“Yes, it is, your excellency,” said Amalric, making his voice sound heavy with grief but feeling grim pleasure despite his weariness. “All is lost.”

His chest swelled, and his limbs felt lighter. Fatigue and exultation together made him dizzy.

He looked with satisfaction into the watery eyes of the Patriarch. You thought surely you would get your bishop’s throne in Jerusalem back, did you not, you old fool? All is lost for you, but not for me. My greatest victories are all ahead of me. And tonight, in Damietta, I shall be with Nicolette again.

XXVIII

The quiet here in Marguerite’s bedroom and the quiet outside helped keep Nicolette calm. Sunday afternoon is peaceful, she thought, even in a Muslim city. For many minutes now she and Marguerite had enjoyed a companionable silence as they did their needlework together.

Keeping her hands busy with sewing eased the tension Nicolette felt, but fear for Roland and the King still lurked in her heart. There had been no news for weeks.

She was altering, to fit herself, a green silk dancer’s gown she had found in the Damietta bazaar. She liked the Saracen style. Marguerite’s work was of a more pious kind. Nicolette glanced at the heavy satin bishop’s cope spread out on the bed, which Marguerite was embroidering with gold thread, resting the hoop on the huge curve of her belly. When that is finished, it will be worth a fiefdom, she thought. And embroidered by the Queen of France, that makes it priceless.

I wonder if she will finish it before the baby is born.

A change in the sounds of the city disturbed her. Why do I hear shouting in the streets?

Marguerite heard it, too. She dropped her embroidery frame and reached for Nicolette’s hand, gripping it so hard that pain shot up Nicolette’s arm.

“Nicolette, something terrible has happened. I can feel it.”

They waited, talking in frightened murmurs as the cries came closer. It is a messenger, Nicolette decided, and he is telling his news to everyone he meets along the way, and the news is bad.

Soon the uproar had reached the palace, and now women were screaming and crying. Nicolette’s heart clenched like a fist.

The door of the Queen’s bedchamber was pushed open by Sire Geoffrey de Burgh, an eighty-year-old knight whom Louis had charged with guarding Marguerite’s person. There was a man behind him.

For a moment, Nicolette stopped breathing. She saw a tall knight with a sun-darkened face partly covered by a blond beard. It was a face she knew well, and yet it looked so ghastly it frightened her. Amalric.

He brushed past de Burgh, his heavy steps making the floor-boards quiver, and knelt at the Queen’s bedside. Another man slipped into the room and stood against a wall. Maurice, the old crusader Amalric had found here in Damietta when he first entered the city. How, she wondered, did that strange gray man come to be with Amalric now?

“Count Amalric,” said Marguerite in a small, trembling voice. “You are welcome. What news do you bring us?”

It is a wonder she recognizes him, Nicolette thought. He was much thinner. Above the beard his heavily tanned face was bony. The blond hair hanging down to his shoulders in lank, greasy locks was doubtless crawling with lice. He was armored from head to foot. The steel of the square ailettes that protected his shoulders was dented, and his purple and gold surcoat was ragged. Even though he was on the far side of the bed she was aware of how his unbathed body reeked.

His stare transfixed her and she felt a cold dread in the pit of her stomach.

“Nicolette.”

His eyes were bloodshot and set deep in hollowed-out sockets. They were cloudy with weariness, but behind the fatigue was a strange glow that frightened her.

What terrible things had he seen and done?

He returned his gaze to the Queen. “Madame, my news is quickly told, but grievous. The King, your husband, charged me to bring word to you. I begged him to let me stay with him to the end, but he commanded me to leave.”

“The end?” Marguerite’s voice was shrill with terror. “My God, is Louis killed?”

Nicolette suppressed a scream.

Amalric went on implacably. “I saw the King taken by the Mamelukes and carried off in chains, Madame. He and his two brothers. As to whether he is still alive, I do not know.”

Nicolette turned to Marguerite. At this moment her greatest fear was not for the men, lost somewhere in this horrible country, but for the woman beside her. This shock might do terrible injury to Marguerite and her child about to be born.

Nicolette jumped up and caught the Queen just as she fainted. Nicolette eased her friend back against the lace-edged pillows.

And then she turned to glare up at Amalric. So callous. Why did he tell Marguerite so brutally?

Keeping a tight rein on her anger, she forced herself to speak courteously. “I beg you, Monseigneur. If you have more to say, say it gently. The Queen could give birth at any time.”

“I come from a place where gentleness is unknown,” Amalric answered coldly.

Amalric’s eyes still held that glow of triumph. Why, she wondered, when he comes from disaster?

Then horror wrenched at her stomach as she understood. He has got what he wants. The King is lost.

And Roland? How will I ever find out?

We are all lost.

As she stared at Amalric, fear and anguish churning inside her, she massaged the Queen’s deathly cold hands.

“It is dangerous to upset her in this condition,” she said. “Please.”

“She is in far worse danger than you imagine,” Amalric coolly returned. “The Turks are on the way. The quicker she realizes that, the sooner we can get away from here.”

Get away?

Nicolette fought panic. But the men — we do not even know what has happened to them. We cannot leave. What is he saying?

A white-bearded man wearing a cylindrical black hat and a black robe entered the bedchamber. A large silver cross with a double crossbar hung around his neck. Nicolette had seen him many times in Damietta before the army left. It was the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Surely he will not want to flee from here, she thought, feeling a little more hopeful.

Amalric realized with horror that he could be trapped between Mansura and Damietta. If those on the galleys saw him and Maurice, a volley of arrows could well be the end of them. Though the desert night was cold, sweat dripped down his sides.

The Saracen ships glided past, propelled by many oars as well as by sails, the voices of the warriors on board carelessly raised in merry shouts, song, and laughter.

They know they have nothing to fear, thought Amalric.

When the voices of the Saracens were only a distant murmur upriver, Amalric and Maurice spurred their horses on. They rode without further incident until dawn.

As the sun appeared over distant brown hills to the east, their way was blocked by two knights with drawn swords. White mantles. Templars.

“The Constable of France!” exclaimed one of the Templars when Amalric identified himself. “You are most welcome, Monseigneur. We are escorting the Patriarch of Jerusalem back to Damietta, and God knows what enemies lie ahead of us. Did you see those Saracen ships? Where did they come from?”

They took Amalric to the Patriarch, who was resting in a grove of olive trees, and Amalric knelt and received the old man’s blessing for a second time. The Patriarch’s party had left the crusaders long before the surrender and knew nothing about it. When Amalric told the old man the news, tears ran down his bony cheeks.

“Surely God has sent you to help us. But how did you escape, my son, when all surrendered?”

“The King urged me to ride with all haste to Damietta, your excellency,” Amalric improvised, “to take command of the defense.”

“We must hurry on, then,” said the old man. “We not only have to fear Bedouins before us, but Mamelukes behind us.”

The Templars shared their provisions with Amalric — bread and dried beef as hard as Egyptian bricks, and wine that had turned to vinegar.

The party set out just after sunrise. Amalric prayed they would encounter no enemies. It was now a whole day and a night since he had last slept, and he felt too weak to fight. His eyelids burned, and his arms were too heavy to lift. He was barely able to hold himself in the saddle. He raised his tired eyes and saw that the sky was cloudless, as it almost always was here in Egypt. It was April — they had celebrated Easter only a few days before the retreat — and in this part of the world that meant suffocating heat. He dreaded the day’s ride.

His companions seemed stronger. The Patriarch and the Templars had rested part of the night, they had brought food with them, and they were used to this climate, having lived most of their lives in Outremer.

Later in the morning he opened his half-shut eyes when he heard a note of fear in the voices around him. Ahead of the party a strange humming sound filled the air and black birds the size of geese rose and fell. One of the Templars rode ahead while the party waited in silence.

When he came back, his eyes were haunted and his face was sallow under his deep tan. “The field ahead is full of dead men. They have all been beheaded.”

“Who are they?” asked the Patriarch.

“Christians. They have been stripped, and their skin is white. We must ride past them, your Excellency. There is no way around.”

The members of the party drew cloaks over their noses and mouths as they rode past the field of slaughter. The bodies had been exposed for many hours. The hum Amalric had heard, now almost deafening as they passed, was the sound of millions of fat, black flies, sharing the feast with the great vultures of Africa.

Amalric glanced at the corpses and then turned his face toward the river. If he were to go back to Mansura he would see a sight like this, and there the blood of the dead was on his hands.

He cringed from that thought, even as he kept his gaze away from these bodies.

A sudden notion struck him. Maurice will have to die. He knows too much.

But no, not while he is still so useful.

Around a bend in the river Amalric saw another sight that made him gasp. The riverbank and the shallows were strewn with wrecked galleys, their sails blackened tatters, many of them burnt to the waterline.

“Our sick and wounded,” said Amalric. “They took them off these boats and slaughtered them in that field we passed.”

“Remember, I said we would be safer on shore, Monseigneur,” said Maurice. “I suspected something like this when no food reached us from Damietta for so many weeks.”

“Those Egyptian ships that passed, going up the river last night,” said one of the Templars. “They did this. But how did they get between us and Damietta?”

“Baibars must have sent his galleys down another branch of the river and then transported them overland to the Damietta branch,” said Maurice. “A difficult feat, but the Egyptians have light ships that can be carried in sections on camelback.”

“May God have mercy on all our poor, lost men,” said the Patriarch of Jerusalem. “They are surely in the bosom of Seigneur Jesus now. We should give them Christian burial.”

“We few could not bury all these bodies in a month,” said one of the Templars sadly. “And it is not safe to stay here, Your Excellency. We shall be in peril of our lives until we reach Damietta.”

“Damietta is not safe either,” said Amalric. “Who is there left to protect it?”

“See there,” said Maurice. He pointed to a flat-bottomed barge floating in a slime-coated green backwater, half hidden by a thick stand of papyrus reeds. “That boat looks in good enough condition to carry us down the river. We can collect some oars from the other galleys, and the current will help us along. We could be in Damietta this very night.”

Yes, thought Amalric. And then there will be no one to stop me from taking all the power I want — the power to depart for France, first of all, and leave Louis with no Damietta to use in bargaining for his life. If he lives even now.

Let us get to Damietta. Take the barge. It will mean having to leave this fine horse behind, but I am too tired anyway to ride any farther.

A Templar said, “There may be more Saracens on the river.”

“Almost certainly all the Saracen ships have gone upriver to Mansura,” said Maurice.

Slowly they rode toward the barge. “Is the crusade over, then, count?” asked the Patriarch. “We began with such high hopes and so many thousands of stout fighting men. Is all lost?”

“Yes, it is, your excellency,” said Amalric, making his voice sound heavy with grief but feeling grim pleasure despite his weariness. “All is lost.”

His chest swelled, and his limbs felt lighter. Fatigue and exultation together made him dizzy.

He looked with satisfaction into the watery eyes of the Patriarch. You thought surely you would get your bishop’s throne in Jerusalem back, did you not, you old fool? All is lost for you, but not for me. My greatest victories are all ahead of me. And tonight, in Damietta, I shall be with Nicolette again.

He pulled his stallion’s head around and set out on the road to Damietta.

The riverbank ahead was mostly empty. Here and there he passed groups of women and servants who had been part of the crusader camp, trudging north, trying to escape. The Bedouins will get them if the Mamelukes do not, Amalric thought.

I am all alone.

A strange sensation. All of his life he had never gone anywhere without an entourage, often an entire army. From the age of five he had been the Count de Gobignon. And now he was traveling alone, fleeing for his life in an enemy country. True, he was fully armored, carrying both a longsword and a battle-ax, but he felt naked and helpless.

Because I deserted my men.

He thought of them, two hundred or more knights from the house of Gobignon, whom he had left behind to perish.

But if I had led them into battle and they had all died fighting? A leader cannot feel sorry for the men he loses.

Just after sunset he came to a heap of dirt and logs the crusaders had piled up across the mouth of an irrigation canal to dam it so they could cross it more easily. Beyond this artificial hill he reined up and waited. Not likely that the Mamelukes would pursue any who escaped this far north.

One man, at least, he could take out of this disaster with him. Of all of them, Maurice had proved the most valuable. He was bold, despite his age, and he knew the country. Amalric would wait here for him.

Time passed slowly as he sat on the ground beside his horse in the twilight. Why the devil did I not think to bring something to eat or drink with me?

A group of the commoners he had passed earlier, appearing a few at a time out of the darkness, gradually gathered around him. No doubt, he thought, they felt safer in the company of an armored knight. None had any food. There was none to be had in the camp when they left it. One had a wineskin, and Amalric drank deeply of the sour wine and then chased them away.

“You are wasting your time. Your only hope is to get as far from the Turks as you can. When I ride on, I am not going to wait for you, and you will not be able to keep up with me.”

He saw fear and resentment in the shadowed faces of the servants and camp followers, but none dared to speak out. Slowly, single file, they set off along the river road.

What is going on back at Mansura? he wondered. If Maurice does not reach me by moonrise, I will have to go on without him.

He heard the hoofbeats of a horse ridden hard. A dark figure clattered through the stony bed of the gully that had been a canal and reined up before him. Peering into the gloom, Amalric saw that it was Maurice.

“You need not fear pursuit, Monseigneur. They will be occupied for hours with the slaughtering of the foot soldiers.”

“Saint Dominic!” Talons of remorse sank themselves into his innards.

“It was only to be expected, Monseigneur. They cannot spare food for so many. They have not yet started to kill the knights and the barons. They may give them a chance to send home for money to ransom themselves. The common men die happy, thinking that by their sacrifice they have saved the life of their King.”

Maurice’s words jolted Amalric. Ransom? If that happens, I am undone. I will not achieve my purpose at all.

“What of the King?”

“He still lives, as far as I know, Monseigneur.”

“Would they let him ransom himself?” The thought of Louis buying his way out of captivity and walking again among the living and free infuriated him. No, that must not be.

“They must know that he is the chief cause of this crusade that has ravaged their country,” Maurice said. “They will probably either behead him or hold him prisoner for the rest of his life.”

Amalric let out a deep breath.

A full moon rose over the Nile as Amalric and Maurice rode quickly on. The common folk stumbling north did not even look up as the two men on horseback passed. After some hours Amalric drowsed in the saddle, assailed by images of good, brave men falling unarmed under Muslim swords. It was Louis’s fault. Didn’t I advise him to fight on instead of run begging to the Turks for a truce? Those men would at least have died with their swords in their hands. And who led them to Mansura in the first place?

He was almost asleep when Maurice slapped his arm. “Off the road, quickly, Monseigneur.”

Instantly he was alert. By moonlight he saw the white and black horizontal stripes of Egyptian sails on the river ahead of him. He and Maurice turned their horses into a clump of shrubbery and palms and watched as a dozen long, narrow boats slid toward them over the shimmering water. But how did they get north of Mansura, where our galleys are supposed to control the river?

Amalric realized with horror that he could be trapped between Mansura and Damietta. If those on the galleys saw him and Maurice, a volley of arrows could well be the end of them. Though the desert night was cold, sweat dripped down his sides.

The Saracen ships glided past, propelled by many oars as well as by sails, the voices of the warriors on board carelessly raised in merry shouts, song, and laughter.

Amalric heard a roar of triumph swell up from the lines of Mamelukes that moved to enclose the crusaders. He saw the yellow banners move forward and the sun flash on scimitars.

He became aware suddenly of the danger of his own position. There was nothing between him and the oncoming Mamelukes but an army that had just laid down its arms. He dare not stay.

There was one sight, though, that he had to wait for. Louis. Amalric held the black war-horse steady, peering at the cluster of tan-walled, flat-roofed huts where Louis and his brothers had taken shelter. The Oriflamme, shining brightly in the glow of sunset, hung over the center of the village.

Now the banner was in motion. A man on horseback, a crusader, had picked it up and was riding this way with it. Trying to save it from the disgrace of being captured by the Saracens. The rider’s faint cry of “Saint Denis.”‘ Reached Amalric’s ears above the din.

A spearhead of Mamelukes, cutting through the crusaders unopposed, had almost reached the village. They fired a volley of arrows at the fleeing rider with the Oriflamme. The horse stumbled to a stop, and the man fell backward out of the saddle. Like a tree cut down by a woodsman, the war banner of France toppled into the mud beside the Nile. A groan of grief went up from the Frenchmen who saw the Oriflamme fall.

Amalric turned away. If only I could have had the glory of saving it. He spurred his horse up the road a few paces, but could not resist the urge to look back again.

A Mameluke had reached the Oriflamme. He swung down out of his saddle, seized the banner’s staff, and lifted it out of the mud. With a long scream of triumph he galloped back to the Egyptian lines waving the red and gold banner wildly.

Not a man among the French moved. That, thought Amalric, shows how completely they are defeated.

Mamelukes on horseback, Amalric now saw, crowded into the village where Louis was. A thrill of terror and delight went through Amalric. Perhaps I shall see his head raised up on a pole and carried off in triumph like the Oriflamme. He was suddenly struck with the thought that if Louis were killed he could turn and ride back among the crusaders, rally them, and lead them to victory.

What a mad notion.

Then he saw Louis. The King’s blond hair gleamed above the turbans and spiked helmets crowding around him. Many hands seized him. They were lifting him up. They set him on a war-horse, and he sat rigidly, like a man in fetters. Doubtless they had wrapped chains around him. Slowly his horse moved through the crowd of Saracens, back toward Mansura. Charles and Alphonse, also mounted, followed. Mameluke horsemen in green cloaks positioned themselves around the royal brothers.

It was over.

Amalric felt as if someone had struck him with a hammer. He remembered the first time he had ever killed a man — a peasant he had found poaching in his forest at Gobignon. He had run the man through with his sword, and then been astonished by how quickly something so terrible could happen, something that could never be undone.

In just the few moments it had taken him to ride from his tent to this little hill the great French army had succumbed. Four long years Louis had spent putting that army together. Another whole year to move it from France to Egypt. Nearly another year of bloody campaigning. And now all over, in the blink of an eye.

And Amalric had done it, and the army was forever past saving. His body froze with the horror of it.

There was no outcry from the French knights at the sight of their King in chains, but Amalric saw a man kneel in the mud. Then more were kneeling. Soon the entire crusading army was on its knees, watching in silence as their King was led away.

Tears welled up in Amalric, and he rubbed his eyes with his bare hands, the empty mail gloves clinking.

“Oh, dear God!” he muttered to himself.

Why am I weeping? This is what wanted, what I have worked for.

Louis got what he deserved, he told himself. He took a deep breath, clenched his fists on the reins, and turned his face away from the unmanning sight of all those poor wretches being dragged off to captivity.

He pulled his stallion’s head around and set out on the road to Damietta.

The riverbank ahead was mostly empty. Here and there he passed groups of women and servants who had been part of the crusader camp, trudging north, trying to escape. The Bedouins will get them if the Mamelukes do not, Amalric thought.

D’Etampes, struggling, looked at Amalric with horror and disbelief as Amalric drove the dagger like a spike into his eye.

He screamed with pain and shock.

Amalric forced the young man’s head down with his other hand, pushing the point into his brain.

D’Etampes’ scream stopped abruptly and he went limp.

Amalric pulled the dagger out with a jerk. A rush of blood followed it. The young knight collapsed on the carpet without a sound, his sword still in his hands.

“And he dared to call me a traitor, a man who could turn against his seigneur like that.” Breathing heavily, Amalric wiped the blade of the basilard on his tunic before putting it away.

Maurice, his lips sucked in, stood looking down at the dead young man.

“Well?” Amalric challenged him hoarsely. “Never seen a man killed before? Come awake, man.” Can I trust Maurice? he asked himself. What if he goes out there and denounces me?

“You have put your life in forfeit, too, you know,” he reminded Maurice. “Ever since you brought in those Arabs to destroy the stone-casters.”

“Of course, Monseigneur,” said Maurice in a low voice, turning his eyes from d’Etampes’ body and looking toward the doorway of the tent. He sighed and spoke more briskly. “I was just gathering my wits. Shall I get rid of the body for you, Monseigneur?”

“No. Get on with spreading the cry for surrender.” Once the army surrendered, no one would know or care who had killed d’Etampes.

Amalric stood staring down at the handsome profile, his legs trembling as they sometimes did after a particularly pleasurable carnal embrace.

My God, what have I done? It all happened so quickly.

The wounded side of d’Etampes’ head was down, and only the spreading puddle of blood showed what had happened.

Why did you make me kill you, d’Etampes? I liked you. There were times I thought of you as a younger brother, someone who could be to me what Hugues was. But Hugues was cleverer than you. He would have understood and would have helped me. You were either too stupid or too pigheaded. A shame. And I just might have let you marry Isabelle after all.

“I will ride north,” he said to Maurice, “and wait for you when I am a safe distance from here. I wish we could catch up with those galleys.”

“We are safer traveling on shore, Monseigneur,” said Maurice with a certainty that puzzled Amalric. The old crusader bowed and left.

Moments later Amalric heard a horse galloping and Maurice’s voice raised in a loud shout. “Lay down all arms! Yield yourselves! The King commands it!”

Amalric threw blankets and discarded clothing over d’Etampes’ body. He put on German steel shoulder guards and a breastplate over his mailed shirt, and replaced the helmet he had been wearing with a lighter one veiled with white linen to protect his head from the sun.

He unlocked a small chest and drew out a bag that contained all the silver and gold coins he had left. He buckled on his longsword and tied the money-bag to his belt.

He did not call to anyone to help him. He could not bear to talk to any of his men.

He tried not to think about what he was doing, but shame burned in his heart. Deserting, leaving them to fall into the hands of the enemy. Was this not the most despicable thing a seigneur could do? Guilt fell on him like an enormous stone.

He straightened his shoulders, trying to throw the stone off his back. No, I must injure these men now, so that later on I can do greater good for many more people.

Carrying his shield, hanging his battle-ax around his neck, he went out. Now he would have to tell an equerry to saddle the one fresh horse he had left.

“What is happening, Monseigneur? Are we really surrendering?”

“Get that damned horse ready.”

“Will you lead us into battle, Monseigneur?”

“Be still!” Amalric shouted as he threw himself into the saddle. He wheeled the horse, a big black Flemish charger, and set off at a trot for the river road.

From upriver, where the bulk of the army was gathered in milling confusion, came shouts of “Down arms! Surrender!” Amalric paused at the top of a low rise to watch. He could not see Maurice, but he could tell where he had been by the sight of men stacking spears and swords, by the sudden fluttering of white flags made of torn cloth. The setting sun, tinged deep red by a sandstorm over the distant desert, cast a fiery glow over the defeated army.

Amalric heard a roar of triumph swell up from the lines of Mamelukes that moved to enclose the crusaders. He saw the yellow banners move forward and the sun flash on scimitars.

He became aware suddenly of the danger of his own position. There was nothing between him and the oncoming Mamelukes but an army that had just laid down its arms. He dare not stay.