though we had just faced an attack such as these, and many of our friends had suffered and died in it, I still found it an impressive sight to watch. The horsemen were superb, galloping in with enormous skill, loosing their arrows in great clouds on the part of the line they were challenging, and then, right in the face of the enemy, turning their horses about with their knees and galloping away, still keeping their enemies under attack as they retreated. They were inviting our men to charge, to break their ranks, and come out into the field to be slaughtered. By and large, their casualties were very low: we had few archers in the army, the majority being with Robin, and so the only damage they suffered was from a few well-aimed crossbow bolts as they thundered into range and swiftly out of it.
‘They are merely probing for weakness all the way up and down the line,’ said Robin to me. I was shocked: probing? I felt we had survived a major attack. I was also slightly surprised that Robin should address me, as our relations were still frosty, but then I realised that with Sir James de Brus out of position, he was just making a remark to the next man in the line. ‘And I think they may have found a weak spot,’ Robin continued. And he pointed past me to the left where the gentle Hospitallers were once again being menaced by another horde of enemy horsemen, which was trotting purposefully towards the extreme left of our line.
‘Ride to the King, will you, Alan, and tell him that we in the centre are firm, but the left is about to take another battering. Ask if he has any orders for us.’
I turned my horse around and threaded my way through the wounded to the seaward side of the army. As I came clear of our pain-racked men, I twisted my head to look north behind me and saw that Robin was right: the Hospitallers were once again being mauled by massed formations of mounted bowmen. Ignoring the deep humming of the Turkish bows and the screams of wounded knights and horses behind me, I galloped south towards the King’s division to relay Robin’s warning. It was glorious to be moving in that terrible heat, to feel the wind on my face, and smell the tang of salt in the air from the sea which was no more than a couple of hundred yards to my right. As I reached the group of knights that surrounded the King, ignoring a menacing glare from Sir Richard Malbete, I saw that a great argument was already in progress. My friend Sir Nicholas de Scras was gesturing passionately with his hands. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I implore you, the Hospitallers must charge — and soon. We cannot take much more of this; the Turks’ arrows have nearly wiped out our footmen, and the horses,’ he swallowed painfully, ‘the horses are being slaughtered from under us, and we do nothing. We must charge — else there will be no mounted force left to charge with.’
‘Tell the Grand Master that you must stand, like the rest of us; we must all endure until the time is right.’
‘But, Sire, men will say that we are cowards, that we fear to attack the enemy because — ’
Richard turned on him savagely. ‘Hold your tongue, sir. I am in command. And we will attack on my orders. Not before. By God’s legs, be damned to your Grand Master and his talk of cowardice…’
A household knight was plucking at King Richard’s sleeve. ‘Sire, look!’ he said pointing down the line to the far end. We all turned our heads to look.
Nearly a mile away, a perfect line of black-clad horsemen stepped delicately out of the shambles of the shattered third division. They held their lances vertically, a pale fence of spears, sunlight winking from the points, and they walked their horses slowly forward. You could clearly see the white crosses of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem on the black trappers of their horses. We were all stunned into silence; I hardly dared to breathe. Then a second line of black knights emerged behind the first.
‘So they are going to charge anyway, without permission,’ muttered one of the King’s noble companions.
Ahead of the Hospitallers was a large crowd of Turkish horsemen; many had dismounted to have a more stable platform from which to shoot their arrows at the foe, others were forming up for another charge at the wavering Christian lines. They seemed as surprised as we that the Hospitallers had emerged from between the wagons of baggage train that they had defended for so long. A few loosed arrows at the black ranks of horsemen, but they had no visible effect. Then the Hospitallers smoothly, silently, like some great cat, moved on to the attack. The first rank of knights, perhaps seventy men, broke into a trot, the mail-clad bodies rising and falling in the saddles in unison, then the canter. The lances came down to the horizontal position; the first line moved up to the gallop. The Turkish enemy were still hastily mounting their ponies, desperately loosing a final arrow and scrambling to get out of the way when the first black rank of knights smashed into them. Men died screaming on the Hospitallers’ long spears, the weight of the heavy horse easily punching the steel spearheads through the light armour of the Turkish cavalry, the colossal impact of the charge splintering the mass of horsemen into tiny shards of individual Saracens fleeing for their lives. Few survived, as the first line swept through them like a roaring wind, and then the second line, the Hospitaller sergeants, came boiling into the fray, swords swinging, maces crushing skulls, more than sixty angry black-clad servants of Christ taking their revenge for the humiliations they had suffered all morning from the stinging arrows of these men. Behind them came a great mass of the remaining French knights, their boldly coloured surcoats gaudy in comparison with the sombre black of the first two lines of charging men. The whole of the cavalry of the third division, all those that still had horses to sit upon, charged. Some three hundred knights, the cream of our army, galloped forward to the attack — in total disregard of King Richard’s orders. The French horsemen, screaming their war cries, piled into the great mass of enemy cavalry, slaughtering any Turks they could find with glorious abandon, blades swinging, gore splashing, their big warhorses biting and kicking out at the behest of their blood-crazed Christian masters.
‘Sire,’ said one of the household knights, breaking the spell of stunned silence. ‘He is moving at last, look — I believe Saladin is committing his reserves to the battle.’ And he pointed at the enemy lines, where large masses of men, some thousands, it seemed, were moving forward on the left against the Hospitaller knights — who were still engaged in a furious melee, hacking at the surviving Turks with their great swords, carving men and horses into red ruin.
‘Well, that’s it, then. Saladin has weakened his centre. We must seize the moment,’ said King Richard. He looked at me: ‘Blondel,’ he said, ‘pass the word to Locksley. He is to move up in support of the third division; pull the Hospitallers’ chestnuts out of the fire, if he can, and then attack the enemy’s right flank — that’s on our left. Is that clear? He can take James of Avesnes and the Flemings with him. We will all attack now, all along the line. That is the order. Trumpeter!’
As I turned my horse to deliver the King’s message, my heart was beating hard with excitement. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him point directly at Sir Nicholas de Scras. ‘You, sir,’ he thundered, ‘you, sir, can tell your Grand Master that I will have words with him after this day is done, if he survives!’ And then the King turned and began to shout for his best lance and his new gauntlets.
I raced back to Robin’s men, but I could see the news of the order to advance had outstripped me. All along the line the horsemen were moving forward. I rejoined the line of Robin’s cavalry, taking my place beside my master. ‘The orders are to support the Hospitallers, sir, and then to attack the enemy’s right wing,’ I said to Robin. ‘The Flemings are to ride with us. It is a general attack, sir, all along the line.’ And, for no reason that I can easily explain, except that I must have been infected with the King’s battle-madness, I grinned at him.
‘Yes, it is, Alan; yes it is. And about time, too,’ and he gave me a wide, easy smile.
Chapter Nineteen
We advanced in a single line, riding out beyond the tide-mark of dead men and horses in front of our position, and we angled our charge towards the north-east, where the scattered Hospitaller knights, having cut their opponents to bloody shreds, were hastily trying to reform in the face of a body of heavy Berber cavalry two hundred strong that was bearing down on them from Saladin’s right wing. As we approached at the trot, with the Flemings hard on our heels, two hundred yards ahead the Berbers launched a shower of javelins and then hurled themselves at the bunched Hospitallers in a furious rush of galloping horse, snarling white-clad warrior and lunging spear. But, tired though they were from their previous fight, the Christian knights were masters of this kind of war: they met charge with charge, and lance with lance; and the two forces, smashed into each other with a crash of splintering wood and the squeal of steel grating on steel.
I looked over my right shoulder to the south and saw that the whole first division, King Guy de Lusignan’s knights, the Angevins, Poitevins and Richard’s knights from Aquitaine, with the Templars in their distinctive white
