Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,166

drowning victim sank at once, unlike a man who was already dead when he hit the water, although he admitted he did not know why this was so. Having been told more than he’d wanted to know, Morgan consoled himself with the wry reminder that he need not fear such a fate in the desert sands of Outremer.

Two of the rescued Saracens had been taken aboard the Sea-Cleaver for questioning. Richard was already short-tempered, bitterly disappointed that he’d not been able to capture the cargo, and his mood was not improved by the delay in finding a translator. Finally Guy remembered that his former brother-in-law, Humphrey de Toron, was fluent in Arabic, and he was hastily summoned to the king’s galley.

One of the captives was a man in his middle years, and he remained stubbornly silent, his dark eyes filled with defiance and hate. The other prisoner was younger, about Morgan’s age. He seemed in shock, not so much fearful as stunned, as Morgan imagined he’d feel if he’d just witnessed the deaths of so many of his own companions. He could not suppress an unexpected twinge of pity for the youth, even if he was an infidel pagan, and when Humphrey squatted down beside the prisoner, he remained to hear what this Saracen survivor would say.

Humphrey had a low, pleasant voice and his interrogation sounded almost lyrical as he put questions to the prisoner in a language few of them had heard before. The answers were given readily, but indifferently, as if nothing mattered anymore. Getting to his feet, Humphrey raised some eyebrows by giving the Saracen a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before turning toward Richard.

“He says they were to reinforce the garrison at Acre, that their ship held six hundred and fifty soldiers, and had been fitted out at Beirut with one hundred camel-loads of weapons: siege engines, spears, swords, frame-mounted crossbows, flasks of Greek fire, and two hundred deadly snakes. They’d made one attempt to run our blockade and planned to try again at dark. He also says that when they realized they were facing defeat, their captain gave the command to scuttle the ship, determined to deny us their cargo. When we rammed it, they were already chopping holes in the hull so it would quickly sink.”

“What was their captain’s name?” Richard asked, and when told it was Ya’qūb al-Halabī of Aleppo, he repeated it, saying that such a brave man deserved to be remembered. He looked then toward the buss’s watery graveyard. The blood had been washed away and the bodies were gone, too, claimed by the sea. The only evidence of carnage was a broken timber from the mizzenmast, a few floating barrels, and the fins of several sharks, drawn by the scent of death. But Richard was not thinking of all the men who’d died, Christian and Muslim. He was thinking of six hundred and fifty soldiers and a cargo hold filled with weapons. His lips moving silently, he made the sign of the cross, and then said huskily, “What if we’d not encountered them? God truly was on our side this day.”

There were murmurings of heartfelt agreement from those listening. Humphrey nodded, but then he smiled sadly. “Men always think God favors their cause. I am sure Ya’qūb of Aleppo never doubted it, either.”

That did not go down well with some of the knights, who thought such a remark bordered upon blasphemy. Richard gave the younger man an appraising look before saying dryly, “But Ya’qūb of Aleppo is dead, is he not?”

IT HAD BEEN seven weeks since Philippe’s arrival at Acre, seven of the most wretched weeks of his life. He’d hated the Holy Land from the first day, hated the oppressive heat, the noxious climate that was so dangerous to newcomers, the stark, treeless landscape so different from France, the poisonous snakes and scorpions that slithered into tents as soon as the sun went down. He worried about his health, a king with only a sickly three-year-old child as his heir, trapped in a land of miasmas and plague where a fit, robust man could be stricken one morn and dead ere the week was out. More men had been killed by illness than by the Turks, men of high birth and rank, some of them his own kin. It was just seven days since Philip, the Count of Flanders, had died of Arnaldia, a painful malady that was very contagious and often lethal. Philippe kept his doctor, Master John