Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  He took his rest that night curled into a hollow on the side of one of the tawny hills, woke with the dawn, made his prayers facing away from the sea, brewed some strong thyme tea to put strength in his bones for the ride ahead and ate the bread his cousin had baked for him before he left Akka, unaware of the yearning sighs Jamilla had given as she pummelled her frustrations into the dough, or the kiss she had bestowed on the final baked item.

  When he saddled up the chestnut it seemed more skittish than usual, throwing its head and blowing hard for no reason. Wrestling it into some semblance of obedience, he pointed its head uphill towards the ridge and put his heels to its barrel, hoping that the extra effort required would render the animal more complaisant. It was the most handsome horse he had ever owned, taken during the surrender of the Hospitaller fortress of Kaukub, called by the Franj Belvoir; but it was also the most contrary. He had had bare weeks to convert it from its infidel ways, and it had proved resistant. On the ride down to Akka he had thought it more responsive, but now here it was again playing up, jigging in a circle, flicking its ears as if spooked by something. He hauled at its head as it tried to jaunt right again and at last fought it to a standstill as he scanned the uniformly brown scrub for the cairn that marked the trail. But then the contrary animal circled again, pulling at the bit, and that was when he saw it.

  A flash of silver to the north, down near the sea. Shading his eyes, Malek gazed into the distance but saw nothing but heat haze and a solitary hawk riding a current of hot air. He was about to wrestle his mount back towards the track when it came again: the sun winking off something far away, where Akka’s coast road turned north towards Tyre.

  Malek’s chest constricted. Then, with sudden compulsion, he drove his mount hard up to the top of the highest part of the ridge, and while it puffed and blew, fat and out of condition, he stood up in the stirrups to get a better view. There! Dust rising like a cloud, and through it little flashes of light. A lot of men on the move. Had the sultan broken the siege at the fort and brought the army down out of the hills? For a few moments his breathing stilled and settled. But then he remembered the easier route would be by Tiberias and the great west road. To have come down from the Qala’at al-Shakif to the position he surveyed now, where the dust was stirred up and metal caught the sun, would have meant a precipitous ascent of the range, followed by an equally steep descent, farther to the north than was necessary.

  He rode along the ridge, parallel to the sea, never taking his eyes off the ominous dust cloud until, twenty minutes later, his worst fears were realized.

  By the time he saw the fires of the encampment below the Castle on the Rock hours later, Malek could hardly stay upright in the saddle. But the chestnut had been magnificent, running all day without respite, galloping along the upland tracks as surefooted as a goat. As they came down out of the hills guards ran to challenge them.

  “Allahu akhbar,” he croaked, and half fell from his horse.

  “It’s Malek,” the first sentinel declared. “One of the burning coals.” Recognizing him, they helped him up and dusted him down and took the chestnut to the paddock.

  “Why in such a state, lad?” asked an older guard. “Couldn’t you stay away? Did you miss us that much?”

  They laughed a little. But they had seen the state of the chestnut, its coat rimed with salt stains, and when he shook his head wearily and looked as if he might collapse, they stopped laughing.

  “Take me to the Commander of the Faithful,” he said, and they escorted him to the sultan’s war tent.

  Within, Salah ad-Din sat cross-legged on cushions, a book spread open in his lap. On the low table before him was a tray bearing a silver teapot, steaming fragrantly into the night air, some glasses and a wide bowl of fruit—damsons and apricots, black plums with the bloom still upon them, brought from gardens in the capital that very day by a series of couriers. Beside him, illuminated by a glass lantern casting out through its tinted shades a spill of coloured light, sat his friend Baha ad-Din, the qadi of the army, his hands curled around a beaker of tea as if for warmth, though the braziers glowed red in the corners of the tent, and curls of frankincense wound their way through the dim air between. There was a third man in the tent, apart from the group of servants gathered discreetly to the side of the wooden alcove wherein lay the sultan’s bed. Reclining on a pile of cushions with a platter of chicken bones discarded at his side was the master of the fortress they besieged: Reginald of Sidon.

  Malek swayed, light-headed. He concentrated on not pitching nose-first into the table, then prostrated himself with as much grace as he could muster. Only when he was down on the floor with his hand in front of his face about to grasp the sultan’s robe to bring it to his lips did he remember his filthy state. Dust had adhered to his sweat and dried to a crust over his exposed skin. He could smell his sweat, acrid, as he raised his arm, and felt suddenly like a savage. He lay there trembling, trying to form the dire news into a cogent sentence, when a hand touched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Get up, Malek. It is Malek, isn’t it? Though it is a little hard to tell beneath the grime of the road.” A note of gentle reproof. To be dirty was an affront to God, rather than to himself.

  “My lord, forgive me, I did not think the news could wait for the luxury of a bath.” He rose unsteadily, aware all the time of the Franj lord’s eyes upon him. He slid a glance in the man’s direction. Malek could not get used to the sight of beardless men, especially with such pale skins. They seemed more like ghosts. He had seen small children burst into tears at a glimpse of them.

  Salah ad-Din smiled. “Lord Reginald is my honoured guest. You may speak in his presence as you would with me alone.” Bending forward, he poured tea in a gleaming stream from the silver pot into a small decorated glass and held it out to Malek. “Drink this down and then tell me what could not wait for a bath.”

  Malek tried not to gulp the tea greedily. So dazzled was he to have been served by his master’s own hand that he almost forgot the words he had been so carefully preparing. “My lord,” he managed at last, “the enemy is moving south from Tyre upon the city of Akka. At their head they fly the banner of the King of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan.”

  The sultan’s expression did not change. Malek might as well have said that the sea was blue, the tide was coming in or that the moon had risen. Not by the flicker of an eyelid did he betray how unwelcome this news must be, when his army was already stretched from Aleppo to the Moab. Instead, he pushed the bowl of fruit towards Malek, and when the young soldier did not immediately react he selected a soft, black plum, turning it carefully in his long, bony fingers, scrutinizing it for any sign of blemish before passing it to Malek.

  “You have ridden all day. You should eat something.”

  Pinned by that brilliant stare, Malek was shocked to see how frail his master appeared: older, his sun-seamed cheeks sunken, white hairs salting the once-black eyebrows and beard. He thought of how his mother had looked, shrunken and inert in her narrow bed, her skin like paper, her face fallen in to reveal the skull beneath.

  Salah ad-Din steepled his fingers, his face mild and patient, as Malek ate the plum and then choked out the rest of his information: a great army—like a swarm of locusts—the banners of a thousand knights mounted on huge chargers, a company of Templars, another of Hospitallers, and many thousand foot soldiers. “Forgive me, my lord, but I am not trained in the art of estimating such a host.”

  Baha ad-Din glared at him as if this news was his fault, while the Lord of Sidon’s eyes gleamed like those of a fox that has seen some new and unexpected escape route.

  “Worse, my lord, I saw many sails on the horizon, warships entering the Bay of Akka. Forty or fifty of them, big ships, not merchant vessels …”

  Now the scribe got to his feet, huffing loudly, for he was a big man and had been comfortable. “That snake Guy of Lusignan, God curse his name! I knew we should have left him chained in Tortosa. Just so much is a Christian’s word
worth.” He flicked his fingers dismissively, a man ridding himself of filth. “They are all the same.” And he glared at Reginald of Sidon. The wily old nobleman gazed back at him through half-lidded eyes, a basilisk stare.

  The sultan beckoned to one of the young pages. “Have some water heated and add thyme and rosemary to fragrance it. My burning coal has ridden far today.” He reclined into his cushions and arranged his burnous over his knees as if he felt the cold despite the warmth in the tent. “And tell me, Asfar, is she in the same condition as her rider, all covered in dust and sweat and half dead on her feet?”

  Malek nodded dumbly, astonished that the sultan should even consider the welfare of a horse at this time, let alone remember its name and gender.

  “She is a fine animal,” Salah ad-Din continued, “of the Jaran bloodline, I believe. A strong arch to the neck, small head, neat fetlocks. You should breed from her when the time is right.” He prided himself on his knowledge of all the finest Arab horses, their ancestry, strengths and weaknesses, and had been almost as delighted to liberate those they had come by at Belvoir from their Franj masters as he was at the freeing of the Muslim prisoners held at the fort. “Make sure the horse is well attended to,” he told another page. “Give her grain from my own store.”

  “Shall I summon your generals?” Baha ad-Din asked.

  The sultan closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he said gravely, “There is no immediate hurry.” He turned back to Malek. “And your mother, dear boy, how does she fare?”

  Malek swallowed. “My mother remains very ill,” he said, for he was unaware that, long miles behind him and less than a day ago, Nima Najib had passed away. It seemed wrong to be bothering the sultan with such trivial matters in the face of this new, immense crisis, but still he ploughed on. “My father—”

  Salah ad-Din nodded. “Baltasar Najib, a valorous man. Severely wounded at the ford of Ramla, as I recall?”

  “My father is a stubborn man, my lord. He deemed my mother too fragile to be moved.”

  “Well,” the sultan said, “in light of these new circumstances he may well have proved himself wiser than I.”

  Malek bowed his head, cursing his own foolishness. Of course, who could leave Akka now? The city was surely under siege.

  They decamped from the Qala’at al-Shakif two days later, leaving a force sufficient to continue the blockade of the fortress and its master, held under lock and key, and they marched by night and day down the easy route by Tiberias. A contingent of troops was sent along the Toron ridge to watch the enemy’s movements, with orders to rejoin the main army above Akka. Taking the ancient road from Nazareth, the Muslim army advanced on the port city from the south-east past Khafar Kenna, that the Christians called Cana, and from there made for the peak known as the Hill of the Carob Trees.

  There, Salah ad-Din surveyed the scene impassively, even though the enemy covered the plain like locusts upon a field of wheat, blotting out the sere grass and the green crops, obliterating the bright streams and orchards. They had made their headquarters less than a mile from the city’s east gate, upon the Hill of Prayers, which Malek had passed just a few days earlier, his only worry at that moment being how to break the news to his commander that he had been unable to win an argument with his father. How long ago that seemed.

  Akka protruded south into the bay like a beard upon a jutting chin, its face fronting the sea, the hollow between chin and neck formed by the harbour. Two sides gave onto water; the landward perimeters rose in great golden walls topped by crenellations and guard-towers. It looked strongly defended, and it was.

  The Franj battalions fanned out from the Hill of Prayers all around the city, from the ramparts of the old Templars’ ward to the north, to the farms beyond the Accursed Tower and all the way around to the eastern wall. From their mass, standards fluttered on the breeze, a rainbow of colour. As if in defiant answer to the jaunty banners of the Franj, the golden-ochre ramparts of the city were lined with the banners of the caliphate, a crescent moon emblazoned on apricot silk. In the inner harbour a forest of masts marked out the vessels that rode there, safe at anchor. The iron chain would have been raised to keep out hostile ships, stretching from the harbour wall out to the rock in the open sea upon which the Tower of Flies stood, named for the place where long-ago pagans had made sacrifices to their gods, where blood had spilled and stunk and bluebottles had swarmed. Thinking of this made Malek shiver: would those flies soon circle the island once more, buzzing with excitement at the stench of spilled blood?

  He remembered when they had retaken the city from the Franj, not much more than two years ago. He had fought grimly at Salah ad-Din’s side with the rest of the sultan’s personal guard, his teeth gritted so hard as he swung and parried and chopped and battered his way through the defenders that his jaw had ached for days afterward, worse than any of the countless small wounds and bruises he had taken. All the while he had thought of his mother and sister inside the walls, whose lives would depend on their success that day, for if they failed in their attempt to take the city, reprisals against the resident Muslims would be cruel. There was no knowing to what depths Christians would sink in their vengeance and hatred: they had no honour. He remembered the stories he had been told about their taking of Jerusalem in the last century: the babies slaughtered, their heads displayed on pikes; old men and women tortured; hundreds burned, locked into synagogues and mosques; the streets running with blood …

  In the end, capitulation had come swiftly and with relatively little bloodshed. The Franj had surrendered Akka more or less intact, and since then the city’s defences had been reinforced under the eye of Karakush, the sultan’s deputy, who had designed the defences at Cairo and made that city impregnable. He hoped they would be able to save his family for a second time.

  As if the sultan sensed his young lieutenant’s thoughts, he said now in a quiet voice, which carried just as far as he wished it to, “Fear not, the city is strong and well provisioned. Her people are in the safest place while we deal with these dogs, insh’allah.”

  Those within earshot echoed “God willing” and added their own prayers. They included the other members of the sultan’s personal guard—his burning coals—men who shared Malek’s rank and devotion: Imad al-Din, the Lord of Sinjar, a man with the beaked face of a desert tribesman; the sultan’s son Al-Malik az-Zahir; his handsome nephew Taki ad-Din, whom he loved more than all his sons put together; and behind them a company of mamluks out of North Africa, their skin as dark as aubergines. Around their heads they did not wear the usual mail coif or helm but just a long strip of red or white cotton cloth wound round and round to form turbans like great onions. They prided themselves on needing nothing more: “Our heads are like rocks!” their captain, Aibek al-Akhresh, would joke. “Nothing can split them.”

  When the sun was high the call to prayer was heard shimmering through the air, and they all dismounted, cleansed themselves as best they could, knelt in the direction of Mecca and prayed. Then they ate their dates and bread and drank water from the skins at their saddles. The sun beat down, and still more Franj arrived by land and sea, and still the sultan sat his horse, watching and saying hardly a word.

  At last the scouts and spies returned and they rode to where his war tent had been erected on Tell Keisan. There they made their reports, and Salah ad-Din nodded, and the qadi of the army, Baha ad-Din, watched, and the sultan’s scribe, Imad al-Din, took notes.

  At last the sultan passed the word that they would outflank the Christians, extending their lines in a large crescent by which to venerate Allah himself, the horns of the moon to encompass the whole Franj army from north to south.

  “And so,” he said softly, “the besiegers become the besieged.”

  14

  London

  OCTOBER 1189

  The coronation of Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, eldest surviving son of Henry and Eleanor, took place in the abbey church of St. Peter in Westminster on the nones of September, and even
though many rich and powerful men of the kingdom were excluded from the ceremony, I was there, attending upon Savaric de Bohun, crammed in with all the nobles of the court—lords and earls, bishops and barons. Not a woman or a Jew in sight, both banned as bringers of bad luck.

  I stood in the crowd, thinking rich men smelled no better than poor men, as we waited for the heir and his lords. A rich purple cloth had been laid all the way from the church entrance, up the aisle to the high altar.

  “Tyrian purple, the colour of emperors!” Savaric fairly swooned at the sight of so much of it. “So costly only kings can afford it, for they say it never fades. Such a purple is obtained from a dye called argaman. Do you know how it is made?”

  I sighed. “I am sure you are going to tell me.”

  “It is made by the crushing of a million tiny snails, and those snails are to be found only in the seas off Tyre. Twelve thousand of them would be sufficient to dye your cuff, and for the best effect the creatures must be harvested only after the rising of the Dog Star. I read this in Pliny, so it must be true. When I return from the Holy Land, I shall bring back a quantity for my use, mine and Reggie’s—our robes will be the most resplendent in all the kingdom.”

  I watched Bishop Reginald take his place alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Forde, his arms full of the robes of state. The two churchmen exchanged a cursory nod; you could see they didn’t like each other. I was surprised at the archbishop’s advanced age. I’d heard while he and Gerald of Wales went on their preaching tour he’d forced his retinue to march hard up and down hill to get them into training for the coming war in the Holy Land, so intent was he on triumphing over the heathen horde. White-haired and scrawny, he didn’t look to me like a man who could bear such rough treatment.