Pillars of Light (43 page)

I just remembered what the Moor had once told me. “In the end,
habibi
, money has as little value as the dust of the earth.”

I was assigned to supply boulders to God’s Stone-thrower, the massive trebuchet King Richard had taken over. It was trained exclusively on the wounded area around the Accursed Tower, while the other two great machines—in the control of the Templars on one side, and the Hospitallers on the other—weakened neighbouring parts of Acre’s walls. Some of the stones we brought were huge Sicilian boulders that had come off the king’s ships. It took several men to roll and to load them. It was easier but less effective to bring the rocks out of the damaged walls themselves, those that had been wrenched by hand by the reckless and the desperate and piled up in the king’s camp, worth more than their weight in gold.

One way or another, we kept up a constant barrage, but the city’s garrison maintained their defence: we had to shelter from arrows and bolts, from stones from their own machines, and worst
of all from the fire pots they lobbed. Time and again we beat out the flames and avoided getting the sticky substance on us. When men were set afire there was nothing anyone could do save to save them from torment. Their corpses burned on and on, like wickless candles, till there was nothing left of them but stench. I had also seen others, still burning, fed into the trebuchet bucket and hurled over the walls along with the other missiles. The first time I’d witnessed this, I could not believe my eyes, but within a week I was inured to it: just another atrocity among so many others.

A man could not take too much of this. I had seen men go mad and run for the sea, tearing off their armour and clothes, shouting that they would swim home. I would have joined them, had I been able to swim. I had also seen figures hurl themselves from the walls of the besieged city. God knew what the conditions in there were like that they would choose to destroy themselves so.

But then the next day the strangest thing happened. In the middle of the day, quite without warning, the sun disappeared and darkness fell across the battlefield: an unsettling, penumbrous light like no other I had ever experienced. Some men fell to their knees and started praying. Others, who had been watching the sky as this odd phenomenon occurred, were struck blind. People were crying out—on the walls, as well as down in the field—calling on their gods for mercy.

“God is angry with us!”

“We are all damned!”

But then, just as quickly as it had left us, the light returned, flooding the heavens. The Bishop of Salisbury raised his hands to the skies. “And the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord!”

Hammer screwed his face up in disgust. “Moon of blood tonight then, lads.”

We were reluctantly resuming our trebuchet duties when a page came running to fetch me. “John Savage. His lordship, Savaric de Bohun, demands your presence.”

It was almost with relief that I followed him to Savaric’s tent.

Unfortunately, the relief was not to last for long.

“Come with me, John,” Savaric said. “We’re going to see the king.”

If you had presented the man in the great pavilion as King Richard of England to me I would have laughed in your face. That hale, dangerous lion who had crowned himself in London, where was he? The man who sat there, hunched among cushions, looked half his size, his eyes too bright in their hoods of bone, the bright red hair lank and dark. He stared at me when I followed Savaric inside his pavilion, and when given my name he leaned forward and gripped my arm with a clammy hand. Ginger hair sprouted from huge knuckles.

“You have to go into Acre, John Savage,” he told me in a hoarse whisper, and when he drew his lips back to pronounce the city’s name I could see the blood leaking from his gums. We were all ill, all reduced in body and spirit, but to see this monster of a king in such a state was a shock. I had to force myself back to his words.

“The darkness—it was a sign, a sign that the Saracens are preparing to destroy the True Cross. We have been sorely tried, but this is the great test. If we do not save His cross we will all be damned, and our war will fail. The Church does not pray for the damned soul, did you know?” He was rambling. I was terrified.

“I have a spy who comes from the city, and he knows where they keep the cross. He will guide you to it, won’t you … boy, boy, what’s your name? Come and meet John Savage.”

A slight, dark lad came out of the shadows at the back of the pavilion and prostrated himself to the king in some strange oriental fashion. Then he got tidily to his feet and stood, hands at his sides, unblinking.

“Kamal, my lord. My name is Kamal.”

He had large, black eyes and a delicate bone structure, and just the lightest fuzz of beard. In the chancy candlelight there was something about him that was unsettling: he looked more like a girl than a boy.

What could I say? You can’t refuse a king—not to his face—and expect to survive it. I managed to bow and mumble some nonsense. But as soon as we were out of that tent again, I turned on Savaric.

“I’m not going into Acre to fetch out some old relic.”

“You could make yourself a rich man, John.”

I folded my arms. “I’m not doing it.”

“I didn’t want to resort to this, John, but … well, I would hate to have to explain to the king what happened to Geoffrey de Glanvill.”

“It’s hardly as if I was alone in that … venture.”

“And whose word do you think they will believe, if it comes to that, John?”

I closed my eyes. I was a dead man, one way or another.

To my great surprise it was not difficult to persuade the troupe to go on this fool’s mission: they’d all heard the tales of the gold squirrelled away by the Saracens in the city treasury, the jewels and coins. Such an audacious mission restored their sense of being the canny outsiders conning the gullible and the slow. After that, the talk was all of treasure and what they’d do with it: the women they’d buy, the land they’d own, the houses they’d build and, most of all, the food they’d eat.

“Roast ox, every night,” Ned said. “Smoking and hissing over a fire with two well-built wenches to turn the spit.”

“Four,” grinned Quickfinger, “stripped to the waist, because of the heat.”

“Swan,” said Will. “Stuffed with all sorts of other birds, like the king’s feast you told us about.”

I was made to rehearse yet again the entire contents of those laden tables while the troupe groaned and sighed and made themselves impossible promises. In the end, once they’d exhausted their fantasies, it was Quickfinger who asked the only sensible question.

“How do we get out? Getting in, easy enough. But getting out, laden wi’ treasure?” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

“There’s a boat,” I said, and couldn’t blame them for being dubious. I certainly had been when Savaric explained it to me.

“All you have to do is to get out past the Tower of Flies, the tower that guards the city’s harbour,” he’d said. “Get past the harbour chain and one of our ships will pick you up from there. I’ve already paid the captain a retainer.”

“You make it sound so simple,” I’d said to Savaric.

He’d nodded earnestly. “But it is, my boy, it is! That’s the beauty of it.”

He was so convinced that he’d almost convinced me. Almost.

This time the message came with a swimmer, a young man much exhausted by his ordeal. Malek aided him into the sultan’s war tent as the sun was dying. Bare-chested, he had patches of salt drying in a white crust on his skin, and all within took note of the stark geometry of his ribs. His prostration was more a collapse than a courtesy.

Salah ad-Din raised him up with his own hands and took the oilcloth-wrapped message from him. Baha ad-Din read it aloud:

“To our beloved sultan, Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, Commander of the Faithful and hope of Islam, greetings from your faithful servants Saïf ad-Din Ali al-Mashtub and Beha ad-Din Karakush. It pains us to tell you that we are so utterly reduced and exhausted that we have no choice but to surrender the city. If you do not effect anything for our rescue, we shall offer to capitulate and make no condition but that we receive our lives.”

The sultan—never outfaced by anything—put his head in his hands. When he raised it up again, he looked deathly, his skin grey and his bright black eyes dulled. Malek felt a sharp pang of sympathy for his commander.

“Do they not know that we have received reinforcements?” Salah ad-Din asked of no one in particular. A few days before, more troops from Sinjar and Egypt had ridden in, followed by Ala ad-Din, the Lord of Mosul.

“My lord, they will surely have seen the levies arriving,” his brother, Al-Adil, said quietly. “But we have not yet been able to break through the enemy lines, and the emirs will be aware of that failure.”

“The Emir of Shaizar will arrive imminently, and my nephew, too, will soon be with us. They must hold out, just a little longer. They must!” The sultan turned to the messenger. “Are you able to swim? No, don’t answer that. I know you will say you can, but it is clear to me that you are exhausted. We will send a pigeon.”

There was a quiet muttering at the back of the tent, then Imad al-Din coughed politely. “I am afraid to report, sire, that we have no pigeon to send. None have arrived from the city this day and there are none roosting in the cote.”

The sultan took up his copy of the Qur’an and opened it at random. He read silently for a moment, then quoted aloud, “ ‘Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of the air and sky? Nothing holds them up but the power of Allah. Verily in this
are signs for those who believe.’ ” He looked up and now his face was serene. “We will have faith and wait for the pigeons to arrive.”

Sure enough, two birds settled on the cote just after sunset.

The cavalry sprang into their saddles, and Malek patted Asfar’s flank. For once they were not holding back to watch the battle from on high. This time they would ride at the forefront of the army, and the sultan and his brother, in their desperation, would lead them.

Down from the hill they charged, one battalion after another, with the drums thumping and the trumpets blaring, with the orange silk banners flying and with cries of “For God and Akka!” The noise of their coming was immense, a thunder in the ground and in the air, and seeing their attack, the Franj manned their defences determinedly, setting flights of arrows to fall upon them, spears and pikes to keep the cavalry at bay. Again and again the Muslim army attacked, and every time they were repulsed, the Franj infantry standing as solid as a wall.

The sultan rode tirelessly, as restless as a mother grieving for a lost child; tears stood in his eyes as he charged from battalion to battalion, urging his men on.

Malek saw a huge Franj warrior hold a parapet on the ramparts against all comers, although pierced by dozens of arrows. It was only when one of the
naft
-throwers hurled an ignited pot of Greek fire at him that the warrior fell, his body engulfed by flame. In response, the Christians killed several prisoners, covering them in Greek fire and hoisting them up on the ramparts that guarded their trenches, so that they burned like torches. Malek, horrified, said a prayer, but could not stop looking. There was a cry behind him and to his horror he saw his own people do the same with a Franj prisoner: the smoke from the two pyres mingled, rank and acrid, making Malek’s eyes water. At least, that was the excuse he told
himself for the tears running down his face. And all the time the great machines bombarded the city.

The archers darted in and out of the cavalry, sending flights of flaming arrows over the earth ramparts towards the stone-throwers and the soldiers who manned them, but the Christian archers who stood their ground seemed to have greater accuracy. One figure in particular, wrapped in a green cloak, took a bold stance atop the rampart, shoulder to the fore, a narrow target, and sent bodkin after bodkin into the ranks of the faithful from his odd long bow, each one unerringly finding its mark. Malek whirled his horse around, beating off enemies, but every time he looked back the archer was still there with a small forest of arrows planted in front of him, letting fly, bending, taking another bodkin, nocking it to his string.
What coolness
, Malek thought, half-admiringly. Then a Franj foot soldier came up under his sword arm and tried to haul him out of the saddle and his attention was returned to the crucial matter of staying alive. Swinging hard, he struck the man with his shield until he fell beneath Asfar’s stamping hooves.

To his right, he could hear the sultan’s war cry. He turned in time to see an arrow graze the commander’s turban, carrying a clout of cloth with it as it flew, straight into the burning coal behind him. With horror, Malek saw his friend Ibrahim fall with a shout.

“Ibo!” he cried in despair. “No, Ibo!”

Digging his heels into Asfar’s barrel, he surged towards his fallen comrade, but the press of bodies was too tight, the tide of the fighting too fierce: it was as much as he could do to keep his seat. Another arrow fell close to the sultan, then another. Malek looked up and saw clearly that the green archer was the culprit, again. Suddenly wild with anger and grief, he forced Asfar through the fighting, cutting a bloody path through the Franj infantry who swarmed towards him, his sword arm rising and falling in a fury all its own.

“For Ibo!” he shouted. “For Ibrahim!”

He soon found he was not the only one to have identified the green archer as a menace. Malek saw another man draw back his arm and then the graceful arc of the lance as it flew through the air and found its mark. The green-cloaked figure toppled with a scream.

That scream drove a bolt of ice down Malek’s spine. Before he even knew what he was doing, he had spurred Asfar on towards the foot of the berm where the archer’s body lay. He saw the figure try to rise, using its bow as a crutch. Bringing the chestnut around, he leaned down out of the saddle and grabbed the archer, hauling him up and over the horse’s withers with an ease that surprised, and yet did not surprise. Then he turned and charged back through the ranks towards the sultan and his cadre.