waters.’ John looked at the men and women around him. They all had clean hands and faces, and were wearing impeccably clean white linen caftans. The priest too had neat hair and clean, trimmed nails. John looked down at his dirty surcoat, still stained with traces of vomit. Rabbit was little better, with matted hair. ‘I hope I do not offend,’ the priest continued, ‘but your odour is rather rank. The bath-house is just over there.’ He pointed to a large building just down the street.
‘A bath-house?’ Rabbit asked. ‘What kind of savage place is this?’
The priest smiled. ‘You are in a land of savages now, good sir. You shall have to learn to behave as one.’ He turned to go.
‘Thank you for your help, Father,’ John called after him. ‘Might I ask your name?’
‘William,’ the priest replied. ‘William of Tyre. I welcome you to the kingdom of Jerusalem, good knights. I hope you find all that you seek.’ And with that, the man turned and walked away.
‘What now?’ Rabbit asked.
John grimaced. ‘Now we bathe.’
John’s ears were still burning as he and Rabbit staggered down the narrow alleyway to the harbour, the heavy, bulging water-skins slung over their shoulders. The baths had been worse than he had anticipated. They had entered through the wrong door and found themselves surrounded by indignant, screeching women, who had chased them back into the street, much to the amusement of the men lounging outside in the shade. After finding the men’s entrance, they had paid one copper each to a sweaty, bug-eyed man, who told them in thickly accented Frankish to disrobe and then handed them two tiny cotton cloths to wrap around their waists. They were hustled through a small room with a single pool of cold water and on to an enormous pool whose steaming waters occupied an octagonal building with a high, domed ceiling. Windows had been cut high up on the wall, and the light streaming in illuminated men of every race, all naked but for their thin wraps. John had cleaned himself well enough and was just about to climb out when an enormous Saracen servant approached, grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip, and proceeded to scrub him fiercely all over with a long-handled brush. Rabbit was given even worse treatment by a severe old man who grabbed him by the shoulders and repeatedly dunked him under the water.
Their skin raw, John and Rabbit were ushered to the pool of cold water and shoved in. Gasping and shaking from the cold, they were finally allowed to leave. They had retreated to the changing room, where they found that their clothes had been washed in their absence. They practically ran as they left the building. John had to admit, though, that his scalp no longer itched and his hands were whiter than they had been in months. Perhaps the custom was not completely barbaric, after all.
‘’Sblood,’ John cursed as he and Rabbit emerged from the dark alleyway. The market stalls were closing up in advance of the midday heat, and the crowd had mostly gone. Beyond the stalls, the ship they had arrived on was already being loaded with new cargo: large barrels that the sailors were rolling up the gangway. Between the market and ship there was only empty ground. The men of their company were gone.
‘You, sailor!’ John shouted to one of the men loading the ship. ‘Where did our men go?’ The sailor shrugged and pointed off down the dock, away from the citadel. John scanned the harbour, but there was no sign of the men. ‘Damn!’ he cursed, dropping the waterskins.
‘We should look for them,’ Rabbit suggested.
‘Where? In there?’ John gestured to the city. ‘We have no idea which direction they went. We’d only get lost.’
Rabbit’s nose twitched. ‘I’m just trying to help.’
John sighed. ‘You’re right, Rabbit. Maybe the glass seller knows where they went.’ John shouldered the waterskins and headed towards the Jewish merchant, who was shutting up his stall. ‘Thank you, sir. We found the water.’ John pointed to the skins, and the Jew smiled in acknowledgement. ‘The men who were there,’ John continued, pointing to where the company had been sitting. ‘Do you know where they went?’
The Jew shrugged. ‘No, I am sorry.’ He picked up a string of glass beads and held it out to them. ‘Would you like to buy something? A present for a lady?’
‘No, thank you.’ John turned away to see a knight watching them from horseback. The man wore a black surcoat emblazoned with the distinctive white Hospitaller cross, composed of what looked like four arrowheads, all touching at the tips.
‘Looking for something?’ the knight asked.
‘We are Reynald de Chatillon’s men,’ John explained. ‘We are looking for the rest of our company.’
The Hospitaller’s eyebrows arched. ‘Reynald’s men, eh?’ He paused and then pointed along the dockside. ‘The rest of your company went that way. They are setting up camp outside the city, just past the harbour gate.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ The knight nodded and rode on.
John and Rabbit marched along the long harbour, passing tall-masted ships to their right and squat buildings on their left. By the time they finally reached Acre’s wall, John’s shoulders were burning from the leather straps of the waterskins. The end of the wall was marked by a massive, square gate-tower, which rose up from the coastline. They passed through the gate into a flat, empty space, and then through a second, outer wall. The men were setting up their tents in its shade.
‘Where have you been?’ Ernaut demanded as John and Rabbit trudged over to the camp and dropped the skins. He unstopped his skin and took a long drink, eyes narrowing as he examined John and Rabbit more closely. ‘And what happened to you? You look like two pigs scrubbed up for market.’
John could feel his face reddening. ‘Nothing. It took us a while to find water.’
‘And they made us bathe,’ Rabbit added. John winced.
Ernaut dropped his skin, and water sprayed from his nose as he burst into a fit of laughter. The men nearby also began laughing, and the others approached to find the source of the merriment.
‘They made you bathe?’ One Eye asked with a wink. ‘Tell us all about it, Rabbit. Did the Saxon here scrub you nice and good?’
‘No,’ Rabbit said. ‘There were servants for that.’ This produced another, louder fit of laughter from the men.
‘Leave him be, One Eye,’ John said. ‘Come on, Rabbit. Let’s pitch our tents.’ John stomped away, followed by the men’s mocking laughter.
‘What did I say?’ Rabbit asked.
‘Nothing. Just try to keep your mouth shut around them.’ John dropped his rucksack and began to pitch his tent on the edge of the camp. He glanced back. The men were roaring with laughter as One Eye bent over, his arse in the air and a quizzical look on his face as he shouted out, ‘Is that a bar of soap, Saxon?’ John grimaced. The sooner the fighting began the better.
John’s shovel dug into the sandy ground, and he leaned forward, scooping up a pile of dirt and flinging it out of the three-foot deep trench where he stood. He paused to push his damp, blond hair out of his face. The June sun blazed down mercilessly from a cloudless sky. When he had first arrived in Acre, two months ago, he wouldn’t have lasted an hour under that sun. Now, after weeks of hard labour, he was tanned and fit, firm muscles filling out his bony frame. He had already been working for two hours, shirtless, as he shovelled out a new latrine ditch for the ever-expanding camp. The Germans under the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad had arrived shortly after John’s company to swell the ranks of the crusaders. In the past week alone, hundreds more had flooded into the camp outside Acre: Raymond of Antioch and his nobles; King Louis of France with two hundred mounted knights; and hundreds of Templars and Hospitallers from every corner of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
‘Get back to work, bath-boy,’ One Eye shouted from where he sat on the ground beside the ditch, shaded by a sheet of white linen. John plunged the shovel back into the earth. This time, when he flung the dirt out of the ditch, it hit One Eye in the face.
‘You’ll pay for that, Saxon!’ One Eye spluttered. He brushed the dirt away and jumped to his feet, fists raised, but then froze. John turned to follow his gaze. A group of mounted knights with Reynald at their head was approaching over the barren plain, their horses’ hooves kicking up a tall plume of dust. As they rode into the outskirts of the sprawling crusader camp, men began to cheer. John squinted. He could just make out four darker men in white turbans riding in the centre of the knights. They rode stiffly, hands tied in front of them. Prisoners.
‘You stay here and dig, Saxon,’ One Eye ordered. ‘If this trench isn’t finished when I get back, then you’ll
