I am glad I went with the king that night. Glad I rode all the way to the bridge, and that we found Fra Peter. I only wish I’d stayed out of the city longer.
Did I say that the tunnel behind the Customs Gate was hell?
It was nothing but pain and terror.
The city of Alexandria the night of the sack – that was hell.
A city taken by storm is sacked. Those are the laws of war, the rules. Who, one might ask, makes these rules?
When we attacked the barricades of the city of Florence with six thousand Englishmen and Germans, it was an article of faith to us that we could not do the city any great injury. I think, perhaps, we underestimated the criminal savagery of man.
We had about seven thousand when we took Alexandria. Perhaps another two thousand in sailors and oarsmen. Perhaps yet another two thousand in armed servants. But I don’t think so. I think we were far fewer than ten thousand men.
I will make no excuses. Machaut sings that we left not a man alive of the infidel.
Perhaps. We certainly tried.
Fiore and I found Nerio and Miles and Fra Peter waiting in the darkness outside the Cairo Gate. The darkness was full of refugees, screams and imprecations – and the sounds of combat and murder. Nerio wanted to go through the city, and Miles, rarely insistent, was demanding that they ride around the city over the broken ground to the north and east.
I agreed with Nerio. Perhaps we were wrong, but we had drunk all our water and our horses were done, and I didn’t think we’d last for the ride around the city.
We re-entered the burned Cairo Gate at midnight, I’m guessing, because the city was afire and there were no bells. Men were looting; men were raping; men were killing. The city was an orgy of destruction, a phrase used by chroniclers but now brought to horrific life. Fiore asked the guard on the gate – men of the Order – where we might find the king. They didn’t know.
De Midleton had taken command of the gate. He was rallying all the Order’s men. We found Fra Peter, whose breathing was very difficult, a place to lie full length and we put him there as gently as we could manage. Miles and I were just looking at his wound when John the Turk appeared at the door – we were in one of the gate house towers, and it smelled like a charnel house. The smoke caught at our dry throats and made our stomachs burn, too – you know that feeling? When it feels like the smoke is in your gut?
‘Syr Midleton asks you!’ he shouted. But he had water – blessedly fresh water.
We drank before we ran back into the yard. Sabraham’s squire was speaking urgently to de Midleton, who turned as soon as he heard our sabatons on the cobbles.
‘It’s the legate,’ he said. ‘I can’t spare a man. Will you go?’
Marc-Antonio was still back at the ships. Or dead. Alessandro was with Nerio, and Juan’s squire, Ferdinando, was with his master’s corpse.
On the other hand, I could lay hands on three veteran archers, and John the Turk.
‘I’ll go,’ I said. We had the Cairo Gate’s stables by us and in less time than it takes a man to get armed, we had beautiful local horses for all the archers, and we were mounted in the yard. Ned Cooper and his mates had all strung their bows, and John had a panoply of looted Mamluk equipment.
We followed George.
We had heard fighting in the quarter behind the gate, and the cry of the Order; on horses, with George guiding us, we were there as quickly as we’d got mounted. I was amazed that we reached the place at all – I was so tired that when my horse stopped, I almost fell asleep inside my helmet and I was sure I couldn’t have lifted my sword.