London Folk Tales by Helen East Page A

with a friend of his father’s, rediscovering his delight in comfortable and civilised company. Fine food, rich red wine, exquisite music, and before he left a purse of money, at his father’s request, to improve his travelling fund.

    Richard, ever practical, insisted on sewing most of it into the breasts of both their tunics, hidden underneath the cross.
    The passage on along the Balkan coast was even worse than their first boat, for now it had got hot. For Gilbert, Ragusa alone stood out, like a single picture burnt on the mind in a fiery fever, yet one he could never have conjured up for himself.
    A walled city like London, hanging on the sea as London clung to the Thames. A city of many faces from many different places.
    â€˜But there,’ he thought, ‘comparison ends, for here the range of differences endlessly extends.’ Traders from the four corners of the world; strings of mysterious eastern spices, men with skin as dark as night, walrus tusks from lands of ice, silk far finer than he had ever seen, signs and scripts he could never read. And the people themselves, and the languages they spoke – bubbling, barking, some semi-singing, and some sounding half-caught in the throat. Gilbert had never supposed such variety could exist, let alone all be held in one small walled city. ‘Oh!’ he said to Richard. ‘Think if London were like this!’
    Gilbert himself thought of little else, holding the memory in his mind like a talisman to keep away the horrors of the endless voyage. People crying and dying, sickness, and the stench of it everywhere. And salt in the mouth, on the lips, and even crusting round the eyes. Until the longed-for morning, when all at once, it seemed to him, they arrived.
    Constantinople. And the news came as they disembarked. They were late, and the main force had already gone on to Jerusalem. As soon as they were ready and fit to march, they were to go to Tyre. And yet before they were either, they were hurried on their way. Onwards now through regions that Crusaders had won.
    And now Gilbert and Richard had their first taste of war. So much confusion: messages back and forth, factions fighting over stores of food and drink, and arguments arising from old feuds. All the rivalries of Europe, especially France, since most of the Crusaders there were Franks, were re-emerging now under the pitiless Saracen sun.
    As they came closer to Jerusalem, news filtered back. At first triumphant announcements, then an undercurrent of whispers. Jerusalem was taken, it seemed. A wondrous victory claimed. Some said the ‘soldiers of the Church’ had only had to pray, and the walls fell down. Others thought it had not been defended. Still others said the city had surrendered. ‘But if so,’ whispered some, ‘why was half the city burned? Why did all the children and women also die?’ The answers were hinted in the ashes of the still-smoking villages they passed – the eyes of any left behind, who ran to hide at the sight of soldiers marching by. Or worse, the ones who could not run, and simply lay, their awful injuries on full display.
    Gilbert tried not to see, nor think too much. It was not hard. They were so tired. And so many of their soldiers were ill. ‘ Deus volt ’ – ‘As God Wills’. Maybe Tyre would simply open its gates, and welcome them as friends. And then their Just and Holy War could end for them, before it even wholly began.
    As it turned out, his hopes were no more foolish than their leader’s expectations. For assuming that Tyre, like Jerusalem, had only their inhabitants to defend them, they attacked openly, without much strategy. To their surprise, they found themselves facing Zahir al-Din, the Muslim leader of Damascus, who was also fighting in God’s name. Having heard of the massacres at Jerusalem, he had answered Tyre’s appeal for defence.
    Even the best-laid plans would not have helped Gilbert