The Long Sword(212)

            My rising cut broke a man’s wrists and half severed them and I threw him to the ground with my knee and my left hand and finished him with my knee while I cut flat and low against an unarmoured spearman. His spear thrust was weak and skidded on my breastplate and I cut into his leg and probably fractured it with the same blow and he too was down.

            And then I was face to face with Mézzières, across a horse-length of beach. My friends were clearing away the front of the Cypriotes, and they had their ring of steel reformed.

            The army of the Alexandrines shrieked their dismay. And then, like fools, they turned and ran.

            The ‘crusaders’ were finally landing, all along the beach, many in boats provided by their ships, and some captains had run their small craft ashore. The Venetians and Genoese knew the harbour and came in close, well away to the right, and their landing cut many of the fugitives off from the open gate.

            I saw none of that. I leaned on my sword and panted, and my breath was all I could breathe inside my helmet, and somehow I got my visor up.

            De Mézzières stood there in the sun with the banner of Jerusalem in his hand. Then he raised his visor. He had a ring of dead at his feet.

            Our eyes met.

            What can I say? You know what we both thought.

            The man at his feet coughed, and coughed again, and in a moment we were on him the way the pursuers were on the Saracen fugitives. I had assumed the king to be dead, but we got his bassinet off his head and his blue eyes fluttered open.

            He rolled to his hands and knees and spat blood into the sand.

            ‘Ah,’ he growled. ‘Ah, Mézzières. I gather we are not in heaven?’



            Most of the men who won that day will tell you that the charge of the Order won the day. Listen, Chaucer, you’ve heard Hales tell it, have you not? Fifty years those men had waited for their day, and when they charged, their lances were tipped with fire.

            The Alexandrines had no idea we had a second force, and the Order showed them what a few mounted knights could do. And Fortuna – or God’s will – gave us everything: the Casteleto, the error of the Mamluk’s charge.

            But by Saint George, it was a glorious day, as great a day as any I have seen.

            The crusaders – no, the routiers, let us call them – slaughtered the Saracens. And the pity of it is that they did not just slaughter their army. Thousands of Alexandrines, including women and children, Jewish street vendors and Christians who had come out to see their brothers rescue them – they were by the gates – and our army killed them. This is the monster that is war, a monster that devours everything in its path.

            And still the men of Alexandria got the gates closed. They left brothers and sons to die and slammed the gates in their faces to keep us out. And the routiers who had played no part in the victory roamed the beach, killing unarmed men.

            Fra Peter gathered us again under the legate’s banner, but not before King Peter made Steven Scrope, one of the blood-covered figures at de Mézzières’ shoulder, and Miles Stapleton kneel and the sand, and he knighted them both. He knighted a dozen other men.

            He took his own collar, a magnificent thing of silver gilt and jewels made of swords and roses from around his neck and he broke it with his sword, and gave half to de Mézzières.

            He gave half to me.

            He made me one of his Order of the Sword while our army of mercenaries murdered the innocents who had come to watch the battle.

            I am a knight, and the business of my Order is war.

            Do peasants sicken of the plough? Do priests tire of saying Mass?