00 - Templar's Acre (39 page)

He passed a small chapel in which a guard from the bastion had been celebrating Mass – for the men were forced now to stagger their religious devotions – when Baldwin saw a man he
recognised. It was one of the guards from the Tower of King Henry II. He had shared a cup of water with Baldwin earlier in the day, and Baldwin nodded to him as he went by. The man grinned and
waved. That was the image that remained in Baldwin’s memory as he turned, because at that moment he saw Buscarel.

The Genoese was standing, hunting through a satchel, oblivious to Baldwin.

Baldwin was debating whether to speak to him or not when it happened.

There was a hissing groan in the air, and Baldwin felt a concussion that started in his feet and slammed upwards, with the heat of a furnace scorching his face and hands. Instinctively he
shielded his face with a crooked elbow, ducking his head, but as he did so, a splash of acid seemed to burn his temple and his wrist, and he gave a cry, so he thought, as he felt himself thrown
aside like a rag-doll, falling on his shoulder.

A missile filled with Greek fire had struck the chapel, and all the men gathered within were enveloped in flames. Mouths open in silent screams, they lurched from side to side, waving their arms
in agony. Two toppled from the flames and crawled over the still-hot stones, and Baldwin saw a man dash from a house with a cloak in his hands, throw it over one of the men, and beat out the
flames, while from within the cloak, a high keening could be heard.

Baldwin climbed to his feet filled with shock. The burning men had already fallen, some thrashing in agony, while others, mercifully, were already still. Baldwin reached the other who had run
from the flames, and found himself staring at a mask. The man’s eyes were wide, his eyelids burned away. His entire head was red, raw and blackened like a hog’s roasted over a fire, and
Baldwin was transfixed. There was nothing he could do to ease the fellow’s pain, nothing he could do to help him. The man would die, and that in extreme pain.

Buscarel barged into Baldwin, stared at the wounded man for an instant, and then cut off his head with a practised sweep of his sword.

The body sank to its knees and slowly toppled to one side while Baldwin remained frozen in place. There was a stench of oil and turpentine, combined with the smell of roasted pork.

Buscarel was already gone when Baldwin could drag himself back to the present. The road was full of men and women gazing about them with horror and incomprehension at the smouldering victims,
and the man with the cloak had unwrapped the remains of the fellow he had tried to help, and now knelt beside him, weeping silently.

That was the picture Baldwin retained as he reached the house. The man kneeling there, staring at the blackened features of his friend whose face had been burned away.

Pietro saw his expression as Baldwin walked in, and said nothing, only went and fetched a cup of strong wine.

‘Master, drink this. You need it.’

Baldwin took it, falling back onto the bench, staring at Pietro’s face without recognition. ‘His face,’ he murmured. ‘It was burned away. And I could do
nothing.’

‘Drink, Master Baldwin,’ Pietro said gently. ‘It’ll help.’

Baldwin sipped, and the first taste made him want to puke, but he drained it. Pietro replenished his cup, and then walked away.

‘You are distressed.’

Lucia had come to him, her hands clasped decorously before her. She was dressed in a shift of clean white linen. On her head was a coif of similar material, and she had tucked her hair away
beneath the cap.

‘You look lovely,’ Baldwin sighed, and gestured about him. ‘Please, take a seat.’

She looked at him for a moment, a long, considering stare, and then went to his side and seated herself on his right, perhaps six inches from him. Close enough that he could almost feel her
warmth, far enough for the distance to be a gulf.

‘Pietro said there was something wrong.’

He did not look at her. ‘There was a burning missile. So many men killed . . . burned alive.’ He felt the shudder start at the small of his back, and then he spilled wine as it shot
through him.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I am sorry.’

‘The man Buscarel, he was there,’ Baldwin said. ‘He made no attempt to harm me, but he tried to rescue a man who was burning. His flesh was afire, all over, and he was
screaming, screaming . . .’ Baldwin stopped to take in a breath. ‘It was awful. And I could do nothing to help him.’

‘Your arm,’ she said. She drew back his sleeve, and he saw for the first time the red blistering. ‘You were badly burned!’

‘It’s nothing.’ He felt as tired as death.

Lucia called for Pietro, and with his help, she made a salve from some butter and honey, and wrapped it about the wound with a bandage. After Pietro had left them, she poured Baldwin more wine.
‘Rest.’

‘How can I rest?’ he said.

She looked at him, and then helped him to his feet and took him to her chamber. The wounds on her back were healed, but the wounds in her memory remained.

In her chamber, she helped him to take off his mail and clothes. He sat on her palliasse, and she stared at his body. The wound in his flank was healed to a ribbon of scar tissue, but there were
other injuries, small cuts from swords during fighting practices with Ivo, scratches on his hands from handling so many rocks and stones, and fresh abrasions from being thrown about today. He was a
mass of more or less minor bruises, gashes and abrasions.

‘Wait there,’ she said, and fetched a bowl with water. She found a rose in the garden and took the petals from two flowers, crushing them into the water and mixing them, before
finding a clean strip of gauze and carrying them back to her room. In the garden as she passed through it, she saw Ivo sitting on the bench. He stared at her with an unreadable expression. He made
no comment as she carried on.

She found Baldwin already asleep. She took the cloth, wrung it out, and wiped his face clean. It didn’t wake him. She gently used the cloth to wipe away the dirt and grime from him, softly
murmuring a song she recalled from her childhood, a lullaby her mother had sung to her. Once, his entire body stiffened, and he cried out, but she soothed him, a hand on his brow, the other on his
breast, and his hand suddenly reached up and gripped hers, holding it there, close to his heart.

His hand had the grip of desperation. As a slave, she should remain with him if he wanted her – but tonight she was scared. The flying rocks, the sudden eruptions of flame, made her feel
as vulnerable as him.

‘I will stay here,’ she whispered. ‘I will stay at your side.’

And she lay beside him on the bed, rested her head on his shoulder, and both slept.

It was dawn when Baldwin woke. He stirred and yawned, stretching. He felt the pain in his wrist where it had been burned, and glanced at it with a sudden memory of a man
burning like a torch, his head cut loose in an instant. And then, he realised that there was a warm body lying beside him.

She said nothing, only watched him as he rose from the bed and began to walk to the door.

Then: ‘You are leaving again?’ she said.

It was her tone that stopped him. She sounded abandoned, like a recently orphaned child. He turned to smile at her, but found he could not.

‘We will die here,’ she said. ‘Won’t we?’

His smile faded. ‘I think so.’

She could see his sadness. He was lonely and despairing, she thought. His whole demeanour that of a man who was set to fail in all he had embarked upon. And in that moment, she felt a strange
conviction that of the two, she was the stronger. He was no more her slave-master than Sultan al-Ashraf. He was only a man.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Come back here.’

Baldwin walked the walls that morning with a feeling of elation. His arm was still sore, but he could not lose the grin from his face. He wanted to tell Ivo and the others how
happy he was. Lucia had been so gentle, sweet and loving, and he felt sure that he would be able to persuade her to marry him. That was what he wanted with all his heart: to make her his wife.

He stood at the hoarding where he had stood the day before. Already carpenters had been all over this section, replacing the broken roof where a rock had smashed it to tinder, repairing the
supports from bits and pieces of timber lying all about. There was nothing the Muslims could do that would break the resolve of the inhabitants of Acre, he thought. They might throw all their
missiles, but men would take heart no matter what.

At the first hissing passage of a fire-pot, he felt his heart quail, but then he stiffened his resolve with a memory of Lucia’s naked body on the bed when he left the chamber. Her smile,
her beautiful face as he kissed her, all woke in his breast a fierce determination to be as brave as she would expect him to be. He still felt the fear, but somehow Lucia’s love lighted in
him a shield against any returning terrors. He managed to put to one side the memory of the man’s face from last night, just before Buscarel’s sword took his head off.

Baldwin was still on the walls when the first assault began with the simultaneous flight of a whole mass of rocks from the catapults. He was stationed once more on the outer wall, ready to repel
a repeat of the pioneers’ attack, when the rocks crashed into the hoarding.

There was no warning. The men were peering through any arrow slits available, when Baldwin saw the catapult arms all rising with that lazy motion, like a small forest of pines in a gale, he
thought. He saw their missiles discharge, but as they reached their zenith, he lost sight of them under the overhang of the roof. There were tense moments as all the sentries waited, braced for the
shock, and then there was a rippling thunder as the massive stones pounded the walls. Some, striking further away, made the feet of the men in the hoarding tremble, and then there was a scream,
suddenly cut short, and a shudder that made the hoarding creak alarmingly. Daylight entered, blinding them.

Baldwin felt it like a leaping horse. That was how he would later describe it: like being on a charger as it leaped over a hedge – the sudden, belly-swooping moment of flight, followed by
the shock of the landing and the rippling of the hoofbeats. Except he was not on a horse.

The missile struck the hoarding at the point of the roof, and crunched through it to the parapet hidden behind. Three men had been there, and Baldwin saw their bodies left as a jelly of blood
and bones at the wall. The roof collapsed, and then the floor too disappeared, torn away by the weight of that immense rock. A man at Baldwin’s side moaned and wept, a two-foot splinter of
wood embedded in his chest. Another was staring open-mouthed at the stump of his left arm, his face white, while Hob was standing precariously at the edge of the hole, shrieking in incoherent rage
his defiance at the army on the plain – miraculously, like Baldwin, completely uninjured.

Baldwin bellowed for his men, and soon the bodies and wounded were removed, while planks were brought to replace those lost. Soon he had a rough deck nailed in place, and a low wall to protect
them from arrows. At least the rock’s progress had improved their view of the battlefield, he told himself.

It was a mass attack from the right that he noticed first of all. Glancing there, he saw an entire line of Muslims rushing forward. Many bore long ladders, and there were three of the tall,
protected scaling towers too, pushed by scores more.

Blaring trumpets from the city countered the booming thunder of the Muslim drums, and then there was a loud pealing of bells. Soon a rush of men answered the summons along the streets, and there
was a constant bellow of orders. Archers stood preparing, while Baldwin was pushed to the back of the wide walls.

‘Hob! We need archers over here!’ he bawled, gesticulating with his arms. Hob saw the danger, and brought a number of Sir Otto’s men with him. They stood stringing their bows,
staring intently down at the battle scene. Then, with wicker quivers filled with arrows set before them, they took one each and nocked it.

‘What do you reckon?’ one said.

‘Out of bowshot for us.’

‘Yeah.’

Baldwin leaned forward. ‘You must be able to hit them! They’re only a few yards away!’

‘Still too far for accuracy, vintenary. We’re better off not loosing our arrows. If we wait here, we’ll soon have targets enough.’

‘What?’

The archer glanced at him with exasperation, then jerked his chin towards the men before them. ‘Look!’

Baldwin saw that the middle of the army was moving, too. They rolled forward, and as they came, the front ranks paused, and he realised that they were all archers. In the sky, their arrows rose
like a cloud of filthy carrion crows, darkening the ground beneath; they hung there a moment, and then began to fly down towards the men on the walls.

‘’Ware! Arrows!’ Baldwin said entirely unnecessarily, and ducked.

There was a clattering, a rattle of arrows hitting steel or rock, and shrieks as men were hit. Baldwin looked about him in astonishment to see that he and all those nearest were uninjured, and
he bellowed defiance at the enemy just as the second wave of arrows arrived. The archer to his right coughed almost apologetically, as an arrow plunged into his shoulder beside his neck. He
stiffened, and tumbled from the wall.

Baldwin stared at the man’s dead body some thirty feet below. His eyes were empty, as though his soul had flown in that instant.

More arrows were falling now, and Baldwin regretted the lack of a roof over his head. It left him feeling as exposed as a tethered chicken before a fox.

There was a shout, and more men ran to the walls bearing shields to protect the archers. One of them was a youth of perhaps fourteen, Baldwin saw. He ran up, carrying a large kite-shaped shield,
and as soon as he reached the top of the wall where the roof had been burst away, he was struck in the leg by an arrow and fell, screaming shrilly, on the dead archer inside. His neck was broken
when he landed.

But the other men were there with their shields held aloft now, and the archers could maintain their fire from beneath that protection. Not that it was enough. There were so many Muslims that
the arrows made no discernible difference.