Crusade (80 page)

Rose’s face was stained with smoke and her hair was lank with sweat. One of her hands and part of her arm had been badly burned by the fire, the skin shriveled and raw. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack.

“Dear God,” murmured Simon, kneeling beside her and taking her good hand in his. “Rose, can you hear me? Rose?”

“Is she alive? Tell me she’s alive.”

Simon looked around. Garin had somehow dragged himself to his feet and was stumbling over. His arms reached out as he saw Rose and he let out a howl. “Oh God, no!” He pushed past Simon and threw himself down beside Rose, draping his burned body over hers. “Rosie!” he cried, in a ravaged voice. His head jerked round at the stunned groom. “Simon, do something,” he begged. “Bring her back!”

“What happened?” demanded Simon. “Where’s Elwen?”

Garin looked from Rose’s limp body to the blazing house. “I tried to save them,” he whispered. “I tried.”

“Jesus,” said Simon, staring up at the house. “Where is she?” he growled. “What room?”

But Garin had draped himself back over Rose. “I never meant to hurt you, my baby,” he babbled madly. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Leaving him, Simon ran to the front door. He stepped inside and was struck by a wall of heat. Shielding his face, he inched forward into the thick gray clouds that were spewing out. He could hardly see a thing. He heard a roaring sound, and as he passed the foot of the stairs, he saw the fire raging above him in the gallery, devouring the walls, boiling and rippling across the ceiling. He could hear timbers spitting and groaning, and guessed that he didn’t have long. At the end of the passage was a door. Clamping his hand over his mouth and nose, Simon shouldered it open and lurched into a kitchen hazy with smoke. The place was a mess. He went forward a few feet and stumbled over something on the floor. Looking down, he saw a man lying in a pool of blood. His throat had been cut. Backing away, feeling his eyes begin to smart, Simon returned to the passage. Steeling himself, he began to climb the stairs.

Heat beat down on him like a fist from the inferno above. It forced him back, making him shout with pain and frustration. Sweat welled up and dripped down his face. He tried again, but he was choking now, faint and blind with smoke. He couldn’t go on. Dropping to his knees, Simon clawed his way along the passage, out into the blessed air. He lay there gasping, until his eyes cleared and he realized that although Rose was still lying where he had left her, Garin had gone. As he crawled to her, through the tatters of smoke now drifting out across the street, he saw a rider in white coming toward him.

Will dismounted as he saw Simon crawling from the burning house. He sprinted to him, then staggered to a stop as he saw the body of his daughter, lying motionless in the street. His throat, his mouth, every part of him slammed shut at the sight of her. Terror clogged him up like cement, hardening to stone inside him. His whole being went rigid as his mind first tried to make sense of, then tried to deny, what he was seeing.

“Will!” croaked Simon, scrabbling to his feet.

Will stared dumbly at him. Then his eyes moved past him to the burning house, and now the terror was liquid, flowing through him in a freezing, rushing torrent. “Elwen!” he shouted, running to the door.

Simon went after him. “Will, no!” he shouted hoarsely. “You’ll never get in.” He grabbed hold of his mantle.

Will fought him savagely, yelling Elwen’s name. He landed a punch on Simon’s chin, breaking his hold, then plunged headlong into the building, his mouth and eyes filling instantly with smoke. It was like being suffocated. Already, the stairs were burning. Will reached them and began to climb, now gasping Elwen’s name. The heat from above was incredible. He held his arm over his face, grunting as his skin seared and tightened painfully. The hairs on the back of his hand frazzled and burned away. But still he climbed, one step, then another. Above him, there was a groan and a crack as a timber in the upstairs hall collapsed. Flames and sparks swept down toward him, and he threw himself down the stairs, collapsing in a heap at the bottom as embers rained down around him. He roared hoarsely in rage, picked himself up and tried again. But the fire was winning, the heat and the smoke now forcing him to his knees. And he hated it. Hated the bright and hungry flames. Hated his own weak flesh. Hated God for making him so feeble. There were other creaking, groaning sounds as more timbers began to disintergrate above him. Then, strong arms were grabbing him, pulling him out into air.

This time, his strength recovered, Simon clung to Will determinedly. The two men pulled and pushed against each other, panting and straining with the effort. But Will, already wounded and exhausted from battle, soon slumped in Simon’s arms. He howled with frustration. As he went limp, Simon dragged him back, away from the door. Inside the house, one of the floors upstairs collapsed, sending flaming timbers crashing down into the hall and clouds of smoke gusting out. The building was now engulfed in flames. Nothing, no one, could stand that heat.

The realization hit Will like a hammer, knocking all feeling out of him with the shock of it. He took hold of Simon’s tunic. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” gasped Simon. “The house was on fire when I got here.” He looked away, unable to meet Will’s murderous stare. “I tried to go in and find Elwen, but I couldn’t. Garin pulled Rose out.” His eyes drifted to Rose’s lifeless body. “But he was too late.”

Will let go of Simon’s tunic. “Garin?” he said numbly. “Garin was here?”

Simon dragged his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what happened, Will. There was a man in the kitchen, murdered. Garin was hurt from the fire and crying over Rose. He was saying all these things.”

“What things?”

“None of it made any sense.” Simon sucked in a breath. “He said something about not meaning to have hurt her. He kept calling her his baby. He was raving mad, I swear.”

Will stared down at Rose. “Where is he now?” His voice was glacial, devoid of emotion. All feeling had dammed inside him. There was a wall between him and his heart.

“He was gone by the time I came back out.”

Will looked to the east as he heard the frantic sound of horns lifting on the wind. A bell began ringing, then another. “They’re inside,” he murmured detachedly. He knelt beside Rose and took her lifeless hand in his. Closing his eyes he put his lips to her fingertips, then placed her hand gently on her chest and turned to Simon. “Go to the preceptory. I want you to take . . .” He paused, a crack starting in the wall inside him, breaking through into his voice. He swallowed it back. “Take my daughter’s body. Don’t you leave her, Simon, do you understand me? Don’t you dare leave her.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find Garin.”

“You don’t even know where he is!” shouted Simon, as Will crossed to the destrier.

“Garin is a rat and this ship is sinking. He’ll be wherever the best chance of escape is. He’ll be at the harbor.”

“You wife and daughter are dead,” cried Simon in a strained voice, as Will kicked his spurs into the beast’s flanks. “Killing Garin won’t change that. Save yourself, I beg you. Come with me!”

But Will was gone, charging down the street in a cloud of dust and fury.

THE DOCKS, ACRE, 18 MAY A.D. 1291

The call of alarm had gone up. Bells and horns and trumpets sounded. The Mamluks had broken through.

They came on camels and horses, swords flashing in the morning light, their cloaks and armor a storm of shimmering color. They came in a hail of arrows and fire, and the deafening rhythm of the kettledrums. They came on foot with mace and axe, and burning torches that they tossed onto rooftops and at the base of siege engines. They came with two centuries of slaughter and oppression in their minds, and a call for vengeance in their hearts that, for some, in the madness of battle, turned into a vicious lust for blood and butchery.

After a brief, bitter struggle, St. Anthony’s Gate finally fell, the remaining Templars and Hospitallers, along with King Henry’s soldiers, retreating before the surging Mamluks, now pouring through in their thousands. Jean de Villiers was wounded. Some of his knights carried him down to the last Hospitaller ship in the harbor, whilst others retreated to their fortress. On the walls, the Franks’ great mangonels were burning. The Mamluks had stormed the Pisans’ camp, slaughtering any man they found and, from there, entered the German quarter garrisoned by the Teutonics, where the killing continued. On the seaward side, by the Tower of the Legate, another breach soon appeared, and although the crossbowmen left to the city by King Louis and the English knights under Othon de Grandson fought the Mamluks ruthlessly, it wasn’t long before they too had to retreat, leaving dead and dying comrades behind them.

Down on the harbor, it was chaos. The last few boats were being filled, and more were sailing out when the bells began to sound. Soldiers, fleeing the battle, rode down to the docks to alert all those still there that the city had fallen. They shouted to the milling, frightened women to get back inside their houses, to hide and wait out the violence. But their words were soon lost in shouts and cries of terror as those at the back began to force their way forward, trying to get to the last boats. A stampede began. Women and children screamed as they were pushed from the wall and went toppling into the water. Sailors on the boats managed to reach down and haul some of them on board, and a few women, those able to swim, plunged in to pull children back to the wall. But many more drowned in the deep water, mothers flailing and splashing, screaming for their babies as they went under. The patriarch of Jerusalem, Nicholas de Hanape, who had been waiting in the pinnace for the ships ahead to move out through the chain, had ordered the crew of the little vessel to row back to shore, much to the protests of the bishops with him. “We can save some of them,” he had croaked in his aged voice. “We have to save some.”

There were more people in the water now, swimming out to the retreating boats. Some of them reached the patriarch’s vessel, and Nicholas himself bent over to offer his hand to help them in. But soon there were too many of them.

“Away!” shouted one of the bishops to the men at the oars. “Away!”

But the terrified refugees were scrabbling into the back of the boat or clinging desperately to the sides, not heeding the bishop’s calls. One of the crewmen got pushed into the water and lost an oar. The boat began to tip with so many people hanging onto it. One of the bishops snatched an oar and began battering at their heads and hands, trying to fend them off. He was purple-faced and screaming, his eyes wild. But although some of the people he struck relinquished their hold and slipped down under the water, knuckles shattered, skulls cracked, it was too late for the pinnace. After a few moments, it lurched to the right and water gushed over the sides, and a moment after that it rolled over, tossing everyone on board into the water, trapping some of them beneath it. Nicholas de Hanape flailed and gasped for a short while, before the dark water closed over his head. The last thing he saw was Acre’s skyline lit up in flames and a seething mass of citizens left behind on the dockside.

Into this turmoil rode Will. He cantered through the city gates onto the harbor wall, people scattering before him. He forced his horse on through the crush, not heeding the calls of panic all around him. His eyes roved, searching for Garin. Simon had said he had been hurt. He couldn’t have gone far. The crowds at the back, near the rows of ramshackle taverns and warehouses, were thinning. People, realizing that they wouldn’t make it out by boat, were heading back into the city, looking for places to hide. The fate of Tripoli was still fresh in their minds. There, the rape and slaughter had mostly been confined to the streets. Those who remained inside until the soldiers were brought to heel and the bloodlust dissipated were spared death. For many, hope now lay in the mercy of the Mamluks.

Will steered his horse through the fleeing mob, wheeling the beast to check behind him and across the water. The bay was filled with ships, all sailing out. Starting to worry that he had been wrong and that Garin hadn’t come here, he began calling to people, asking if they had seen a man who had been burned. Most people rushed past, ignoring him, but one elderly man pointed east along the docks. Will saw a line of figures scrambling along the eastern mole toward a Templar ship moored in the outer harbor. One, a lone man, was at the back, stumbling along. Digging his spurs into his horse, Will cantered across the harbor to the point where the mole stretched out from the shore. The mole, bitten by the windswept sea, was ancient and crumbled, some sections so eroded that the sea washed across them. Leaving his horse on the harbor, Will raced along the mole, splashing through the blue water that rushed and dragged over the stones. To his left, the open sea churned, deep and dark; to his right, the outer harbor was calm and green. His feet slipped and slid on the slimy stones, threatening to plunge him into the black, rolling waves. “Garin!” he shouted, as he gained on the figure. He was gratified to see the man jerk around at the call.

Garin’s face was badly burned, and he clutched his hands to his chest as if they pained him. His tunic had been incinerated; just a few ragged scraps of it still fluttered about his chest, and some of the material had been burned into his skin in black, scorched patches. He took a few stuttering steps back as he saw Will, then turned and ran, following the line of women, all heading for the Templar ship with its renegade captain. Will went after him, leaping from one exposed rock to the next. Garin, throwing a glance over his shoulder, saw that he wasn’t going to make it. He turned and drew his dagger as Will wrenched free his sword.

The two of them staggered to a halt, the hungry sea gnawing the rocks between them.

Garin’s face was clenched with pain, but his expression, although defiant, held a look of resignation. “Let us do what must be done then,” he called, his voice thick with pain and drink.

Will felt a decade’s worth of hatred explode inside him at the sight of Garin. “What did you do? What did you do to my daughter?”