Christian Cameron - The Long Sword

Then we dismounted, and stormed the Cairo Gate from behind. It sounds noble that way, and there was some fighting, but nothing worth making a song of. Mostly, we were killing men trapped in their towers without hope of survival. They didn’t fight well and we were not giving any quarter. And I killed my share. I take no joy in it: when you are climbing a winding stair and the man ahead of you is burned with hot sand and you get some in your harness, too, then the virtue of mercy is a far country, and prowess is a word without meaning.

We cleared the towers of the Cairo Gate. But the Breton knights misunderstood the king and set the gates themselves afire.

The king was beside himself, and tired enough to vent his rage on de la Voulte. ‘Are you a fool, messire? Or do you crave glory so much that you wish to fight the Sultan’s army now? By Christ’s heavenly kingdom, by burning these gates you have cost us this town!’

De la Voulte was contrite, but the Count of Turenne, who, as I hear it, actually ordered the gates burned, replied with equal heat, ‘Perhaps you are the fool!’

He sounded like a man in the grip of a tremendous fear, his voice pitched high and wild. His knights took him and dragged him — I mean that exactly — away.

And then we mounted again. The king was determined to break the bridge.

Darkness had fallen. It was not an unkind darkness; the sky was still ruddy, and the stars were out, and there was still moonlight and when we rode out of the Cairo Gate, I could see enough to know that we had fewer than half the knights we’d had back at the Customs Gate.

It may make you laugh to hear it, but I, the veteran mercenary, hadn’t even thought of loot. We were in the richest city in the world, and I was still following my king and Fra Peter. That is how far I had come in my life from serving Mammon.

We had about eighty knights and men-at-arms; our horses were tired, and every man in that column had fought the day before, some for hours, then we had stormed the Customs Gate, crossed the city, and taken the Cairo Gate, too. We had faced fire and brimstone, burning sand, Saracen arrows, poison and naphtha.

We rode along the Cairo road rode for less than a mile before we came to the river.

There was an army there, and we struck the outposts in the dark before we knew what had happened. The entire ride, we had ridden through and over refugees, and the transition from terrified refugees to surprised Mamluks was too sudden. They were well mounted and suddenly we were in a tangle and I took a hard blow to the head before I had my sword out of its scabbard.

Night is a terrible time to fight in armour. A night melee on horseback is one of the most desperate encounters a man can have. And in an ambush, when you are nigh dead with fatigue — that is when you have nothing but your training.

I have lightning flashes of memory. I remember a Mamluk on Fiore’s back, straddling his horse, searching his armour for a weak place with a dagger, and I got my longsword around his neck and threw him to the ground. I remember cutting over and over at one man who parried and parried until Nerio killed him with a spear, and God only knows from whence that spear came.

I remember the banner of Cyprus going down in the light of the city afire and Miles Stapleton raising it.

I remember being knee to knee with de Mezzieres, fighting in opposite directions.

Someone won and someone lost, no doubt. We extricated ourselves. There were three Mamluks on the king, and Nerio and I cut them off the way you clear a swimmer of leeches and they rode away into the darkness, and so did we.

We didn’t make it to the bridge.

The king rallied us in the darkness and begged us to attack the Mamluks again.

That was when I realised that Fra Peter was not with us. I made Gawain, who was badly knocked up, trot all the way around the huddle of Latin knights, but Fra Peter was gone. We had two dozen Hospitaller knights with us; Fra Robert Hales was there. And he, too, had lost Fra Peter.

De Mezzieres was begging the king to go back into the city.

I found Nerio by his crest, a spray of peacock plumes as thick as a man’s wrist, and a coronet of gold. It’s amusing: he’d been censured for it on Rhodes, and Fra Peter told him to keep it, told him we’d all be able to find him.

‘Fra Peter,’ I said, or something equally fluid.

We were only four. But we went back into the darkness and the Mamluks.

I remember once, while hunting a stag in the east, I ran headlong onto a bear. The bear was as surprised as I, and instead of exchanging blows, we each fled as fast as our panic could carry us.

I’m going to assume that this is what happened with our Mamluks. At least, when we reached the ground of the ambush, the mutual ambush, I suspect, there were horses wandering and men on the ground and the only enemies were dead or wounded.

Fra Peter was easily found. His horse was dead. He was not, and we passed some anxious minutes freeing him. The ever-practical Fiore retrieved his saddle and bridle.

We got him over a Mamluk charger that did not think much of his smell or his weight. Nerio attended him with Miles.

Fiore and I determined that we would scout ahead. We were already most of the way to the bridge, so we picked our way along the road, riding into the palms on the east side of the Cairo road. But the road remained empty, and our stealth was wasted. We rode all the way to the great stone bridge.

It was empty.

There was a great army on the other side of the bridge, but they were in motion — away. Abandoning their fires and their hasty camp, they were in full retreat.

It was a miracle, if you like. If we had had fifty more men and a wagon of flammables — or some kegs of the alchemical powder that men call ‘black’, we might have accomplished something.

If Turenne had not burned the gate …

I am glad I went with the king that night. Glad I rode all the way to the bridge, and that we found Fra Peter. I only wish I’d stayed out of the city longer.

Did I say that the tunnel behind the Customs Gate was hell?

It was nothing but pain and terror.

The city of Alexandria the night of the sack — that was hell.

A city taken by storm is sacked. Those are the laws of war, the rules. Who, one might ask, makes these rules?

When we attacked the barricades of the city of Florence with six thousand Englishmen and Germans, it was an article of faith to us that we could not do the city any great injury. I think, perhaps, we underestimated the criminal savagery of man.

We had about seven thousand when we took Alexandria. Perhaps another two thousand in sailors and oarsmen. Perhaps yet another two thousand in armed servants. But I don’t think so. I think we were far fewer than ten thousand men.

I will make no excuses. Machaut sings that we left not a man alive of the infidel.

Perhaps. We certainly tried.

Fiore and I found Nerio and Miles and Fra Peter waiting in the darkness outside the Cairo Gate. The darkness was full of refugees, screams and imprecations — and the sounds of combat and murder. Nerio wanted to go through the city, and Miles, rarely insistent, was demanding that they ride around the city over the broken ground to the north and east.

I agreed with Nerio. Perhaps we were wrong, but we had drunk all our water and our horses were done, and I didn’t think we’d last for the ride around the city.

We re-entered the burned Cairo Gate at midnight, I’m guessing, because the city was afire and there were no bells. Men were looting; men were raping; men were killing. The city was an orgy of destruction, a phrase used by chroniclers but now brought to horrific life. Fiore asked the guard on the gate — men of the Order — where we might find the king. They didn’t know.