A Blood Red Horse (15 page)

At night there was some respite, and early in the morning, as the Christians began to march but before the Saracens geared themselves for attack, William sometimes looked at the landscape and marveled at its variety. The army traveled through woods and over pleasant-looking rivers. Along the coast the plants grew so luxuriously that it made progress difficult for the baggage animals. Truly, thought William, this could be the land of milk and honey. But then the arrows would start raining down, and it was hell again.

At the end of a fortnight, the road grew narrow between the mountains, and Richard saw that a major ambush was more and more likely. He ordered his knights to ride their warhorses—the time was coming when the Christians would have to retaliate. William asked Hal to saddle Dargent, but Hal was unwilling. Dargent had cast a shoe and was likely to go lame. William would have to ride Hosanna. Hal put as much armor on the horse as he thought he could bear, and William, his heart heavy, took his place in the column.

There was no letup from the Saracen attacks. As the Christians approached the forest of Arsuf, despite the king constantly reiterating his order to keep marching straight ahead, tempers were frayed. The enemy edged ever closer and poured out of the hills in increasing numbers. William tried not to hear the pleas of the wounded men or the anguish of the horses left behind to face their fate alone. The order was not to break the column. They must obey the order or all would be lost.

As the thuds and cries grew ever louder and his eyes,
despite his visor, smarted with dust, William felt suffocated by the heat and kept a mailed hand on Hosanna's neck. The horse stepped out eagerly as the sun rose. The wale on his neck was well healed but had left a permanent ridge of proud flesh. William steadied him with his voice. He tried not to think of what was happening. He tried, instead, to focus on Jerusalem.

Arrows were now glancing off Hosanna's shoulders every minute, and William wildly swept them away. Suddenly, a terrible, unbidden thought made him shiver. If Richard ordered a charge now, would Hosanna obey? The horse seemed willing enough, his ears pricked forward. Surely he would. But if he did, did that mean that the king had been wrong in ordering the massacre of the prisoners at Acre, and that Hosanna had somehow felt it?

William wished he could talk everything through with Ellie. Then he shuddered and ducked to avoid a crossbow bolt. It missed William but hit the next horse, which sank to the ground, its leg shattered. The knight shouted in his distress.
Oh God,
thought William. No. How could he wish that anybody he loved should see what the crusade was really about? As he rode on through the filthy, choking air William realized that he did not know what he would say about any of it if he ever got home again.

Then a voice broke through the uproar. It was Gavin's. “This is intolerable!” he shouted as he pulled another dart from Montlouis's neck.

The Saracen war cry of “Allah akbar” was all around them. It echoed inside the steel of William's helmet. Behind him a rattling grunt signaled the end of another horse, caught by an arrow straight through the throat. Blood spattered all over William's back, but he dared not look round.

Then he heard Gavin again, almost screaming. “Tell the king!” he yelled. “Tell the king we can bear this no longer! We will be remembered as cowards if we don't retaliate before we are all dead. We are losing our horses one after another. Come on, my friends, let's charge!” William, ignoring the order to face forward, spun Hosanna round.

“Gavin! No!” he yelled. “No!”

But Gavin paid no heed. He swung Montlouis out of the column and, raising his lance, swept headlong toward the Saracen horde. Seeing Gavin break formation, other men, also driven to distraction by the mayhem around them, turned to attack. The king realized that he was powerless to control his scattering troops and took the only decision he could.

“Sound the charge!” he yelled at the trumpeter, and with shouts of “God and Jerusalem!” all the Christians were suddenly galloping after Gavin and toward their tormentors.

Gavin reached the enemy first. He lost his lance at once and set about with his sword. The Saracens were taken aback by his lunatic bravery and seemed nonplussed until a dark boy on a high-stepping Arab stallion unsheathed his sword and matched Gavin strike for strike.

Kamil had been waiting for such an opportunity. His horse teased Montlouis like a ballet dancer teasing an elephant, and never changing his expression, Kamil evaded Gavin's sword with ease. Only the arrival of the entire Christian army, with Hosanna in the thick of it, saved Gavin from certain death. The impetus swept Kamil away, and Gavin found himself among the group of Hospitaller knights who had reached the Saracens after him.

As for Kamil, just for a moment in the melee, he found himself galloping by the side of a remarkably beautiful
flame-colored horse. As Hosanna swung away, Kamil watched him. Then, knowing that the knights' charge spelled defeat for the Saracens in this particular battle, Kamil headed back to the hills, but not before he had made a mental note to look for the red horse again.

Once the Christian charge got under way, the Saracen forces scattered, leaving thousands of dead and dying from both sides in their wake. King Richard, after giving his men a severe lecture about not breaking the rules he had set down, commended many knights for their bravery. When he had been reprimanded for his disregard for orders, even Gavin's precipitate charge was forgiven, although the king was clearly displeased. It had been Richard's intention to draw the Saracens to a place where they could have been surrounded. As it was, the king himself, riding the fleet horse he had taken from the ruler of Cyprus, had been forced to pursue the Saracens, leaving his own men vulnerable. It was small consolation that many of the enemy were caught, and disappointing that Saladin was not among them. As for the Christians, they too lost many men, including Adam Landless.

Gavin bit his lip. As he rode back through the scenes of devastation, at the king's side, he looked with distaste at the soldiers who had returned to the battlefield and were loading themselves with plunder from the fallen. It was, needless to say, customary. Nevertheless, it was not something Richard encouraged, and when Gavin saw Adam's looted body, he was, notwithstanding the king's presence, violently sick. Richard was not sympathetic.

Only ten miles away in the Saracen camp, Saladin was striding around his tent angry and worried. Baha ad-Din
was standing by the flap, looking out and listening to messengers. Wounded soldiers were streaming past.

“Kamil had no business to get close enough to the Christians for them to charge,” said Saladin, his voice furious. “Hundreds of men have been killed. And for what?”

Baha ad-Din did not have time to reply before Kamil himself was galloping toward him. Saladin left his tent and stood, his hands on his sword, as the boy leaped off his horse and stood silently before him. He did not receive his customary smile of greeting. Instead, Saladin's eyes were cold.

“Your bloodlust has caused us to suffer what the Christians will call a defeat,” he said curtly.

“The boy did what he thought Allah would want.” Baha ad-Din was hot in Kamil's defense.

“Kamil did what Kamil wanted. Is that not so, Kamil?” Saladin was not to be pacified so easily.

“The Christians seemed an easy target,” Kamil replied. “We killed many before they turned to attack.”

“That is not the point,” said Saladin. “Their King Richard seldom makes a mistake. When he charges, we are always likely to lose hundreds of men. We also have a clear chain of command when it comes to provoking a battle, as you well know, Kamil. You are not yet part of that chain. Please remember that. I should punish you. This time I will not. But next time you will not be so lucky.”

Kamil left Saladin's presence and sat in sullen silence in the outer tent. Saladin's eternal lectures were beginning to make him more than impatient. The sultan was always so careful in his strategies, and the results were so slow. In Kamil's estimation, he showed far too much tolerance and far too little thirst for vengeance. Maybe that was because Saladin's family had not been cut down in cold blood. Feelings
of resentment and frustration filled Kamil's soul. Everybody thought Saladin was a hero. Well, maybe he was not such a hero after all. How could anybody who really hated Christians care so much for rules and chains of command when opportunities for slaughter presented themselves?

After pacifying Saladin, Baha ad-Din found Kamil and sat down beside him.

He noted the boy's expression and chose his words deliberately.

“Be careful, Kamil,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. “I know your heart is warm and turns to Allah. But you must not let your wish to do Allah's work allow you to forget that you are a boy in the service of the sultan.

When the sultan wishes to punish, he is not merciful. I repeat, be careful.” Kamil did not reply, and after a few moments, Baha ad-Din left him to his thoughts.

A tall man with sly eyes and a short black beard was also watching Kamil. After Baha ad-Din had gone, he came to sit beside him and began talking in a low voice.

Richard, meanwhile, gathered up his forces again, and in three days his army reached Jaffa. There, the knights experienced a side of crusading life they had not encountered before. Although the town itself had been destroyed by the Saracens, the orchards and suburban gardens had been left. The trees were heavy with fruit, and flowers filled the air with rich and exotic scents. Richard ordered camp to be struck in an olive grove. This surely was the Promised Land. The sun was still hot, but without their armor on, it was not unbearable.

Along with the other soldiers, William, Gavin, and Hal gorged themselves on figs, grapes, and pomegranates and flavored their tasteless dried beef with lemon juice. Before leaving the battle site at Arsuf, many men had cut slabs of flesh from the dead horses to supplement the biscuits and hard bread they were all heartily sick of. They had brought sackfuls of it with them, which they now proceeded to roast.

But although the smell of fresh meat sometimes made William's mouth water, his stomach revolted at the sight. “Never, never will I let that happen to you,” he promised Hosanna, now tethered in a field where the September
grazing was thick and juicy. “I will bury you if I have to, but I will never, ever, eat you.”

Hosanna, stamping his feet to get rid of the flies and occasionally neighing to Montlouis, gently pushed the boy to one side to get to a more attractive piece of grass. Then, in his old accustomed way, he stood with his head over William's shoulder.

William stroked his nose. “At least we are still alive,” he murmured, and the horse stopped chewing for a moment as if in agreement.

With so much fresh food and water, everybody, from the common soldiers to the most aristocratic knights, felt refreshed and reinvigorated. Prayers were said for the dead. Horses were mourned as well as eaten. William, although he missed his father desperately, began once again to feel that the crusade was, if not splendid, at least a righteous endeavor. He practiced battle tactics on Hosanna, pretending to storm the gates of Jerusalem singlehanded. How sharp and agile the horse was! He could pull up from a full gallop in seconds, whipping round and galloping back the other way or in any direction William chose. His floating gait was William's for the asking, and the horse went backward and sideways at the slightest touch of rein and leg. He was both proud and obedient, a perfect combination. Sometimes William got so carried away with Hosanna that he forgot where he was and turned round to shout to Ellie to watch. When he realized his mistake, he would blush and hope nobody noticed.

Richard alone seemed troubled. He had many things on his mind. First of all, he knew that some of his knights had already set sail back to Acre—only two days' voyage if the winds were good—intent on bringing down wine and women to add fresh delights to the festive atmosphere.
These would be a bad distraction. But worse than this, Richard could no longer ignore something that had been obvious, at least to him, since they had arrived at Acre and the geography of the Holy Land became clearer. Jerusalem, the object of such veneration, the reason so many knights had set out, was an impossible target for a crusading army with no regular reinforcements. Even if the Christians managed to take it, and even with Cyprus in friendly hands, how on earth could a city so far inland be supplied and defended?

As his knights relaxed, Richard spent many sleepless nights wondering if it might be possible to convince the men he was leading to forget about the holy places and settle instead for the coastal towns until a bigger force and, perhaps, more settlers who could help the army could be summoned from France and England. The king could see no easy way to persuade them. Jerusalem was the beacon that kept his men going through the heat, dust, horror, and discomfort. To remove the one goal they all had in common would be dangerous and might precipitate a revolt.

The king wrestled with this problem alone. One night he walked out in the early hours and found himself standing beside Hosanna, whose behavior over the Saracen prisoners the king knew about and found disconcerting. He spent hours looking at the horse, whose coat had a ghostlike sheen in the moonlight. Richard found him a peaceful companion. As Hosanna had once listened to Old Nurse, he now seemed to listen to the king, his dark eyes full of something Richard could not quite describe. It was not, he decided, wisdom. It was more like looking into your own soul. He told Hosanna as much, and Hosanna bent his head to scratch it on Richard's arm, rubbing his white star against the king's breast. “If only human beings were as
forgiving as you seem to be,” Richard said as he finally bade the horse good night.

The king never told William of this conversation. But whenever he found himself riding alongside the red horse, the king had the uncanny feeling that somehow their destinies were intertwined. “Superstitious nonsense,” he told himself. Nevertheless, he too began to touch Hosanna's star for luck, just as the sailors had on the voyage out.