The Book of the Lion

Not perfect silence—a fly buzzed, stuck in a wine jug. A Breton man-at-arms was whispering into the ear of a priest.

Hours had passed. Our army had retreated, and the Saracens had followed. Our pikemen had stiffened into a line, and they had torn into the Saracens in their exposed position, outside the walls. Our bowmen had emptied their quivers. When the pagans, in turn, retreated, taunting, not one of us had fallen into the trap.

I moved my arms, lifted my head, slowly. I drank from a brown, cord-bound gourd, water laced with wine. I was breathless, and could not drink any more. I was splayed out on the ground, unable to move my legs. Each breath was acrid, a lungful of dust. Coughing took too much strength.

An army was lying around me, thousands of men twitching like the mortally wounded. Water-bearers worked among us, and pleasure women sought out their favorites, bathing foreheads with water-and-vinegar-soaked rags.

The city of Acre was as it always had been, the gash in its wall barely visible through the haze. The ground between us and the walls was thick with bodies and torn armor.

Large black birds scattered across the battlefield, and Saracens and Christians searched among the dead, crying out when another breathing man was discovered. Armorers and their apprentices hunted, working their way through the mass of scattered war-stuff.

A man crouched beside me. The knight’s dark mail was white with dust. He was bearded, his lips disfigured with a blue scar.

Rannulf called to a serving woman, and she hurried with a sloshing leather bottle of vinegar. Rannulf squeezed a cloth, and wiped my face.

“You knocked the arm half off that Infidel, Edmund,” said Hubert’s hoarse voice. “Smashed the bone!”

Hubert was all but unrecognizable, his face a mask of wall dust and ash. I coughed. “Did they hurt you, Hubert?” I heard my voice ask.

Hubert laughed wearily. He sounded old, ancient. “No,” said Hubert, raggedly. For a long time he did not speak again. “I fought hard, and I wounded one or two men.”

I nearly said something to Rannulf, but the knight rocked his eyes toward Hubert and back to me. He gave a little shake of his head.

A small troop of Saracen warriors stepped carefully through the rubble, waving a pale blue banner, like house stewards bringing home a sheet of windblown laundry.

“How did you manage to find sword room,” Rannulf was asking Nigel. “Thrust and ward-off, in such a crowd?”

Servants worked the battlefield like serfs at harvest as the council took place in the cleared battlefield, under a wine-red canopy. Sir Guy de Renne sat cross-legged beside one of the pagan deserters from the city. The pagan leaned forward, one hand out, in the time honored pose of the interpreter. The evening grew heavy. Soon illumination was required, smoking lamps that flickered and sizzled, with the smell of olive oil.

Hubert cried out during the night, and I reached over to shake his shoulder. He sat up straight, swinging his arm wildly, staring around at the interior of the tent. When I spoke he did not hear me.

The parley went on all night, but by morning, the meeting paused. The canopy fluttered in the weak wind, a luxurious covering, with sun-yellow fringe, large, harvest-auburn pillows on the ground. The battlefield was clear now, entirely stripped, and only a sole dog grazed the empty land.

The dog watched suspiciously, tail wagging very slightly as our camp stirred. A single bowman without mail or helmet, tousle haired and limping, was ordered out into the field, and the bowman made short work of nocking an arrow, and bringing the dog down. The day before there would have been cheers or laughter, but now no one made a sound.

Nigel spread a cloth dyed a rich, indigo blue. No English dyer could match such a dark hue, and no seamstress could have applied such perfect white tassel all the way around the border.

“Gifts from the people of Acre,” said Nigel. “Isn’t it wonderful that they feel so generous!” he added with an irony that sounded close to sympathy.

Sunlight winked off a finger ring, green jasper, excellent workmanship. Gold and fine silver gleamed among the colorful collection of anklets and head cloths. Copper abounded, too, and a bastard alloy of tin and silver, rings and bracelets that were pretty to the eye.

Sir Guy de Renne resumed his place under the canopy, and a Templar sat beside him. The emissaries from the city joined them, and even at this distance it was plain that Sir Guy de Renne was receiving them on behalf of King Richard and the noblemen.

Ships arrived, more wheat from Genoa, goats bleating, hens scratching the confines of their cages. Men rolled casks of red wine up the beach, the barrel staves seeping. Smiths worked in blue smoke, mending shattered sword blades, fitting new steel into hilts.

King Richard strode among us, quaffing wine from a goblet set with beryl and small rubies—showy stones, worth a knight’s ransom, but what my master Otto would have called “poor to hand.” I wished I could work a cup for the king, forge it, and set it on his table.

Every Christian had buckets of wine while the parley continued. Horse-leather buckets, goatskin sacks, bronze pails, pink gourds, every imaginable container filled to overflowing with red, and emptied down Crusader gullets. Men fell flat out, half slain by the heat and the new drink. White hen feathers drifted in the hot wind. At first a chorus of goats and lambs bleated. The livestock cry was decimated, then halved, then diminished to a few, querying bleats. And then the last kids were silent. Cooking smoke rose over the camp.

Men ate without speaking. They sucked hot fat from their fingers. Men gave themselves to goat steaks and lamb legs, closing their eyes, stopping only to drink more wine, the red liquid pattering on the ground. There was a trance-like frenzy about the feeding pikemen.

As I sat, my belly full, I felt a step beside me. It was Father Urbino, looking thin and sunburned, his eyelashes white with dust.

I assured myself that I was too weary to have any feelings, and if I let myself picture a trampled body, a splash of blood, I pushed the image from my mind—perhaps because I sensed I would see worse.