All Things Are Lights – Day 158 of 200

If Maurice is really helping the Saracens, Damietta might fall if I fail to denounce him. I will have murdered all of us.

Dear God, now I shall have to watch Amalric and Maurice both.

She felt weak, crushed by fear. Why must this all fall on me?

But there was no one else. She would have to struggle on alone.

XXX

Roland had lost track of the days, but he thought he must have been a prisoner of the Mamelukes for about two months when he was marched from the house of Lokman to the walled camp outside Mansura.

He stumbled through the gateway in the mud-brick wall. Inside he saw a small cluster of brown huts like all the others he had seen along the Nile. But here were no Egyptian peasants. Instead, everywhere were men of France, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. His heart sank.

Two months — that was all it had taken Baibars and his Mamelukes to reduce the rest of Louis’s army to this.

“Ah, Jesus!” Perrin whispered.

The men were tattered, thin, filthy. Some paced, some stood staring into space. Most sat on the dusty ground. They wore whatever rags were left to them after the Egyptians had taken their armor. Worst of all, Roland thought, they did not seem to care about anything. Only a few even bothered to look up when Roland’s group straggled into the compound.

Roland found himself remembering the glorious June day in Paris two years before, sunlight dazzling on helmets, thousands of knights on magnificent chargers, the Oriflamme gold against a blue sky, the deafening cheering of the crowds, the King in his glittering armor. And he looked again at these defeated, despairing men. And then he wept.

“In the name of the Voice comes brightness,” Perrin said suddenly that night.

“Saint Michel! Be still!” Roland snapped, recognizing the Cathar saying.

“The lord of this world has me fast in his power,” said the jongleur, slurring his words.

Roland looked around the dark, crowded hut to see whether any of the captive knights had heard. He saw no sign.

Perrin must be talking in his sleep, Roland thought. He reached out a hand and gave him a shake. “Keep talking like that and you will get us killed,” he whispered.

Then a dread suspicion struck him. He put his hand on Perrin’s forehead. The jongleur’s brow was so hot Roland jerked his hand back.

He had seen men stricken like this many times since he came to Egypt. One moment well, an hour later writhing in fever, a few days after, dead.

He seized Perrin’s hot hand in both of his and squeezed it as hard as he could.

“Fight it, Perrin,” he whispered fiercely.

Fear turned his body as cold as Perrin’s was hot. There was nothing he could do. There was no food, no medicine, no one left who knew anything about illness. Oh, Guido, why did they have to kill you?

He stroked Perrin’s forehead, rubbed his burning hands. His helplessness was torture. Is this all I can do — sit here and watch him die?

He looked around at the other knights in the hut. Could any of them do anything? Each sat enclosed in his own silence.

I can count myself lucky even to be with him, Roland thought.

They were together only because Perrin had been kept with the knights at the house of Lokman. The commoners captured when the rest of the army surrendered were being held in another brick-walled enclosure a small distance away.

In the days that followed, the whites of Perrin’s eyes turned deep pink, a yellow crust formed on his lips, and he kept sweating away the little flesh left on his bones.

Roland sat with him constantly, numb with fear. He begged for extra bowls of the watery mash the Egyptians brought twice a day in buckets and tried to force it down Perrin’s throat, but the jongleur could not swallow.

Though he had never had much trust in God, Roland found himself praying.

At midday, a week after their arrival in the camp, Roland stepped out of his hut for air. The entire camp stank, but less so outside.

He noticed a small crowd gathered at the wall. Some of the men were shouting angrily. Curious, Roland went over to them. A young knight was standing on the shoulders of two other men, watching something. He climbed down just as Roland pushed his way into the crowd. He was white with fear.

“They are killing the sergeants and the men-at-arms,” he said. He wiped his nose with the grimy back of his hand. “You can hear screams from within the stockade where they are holding them, and a cart just came out from there with a pile of bodies. Bodies with no heads.”

Just as at the house of Lokman, thought Roland.

His sorrow was deep inside, tormenting his whole body, like the constant hurting of an infected wound.

A man with a filthy, bloodstained bandage tied around his face said, “The worst of it is, our men have no priests to shrive them before they die. The dogs of Saracens cut all the priests’ throats the day they took us.”

“It will be us next,” said the man who had been looking over the wall.

“Not at all,” said a dark-bearded knight who somehow had managed to be better dressed than the rest of them. “That treatment is only for commoners. Surely even the Saracens have more chivalry than to butcher knights as they would peasants.”

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