by Robyn Young
“No,” snapped Hugh. “I have told you, Edward demands too much. He can have the use of my lands in Cyprus as a base for a new Crusade. But I will not pay him the sum he has asked for. Just for him to speak with the pope?” Hugh shook his head adamantly. “It is outrageous. How do I know that Edward will even succeed?”
“If he cannot, Your Majesty, then no one can. But I do believe Edward will be able to help you in this matter.”
“No,” said Hugh again, shaking his head. “No, it is too much.”
Garin nodded. “Then I will leave today.”
“What do you mean? You will not speak with Edward?”
“I will, of course, tell him what you have told me, but as I explained, Edward has difficulties of his own. For him to take the time to help you with yours, he must be compensated adequately.”
Hugh turned away, his frame tense. “I would pay it if I knew it would work.”
Garin gave a sympathetic shrug. “It is a risk. But what else can you do, Your Majesty? How much is your throne worth to you? What lengths are you willing to go to, to keep it from your enemies?”
Hugh’s gaze was fierce. For some time, he didn’t answer. When eventually he did, his voice was low. “I will sign the document,” he said through gritted teeth. “It will be my heirs, my sons, who will rule Outremer, not d’Anjou’s. I will give Edward what he wants.”
“Then my business here is almost done,” said Garin, his smile lost in the chamber’s smoky shadows.
THE JEWISH QUARTER, ACRE, 26 MAY A.D. 1276
A line of golden bells that hung from a nail on the back of the door tinkled delicately as Will stepped inside the bookshop. The musty interior offered a welcome respite from the feverish heat. It was a fair walk from the Pisa Road to the Jewish Quarter, and sweat trickled down his back beneath his thick garments.
At the sound of the bells, a man appeared from a doorway at the back of the cramped store, the walls of which were lined with books. There were books of all sizes on shelves, covering the top of a counter, rising in teetering piles like haphazard towers from the tiled floor. The man was in his late sixties and was short and stooped with wavy, grayish-black hair and a wiry beard. His skin was weathered and brown, and his eyes squinted keenly at Will. “Sir William. I was wondering when you would return.”
“How are you, Elias?”
Elias chuckled and waved his hand. “Pleasantries are for the young, William, and for those who have time to spare. I know what you have come for.” Before Will could answer, he went to the counter and bent down. He rose with a wince, clutching his back and a thin book, bound in faded red leather. “Here.”
Will took the book. It looked old and the bindings were loose. Inside, he saw that most of the pages were filled with a faint Latin script.
“A traveler from Rome wrote it years ago,” said Elias, peering over Will’s shoulder. “It isn’t any great work, a rather flaccid treatise commenting on the customs of the people of Syria. But it does contain what you need.” He held out his hand. “May I?”
Will returned the book, watching as Elias thumbed through the pages, his brow creasing as he struggled to read the text in the dim light.
“Ah, here we are. This should help you.”
On the page Elias had opened were two blocks of text, one on either side. One was Latin and the other was a language that looked a little like Arabic, but wasn’t. Will recognized it. It was the language from the scroll. “This is it,” he said, a note of excitement in his voice.
Elias nodded. “Everard was almost right. It is Syriac, although it is the Jacobite rather than the Nestorian form. But both are very similar and it was an easy mistake to make.”
“The language of the Syrian Christians,” said Will, glancing at him.
“Yes, although it was derived from Aramaic, the ancient language of my people. The dialect branched in two when a schism occurred within the Eastern Christian church, which formed into two sects under Nestorius of Persia and Jacob of Edessa.”
Will nodded. “Hence the names.”
“It took me a little while to find this, but as you can see the writer has translated the Jacobite script from a simple poem into Latin.” Elias leaned over and turned the page for Will. “He also notes the letters of the Jacobite alphabet and the corresponding letters in Latin, where applicable. Within Syriac there exist no actual numerals, so wherever numbers are used in your scroll they will show as letters, each of which has its own numerical value.”
Will looked up from the book. “Thank you.”
Elias smiled. “Oh, yes,” he said suddenly, bustling back to the counter and fishing a piece of paper out from under a pile of books. “You’ll be wanting this back.”
The paper had a few lines of text from the copy of the scroll that Will had given Elias to check against a source book, after Everard had concluded what language it was written in.
“What is it that has you and Everard so excited?” asked Elias, watching Will slip the paper inside the book to mark the page.
Will hesitated.
Elias laughed and shook his head. “Perhaps it is better that I do not ask, yes? Then you will not be betraying any confidences and I will most likely sleep better at night.” He smiled. “Just tell the old devil to visit soon. I have plenty of new books that I am sure he would be very interested in, that may help your cause.” He paused, then added, “Our cause,” in a quiet, earnest tone. “Tell him, William, that I have a drop of Gascony left in my cellar and the need of good company to share it with.”
Will smiled slightly. “I will.”
THE TEMPLE, ACRE, 26 MAY A.D. 1276
“Is it done?”
Everard didn’t look up, but frowned and pushed his spectacles up his nose. “If you stop interrupting it will be. Tell me what de Lyons said,” he murmured, as he copied out another line of text, checking both the poem and the alphabet, then transferring it painstakingly into Latin.
“I already have,” said Will impatiently. He felt incredibly on edge, unable to sit or stand still. Everard had no idea where the scroll had come from, and Will wasn’t sure how he was going to explain himself when its contents, whatever they might be, were revealed.
“Tell me again.”
Will forced down his restlessness and sat on the edge of Everard’s bed. In a few moments, he had recounted what Garin had said.
“And you do not believe him?”
“I do not believe Edward. Whether Garin thought he was telling the truth or whether he was knowingly covering for Edward, I’m not sure.”
Everard sighed heavily. “Then we are back where we started.” He glanced at Will. “Unless he is speaking the truth and our suspicions have no basis in reality.”
Will shrugged. “That is possible, of course, but I’m not convinced.”
“Why did you say you would give de Lyons an answer so swiftly?” asked Everard irritably. “I must think carefully about this matter before I act.”
Will didn’t tell Everard that he had wanted his business with Garin over and done with as soon as possible. “To be honest, I assumed your answer would be the same. We cannot afford to send Edward these funds at present. That is all we need to say.”
“And if he retaliates by going to Pope Gregory and telling him our secrets? What then?”
“He cannot reasonably do that without implicating himself. He is our guardian. He can be accused of heresy as much as we can.”
Everard shook his head. “Edward could say he only joined our organization to spy on us and learn our secrets that he might aid in our downfall.”
Will exhaled sharply. “Well, then he’ll never get his money. You cannot give in to him, Everard.” He rose. “If you do, we might end up funding Edward’s wars for the next decade.”
Everard nodded after a pause. “You are right, I know. I just wish I had never put us in this position. Tell de Lyons to convey the message to Edward that we regretfully cannot assist him at present, but that we will review the situation
again in due course.” He sat back, holding up the parchment, the black ink glossy and wet. “Your scroll makes no sense, William.”
“What?” Will crossed to him. He took the parchment carefully from the priest, so as not to smudge it. His eyes scanned the Latin text. Everard was right. It was just a series of letters and jumbled words that seemed to contain no discernible meaning whatsoever. “Elias said the Syriac alphabet doesn’t have numbers. Could you have put letters in places where the scroll has numerals?”
Everard shook his head. “Even if I had done, the rest of the words would make some sense at least. I can see no pattern, numerical or otherwise here. I admit, in places the scroll is hard to decipher and some of these words cannot be transliterated exactly into Latin. But even so, this should give us the gist. The only thing I can think is that it is in code.”
“What sort of code?”
“Without more information on this scroll, where it came from for instance, I have no way of guessing.”
Will met his gaze. “All right,” he said quietly. He sat and began to speak, telling Everard about the grand master’s decision to send Angelo to interrogate Soranzo and that the Venetian had murdered the Genoese merchant. He also recounted Soranzo’s dying words.
“The Black Stone?” said Everard sharply.
“That’s what he said. The Black Stone will be your downfall, not your salvation.”
“Go on,” said the priest urgently. “Tell me the rest.”
When Will had finished explaining about Kaysan and the Shia mercenaries in Arabia, Everard’s expression was grim. He didn’t say anything, but turned back to the scroll and snatched up his quill. Starting again on the lower half of the parchment, he began to write fresh lines of text.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve seen it used before, once or twice. A message in one language is written using the alphabet of another to disguise it. To anyone looking at it, this message appears to be Syriac, but really it is something else.”
“What?” asked Will, watching as Everard wrote.
“If this Kaysan is a Shia, the obvious choice is Arabic.” Everard nodded as he finished the first line, using the Syriac alphabet from Elias’s book and his knowledge of the Arabic alphabet to swap the letters round. “Yes,” he said eagerly, “see here. Our Shia friend has used the Jacobite script to encode an Arabic message. For every letter in Arabic, he has used the corresponding letter in Syriac. Translated literally, it means nothing, but reverse each letter back into Arabic and you have your message.”
“That seems pretty easy,” said Will, watching as the Arabic text flowed from right to left, across the page. Everard made it look simple.
“No, no,” said Everard, sounding pleased with himself, despite his concern, “it is quite a clever disguise. Only if you knew who the sender and the recipient were, or what language they would be likely to speak, could you break the code. If the letter had fallen into just anyone’s hands, how would they know what language to reverse it back into to get the meaning of the text? Presumably sending this sensitive information, as you say our grand master called it, with a company of illiterates wasn’t much of a danger anyhow. You are, after all, a minority. Most men in this preceptory can’t even write their own names, and I expect the grand master didn’t think anyone would either dare read it, or be at all inclined to. Your suspicious mind is a great asset, William. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.” He turned his attention back to his writing. “Now, again, some letters of these alphabets do not match up exactly, but we should get an accurate enough interpretation.”
Will went to the window and looked out across the busy, sunlit courtyard, trying to contain his renewed impatience, as Everard continued to write, the quill scratching ferociously across the parchment. After a while, the scratching ceased.
“Dear God.”
Will turned. “What is it? Everard?” When the priest didn’t reply, Will snatched up the parchment and began to read, slowly translating the Arabic. Some of the letters, as Everard had said, had been lost in the translation, but it was nonetheless decipherable. His mind filled in the blanks.
So long it is since I have heard from you, my brother, I had begun to fear that perhaps you had traveled from this world. The Sinai that separates us might as well run to the ends of this Earth, for you are so close and yet so far from me, trapped within their Babylon. To see your words brought joy to my soul and eased a fearful heart. But let me speak no more of this now. My men are restless. Some among them do not agree with this plan, and I must send the knights who conveyed this message away from here with all speed. They are my men and will follow my lead, but I am asking much of them. Indeed, my brother, you are asking much of me. In truth, I am afraid. But I will do this, that you might escape your bonds and return to me.
Next year, in the week before the first day of Muharram, we will be waiting for the Western knights at Ula. Tell them to come to the mosque and give my name. We will take the Christians down the forbidden road to the Holy City. We will help them enter the holy place. But not a man among us will touch the Stone. Not even I. The Western knights must do this alone.
I trust, Brother, that your reward is as great as you say, for when we have done this, every one of our kin, be they the righteous, or our enemies, will revile us forever. And there will be no home for us in these lands. I only pray that God will forgive us, knowing that no ill to His Temple exists in our hearts and that it is for love that we do this.
Will looked up at Everard. “I don’t understand what this means.”
“They are planning to steal the Black Stone.”
When Will didn’t respond, the priest sighed roughly. “It is a rock.” He spread his hands apart roughly twelve inches. “About this big. Said to have been brought from Heaven by the Angel Gabriel. You have heard of the Ka‘ba?”
“The Muslims’ sacred shrine at Mecca?”
Everard nodded. “The Ka‘ba, which means cube, is a temple, which Muslims believe was built by Abraham with the aid of his son, Ishmael, who built it brick upon brick and dedicated it to God. Others believe it was a site of worship for the Arab tribes who existed before the birth of Islam. It is said by some that when Muhammad came to unite the tribes under one God, he destroyed the idols the tribes had housed within the Ka‘ba and rededicated the temple to Allah. The only object the Prophet did not destroy was the Black Stone, which is believed to have been a relic of Abraham. It is said Muhammad kissed it and set it within the wall of the Ka‘ba, where it was held in place with a band of silver and came to symbolize the oneness and unity of Islam. Muhammad decreed that pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, was one of the most important duties for every Muslim and that the Black Stone should be revered during this journey. Now, each year, Shias and Sunnis unite and travel the many miles to Mecca, where, following in the footsteps of the Prophet, they walk around the Ka‘ba and kiss the Stone. Some say the Stone was once as white as snow, but has turned black with the sins of mankind and that on the Day of Judgment it will testify before Allah in favor of the faithful who have kissed it.” Everard fixed his bloodshot gaze on Will. “It is the Muslims’ most important relic. It is forbidden for any nonbeliever to even approach the holy city. To enter Mecca and steal the Stone from its sacred resting place would be an insult beyond all insults.”
Will was listening intently, growing more and more sober with every word Everard spoke. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying that if Western knights are to do this, as the message states, then every Muslim in the known world would rise against us. It would be war on a scale that has not been seen since the First Crusade. Perhaps greater.”
“But surely Kaysan wouldn’t do this? He is a Muslim.”
“As, by the sounds of it, is this brother he addresses. But it is not without precedent. There is written a tale of a company of Shia Muslims of the Ismaili sect who did just this, centuries ago. They sacked Mecca and carried off the Stone, which remained in their possession, as
a ransom, for twenty years. When they finally restored it, they began to profit from the revenue generated by pilgrims returning to Mecca. Other Muslim rulers have taken control of the city, sometimes by force, for their own purposes since that time.” Everard rose and went to a table where a jug and goblet stood. He poured himself a large measure of wine. “Even our own people have tried something similar. A French knight, whose attack on a Muslim caravan traveling to Mecca led to the Battle of Hattin, planned to do this. It happened shortly before the Anima Templi was formed. He wanted to mount a raid into Arabia, intending to demolish the tomb of Muhammad at Medina and to sack Mecca and burn the Ka‘ba to the ground. Three hundred Christians followed him to this end and with them a similar number of Muslim outlaws. They didn’t succeed in entering either holy place, but they laid waste to a number of caravans, including one in which Saladin’s aunt was traveling. The knight paid with death for his disgraceful crimes.” Everard drank deep from his goblet. “But it seems,” he murmured, “that the lessons of the past have been forgotten. I must think about this,” he said quietly. “What it means. What can be done. We must call a meeting of the Brethren immediately.”
“Why would Grand Master de Beaujeu be involved in this?” asked Will, watching as Everard sat, fear and exhaustion showing in his lined face. “It makes no sense. Why would he want to start such a war?”
“I do not know. I have many questions myself. Who is this brother Kaysan mentions? Is he blood kin or a fellow member of an order? The message certainly doesn’t seem to have been intended for the grand master, as it sets Kaysan and his brother apart from the Western knights, so how did de Beaujeu come to send the original message? Did he know what it contained? And how did Soranzo know of the plan?” Everard took the scroll from Will and glanced over it again. “Sinai,” he murmured, “trapped in their Babylon.” He looked up at Will. “At least we know where this brother of his is based. Babylon-Fort was the ancient name for Cairo, when the Romans lived there.”
