Knights were accustomed to fighting with swords or lances, and few of them were able to follow Richard’s example. But he could handle a crossbow as skillfully as he did other weapons, and even when some of the crossbowmen stopped firing, afraid of hitting their own during the assault, he’d continued to shoot, confident of his aim. He did not put his crossbow down until all of his galleys were out of Saracen arrow range. His knights kept their distance, for they could feel the fury radiating from him, the black-bile rage that was the accursed legacy of the Angevins, giving rise to those legends that the counts of Anjou traced their descent from Lucifer himself.
He surprised them, though, when some of the galleys made ready to return to the attack, for he called them back. “I’d hoped to capture it,” he said angrily, “for its hold is likely to be filled with weapons and food, mayhap even Greek fire. But there are too many of them and they are not going to surrender. Enough good Christians have died this day already. No more.” He paused to cough, for his throat was sore from shouting orders and curses, and then he said hoarsely, “Sink it.”
Though they’d never have admitted it, most of his men were relieved to be spared another assault upon the Saracen ship. But they also wanted revenge for the deaths of their comrades, and they responded eagerly to this new command. The galleys once more encircled the buss, waiting for the signal. A trumpet blasted, and when the drums began to sound, the sailors strained at their oars, seeking to gain as much speed as possible before their iron spurs slammed into the hull. The impact flung men to their knees, even those who’d been braced for the collision, and they shouted in triumph when the vessel was gashed open in several places. They were preparing to ram the wounded ship again when it seemed to shudder and then began to sink.
The death throes of the huge Saracen ship were astonishingly swift, baffling the watching sailors. They’d barely gotten safely away from the undertow when the buss tilted and slid, prow first, under the waves. Most of its crew drowned; others died at the hands of their Christian enemies. The knights unsheathed their swords to strike at any Saracens within reach and the crossbowmen found such easy targets for their bolts that the sea was soon streaked with blood. Richard decided to save some, wanting to interrogate them about the siege weapons they’d carried, and the thirty-five men pulled into the galleys would be the only survivors.
Emotions were raw and overlapping for most of the men; relief that they were alive mingled with grief for dead friends and a surging sense of triumph. Morgan was still shaken several hours after the battle, unable to join the other knights on the Sea-Cleaver in celebration of their victory. He was not sure why he felt so unsettled, finally deciding that there was something particularly frightening about death by drowning. He’d asked one of the sailors why the Saracens had died in silence, not even crying out to their God as they disappeared beneath the waves. He was soon sorry he did, for the sailor related his own near-drowning experience in gruesome detail, explaining that a drowning man rarely called for help, too caught up in a panicked struggle to get air into his lungs. He also volunteered that a drowning victim sank at once, unlike a man who was already dead when he hit the water, although he admitted he did not know why this was so. Having been told more than he’d wanted to know, Morgan consoled himself with the wry reminder that he need not fear such a fate in the desert sands of Outremer.
Two of the rescued Saracens had been taken aboard the Sea-Cleaver for questioning. Richard was already short-tempered, bitterly disappointed that he’d not been able to capture the cargo, and his mood was not improved by the delay in finding a translator. Finally Guy remembered that his former brother-in-law, Humphrey de Toron, was fluent in Arabic, and he was hastily summoned to the king’s galley.
One of the captives was a man in his middle years, and he remained stubbornly silent, his dark eyes filled with defiance and hate. The other prisoner was younger, about Morgan’s age. He seemed in shock, not so much fearful as stunned, as Morgan imagined he’d feel if he’d just witnessed the deaths of so many of his own companions. He could not suppress an unexpected twinge of pity for the youth, even if he was an infidel pagan, and when Humphrey squatted down beside the prisoner, he remained to hear what this Saracen survivor would say.
Humphrey had a low, pleasant voice and his interrogation sounded almost lyrical as he put questions to the prisoner in a language few of them had heard before. The answers were given readily, but indifferently, as if nothing mattered anymore. Getting to his feet, Humphrey raised some eyebrows by giving the Saracen a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before turning toward Richard.
“He says they were to reinforce the garrison at Acre, that their ship held six hundred and fifty soldiers, and had been fitted out at Beirut with one hundred camel-loads of weapons: siege engines, spears, swords, frame-mounted crossbows, flasks of Greek fire, and two hundred deadly snakes. They’d made one attempt to run our blockade and planned to try again at dark. He also says that when they realized they were facing defeat, their captain gave the command to scuttle the ship, determined to deny us their cargo. When we rammed it, they were already chopping holes in the hull so it would quickly sink.”
“What was their captain’s name?” Richard asked, and when told it was Ya’qūb al-Halabī of Aleppo, he repeated it, saying that such a brave man deserved to be remembered. He looked then toward the buss’s watery graveyard. The blood had been washed away and the bodies were gone, too, claimed by the sea. The only evidence of carnage was a broken timber from the mizzenmast, a few floating barrels, and the fins of several sharks, drawn by the scent of death. But Richard was not thinking of all the men who’d died, Christian and Muslim. He was thinking of six hundred and fifty soldiers and a cargo hold filled with weapons. His lips moving silently, he made the sign of the cross, and then said huskily, “What if we’d not encountered them? God truly was on our side this day.”
There were murmurings of heartfelt agreement from those listening. Humphrey nodded, but then he smiled sadly. “Men always think God favors their cause. I am sure Ya’qūb of Aleppo never doubted it, either.”
That did not go down well with some of the knights, who thought such a remark bordered upon blasphemy. Richard gave the younger man an appraising look before saying dryly, “But Ya’qūb of Aleppo is dead, is he not?”
IT HAD BEEN seven weeks since Philippe’s arrival at Acre, seven of the most wretched weeks of his life. He’d hated the Holy Land from the first day, hated the oppressive heat, the noxious climate that was so dangerous to newcomers, the stark, treeless landscape so different from France, the poisonous snakes and scorpions that slithered into tents as soon as the sun went down. He worried about his health, a king with only a sickly three-year-old child as his heir, trapped in a land of miasmas and plague where a fit, robust man could be stricken one morn and dead ere the week was out. More men had been killed by illness than by the Turks, men of high birth and rank, some of them his own kin. It was just seven days since Philip, the Count of Flanders, had died of Arnaldia, a painful malady that was very contagious and often lethal. Philippe kept his doctor, Master John of St Albans, close by, but his nerves had become so ragged that he found himself wondering if the man was truly trustworthy, for he was an Englishman, after all. If Richard had poisoning in mind, who better to do it than the king’s own physician?
Philippe would normally have welcomed the death of Philip d’Alsace, seeing it as divine retribution for his treacherous alliance with Richard at Messina. But in his current doom-ridden frame of mind, he could focus only upon the political hornet’s nest stirred up by Philip’s demise. He’d had no son, bequeathing Flanders to his sister Margaret and her husband, Baudouin, Count of Hainaut, the parents of Philippe’s late queen, Isabelle. Philippe feared that Baudouin would contest his claim to the rich province of Artois, which had been Isabelle’s marriage portion, and Baudouin was in an ideal position to stake his own claims, for he’d been one of the few lords not to have taken the cross. Philippe had no intention of
losing Artois, and he even had hopes of annexing all of Flanders to the French Crown. But he was at a great disadvantage as long as he was anchored here in Acre, nigh on two thousand miles from Paris.
He’d spent huge sums so far on siege engines and sapping equipment; he had teams working diligently to undermine the walls of Acre. But as he lay awake at night, for he’d been sleeping poorly since his arrival in the camp, he found himself doubting that they could succeed. Acre had held out for nigh on two years, after all. What if the siege dragged on for months? And even if they managed to take Acre, what then? Was he the only one to harbor such misgivings? Many of the men had convinced themselves that victory would be assured once the English king reached Acre. But to Philippe, that meant only that if Acre was captured, Richard would hog all the credit for its fall. He well knew that the Angevin was not one for sharing glory, and he could foresee a future in which he would be utterly overshadowed by the other man, the King of France diminished by one of his own vassals, a prospect he found intolerable.
He’d been troubled all afternoon by a throbbing headache, and even though darkness was still hours away, he decided to lie down. It had not been a good day. One of their siege engines had been bombarded with Greek fire and destroyed; fortunately, it had not been his. His miners had encountered another setback, a cave-in that slowed their progress toward the walls. And he was still brooding over his failure to recover his favorite falcon. While he did not enjoy hunting, he did find hawking relaxing and had been exercising a large white gyrfalcon when it had suddenly taken flight toward the city. Determined to recover it, he had offered a huge reward of one thousand dinars. But the gyrfalcon had been captured and smuggled out of the city, judged to be a worthy gift for Saladin himself. Philippe’s household knights were surprised by the depths of his disappointment. They did not realize that he saw the falcon’s loss as one more evil omen, yet another portent of ill fortune in this unhappy, accursed land.
It was too hot to draw the bed hangings, and Philippe could hear his squires moving around the tent. Knights came and went, trying to keep their voices low when they were warned the king was resting. He tossed and turned and finally fell into a fretful sleep. He awoke to find one of his squires leaning over the bed, looking apologetic. “I am sorry to disturb you, sire, but the Marquis of Montferrat is here and he says it cannot wait.”
Philippe scowled, although his annoyance was directed at Conrad, not the youth. He’d supported the marquis because they were cousins, because he believed Conrad would make a more competent king than Guy, a proven failure, and because he’d known Richard would back Guy’s claim. But the more time he spent with the marquis, the less he liked him, concluding that Conrad and Richard were two sides of the same coin, both of them arrogant and hot-tempered and hungry for public acclaim.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he was not surprised to find Conrad standing there, for the man had no sense of boundaries. “Are you ailing, Cousin?” Conrad’s query could have indicated concern; Philippe took it to convey surprise that he’d be abed at such an hour, an implied rebuke.
“What is it, Conrad?” he said, gesturing to his squire to pull on his boots, watching to make sure the boy shook them first to dislodge any spiders, scorpions, or other desert vermin.
“Sorry to awaken you, but I thought you’d want to know that Hannibal is at the gates.”
Philippe assumed that was some sort of classical allusion since he vaguely recalled Hannibal had been an enemy of Rome. While Conrad had earned fame for his military exploits, he’d won admiration for his eloquence, too. He was fluent in several languages, often flavored his speech with Latin epigrams, and liked to quote from ancient Roman and Greek poets. In that, he reminded Philippe of Richard, another one who prided himself on being well read and knowledgeable about bygone civilizations. Philippe suspected that both men deliberately flaunted their superior education as a subtle means of demeaning him. Yes, his book-learning had been cut short, but a king of fifteen had little time for tutors or the study of Latin, not when statecraft and survival occupied all of his waking hours. He never doubted that he was as capable and quick-witted as Conrad or Richard, and was convinced that he was more formidable than either, for he had a quality they both lacked—patience.
Standing up, he regarded the marquis with cold eyes. He was sure that the Almighty intended great things for him, sure that he was destined to restore France to its former glory. So why had God not bestowed upon him the sort of grace that Conrad and Richard had in abundance? The marquis was no longer young, in his mid-forties, but he was still a handsome man; his fair hair camouflaged any traces of grey and he moved with the lithe step of a man half his age. Philippe was honest enough with himself to admit he’d have attracted no attention had he not been born the son of Louis Capet. But Conrad, like Richard, would never have gone unnoticed. Philippe had wondered occasionally if Conrad’s cockiness had come from his physical blessings, but that seemed unlikely. Guy de Lusignan had been equally blessed, after all, yet his center was hollow and that had doomed his kingship. Power was in its own way as mysterious as alchemy, a conclusion Philippe had reached years ago, comparing his good-hearted, weak-willed father with the whirlwind that was Henry Fitz Empress and vowing never to follow in Louis’s faltering footsteps. Henry had not seen him as a serious threat, not until it was too late. God willing, that would also hold true for his boastful, reckless son.
“Cousin?”
Conrad was looking at him quizzically, and Philippe brought his thoughts back to the here and now. He knew he was expected to respond to Conrad’s cryptic comment about Hannibal, but he was unwilling to admit its meaning had escaped him. Taking his scabbard from his squire, he buckled it and was settling his sword on his hip when Guillaume des Barres spoke up, confessing that he hadn’t understood the “Hannibal at the gates” remark. Conrad was happy to enlighten him, explaining that it had been a popular Roman proverb, warning of danger by referring to the man who’d once been Rome’s greatest enemy, and Guillaume thanked him politely.
Philippe felt a flicker of affection for the knight, appreciating his adroit intercession. But the sight of Guillaume reminded him of all the just grievances he had against that accursed Angevin, one of which was the shameful way Richard had treated the knight in Messina. Guillaume had not been allowed to rejoin Philippe’s household until they’d been ready to sail for Acre, and although he appeared to have forgiven Richard for that petty fit of temper, Philippe had not. “You mean Richard has finally deigned to put in an appearance?”
“His fleet has been sighted approaching the harbor.” Conrad grinned then, looking rather pleased with himself. “And I’d wager he is not in the best of humors, for I gave orders to turn him away from Tyre.”
By now the tent was crowded with French lords and knights, including the young Mathieu de Montmorency, Philippe’s cousin, the Bishop of Beauvais, and his marshal, Aubrey Clement. Beauvais laughed loudly, but the other men looked shocked at Conrad’s lèse-majesté.
Philippe did not approve of Conrad’s action, either. Unlike Guy, Richard was not a counterfeit king, and kings were entitled to the respect due them as God’s Anointed. Moreover, it seemed needlessly provocative, guaranteeing Richard’s enmity ere he even laid eyes upon Conrad. Until now, Richard’s opposition to the marquis had been political. After this, it would be personal, very personal. Marveling that men of obvious intelligence could be so foolhardy, Philippe said brusquely, “Let’s get this over with.”
As they emerged from Philippe’s pavilion, they paused in surprise, for the entire camp seemed to be in motion. Men were hurrying toward the beach, jostling one another in their haste to secure a good vantage point. There were a number of noncombatants at the siege—wives of soldiers and their children, the prostitutes drawn to an army encampment like bears to honey, servants, pilgrims, local vendors and peddlers. They were all running, too, eager to witness the English king’s arrival.
Watching in bemusement as thi
s throng surged toward the sea, Conrad said scornfully, “Will you look at those fools? You’d think they hope to witness the Second Coming of the Lord Christ! What is there to see, for God’s Sake? Just some ships dropping anchor offshore.”
Philippe gave the older man a tight, mirthless smile, thinking that Conrad was about to get his first lesson in Ricardian drama. As some of their knights cleared a path through the crowd for them, he continued on at a measured pace, taking care to detour around occasional piles of horse manure. “Do you have troupes of traveling players in Montferrat, Conrad?”
The marquis was obviously puzzled by this non sequitur. “Of course we do. Why?”
Philippe ignored the question. “I imagine they are the same everywhere. As they approach a town, they do what they can to attract as much attention as possible. If there are tumblers or jugglers in their company, they’ll lead the way, turning cartwheels and juggling balls or even knives. They’ll blow their trumpets to draw a crowd, bang on drums, sing and banter with spectators, trot out dancing dogs or trained monkeys. Once I even saw a dancing bear. The bigger the spectacle they can make, the larger the audience for their performance.”