The Green Count Page 12

  Most of the English and French knights nonetheless wore their harnesses and carried such lances, as the only weapons they had; we had almost a hundred former routiers, most of whom had light lances or spears, and a few had crossbows; and finally, we had our own professional archers, as well as the Romanian stradiotes. We also had a handful of ‘turcopoles’, local men on good horses with bows, and John rode with them, although he muttered that not one of them was a true son of the plains, and as he watched them ride, he pulled at his long moustaches, with something akin to amusement.

  At any rate, I rode along in a haze of happiness, apologised to Marc-Antonio, and managed a civil word with Sir Steven Scrope despite my earlier intention to kill him when next we met.

  It is interesting, the effect of happiness. First, because it makes you calm, and increases your self-possession, so that you become a pillar of good humour for your friends. Second, because it can render you more, rather then less, observant. Possibly fretting, and worry, are bad for observational skills, but I have noted on a number of occasions that a well-rested man on a good horse and in a fine fettle sees things that his angrier cousin misses.

  We rode north and east. We were told there was a great deal of bandit activity in the hills around Jerusalem, because the Mamluks were gone. Fra Peter had few fears; with two hundred fighting men, no bandit was likely to dispute our path.

  Our first day’s ride was utterly uneventful; we climbed the first ridge above Jaffa and rode east across a broad plain that alternated between dusty desert and fertile fields. At the edge of the rough ground which rose across our path, we came to a fine village with a pair of churches, a mosque and an inn. It had a Jewish temple too, or so I understood. That is the Holy Land for you.

  I was tired from two patrols and a day in the saddle, and I was rolled in my cloak before the sun was down; up for a watch, and then asleep again until the cold tail of the night.

  The next day we made a better start, because everyone was getting used to the discipline; the pilgrims were up earlier, and I helped Emile to mount. She gave my hand a squeeze and flashed me a smile that might almost have been lascivious, but that was our only contact, yet still it was enough to make my heart jump.

  The rough ground rose almost at the very eastern edge of the village, and we began to climb steep hills – not large, but sharp, with water gullies in all directions and scrubby plant life that seemed determined to attack the traveller. It was cold and a little wet, and I misdoubt I noticed, I was so happy.

  A few hours out of Jaffa, on a winding trail that could in no way be called a road, with the pilgrims in the centre guarded by the archers, the best-armed knights as the rearguard, and the rest of us out in a cloud in front, we were hit.

  I was riding with John. We were almost a hundred feet higher than the pilgrims, and John was crossing a broken hillside on a track that I would not have dared to take on a horse except that I was coming along behind him. But, due to the complexion of my day, I was the friend to all the world; my head was up, and I was looking in the right direction when I saw the dazzle of sun on metal.

  ‘John,’ I called. I was still new enough to the world of war in the east that I raised a hand and pointed.

  Instantly, half a dozen arrows came back at me from further up the slope. My pointing hand foolishly told the ambushers that they were detected, and since they were discovered, they were quick enough to shoot. My riding horse went down with three shafts in her, and gave a sort of snorting scream. I got off the right side, got my leg over my dying horse, and then fell … There was no footing on the slope anyway, and I stumbled, rolled, and came up again, completely uninjured but another ten paces down slope, and too far from John. He turned back, didn’t see me, drew his bow, and gave a sharp yip and his Arab leapt forward. John already had an arrow on the string and another half a dozen arrows were inbound, but he was no longer where the arrows were going, and they all struck within a horse-length of where he had been.

  John drew and loosed, and then he was gone, over a little hump, and there was a gentle shower of dust to mark his passage.

  I had no bow. I wished for a crossbow, or something with which to bombard my adversaries. But I had nothing but the javelins, which I saved from the collapse of my horse, who was already gone, rolling over the next small precipice and plummeting towards the road below.

  The bandits had caught a lion. Their ambush had closed on the very tip of our advance guard, probably on the assumption we were a small armed party, and now, in a few breaths, the whole of our little army was unfolding below me. The Romanians were riding along the slope below me at a gallop, and about a third of the mounted men-at-arms were moving forward in a body to cover the front of the pilgrims.

  It was all very competent and martial, and it looked to me as if Syr Giorgios Angelus and the Romanians were about to counter-ambush the bandits. All fine, except that I was alone on a steep slope, and my horse was dead, and except for John, who’d vanished, I was the closest to the ambushers.

  They were no fools. They saw all the dust and made the right decisions too.

  More arrows came my way, and some flight arrows – really, light cane arrows with reduced fletching – were launched in the direction of the pilgrims. A good Tartar bow or a Turk bow can reach two hundred paces or more; when they shoot with their lightest arrows, they can shoot even further, all the way out to four hundred paces, or so I’m told. At any rate, shafts started dropping past me.

  And I started uphill. I had some cover from the dust, and going down with the bandits shooting at my back held no charm for me at all. So I climbed. All I could think of was that those light flight arrows might have hit Emile. It made no sense – I could not honestly imagine that such a thing would happen – but I was far more in fear for her than for myself.

  It was not so very dangerous – I was on foot and could use the cover – and once I went up a rock, safe as if I was in a castle due to the sight lines.

  I suppose that the two men I found had been left to occupy the pilgrims while the rest escaped. I’m quite sure they’d missed me in my climb, and so much time had passed since they shot my horse that the sun had started to drop – at least, it felt like a lot of time to me, sweating inside my maille and brigantine; hill climbing is hard enough without additional weight. My basinet was an unwelcome encumbrance, but I was unwilling to have it off.

  I reached the top of the ridge and saw them. Unfortunately, both men saw me at the same time. They were grizzled, old in evil, wearing dirty kaftans over good maille and carrying swords – one a straight-bladed Mamluk sword, the other a curving Turkish sabre.

  But they didn’t use them. They both shot at me. The range was perhaps thirty paces, and I managed to knock an arrow down with a cut of my javelin and I got a few paces towards them. Both men nocked again.

  There is something uncanny, more than merely frightening, about seeing the archer’s eye over the arrowhead. The first man loosed, and my javelin snapped up from a low garde to high, but the arrow missed, hissing by my leg to splinter in the gravel. And when his partner loosed, his shaft skipped down my spear, clanged off the bell of the cuff of my left gauntlet, and vanished into the dust.

  I ran three or four paces forward and lofted my first javelin. We’d all played with them; the Mamluks and the Turks loved them for close combat on horseback, and they are great fun to throw. The good ones are like big arrows, with fine, chiselled heads. Sometimes they are worked in gold and silver, like fancy swords.

  But I was no expert, and my javelin stuck in the ground a few paces short of my foes.

  But it had its effect. I have noted this many times – there is a world of difference between shooting at a man who cannot shoot back, and shooting at a man who shoots at you, however ineptly. Both men were slower getting their arrows on their bows, and the one on the left loosed too quickly.

  The one on the right looked surprised,
and fell to the ground like a sack of grain dropped from a barn. He lay on his face, an arrow in his back.

  The first man, the nearer, reached for another arrow and tried to nock it, and I threw my second javelin. It was a terrible throw, and instead of a clean high arc, it tumbled in the air. The head struck a rock at an odd angle, and the shaft twisted away and struck my bandit in the shin, and he dropped his bow. He was trying to look behind him …

  John appeared from behind him. He flicked his whip – his riding whip, which he was holding by the thong – and the handle hit my bandit behind the ear and the man pitched forward, unconscious despite his helmet.

  John waved, as if this was something we did every day, and rode away into the swirl of dust he’d raised. I ran forward, but there was nothing to fear – one man dead, the other out, and no more enemies in sight. I found the nearly impregnable position the two men had occupied and sat down out of the wind, and pulled off my basinet. It was chilly, and the wind cut through my maille and made my sweat cold. I was suddenly very tired, and very aware that death had once again passed me by, and I prayed for a while. Then I stripped the dead man of equipment; he had an excellent bow, a fine steel cap with maille better than most of my own maille, and a good sword, as well as two quivers full of fine arrows. I took it all, and his purse; I closed his eyes, and began piling rocks atop him, which I did until he was invisible.

  John returned with four good horses – the mounts and remounts of our foes. I was very tired by then, and the sun was descending, and our pilgrims were long gone from the valley below us. But with the dead man’s horses, I made good time, and we took the unconscious man with us.

  John pointed a booted toe at the man. His outer garment was dirty, it was true, but under the dust it was a green silk kaftan with fur edging. His turban was of dirty white silk embroidered with a verse of the Koran.

  ‘That’s a Turk,’ John said. ‘I don’t know what kind. But a Turk. Both of them.’ He shrugged. ‘Of Rhum, I think. Rich.’

  ‘What are they doing here?’ I asked.

  John shrugged. And rode away. I followed him, because night-time in the high country north and west of Jerusalem is not a good place for a lone Christian, even with a Kipchak to sustain him.

  The two of us rode warily, high on the hillside. The captured horses were fine, with small, light saddles that put a premium on the rider’s legs and skill, but probably allowed the smaller horse to bear weight all day. I was amazed at the animal’s endurance, as good as the horse I’d just lost, or better. Arabs are famous for reasons – a superb breed.

  The sun began to sink in the west, and our choices were limited. We were alone on our hillside; there were goats or sheep somewhere, announcing themselves by the sound of their bells, and dogs were barking on the ridge opposite us, where I was confident I had seen men, and probably shepherds.

  I didn’t really know where I was, and neither did John. When the sun was well down, and we still hadn’t found tracks or anything to reveal our friends, we slowed down, found a big overhanging rock high on the hillside, and made a rough camp.

  I had got soft in a year with a squire. I didn’t have my usual pack on the back of my saddle: a malle with a razor, a clean shirt, a spare cloak and a fire kit. I’d always had some such in routier days, but now it sat behind Marc-Antonio’s saddle, not mine.

  I was just considering some well-chosen curses when a voice called out from the rocks in pretty fair Latin. You can imagine that we both whirled; John produced both a bow and an arrow on his string in record time, and I drew a dagger, but our potential adversary proved to be a very old man with red cheeks and white hair and a magnificent white beard.

  ‘Blessings! In the name of the Holy Trinity!’ said the old man. ‘The gentle Jesus knows I am no threat to you. Now put up your weapons and come.’ He looked at our wounded man, the Turk, still stretched over a saddle. He lifted an eyelid, and nodded.

  In truth, he was a hermit. I have no idea if he was from some Order – I do not think so. His Latin was very good and his Italian was Tuscan. He lived in a small cave, the walls of which were dark with smoke and yet bore some remarkable painting – a scene of Christ’s passion as good as you’d see in most Italian churches, much bismotered with smoke and ash, and an Annunciation. He was grinding pigment himself, and there were little clay pots and vessels full of ochre and such stuff in a niche along one wall.

  He talked, as much to himself as to us. He was making a stew of chickpeas, very common in those parts, and somewhat bland, but we were both hungry and it was clear he was guesting us. He laid out three bowls and three cups, and three simple wooden spoons, at a low table.

  ‘You are a Frank?’ he asked me. He kept a wary eye on John and on our prisoner.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I was born in England.’

  He smiled softly. ‘I don’t suppose you can be more of a Frank than that,’ he said. ‘I was born in Ancona.’ He went and stirred his pot, which was a good one of bronze – he was not a destitute peasant.

  ‘Can I help?’ I asked.

  ‘Tell me of your friend?’ he said.

  ‘John was born a Tartar,’ I said. ‘He serves me, but he is as good a Christian as me.’ Or better, I thought.

  ‘Ahh,’ the hermit said, and he relaxed visibly. ‘Tartars are fine men,’ he said, and turning to John, he said something like ‘Holugui’ and John brightened and replied in kind. But that was our host’s only word in John’s tongue.

  We had laid the captured Turk on the ground, and we made him comfortable. I spent a few moments going over his scalp with my hand. There was bruising and mushy blood where John had hit him, but he was otherwise unwounded. His cap of steel had been unpadded, and the blow had hit him as hard as a mace.

  John couldn’t tear his eyes from the pictures on the walls. Our host lit some oil lamps, and the pictures became clearer. Finally, he said ‘This is Jesus?’ and pointed at the man on the Cross.

  ‘Certes,’ our Anconan said.

  John knelt. ‘Very holy,’ he said.

  I noted that the men gathered around the foot of the Cross were not Romans, but crusaders. There were some Mamluks among them, but in the foreground were knights and men-at-arms. I was looking at their armour, which was very modern, when the hermit coughed.

  ‘Dinner,’ he said.

  We prayed; our hermit did not seem to be a priest, as he prayed in Italian. Then we ate, and the stew was delicious, and he served us a little wine and cups of water from his spring at the back of his cave.

  John rose with his bowl in his hand and continued to look at the crucifixion. It fascinated him, and the hermit moved to his side and took charcoal and began to sketch on the wall. In a few moments I realised that he was sketching John at the foot of the Cross.

  I think I sputtered. ‘He doesn’t deserve that!’ I said.

  The hermit turned, charcoal in hand. ‘Is he not a sinner? And do not our sins crucify Christ every day?’ When he said Christ’s name, he bowed his head.

  ‘You say that knights crucify Christ?’ I asked. I suppose I was annoyed at the painting.

  He made a little motion, not a smile, more like a twitch. ‘Did Jesus say anything about killing his enemies?’ he asked.

  ‘Who will protect pilgrims, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I only ask questions,’ the hermit said with a wry smile. ‘I never answer them. But … perhaps God will protect pilgrims?’

  John followed what we said well enough. Now he twirled his moustache. ‘Bandits,’ he said.

  ‘Bandits attacked us today,’ I said.

  The hermit frowned. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps you were attacked by Uthman Bey.’ He looked at the unconscious man. ‘That is Uthman Bey’s cousin. I have fed him, too.’

  ‘Uthman Bey?’ I asked.

  ‘Uthman is a Karamanid prince.’ My hermit seemed more worldly than I
expected.

  ‘Karamanid?’ I asked.

  John was looking at the figure the hermit had just drawn, and grinning. ‘Just Turks,’ he said, ‘not people.’

  ‘You know that the Holy Land belongs to the Mamluk Sultan?’ the old man said. ‘Well, the border is north of Syria, and there the Mamluk empire borders on the Christians of Cilicia and the Karamanid Turks. There are a dozen Turkish dynasties – perhaps twice that. Uthman Bey began raiding us as soon as the Mamluks looked weak.’

  ‘You were once a knight,’ I said. ‘No one but a knight would follow all this.’

  Our host smiled slowly. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I came as a pilgrim and found my Saviour here. I will probably never leave.’

  I might have asked him more, but our prisoner began to twitch and called out. And then, suddenly, his eyes opened and he rolled to his feet with a shout …

  And collapsed. I had drawn my baselard, meaning to stab him, but when he fell forward and threw up, I felt for him. I have taken some blows to the head; a swift rise is a sure way to lose your dinner.

  The hermit and I cleaned up after him while John watched him.

  I feel I need to remind you that we called John, ‘the Turk,’ yet indeed, he was not a Turk at all, but a Kipchak, a Tartar from the high steppe north of the Black Sea. And he had briefly served the Mamluks, been captured, and in turn become a ghulam, a sort of slave-soldier, for the Turks in Greece. I suppose I say this too often, but most Latins can’t tell one from another and I grow annoyed.