The Book of the Lion (14 page)

Nigel said a few words of strained Frankish, and Sir Guy smiled in a fatherly manner. “We shall disturb their sleep,” he said in words all too easy to translate. “We shall worry their women—”

“We'll see a few of our men lose their lives,” said Nigel.

“Eh?” Sir Guy wrinkled his nose.

The knights held back, letting the footmen carry the effort at first. A siege engine's axles were greased with ox fat, and the workmen stood aside cheerfully as Sir Nigel inspected the workings of one of the wooden structures. “You could put old women in this and it would serve as well,” said Nigel.

The tower had served well in several assaults before we arrived, but each time the defenders killed the siege engine's passengers faster than the attackers could disembark through the summit. The last time the tower had been used, three days previously, it had caught fire because of hot coals hurled from iron braziers. The braziers were smoking even now, on the edge of the walls.

The foot soldiers, few of whom spoke English, stood expectantly.

“Go on,” said Nigel, with a show of enthusiasm. “To the walls!”

The footmen gave their shoulders to the wheel and axle, and heaved. The great wooden tower creaked, rocking, crossbowmen standing by to mount the portable edifice.

It creaked again, timbers reporting up and down the tall shaft. But the wheels did not turn.

“Again!” cried Nigel. “To the walls!”

The siege engine rocked forward, and then caught speed, swaying, rolling ahead over the uneven ground, to a throaty yell from the army.

I reassured myself—this was a battle, and I was still very much alive. More than alive—every color was bright. Hubert was alive, too, breathing hard although he was standing still. The enemy fortifications were dark with men, and a few sling stones pattered on the ground, testing the range, smacking the leather armor protecting the men driving the engine forward. There was a teasing, dreamlike quality about both the Christians and the defenders.

A splinter of stone bounded all the way to where we stood, and Hubert picked it off the ground. He threw it back toward the city, then dropped his hands, as though he had done a forbidden thing.

Still alive—the thought in my sinews.

I knew that Nigel would prefer to wait for the long-expected arrival of King Richard. But the French King Philip and his countrymen, the Teutonic knights, the Templars, and the Hospitallers—the entire polyglot force—were tired of watching their hair fall out in clumps, a symptom of the fever that festered throughout the camp.

Several men scrambled up the interior ladder, the siege engine trembling like a living thing. Within moments the top of the tower was manned with arbalestiers, crossbowmen armed with short swords. Dozens of common soldiers, freedman haywards and foresters in their ordinary lives, gave a shoulder again to the wooden wheels, and the great tower advanced more quickly over the battle-leveled ground.

The strong men pushed the siege engine to the edge of the cleared space around the walled city, protected from the eyes of the defenders by wood-and-leather shields.

Soldiers holding back, in the main force, carried a new device, something the Mussulmen had not seen before, a grappling ladder called “the cat.” There were several similar, long ladders with specially smithed hooks at either end.

Another sling stone buzzed through the army, and struck a water-carrier on the ankle. The boy hopped on one foot, pretending to be injured, but also not pretending—really hurt. A weapon I had never seen before, a machine like a large crossbow, snapped projectiles high over the city walls, the leaden shot whistling.

The siege engine wobbled forward, the men in the top looking back and waving, like city fathers enjoying the view from a belfry.

Acre's defenders jeered, and sang challenges across the battered plain. The flattened earth around the city was broader than it appeared at a distance. As the siege engine groaned across the bare dirt, the attackers and defenders cried threats so menacing they sounded cheerful, as though a harmless tournament was being resumed at long last, to the relief of all.

The tower was moving faster now, the wheels squeaking, chattering.

Smoking coals spun through the air, and the men in the tower top smothered the embers with sand, stomping methodically. The siege tower was so close to the city now that the shadow of the tower fell over the defenders.

Arrows showered into the tower, and then, with a timber-splintering
whack,
the siege engine struck the wall.

It began to rain stones, glowing coals, arrows, and quarrels—the projectiles fired by crossbows. The siege tower shivered up and down its length, additional men charging across the bare ground, shouldering each other in a stampede to ascend the vault.

Hubert and I struggled ahead, too far in the rear of the advancing line to be close to the fighting. The ladder gangs attached the hook ends of their equipment to the walls, and then crumpled under the rain of rock and arrows, as though weary and curling up for a nap.

A dull avalanche of noise shook the air: stone against iron, spear against helmet, swords ringing, every blow striking metal or hard leather.

In the height of the din, a Frankish knight surmounted the walls from the top of the siege tower, as easily as a man stepping from a boat to a wharf. He stood there in full view of all, handsomely armored, his flat-topped helmet ringing as stones and arrows bounded off the iron.

There was something womanly, or priestly, about the way the mail shirt hung nearly to his ankles. He raised his sword as though to salute his enemy. He stood on the battlements, took a step, and then wavered, like a man lost in weariness, as spears and bricks bounded from his helm.

He spilled into the stone city.

 

 

 

 

The sound deafened me—so many voices I could not make out a word.

We were all thirsty. Men around us passed leather sacks, drinking with care, lest a drop fall wasted to the ground, then drinking with abandon, guzzling. Hubert was yelling, and so was I, calling for the help of the Holy Sepulcher, for the blessing of Our Lady. As though Our Lord's hands were being spiked within the walls at that very moment, his ribs lanced.

Knights in battle wear helmets shaped like buckets, some with rounded peaks, some flat, but Hubert and I were dressed like foot soldiers, iron and leather bowls over our heads, chain mail up to our chins, our faces exposed. Hubert was blushing and sweaty with the heat, the pressure of the short helmet forcing his face into a scowl.

The roar continued, an unending cry from the attacking army, a ceaseless howl from the defenders. But it was hoarse, now shrill and not as loud. Crossbow quarrels hummed through the air from the Crusader ranks, shattering on stone, sometimes drilling into flesh. The first time I saw a wrist screwed through by one of these missiles I winced, and closed my eyes.

But soon I saw worse things. Men clambered up the ladders, paused to adjust their helmets, half drunk with wine. Stones and arrows sang off Crusader chain mail. One by one the Christian fighters slumped, laborers overcome with exhaustion, and either fell or were lowered back down, bleeding onto the shoulders of their companions.

When one of the new cat-ladders was pried at last from its grip on the walls, the defenders struggled to shove the contraption further away from the battlements. The ladder was thick with fighting men, shaking their weapons and cursing the defenders, who could not pole the ladder free from the wall. It all looked laughable in a sickening way, a market-day brawl among neighbors.

At last an Infidel with bright yellow sleeves and a white head cloth leaned down over the battlement with a long spear and pricked the face, the cheeks, the eyes, of some of the pikemen, causing them to tumble like scarecrows down to the ground.

It all happened sluggishly, a battle among bees. Now and then helping arms carried someone through the armored men, faces streaming scarlet. Hubert and I lifted our cockcrows in the grand cacophony. Neither of us was close to the fighting, but we were lightly powdered with blood.

 

Rannulf stood nearby, watching with the calm concentration of a falconer observing his bird. Nigel had joined him, and the two shook their heads, shading their eyes with their hands.

Many of the arrows and leaden missiles that snapped through the air were Crusader in origin, saved up and now used against us. A heavy projectile shaped like a mushroom scarred the ground near Nigel, and he gave it a kick. When a Catalan squire ducked an arrow, Nigel laughed.

The sound of the hoarse cries altered, fell to a deeper timbre. Men turned around, and pushed and cajoled the siege towers slowly back over the now cluttered ground. The defenders showed themselves, shaking spears and fluttering their bright colors in the bronze light of the setting sun.

“A great battle,” snorted Nigel.

 

I squirted red Tyre wine into Sir Rannulf's cup.

We sat on a thick carpet Rannulf had bought from a Burgundian, who had purchased it from a Cypriot, who had recovered it from a shipwreck. A clay oil lamp gave off a cheerful, delicately smoky light, and the carpet, a marvel of colors, was lightly glazed with salt and sand.

“I saved a squab for you, Sir Rannulf!” Wenstan stammered.

“It cost a Flemish obole,” said Nigel. “Hard-bargained, but Wenstan would not pay more than that.”

Three days had passed since the battle. Day and night it was too hot to think of further fighting. Hubert and I attended Nigel, which meant that we did little more than drowse in his tent, brushing flies from our eyes. We ate Templar bread and drank inferior wine, fit for squires, a beverage that had almost turned to vinegar. A rash on my skin seethed under my tunic, and I scratched until I bled.

Rannulf stabbed the gold-roasted bird with a knife, and held it into the candlelight. The bird was still spiked with pin feathers, its tiny, fire-withered head dangling. “The hens are gone?”

“Eaten, every one. A squab is fit food for a knight,” said Nigel. “Chew up the little bird, Rannulf, and don't complain.”

Rannulf pulled off a wing. “The pigs are eaten, too?”

“A Sicilian knight bought them all from our captain,” said Nigel. “He had a plan to render what was left after feasting, paste it on our arrowheads, and cause dismay among the Mussulmen.”

“It would cause them misery,” said Rannulf thoughtfully.

“But the pigs died of a murrain,” said Nigel.

Rannulf had a way of absorbing news as though he had expected it all along. “The Frankish knights have questioned the prisoners,” Rannulf said at last, stripping flesh off a slender, pink bone.

“And cut out their tongues afterwards,” said Nigel, “no doubt.”

Rannulf let the fleshless bone fall.

“Thin little devils, these Acre-men,” added Nigel. “It's a wonder they fight as well as they do.”

Rannulf concurred, using the Frankish
maigre.
“And thirsty. For water, never for wine:”

Rannulf and Nigel discussed the mines sometimes excavated during sieges like this, tunnels that could be carved out under the foundations of the wall, and purposely collapsed. “But it will take too long,” concluded Nigel. “The castle walls were built on rock fifty years ago—by Christians. Soon we will be roasting lice on a skewer for supper.”

“Your squire is drunk,” said Rannulf.

“Impossible,” said Nigel, giving Hubert a nudge with his foot.

“I live to serve my lord,” said Hubert thickly.

“I roasted a wood-mole once,” said Nigel. “In the Forest of Galtre. My mount went lame. It was night, and raining, and the blind little creature wriggled out of his hole. I killed it with my glove,
whap.”

“One blow?” Rannulf asked.

Both men fell silent at the sound of a distant cry.

Nigel shook his head. “The women,” he said. “Fighting again.”

“We should drive all the camp followers away with whips,” said Rannulf.

“They give us comfort,” said Nigel. “Those of us who enjoy pleasure, Rannulf.”

 

Several times at night a cry woke me, a wounded man with a fever, or a water boy having a nightmare. The camp stirred, hundreds of men awakened by the sound.

 

 

 

 

Soon,
we prayed.

Soon the King of England would set foot on this shore.

Rumor was alive. Richard Lionheart had left Crete, with a force of blue and yellow Genoan galleys. He was one day away, two at the most, with twenty galleys heavy with livestock and grain. He would arrive and attack at once. He would end the siege by midnight.

At the same time a devilish counsel nagged me: a wheedling suggestion that the king might not arrive at all, and that having seen one battle I could leave for home.

The catapults hammered the walls in the early morning, and then again in the late afternoon. One evening a crack appeared in a wall, like a rip in a blanket. Crusader bowmen and pikemen rushed forward with ladders, only to find Saracen masons already at work, hurling some of their building stones down upon our soldiers, more sleepwalker fighting, puppet men fighting men of straw.

 

Hubert continued to develop an amazing skill—he could imitate people. In the shade between the tents he would chirp, “Who am I?” and do a killing mockery of Guy de Renne's upright posture, or Nigel's stiff-legged stride.

He had a further talent. In firelight he would make an animal out of his hands, throwing a shadow against the canvas. Whether hound or a serpent, each animal Hubert made had the same quality of quiet devilment. “What are you doing?” Nigel asked once, then crouched to watch. “A chimera!” he gasped. “Put your hands together like that again! A prime chimera, or I'm a sow.”