The White Cross (17 page)

I looked back just once. I waved. Kempe and the others raised their hands. But not Elise.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER ONE

Vézelay, France: July 1190

DEPARTURE

In common with most enterprises involving multitudes of men, the Kings’ Croisade of 1190 is subject to innumerable delays.

Since Richard first received the cross two years before, the war he’d fought against his father for control of Aquitaine took precedence over all else. Old Henry’s death, the new king’s coronation and subsequent fund-raising tours detained his armies for a second winter in the West, while those of Frederick Barbarossa, the German Emperor, had already reached the Hellespont. In March another death removed the King of Sicily from the affray. By then the French and English monarchs had decided on a new date after Easter for a joint departure. (For in an age when kings must personally defend their borders, it was advisable for land-hungry neighbours to leave their realms together.) But fate had one more obstacle to cast into their path; and on the day Archbishop Baldwin and his knights rode into Richard’s camp at Chinon, the Queen of France chose selfishly to die in childbed, and defer campaigning for a further period of mourning.

So one way or another, it’s the beginning of July before the Christian army finally assembles on the granite scarps around the town of Vézelay, a three-day ride south east of Paris.

The night before they leave, a congregation of two thousand fill the newly-built basilica of Sainte Madelaine, to call upon the Risen Christ to bless the holy quest. Two thousand men, but not a single woman.

The last time a great army marched from France against the infidel, some forty years before, King Richard’s mother Eléonore had taken up the cross herself, declaring she would strike a blow for Christendom with her own hand. Encouraged by her fortitude other women followed, riding in linkmail like amazons to form their own battalion beneath the Fleur-de-Louis banner. But not on this croisade. For this croisade the Pope decrees that only males of stainless character can save Jerusalem. Laundrywomen past the age of childbearing will be the only females to join the expedition; ill-favoured dames who’ll keep its soldiers’ linen and their souls both free from stain by being too old to attract them. Who but a celibate could make so obvious a mistake?

‘Holy Sepulchre assist us! Let not uncleanliness, base thoughts or fornication distract us from our enterprise to free the Holy City!
Sanctum Sepulchrum adjuva!’
is what the Abbot of Vézelay has to say in Latin on the subject. ‘Be strong, put on Christ’s armour. Stand fast against temptations of the flesh!’

That night two thousand men, bare-headed, cram the aisles and narthex of Sainte Madelaine to hear his sermon and receive his benediction. Outside the building twenty times that number crowd the town and occupy the slopes around the village of Saint Père, the lights of their flambeaux spangling the Morvan landscape like galaxies of stars.

‘Sanctum Sepulchrum…’ Men’s voices on the parvis relay the chant. ‘Sanctum Sepulchrum adjuva!’ They’re proud to be men with a taste for war bred in them – trained into them from childhood. The irony of using a religion born of opposition to one military culture to fuel another is lost on the crucesignati. Gentle Jesus urges them to battle for the right to re-erect His cross and cleanse His tomb; invites them to see violence as a virtue.

‘Sanctum Sepulchrum adjuva! Holy Sepulchre assist us!’
Their paean rises to the vaulted roof of the basilica, spreads as ripples from a stone flung into water, resounding and rebounding round the hills and through the twilit valleys.

Dawn breaks over Vézelay. Its townsfolk wake from dreams of thunder to the reality of trembling earth and rank on rank of tramping feet. Platters rattle on their shelves. The sentries on their walkways feel the town walls tremble. Others who have risen early to stand at first light on the valley slopes, watch forests of raised spears move steadily along the Moulins road. Wood creaks, harness jingles, metal shoes strike sparks from stone. Dogs bark. Commanders bellow orders. Excitable young riders crow like the roosters as by degrees the sun penetrates the dust of their departure to paint colours onto fields of banners. Pennons buckle in the breeze, and from the hill behind the town the bells of the basilica ring out in noisy celebration. Cue for black cats to cross the road ahead and bats to leave their belfries. The great folly of the Kings’ Croisade is underway at last.

Some few days before, the marshals of provision have ridden ahead to commandeer supplies. Now in the darkness of the early hours the highest échelons of kings and prelates leave their lodgings in the town.

Now the first French contingent begin to move preceded by two bishops, the Counts of Nevers, Fontigny, Clermont and Blois. Each with his own battalion. Each jewelled and perfumed, barbered to the ears and signed with a bright cross of scarlet silk. Behind on leading reins prance destriers in tasselled housings, with hooded gyrfalcons, peregrines on perches, smaller birds in cages and dogs in couples – greyhounds, lymers, tracking dogs and pacing dogs for running down gazelle. Behind the dogs come chamberlains and pages, clerks, heralds, surgeons and physicians, astrologers, cartographers, and chroniclers to record the valour of the enterprise and set down the history of its conquests. Then swarms of common fletchers, farriers, fewterers, smiths, scullions and pastrycooks. Packhorses and hide-covered wagons bear plate and coffers, battle helms in pinewood cases. Documents on parchment. Raiments layered with lavender against the moth in solid cedar chests. Marching in their tracks come companies of soldiers – squires on foot and knights on horseback. All faces stamped with eager smiles. All bodies branded with red crosses.

Behind the French are men of Burgundy; brothers in Christ who also wear red crosses on their shoulders to strengthen their right arms. Then Mosans and Brabançons out of Flanders, riding six-abreast on Flemish horses under the green standard of their leader, Jacques d’Avenses. Then black-crossed Teutons from the Rhineland who missed their chance to leave with Barbarossa. Then cavallieres and troops of crack Italian routiers – rank on rank, with crossbows on their shoulders and yellow crosses on their cloaks. Until at last all cruciforms are drained of colour; lily-white.

More numerous than those of France, of Burgundy and Flanders, Germany and Italy all set together – too many to be counted as they pass, or calculated later for the annals – few in the white-crossed army of the English King have any clear idea of where Jerusalem might be or what Muslims believe. Within their ranks they speak eight languages and twice as many dialects. A third perhaps are mercenaries. The rest are believing Christians who are convinced they’re in the right – that Saracens are in the wrong and bound for hellfire and damnation.

Then naturally the greatest Christian hope since Charlemagne rides as you might expect well to the fore; his reputation vitally enhanced by what is borne before him. For on a sumpter in a specially constructed casket bound with bands of brass, King Richard carries nothing less than Arthur’s elf-made sword,
Escalibor.
Not as it happens handed to him from the surface of a lake, but risen from the earth.

His heralds spread the story up and down the lines that prophesy foretells the coming of a worthy king, within whose hand an ancient sword, cast all of bronze in a stone mould, will guide his Christian force to victory. By curious and happy chance the very sword,
Escalibor
, has recently been found within the grave of King Arthur and his Queen at Glastonbury, and sent across the Narrow Sea by Abbot Hugh de Sulli for Richard to take with him en croisade. An inscription and a tress of Gwenevere’s exquisite golden hair confirm the blade’s identity, or so the criers claim. And clearly when it comes to omens of success or failure – Escalibor or Melusine’s black bat? – there is no contest. The legendary weapon wins hands down.

Unhelmeted, the King of England’s dressed much less for comfort than effect. Mounted on a milk-white Spanish stallion, dazzling in silver linkmail with his lightest, brightest golden crown set on his tawny head, he rides beneath the heraldic lions – the
leopardés guardant
of Normandy and Maine Anjou unsheathing claws across the scarlet waves of his royal banner. Chin up, chest out, with all his soft parts under iron control, he looks more than magnificent. He looks the very image of a hero.

The King of France, by way of contrast, is slightly built with small squint eyes and thinning hair.
Philippus Rex Francorum
looks commonplace and doesn’t care. Crowned at fourteen and not yet twenty-five, his serious perceptions make him seem older than his years. Attended by a single page, bareheaded, dressed like a penitent in a plain black surcoat astride a hackney mare, he moves almost unnoticed up the line to take his place at Richard’s side.

‘Well now, Philippe, have you come to see how differently the road looks from an English point of view?’ King Richard beams and reaches with a large gloved paw to slap the King of France on his thin thigh. ‘Or are you going to tell me that you’ve changed your mind about Jerusalem, and want to spend the summer interviewing for another queen?’

‘You know that I’m in mourning still,’ the younger man says coldly.

‘Which means?’

‘Which I should say means that it’s you, not I, who needs a wife.’

‘Quite so,’ Richard concurs. ‘But is that your suggestion, Philippe? Or your sister’s?’

‘If you will recall, your contract with my sister has brought you, amongst other things, the territories Gisors and Châteauroux.’ King Philippe shrugs his narrow shoulders looking less than pleased. ‘So if it’s true as we have heard that you are looking elsewhere for a queen – that land must be returned to France the day that you break faith with Alys, along with Issoudun and Graçay.’

‘I’ll grant you that her dower lands are one of Alys’s best features. But don’t ye think our noble houses deserve a little respite now and then from fucking one another?’ The English King turns in his saddle and smiles to see the colour drain from Philippe’s face. ‘God’s blood, I swear ’tis hard to tell when you are bedding France if you’re performing a dynastic duty, or committing incest.’

As both of them and all the world’s aware, for years the political and copulatory affairs of France and Acquitaine-Anjou have been hopelessly entangled. King Richard’s mother, Eléanore, has been both Queen of France and England; married at fifteen to King Philippe’s father and after their divorce to Richard’s father, Henry. What’s more, at around the time that Richard’s brother consummated
his
marriage to Philippe’s sister Marguerite, their father bedded Marguerite’s sister and his fiancée, Alys, to get a child on her.

But there was more… in Paris three years earlier the princely cousins, Richard and Philippe, have also shared a naked bed – and if no one outside the sheets that night can say what happened underneath them, it’s known that in his taste for adolescents of both sexes, Richard shares the carnal habits of other military commanders. Of Alexander and of Caesar. A big hairy man himself, he has a penchant for unripened flesh.

Some people, like the King of France, blanch with emotion. Others, like the King of England, darken; and only they know if it’s righteous indignation or an unwelcome memory that accounts for Philippe’s sickly shade.

‘If you want France’s support in this campaign,’ he speaks between clenched teeth. ‘I’d recommend you save your insults for the Turks!’

King Richard laughs. ‘I’ll bear the point in mind.’

Thereafter the kings ride in studied silence, knee to knee, acknowledging the cheers of those who leave the fields to see them pass, or run to kiss their stirruped feet. Both bowing from the saddle. Both smiling affably in all directions but the one that brings them face to face.

Later in the afternoon, to cries of admiration, the King of England with his guard moves past the sumpter carrying Escalibor to take his rightful place as he perceives it at the very forefront of the cavalcade. He rides beneath his lion standard, his long cloak rippling across the haunches of his Spanish stallion.

The King of France, who’s had enough of riding for the day, returns to rest and to reflect upon his litter.

A living mass of men and beasts snakes backward to the far horizon. The riders’ long forked pennons stream and flutter in the wind like vanes of sea-kelp in a current. Some sewn with verses from the Bible. Not all of them the right way up.

Between the military divisions, herds of goats and grunting pigs and red and white milch cows keep drovers busily employed. Vans made to look like gabled hutches house the old laundresses with their washtubs and their soap. Long trains of mules and donkeys carry lighter freight. Wains hired from local carters for the journey south are stacked with camp equipment – horseshoes, chests of nails, with provender for livestock, cheeses, sides of salted pork and sacks of beans and grain. Others large enough to bear the main beams and components of siege engines and their missiles, are dragged by teams of oxen whose slow progress sets the pace for all the rest. Indeed so ponderous is their advance, that Richard at the head of the migration has crossed the winding River Nivernais three times to pitch his cloth of gold pavilion on its western bank, before the final remnants of his English army strike tents at Vézelay some six leagues to the rear.

Archbishop Baldwin, who’s declined an invitation to ride forward with the Archbishop of Rouen and his
avant garde
of jewelled grandees, climbs painfully onto his mule to await the marshals’ signal for departure. He’s had a tiresome, tiring day including more than he can take of fussing chaplains and purposeless complaints. The journey east from Chinon has worsened his old troubles with his joints – and if he’s honest with himself, as Baldwin almost always is, he feels no relish for the trials ahead. It isn’t that he doubts the need for the croisade. God only knows how fervently he’s advertised it as a
bellum sacrum
to Christians from Wales to the Touraine.