently I feared it might fall out. His face was red and a great vein beat against his temple.

‘Not even a skirmish, yet, Sir William,’ he said. He pointed forward and I followed his hand.

The Turks were trying to raise their sails as they rowed away from us.

He turned to the second helmsman, who was finally getting a new oar in the water. ‘Master Foccario, when you have that fixed to your liking, get the banner of the Virgin aloft and dip it thrice to signal ‘General Chase.’ He frowned at me. ‘Now we pay for weeks of soft living,’ he said.

We ran the Turks into the surf of Thessaly. One of their ships, shallow as she was, staved herself on the rocks, and two more weathered the long headland which was like a stony finger pointing into the sea and were away, flying to safety.

We came alongside another, and our crossbowmen, who must have been shooting steadily throughout the action, finally came to my notice. They were able to use the rail to aim, and to shoot down into the lower Turkish ship. Our crossbowmen cleared their quarterdeck before we grappled, and we took the fourth Turk entire. Her rowers were mostly slaves, Christians and Jews and Syrian Moslems.

I could barely walk, I was so tired.

But we were not done.

The admiral recalled his boarding party and we were away, the oars beating the sea. The last remnants of the Turks, the ships not lucky enough to have weathered the cape in the strong wind, were running themselves ashore on the beach, not stern first, either, but bow in.

The admiral called me aft.

‘I’ll place you ashore between those two Turkish galleys,’ he said. ‘And you hold the beach. I want all these ships. If I can’t drag ‘em off, I’ll burn them here.’

Just then, it seemed to me impossible that ten Christian men-at-arms, all exhausted, could hold a beach that was alive like a disturbed anthill.

And as we turned end for end, the great sweeps reversed on one side so that the port side oarsmen rowed facing forward while the starboard side rowed facing aft, my friends and I watched the beach.

Nerio raised a blood-flecked eyebrow. ‘Even for me, this is insane,’ he said.

Marc-Antonio, right arm strapped to his side, brought us wine. It was uncut malmsey, thick and dark and sweet and we drank it like water.

The Turkish arrows began to fall among us.

Alessandro began to lace our helmets. The third men on the benches began to come aft with javelins and axes and arming swords. Some were now armed with Turkish weapons.

‘Oh,’ Fiore said. ‘I though he was only sending the five of us.’

Somehow, that seemed the greatest jest ever told, and we hooted.

‘Last man on the beach buys wine,’ I roared, and jumped into the surf.

This is what a harness of plate is for. I only had to jump ten feet, and the water and the sand took the shock of my leap — but I fell forward, my foot catching on a rock, and my helmet filled with seawater. And then I was up, with no memory of rising. Arrows struck my helm and my breastplate, but thanks be to God not a one struck my unarmoured left arm or shoulder, and I was moving up the beach with seawater pouring out of my harness like milk from a leaky farm bucket.

Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps the freedom of having space to swing, to engage one opponent and sidestep another, but I remember that fight much better than the four before it. I remember catching the Emperor’s longsword at the mezza spada, the middle of the blade, to face a Turk with a heavy axe, and using the quillons of my sword to gouge his eyes before running the point over his hands and severing the tendons while my armoured knee slammed into his balls. And I stepped through him to plunge my point like a dagger into the unprotected back of Juan’s adversary as they wrestled, and as another Turk tried to put an arrow into my back, Fiore beheaded him.

Behind us, the oarsmen roared ‘Saint Mark! Saint Mark!’

More Venetians were landing all along the beach, and then, finally, it was over.

Sometimes our finest moments are lost in the black and the fatigue. It may be the best fight we all had together.

Well, the fighting was over.

War at sea is the hell of squires. My harness had been drenched in seawater and covered in blood, scorched with fire — I have no idea where the fire happened, but I had burns and scorch marks and all the straps on my left cuisse had to be replaced. Oh, and then I rolled in wet sand.

Marc-Antonio, with the best will in the world, was hurt far worse than I. His right arm was all bandages and they were red with blood, and he’d stayed on his feet and used a sword left-handed — a truly knightly act. But there on the beach, when the Turks broke and ran — to the tender mercies of the local Greek peasants, a tough bunch if ever I saw one — when we’d slumped to our knees, breathed like bellows, and gradually dropped most of our priceless harness in the blood-soaked strand, Marc-Antonio shook his head.

‘You’d better clean that and get some oil on it,’ he said. He grinned, so I didn’t kill him. And I knew he was right.

This is what you are trained for, in the order. Not just so that you can triumph on the day of battle, but to have the will to conquer your own body and the listlessness that comes with survival. Oarsmen were sitting among the dead, passing bottles of wine and water. Crossbowmen were coming ashore to loot.

My four brothers and I began to clean our armour. The Venetian marines knew tricks we didn’t — that one stain could clean another. Under their instruction we waded into the sea and cleaned our sabatons and our greaves of the ordure stuck to them, and while Fiore and I washed the pieces of harness, Miles and Juan dried them and oiled them with sheepskin and whale oil.

Nerio drank wine while Alessandro worked, and then he shook himself like a dog and handed his wine to Marc-Antonio. ‘Sometimes I’m an arse,’ he admitted, and set to work.

The two Venetians joined us, and one by one the looters stopped and fell in, too, washing their maille in seawater before scrubbing it with oiled lambswool and wrapping the dried shirt in a dry fleece full of old lanolin.

Eventually I was clean from wading in and out of the sea, my shoes ruined, my cut foot a burning anvil of pain only then beginning to intrude on me.

‘By Saint Mark, if you and your friends hadn’t made such a slaughterhouse of the beach, we could get our cook fires lit,’ said the admiral at my back. But his smile belied his tone. ‘Sit! You’ve earned it, and so have I.’

Slaves and oarsmen cleared most of the dead off the beach, though the rocks were full of corpses and leaving the fire for a piss could raise a ghost, I can tell you, but there was a wind rising, and the admiral refused to leave the site of his victory.

‘I won’t lose one hull,’ he said. ‘We’re in for a two-day blow. And not a man of us will be worth a shit in the morning.’

There was one more incident. Alessandro and Marc-Antonio did their best to prepare a meal, but firewood became the last crisis of the day, and suddenly every man on the beach was so utterly tired that many let their fires die rather than walk up the headland for wood. Nor were the local peasants especially gracious, but I forgive them. They had daughters and coins and unburned farms and they probably feared us as much as they feared the Turks.

At any rate, Juan and I managed to get to our feet and walk up the beach, and then, after some desultory searching, we found a whole tree that had floated ashore as driftwood, dry as a bone and ready to be three fires. I managed to walk back down the beach to get the dead Turk’s axe, and then back to limb the tree. The wood was strong and hard and well-seasoned, and it took all my strength, hobbling on a badly cut foot, let me add.

You might think I’d have been too tired, and perhaps I was, but those of you who have stood the blows of the enemy know that something to do — something, anything to occupy your mind is preferable to nothing. Or perhaps to considering how close one was to nothing.

As I cleared branches, Juan — Spanish aristocrat — piled them and used dead men’s belts to make bundles. The belts came from the corpses that the slaves and servants and junior oarsmen had tossed in behind the driftwood. They didn’t smell rank, yet, but they had the copper-shit smell of dead men, the battlefield smell that northerners call ‘Raven’s call’.

At any rate, I was halfway up the trunk of the tree when one of the corpses opened his eyes. I lifted the axe automatically. His eyes met mine. He groaned.

In a fight, I can kill without a thought. But by the gentle Jesus, on that windswept beach that smelled of death, I’d had enough of it. I knelt and looked him over, fetched him water — hobbling to the fire and back, damn it! And in the end, Juan and I carried him to our fire. The oarsmen had stripped him naked for his clothes, and left him to die.

He should have died. He had a spear wound in his gut — a ticket to a nasty, week-long bout with delirium before death, but God and Saint Barbara had other plans for my Turk.

The admiral’s prediction was as accurate as a sorcerer or an astrologer’s. The next day we had the first rain of autumn, and a heavy wind blew all day. Men huddled by the fires in silent misery; muscles ached, and wounds seemed worse.

Some were, but they weren’t mine.

The second day wasn’t much better, and our old admiral lay in his blankets all day under a makeshift tent.

But the third day dawned bright and clear, and trumpets called us to our duty.

‘Mutton and cheese in Piraeus,’ the admiral promised. ‘And wine enough for every man to forget.’

‘And then on to Rhodes,’ Nerio said.

The admiral glared. ‘I’ve just won the greatest naval victory of these last twenty years,’ he said. ‘More than any Venetian expected of this “crusade”.’

Sometimes it is best to be silent.

We were.

Piraeus was delighted to receive us. The Turks were a constant threat in Attica and Thrace, and I found the attitude of the Greek soldiers and peasants very different east of Corinth from that west of Corinth. I had a good chance to learn about Greeks in Athens and Piraeus.

Thanks to Giannis and Giorgos, I had translators and Greek friends, and my friends and I were the heroes of the hour: all the Greeks in the two Peloponnesian vessels had seen us break the Turks on the beach. They were eager to buy us wine, even though we were Latins and schismatics; that is, heretics to their church.

‘You were magnificent!’ said an older man with a beautiful white beard. He wore scale armour plated in gold, with enamelled scales and fine Italian elbows and leg armour. We were parading our prisoners and captured ships for the people of Athens, Latin and Greek alike. The older man turned his dark eyes on me and grinned. ‘For a brazen-haired heretic, I mean.’

His Italian was better than mine and I wasn’t sure what to say, so I bowed.

‘You are from Thule? That is what I hear, yes? Far away over the sea, where the Emperor’s guard is from — Hyperborea. Yes?’ He looked at me as if I was a rare heraldic animal. ‘The Axe-bearing guard, yes? You know?’

I had Giorgos Angelus at my back. I turned and looked at him.

‘One of the Kantakouzenoi,’ he said.

The old man smiled thinly. He spat something in Greek, and Angelus stiffened.

Giannis Lascarus shook his head on my left-we were lining the pier for the Duke of Athens and his friends. ‘Kantakouzenos calls Giorgos a traitor and a heretic. Giorgos chooses to say nothing, but the Kantakouzenoi betrayed the empire.’

The old man offered me his hand. ‘Iannis,’ he said. ‘I am Navarch aboard this ship.’ He pointed at one of the long Greek ships.

I bowed. ‘Sir William Gold,’ I said.

The ceremony passed without further incident, and evening found us filling a street of waterfront tavernas that allowed us to have several hundred men all sitting at what seemed like on long table.

John Kantakouzenos sat opposite me. ‘Fighting the Turks is a waste of time,’ he announced. ‘They are good soldiers, and the empire needs soldiers.’

Angelus grunted. ‘They will take the empire and break it up among themselves,’ he said.

Kantakouzenos shook his head. ‘No, it is we who will break them up. Look at the Patzinaks and the Cumans and all the other nomadic peoples — they come to us and we make them Romans! We used the Huns to break the Goths, and the Patzinaks to break the Bulgars. Perhaps with the Turks we will rid ourselves of the Latins. Yes?’ He laughed.

‘You seemed willing enough to fight yesterday,’ I said.

The old man shrugged and drank. ‘My brother says fight. I fought. The despot has an agreement with your knights, the Duke of Athens, the Emperor, and Venice.’ He smiled with half his mouth. ‘It will only last as long as it is convenient for you Latins, and then you will stab us or sell us. As always.’

Father Pierre had maintained that the Greeks would be strong allies of the crusade once they saw that we were serious and friendly. An evening drinking wine with Syr Iannis made my head spin. He had a different story for everything I knew, not least, of course, that we were the heretics and he was the practitioner of the true religion. He reminded us of the perfidy of the Venetians in attacking the empire a hundred and fifty years before, and he referred to the Latin lords of the Morea as pirates and brigands. It was an eye-opening conversation.

And when Giorgos Angelus accused him of treason again, he just smiled. ‘My brother was the best hope the empire had,’ he said. ‘We need to be done with gentle men who know the ceremonial and love to debate in church. We need soldiers and statesmen and even merchants.’ He shrugged. ‘The empire has no tradition of primogeniture like you Latins and your barbaric ways. Here, if a man takes the empire, it is his. It is nothing but the will of God.’

‘Your brother is a friend of the Turks!’ Angelus spat.

‘Better than Turks than the Franks,’ Kantakouzenos said. ‘The Turks are honest and decent. The Venetians would sell their mothers as whores for a few ducats.’

Nerio might have been expected to take part, given his father’s record in Greece, but he had found a girl, a beautiful girl. Juan was befriended by a Greek priest and they had a conversation about theology and Juan followed him to his little Athenian church to see his icons. Fiore spent two hours debating the Roman origins of our martial tradition with Giannis and one of Kantakouzenos’s officers. Miles basked in the admiration of twenty knights and sat with the two Hospitallers, drinking in their praise.

I listened to Syr Iannis Kantakouzenos, and I worried.

Carlo Zeno never explained what he had been doing at the Tower of Winds. But he never mocked me again — well, any more than Nerio or Juan. Despite that, for one evening, Greeks and Venetians and Hospitallers were all on the same side.

And later we danced. Nerio had become the centre of attention: his name had got out among the men-at-arms, and his father was a famous figure among the Latins of Greece. People came out of their houses to see him, and the atmosphere became less constrained.

I had no idea how famous our little victory was. It was my first sea fight, and if I’ve told it well, that owes as much to hearing the old admiral tell me what had happened as anything I remember. I know that the wind changed at some point and that seemed of great moment to the sailors; of course I understand better now. And I know that the Greeks and Latins shared this — they were starved for victory. The Turks, the Serbs and the Bulgarians had beaten them over and over for twenty years, not by skill in arms but by sheer numbers. And why? For the most part, as far as I could see and by the relation of Giannis, Giorgos, Nerio and Lord Contarini, the lords of Achaea and the Morea were beaten because they were divided among themselves. I have heard it said many times that the knights of Romania, as we called it, were the best in the world, and par dieu, gentlemen, those I met were hardy, cruel men of preux and cunning, but they had not the gift of loyalty, and so they were easily bested by lesser men.

Or so I see it.

Regardless, that Sabbath eve in Piraeus and Athens, we had won a victory that gave them heart-heretics and schismatics together, so to speak.

The next day we gathered cargoes on the waterfront. I had a hard head; I had drunk too late, I think, and I was in a foul mood. I was worried for Marc-Antonio, whose wound was festering, and inclined to find my Turk, who I expected to die despite the treatment of the brothers of the Hospital. In short, my view of the world was as black as it can be for a man four days out of battle. My own wounds hurt, my head hurt, and life seemed … empty.

Usually I filled this feeling with a woman. There, ‘tis said. Taken like a drug. But chastity, and chivalric love — a terrible pair to yoke together — left me alone with my thoughts instead of abed with a soft friend. Alone, a man in dark mood can see many things … differently … and I walked the docks, tormenting myself with Emile’s words, her lack of love for me, her inclination (as I saw it in my darkness) for the king.

A man can use any tool to justify himself to sin and I was busy using my blackness to work myself to hate Emile so that I might find myself a pretty Greek. But Miles saved me from this, with a sort of deadly cheerfulness that made me vent my spleen on him. He gave me the sele of the day and enquired after my wound.

‘It pains me,’ I said. ‘I can scarcely walk.’

He dared to smile. ‘And yet you go up and down these piers as if searching for our Saviour,’ he said with gentle derision.

‘I have much on which to think!’ I said.

He laughed. ‘I am younger than you,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me a man can think while sitting down, if his foot is cut.’

‘Are you wandering about explaining to men the errors of their ways, or do you have some errand?’ I asked. I may have been even more direct. Perhaps I said, ‘What business is it of yours?’

Miles smiled. ‘In truth, the senior knight of our order was asking for you this morning, and Milord Contarini is sitting under his awning just there, awaiting your good pleasure.’

I was being mocked; knights await the good pleasure of lords, and not the other way about.

I realised that I had been pacing up and down in full view of the command structure of the fleet and no man likes to look a fool.

‘And how long have you known that I was wanted?’ I asked. In my mood, I saw him laughing at my pain and watching me pace the docks.

Miles bowed, refusing to be drawn to temper. ‘About as long as it took me to walk from the poop to this spot,’ he said.

Something in his restraint finally cracked my bad composure. ‘Miles, my apologies,’ I began.

He shook his head. ‘None needed.’ Really, he was too good to be believed. He didn’t seem to need a wench or a confessor and he had fought quite brilliantly.

I sighed, and hobbled to the gangway of the great galley. What inconsistency of the mind allowed me to walk back and forth, cursing Emile’s imagined faithlessness, without so much as a twinge from my foot-but the moment I returned to my duty, it hurt with every step?

Bah! I see both of you gentlemen are familiar with this sort of thing.

At any rate, as I limped, I watched the deck crew using the foremast’s yard as a crane to lift a bale of hides inboard. Something turned over in my head. Hides wouldn’t go outbound to Rhodes — Rhodes might have a leatherworker or two, but hides were a homebound cargo for Venice. I had been listening to Nerio and to Lord Contarini when they spoke about merchanting.

I looked down the main deck to the stern, where the command deck rose a few steps above the main deck. Lord Contarini was sitting, just as Miles had said, in a low chair. The leather battle curtains were brailed up for the breeze. He was watching the loading of the great galleys shallow hold. He saw me and his demeanour changed.

I am no fool. I had the evidence, and I assembled it. He was loading us for Venice, not Rhodes.

Let me tell you, I prefer a fight to a debate. But I had promised the legate.

I had perhaps thirty slow steps in which to marshal my arguments and make a case. And the first choice was whether to allow myself to be mastered by anger, or to be all sweet reason. The anger was right there, boiling together with the injustice of Emile’s behaviour, the perfidy of the king, d’Herblay’s cowardice, my fear of Cambrai’s long arm, my own fatigue and black mood. Anger was easy.

There are moments in life that are as definite as battle. As stark. There are moments when you see things as if they were outlined in scarlet, when truth is illuminated, when a man’s character changes because he understands something heretofore hidden, for good or ill. We remember with pleasure those moments that are achievements of some goal: the wife, the treasure, the golden spurs, the Emperor’s sword. But in our secret mind we know that some of the red letters that mark our days were not achievements but discoveries. I have known a good woman ruined by another woman’s perfidy, ruined to dissipation by a relentless cynicism. I have seen one man turned faithless by another man’s bad faith, accidentally discovered.

In one brilliant flash as I stepped aboard and crossed myself to the crucifix at the stern, I saw that anger would serve no purpose whatever in this debate. And that, further, my anger was a bent, nicked sword in any debate. I can’t tell you by what train I arrived at this conclusion, but I saw it. This was one conversation in which I must not be governed by my black mood.

Like a man approaching a fight in the lists, I examined my opponent and tried to find an attack that would carry his conviction. That he had given his word? That our victory needed to be known on Rhodes?

Like many young men entering unequal combats, I had not prepared my attack when I entered his distance. But at least I knew the manner of my own defence, and had my first feint, as it were, prepared.

I bowed, touching my knee to the deck. ‘My lord summoned me?’ I said.

Lord Contarini inclined his head. I knew he liked me. ‘I need to talk to you on a serious matter,’ he said, a little too portentously.

In a fight, you can read an opponent in a hundred little things. A man may lean back slightly when you present your blade at his eyes — that little flinch reveals everything. Lord Contarini’s voice and his first words told me that he was not happy in his own mind with the choice he had made. And that was an opening.

‘I see we are loading for Venice,’ I said bluntly. I neither smiled nor frowned — my voice was steady.

He broke his eyes away from mine. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is necessary.’

I neither nodded nor frowned. ‘It is my duty, my lord, to tell you that your action will force the cancellation of the crusade.’

His head snapped around. Had it been a fight, I had just landed a blow.

I admired him, and one of his most admirable qualities was that his age rendered him immune from the petty ambitions that ruled the rest of us. But I had him. Having won a great victory, he was chained to the good opinion of the world.

He glared at me. ‘Venice must be informed immediately if this victory is to be followed up. And perhaps this sea fight is as great a victory as the crusade was ever expected to win.’

‘The crusade is intended to take Jerusalem,’ I said.

‘With six thousand men?’ asked the admiral. ‘Spare me your pious crap, Sir Knight.’

I bowed and clamped down on my temper. ‘My lord, I gave my solemn word to the legate that I would return to him at Rhodes — and I believe you did the same.’

‘My duty to Venice outweighs my word to the Patriarch, however worthy that gentleman.’ He said it, and yet I could see that it rankled.

‘Can we not send a galley or two, or even an overland messenger?’ I asked. But my mind was running on, and I thought I had it. I was too young to fully appreciate the impact of a great victory won in old age, but I understood that Lord Contarini wanted to live to enjoy his fame. It was something in his face when I said the word messenger. He wanted to be his own messenger, to enjoy the worship of the crowd, the Te Deum at Saint Mark’s.

It was an uncomfortable wisdom, because I fully comprehended his desire. I, too, want to live to tell my stories. There is little value to fame after you are dead, whatever the ancients may say.

He shook his head. ‘I need …’ he began. He paused.

‘My lord, if you support the crusade to the end, your fame will be greater, I said quietly. ‘If you return now, some will smear your victory with terms like desertion.’

He stood suddenly, overturning his seat. ‘You dare?’ he spat.

This is a form of confrontation I dislike. I dislike enduring the anger of a man I admire. But I had given my word, and my sudden wisdom flowered in a hundred ways as I saw — better — how to command myself and other men.

I bowed. ‘I must dare,’ I said. ‘My lord, I am only doing my duty to my lord the legate. And, my lord, to you.’

‘Betake yourself out of my sight,’ he said. ‘It is too late. We have a cargo engaged, as do most of the ships in the fleet.’

I bowed again. ‘A set of cargoes that can be unloaded in as many hours as they were loaded — and warehoused until we return.’

‘Now you will advise me on merchanting, Sir William?’ he asked.

I bowed and left him, but I was shaking inwardly. And yet I thought the balance had shifted. I had caused him some doubt.

I limped down the gangway and turned my halting steps for the Hospitaller galleys. I did not dread the summons of the senior knight — or perhaps I didn’t dread it enough. I had come under the orders of different knights at Avignon, but I had little notion of my own subordinate position.

Fra Daniele del Caretto soon enlightened me.

‘I am surprised that you did not repair aboard immediately,’ he said, ‘To pay your respects to your senior officer. I have waited in surprise for some days, and now I find you wanting utterly in either respect or humility. And where is your surcoat? Are you too proud of your earthly riches to wear the Order’s cross? The cross of Christ?’

This from a man whose own surcoat was so thickly embroidered in gold and silk thread as to constitute another layer of armour. He wore his over a short gown of linen and silk. His hose were silk — he wore a small fortune on his back.

He continued, ‘I was utterly against the inclusion of your kind in our great empris. I expect that you were shocked to find that there was nothing to loot aboard the Turkish vessels.’

Righteous indignation is a useful tool, to be sure. But sometimes, if one is lucky, a conversational adversary makes a claim so ludicrous that it allows you to smile. Remember, too, that I had just had my road to Damascus about temper; not, as you’ll hear, that my conversion was perfect or durable. But in that hour I was a different man.

He leaned forward. ‘Speak, man. Have you nothing to say for yourself?’

I looked at him straight and again, neither smiled nor frowned. ‘Lord Contarini intends to sail for Venice and leave the crusade in the lurch,’ I said. ‘I was just with him.’ I bowed my head. ‘I am very sorry if I have seemed wanting in respect, Fra Daniele.’

‘The admiral spoke of you commanding the volunteers when in fact such a thing is impossible — no volunteer can command anything.’ He looked at me down his long patrician nose.

I might have shrugged, two hours before, and earned his ire. But I did not. ‘Fra Daniele, might I move you to address Lord Contarini?’ I asked.

He sat back. ‘Lord Contarini is a merchant adventurer of Venice and is in no way under my authority. You are. I find you insubordinate.’

He seemed very satisfied with his little sphere of power. I have known such men all my life, and the church attracts its fair share. Yet this man had fought his ship with spirit — even with skill — during the battle.

‘Fra Daniele …’ I considered my words. I was a knight. I was his equal in every way, except within the insular world of the order. Yet the order had given me much, not least my life.

His eyes narrowed. ‘You may address me as “my lord”,’ he said.

I met his eye. ‘No, sir. You are not my lord. The papal legate is my lord. I am here on his express authority — I have his orders to command the other volunteers for the greater glory of Christ, and to return them, and the Venetians, to their duty at Rhodes.’ It was a mistake. His face hardened as I spoke. But I enjoyed it.

He shook his head. He was honestly baffled. ‘You may not speak to me that way, sir. I am the Lord Preceptor of Cyprus, a Cross of Grace, a veteran knight of your Order. I am your lord in every way. If you will not submit …’

I was finally learning how to do something other than fight.

I bowed. ‘My lord, I spoke in haste.’

We regarded each other across his stern cabin table. I let my eyes inform him that my surrender was pro forma.

‘Well-’ he began.

‘My lord, the Venetians are proposing to desert the crusade and sail for home. I believe that you have it in your power to convince Lord Contarini to stay true to his vows.’ I put a hand on the table.

‘You speak well, for a mercenary,’ he said.

‘My lord, I was a routier, a brigand. I was saved from that life — and from death itself — by the legate. I owe him everything, and I will do anything in my power to see his orders obeyed and his wishes complied with.’ I held his eyes.

He looked away. ‘What a strange, insistent fellow you are, to be sure,’ he said with irritation. ‘Very well, I’ll go chivvy Lord Contarini. But these Venetians are not gentlemen — mere merchants.’

The next morning, we rowed down the harbour in a dead calm so flat that the smell of dead fish seemed to cling to the rigging, and the ocean was like a badly polished mirror stretching away to the island of Salamis across the strait. But we weathered the cape, rowing like sweating heroes, and altered course to port and not to starboard. At noon we were seeing the great temple to Poseidon at Sounion, which Nerio pointed out and described in great detail. As great detail, in fact, as the charms of his Athenian mistress, whose lush breasts and insatiable appetite for him he was describing with the kind of relish that-

I beg your pardon. But my new found evenness of temper was not, in fact, accompanied by a whole change of temperament. Listening to Nerio did not incline me to chastity. Nothing did.

At any rate, the admiral was reserved but courteous. He was in his chair on the command deck until the sails went up after we passed Sounion, and then he went below. The next day, and the next, he remained aloof, and I was sorry to lose his regard.

We ran north and east on an empty sea in light airs. Word of our victory had sent every ship into the nearest safe port. The captains of the Ionian felt about our fleet exactly as the peasants of Thessaly had felt about our landing — they feared us as much as they feared the Turks. We didn’t site a fishing boat until we were on the Aeolian shore, or at least what Nerio assured me was Aeolia. I was receiving a second-hand classical education, combined with an endless volley of erotica, from every conversation.

And what of my Turk? As I have mentioned, the Hospitaller knights had taken him aboard their galleys. We were on the beaches of Lesvos, the isle, I am assured, of a brilliant and beautiful poetess whose descendants Nerio was pursuing closely, when I had time to go visit my Turk. The Hospitallers were drawn up close to us on the long golden beach under a tall and equally golden headland. They had a number of brothers who were very good doctors, and Fra Jacob, an older German doctor, had taken him in hand. He spoke to my man for some time and then turned to me.

‘He’s not a Turk — did you know that? He says he is a Kipchak. Do you know the word? The Genoese sell them to the Egyptians as slave soldiers. Superb archers.’ He rolled back the sleeve on the man’s linen shirt to show me a host of tribal tattoos.

‘Moslem?’ I asked.

They talked in low tones. Eventually Fra Jacob shrugged. ‘More Moslem than anything else, though I think his notions of spirits would puzzle the Caliph.’

I told him of meeting the Kipchaks — the ambassador — at the court of the Emperor at Krakow.

Fra Jacob raised an eyebrow, said a few words to my captive, and the man groaned and then laughed. He was not dead, and that was something, but he could not be troubled long. I sent him fruit from the town, and a chicken, and some wine — which I should have known no Moslem would drink.

The town was crowned with a fortress so ancient that the peasants claimed it featured in The Iliad, and the hill was called ‘Watchful’ in the local tongue. The fortress at the top was commanded by an English knight who had served at Poitiers, and we had good cheer for three days while the fleet scraped their hulls and loaded water and food. I was surprised to find an Englishman on the coast of Asia — I began to think that we were everywhere.

Sir John laughed. ‘The Gattelussi — you know them? Lord Francis is prince of this island and a good friend of the Emperor.’ He nodded, enjoying his master’s reflected glory. ‘He hires us in Italy.’

Indeed, Sir John Partner had as many Genoese and Pisans and Bretons as he did Britons, but for all that his little garrison had an English air. There were men there I knew, at least by sight, and it was pleasant to speak English, although less so to climb to the fortress.

The last day in Lesvos, Fra Jacob led me to the man again. ‘He’s making a good recovery,’ Fra Jacob said. ‘Which I attribute to sea air and divine intervention. There should have been the usual sepsis followed by death, but in this case, a week on, and with the original lesion closing? I have to believe he may recover.’ Fra Jacob paused. ‘He has indicated to me that if he recovers, he will convert.’

I grinned. A soul saved is a soul saved, and it is always a benison to have a good deed rewarded.

‘Will you keep him?’ Fra Jacob asked.

I shrugged. ‘I assume he knows horses. I could use a page. So yes. I won’t make him a slave — I’m not a Genoese.’ I laughed.

Jacob spoke to the Turk — I thought of him as a Turk, and they were speaking Turkish. The man grinned and nodded at me.

‘He offers you two years and two days of his life as ransom,’ Fra Jacob said.

I gripped his hand.

Fra Jacob nodded. ‘I’ll keep him in this hammock until we reach Rhodos. We’ll baptise him if he lives, and by the time we raise the island, I’ll have taught him a little Italian.’ He nodded. ‘You are one of our volunteers?’ he asked.

I bowed and agreed that I was.

He smiled. ‘Enjoy Rhodes,’ he said. ‘You’ve had an encounter with Fra Daniele?’ he asked carefully.

I nodded.

‘His kind is not rare,’ Fra Jacob said. ‘Listen, I am a doctor, trained in Italy. I have been a brother of this Order since my wife died in the Black Death.’ He took a cold cloth and ran it over my Turk’s face. He met my eyes. His were mild; in the low orlop of a Hospitaller galley, his eyes seemed very dark. He smiled, apparently without malice. ‘My father is a nobleman and my birth perfectly decent. But I have never been allowed to dine with the knights, nor offered accommodation, despite the Order’s vows or my own skills.’ He shrugged. ‘I am less resentful than perhaps I sound, but your reputation is as a man of blood.’

It was my turn to shrug. ‘I serve the legate,’ I said.

He nodded and his brow wrinkled. ‘You may find that there are many in the Order who have little respect for your legate.’ He paused. ‘Or none. He was born a serf — a peasant.’

I laughed. ‘I am warned. But I grew to manhood being excluded by the English court — I won’t be broken by aristocratic airs.’

While I was speaking, he got a Greek lamp, lit with olive oil, which smelled so much better than the whale oil you find in the north. By its light I could see my man. ‘What is his name?’ I asked.

We went back and forth, and the best I could reckon, his name was something like Kili Salmud.

He tried to bow, lying in a hammock with his hands together. He flinched as the movement reached his stomach muscles.

‘Let’s get him baptised with a Christian name,’ I said.

Fra Jacob frowned. ‘You might feel differently, were your situations reversed,’ he said.

I think I grinned. ‘But they are not,’ I said, or something equally glib.

South of Chios, we spread our line wide, a dragnet fishing for Turkish vessels, and we snapped a dozen of them up — fishing smacks, a lateen-rigged merchant, a three-masted tub that proved to be a pirate-taken Genoese. We ran her down ourselves in light airs, with the whole crew rowing triple banked, and Fiore and I led the boarders — Nerio was down with the flux. The crew fought to the last; the last being a man that Fiore beheaded with his false edge strategy, the showy bastard. Their resistance was pointless, as my friends and I were in full harness despite the heat, and with the two Venetian men-at-arms, all the dying was done by the crew of the round ship. In the hold we found the rotting bodies of the Italian crew, and saw why the Turks — really, as it proved, the merest Levantine pirates of no race whatsoever — had fought to the end, as the cargo was worth a pile of gold, being all silk, and the crew had been ill-used to the point of horror: tortured and humiliated before being killed like sheep with their throats opened, youngest to oldest.

The old admiral, who had scarcely spoken a word to me since our argument on his quarterdeck, came below when summoned by his marines. He didn’t avert his eyes, but merely shook his head.

‘You killed the bastards too quickly,’ he said. But he flashed me a smile. ‘Pirates — animals. They prey on Christian and Moslem alike, and are the enemies of all men.’ He nodded at one young man. ‘That’s a bad way to die, eh?’

And later, he had malmsey served to all of us, and he said, ‘It is easy to prate of the foul religion of the infidel and all that, but when you look at what those pirates did — to Genoese, my natural enemies — you know that it is those bastards who are the enemy. And they live in the seams and fissures between the rivals and ply their horrid trade because the lawful powers are busy fighting.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m sure I’ll go to hell for saying it, Sir Knight, but I’d rather clear the fucking pirates off the sea than conquer Jerusalem. I can go to Jerusalem any time I want, just for paying a fee to the Sultan in Cairo, who is a lawful man with normal appetites. And when we take Tyre, or Jaffa, or whatever unlucky town we storm …’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve said too much.’

You see these horrors at the fringe of war. Routiers rob and rape, and worse, and I’ve known men who eventually go dead inside, and rouse themselves by inflicting horror. I’ve heard Camus say that raped nuns make the best whores, and the Levantine pirates were of the same breed — men dead to anything but the false feeling of power. But when I looked around that afternoon, the dead Italians very fresh in my head, I saw that Nerio and Juan agreed with the admiral, whatever they might say. They did not believe in the crusade.

Perhaps no one did.

We raised Rhodos at the first breath of autumn. I didn’t know the Mediterranean then as I do now, but I knew a storm when it came, and we rowed, sailed under a scrap of brailed-up lateen on a short yard, and rowed again until our hold was awash with waves breaking over bulwarks amidships and the rowers were sitting in water and every man not rowing was bailing or manning the pumps. We were three days and two nights somewhere north and west of Rhodos, and when the oarsmen were exhausted and the water was gone, the admiral conned the ship himself, got into the lee of an islet and rested us in calm water until we were strong enough to beach stern first on a beach of gravel.

The Venetians are superb seamen. We didn’t lose a ship. I will spare you my thoughts, except to say I feared death more every moment during that storm than I ever had in mortal combat. I think that is because we fear that with is foreign, and not that which is familiar. The storm terrified me, so that when the sky was black and rent with fire, the timoneer struck me with his rope and pushed me to an oar. And I went.

Nor did I hold it against him.

At any rate, we raised Rhodos, and entered the ancient harbour — everything east of Venice is ancient. Rhodes had a great navy when Rome ruled the world, and now she does again: the ships of the Hospital are few, but well feared.

The harbour was packed with shipping the way a Bristol keg is packed with mackerel. Or perhaps the way Sherwood Forest is packed with trees — aye, that’s more apt, because their masts stood like a forest. There were more than a hundred ships in the harbour or on the beaches outside. There were forty fighting ships: from the Order, from Cyprus, from Genoa, from the Gattelussi. There were even two from the Emperor at Constantinople. With the Venetian galleys, there were almost sixty fighting sail, and another hundred round ships to carry the army and their horses.

And the horses! All Rhodos was covered in a carpet of warhorses. We had almost five thousand knights and men-at-arms, and most of them were mounted. The Order’s chancellor told me one night after Mass that he was feeding near four thousand chargers out of the Order’s farms and byres.

I didn’t see the horses at once, because as soon as we beached I went with my friends to see the legate. Marc-Antonio waited on me; his inflammation had gone down at sea, and the storm had, of all things, cured his fever. We found the legate in the English langue, the tavern devoted to the needs of English knights and squires within the Order.

I haven’t said as much as I might about the Order. When they found me, I was as uncritical as a man can be. I loved everything about the Order: the sense of community, the brotherhood, the religious devotion, the discipline, the training in arms. When I came to the Order, they seemed to me the very antithesis of the routiers, who had no spirit, no driving purpose beyond greed, no training, and no discipline. Who sold their own members for money.

By the crusade summer, I was more critical. Juan di Heredia’s combination of competence, intense ambition, lax morals and amoral piety had, despite my respect for the man, cost me something of my idealism. The realities of preparing the crusade — even my beloved Father Pierre’s open questioning of the uses of violence — all made me look more deeply at the Order. Fra Daniele didn’t shock me — his ilk existed in Avignon — but he helped insure that I would look at Rhodes with a careful eye.

At any rate, the Order — on Rhodes, and in any commanderie with multiple ‘nations’ or ‘languages’ — had inns to house and support them. In the earliest days in Jerusalem, I suspect this had been to comfort new knights, so that they could hear their own language spoken. By the crusade summer, some of the languages no longer had as many adherents, and other, new divisions had grown to divide langues and inns that formerly had been pillars of the Order. The French langue was deeply divided between French and Burgundian and Hainault; the Italian langue was bitterly divided between the knights of Genoa and the knights of Venice, with the Florentine and Neapolitan and Sianese and Veronese knights as a sort of third ‘side’. There was a German langue, and an English langue that included Scottish and Irish knights — two groups who did not view themselves as English any more than a Provencal knight was French or a Catalan knight was ‘Spanish’.

Despite these divisions, — perhaps even because of them, the Order was a solid fabric. The Order could be petty and bureaucratic; it had whole slaughterhouses of parchment scrolls dedicated to knight’s’ genealogies and land holdings and registered rents and leases, but the Order provided inns, hospital care, and in some cases, transportation for pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land from all of Europe. From your front door in London or Aix-la-Chappelle or Nijmegen or Nuremberg or Prague or Verona or Barcelona or Najera or Paris or Bordeaux you could travel all the way to Jerusalem guarded, supported, and cared for by the Order.

The decision to guard the pilgrim routes and to provide care for the sick, whether pilgrims or not, had been one of the earliest, defining moment in the Order’s history. Unlike the rival Templars, the Hospitallers had not defined themselves solely as warriors. With the fall of the Holy Land, about a hundred years before my time there, the Templars had lost their purpose, but the Order continued to provide caravans to Jerusalem.

I mention this because on arriving at Rhodes, the capital and fortress of my Order, I saw for the first time how few the Knights of the Order were. In truth, in times of peace, the Order maintained only about three hundred brother-knights at Rhodes, and another few hundred serving brothers. Some serving brothers were professed soldiers: that is, professional soldiers who had taken all the vows of the Order, but were of insufficient birth to rank as knights. They were called brother-sergeants. There were very few in the commanderies in Europe — just two in Avignon, a few retired old men in England helping to raise warhorses — but there were hundreds at Rhodes, where they provided the expert leadership and technical skills in siege work and ship handling to the knights. But most of the serving brothers were doctors, apothecaries, nurses and herbalists, carpenters and blacksmiths and other skilled men. They were not warriors except in the direst emergency.

All this is by way of explaining that Rhodes was a military base, a great fortress in the very face of the Turkish enemy, but also a small state, like Vicenza in Italy or Strasbourg. It had a small but expert army, a set of skilled craftsmen, a subject populace of free peasants most of whom were Greek schismatics, and a handful of feudal lords — mostly Latin, but a few Greek. It had a government and ambassadors and the Grand Master was as powerful as many princes. Rhodes had an excellent fleet of six galia sottil and one galia grossa and two dozen lesser craft, small galleys with fewer than a hundred oarsmen, fast and shallow in draft, that could cover shipping, transport pilgrims, or raid the enemy coast. The navy drove most of the Order’s military preparations. Rhodes was a naval power. She contributed two full-time galleys to the defence of Smyrna, a city on the coast of Turkey that the last crusade had seized in Crecy year.

Yet this small fleet, and the garrisons of the dozen castles the Hospitallers manned in Outremer and the Ionian islands, and the armed caravans that took pilgrims to the Holy Land — these small operations required almost all of the Order’s manpower. Rhodes always had to be prepared for siege, still does. At any moment an enemy fleet might descend like the Assyrian wolves to try to snap up the port or lay siege to the city. And every mark of the revenue of the islands, the tolls paid by pilgrims, the revenues of all the Order’s estates in Europe and Cyprus — all that money was already spent and on the same castles, ships and caravans I’ve mentioned.

We always imagined the Order as a great Roman legion of knights, ready to march at a moment’s notice against the Saracen foe. But the truth was that for a Passagium Generale the Order had to summon in all the knights and brother-sergeants and donats and other volunteers from all over Europe, which cost money and took ships. And then they had to feed and house all those men, see to their equipment, put them in the field, feed and maintain them and their horses. All that, while continuing to serve pilgrims, heal the sick, and defend their own fortresses. So, they were a legion, but most of the legion was tied down in routine duties.

We arrived — that is, the legate arrived — with fifty brother-knights from the commanderies, men like Fra Peter Mortimer. And there were a hundred more come with the Genoese or making their way in private ships. Rhodes was packed to the gunwales with knights.

And every one of them had precedence over me.

The inn of the English langue was so much like home that I blinked in the great stone doorway and imagined, for a few heartbeats, that the Thames was two streets away. The English langue was located below our bastion, the section of walls for which the English are responsible during attacks. The building is tall, like a London house, and broad, taking up the space that two or three houses would occupy, with a glittering facade of mullioned windows. The ground floor is stone, and rubble-filled timber soars away, whitewashed over stucco over brick, four tall stories of London shining in the Mediterranean sun. Deep stone basements protect the ale and they go down so deep in the soil that you can see the ancient street from the time of Alexander and there is a marvellous bust in one of the cellars, a bearded man’s head that some say is Saint John and Nerio says is Messire Plato, the philosopher.

It might be the best inn in London, save for the omnipresent smell of garlic and the presence of oil lamps on every table and olive oil in the food. But it is a noble building with many rooms and many places for private conversation; unlike any other inn I know it has a chapel and a chaplain. The courtyard has a line of pells where men may practice the art of arms, and the archery range and tiltyard are close.

By ancient custom, the commander of the English langue is the turcopolier, or the officer in charge of mercenaries. I’m not sure what this says about the English, but in the crusade year, the turcopolier was the captain of the Order’s cavalry and scouts; a senior military officer. His name was Fra William de Midleton, and he was a tall man of enormous girth, and no amount of exercise seemed to reduce his size.

I learned all this on arrival, because the turcopolier was sitting in a snug with the legate.

He rose, his great belly pushing at the table that Father Pierre was using as a desk, and extended a massive hand. ‘Sir William de Midleton — I am delighted at your coming, sir, and the more so as the manner of your arrival reflects so much credit on our nation in the Order.’

In the next few minutes I learned that our battle with the Turks was the talk of the waterfront and indeed of the whole town, where it was fairly reckoned as the first fruits of the crusade, since the whole coalition fleet was composed of men committed, at least on paper, to the attack.

‘How did you find your first brush with the enemy?’ Fra William asked.

I was flushed by his praise, but I bowed and thanked him. ‘I found them to be good soldiers and wonderful archers. Brave and very dangerous. But poorly armoured.’

Fra William nodded. ‘Those are Turks. Brave and reckless. Wonderful archers! When we get a few to convert, we recruit them instantly, I promise you. But when you face the Egyptians, the true Mamluks, you will see that courage and archery united with the industry and discipline of Egypt. The Ghulami are fully armed — and twice as dangerous.’ He smiled. ‘Luckily, we have … arrangements … with the Sultan.’ He smiled at Father Pierre.

The legate did not smile. ‘No Christian should have an arrangement with the infidel,’ he said.

Fra William raised both eyebrows. His face was broad and flat with a large nose and wide, childlike eyes — he looked more like a favourite uncle than a commander of mercenaries. ‘Excellency, when you have lived here as long as I-’ he began.

Father Pierre looked at me, and not the turcopolier. ‘I have been in the East since the year of Poitiers,’ he said. ‘I have lived in Constantinople and Famagusta. I know the Latin sees of Outremer. I know that Venice and Genoa and Pisa and Florence have made their own pacts with the devil — but I do not expect such rhetoric from the Knights of Christ.’

Fra William showed his dismay and anger. He leaned against the cool stone wall and shook his head.

I thought of the admiral and his statement about pirates. But, quite wisely, I think, I didn’t say what came to mind.

In the difficult silence, Fra William bowed stiffly — or perhaps, roundly — and squeezed past me. ‘I’m sure the legate would like to brief you alone,’ he said. ‘When he has finished with you, perhaps you would be as kind as to come to my closet and I will assign you a cell.’

He was perfectly pleasant, although I could see his irritation. He walked out of the oak door and closed it behind him.

Father Pierre rested his head in his hands. ‘Why does the Pope want a crusade — an armed attack — on men half the Inner Sea view as allies?’

Sometimes men ask rhetorical questions. They don’t want answers. But in this case, I felt that it was worth a try. ‘The Pope has declared crusades against Milan and even Naples,’ I said.

Father Pierre sat back. ‘I do not like my role here. Enough of that — you are too young to share my burdens, and it is unfair of me even to mention them. You have won a great victory.’

I shrugged. ‘My lord, we all won a victory.’

He nodded. ‘And the Venetians? They came willingly?’

I shrugged again. ‘My lord, they are here.’

He laughed. ‘Sir William, you sound more like an Italian every day. Your friends — my friends — they prosper?’

I nodded. ‘None of us took a bad wound,’ I said.

‘By the grace of God,’ added the priest, and I bowed my head.

Then I told him most of the expedition, leaving out almost everything Admiral Contarini had said. He nodded.

‘The Venetians are the best sailors on the face of the inner sea,’ he said. ‘But they turn their God-given talents to the service of greed and not God. The Genoese beat them here.’

‘The Genoese were not present when we faced the Turks,’ I said.

Father Pierre nodded. ‘The Genoese say that by fighting the Turks, we provoke a naval reaction that may threaten the entire Crusade,’ he said. He raised a hand as I began to protest. ‘Spare me, spare me! I know. The Genoese serve only their own city.’

I leaned forward. ‘Have you chosen our … goal?’ I asked softly.

For the first time in my life, I saw Father Pierre be evasive. He was a very poor liar. ‘No,’ he said.

I knelt and confessed myself of my amorous thoughts. My confessor laughed. ‘Chastity sits heavily on you, my son,’ he said. ‘Be careful. Be … wise.’

‘Wise?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I have said too much. For your penance, you may find all your friends billets in this city and then join me for dinner. Lord Grey celebrates his birthday and he is eager to see his nephew. How was Master Stapleton?’

‘He was brilliant in arms and a good man throughout.’ I waved towards the closed door. ‘He is the last man among us unknighted.’

‘You would recommend him for knighthood?’ Father Pierre asked, his hands steepled in his accustomed way.

‘Without hesitation. He will be a better knight than I am.’ I bowed.

Father Pierre shook his head. ‘I doubt that,’ he said, the best compliment he ever paid me. His praise was given sparingly, and often to third parties so this was very sweet, despite being so brief. He waved me away in dismissal. ‘I’ll speak to Lord Grey,’ he said.

As I closed the oak door — it might have been imported from England, it was that heavy — I thought that in the past few months, my beloved Father Pierre had begun to act more like a prince of the church. He was not spoiled. It was merely that his new dignity shrouded his enthusiasm and his genuine friendliness.

I missed Father Pierre. He was there when his eyes laughed at my petty sins, when he knelt with me on the floor to pray, when he embraced me. But the cautious strategos who lied about the goal of the expedition …

At any rate, I went up a floor and along a hallway so narrow that a man in full harness would have had to go sideways like a crab. I asked the servants — some English, some Greek, some Arabs — the way until I found the open door at the end of a hall that should have been straight but was not. Later I learned that the English langue was one of the richest, and was built in four stages that did not perfectly align, so that the main hall of the second floor was neither straight nor flat.

Fra William filled the room he called his ‘closet.’ It had a pigeon roost (as we call it) for scrolls, and the whole shelf was packed with them, hundreds of scrolls, and there were more around the room in baskets. In among the scrolls was a table no bigger than the sideboards on which squires cut meat and mix wine, and it, too, was covered in scrolls, and the bulk of the man was wedged between the pigeon roosts and the writing table. By his side was another tall man, this one as thin as Sir William was round.

‘Sir Robert Hales — Sir William Gold.’ He waved at us.

Sir Robert Hales rose and took my hand. ‘I have heard of you, in France and in Italy.’

I bowed. ‘Indeed, my lord, we were introduced at Clerkenwell.’ I smiled. ‘I was with Juan di Heredia’s nephew.’

Sir Robert flushed. ‘Sir William … indeed. I swear you were younger then. Or perhaps smaller.’

We all laughed. I had been a squire of no account whatsoever. Now I was a knight of moderate fame.

Sir Robert sat. ‘Of course, I know your sister, who shares your high courage.’

My turn to flush. I had scarcely thought of my sister in six months. Fra William looked up from his writing. ‘Sit, Sir William. By our lady, clear him a space. There’s nowhere for a man to sit.’

I stood against the far wall and hoped that nothing fell on me. Very gradually, I leaned against a set of shelves weighted down with scrolls and books and tall stacks of parchments being led to their dooms by their heavy seals, slipping gradually but inevitably towards the floor.

‘You had a quarrel with Fra Daniele,’ Fra William stated. He did not ask.

I said nothing.

‘Senior Knights of the Order are commanders,’ he said. He was still writing quickly. His big hand was perfectly well-trained, and his writing was as neat as a professional scribe’s hand. He was writing Latin. ‘Many of my paid soldiers are commanders in their own right, and I have to explain to them that here, on Rhodes, their authority is nothing, and only the brother-knights have the power to giver orders.’

He looked up at me. ‘In Outremer, mercenaries sold themselves to the enemy. We have become careful.’

I nodded.

Fra William pursed his lips. ‘You further informed Fra Daniele that the legate is your lord.’

I suppose I sighed. I was trying to control my temper, and not doing a perfect job.

Fra William frowned. ‘He is a great man, perhaps a saint. But you, as a volunteer in the Order, must obey your superiors. You swore an oath to obey.’

‘Any reasonable order,’ I said.

‘No,’ Fra William said. ‘There is no such stipulation. You swore to obey. Kindly keep that in mind. I have no doubt — no doubt at all — that you are a brilliant soldier. The dockside tales of your daring are worthy of Roland or Oliver or Gawain. But if you wear the red coat, you must obey.’ He raised both eyebrows in his most cherubic look, one I would come to understand better. ‘Even Fra Daniele.’

‘Yes, Sir Knight.’ I bowed carefully, given the limited space.

He smiled, and the room seemed to fill with his glow. ‘Good. As an Englishman, you fall to me, and I am proud to have you. I’m sorry I had to start with discipline. But we take it seriously. And you will see why if we come to battle. Knights — gentlemen — are used to doing just as they please, even on the battlefield.’

Fra Robert smiled. His smile was as thin as Fra Williams was beaming. He didn’t strike me as a man who had much time for humour.

I nodded. ‘I have some experience of this,’ I said.

He handed me a set of keys. ‘Perhaps the greatest advantage of being English,’ he said, ‘Is that we have the richest inn except for the Italians, but the smallest langue in numbers. So while there are men camped in the streets, I can give all of you cells, good cells with beds. Enjoy them — they may be the only beds you see for a year. The food here is excellent, though I do say so myself,’ he added, patting his belly. ‘We will pretend that your friends are English. Fra Daniele thought they were.’ He went back to writing, and I was not sure whether I was dismissed or not. After some time, he looked up. ‘You know John Hawkwood. How is the bastard?’

I shrugged. Italy had made me the master of many shrugs — shrugs for knowing too much, or nothing at all. ‘I wrote to him twice last winter and had no reply. He was badly defeated last autumn, but he rescued much of his army.’

‘There a rumour that he and the Visconti are threatening Genoa,’ Fra William said. ‘That the Pope used Hawkwood to put pressure on the Genoese to participate in the crusade.’

I shook my head. ‘It may be, but he was nowhere near Genoa when we undertook the last round of negotiations. That success belongs entirely to the legate.’

‘I knew him as a boy.’ The turcopolier frowned. ‘Our lives have taken very different paths.’ He met my eye. ‘How many men have you commanded?’ he asked suddenly.

‘I was a corporal last year against Florence, with fifty lances,’ I said.

Fra Robert smiled his thin-lipped smile again. He murmured something I did not catch.

Fra William raised an eyebrow. ‘Most of the volunteers who came out with the legate have declared a desire to serve together.’ He signed his name, took hot wax and sealed his document. ‘If circumstances align, I might like to see you command them. It would be unprecedented for a man not of the highest birth — commands of volunteers and donats usually go to princes and kings.’ He grinned sourly. ‘I don’t have one, this fight. Did the Emperor really gird you with that sword?’ he asked.

I smiled. I drew the longsword carefully and handed it to him, and he regarded the Emperor’s sword with something like lust.

It is worth saying that the sword was almost unmarked by a dozen combats. There was not a nick in her blade, not a mar on the surface of the metal between her fullers, except where I had covered myself against the sweep of the Turk’s axe — I had not allowed his weapon anything like a direct cross, and yet his edge had left a cut on her forte.

‘You fought in a tournament,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘While wearing the surcoat of the order,’ he added. Then he shook himself; indeed, he quivered. ‘Never mind. But please understand that you have flouted some rules that young knights are punished for disobeying.’

‘Are these rules written down somewhere? I asked.

He laughed. ‘Every baillie has his own. Every langue has some few. It’s only ten years ago that we were allowed to keep a copy in English — until then we had to read the rule in Provencal. But I’ll find you a copy of the rule. You won’t find any mention of tournaments.’

Sir Robert leaned forward. ‘Sir William, do you know anything of the — the factions within the order?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

Sir Robert had the look of a man all too well versed in politics. Certes, he was — and is — a great man at the court of the English king. He played with his beard. ‘Men may join the order and yet remain loyal to their former lords. We are still English. The French are still French.’

I suppose I smiled.

‘What I mean is that there are, no doubt, those within the order who do not relish your legate or his crusade,’ he said.

‘Or his evident partiality for Englishmen,’ Fra William laughed.

Sir Robert nodded. ‘Do you see how this can affect all of us?’

‘Of course he doesn’t,’ Fra William said. ‘Let him breathe, Robert. He’ll come to know us soon enough.’ He waved his hand. ‘Go find your friends and I’ll see you for Lord Grey’s birthday.’

Lord Grey’s dinner was a gathering of all the English on Rhodes, and I was surprised — and deeply pleased — to see how many of us there were. The English Grand Prior, Fra John Pavely, had led a goodly body of knights and men-at-arms out to Rhodes for the Passagium Generale. There was Nicolas Sabraham; there was Steven Scrope, who, like Miles Stapleton, was a squire ready for knighting. Fra William Midleton sat with his friend Fra Robert Hales, who was holding forth of the current state of finance in the English priory. Sabraham whispered to me that I could expect Hales to be Prior of England. We had the Scottish knights, Sir Walter Lindsay and his brothers Kenneth and Norman. We also had Sister Marie who I had not seen in months. She had accompanied Marcus, the legate’s archdeacon, on an errand to Naples and joined us late. There were two other women present in a very masculine party, both sisters of the order. One was Fra William’s sister Katherine. She, too, was nearly perfectly round, and her eyes also had the bright twinkle of intelligence. She was by me during the speeches, and her undertone of comment on her brother was so funny as to be a danger to all around her. And always by her side was young Sister Mary Langland, who I mention only because she was perhaps the most beautiful nun any of us had ever seen, and yet so utterly pious and chaste as to prevent untoward advances, even from Nerio. It was a splendid evening, with fine food and a flow of talk — and ten thousand compliments for our part in the Venetian victory off Negroponte.

I enjoyed Rhodes. By the time we’d been there a few days, it seemed as if we’d been there forever, and by the end of the second week, it was as if it was the only life I’d ever known. We lived, with our squires, in the English langue; we served all the offices from matins to compline. Nerio sang so well — the bastard, he did everything well! — that he was taken to sing in the choir.

I was privileged to be a reader. Fra Peter had known me in London and knew that I was in the most minor order, as a reader of the Gospel. He didn’t seem to know that I had been accorded that status to save me from branding. I confess to you that standing in the great church of St John by the harbour of Rhodes and reading from the Gospel to the knights, brothers, and volunteers — and mercenaries — of the order was a great pleasure, not unmixed with fear. I found reading to be much like fighting in the lists: the attention of hundreds of eyes can confuse or even terrify.

One pair of eyes especially. Emile had a dispensation to hear Mass with the knights. It was not an uncommon dispensation for pilgrims to obtain, but it made Mass all the more important to me — see what a sinner I am — that Emile was there. When I read the Gospel, I was all too aware that she stood very close to me, on the other side of the choir stalls, with the Order’s sisters.

Otherwise I had virtually no opportunity to see her. I had imagined that we would lie in each other’s arms every night of the crusade (how complex a set of sins that is) and of course, when the reality presented itself, she was sealed away among the women. I took consolation, though; without the post-battle darkness of spirit I was not nearly as jealous and the king could no more come to her than I could.

I tried to arrange opportunities to be with her. The one I remember was a ride in the countryside, hawking. The children came, but the duenna I had arranged, the wife of one of the Order’s standing officers, was unable to ride, being sick, and that forced Emile to remain with the nuns. We did manage to smile at each other a great deal in the gate house. And I had a lovely day riding along dusty lanes with the nurse and the three children, as well as Marc-Antonio and Miles, both of who proved far better hawkers than I.

Edouard was five or six, and I had found him a pony — really, an island horse. He rode beautifully. In fact, he rode better than I did, and he was polite, attentive, and very excited to be out in the country with a real knight.

‘You don’t have your big sword,’ he said accusingly.

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘What if the Saracens attack us?’ he asked.

I pointed over the great blue horizon. ‘The sea protects us. Before the Saracens could come here they would have to assemble a fleet.’

‘You would kill them all anyway,’ he said. ‘Maman says so.’

There is something disagreeable in the flattery of a child, second-hand. ‘Eduard, being a knight is not all killing,’ I said.

‘Is it not?’ he asked with the terrible disinterest of the young child. ‘When I grow up, I will kill anyone I don’t like.’

I had not spent enough time with children to know how to handle this.

Miles, on the other hand, had a variety of brothers. ‘Even the ones who surrender?’ he asked. He smiled as he said it.

Eduard looked pained. Here I had been at the point of imagining him a violent recreant. When I knew children better, I learned that they merely experiment with ideas, and look to adults for encouragement. Some children are encouraged even when adults do not mean them to be.

Miles cut across that. ‘Think about the word “gentil”,’ he said.

The boy pointed at me. ‘But Sieur Guillaume is a great knight, and he kills everyone! This is what Maman said.’

‘Look!’ cried Marc-Antonio. He’d found us a target for our birds, and he halloo’ed at the flock of birds. His intervention couldn’t have been more timely.

I resolved to spare someone as soon as possible.

The time passed pleasantly. I suspect it was made better for the five of us that we arrived on the wings of a famous victory, and that we had, apparently, been seen to be important in it. I say this with some amusement. It was a hot fight, and a desperate one, one of the harshest I had seen until that moment, and I had no way to judge the importance of my own role, or my friends’. I had been in fights where I knew I had turned the tide — the bridge at Meux comes to mind — but at the sea fight off Euboea, I fought, and that’s all I know.

After the dinner for Lord Grey, I knew most of the English knights and squires, whether they were donats, brothers, or crusaders. Through Nerio, I quickly came to know the Italians in the Order; Fra Ferlino di Airasca was a Savoyard. He was the Order’s admiral, as senior as Fra William Midleton, and as easy to know. He had the beautiful manners of the Savoyard court, and his family were friends of Emile’s father’s family. He was a fine swordsman, and he and Fiore made an immediate and close acquaintance. Fra Palamedo di Giovanni was commanding one of the Order’s galleys, and Nerio visited him frequently.

Each day on Rhodes, after matins, we’d eat a light meal — hard bread and cider, perhaps a little cheese, some sausage, whatever was left in the kitchens — and then we’d debouch into the yard and train. We’d stand at the pell with Fiore yelling at us, and we’d engage each other. The Order believed in the English game of sword and buckler, with sharps, and we’d swagger our good swords, first left- and then right-handed. And then spend hours taking out the nicks. I was careful of the Emperor’s longsword, and used my spare.

By the summer of the crusade year, Ser Fiore had begun to codify many of his notions of sword and spear play. He had a theory, much like the way the theologians with whom we discoursed had theories on the divinity of Christ, or the Virgin Birth, or the nature of the Host, or the nature of blessings administered by priests. If I dwell on the profession of arms, it is because I was not a priest, but on Rhodes, as in Avignon, we were surrounded by the profession of Christ, so to speak, and we would have had to be far more ignorant men then we were not to imbibe some of their wisdom and their style.

So with Fiore’s theory. One of them was that the forming of the first cross in a fight determined all the actions that followed until the two combatants broke apart, or one was hit. And the process by which the combatants came together — in a fight, you never think of these things, but Ser Fiore did, all the time. He would stand watching us, purse his lips, shake his head, and I’d think what am I doing wrong? And it would prove later that he was thinking of making us fight to music.

Because fighting has a rhythm to be exploited, of course.

In the yard and in the squares and on the parade of the fortress we trained and trained. Fra Peter led my company, in which, to all effects, I was a corporal. It was the only time I saw him, except occasionally at dinner. When not training, Fra Peter attended constantly on the legate and sometimes on the Grand Master. I missed him.

We formed lines and squares, we formed wedges on foot and mounted, we fought alone, as pairs, as teams of five and as units of fifty, and we practised with spears and swords. A few men had axes or poleaxes — a difficult weapon with which to train, believe me. A good man can ruin a pell with an axe cut. Fiore installed a line of springy saplings — very different from our heavy oak pells — to give us a more rapid, more flowing ‘opponent’. But the axe men could lop them to pieces, and sometimes did.

Fra William used a very small axe on a long handle, a weapon he’d taken from a Turk. With a mischievous gleam on his face, he appeared one afternoon and worked his way down our saplings, turning them into kindling with his little axe.

Fiore watched him and then picked up a victim, a thin branch, no thicker than my thumb. It was cut through and almost polished. The cut ran straight.

Fiore nodded and looked at the turcopolier. ‘He is very good,’ Fiore admitted.

I was amazed that a man so big was so capable, but the man was amazing.

My Turk was also amazing. We baptised him on the feast of Saint John, and he took the name John. Everyone called him John the Turk — Iannis Turkos, in the local tongue. By the time the hospital released him, his Italian was acceptable, although he was not good at tense or time and his idea of the agreement of numbers could be very difficult.

‘I am very honoured to being so many knight,’ he said with a bow to my friends. ‘All with Christ now.’

It is easy to make a man sound like a fool with bad speech and John the Turk was no fool. He could ride anything, and he was impossibly generous — his understanding of Christ’s word shamed the rest of us. I gave him some coins to drink my health one day, and watched him the next day give all of it to a beggar.

‘Does He not say, give all you have and follow Me?’ John asked.

Nerio slapped him on the shoulder. ‘He didn’t mean a horse or arms,’ he said.

John laughed. ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘Christ no fool.’

John also thought I was a priest because, at his baptism, I read the Gospel. From John I learned that an imam, a Moslem priest, was a reader first and foremost. I discovered that imams are not disbarred from being warriors or having wives, which led me to suspect that the Saracens might have certain advantages.

Be that as it may, John was the first real servant I ever had. He was both a wonderful and terrible servant. He had no notion of subservience: that is, he had respect for my rank, and my friends, but he, too, was a professional warrior, and he didn’t expect to be treated any differently. He was happy to lay out my kit, polish my armour, sharpen my weapons, and especially care for my horse but he refused to have anything to do with the serving of food or the cleaning or maintenance of clothes, all of which he described with withering contempt as ‘women’s work’. He handed all of them to Marc-Antonio.

One day they appeared before me, Marc-Antonio with two black eyes and a long gash on the back of his right hand, and John virtually unmarked — but whatever was settled between them, Marc-Antonio was no longer referred to as the ‘woman’.

It is odd, to me, that some men have such opinions of women. Women, to me, are brave, careful, smart, and delightful. I would cheerfully do laundry to have an hour with a woman, and I’d think nothing of sewing clothes for anyone I like. And the Blessed Virgin was a woman. I defy any gentleman anywhere to offer her insult, and I offer that cartel without restriction to any defamer of women.

But my Turk, my Kipchak, saw the roles of women and men as separate streams. If we are held here long enough, perhaps I’ll tell you how John came to change his spots. But as the weeks passed, and we trained and trained, and our horses fattened and recovered their muscle, so John became one of us. And one day we watched him shoot his bow.

First, he was given a bow by Fra William. He thanked the turcopolier profusely — and then, when the man’s back was turned, he fumed. He ridiculed the bow as too weak, badly made, with a cast. He strung it and unstrung it.

He took the quiver of arrows he’d been given and went through them one by one.

‘A bow for slaves. And arrows to match,’ he all but spat. He upended the quiver, an English arrow bag, really, and in it was a mixed bag — literally — with arrows of every colour and nine or ten different fletching styles: round vanes, elliptical vanes, and pointed vanes like our own arrows. He fetched a stool (we were in the yard) and began sorting them into piles, staring down the length, holding them to the sun, and running his thumb down the vanes.

One of our crossbowmen, the Order’s, I mean, came out with an English ale in his fist. ‘I hate to see them apes given arms,’ he said in Genoese-Italian. ‘But they’re born to bows like little centaurs.’ He watched the Turk. ‘Almost intelligent, eh? Good bow, eh?’ he said to the Turk.’

‘Bow is craps. Arrows are turd every one,’ John said. ‘Made in Genoa.’

The crossbowman flushed and went back inside.

John smiled a grim little smile, and went back to sorting arrows. In the end he chose five — of forty. Another ten he set aside, and after he’d taken the steel or iron heads off all the rest and thrown the shafts on the inn’s pile of kindling, he straightened the ten he’d chosen over a little fire. A few days later, when the garrison was shooting at the butts, John appeared with his English quiver at his belt — on the wrong side. When I tried to correct this, he laughed at me.

The garrison archers and crossbowmen were loosing at about seventy paces. We stood and watched them, about thirty paces further up-range. John strung his bow, and then, without drawing a breath, loosed an arrow over one of the Genoese.

It struck the distant target.

Every man on the line turned and the Genoese crossbowman began to yell insults.

John raised his bow and loosed the other four arrows in his fingers as fast as I can tell this, the last arrow leaping high into the sun before the first one struck.

When they hit the target a hundred paces distant, they struck one, two, three, four.

I looked at Juan. ‘Why didn’t they kill us all on the beach?’ I asked.

John laughed. ‘I am out arrow.’ He turned his back on the Genoese in contempt. ‘Get I good bow, fight better.’ He shrugged. ‘Sword, horse.’

Juan looked down range at the target and the angry archers. ‘May Saint George and all the saints preserve us,’ he said.

‘Amen,’ I agreed. ‘John, do all the Turks shoot like you?’

He shook his head in disgust. ‘Turks, no.’ He said. ‘Turks and Turcoman not all good archer. Some fall off horse. Horses. Yes? But Kipchak and Mon-ghul ride, shoot, always win.’ He shrugged. ‘Not always. Yes? But many.’

Juan pursed his lips. ‘Yes, John,’ he said.

John was not the only Christian Turk, not by a long chalk. As I later found, the Greek Emperor had a whole regiment of them, and so did some of the lords of Achaea and Romania. But his archery was superb and the tales of his prowess circulated rapidly. Some of our crusaders came to see him shoot and to wager on him. I confess I made a fair packet on him one afternoon, wagering with a dozen former brigands as the marks were moved farther and farther away.

A new shipload — a great round ship — of crusaders had come from Venice. It had aboard a number of Gascons and some other French and German knights. I hadn’t met them yet, but they all came to watch the archery and complain of the heat.

One of crusader knights was d’Herblay. With him as a full retinue of men I knew — some well, like young Chretien d’Albret, who remembered me as a routier only slightly less barbaric than Camus, and many Gascons, Bretons, and Savoyards men-at-arms who clearly viewed me as their lord did, as an enemy. Gascons are the touchiest people on the face of the world. They hate each other, and everyone else, in equal parts, and when one of them achieves a measure of fame, they expect to be treated like Charlemagne and Lancelot all rolled into one. The Bretons were hard men who said little and scowled much. The Savoyards were veteran men-at-arms.

And they were with the Comte d’Herblay. Young d’Albret wore his colours, so that I had some warning that the man was present.

I wanted d’Herblay dead — humiliated and dead. But there was more to it than that. Even while John the Turk took their money with his archery, I was watching them. They swore, they blasphemed, and perhaps more important, their clothing was slovenly and their jupons were all spattered with the rust of their maille, which they probably didn’t trouble to clean over much. The Order drilled its knights and volunteers every day; these crusaders never seemed to practice at all. They ate, they drank, they gambled, and they fornicated. Their state pressed through my hatred of d’Herblay.

These were bad men.

Very like the man I’d once been.

D’Herblay paid over his debt on his wager with a poor grace. ‘And when did you become a little priest, Gold?’ he asked. ‘Have you discovered little boys? Are you pimping for the Pope?’ He nodded and smiled his ironic smile. ‘Of course you are not dead. Of course. When a gentleman wants something done right-’

‘He needs to have the courage to do it himself,’ I said.

I was curious to find that his taunts had very little impact. In a camp in Provence in fifty-seven or fifty-eight, those words would have sent me into a rage. Here, I looked at Juan, who was hard by, and he rolled his eyes. You must imagine us, in our sober brown gowns, neat and clean as new-made pins, and these rust-stained brigands. D’Herblay was himself well dressed, in incongruous and sweat-matted fur and wool. But his men looked like the scrapings of a particularly rancid barrel.

‘You used to have the name of being a fighter, Gold,’ d’Herblay said.

‘I would be delighted,’ I said carefully, ‘to fight you at any time.’

He flashed his fake smile.

‘Daggers, right now?’ I offered.

Juan put his hand on my arm. ‘The order would cast you out. And perhaps excommunicate you.’

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ I said. Ten minute with them, and I was becoming one of them again.

D’Herblay stepped back among his men-at-arms. ‘And be knifed in the back by your thugs?’ he said.

I didn’t even trouble to reply. Just for a moment, I considered drawing my basilard and killing my way through to him.

To the ruin of my career.

And the death of my soul, perhaps. Or perhaps I’d be making the world a better place.

He tried to whip the Gascons into a fury against me, but they didn’t think highly of him, and he left us with a trail of imprecations that might have earned immediate heavenly retribution and made him sound weak — and I found that Fiore’s hand was heavy on my shoulder and Nerio was pressed against my side.

‘Wine,’ Nerio said.

Of all people, Chretien d’Albret came and stood by me when d’Herblay was gone. He was older, heavier, and had a scar on his left arm that ran down on to his hand, a bad wound. He approached me with reserve.

I bowed and then reached out and embraced him. We had, in fact, survived some hard times together. His face brightened as I embraced him.

I introduced him to Juan, and to Fiore, and Nerio, who greeted him with no warmth at all.

Fiore hadn’t met him, but by happenstance had heard me speak of the youngest d’Albret.

‘Ah!’ Fiore said. ‘Sir William speaks of you often.’

As a method of warming an old friend, this line cannot be beaten, and Fiore’s sincerity was indubitable. When we had collected all of John’s winnings we took him back to the English inn, and gave Chretien d’Albret and his friend Henri — I cannot remember his style — at any rate, we gave them some wine and were treated to a long dissertation on the state of politics in the Duchy of Aquitaine, which was of interest only to me. Fiore shuffled in his seat, eager to be back in the yard, and Juan took to peering out the mullioned windows, and eventually I let them go.

D’Albret shook his head when Fiore made his excuses. ‘You are so … mild,’ he said. ‘I remember you, you and Richard, running the inn in that little town we held all winter when you were fighting Camus. When you took me. You remember?’

I laughed. ‘Of course I remember.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t swear. You are dressed like a monk. D’Herblay says you fucked his wife. Is that true? Or are you really a monk?’

‘He is a coward and a bad lord,’ I said. ‘You should not serve him.’

D’Albret fingered his beard. He had a louse crawling out of his collar, headed for his hair. I remembered living in clothes full of lice.

It seemed a long time ago.

‘You think you could kill d’Herblay?’ he asked, and he cocked an eyebrow.

I didn’t say in a single blow. I shrugged. ‘Any time. But I will spare you my boasts,’ I said.

‘You ran a brothel,’ d’Albret said. He said it in accusation, but the accusation was not hypocrisy. The accusation was You used to be one of us.

The truth of it was that by changing my spots, I accused him. And he knew it. He was uncomfortable. Even as we sat in the inn, brothers and knights would come in from exercise, or divine office, or mounting guard, with many a pleasant word, or the benison, or a saint’s name on their lips. I had grown used to the company of men who used courtesy at all hours — d’Albret still lived in the world from which I had come. Even when he swore, he did so only to try me.

I shrugged. Again. D’Albret seemed to be trying to say something; he kept rising to it, and then slipping away. ‘I enjoy serving the Order,’ I said. ‘Have another cup of wine.’

‘What do they pay?’ he sneered.

‘Your family is rich enough,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you pay the fee and become a volunteer?’

He looked at me as if I’d just made a lewd suggestion and he was a nun. ‘I fight for gold,’ he said. ‘What can your Order do for me?’

‘Why are you come on crusade, then?’ I asked.

He laughed, leaning his stool back on two of its legs and stretching his booted feet towards the unnecessary fire. ‘To be rich!’ he said.

‘Not to travel to Jerusalem?’ I asked.

‘Not unless the streets are actually paved with gold,’ he laughed.

Despite my new-found maturity, he was beginning to get to me. He meant to, and when they set themselves to it, Gascons can be the most offensive men in the world. Perhaps even when they do not set themselves to it.

‘This crusade is just a chevauchee?’ I asked.

D’Albret grinned. ‘There’s no war in France and not much in Italy since Hawkwood got beaten. They paid us to leave Provence, and then they paid us to winter at Venice, and now we’ll take a few Saracen cities and despoil them and go home rich as bankers. It was this or Spain.’ He looked into the distance. ‘Or perhaps when this is done, I’ll go to Spain. There’s to be fighting there. I hadn’t expected this misbegotten expedition to take so long.’

I started to speak, but he rode over me.

‘It’s the fucking peasant the Pope sent. He knows nothing of war — a total fool. Can you imagine? An actual serf off Talleyrand’s estates, pretending to command men. The Pope wanted this expedition to fail.’

I had finally understood that he meant Father Pierre. ‘The legate?’ I said. ‘Without him, there would be no crusade. Don’t be a fool, d’Albret. Whatever his birth, he’s no peasant.’

D’Albret laughed his older brother’s nasty laugh. ‘Once a serf, always a serf. They flinch when you snap your fingers.’

I could imagine what Father Pierre would say if I fought a duel for his good name. So I took a deep breath, looked elsewhere, and finally rose. ‘We will have to agree to disagree,’ I said. ‘I see him as a great man, a living saint.’

D’Albret spat. ‘Well, the problem will be solved for us soon enough, or that’s what I hear. The Serf — that’s what we call him — has given offence to certain parties, eh?’

‘Who do you mean? And how will the problem be solved?’ I asked. I had been about to slap money on the table and walk away, but I knew a threat to my lord when I heard it.

D’Albret looked both smug and superior. ‘I just know the Serf will be gone soon. And then we will have a good war, and booty. That’s what everyone says.’ He shook his head. ‘When you killed that French bastard who stole your sword in the spring? I told everyone I knew you. I was proud to know you, eh? What happened? Priests take your stones? I heard d’Herblay beat the crap out of you. He says you are a coward.’

Before I knew it, my hand was on my hilt.

He laughed. ‘So you are still alive,’ he said.

‘You serve d’Herblay,’ I said. It was obvious. He wore the blue and white arms.

‘He’s not so bad. Better than the Bourc. The money’s good.’ He shrugged. ‘He’ll kill you, William. When the legate’s gone you had best hide.’

It was a busy day. D’Albret wasn’t gone a heartbeat before Nicolas Sabraham occupied his stool. From his look at d’Albret’s departing arrogance, I immediately understood his interest.

‘He claims there’s a threat to the legate,’ I said.

Sabraham laughed. He didn’t laugh often, and his contempt was obvious. ‘The French have ten plots going to kill the legate,’ he said. ‘All talk. They are the most hopeless conspirators, and the most pompous.’

‘D’Herblay is here,’ I said.

Sabraham knew that. ‘What I came to tell you,’ he said. ‘You show promise in this role, Sir William.’

‘Why do they hate him so much?’ I asked.

Sabraham sighed. ‘His birth. Their fears. They were raised to hate peasants, now a peasant will be Pope.’

‘I find I am not as close to young d’Albret as I once was,’ I said. ‘But I might be able to learn more — perhaps to turn him. He was a good man once.’

Sabraham put out a hand to stop me. ‘No. I know all I need to know about the Gascons and the French. Although, if we take Jerusalem with those men, it will, I promise you, be entirely due to the will of God.’

I winced. ‘They are good men-at-arms,’ I said.

Sabraham shrugged. ‘They are thugs in armour. I’d prefer to use the Mamluks to exterminate them. In fact, I sometimes suspect that was the Holy Father’s intention all along. No, I am not here for your Gascons. I’m here for your Turk. May I meet him? Fra William says he is quite the marvel.’

I summoned John — more arrow repair in the yard — and bought him a cup of wine. He never made any fuss about wine, and I find that many easterners will drink it. But that is beside the point.

Sabraham spoke to him in Turkish. In minutes, they were speaking quickly, a veritable barrage of words, guttural and liquid.

Sabraham dismissed my servant back to his ‘work’ and leaned back. ‘What a treasure,’ he said. ‘A fine man. You are very lucky. His people take death-debt very seriously. And he thinks you are a priest of Christ. His theology is a little weak, but you won’t suffer for it. I must go … I hear he’s a famous archer?’

‘He is, too,’ I admitted.

Sabraham nodded. ‘Soon, Sir William, we’ll get to see what this crusade is made of. An archer who speaks good Kipchak may be the best asset we have.’

A few days later, early in September, I believe, Miles stood the vigil before knighthood. We had a fine ceremony, and after vigil in the knights’ chapel of the Order, we heard Mass. Vigil in armour is a complex form of penance; the armour both supports and fatigues you, and as you tire, the plates of your knees begin to press harder into your kneecaps, and if I’d had a little less wine, I’d make a moral of that. But I won’t. Emile came. We touched hands at the holy-water font — I dipped my hand for water, and she put her hand in atop mine, taking her water from the backs of my fingers.

Oh, it sounds like nothing, but I still flush to tell it.

‘When you sail,’ she said softly, ‘I must stay here. The comte is here.’

There was no time to question her. We moved apart. But Father Pierre told me that the non-military pilgrims and the women would stay at Rhodes while the crusade attacked, and when we had seized Jerusalem, we would send for them.

I wanted to see her again. Her face was before me all the time, and she was only six streets away. Finally, I summoned my courage and sent Marc-Antonio to the nuns with a note. He had a way with nuns — it was his innocent countenance.

Thanks to that note, we began to plot our meeting. Emile suggested a church — Rhodes is full of churches, and some nearly deserted, especially after compline. We sent back and forth a date, a time, a place. It was delicious to correspond every day. I would fly home from the drill field, strip my armour and look for a note. Sometimes Marc-Antonio would put it into my gauntleted hand while I was still mounted. Some days there was no note at all.

One day she sent ‘Be careful — you have more to lose than I.’

That seemed odd.

But her notes seemed to promise everything, and I became less inclined to secrecy and more to romance.

Fiore hit me in the head a great many times that week.

We chose the Monday night as the most private, the most secret. By Friday, I had fine castile soap and a little Hungary water and my clothes were cleaned and brushed. Repeatedly. Marc-Antonio was beginning to show his irritation with my new level of personal beauty.

On Saturday evening, we had two tables of piquet at the inn. The knights did not forbid gambling: with wine, it was an ‘allowed’ vice. I was playing with Fra William when the legate came in. We all rose.

He glanced at the cards with unhidden disapproval. ‘We are so close to Jerusalem that a man might reach out and touch her,’ he said. ‘The centurions diced at the foot of the cross, I suppose.’ He looked at me. ‘I need you.’

I bowed. ‘My lord.’

He took me to one of the snugs, where Marcus, his archdeacon and sometimes his secretary, served us wine.

‘Sabraham will sail tomorrow,’ he said.

That didn’t surprise me. Many of the ships had water aboard and all had their full compliments of sailors and oarsmen. We, that is, Nerio and Juan and I, thought that the expedition might load on Friday and sail on Saturday week.

‘He desires you to support him,’ the legate said.

I had no choice but to agree. I owed Sabraham my life, and I owed it to the legate as well.

‘You hesitate,’ he said.

I shrugged.

‘You may tell me anything!’ he said.

May I tell you that I have an amorous meeting in a church with the woman I love, where I hope to woo and win her, to make love among the pillars of the nave? May I tell you that, Father?

‘I’ll be ready,’ I said.

‘You go to scout beaches for the crusade,’ he said.

I confess, I was proud to have been chosen by Sabraham.

Proud … and devastated.

I sent Marc-Antonio with one last note.

My dear,

I sail in the morning. Only the orders of God’s Vicar could keep me from you. Pray for me, and know that you have all my love.

Your knight

He came back an hour later. ‘No note,’ he said. He sounded puzzled and angry and handed me a packet.

It was no packet. It was a piece of blue silk, and on it was picked out a passage of the Gospels, in pearls. It took me a long time, too long, to realise that it was a favour, meant to replace the old one.

A slow, strong smile filled my face — and my heart.

On Sunday morning, just about the time we were leaving Mass, the Cypriote fleet entered the harbour — almost eighty sail. The king’s brother was there, and all the rest of his nobles and officers who had not seen him in two years. I understood from what I heard in Venice and on Rhodes that the king feared that if he went home to Cyprus, he would never leave. As it proved, I think he knew his people well. I never saw him on Rhodes — later I learned why — but the coming of the Cypriotes doubled our army and our fleet, and made the whole empris seem possible. With eight thousand men-at-arms and almost two hundred ships we might actually take Jerusalem. Surely it was the largest Christian host in a hundred years.

In fact, the last two weeks we were at Rhodes the Turkish emirs of the coast hastened to send submissions and surrenders to the King of Cyprus and even to the Order. Fra Ricardo was heard to joke that the Order should gather a hundred ships every autumn because we had them scared. The naval victory in the north had paralysed the two largest Turkish emirs, and now the smaller fish were wriggling.

I went back to my friends and embraced them, one by one.

‘Leave some Turks for us,’ Fiore said.

I carried my harness down to the seaport in a state of inner confusion. I had not seen Emile. I was not taking my friends.

At the pier, Sabraham looked at the wicker hamper containing my harness and smiled, his teeth bright in the torch lit dark. ‘You won’t need that,’ he said. ‘I’ll see that it gets loaded onto the correct ship with your horse and the rest of your equipment.’ He nodded at Marc-Antonio. ‘Better yet, send your squire with your war gear. All you need is a dagger.’

We sailed in one of the Order’s own ships, a galliot or light galley commanded by a Brother Sergeant. She was a fine ship, and we had beautiful weather. We were two days at sea while Sabraham explained to me just how we would choose the beaches where we would land. I had John and no one else — my friends would sail with the main fleet.

We had no warhorses, no armour, no surcoats.

‘We will swim ashore,’ Sabraham said.

In private, he asked me if I trusted John.

‘No,’ I answered.

Sabraham smiled. ‘Then you can take him. Don’t trust him — never let him be more than an arm’s length away. You can swim?’ he asked again.

We swam by the ship while she rowed until Sabraham was satisfied and he taught me a few words of Arabic.

Six days at sea. We sighted Cyprus. My geography is stronger now than it was then, but I could see through a brick wall in time. I watched the coast of Cyprus growing larger for two days and then slipping astern as we weathered Cape Salamis.

My navigation was non-existent then, although Sabraham, who seemed to teach rather than talk, was showing me the rudiments of open water navigation, and I had begun to stand all of Brother Robert’s watches with him. Brother Robert had been a small English merchant until his wife died on pilgrimage. He was a fine seaman and my first real teacher about the sea — I suppose that Lord Contarini should have pride of place here, but Brother Robert was patient. He taught me well enough that a day after Cyprus went under the rim of the world, I turned to Sabraham at the edge of dark.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. It had taken me two days to ask.

He looked forward to where Brother Robert was teaching John better Italian with the aid of a book of Psalms.

Then he frowned. ‘Alexandria,’ he said.

Alexandria. Founded by the conqueror. Some men said it was the greatest city in the world and Fra Peter said it had forty gates.

I had guessed the answer, and yet my breath caught in my throat.

Alexandria.

Alexandria is said to be the largest city in the world. Now, I have been to Baghdad and Constantinople, and Barcelona and London and Paris and Prague and a few other cities. Baghdad, they say, was much larger before the Mongols sacked it. Constantinople is perhaps the largest of all these cities, but it is almost empty — fifty thousand people inside walls that have held twenty times as many. Rome is a ruin of a ruin.

But Alexandria is mighty. It stretches all along the shore of the sea on a set of sand spits and islands, much like Venice, or I think it was when first laid down. Alexandria has a great double wall like Constantinople’s, pierced with more than forty drum-shaped gated towers, and each pair of towers at a gate was like a small fortress with a garrison, able to be locked away from the city and held. The city has two great harbours, which some men call the old and the new but we called Porto Vecchio and Porto Pharos, after the ancient lighthouse. Porto Pharos was defended by two superb castles, both so new that you could smell the mortar from a mile away — the Casteleto, the little castle, was on the eastern arm of the spit that defended the great harbour, and the Pharos Castle, which has an Egyptian name I never learned, guards the western spit and overawes the city which had more than a hundred mosques as well as twenty Christian churches for the various schismatics there — Nestorians and Gnostics and Greeks. The Porto Vecchio was full of ships, including Genoese and Cypriote ships while the Pharos harbour held privileged visitors and the Sultan’s navy.

‘Egypt has a weak Sultan, very young,’ Sabraham said. ‘Al-Ashraf Sha’ban. The regent rules him. He is a Mamluk and holds the title atabak al-’asakir or as we say, Constable. Commander. He is called Yalbugha. Repeat the name.’

‘The Mamluks are a kind of Turk, yes?’ I asked. I probably massacred the name, as he made me repeat it and the title that accompanied it. That was part of my lessons, too. I also learned to say ‘Allahu Akbar’ or ‘God is Great’.

‘The Mamluks are Kipchaks and Circassians,’ Sabraham said, ‘taken as slaves — sometimes as war captures, but sometimes sold by their own parents. The Genoese bring them by the hundred, and the Egyptians buy them as soldiers. Sometimes they are called “Ghulami” or “slaves”.’

‘If they are slaves, why do they fight at all?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t the Egyptians do their own fighting?’

Sabraham nodded. ‘Warfare demands horsemen, and Egypt is rich, but it is terrible country for horses — too hot, and too many insects. The rainy season kills horses by rotting their hooves and the dry season kills their forage and robs them of water. But the troubles in raising horses don’t effect the army horses — it is that there are not enough horses to raise a boy to riding from infancy. You cannot create a horse-archer overnight.’

I nodded my agreement. I knew how much effort it took to remain capable with a lance, or a longsword.

‘So they buy boys who were raised from birth with horses. Most of them are Kipchaks like your John. Some few are Turks, but they are not trusted with senior commands.’ He shrugged. ‘A Kipchak boy can rise to rule. All of them have fine armour, beautiful horses, superb weapons, any woman they want, and they live well.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m told that Kipchak boys have been known to compete to go to the slavers.’ He paused. ‘Do you know who Baybars was?’

It was like being asked who Satan was. ‘Yes!’ I exclaimed.

‘He was a Kipchak. You understand?’

I supposed that I did. I certainly understood why Sabraham was so pleased by John the Turk.

At any rate, Sabraham watched the shoreline as we approached; it was as flat as the fens around Boston and green as spring, even in early autumn. We made a rendezvous of which I had not been informed — Sabraham was very close with information about our meetings. Off a village to the west of Alexandria, we transferred, by prior arrangement, from the Order’s galliot to a Cypriote merchant of less than a hundred tonnes, a stubby, round-hulled ship with a crew of six men and holds that stank of fish guts.

Brother Robert saluted us and slipped away to the north, and Theodore, the captain of our new vessel, a Cypriote Greek, welcomed us aboard. It was immediately clear to me that he was in the pay of the Order or perhaps the king, but Sabraham insisted that the six of us — his own servant or squire, whose name was Abdul, his two silent soldiers, whose Christian names I had never learned, as well as John the Turk, Sabraham himself and I — stay well separate from the crew of the fishing smack. By his order we all wore our hoods at all times, and we bespoke no man.

In the last light of day, beautifully timed, I must say, Theodore entered the outer harbour under a shivering lateen very close-hauled. The broad harbour had four rows of ships anchored well off shore, but for some reason no vessel was anchored closer than a bowshot from the beach.

Our captain called to Sabraham and they had a brief conference.

Sabraham returned to me and shook his head. ‘He says the Porto Vecchio is so silted up that he cannot approach the shore. Why did he not tell me this earlier?’

‘I thought you had been here before?’ I asked.

‘Always from the land, with caravans,’ Sabraham said. He frowned.

Theodore made a signal and the ship turned south, deeper into the harbour. He appeared to mistake his anchorage, and passed the pilot boat. As we ran down wind, with the Arabic anger of the pilot boat in our ears, Sabraham gathered us in the stern. ‘The water under the keel will be less than two men deep,’ he said. ‘Swim up the beach and strip your clothes. We will be met.’

I touched the dagger at my belt. ‘If we are not met?’ I asked.

He frowned. ‘We improvise,’ he said.

He himself wore only a cheap wool gown over his braes, with a heavy basilard in his rope belt. I emulated him.

But the pilot boat had changed tack, and her rig was lighter and faster than ours.

Master Sabraham watched her in the dying light. ‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘We will have a long swim.’

Just then, the tubby fishing boat’s hull skidded on the sea’s bottom. We were a long way from shore; the city seemed close enough, with the lights of the taller buildings reflected in the still water of the Porto Vecchio, but those waters were still several hundred cloth yards wide.

Captain Theodore shouted commands in Greek and the helm was put up. Sabraham swore.

‘Look, we improvise,’ he said.

I was looking over the side. As we turned, I could see the bottom as clear in the failing light as I can see the floor of this room. It was right under our keel. Even as I looked, we touched, and Sabraham and I were thrown flat on the deck.

‘Shit,’ Sabraham said. Without any further imprecations, he rolled over the side into the water as the pilot boat came alongside with a swarm of Arabic imprecations.

The side at the waist was only three feet above the water, and the water was as warm as blood. But it stank of human excrement and dead fish. My hand brushed a dead cat floating like a bloated, matted fur hat, stinking of decay and I was all but paralysed with a kind of disgusted panic.

Fortunately, the water was shallow. It was so shallow that we were touching bottom before we were at a safe distance from our smack. Twice I had to force my face under the foul water to avoid detection, and by the time I was halfway to shore, I was only waist deep.

Despite that, I made it ashore. We all did. John spat and spat — I think that Kipchaks are very clean people — and two Alexandrines appeared out of the darkness. There was a muttered exchange of passwords and they provided us with gowns of linen and cotton.

Sabraham had spent the days of the passage briefing us, and I knew my role. It fitted my inclination and my training, so John and I left Sabraham almost immediately and walked along the beach front for more than an English mile, gazing with fascination at the sea wall above us. It was magnificent, as fine as the wall of Constantinople, tall, built of layers of pale stone that glowed like fine chamois in the dark and the sally gates we passed had marble lintels with Arabic inscriptions that neither John nor I could read.

The night was full of noise and foreign, intoxicating smells: smells of alien cookery, of plants, and spices, and garbage. The thin sounds of music, elfin, silvery and magical in the moonlight, slipped over the sea wall. Women laughed. Men laughed, too.

Over the walls towered the stele that marked the tomb of Alexander, and as we made our way west and south around the walls, we saw the twin pillars that Sabraham had pointed out from the sea — the columns of Pompey. We crossed the river at the great stone bridge, which was unguarded, to my astonishment, and made our way to the Cairo Gate, where Sabraham had ordered us.

It took us the better part of the night to walk around the city, and by the time we reached our first destination, I was drunk on the foreignness and the wonder of Alexandria. It was gargantuan — thrice the size of Florence, or so it seemed in the darkness.

Eventually, we reached the gate that Sabraham had described and we lay down in a caravanserai with pilgrims and merchants and slept. I slept — I was young.

In the morning, we rose with the others. We made no pretence of being Moslems, which, if you consider, is odd, as John might easily have passed as one. But no one paid us any attention, and after their morning prayers, we purchased horses. They were the fine-headed Arab breed, and impossibly cheap; that is, in Italy I had never been able to afford an Arab, and in Egypt, despite the difficulty in raising them, they cost little more than a palfrey cost in France.

If dawn revealed a superb world of gilded minarets, veiled women and handsome, bearded men in all the colours of the rainbow — par dieu, the Egyptians were rich! — but as I say, if the sun revealed their riches in all their startling adornment and magnificence, it also revealed a level of horrifying poverty that was the more shocking compared to the opulence. Outside our caravanserai, there were two beggars, dead. They lay where they had died, and no one seemed to care. Beyond the market’s horse lines — we were outside the great customs gates of the city, and there was a market — a line of beggars sat in the dust. There were lepers, and men with their hands cut off: criminals, my Turk assured me. But there was a single leper woman with seven children, and every one of them was a leper; most of them were naked, so that every touch of the disease on their poor little bodies was on display. The leper woman and her seven children had much the same effect on me as the floating cat’s corpse.

Moments after we purchased our horses, John suddenly grabbed my arm.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Don’t stare.’

A troop of horse, perhaps a hundred men-at-arms, came out the gate at a canter. The leader was mounted on the finest horse I had ever seen, a bright gold horse like Jack, years ago in France, with bronze mane and tail and dark legs and muzzle — I had never seen such markings. The horse’s caparison and tack was all of green and silver, there were jewels on his bridle, and his rider was in green silk. His helmet was a tall, peaked spiral with an open face and a superb aventail of tiny links. His green gown seemed to cover more armour, and he carried a golden axe in his hand.

The guard at the gate turned out and saluted, more than two hundred men in maille and plate, with heavy bows of horn and sinew and heavy, curved sabres.

I noted that John’s advice had been exact — almost every man and woman in front of the gate was sitting. Most were silent, and all wore attitudes of respect.

I watched the men-at-arms, as they were the first Mamluks I had seen. They were well mounted. Most of them had light lances, like our boar spears, and all had a case carrying at least one bow, although some had two, and one big man had three bows. They all carried one bow strung.

I noted at once that they rode a different saddle from us. Of course I had heard this from Sabraham and indeed from Fra Peter, but their saddles were very small and had no back, and their caparisons, where worn, were only silk, with no mail underneath, though their armour and helmets were heavy enough, by Saint George.

An old woman sitting next to me in the dust spoke to me and cackled.

‘Say nothing,’ John enjoined me. He spoke low.

The woman’s eyes widened and she shuffled away.

‘I told she you are sick,’ he said.

The Mamluks waited in front of the gate through their lord’s inspection of the garrison. The troopers began to be bored, like soldiers the world over, and the men in the front rank began to examine the crowd.

The rightmost Saracen in the front rank was a big, heavy man with a henna-dyed red beard. His horse was the biggest there, almost as big as my warhorse and his eyes roved the beggars, and then the merchants.

I tried to make myself very small.

His eyes went right over me.

So did the eyes of the younger man to his left.

Their lord received the salute of the gate’s garrison, and returned it imperiously with his axe, then he turned and made his horse rear a little, and the crowd almost cheered. It was a curious sound, almost like a whisper.

He raised his whip — his axe was hung by his saddle bow — and called something in his tongue, and all the mounted men shouted.

The gates began to open, and the Mamluks began to form in a column with perfect discipline, all except the younger man, one file to the left of the old bastard with the dyed beard. The younger man put his heels to his mount and seemed to fly across the packed dirt. For a few horrifying beats of my heart I thought that he had chosen me, or John, but he went past us, almost over us.

I turned and saw a group of pilgrims. As it proved, they were a wedding party.

The young Mamluk rode in among them. He reached down and raised the veil of the bride and came riding back with her over his saddle. She was screaming and reaching for her husband but the young man lay face down in a pool of blood.

It had happened very quickly, as such things do. I’d seen it done in France.

I started to rise, and John struck me with his fist. I went down.

I rose on one knee, as Fiore taught, and John caught me. He wasn’t attacking me — so much for trust — he was restraining me.

‘Calm!’ he said. ‘Or we have been dead. All of us.’

Henna-beard shouted something, and the young man with the bride over his saddle laughed and waved his riding whip. Henna-beard shook his head in disgust and rode through the open gate. About half of the cavalry followed the Green Lord out of the gate and down the road to Cairo, and the rest formed by fours — a beautiful spectacle — and rode back in the gates.

Well. In those moments, I learned everything about the Mamluks.

The anger in the market was palpable. The Egyptians were not cowards, whatever my Italian friends said. But they had no weapons; no one I could see had more than an eating knife. There were men shouting, suddenly, and the wedding party was paralysed until one of the women burst into a wailing cry, and instantly it was taken up.

The garrison had begun to march inside when someone threw a paving stone, and a Mamluk soldier was hit and went down.

The garrison halted and began to reform. They were in some confusion about whether to reform inside the gate or outside.

The people in the market were working themselves up to a riot. I had seen it in London and Paris and Verona, and I found it fascinating, in a detached way, how much an Arab mob resembled a good English mob.

‘Run!’ John said.

We caught the bridles of our new horses and ran. The mob was solidifying around us; men were running up from the low shops and stalls along the market, and a farmer bringing produce to sell jumped down from his cart, seized his stick and ran to join the crowd. Men and women — even children — joined the crowd.

A hail of stones hit the soldiers.

They drew their bows.

And loosed. By the wounds of Christ, they killed fifty people in their first discharge, and they nocked and drew again, and the arrows flew. More died.

Arrows found their way past the front rank. We were fifty paces beyond the front of the mob, and an arrow went over my right shoulder and over my horse’s rump to kill a Jew standing by his stall. He crumpled, a look of consternation on his face. His son stared at me, face white. The boy was ten or eleven and he had no idea what to do with his father suddenly dead.

They were a horse-length away. Before I had gone another step, two Fellahin, the local Arab peasants, grabbed the Jew’s stall table and overturned it and began to rob it.

‘Run!’ said John.

Men looked at John. He had shouted in Italian. But another flight of arrows came in, and more of the onlookers fell.

At the forefront of the riot, a woman was screaming in Arabic. She had an arrow in her gut, and she pointed at the Ghulami and shrieked.

A tide of rioters rolled forward at the thin line of archers, and they shot hurriedly. Most of their arrows carried over the rioters and struck in the market where I was. My horse took an arrow in the muscle above her right front leg but by the grace of God, it went all the way through, and it was a moment’s work to cut the head and extract the shaft while she bit at me the while.

By the time I had her calm, John was in the saddle.

There was a cloud of dust where the Ghulami had stood with their bows. And no more arrows.

They were bad men, and had shot into a crowd of their own people, but they died horribly, and God have mercy on their infidel souls.

I got a leg over my wounded horse, and we were away. We rode in a long, curving path out and away from the Cairo Gate and back along the shore of the inner harbour.

I looked back in time to see the mounted Mamluks re-emerge from within the gate to charge the crowd. The roar of the rioters rose to become a scream.

The Mamluks had sabres in their fists, and they were killing every rioter they caught.

I didn’t look back again.

Like most other cities, Alexandria is surrounded by suburbs and some of these are small towns or villages of their own. We entered one, watered our horses, and purchased food; bland food, with no meat or even chicken. And we had an odd bread that seemed to be made of chickpeas that was highly spiced. There was no wine, and heavily sugared hot water with spice was the only beverage.

We had outrun the news of the riot, but John returned to me after some discussion and shook his head. ‘The man who cook the food say the Mamluk Ghulami they do bad thing every days,’ he said.

It occurred to me that under other circumstances, with some gold, I could make trouble for the Sultan here. I resolved to say as much to Sabraham.

I was also learning that I needed to learn to speak Arabic. I endangered us every moment by my failure to understand what beggars and street people and grandmothers and tea-sellers shouted at me. The combination of being mounted — and thus rich or powerful — and not understanding the language should have led to our instant unmasking, except that the city and its environs couldn’t imagine that they had a foe at all, so rich and powerful were they; and further, although I didn’t know it, many people imagined I was a Mamluk. There were ‘Franks’ among them, Italians and Gascons. Conversion to Islam was not a serious matter to men who had already turned their backs on God and his angels. Nor did the Mamluks make many demands on their soldiers as to religion: so long as a man professed Islam, all was allowed.

Be that as it may, we rode unharmed out of the riot, broke our fast under palm trees in a small taverna, and then rode along the beach east of the great city.

After all our trouble, my actual mission took less than three hours. We found the sand of the beaches firm and wide enough to form our army. John found a path that broke the line of dunes and we went inland — to find an open space of mudflats and dry gravel that was large enough to make a camp for the Hosts of the Phalanx of Archangels and all the Company of Heaven, much less our little force.

We were thorough. This was a task I knew from serving Sir John in Italy, and I knew that a good camp with secure access to the ships would make the siege possible. We found a line of wells, each with a small farm about it, and I confess to some pity for the unbelievers who were about to be driven from their farms or killed so that my crusaders could have water. But not much.

What I did not see was firewood, nor was I confident that our wells could water an army of ten thousand men and as many animals. So no firewood, and no wood to construct siege engines.

I didn’t mention any of this to John. He was on edge, but then, why should he not be? I was mostly concerned because I’d noted, as Sabraham had said, that most of the Mamluks were men like John. Kipchaks have a well-deserved reputation for honesty, but I wondered how great the temptation might be to abjure his new religion and go riding in among men of his own kind, men with obvious riches and power.

For whatever reason, he did not.

We slept under the stars. Then the stars vanished, it rained, and we were miserable, although I was pleased to see that my chosen camp shrugged off the water easily. Then the moon rose on the world and we were cold — cotton holds no heat when damp. It was a long night, and the first grey light of morning was cheering.

Meeting Sabraham at the appointed rendezvous, a wrecked ship pulled high up the beach to the west, was even more cheering.

He looked out to sea. ‘We have missed our day,’ he said. ‘The governor was away visiting Cairo with his bodyguard. Now he is back.’ He looked at me.

I pointed at John. ‘You should ask John, but I think the governor rode out again this morning.’

Sabraham turned and spoke in Turkish. They both spoke at once, then John spoke, pointed at me, and smiled.

‘The governor is marching to Mecca!’ Sabraham said. ‘Well done, Sir William.’

I laughed. ‘He might be going to the moon for all I’d know. I need to learn Arabic. I’m as helpless as a babe here.’

Sabraham asked another question in Turkish. John answered in Arabic. They both looked at me.

‘You like it here?’ Sabraham asked.

It was an odd question. I must have shown this in my face. Sabraham put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Some men can’t stand the foreign. Sights and smells they don’t know seem to anger them, or terrify them. To do this task, you must like the people with whom you mix.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, as to that,’ I said. In fact, I’d liked what I saw, except the dead beggars. You could walk London from one side to another, and you’d only see a dead man in the gutter on a bad day. That’s what alms and hospitals are for, in London. When rich men die, they endow so many beds for the poor. And the same in Venice.

‘Did you learn aught else?’ Sabraham asked.

I pointed east. ‘We can land anywhere here,’ I said, ‘Except right off the long point, which is all mud and soft sand. There’s good ground for a camp to the south and west. There’s water.’ I was tired, that’s what I remember best about that morning. ‘But no wood.’

Sabraham laughed. ‘Welcome to Egypt,’ he said. ‘There’s no wood here. Well done. You did well to avoid the riot. I was afraid you were caught in it.’

I explained how narrowly we had escaped.

Sabraham didn’t seem to be listening. When I was done, he waved at the walls of the city, a mile distant. ‘Do you think we can take it, with your friends the crusaders?’ he asked.

‘How many in the garrison?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘Two hundred per gate. Forty-three gates. A thousand superb cavalry in reserve.’

‘Ten thousand men,’ I calculated. ‘We’re attacking a walled city with a garrison almost twice the size of our whole army.’

Sabraham smiled thinly. ‘Yes.’

Over the next hour, we built a small fire on the beach from driftwood. The wreck of the ship was stripped, and nothing was left but the heavy timbers of the bow and even they had been hacked at inexpertly. Wood was of utmost value.

When our fire had been going for a bit, a man on a donkey came to the edge of the beach and watched us.

Sabraham frowned. ‘Our horses are too good,’ he said.

John nodded.

‘I am keeping mine,’ I said.

Sabraham looked at me as if I was a fool, but John grinned. ‘Good horse,’ he said. ‘Mine, too.’

So when Theodore’s round ship came up to the beach, we wasted an hour — with Sabraham cursing us — taking the horses. John was the master at this; he swam each horse out to the ship in a few feet of water and with the help of the master and the yard, he got them over the side into the waist of the ship where he lay them down. The Turks and the Mongols move horses around all the time, even by water, and John seemed much better at it than anyone I had seen.

At any rate, despite Sabraham’s curses and Theodore’s remonstrations, we saved all four horses, and we were away in the last light, wallowing across the wind. But after an hour the wind came straight off Africa, full of dust — bad for our eyes, but very good for our speed.

I slept a long, long time, awoke and swam, and slept again. When I awoke, it was to see the whole of the crusade fleet stretched away in the dawn.

The crusader fleet lay off Crambusa, a tiny islet on the southern coast of Turkey. As soon as we hove in sight, trumpets sounded from the galia grossa that King Peter used as his flagship. Before Sabraham and I scrambled aboard, I had the pleasure of seeing the Venetian admiral wave from his command deck, and agree to take our new horses aboard at the beach. My little Arab had survived two days at sea without showing any temper, and John was smugly triumphant.

We were rowed over to the flagship in a small boat, and as we approached the stern ladder we found quite a crowd of Venetians and Genoese sailors thumping each other’s boats with bargepoles. But our Cypriote oarsmen made their way through the press and got us up the stern. The king received us, reclining in the stern cabin. He was lying on cushions like a Turk, and de Mezzieres sat to his right with two of the king’s other officers, the marshal, Lord Simon, who I had last seen at the Emperor’s banquet, and the admiral, Jean of Tyre. Cramped along the low, carpeted wall was a man I didn’t know at all, but he was introduced as Sieur Percival, a knight of Coulanges who was deeply knowledgeable about Alexandria and served the king. The Hospitaller admiral, Fra Ferlino, was crouched like a servant on a stool. He waved courteously. Wedged in by him and taking up a third of the space in the cabin was the turcopolier, Fra William de Midleton.

A servant brought me wine.

Fra William indicated Sabraham. ‘Your Grace, Master Sabraham is a volunteer with the Order, as his Sir William. Together they have visited Alexandria in secrecy.’

‘That is a fine deed of arms,’ King Peter said to me. He smiled. ‘I will not forget you, when I come into my kingdom.’

Sabraham bowed — as much as the low overhead beams and situation permitted. ‘Your Grace, we found the city well-armed, but the governor has just left for Mecca. He took many of his guard with him on his pilgrimage.’

King Peter nodded, and propped himself up on his elbow. ‘That is good news. What of the garrison?’

Sabraham let go a breath. ‘Well-armed and well provided. I visited at least twenty of the towers and found them all manned.’ He looked at me. ‘I expect that I saw enough to count ten thousand men.’

Every man in the cabin twitched. The king glanced at me.

I nodded. ‘At least, your Grace. The garrison I saw was well-armed in good harness and carried bows as good as John the Turk’s bow.’

King Peter sighed. ‘Ghulami,’ he said. ‘We have faced them before now.’

‘They’re all cowards,’ Sieur Percival said. He shrugged in contempt. ‘I was a prisoner, a slave, in Alexandria. The town wall is enormous — the circuit is almost ten miles. They cannot hold the whole length, not event with ten thousand men. And they will not stand and fight like men.’

Sabraham raised his eyebrows. ‘They don’t need to stand and fight,’ he said, ‘when they are mounted. They shoot and run, shoot and run.’

‘Like cowards!’ insisted Sieur Percival.

‘And yet they took you prisoner,’ de Mezzieres said.

Men laughed, and Sieur Percival flushed.

‘Come, Percival, I know you and I know your mettle.’ King Peter waved a hand. ‘Where would you land?’

‘In the Porto Vecchio, where the foreign vessels wait for entry into the New Harbour,’ he said. ‘There is a fine expanse of white sand and gravel that runs right up to the walls. We can land an army there, aye, and encamp it, as well.’

Sabraham looked at me. I bowed. ‘Your Grace, we landed on that beach. It is foul with garbage, and the old harbour is very shallow. The ships anchored there could foul the manoeuvres of the fleet. And any camp would be immediately under the walls of the city-’

‘Where they must be to conduct a siege,’ Sieur Percival insisted.

‘Where there is no water or cover of any kind,’ Sabraham said.

‘There is no other place,’ Sieur Percival insisted.

I leaned forward. ‘Your Grace, there is another place, about a mile to the east along the coast, with nine good wells-’

‘He is lying,’ Sieur Percival said. ‘There is no other place.’

Some men resent any disagreement. I cannot account for Sieur Percival’s instant rage, but it was remarkable, and he did himself no favours.

‘You are a fool,’ he said. ‘A mere boy. A veteran soldier would not make this mistake. East of the city is a wood of palms-’

‘Only inland,’ I said. ‘On the coast, there are farms behind the dunes, and-’

‘Be quiet!’ Sieur Percival shouted. ‘You know nothing.’

De Mezzieres put out a hand and physically restrained Sieur Percival. ‘My lord,’ he said gently, ‘the king has asked for this young knight’s report.’

‘It is worthless. This is what you sent on your reconnaissance? A Jew and a boy?’ Sieur Percival spat. He actually spat on the king’s cabin floor.

The king lay back and fanned himself for a few breaths. He sighed heavily. ‘Very well, my lord de Coulanges. You think the town is possible?’

Sieur Percival crossed his arms. ‘We will take it with ease,’ he said.

The king looked at the Hospitaller admiral. ‘Fra Ferlino?’ he asked.

‘Tell me of the fortifications on Pharos,’ the old Italian asked.

Sabraham ignored de Coulanges. ‘My lord, they are new, very new. There is a main castle, as tall as a mountain with heavy machines on its corner towers. It is surrounded by a new curtain wall that has eight towers, all with artillery. There is no ground from which to lay siege to it.’

The king glanced at de Coulanges. ‘You have never mentioned this,’ he said.

De Coulanges stamped his foot. ‘A lie! They seek to make the place sound stronger than it is. Perhaps they are in league with the infidels. Make the Jew eat a piece of pork.’

Sabraham was growing red under his dark skin and I could see the tension in his shoulders.

‘The old harbour is deep enough for any ship, and we will have an easy landing there, right in the face of the enemy,’ de Coulanges insisted. ‘The state of this great castle is of no importance.’

Fra William stroked his beard and fingered the beads at his belt. ‘May I speak, your Grace? It seems to me unlikely that this man, your chamberlain, no matter how worthy, knows more of Alexandria than these two who were there but two days ago. Sabraham, how often have you been at Alexandria?’

‘Not more than twenty times,’ Master Sabraham said. ‘I believe that the worthy gentleman is exaggerating the weakness of the place because he desires his revenge against it — a worthy desire, but not one to generate an accurate report.’

De Coulanges opened his mouth to speak and de Mezzieres put a hand over his mouth. ‘You have said enough,’ he snapped.

Silence reigned.

‘Do you think we can take Alexandria, Master Sabraham?’ the king asked from one elbow.

Sabraham sighed. ‘Only with the grace of God and a miracle, your Grace.’

King Peter swung his legs to the floor. ‘They have ten thousand men and a double-walled city of forty-three towers. We have half their numbers, but by God, messieurs, we have the best knights in the world, and I say it is better to stumble in a great empris then to take some village in Asia of which no one has heard.’

That morning, after he heard Mass aboard his flagship, the king announced to all the captains that the target of our expedition was Alexandria. He waited until we were all together, and he announced that no ship would be allowed to quit the fleet. He was open in his concern that the Genoese or the Venetians might betray the expedition.

I saw Admiral Contarini’s face when the king made this remark.

The king gave orders.

We were to follow him straight south. We would rally the fleet in the Porto Vecchio, the old harbour, and when the king sounded his trumpets, we would attack.

We crossed the sea in two days, and it would have been better if we’d taken three. By good fortune and ill, we raised the great castle of Pharos and the spire of Alexander’s tomb well before the sun had set after a perfect passage on the blue water without a sight of land and we descended on them like a bolt from the blue.

Unfortunately, the sun would not stay in the sky for our attack. As the sun set, we were coming up into the roadstead and the king was unwilling to try the anchorage in the dark. So the Alexandrines saw us, and all chance of surprise was lost.

At last light, King Peter summoned all the admirals to him. While they were meeting, I received word from Fra William that I was wanted on the Hospitaller galley, and the Venetians rowed me across to the turcopolier with great willingness.

The sun was going down in the west, a great red ball, and the temperature was perfect, neither too warm nor too cold. The stars were just coming out, and the muezzein’s calls filled the air — alongside alarm bells and gongs and the cries of soldiers which carried across the water as if they were on the next ship.

I climbed the ladder and was taken on to the command deck.

Father Pierre stood with Fra William and Fra Peter — and Sabraham.

I bowed, knelt, and kissed my lord’s ring. He hugged me. ‘So far away!’ he said.

‘We can’t all ride the same galley,’ I said.

Fra William was leaning his great bulk against the stern rail. He pointed over the water at Pharos Castle. ‘I see Sabraham was not lying about that pile of stone,’ he said.

Sabraham shrugged. ‘I wish I was,’ he said.

Father Pierre looked at the great sweep of the city. Alexandria is almost flat; there are two low hills in the middle, rocks, really, and it is almost three Italian miles across — honestly, it takes your breath away, it is so huge. He was shaking his head.

‘Every time I look, it terrifies me,’ he said. ‘It is bigger than Rome.’

We all looked.

Father Pierre shook his head again. ‘We are committed to this attack. The crusaders cannot remain in the boats.’

I bowed again. ‘My lord, it is not too late to land east of the city.’

Fra William shook his head. ‘The problem is not laying a siege. We lack the men, the artillery and the provisions to lay a siege. Let us be frank. For six months this expedition has been patched together and patched together again, one patch on top of another until the whole is like a frayed old garment and we have never met the enemy.’

Fra Peter smiled, but to me, in the red light, he looked old, tired, and angry. ‘It is no fault of ours. It is a miracle that we are here at all.’

Fra Robert frowned. ‘It might be better if we were not here. There are a hundred Knights of the Order in these ships. We have not set a hundred of our brethren ashore in Outremer for twenty years, to say nothing of the soldiers and turcopoles. The cost is staggering, and it will hurt us for another twenty years.’

Father Pierre shook his head. ‘Mes amis, let us pray,’ he said. And we knelt on the deck and prayed. When we were done, he rose, and blessed us. ‘That is my contribution,’ he said. ‘The king is determined to land in the Old Port and attempt the gate of the old castle. His reports make it the weakest.’ He looked at us. ‘I leave it to you gentlemen to see if there is another path to victory.’

And then he left us.

It was, perhaps, an odd performance, but he was not a soldier; in fact, he wore no armour and he never meddled in our councils except to aid us. He was, as I have said a thousand times, an exceptional man.

When his head vanished into the stern cabin, the turcopolier nodded to Sabraham. ‘I’m eager to hear any ideas you may have.’

Fra Peter looked at me. ‘Or you. You have seen a great deal of war, Sir William.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s Florence all over again, isn’t it, my lords? We have a tiny army, and even if we could defeat the enemy …’

Fra Peter nodded. ‘Perhaps that makes you our expert, then,’ he said.

We discussed and discarded various plans. I stopped suggesting that we make our landing up the coast where I had reconnoitred a camp. The turcopolier’s statement was too true to deny — we lacked the men to lay a proper siege. There was no point to making a camp so far from the walls that men would wear themselves out walking back and forth. Of course, in Italy, we did just that, but we rode everywhere. And our ‘sieges’ were mostly raids.

The sun set, and the warm red light stayed only on the towers of the city and the fortress of Pharos.

‘They’re winding a machine on the fortress,’ Sabraham said.

We watched them wind it. It was three-quarters of a mile way, and the last light showed it plainly.

‘The machines are new,’ I guessed. ‘The captain of the fortress wants to test his range.’

While we watched, the gate of the fortress opened and a column of cavalry appeared like a black worm spitting out of the fortress mouth and it wound and uncurled along the road over the neck of land from the main walls. The men must have been on horseback for they moved fast.

‘He’s ready to cast,’ Sabraham said. ‘Watch for the fall of the shot.’

It was almost dead calm. The fall of the stone from the machine vanished into the water, and we didn’t see it. Three-quarters of a mile is just too far.

I pointed at the column of cavalry. ‘That must be a goodly portion of the Pharos garrison,’ I said.

The turcopolier nodded. ‘You think we could take the fortress by escalade?’ he asked.

I shrugged. ‘I’ve known it done.’

When the admiral returned, we had the beginning of a plan. Which is to say we had an idea.

The old Savoyard pursed his lips and stared at our model of the shore and our fortress and it’s outpost, the Casteleto on the opposite spit. He looked very serious indeed, but he kept his council and allowed us to take Brother Robert and his galliot.

By moonlight, we were rowed across the entrance to the new harbour. We stayed well out of bowshot, but Brother Robert was willing to risk the machines in the citadel.

‘In the dark?’ he asked. ‘No. God is not going to let my poor ship take a stone from heathens in the dark.’

When we reached a certain point, our rowers were ordered by whispers to cease rowing. We rocked in the very gentle swell. There was almost no wind, almost no waves, and we could hear everything.

We listened and listened. We heard very little besides gulls and two women having an argument. Sabraham translated some of the choicer moments.

‘It can be done,’ I said.

Sabraham, for once, looked unsure.

‘Now,’ I said.

‘And this is your idea,’ Nerio said.

‘All mine,’ I muttered.

All of the Order’s volunteers, as well as a dozen of the English crusaders who were in the turcopolier’s galley and another dozen Gascons from the admiral’s galley were with me. To top it all, I had Chretien d’Albret and his retinue of French and Gascons and Savoyards. I should have wondered why he was following me, but at the time I was merely delighted to have some crusaders to add to my assault.

And most of them, especially the Gascons, had done this before.

We stripped all of the Order’s galleys of their stern ladders and the carpenters pegged them together.

None of us wore any harness.

Nor did we carry any weapons but our swords and daggers. I put the Emperor’s sword naked through my belt and left the scabbard for another day.

It is difficult to prepare for a fight in full darkness. At least we didn’t have to arm, or get at our horses. We had eighty men-at-arms — a pitiful number against the city of Alexandria.

The admiral brought us all the lanterns of the galley, and we used them to prepare, and then we swiped lamp-black off the insides and used it and the lids from the small cook pots to blacken our faces.

‘Go with God, messires,’ he said. ‘If you succeed, it will be a great deed.’

‘And you may save the crusade,’ Sir Robert Hales breathed.

‘The king’s attack goes in at first light,’ the admiral continued.

The legate came on deck and blessed us. We gathered with our blackened faces and all our fears on the corsia, the gangway amidships, and Father Pierre passed along, blessing every man. Many he confessed. It took time I didn’t feel we had, and my heart was in my mouth, so much so that I couldn’t breathe, and when Father Pierre reached me, I could barely speak.

But I knelt, confessed, and was absolved.

‘Deus Vult!’ the legate whispered.

‘Deus Vult! ’ we growled.

We went down the stern on ropes, our ladders being already stowed in the galia grossa’s longboat. We packed eighty men into five ship’s boats and, with muffled oars, we pulled for shore.

Ahead, a city woke. It was not yet dawn, but we could hear shouts and marching.

In the stern of the lead boat, Sabraham turned to me. I could see nothing but his nose and his teeth. ‘They’re alert,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, with far more confidence than I felt. But I had a career of taking castles by coup de main. In this, at least, I was the old hand.

We rowed to the east, putting the spit of land on which the smaller castle stood between us and the city, and then we turned back south and west.

‘Lay out!’ I growled at the rowers. They were free oarsmen, and most of them had helmets and maille shirts, javelins and axes. It says something about the importance of volunteers to the Order that we were to go first, and only call for the oarsmen if we were successful.

Now the low boats moved like dolphins across the mirror of the water, so still it reflected stars and moon. We shot into the moon shadow of the Casteleto, and then slowed. We were under the very walls of the castle. Our oars were muffled and yet we seemed to make more sound than I could bear: the drip of water, and the Gascons would whisper — oh, sweet Christ, in that hour I almost put my basilard into one bastard from Poitou just to silence him, and all my newfound strategies of calm maturity were tried. And then we could see the low pier of the Casteleto’s dock before us.

Brother Robert brought us alongside the dock without touching.

I leapt on to the stone pier and ran for the stairs, my shoulder blades tense for an arrow, my ears cocked for a sudden sound. Up and up … I believe there were but twenty steps to the sally port, but I thought it took me half my life … up and up, my feet pounding on the stone, the soles of my leather shoes slapping too loud, too loud …

Dawn was close. I could smell the change in the air, and hear the birds.

Fiore was by me, and then Nerio and Miles and Juan. Right behind them were our Greeks, Giannis and Giorgos. And then another six men with our ladder, which struck the walls of the stone stairs like the sound of a trebuchet loosing its payload, and we all flinched. And then they did it again, so loudly that the sound echoed off the city walls, and the men, English and Gascon, carrying the ladder, cursed in shame.

Sometimes, the worst part of an escalade is that you cannot shout ‘Shut up!’ at your troops.

Somewhere inside the Casteleto, a door slammed.

‘Now or never,’ I whispered.

Thirty pairs of hands raised the ladder. We had one. One.

The moment the feet of the ladder were braced, I was on my way up.

I hate ladders. I hate heights, have no head for them, and when a sailor goes out on the yard of a ship to brail up a sail, it makes me queasy on the deck.

But there are things you must do yourself. You cannot lead an assault from the back.

I went up and up, and as I climbed, I was going from night into day. Our ladder was just the height of the wall — and I only knew that ten feet from the top. And as I climbed the last few feet, winded, and terrified by the creaking and cracking sounds the ladder made as my weight bore on the whole length, a sentry on the Pharos Castle across the harbour entrance saw us.

Up until that moment — despite my terror, the burning in the back of my throat, the feeling of lassitude that threatened me from fatigue and fear, the spike of pain at the base of my guts, and the annoyance of finding that my unscabbarded sword was cutting into my hose — despite all of that, time had passed very slowly.

After the sentry across the water sounded his gong, everything seemed to break apart like a dropped glass, and my memory of the rest is fragments.

I got a leg over the wall and jumped. It was farther than I expected, a man’s height or more, to the catwalk and I landed hard.

There were no enemies on the walls. Instead, a dozen men were blinking in the grey light, standing in muslin shirts and skullcaps on the pavement of the courtyard, and they saw me about the time I saw them.

They had bows.

I remember running down the inner face of the wall — there were steps, and by God’s mercy they ran the right way, so that I was shielded from their archery.

One of them paused to point up where I had come. I assumed Nerio had made the wall. I was in the courtyard, among hen-houses and a pile of wood that in daylight turned out to be the castle’s palings and hoardings. I moved behind it.

Arrows were loosed.

I found that there was a crawl space behind the palings. And I moved along it.

I suppose I charged the archers. My next memory is fighting. I do not know if I fought well or badly; somehow, the archers had lost track of me, or never knew I came down the wall. Or, like soldiers the world over, they engaged the enemy they could see, the men coming up the ladders.

But the grace of Our Lady was with us, and none of my friends took a hit, and then the archers were dead and Fiore was by me, and Nerio and Sabraham and Juan and Miles and Marc-Antonio and John the Turk and we were clearing the galleries at either end. Men came out of doorways and died, or leaned out of towers and loosed one arrow before the men on other catwalks ran them down.

The only moment in the fight that I remember is when Fiore killed an archer by throwing his sword. It was incredible.

Then it was over.

We moved through the castle like an ill wind. The last watch in their barracks were waking, and we slaughtered them at the doors and by their pallets. We gave no quarter. There is no other way, in a storming action.

It was a military castle and had, thank God, neither women nor children. Fiore had the admiral’s great banner, and he carried it to the top of the central donjon.

From there, we could see the morning.

I would have said that it had taken us an hour to land and storm the Casteleto, but when we looked, the sun was still low in the pink and gold sky. Over to the west of us, we could clearly see the white and red sails of the crusader fleet, many marked with crosses as big as whole ships, as they entered the Old Harbour in two lines. Closer, almost at our feet, lay the magnificent tower of Pharos just across the mouth of the New Harbour, perhaps a long bowshot away.

To our right, out to sea, lay the Order’s fleet — four galleys and ten transports as well as a few of the smaller galliots and round ships.

More than a hundred crusader ships were trying to make enter the Old Harbour. The great lines stretched like frayed rope out to sea, and there were gaps — the galleys needed no wind, and made better time, and many ships had left their place in the line and proceeded, so that there were collisions. But that was not the worst of it: even as we watched, ships attempting to go into the beach struck the shallows. A Venetian galley rolled her mainmast overboard.

Still the king’s great red galley crept closer and closer to the land. Aboard the king’s ship, someone was conning them through the deepest channel.

But ahead of them waited the army of Alexandria.

Perhaps if we had landed as soon as we arrived, we might have surprised them, but by the morning after our sails were sighted, every soldier that the governor’s lieutenant could spare was standing in close array on that beach.

Why didn’t they man their walls?

Perhaps it was a day in which Christian and Moslem sought to rival each the other in bravery — or in foolishness. Or perhaps the governor’s lieutenant felt, as our king did, that they could not garrison the whole of a ten mile circuit.

Perhaps they were as eager to slay us as we were to slay them.

They were too far from me to see their quality, but they filled the beach from east to west, and even as we watched, a troop of horse that glittered in the rosy light emerged from the great towered gate at the Egyptian army’s back. They looked like ants, but they sparkled with steel.

The crusader fleet was running aground more than a bowshot from the shore.

Nicolas Sabraham made it to the top of the tower, his sword red-brown and his hands sticky on the hilt. He looked out over the battle of Alexandria.

‘Oh, sweet Christ,’ he said.

A little less than a mile away, tiny figures were leaping off the king’s galley — into the sea.

Nerio emerged on to the roof of the Casteleto just as we saw the Hagarenes on the other tower begin to wind their engine.

‘Get the sailors,’ I shouted. ‘Find men who know how to make these machines shoot!’

Nerio nodded. ‘I think we have them all. The castle is ours.’

I ran across the tower to look at the city at its nearest point. The gate was shut. So there was no counter-attack coming. Nor would it be difficult to resist any attack; it could only come along a single stone road two horsemen wide.

‘They’re not loosing at us at all,’ Fiore said.

The engines on the Pharos castle had begun to hurl their rocks the other way, at the immobile crusader fleet.

Even as we watched, a Venetian cog took a direct hit. Timber flew into the air, and in a moment, the little ship sank. She went down in less water than there was to cover her hull, but her armoured men drowned in water not much over their heads.

‘Sweet Christ,’ moaned Sabraham.

Let me explain again. The harbours of Alexandria are like a gothic letter E. Two harbours, separated by the long spit with the Pharos fortification between them. That fortress could batter the crusader fleet, and looked to me to be impregnable. We’d just taken the Casteleto, at the bottom of the E, if you like, and the crusader fleet was trying to get into the old harbour, between the Pharos spit and the top of the E.

Huffing, Brother Robert and a dozen sailors came up the ladder to the top of the Casteleto’s donjon. Brother Robert had to stop at the top and breathe, despite my urgency. His face was so red I feared he would explode.

Miles stood by him. ‘Can I tell you something that will make you laugh?’ he asked.

I was watching the destruction of the crusade. ‘I doubt it,’ I said.

‘The sally port door was unlocked,’ Miles said. ‘I just pushed it open and walked in.’

I didn’t laugh, but I do now. That’s war, friends. All the terror on the ladder — and I might have tried the door!

The engines on the far tower were coming back again.

I pointed to them. ‘Brother Robert? Can you do anything?’

His head bobbed. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, and began to issue crisp orders. The Casteleto had a pair of machines, both mangonels, mounted high.

‘They’re higher than we,’ Brother Robert said. ‘I don’t think I could strike them save by the will of God.’

Sabraham shook his head. ‘You don’t need to strike home,’ he said. ‘Those aren’t hardened men. They rush their shots and they miss. If you come close, they will turn their fire on us.’

Fiore had by this time found a half-pike. He fixed the admiral’s flag to it and looked at me.

I nodded. ‘As secure as we’ll ever be!’ I said.

Fiore dei Liberi planted the order’s flag on the walls of the Casteleto, the first lodgement the crusader army made in Alexandria.

Out on the water, there was no immediate change in the Order’s ships.

The great bows of our two mangonels began to bend back. I went to the winches with the sailors and my friends and two Gascons who’d ended in the tower.

We got the bows back, and the great cogs of the mechanisms clicked into place. With heavy pry bars, Brother Robert and two sailors began to move the engines, levering them a few inches at a time.

The far tower loosed its deadly hail at the crusader fleet.

I was panting from winding the great bows. But out to sea, the oars were out on the whole of the Order’s squadron, and they gave way all together, a magnificent sight. Caught by my attention, other men came to look.

The Order’s ships formed a line behind the galia grossa.

‘Here they come,’ whispered Juan. He fell to his knees and began to pray. Most of us who were not actively aiming the engines knelt and prayed.

‘Let’s try that,’ Brother Robert said. ‘With God’s grace,’ he muttered, and pulled the lever.

The bows stunned the air, and the great engine slammed back in recoil, jumping a hand’s breath and slamming back down to the stone roof so that dust rose up.

Brother Robert’s first missile was visible at the top of its arc. And then it fell too far and slammed into the Pharos castle, about halfway up its tower. Dust and stone fragments flew.

We all cheered.

Every man in the enemy tower ran to the wall facing us to look. Until then, despite the alarm sounded by one of theirs, I suppose they had assumed themselves safe. Truly, I have no notion what they thought.

We started winding the engine and Brother Robert moved the second one into firing position.

Nerio was grunting along with me on the torsion. ‘Think — that — whoever — designed — this tower-’ he grunted.

Brother Robert loosed his second dart. It went higher, and struck the enemy tower just a hand’s breadth below the top of the crenellation. There was a little dust, but there were screams. They carried, because it was a silent dawn, and we could not hear what was happening on the other side of the Pharos spit, where the crusaders and the king were landing. And dying.

It was just luck. In four more shots we didn’t come close to hitting the top: one went over, and two slammed into the flank of the tower and one vanished into the sea because we hadn’t tightened the torsion all the way.

Then the first rock came back at us. It was well-aimed and struck our tower close to the top, and men were cut with stone chips. The whole tower moved the way your breastplate moves when a heavy arrows strikes it true. I wished for my armour.

Brother Robert loosed another engine. His dart struck well up, and knocked in a merlon. I knew from what I’d just experienced that a hail of stone chips had just flayed an engine’s crew — nothing mortal, probably, but a healthy dose of fear.

‘Don’t touch this one!’ Brother Robert shouted. ‘Wind her gently, I pray you!’

A stone the size of a helmet struck him, and tore him to gobbets like a doll worried by a dog. He seemed to explode.

I shook myself — I still see him. Bah! We wound that engine like demons. And perhaps his dead hands held the engine steady. Fiore pulled the handle and the beast leaped. For the first time, our dart just cleared the far wall and vanished into their tower.

Marc-Antonio handed me a scrap of cotton. I used it to wipe my face and it came away bloodied.

Now, I could hear the sound of combat. On the far beach, men were fighting. And dying.

At my feet, the fleet of the Order stood in, due south, under oars. It was too late for them to turn, and now they were going to run the gauntlet of the Pharos fortress’s plummeting stone and make for the beach of the Pharos Harbour.

Our tower took two more hits and some of our sailors began to flinch. And some of us began to take cover under the stone of the curtain wall. Men are only men and flesh and blood cannot stand against stone.

‘Again!’ I shouted. ‘Wind it again!’ I was on one drum, with Nerio, and Fiore and Miles were on the other. Juan had two Gascons and a Catalan winding the second machine.

I can’t tell you where the next stone hit us — only that we were all lacerated, one of the Gascons was messily dead and Juan had a gash from eyeball to ear and was stretched full length on the roof.

My handle came up to the stop.

So did Miles’.

Fiore moved the engine. No hesitation — he’d watched the Englishman serve the machine and he knew his mathematics. He stepped back — no expression on his face, and pulled the handle.

The iron dart leaped away, and the machine slammed back to the roof.

Miles ran to the other machine. He and one of the Gascons and another sailor worked to clear the corpses away from the base.

Fiore stepped across our dead and used his crowbar again, and pulled the lever, uncaring that the leaping monster crushed a dead man’s skull.

Men were cheering in the courtyard.

We were struck twice — slam, slam!

The Casteleto tower rocked.

Now there was a crack all the way along the middle of the roof.

I leaned out and saw the Order’s fleet standing in for the New Harbour beach. They were not going for the Porto Vecchio, where the king and the crusaders were mired in shallow water. They were running the gauntlet of the Pharos tower, using the gap we’d made by taking the Casteleto. Going to the New Beach.

Which was empty of enemy.

The galliot was nosing into the Casteleto dock. I didn’t need new orders to know what that meant.

The cheering in the courtyard went on. Fiore, with Miles and Nerio and the sailors, had the leftmost engine loaded just as a big rock — I swear, as God is my saviour that I saw it in the air a moment before it struck — crushed the engine that they had just abandoned. Pieces of wood as big as my arm flew, jagged splinters that were as sharp as swords, yet not a man was killed.

The crack in the tower’s roof widened and the whole building shook like a beaten drum.

Before I could shout a warning, Fiore pulled the handle on his machine and the dart soared away. I never saw what any of our last shots accomplished.

‘Down!’ I roared — or perhaps I squeaked it. Standing on a damaged stone tower while a heavy machine pounds your friends to pudding is not at all like fighting in harness, friends. I was so afraid I wanted to shit myself.

But we got Juan through the trap door. Miles got him to me and I threw caution to the winds because the steps were cracking and jumped to the second storey floor, cradling his head. I dropped him, but we were down.

A piece of the roof fell, a corbel.

‘Down!’ I yelled. ‘All the way out of the tower!’

In fact, we might have taken our time. The roof didn’t fall in for three days. But the next rock split the tower the way an axe splits a big billet of wood.

Juan recovered his wits in the galliot. He threw up twice, drank some water, and shook himself. For as long as it took us to reach the beach, he could only speak his native Catalan. The ways of the mind are strange.

Behind us, the Admiral’s banner continued to fly from the Casteleto, and the machine on the tower of the Pharos threw great stones at it. But most of them fell short, and they loosed very slowly.

We left the oarsmen and sailors as a garrison, with Fra Ricardo as castellan. My part in that battle was done.

I landed almost dry shod, and I had had the whole run down the harbour to don my harness with Marc-Antonio working like an automaton at my side. As soon as my breast and back were closed, he went to the others. Juan armed last, when the stern of the galliot was drawn well up the beach and the horses were going over the sides on the transports.

Oh, yes. The horses.

There was my Gawain, shining in the sun of Outremer.

There seemed no hurry at all. Men came and shook my hand, and the legate embraced me and Saracens came to the walls of their town, just half a bowshot away. Guillaume Machaut says we were showered with arrows, and Nerio was hit, so I suppose that this must be true, but I have no memory of darts or arrows. I only remember the feeling of calm, of confidence, that Father Pierre inspired in that hour. He wore no harness, only a fine gold and silk stole over one of his Carmelite robes. He had no weapon in his hand, but held a simple wooden cross. The only order he gave was to demand that the Knights of the Order would maintain the sanctuary of churches in the event we broke into the city, that we kill no women or children, that we behave as soldiers of God.

And then the Knights of the Order were mounted — a hundred of them, a block of scarlet. I’m not sure when the world had seen a hundred Knights of the Order all together on their chargers — perhaps not since the fall of Acre. The sight was so noble as to steal my breath.

I got up on Gawain. Marc-Antonio got me a lance, and I began to form the donats and the volunteers. We had lost a good number of men at the Casteleto. Their ranks were filled by d’Albret and his Gascons and Savoyards, who were, strictly speaking, crusaders and not volunteers or Donats, but they were there and had their mounts. I still did not question what they were doing with us.

I had formed my volunteers in a wedge at Fra Peter’s command and D’Albret came up behind me. He pushed right in, his visor open. ‘I like this better,’ he said. ‘Ah, monsieur, now perhaps we will see some fighting.’

He was grinning ear to ear.

It was not at all like being pounded by stone balls.

Ser Nerio brought his destrier up so that his right knee tucked behind my left. Ser Fiore brought his charger to where his left knee was behind my right. In the next rank, d’Albret was pinned between Miles and Juan. And do on, until our last rank was ten wide.

Off to my right, by the water’s edge, the men-at-arms and turcopoles, the Order’s light horsemen, were arming as fast as they could. John and Marc-Antonio, having got us into our armour, were now pulling maille shirts over their own heads and trying to find their own mounts in the herd of horses now swimming or walking on to the beach. There seemed to be horses everywhere.

Miles’ uncle advanced the papal standard.

Fra William got his turcopoles formed. He had about a hundred squires and ‘light’ cavalrymen and they did not form a wedge, but instead cantered out to form an open line to our front.

Fra Peter rode out of the central wedge and rode along our front.

‘Christians!’ he called. ‘For this you have trained. For this you have endured the penance of your harness and the taste of your own blood. Now is your hour!’

Four hundred voices roared. And were silent.

Four hundred men.

The legate was in the centre of Fra Peter’s wedge. As safe as the knights could make him, and our three squadrons began to ride along the foreshore, toward the keening sounds of combat.

The sun was high.

It was just noon.

Fra William took the turcopoles up the beach, formed at an order so open that there was twenty yards between horsemen, but that meant that his hundred covered almost the whole width of the beach and the sandy plain below the city walls. I had seen them practice this ‘screen’ on Rhodes, and I had assumed it was a matter of deception because even a very thin line of horses raises enough dust to cover most movements.

But the screen covered more than movement. Because the men in the screen had bows and crossbows, they could deter enemy light cavalry. They could also see and scout obstacles and could react far more quickly than we armoured knights to changes in the field or sudden sallies. Best of all, they were themselves very difficult to hit; at twenty yards apart, each horseman was an individual target. A single horseman can slow or speed, angle left or right, and if he knows his business, he can tie down a good amount of archery. You might argue that the archers could simply shoot over him or past him at the serried ranks of knights behind, but that is not the way of men in war. Men in war shoot at the target closest to them and most immediately dangerous.

At any rate, the confidence and calm of the Order was so great, and I think that Father Pierre’s presence had something to do with it, that I had time to admire the precision of our formations, and the advance of the line of light horse was splendid.

As we moved west along the beach, the sounds of fighting grew louder. When we came to the spit of land on which the Pharos castle stood, well out in the bay, the line of rocks that supported the spit made a wall. In fact, I have learned since that it is a wall, built in ancient times by Great Alexander and has since silted over to form dry land.

But along this wall came part of the garrison of Pharos.

Our turcopoles changed direction like a flock of starlings in the air. One moment they were a line across the beach, and then they changed front to the north, and formed to our right flank, facing the new threat from the garrison.

It was one of the day’s most important fights, and I missed it. I saw a little of it and it gave me a taste of how warfare in the Levant must be conducted — utterly different from the protracted armoured melees of Italy and France. The garrison of the Pharos Castle was part mounted Mamluks and part infantry archers. They moved very quickly along the top of the rock wall, seeming to walk on the sea. Our turcopoles changed front to meet them, as I have said, and both sides ended up on the sand at the sea’s edge, loosing a cloud of arrows as they closed.

The end of the Saracen line was only a hundred paces from me, and I gathered my reins and looked at Fra Peter.

He rode to me from his wedge. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘You will not charge until I command you. Do not betray my trust in you, William.’

Well.

I saw Marc-Antonio go down under his horse, and I saw John’s horse leap my downed squire even as John loosed his bow with perfect control, leaning well back, head thrown back. He feathered a Mamluk at a range of perhaps one pace, and his horse reared, at his command, I think, and he had another arrow on his bow and loosed it down into a man close enough to have been struck by his sword. He shot and shot and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

And the whole time, we were moving. We passed behind the melee, or shot-stour, or call it what you will. We left our turcopoles to hold the garrison, and we rode west.

And now we could see the battle.

In the centre, King Peter’s galia grossa had made it close in to shore. I was told later that there was a single channel, the width of a ship, that came within half a bowshot of the beach, and the king’s ship was piloted to the end of the channel, bow first, and not stern first. So the king and his knights had to go into the water over the bow, and they leaped into the waves in three feet of dirty seawater.

The army of the city loosed thousands of bolts, shafts, arrows, and stone at them. This I saw with my own eyes and the gentle surf carried shafts ashore for days, but even more wondrous was the forest of fletchings that rose out of the flat waters where arrows had buried themselves in the shallow bottom.

When the arrows had minimal effect, when, in fact, the king’s galley disgorged most of his retinue, the king and his knights began to wade ashore. Guillaume of Turenne, Sieur Percival, Simon de Thinoli, Bremond de la Voulte, Guy la Beveux and Sir John de Morphou all formed close by the king and followed him as he waded, heavily armoured, through the sea.

They began to fight their way ashore — surely, messieurs, one of the greatest feet of arms ever by Christian knights, as there were fewer than seventy of them, and they fought their way to the water’s edge against ten thousand men.

Other ships tried to emulate the king’s feat. But, as we had seen from our tower, they ran aground too far from the king’s ship to succour it, and their men-at-arms had to wade neck deep towards the shore, exhausting in armour — and a misstep could mean death. Then the king’s brother, the Prince of Antioch, hit on the notion of running the stern of his galley against the stern of the king’s galley, and making a bridge.

By this time, the king was surrounded by Bedouin and Berber auxiliaries. Jean de Rheims told me that the king killed fifty men before he fell, and I can well believe it, having seen the dead. Percival de Coulanges, who is, believe me, no friend of mine, was yet a very pillar of valour, and his sword was like that of an avenging angel. Bremonde de la Voulte had a poleaxe, and with it he cut a tunnel through the infidels.

For an hour, the sixty or seventy knights held a section of beach against ten thousand men. Finally, the Prince of Antioch’s retainers boarded the king’s galley and ran the length of it, using it as a sort of pier, and other ships began to follow suit. Ships full of crusaders laid alongside the king’s galley, or crossed her stern, or grappled themselves to the Prince of Antioch’s galley.

Imagine, then, as the whole of the crusader fleet roped itself into a great floating dock from which to land men, how it would have fared had the machines on the Pharos Castle still been able to engage them!

Truly, it was all God’s will. It certainly was not good planning or brilliant tactics.

By noon, Prince Hugh was ashore with six hundred more men. The king was still fighting, and would not retreat. Nor were six hundred knights, however brave, enough to defeat the whole number of Alexandrines.

The rest of the army, the crusaders, either hung back or could not get ashore. I mean no dishonour to those who tried — men drowned leaping over the sides of ships in frustration, into water just over their heads. But many ships hung back, the Genoese, and, I confess it, the Venetians, much as I love them. I was not aboard Contarini’s flagship when he was finally informed that the target of the fleet was Alexandria, but I have been told he swore to sink the King of Cyprus’s ship himself.

He did not. But neither did he land.

The city garrison began to close in on the knights on the beach. Now, the annals of chivalry are full of tales of one man defeating ten, or a hundred, and that with God’s help. But any man trained to arms knows that if ten untrained peasants are brave and have sharp sticks and do not fear death, they can bring down an armoured knight, aye, and kill or take him. Perhaps it would take twenty to bring down a de Charny or the Black Prince. But the odds of ten thousand against six hundred could only be held so long.

The circle of Cypriote knights was wavering when de Mezzieres got his round ship in close and leaped into the surf. The water came up to his neck — I have heard this from a hundred witnesses — and he had the banner of the King of Jerusalem in his fist, which had not flown in Outremer in a hundred years. And he walked slowly out of the waves, the white banner of Jerusalem trailing on the dirty water behind him, and twenty knights followed him. De Mezzieres raised the banner of Jerusalem, and the knights of Cyprus and the handful of crusaders ashore shouted.

And the admirals of Genoa and of Venice, cursing, no doubt, began to manoeuvre to land their knights.

They were half an hour behind the action.

The king was doomed.

When we passed the sea wall, it was, as I have said, noon. The Egyptian sun, even in autumn, was impossibly brilliant, and the air was as warm as an English day in high summer. The dazzle of the noontide sun on the water of the bay was like a thousand-thousand points of light, so bright they burned the air like daggers.

The army of Alexandria lay before us on the dirty white sand. Now, I have heard men say that Alexandria was undefended, and they lie. This is the foolish jealousy of men who, having missed a great battle, seek to deride all those who were there.

They had a great army, and the governor’s lieutenant had the whole garrison of the Pharos Castle, and there was another lord under the walls with a strong force of cavalry.

But the very impetus that was about to win the battle for Islam, the sheer force of ten thousand against six hundred, had drawn them out of all formation into a great clump, a heaving, desperate mass at the centre of the bay of the old harbour’s arc. They had no formation, and the Mamluk bowmen, the Al-Halqua, non-Mamluk, troops of the garrison (as Sabraham later identified them) and the Sudanese spearmen — good troops, as I would have reason to know — were packed in like glasses in woodchips.

When the lord under the walls saw the Order, he led his cavalry at us. He had more horse than we, but not many more, and their horses, while beautiful, were small. Nor were they in wedges. He led his Mamluks forward, and again I gathered my reins short, and Fra Peter turned; his visor was still up.

‘Abide!’ he called.

I was too eager.

We walked along the sands. In my memory, our formation was perfect.

To my right front, where the king was, the banner of Jerusalem wavered. And fell.

The hosts of Alexandria let out a great roar that rang from the walls, and the people of the city echoed their cheer.

Fra Peter leaned back. He was speaking to the legate.

Chretien d’Albret cursed. ‘The fucking serf! He’s going to let the king die. Charge, Gold! Lead us!’

He began to push his mount forward.

We were formed very close. I turned and thumped the butt of my lance against his chest. ‘Abide!’ I shouted.

Fra Peter made a set of hand signals with his bridle hand — to the southernmost wedge. To me, he held up his hand — flat.

Halt.

I could not imagine why we should halt.

But Fra Peter and Fra William had been very clear about obedience, and despite d’Albret shouting that I was a coward, I raised my lance and reined in. My whole command halted. Horse shuffled — somewhere close at hand, a horse let out a long fart.

The southernmost wedge plodded along the sand.

The Mamluks let their horses have their heads, took up their bows, and loosed their first arrows. They were at long bowshot, perhaps three hundred yards. A light cane arrow fell from the sky and hit me in the helmet.

Oh, armour!

There was a sharp ping.

Fra Peter’s gauntleted hand closed on air and pumped, once.

‘Walk!’ I called. I put my weight forward.

‘Now what? Gold, for the love of the Virgin! The king is down!’ D’Albret’s voice had an odd ring. He’d been an excitable boy and he’d spent too long with Camus, who imagined himself Hell’s emissary on earth.

As if Hell needs an emissary.

I looked, and the circle of the crusaders on the beach had been broken.

The three bodies of the Order were now in echelon, the southernmost slightly ahead, then the centre body with the legate, and then mine. Our angled line of three wedges was like a barbed scythe.

And Fra Peter’s fist pumped, once.

I heard the change in the hoofbeats as the arrows screamed in. I touched Gawain with my spurs — and he leapt forward.

The Knights of St John have been fighting in the Holy Land for two hundred years. One of their many tricks is this change of speed as the first serious arrow volley is launched. In three strides, Gawain and I were at a gallop, still with Nerio and Fiore leaning into me, their armoured knees behind mine. We were an arrowhead, a battering ram of horses and steel.

The Mamluks rode in close, trying to break our formation. By Christ, gentles, they were brave! They came right in, almost to our lance tips, to loose their arrows, and it seemed to me that in one beat of my heart they were impossibly far away and the next they were right atop us.

Deus Veult!

One shout, like a crack of thunder. This, too, we had practiced since Venice.

Our lances came down.

And they turned away. They had neither the formation nor the horseflesh for melee and they turned and shot over the backs of their saddles.

One man down — one at the front of the wedge — and the whole force would be dissipated into a wreck of falling horses and broken men.

God did not will that.

I do not remember closing my visor. But my whole world was limited to a single man, his beard dyed red, his armour gold and silver in the brilliant sun, his horse’s rump shining with sweat and the back of his saddle just two horse-lengths from me.

His arrows struck me. The first slammed into my breastplate like an axe blow, thrusting me back in my saddle like a good hit in a joust, and the second hit my visor — and penetrated it. I felt my death slide across my cheek.

But as I was not dead, I rode on.

Then everything changed.

The Saracen’s Mamluks charged us from under the walls, and moved diagonally to cross our front. But when they failed to break our formations, they evaded straight away instead of galloping lightly away from our impotent lances — and slammed into the rear of their own infantry.

In my memory, I pursued my hennaed Mamluk for hours across an infinite plain of sand. But then, in one beat of my heart, I caught him, and my lance struck him in the back. I imagine I killed him instantly — his coat of plates and mail failed against the force of my charge. My point went in, and the whole of my lance penetrated him: his horse had balked.

I lost my lance.

In two more heart beats I was deep in the Saracen army. Gawain was killing more effectively than I; he danced, his iron-shod feet like four iron maces. Weapons struck me — and it is in moments like this that you discover your training. I drew the Emperor’s sword without a conscious thought; it flowed into my hand, and I cut. I do not remember fighting men, only cutting at a mob. Gawain was still moving forward.

I had one thought, then, to cut my way to the king. If I raised my head at all, I could see the last of the crusaders on the beach, perhaps three hundred, now, the brilliance of their armour showing where they stood through the press of foes.

And next to me was Fiore, his arm rising and falling like an executioner’s axe, and on the other side of me, Nerio and his superb horse left a wake of red ruin. Miles was at Fiore’s left knee and Juan at Nerio’s right, and the five of us were the point of the Christian spear thrusting for the king.

And yet, as we slowed, I had time to be afraid.

Usually, in combat, there is no time to be afraid. Fear comes earlier, when you prepare, and wait, and later, when you consider, and shake. But on the beach at Alexandria, we took their foot so completely by surprise that we were at their backs, and I saw bearded, shouting faces suddenly turning to me. I had time to consider whether my four friends and I could, by ourselves, best the greatest city in the world.

I had no idea what was happening elsewhere. I spared no thoughts for the legate, unarmoured, in the midst of the press, or for Fra Peter or Fra William or any of the other knights. They were off to my left and they might have been in other spheres.

Ahead, I saw the flash of armour.

Now I was using my sword two-handed in fatigue, and desperation. The danger is hitting your own horse. As the horse moves its head — and horses move their heads often — you can catch the back of the neck above the mane, killing your own mount.

Fiore had no wasted his time.

At some point — hours? Days? We struck the Naffatun. They were veteran Mamluks armed with grenadoes of naphtha, a sticky stuff like tar that ignited on contact and burned armour and human skin, the very stuff of hell brought to earth. They had pressed far down the beach and burned two galleys that they’d caught aground, and now they hurled their bombs at us and charged with their swords.

Imagine that you see this through the narrow slits of your visor while your lungs struggle to pull in enough air through the tiny holes in your helmet. Imagine the stink of your own sweat on a sweltering day, wearing eighty pounds of armour, fighting for your life.

Something caught me from behind. I was taken by surprise, and in a moment, I was unhorsed. You always imagine that this will take time — but by Saint George, one moment I was horrified by the Naffatun and the next I was off my near side, down in the sand.

Men caught fire, and died horribly. Horses panicked close by me — hooves were everywhere as our dense formation exploded in a rout of burning men and terrified horses.

But as we were surrounded by the Army of Egypt, our own near destruction only served to thrust us again at our foes. Panicked horses exploded into the serried ranks of the foe.

Truly, God willed it.

Not that I was aware, particularly. I was more aware of the hooves, everywhere, and the ranks of enemy infantry.

The Naffatun were well armoured and had shields of some horrible beast with a knobby hide. I got to one knee and hammered one with my sword one-handed and failed to penetrate it, and my adversary slashed at me with a heavy sabre from the shelter of his buckler and his sabre had no more effect on my harness than the Emperor’s sword on his shield.

On the third or fourth exchange I remembered a play of Fiore’s and, as my weapons struck the face of his hide buckler, I rotated my hand up and leaned forward. My point slipped past his shield and down into his face, and he fell backwards, my sword deep in his guts.

And I went with it. By luck or practice, I used the collapse of his body to drag me off my knee and to my feet.

Gawain was close; I knew him, and was sure he wouldn’t leave me. I needed a few seconds in the press to get him.

That was the time of the longsword.

The men around me were mostly Bedouin — unarmoured men with small shields, daggers and spears. Interspersed with them were Sudanese Ghulami, men as black as Richard Musard, or blacker, with heavy spears like the ones we’d use for a foot combat or a passage of arms. I cut hard, a long, flat cut from right to left, clearing a little space and severing a man’s fingers. He fell back, and I killed another with a flick of my point: I was spending my spirit the way Nerio spent ducats.

But by God, I was fighting well.

Fiore reached me first, angling into the enemy from my right and killing his way like a ship under sail cuts the water. His charger dropped a big spearman whose heavy shaft was absorbing my blows. I caught his stirrup and his good horse hauled me ten paces through the press and I was hit twenty times. I was bruised, and I took a wound in the back of my right bicep under the spaulder, but when the pain forced me to relinquish the stirrup leather, I was close enough to the crusaders to see their crests and their coat armour.

I could see Mezzieres, forty feet away. He had one foot on either side of the king, who was lying flat in the sand.

I thought of de Charny.

I prayed.

I was hit. And I stumbled.

And then Juan was there — Juan, who’d been knocked unconscious in the first action. He was tall in his saddle, his seat firm, his back straight, and his arm rose and fell like a man threshing wheat, and Saracens died. Because of him, I finally had a moment to gather Gawain, who should have followed me like a loyal dog.

My horse was nowhere to be seen.

I believe that I cursed.

Miles had our banner, and now he was close to me, and behind him I could see Nerio and the scarlet coat armour of my volunteers. The Saracens were screaming — the keening came through my helmet — and the dying were screaming a different tune and the cry ‘On, on!’ thundered out, grunted from the mounted knights.

The world balanced and the balance held, like two combatants when both make a strong pass and their blades lock. We were locked. Mezzieres, Nerio, Fra Peter. Somewhere out on the bay, Carlo Zeno leapt into the water. A ship full of Genoese discharged a heavy volley of arbalest bolts into the flank of the Naffatun.

I saw none of this, you understand. Nor had I seen d’Albret unhorsing me, or trying to kill me and being driven off by Juan. In the helmet, you just don’t see.

Where I was, there was only the grit in between my teeth, the heaving of my sides as my lungs begged for air that my breastplate denied, the sweat that wept into my eyes from my hairline and the soggy padding of my cervelliere, and the sword I held in both hands.

Listen, then.

I got my sword up into a high guard — rare enough, on the battlefield — but something came to me, in the locked moment, some grace, whether from God or Fiore I leave you to guess. But I took up the guard called Window with my hands crossed, and my adversary was an armoured Saracen in light mail. He had a scimitar and a buckler with five bosses and verses of the Koran inscribed in gold.

I cut. I rotated my hands and cut between the bucker and the scimitar, rotating forward on my hips.

Like many men against whom I trained, the space between his sword and his shield was less guarded than it ought to have been. My sword touched both his sword and his shield. And continued through his helmet and into his head. My hand was so fell, so heavy, that the blade went through helm and head, down and down.

He fell, and I pressed forward one full step, cutting the reverse line up. I felt as if the very power of God had filled me. By Christ, all my life I have heard men claim to have cut through a helmet, but I have seen it done with a sword only three times, and that was one.

My rising cut broke a man’s wrists and half severed them and I threw him to the ground with my knee and my left hand and finished him with my knee while I cut flat and low against an unarmoured spearman. His spear thrust was weak and skidded on my breastplate and I cut into his leg and probably fractured it with the same blow and he too was down.

And then I was face to face with Mezzieres, across a horse-length of beach. My friends were clearing away the front of the Cypriotes, and they had their ring of steel reformed.

The army of the Alexandrines shrieked their dismay. And then, like fools, they turned and ran.

The ‘crusaders’ were finally landing, all along the beach, many in boats provided by their ships, and some captains had run their small craft ashore. The Venetians and Genoese knew the harbour and came in close, well away to the right, and their landing cut many of the fugitives off from the open gate.

I saw none of that. I leaned on my sword and panted, and my breath was all I could breathe inside my helmet, and somehow I got my visor up.

De Mezzieres stood there in the sun with the banner of Jerusalem in his hand. Then he raised his visor. He had a ring of dead at his feet.

Our eyes met.

What can I say? You know what we both thought.

The man at his feet coughed, and coughed again, and in a moment we were on him the way the pursuers were on the Saracen fugitives. I had assumed the king to be dead, but we got his bassinet off his head and his blue eyes fluttered open.

He rolled to his hands and knees and spat blood into the sand.

‘Ah,’ he growled. ‘Ah, Mezzieres. I gather we are not in heaven?’

Most of the men who won that day will tell you that the charge of the Order won the day. Listen, Chaucer, you’ve heard Hales tell it, have you not? Fifty years those men had waited for their day, and when they charged, their lances were tipped with fire.

The Alexandrines had no idea we had a second force, and the Order showed them what a few mounted knights could do. And Fortuna — or God’s will — gave us everything: the Casteleto, the error of the Mamluk’s charge.

But by Saint George, it was a glorious day, as great a day as any I have seen.

The crusaders — no, the routiers, let us call them — slaughtered the Saracens. And the pity of it is that they did not just slaughter their army. Thousands of Alexandrines, including women and children, Jewish street vendors and Christians who had come out to see their brothers rescue them — they were by the gates — and our army killed them. This is the monster that is war, a monster that devours everything in its path.

And still the men of Alexandria got the gates closed. They left brothers and sons to die and slammed the gates in their faces to keep us out. And the routiers who had played no part in the victory roamed the beach, killing unarmed men.

Fra Peter gathered us again under the legate’s banner, but not before King Peter made Steven Scrope, one of the blood-covered figures at de Mezzieres’ shoulder, and Miles Stapleton kneel and the sand, and he knighted them both. He knighted a dozen other men.

He took his own collar, a magnificent thing of silver gilt and jewels made of swords and roses from around his neck and he broke it with his sword, and gave half to de Mezzieres.

He gave half to me.

He made me one of his Order of the Sword while our army of mercenaries murdered the innocents who had come to watch the battle.

I am a knight, and the business of my Order is war.

Do peasants sicken of the plough? Do priests tire of saying Mass?

I was twenty-five years old, and Alexandria was my sixth great battle. In the fighting, each was different, as one lover is from another. In the aftermath, there is a sameness that defies description — foul, cruel, evil.

The king never regained control of the host of mercenaries we’d brought from Italy and I will not lie: what follows is dark and there’s little chivalry in it.

The routiers ranged along the walls. To them were added most of the marines and many of the sailors. The captains brought their ships off the shoals and sands of the Old Harbour and rowed or sailed around Pharos Castle into the Pharos Harbour and the Venetians attempted an escalade on the Pharos castle before sun set. The governor’s lieutenant resisted manfully, and threw them back with losses.

I was sitting on an upturned boat at the end of the sea wall while a Venetian surgeon probed my shoulder with a knife fouled from cutting ten other wounded men. Then he sewed the flap of separated skin back down. I promise you that it hurt!

Marc-Antonio had three arrows in him. Carlo Zeno pushed the surgeon aside and cut them out with his own hands. Of our army of five thousand, only a thousand had been engaged, but that thousand had enough wounds for ten. Yet we had very few dead. Our harnesses were so good that most men lived at least to see the dawn, and many are still with us.

It was growing dark when Nerio found Chretien d’Albret. Nerio’s squire Davide fetched me, and we rode across the sand. John the Turk had found Gawain and restored him, and had landed our little Arab horses, who shied at blood but nonetheless were firm footed and well-rested; Gawain had ten cuts, one so broad that his red muscles showed like a gap in a curtain. John gave him opium and then sewed him up like the doctors were doing to men.

Much later, perhaps a year or more, when I was telling the Count of Savoy about the fight — his nephew was there, but the Green Count was not, of course — John was fletching arrows by the fire, and I saw him grunt and shake his head while I told this story.

Later that night, I went to him. By then we were old friends and I asked him why he had sneered at my story. He laughed mirthlessly, in his Tartar way. ‘All battle the same,’ he said. ‘Young men sing. Old man grunt.’

I thought he was posturing. ‘John, you were a hero — you saved us. I saw you save Marc-Antonio. You earned glory-’

His Tartar eyes burned with sudden anger. John is seldom angry, but he stepped forward at me although I am a head and more taller. And I suspect I stepped back.

‘I save friend!’ he spat. He reached his left hand behind him and wiped his arse elaborately and then brought the hand up to my face. ‘Worth more than glory, is my shit,’ he said.

I tell you gentles this, because not everyone agrees on what we saw and did at Alexandria.

We rode to Chretien d’Albret.

He was dying. Listen, in paintings, saints die with serene faces, whether on the rack, or full of arrows, or like Christ on the cross. But men do not go that way, and most especially when they have been burned across most of their upper body with naptha.

The fire had done something to d’Albret. He thought he was going to hell. In fact, he thought he was already in hell, burning alive.

Well.

The poor bastard.

Flesh came away whenever he moved, charred strips like bad meat. And he screamed and screamed until you’d think he’d have had no voice left. His eyes were gone.

Christ, I can’t tell this …

He raved.

To most men on the beach, his raving sounded like the last words of a man in torment. But I knew what he was saying. He was saying that d’Herblay had paid him to kill me.

I stood and listened.

Nerio was better than me. He made a little sound like pfft and killed d’Albret, drawing, thrusting, wiping his blade and returning it to the scabbard so fast that it was as if his hands were full of silver fire in the moonlight.

‘I hope one of you will do the same for me, if my turn is like that,’ Nerio said.

But we had all heard what we had heard. It wasn’t just me d’Albret was after. D’Albret had died screaming that he had been paid to kill the serf. The Serf.

A man in agony cannot be interrogated or questioned or threatened or begged. He screamed d’Herblay’s name. He screamed his repentance at the sky, and was killed.

God have mercy on his soul, and the souls of all those who died in the sand.

We went back and slept on pallets of straw in a rough camp that the sergeants and lay brothers of the Order had prepared. But before we lay down our horses were groomed and fed, their wounds tended, their tack stripped away and cleaned. It took me, I swear, half the night.

Marc-Antonio’s habit of getting wounded when there was work to be done was remarkable! But with John’s expert help and my friends and their squires, we got it all done. We made the Gascons d’Albret had brought do the same, though they complained and complained. I might have raged at them — you could see Fra Robert Hales and Fra Ricardo and a dozen other older knights patiently currying horses in the moonlight while a handful of young Gascons proclaimed themselves too nobly born for such work, but I was too tired for rage. And I wanted them where I could see them.

The legate was tireless. He went from wounded man to wounded man, and late, when the moon was high, he came to us. We prayed, and I told him about d’Albret.

He shrugged. ‘My life is worth nothing,’ he said. He smiled his simple smile and went off to find other men worse off than we. Later, he spent an hour protecting a huddle of Moslem survivors from the routiers.

I was asleep.

We rose to pain. I was under my military cloak — Egypt’s nights can be cold — with Nerio pressed close to me on one side and my wounded squire pressed close to the other. He had the fever we all dreaded, and he was so hot I thought he was done. All three of his wounds were red.

So was my shoulder.

I have little memory of that day. Fra Peter ordered us to horse, and we tacked and bridled and we were mounted in the dawn, and our horses were as stiff as we were ourselves. But not an arrow did we receive from the walls. The king awoke late, mounted, and rode the whole circuit of the walls before noon with the Order as his bodyguards. Two hundred knights, and the greatest city on earth.

They might have laughed us to scorn, but they had their own troubles.

King Peter sent them a cartel, summoning the city to surrender. Their commander returned a defiance.

We rode from point to point, and everywhere I looked for d’Herblay and asked me if they had seen him.

He was nowhere to be found. Most ‘crusaders’ rose late and began to prowl around the walls like dogs searching for food. They were not an army. I know, because the king stopped many times, trying to reason with men. He stopped Sir Walter Leslie, who was with his brothers and some other Scottish knights and asked them to rejoin the army.

Sir Walter bowed deeply. He was in his harness, as were his brothers and all their men, and they were stripping some houses in the suburbs by the Pepper Gate.

‘You Grace, we came here to be rich, and if we cannot take the city, at least we can loot these towns,’ Sir Walter said.

Gascons, French, Scots — they ran riot over the countryside, looted a caravan they caught coming in, killing the animals where they stood. The Venetians stormed the Pharos again, and found it empty. The town’s lieutenant had stripped it of men and valuables and slipped away after the attack the night before, convinced he could not hold it.

As I say, the Saracens had troubles of their own. One was that the lieutenant was himself shattered by defeat. I have seen this in other places; he had a larger army and a magnificent defensive position, but defeat robbed him of his will to resist.

And we had neglected the most simple precautions, and so the Alexandrines were able to send messengers to Cairo. On the other hand, with all the harbour castles in our hands, the Venetians and Genoese were suddenly sanguine. Their ships were safe, and any ships that remained in the old harbour were rowed around to the New.

By mid-afternoon, the king had perhaps two thousand men-at-arms under his hand. He had all the English — perhaps the habit of obedience was better among the English, but I think it is that there were more lords and fewer routiers. At any rate, the English stayed together as a body, and the Scots, despite Leslie’s comments in the late morning, came back to the beach and remained part of the ‘army’. But the French, the Gascons, the Bretons, the Savoyards and the sailors were uncontrollable.

Nor were they the only ones uncontrolled. In the town, a riot set the Christian quarter afire and the heads of a dozen Christian men appeared on spikes over the Sea Gate that the locals called Bab al-Bahr. The French routiers got barrels of pitch from the Venetians and tried to burn the gate and the garrison drove them off with heavy losses.

No one knows what happened in those hours. But we saw the smoke rising in the town, and as the French threw themselves against the Sea Gate, we covered their flanks. Parties of Saracens would emerge from the sally ports along the waterfront to kill the attackers, and we — mounted — would trap them against the walls. In fact, mostly we trapped air and sand because they were too quick for us.

Late in the afternoon, the Scots had a go at the Sea Gate. Sir Walter Leslie led them forward, and they rolled barrels of flammables to the base of the gate. But the Naffatun had come, and they rained fire on the earth. Sir Norman Leslie died in his harness, so burned that the plates buckled, and many another Scot died with him. But they got the gates afire, or possibly the naptha that killed the Scots also caught the gate.

The infidels made a mounted sortie, trying to clear the gate so that they could put out the fire and we charged them, and for the first time we were sword to sword with Mamluks. I was by the king for he did me the honour of riding with my contingent of volunteers, and we had a sharp fight, but the Mamluks didn’t linger. We pressed them hard into their sally port, but they got away.

Mostly I remember being tired, hot, and miserable.

Sunset was close when the king summoned all his counsellors.

‘Well, my lords,’ he said. ‘Here we are at the walls of Alexandria.’ The smell of smoke was everywhere. There was a fire inside the city, still burning. We didn’t know that Janghara, the cowardly lieutenant, had ordered the Christians killed and then snuck out of the city. We had no idea that there were more Alexandrines fighting the fire than fighting our armies.

King Peter was never greater than that hour. Tall and slim even in harness, he seemed fired by the same energy that animated Father Pierre, who stood by his side. ‘Now is the time to take the city, my lords,’ the king insisted. ‘Advise me.’

Percival de Coulanges, the same who had called Sabraham and me liars, stepped forward without hesitation. ‘I know the right gate to attack. This one is too obvious because it is close to our camp. Let’s take ladder and try the Bab al-Diwan. The customs house gate.’

The king had a heavy gold link-belt on his hips, and his hands rested on it. ‘My lord, you are a good and loyal vassal,’ he said. ‘But your advice on the Old Harbour left something to be desired, and we all almost bleached our bones on your beach.’ He laughed. ‘Are you sure?’

Percival shook his head. ‘No, my lord,’ he admitted. ‘But when I was a slave here, the Lord of the Customs cast the army forth and said that his gate was his alone, and only his own men could be there. He was such a corrupt bastard that he couldn’t have the Sultan’s men watching him.’

Fra Robert Hales laughed aloud. ‘I’m glad the Saracens suffer from all the same sins as we,’ he said.

Raymond Berenger, the new Master of the Order, nodded. ‘Let us have a go at this gate.’

Father Pierre sighed. ‘I mislike the — the fractures. Many of our men are wandering like sheep without shepherds.’

‘Like wolves without older wolves,’ muttered Fra William Midleton.

The Count of Turenne, the greatest nobleman present, had fought brilliantly the day before. Now he shook his head. ‘My lords, we have won a great battle and surely shown these Saracen dogs our worth. Should we not withdraw?’

Up until that moment, no one had suggested withdrawal.

The king looked up at his banner. ‘My lord, for myself, I go to Jerusalem.’

Turenne nodded. ‘As you say, your Grace.’ He was not sincere.

Percival de Coulanges had been utterly wrong about the Old Harbour and the landing, but he had the Customs Gate dead to rights. We rode widdershins round the city until we came to the point where the pillars of Pompey could most clearly be seen, and there was a small gate and an empty market in front of it. Yet behind the gate were two immense towers and a set of walls.

I have said that the king was not in command of our ‘army,’ but many of the wolves followed us when we moved. The Scots came with us, and some of the French under Turenne and others with de la Voulte. The king had the Order and the legate had all the English under Lord Grey. And hundreds of Venetian sailors and oarsmen came with us, scenting something.

The king made an excellent plan. He brought up two small scorpions and men who could use them from the Casteleto, and flammables — pitch and naphtha taken at the Pharos. That was, I think, the first time I saw the black powder that men use in cannons. We had had it with the king’s army in the year of Black April, but while I had smelled its hellish scent I had never used it. But the king ordered the captured powder brought forward, and while Cypriote pioneers and Venetian oarsmen wrestled with the barrels and the machines, the king gave us orders.

‘The Scots and the English will assault the gate,’ he said. ‘The mounted men will make two bodies, one with me, and one with the Grand Master. We will keep any Saracens from taking the assault to the flanks.’ He looked back and forth among us. ‘If we get the gate open, then summon the army. But in that case, all the mounted men — on me. We will fight our way through the city to the bridge at the Cairo Gate.’

‘I know it,’ I said.

‘Ah, Sir William! So you will help get us there.’ He watched the gate for as long as it takes to say a Paternoster. ‘And we will use the powder to knock the bridge down. I have seen this done. Eh?’

I had my doubts. I had seen the bridge, and it was big and broad and beautifully built. But dark was an hour or two away and the light was failing. And I didn’t imagine we’d win through, anyway.

But God, as Father Pierre likes to say, moves in mysterious ways. Sir Walter, determined to avenge the death of his brother, and supported by a dozen Scottish knights, with some wild Irish among them for good measure, assaulted the gate. They were brave, and for some time, while they tried to kindle fire against the wooden doors of the outer sally port, we thought that the gate might be un-garrisoned. But after about ten minutes, there was a sally from the next gate, and we charged them. They were no match for our armour or our horses, and they ran. I began to wonder if the garrison was already having problems of spirit — it seemed to me that only their leader had shown any courage, and he was lying face down in the sand, dead by the hand of King Peter.

When we got back to the gate, the towers above it were manned, and arrows and javelins rained on our Scottish knights. Sir Walter was wounded, and so was Lord St Clair, and one of the Irish knights took a blow to the helmet that knocked him unconscious. But the other men stayed at their task.

By that time we had quite a crowd of sailors and routiers about us, and they were prowling the walls. A few were killed — the garrison of the customs house leaned right out over the wall to shoot them. But they had no hoardings, and so the Italian arbalest men and the handful of English and Scottish bowmen began to pick them off.

John asked my permission to join the archers and I sent him off with my blessing. The loot of the battlefield the day before had yielded him not one but three Mamluk bows, a fine sabre with verses of the Koran in gold on the blade, and a hundred arrows. He was as eager to employ them as a new-dubbed knight is to wear his armour.

I can’t imagine that there were more than a dozen archers, all told, but they swept the walls. One of the differences I noted between the crossbow and the self bow is that John and the English archers had to draw and loose as a target was revealed, but the Italians could watch a particular crenellation, weapon aimed, waiting for the unlucky Saracen to expose himself.

Nonetheless, John scored the spectacular success of the afternoon, hitting an officer as he passed between merlons so that he fell with his head over the battlements. After that, the Saracens dared not show themselves, and again I thought they showed a want of spirit. They could have flooded the walls with archers and buried our men in shafts, and instead they allowed a dozen men to clear their walls.

One of the Italians, a veteran of fifty actions, I’ll wager you, moved forward. He had a light crossbow, the sort lords use for hunting-still a puissant weapon. He moved forward with the crossbow sweeping the walls, and moved all the way to the base of the wall. From there he moved to the gateway, from where he covered the knights, shooting his bolts almost straight up. Two more of the Italians joined him.

The three Englishman and one Scot of Ettrick — all brilliant archers — grew bored at the paucity of targets and they joined the sailors at the base of the wall. One of the Englishmen found the outlet of a jakes, a shithole so old that it was merely a mound of greenery. He was up on his mate’s shoulders in a moment and I saw this.

He was too broad to make it in,

I looked at Fra Peter; he gave me a nod and I rode down to the archers and sailors.

The archer wrinkled his nose. ‘Old shit, my lord.’ He grinned. ‘I been and used a few shitholes and your pardon in France, if you take my meaning.’

I laughed. ‘I used an apple tree once,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I know, me lord. I won there. Afore Poitiers, where we took King John.’

I dismounted and clasped his hand, old shit and all.

‘Ned Cooper,’ he said. ‘I was with the Prince at Poitiers. These criminals is Ewen, a barbarous fuckin’ Scot, and Rob Stone.’ He spoke slowly, and blinked a great deal, and I think he’d been hit a little too often in the head. Which is an odd thing for me to say, I admit, having received a few blows myself.

‘Which the thing is,’ Ned went on as if we were old comrades … and I suppose we were. He certainly knew me. ‘Which the thing is, that a small man, a really small man or a boy, would go through that hole as slick as …’ He looked around, and came to the unavoidable conclusion, ‘shit.’

Ewen, the Scot, and obviously not a candidate, shook his head. ‘I ’ate the smell,’ he said.

Rob Stone stretched his arms. ‘I’d rather roll in the stuff than go up a ladder,’ he said. ‘Methinks I’m too big in the arse, but I’ll have a go.’

But even as he tried — and failed — John the Turk appeared. He watched Stone struggle to get his shoulders through the hole and frowned. He walked away and I thought that was the end of it.

By this time the entire garrison of the customs house was in the towers, safe from our archery, lobbing red-hot sand and boiling tar and naphtha and all the weapons of hell on Sir William Leslie and his people.

The Scots were not getting in the gate. The two highlanders were hacking at the wooden door with axes, but it had been built for such attempts, although perhaps not from two northern giants.

John the Turk came back with a small boy perched on his saddle.

Ned Cooper nodded. ‘Now you’re thinkin’, mate. Now you’re usin’ yer noggin. Let the boy ha’ a go.’ He turned and pulled Stone’s ankle. ‘Get thy fat arse out there, Rob Stone.’

Stone grunted, sneezed, and dropped heavily to the ground. ‘Too bloody big,’ he said.

John showed the boy two gold ducats and the boy grabbed one, grinned, and stripped naked. John ran, flat footed and ungainly when off his horse, to the Italians. One of the bowmen had a grapple and rope, and John took it. The sailors came trotting back with my Tartar, and they looked up at the hole and did what soldiers do in such situations — they began wagering.

The boy stared at the rope, and John tied an end to the boy’s ankle. Ewen the Scot boosted the naked boy as if he was weightless and he vanished into the hole like a sword going into a scabbard.

And the line started to flow up the wall.

One of the Venetian sailors was a very small man. He stripped to his hose and hung his dagger round his neck and went up the rope. He got a shoulder through, there was a streak of curses and blasphemy utterly unbecoming a crusader, and a chunk of ordure-encrusted masonry fell, and he was in.

And then … nothing.

The Scots finally had the sally port alight. The axes of the two highlanders had gouged the surface enough for the fire to take hold, or so it appeared, and I rode back to the king.

He was eating a sausage. He looked at the sun, two fingers above the horizon, and back at the inferno the Scots had made. They had piled every scrap of wood they could find against the gate, and added some hellish stuff from the Pharos Castle. It burned fast.

By my estimation, the enemy had had the time to build a defensive ditch and rampart behind the sally port. If we were unlucky, they had a blank wall and false turn to trap a dozen men and drop naphtha on them.

I would have.

But the Mamluks were just men, neither better nor worse than ourselves.

‘It is now or never,’ the king said, finishing his sausage. He looked at Fra Peter. ‘You heard Sabraham’s report.’

Fra Peter nodded. He glanced at me. ‘Sir William hasn’t heard. The Sultan in Cairo is marching an army to the relief of his city. Probably here tomorrow. It marched before we came off our ships.’

I whistled.

The king smiled at de Mezzieres. ‘You know, gentlemen, this was never my choice. But now we are here, I think we should try and make our mark. Let us do something worthy, that our names may live forever.’

De Mezzieres nodded. ‘I am with you, your Grace.’

The king dismounted.

To the Grand Master, he said, ‘Give me the volunteers — they are the younger knights. If I have you and the Order at my back and a horse, I will fear no sally.’

The Grand Master nodded. ‘You are determined to assay this, your Grace?’

‘I will take this gate or die in the attempt,’ King Peter said gravely. Then he called forth his squire and knighted him.

The fire was burning down and the gate was a blackened tunnel.

‘One rush, my lords. No one hesitates, and the first man in the city will deserve something precious of me.’ He reached out to de Mezzieres and took the great banner of Jerusalem.

We dismounted and went forward at a trot. You can run in full harness, but we had been on shipboard for a week and we were not at the height of our conditioning. I hurt in a hundred places, and my breastplate rubbed the top of my hipbones because Marc-Antonio was wounded and John didn’t know what holes to use on the straps. My arms ached from fighting the day before and I had a wound that was fevered.

I was in fine shape compared to some of the volunteers. Juan was pale under his dark skin and Nerio had circles under his eyes.

Fiore burned with puissance. And so did Miles Stapleton: just knighted, he was ready to take the city on his own.

We jogged forward.

Seeing us, the Saracens launched a barrage of arrows and darts. Our Italians shot back, trying to angle their bolts into the slits in the towers. I can’t tell you whether they succeeded or not because my visor was closed and I was breathing the hot air of Egypt in my stifling faceplate.

We had about four hundred paces to cross. Halfway there I saw the Scots coming in from the side — they’d been huddled under the wall with the archers and the sailors and they were angry at their wounds and their dead.

I passed the king. In a storm, it is every man for himself, and I was lengthening my stride as I took hits. A heavy spear stuck in the sand in front of me.

My breath came in gasps, and I hadn’t fought anyone.

Nerio appeared at my shoulder and Miles began to pass me.

I was hit again.

And then I ran into the wall of heat. Even inside my visor, I could not breathe that air. It was appalling. I thought my eyes would burn and I was in armour. I tripped over a fallen beam and stumbled; my shoulder hit a wall and I bounced, shoulder burning. I caught myself left-handed and the stone burned the heavy deerskin off the palm of my hand.

Sweet Christ, it was hell! The tunnel behind the burned door had caught fire — something had been stored there, perhaps. But the stone was hot, and part of the passage was still burning. It occurred to me that this was the stupidest thing I had ever done.

I got past the fire. The heat had finally got through my heavy fighting shoes to my feet and then I was in the sun. There were men there, but only twenty or thirty. Not a hundred or a thousand.

I’m not sure I actually thought anything, then.

I had the Emperor’s longsword in my hand, and I used it.

I suppose this is the moment to tell you of my epic duel with the Captain of the tower, my longsword against his spear — and oh, my friends, I’d love to tell you such a tale. But I remember little of it, and mostly they were unarmoured, desperate men. Let no man ever tell me they were cowards. Those men, Alexandrines and not Mamluks at all, hurled themselves at me the way we had thrown ourselves at de Charny.

Why were there not more of them? Where were the armoured men? The engineers? The burning oil?

I knew none of these things, and neither did the terrified men facing me.

I know that I spared no one. I know that I used every weapon and every limb. My sword stabbed and cut, and I used my arms and legs, my elbows, my knees, the pointed steel tips of my sabatons.

I would say that I was alone against them for an hour, save that Fiore has sworn to me that he was never more than three steps behind me in the tunnel.

That’s how it is, sometimes.

But then I knew when Fiore was next to me, because the pressure eased suddenly. Ever play with a child, and she sits on your chest? And then she rolls off … It was like that. And then there was even less pressure as Miles thrust forward, and then Nerio, and then Juan, and we were pushing forward, step after step.

Juan died there. He’d taken a wound the day before, and worse, been knocked unconscious, and he was slow and pale, as I’ve said. He got a spear under his aventail and down he went. Fiore stood over him, and his sword flew and he killed men the way a housewife kills flies.

And then the king was with us, the banner of Jerusalem charred in his fist, and de Mezzieres and de Coulanges and a dozen other of the king’s knights, and we burst out of the gate house and into a courtyard. I realised we were between the walls and had it all to do again, but … the far gate was open and there were no more than forty Saracens between us and the city and not a Mamluk in sight.

There was no time to mourn Juan. I knew he was dead — I’d seen the spear and the sheer amount of blood.

The Saracens charged us, trying to put the djinn back in the bottle as they might say themselves. And there was a flurry of archery from the inner towers and we were like rats in a trap, surrounded by towers full of enemy archers.

But the far gate was open and Alexandria, the richest, biggest city in the world, beckoned.

I suppose I killed my share, but I only remember the late afternoon sun slanting down on the street beyond the gate. That site filled my visor.

Something was happening beyond my helmet. It took me time, perhaps three exhausted, desperate blows with my longsword, before I realised that the enemy archery had stopped. Had I looked up, I would have seen the cross of St George, the banner of England, flying from the outer towers of the Customs Gate.

The boy and the thin Italian had got a line over the wall, and the Venetians and the English had taken the towers even as we cleared the yard and occupied the attention of the defenders. John said that they cleared the first tower by running in an open door and all the garrison were shooting down at us, their backs to the door, and John and Ewen stood in the doorway and killed them with arrows.

About that time, the last men in the yard threw down their scimitars and their spears. And died. We gave no quarter. Chaucer, you have been in a storm. There is no quarter. Sir Walter Leslie killed the kneeling men.

The archers were more merciful, and took a tower full of soldiers alive. It is from those terrified prisoners that John learned why we had succeeded. The captain of the Customs Gate was not a soldier, but a customs official, as Coulanges had said. He had refused to allow the Mamluks to augment his garrison.

He paid with his life. Thus perish all corrupt officials.

In less time than it takes to say Matins, we had the gate itself open. Then Fra Peter led our horses in, and the banner of Jerusalem joined the banner of England on the gate.

The Venetians poured in right behind the Cypriotes, and then the ‘crusaders’ came up, the mercenaries and routiers. They wouldn’t obey the king, they wouldn’t fight for him — but now they came like jackals when we had done all the fighting.

I was kneeling by Juan, with my friends, and Fra Peter.

What can I say? Juan was dead. I had lost people over the years, starting, I suppose, with my parents. I am a hard man. But I had been with Juan almost three years. He was my first friend in the Order. He was my brother in redemption, if you will. At an inn outside Avignon, we had wrestled naked to amuse our girls, and that evening we’d drunk wine with our heads pillowed in their laps and talked about God and women and wine and swords. I’d held his head when he wept after his girl died of the plague in Italy and he’d covered my back when d’Albret tried to kill me.

He was dead. He seemed too small for his harness, and his smooth olive skin seemed impossibly alive. His body held the usual amount of blood, and it was on our feet, mixed with that of all the other poor bastards who’d died in the yard.

The king was already mounted. He leaned down; Fiore was weeping.

‘Let women weep. It is for men to avenge,’ he said.

Perhaps those words seem bold to you. To me, they rang empty. Revenge? I wanted Juan.

And he was dead.

We mounted and followed the king. It was not my finest hour. I was supposed to be a leader, and I couldn’t get much past Juan’s death. I don’t let people get too close — except a handful who take me by surprise. I like men, and women more, though I don’t want them under my skin. But Juan was under my skin, and his loss — Christ, gentles, I’m sure I didn’t pay him enough attention which he was alive, and that burns me now as it burned me in the streets of Alexandria. Fiore was the better swordsman, Nerio was far wittier, Miles was more holy.

Juan was merely the one I liked best, but he had to die for me to know it. He was like my left hand — I don’t think about my left hand much, but by God, cut it off and I’d mourn it.

We rode across Alexandria. We were the news of our arrival, herald and hammer both.

Coulanges knew his way about. After a time, I was able to navigate by Pompey’s pillars to the west and Alexander’s obelisk to the east, but I would never have made my way through that web of streets. Coulanges, for all he was a fool — and that he was — was a good guide.

We had two or three fights, sharp fights, with terrified men. We passed down a street, an avenue as broad as an English town and long enough that the whole stretch of the thing seemed supernatural.

By Saint George and Saint Maurice, Alexandria was staggeringly big. It was growing dark by the time we were all the way across.

Then we dismounted, and stormed the Cairo Gate from behind. It sounds noble that way, and there was some fighting, but nothing worth making a song of. Mostly, we were killing men trapped in their towers without hope of survival. They didn’t fight well and we were not giving any quarter. And I killed my share. I take no joy in it: when you are climbing a winding stair and the man ahead of you is burned with hot sand and you get some in your harness, too, then the virtue of mercy is a far country, and prowess is a word without meaning.

We cleared the towers of the Cairo Gate. But the Breton knights misunderstood the king and set the gates themselves afire.

The king was beside himself, and tired enough to vent his rage on de la Voulte. ‘Are you a fool, messire? Or do you crave glory so much that you wish to fight the Sultan’s army now? By Christ’s heavenly kingdom, by burning these gates you have cost us this town!’

De la Voulte was contrite, but the Count of Turenne, who, as I hear it, actually ordered the gates burned, replied with equal heat, ‘Perhaps you are the fool!’

He sounded like a man in the grip of a tremendous fear, his voice pitched high and wild. His knights took him and dragged him — I mean that exactly — away.

And then we mounted again. The king was determined to break the bridge.

Darkness had fallen. It was not an unkind darkness; the sky was still ruddy, and the stars were out, and there was still moonlight and when we rode out of the Cairo Gate, I could see enough to know that we had fewer than half the knights we’d had back at the Customs Gate.

It may make you laugh to hear it, but I, the veteran mercenary, hadn’t even thought of loot. We were in the richest city in the world, and I was still following my king and Fra Peter. That is how far I had come in my life from serving Mammon.

We had about eighty knights and men-at-arms; our horses were tired, and every man in that column had fought the day before, some for hours, then we had stormed the Customs Gate, crossed the city, and taken the Cairo Gate, too. We had faced fire and brimstone, burning sand, Saracen arrows, poison and naphtha.

We rode along the Cairo road rode for less than a mile before we came to the river.

There was an army there, and we struck the outposts in the dark before we knew what had happened. The entire ride, we had ridden through and over refugees, and the transition from terrified refugees to surprised Mamluks was too sudden. They were well mounted and suddenly we were in a tangle and I took a hard blow to the head before I had my sword out of its scabbard.

Night is a terrible time to fight in armour. A night melee on horseback is one of the most desperate encounters a man can have. And in an ambush, when you are nigh dead with fatigue — that is when you have nothing but your training.

I have lightning flashes of memory. I remember a Mamluk on Fiore’s back, straddling his horse, searching his armour for a weak place with a dagger, and I got my longsword around his neck and threw him to the ground. I remember cutting over and over at one man who parried and parried until Nerio killed him with a spear, and God only knows from whence that spear came.

I remember the banner of Cyprus going down in the light of the city afire and Miles Stapleton raising it.

I remember being knee to knee with de Mezzieres, fighting in opposite directions.

Someone won and someone lost, no doubt. We extricated ourselves. There were three Mamluks on the king, and Nerio and I cut them off the way you clear a swimmer of leeches and they rode away into the darkness, and so did we.

We didn’t make it to the bridge.

The king rallied us in the darkness and begged us to attack the Mamluks again.

That was when I realised that Fra Peter was not with us. I made Gawain, who was badly knocked up, trot all the way around the huddle of Latin knights, but Fra Peter was gone. We had two dozen Hospitaller knights with us; Fra Robert Hales was there. And he, too, had lost Fra Peter.

De Mezzieres was begging the king to go back into the city.

I found Nerio by his crest, a spray of peacock plumes as thick as a man’s wrist, and a coronet of gold. It’s amusing: he’d been censured for it on Rhodes, and Fra Peter told him to keep it, told him we’d all be able to find him.

‘Fra Peter,’ I said, or something equally fluid.

We were only four. But we went back into the darkness and the Mamluks.

I remember once, while hunting a stag in the east, I ran headlong onto a bear. The bear was as surprised as I, and instead of exchanging blows, we each fled as fast as our panic could carry us.

I’m going to assume that this is what happened with our Mamluks. At least, when we reached the ground of the ambush, the mutual ambush, I suspect, there were horses wandering and men on the ground and the only enemies were dead or wounded.

Fra Peter was easily found. His horse was dead. He was not, and we passed some anxious minutes freeing him. The ever-practical Fiore retrieved his saddle and bridle.

We got him over a Mamluk charger that did not think much of his smell or his weight. Nerio attended him with Miles.

Fiore and I determined that we would scout ahead. We were already most of the way to the bridge, so we picked our way along the road, riding into the palms on the east side of the Cairo road. But the road remained empty, and our stealth was wasted. We rode all the way to the great stone bridge.

It was empty.

There was a great army on the other side of the bridge, but they were in motion — away. Abandoning their fires and their hasty camp, they were in full retreat.

It was a miracle, if you like. If we had had fifty more men and a wagon of flammables — or some kegs of the alchemical powder that men call ‘black’, we might have accomplished something.

If Turenne had not burned the gate …

I am glad I went with the king that night. Glad I rode all the way to the bridge, and that we found Fra Peter. I only wish I’d stayed out of the city longer.

Did I say that the tunnel behind the Customs Gate was hell?

It was nothing but pain and terror.

The city of Alexandria the night of the sack — that was hell.

A city taken by storm is sacked. Those are the laws of war, the rules. Who, one might ask, makes these rules?

When we attacked the barricades of the city of Florence with six thousand Englishmen and Germans, it was an article of faith to us that we could not do the city any great injury. I think, perhaps, we underestimated the criminal savagery of man.

We had about seven thousand when we took Alexandria. Perhaps another two thousand in sailors and oarsmen. Perhaps yet another two thousand in armed servants. But I don’t think so. I think we were far fewer than ten thousand men.

I will make no excuses. Machaut sings that we left not a man alive of the infidel.

Perhaps. We certainly tried.

Fiore and I found Nerio and Miles and Fra Peter waiting in the darkness outside the Cairo Gate. The darkness was full of refugees, screams and imprecations — and the sounds of combat and murder. Nerio wanted to go through the city, and Miles, rarely insistent, was demanding that they ride around the city over the broken ground to the north and east.

I agreed with Nerio. Perhaps we were wrong, but we had drunk all our water and our horses were done, and I didn’t think we’d last for the ride around the city.

We re-entered the burned Cairo Gate at midnight, I’m guessing, because the city was afire and there were no bells. Men were looting; men were raping; men were killing. The city was an orgy of destruction, a phrase used by chroniclers but now brought to horrific life. Fiore asked the guard on the gate — men of the Order — where we might find the king. They didn’t know.

De Midleton had taken command of the gate. He was rallying all the Order’s men. We found Fra Peter, whose breathing was very difficult, a place to lie full length and we put him there as gently as we could manage. Miles and I were just looking at his wound when John the Turk appeared at the door — we were in one of the gate house towers, and it smelled like a charnel house. The smoke caught at our dry throats and made our stomachs burn, too — you know that feeling? When it feels like the smoke is in your gut?

‘Syr Midleton asks you!’ he shouted. But he had water — blessedly fresh water.

We drank before we ran back into the yard. Sabraham’s squire was speaking urgently to de Midleton, who turned as soon as he heard our sabatons on the cobbles.

‘It’s the legate,’ he said. ‘I can’t spare a man. Will you go?’

Marc-Antonio was still back at the ships. Or dead. Alessandro was with Nerio, and Juan’s squire, Ferdinando, was with his master’s corpse.

On the other hand, I could lay hands on three veteran archers, and John the Turk.

‘I’ll go,’ I said. We had the Cairo Gate’s stables by us and in less time than it takes a man to get armed, we had beautiful local horses for all the archers, and we were mounted in the yard. Ned Cooper and his mates had all strung their bows, and John had a panoply of looted Mamluk equipment.

We followed George.

We had heard fighting in the quarter behind the gate, and the cry of the Order; on horses, with George guiding us, we were there as quickly as we’d got mounted. I was amazed that we reached the place at all — I was so tired that when my horse stopped, I almost fell asleep inside my helmet and I was sure I couldn’t have lifted my sword.

We found a church, a Coptic church, a small, round church, unmistakably Christian. It was packed full. And on the steps outside stood the legate and Lord Grey and Sabraham and the two Greek knights, Giannis and Giorgos.

At the bottom of the broad steps stood twenty ‘crusaders’. They were English and Breton, Gascon and French. Or they might have been.

Two of the routiers were dead.

Even as we rode up by a street, another rout of brigands appeared out the alleys.

‘Burn it! Burn it!’ shouted the crusaders. ‘Death to the infidels!’

I saw d’Herblay and the Hungarian almost immediately. They were together, near the back of the crowd, and thus invisible to Sabraham, but the Hungarian’s long hair and the ribbon of pearls that confined it gave me my clues. And I knew d’Herblay. I would have known him anywhere, I think. And he was so arrogant he was wearing his surcoat.

But Fortuna was against me, and no sooner had my fatigue-addled head slowly produced their identities than d’Herblay turned, as if warned by Satan. He elbowed the Hungarian and the man looked back at me. He had a steel crossbow in his hand, the weapon the Italians call a Balestrino.

Three horse-lengths beyond the Hungarian, backlit by the lamps burning inside the church, the legate stood unarmed and unarmoured on the steps, with a wooden cross in his hand. He was shouting that these were Christians. In fact, I could see Moors and Moslems and Jews and Christians all huddled together on the portico, and more in the church behind.

‘Kill them all!’ roared the routiers. They pulled a man past the knights on the steps and butchered him, laughing.

Leering crusaders killed a teenage girl.

All this in two beats of my tired heart. The Hungarian raised his crossbow one-handed, but my horse was moving and he whirled — and shot.

Fortuna is a fickle mistress at the best of times. I was leaning forward on Gawain’s neck, my longsword reaching for the Hungarian’s neck, when he shot. His bolt struck the blade of my sword — and glanced away.

He parried my blow, which I confess was greatly weakened by the bolt, with the steel of his crossbow, and rolled off to my right, away from my horse.

The legate, either unaware that I was at hand, or believing that we were more routiers, suddenly plunged into the crowd. Giorgos endeavoured to cover him with his sword but the legate strode down into the mercenaries.

One of the bastards struck him with his spear haft — and he went down.

That was it for Sabraham, and for Fiore, and for Lord Grey. The men on the steps began to use force and Fiore led our party right into the backs of the routiers, the so-called crusaders.

They drove them from the square. I would not have imagined that I had more to give, that I could raise my sword. But I wanted d’Herblay.

I lost him. I was exhausted, and thirsty, and I can make other excuses, but I lost him as smoke swept over the little square in front of the church. Fighting caused men with torches to drop them, and Fiore was like an angel of the Lord, glowing in the flames. He tried to cut his way to the legate’s side.

Of course, we were killing crusaders, to save infidels and heretics.

I suppose we saved a hundred Greeks, and a handful of Jews and Moors. Many of them spat at me.

I wanted d’Herblay, but in that dark and smoky place, with the inferno all around us as Alexandria burned, what I got was Father Pierre. I can’t say I cut my way to him. I can’t even claim that I bravely decided to save my commander instead of getting my own revenge on the man who nearly broke my body.

I stumbled over him. All I can claim is that, God having given me this sign, I didn’t step over Father Pierre and try to shed d’Herblay’s blood. Instead, I looked down. But I knew — it’s hard to say why, with the smoke, the visor of my dented helmet, my fatigue — but I knew I had him. There was a flurry of violence — a man with a spear, and all I did was beat it away.

And then I sheathed my sword, raised Father Pierre in my arms and carried him into the church. He was crying.

I had seldom seen him cry. He had taken a bad blow, and his scalp was torn. But his face held more than suffering — I had never seen him without hope. His small face always beamed with something from inside, some special benison he brought to the world. But, that night in hell, it was gone.

He knelt before the altar and spread his arms and fell face forward, saying, ‘Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.’

Perhaps. But I had been one of them, and I knew exactly what they were doing.

They were raping, looting, and killing. They were very good at these things.

And d’Herblay and the Hungarian and his men were out there in the darkness, still probably looking to kill the legate, even though it was now too late. The crusade was victorious. We’d taken the greatest city in the world.

The man lying full length before a ruined altar would be Pope.

If I could get him home alive.

Such is the life of arms. Or rather, such is one path on the life of arms.

We got the legate back to the Cairo Gate on a horse. The church to which the legate had gone to save its congregation was only six turnings from the gate, and yet those six streets seemed full of menace. And getting there seemed to take half the night.

I reported to Sabraham. He was wounded, and he shook his head. ‘I wish you’d got him,’ he said. He was watching the rooftops. ‘I want the legate out of here.’

As it proved, the legate wanted to be quit of the city, too. He was slow to recover, but when his eyes were open, he demanded — begged — to be taken to the king. He had decided that he could convince the king to stop the ‘crusaders’ from raping the city.

Our men had a small fire in the courtyard, and torches. Tired men were at least taking the corpses out of the towers, and a dozen captured slaves were washing the blood off the tower steps.

‘I thought that I was done,’ I said, a little bitterly.

The legate blessed me. ‘You sleep, my son. I will ride back to the ships.’

Sabraham shook his head. ‘I’ll take him,’ he said. To me, he said, ‘D’Herblay is out there. Waiting for us to move him.’

When you imagine yourself as a knight, what you imagine — if you are like I was as a boy — is that moment when the Knights of St John charged the infidel. A windswept beach. Three hundred brave men in brilliant scarlet and steel. That seems to you what knighthood will be.

But this, my friends, is where I think we find chivalry — when our throats are so parched we cannot swallow, when the smoke from a thousand fires cuts our lungs, when our armour seems to hurt us more than an enemy can, when our jupons are heavy with our sweat and our blood, and our hands won’t close properly on our swords. When all we want is sleep. Or death.

That is when we find what makes us knights, I think.

I looked around in the firelight at my friends. None of us had even dismounted. Sabraham had blood flowing over his cuisses — he’d taken a wound in his armpit. A real wound.

‘You stay,’ I said. I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep. But: ‘We’ll take him to the ships.’

Miles leaned out across his horse’s neck, hands crossed in fatigue. ‘We should go out the gate and ride around,’ he said for the second time that night.

But de Midleton wouldn’t hear of it. ‘There’s Sudanese Ghulams out there, and Mamluks,’ he said. He pointed to where a dozen of the Order’s brother-sergeants were improvising a barricade. ‘I expect an attack at dawn. I’m not sending the legate out into that.’ He took me aside. ‘Let me put some food and water into him. And your poor horses, gentles. But I agree he shouldn’t stay here. If this tower falls …’

I could just about think. ‘We won’t have Coulanges,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about losing my way.’

Sabraham was being helped from his horse by a trio of serving brothers. He could scarcely stand. ‘Take George and Maurice,’ he said. ‘They know how to get around.’

He beckoned me to him. When the brothers put him down, he went all the way to the ground. And lay there.

I had to crouch by him.

‘I’ve lost a lot of blood,’ he muttered in a tiny voice. ‘Move fast. He can’t stay here. One attack — tower is lost. Get him to the ships. Please, Will!’

‘I’ll do it,’ I said. In fact, I was ready to fall asleep with my head on his chest.

One of the serving brothers pushed me aside. They were cutting Abraham’s clothes off even as he spoke. A man came up with an iron rod glowing red.

I smelled the burning flesh. For good or ill, Sabraham could offer no more advice — he was out.

I stumbled back to my horse. Poor Gawain had taken ten wounds the day before and now had been ridden all day. Oats and water kept him alive — but they didn’t make him well.

I looked over my people.

‘Friends,’ I said. ‘I need every one of you. There are men in the streets who mean to kill the legate. I have promised to get him to the ships.’

Ned Cooper turned his face to one side. ‘Kill the legate?’ he asked. ‘He’s like a fuckin’ saint, beggin’ yer pardon.’

Ewan the Scot put a finger alongside his nose. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘What do you know?’ Nerio asked.

Ewan shrugged. ‘Men come round, offering us silver for some fancy shooting.’ He laughed. ‘Guess they didn’t think you was up to it, Ned!’

‘There’s a Savoyard. D’Herblay. Anyone met him?’ I asked.

No one had. Except, of course, my friends.

We all ate. I decided, having set a few ambushes myself, that it would not hurt us to make the Hungarian wait and we all slept for an hour. We had no real way of knowing the time: no cocks crowed, there were no bells, but the Order’s men knew the hours well. Men fed and watered our horses and I had to be wakened roughly, even though I had slept in my harness.

We all had. And I ached, and so did the rest of them. But we drank hot wine with spices, which the Order’s people had going in the yard, and we chewed cloves — by Saint George, spices were all but free in Alexandria. I looked at the Emperor’s sword by firelight, and there was no dent in the blade, no kink, where the crossbow bolt had struck it. Instead, there was a scratch about as long as my little finger, as if an inexpert engraver had started to make a line. I got a stone from Davide and touched up the edge.

It was obvious to a soldier that the legate had a head wound — the kind that makes men fey and strange for days. The brothers had kept him awake, on principle, but he was having trouble speaking. I placed him with Miles. Lord Grey could not ride — a deep thrust to his right thigh.

I gathered my friends, and indeed, my whole little command. ‘Here’s my plan,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to hear it bettered. We cut across the city and go out through the same Customs Gate where we entered. It is the only way I know — and besides, we don’t know if the other gates have fallen, or are still in enemy hands.’

Maurice blew out his cheeks, but said nothing.

‘Outside the walls, we gallop. We’ll be west of the city, and I can’t see any enemy making for there in the dark, with a tide of refugees around them. We make our way past the crusader fleet and take the legate to the Order.’

Stapleton narrowed his eyes. ‘He asked to be taken to the king.’

I nodded. ‘So he did,’ I agreed. ‘Any other questions?’

Maurice frowned. ‘We will move quickly? What about prickers? Outriders?’

I shrugged. ‘I was hoping the archers would agree to lead the way.’

Ewan laughed. ‘Is there any money in this?’ he asked. ‘I see you’re all soldiers of God, an’ all. But everyone else is looting, and we’re here working an’ getting killed.’ He looked around and spat. ‘Not yet, mind. But this here’s a mad trick, ridin’ across a city gettin’ sacked.’

Ned Cooper looked at me like a shy maiden — a particularly old and ill-favoured shy maiden. ‘True knights is generous’ he said. ‘The Black Prince used to offer us a douceur when we was missin’ out on the loot.’

Miles all but spat. I’m glad he didn’t. ‘The legate is every man’s friend, and has held this expedition together,’ he insisted. ‘He trusts the English more than any!’

‘More fool he,’ Ewan said. ‘Fuckin’ English. Present company, eh, Ned?’

I glanced at Nerio. Nerio laughed. He had lines on his face like an old man, and the firelight made him look older and more dissipated than his father. But his laugh was his old laugh. You might have thought there was a wench in the offing.

He nodded. ‘Twenty ducats a man when we reach the ships,’ he said.

Ewan raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time. ‘Eh bien,’ he said.

Rob Stone, hitherto silent, said, ‘Amen.’

Ewan spat on his hands. ‘Let’s ride,’ he said.

John the Turk looked at Nerio. ‘Me, too?’ he asked.

Nerio laughed. He turned to me. ‘Jesus had it all wrong, brother,’ he said. ‘He should have offered to pay men to behave well.’

Fiore laughed. ‘I could use twenty ducats, too,’ he said, which was as close to making a joke as I ever heard the Friulian come.

About ten more minutes passed while the legate was prepared. We tied him to a borrowed warhorse. I rubbed Gawain down, gave him a little water, and he seemed spirited. He was a far better horse than I had thought, back at Mestre.

It was fully three hours after vespers, the very dark of the night, when William de Midleton opened the sally port for us. ‘God speed,’ he said.

I confess I almost expected a crossbow bolt to take John the Turk, the first man out the sally port. But he slipped out of the gate, low on his horse’s neck, bow strung but in the case at his side. He rode with George and Maurice and, after a minute of rapid heartbeats, I sent the archers after them. Rob Stone winked as he kneed his rouncey through the gate.

I went with Nerio, and then Miles and the legate’s deacon, Michael, supporting him on his horse, and then Fiore with Davide at the rear.

By my estimation, the ambush had to come right away. If d’Herblay and the Hungarian really planned to kill the legate — or me — they would know we were in the Cairo Gate. By waiting, I hoped to bore him into assuming we’d spend the night. He’d post men on the gates, and they’d tell their master when we moved.

By the time we reached the great avenue in the middle of Alexandria, lined with palaces — I had all but forgotten the Hungarian. Instead, my senses, tired to the point of failure, and then overwhelmed with noise and light, were bruised. Buildings were afire everywhere. By the ruddy light, we were treated to a carpet of corpses on every major thoroughfare. The sheer numbers of the dead staggered us all, even men who had seen fighting in France.

And further scenes from the inferno played out around us. A dozen soldiers chased a woman who ran screaming, half naked. She might have been beautiful if her lower jaw had not been cut away. Against the background of burning building, her agony was an insane vision of man’s wretched state in a world of sin.

A horse wandered, walking, trotting, screaming in agony, and it’s guts uncoiled behind it, leaving a hideous ribbon to glisten in the dark.

Laughing looters sat on cooling corpses and diced for the stolen goods. A dozen brigands lay in an alcoholic haze, apparently unconcerned that they lay among their victims.

And everywhere, little furtive packs crept, and struck. Many of the victims must have joined the sack — it was always thus in France — so that the numbers of the murderers and rapists were always increased. I saw men in local dress killing and burning. The poor of Alexandria joined the scum of Europe.

Through this, we rode.

We were, by my estimation, almost half way along the avenue when John rode back out of the chaos. He shouted — and I’m ashamed to say his shout woke me. I had fallen asleep in Hell. He shouted again.

I slammed my arm into Nerio’s backplate. He was also asleep. I turned, but Miles was doing his duty, and the legate’s eyes were open; glazed, but open.

John reined in at my side. ‘Rider — two.’ He pointed beyond the nearest palazzo, a squat and inelegant building with two minarets that rose like horns on a toad. ‘I think they watch. I kill one.’ He grinned. ‘Now they no watch.’

Nerio backed his horse. ‘How long have they been with us?’ he asked.

That was too much for John, who shrugged. ‘Two men,’ he said. ‘Now one.’

I rode ahead to the archers, whose horses were just visible in the next firelight.

‘We’re being followed,’ I shouted. ‘Stay-’

Ewan ducked and the stone hit me, not in the head, but in the back. I assume it was thrown with a sling, and it was a big stone. It left a dent.

Luckily for me, the Bohemian had left me room in the upper back to flex my shoulders. That became the space for the armour to absorb the blow.

It still knocked me straight down, off my horse and into the street.

I rolled. I’ll stop this litany, but only the hardest training will get you to roll off your horse when you are taken in an ambush and near dead from fatigue.

I don’t remember any of this. What I do remember is coming to my feet in the fire-shot darkness with the Emperor’s sword in my hand. Ewan was off his horse and running. Ned Cooper was at my back with an arrow to his bow. He was unashamedly using me as cover.

It was as well he did. A bolt tested the quality of my breastplate. It penetrated, but only about half an inch.

That, too, was luck, because my visor was up.

Ned loosed. I felt the heavy shaft whisper away through the air and I heard hoofbeats.

Nerio was three horse lengths away, sword out. He was riding at something — his gaze was fixed. Behind him came Miles and the legate — right into the heart of the ambush.

Sometimes, in war, you must take the dice as they roll.

‘Ride through!’ I croaked. My throat was all but closed. ‘Go!’

Miles heard me. He touched the legate’s horse with the point of his sword, and the animal bolted.

There were shafts in the darkness, arrow shafts, shafts of firelight. It might have been distracting …

Ned Cooper moved with me, loosing shaft after shaft. He grunted when he loosed.

Things hit me. A shaft, spent and pin-wheeling through the darkness, another stone off a sling I could hear spinning in the dark, a thrown spear. The last of the three was ill-thrown, and yet it slammed across my knees and wounded Cooper behind me. In daylight, spears aren’t so dangerous. In the dark …

Christ, I was scared. Fear is fatigue. Fatigue is fear. Thirst, hunger, bone-ache …

There was nothing to fight.

But when Ned went down, I got an arm under his, and dragged him. The legate was past us, and I couldn’t even see his horse. Gawain was across the avenue, head up.

A good warhorse is a gift from God. I had no other plan; I was the target for every archer in the ambush. I decided, as if from very far away, that if I could make it to Gawain, I’d ride away.

I made it halfway across the avenue and Gawain met me halfway, bless him. I didn’t really think about the consequence — I got Ned up into the saddle.

He wasn’t unconscious. He screamed as his right knee got knocked around, but the spear came free and fell to the road.

‘Jesus fucking Christ the Saviour of fucking mankind,’ he shouted into the night.

‘Ride for it,’ I said.

I slapped Gawain.

About then, I realised that I hadn’t taken a blow or an arrow in what seemed like a long time. I had no idea why, but I had been in enough desperate fights to know that something had changed, and Ned and I were no longer the centre of the enemy’s attention.

My visor was still up. I let go of Gawain’s stirrup — I had had some notion of holding the stirrup and bouncing along like a man with ten-league boots, but I was too tired. And I had some notion of occupying the enemy while the legate escaped.

Unless, of course, he was dead, which was one awful explanation of why the enemy fire had shifted away from me.

But that made no sense, even to my fatigue-addled head. Men in a fight will go after one opponent until he’s down and only then go for another. That’s the law of the forest.

Kill the thing you can see.

What in the hell of Alexandria was going on?

The night was still a literal inferno. Fire and darkness … smoke, that makes darkness even more deceptive. And can choke you. Only in full night can you stumble into smoke you never saw and cough your lungs out.

A man was coughing, just to my left.

I picked up the spear that had come out of Cooper’s thigh. It was a surprisingly good spear — you know when you pick one up, line a sword. It was light and responsive in my hands, the haft slim and well balanced, the head light. I used it to feel my way. The cloud of smoke was drifting, I assume, because for me it was like a choking fog covering the moon. I could see a little at first, and then nothing.

I wanted cover. The smoke was killing me, but it was cover. I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes were watering. My armour weighed like lead.

Yet, I was unwounded.

I moved one step at a time.

A man screamed — and his scream was answered by a feral chorus from behind me, too far away to be part of this small thread in the tapestry of violence.

I made it to the foot of one of the minarets. I knew the stonework in a glance, and there was a ruddy glow from inside that lit the smoke.

There was a man. He came at me, or merely crossed my path, and my spear went into his throat with the unerring accuracy born of practice.

I have no idea who he was, or whether he was part of the ambush. But he was armed and had mail on. I dropped him off my spear point.

Another step and the feeling in front of my face was replaced with a comparative cool. I essayed a breath, and then put my back to the low wall and heaved. I had inhaled too much smoke.

Another scream. And a shout. And coughing. All this so close that I whirled, head up, fatigue forgotten-

Three spear-lengths away, a man broke cover from a decorative shrub on the grounds of a tall facade to the west. He took two steps, grunted, and fell. In the smoke-shot dark, I had no idea why he fell, but he wore armour.

I alternated curses and prayers.

But the man who broke cover was not one of mine, and the mere fact of his being in cover said he was one of the ambushers. He thrashed to death like a crushed bug, his armour reflecting the inferno around him.

I ran towards him. Or rather, I stumbled. I tripped at least once, went down in an armoured sprawl, rose and plunged on, across another belt of smoke and heat. I couldn’t see the ground, which was broken and full of stones. Someone’s decorative border. I hurt my hands.

The man who had broken cover was a routier in a stained surcoat and looted harness, and he had a Mamluk arrow through his throat. His surcoat was blue and white.

I made it to the relative cover of the tall facade — marble in front and brick behind. By then, my head was running very fast. I had to hope it was one of John’s arrows. If there were Mamluks loose in the city, the crusade was doomed and so were we. Although there was irony in that.

But odd as it sounds, the dead man with a Mamluk arrow told me what was going on. John and Maurice and George were behind the ambush, wreaking havoc. Otherwise, I’d have been dead in the road, and Gawain would have been filled full of arrows. If they had broken the eastern hinge of the ambush, then I was now moving with them, or behind them.

I offer you my thoughts, because fighting at night in a burning city carpeted in dead men is more difficult than it sounds.

I moved across the tall building’s facade. It was not afire, nor was the next building to the west, which had rose bushes in a hedge around its entrance.

I guessed that the rose hedge was the basis of our ambushers’ position.

And God performed a miracle for us. Fiore stumbled out of the darkness to my right. Never were the Order’s surcoats more valuable.

‘Close your visor,’ he said. There’s friendship for you.

‘Hedge,’ I said.

He nodded. I slammed my visor down, and we went at the hedge.

It may seem impossible to you that our adversaries didn’t see us coming, but they did not. Nor do most men know that, in a full harness, a man is immune to thorns.

I knew, and so did Fiore.

We burst through the rose hedge like the vengeance of the angels. There were three or four of the Hungarian’s men there, and the man himself. I had him immediately. He was in maille, with a black brigandine over it and I saw his face when he turned. I was just pulling my spear out of the crossbowman I’d encountered first.

I thought he’d run. Instead, he stepped back and drew.

To my right, Fiore was fighting three men, one of whom had on a great deal of armour. Another brigand slammed out of the dark and thrust at me with a spear. I slammed the spear clear of me and struck a clumsy blow, made worse by my butt-spike catching in the roses..

The Hungarian struck at me. His edge caught the rim of one of my gauntlets. His timing was perfect but his point control a little awry in the dark.

As a result, the spearman and I went close, and the Hungarian danced away.

In that beat of my heart, I knew he was a good swordsman, and that he was going to kill me. But I had my point under my other adversary’s right arm. I released my top hand — my left — punched him in the head with my mailed fist, reached past his shoulder and caught the point of my spear as his head snapped back, which changed everything. I threw him. In fact, I ripped him off his feet and tossed him at the Hungarian. He went down hard and the Hungarian went down with him.

Fiore put his pommel into one man and pivoted on his hips, parrying his second opponent as if he’d practiced fighting three men all his life. Having made his cover, he brought his sword back up; not a very strong blow, but he made his second opponent stumble even while the first collapsed.

All that while I caught one breath.

I put a steel-footed kick into the downed spearmen and the Hungarian regained his feet while I pulled out my spear point in to finish my foe.

That’s what you do when you are outnumbered. Make sure the men who are down stay down.

The Hungarian had a steel cap on over his maille hood and there was enough light, reflecting off smoke, making everything a ruddy haze except our blades that flickered like red-hot iron, that I could see his face clearly, his high cheekbones, his heavy, long moustaches, and his smile.

‘Ah, Sir William,’ he said.

He cut at me. He made three simple blows — mandritto, reverso, mandritto, just as Fiore drilled us, and I covered all three. I had my spear point low, the butt high in my right hand — one of Fiore’s guards. In this guard, and with my good steel arms, I could ward myself all night, as long as I had the strength to keep the spear steady. With my advantage in distance, the Hungarian was limited to fast attacks and withdrawals.

I thrust low, at his hands.

He leaped back and I stumbled after him — armour is heavy, and I had forgotten the spearman on the ground.

The Hungarian thrust with one hand: I made my cover high and late, and his point slapped my visor.

Dead, except for my armour.

I cut; a simple, heavy fendente with the spearhead to buy time. He was faster than anyone I had ever faced — faster than Fiore, faster than Nerio. As fast as the Bohemian I had fought in Krakow.

But my simple fendente slammed into his outstretched sword even as he was withdrawing it, and knocked it well to the side. I passed forward, and so I was in a good low guard when he hurled his sword like a thunderbolt. Against an unarmoured man, in the darkness, it might have proved decisive, but I slapped it aside with my spear and cut at him.

I was standing at the top of a low wall, and he’d leapt to the bottom.

In the red darkness, I could see him crouch. I was wary; I saw the corpse and then the crossbow.

I ducked back. Behind me, Fiore was down to just two. I turned and stabbed one of Fiore’s opponent’s in the neck. My spear didn’t penetrate his aventail, but I assume I broke his neck.

I turned back to the wall, but the Hungarian was gone.

Fiore and I were still panting like horses after a race when John the Turk rode up outside the rose garden and called out.

He had Ned Cooper and Gawain. He also had a dark bay — someone else’s horse adrift in Hades.

We collected George and Maurice at the back of the tall building that was now shooting flames fifty feet into the air. They were stripping dead men of their purses like the professionals I’d taken them for and I was impressed that Maurice tossed a purse to John.

George nodded to me. ‘Get the Hungarian?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I admitted.

He laughed.

‘And the legate?’ I asked. All my best men except Nerio were there. And the legate was not there.

George just shrugged. But he handed me a gourd canteen, and I drank my fill. John the Turk gave me garlic sausage, good Italian sausage, and I sat there, surrounded by corpses and dying men, and ate sausage and drank water for as long as it takes a priest to say a quick Mass. Fiore joined me and we all ate and drank. The Hungarian could have killed the lot of us, but we were done in like knackered horses, and we had a little hole in the smoke in which to breathe.

But soon, too soon, I could feel the press of my fear for the legate.

We rode with the hot wind of the burning of Alexandria at our heels. We missed our way twice; once where the Avenue turned south and we should have taken a cross street. The second time, we missed the Great Mosque in the smoke.

But the city on fire reflected like dull bronze from the distant pillars of Pompey. We reached the wall in a huddle of hovels. We were nearly lost, desperate — and dawn was close. I was certain by then that Nerio and Miles and the legate were dead or taken.

Every decision I had made all evening came up like bad food.

George climbed the wall, cursed for a while, and climbed down. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘North, or south?’

I hate guessing. ‘North,’ I said. And probably something like, ‘Is that north?’

In the dark and smoke, even with the pillars, everything seemed wrong. Perhaps it was just fatigue. But I was hearing voices — Emile, Father Pierre, my sister. And the endless sound of signing, as if there was a choir in Hell.

Two miserable streets later, we crossed fresh corpses. We followed the trail of dead — there was a spearman, there and archer.

The Customs Gate rose out of the bloodshot murk. And in the relative safety of the tunnel was Nerio, his helmet off, and Miles, supporting the legate.

‘Never do that to me again,’ Nerio said. He threw his arms around me and tried to crush me — me, and Fiore too. ‘Leave me to die and ride away. It would be kinder.’ He spat, and handed me a canteen. I took a pull. It proved to be Malmsey, but it tasted like the nectar of the gods of Greece.

It also proved to be the last surprise of the night. By the time our exhausted column crossed the sand where the crusaders’ ships were beached, the sky was grey and we could see men asleep on the sand.

We didn’t stop. But neither did we gallop. We didn’t have a horse capable of the effort among us.

The Order’s admiral was awakened at once. I lay down in one of the Order’s tents and slept for perhaps ten minutes. It wasn’t much lighter when I was awakened and Fra Ferlino di Airasca ordered wine brought.

‘We know very little here,’ he said. ‘And the legate took most of the Order away into the city.’

I outlined the facts as I knew them, so tired by then that I was sick to my stomach. But two slaves brought food, fruit, and bread and cheese, and I devoured it.

The admiral said nothing while I spoke, except to curse when I said that Fra Peter Mortimer had been wounded.

‘How is the legate?’ I asked.

Fra Ferlino shrugged. ‘Well enough. Better when we can let him sleep. His eyes are better.’ Knights of the Order have a great many healing skills — the Hospital is as much part of their trade as the sword — and they tended to speak in tropes. But I knew from Fra Peter that a man with a bad blow to the head shows it in his eyes.

He looked at me. ‘Can the Cairo Gate hold? Where is the army?’

I shook my head. ‘The army …’ I was tempted to blasphemy. ‘The army is raping and looting the city. They man no towers, and they kill only-’ I snarled.

Fra Ferlino cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘You are a virgin of sieges? What did you expect? A parade?’ He held out a hand. ‘Yet we must hold those gates if we are to hold the city. And the army of Cairo?’

‘We went out with the king last night,’ I said. I stumbled in my speech — was it only last night?

‘We hear the king is in the Tower of Pharos,’ the Order’s admiral said. ‘But nothing more.’

‘He needs to know that the Cairo Gate is held, and the main enemy army retreated,’ I said.

‘I’ll see that he knows,’ the admiral said.

And then they let me sleep.

That lasted three hours. Perhaps a little more.

I was still in my harness. I had no squire to get me out of it, and I was too tired to touch the laces and buckles. I think I tried — I have the vaguest impression of scrabbling at an arm harness just before collapse and I woke to a variety of aches and pains that I would associate with the results of a torturer’s rack.

The man standing over me was the king. He looked as neat as a newly forged sword. His harness was clean and polished.

‘I’m so sorry, Sir William,’ he said. ‘But the admiral tells me that the Cairo Gate is held, and the enemy army has slipped away. I need to know.’

Muzzily, I told my story again.

The admiral had a quick conference with the king and I caught enough words to know what they proposed. My heart sank: I’ve heard that phrase used a hundred times, but then I knew what it meant.

They needed me to lead a column of reinforcements back through the city.

The king embraced me. I almost laughed. He wasn’t going.

When I got my harness cleaned up a little — the king’s squire came and helped me, bless him — I drank some water and pissed it away, drank some more, and stumbled out into the sun, which hit me like the blows of a deadly opponent. Two serving brothers armed me, and the metal going back over my bones was like the bite of weapons. But when I reached the Order’s parade — really, just a little area of gravel and old kelp in the centre of a three-sided wall of tents — there was Nerio, there was Fiore, and there was Miles.

I don’t remember if I cried. But I do now. By our saviour, we were …

We were. And Juan was dead.

‘Let’s get this done,’ I said.

We rode into Alexandria, and nothing waited for us but the rotting horror of the spectacle. No dogs, no wolves, no brigands prowled, and no feral Alexandrines slaughtered. The streets were dead. And littered with meat that had been men. And women. And children.

When we reached the site of the ambush, Maurice gave me a sign, a wave, and he and George and John rode away without further explanation. I assumed that they were looking for signs of our attackers.

I was wrong.

I rode under the arches of the Cairo Gate with nothing endangered but our sense of man as a redeemable sinner. John and his companions came back an hour later, or so I hear, but I was, thank God, asleep.

I slept in one of the Cairo Gate towers. I slept yet again in my harness, and woke to an alarm that proved false. Then I slept again.

When I woke for the third or fourth time, it was to the terrible realization that I had not unsaddled Gawain, nor seen to him in anyway. Only that would have dragged me from some dead Mamluk’s straw pallet — clean as a whistle, by the way.

Under my sabatons, my shoes were scorched and sticky with blood. My feet hurt — the arches ached. The armour was a worse enemy than the infidel. I felt I’d broken my hips while asleep.

Gawain was in the gatehouse stable, lying in clean straw, exhausted. He opened his eyes, snorted, and closed his eyes again, his derision for the whole of the human race clear to anyone who knows horses. Pressed against him was Fiore’s charger, also curried and clean.

‘Good knight, bad horseman!’ John the Turk said. ‘Jesus love animals. Knights not so much.’

I clasped his hand.

He nodded.

‘Thanks, John.’ I saw that he had Fra Peter’s Mamluk horse groomed. The animal had a headstall and two reins through ring bolts.

‘Stallion!’ John said. ‘Want.’

I’d have laughed, but all I wanted was sleep. John got my armour off me in the straw, and I collapsed by my horse as he told me that Fra Peter had been taken to the ships.

I slept again, guarded by a new Christian convert whose brethren were sitting across the river. Had John not been loyal to his word, I’d have been dead many times, that campaign.

But Tartars — Monghuls — do not lie.

Thanks be to God.

I awoke in the darkness. I could not move: it took an effort of will to make my eyes open, much less to move hands or feet. Straightening my spine was an incredible effort, as was extending my legs.

But, like climbing a mountain, every bit helped. I began to gain control of my limbs, and I rolled to my feet like a badly wounded man. I was not. To crown the miracle of the taking of Alexandria, my fevered wound had closed and gone cold. I think — I like to think — that when I lifted the legate, his flesh healed mine.

Say what you will, Chaucer.

It was almost fully dark outside when I was dressed and armed, filthy, tired, and afire with the pains of two days of combat. John armed me in silence and sent a boy for Fiore. I found Fra William de Midleton in the yard.

‘We are ordered to hold,’ he said heavily.

The city was oddly silent. No cock crowed. No music, no muezzins. Of course. And yet, the silence was terrible.

I think you need to know that despite the encounter in the smoke, I didn’t give a rat’s arse for the Hungarian or d’Herblay in that hour. Essentially, I forgot them. Holding the gate became our goal — there was nothing else. You’ll see.

I looked at the open gate. ‘We should rebuild the gate. The ships have carpenters-’

Fra William shook his head. ‘There is a Moslem army just over the bridge.’

‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘My lord, did no one tell you?’

Fra William started. ‘How do you know?’

I was too tired to argue. ‘Fiore and I rode to find Fra Peter. Then we went and looked at the bridge. The Saracens were fleeing.’ I paused. ‘That was — a day ago? Hasn’t the bridge been burned?’ I asked.

Fra William shook his head heavily. He was as exhausted as I. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Scouted?’ I asked.

‘No, Sir William!’ he said. ‘Nothing has been done. They say that the king is surrounded by counsellors who say the city must be abandoned.’

I think I ignored him or didn’t believe him. I knew, I, a young knight, a Corporal, that by taking Alexandria we had cut the Sultan off from all his trade, shattered his resources, and severed his main link with Palestine and all his garrisons. Saint Louis had never struck such a stroke. Indeed, since the taking of Jerusalem herself, no Crusade had ever accomplished as much. With the fleet in the harbour and possession of the walls, in effect, we had crippled Egypt. And when the rest of Europe heard, when the Green Count came at our backs, we would have the whole of Egypt, and the Holy Land as well. King Peter’s strategy was solid. We had won.

I was also wise enough to see that Fra William was more shattered than I. Even while I stood there in my harness, besmottered with blood and offal, I was growing stronger, as young men do. ‘Let me see to it,’ I said.

He spread his hands. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘I need to sleep.’

We had forty Hospitaller knights in various degrees of fitness at the gates, and another fifty sergeants and turcopoles. By the odd flow of the currents of war, we also had Lord Grey’s retinue without the man himself; Miles Stapleton had taken command of them. That included Ned Cooper and his archers, who had ridden back with us.

‘I ain’t leaving you till I see my ducats,’ Ned Cooper said. The wound in his thigh, so devastating in the heat of the fight, proved to have barely penetrated the skin to the muscle of his leg.

From Ned and John — and Maurice and George, now much less taciturn than they had been before — I learned more of the ambush in the dark. At the same time that John feathered one of the spies following us, Ewan had seen the rose hedge and made the correct assessment. He’d dismounted and put a heavy arrow into the hedge.

The night had exploded, but the Hungarian’s hastily laid trap had failed to touch the legate, who’d ridden past without a scratch. Maurice and John had tried to counter the ambush from behind and everything had degenerated into a smoking tangle of chaos, in the best tradition of war and complex plans.

At any rate, in addition to my people — well, really the legate’s and Lord Grey’s, we had a dozen of the surviving Scots, including the Baron of Rosilyn, who outranked me, and we had most of Contarini’s oarsmen, a disciplined body, under Carlo Zeno.

This was less a miracle than it seemed. In battle, men follow men they know. We all knew each other: the Scots followed the Hospitallers, and the oarsmen followed the English archers. But it gave us a good garrison, and when Fiore and I found Master Zeno, we quickly came to an agreement about employing his oarsmen to fortify the gate.

He made a wry Italian face. ‘I wish I could send to the admiral,’ he said. ‘We have carpenters and tools. But that city …’

‘Hell come to earth,’ I agreed.

Outside the walls of our gate castle, men continued to behave like animals. And, as I had seen in France, perhaps the worst of it was that local men joined the riot, killing their own, or the Jews — always the poor Jews — only to be massacred by our brigands and crusaders. Men set fire to their own houses. Men slaughtered their own families in despair.

And that was by day.

Night was worse.

Nonetheless, we worked by torchlight. Zeno was tireless, and if he was a mocking villain in the streets of Athens, he was a hero in the Stygian dark of Alexandria.

We made the courtyard behind the first gate a trap. We dug up the cobbles with pickaxes and trenched it, raised a rubble wall and put palm palisades atop it. We relit the fires, made food, and served it to our soldiers.

In the midst of all this, we were interrupted by a terrible dilemma. A Greek patriarch came to the gate and begged us to admit several hundred Greeks.

It was clear that the enemy was coming, and Fra William’s sense — and he was a good soldier — was that the Mamluks and their infantry were coming across the river and striking against any Christian they could find. But we couldn’t feed the Greeks. And the riot of the sack continued, so that we had the threat of Mamluks from the south and the threat of our own crusaders from the north.

Syr Giannis went to Fra William and knelt and begged him to save the Greeks. Fra William was standing on the walls, watching the city burn — and watching a small army of looters approaching.

But he was a Hospitaller. He opened a side gate, even while he sent a sortie — me, of course — to order the looters away.

I went out with a borrowed poleaxe in my fist, and walked along the so-called ‘street of pepper’ with Fiore and Miles and Nerio and Syr Giannis until we reached the main avenue, where the looters were coming.

They had a dead Moslem’s head on a pole, and they were carrying a woman — or what was left of her. They were all drunk, and they looked like souls basking in the warmth of hellfire.

The five of us didn’t even cover the street.

Fiore had his visor open. ‘What do we intend to do with these dogs?’ he asked.

They were slowing. Behind us, the Greeks were filing into the Cairo Gate fortress, but they could only go single file. We had archers on the wall, and Fra William was preparing a sortie.

It was all too slow to save the Greeks. And the looters — the crusaders — were numerous and well armed.

The Count d’Herblay shouted my name.

‘Bon soir, William the Cook!’ He laughed. He had his armour on and his hose down by his ankles. He had a poleaxe in his armoured fists and fresh blood on the knuckles of his gauntlets. He didn’t look like the angry, weak man of Genoa. The one who’d flinched from my beating.

In fact, he looked drunk, and insane.

I was in some way pleased. I admit this. It made what I intended easier.

I raised my axe. ‘Halt,’ I said. ‘You may not come further, on pain of death.’

‘Who the fuck pretends to give us orders?’ asked a Gascon.

‘I do, in the name of the Hospital. Go rape children somewhere else,’ I said. In that moment, I hated almost all the men on earth.

They didn’t like that.

No one does.

D’Herblay laughed, but it was hollow. His face was a terrible thing of rage and pain, fatigue and fear. He had lines that made him look like a damned soul, and his face was near black with smoke. He came forward without troubling with his visor or his hose. God only knows where his leg harness was.

Conversationally, he said, ‘You know, Camus will kill me if I kill you. He wants you so badly.’ D’Herblay laughed. His laugh was — terrible. Even — sad. ‘But he’s not here and I am. If you run away, we won’t kill you.’ He shrugged. ‘Or we will.’

‘Last chance, my lord,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of killing. Aren’t you?’

He stopped, just out of range. Then he spat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘All my life, I have been afraid. All my life, I have wanted …’ He frowned. ‘Do you know what I’ve found here? Nothing matters. It’s all just shit. You … my whore of a wife … the king … Camus …’ He croaked his laugh. ‘Here, it just doesn’t matter. I can be … anything.’

I didn’t think that I was talking to the Count d’Herblay. There was no vanity, none of the puffed up crap. No sarcasm. His voice was stark — and horrible.

‘I don’t even want to kill your damned legate any more,’ he said. ‘But it is all blood and smoke. Isn’t it?’

He was shifting his weight.

I tried one more time. ‘Disperse!’ I shouted. Or perhaps I merely coughed it. ‘Turn back, or be the enemies of God.’

‘I am the fucking enemy of God,’ D’Herblay said. ‘So save your sanctimonious shit.’

One of his blue and white men at arms laughed at that — and then they all came forward at us.

There is an enormous difference between killing helpless townspeople and fighting a knight. I hope d’Herblay learned that when I broke both his hands with one blow. The steel of his hourglass gauntlets protected him from the edge, and he didn’t lose the hands.

He just lost their use.

His spear clattered to the cobbles. He didn’t growl — he screamed, and I put my axe head behind his heel and pulled, dropping him with a clatter.

I put the spike atop my weapon to his unvisored face. I stepped on his broken left hand. He screamed.

‘I am not killing you,’ I said. ‘I do not want to kill another man. Not today. Go. All of you.’

Something in me was broken. Or had never been right. I wanted to kill him. In fact, I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to kill all the bad men, on and on.

But I had listened to enough of Father Pierre to begin to doubt if killing them was the way.

D’Herblay lay in the road and screamed. I ignored him. In Gascon French, I said, ‘Are any of you knights? Are you not ashamed? Is this your war for the gentle Jesus? Is this all we are? Go hold a tower. Go and fight the enemy. The armed enemy. Or we are nothing but reivers and bandits?’

I suppose I thought that they would turn away, ashamed.

Instead, they simply attacked.

Fiore laughed. ‘Well done,’ he said, as his pole arm flicked out.

We were five against twenty, and from the moment the blue and white in front of me came forward, I remember little. But I remember passing my iron between a man’s legs and lifting him, and his screams. I remember slamming my poleaxe two-handed, a full blow like a man splitting wood, into another.

I confess I put another down after he had turned to run.

They still talk of that fight, in the Hospital. They could all see us from the walls of the gate castle.

Of course, they lie, and say that the five of us fought a hundred Mamluks. When in fact, we fought twenty men-at-arms who wore the same cross as we wore ourselves.

And then it was done. The survivors ran like rats, leaving their loot on the road.

And then — I’m not ashamed to say — John the Turk and Maurice and George shot them down. As they ran.

And I confess, too, that killing d’Herblay would have given me more pleasure than any of the poor devils of infidels I killed in Alexandria. But I did not.

I walked back to him, and someone had killed him. On the ground, his hands broken, as helpless as a babe.

And Nerio said, ‘You are too good to be a mortal man, William Gold.’ He raised an eyebrow. And flicked his sword at me like a salute.

The next morning, we fed the Greeks — and their Jewish and Moslem friends — what food we had. About an hour after sunrise, we were probed by Bedouins. They came in close but we were silent as the grave and we didn’t allow them into the courtyard through the gate: Ewan and John and Ned Cooper saw them off, leaving a dozen corpses.

Then John followed Fra William and twenty turcopoles out the gate on his little Arab. They were gone an hour, and then John took the English archers and they were gone another hour.

The next troops to come at us were Sudanese. They were not well-disciplined, and I suspected they were being used to count our swords, so to speak. But they were fanatics, or possibly full to their eyeballs with opium. There were several hundred of them.

They died in front of the towers, and then they died in the gate tunnel, and then they died in our fortified trap in the courtyard, and they never stopped stabbing and chanting and screaming their name for God.

After their attack, we watched from the tower as three or four thousand soldiers, the Sultan’s professionals, made camp on the other side of the suburbs.

I won’t say we were smug. But we had a good garrison and a fine position. The courtyard trap was better than a gate, because we could sortie whenever we pleased and the Venetians and the English — and John — gave us a power of archery I’ve seldom had in a siege. We were going to run out of shafts in a few days, but we had the largest city in the world at our backs. I was no more worried than an exhausted soldier in a siege usually is and Fra William de Midleton was positively exuberant. He’d led the counter-attack on the Sudanese, axe in hand, and now seemed … bigger.

That was evening of the third day.

By then, Fra William had organised watches. I no longer had a command — my group of volunteers was spread to the winds. We had casualties; Juan, of course, and others; and we were missing men. Volunteers of the Order were as likely to loot as others. And Nerio had taken men with him when he took Fra Peter back to the galleys. More had escorted the legate that hellish night.

Fiore and Nerio and I served with the Scottish knights. They were good men, and they followed Baron Rosilyn. He was no older than I, and very proud, but a fine fighter. I’d like to say we got along, but in fact, we never spoke beyond ‘That wall’, and ‘Here they come’.

On the morning of the fourth day, Nerio took a patrol all the way to the ships, and returned in the evening with twenty Knights of the Order and all the rest of the available turcopoles and volunteers. They marched in just in time, for we had the first probing attack from Mamluks at dusk. We repulsed it easily.

Nerio had canteens of wine, and he shared them with us, so we were sitting on our haunches like beggars in armour, drinking Venetian wine from canteens. Nerio shook his head.

‘Turenne, that man of steel, says this gate cannot be held. He is demanding that the city be abandoned.’

I shrugged, having heard the same. There were brigands and crusaders trying to join us by then. Fra William sent them to hold other gates. A few even did. We admitted none of them to our towers.

Nerio shook his head. ‘No, I mean it. Most of the crusaders wish us to sail away. There was a rumour today that these gates had fallen.’ He looked at me. ‘The legate is in a bad way, my friend.’

I nodded.

Nerio frowned. ‘Someone has told the king that you attacked d’Herblay and other crusaders — that you are a secret pagan, a traitor.’

Fiore grunted.

‘I wish I had a better quality of foes,’ I said. ‘Camus and d’Herblay — ugh.’

Nerio’s eyes slipped past Fiore. I was going to say more, but Fiore turned his head to look. It was a Greek girl, bringing water to the soldiers.

Nerio rose. ‘Sabraham wants to speak to us. He said something to me,’ he said, ‘But I forget what it was.’ He laughed, and went to chat to the Greek girl, apparently untouched by the horror around us.

The next day, the Mamluks prowled for a weaker gate.

The king came and told us that we were the pillars on which the crusade rested.

He had a complete collar of the Order of the Sword, and he put it on me. He waited with us for the daily visit by the Sultan’s army, but it did not come, and eventually he rode away. He looked tired, and harried — we all did.

But de Mezzieres had a conversation with Nerio and Fiore while I was invested with the order.

And when the king was gone, I put a hand on Nerio’s shoulder. ‘Brother,’ I said, ‘we need to bury Juan.’

Nerio shook his head. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘I have him on the galley. Wrapped in a shroud. He’s not the only dead knight.’

I shook my head. ‘He died in the Holy Land,’ I said. ‘Surely …’

Fiore looked down. ‘We’re leaving, Will,’ he said.

Nerio wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I sat. I don’t think I decided to sit. My knees just gave.

Nerio finally looked at me. ‘The king tried. The legate tried.’ He shrugged. ‘Listen, William, Admiral Contarini tried. He has been against this attack from the beginning, and he argued that now that we had raped the city and broken it for trade, the least we might do is hold it and march on Cairo.’

Zeno was drinking our wine — or, given that it was Venetian wine, possibly we were drinking his. ‘Cairo?’ he asked. ‘Christ on a cross, this army!’ He spat. ‘Every fighting man in this army is right here,’ he muttered.

Nerio made one of his Italian faces. ‘We are leaving.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘For you, I’m sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘For me … I never want to see this place or these animals again.’ He flicked his eyebrows up, and shrugged. ‘Perhaps I am a banker at heart, but what have these infidels ever done to me? Nothing. But our crusaders?’

I was not the veteran captain then that I am today, but that city could have been held.

Instead, our crusaders made a real effort — not to fight, but to enrich themselves. You’d have thought, from the charnel house of death, that every living thing in the city was dead, but some people had been rescued — to be made slaves.

When we sailed away — with the loot of a rich city, ten thousand slaves, and two shiploads of Alexandrine Greeks who begged not to be left to the counter-sack of the Mamluks — when we left, the Egyptian Army had stopped attacking because they’d lost a thousand men for nothing.

We killed a great city.

Also — for nothing.

Two days later we landed in Cyprus. The ‘crusaders’ were eager to trans-ship their plunder and there were men sailing for Italy before Mass on Friday.

I have nothing more to say, except that those days, the voyage from Alexandria to Famagusta, and the days that followed, were perhaps the blackest of my life.

Nerio had saved his Greek girl. He was well enough. And he and Fiore tried to comfort me. And Miles, who was as disconsolate as I.

What do you make of the ruin of all your hopes?

What is knighthood, when crusade is but a word for rape?

We buried Juan in the cathedral of Famagusta. You can still see his arms there, in alabaster, painted. I have been to visit him a few times. Sometimes I sit on his tomb, and talk to him, though I realise this is foolish.

Sometimes I weep.

I certainly wept that day.

It was Nerio — Nerio, for whom religion was an inhibition on his carnal pleasures — who saved me. The four of us we standing over the tomb, no alabaster yet, and we went to the altar to pray.

And Nerio said, ‘Let’s go to Jerusalem anyway.’

The four of us rose, and swore — four swords on the tomb.

The crusade broke up with frightening rapidity. The English were gone in less than a week, and the French immediately began to spread a rumour that the English and the Hospital had deserted the walls first.

I got to listen to the process by which a military disaster that was a catastrophe of cowardice, indecision and greed was transformed into a Christian victory, a blow to the infidel. I got to hear black told as white, the admiral of the Hospital called a coward for attacking the Pharos Harbour, the Hospital accused of deserting the king on the beach.

There was worse to come. But luckily, in the atmosphere of recrimination, I took my leave of the king and de Mezzieres in a rose garden. I didn’t have to listen to the French, the Bretons, the Savoyards or the Gascons justify themselves.

King Peter looked drawn, his face pinched. Men said that he had come home to a cold bed and a distant welcome. Men said all sorts of terrible things. I saw the queen at a distance — but more on that later, if we sit together another night.

King Peter, true to his word, made me put my hands between his and accept a barony. Men told me it was a fine piece of land, would support ten knights and I swore to be his man and to serve him with three knights whenever he desired.

It did not lift the black fog entirely, but I had never held any land before. I was a lord.

By the grace of God.

The king gave me his leave to depart; not that, as a volunteer of the Order, I needed his leave. And he gave me his passport to Jerusalem.

He put a hand on my shoulder and sighed. ‘Some of the English go to Jerusalem. My people say that the Sultan is so discomfited by the overthrow of his army at Alexandria that he has withdrawn his garrison.’ His eyes met mine, and they were red. ‘Where did we fail?’ he asked.

‘The crusaders failed you, my lord,’ I said. ‘But for them, we should have won.’

He shrugged. His bitterness was immense. ‘You will see the Countess,’ he said.

My spine stiffened.

He looked at me. ‘I am told,’ he said, ‘that her husband did not survive the sack.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said, probably too quickly.

He smiled grimly. ‘As for that, Baron, I care nothing one way or another.’

I bowed, knee to the ground.

‘Will you wed her, Lord Gold?’ he asked. It was not the question, which was perfectly correct, but the manner of his asking — wry and discordant.

‘I will, with God’s help,’ I said. Oddly, one of the answers we gave in Church.

He looked down, and shrugged. ‘She is a wonder. When you see her,’ he said, ‘Tell her that she was correct in her surmise. Only that.’ He shrugged. ‘I never wanted to command the crusade.’

‘No, your Grace,’ I said. I accepted his kiss of peace, and I withdrew.

I will not say he was a broken man. I will only say that his light was dimmed. The fire that burned so hot in the lists at Krakow was almost gone. He knew — and I knew — that something was broken and would never, ever be restored.

The next day, we sailed for Rhodes, and the passage there was brutal, nine days of storm-tossed seas and fear. But by God’s grace, on the tenth day we raised the twin harbours and the fortress, and we landed in the sunset.

There were a great many people on the beach. They began to cheer as we came ashore: the galleys turned and landed stern first, and the oarsmen marched off, followed by the deck crews, and then the volunteers and last the knights, and we paraded on the foreshore in the sand. And Raymond Berenger, the Grand Master, walked along our ranks as the people cheered us.

Marc-Antonio was recovering — yet another miracle. He appeared beside me with our horses in his fists, and John with two more. John the Turk was grinning.

Nerio was grinning.

We were, after all, alive. When you are young, horror does not last, thank God and all the saints, otherwise we would all run mad.

Fiore hugged me, and Nerio shook his head. ‘Turn around,’ he said.

I did.

Emile was waiting, and without, I think, considering her action, she threw her arms around my neck. And her lips were on my lips and I suspect that this was not a common display in front of the knights.

‘Will you come with me to Jerusalem?’ I asked.

She laughed her good laugh. ‘My love, we were always going to Jerusalem,’ she said.