had also cost Guy all his credibility in the eyes of the barons of the kingdom.
Andre swallowed a last mouthful of food and wiped the grease from his lips with the back of one hand before drinking deeply and then turning to look at his nearest neighbor, a slight, clean-shaven man with a hooked nose and a hollowed-out face that seemed lacking in lips and teeth. The fellow also had almost excessively broad shoulders, and he had sat down quietly beside Andre only moments earlier and was now diligently attacking a thick slice of juicy pork. He paid no attention to anyone at first, but when Andre greeted him he looked across at him and grunted, then stuffed the meat in his mouth into one cheek. Andre had noticed that he had brought nothing with him to drink.
“Good pig,” the fellow said. “Did you have some?” He spoke narrowly, barely opening his mouth, so that his accent—Andre had no idea which region it sprang from—sounded tight and nasal, but his words were understandable at least, and Andre was pleased, for the odds of having found, at first try, someone with whom he could converse straightforwardly among this enormous force were greatly less than even. He swallowed a belch and nodded.
“No, I think what I ate was goat, but it was good. When was the day of rest declared? I missed hearing about it until I woke up and caught the smell of roasting meat, about an hour ago.”
His neighbor sniffed. “Last night at midnight,” he said.
“What about the people unloading the ships?”
“What about them? Somebody has to unload the ships. I worked all afternoon, yest’day, then had to go on watch last night. I saw you out there, too, with one of the Templar crews, didn’t I? You one of them?”
Andre grunted. “Aye, a novice, lowest of the low. Not a Templar yet, but not a common nobody either, so I can’t win at anything, anywhere.” He hoisted his empty flagon. “I’m going to get more beer. Can I bring you one?”
The man looked about him as though surprised to discover that he had none, and then made to get up. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, then we’ll lose our seats. Stay here and finish your meat.”
By the time he returned, his new companion had finished eating and was staring morosely into the fire in front of him. Andre handed him a flagon of beer and sat back down beside him.
“Interesting that King Guy should turn up here, all the way from where you’d expect him to be, when we’re supposed to be on the way to help him. Don’t you think?”
“Interesting?” The guardsman shrugged. “No. I mean … I suppose it is if you care. But who cares? Besides, we’re not going over there to help him. We’re going over to kick the Saracens out of God’s country, aren’t we? To take it back for the Church …” He shook his head. “Can’t see much in favor of our helping him, when I think about it …
“What have you heard? What’s your name, by the way?”
“Nickon … Nich’las, really, but Nickon’s what I get. What’s yours?” Andre told him and he nodded. “Aye, well, Andre, from what I’ve been told, this Guy, this Jerusalem King, looks as though he should be good in a fight, but he doesn’t often get to fight, if you know what I mean. Not too many people confident of his leadership … He’s the one caught all the blame for the big battle at Hattin, where your lot and the Hospitallers got slaughtered and we all got kicked out of Jerusalem. They say he lost it all single-handedly, ’cause he didn’t know his arse from his elbow and couldn’t make up his mind whether to stop and fight or run and hide … Anyway, one of the nobs he brought with him was talking to the King—our King—day before yest’day, and I was on duty, right there within reach of ’em. Anyway this fellow, some big baron from Jerusalem, he was saying that Guy was the one who set up the siege of Acre, two years ago, and he’s been holding Saladin’s crew tied up there ever since.”
He cocked his head, looking sideways at Andre. “He was captured and held prisoner by old Saladin himself, did you know that?” Andre shook his head, pursing his lips, and Nickon nodded solemnly. “Well, he was, for more than a year … Mind you, being a prisoner and a king probably isn’t the same thing as being a prisoner and a plain old sweaty guardsman, because Saladin let him go after that, on condition that Guy promised not to fight against him again. So Guy promised, and he got out, and then he started raising an army right away … Well, a promise to a godless heathen’s no promise at all, is it? ’Specially if it’s made under … you know …”
“Duress.”
“Right. Anyway, it took him a while, but he finally raised an army and set siege to Acre …” Nickon tilted his head, eyeing Andre from an angle. “You’ve ’eard about Acre, haven’t you? You know what it is?”
“Yes … and no. I remember hearing something vaguely, but it was a long time ago and I didn’t pay much attention. I had no notion at the time that I’d ever be going there. Tell me about it. What’s so important about Acre?”
“Well, it’s a port, isn’t it? One of the places that Saladin overran and swallowed up right after Hattin. The only place he didn’t get, right at that time, was Tyre, another port, farther to the north, and he would’ve had that as well if it hadn’t been for Conrad of Montferrat. I’d never heard of him before yest’day, but I’ve heard a lot about the whoreson since then, I’ll tell you. He’s a German, some kind of baron or high lord, one of Barbarossa’s people, and he turned up in the Holy Land by accident—” He checked himself. “Well, not by accident, not really, but nobody there knew he was coming, and he sailed right into the harbor at Tyre with a fleet of ships full of knights and soldiers on the very day the people in charge was getting ready to surrender the city. Put an end to that, Conrad did, and right quickly, and the upshot was that Saladin withdrew … Nobody really knows why he withdrew, but he did, straight away. Turned around and marched away down south and captured Acre instead … And his army’s still holding it, even though they’ve been under siege for two years now, and King Guy’s the fellow who started the siege.”
Andre wrinkled his brow. “Wait, now … I understand all that, but what has it to do with Conrad and Guy being enemies?”
“Nothing, my old lad … and everything. I can see why you’re still a novice. Conrad and Guy are two cats fighting over the same mouse … The mouse is the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and there’s nothing happens in the Holy Land that isn’t touched by it. Conrad sailed into Tyre by accident and rescued it. Now he’s Marquis of Tyre. Guy sailed into Jerusalem and tupped its Queen—though she wasn’t the Queen then, not yet— and now he’s the King of Jerusalem. Conrad is envious. The kingdom’s bigger than a pissy little port and he wants it for himself. And according to what this nob was saying to the King yest’day, he might get it, one of these days … See, he’s arguing—and there seems to be a lot of people over there who support him—he’s saying that Guy was only king there because his wife, this Sibylla, was the rightful queen. Sibylla died last year … she’s gone. Ergo, according to Conrad and those who’d like to see him on the throne, Guy no longer has a claim to the crown.”
“But Guy was crowned legally, was he not?”
The guardsman turned and looked at Andre from beneath raised eyebrows, lifting his arms in appeal. “I don’t know. Somebody forgot to invite me to the coronation.”
“Aye, well, he was, by the old Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem.”
Nickon slowly pushed his lips out into a pout that was all the more impressive because he had no lips to speak of, his mouth little more than a horizontal slash. Nonetheless he managed to convey great skepticism, perhaps because of that, and as Andre began to ask him why, he lifted one hand and shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Ask yourself one question, lad … Do you really believe Montferrat and his cronies care for a moment about what some doddering bishop might have done five years ago? There is a
