Jack Hight - Holy War

Balian nodded. ‘Something must be done,’ he said as he sat up and picked sleep from his eyes.

‘Who else of the great lords feels the same?’

‘Humphrey. And Hugh of Burgundy, the French commander. That one hates Richard.’

‘Fetch them and meet me at the wall of the fort.’

The cold seemed even sharper when John stepped outside. He returned to the lee of the wall and paced back and forth, stomping his feet in a futile attempt to restore some warmth to them. Balian finally appeared. He was followed by two men. Humphrey’s fat cheeks had thinned and there were dark circles under his eyes. Hugh looked far from well. His face was flushed with fever and he was sweating despite the cold. He had taken an arrow to his ankle during the battle of Arsuf, and the wound had festered.

‘Thank you for coming.’ John spoke loudly to be heard over the screaming wind. ‘I am going to speak to Richard. Someone must turn him from this madness.’

Balian nodded. ‘We should never have marched in winter. At this rate, Saladin will destroy us without a battle.’

‘I am only a priest,’ John said. ‘Richard will not listen to me alone, but he cannot ignore your counsel. Will you join me?’

‘Anything to escape this cursed cold,’ Hugh muttered.

The other men nodded.

The guards at the fort gate waved them through. The keep was a simple, two-storey building of white limestone. Richard’s chamber was on the second floor. They found the king alone. He was sitting before a roaring fire, a goblet of wine in hand. He gestured for them to enter.

‘Your Grace,’ John began. ‘We would have a word with you.’

Richard scowled. ‘You wish to tell me to retreat. I will not do it.’

John exchanged a glance with the other lords. ‘I beg you to reconsider,’ Hugh urged. ‘We cannot take the city, Richard, not in this weather.’

‘We can, and we will! The prophet in Sicily foretold that I would not lose a battle in the Holy Land. You were there, John. Tell them.’

‘You may not lose a battle, my lord, but you are losing your army nonetheless. Over half the horses are dead, and when the last of them are gone, what will the men eat? Many have deserted already. When the food runs out, they will leave en masse. We must fall back. You cannot fight the rain and snow.’

‘I swore to take Jerusalem.’

‘It will not happen,’ Balian said. ‘Not now.’

Richard’s brow furrowed and his fist clenched around the goblet. He hurled it at Balian, who ducked. Wine splashed across John’s face and the goblet clattered off the wall. Richard pushed himself up from his chair. ‘You are cowards, all of you!’ he roared. ‘Leave if you wish. Run back to Acre. I will stay here.’

Hugh met his gaze without flinching. ‘Then you will die here. Alone.’

‘So be it.’ Richard turned to stare into the fire.

‘There is another way to take the city,’ John suggested. ‘Peace, Your Grace. We still await the Pope’s response regarding Joan’s marriage.’

Richard snorted. ‘Do not play the fool, John. I agreed to your scheme only to weaken our enemy’s resolve and to keep Saladin from allying with Conrad. My sister will never marry a Saracen. And if we turn back now, the advantage will lie with Saladin. He will piss on your precious marriage. Go, all of you. Leave me.’

‘The blind fool,’ Humphrey grumbled as the lords headed for the door.

John stayed behind. ‘You are not the only one whose life will be lost if you stay, Your Grace. Your men will die with you. You will have sacrificed their lives for nothing.’

‘I told you to leave,’ the king muttered. He went to the window and threw the shutters open. Wet snow swirled inside to melt on the stone floor. ‘When will this cursed storm end?’ Richard looked to John. ‘I fight for God, priest. Why does He thwart me?’

Because your God is not the only one in this fight , John wished to say. Instead, he said, ‘You have won great victories, Your Grace. You took Acre, Jaffa and Ascalon. You have saved the Kingdom. God made that possible.’

‘And now it seems He is done with me.’ Richard shivered and closed the shutters. ‘I am not the blind fool that Humphrey thinks me, John. There are French and English, Italians and Germans, Hospitallers and Templars in my army. Jerusalem is all that keeps them from happily slitting one another’s throats. With that goal gone, my army will disintegrate. I cannot retreat.’

‘If you stay, they will abandon you all the same. Or they will die. You must fall back. Your crusade is over, Your Grace.’

Richard’s shoulders slumped. It was the first time John had ever seen him look defeated. ‘I am stubborn, John, and sometimes a fool. But I am not a stubborn fool. I’ll not throw away the lives of my men. We will fall back to Ascalon.’

‘O Allah forgive me; have mercy on me,’ Yusuf murmured as he knelt beneath the dome of the Al-Aqsa mosque. He prostrated himself and then sat back on his heels. ‘Greeting to you, O Prophet, and the mercy and blessing of Allah. Peace be unto us, and unto the righteous servants of Allah. .’

The words spilled out with hardly a thought. Yusuf had years of prayers to make up. He had missed them while on the march or while fighting. He could hardly remember a time when he was not at war. He had spent years in the saddle, far from his family. He had done horrible things, all in the name of Allah.

‘I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.’ Yusuf looked to his left. ‘Peace be upon you.’ He looked right and repeated the phrase. The sound of footsteps, soft on the carpeted floor, came to him as he stood to begin another round of prayer. He turned. It was Az-Zahir.

‘Father!’ Yusuf’s son was grinning. ‘A thousand pardons, but I have important news. The Franks are retreating!’

Yusuf bowed his head. Allah had heard his prayers. ‘Alhamdulillah.’

‘It is a great victory, Father.’

‘It is Allah’s victory. His storm drove them away.’

‘Your emirs are eager to give chase.’

Five days ago, they had been prepared to desert him. Now they longed to fight. Yusuf shook his head. ‘The roads are impassable, and the cold and wet will slacken our bowstrings. Let the storm chase our enemy to the coast. We have held Jerusalem. Soon enough, we will drive the Lionheart back across the sea, his tail between his legs.’

March 1192: Ascalon

As John strode through the camp outside Ascalon, he passed a troop of thirty or so men marching north on foot. Hundreds left every day. They were headed for Jaffa, or perhaps Acre. Nothing was being done to stop them. At the edge of the tents, John came upon half a dozen men of Aquitaine trading insults with some English archers. A punch was thrown, and in the blink of an eye a brawl began. More men came running to join. John gave the fisticuffs a wide berth. A week ago, he had tried to stop a fight and had got a black eye for his pains. The English lords only laughed when he told them. ‘They are men,’ de Preaux had replied. ‘They fight.’ The lords were blind, too busy hunting and fucking whores to see the truth: Richard’s army was falling apart, as he had predicted. The fights were growing nasty. Rifts were appearing in the ranks. A few more months of this, and there would be open war, as there already was in the north where Conrad had joined forces with the Frenchman Hugh of Burgundy to lay siege to Guy in Acre.

John left the brawl behind and crossed the burnt fields, where Syrian Christians were busy ploughing the ash back into the soil. The city wall loomed up ahead. The reconstruction was half completed. That was the one thing that had been accomplished in the two and a half months since the retreat from Jerusalem. John nodded to the guards as he passed through one of the rebuilt gates. The Syrian Christians had begun to filter back into the city, which was alive with the sounds of saws and hammers. To his right, men were busy clearing a site — separating nails, roofing tiles and other pieces that could be salvaged from the rubble. At the centre of town, there was a thriving market in such products. Everywhere, new homes were springing up from the ashes. Some belonged to native Christians; others to nobles who had moved to the city. Ahead, men crowded around an impromptu market in the middle of the street. Men-at-arms were selling goods from a caravan they had raided the day before. John shouldered through the crowd and turned down a narrow side street. He stopped before Joan’s home and knocked.