They boarded the two-deck galley and joined the captain on the poop deck. The morning was still and the flag with its red cross pattée hung limp at the stern rail. Their supplies were unloaded from a creaking wagon. The packhorses that would carry them were led up the gangway, followed by the servants he had brought to mind them and cook the food.
Finally William appeared, a sombre presence on a fine morning in his black-cowled robe. His face was grey.
‘I trust this morning finds you well,’ Josseran said to him.
William produced a perfumed handkerchief from his robe and put it to his nose. ‘I do not know how any man can bear the stench.’
Yes, the stench. It was true, it was intolerable. It came from below, from the Mohammedans manacled to the oars on the slave deck, their own faeces lapping around their ankles in the bilges.
‘I have found since I have been in this land that a man may grow accustomed to any vileness,’ Josseran said. He turned and murmured to Gérard, who stood beside him. ‘Even that of churchmen.’ Well, not quite. The idea of chaining men to galley benches offended him as much as it did the friar.
‘I fear my stomach will revolt,’ William said.
‘Then it behoves you to remove yourself to the side,’ Josseran said and led him to the starboard rail of the galley. A moment later they heard the friar revisiting his breakfast.
The sounds of the morning – the booming of a drum, the flat slap of the slave master’s whip, the clank of manacles – mingled with groans. The oars dipped for a moment, seawater glistening on the blades, then moved in time with the great drum as the galley sliced across the smooth waters of the harbour towards the mole.
Josseran looked back at the colonnaded piazza of the Venetian quarter, its three broad gateways open to the sea, the fondachi flying the Golden Lion pennants. Beside the Iron Gate, the old Genoese warehouse presented a sheer wall to the harbour. The chain was lowered and their bow cut between the breakwater under the shadow of the Tower of Flies. Their captain set their course towards Antioch. Josseran stared at the familiar barbicans of the Templar fortress on the Dread Cape. He had the uneasy feeling that he would never see them again.
Josseran and William spoke little on the sea journey north. There was a palpable air of tension among the crew until they had passed Tyre, for the Genoese and Venetians were still raiding each other’s merchantmen and no one could be sure that even a Templar galley might not be attacked. The soldiers prowled the rigging, crossbows slung over their shoulders, their faces grim.
Josseran was gratified to note that the good friar spent most of his time bent over the stern, heaving bile into the ocean. He was not accustomed to finding satisfaction in other men’s discomfort but William somehow invited it.
The Dominican arrived in Antioch stinking and foul. As they stood on the dock at St Symeon even Kismet twitched her nostrils at the smell of him.
‘You should have no trouble finding a bath house, even in Antioch,’ Josseran said to him.
William stared at him as if he had spoken a blasphemy. ‘Are you mad? You wish me to catch the vapours and die?’
‘In this climate we find such indulgences welcome, even necessary.’
‘Indulgence is all I have found among you and your kind thus far.’ He staggered on to the wharf.
Is he going to stink like that all the way to Aleppo? Josseran wondered. This is going to be a long journey.
X
Antioch
THE BYZANTINE WALLS had been built by the Emperor Justinian, one spanning the river Orontes, two more winding up the precipitous heights of Mount Silpius to the citadel. In all there were four hundred towers commanding the plains around Antioch.
Prince Bohemond may have negotiated a truce with the Tatars but on first impression Antioch did not seem a city at its ease. There were soldiers everywhere, and fear was etched into the faces of the Mohammedans in the medinas. Everyone had heard what had happened at Aleppo and Baghdad.
Bohemond’s welcome was cool. He had no love for the Pope or any of his emissaries. But Josseran was a Templar and no one in Outremer wanted to offend one of them.
From the citadel Josseran looked back over his shoulder, at the whitewashed villas that clung to the slopes of Mount Silpius below, descending to the cramped and twisted streets of the city. Through the haze that clung to the plain he could just make out the glimmer of the sea at St Symeon.
They were escorted to Bohemond’s private audience chamber. It was sumptuously furnished, but the most remarkable thing about it was not the silk kilims on the floors or the silver ewers, but Bohemond’s personal library. The walls were lined with thousands of beautifully bound books, many of them in Arabic, learned books on such arcane matters as alchemy and physic and what Simon called al’jibra.
Tools of the devil, William said.
Bohemond was seated on a low divan. Before him was a table piled with fruits. There was a huge carpet of lustrous design on the floor, its centrepiece a hanging votive light, woven in crimson and gold and royal blue. A fire blazed in the hearth.
‘So I hear you are going to convert the Tatars to Christ!’ Bohemond jeered at William by way of welcome.
‘Deus le volt,’ William answered, using the words that had sent the first crusade to the Holy Land. ‘God wills it.’
‘Well, you know that Hülegü’s wife is Christian,’ he said.
‘I have heard these rumours.’
‘Not rumour. It is true.’
‘And this Hülegü himself?’
‘The Tatar himself is an idolater. I have treated with him personally. He has eyes like a cat and smells like a wild goat. Yet he has humbled the Saracens in their own cities, something we have failed to do in one hundred and fifty years of war. He seems to do well enough without God on his side.’ There was a sharp intake of breath as William reacted to this blasphemy. Bohemond ignored him and turned to Josseran. ‘And what of you, Templar? Are you simply escort for our friar here, or do you Templars wish to make alliance with them, as I did?’
Josseran wondered at this remark. Did he have a spy behind the walls at Acre? ‘I am just a humble knight, my lord,’ Josseran answered.
‘I have yet to meet any Templar I would call humble.’ Bohemond got up and went to the window. He watched a shepherd boy scramble after his goats as they scampered through the olive groves below the citadel. ‘What do they say about me in Acre?’
Josseran imagined he already knew the answer to his question, and so he told him the truth: ‘There are some who call you wise, others who call you traitor.’
Bohemond kept his back to them. ‘Time will show that it is wisdom, not treachery, that spurred my actions. This is our one opportunity to rout the infidel from the Holy Land. You will see. Hülegü and I will ride side by side through the gates of Jerusalem.’
‘If he enters as a baptized Christian, the Pope will join the thanksgiving,’ William said.
‘If the holy places are returned to us, what does it matter?’ Bohemond said. When William did not answer, he added: ‘You have requested a guide and a dozen soldiers. So be it. My men will escort you to Aleppo where you may meet with the prince Hülegü. You will see for yourself that we have nothing to fear from him.’
‘We thank you for your service to us,’ Josseran said. Nothing to fear? he thought. Why then does my prince Bohemond look so afraid?
They dined that evening at his court, and the next day they set off from Antioch with a squadron of Bohemond’s cavalry at their back, the wagons containing their stores and the gifts for the Tatar trundling behind. Their Bedouin guide, Yusuf, rode at the van as their caravan wound its way into the hills heading east, to Aleppo, and an uncertain tomorrow.
XI
Fergana Valley
‘A RIDER CAME this morning, from Almalik,’ Qaidu said. From his expression, Khutelun knew the news was all bad.
Qaidu sat facing the doorway of the yurt. On his right, the side of the mares, were his sons; on his left, the side o
f the cattle, Nambi, Qaidu’s third wife, and Khutelun herself. Two other wives were also present, for it was the Tatar way for the advice of women to be sought on all matters but war and hunting.
The yurt was heavy with smoke and the smell of mutton fat. A branch cracked in the fire.
‘Möngke, our Khan of Khans is dead,’ Qaidu said. ‘He died fighting the Soong in China, four moons past.’
‘Möngke? Dead?’ Gerel repeated. He was already drunk. Too much koumiss. Always too much koumiss.
There was a long and dreadful silence. Möngke’s death meant that none of their lives would ever be the same. With the passing of a Great Khan the world would change irrevocably. Möngke had been Khaghan, chieftain of chieftains, for as long as he could remember.
‘Möngke is dead?’ Gerel repeated.
None of them minded that he was drunk; it was not a matter of shame among them. But drunkenness was not a great virtue in a chieftain, a khan. Let’s hope he will never become one, Khutelun thought.
‘You have been summoned to the khuriltai, the council?’ Tekudai asked.
‘Yes. All khans of the Tatar have been called to Qaraqorum for the election of our new Khaghan.’
‘Möngke is dead?’ Gerel said again, slurring the words. He frowned and shook his head, as if he could not make sense of the words.
‘Who will it be?’ Nambi asked, ignoring her stepson.
Qaidu gazed into the fire. ‘Hülegü has been absent from Qaraqorum now these ten years, warring in the west. Of Möngke’s other brothers, only Ariq Böke has the heart of a Tatar. Khubilai, Chinggis Khan’s grandson wants to be Khaghan, but he has been in China too long.’
There was a loud, snorting sound, like a camel at a well. Gerel was asleep, snoring loudly.
‘I fear Möngke will be our last Khan of Khans,’ Qaidu said.
They fell silent again, in dread of their father’s pronouncement.
‘Berke is far to the north, in the Russias, with the Golden Horde. He will never return and he will not bow to the rule of his brothers. Hülegü, also, has carved out his own kingdom in the west and I doubt that he will bend the knee at the khuriltai. Our great people is dividing and in that there is peril for us.’ He looked at Khutelun, his daughter, the shaman, the seer for the clan. ‘Tonight you must commune with the spirits,’ he said. ‘You must see what they wish for us to do.’
Khutelun, her head uncovered to the wind and her sash around her neck, stood alone on the ridge called The Woman is Going Away.
She knelt nine times, the customary way, in honour of Tengri, Lord of the Blue Sky. She sprinkled mare’s milk on the ground as offering to the spirits who lived on the mountain, spilled more in the fast-flowing stream as sacrifice to the water sprites.
Afterwards she returned to her yurt where the embrace of the koumiss and hashish enveloped her like a mother’s arms, and she danced in the sweet and cloying darkness, alone with her ancestors and the great star that blazed through the smoke hole in the roof. The shadows swayed and clawed; the moaning of the wind was a thousand voices of the dead, raised again to life by the rhythm and rattle of the shaman’s drums.
But all the smoke-dreams would show her of the future was a man with hair the colour of fire, riding a horse as white as ice and as large as a yak; behind him were two other men, one dressed in black, the other in white with a cross the colour of blood emblazoned on the breast.
And in the dream the man with the fire-hair returned from the mountain with the body of a white goat and he laid it at the feet of her father and claimed Khutelun as his own.
XII
the road to Aleppo
SHADOWS DANCED IN the olive trees behind the orange glow of the camp fire. A log crackled and tumbled into the flames in a small shower of sparks. The horses twitched at their tethers, and there was the low murmur of talk as William and Josseran and Gérard huddled together for warmth.
Bohemond’s soldiers were asleep, except for two men that Josseran had posted sentry on the perimeter of the camp. The servants were huddled under the wagons. Yusuf, the old Arab guide, was the only other soul still awake at this hour of the watch, but he had sensed William’s enmity and kept himself a little apart, out of the firelight.
Gérard, a lean young man with sparse hair and a wiry beard, spoke rarely, and contented himself with stirring the fire listlessly with a long stick.
William stared at Josseran. On the journey from Antioch the knight had taken to wearing a makeshift turban, which he wrapped around his head and his face to protect it from the wind and the sun. ‘You look like a Saracen,’ he said.
Josseran looked up. William’s lips had cracked, and the skin on his face was already peeling from the effects of the harsh sun on his fair skin. ‘And you look like a boiled peach.’
William saw Gérard smile.
‘I am still curious about this cross you wear.’
‘It was given me by a friend in Acre. A Jew.’
‘You are friends with Jews?’ William hissed. It confirmed his worst suspicions.
‘He has been my language teacher this last five years.’
‘Because a Jew is a teacher does not make him a friend. How long have you been in the Holy Land, Templar?’
‘Five years.’
‘A long time to be away from the company of civilized men.’
‘The Jew who gave me this cross is one of the most civilized and learned men you will ever meet, priest. He taught me both Arabic and Turkic, without which you might as well be a dog barking here in Outremer. Besides, how may I be so far from civilized men when I am in the holy land where Our Lord was born?”
A fine speech, William thought. Why then, did he feel as if he was being mocked? ‘Is that why you are here, to be closer to God?’
‘I was told that the Holy Land needed knights like myself.’
‘Indeed. The Holy Land is our sacred trust. That so many of the holy places are still in the hands of the Saracens is a foul stain on our honour and our faith. It is the duty of every good Christian to win them back.’ He saw the expression on the knight’s face and it irritated him. ‘Is that not your belief, Templar?’
‘I have been here five years. You have been here not five days. Do not tell me my duty in the Holy Land.’
‘We are all here to serve Christ.’
Josseran stared moodily into the fire. Finally, he said: ‘If one may serve Christ by killing men, slaughtering women and children, then Gérard and I shall surely shine resplendent in heaven.’
He saw another look pass between the two Templars.
‘What do you mean by that?’ William said.
Josseran sighed and tossed a stick on to the flames. ‘I mean my duty in the Holy Land lies heavy on me, Brother William. I came here thinking to reclaim the Holy City from the Turk. Instead I have seen Venetians run their swords through the bellies of Genoese in the streets of Acre itself, and I have seen the Genoese do the same to the Venetians, in the monastery of St Sabas. Christian killing fellow Christian. How does that serve Christ? I have also seen good Christian soldiers rip children from their mother’s wombs with their swords and I have seen them rape women and then cut their throats. These particular innocents were not occupying the holy places but were simple Bedouin fetching their sheep from the pastures. All done in the name of Our Saviour.’
‘The Holy Father, as you know, was most offended to hear of the strife between the Venetians and Genoese, for he believes, as you do, that our warlike efforts should be turned against the infidel and not each other. But as for these innocents, as you call them . . . we kill sheep and pigs without sin. To kill a Saracen is no greater stain on the soul.’
‘Sheep and pigs?’ Gérard shifted uneasily and gave Josseran a warning glance.
But Josseran could not help himself. ‘Do sheep and pigs have good physic? Do sheep and pigs know astronomy and the movement of the stars? Do sheep and pigs recite poetry and have their own music and architecture? The Saracens have all these things. I may di
spute with them on religion but I cannot believe them to be just sheep and pigs.’
Astronomy and the movement of the stars? The Pope had made it a blasphemy to reach into the secrets of nature. It was clearly an unlawful invasion of the sacred womb of the Great Mother. On his last visit to Paris he had seen a family of Jews dragged from their house and beaten by a mob because they had been discovered secretly translating Arabic texts dealing with mathematics and alchemy.
‘The heathen believe the world is round, in defiance of the laws of God and of heaven,’ William said. ‘Do you believe this, too?’
‘All I know is that though they may not have faith, they are not animals.’ He looked at Gérard. ‘Tell him what happened to you.’
‘When I was in Tripoli, I was kicked in the leg by a horse,’ Gérard said. ‘The leg became infected and an abscess formed. A Templar surgeon was about to cut off my leg with an axe. One of my servants sent for a Mohammedan doctor. He applied a poultice to the leg, and the abscess opened and I soon became well. You understand, Mohammedan or no, it is very hard for me to hate that man.’
‘You have a blasphemous tongue, Templar. It was God that healed you. You should give thanks to the Lord, not the heathen.’
‘I am tired of talking to priests,’ Josseran said. He walked away and lay down on a blanket under the trees. Gérard followed.
William sat alone in the guttering firelight. He prayed to God for the soul of the Templar, as was his duty, and prayed also for strength for what was to come. He prayed long into the night, long after the fire had settled to embers, for he was deathly afraid of facing this Hülegü and he did not want the others to know.
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