Geoffroi waved at him, kicking on his horse and galloping towards him. ‘Go in there, boy!’ he cried. ‘Quickly! Get under cover!’
But the boy’s wide, panicking eyes looked blank; he had not understood.
The knight was almost on him.
Geoffroi, screaming now, yelled out, ‘NO! He’s a child; he’s no soldier! Leave him! Leave him be!’
The knight charged on.
Drawing in his horse’s head so sharply that the animal all but tripped, Geoffroi changed direction and flew forward on a path that would cross that of the knight. Passing in front of him so closely that he actually saw the knight’s eyes behind the slit of his visor — dark eyes, narrowed, intent — Geoffroi then wheeled again and, bending down out of the high saddle and lowering his left arm more in hope than in expectation, scooped the child up and out of the knight’s path.
Then, before the knight could slow down and turn, Geoffroi spurred his horse and, weaving and swerving, raced from the scene.
He was so charged up that, for a few minutes, all he could do was cling on to the child — whose terror seemed to have totally paralysed him — and urge his rapidly tiring horse onwards. So it was that, after some time, he suddenly realised that he had left the fighting behind.
The three of them, lathered horse, panting man and catatonic boy, seemed to be entirely alone.
They were in a shallow valley — little more than a depression — and cut off from the carnage they had left behind them by a short range of low hills. Hurriedly — this respite could last but moments, he knew — Geoffroi slid down from the saddle, still holding the child, and deposited him on the ground.
The boy immediately fell over.
Kneeling at Geoffroi’s feet, face in his hands in the sand and small bottom stuck up in the air, he began to cry. Amid the tears he managed to splutter out a few words, but they were in a language that Geoffroi did not understand.
Squatting down beside him, Geoffroi said gently, ‘I am not going to kill you, child! Is that likely, when I’ve just risked life and limb to save you?’
The boy raised his head. Cautiously, as if he were not at all sure it was wise. He said something, but, again, Geoffroi didn’t understand.
Geoffroi stood up and went over to his horse, reaching up for a water bottle and a strip of cloth. Then, returning to the boy and sitting down beside him, he made gestures of face washing, pointing at the child.
The boy — he looked no more than six or seven — watched him out of terrified eyes. This, Geoffroi thought in exasperation, is getting us nowhere. Very gently, careful to make no violent move, he ran water on to the cloth and began to clean up the child’s face.
The boy seemed to comprehend, at last, that this strange, sweaty man on the big horse was actually trying to help him. Submitting obediently to Geoffroi’s ministrations, he sat quite still while Geoffroi wiped away what seemed like several cupfuls of blood.
The cut itself — on the boy’s forehead just below the hairline — did not look too deep; in the manner of head wounds, the amount of blood was not indicative of the severity of the wound. By the time Geoffroi had finished mopping up, the bleeding had all but stopped, so he made a pad out of part of the cloth and tied it firmly in place with the remainder.
‘That’s the best I can do for you, young man,’ he said, sitting back to study the results of his nursing.
The boy ventured a small smile; his teeth were very white and even. Some rich man’s son, Geoffroi thought, if I do right to judge by the standards of my own people, for no poor child of the north has such a dazzling array of clean, white teeth. The child’s clothes, too, under the blood and the dust, were of fine quality.
‘What am I to do with you?’ Geoffroi asked, knowing that the child would not answer. ‘Take you into the city? No, they’d kill me long before they saw what I was carrying. Leave you here? No, for there is no guarantee that our forces might not arrive before your own people, whoever they are, and undo all my good work.’
He sat there, frowning, for some moments.
Then, for want of a better plan, he put the boy back on to his horse, swung up behind him and, keeping a very careful look out, rode along to a gap in the line of low hills and stared out over the plain before him.
The battle was still raging. The Christians, he saw clearly, were in retreat; the Turks and Muslims were chasing them ever faster from the walls of the city.
If he were to be very quick, it might just be possible. .
Since further thought was probably a mistake — he might come up with serious flaws in his plan — Geoffroi waited no longer. Kicking his horse to a canter, keeping as well within the feeble shelter of the hills as he could, he circled round in a wide sweep, behind the pursuing Muslims and in towards the city.
Then, again without pausing to think, he stopped, carefully lowered the child on to the ground, and pointed at the city.
‘Go on,’ he urged.
The child did not move.
‘Go ON!’
Frightened by the sudden loud cry, the child, with one last look from those huge dark eyes, turned and ran.
Geoffroi, who had meant to keep his voice down and generally maintain a low profile, galloped off in the opposite direction. Quite sure that he could hear startled Turks yelling after him, that he could feel the drumming of their horses’ hooves as they pursued him, notching arrows to the string as they did so, he made for the shelter of his hills.
And, in time, unsullied and probably even unnoticed by the enemy, he caught up with his own retreating army.
Many of the Christian army had been killed in the melee of the retreat from Damascus. Many more had been wounded; back in camp, Geoffroi saw that a large number of hospital tents had been prepared and were busy treating the worst of the injuries. Moans, cries and screams rent the air, and he could smell blood. The heat and the insects were turning the suffering of the wounded into torture; black flies kept alighting in swarms on open wounds, bringing with them at best a nightmare of tiny, stabbing pains as they repeatedly landed, were wafted away and landed again. At worst — and this the wounded must have realised — they brought the dreadful threat of infection.
Once the terrible yellow pus filled an open cut, as every crusader knew, it was but a short step to the hot, scarlet pain of inflammation, the sweet-sour stench of gangrene and, once that had set in, amputation.
Geoffroi had become separated from his own company, and, try as he might, he could not find them.
In the midst of his searching, he came across a familiar face: a short, swarthy knight from Lombardy — or was it Liguria? — with whom, lounging on the banks of a small tributary of the Danube, he and some fellow Frenchmen had once placed bets on who would be first to catch a fish.
A lifetime ago.
‘Lost?’ the dark knight asked. ‘You certainly look it.’
Geoffroi explained.
‘Ah, then you won’t have eaten.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
The dark knight took no notice. Grabbing Geoffroi by the elbow, he led him away to his own camp, where he fed him with slices of some salty meat and a hunk of dry bread, washed down with a thin, fairly sour red wine.
Then, when Geoffroi had thanked him, he pointed out the way back to the French troops’ lines.
He got back to be told that Herbert of Lewes was dead.
He had been struck in the neck by one of those arrows. Although the wound in itself had not been fatal, Herbert had, in trying to pull it out, snagged its tip against a main artery.
Still astride his horse, he had bled to death.
Numb, Geoffroi whispered, ‘I liked him. He was my friend.’