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to find water.’
    ‘And they made us bathe,’ Rabbit added. John winced.
    Ernaut dropped his skin, and water sprayed from his nose as he burst into a fit of laughter. The men nearby also began laughing, and the others approached to find the source of the merriment.
    ‘They made you bathe?’ One Eye asked with a wink. ‘Tell us all about it, Rabbit. Did the Saxon here scrub you nice and good?’
    ‘No,’ Rabbit said. ‘There were servants for that.’ This produced another, louder fit of laughter from the men.
    ‘Leave him be, One Eye,’ John said. ‘Come on, Rabbit. Let’s pitch our tents.’ John stomped away, followed by the men’s mocking laughter.
    ‘What did I say?’ Rabbit asked.
    ‘Nothing. Just try to keep your mouth shut around them.’ John dropped his rucksack and began to pitch his tent on the edge of the camp. He glanced back. The men were roaring with laughter as One Eye bent over, his arse in the air and a quizzical look on his face as he shouted out, ‘Is that a bar of soap, Saxon?’ John grimaced. The sooner the fighting began the better.
    John’s shovel dug into the sandy ground, and he leaned forward, scooping up a pile of dirt and flinging it out of the three-foot deep trench where he stood. He paused to push his damp, blondhair out of his face. The June sun blazed down mercilessly from a cloudless sky. When he had first arrived in Acre, two months ago, he wouldn’t have lasted an hour under that sun. Now, after weeks of hard labour, he was tanned and fit, firm muscles filling out his bony frame. He had already been working for two hours, shirtless, as he shovelled out a new latrine ditch for the ever-expanding camp. The Germans under the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad had arrived shortly after John’s company to swell the ranks of the crusaders. In the past week alone, hundreds more had flooded into the camp outside Acre: Raymond of Antioch and his nobles; King Louis of France with two hundred mounted knights; and hundreds of Templars and Hospitallers from every corner of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
    ‘Get back to work, bath-boy,’ One Eye shouted from where he sat on the ground beside the ditch, shaded by a sheet of white linen. John plunged the shovel back into the earth. This time, when he flung the dirt out of the ditch, it hit One Eye in the face.
    ‘You’ll pay for that, Saxon!’ One Eye spluttered. He brushed the dirt away and jumped to his feet, fists raised, but then froze. John turned to follow his gaze. A group of mounted knights with Reynald at their head was approaching over the barren plain, their horses’ hooves kicking up a tall plume of dust. As they rode into the outskirts of the sprawling crusader camp, men began to cheer. John squinted. He could just make out four darker men in white turbans riding in the centre of the knights. They rode stiffly, hands tied in front of them. Prisoners.
    ‘You stay here and dig, Saxon,’ One Eye ordered. ‘If this trench isn’t finished when I get back, then you’ll answer to Ernaut.’
    ‘Bastard,’ John muttered as One Eye strode away. After a while, the cheering in camp stopped, but One Eye did not return. The sun crawled across the sky, passing its zenith. John was nearly finished with the trench when he heard Rabbit calling his name.
    ‘John!’ Rabbit skidded to a stop at the edge of the trench. ‘Come on! Get your armour!’
    John dropped his shovel. ‘My armour? Are we under attack?’
    ‘No, it’s not that,’ Rabbit replied, his eyes wide with excitement. ‘Lord Reynald has captured prisoners. There’s going to be a tournament!’
    ‘By Christ’s wounds, it’s hot,’ John muttered, wincing as his hand glanced against the skirt of his scalding-hot chainmail. He followed Rabbit to a spot in the shade of the city wall, where a ring twelve paces wide had been marked off on the dusty ground. A large hour-glass had been placed on a stool, to keep time for betting purposes. Reynald’s men stood around the ring,