Seeking Jerusalem Read online

  ‘Richard, don’t be so foolhardy. You heard what the boy said; you are outnumbered five to one.’

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for, Henry? You heard me. Get the queen to safety now, and take the squires with you.’ The king glared at Henry, who grabbed the queen’s reins and led her away at a smart canter.

  Berengaria was exasperated by her husband. The Saracens obviously didn’t know that they were there so he could have returned with her to Jaffa. But no; he had to play the hero.

  The king led de Cuille and the other twenty knights behind the shoulder of a hill so that they were hidden from the track along which the Saracens were advancing. They dismounted and held the muzzles of their horses so that a sudden neigh didn’t give them away. From their hiding place they watched as three scouts led the way a hundred yards apart. One passed within fifty yards of the hidden knights but didn’t think to check the side valley.

  Once half of the Saracens had passed their position the crusaders mounted quietly and rode towards the flank of the enemy column. Without a sound the knights formed into line and started to canter, knee to knee, towards the Saracens. By the time that the pounding hooves alerted their foe they had changed to a gallop and lowered their lances. A minute later, whilst confusion reigned in the Saracen ranks, the charging conroi hit them. The hundred or so Saracens had been riding in a loose formation four of five abreast so the knights’ charge killed, wounded or dismounted nearly all the outer file of riders.

  Throwing away their lances and pulling out swords, maces and axes, the knights had dealt with another fifteen or so before the remainder took to their heels and fled back the way they had come. Richard let them go. An armoured knight on a destrier or a courser could never catch a Moslem on an Arabian steed. Eighteen of the enemy lay dead with another twelve badly wounded. Five were relatively unharmed, having had their horses killed under them.

  The wounded would die anyway if left in the hills, probably pecked to death by the carrion birds that were already circling the area so Richard ordered them killed. Richard and Miles weren’t happy about the king’s order, but they could see that it was probably sensible in the circumstances. Because of the constant negotiations with the Saracens, the French had started to tease King Richard about being soft on the enemy so he ordered the beheading of the dead and the knights stuck their heads on the lances and spears recovered from the battlefield. Richard and Miles, together with a few other knights, declined, but the majority thought that this was great sport.

  The sight of the returning hunting party with their grisly trophies held aloft certainly enhanced King Richard’s reputation amongst the rank and file.

  Meanwhile Saladin was debating Conrad’s offer with his emirs.

  ‘Conrad has shown himself to be a perfidious traitor by his offer to betray his fellow Christians. What makes you think you can trust him, Lord Saladin,’ one of the Syrian emirs wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t. He is only interested in personal gain and has no principles, but it may well serve our purpose to treat his offer seriously. It would certainly help our cause to widen the rift between him and the Lionheart.’

  ‘What is Al Malik Ric’s latest proposal?’ The emir who asked looked towards Safadin, who had met Richard’s envoy, Humphrey of Toron, a few days previously. Malik ik Ric was the Saracen name for King Richard.

  Safadin looked at his brother for confirmation before answering. ‘He proposes that the coastal cities he holds should remain as part of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, a truce between us for three years and the partition of Jerusalem between us, each retaining their holiest places in their part of the city. To cement the treaty he offers his sister Joan as my wife. We would then reign as King and Queen of Jerusalem.’

  ‘You’ve already got three wives, Safadin; what would they say to an infidel taking precedence over them?’

  ‘They’ll do as they are told.’ Safadin snapped back. He looked indignantly round the tent at the roar of laughter that greeted this statement. Everyone present knew that Safadin had real trouble with the three wives he already had. They nagged him all the time and jockeyed for his attention; so much so that he was always glad to get away from them.

  When Richard told Joan of his proposal for peace he thought that she would be pleased at the prospect of becoming a reigning queen again; she wasn’t. So much so that she threw her best silver hairbrush at him in her rage. Nevertheless, Richard kept up the negotiations based on the union of Safadin and Joan whilst he prepared for the advance towards Jerusalem.

  ~#~

  Richard de Cuille looked out from the top of the keep at Casel Moyen, which stood where the coastal plain met the foothills on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Saladin had partially destroyed the fortress and its companion stronghold at Yasur, so King Richard had been forced to spend a month rebuilding them to secure his supply lines before advancing further.

  It was late afternoon and Richard was watching for the return of Miles and his conroi from a routine patrol into the hills around the castle. It was unusual for Richard not to lead his conroi but he was recovering from an attack of dysentery and still felt weak.

  In early November the fierceness had gone out of the heat of the sun, but today was almost cold as clouds had blown in from the west, changing the usual bright blue sky to a leaden shade of grey, and there was a chill wind. The valley in which Casel Moyen lay was mainly gravel with stark barren brown hills rising on either side. There was a small oasis near the casel with date palms, but there was no grass for the horses, so everything for men and horses had to be brought forward from Jaffa using camel trains. These were vulnerable to attack by the Bedouin tribesmen who had been left behind to harass the crusaders. Meanwhile, Saladin and most of his men had withdrawn to Jerusalem to prepare it for a siege.

  De Cuille was getting concerned as Miles and his men were overdue. He wished he had gone with them and regretted having given in to his physician’s advice to leave it until he was properly recovered before re-joining his conroi. Then he heard a noise from behind him. He had been watching to the east from where he had expected the patrol to come but, when he turned round, he saw a large caravan approaching which had obviously been attacked. He saw Miles’ banner of three silver bows on a green field fluttering amongst the knights forming an escort.

  ‘What happened?’ Richard asked Miles half an hour later after the latter had reported to Count Henry of Champagne, who the king had placed in charge of the castle whilst he scouted forward towards Ramla, halfway between Casel Moyen and Jerusalem. They were sitting in Richard’s tent in the outer bailey as Tristan poured them a goblet of wine each.

  ‘We were patrolling in the hills to the north east when we spotted three hundred or more Bedouin making their way along a narrow track below us, so we followed them. When they attacked the supply caravan coming up from Jaffa we waited until they were committed, then we charged into them, taking them completely by surprise. Although they outnumbered us and the caravan’s escort by two to one, they soon broke off the attack and beat a hasty retreat, leaving fifty or more dead and wounded behind.’

  ‘What did you do with the wounded?’

  Miles shrugged. ‘Those who were badly wounded we killed and we brought in about twenty of those more lightly injured to work as slaves on the rebuilding of the two castles.’

  ‘I suppose it makes sense but I hate killing the defenceless. We are supposed to be on a Christian pilgrimage but we behave like savages. I’m not just talking about slaughtering the Saracens, like we did at Acre, but about the debauchery, whoring and drunkenness every time we stop anywhere for long enough for the camp followers to catch us up.’

  Unseen by the two men, Tristan blushed. As soon as the blue and red pavilion had appeared outside Jaffa he and Warin, Miles’ squire, has taken their meagre savings and gone in search of the whores they had enjoyed at Acre. The pavilion and the bordello owner were the same, as were the eunuchs who guarded the entrance, but the girls inside were differ
ent – but just as experienced in their art. Regrettably, neither had the money for a return visit.

  ‘What has made you so depressed? Is it being ill?’ Miles was worried because Richard had been a different man on crusade to the unhappy and sombre individual he had known in Northumberland.

  ‘When I came on crusade I felt a sense of release from the burden of guilt that weighed me down ever since I killed Jocelyn at Alnwick nearly twenty years ago now. But recently I have begun to question what we are doing here. Do you honestly believe that we will ever recapture the Holy City?’

  ‘Well, yes. At long last we are on the road to Jerusalem, and it can’t be more than twenty five miles away now.’

  ‘Yes, but the nearer we get the longer our lines of communication back to Jaffa are and the more vulnerable our supply caravans will be to attack. When we do get there, the walls of Jerusalem extend for miles and miles, so we don’t have enough troops to besiege it properly. Even if we did, we would be spread so thinly that we would be vulnerable to attack from the Saracens in the hills. Then, if we did manage to take it by some miracle how would we keep it? Most of the troops in Richard’s army are from Europe and want to return home as soon as they have taken Jerusalem.’

  ‘When you put it like that it does seem pretty hopeless. So what is Richard’s real objective?’

  ‘Candidly?’ Miles nodded so Richard gave voice to thoughts that he had hardly dared to let himself think, let alone express in words.

  ‘Richard loves war, he is a warrior king and he is good at it. It is obvious that, if he didn’t have a hotchpotch of an army with a host of commanders who he has to consult, he would have conquered Egypt by now and plundered its wealth and natural resources. Laying siege to Jerusalem would present him with all the problems I have outlined but he has to try or he would seem like a failure. I don’t know what he is trying to achieve now, and I doubt that he knows himself. So he will continue to fight Saladin in the hope that a solution presents itself.’

  ‘Wow, that is pretty depressing.’ Miles was dumbfounded. ‘I hadn’t thought about like that before but it does have the ring of truth to it.’ He thought for a while whilst Richard drank the rest his goblet of wine contentedly and held it out for Tristan to refill.

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘What can we do? We carry on, fight the Saracens, try to stay alive and pray that some light at the end of the tunnel eventually emerges. After all, the crusade can’t last for ever.’

  ~#~

  Richard de Cuille was pretty close to the mark. The king was getting increasingly concerned about the deteriorating situation in England and Philip Augustus’s machinations against the rest of his Angevin empire. But his main preoccupation was his reputation as a fighter. He had grown up in the shadow of William Marshal, who was called the greatest knight in Christendom when he was younger. There was no-one who could beat Marshal at the tourney or the melee on the tournament circuit. Then he had gone on to carve a reputation as a military leader and a statesman. Richard had always admired William, even when he took Henry Plantagenet’s side against him and his brothers.

  He wanted to get home but he wasn’t prepared to leave a mess behind him in the Holy Land. The Third Crusade under his leadership had to be seen as a success. He knew in his heart that the chances of taking and holding Jerusalem were slim but he would never be forgiven if he didn’t try.

  Once the two castles had been rebuilt, he advanced on Ramla. This town was only twenty two miles from Jerusalem and the morale of the army had never been higher. Richard’s own reputation received another boost when he rescued a foraging expedition exhibiting great personal bravery.

  The fifty strong foraging party had set out to the east of Ramla to gather wood needed for the rebuilding work. When they had been attacked by the Saracens, two conrois of Templars had been sent to their rescue but it had been a trap and the hundred crusaders had found themselves facing some six hundred Turkish light cavalry. As soon as he heard of their predicament, King Richard had immediately put together a force consisting of four conrois of knights, a hundred serjeants and fifty Turcopoles. The Duke of Burgundy and Count Henry of Champagne had tried to stop him embarking on what they considered a foolhardy escapade. Had Berengaria been there she would have been distraught at her husband’s recklessness, but she had been left at Jaffa.

  Richard’s force totalled two hundred and fifty plus seventy non-combatant squires. The number of squires was dwindling. Ideally each knight should have a squire to serve him and who he was responsible for mentoring in his preparation for knighthood, but not every knight could afford one and so some shared. Some squires had reached the normal age for knighthood during the crusade and there were no young boys of the right background to replace them. Others had been killed or died of disease.

  The Templar serjeant who had been sent back to get help guided the king to the place of ambush and Richard took the situation in at a glance. Most of the original foragers and the Templars were still alive; the Turkish horsemen seemed oddly reluctant to press home their attack and seemed content to keep those they had trapped contained. Richard realised almost at once that this was a double ambush and that he was the quarry. He halted his small force at the top if the ridge overlooking the skirmish taking place below him and scanned the surrounding hills. As he waited, a large force of Turkish cavalry appeared on the top of the ridge to his right and started to gallop towards him and his men.

  Richard formed his men into three ranks with the knights in front, then the serjeants and finally the Turcopoles. They smashed into the much larger force of Turks and drove into the middle of them, killing and maiming many of the enemy on their way. Richard himself rode his largest destrier and, standing tall in his stirrups, rained blows down on the lightly armoured Turks with his sword. He seemed to be everywhere at once and soon created a large circle around him which no Turk dared to enter. Seeing this, Richard looked around him and spotted a richly dressed young man, who he correctly assumed must be the emir leading the Turks. He charged towards him and, as he reached the emir’s bodyguard, the destrier reared on it back legs and smashed in the skulls of two Arabian horses with its iron shod hooves. Richard urged his horse forward barging two more men out of the way whilst Richard cut into the neck of one rider and smashed his shield into the face of the other.

  Only three horsemen now stood between him and the emir. One of them panicked and turned to flee, surprising the other two. Whilst they were momentarily distracted, it was the work of seconds for the king to chop down on the wrist of one man, cutting his forearm in its silk sleeve in two, and then chop it at the head of the remaining bodyguard, knocking his spiked helmet flying. A second blow with Richard’s bloody and pitted sword cut deeply into the man’s exposed skull.

  Richard was gratified to see that the emir hadn’t taken the opportunity to join his cowardly bodyguard and flee, but stood determinedly facing him with hate in his eyes. The young man thrust his spear at Richard’s face, exposed as it was in the open-fronted helm that the king favoured. Instead of ducking, as the emir had expected, Richard reached out and grasped the haft of the spear just behind the point with his mailed fist and yanked it forwards and to one side of his body. The emir was thrown off balance and had to let it go so he could clasp the pommel of his saddle in order to avoid being pulled off his horse.

  In grasping the spear Richard had been forced to let go of his sword, but it was attached to his wrist by a leather thong. He had retrieved it before the emir could recover and pull out his own sword. A swift thrust with his sword point into the neck of the young man neatly disposed of him and then, once word spread that their leader was dead, the Turks broke off the flight and fled, leaving behind them over a hundred dead for the loss of fifteen men on the crusaders’ side.

  Only pausing to order the Turcopoles to chase the Turks to make sure they didn’t try to reform, the blood-stained king then turned towards the Turks in the valley and led his men in another charge. But, having
seen the failure of their ambush, one look at Richard the Lionheart leading the charge against them had them putting spurs to their horses and fleeing as fast as they could go.

  The foragers and the Templars had suffered some losses but, they had killed many more of the enemy than they had lost, so overall the double ambush had proved much more costly for the Saracens than it had for the crusaders.

  ~#~

  Richard de Cuille was now fully recovered but his conroi had been escorting a resupply caravan from Jaffa when the king had ridden to the rescue of the foragers and the Templars, so he had missed the fight. But he was fated to take part in an even more glorious exploit led by the king.

  One of the few prisoners taken at the failed double ambush was the younger brother of the emir who Richard had killed. He had been knocked off his horse and had dislocated his shoulder. Although this had been pushed back into place, albeit none too gently, he was still in some pain and feeling very sorry for himself. At sixteen he was too inexperienced to stand up to the Templars’ somewhat robust questioning for long. He quickly admitted who he was and confirmed that his brother was the emir leading the Anatolian Turks in Saladin’s army. His death was therefore a serious blow to the sultan.

  ‘What do you know of Saladin’s plans, boy?’ One of the senior Turcopoles asked him in Turkish.

  ‘Nothing,’ the youth replied sulkily.

  ‘Did your brother not confide in you then? Are you not worthy of his notice?’

  ‘Of course! We were very close,’ the Turk bridled at the suggestion.

  ‘Then what did your brother tell you of the sultan’s plans?’ The youth looked at the ground sullenly and said nothing.

  ‘Unless you answer our questions you will have more than a dislocated shoulder to worry about. My friend here is very good at pulling out fingernails and teeth before starting on other parts of your body, like your fingers, toes and genitals. Believe me when I say that you will talk eventually, so you might as well keep as much of your body intact as you can.’