Christian Cameron - The Long Sword

Nerio frowned. ‘Someone has told the king that you attacked d’Herblay and other crusaders — that you are a secret pagan, a traitor.’

Fiore grunted.

‘I wish I had a better quality of foes,’ I said. ‘Camus and d’Herblay — ugh.’

Nerio’s eyes slipped past Fiore. I was going to say more, but Fiore turned his head to look. It was a Greek girl, bringing water to the soldiers.

Nerio rose. ‘Sabraham wants to speak to us. He said something to me,’ he said, ‘But I forget what it was.’ He laughed, and went to chat to the Greek girl, apparently untouched by the horror around us.

The next day, the Mamluks prowled for a weaker gate.

The king came and told us that we were the pillars on which the crusade rested.

He had a complete collar of the Order of the Sword, and he put it on me. He waited with us for the daily visit by the Sultan’s army, but it did not come, and eventually he rode away. He looked tired, and harried — we all did.

But de Mezzieres had a conversation with Nerio and Fiore while I was invested with the order.

And when the king was gone, I put a hand on Nerio’s shoulder. ‘Brother,’ I said, ‘we need to bury Juan.’

Nerio shook his head. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘I have him on the galley. Wrapped in a shroud. He’s not the only dead knight.’

I shook my head. ‘He died in the Holy Land,’ I said. ‘Surely …’

Fiore looked down. ‘We’re leaving, Will,’ he said.

Nerio wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I sat. I don’t think I decided to sit. My knees just gave.

Nerio finally looked at me. ‘The king tried. The legate tried.’ He shrugged. ‘Listen, William, Admiral Contarini tried. He has been against this attack from the beginning, and he argued that now that we had raped the city and broken it for trade, the least we might do is hold it and march on Cairo.’

Zeno was drinking our wine — or, given that it was Venetian wine, possibly we were drinking his. ‘Cairo?’ he asked. ‘Christ on a cross, this army!’ He spat. ‘Every fighting man in this army is right here,’ he muttered.

Nerio made one of his Italian faces. ‘We are leaving.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘For you, I’m sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘For me … I never want to see this place or these animals again.’ He flicked his eyebrows up, and shrugged. ‘Perhaps I am a banker at heart, but what have these infidels ever done to me? Nothing. But our crusaders?’

I was not the veteran captain then that I am today, but that city could have been held.

Instead, our crusaders made a real effort — not to fight, but to enrich themselves. You’d have thought, from the charnel house of death, that every living thing in the city was dead, but some people had been rescued — to be made slaves.

When we sailed away — with the loot of a rich city, ten thousand slaves, and two shiploads of Alexandrine Greeks who begged not to be left to the counter-sack of the Mamluks — when we left, the Egyptian Army had stopped attacking because they’d lost a thousand men for nothing.

We killed a great city.

Also — for nothing.

Two days later we landed in Cyprus. The ‘crusaders’ were eager to trans-ship their plunder and there were men sailing for Italy before Mass on Friday.

I have nothing more to say, except that those days, the voyage from Alexandria to Famagusta, and the days that followed, were perhaps the blackest of my life.

Nerio had saved his Greek girl. He was well enough. And he and Fiore tried to comfort me. And Miles, who was as disconsolate as I.

What do you make of the ruin of all your hopes?

What is knighthood, when crusade is but a word for rape?

We buried Juan in the cathedral of Famagusta. You can still see his arms there, in alabaster, painted. I have been to visit him a few times. Sometimes I sit on his tomb, and talk to him, though I realise this is foolish.

Sometimes I weep.

I certainly wept that day.

It was Nerio — Nerio, for whom religion was an inhibition on his carnal pleasures — who saved me. The four of us we standing over the tomb, no alabaster yet, and we went to the altar to pray.

And Nerio said, ‘Let’s go to Jerusalem anyway.’

The four of us rose, and swore — four swords on the tomb.

The crusade broke up with frightening rapidity. The English were gone in less than a week, and the French immediately began to spread a rumour that the English and the Hospital had deserted the walls first.

I got to listen to the process by which a military disaster that was a catastrophe of cowardice, indecision and greed was transformed into a Christian victory, a blow to the infidel. I got to hear black told as white, the admiral of the Hospital called a coward for attacking the Pharos Harbour, the Hospital accused of deserting the king on the beach.

There was worse to come. But luckily, in the atmosphere of recrimination, I took my leave of the king and de Mezzieres in a rose garden. I didn’t have to listen to the French, the Bretons, the Savoyards or the Gascons justify themselves.

King Peter looked drawn, his face pinched. Men said that he had come home to a cold bed and a distant welcome. Men said all sorts of terrible things. I saw the queen at a distance — but more on that later, if we sit together another night.

King Peter, true to his word, made me put my hands between his and accept a barony. Men told me it was a fine piece of land, would support ten knights and I swore to be his man and to serve him with three knights whenever he desired.

It did not lift the black fog entirely, but I had never held any land before. I was a lord.

By the grace of God.

The king gave me his leave to depart; not that, as a volunteer of the Order, I needed his leave. And he gave me his passport to Jerusalem.

He put a hand on my shoulder and sighed. ‘Some of the English go to Jerusalem. My people say that the Sultan is so discomfited by the overthrow of his army at Alexandria that he has withdrawn his garrison.’ His eyes met mine, and they were red. ‘ Where did we fail? ’ he asked.

‘The crusaders failed you, my lord,’ I said. ‘But for them, we should have won.’

He shrugged. His bitterness was immense. ‘You will see the Countess,’ he said.

My spine stiffened.

He looked at me. ‘I am told,’ he said, ‘that her husband did not survive the sack.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said, probably too quickly.

He smiled grimly. ‘As for that, Baron, I care nothing one way or another.’

I bowed, knee to the ground.

‘Will you wed her, Lord Gold?’ he asked. It was not the question, which was perfectly correct, but the manner of his asking — wry and discordant.

‘I will, with God’s help,’ I said. Oddly, one of the answers we gave in Church.

He looked down, and shrugged. ‘She is a wonder. When you see her,’ he said, ‘Tell her that she was correct in her surmise. Only that.’ He shrugged. ‘I never wanted to command the crusade.’

‘No, your Grace,’ I said. I accepted his kiss of peace, and I withdrew.

I will not say he was a broken man. I will only say that his light was dimmed. The fire that burned so hot in the lists at Krakow was almost gone. He knew — and I knew — that something was broken and would never, ever be restored.

The next day, we sailed for Rhodes, and the passage there was brutal, nine days of storm-tossed seas and fear. But by God’s grace, on the tenth day we raised the twin harbours and the fortress, and we landed in the sunset.

There were a great many people on the beach. They began to cheer as we came ashore: the galleys turned and landed stern first, and the oarsmen marched off, followed by the deck crews, and then the volunteers and last the knights, and we paraded on the foreshore in the sand. And Raymond Berenger, the Grand Master, walked along our ranks as the people cheered us.