Michael Jecks: Templar's Acre

‘Mistress, I wondered if you could help me?’ he began.

To his astonishment, she picked up her skirts and pelted away. Ach! There was no point in chasing her. She was fleet of foot, and he was not, after his injury. His head was pounding with pain and the heat. In any case, with the luck that had dogged him since leaving Italy, she would be unlikely to speak his language.

He stared about him dejectedly. These alleys all looked the same. After a moment’s reflection, he decided that his initial thought must have been correct. The cathedral must lie to the west. He set off down the hill.

At a crossroads he turned right, hoping that the higher ground that appeared to lie this way signalled the location of the cathedral. The alley narrowed, and then he saw that up ahead it broadened into a wider thoroughfare. Yes, it definitely had the appearance of a less intimidating, less foreign area, and he was relieved as he walked on, until he entered a square and gazed about him.

At the northern edge there was a huddle of men about a table, drinking and laughing, and he gave a sigh of relief, for none looked like Saracens. Most were sailors. He walked towards them with hope bursting in his breast that he could soon be out of here and safely at the cathedral, but then his steps faltered.

The leader of the Genoese ship was among them, staring at him with hostility as he drew a long knife.

‘Only three dead? You have done well,’ the Marshal, Geoffrey de Vendac, said. ‘Any other troubles?’

‘We had to save a ship of pilgrims.’

The Marshal nodded. He was slightly older than Ivo, strong and moderately tall, with a grizzled beard and brown eyes in a square face.

Ivo knew him well, but never took advantage. The Templars were the most powerful force in Christendom, because they answered to God and the Pope, no one else. Not even the French King had an army to compare with their Knights. But the Marshal had lost much of his confidence in recent months. He had been in Tripoli during the siege, and Ivo knew he felt guilt for surviving when so many innocents had died. People like his wife Rachel and their young son Peter.

‘Pirates?’ the Marshal asked.

‘Genoese.’

‘They’re a menace to all shipping,’ the Marshal said, scowling. ‘They plunder without thinking they harm all Christians.’

Ivo shrugged. ‘It’s always been the way between Venetians and Genoese.’

‘It has grown worse in the last year.’

Ivo nodded at that. The Genoese blamed the Venetians for losing Tripoli, and their rivalry had once more exploded into open war at sea.

Their business concluded, Ivo was gathering his pack before leaving, when the Marshal asked quietly, ‘Is there any news?’

Ivo shook his head. ‘There can be none,’ he said with fierce certainty. He thrust the last items into his bag and pulled the strap over his head. ‘They are dead, Marshal. You know that as well as I do.’

It was more than a year ago that the Marshal himself had brought the news that Tripoli was overrun.

Ivo had not expected it. No one had. At the time, the Egyptians had seemed content. They had taken castles, towns and villages — the whole of Outremer was open to their attacks — and then they took Tripoli too.

Ivo had heard much about the attacks. How massive catapults were erected and were firing their missiles within hours. A corner tower crumbled, then a second between that and the sea, and suddenly the whole city was open to assault.

The Venetians were blamed because it was they who pulled out first. They grabbed their money, crammed their goods on board their ships, and sailed away with their men-at-arms. The Genoese, fearing the Venetians had learned of some imminent disaster, took to their own vessels. Seeing the galleys of both leave the harbour, it was plain that the city must fall. Women wailed in despair, men stood shocked, watching their allies flee.

But not for long.

Muslim soldiers scaled the rubble where the wall had collapsed, and were over it and into the city in no time, slaughtering the men, capturing women and children for slaves. Some inhabitants managed to make it to the little island where St Thomas’s Church stood, praying for sanctuary, but the Muslim cavalry saw them and waded out to the island.

Not a single Christian escaped that carnage.

Tripoli had been a beautiful city. Wide roads, large houses, great churches and markets, and now, all was destroyed. The Sultan had declared that Christians would never again live there, and had ordered that every stone should be removed. And as he had commanded, so had it come to pass. The city in which beauty had reigned was a place of rubble with, here and there, the bones of the inhabitants showing bleached white.

Ivo knew. He had seen it.

‘I am sorry, Ivo,’ the Marshal said. His eye held a tear. He blinked it away.

Ivo replied stoically, ‘It’s nothing.’

‘You have my prayers.’

‘I’m grateful, but save them for the people here. Acre is his next and last target.’

‘Prayers will aid those who seek to help themselves,’ the Marshal said. He crossed the floor to a sideboard, filled two mazers with wine and passed one to Ivo. ‘We must do all we can.’

The door opened, and Ivo turned to see Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Grand Master of the Order. He bowed deeply.

De Vendac passed his own mazer to his master, and poured a third.

‘The horses are here?’ asked the Grand Master.

He was a tall man, immensely powerful, with broad shoulders, the thick neck of a knight used to wearing a heavy steel helm, and a sun-bleached beard. His head was bald above his handsome, Viking face. Ivo knew him to be courageous, but also sly and shrewd when it came to politics. It was said he had spies even in the court of the Sultan at Egypt.

‘We lost only a few, Grand Master,’ Ivo said.

‘Good. We have need of as many as we can find.’

‘It is not only mounts. We need men,’ the Marshal pointed out.

‘We have messengers riding to the Pope and all Christian kings,’ the Grand Master said, and drained his cup, adding more quietly, ‘But whether they can help, I doubt me. We lost too many at Tripoli.’

Walking from the Temple’s gates and out into the bright sunlight, Ivo was content to know that there would be more work for him. The weight of the coins in his purse was a comfort. There was a truth and honesty in money — and money bought wine and forgetfulness.

He kept on towards the cathedral. The Patriarch of Jerusalem had based himself here since the capture of his city. Ivo had a notion to go there and pray for his wife and son. When he had visited the ruins of Tripoli, he could not find their bodies among the piles of skeletal remains to bury them. He just hoped their deaths had been swift.

The moment of stillness was all too fleeting. Baldwin turned, but behind him he heard a bellow from the Genoese, and two more shipmen set off in pursuit.

There was one alley, which Baldwin might reach. He bolted for it, his boots slapping on the paved square, panting already with the exertion. The heat was not oppressive, but the humidity was, and he felt the sweat bursting out all over his back, under his arms, across his chest. He would give anything for a long draught of water from the stream at Furnshill. Just the memory of that chill, refreshing liquid was a torment. He slipped at a corner, and pelted up a second passage, narrower than the first. With no idea where he was heading, he simply kept running, his feet beating a regular tattoo.

In the shade of the alleys, he ran at full tilt, surging past traders, women, urchins and hawkers of all types. One man he butted into lost all his goods from a wicker basket, and hurled abuse after Baldwin as he raced off again, his wound pounding with each step, his head feeling that it must burst.