A greenfinch twitters through the silence in the wood.
‘Men can control their urges.’
‘Puny men with feeble urges.’
‘You will be punished.’ (But my voice sounds pitifully small, the bleat of a trapped lamb.) ‘My Lord of Warenne…’
‘Is away in York until after Michaelmas, My Lady with him.’
‘I’ll not allow you to betray my husband.’
‘Your husband is not here.’
And, Jesus crucified, he’s creeping closer, step by step!
‘I’ll scream!’
‘But won’t be heard by anyone but me.’
Too late – he’s here! Burning eyes above me, merciless, wide open, hideously blind…
Oh God, I’m down! He’s on me – heavy, hard and heavy – rancid, sweating, ramming at me with his knee.
Push! Push back! Both hands, frantic as a bird in lime – wings beating but can’t fly…
No good, my little knife. But he’s seen it, twists my arm…
Aah! Flings it… But I have teeth and can bite – and bite again – hard in the neck!
Aaagh, Jésu! Did he have to use his fist?
Warm blood – I’m tasting blood… Lady of Mercy, Queen of Heaven, you’re a woman – don’t, don’t let him, Holy Mother…’
The finch can fly, but sits up in the tree instead – sounds like a rusty gate, wrenched open and slammed shut. Rasping. Tearing, wrenching open, slamming – wrenching, slamming...
I have no will. There’s nothing I can do but listen to the bird.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Afterwards when it was over, I watched him leave the wood. Disgusted, with himself, with what he’d done – and certainly with me. And he said nothing, nothing when he left me.
What could he say, and what could I? I lay there like a broken doll.
With harvest in, and in twice more since then, I’ve re-lived every moment of my degradation. Week in, week out. Day and night, awake and in my sleeping nightmares. I’ve re-lived how it felt to be defoiled, torn, bruised, abused!
God forgive him, for I never will. Or will forgive myself. Or can escape the knowledge that I fuelled the fire that finally consumed me.
For two full years I forced myself to think of it, remember what he’s killed and what he has created. What has changed.
I had my own good reasons through those years. NOW I HAVE ANOTHER.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER ONE
The city of Saint Jean d’Acre: July 1191
SURRENDER
‘As the defences of the city weakened, the Saracens lost hope and treated for a peace,’
King Richard’s annalist records.
‘The terms agreed were that the Sultan should restore the Holy Cross and release one thousand and five hundred Christian captives who were held in chains through his dominions. Thus was the city of Saint Jean d’Acre surrendered to the kings with all the riches of the Moslem garrison, who saved only the clothes they wore and their own lives. ‘With peace restored, the King Philippe purposed to depart from Palestine against the wishes of his people and King Richard, who offered to him half of all the gold and silver, arms and horses he had brought if he would but agree to stay. But the King of France would not be gainsayed in the matter, and to the outrage of the Christian host, took ship with but a few companions to sail home to France.’
I’d put it differently.
The original conditions for surrender, agreed in Tyre between the Sultan Salahuddin and King Philippe, allowed for the Marquess, Conrad de Montferrat, to take charge of the captive Moslem garrison until the Sultan could discharge his soldiers’ ransom and exchange them with an equal number of Christian captives. In the interests of a lasting truce, the Sultan would return the Holy Relic of the True Cross, captured four years earlier at Hattin – in addition to allowing Christians free trade in Moslem ports and access to the holy places of Jerusalem.
It was a plan for all the
People of the Book
to live in peace together, whether they be followers of Jesus or of Muhammad. A plan that suited King Richard and his vassal, Guy de Lusignan, about as snugly as a saddle suits a sow! A negotiated peace? Is that what Richard has journeyed half across the known world to achieve? A hero who has boasted of a Christian victory? A monarch who has set his sights on a new client Kingdom in the East that owes allegiance to Anjou?
Is it likely he’d be willing to save lives by settling for a bloodless compromise agreed in secret with the King of France? Well, what would you imagine?
Despite the onset of a fever, which improves his patience not at all – on his arrival Richard makes a series of deliberate moves. He declares an armistice. He has a carpeted divan installed in his pavilion. And then, deliberately excluding King Philippe and his kinsmen, he summons to its side the other Christian leaders – Count Henri of Toulouse, Robert of Leicester, Duke Hugh of Burgundy, Andrew de Chauvigni, Theobald de Blois and Bishop Hubert Walter – to seek their views on which of the two claimants, Guy or Conrad, is best qualified to wear the Latin crown. But when, sprawled like a potentate amongst his cushions, he hears from every mouth a firm intention to back Philippe’s man, Conrad, in place of his man, Guy – King Richard blasphemes on every intimate anatomy of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and tells them all to go to Hell!
Next day, he takes advantage of the truce to have his siege machines assembled for a final and victorious assault on Acre – then lays a snare to catch a Sultan.
The Church of Rome absolves its followers from all oaths made to unbelievers. So when King Richard’s emissary bows before the Sultan Salahuddin Yussuf in his new camp of Shefa’ Amr – to tell him in mangled Arabic that his master cannot travel due to sickness – but to assure the Lord of Egypt and Damascus that he may come in perfect safety to treat in Richard’s tent for the lives of those within the city – to all intents and purposes he has his Christian fingers crossed behind his Christian back.
But Allah’s Shadow on the Earth is far too old a jackal to be deceived by such an obvious trap and turns his tailbrush from its jaws.
‘It is a sad condition of our station that opposing kings may not meet at times of war without relinquishing their right to opposition,’ he declares. ‘There is a Christian saying, I believe, that a long spoon is needed to sup with the devil. Alas, I do not have one. But by all means let us be civilised. I will send my own physician to thy master, may God preserve him in his affliction. From what I hear of the malady, he suffers from a sailor’s diet, lacking khudhar-leaves and fruit, the condition that the Christians call
scorbutus
?’
Eyeing him uncertainly, the emissary nods.
‘It may be then that something from our orchards will restore his health.’
The Sultan claps his ringless hands. ‘Pack citrus,
khushaf
and fruit sherbets in snow from one of our ice-houses,’ he orders an obedient eunuch. ‘Our noble adversary, Richard Malik al-inkitar, hath need of them as soon as they may be conveyed.’
But as the servant turns to do his bidding, his master is reminded of another matter.
‘The boy?’ He indicates the dark-skinned slave the King of England’s sent him as a gift. ‘He is entire and functions as a male?’
‘He does My Lord.’ On surer ground, the emissary risks an unctuous smile.
‘Unfortunate.’ The Sultan sighs. ‘So shall we let him choose whose service he prefers? King Rikhad’s – as a catamite with, shall we say a well-worked passage; but with all that God hath given him still in its proper place? Or in my service as an emasculatus – with the source of his discomfort and the attachments for participation both removed?’
God’s Deputy bestows a look of fatherly compassion on the youth whose fate is in the balance. ‘As Allah lives, we all know, do we not, what men most value after life itself? Thou mayst return the boy with my felicitations.
‘And tell His Majesty,’ the Sultan adds with a fine sense of Kurdish irony, ‘that the son of Najmuddin Ayyub ascribes his own good health and that of his descendants to prayers performed five times a day – also to citrus fruit and the embrace of wives, both taken regularly but in moderation.’
The spurned gift and diplomatic snub serve to spur King Richard into violent action, much as Salahuddin has expected. The final stages of the siege take longer and demand more Christian lives than he himself anticipates. But the crucial gate-tower finally collapses. The dust cloud clears. A white flag of surrender appears above the rubble, and four envoys in snowy turbans, servants of the emir Baha-uddin Karakush, climb through to offer terms.
The troop detailed to guard King Richard’s gold pavilion, are kept busy for the best part of two days and one long night with the continual entrances and exits of his couriers, his secretaries and Christian allies. It is the time of
khamsin
, when hot winds from the southern deserts scorch the plain. Pullani water-carriers work ceaselessly with siphons to soak the outer fabric of the suffocating tent – to cool the bodies of the men inside, if not their tempers. Three are kings; and the Marquess Conrad, summoned from Tyre to help decide the fate of Acre, has made himself a prince. They shout. They pace. They all but lock the golden fleurons of their crowns, like rutting stags intent on gaining territory.
Twice – once in daylight, once in darkness – they send an emissary to the Sultan’s camp. Constantly the Bagdad pigeons fly with messages from God’s Shadow in the hills to His defenders in the city, whilst those outside it wait to hear if the Moslem prisoners are to be spared or slaughtered.
On July the 12th, the first morning following the feast day of Saint Benedict, the chain is lifted in the Moslem harbour, and the grizzled veteran commander, Conrad de Montferrat, enters Acre with his Italian bodyguards and a platoon of Tyrian soldiers, by means of a makeshift bridge thrown over the dry fosse. Expendable to Richard but trusted by King Philppe, his task is to accept the garrison’s surrender and prepare the city for re-occupation.
Soon afterwards, the King of France’s criers ride through the camp to broadcast the armies’ orders.
‘Hear that the city of Saint Jean d’Acre has fallen, praise be to God! Henceforth it is forbidden by order of the Council of Christian Leaders for any man to strike the city walls, or to revile by word or deed the conquered infidels. The ransom for their lives, to be paid within four weeks of this day, is two hundred thousand bezants loaded onto forty camels, with a further forty thousand to be paid to Princess Isabella and the Count of Montferrat. Likewise the holy relic of the True Cross is to be restored, together with one thousand Christian prisoners of high station and five hundred of a lesser rank. Those companies to be housed in the city will be informed of it by their commanders after the hostages have left its precincts.’
On the evening of the same day, the Moslem garrison of Acre files from the city to the compound that awaits them, in a long crocodile formation of six battalions led by the Egyptian eunuch, emir Baha-uddin Karakush ibn Shaddad.
‘Oh Most Merciful of the Merciful, Lord of the Weak,’
the Kurdish leader, al-Maktub, who leads the third battalion, commands his Imams to recite.
‘We care not if we are delivered into the hands of foes and strangers, provided that Thy wrath is not upon us!’
King Richard, recovered from his fever, rises next morning to dress as he has dressed for his arrival in the Bay of Acre. Clad in the purple and the scarlet with a gold crown on his head, he rides into the city – as Alexander rode to claim it, and Caesar in his time – with all his chamberlains, his greyhounds and gyrfalcons, his pastry cooks and household troops in train to make a stately entrance. On either side as he trots by, long ranks of Christian soldiers cast their cloaks beneath his horse’s hooves. Or else kneel in the dust as if they’re witnessing the passage of a saint.
The King of England’s bearing when he comes to climb the staircase of the emir’s palace is regal and benign. But when he strides into its marble courts to find them crowded with the followers of the French king’s cousin, Leopold of Babenberg, he becomes the beast with which he is most frequently compared. He gives a deafening roar; and shortly afterwards the shocking spectacle of Richard’s troops casting the Duke of Austria’s presumptuous eagle into the filthy moat, and hoisting their own king’s emblematic leopards in its place, is gleefully recorded in his annals.
Duke Leopold’s own outrage at the insult is accepted as the reason for his swift departure from the Christian camp with the remnants of his German forces. But when it comes to King Philippe’s return to France a fortnight later, none of the motives that the chronicles ascribe to him tell the whole story.
‘He professed that illness had been the cause of his pilgrimage and that he’d now fulfilled his vow,’
the Royal Itinerarium maintains.
‘The King said he was departing because he was sick. Well, say what you like, that’s what he said!’
is the troubadour Ambroise’s version of events. But the chronicle of Ralf de Diceto is closest to the truth, with:
‘Once the city had surrendered, the French King proposed to go home as if everything was now completed,’
reflecting as it does King Philippe’s earlier agreement with the Sultan Salahuddin and Conrad de Montferrat, to secure a French bridgehead in Outremer.