Authors: Unknown
It was seven days since Acre had fallen. The Crusaders’ capital was gone and with it the dream of a Christian Holy Land. The slaughter, which had begun as the Mamluks stormed through breaches in the walls, had continued for the rest of that day, and by the time the sun set, a shroud of black smoke hung over the city and the streets were littered with the dead. Acre had become a charnel house, a stinking open grave filled with children, lying twisted and bloodied, men hacked down as they ran, women viciously raped then disemboweled or beheaded. All along the walls and outside the gates and entrances of towers, the corpses of knights and soldiers lay sprawled across one another, along with many Mamluk, Bedouin and Syrian troops. Banners and flags, some still clutched by their bearers, fluttered limply over the piles of dead. Here and there, the wounded groaned and stirred, trying to pull themselves through the quagmire of blood and death before the Mamluk patrols came.
As evening had fallen on the first day, carrion birds gathered in the skies, as through the smoking ruins, survivors flitted, trying to find somewhere to hide from the roaming soldiers. Sultan Khalil had managed to bring most of his army to order, but some men, mercenaries and undisciplined marauders, were still crazed from the killing, and for them the rape and the butchery continued. Others sought plunder, and palazzos, churches and stores were raided for treasure. As Khalil set up his headquarters in the royal palace and his generals moved to rein in their men, squadrons were sent out to round up the survivors. Only wealthy men or those of rank were spared the sword. The women and children were taken as slaves, gathered up in their thousands. Only three buildings withstood these systematic raids: the strongholds of the Hospitallers, the Teutonics and the Templars, all of which were crammed with refugees.
The sounds of killing had carried on into the night. Will, standing at the window in the grand master’s chambers, listened to them grimly for a time, before he heard Zaccaria move behind him and a priest begin to mutter, and turned to see the grand master drag in his last breath. Guillaume hadn’t spoken since he had been brought into his solar, still bleeding profusely from his wound, except to ask how the city was faring. When Theobald Gaudin told him it was lost, the grand master sunk back onto his pillows. A silent tear slipped from the corner of his eye as he lay there, hearing the massacre continuing beyond the walls. Guillaume de Beaujeu was buried the next morning in the preceptory’s orchard. Zaccaria wasn’t at his funeral. After the grand master’s passing, he led a small company of knights, including some Hospitallers who had taken refuge in the preceptory, out of the gates. According to the only survivor, they stormed several Mamluk companies, killing many, Zaccaria and the Templars yelling the grand master’s name as they cut a brutal path through the soldiers.
A day after this, the fortresses of the Hospitallers and Teutonics had capitulated, the knights on the ramparts observing the
nakkabun
being drawn up, ready to begin mining the walls. They appealed to Khalil for amnesty and the sultan agreed. The Temple held out, with some of the refugees within its walls being taken each night through the underground tunnel to ships returning from Cyprus. The Mamluks had no way of stopping these evacuations. They had no ships of their own, and the Franks’ vessels, safely at anchor in the bay, were armed with trebuchets that would sling stones at any Mamluk patrols that ventured onto the harbor. Unable to counter them, Khalil pulled most of his forces back from the docks, unconcerned by the escape of a few hundred civilians. Inside the preceptory, the evacuations were happening all too slowly. They had nowhere near enough provisions for this many people, and with the death of the grand master creating a general sense of despair, the Templars finally agreed to surrender. Before they sent word to Khalil, Marshal Peter de Sevrey ordered Theobald Gaudin to leave with the order’s treasury on the one Templar ship that remained in the harbor.
As the knights approached the entrance to the tunnel, the gate was opened. Some of the men went ahead to secure the harbor wall. The few Mamluks on patrol there were killed, quickly and quietly, and the sergeants began to move out, hauling the handcarts across toward the mole, followed by the refugees. In the bay, the lanterns on the Templar galley, which was called the
Phoenix
, glowed like tiny beacons, guiding them. Whilst the other knights filed out, swords drawn, Will paused in the entrance.
The seneschal was standing there with several men who had helped convey the treasury. His hard gaze turned on Will. “What are you waiting for, Commander?”
“Come with us,” murmured Will.
The seneschal jerked his head at the men. “Start making your way back,” he ordered them. When they were out of earshot, he looked at Will. “My place is here, with the marshal and the others.”
“You’ll be killed or imprisoned.”
“I am old,” said the seneschal gruffly, “and I have lived most of my life in this city. I would call nowhere else home. My time has passed. Yours has not. You still have work to do.”
“It is over,” said Will flatly. “We have lost the Holy Land. The Anima Templi no longer has a purpose.”
The seneschal’s eyes narrowed. “You are wrong,” he replied sternly. “We may have lost our base in the East, but that is only land, mere sand and stone. We are more than that. The Temple still exists, and without a master it is rudderless. This is a dangerous time. Now, more than ever, you must work to safeguard the order from those who would seek to use its resources for their own ends. You must work to preserve the peace and the aims of the Brethren, if not in Outremer then in the West, for its kingdoms are as war-torn as this one. There are men on those thrones, Commander, unscrupulous men, hungry for power, who would jeopardize entire nations to satisfy their desire for supremacy. It will be your task, as it was here, to preserve the balance and to safeguard those of all races and faiths who would be destroyed by the greed and ignorance of others.” The seneschal’s voice was rough. “That is your purpose and that is why it was made certain that you and Robert de Paris were on this ship. Others stayed behind in your place, Campbell. Do not let our sacrifice be in vain.” He took hold of the gate. “Now, go.”
Leaving the seneschal in the tunnel to haul the gate closed behind him, Will stepped out into the cool night air. The rush of the waves was loud in his ears.
OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF THE TEMPLE, ACRE, 28 MAY A.D. 1291
Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil stood in silence and watched as the lines of captives were led out of the ruins of the Temple. The evening sun cast a ruddy light over the crumbled walls, which had been undermined and had collapsed that afternoon. Into the breach, two thousand Mamluks had ridden into battle with the last remaining knights and soldiers inside. But the walls had been destabilized by the mining, and half of the landward side of the fortifications came down in a roar of dust and stone, crushing Christians and Muslims alike beneath the piles of rubble. It wasn’t supposed to have been this way, but negotiations with the Templars had broken down and Khalil had decided to force his way into the compound.
With the fall of the Temple, the battle was ended. Acre, first captured by the Crusaders two hundred years ago, was back in Muslim hands. Khalil had sent one of his generals down to Tyre to see that it too was taken, although from the reports sent back it seemed few citizens were there to witness its demise, for many had put to sea, seeing the vast pall of smoke rising from Acre on the horizon. Sidon, Beirut and Haifa, the Franks’ last strongholds, would soon share Acre’s fate and then, at last, it would be over. No more would the Western invaders hold sway in Palestine; no more would they threaten them or take their lands, turning mosques into churches and Muslim citizens into slaves. Khalil was a conqueror, victorious. The men of his army praised him as a hero, as vanquisher of the infidel, as God’s own sword. Khalil accepted their praise without comment. In the days to come he would receive it with gratitude and with pride, for he was glad that it had finally ended and that he had done what he had set out to do. Now that the Western Christians were gone, the Mamluks could turn their full attention to the Mongols without worry that the two forces would ally. Khalil had followed in the footsteps of Baybars and Saladin, excising the last of the poison from the wound first carved by the Franks two centuries before. He had liberated his people. It was over. It was finally over.
But in the grave that was Acre, in the bloody streets that stank of death, it was hard to be glad. And so, al-Ashraf Khalil turned from the trudging lines of captives and walked grimly away from the ruins of the Temple, his face lit by the setting sun.
THE
PHOENIX
, THE MEDITERRANEAN, 30 MAY A.D. 1291
Will stood on the deck of the
Phoenix
, the blue sea stretching before him. Behind him men, women and children huddled on the decks. After days of silence, the murmur of conversation had begun again. People had started to eat, to tend to wounds and comfort their neighbors, and the atmosphere, although still subdued, had lifted a little. It was, Will knew, the way of things. Despite what they had been through, they had survived. The only thing they could do now was to go on surviving, to go on living, no matter what they had lost. He looked down at his open palm, at the gold ring lying in it, remembering Elwen’s cool skin as she had placed it on his finger, pushing it gently over the ridge of his knuckle. He had worn it thereafter on the chain with the St. George pendant. The pain, both of her passing and her betrayal, was deep within him. He could feel the enormity of it, struggling to break free and engulf him. But he hadn’t let it. He couldn’t.
Three days ago, he had sat with Rose at the stern, ignoring the curious glances of some of the knights, and asked her to tell him what had happened at the house. It took his daughter a long time to say the words, and they were torturous for her to utter, even the parts she hadn’t understood. But keeping his tone calm and composed, Will eventually coaxed the truth out of her. Now he knew the extent of Garin’s treachery, from the attack on Honfleur to the attempted taking of the Black Stone. But, more than that, he knew the face of his enemy.
Garin had been a pawn, a weak, controlled pawn. It was King Edward who was the real traitor, the wolf in the fold and instigator of all his woes. He had been their guardian. He had become their enemy.
The seneschal was right. The Anima Templi’s work was not finished, not by a long way. He was its head, and as all those before him, he had a duty to defend it from harm. That was why Everard had chosen him. He would make certain the Brethren would go on. But, in order to do that,
he
had to go on. Lifting the gold ring to his lips, Will kissed the cool metal tenderly, then flung it to the sea. It went spinning over and over, flashing in the light, before it hit the water and disappeared beneath the waves. Will felt someone move up alongside him.
“Rose is awake,” said Simon, resting his arms on the side of the galley. “She’s down in the hold asking for you.”
“I’ll be there in a moment.”
Simon nodded and clasped his shoulder before moving off.
Will drew in a breath, and with it his determination strengthened. He still had Rose. Whether she was his daughter or not, he loved her. He had Simon and Robert, and somewhere, back in Scotland, he had family. The crumpled letter from his sister, Ysenda, was folded in his pouch, salvaged from the preceptory. He was not alone. His mind filling with memories of moors and rain, Will turned his back on the East and looked west toward home. Toward revenge.
Author’s Note
I endeavored to stay as close to the history as possible in the writing of this novel, but as history doesn’t always work as neatly or conveniently as one might like I’ve inevitably had to apply a certain amount of artistic license. Dates, in particular, can often prove problematic as you try to weave a fictional story and characters through real events in the narrative, and sometimes it becomes necessary for details to be tweaked for the sake of the plot and ease of reading. For instance, by this point in the Templars’ history the office of seneschal had been abandoned, but as the duties of this post were taken over by an official who, along with Theobald Gaudin, was also entitled grand commander, I have resurrected it to avoid unnecessary confusion. The town of al-Bira was attacked by the Mongols in the winter of 1275 and the siege was actually raised before Baybars’ force reached it. King Hugh III initially retired to Tyre after leaving Acre rather than going straight to Cyprus, and it would have taken a little longer than I have described for news to reach the city that Charles d’Anjou had bought the rights to the throne of Jerusalem. The Islamic month of Muharram occurred in June of 1277 rather than April, and Tripoli, which was besieged at the end of March 1289, in reality took almost a month to fall to Kalawun’s forces.
My version of Baybars’ demise is fictitious; Baraka Khan couldn’t have poisoned his father, for he remained in Cairo when Baybars left on the Anatolian campaign, but the sultan’s death has nonetheless been the subject of much speculation. Several chroniclers believe Baybars died after drinking poisoned kumiz. These accounts suggest that astrologers warned him of a lunar eclipse that would herald the death of a king and that to safeguard himself he decided to poison another ruler, an Ayyubid prince who had aided him against the Mongols at Albistan, but who thereafter had displeased him. The accounts vary in detail, but tend to agree that Baybars drank the poisoned cup he had prepared for the prince by mistake. Other sources say he died from a wound sustained on campaign, others still that he succumbed to a sickness. Whatever happened, Baybars did not die instantly, but after thirteen days of ill health. For those who wish to discover more information on historical events detailed in the narrative, I have enclosed a bibliography for further reading.