A Flame Run Wild (21 page)

On the night before sighting Acre, Alexandre watched Liliane stir restlessly. He was aware of her every movement. . . and her deep hurt. He slouched gloomily against the gunnel. He could not even make love to her, to do so now would be to say goodbye twice, and he could not bear that. He wanted to comfort her, but he knew that if he forgave her too quickly, she would fasten herself like a crab to him. Her acquiescence at being sent home deceived him not at all. She had no intention of returning to France, but she would do so if he had to strap her to a wine cask!

* * *

Near dusk of the next day, they sighted Acre. The best port on the Palestine coast, the city lay in the shallow northern curve of the bay of Acre. A vast white-gold desert spread inland from Acre past Mount Carmel to the distant Galilean foothills that shielded Lake Tiberias. The setting sun glinted off the great onion domes and minarets that rose above the city behind its long, heavy wall.

Siege machines had shattered most of the tall palms on the highest city terraces; splintered stubs jabbed at the sky. The city wall bounded the sea and wound above the harbor streets where ramshackle shops still functioned. Several moored ships stood offshore, and shelters constructed from dismantled ships strewed the upper beaches above the tide line. Beyond the dunes, the camp spread to the siege trenches, now emptied for the day as were the ramparts of the city. Eastward, hidden in the great desert dunes, lay the camp of Saladin, who had come to give what relief he could to the besieged city by raiding the crusaders.

Once in the harbor, Liliane had planned to jump overboard and swim past the anchored ships for shore, but when they passed the Tower of Flies, she had second thoughts. The water, though clean enough offshore, was filled win floating garbage and ships' debris in the harbor area. A thick sludge of sewage had gathered in the coves protected from the sea breeze; eventually it would edge out with the tide, but it rolled and stank. Alexandre's discouragement was quicker to the point. He slipped a rawhide tether about her wrist and cinched it to his before she realized what he was doing. "I could not bear to lose you," he quipped in Arabic, dropping her loose sleeve down to conceal the cord as he led her a little apart from the rest of the men leaning over the tilting gunnels.

As Liliane gave him an angry look, her free hand crept to her waist for her dirk. It was gone! He had stolen it! She jerked at the thong and Alexandre laughed softly. "Calm down, friend. You will miss little in leaving Acre. Sieges are ranch like that sewage; their stink never seems to go away but lingers long after the city is taken. King Richard may have his faults, but he knows how to conduct an assault. If the Saracens will has not been broken by now, the day he does break it will be some time in coming and will be an ugly sight. Tomorrow will dawn hot and miserable, as will all the days that follow, and the army will grow meaner with each moment they sweat." His face sobered as he pointed to the Tower of Flies. "When Acre falls, you will not see the base of that tower because of the pile of bodies. Women and children will not be spared. I do not want you here for that."

"Alexandre, I am not a child," she replied quietly as the ship docked and the crewmen tossed lines to the quay. "I can endure Palestine if you can. Let me stay. If I take care, no one need know who I am.

"I knew, three days out. How long could you hide your sex from a sergeant or banneret? Twenty minutes in the field and you would be spotted. Besides"—the wrist tether tightened a notch— "I am damned if I will risk your neck. No more arguments." Once the ship was secure, he propelled her ahead of him up the creaking ladder. When they reached the quay, he did not bother to wait for his servants and belongings, but curtly ordered the shipmaster to see to them. Then he led Liliane toward the nearest loading merchant ship.

With the chattering Kiki clutching her neck, Liliane stumbled behind him. "Slow down!" she hissed. "Everyone will suspect something is amiss if you keep dragging me along like a puppet!"

Alexandre did not ease his pace. "I shall worry about that when you are in the middle of the Mediterranean. Pick up your dainty feet, my sweet."

The first merchant lateener was sailing for Rhodes. Alexandre applied to another one and was told Palermo. As he began to dicker in fluent Italian with the oily-tongued captain over the price of her passage, Liliane cast a quick, desperate look about the quay. In Alexandre's current mood, he would arrange for her to be stowed in the cargo hold until the ship was a day out. A few feet away, a sullen camel was being unloaded. Rolled rugs were stacked by the animal's feet on its near side; two rugs still remained on its back. Liliane eased closer to Alexandre, then loosened the slack loop about her wrist. Scratching Kiki's chest, she whispered in her ear, "
Allez
! Make trouble, Kiki!" That being one of her favorite orders, Kiki's small eyes gleamed, her teeth baring in anticipation.

The monkey leaped through the air to land atop the camel's neck. Scrambling to its head, Kiki screamed in its ears, then wrung them industriously. The camel exploded with pain and rage. The rugs still aboard the creature came flying off his back, and everyone, including Alexandre and the wide-eyed culprit who began the whole display, ducked.

Liliane had seen a camel in full froth, but never at so close a range. The spectacle was horrifying. His eyes rolled, teeth snapped, head snaked, spittle sprayed. The dockhands shrieked as spatulate hooves flayed with a startling reach at the nearest targets.

Liliane was so eager to distance herself from the beast that for the first few seconds, she forgot her purpose in arousing its ire. Then, observing the way Kiki bounced precariously atop the camel's skull, Liliane remembered haste, whether suicidal or not, was in order. With a quick tug, she slipped from Alexandre's loop and, her heart in her throat, bounded atop the pile of rug rolls and onto the camel's hump. The sensation was that of leaping into a tornado with teeth.

With a furious yell, Alexandre grabbed for the camel's bridle at the same moment its head snaked back for Liliane's leg. Alexandre missed and Liliane slammed her booted foot against the camel's bared teeth. She grabbed the startled animal's bridle, jerked its head in the direction of freedom and gave him a mighty whack in the ribs with her heels. Giving a ferocious shriek, he reared. Alexandre, with one arm shielding his head, grabbed at Liliane's ankle as the camel's cursing owner tried to drag her off from the other side. Alexandre nearly connected with an accurate hoof while the owner met Kiki's vicious little teeth. With a shout, the man grabbed his bleeding hand. When the camel's mad spin pointed his head to the quay entry, Liliane jabbed its rump with her steel brooch pin.

The camel exploded into a dead run. Trying to toss his rider off, he crowhopped and leaped dock cargo. Her spine ready to snap, Liliane screamed in Arabic for the quay to clear: She need not have bothered—everyone capable of running was in motion. She and the camel were called many foul names, most wasted on a non-Mohammedan and an animal preoccupied with murder.

Alexandre pounded off after the pair, but the camel had disappeared into the harbor alleys. For a few minutes, shrieks and howls from frightened pedestrians marked its passage. Finally, all Alexandre could hear was the rising note of panic in Liliane's fading shouts. Sick with worry, he stumbled to a halt with his chest heaving. Not only had he lost Liliane, but that crazy camel was apt to kill her.

Flattening Liliane was more the camel's intent. Although not clever, he discovered that walls, carts and people were not scraping her off. A low arch off the main street offered a new solution. Liliane ducked but not quickly enough. The arch scraped her painfully off the camel and onto the dirty cobbles. With the breath knocked from her lungs, she lay stunned, amid citrus peels and unnameable, slippery refuse. Fortunately, Kiki's cluttering penetrated her rattled brain in time to realize that the camel had perceived the success of his maneuver and was gamboling back for a leisurely trample that would permanently add her to the general mess on the street. With a wheezing groan, Liliane crawled to a window lintel and dragged herself up. The camel trotted closer.

Merciful heaven, she could hardly walk! What was she going to do? Overhead hung a tattered awning. Liliane grabbed for her dirk, then remembered that it was gone. She yanked the awning's cord; it snapped, but a corner of the awning tore. Dizzily, Liliane caught the edge and pulled hard. It ripped and fell down just as the vengeful camel came under the arch. She swung the awning hard against the beast's muzzle. The instant the cloth tangled about the camel's head, Liliane scrambled down, limping hurriedly away from where the camel was rending its new affliction. Kiki scampered after her.

Liliane scooped up the small creature to quiet its telltale cluttering and set off down the first alley. Her head was clearing, but with every step her body protested more heatedly. Tomorrow, if she could escape that rotten-tempered camel, she was going to feel even worse. When she lurched around another corner, she heard no sound of pursuit—apparently the camel had been diverted to shredding the awning.

After walking some distance in confusion through the harbor streets beyond Acre's great wall, Liliane came upon the sweep of tents and makeshift huts of the joined camps of King Guy of Jerusalem and King Philip. Rubbing her bruised shoulder, she sank to a halfhearted squat. The camp was a warren of erratic "streets" strung aimlessly together. The fringes that caught the sea breeze were jammed with tents and hovels, while the ones that neared the siege trenches and desert dunes were open and empty. Saracen raiders would be roaming those dunes at night. Any crusader venturing far to relieve himself might be relieved' of a working gullet, as well.

Odd bits of fabric, goatskins and horsehides patched together most of the tents; even by night, Liliane could see how the recently pitched French tents had already bleached in the relentless sun, the folds of their draping showing their original colors. A cluster of makeshift bordellos lay nearest the harbor town. The largest bordello was in a rundown two-story building with Moorish screens at its windows. Business was already brisk, and laughter spilled into the canvas-lined alley.

The camp stank. It was raucous with wandering soldiers, boisterous wenches and restless livestock. The usual disorder was aggravated by the arrival of Philip's army the previous week. French soldiers were already in scattered brawls with Guy's men, and the routiers were busy trying to maintain a boundary between the camp already established on the best site and the new discontented army of men. Liliane took care to skirt the chaotic French camp and the pole-mounted torches that cast a feeble, scattered glow over the allies. Fires and cooking pots sent up a greasy, sooty smoke that hazed the early evening air.

Liliane wrinkled her nose. She was hungry, even if the stench of burned mutton was unappetizing. Taking the Byzantine cross from beneath her aba and displaying it broadly, she ventured near a tent that gave off the odor of garlic and other savories. Unfortunately, the delicious odor was that of roast pig, and Liliane's experience was that converted Mohammedans did not usually convert to Christian diet. She prowled a bit farther, but soon thought better of purchasing a meal. Guy's soldiers, more wary of Saracens than the French, gave her dangerously suspicious looks. Being unarmed, she decided that her wisest tactic was retreat. With empty stomachs and without blankets, she and Kiki retired to a chilly night on the beach.

Chapter 9

~

The Leopard and The Unicorn

Below the walls of Acre

April 1191

L
iliane meant to wake before dawn and be off into the harbor streets, where she would draw less attention and be able to buy new weapons; however, she awakened to the rumble of siege engines and the sleepy challenges of King Guy's men to the Moors within the city. New to the game, the French scurried about like nervous fox terriers. King Guy was weary from badgering the Saracens alone for two years, and as he had broken a treaty with them to keep the peace, he was more dogged and desperate than fired by holy zeal. If the Saracens cornered him again, they would claim his head. He began to harass his enemy at first light.

Liliane ran along the shore to the harbor quarter to buy weapons and a few bland mouthfuls of ganoush for herself and Kiki. Unsure what martial experience she would face, she left the bitterly protesting Kiki with the food vendor. A few coins and a cold warning that she would slit the vendor's throat if he lost the monkey gave her reasonable assurance of retrieving her pet if she survived the next day. If she did not return by sunset, the vendor was to take Kiki to Alexandre de Brueil, the powerful French
effendi
. Kiki's delivery would assure Alexandre that he had no more need to worry about returning his errant wife to France. For her sake, he would care for the engaging creature.

When she returned via the dunes toward the battle, she saw that the siege lines were strung from south to north. Guy's flags flew over the south; Philip's white and gold fleurs-de-lis over the north. The bang of hammers and rake of adzes by carpenters laboring to build siege engines roused anyone inclined to loiter. Farther down the beach, squires and hostlers hurriedly led strings of horses to be exercised before the sun rose high enough to sear their skulls. As Liliane neared the battle lines, she saw she must leave the dunes lest she be mistaken for a Saracen scout. Not daring to recross the camp ditch by daylight, she wriggled and scrambled through the dunes to a patch frequented by the grooms. There she waited her chance, then fell in alongside the rear of a passing string as if she belonged to the group. Before the lead groom noticed her, she was back in the camp.

The archers with their wicker shields were already in place, while scattered knights gave directions to the siege crews and routiers. Alexandre was standing near Philip, who was examining scrolls on a folding table and issuing instructions to the foreman of several carpenters working on an odd-looking catapult. After a glance at the scroll, Alexandre appeared more interested in the points at which sappers were boring beneath the massive city walls. Occasionally, he looked around, his hunter's eyes sharply scanning the alleys of the siege camps, and win a jab of apprehension, Liliane realized he was looking for her.

She ducked behind a wine cask alongside a driftwood and plank tank near the looming Accursed Tower. Half a dozen doxies appeared with water jugs on their heads and baskets of bread to feed the troops already on the line. They drew immediate attention from the men, and aware that Alexandre's male interest would also be alerted, Liliane hastily deserted her shelter for one less open. A few laggards crawled from their tents to relieve themselves and grab a quick bite from the cooking pots before gathering up their arms and heading for their loosely assigned positions. Liliane was glad her
haik
hid her expression. She was no prude, but so many men squatting openly with dropped braies was a startling spectacle. So intent was she on not staring that she nearly ran into a large tent jotting info the path. Jacques's banner with his red boar fluttered in the morning breeze from the sea. Her spine pricked as she shrank back into a canvas alley. She was beginning to feel like a silly ewe lamb stumbling about a den of lions.

Several guards and men-at-arms were gathered about a low fire whose pot emitted a savory odor that knotted her stomach with hunger although she had eaten scarcely an hour before. The soldiers were fine-tuning their weapons as they awaited their master. As so few men were about, Liliane decided the others must have gone ahead to the siege lines with Louis. She soon found out that she was wrong.

Hearing steps behind her, Liliane moved hastily to clear the path, only to find herself eye to eye with Louis. Hastily, she salaamed, backing away with her head low. Louis flicked a signal to one of his men who snagged her sleeve. "What are you doing hanging about here, you infidel scum!"

Having learned as a child that Louis respected only strength, she drew herself up with a great show of outraged dignity. She snapped her sleeve from the guard's grasp, then shoved the thumbs of her trembling hands into her waist sash. "I am Jefar el din, Christian prince of the Siwans and counselor to
Melek
Philip. I go where I like, you insolent dog." She waved an imperious hand. "This tent protrudes into the thoroughfare. If it is yours, see that the error is corrected."

With tingling shoulder blades, Liliane stalked off. Several alleys away, she finally managed to draw a full breath. By tossing Philip's name at Louis, she had caught him off guard, but he would remember her. Anonymity was her best defense in Acre, but after less than a day, Louis's vindictive attention had been drawn to her. She might as well have angered a scorpion.

Glumly, she headed for the battle line. Few able-bodied men remained in camp and she would only draw more unwanted attention by wandering.

Showers of arrows flew from the archers' bows to rain upon Acre's defenders, their helmets glinting orange upon the massive ramparts. From those ramparts, Greek fire spiraled down upon the flimsy siege ladders thrown against the bulky walls. Liliane heard the heartrending shrieks of men falling off the ladders and the howls of burned men rising over the grinding racket of siege wheels, as the threats and curses of men lashing fearful draft animals forward added to the din. Only the veterans were used to the racket. Over the confusion, arrows hummed with the nasty, deep drone of crossbow quarrels.

Liliane covered her head as the first rock from a siege engine splintered against the Accursed Tower. Shards flew and dust clouded up as the rock's bulk dropped into the yellow earth at the tower's base. A fine ocher haze now hung over the middle line. Coughing, she looked for Alexandre. Philip's command post, had been set up well behind the line, with its lily banners dainty and incongruous above the smoky din. She worked her way to an earthen wall near the post Philip's crested helmet was occasionally visible above the wood-spiked, mobile barricade, but she did not see Alexandre. She might have known that the shelter of a barricade was not for him.

Although Liliane had heard that Philip was no coward, he seemed to be taking great care not to expose himself. The stories of two Palestine-bent Norman English nobles who had stopped at Castle de Brueil during the past year had shed light on Philip's eagerness to take up the Crusade. According to the nobles, Philip's motives in taking the cross were entirely pragmatic. Philip had once been close friends with Richard and warred with him against his father, Henry. Upon Henry's death, Richard, with an eye" to his back, had strengthened his Angevin strongholds in France and, suspecting Philip of splitting his opposition, had ended their friendship. When Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187, Richard was determined to retake the city, whatever the cost to England. But he was not prepared to leave his Angevin possessions to the quick, ready claws of Philip. To keep Richard from declaring war and securing his claims before beginning the Palestine campaign, Philip took up the cross himself.

While making her morning purchases, Liliane had also heard a discouraging bit of news from the vendor keeping Kiki. King Richard had not yet arrived at the siege. En route to Palestine, he had decided to conquer Cyprus and make its ruler, Arthur, his heir rather than his brother John, a move Liliane thought was going to cause him a great deal of trouble back home. His absence from Acre would also prolong, if not cripple, the siege.

In a very short time, Liliane spotted Alexandre's position. His banners flew at center, his tiny force drawing the worst of the defenders' arrows and catapult stones.

Jacques's force, far more numerous and better equipped than Alexandre's, was on the curved south end,"farthest from the risk of rear attack by Saladin's raiders. Jacques's position was probably as much due to his avoidance of risk as Philip's refusal to trust him at a more crucial point. She grimaced. Philip need not have worried. Jacques's concern for his own skin would incite him to fight like a weasel.

Liliane took up a strategic position a safe distance to Alexandre's right, between him and Jacques. Her new weapons included not only another crossbow, scimitar and dirk, but a round Saracen shield emblazoned with a Byzantine cross, and a tiny poignant concealed in the snug sleeve at her right wrist. Although her weapons were strong and light for a man, they were weighty for her. The pointed steel helmet and the padded gambeson that she had added to her
haik
and the used chain mail tabard also added unaccustomed weight.

She felt clumsy and miserably hot, although the sun was still more than half a span from noon. If not for the
haik
, perspiration would be streaming into her eyes. The sea looked cool and inviting, and Liliane cursed the pride that brought them all to swelter in the mounting heat. Acre's nearby marshes shimmered with a whir of mosquitoes and a stench of rotting plant life, refuse and a few corpses. The whole battleground was an open wound.

In 1189, King Guy of Jerusalem had laid-siege to Acre until he had given his word to Saladin that he would desist. So much for chivalrous Christian oaths, Liliane thought wryly; the word given an infidel counted for naught. Guy had wasted no time in seeking an alliance with Richard and Philip. Now his pennants fluttered with the rest. Over the parched earth hovered the reek of death as battered bodies littered the ground. No dogs prowled to scavenge, as all of them had either been eaten by the crusaders or taken by the defenders to be devoured within the city. Even the desert jackals evaded the stretch between the city walls and the ditch.

This was the corruption Alexandre had endured in Jerusalem, except it must have been much worse confined in a city where food and water were nearly reduced to piles of dust. Liliane had never been able to coax Alexandre to speak much of the siege of Jerusalem; now she saw why. His experience had been unspeakable.

The sweltering day wore on as the siege engines pounded relentlessly at the wails. Aside from the helmets glinting on the ramparts, little was seen of the enemy. Sporadic crusaders surging up the scaling ladders were thrust away or doused with flaming oil. Having no bone to pick with the Saracens, Liliane fired only enough quarrels from her crossbow to keep from arousing notice and spent most of her time assisting the Knights Templars with the wounded along that section of the line. All the while, she kept alert to the whereabouts of Alexandre in relation to Jacques's men-at-arms. At the moment, she did not think Jacques would send in an assassin from the rear. While there was much confusion and racket, the action was too directed upon the city for an "accident" to excuse an arrow or spear from any other direction. However, that situation did not last.

As dreamlike as a mirage, a group of horsemen approached the line from the vast gold sweep of the desert. A cloud of sand rising from the hooves of their dainty mares and sunlight glittering from their helmets, breastplates and weapons, the Saracen riders floated unswervingly toward them. The crusaders were being attacked from the rear!

Liliane's attention darted to Jacques. His fat bulk was stuffed into a hauberk that strained as if it had been twice let out. He wore a boar in gold atop his helmet crest. He looked massively uncomfortable and excited as he waved to Louis and snapped an order she could not hear. Without hesitation, Louis summoned a troop of twenty men-at-arms, and a few minutes later their horses scrambled across the far side of the ditch to encounter the Saracens. The Saracen troop met them with a volley of arrows that took out four riders, then wheeled and headed back into the desert. To the cheers of the watching ranks, Louis's men gave hot pursuit. Then, perhaps a mile and a half from the line, shrieking Saracens boiled over the dunes with eerie whistling cries. Louis's gauntleted fist went up, jerking back in the direction of the line, his men wheeling readily after him. The French destriers were strong and fresh, saving them from the reach of the fleet-footed Saracen mares; however, they were not swift enough to keep stragglers from drawing arrows in their backs. Louis, red-faced with anger and humiliation, led the pack.

Liliane noticed that Alexandre's attention, like everyone's, was on the chase. Then she saw that a Signe crossbowman was drawing a bead on the breastwork behind Alexandre's back. Her heart in her throat, Liliane swiftly nocked an arrow in her bow. Alexandre turned, redirecting his attention to the siege, just as the bowman fired and her own bow swung up. The bowman's quarrel ripped through Alexandre's breeze-whipped surcoat. He, crouched, his shieldless arm instinctively going up. Liliane's quarrel took the bowman in the neck as he started to aim a second arrow. Paralyzed with fascinated horror, Liliane was unable to take her eyes from the man plucking frantically at the feathered missile, then, dimly seeing Alexandre's head turning toward her, she stumbled away down the embankment.

The flaw of her light bow was quickly evident when the bowman succeeded in plucking it out. As the quarrel had missed the spine and arteries, he was scarcely harmed. Flinging himself into the melee of besiegers in the trench, he fled back toward the Signe pennants through a rain of arrows from Acre. Praying that Alexandre would follow the assassin, Liliane scrambled toward the maze of tents. As she cleared the line, she heard feet pelting behind her—Alexandre had followed her! She ran into the nearest camp alley, diving into a battered tent. A flurry of shrieks and the clatter of cooking pots scattered a wizened Breton cook and an urchin child. "The infidel!" screamed the old woman. "The infidel is upon us!"