Crusader Captive Page 14

  The horror around her seemed to fade. The shouts and screams died. For what felt like an eternity she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Not until the apparition tore off his heavy covering and she spotted Queen Melisande clinging to Simon’s chest, did Jocelyn draw in a raw, rasping breath.

  She wanted to drop to her knees and give a sobbing prayer of thanksgiving. But even as the king’s guards rushed forward to relieve Simon of his burden and the queen assured her anxious son that she was unhurt, a chorus of hoarse shouts heralded a new danger.

  Jocelyn spun around and followed outthrust arms and pointing fingers. Horrified, she saw that Blanche Garde’s massive gates had been thrown open. While she watched in swamping waves of dismay, the portcullis went up and the drawbridge rattled down. She didn’t need to see the distinctive armor of the Saracen cavalry that thundered onto the drawbridge to realize the king’s army had been lured into a well-planned trap.

  Baldwin recognized it as well. Rising in the stirrups, he shouted at the knights behind him. “LeBeau! Tell the trumpeters to sound ‘To Arms.’ Ibelin, you take the left flank. DeChatillion, the right. I’ll lead the center. We’ll attack those who fire at us from the rear first.”

  The knights pulled on the reins, spurred their mounts and thundered in opposite directions.

  “You!”

  The king’s glance cut to Simon. He couldn’t remember his name but recalled who he was pledged to.

  “Get you to the Templars. Tell the Grand Master he must blunt the attack from Blanche Garde at all costs.”

  He sawed on the reins to hold his mount steady as another fireball soared overhead.

  “And you…” This was directed to the knight who’d rushed over on foot. “Take my lady mother and these women…”

  Where? No tent was safe from the missiles raining down on them, no place secure from attack.

  “The stream just beyond that copse of trees,” Simon shouted as he raced to Jocelyn and scooped up the shield she’d thrown aside. “They can crouch below its bank.”

  “To the stream,” the king concurred grimly as he dug his spurs into his mount’s sides. “I’ll send a troop to safeguard them as soon as I may.”

  Simon paused only to thrust his shield at Jocelyn. “Keep this to protect your head and back.”

  “No! You’ll need it.”

  “I’ll find another.”

  He was already off and running. Her arms sagging with the weight of the embossed leather shield, Jocelyn watched him dodge fiery obstacles with the agility of a panther. He stopped only to seize the reins of a riderless palfrey plunging through the chaos and haul himself into the saddle. By the time the trumpets sounded a strident call to arms, he’d disappeared from her sight.

  “Majesty.” The smoke-blackened knight the king had entrusted his mother to croaked out a desperate plea. “The copse of trees. We must get you there.”

  He held his shield over Melisande’s and Lady Sibyl’s heads. Jocelyn grunted at the weight of Simon’s but raised it high enough to join with his. Under this pitifully inadequate protection, they stumbled past blazing tents and smoldering corpses to the rocky stream cutting through the trees.

  Once there, the beleaguered knight thrust both shields into the bank. The queen and her lady-in-waiting crouched under them. They were up to their ankles in trickling water and surrounded on all sides by the din of men rushing to answer the trumpet’s call. Melisande shoved her charred veil from her eyes and beckoned urgently to Jocelyn.

  “Here, girl. Take cover with us.”

  Jocelyn started to duck under the shield but halted after just a step. Sir Hugh was dead. Simon had been sent to fight alongside the Templars. Who remained to lead Fortemur’s contingent?

  “I must see to my men.”

  “No!” Melisande reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Do not leave this shelter.”

  Shaking off her hold, Jocelyn crouched and followed the low, winding bank. Her sodden skirts dragged the mud. Rocks bit through the soles of her boots. Smoke stung her eyes.

  The site Simon had selected for her troop lay close. She was certain of it. Or as certain as she could be of anything in this terrifying nightmare. She was about to climb up on the bank to take her bearings when a knight wearing the black and red of Fortemur charged through the trees.

  “Sir Guy!”

  Thank the Lord! Her armorer had arrived with Sir Hugh! Sobbing with relief, Jocelyn scrambled up the bank.

  “Sir Guy! Here!”

  “Milady!” Sawing on his mount’s reins, he drew it to a pawing halt. “Sir Simon sent us to stand with you and the queen until the king’s men arrive. Now, for the love of the Holy Virgin, take cover.”

  Since he’d already dismounted and was dragging her back down the bank, Jocelyn had no choice but to obey. Then all she could do was try to block the screams and stench and wing prayer after prayer heavenward.

  Keep him safe.

  Dear God, please keep him safe.

  Simon thrust right, then left, then right again. Sweat poured down his face, soaked his neck beneath his mail. His sword was blooded to the hilt. Its grip was slick from gore and entrails and brains. Straining every muscle and sinew in his body, he fought alongside the Templars.

  Seasoned warriors that they were, the knights had leaped into their saddles mere moments after the Saracens had erupted through Blanche Garde’s portcullis. The sergeants had similarly rushed to counterattack with pikes and maces and battle-axes. Holding aloft the black-and-white Beauseant that was both a banner and a beacon, they’d rushed to meet the unexpected assault.

  Like Simon, every one of them was now drenched in so much blood and gore that it near obliterated the red crosses on the knights’ surcoats and the black crosses on those of the sergeants.

  Thank God and all the saints Sir Guy had ordered Avenger barded and saddled at the first signs of attack. A terrified Will Farrier had been gripping the destrier’s reins with white, shaking hands when Simon had charged back to order a protective troop for Jocelyn. With a shouted command for Will to remain with Sir Guy, Simon had leaped from the palfrey he had commandeered in the king’s camp and swung astride the heavily muscled warhorse.

  In the desperate hours—or was it mere minutes?—since, Avenger had more than proved his mettle. Responding to the slightest pressure of Simon’s knees, the bay wheeled, bit, kicked and trampled to devastating effect. Blood poured from wounds to its neck and haunches but the destrier proved as effective a weapon as any lance or sword.

  Avenger evidenced even more value when Simon saw Bertrand de Tremelay go down. The Grand Master was surrounded by a half-dozen Saracen foot soldiers. One lunged forward to grab his mount’s reins. Another ducked under his slashing sword and thrust his pike at the furiously battling knight. The force of the thrust pierced de Tremelay’s mail and toppled him from the saddle.

  “Templars!” The cry ripped from Simon’s raw, smoke-seared throat. “To the Master!”

  He spurred Avenger and used the barrel-chested courser as a battering ram to force a path through the swarming foot soldiers. De Tremelay was on his feet when Simon reached him. His right arm dangled uselessly at his side, but he’d transferred his sword to his left and now swung the blade in vicious arcs.

  Simon did what he’d spent almost his entire life training to do. He killed and dismembered. Ruthlessly. Dispassionately. Swiftly. Within mere moments, the ground around the Grand Master was littered with corpses.

  “I’ll not forget this,” de Tremelay shouted gratefully when Simon dismounted to help him back onto his courser.

  They would be lucky if either of them lived to remember anything, Simon thought grimly as he dragged himself into the saddle again. The battle raged all around them. Vicious balls of fire still shot through the night sky.

  As he plunged back into the fray, he could only pray that Jocelyn was sheltered and safe.

  The battle was over by dawn.

  Baldwin had rallied his forces and charged the army at
his rear. Even before the queen and the rest of the camp heard that his desperate counterattack had succeeded, wild rumors as to who’d led the army that had attacked them swirled as thick as the smoke that hung like a pall over the battlefield.

  Against all odds, the Templars had routed the attackers who’d poured out of Blanche Garde’s gates. Then, incredibly, they’d battled their way to the gates themselves and stormed through them. The hilltop fortress was now back in Frankish hands.

  But at horrific cost. When at last it was deemed safe for the queen to emerge from her protective position, she looked stricken to her very soul by the carnage around her. She stood with Jocelyn on one side, Lady Sibyl on the other, and surveyed the scene with red-rimmed eyes.

  “Dear God above,” she rasped in a smoke-ravaged whisper. “Will this kingdom ever know peace?”

  For a moment she looked old beyond her years. So old and worn that Jocelyn put out a hand wrapped in bandages torn from her linen undertunic.

  Melisande might be the daughter, wife and mother of kings, but she’d lived her entire life in a land torn by strife. She knew all too well the price that must be paid to hold this kingdom together. Drawing in a ragged breath, she squared her shoulders.

  “We must needs find the king’s marshal,” she told Sir Guy. “He—or his second in command if Sir Humphrey has fallen—will organize succor for the wounded and identification of the dead. These ladies and I will assist how we may.”

  Jocelyn didn’t have Lady Constance’s skill at physiking the sick. As chatelaine of Fortemur, however, she’d seen her share of broken bones set and crushed limbs sawed off. Even so, the gruesome burns, weeping blisters and spilled entrails made her gag until at last she grew accustomed to such horrific human misery.

  All the while she helped tend to the wounded, she wondered desperately whether Simon had survived the storming of Blanche Garde. She didn’t learn his fate until the king came in search of his mother sometime past noon. By then every bone in Jocelyn’s body ached with fatigue, and grime had etched its way in every fold of her skin.

  Baldwin looked no better. Blood stained his surcoat. Soot rimmed his eyes. He’d lost his helm with its gold coronet and had shoved back his mailed hood to seek relief from the sun that now beat down mercilessly. But no sign of the enmity that had pitted mother against son in their fierce struggle for power showed in his face as he reached down to help the queen rise.

  She put her hand in his and got stiffly to her feet. Her gaze raked his tired face as she sought verification of the rumors that were now all but fact.

  “So it’s true? It was the Emir of Damascus?”

  Jocelyn held her breath. Several of the men she’d tended had sworn they’d recognized the emir’s standard, but they could well have been mistaken in the dark of night and heat of battle.

  “It was the emir,” Baldwin confirmed heavily.

  “Is he dead?”

  “He is.”

  “May the bastard rot in hell!”

  Just in time, Jocelyn bit back a heartfelt endorsement of the queen’s wish. With so many dead and dying all around them, this was hardly the time to give vent to personal feelings. And truth be told, she was more concerned at this moment with Simon’s fate than with the emir’s.

  “Come, Lady Mother.” The king led her to the palfrey he’d brought for her. “Blanche Garde is ours once more. I’ll see you housed within its walls.”

  “Attend me, Lady Sibyl. You, also, Lady Jocelyn.”

  Baldwin held the reins while the queen mounted. Squires performed the same service for her ladies. While she settled into the saddle, Jocelyn made bold to address the king.

  “Do you have word of Simon de Rhys?”

  “Who?”

  “The knight who commanded my guard. You sent him to tell the Templars to hold at all costs.”

  Wearily, the king shook his head. “I don’t know his fate. We’ll find out soon enough, however. The Grand Master has sent word that he awaits us inside the keep.”

  Corpses of both defender and attacker littered the steep incline leading to the castle’s gates. Baking in the sun, many of the bodies were already black with flies. Added to that was the smoke from the still-smoldering funeral pyres. Jocelyn thought she’d become accustomed to the odor of death. Yet she had to draw her grimy sleeve over her nose and mouth to keep from retching.

  Once inside the gates of Blanche Garde, the scene was somewhat less grim. Apparently the Saracens had surrendered shortly after the Templars had stormed the gates. They now had to be guarded from those who remained of the keep’s original Latin population. Understandably, the survivors wanted to avenge their dead.

  It soon became clear that the Templars had prevented their wholesale slaughter and enforced a rigid discipline. Jocelyn saw evidence of their work everywhere. Sergeants in the distinctive black tunics supervised work parties cleaning away the debris of battle. Clerical monks inscribed the names of the living and the dead. Cooks had the ovens fired. Even the Grand Master’s own farrier was already at the bellows in the inner bailey, his face sweaty and red as he reshod warhorses that had thrown shoes during the battle.

  But look as she might, Jocelyn caught no glimpse of Simon’s tall form among the knights restoring order to the keep. Her throat got tighter and her heart weighed heavier as she trailed the king, his mother and their entourage into Blanche Garde’s great hall.

  A small gathering waited for them within. Two women stood off to one side, obviously summoned to attend the queen. The majority of the welcoming party, however, consisted of battle-stained warriors. The Grand Master of the Knights Templar stood at their head. Jocelyn recognized the thin, ascetic monk even before he detached himself from the group and came forward to greet Baldwin.

  “Majesty.”

  “Brother de Tremelay.”

  The Templar cradled his bandaged right arm in his left as he and the king embraced. Only then did Jocelyn see the one she sought above all others.

  “Simon!”

  The glad cry burst from her before she could control it. The joy on Simon’s face more than made up for her impetuous outburst. He took an involuntary step forward. Then, to Jocelyn’s searing dismay, he caught himself.

  His brow raised, Bertrand de Tremelay noted the knight’s reaction, but the oaths the Grand Master had taken so many years ago bound him as fast as any chains. He would not—could not, according to the strict rules of his order—have discourse with women. Nor could he allow any of his acolytes to do so. But he’d been a man much longer than he’d been a monk. No stranger to human emotions, he directed his gaze to that of the queen.

  Melisande intercepted the signal. She nodded once, a mere tilt of her head, and let a sigh slip from between her lips. “These horrific hours have sapped me more than I realized. I fear I must…” She sighed again and pressed the back of her hand to her grimy brow. “I truly must have rest.”

  Her son’s face paled under its coating of dirt and gore. With a bite to his voice, he barked out an order to the two women who stood off to the side.

  “Take the queen and her ladies to the women’s bower. I would that they might rest and cleanse themselves.”

  The two hurried forward and dropped into a curtsy before Melisande. They looked every bit as worn as the queen and the ladies who accompanied her. Jocelyn could only imagine what they might have endured while hostile forces occupied the keep. When the queen gave them leave to rise, the eldest of them issued a simple request.

  “If you’ll come with us, Majesty, we’ll take you to the women’s solar. Lady Alys awaits you there.”

  Before acquiescing, the queen turned to her son and issued a regal request. “I would ask that you come to me in due time so we might confer on the disposition of Blanche Garde.”

  “Send word when you are ready, Lady Mother.”

  Jocelyn hesitated. How could she quit the hall without exchanging so much as a word with Simon? As if reading her mind, Melisande paused a moment and gave him a wea
ry smile.

  “I would speak with you also, de Rhys. I will send for you later, after I’ve had time to confer with my son.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  His blue eyes went from Melisande to the woman beside her. Jocelyn hugged that brief glance to her breast as she trailed the queen and Lady Sybil from the great hall.

  In the women’s solar they were greeted by a lady and two young girls whose swollen, red-rimmed eyes told their own tale. The lady was Alys, wife to the lord who’d held Blanche Garde in the queen’s name. She dropped into a deep curtsy and welcomed Melisande in a voice ragged with grief.

  “Would that I could greet you in other circumstances, Majesty.”

  The queen took her hands and drew her to her feet. “What of your husband?”

  “Dead. With our three sons. They…they fought to hold Blanche Garde most valiantly.”

  “I doubt it not,” the queen said gently. “And you? Your daughters? Were you ill used?”

  “No,” the woman said wearily, “but we have not been allowed to leave this chamber. Tell me, how do the rest of our people fare?”

  “Come, let us sit and I will tell you what I know.”

  The telling afforded Lady Alys little succor. Her neck bowed and her shoulders drooped with sorrow as the queen related the information she’d pieced together since the start of the attack. By the time she finished, Lady Alys and her daughters were awash in tears.

  Jocelyn kept busy for the next few hours assisting Lady Sibyl in seeing to the queen’s needs. Those included washing, eating, and ordering the personal possessions recovered from the camp. Luckily, several of the queen’s trunks and chests had been stored in a separate tent and were found intact.

  Once Melisande was rested, the queen sent word to her son that she was ready to speak with him. Before he arrived, she dismissed everyone from her presence.

  Jocelyn used the respite to go in search of Simon. She wished desperately to hear from his own lips how he’d fared during the battle. To her bitter disappointment, she learned he’d ridden out with the Grand Master.