Shield of Three Lions (51 page)

“Oh, thank you, Your Highness!” I cried. “When will he be replaced?”

“Why, never. He wants the job, just as I thought. Or,” he amended, “he wants the reward.”

“What reward did you offer?” I asked, much amazed.

“Ask him.”

I waited a decent interval, then dashed to find the Scot and do just that.

He was evasive. “Aye, yif I live and yif I get back home, I’m to have reward.”

“Yes, but what? Gold?”

He turned his look on me, his eyes still blank and almost hostile. “Put it this way, bairn: yif I want to stay in the Holy Land at all, I have to dig this hole. Then I also get reward. Yif not, I have to leave.”

There was a long silence as I absorbed his hidden message: the king would be rid of him one way or another and, though the Scot knew it, he had elected to stay with me. I turned away to hide my grief

DAY AFTER DAY ENOCH GREW grimmer. He never laughed or japed, rarely talked. He descended like a mole each morn before sunup and climbed out marrow-weary, black with ooze and powdered with dust, his eyes heavy, his spirit depressed in a way I’d ne’er seen before. Other Crusaders spoke of him as a marvel of ingenuity and labor, soothly a wizard of mining, but he took their comments with stoic disregard. It frightened me to see him so and I mourned for his former abrasive self. King Richard might replace knights and bishops in his game, but Enoch was unique. Hadn’t I learned it when he fell into the Rhône? I didn’t need the same lesson twice. But what could I do?

King Philip’s tunnel was fired and made a breach in the wall at the cost of two hundred seven Frenchmen dead, including his engineer Jean de Brun. The Saracens stood in the crack and jeered at the Christians who still couldn’t approach the wall because of the deep moat at its base. But, as Richard pointed out, the breach had its encouraging effect, and every day he urged his men to scale the wall. The point here, he explained, was that the
enfants perdus
were the advance for the men who
would
get over the wall and were thus preparing them spiritually for the Herculean task.

Twice the king had relapses of his disease while Philip continued to improve. During these periods the French king took command, but on the day Richard’s tunnel was to be fired the English king was there.

I helped Enoch prepare, rubbed his woad onto his back and legs.

“This micht be farewell, Alex.”

I saw that he was serious and felt my heart thud to my feet.

“The king is certain you’ll succeed—I’ve heard him say so. Soothly Enoch, many times.”

He nodded, lips twisted. “Aye, that we schal. The tunnel will blow, the wall will fall. But it still micht be farewell. As a Scot I tell thee true: my chances be about the same as a snow blizzard this day.”

Fanfare blared in the distance and he took my arms.

“List to me lad, and hear me good. Yif I die today,
doona continue on this Crusade.
”

His blazing eyes frightened me near to a swoon.

“What do you mean? Where would I go?”

“Home, home to Wanthwaite. Gae to Malcolm first in Paris and ask him to help. I mun gae, so pay heed: there’s a bundle tied under Twixt’s pillion for ye to use for expenses yif it cums to that.”

He was offering me money. I felt such a mix of gratitude, terror and astonishment that I couldn’t speak.

“Buy passage on the next ship. And Alex, forgit the king. Nay, dinna deny that ye dote on him—anyone can see it. Ye’re a silly bairn and he’s a great hero sae it’s to be expected, but such a fate be nocht in yer stars.”

“What fate?” I couldn’t help asking.

“I doona think I need to explain. Promise!”

To keep him from worrying more, I promised, for I, too, couldn’t explain. Yet, I remembered well from Messina, the king had warned me that if I tried to leave the Crusade I would lose Wanthwaite.

The Scot took my cheeks and kissed me, then ran down the hill. I washed off the woad and somberly followed him.

I joined the king at his pavilion where he mounted his litter to be carried onto the field while foot ran beside him supporting his
testudo
overhead, a hurdle roofed with wicker-work and hides. I took a quiver of heavy steel quarrels for his arbalest, for there was an opening in his bombproof for him to aim his deadly arrows. Enoch had been furious that I was to go into the field but I wore my helmet, could crouch behind Richard’s shield; there was an inpenetrable aura around the king which made all of us close to him secure.

A declivity had been dug for his leopard skins with a good view of where the tunnel would explode and we all kept our eyes anxiously on the spot. The Muslims were still at prayers, the Christians should have been at Matins. We watched, silent, hardly breathing.

Enoch’s still alive, I thought, but three heartbeats from now he may be dead. What would the world be like without Enoch? Once before I’d faced the possibility and almost died myself.

Then it began, an uneasy rumble and sway in the earth’s gut, an explosion of smoke and fire to rival Mount Etna as flames shot upward carrying huge rocks as if they were feathers. Right before us the Accursed Tower cracked, shuddered, leaned and stayed at an impossible
angle as soldiers below scurried away from its imminent fall and Turks in the gap behind stared with disbelief at their sudden exposure.

“Good work!” the delighted king shouted. “Into the breach, men! Climb the wall!”

Meantime I turned to the tunnel’s entrance awaiting the emergence of the first sappers. Soothly they must have survived—no bodies had shot upward. Yet how could they live through such hellfire? One by one they crept out, blackened, exhausted, exhilarated men.

And Enoch was there!

“He’s alive!” I said triumphantly.

“Of course,” Richard replied, then registered my tone and continued coldly. “I surmise that he didn’t tell you what his reward is to be, Alex. You should follow the Plantagenet method of dealing with the Scots and learn to use them, but never trust them.”

I wanted to answer, but this was not the time. Also, a thought stirred that I’d repressed in my fear: Was Enoch’s reward connected to Wanthwaite? Was his willingness to risk his life more connected to my property than to me?

BY LATE AFTERNOON THE KING was waxing angry, for no one could reach the wall across the wide deep moat.

“After them, you cowards! Pull it down! Two gold bezants for a stone off the wall!”

Spurred by gold, several Pisanos gave their lives for naught. Knights tried to leap their horses o’er the ditch and were rewarded with Greek fire dropped directly on their heads, turning them into burning effigies!

“Three bezants! For England and St. George!” the king shouted.

“I’ll enter Acre today or die trying!” a brave knight cried as he spurred his mount forward.

“Albert de Clement,” Richard said. “He’ll triumph if anyone can.”

We watched Albert scramble on foot down the moat, somehow emerge on the other side, start a hand-over-hand ascent up the sloping stone. Reach the top! Go over! Moments later a Saracen appeared
wearing Albert’s helmet. The king took careful aim and shot him through the heart.

“Four bezants!” Richard cried.

Our arrows brought down so many Saracens that the moat began to fill with dead bodies.

“Use the bodies as a bridge!” the king called.

Darkness fast descended. Trumpets sounded the end of the battle and knights retreated for well-earned rest. But not Richard. He sent me to his pavilion to fetch refreshment while he conferred with his captains.

The moon floated full o’er the scene of carnage and despair. One by one, silent Saracens appeared on their parapet, let down ropes to descend so they could collect their dead. One by one King Richard and his knights picked them off and slowly, slowly, the moat was filled. Guards were placed to make certain our bridge of corpses remained in place, and the king finally retired.

AT DAWN THE SICK KING WAS again in place.

Mategriffon was pulled to the edge of the mushy ditch. Finally the mules were whipped, the monstrous structure crunched o’er human bones and gore right to the wall’s edge. Tun after tun of Greek fire struck the piss-soaked hides to no avail, and now the Crusaders could shoot directly into the city.

Then there was fanfare behind us! From the hills thundered white clouds of Arabs on their magic steeds. “Aid for Islam! Aid for Islam!”

For a moment the Crusaders quailed, were thrown off balance. What we all dreaded more than anything: Saladin attacking our rear!

“Take heart and fight, you cowards!” the king bellowed hoarsely.

E’en so, ’twas a scene of panic. Drums throbbed without end, horsemen leaped howling through smoke o’er the heads of foot in the trenches, green banners flowed. All kinds of strange men: dervishes whirling like madmen in their red skirts, Egyptian mamluks in mail, black Kurds with long shining scimitars and painted shields, saffron-cloaked
Halka.
Everywhere a melee of noise, confusion,
cries, the clang of sword against sword, animals neighing in terror, the pound of stone on stone.

“Christ and the Sepulcher! Christ and the Sepulcher!” chanted the foot as they took deadly aim at the horses’ bellies when they leaped the trenches.

“Islam!”

“Christ!”

But our king had anticipated the fearful tactic and now waved his banner thrice to waiting knights on Toron Hill. Men of steel, lances held horizontally before them, rode in tight formation as one body down into the fray. The Saracens were trapped. Now mayhem intensified. Through rolling clouds of dust we watched the panicked white eyes and bared teeth of stalwart destriers as they took mortal wounds, great knights slowly tumble to the ground in clattering heaps, and everywhere the flow of blood. At last, hours later, the Saracens regrouped the remnants of their gaudy forces and limped back o’er the hills whence they had come. And we turned once more to the wall.

Richard sent the signal to intensify the battering of the tower where it leaned as if jug-bitten. One great
belier
tower after another was put into action, drawn closer to increase the damage; another shudder and ’twas down! A roar filled the skies!

Hour after hour the fighting continued without letup, ever fiercer, ever deadlier. Then King Richard rose from his pelt.

“My horse!” he demanded.

Nothing could stop him. Followed by Leicester, Hugh le Brun, Andrew de Chauvigny and the Bishop of Salisbury, his great figure rode into the swirl and scream of the battle. I didn’t breathe for an hour as I watched. His long arms turned like windmills, his shield in one hand, his broadsword in the other, as heads rolled at his feet. Never had anyone seen such a sight! E’en the Turks paused, awed by his invincible prowess. On and on he rode, right up the wall I trowe, a powerful god-king and no one could stop him.

Into darkness he fought as bodies piled high in the moat, towers pulled to the wall one after the other, stones peeled away like fish scales. Then there was a giant shout in the darkness!

Acre had surrendered!

It was July twelfth, almost exactly one month since our arrival. King Richard had kept his word.

RICHARD PAID FOR HIS MAGNIFICENT LEADERSHIP with a brief relapse in his health, but he was still able to dictate the terms of peace. He ordered all Turks to leave Acre forthwith except for three thousand emirs who volunteered themselves as hostages until Saladin should fulfill Richards demands for a huge ransom of gold, a return of Christian prisoners and the True Cross. However, our wise king set a deadline for the sultan so we would not be bogged down in Acre forever.

I was witness to these exciting negotiations as the king now kept me near him in his pavilion. Once his hot eyes beamed from his pale face and he whispered, “We’ll have a palace instead of a tent, Cupid.”

Then that same day a runner arrived from Tyre with the news that the queen had left Cyprus, their buss was expected at any moment. Caught utterly off-guard, the king’s face became suddenly unmasked and for a fleeting moment I witnessed such childish terror as I’d never seen before in the most timorous soldier. ’Twas gone in an instant but left an imprint like that from looking directly into the sun.

Quickly he recovered and expressed his pleasure, saying that a suitable palace must be found for the royal couple, glancing at me as he gave the order. For days afterward, I pondered that panicked expression, much perplexed. That the king might be repelled by his queen I could understand, or irritated, or bored, or resentful. But fear? From a king notorious for not knowing the meaning of the word? How had poor little Berengaria managed to strike such terror in a lion’s breast?

FOR ONCE THE KING’S FAVORITE ADAGE “As we are seen, so are we esteemed” couldn’t apply to our entrance into Acre, for we marched
through empty streets. Enoch and I rode directly behind a group of bishops who broke into loud sobs as we passed the many churches in this Christian city Pointing to whitewashed walls, they bemoaned the mosaic saints lost under the paint, or they keened loudly for the empty altars, or the rounded minarets set atop Christian towers.

“You’d think they’d found quhat they expected,” Enoch commented dryly. “Circumcision blood in the baptismal fonts and worse on the altars.”