When we got back to the gate, the towers above it were manned, and arrows and javelins rained on our Scottish knights. Sir Walter was wounded, and so was Lord St Clair, and one of the Irish knights took a blow to the helmet that knocked him unconscious. But the other men stayed at their task.
By that time we had quite a crowd of sailors and routiers about us, and they were prowling the walls. A few were killed — the garrison of the customs house leaned right out over the wall to shoot them. But they had no hoardings, and so the Italian arbalest men and the handful of English and Scottish bowmen began to pick them off.
John asked my permission to join the archers and I sent him off with my blessing. The loot of the battlefield the day before had yielded him not one but three Mamluk bows, a fine sabre with verses of the Koran in gold on the blade, and a hundred arrows. He was as eager to employ them as a new-dubbed knight is to wear his armour.
I can’t imagine that there were more than a dozen archers, all told, but they swept the walls. One of the differences I noted between the crossbow and the self bow is that John and the English archers had to draw and loose as a target was revealed, but the Italians could watch a particular crenellation, weapon aimed, waiting for the unlucky Saracen to expose himself.
Nonetheless, John scored the spectacular success of the afternoon, hitting an officer as he passed between merlons so that he fell with his head over the battlements. After that, the Saracens dared not show themselves, and again I thought they showed a want of spirit. They could have flooded the walls with archers and buried our men in shafts, and instead they allowed a dozen men to clear their walls.
One of the Italians, a veteran of fifty actions, I’ll wager you, moved forward. He had a light crossbow, the sort lords use for hunting-still a puissant weapon. He moved forward with the crossbow sweeping the walls, and moved all the way to the base of the wall. From there he moved to the gateway, from where he covered the knights, shooting his bolts almost straight up. Two more of the Italians joined him.
The three Englishman and one Scot of Ettrick — all brilliant archers — grew bored at the paucity of targets and they joined the sailors at the base of the wall. One of the Englishmen found the outlet of a jakes, a shithole so old that it was merely a mound of greenery. He was up on his mate’s shoulders in a moment and I saw this.
He was too broad to make it in,
I looked at Fra Peter; he gave me a nod and I rode down to the archers and sailors.
The archer wrinkled his nose. ‘Old shit, my lord.’ He grinned. ‘I been and used a few shitholes and your pardon in France, if you take my meaning.’
I laughed. ‘I used an apple tree once,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I know, me lord. I won there. Afore Poitiers, where we took King John.’
I dismounted and clasped his hand, old shit and all.
‘Ned Cooper,’ he said. ‘I was with the Prince at Poitiers. These criminals is Ewen, a barbarous fuckin’ Scot, and Rob Stone.’ He spoke slowly, and blinked a great deal, and I think he’d been hit a little too often in the head. Which is an odd thing for me to say, I admit, having received a few blows myself.
‘Which the thing is,’ Ned went on as if we were old comrades … and I suppose we were. He certainly knew me. ‘Which the thing is, that a small man, a really small man or a boy, would go through that hole as slick as …’ He looked around, and came to the unavoidable conclusion, ‘shit.’
Ewen, the Scot, and obviously not a candidate, shook his head. ‘I ’ate the smell,’ he said.
Rob Stone stretched his arms. ‘I’d rather roll in the stuff than go up a ladder,’ he said. ‘Methinks I’m too big in the arse, but I’ll have a go.’
But even as he tried — and failed — John the Turk appeared. He watched Stone struggle to get his shoulders through the hole and frowned. He walked away and I thought that was the end of it.
By this time the entire garrison of the customs house was in the towers, safe from our archery, lobbing red-hot sand and boiling tar and naphtha and all the weapons of hell on Sir William Leslie and his people.
The Scots were not getting in the gate. The two highlanders were hacking at the wooden door with axes, but it had been built for such attempts, although perhaps not from two northern giants.
John the Turk came back with a small boy perched on his saddle.
Ned Cooper nodded. ‘Now you’re thinkin’, mate. Now you’re usin’ yer noggin. Let the boy ha’ a go.’ He turned and pulled Stone’s ankle. ‘Get thy fat arse out there, Rob Stone.’
Stone grunted, sneezed, and dropped heavily to the ground. ‘Too bloody big,’ he said.
John showed the boy two gold ducats and the boy grabbed one, grinned, and stripped naked. John ran, flat footed and ungainly when off his horse, to the Italians. One of the bowmen had a grapple and rope, and John took it. The sailors came trotting back with my Tartar, and they looked up at the hole and did what soldiers do in such situations — they began wagering.
The boy stared at the rope, and John tied an end to the boy’s ankle. Ewen the Scot boosted the naked boy as if he was weightless and he vanished into the hole like a sword going into a scabbard.
And the line started to flow up the wall.
One of the Venetian sailors was a very small man. He stripped to his hose and hung his dagger round his neck and went up the rope. He got a shoulder through, there was a streak of curses and blasphemy utterly unbecoming a crusader, and a chunk of ordure-encrusted masonry fell, and he was in.
And then … nothing.
The Scots finally had the sally port alight. The axes of the two highlanders had gouged the surface enough for the fire to take hold, or so it appeared, and I rode back to the king.
He was eating a sausage. He looked at the sun, two fingers above the horizon, and back at the inferno the Scots had made. They had piled every scrap of wood they could find against the gate, and added some hellish stuff from the Pharos Castle. It burned fast.
By my estimation, the enemy had had the time to build a defensive ditch and rampart behind the sally port. If we were unlucky, they had a blank wall and false turn to trap a dozen men and drop naphtha on them.
I would have.
But the Mamluks were just men, neither better nor worse than ourselves.
‘It is now or never,’ the king said, finishing his sausage. He looked at Fra Peter. ‘You heard Sabraham’s report.’
Fra Peter nodded. He glanced at me. ‘Sir William hasn’t heard. The Sultan in Cairo is marching an army to the relief of his city. Probably here tomorrow. It marched before we came off our ships.’
I whistled.
The king smiled at de Mezzieres. ‘You know, gentlemen, this was never my choice. But now we are here, I think we should try and make our mark. Let us do something worthy, that our names may live forever.’
De Mezzieres nodded. ‘I am with you, your Grace.’
The king dismounted.
To the Grand Master, he said, ‘Give me the volunteers — they are the younger knights. If I have you and the Order at my back and a horse, I will fear no sally.’
The Grand Master nodded. ‘You are determined to assay this, your Grace?’
‘I will take this gate or die in the attempt,’ King Peter said gravely. Then he called forth his squire and knighted him.
The fire was burning down and the gate was a blackened tunnel.
‘One rush, my lords. No one hesitates, and the first man in the city will deserve something precious of me.’ He reached out to de Mezzieres and took the great banner of Jerusalem.