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the rush of the ocean against the rocks below.
    The great monastery of San Sabas loomed in the darkness, on a hill between the Venetian and Genoese quarters. It had been abandoned by the monks who lived there several years before and had immediately become a point of contention between the two rival merchant communities. Each had tried to gain possession of it, first by legal wrangling in the Haute Cour, then by force. Pitched battles in the street had led to a full-scale civil war, with the barons and military orders being forced to take sides. The survival of the Crusader states themselves, after all, depended on the sea power of the Italian merchants.
    The war had culminated in a naval battle off Acre just eighteen months before in which the Venetians had sunk twenty-four Genoese ships. An uneasy truce had been patched together by the Pope. But the dispute still simmered, with the Genoese having now abandoned Acre for Tyre, to the north.
    We were supposed to be fighting the Saracens.
    Josseran picked out other landmarks in the darkness: the tall, graceful silhouette of St Andrew’s Church; the palace of the governor in the Venetian quarter; the cathedral of the Holy Cross; the Dominican monastery in Burgos Novos; and in the distance, on the northern walls, the Accursed Tower and the Tower of St Nicholas.
    He knew this city now better than he knew Paris or Troyes. Five years he had been in Outremer and he barely recognized himself as the zealot who had first stepped on these shores, fervent, conscience-weary, afraid. On leaving France he had secured a loanof two thousand shillings from the Templar preceptory to make his way to Acre. In return he had pledged his properties to the Templar lodge should he not return from his pilgrimage.
    Five years!
    He had changed so much. At home he and his fellow Franks had dressed in furs and gorged themselves on beef and pork. He rarely washed his body, believing that he would make himself sick with chills. What a savage I was! Here he ate little meat and supped from copper salvers of oranges, figs and melons, drank sherbets instead of mulled wines. He bathed at least three times a week.
    He had been taught from a child that the Mohammedans were the embodiment of the Devil himself. But after five years in Acre he sometimes wore robes and turbans in the Saracen manner, and had learned from these same devils a little of mathematics and astronomy and poetry. The Temple even kept Mohammedan prisoners as artisans or armourers and saddlers. Over time he had formed tentative friendships with several of them, had come to see them as men like himself.
    I don’t know if I can ever go home now. I don’t even know where my home is.
    His regime as a Templar was strict. In winter his day began just before dawn; after prime he would check his horses and their harnesses, inspect his weapons and armour and those of his sergeants-at-arms. Then he would undertake his own training and that of his men: the constant practice with lance, mace, sword, dagger and shield. He would eat his first meal at noon and not sup again till the evening. He would recite a dozen paternosters each day, fourteen every hour, and eighteen for vespers. It was the life of a warrior monk.
    He had thus made his pilgrimage, done his penance, almost served the five years of his pledge. The chaplain said he was forgiven all his sins. So why then did he still feel this heaviness in his heart? Soon it would be time to return to France and resume the patrimony of his father’s lands. He should be more eager for that homecoming.
    He heard a footfall on the stone in the darkness and turned around. His hand went instinctively to his sword. So many assassins in this accursed city. ‘Put away your sword, Templar,’ a man said, in Latin.
    He recognized the voice. The Dominican friar, William.
    ‘They told me I would find you here,’ he said.
    ‘I often find comfort in the night.’
    ‘And not in the chapel?’
    ‘There are fewer