Lionheart (92 page)

Midst the clamor, Morgan had to shout, too, in order for Henri to hear him. “I confess that I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of miracle claims. But by God, no more!”

Henri’s smile was incandescent, brighter than all the gold in Montpelier. “You do not have to believe in miracles, Morgan. Just believe in my uncle.”

AS SOON AS THEY BEACHED their galley and waded ashore, Henri was surrounded by soldiers, eager to know when they could expect the rest of the army. He gave them a smile and a noncommittal “soon” and then asked for Richard. None seemed to know where he was, so when they said André de Chauvigny was in the town, Henri headed for the shattered Jerusalem Gate, trailed by his knights.

He’d never seen a city that had come so close to dying and he was shaken by the extent of the destruction. Even worse than the sights were the smells; it was like stumbling into a charnel house. He was not surprised that the men loading bodies into carts had their noses and mouths muffled by scarves. He found André by the east wall, climbing over the rubble to inspect the damage done by Saracen sappers and trebuchets. At the sight of Henri, he scrambled down so hastily that he turned his ankle and treated nearby bystanders to a burst of colorful cursing. Grabbing the younger man by the arm, he pulled Henri into the closest structure, a ruined, ransacked shop that had once been an apothecary. Standing in the wreckage of mortars, pestles, and smashed bottles and jars, Henri gave him the bad news, not even trying to soften his words for there was no way to make it palatable. The light was not good, but André seemed to lose color.

“Well, at least Richard will have his speech ready,” he muttered, kicking the broken glass and crockery aside to clear a path to a wooden bench. Sinking down upon it, he saw Henri’s puzzled look and forced a smile. “A private joke, lad.” Unhooking a wineskin from his belt, he drank deeply. “I suppose it is too much to hope that you brought wine with you? God curse them, the Saracens poured out every drop in the town.” He drank again before tossing the wineskin to Henri, and then got reluctantly to his feet. “We’d best get this over with. Let’s go find Richard.”

Henri was not looking forward to that conversation and took a long swallow before handing the wineskin back. “I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw Richard’s banner. How in God’s Name did he do it, André?”

“Damned if I know,” André said with a crooked smile, “and I was there. I used to joke that men would follow him into the depths of Hell. Yesterday they did.”

As they stepped outside, the stench caused Henri to gag. He soon saw why; another cart was lumbering by, loaded with bodies. But as he glanced into the cart, he frowned. “What in the world . . . ?”

“Oh, that.” André brought up his aventail flap to cover his lower face until the cart had passed. “The Saracens killed every single pig in the town, for their holy book says swine are unclean. They dragged most of them into a churchyard and then the whoresons threw the bodies of slain Franks in with them. It was meant to be a mortal insult, so our lads are returning the favor. We’re burying our own, but we’re dumping the pigs outside the walls with the corpses of any Saracens we can find.”

Henri watched the cart rumble down the street toward the Ascalon Gate. His father had liked to quote from Ecclesiastes, that
there was a time for every purpose under the sun. A time for war and a time for peace.
The Holy Land had seen more than its share of war. When would the time for peace come? “How many died, André?”

“We do not know yet. There is always much bloodshed when a town is taken by storm. Those who were able to get into the castle, survived. Those who could not, died. Saladin did not seek a bloodbath, for he wanted the castle garrison to surrender ere Richard could come to their rescue, and he tried to rein his men in, without much success. But I’ll let Richard tell you about that.”

He was clambering over the rocks toward a gaping hole in the wall and Henri followed. “Where is he?” When André said he was in his command tent, Henri felt a chill of alarm. “Is he ailing?” he exclaimed, for it was very unlike Richard to be in his tent in the middle of the afternoon. He was greatly relieved when André shook his head, for he thought a man could sicken merely from breathing the fetid air that overhung Jaffa. It was, he thought with a shudder, like a plague town.

“He’s well enough,” André said and then glanced over his shoulder with a grin. “He has guests.” And he laughed outright at the baffled expression on Henri’s face, refusing to explain as they made their way toward the camp set up outside the walls.

As they approached Richard’s tent, Henri could hear animated voices coming from within. When they entered, he was confronted by a scene that was surreal, for his uncle was entertaining some of Saladin’s emirs and Mamluks, seated cross-legged on cushions as they laughed and shared platters of figs, dates, pine nuts, and cheese. Richard sprang to his feet with a delighted cry. Welcoming Henri with an affectionate embrace, he took advantage of the hug to murmur a question pitched for his nephew’s ear alone, and flinched at the whispered answer. But when he turned back to his Saracen guests, his smile was steady, utterly unrevealing.

“You know my sister’s son, the Count of Champagne,” he said genially, “now the Lord of Jerusalem.”

Henri had met them all before, for these were men who’d remained on amicable terms with the English king even in the darkest days of the holy war between their two peoples. Abū-Bakr was the chamberlain of Saladin’s brother al-’Ādil; he and Richard had become quite friendly during the off-and-on peace talks. Aybak al-’Azīzī was a Mamluk who’d been escorting the caravan Richard had raided, but he apparently held no grudges. Sani’at al-Dīn was al-’Ādil’s scribe and Badr al-Dīn Dildirim al-Yārūqī was the lord of Tell Bāshir, an influential emir who stood high in the sultan’s favor. They greeted Henri affably and, not for the first time, it struck him that his uncle got on better with his Saracen enemies than he did with his French allies.

“I was just telling them that Islam has no greater prince than their sultan,” Richard explained to Henri, “so I did not understand why he’d departed as soon as I arrived. I said that I’d not even been fully armed, that I was still wearing my sea boots.”

“And how did they respond to that?” Henri asked, for he knew not all appreciated the Angevin sense of humor. For certes, Philippe had not.

“Oh, they laughed,” Richard said, and Henri marveled that they could be trading jests when yesterday they might have been trading sword thrusts. He found it heartening, for surely mutual respect was a good foundation for building a peace, and he very much wanted peace for Outremer, convinced that it was the only way to ensure the survival of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The conversation continued in this vein, half joking, half serious, Geoffrey, the Templar
turcopole
whom Richard used when Humphrey de Toron was unavailable, translating for both sides. Richard expressed concern when told that al-’Ādil had been taken ill and wished Abū-Bakr a speedy recovery when he revealed that his limp was due to an injury he’d suffered during the siege. They in turn complimented Richard upon the prowess he’d displayed in retaking Jaffa and joked that they’d have spared a few kegs of wine for him had they only known he’d be arriving so soon. The mood in the tent was polite and playful and held so many undercurrents that Henri thought a man might drown in them if he made a misstep.

But when his Saracen guests made ready to depart, Richard became serious. Turning to Abū-Bakr, he said, “Greet the sultan for me and tell him we must make peace. My lands over the sea are in peril and I know his people are suffering, too. This war is harming us both and it is up to us to put an end to it.”

Abū-Bakr responded with equal gravity, promising that he would convey Richard’s message to his sultan, his courtesy as polished as any courtier’s, his dark eyes giving away nothing of his inner thoughts, and it occurred to Henri that this was like watching a chess game come to life, one played for the highest of stakes.

As soon as they had gone, Richard exhaled a deep breath, then seated himself on a coffer. Now that he was no longer playing the role of gracious host, Henri could see how weary he looked. “So,” he said, “tell me what happened to your army.” He listened without interrupting, and after Henri was done, he ducked his head for a moment, his face hidden. When he finally glanced up, it was with a faint smile. “So you left them at Caesarea and hastened to Jaffa to die with us?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds quite mad,” Henri acknowledged wryly. “But I do not know how much longer I can endure the suspense. What happened here, Uncle?”

Over a light meal of bread, cheese, and fruit, Richard told him. “They fought fiercely, like men with nothing left to lose. But after the wall collapsed on Friday, they sought to save themselves and their families. Saladin agreed to let them surrender the next day and set terms for their ransom. Soldiers were to be freed for an imprisoned Saracen soldier of equal rank. For the townspeople, he demanded the same sums that he’d negotiated with Balian d’Ibelin when Jerusalem yielded: ten gold bezants for a man, five for a woman, and three for a child. But by then his men were running wild in the town, and he told them to remain in the citadel for their own safety.”

“Was the death toll very high?”

Richard nodded bleakly. Many of the dead were wounded or ailing knights and men-at-arms who’d remained behind in Jaffa to regain their health. Yet he knew his army would have done the same had their positions been reversed. War was war and soldiers were the same the world over, although killing came easier to some than others.

Henri decided that he and Isabella would found a chantry to pray for the souls of those who’d died in the Jaffa siege. “I cannot even imagine their joy when your sails appeared on the horizon,” he said, reaching for a chunk of cheese, his first food of the day.

“I wish it had been that simple. Saladin got word Friday eve that I was on the way and, according to several prisoners, he tried to get his men to take the castle ere I arrived. They balked, though, some exhausted by the fighting and their wounds, others more interested in plundering the town, especially once they discovered that many of the caravan’s goods had been brought there. When Saladin heard that my ships were approaching the next morning, he sent Bahā’ al-Dīn—you remember him from our first meeting with al-’Ādil—to coax the garrison out. By now they’d seen the ships, too. There were only three galleys at first, so forty-seven men and their families agreed to come out. The rest of the garrison decided to resist now that rescue might be nigh. But as the morning wore on and we stayed offshore, they despaired, and the patriarch and castellan went to entreat Saladin to restore the original terms of surrender.”

Anticipating Henri’s question, Richard explained that they’d thought they were too late. “But then a brave priest swam out to my ship. We landed on the beach, cleared it, and I led men up a Templar stairway into the lower town. Once the garrison saw my banner, they sallied forth and we soon had them on the run. With his army in such disarray, Saladin had no choice but to withdraw to Yāzūr, taking the patriarch and castellan with him as prisoners. A pity about Bishop Ralph. But I was told the castellan had tried to flee at the start of the siege, had to be shamed into coming back and doing his duty, so he well deserves to end up in a Damascus dungeon.”

Henri started to ask how Richard had known about the stairs, but then remembered something Morgan had told him—that when they took Messina, Richard had led them to a hidden postern gate he’d discovered during an earlier reconnaissance of the city. Much of his uncle’s success as a battle commander was due to his meticulous preparations, his eye for the smallest detail. But that still did not explain how a small force of knights had been able to prevail against such overwhelming odds. “You make it sound like just another day’s work, Uncle. I wonder if Caesar or Roland or Alexander the Great were equally casual about their conquests.”

Richard laughed, always pleased to have his military skills lauded. “I will gladly take full credit for our victory at Jaffa, especially if there are any French within earshot. But we benefited greatly from the low morale of Saladin’s army. His men have been campaigning for years, are tired, homesick, and frustrated, for they’ve had few opportunities for booty since my arrival at Acre, and even soldiers fighting a holy war still expect to profit from it.”

Leaning over, Richard helped himself to a handful of pine nuts. “The men we faced had no interest in fighting, Henri, were so busy ransacking the town that they did not even realize we’d gotten ashore. We were lucky in so many ways yesterday, but I do not know how long it will hold. Jaffa’s defenses could now be overrun by a band of determined monks!”

“Not if
Malik Ric
stands astride the battlements,” André joked. Getting a skeptical look from Richard, he insisted, “No false modesty, Cousin. You’ve earned such a reputation for lunatic courage and battlefield mayhem that no sensible man wants to take you on. Even I would not!”