Baldwin had these bitter thoughts as he strained and hauled. They finally manoeuvred the cart and the sweating, panicky horse, to the top of the hill, and there they all stopped, a block under the tyres of the cart, while the horse bent to a drinking trough, and men sank to the roadway, panting and groaning to themselves.
‘What’s the point of a city on a hill like this?’ Thomas muttered.
‘Swyve me if I know,’ Anselm said, wiping his brow with a scrap of shirt. He looked about him. ‘Who picked it?’
‘The man who didn’t want to see the city washed away every time the tide came in,’ Hob commented drily. ‘Perhaps he was born able to use the brain in his head, unlike you lot.’
Baldwin gave them a little longer, but when all were recovered, he had them on their feet and continuing up the roadway.
At the gatehouse, they offloaded the cart, complaining nonstop, while he walked to a tavern in the shadow of the walls. There he bought two gallons of thin ale. He sent two of the men to collect the ale in jugs, and the team drank deeply, before returning the jugs to be refilled. When all twenty had slaked their thirst, he had them continue, and soon the timbers were stacked moderately neatly, without blocking the street. Then they must go back to the harbour for more. Baldwin could understand their gripes. This kind of work was more suitable for labouring peasants, rather than free men, but there were not the men available to do such work. And besides, Baldwin was all too aware of Sir Jacques’ injunction to keep the men busy. It was better that they were occupied than that they sat about drinking without purpose.
He was about to follow the men, when he heard a shout from on top of the tower. Looking up, he saw a watchmen pointing urgently towards the south. Baldwin glanced at his men. Hob was watching him with a cynical look in his eye.
‘Hob, get the men back to the harbour’, he said. ‘You begin on the next load. I’ll join you shortly.’
‘Oh. Right. Shortly,’ Hob said, and spat into the road.
Baldwin felt his hackles rise at what sounded like simple insubordination. He was about to shout at the man, but before he could draw breath, Hob had turned to the rest of the men. ‘So? What you lot gawping at? Think those logs are gonna get up here without help? Maybe they’ll roll themselves up the hill, eh? Now get your miserable, swyving arses back down there, and fetch the next lot.’
And the men moved off, apparently content now someone had cursed them. He heard Hob damning their souls, eyes and arses as they moved off down the hill again, but by then Baldwin was already halfway up the first set of stairs to the wall. He hurried to the tower’s door and climbed inside, past the machinery of a catapult, and into the hoarding. Uther followed him. The timbers were slick from the rains of the previous night, and his leather soles almost slid away, but then he caught hold of the wall, and stared out in the direction the guard had indicated.
There, in the haze, perhaps a mile along the bay, he made out a black dot. With fear stabbing at his heart, he peered behind it, then studied the lands to the east and south, searching for the line of black, for the inevitable fluttering of banners and pennons on the horizon — for dust in the air, anything indicating an army. Seeing nothing, he felt a sudden loss of tension that showed how anxious he had been.
‘What is that?’ he asked the guard.
‘Single rider, I think, sir. Can’t tell more at this distance.’
Baldwin nodded, looking about the plain. The shanty town was gone, and in its place there had been efforts to dig a trench to make assault more difficult, but the work had not proceeded efficiently. Too few thought there was a serious threat. That was down to Philip Mainboeuf and the contempt he had publicly shown for the promoters, as he saw them, of war.
The man on horse back was moving sluggishly, and Baldwin frowned. ‘I will go and see if he needs help,’ he said. ‘That rider looks exhausted. He may have run out of water.’
He took his time descending the stairs, not wanting to slip, with Uther pelting down ahead. He would ask for gravel to be spread on the wood later, he decided, so that in battle the men could stand securely.
At the bottom he spoke to the porter at the gate, and found a stable where he was able to borrow a sturdy rounsey. On that, he rode out to the south with a fresh waterskin, cantering gently, Uther panting to keep up.
The man was a dark stick on the edge of the horizon when he started out, but soon he was able to discern a horse and man, and then the fact that the man had a turban wound about his head. In the midst of the turban a shining steel spike sparkled, almost blinding Baldwin.
‘Friend, are you well?’
‘I have travelled far.’ His voice was hoarse.
Baldwin peered. ‘Do you need water? I brought you some to ease your last mile.’
‘I am thankful for that,’ the man said. His lips were broken and scabbed from dehydration, and his eyes were so narrowed that it was apparently difficult for him to open them more than a small amount.
He was oddly familiar, and Baldwin found himself running through the various Muslims he had met, trying to jerk his memory. Nothing struck him, and he was forced to ask at last, ‘I know your face, I think. Do you remember me?’
The man tipped a little water into his hand and wiped it over his face, then more over the back of his neck. ‘In Cairo last year, when you were meeting with my master, the Emir al-Fakhri.’
‘Of course,’ Baldwin said with a smile. ‘I hope your master is well? You have come from Cairo on your own? It is a weary long way for a man alone.’
‘My master bade me come, and not to rest,’ the man said. ‘I have news for Acre.’
‘It is not secret?’
‘No. The embassy sent to speak with the Sultan al-Ashraf has not succeeded.’
‘Not succeeded? You mean that they didn’t reach Cairo?’ Baldwin said. Sometimes the Bedouin would attack people, he knew, but rarely a Templar or Hospitaller. That was curious, certainly, and he was about to ask more, when the man gave a hacking cough and continued.
‘No, the men reached Cairo, but the Sultan refused to see them and had them thrown into his cells.’
Baldwin felt the news as a punch in the belly. Then his shoulders sagged. He had wanted a clear and unequivocal response to the embassy, he recalled.
‘So it is war, then,’ he breathed.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Baldwin stood with Sir Otto as the Commune met to hear the message.
It was a quiet and attentive meeting. The representatives were gathered in a semi-circle about the Constable. Baldwin noticed that in particular. In the past there had been two groupings: on the one side the merchants and tradespeople who wanted to avoid antagonising the Muslims, and on the other the Orders. Now there appeared to be a feeling of unity in the Commune that Baldwin had not seen before.
The messenger from al-Fakhri stood anxiously before the Constable, who glowered from his throne. ‘Speak.’
Al-Fakhri’s servant turned to the crowd, and spoke clearly in slightly accented French.
‘My master, the Emir al-Fakhri, bids you welcome. He prays that the Franks of Acre are thriving and sends his good wishes to all his friends in the city.’
‘Get on with it,’ the Constable snarled.
‘Your messengers arrived on the Thursday before last. My master saw them with his own eyes: one Templar, one Hospitaller, and their servants and assistants. They were arrested as soon as they entered the city, and all were refused permission to meet with the Sultan. They were taken directly to the gaol.’
‘But they were emissaries travelling under promise of safe conduct!’ the Grand Master of the German Order protested.
The messenger shrugged. His manner indicated that if the Sultan did not extend safe conduct, there was little security for them.
The Constable leaned back in his seat. There was a moment’s absolute stillness in the chamber. High overhead, a flag flapped and cracked in the wind from the sea, and Baldwin was startled by its loudness. Birds wheeled and soared, their cries oddly plaintive, as if they were announcing the disaster to come. Baldwin reckoned all in the square felt the same wretched discouragement.