‘Come! You think to let these sons of the Devil push you around? Like a boy in the stable-yard? Push, my friends, push! Heave for all you are worth! Are you Christians? Then prove it! PUSH!’
Baldwin could feel the line advancing. Step by dogged step, they climbed to the top of the rampart once more and then they were over the top, where the wicker baskets had been trampled, and could stand waiting for the enemy to group again and charge. But now, when Baldwin looked up, the sky was darkening in the west, and he realised with a vague surprise that the enemy was pulling back now that night was drawing in.
Someone gave a shout of triumph, but Baldwin could not join in. All he felt was utter bone-deep weariness. He watched while the others all waved their weapons, some derisively, most with exhausted gratitude, and the women reappeared, bearing fresh containers full of rocks and rubble, while men began to sift through the bodies, seeing if any of the injured could be saved.
Baldwin suddenly saw Ivo and Pietro with bent heads over at the far side of the breach, kneeling beside someone lying on the ground.
He knew it before he saw the face.
Sir Jacques d’Ivry was dead.
Lucia saw him as soon as he walked in through the door. He stood there a moment, his helmet in the crook of his arm, and she went to him. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. Sir Jacques is dead.’
‘Oh!’ She placed her hand against his heart, face torn. ‘He was always so kind to me.’
‘To all. He loved one woman, and when she was taken from him, he joined his Order in order to serve her as much as God, I think.’
Baldwin closed his eyes and shuddered. The sword at his waist was a painful burden that threatened to pull him to the ground. His left forearm had a deep scratch, but that, the slash to his thigh and barked knuckles were his only wounds. The men in the front ranks had been far less lucky.
‘He fell. I think he carried on for too long, but he wouldn’t have admitted it.’
The door opened and Pietro and Ivo entered, one after the other. As Ivo collapsed onto his bench, he began: ‘Hoi, Pietro, go and. .’ He stopped, and stared at Pietro.
His bottler blinked slowly. The bandage about his head was stained and grimy.
‘Sweet Jesus, you look in a right old state,’ Ivo said wonderingly.
‘Which isn’t surprising, after the last days,’ Pietro said with a trace of his old asperity.
‘True. Come — sit here. I’ll fetch you some wine.’
‘Eh? No, you can’t. It’s my place to serve you.’
Ivo rocked forward to bring himself to his feet again. ‘Ach, this old body is too used to easy cushions as it is. Pietro, I command you as my servant to sit there.’
He walked off and before long had returned with a tray of cups and two of his largest jugs, filled with wine.
‘This is the last of the wine from Beirut,’ Ivo said sadly, pouring. ‘I don’t think I need worry about keeping it.’
‘I am sorry about Sir Jacques,’ Baldwin said hesitantly. He was shrugging off his coat, and Lucia hissed and muttered under her breath at the blood. She washed his wounds and cleaned them with damp towelling, while Baldwin sat, wincing.
‘I knew him a long time,’ Ivo told him. ‘He and I came here with the Prince many years ago. His woman and mine, they were friends, and then she got that damned disease, and went to the convent. He felt the need to serve as she did. He never seemed to regret it.’
‘He was a good man,’ Baldwin said.
‘Aye. One of the best.’ Ivo nodded glumly to himself and then lifted his cup in a silent toast. Sir Jacques had been his oldest friend.
Pietro was almost asleep, head nodding. Ivo looked at him with great sadness. You poor old whoreson, you’re too old for this. Same as I am, he thought.
‘We won’t survive this onslaught for long,’ Baldwin said. ‘They must break through before too long.’
‘They will, I think,’ Ivo said. He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Well, I won’t save my bleeding wine for a bleeding Muslim soldier to guzzle after he’s killed me. Drink up, boy! Drink up, Edgar. Lucia, you need a drink too. We drink to Acre, to my friend Jacques, to my wife Rachel, my son Peter, and all the others who’ve died in this damned land. And once we have been kicked out, I pray that no other Christian army ever comes here again, for God has forsaken it — and us,’ he finished viciously. He dashed away the tears as he took more wine.
Baldwin and Lucia drank their wine with him, but left soon afterwards, going to Baldwin’s room where they made love as though it would be their last time.
And so it was.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
Abu al-Fida had stood at his machine’s side all that long day. Al-Mansour was performing with exemplary reliability. They had used seven slings, and had had to replace the beam arm a week ago, but apart from that, nothing had gone wrong.
He watched the final shot loaded, the beam arm straining and creaking under the weight pulling at one end, and nodded to the gynour at the pin. The gynour yanked at his rope, the pin slipped out, and the arm rose, the leather sling scraping the rock along the channel, and up. The sling’s upper loop came away, and the projectile was launched. In the gathering darkness, he lost sight of it in an instant. He thought he could discern it at the uppermost point of its trajectory, but then it disappeared from view again. There was only the flat-sounding crump as it landed.
It did not matter. They had hurled many rocks at the city today, and he had seen the result: the collapse at the gates, the destruction of the final towers nearby, the immense faults showing in the walls themselves. Acre must soon be theirs.
‘Emir, the Sultan asks that you join him.’
Abu al-Fida nodded perfunctorily to the bowing messenger and called for his horse. If the Sultan wanted him, he had better hurry.
Sitting on his horse and cantering from the army of Hama all about the northern edge of the plain until he came to the Sultan’s pavilion, gave al-Fida a measure of just how enormous the force was that Sultan al-Ashraf had accumulated for this holy task. There were men from all over the Sultan’s lands, even a few from the wild Nubian plains west of Cairo. Terrifying men, with their black features and fierce glares.
He dropped from his horse at the entrance to the Sultan’s pavilion, passed his sword to the men standing guard, and bowed low just inside the doorway.
‘I am glad to see you here, Emir. Your catapult is serving us well.’
‘We are pleased to serve you.’
‘And the memory of your son.’
‘Of course.’ Abu al-Fida looked up at that. He would not bow to any man in his sorrow for the loss of Usmar.
He did not like this new Sultan. His father had been a hard man, determined and dangerous. This, his son, was already blooded in deceit and politics. He had killed off those whom he felt had threatened him. Even the mention of Usmar sounded to Abu al-Fida like a threat, as though his determination to avenge his son was to be doubted.
The Sultan eyed him narrowly. ‘Tomorrow, you will increase your rate of discharge at dawn.’
‘We do not have many more missiles,’ Abu al-Fida objected. ‘If we send them too speedily, we must exhaust our resources. We have been throwing them every day for over a month.’
‘I know, Emir. However, there will be little need for you to maintain your firing for too much longer.’
‘You will storm tomorrow?’
‘Early, yes. By nightfall we shall own the city.’
‘Then may I respectfully ask that I join the storming parties?’
Sultan al-Ashraf stared at him with a bemused expression. ‘You realise the danger? The Franks have many men still. The storming parties will suffer terrible losses.’
Abu al-Fida looked at him with a steady eye. ‘I do not care. If I can help win the wall, I will be content.’