Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,315

dark eyes giving away nothing of his inner thoughts, and it occurred to Henri that this was like watching a chess game come to life, one played for the highest of stakes.

As soon as they had gone, Richard exhaled a deep breath, then seated himself on a coffer. Now that he was no longer playing the role of gracious host, Henri could see how weary he looked. “So,” he said, “tell me what happened to your army.” He listened without interrupting, and after Henri was done, he ducked his head for a moment, his face hidden. When he finally glanced up, it was with a faint smile. “So you left them at Caesarea and hastened to Jaffa to die with us?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds quite mad,” Henri acknowledged wryly. “But I do not know how much longer I can endure the suspense. What happened here, Uncle?”

Over a light meal of bread, cheese, and fruit, Richard told him. “They fought fiercely, like men with nothing left to lose. But after the wall collapsed on Friday, they sought to save themselves and their families. Saladin agreed to let them surrender the next day and set terms for their ransom. Soldiers were to be freed for an imprisoned Saracen soldier of equal rank. For the townspeople, he demanded the same sums that he’d negotiated with Balian d’Ibelin when Jerusalem yielded: ten gold bezants for a man, five for a woman, and three for a child. But by then his men were running wild in the town, and he told them to remain in the citadel for their own safety.”

“Was the death toll very high?”

Richard nodded bleakly. Many of the dead were wounded or ailing knights and men-at-arms who’d remained behind in Jaffa to regain their health. Yet he knew his army would have done the same had their positions been reversed. War was war and soldiers were the same the world over, although killing came easier to some than others.

Henri decided that he and Isabella would found a chantry to pray for the souls of those who’d died in the Jaffa siege. “I cannot even imagine their joy when your sails appeared on the horizon,” he said, reaching for a chunk of cheese, his first food of the day.

“I wish it had been that simple. Saladin got word Friday eve that I was on the way and, according to several prisoners, he tried to get his men to take the castle ere I arrived. They balked, though, some exhausted by the fighting and their wounds, others more interested in plundering the town, especially once they discovered that many of the caravan’s goods had been brought there. When Saladin heard that my ships were approaching the next morning, he sent Bahā’ al-Dīn—you remember him from our first meeting with al-’Ādil—to coax the garrison out. By now they’d seen the ships, too. There were only three galleys at first, so forty-seven men and their families agreed to come out. The rest of the garrison decided to resist now that rescue might be nigh. But as the morning wore on and we stayed offshore, they despaired, and the patriarch and castellan went to entreat Saladin to restore the original terms of surrender.”

Anticipating Henri’s question, Richard explained that they’d thought they were too late. “But then a brave priest swam out to my ship. We landed on the beach, cleared it, and I led men up a Templar stairway into the lower town. Once the garrison saw my banner, they sallied forth and we soon had them on the run. With his army in such disarray, Saladin had no choice but to withdraw to Yāzūr, taking the patriarch and castellan with him as prisoners. A pity about Bishop Ralph. But I was told the castellan had tried to flee at the start of the siege, had to be shamed into coming back and doing his duty, so he well deserves to end up in a Damascus dungeon.”

Henri started to ask how Richard had known about the stairs, but then remembered something Morgan had told him—that when they took Messina, Richard had led them to a hidden postern gate he’d discovered during an earlier reconnaissance of the city. Much of his uncle’s success as a battle commander was due to his meticulous preparations, his eye for the smallest detail. But that still did not explain how a small force of knights had been able to prevail against such overwhelming odds. “You make it