by J. K. Swift
“Not directly, no. But I am told he will be sending reinforcements to us soon.”
Malouf crossed his arms and nodded. “That is good. The Mamluks are coming. And they will not be merciful. You have heard, no doubt, what they did at Tripoli?”
“Yes,” Foulques said. “Marshal Clermont was there with a Hospitaller force. It was a slaughter. They were fortunate to escape, but Tripoli is not Acre.”
“You have much faith in your city’s walls. I hope it is well placed,” Malouf said.
“Why did you come here Monsieur Malouf? You risk much by being seen with me in public.”
Malouf held his hands out, palms up. “A father will do anything for his daughter.”
“There was no need for you to seek me out. I am a man of my word. I have not forgotten our bargain.”
“Ah, but I am sure you understand my concern. In Cyprus, you will be a long way from your responsibilities.”
Foulques turned to look at Malouf. “I have not forgotten Najya. She is in no danger. Even if the Mamluks should attack, Acre will not fall.”
“And if you are wrong? Forgive me Foulques, for I do not doubt your convictions. But you must understand, in my life I have learned it best to look at problems from all possible sides.”
“And what do you suggest?”
“Go to her, Foulques. Convince her to leave the city. She will go if the request comes from you.”
Foulques said he would do his best to convince her, but he knew in his heart she would not like the idea. When he returned to where Vignolo and Alain were standing, he realized Vignolo was staring at him.
“What?” Foulques asked.
“What did he want?” Vignolo was scanning everything that moved around him.
Foulques looked back to where Malouf had been standing, but the old man was gone. “He wants me to pay his daughter a visit.”
When Foulques looked back at Vignolo, the Genoan was staring at him open-mouthed.
“That is not what I expected to hear,” Vignolo said.
CHAPTER NINE
When Foulques arrived at Najya’s home, he spotted her outside tending to one of the two beehives flanking either side of the door. Her home was her workshop, and her workshop her home, for bees had been a large part of her life for as long as Foulques could remember. By the time she was twelve people already knew she was the one to contact if they came across a swarm on their property that they needed removed.
Foulques accompanied her on several of these ‘queen rescues,’ as she liked to call them. Not because he was particularly enamored of bees, or honey. Quite the opposite; he was secretly terrified of the stinging insects.
He had heard stories of a man his uncle knew who disturbed a hive under an old wagon. He was stung multiple times and his face swelled up beyond recognition. He quit breathing at one point and he had to be treated by one of the brothers of Saint John. Ever since then, the image of the man’s grotesquely swollen face had left its mark on Foulques’s memory.
However, as much as he distrusted the tiny insects, he found Najya’s enthusiasm infectious whenever she went on one of her rescue missions. When they spotted the blanket of bees hanging off a tree branch, the soldier bees swarming around their young queen as she searched for a home to start a colony, Najya’s voice would become hushed and brim with excitement. At the same time, she would take on an air of concern for the homeless insects and her movements would become so careful, so deliberate.
That was the difference between her and Foulques when it came to the bees. He would move carefully around the insects out of fear. Najya would do it out of concern for their well being. And the bees seemed to know it, for she could walk up to the branch, cooing and talking quietly the whole time, pick it up carefully with her slender, bare hands, and drop it into a sack to take home. There she would put the queen and her court, as she liked to call them, into one of the empty wooden hives she had built herself and which stood waiting for just such an occasion. To Najya, finding a new home for the queen was worthy of any royal coronation Foulques had ever witnessed.
He stood there, across the street from her home, and watched her work. He was near enough that if he had spoken in a normal voice she would have heard him, but so engrossed was she in her work, he could have been standing right next to her and she would not have noticed.
She wore a long, simple tunic of white linen, hemmed in golden thread. Over this was a sheer wrap of blue silk. It was as gossamer as the wings of the creatures she so loved, and Foulques could not help but look on in fearful fascination as she reached her arm down the open top of the larger of the two hives, which was almost as tall as she was. Bees spouted up all around her, but she talked quietly to them while swinging a tiny brass brazier, which emitted a constant stream of fine smoke. Foulques waited until the smoke pluming from the brazier had placated the bees enough for him to approach.
She finally noticed him and she stood there smiling, the sun sparkling off her large, light brown eyes and emphasizing just how sheer her wrap really was. With smoke still swirling around her, she looked like she had just come to life from the margins of a monk’s illustrated fairy tale.
She held up a hand. “Wait there, Foulques, while I close up their home.” She set the brazier down, which was still spitting forth spirited tendrils of smoke. Then she carefully placed the large, irregularly shaped lid back over the hive, talking quietly as she worked.
“People are going mad in this city. Last night someone broke into one of my hives and stole honey! I have had my workshop here for ten years, and not once has anyone ever stolen anything from me.”
She brushed off her hands, stepped lightly over to Foulques, and kissed him on first one cheek and then the other. Foulques looked nervously around, but Najya laughed. She looked like an Arab, often dressed as one, but her customs and actions were all her own. She was unpredictable, but always genuine, and that was why everyone, including Foulques, loved her.
“Have you come to say goodbye, then?”
Foulques looked down at his hands. “In part. But really, I am here to try and convince you to leave the city before the Mamluks arrive.”
“If they come,” she said.
“They are coming.”
“Well, you are too late,” Najya said.
Foulques knew this was going to be difficult.
“Look, Najya—”
“My brother was already here. Several times, in fact. If he cannot convince me to leave, what chance do you think you have?” She cocked her head and looked at Foulques out of the corner of one eye. “Did he send you?”
“No, of course not.” Foulques was relieved he did not have to lie.
She crossed her arms and gave Foulques one of her all-knowing half smiles. “Tell me Master Knight. If your Order was not sending you to Cyprus, would you be leaving the city? Now come inside and have tea with me. People will be staring at us soon and you do not want that, do you Brother Foulques?”
And that was that. His conscience was clear. He followed Najya inside for tea.
CHAPTER TEN
Khalil focused on the irregular up-down movements of his father’s chest. Resisting with every fiber of his being the urge to look at the horn scroll tube resting on a large pillow at the foot of what would surely be Sultan Qalawun’s deathbed.
Khalil knew they were watching him. Someone was always watching him. But that was quite possibly the only reason he was still alive. His servants were watched, his friends were followed wherever they went, and anyone they talked to was noted. So how could he have been responsible for poisoning the sultan?
Vice-Sultan Turuntay and his Royal Guards were beyond thorough in their investigation. They had a long list of suspects, men and women of power and ambition, like Khalil, but in the end, the culprit turned out to be quite unremarkable. One of the sultan’s bath attendants, a Christian slave taken at Tripoli, confessed to pricking him with a venomous needle. Turuntay accepted that, for no trace of poison was ever found
in any of the sultan’s food, so it had to have been administered by other means. The sultan’s team of hakim had been astute in recognizing he had been poisoned in the first place. They had conflicting theories on what type of poison had been used, but the slave died by ingesting some other deadly substance before she could be questioned further. Whatever was killing Qalawun was much slower acting. It was shutting down his organs one by one and there was nothing anyone could do.
There was a sudden commotion outside the tent entrance. There were only four servants, Vizier Baydara, and two of Turuntay’s trusted men inside the tent with Khalil. The vice-sultan, himself, was not present.
Khalil heard a soft, yet commanding, voice giving instructions to the guards outside.
“You will hold my emir’s weapons in safekeeping, for he is a Royal Mamluk of the Cairo Tabaqa, come to pay his respects.”
A handsome, clean-shaven Arab stepped gracefully through the doorway. His hazel eyes were lined with a trace of black and they shone forth from his delicate face like the last rays of sun setting behind an oasis. Those eyes took in the room and everyone in it with a single glance, and when he opened his mouth his words rang with conviction.
“My Master, the venerable Emir Badru Hashim, would have words with his sultan.”
A second form, stooped and massive, then filled the door so fully that the braziers set just inside the tent dimmed as they were robbed of oxygen. The man moved into the room and they roared back to life casting the newcomer in shadow for a moment. He continued moving forward slowly, as though an unseen force pushed him along like the waters of a raging river carrying a colossal boulder.
Unlike the handsome man who had announced his master, the Mamluk’s peculiarly gray eyes stared straight ahead at the sultan’s bed as he moved unerringly toward it. He acknowledged the presence of no one else. One of the sultan’s own guards took a backward step out of his path. Even the lanky form of Vizier Baydara was forced to scramble aside as the man named Badru Hashim dropped to his knees beside Qalawun.
“My Sultan.”
Khalil’s head vibrated when he spoke, like someone had beat a large drum with a heavy hand. Once.
“I have returned to you. As Allah is my witness, and by all codes of the Furusiyya, no man or woman has dominion over me. My service, my life, is once again yours to command.”
Khalil was close enough to see his father’s face twitch, and then his eyes fluttered open to slits, as though the Mamluk had the power to call back men from the dead.
Who was this man?
Qalawun’s eyes continued to open, growing wider and wider. When they were fully open, the sultan turned his head and looked at the Mamluk. Then they grew wider still, though Khalil would have thought it impossible. Qalawun took in air through his mouth, his chest began to move, and his face gained color. Then it reddened, veins snaked up along his neck and into his cheeks, his chest arched up, and in the old man’s eyes Khalil saw something he did not think his father was capable of experiencing. Terror. Not rage, not surprise. Pure terror. He had awoken into a nightmare.
The sultan’s chest heaved, he opened his mouth and a single, strangled word came forth.
“No…”
The giant man faltered. He blinked. This was, apparently, not the outcome he had expected.
The tent flaps flew aside and Vice-Sultan Turuntay stormed into the space. Five Royal Guards followed.
“Get that man out of here!”
The man in question was slowly rising to his feet. When the first guard took his arm, he dislodged his hands with a violent shake. He withered the second guard with a stare and walked past him toward the entrance under his own power. He did not once glance at Turuntay as he exited the tent.
As Turuntay and the guards went to the sultan’s side, Khalil found himself being pulled along in the stranger’s wake by irresistible forces. Standing outside he saw the Mamluk walking swiftly away, his servant half running to keep up.
Khalil saw his friend, Ibn al-Salus, on his way somewhere with a rolled up carpet under one arm. He shouted his name and ran to meet him. Ibn al-Salus gave him a questioning look.
“You see those two men?”
“Yes…?”
“Go to them. Do whatever you must to make them stay until I have had a chance to speak with them. But keep them out of sight. Somewhere that Turuntay will not see them.”
“All right, but I—”
“Do it! Whatever it takes. Understand?”
He ran back to the tent without waiting for his friend’s response.
The sultan’s hakim were gathered at his bedside when Khalil entered the tent. Turuntay and Vizier Baydara were in one corner speaking in hushed tones. They stopped talking when Khalil approached.
“Who was that man?” He directed the question toward them both. Baydara looked at Turuntay, but the vice-sultan avoided both Khalil’s and the vizier’s eyes. He knew something.
“I ask again. Who—”
“He is a disgraced Mamluk released from your father’s service years ago,” Turuntay said.
“Disgraced? How?”
“His blood is mixed, his tendencies barbaric, and he has eyes the color of the dead. What else do you need to know while your father lies dying in front of us?” Turuntay said, gesturing toward the prone form of Qalawun.
Baydara nodded his thin face. “We should pray to Allah. The hakim say it could be over at any moment.”
Sultan Qalawun died within the hour. Khalil stood at foot of the sultan’s bed for the whole duration, never once letting the horn scroll tube out of his sight. In that time, the sultan’s highest ranking emir, one after another, silently shuffled into the tent to stand watch over their master. Soon after the sultan let out his last breath, Vizier Baydara, with all the pomp and grace required by custom, walked to the pillow on which the scroll rested. He drew his khanjar, sliced the golden cords tying the horn to the cushion, and picked it up. He broke the wax sealing its end. He removed the parchment from within and began to read.
“I, al-Malik al-Mansur Saif ad-Din Qalawun al-Alfis-Salihi, the sultan of Egypt, name my son Khalil as my successor. Let all those emir loyal to me also support him in this, my final wish.”
There was a pause on Baydara’s part, Khalil noted, before he went down on one knee and held the scroll out to Khalil with both hands. Khalil snatched it from his hands and waited for the vizier to say the words. When he finally did, they were completely bereft of emotion.
“What is your command, My Sultan?”
Khalil had given this moment so much thought over the last few days he had trouble believing it was actually here. But here it was. Time was no longer his enemy.
“We attack,” he said.
The tent was silent, save for the inhalations of twenty men.
“We cannot attack,” Vice-Sultan Turuntay said. “We must return the sultan to Cairo and honor him.”
Khalil heard no respect in his words. No deference, whatsoever. A Mamluk should know better.
“I am the sultan,” Khalil said. “My father has given his life in preparing the greatest army ever seen. And you would dishonor him by disbanding it?”
“Not I,” Turuntay said. “Custom demands we respect the grieving period.”
Khalil glared at Turuntay. “Custom demands? It sounds like it is you who demands.” Khalil caught himself before he said more. This was not the time to confront the vice-sultan. “Customs change. Once Acre has fallen, we will grieve for my father. There will be time, then. Time enough for the whole world to grieve.”
But you, Turuntay. You I will permit to grieve much sooner.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The short journey from Acre to Cyprus had gone without incident. The late winter sun was not yet too hot, but it was still brilliant enough to make the gentle waves of the Mid-Earth Sea sparkle like gem stones. The galley was not the fleetest of ships, that much was true, but it was stable. And that suited Foulques’s mood, and stomach, just fine.
&nbs
p; As Vignolo directed his young crew on the docking procedures, Foulques saw Brother Thomas standing alone at the railing. The tall youth stared out over the small bay, his eyes seeing none of its beauty. Foulques knew how he felt, for he had the same misgivings about their new home. He went and stood by his side.
“Admiral,” Thomas said, bowing his head in greeting.
“Congratulations. That was officially the first successful voyage of the Hospitaller Navy,” Foulques said. “I wanted to tell you that you did a fine job choosing the one hundred members. They are all good men.”
“Ninety-nine,” Thomas said.
Ah, the true source of the melancholy, Foulques thought. He should have known.
“I am sorry Pirmin could not be with us, Thomas. Unfortunately, the marshal felt he needed him at Acre. I do not always agree with Marshal Clermont, but this was his call to make. There was nothing I could do.”
Thomas nodded. “I understand,” he said.
Foulques was fairly certain he did not. How could he? The marshal knew Foulques wanted Pirmin for his own use. The lad was going to be an amazing warrior. He did not know how to tell Thomas that his friendship with Pirmin had come to an end purely due to Foulques’s own enmity with the marshal.
Foulques pushed away from the railing. “Carry on, Brother Thomas. Carry on. It is all any of us can do.”
Foulques entered the meeting chamber expecting to find a room full of advisers and servants to King Henry, the King of Cyprus, and currently the leader of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But it was empty, save for one small man sitting behind a rather non-descript table of rough-sawn wooden slabs set atop two trestles. The doors closed behind the Hospitaller and the first thing that went through Foulques’s mind was, Who is this young man? He could not have been more than twenty years old.
The man motioned for Foulques to approach, and it was that small gesture that gave him away. Only royalty could exude that much confidence, disdain, and suspiciousness all in the wave of one hand.
