Fra William got his turcopoles formed. He had about a hundred squires and ‘light’ cavalrymen and they did not form a wedge, but instead cantered out to form an open line to our front.
Fra Peter rode out of the central wedge and rode along our front.
‘Christians!’ he called. ‘For this you have trained. For this you have endured the penance of your harness and the taste of your own blood. Now is your hour!’
Four hundred voices roared. And were silent.
Four hundred men.
The legate was in the centre of Fra Peter’s wedge. As safe as the knights could make him, and our three squadrons began to ride along the foreshore, toward the keening sounds of combat.
The sun was high.
It was just noon.
Fra William took the turcopoles up the beach, formed at an order so open that there was twenty yards between horsemen, but that meant that his hundred covered almost the whole width of the beach and the sandy plain below the city walls. I had seen them practice this ‘screen’ on Rhodes, and I had assumed it was a matter of deception because even a very thin line of horses raises enough dust to cover most movements.
But the screen covered more than movement. Because the men in the screen had bows and crossbows, they could deter enemy light cavalry. They could also see and scout obstacles and could react far more quickly than we armoured knights to changes in the field or sudden sallies. Best of all, they were themselves very difficult to hit; at twenty yards apart, each horseman was an individual target. A single horseman can slow or speed, angle left or right, and if he knows his business, he can tie down a good amount of archery. You might argue that the archers could simply shoot over him or past him at the serried ranks of knights behind, but that is not the way of men in war. Men in war shoot at the target closest to them and most immediately dangerous.
At any rate, the confidence and calm of the Order was so great, and I think that Father Pierre’s presence had something to do with it, that I had time to admire the precision of our formations, and the advance of the line of light horse was splendid.
As we moved west along the beach, the sounds of fighting grew louder. When we came to the spit of land on which the Pharos castle stood, well out in the bay, the line of rocks that supported the spit made a wall. In fact, I have learned since that it is a wall, built in ancient times by Great Alexander and has since silted over to form dry land.
But along this wall came part of the garrison of Pharos.
Our turcopoles changed direction like a flock of starlings in the air. One moment they were a line across the beach, and then they changed front to the north, and formed to our right flank, facing the new threat from the garrison.
It was one of the day’s most important fights, and I missed it. I saw a little of it and it gave me a taste of how warfare in the Levant must be conducted – utterly different from the protracted armoured mêlées of Italy and France. The garrison of the Pharos Castle was part mounted Mamluks and part infantry archers. They moved very quickly along the top of the rock wall, seeming to walk on the sea. Our turcopoles changed front to meet them, as I have said, and both sides ended up on the sand at the sea’s edge, loosing a cloud of arrows as they closed.
The end of the Saracen line was only a hundred paces from me, and I gathered my reins and looked at Fra Peter.
He rode to me from his wedge. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘You will not charge until I command you. Do not betray my trust in you, William.’
Well.
I saw Marc-Antonio go down under his horse, and I saw John’s horse leap my downed squire even as John loosed his bow with perfect control, leaning well back, head thrown back. He feathered a Mamluk at a range of perhaps one pace, and his horse reared, at his command, I think, and he had another arrow on his bow and loosed it down into a man close enough to have been struck by his sword. He shot and shot and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.