The Book of the Lion (15 page)

“A chimera has three bodies, my lord,” said Hubert, making the silhouette sprout ears. “This is only a roebuck. With a long tongue.”

I made a silhouette of my own, a doe. The two shadow creatures goggled at each other, and Hubert and I fell to laughing.

 

Rannulf and I rode far down the shore, shadowed by the tiny figures of Saracen horsemen exercising their mounts and keeping an eye on us. They made me anxious.

“If they cut us from camp,” said Rannulf, “then you'll see some fighting.”

Rannulf carried a hunt spear—he had heard that a few lean lions prowled the briars of the Holy Land. “Even a warhorse would shy at the scent of a big cat,” said Rannulf. “It would be hard to run down so much as a cub.”

I had always been fascinated by lion lore. My master Otto had told me that the female lion bears lifeless kittens, and the male lion stands over the litter and roars it into life.

“Surely, my lord, a bow would have better luck.”

“An iron-tipped arrow, it's true, but where's the courage in killing with an arrow?”

Rannulf flicked a small yellow flower from the sand with the point of his weapon, and kept it in the air, tossing it with his lance point. He speared a pink flower, and stabbed a spreading mallow weed. When at last he came upon a rodent burrow, a small hole in the dry earth, he stabbed his shaft into it, tearing up the ground. The torn earth had a pleasing odor, both fresh and fermented.

A tiny, tawny creature fled at last, escaping its wrecked home. Rannulf lanced at it, tiny as it was, and toyed with it, but the creature escaped whole and apparently unhurt.

I offered, “It's all in the balance, my lord.”

Rannulf gave me a long glance, and I looked away, studying the long, straight line of the sea.

Fox spoor peppered a stream bank, delicate footprints and dung no bigger than a ferret's. A sheep's skull grinned from the flowering weeds, and the dry flock droppings told a tale of shepherds and a village, all the inhabitants fled.

I had long been tempted to ask, but only now could blurt the question, “Did you really kill so many as five men, my lord, at the famous tournament in Josselin?”

“My old friend Thomas fitzMaurice died of a fractured hip and back—his horse rolled when my charger collided with his. A rank accident. Three of my opponents, all good men, died over months of spoiled wounds, puffed up, turned black, and—” He shrugged heavily, his light leather hunting armor creaking. “I killed one on the field, a youth, younger than you—my horse trod on his chest. I killed five, and yet—” He shrugged.

Was I disappointed to learn that these deaths were not feats of sword?

“Men misjudge me,” he said peacefully. “Inside, I sing songs like the ones Miles used to love, and I offer Heaven my own sort of prayers. Nigel is the one who craves.”

“Craves, my lord?”

“He has an appetite. For women, and for battle.”

 

Each morning Hubert and I trudged down to the water's edge, driftwood and shell underfoot, and gazed at the horizon for King Richard's ships. Often a Saracen galley crawled the distance, guarding the coast. Hubert and I had already adopted the knightly dislike for walking any distance at all. Very soon, Hubert opined, we should be allowed to wear spurs, like the knights from Aragon, who sat drinking claret wine in gold-and-indigo blouses, the rowels of their spurs gleaming.

Sometimes Hubert and I rode south of the camp, all the way to the dunes, and from there, if the wind had carved a hillock tall enough, we could see Saladin's armies to the east, tent peaks and fluttering standards.

Saladin's outriders coursed through the brush every day. They called after our Frankish horsemen, who galloped away, reined in, and galloped back in turn. The Saracens never fled quickly, always took their time, and the Franks were careful to stay well out of bow range.

Hubert and I pulled up short, Shadow and Winter Star breathing heavily. Today we had ridden farther south than usual, and the river stones scattered, dry and drought-scabbed. Water gleamed in the shade of a tree, spilling through green stones, and a Saracen knelt there, while his mount drank.

A horse can drink a long time, its belly filling, swallow by swallow. I often find it comforting, this heavy, meditative sound, water rising into the warm barrel of a horse's frame. The infidel stroked the horse's neck, smiling lightly, and only when Winter Star made a loud equine sneeze did the horseman glance and stand up, with no show of fear, or even curiosity.

I cleared my throat. “A pleasant afternoon,” I offered.

Hubert looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“And this,” I continued, “is a peaceful place to let a horse take its ease.”

The Saracen wore a deep yellow head covering, with a trailing cloth that hung down his nape. He was darkly bearded, and his teeth were white when he spoke.

Hubert sat tight in his saddle, like a chapel statue.

I made a gesture of apology:
I do not understand.

“Francoman,” said the Saracen. He indicated the two of us.

“Oh no!” I exclaimed. “Not Frankish. English. Two English.”

He showed nearly all his fine teeth. English, French, his gesture said, what difference?

He pulled his charger gently from the stream, and indicated the water. Did I care to water my horse?

Hubert did not make a single move, although Shadow lifted his head, sniffing the unfamiliar horse.

I hesitated. If my throat was cut, I wondered, how badly would it hurt?

I dismounted, my feet whispering in the sand among the stones. The flesh of my throat, the pulse that trembled there—that was all I could think about as I led Winter Star to the stream. I let him nose the surface, shake his mane, bridle tinkling.

The Saracen was not as young as he had looked, a few gray whiskers in his beard, a scar like a red earthworm on his sword hand. Winter Star made short work of taking water, snuffled, pawed the sand, and looked intently at the Saracen's own mount.

The Saracen spoke, and I knew, without understanding the words, what he was saying.

I thanked him, and said that his horse, too, was fine. I added, speaking clear English, that the horse was not, in law, actually my own. It belonged to Sir Nigel, I said, although I myself was squire to—

Hoofbeats approached. The Saracen mounted his horse in an instant, and called out to his distant companions.

I stayed as I was.

Several outriders, from the sound of it, splashed and cantered through the water upstream.

Hubert wheeled, dug his heels into Shadow, so hard that the horse bolted. Hubert fought hard to master him long enough to turn back and call something strained and breathless.

The Saracen made a gesture to his forehead, and spoke. His voice was level, less friendly, now, but reassuring. He wished me well, let his horse mince like a lady's palfrey across the stream, and then rode hard to catch up with his companions.

 

“He could have quartered you, arms and legs, and put your head on a willow stick,” said Hubert.

“But he didn't,” I replied.

“There was your chance to run a pagan through to the heart,” said Hubert, “and you traded by-your-leaves, like two wives at a fair.”

“He was a knight-at-arms, at his ease,” I said, using the lines from a lay about a knight outside his lady's garden, one of Miles's favorites.

Hubert urged his mount forward, and I did not follow him.

 

 

 

 

A well is a busy place.

No knight or squire, knight's clerk or priest would want to be seen drawing water. Serving boys carried the buckets, and washerwomen gathered, joking and singing in their foreign tongues.

Hubert ignored me, watching wrestling matches among the pikemen, practicing swordplay with a few Provençal squires. I found myself visiting the well all that afternoon, and much of the next day, and lingering, enjoying the gentle voices of the women.

When a friendship is interrupted, it is a shock, painful, as when the plow strikes a restharrow root, shaking the plowman to the bone. I consoled myself that I would do as well without Hubert and his piping voice, his eagerness.

But the thoughts were bitter, and they were lies.

I had never felt such heavy heat before, not on the longest summer day. Birds did not sing, and the sky paled, dust lifting to the very apex of the blue dome above. The rumor was that the wells in Acre were down to their last, black bottom moss.

I poured cool well water into a basin, a dented, tinker-wrought vessel. I washed my feet with a rag, and let the water trickle down over my face.

“Washing your skin?” said Nigel, his shadow falling over me.

I admitted that this was water, and that I was washing.

“No good,” said Nigel, “can come of that.”

“It is a hot day, if it please my lord.”

“I knew a summoner who washed his hands and feet,” said Nigel. “He caught a chill, and it went to his lungs, and he died.”

“My lord, it cools the blood.”

“This is what Hubert tells me—that your blood is as cool as a widow's.”

I set my mouth, determined not to say another word. “If my blood is cool, then why do I feel the sun so?” I heard myself say.

“You have the mind of a shriver, Edmund.”

I continued to rinse the rag in the cool water, and bathe my arms, although I took no pleasure in it, under Nigel's incurious, disapproving gaze.

“Smiths use water,” I said, amazed to hear myself chatter. “To cool the tongs, Sir Nigel, and the red-hot iron.”

Nigel sat and stuck a finger into the water. “Go to Hubert.”

I scrubbed my face hard. “As my lord wishes,” I said.

A few days ago Nigel would have laughed, one of his sharp, unthinking chuckles. He sighed, and after a long moment, he said, “Rannulf told Hubert he has all the sense of a pig's farrow Rannulf told him that you and the Saracen knight were well met, and that in every way you acted like a man-at-arms.”

I felt myself blush.

Nigel was quiet for a moment, listening to something far off. When I began to speak he put out his hand
—hush.

Another brass instrument sounded, a strangled bleat at first—our horners were out of practice.

Then, a pure, golden tone.

More trumpets joined in, up and down the tent city. A washerwoman hurried from the well. A serving boy trotted off, careful not to spill his water at first, then failing, water splashing the dust.

I was on my feet, the basin overturned, water spreading at my feet.

We ran, through the tent city, to the beach, down the sand. I joined Hubert there, and we waved and cheered. Hubert and I helped Wenstan to loose a banner, a scarlet lion. And all the other squires shook free their flags, the lions, the dragons of silk, all of us shouting to be heard over the trumpets.

A force of blue and yellow Genoan galleys rode the tide, fending off a Saracen warship. “Twenty of them!” cried Hubert. “Thirty—and look how heavy they are in the water!”

A force of Saracen galleys, black oars beating in expert rhythm, swept down from the north.

Men began to kneel in the sand.

 

The city behind cried out with hope and horror, as the Saracen galleys scattered into the Genoan fleet. Ships collided, a low, gut-wrenching crash, great casks clashing, splintering. One Christian galley was holed at the waterline by the battering ram of the Saracen ship. Tiny insect-men swarmed, hacking and stabbing, as the remaining Genoan vessels broke free, white foam at their prows.

 

All that long day Genoan ships battled through the Saracen attackers, and one by one the Christian ships rode anchor, just beyond the surf. One of the Genoan vessels caught fire, and the reflection of the flames was beautiful, a carpet of gold on the dark water as the sun began to set.

The camp was noon-bright with bonfires, drift timber, masts, and staves piled on the beach and set alight.

“What does the king look like?” I asked.

“He's a tall man,” said Hubert, “with a strong face. I'll know him as soon as I set eyes upon him.”

Neither of us mentioned our disagreement, and it was forgotten between us. Knights waded ashore from the ships, the waves gentle, and each fell to his knees as soon as he reached the beach. The Templars, with their black-and-white blouses, were the only knights easy to identify in this firelight, all the rest of us sun-bronzed and indistinguishable from servants.

“That's him!” cried Hubert, as a red-maned, heavyset man staggered ashore, knelt to pray. The shaggy-haired man stood and called for wine, tugging at his clothes. He relieved himself copiously onto the sand, a man with the bladder of a stallion.

“He's the Duke of Ogilby,” said a knight's clerk.

This duke was followed by a string of knights and barons, some of them drunk, some only half drunk, calling for a skinful of wine, each kneeling to pray before they staggered up on the sand to seize a proffered cup of the finest in the camp. Each man praised God for his deliverance, speaking Frankish. Each praised the saints and the Holy Cross as his squires and servants helped him up the beach through the bonfires to the camp.

But Hubert's face grew tense, and I had the same unvoiced fear—that King Richard was not with this fleet, that he was not yet arrived. Or worse—that he would never arrive, and that these fires of celebration would merely illuminate our disappointment.

“That's him!” Hubert would whisper, but each time it was William of Foy, or Alfred de Point, or Godwin of Shuckburgh. Or yet another William—of Dugdale, or Aston, or Essex. There arrived a full complement of earls and their squires, some of them not drunk so much as ill, weak-legged, some weeping with thanksgiving.