00 - Templar's Acre

Also by Michael Jecks

The Last Templar

The Merchant’s Partner

A Moorland Hanging

The Crediton Killings

The Abbot’s Gibbet

The Leper’s Return

Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

Belladonna at Belstone

The Traitor of St Giles

The Boy Bishop’s Glovemaker

The Tournament of Blood

The Sticklepath Strangler

The Devil’s Acolyte

The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

The Templar’s Penance

The Outlaws of Ennor

The Tolls of Death

The Chapel of Bones

The Butcher of St Peter’s

A Friar’s Bloodfeud

The Death Ship of Dartmouth

The Malice of Unnatural Death

Dispensation of Death

The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

The Prophecy of Death

The King of Thieves

The Bishop Must Die

The Oath

King’s Gold

City of Fiends

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Michael Jecks 2013

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Michael Jecks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN: 978-0-85720-517-9
TPB ISBN: 978-0-85720-518-6
EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-85720-520-9

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by CPI (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

Neil, Lois, Emily and Izzy

(the wonderful Rowlipops)

With thanks for supporting their medievally-challenged local writer with wine and beer.

Writing
Templar’s Acre
has been a wonderful adventure for me – but I’ve mixed feelings now that it’s done because sadly, it is going to be the
last of the Templar series for a while.

There are many good reasons for this. The most important is that I need a change. I am absolutely convinced that for an author to interest the reading public,
he
must first be
interested in, and intrigued and fascinated by his subject. As a result, I think I have become one of the worst fourteenth-century anoraks in existence.

Since embarking on the Templar series with Baldwin and Simon, I’ve grown exceptionally comfortable in their company. I know how they will respond to any number of influences, and I like
their families and friends. More, I know their period. I am happier with their politics and politicians than I really should be. And while I do not look at those days through rose-tinted
spectacles, I am equally sure that their time was better than has often been depicted.

But every author comes to a realisation that he needs to change direction once in a while, to focus on new challenges. For me, with two books written every year, and concentrating so heavily on
my specific period, it has been very difficult to come up for air into the twenty-first century.

Just moving, with
Templar’s Acre,
into the late thirteenth century, made writing feel more like a holiday again. Finding new, different characters to write about, a different
location, and looking more to the clash of cultures than a straight crime novel, was wonderful.

I have wanted to write about Acre and this final battle for the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader States ever since my very first fan letter.

In it, so I am told (I wasn’t allowed to see it), the writer listed over twenty factual inaccuracies in my book. The first was that I had mentioned that Baldwin had been at the Siege of
Acre in 1291. This, the writer stated, was wrong. The siege took place in 1191, and rather than the Christians being attacked in the city, it was Saracens inside the city who were attacked by
Richard the Lionheart’s men.

My editor, who had only recently commissioned a complete unknown (me), was a little concerned by this list. She called me to ask if I would like to comment on a few of the points raised. The
subtext, I think, was: ‘Are you a complete moron who got all this detail wrong?’ It wouldn’t be surprising. No editor likes to think that they could have commissioned a complete
turkey.

Fortunately I was able to reassure her. I vaguely recall making a throw-away comment along the lines of, ‘If this fool can’t even be bothered to check to see that Acre was attacked a
hundred years
after
Richard took it, I don’t see why I should waste more time on his questions.’

It did niggle.

So for the last seventeen years or so, I’ve wanted to get heavily involved in a good battle book. And this is the result.

Templar’s Acre
is a fictional prequel, but the main action and most of the characters were real.

Roger Flor was as I depicted him in the book. The only possible difference between the real man and the one I have invented, is that I have been far kinder to him than he really deserves. In
later life he became a noted mercenary, until his death at the hand of an unappreciative employer in 1305.

The scenes of the end of Acre are as accurately portrayed as I can manage.

It was one of the first protracted sieges to be documented extensively. I suppose the fact that so many educated men were able to flee the city helped. Usually, when the Mameluks attacked a
stronghold, it was in a place like Safed or Krak des Chevaliers, from which there could be no safe escape. Hemmed in upon all sides, the miserable victims must surrender, in which case death or
slavery would inevitably result. Many, of course, chose to fight to the last, refusing to submit even when all hope was gone.