The Knight's Pledge

Book 2: Will Bowman Series

by Scott Mariani

Genres: Historical Christian; Medieval; Action & Adventure Romance; Medieval Romance; Alternative History sci-fi; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

READERS LOVE SCOTT MARIANI:
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THE THRILLING NEW INSTALMENT IN THE WILL BOWMAN SERIES, FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

1191.

Will Bowman, now fully entangled in Richard Lionheart's crusade, has reached the Holy Land. However, just as he and his crew are about to touch down in Acre, they are drawn into an intense battle at sea, where they are faced with the dreaded Byzantine weapon: Greek Fire.

Barely escaping with his life, Will gains the trust of Richard Lionheart, moving into his service. But as the siege of Acre continues, and Richard's campaign grows ever more brutal and barbaric, Will begins to wonder just how safe his new position is.

And when the King sends him on a seemingly doomed mission, Will must ask himself: who exactly is he fighting for?

Release date: December 4, 2025

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter 1

His prayer finished, Will sat still for a moment with his eyes closed and waited for the unlikely response from above. In keeping with the rest of his occasional, private and sadly one-sided dialogues with God, he knew his words had been as clumsily expressed as might be expected from a man of his poor background and limited education – an English peasant farmer born and bred was no learned Latin-speaking clergyman, for sure – and yet he had meant them with absolute sincerity, straight from the heart. He could only hope that would count for something in the Lord’s estimation.

An English peasant farmer William Bowman was indeed, or had been; one whose sudden change of fortune had brought him a long, long way from home this last year. He often reflected on the life he had left behind, a simple and happy existence he once had thought would last forever but which now remained only as a memory. Some days he could see Beatrice’s face, hear her voice, as clearly as though she were still here; on others, the vision of his beautiful wife and the little rural homestead where they had joyfully planned to raise their future family seemed like a faded dream that he struggled to remember. Those days were hard to bear.

Opening his eyes, he resurfaced into his present reality like a man awakening from a sleep, and the perceptions of his senses came quickly flooding back: the gently rolling motion of the warship under him, the soft, oddly comforting creak of its clinker-built timbers, the flap and crackle of the sails overhead, the warmth of the bright Mediterranean morning sun that shone down from a perfectly blue sky and sparkled like a million diamonds on the calm sea, the splash and hiss of the water along the vessel’s sides. Most of all, of course, he was aware of the noisy activity of his shipmates around him. The proximity of more than five-score men aboard a craft not a hundred feet long by twenty wide – not to mention the horses belonging to the mounted knights, the menagerie of poultry and other livestock they carried aboard, and all the stores, provisions and weaponry suited to a ship of war – left as little room for comfort as it did for privacy or quiet personal reflection. Even on a sea as smooth and sweet-sailing as that on this fine, calm seventh day of June in the year of our Lord 1191, the crew were kept more or less constantly busy under the watchful eye of their captain, and the shouted commands, the thump of running feet on the deck, the groaning effort of tugging on ropes, the frequent cursing and admonishment of their superiors, resonated from prow to stern.

Not all were so frenetically occupied aboard ship. For Will and his fellow pilgrim warriors, barring those times when the wind failed them and they might be expected to take an oar, or when the ship was caught in the grip of a fearful storm as had happened several times during the course of their long, much-interrupted voyage from England, there was generally little or nothing in the way of sailor-like duties to occupy them; and so they spent their idle time however they chose. They were the crucesignati, those men of noble or common birth alike who had taken the cross and volunteered their service as soldiers of God in exchange for remission of all their earthly sins. For them the ship, and the great battle fleet of which it was only a tiny part, was simply the means of transport by which they were to be carried to their destination, whether that be to glory or to their doom.

Most of those aboard, Will included, had never known a mariner’s life until this voyage; indeed for Will his departure from the Port of Southampton in March of the previous year had been his first ever experience or even sight of the sea, having spent his entire twenty years until then as a villager in the rural heart of England. By now, though, after being racked by the gales of the Bay of Biscay, narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on rocks and reefs or sunk to the bottom by monstrous waves, beset by ferocious Berber pirates in their fast-sailing galleys on the Alboran Sea and otherwise becoming intimately familiar with the many deadly perils an ocean-going life had to offer, he considered himself a fairly seasoned mariner if not, perhaps, quite as much of a salty old sea dog as some of his shipmates like the wizened, weather-beaten Joe Cook. From England they had voyaged around the northern coast of France and rounded the Iberian Peninsula before traversing the Mediterranean Sea by way of Sicily and then Cyprus. Each leg of the journey had been fraught with its own particular dangers and adventures, some of which had come very close to being Will’s last.

But now, or at any rate very soon, the long voyage was coming to an end. Its much-anticipated destination was the eastern Mediterranean coast and the land known back home in the West as Outremer: the Holy Land, once the jewel of all Christendom before it had been taken from them, long ago, by the then newly formed Mussulman armies sweeping out of Arabia and swiftly conquering the larger part of God’s kingdom by sword, fire and ruthless persecution.

Centuries later, those fragile Christian states still remaining in Outremer were facing a renewed and no less deadly threat in the form of the mighty Sultan Saladin, a name that struck fear into the hearts of men as far away as England. It was he who had butchered the Christian army of King Guy of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin in the year eighty-seven, consigned all but a few of its survivors to bloody execution and from there marched on the Holy City itself. It was said that when poor Pope Urban in Rome had received the news of ­Jerusalem’s fall to the Saracen hordes, the shock had caused him to drop dead on the spot.

It was not out of choice that young Will Bowman had set out to war with the pilgrim army whose mission it was to reclaim Jerusalem from its enemies. But this was where his destiny had brought him nonetheless, and now that he was here he was obligated by duty to see his mission through. That sense of duty was not directed particularly towards his country, nor his king, nor even necessarily to God (though he kept that part to himself); but rather he was committed for the sake of the men with whom he had forged strong bonds of friendship along the way, who had more than once saved his life and to whose wellbeing he was devoted as a comrade and a brother in arms.

Two of those men were sitting by him at this moment, in the nook under the warship’s towering forecastle where they habitually ate, slept and spent much of their time talking or playing at chess among the piles of coiled rope and spare mast spars, sail canvas and barrelled provisions that cluttered the deck.

Will had met Gabriel O’Carolan early on in the first leg of their voyage from England. A few years older than him and half a hand shorter in stature, fair-haired and handsome, he hailed from the west of Ireland: a curious character quite unlike anyone else Will had ever met, quick to laugh and yet intensely serious at times, a keen-witted observer of human nature and the world around him, who missed little and whose experience of life was far wider than Will’s own. There had been an immediate entente between them and their friendship had cemented quickly. Like Will, Gabriel had taken the cross primarily as a means of escaping his own troubles. In Gabriel’s case there had been an ugly situation in which he had been falsely accused of murdering the husband of the woman he had tried to elope with.(As Will had discovered, his friend seemed to have a particular tendency to form sentimental and invariably ill-fated attachments to all the wrong kinds of ladies.) During their months at sea Gabriel had taught him the game of chess, at which Will had become nearly as proficient as his teacher. The Irishman’s expertise with the sword, though, was a skill as yet unmatched.

The other of the three companions was called Samson, so named by Gabriel in honour of the giant Israelite of the Bible whose God-given strength had enabled him to collapse the temple of the Philistines. The present Samson was no less powerful and hulking in stature, a shaggy great bear of a man whose capacity for terrifying, almost insane, violence in battle belied his gentle, tender and even rather shy temperament. He was also immensely loyal. When Gabriel had fallen into the harbour at the Port of Southampton – distracted by the sight of a beautiful woman on the dock – it had been Samson who had plucked him from the water and they had been inseparable ever since.

As much as he might sometimes have felt cursed by fate, Will was blessed to have gathered such companions around him. Gabriel, Samson and some of the other men he had met on his journey – like the rough-mannered but good-hearted former butcher Roderick Short, old Joe Cook, and Tobias Smith whom they had sadly buried along the way – had become his only family since the terrible event that had torn apart his life and wrenched him from his home. Not a day, scarcely an hour, passed in which his mind didn’t find itself wandering back to that time. He and his childhood sweetheart Beatrice had been married only eighteen months and were expecting their first baby when she had been murdered by a band of marauding soldiers, men-at-arms in the service of a minor nobleman called Sir Ranulf of Gilsland, bound for the Holy Land. The quest for revenge that had led Will halfway around the world had finally culminated on the island of Cyprus, where the fateful confrontation with the murderers had taken place. They would trouble no more innocent souls now, having answered for their crimes along with their noble lord and master and the fellow knights who had tried to shield them from justice. Will never again expected to see the grim black eagle crest that had adorned their armour. But that didn’t mean he would ever be able to forget it.

‘Would you care for a game?’ Gabriel asked, interrupting Will’s thoughts as he took out the bag of chessmen and the rolled-up square of chequered leather that served them for a board. ‘Though quite why I would willingly subject myself to another rematch is a mystery, seeing as how you have beaten me the last four times in a row. Not that I am in the least way keeping a tally, you understand.’

‘I’ve been lucky, that’s all,’ Will replied with a smile. Then as Gabriel rolled out the board on the deck between them and started setting up the little ivory and rosewood pieces that he had carved himself, a tantalising aroma wafting aft from the ship’s galley caught Will’s attention. ‘What is that I smell?’

‘Our ignoble shipmate Osric and his cronies managed to hook a prodigious great fish this morning and are currently preparing to devour it like a pack of hungry dogs,’ Gabriel replied somewhat laconically, considering his opening move. ‘Despite the fact that, as I tried in vain to warn them, their prize catch appears to be almost certainly of the silver puffer variety that is deadly poison even when thoroughly cooked. I doubt any of them lives long enough to set foot on solid land again.’

‘Speaking of land,’ Will said, pointing. ‘Look.’

They jumped up, abandoning their unstarted game, and hurried over to the ship’s side followed by the lumbering Samson. All three men leaned over the rail and peered forward in the easterly direction of the ship, shielding their eyes from the strong sunlight. Sure enough, the distant coastline that had been visible even from the eastern tip of Cyprus was now much closer, so close that it was possible to make out distinct features along the shore and the forested hills further inland.

‘What country is that?’ rumbled Samson.

‘That, my dull-witted friend, is the Holy Land,’ Gabriel replied.

The Holy Land. The very words carried a power that made Will, and even Gabriel, want to bow their heads in reverence. The place itself was an awe-inspiring sight that every man aboard, with the possible exception of Samson, had been dreaming of seeing ever since setting out from home.

They knew that many of them would not be coming back, and that terrible hardships and deadly battle awaited them there. That awareness was reflected in the general atmosphere aboard Will’s ship and certainly all the others in the fleet: a mixed sense of exuberance and foreboding as men sharpened their blades and fettled their crossbows in readiness, watched out keenly for omens good or ill, and spent more time in prayer than had been their habit until lately. The ebullient spirit that had sustained them through all the struggles and deprivations of the voyage, the battles fought in Portugal, Sicily and Cyprus and the loss of numerous comrades, was for some of the men wavering a little as they drew ever closer to their destination.

What they didn’t yet know, and could not have predicted, was that the battle was to begin before they even reached shore.

Chapter 2

‘If I do not mistake,’ Gabriel said, peering landwards, ‘those tall towers visible to the west are those of the castle of Margat, the great fortress of the Knights of St John near Tortosa, one of the few bastions as yet unconquered by Saladin. Further along the coast lie the cities of Tripoli, Nephyn and Boton. Boton, where arose the infamous feud between Raymond of Tripoli and the Templar Grand Master Gerard de Ridefort, which they say resulted in the disaster of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem. And very soon, I imagine, we shall catch sight of Acre itself.’

The wealth of his friend’s knowledge never ceased to astonish Will, though he should have been used to it by now. ‘Acre,’ he echoed with awe. For so long, he had wondered what it would look like. He had left his home in England with only the vaguest knowledge of the region, and completely ignorant of its complex history and politics. It was largely thanks to his friend Gabriel’s far superior education and apparently inexhaustible supply of information that over the course of the long journey eastwards he had slowly been piecing together his own understanding of the situation in the Holy Land.

As Will had come to learn, the Christian states of Outremer had originally been four in number, established almost a century earlier when the first armed pilgrimage of 1096 had at last redelivered the region back into Christian possession. This had happened more than four hundred and sixty years – a length of time scarcely imaginable to him – after the violent invasion by the rising might of the Saracens had initially torn it from their grasp. The largest and northernmost of these states had been Edessa, a vast tract extending far east of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. At Outremer’s southern extreme lay the Kingdom of Jerusalem, whose most important locations were the ancient port city of Acre, called Ptolemais in the Bible, and the holy site of Jerusalem itself, the very beating heart of Christendom. Situated along the Mediterranean coast between Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were the other two Christian states, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli.

For many years, according to Gabriel’s account, these four semi-independent territories had thrived and held fast despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered and surrounded to the south and east by the various Mussulman forces that constantly threatened to invade and overrun them. Then in the year 1144, some quarter of a century before Will was born, Christian Outremer had received its first major blow of recent times as the vulnerable state of Edessa at last fell to the relentless attacks of the enemy.

This disaster, however badly it had shaken Christendom at the time, had been little in comparison to the stunning defeat that had occurred forty years later. Following his devastating victory against the Frankish King of Jerusalem at the battle of Hattin in 1187, the all-powerful Sultan Saladin had attacked and swiftly captured the city of Acre in July of that year. Thereafter the strongholds of the kingdom had fallen one by one: Sidon in late July, Beirut in early August; Ascalon in September. Only one coastal city, Tyre, continued to defy Saladin’s advance, thanks to the effective defences put in place by its ruler Conrad the marquis of Montferrat. Then on the ninth day of October, after a short siege that the Christians bravely but vainly resisted under the leadership of the knight Balian of Ibelin, the sultan’s victorious army had entered the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Saladin had gone there with one aim only: to wreak bloody massacre and consolidate his legacy as the perfect champion of holy war. ‘You will receive neither amnesty nor mercy,’ he declared to the citizens. ‘Our sole desire is to inflict perpetual subjugation upon you, and we will kill and capture you wholesale, spill men’s blood and reduce the poor and the women to slavery.’ Only when the Christians responded that they would fight to the last man and execute the thousands of Mussulman prisoners held within the city did the sultan relent and offer slightly more generous terms. Spared death, thousands of men, women and children of Jerusalem were instead led away in chains to the slave markets of Arabia. With that, the epicentre of Christendom itself had fallen, the most chilling fears of the Western world realised.

Needless to say the seventeen-year-old Will, enjoying a quiet and humble existence in England, had been blissfully unaware of these happenings at the time. Elsewhere, larger wheels were turning. The unthinkable calamity had been the event that prompted the rulers of France and the Holy Roman Empire to join forces and take up the cross in Jerusalem’s defence. It would not be the first time the countries had united to fight the Saracens in the Holy Land. This time, however, they would also be joined by the King of England, Henry II.

As Gabriel had explained, the involvement of no fewer than three Western kings had proved something of a mixed blessing. While the almost limitless resources able to be marshalled by such omnipotent rulers theoretically gave them a crushing advantage, their alliances were weakened by longstanding rivalry, mutual distrust and thinly veiled hostility – and this was especially true of the relationship between France and England who had been at war against one another since time immemorial. The joint venture was thus problematic from the beginning, each king being convinced that the other would take advantage of his absence to attack his lands and expand his own domains at his rival’s expense. Neither would commit to the expedition until the other did; if one was to go, both had to go. This impasse was the cause of long delays and delicate negotiations, before it was agreed that both kings take the cross simultaneously, which they then did on June twenty-first, 1188, an entire year after the atrocity of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem.

With so many affairs of state to put in order before they could set off, they had given themselves the better part of another year to organise themselves, initially agreeing on a departure date of Easter 1189. However, this too would be further delayed until yet another year had gone by, with the two countries continuing to war against one another despite the truce called by the new pope. By this time the elderly King Henry – regarded by many as really too infirm to be embarking on a long-distance military campaign – had died, leaving his newly crowned son Richard to take his place.

Richard, a born warrior, had enthusiastically taken the cross almost immediately on hearing of the fall of Jerusalem. In stark contrast, Philip of France was generally considered more a scheming, bean-counting administrator than a fighter, and his personal enthusiasm for undertaking a military campaign of such a scale was virtually nil, having only consented to participate because of the public pressure on him to do so. At last, in July 1190, he and King ­Richard embarked on their joint expeditio crucis, the great armed ­pilgrimage to ­Outremer.

Meanwhile the Holy Roman Emperor, the indomitable Frederick Barbarossa, had taken the cross as early as March 1188 despite his own advancing age of seventy or more. Like his counterparts he spent almost a year preparing for the expedition, not departing until the following May. Unlike Richard and Philip who had elected to journey by sea, the veteran warrior would lead his huge army overland.

‘While all this has been going on,’ Gabriel had told Will, ‘the position in Outremer has been steadily worsening. With both the Holy City and the port of Acre occupied by Saladin’s forces, the last bastion of resistance within the kingdom has been the city of Tyre. Only two of the four original Christian states now remain intact, though riven with internal political dissension and rivalry. If yet more territories fall to the might of Saladin’s armies, the entire region risks falling back into enemy hands, most likely marking the end of Outremer for all time.’

‘It sounds like a desperate situation,’ Will had said, absorbing as many details as he could.

‘Desperate indeed, brother. As we know, for a great while now the former King of Jerusalem, whom we saw in Cyprus when he attended our king’s wedding, has been laying siege to the city of Acre with whatever remains of his army, though he must be heavily outnumbered and suffering for lack of supplies and reinforcements after holding out for so long. And so it is to Acre that we must go, to lend our assistance in any way possible. The port is of such strategic importance that everything now depends on the ability of our joint Christian armies to win it back. Such is our only hope of ever recovering Jerusalem.’

Gabriel’s stark warning had echoed in Will’s mind ever since. Neither man was a stranger to war, having fought several battles along the course of their journey. But the conflict they were heading into now was on a completely different scale and the stakes were far, far higher. What they could expect to find when they at last reached Acre, he could barely imagine.

Only one thing was certain. Now that the redoubtable King Richard of England and his army were about to arrive on the scene, the situation at Acre could soon be set to take a dramatic turn.

*

As the shoreline steadily loomed larger on the horizon, Gabriel pointed again. ‘Look, brothers, look. Do you make out that lofty sandstone tower on the hillside there, not far inland? There, to the right. See it? I do believe that is the Tower of Gibeleth, belonging to the castle of the same name. I had the account from a man who travelled on pilgrimage to these parts long ago and it is just the way he described it. The ancient town at the foot of the hill is Byblos, of even earlier foundation than Tyre or Sidon. In the time of the Phonecians it was considered the seat of worship of Adonis.’

But neither the ancient Phonecians nor their pagan gods were of much concern to Will at that moment. Distracted by some instinct, he had turned away from the rail to peer across the sparkling blue water on their north side, and there he had spotted something odd. A good distance from the host of English ships, heading towards the land on an easterly course like theirs but veering off at an angle from the rest of the fleet, was a vessel he had never seen before. It was a craft of remarkable size; if anything, even larger than King Richard’s own royal galley that sailed at the head of the fleet. It looked to be some manner of great cargo buss, propelled both by sails and oarsmen, but in certain ways it differed from the rest. Unlike the various English esneccas, galleys, busses and cogs, many painted in bright colours and lined with shields along their sides, the unfamiliar ship had its high-sided hull peculiarly decked with green and yellow hides that covered its flanks down to the waterline. While most of the pilgrim warships were single or double-masted, this one was set with three masts of great height, carrying a heavy press of canvas that was bearing it quickly towards the coast.

All these months Will had been at sea, sailing aboard this vessel and that, and almost continually within sight of all manner of others; and yet the appearance of this one caused him a strange tingle of apprehension. There is something about that ship I do not like, he thought to himself.

He seemed to be alone in having noticed it. Gabriel was still nattering away about castles and towers and Samson appeared to have dozed off on his feet, like a horse. ‘Pardon me for interrupting your flow, Gabriel,’ Will said, nudging his friend’s arm. ‘But what is that ship over there to the north? It’s surely not one of ours. I haven’t ever seen it before. It seems to have come out of nowhere.’

Gabriel followed him across the deck with the awoken Samson close behind, and the three of them lined along the opposite rail and peered past the companion vessels of the fleet to try to make it out. ‘A Frenchman, perhaps, a straggler from King Philip’s fleet bound for Acre,’ Gabriel said, shielding his eyes from the sun. There are two or three banners flying from her masts, but they are unfamiliar to me and I am no mariner in any case. Your eyes are better than mine, brother; what do you think?’

‘He’s a gurt big bugger, whoever he is,’ grumbled Samson, his hairy face twisted into a scowl.

‘And in a hurry, too,’ Will replied. His unpleasant feeling about the strange ship was growing by the moment. He leaned as far over the rail as he could and stared hard at it. It was true that he possessed remarkably good vision. In the days when he had roamed the woods and meadows of his native county of Oxfordshire with his bow and arrows, even the cleverest rabbit or hare was hard pressed to hide from his keen hunter’s eye.

‘Bringing urgently needed supplies to assist our Christian brethren in their siege effort, no doubt,’ Gabriel said, but Will doubted it very much. By this time a number of their shipmates and some of the crew, having also spotted the ship, were gathering along the side to stare at it, amid a buzz of speculation. Some seemed to share Will’s sense of suspicion, which by now had hardened to certainty. As he watched, he caught the briefest faraway glimpse of a man’s face peeking furtively over the strange ship’s high side. Then another. They were too distant to make out any clear detail but he would have sworn that the faces were clean-shaven, like most Christians. But if that was who they were, why were they behaving so oddly and steering on a course away from the pilgrim fleet?

‘That’s an enemy ship,’ Will declared, with strong conviction. ‘And though I’m no expert sailor either, my guess is she’s sailing under false colours and her people are masquerading as Christians as a ruse to deceive us.’

Gabriel frowned at him. ‘Can you be so sure, brother? At this distance? And why would an enemy ship be sailing alone, without the protection of her comrades?’

‘Because she’s a cargo vessel bringing supplies to Acre, just as you said,’ Will answered. ‘But not for us. For the Saracens occupying the city.’

‘You may be right,’ Gabriel said. ‘Then again, there is really no way of knowing.’

‘I’m certain of it,’ Will insisted. ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. May the king hang me from the masthead if I am wrong.’

Gabriel was about to reply when they saw movement aboard the royal galley up ahead. ‘The flagship is lowering a boat,’ he said, pointing. ‘What can the king’s intentions be, I wonder?’

Those soon became clear. The royal barge, a sleek and light skiff manned by twelve strong rowers and carrying an envoy clad in richly coloured robes of blue and crimson bearing the king’s ensign, splashed down into the water and made its rapid way across to another galley where, as Will and his shipmates watched, the envoy was received aboard with urgent haste. Moments later, the envoy having clambered hurriedly back down the galley’s side and the barge rowing hard for the flagship, the galley’s deck swarmed with a flurry of activity and they altered course to intercept the strange vessel before she could make landfall.

Time seemed to have stood still, though long minutes passed. Nobody was watching the shore any longer, as all eyes were fixed upon the galley and the more distant stranger. ‘Come on, come on,’ Will found himself muttering under his breath, urging them on with clenched fists. The gap of open blue water between the vessels grew steadily narrower, narrower; but as the galley drew closer to the stranger it was obvious that the latter’s captain, whoever he was, had no intention of letting himself be caught and was instead making all speed for the coast. That was telling in its own right.

What happened next was much more so. Because as the fast-sailing galley closed the distance further still and the cry of its hail was heard from far away across the water, the strange ship abruptl. . .