‘Or whether you would,’ Nicholas Hunfrey added.
Baldwin had a feeling of great comradeship up here with them. Anselm and his brother were squatting near the wall playing dice. Nicholas Hunfrey had a half-cooked chicken leg that he was chewing with relish, and others stood taking their ease, idling the day away, while Hob stayed at the parapet, staring out at the Muslims. He ducked quickly as the wall shook, an eruption of thick black smoke rising from a fresh missile. Then he was up again, peering over at the enemy.
‘If others had their way, I wouldn’t be here now,’ Baldwin said. ‘What has been happening?’
‘They loose arrows at us,’ Nicholas said, ‘so we loose them back; they run at our walls, we throw rocks, oil, everything at them, and they die or run away. But they’re tunnelling, I don’t doubt. You can hear them at the rocks below, if you listen carefully.’
‘Will the walls survive this onslaught?’
‘The men who built this city knew what they were doing,’ Hob said. He yawned.
‘How are the men?’ Baldwin asked, gazing at them all.
‘We survive. But we need to keep them busy.’
‘It’s this waiting that drains a man,’ Baldwin said. ‘If we could get out there and fight, it would be better. We should plan more offensives, like the Templars’ attack.’
‘Perhaps,’ Hob said heavily, ‘but we all saw the after-effects of that. The leader over there by the catapult had the Templar bodies brought round in front of the walls where we could see them, and had them beheaded. They were used to decorate the Templar mounts they captured, and were led around the front of their army to the Sultan. We could see the horses being presented to the Sultan himself. We don’t need more attacks like that.’
‘No,’ Baldwin agreed. He clenched a fist and rested it on the parapet before him. ‘I just want to know when we are likely to fight! I want to get at the bastards.’
‘A siege can last a long time.’
‘I once heard that it took a whole year to surrender to King Richard, a hundred years ago,’ Baldwin said.
‘God forbid!’ Hob winced.
* * *
Buscarel was still very weak when he walked out of the Temple. He looked at the ships in the harbour and leaned on a wall while a bout of shivering overwhelmed him. His condition was not from any injury, but a result of the two fevers he had suffered. Leaving the undercroft, he felt as weak as a kitten, and the play of the sun on his face was as delicious as the caress of a beautiful woman.
A rock crashed into the buildings behind him, and he turned with a start. A house only a block or two up from the Venetian quarter suddenly crumbled before his eyes, the outer wall dissolving into dried mud and masonry. It woke him from his reverie. If the missiles could reach him here, then surely his own house would be in danger.
Hobbling, he made his way up into the Genoese quarter, until he came to his own road, to his own house. He must have come the wrong way, he told himself. This wasn’t his road. This wasn’t where his house had stood.
But it was.
There was nothing left. Where once there had been a tall, strong property, with space for his family, now there was a void, one of many, in which masonry and timbers lay in haphazard piles. He stepped forward, two, three paces, and stood staring in disbelief. His throat swelled; he tried to swallow, but the lump was too big. There was a vast emptiness within him, as if someone had reached in and plucked out his heart.
‘Cecilia,’ he managed hoarsely. Where was she? Where was his family?
‘Cecilia?’ he shouted, and then he screamed her name, again and again, his voice swallowed up in the cacophony of the battle.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Acre was sombre that morning. Despair was like a blanket, smothering hope throughout the city as Baldwin and Ivo walked to the walls. The Hospital was keen to launch another night attack. Baldwin suspected that they wanted to show their age-old rivals at the Temple how a midnight raid should be conducted. They gathered a force of some two hundred and fifty men, with fifteen knights and the rest made up of well-armed sergeants and men-at-arms, and on a moonless night, they issued from St Anthony’s Gate, formed into battle order, and set off for the towering mass of al-Mansour.
Their attempt was doomed from the first. The Muslims had learned from the abortive attack of the Templars, and before the Hospitallers had crossed half the distance, a series of fires were lighted and the army roused. For a brief space, those on the walls saw the Hospitallers’ weapons glinting in the firelight, and then they charged — a glorious, determined gallop across the plain that began as a disciplined band of warriors, but soon degenerated into a simple race for the Muslim lines, and as they went Baldwin saw the sharp gleams and flashes as bodkin arrows plummeted down.
Horses plunged headfirst into the sand as arrows struck. Baldwin saw a knight grasping at an arrow in his throat, both hands desperately scrabbling for it before he tumbled from the saddle. Men fell on all sides, and the horses were driven mad with pain. One lost direction, and rode parallel with the city walls, between defender and attacker, his rider holding on for dear life, while more and more arrows were loosed at them, until a merciful shot drove into the horse’s skull and the rider broke his neck in the fall.
The Marshal led his men on, while his companions overtook him and went on to slam individually into the line of spears set into the sands. Horses were impaled. Baldwin saw a rider, thrown by a reluctant beast, hurled onto a spear, where he wriggled, his screams carrying clearly back to the city. Two Muslims stood by him, but did nothing to stop his agony. He took a long time to die, while his companions tried to hack their way past the outer perimeter and in towards their objective.
Baldwin saw the swords rising and descending, the forward surge of the men and horses, their falling back, only to regroup and move forward again, and yet there was nothing the gallant Hospitallers could do against the numbers forming against them. As they struggled to make headway, more and more Muslims were augmenting the force opposing them, and eventually the men of the Hospital had to withdraw. The Marshal called his men back, the standard-bearer turning and taking the lead, but even now the Hospital must endure the trial of a long ride under constant assault from the archers and slingers, and even two mangonels which were brought into action. One bolt passed through two riders and then slammed into a horse, killing all three outright. And then it was over. The men reached St Anthony’s Gate, and passed inside again.
Now, staring out at the plain, all the bodies could be seen clearly in the daylight. No one moved to take them away. It was as though the Muslims were taunting the men of Acre by leaving them to rot in the sun.
‘Everyone knows,’ Edgar said. He had joined Baldwin that morning and now stood peering over the parapet with an expression of resolution on his face.
‘About the Hospitallers?’
‘No, about our chances of survival. If Temple and Hospital cannot force a way through, then we are all held here. And with a hundred or more catapults working day and night, the walls will fail.’ His tone was reflective, but matter-of-fact.
Baldwin nodded. ‘We need a miracle,’ he said.
‘Let me in,’ Buscarel said as the grille opened. A short time later, he was inside the familiar, cool entranceway to Lady Maria’s house.
‘Buscarel. I thought you were dead,’ she said coolly.
‘Your man found me.’
‘Your house. Yes. I heard it was gone,’ she said.
She snapped her fingers and her bottler appeared with a tray which held chilled wine and goblets of fine glass. He set the tray down on a table, and poured. As he did so, there was a crash from somewhere nearby, and he nearly upset the tray. Buscarel did not need to look to know his face was twitching. The fellow had enjoyed ruling over the slaves and servants in the house, but now the enemy was near, his nerves were frayed. Buscarel didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.