Behind us came the Flemish under James of Avenses, a great hero to his men, and then the French knights, who had recovered some of their bounce since the disastrous first day of the march and looked eager for a fight, and last of all came the Hospitallers, two hundred and thirty warriors as skilled in war as they were in mending men’s broken bodies, riding close to the precious baggage train. This time no mistakes were made and the ox-wagons, the sides of the great brown beasts trickling with blood from the urging of sharp goads, were hard on the heels of the French. I could have thrown an apple, had I been so inclined, and hit the cheerful face of my clever and kindly friend Sir Nicholas de Scras, who was riding in the front rank of the Hospitallers. Instead, I waved a friendly hand, and received a salute in return.
When the whole army had emerged on to the plain, nearly twenty thousand men, the King gave the signal for a halt as the vanguard approached a shallow, marshy river that ran directly across our path and down to the sea. The trumpets rang out and a message was passed from commander to commander down the line. We all had turned left to face the vast enemy, who were now less than a mile away, the spearmen and archers on the right of our march, the seaward side, the west, pushing through the horses to form up in front of our cavalry ranks facing east. We were a great, fat line of men and horses and beasts of burden. Our right flank, in the south, the King’s division, was anchored on the river. The left, the Hospitallers and the baggage, received some protection from the woods. A mile away, the enemy sat still on the higher ground to the east, making no advance, content, it seemed, to allow us to make our formations, although I could see units of horsemen and their dust in the far distance moving laterally behind their front lines. For a quarter of an hour nothing happened. There was just the rustle and chink of our men sorting out their weapons and equipment, and the murmur of soldiers talking quietly with their neighbours. ‘Now what?’ said a loud voice from in front of me: Little John, of course. ‘Now,’ said Robin in his carrying battle voice, ‘now, we wait. Stand down, but don’t leave your positions. We wait for them to make the first move.’
And wait we did, for an hour or more, as the sun rose over the hills to the east and began to burn the joy out of the day. We stood or sat on our horses, all in our full battle gear, sweat trickling down our ribs, staring at the ranks of the enemy in the distance, and trying to guess their numbers, and keep our fears at bay. Saladin had been reinforced, I had been told by Ambroise, and his force was now in excess of thirty thousand strong. It was a daunting thought: we had some fourteen thousand footmen, wielding spears, bows, swords and crossbows — but only about four thousand knights. We were heavily outnumbered and every man in the line knew it.
Priests moved along the front of the line reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water on the troops who knelt to receive the blessings of the holy fathers. Father Simon was working his way through our ranks, blessing weapons and assuring the men that God and all the saints were on our side and would come to our aid. ‘And any man who dies in this struggle can be assured of a place at the right hand of the Father in everlasting bliss,’ he said. I hoped it was true; that God would welcome all our dead into Heaven, for I felt that my death was close. Once again, the ice-snake of fear slithered in my belly — I had always been lucky in battle, perhaps this day my luck would run out. I mumbled the Pater Noster under my breath, hoping that the words that Christ himself had taught us would give me courage and strength.
‘God’s great bleeding arse-grapes, what’s the matter with these people? Are they shy? Don’t they want to fight? What are they doing up there, lined up so pretty and brave if they don’t want a nice battle? Christ on a crutch, this is beginning to get very dull.’ Little John’s blasphemous words shocked me back into reality. And strangely they gave me comfort, too. I had fought beside these men before and triumphed. I could not seriously imagine anyone killing Little John, or Robin for that matter. I looked to my right and saw the Earl of Locksley sitting his horse, as cool and unconcerned as if he were on a picnic. He was humming under his breath, as I knew he often did before battle; his helmet rested on the pommel of his saddle, a slight smile was playing over his face and he was idly twisting a long eagle’s feather in his fingers, admiring the play of sunlight on the tawny colours. He must have sensed me looking at him for he suddenly glanced over at me, and half-smiled. I looked away quickly, ashamed that he had caught me staring at him. Remember: his hands are stained by the innocent blood of Sir Richard at Lea, I thought, furious with myself.
A messenger came riding down the line, a trouvere whom I knew slightly; I noticed that he stopped and conferred with the commanders of each division in turn, and soon the word was out. We would move on; there would be no battle today. My cowardly heart gave a leap of joy. I had a reprieve. If the Saracens did not want to fight, well, we would just keep on marching down to Jaffa, which was now less than fifteen miles away. As the news spread, the whole column seemed to rise and shake itself like a large, long-bodied dog, a fierce wolfhound perhaps, getting up after a snooze by the fire. A flurry of activity ran all the way down the line, orders were shouted, those cavalrymen who had dismounted pulled themselves back up into the saddle, the footmen who had been seated got up, shouldered their arms and the whole pack of us prepared to march. Trumpets blared, whistles blew, junior officers shouted at their men and the whole massive column began to lumber off the field, away from the enemy, the first units splashing through the wide shallow river to the south of the plain. There would be no battle; we were on our way to Jaffa.
Just at that moment the enemy drums began to sound; a deep booming noise that vibrated the chest, and put a shiver into a man’s legs. Alien pipes shrieked, cymbals clashed, and brass gongs sounded. I could hear a faint cheer, and there was a ripple of movement in the enemy lines. And for a moment, the whole Christian army seemed to pause. It felt as if I had been sitting in a small room with another person, a stranger, neither of us speaking, and just as I had got up and decided to leave this churlish companion, he had suddenly addressed me. We were wrong-footed, slightly confused by the enemy’s timing. And while we hesitated, and their drums boomed, and their clarions blared, a huge mass of Turkish cavalry on right flank of the enemy, opposite the Hospitallers of the third division, broke away from their line and began to move slowly towards us. We had moved only about a quarter of a mile, perhaps less, when the enemy began to advance, but no one gave the order to halt, and so some of our men carried on marching and some stopped. Suddenly, disastrously, there were gaps appearing all along the column between those who had decided to march and those who had stopped to face the enemy. Men cursed and stumbled, knocking into the men in front; others were buffeted by men from behind. King’s messengers, heralds and trouveres charged up and down the line bellowing that we were to halt, and close up the gaps in lines again — urgent trumpets reinforced this message. And into this mess — an army, strung out on the march, trying to change its mind — charged a thousand highly trained Turkish cavalrymen, bows in their hands, pagan wickedness in their hearts.
The enemy riders made straight for our extreme left flank: the baggage train guarded by the Hospitallers. Like a wheeling flock of sparrows, but with the noise and thunder of a mountain avalanche, they swooped in, drums booming in unison, like the heartbeat of a giant, coming closer and closer to the slowly moving wagons. A thousand bowstrings twanged as one, a thousand shafts were loosed, forming a black smudge in the pale blue sky, and they descended like a thousand tiny thunderbolts on to the Hospitallers, foot and horse, clattering against arms and armour like a child drawing a stick along the palings of a wooden garden fence; another volley swept up into the air, but lower this time, and smashed into our rearguard, and then the horsemen swung away, turning their ponies as neatly as dancers, and loosing one last volley as they raced away back to their lines. The attack had taken no more time than a Pater Noster: but the effect on us was devastation. The shafts had slammed into the ranks of the footmen guarding the baggage train, spitting Christian limbs and dropping good men in bloody twitching heaps. It seemed the Turks had learnt from their previous failures to pierce our mail and this time they had held their fire until the horses were merely dozens of yards away from the Christian lines. The spearmen of the third division had stood firm; meeting the blizzard of arrows with their teeth gritted and their shields high, and many died for their bravery, pierced with a handful of shafts at the same time; others took horrific wounds to face or neck. A few crossbows answered the arrow storm with a return fire of wicked black quarrels; and when the Turks pulled back, I was glad to see that they left a trail of bodies in their wake.