‘We should open the doors when they least expect it,’ Ivo muttered. ‘Let the bastards run in, and we cut their legs off when they’re in, then lock the doors again.’
‘I think I’d prefer to keep the door shut,’ Buscarel said.
Ivo nodded. Then he sniffed the air and frowned.
At the farther side of the room, Lucia could smell it too. There was a reek of burning rising from the floor. She knew what that meant as well as Ivo.
There was a last shattering crash, and the doors were flung wide. They could hold the Muslims at bay no longer. Lucia sobbed, but refused to shriek. She saw the men almost falling over themselves to get inside — black-turbanned warriors, one Emir with his white turban. He and the others had drawn swords. She saw Buscarel hacked to pieces at the door, and then a man was running at her, a Muslim with one eye, and in the flash of a moment she saw the Kurd again. The man of her nightmares.
That was when she screamed.
Ivo heard her, and span about to see the man pawing at her. He roared with rage, and ran, slamming into him. More Muslims were pouring into the chamber, and Ivo stared at them, then at Lucia.
‘Girl, go with God,’ he said, and plunged his sword into her heart just before the first blow fell on him.
Only a few moments later, as two thousand Muslim warriors ran through the Temple, chasing women and children before them, whooping and shrieking with triumph, the floors gave way. The Sultan’s miners had done their job too well. As the timbers beneath burned, the Temple shuddered, and when the Muslim army entered, there was nothing to support their weight.
With a thunderous roar, like the sea pounding against rock, the whole Temple collapsed. The roof fell in on to the people inside, and the entire edifice tumbled into the caverns dug out beneath.
No one survived.
EPILOGUE
30 May 1291
He woke again to the creaking of the ship, alongside the sounds of men vomiting and women weeping. His leg was giving him a deal of pain, and he wished he could rise, go to the upper deck and see where he was.
‘Master Baldwin?’
‘Edgar?’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I broke my leg.’
‘And the Temple?’
Baldwin recalled that hideous sight: the collapsing building, the smoke and dust. For a moment he could remember the first view he had had of Acre — the city of gold rising over the seas, a place of elegance and culture. It seemed inconceivable that it could have disappeared in a matter of days. In place of the city of gold was a city of the dead.
And he remembered the slow smile on Sir Jacques’ face, his kindness and gentle humour; Ivo, his good companion, the man who had rescued him on arrival and given him a home; Ivo’s irascible bottler, Pietro; Buscarel, the man who had been Baldwin’s enemy and who became his friend; Hob, and the other men of his vintaine.
And he thought of Lucia. The woman whom he loved.
‘The Temple’s gone. It’s all gone. The city, the people, everything,’ he said, and closed his eyes against the tears that trickled from them, running stickily into his temples. He rolled with the ship, keeping his sobs at bay, thinking life could not hold anything for him that could replace all he had lost.
‘I’d like to kill that bastard,’ Edgar said after a while in a musing tone.
‘The Sultan?’
‘No. He was doing what he had to. No, I meant Roger Flor, taking the ship and all the women. I’d bet he took all their money, too. I wonder what happened to that bastard. Where has he gone?’
Roger Flor at that moment was sitting in a tavern.
Cyprus was an island he appreciated, and rarely more than now. He had a purse full of money, he had a ship, and he had enjoyed the affections of three ladies on the journey here. A man needed such diversions.
‘So, do we sail for France?’ Bernat asked.
‘France. . Yes, we could,’ Roger Flor said pensively.
‘We could go to the Temple. We do have a ship.’
‘Oh yes, we have a ship,’ Roger Flor agreed, and poured himself more wine. ‘We have a ship, and the ability to sail anywhere. Now that the Muslims have control of all the ports and harbours off the Holy Land, there are ships full of valuables sailing from Cairo each and every day. .’
‘You want to turn pirate?’
‘No. I want to turn rich.’
Bernat stared, and gradually a smile broke out over his features. ‘I’m in too.’
Roger Flor grinned back and passed a cup to him, filling it.
‘A toast,’ Roger Flor said. ‘To the men of the Temple. They can survive in future without my aid.’