accumulated in our travels, including Richard’s new bride Queen Berengaria and his sister Queen Joanna, and two or three thousand or so sick and wounded. I wondered what had become of Nur, whether I would ever see her again — whether I wanted to — and then pushed that thought away: this was not a time for self-pity.
King Richard, splendid in his finest gilt-chased armour, a golden crown on the brow of his steel conical helmet, rode up and down the line all that first day with a company of knights, exhorting the commanders to keep their companies close together and not allow any to lag behind. He seemed to be brimming with energy, now that we were finally setting off towards our destination, and his strong voice could be heard in snatches up and down the column, over the immense tumult of nearly eighteen thousand men on the move.
We marched in the rear part of the second division, myself riding Ghost at a walk in a double column with eighty-two surviving mounted men-at-arms, led by Robin and Sir James de Brus. Like all the other troopers, I carried shield and lance, and wore an open-face helmet, knee-length hauberk and felt under-tunic beneath the mail, despite the blistering heat. We were plagued by huge clouds of flies that buzzed and crawled over our faces, drinking the sweat and as we were for ever slapping and brushing at them, we must have looked like and army of lunatics, twitching and flapping and sweating as we ambled along in the harsh morning sunshine.
To my left walked Little John’s company, a mixture of archers and spearmen. To my right, past the other line of cavalry troopers, marched Owain’s men on the seaward side. We had one hundred and sixty one archers fit for duty and eighty-five spearmen — I knew this because Robin had asked me to make an accurate tally before we left. Some of our men had died en route to Outremer, some perished in the siege, and some were sick with fever and had to be left at Acre, but ours was still a formidable force. The archers and spearmen had been divided between two companies: one commanded by Owain, and the other by Little John. If attacked, the spearmen were to form a shield wall and stand firm, and behind them the archers were to shoot down the foe. We cavalrymen were not to take any offensive action, unless absolutely necessary: as Robin had hammered home to us, our job was to march, march, march — and stay together.
Behind us came a small force of belligerent Flemings, and then the French knights of the third division. They were the rearguard, and also had charge of protecting the baggage train: forty lumbering ox-carts, several strings of pack horses, and three dozen mules. Most of the baggage was on board the galleys of the fleet, which could just be seen, keeping pace with us out on the calm blue water to our left, wet oars dipping and flashing like freshly caught mackerel in the sunlight.
By mid-morning it was already evident that the column had problems. The gap between our second division and the Frenchmen of the third seemed to grow larger with every step. And we were reluctant to slow our march because it would mean losing touch with the Norman knights in front of us. So we stuck rigidly to our pace and the space between our company and the French grew wider. At one point, King Richard came thundering past with a tail of sweating household knights, and I could hear him shouting angrily at the French commander, Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, telling him in no uncertain terms to keep up. I could not hear the Duke’s reply, but the harangue seemed to have no effect at all, as the hole in the marching column continued to grow. At noon, having covered no more than five miles, we stopped for a meal and a much-needed drink of lukewarm water from our skins. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the enemy scouts.
Three hundred yards to my left, riding along the top of a small sandy ridge, was a line of cavalry: small, lean men on small, wiry ponies, their heads wrapped in black turbans, from which the crown of a steel helmet with a cruel looking spike emerged. I could see the shape of their short bows, protruding from a leather carrier behind the saddle. They looked an evil crew, their dark bearded faces seemingly marked with malice and a lust to spill Christian blood. Despite the heat, I shivered.
As we resumed our march, the enemy cavalry kept pace with us, hour after hour, walking their beasts, and coming no closer. Occasionally one rider would peel off from the column and gallop away to the northeast to make a report to the main body of the Saracen host, which was out of sight somewhere in the hills. By mid-afternoon, I noticed that the line of Saracen scouts had thickened considerably — instead of a single row of walking ponies, there were now a fat column of men and horses, three or four deep. And behind the enemy column I could see more horsemen coming to join them. I looked behind me: the gap between our division and the ranks of the French cavalry had opened even wider. There was now a good quarter of a mile of empty space between us.
‘Should we stop and wait for the French?’ I asked Robin. I knew what he would say before I even finished the question.
‘We have our orders,’ said Robin tersely.
I twisted in the saddle and looked behind me again. The third division was composed of a little more than a thousand mounted knights, mostly French but also with a few hundred renowned Italian noblemen from Pisa, Ravanna and Verona. They were accompanied by more than five thousand spearmen and crossbowmen, unhorsed men-at-arms, servants, muleteers, ox-cart drivers and assorted hangers-on. Despite King Richard’s clear orders, they even seemed to have brought along all their women. In the vanguard of the division, in two glittering ranks, rode five hundred French knights, splendid in bright surcoats and riding under gaily fluttering pennants. Behind them trundled the ox-carts and the mule trains, guarded on either side by the footmen: tall spearmen in leather armour and skilled Italian crossbowmen, their bows over their shoulders, singing as they marched. In the rear was another double row of knights. The formation was a good one, designed as it was for the defence of the supplies in the wagons, or it would have been but for the yawning space between the third division and the rest of the army. There seemed to be no sense of urgency, but I could see that the real problem was the ox-carts, which moved along too slowly. Even moving at a walking pace, the double row of knights at the front was constantly having to rein in and wait for the big wagons to catch them up. And every time they did this, the space in our column gaped a little wider.
‘Alan,’ said Robin, ‘ride up to the King and inform him of the situation; tell him we are in grave danger of leaving the French behind, and that we must slow the march. Go on, quickly. I don’t like the look of those Saracen horsemen.’
I guided Ghost between two of Little John’s walking spearmen and put my spurs into her sides. As I galloped up the left-hand side of the army, I looked over to the East and I could see what Robin was concerned about. A river of horsemen, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, was spilling out into the coastal plain roughly opposite Robin’s force — but they were heading towards the gap in the column. If they got between the main body of our army and the French they could surround the wagon train and cut it up at their leisure. I put my head down and raced Ghost as fast as I could towards the royal standard, a rippling splash of wind-tossed gold and red that fluttered half a mile ahead; and, in what seemed like only a few moments, breathless, sweating like a slave, I was calling out to the household knights to let me pass and, suddenly, I was in the presence of the King. He looked older than when I had last seen him this close to, on the beach in Cyprus, and more careworn, and I knew I was about to add to his worries.
‘Greetings, sire, from the Earl of Locksley, and he says that the French and the baggage-train are being left behind and we must slow the march or abandon them. Also, it looks as if a large body of Saracen horse is on the verge of getting between us and that same division.’
‘Are they, by God! William, Roger, Hugh, you three come with me; the rest of you keep the column going. Blondel,’ I smiled with pleasure at the King’s use of his personal nickname for me, ‘how many cavalry does Locksley have, about four score, isn’t it?’ I nodded in agreement. ‘Right, let’s see if they are any good.’
As we cantered back down the column, the King, his three bravest knights and myself all riding abreast, I saw that we were already too late. Three or four hundred Saracens in loose formation were galloping their scrubby little horses straight at the leading knights of the French division. All had their short bows in their hands, and as we watched, they let fly a cloud of arrows, which sailed high, came down, and rattled against the knight’s shields and chainmail coats. Without slowing their horses, the Saracens plucked fresh arrows from quivers on their saddles, nocked and loosed again; and again; and again. I was astounded, their rate of fire was faster even than our own Sherwood bowmen, and they were accomplishing this from the back of a galloping horse! Just as the Saracens must surely smash into the ranks of the French knights, who had levelled their lances, and were trotting forward ready to receive them, the Saracens swerved away from the line of knights, rode swiftly along the face of the division shooting another shower of arrows, skewering horses and men at close range, and then curved away back the way they had come, turning in their saddles to give the French one last parting volley from their short bows. It was an amazing display, and I doubted if anyone in our army could match their skill on the back of a galloping horse.
As they rode away from the knights, I noticed something strange: although many of the Frenchmen were
