Crusade

by Robyn Young

  Over by the window a small table had toppled, dislodging the jug that had been placed on it, which had exploded into tiny fragments. Two figures were on the floor. One was Baraka Khan. He was on top of the woman prisoner, one hand grappling with hers, trying to pin it down, the other partially clamped over her mouth. Her hair was splayed across her face and her white gown was ripped at the front, exposing a slice of pale skin, from her throat to her breast. In Baybars’s mind there was a flash of memory, a grainy scene from long ago. Then he was striding forward, his rage mounting with every step.

  Baraka pushed himself off the woman as his father came toward him. “She tried to escape!” he blurted. Before he could even stand, Baybars was reaching down and hauling him up by the back of his silk tunic, which tore under the arms with the violence of the motion. “Father! Please! I was trying to stop her from—”

  “I know what you were doing!” Baybars stormed at him, pulling his son toward him. There was a resounding crack as he slapped Baraka across the face, causing the youth’s head to be flung to one side. A mark, for one second white, bloomed scarlet on his cheek. Baybars shoved him violently in the chest.

  Baraka staggered back, tripped over the legs of the fallen table and sprawled on the floor, crying out as his head banged against the tiles and needle-sharp specks of glass embedded themselves in his skull. “Please, Father!” he cried desperately, trying to push himself up.

  The woman was on her feet, clutching her ripped gown to her chest, but neither of them were looking at her anymore.

  “Do you think that I don’t know?” demanded Baybars, stalking toward Baraka, the hems of his robes catching shards of glass and trailing them across the floor with a sound like the scratching of fingernails. “Do you think me blind? Stupid?”

  “What do ... ?”

  “I know!” shouted Baybars hoarsely. “I know what you’ve been doing with my slaves!”

  Baraka went still, his throat constricting. He couldn’t speak.

  “Why do you think I brought you on this campaign?” demanded Baybars, towering over his prostrate son. “Did you think it was for your counsel? Your wits?” He gave a hard bray of laughter that ceased as abruptly as it was vented. “I brought you with me so that I could get you away from my harem!” He shook his head. “For a time I thought your quietness, your newfound desire of solitude away from the disruptive influence of your friends some sign that you were ready to settle down and work, ready to become the man I hoped you would. But I should have known better. Those girls were mine, gifts to me. Some I may have taken as wives! That you went behind my back to slake your lust on them like a rutting dog disgusts me. You disgust me!” He kicked out in rage, catching Baraka in the side.

  Baraka curled away from the kick, gasping as it jabbed into him. He groped at the floor, pulling himself from his father’s wrath. But Baybars came after him, reaching down to drag him up. As he felt his father grasp the collar of his tunic, Baraka’s hand shot out, looking for purchase, for something to cling to. His fingers found a shard of the broken jug, and as Baybars hauled him upright, he thrust it toward his father’s face. He stopped, just short of him. The two of them stood frozen, the jagged fragment of glass occupying the space between them, a thin red line staining one edge where Baraka had cut himself picking it up. Outside the throne room came sounds of a disturbance, but neither of them looked round. All of their attention was fixed on each other, hatred, disgust, disappointment, years of it, seeping from each of their stares. Their breaths caused mist to bloom on the glass.

  Baraka’s nose was dripping and sweat stood out on his brow, dampening his curly hair. His narrow eyes were slits, but there were no tears in them. “I may have defiled your harem, Father,” he said, in a voice that sounded utterly alien to Baybars, devoid of love, or respect, even of fear, “but you have defiled your position. Khadir, Mahmud, Yusuf, so many in your court have entreated you to keep your pledge and destroy the Christians, but you haven’t listened. Do you know how many of your own men are against you now? How many want to see you dead? But I am ready and willing to do what you will not. You’re a coward, Father.”

  Baybars’s blue eyes widened. He tore the fragment of glass from Baraka’s grasp, gashing himself as he did so. Tossing it away, he shook the youth as if he were a rag doll. “You’re ready, are you? Well, let us see how ready you are without a kingdom!” He stopped shaking his son and resorted to his fists, pummeling and punching Baraka until his knuckles were blotchy with blood. Finally he stopped, his breaths strained. “You’ll not take my throne when I am gone, Baraka,” he breathed. “You’re not fit to lead our people. Your brother, Salamish, will be my heir.” Baybars backed away from the bloodied, half-conscious form of his son, lying small and fetal on the tiles. I tried,” he whispered, “to make you ...” His shoulders sagged. “I tried.”

  As Will was running down the passage after Kalawun, he saw someone dash out of the throne room, through the open doors of which he could hear a fierce argument. “Elwen!”

  One of the palace guards reached for her quickly; the other turned at Will’s call. The guard’s eyes went large with bewilderment as he saw Kalawun and a royal messenger charging toward him. Elwen cried out as the other guard caught her arm and spun her into the wall, pinning her against it. Will was on him before his companion had even had chance to call a warning, elbowing him viciously in the face and hauling him away from Elwen, then grabbing his hair and cracking his head back against the wall. Kalawun tackled the other guard, knocking him unconscious with the hilt of his sword. Elwen screamed again as Will took hold of her.

  “Elwen!”

  Her eyes focused on him in stunned confusion.

  “Return to my rooms,” said Kalawun quickly, sheathing his sword. Teeth barred in pain, he clutched his wounded arm. “Behind a tapestry in my bedchamber there is a passage. Follow it until you reach a set of steps going down. At the base of these, turn right and you will find yourself near the kitchens.”

  “Kalawun . ..,” began Will.

  There was more shouting coming from the throne room.

  “Listen!” hissed Kalawun, grasping Will’s shoulder and steering him in the direction of his chambers. “Beyond the kitchens is a servants’ passage that leads outside the walls by a small gate and down into the city. There is a mosque, near to a cattle market in the main square. Go there and find somewhere to hide. I will send men with horses. They will leave them at the mosque’s entrance.” He let go of Will, leaving a bloody handprint on his shoulder. “Go!”

  34

  The Road from Damascus, Syria 17 JUNE A.D. 1277

  After checking on the horses, Will took a waterskin from one of the packs, then returned to where Elwen was sitting on a rocky outcrop. She was swaddled in a blanket, knees drawn up to her chest, her gaze on the road that dropped down the ridge and wound away behind them, growing thinner and fainter with distance. The moon was low and swollen, turning night to ghostly day. The tops of trees in the valley below them, which faithfully chased the curve and sweep of a river, were clouds in its light; and the desert snow, powdery and infinite.

  Elwen’s teeth were chattering and her warm breath fogged the air in rapid plumes. Will climbed up to where she was sitting and handed her the skin. She took it, but didn’t drink.

  “I should have found wood for a fire,” he murmured, shrugging off his own blanket and placing it around her shoulders. Over her ripped gown, she was wearing the silk cloak he had stolen from the royal messenger. Its vibrant violet was blanched gray in the moonlight and glimmered like water around her feet. “You need it more,” he said, when she started to protest. He stood on the ridge, feeling the cold settle around him.

  “Are you still worried they’ll come for us?”

  As Elwen spoke, Will looked around and shook his head, but his eyes crept back to the road and the heavy tension he had felt since they had fled the citadel didn’t vanish with his assurance.

  After an agonizing wait near the city mosq
ue, Kalawun’s men had come, leaving two fine Arab horses loaded with supplies outside the mosque’s entrance. Will and Elwen had ridden furiously out of the city, Will wanting to put as much distance between them and Damascus as possible. But other than the usual travelers, merchants and farmers for the most part, they had seen no one else on the road, and although Will had watched for it, there had been no sign of pursuit. They had spoken little, both of them too pensive to make conversation.

  “Sit with me?”

  Will forced his gaze from the road. Elwen was looking up at him. The hollows of her cheeks were rendered even deeper in this light, her face gaunt, almost haggard. Out of Damascus, noticing how thin and drawn she looked, Will had remembered what Simon had told him back at the preceptory and had questioned her about her apparent affliction. But she had brushed it aside, telling him it didn’t matter. He hadn’t asked her again, just as she hadn’t asked him about Mecca. It was as if too much had happened in the time between for either of them to relate those things to each other. They were awkward in each other’s company, strangers after all the months apart. Now, looking at her, he was struck by the realization of just how lucky he was to have saved her, and his discomfort vanished. He went to her and sat, taking her hands in his. They were smooth and cold. God, but he had almost lost her. He closed his eyes and murmured a fervent prayer that she had been spared. “Elwen,” he began, then stopped, emotion sticking in his throat.

  She stared at him, her eyes growing bright. “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” he asked thickly.

  Elwen paused, then spoke haltingly. “For ... putting you in danger. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told those soldiers that I was your wife. I should have lied, but I didn’t know what to ...” She looked suddenly stricken. “Simon?”

  “He is fine,” said Will, watching her close her eyes in relief. “But I don’t see how you can think this is your fault.”

  She hung her head. “It’s not just that,” she whispered faintly, “it’s ...”

  “If I hadn’t tried to have Baybars killed, none of this would have happened,” Will continued, not hearing her. “That’s why you were taken. Because of me.”

  “No, Will, I ... There are other things, things I have to tell you that—”

  “Let me speak. Please,” he cut across her. “I need to say this. I should have said it earlier, but . . .” He halted. “No. I should have said it years ago. There’s just always been some excuse, some distraction. I thought I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t. When I came back from Mecca, I was glad that I had stopped the theft, truly, but that feeling was nothing in comparison to what I felt when I was riding to Damascus, knowing that you might be . . .” He took a breath. “That you might be dead. I realized that you were more important to me than ...”

  To Elwen’s dismay, Will’s voice cracked and he began to cry, great choking sobs that came from the very center of him. She put her arms around him, the blanket falling from her shoulders.

  After a time, the grief drained from him. He raised his head to look at her. “Do you still want to marry me?”

  Elwen gave a startled laugh, then saw that he was serious. Her laughter vanished and she stared at him, stunned. As she did so, it seemed he had grown somehow dimmer in her vision. Glancing up, she gave a small gasp. There was a shadow on the moon, a dark arc around its edge.

  Will followed her gaze. “The eclipse,” he murmured.

  Together they stood and watched it for a time, his question hanging unanswered in the air between them, as slowly, almost imperceptibly, the shadow spread like a creeping stain. At some point in their muted silence, Will felt Elwen take his hand.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  A jolt went through him, of what he wasn’t sure, and then he felt a change inside. The heavy tension faded. He felt lighter, calmer. Was it the baby? He had never given much thought to having one before. Why would he? If marriage was impossible as a knight, that was nothing when compared to having a child. No. It wasn’t so much the thought of the child itself; it was the realization that it was possible. He had thought that he couldn’t be with Elwen, but he had been, for years. He heard a rush of breath and she spoke again in a whisper.

  “Yes. My answer is yes.”

  Will squeezed her hand tightly, and a smile crept across his face as above them the moon was gradually devoured. His gaze fixed on the sky, he didn’t notice that Elwen’s eyes were closed.

  THE CITADEL, DAMASCUS, 17 JUNE A.D. 1277

  Kalawun was on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the tiles. The water in the pail beside him was dark with blood, as was the cloth. It was everywhere. He could taste its sourness each time he swallowed. Muted moonlight cast a fan across the chamber, making eerie shapes of the familiar. The eclipse had begun some time ago and was now approaching totality. The moon was dull copper-red. It looked like a bloated, diseased eye. Sitting back on his heels, Kalawun squeezed the cloth into the pail and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. His gaze was dragged, unavoidably, to the form of Khadir, wrapped in silk sheets, like a bug in a cocoon, propped against the wall by the door.

  Leaving Will sprinting down the passage, Kalawun had entered the throne room to find Baraka on the floor, with Baybars standing over him, fists bruised, eyes vacant. The sultan, seeing him, left the room without a word, and Kalawun helped Baraka to his feet. But when he tried to take him to the citadel’s physicians, the youth pulled away, telling him in a chillingly emotionless voice that he was to be left alone. Kalawun, aware that he had to get the horses to Will, let him go. By this point, he was almost faint with the blood loss from his own injury. Before he had been able to find two officers to take the horses and supplies to the mosque, however, he was faced with the problem of the unconscious guards, still lying outside the throne room. Baybars had passed them by without care, but Kalawun knew it wouldn’t be long before somebody started asking questions about the woman’s escape.

  In the end, he had both men moved to the citadel’s infirmary, telling the governor of Damascus, who had heard word of the disturbance, that an unknown man had forced entry into the citadel and attacked his men. Whilst his arm was stitched by the citadel’s physician, Kalawun explained to the governor that he had been in pursuit of the trespasser, but that before he could intercept him the man reached the guards and assaulted them, then fled with a prisoner. He tried to stop the man leaving, but was injured when the assailant pulled a blade on him. Kalawun thought he had managed to convince the governor, but was left to wait anxiously for the two guards to come round. Both men, in awe of the Mamluk commander, and listening groggily to his version of events, appeared convinced that he had in fact been chasing their attacker. But Kalawun guessed uneasily that only time would tell if they started to remember something different. Having sent his men to the mosque, he was then left to mediate between the governor, who wanted to send soldiers after the attacker, and a silent Baybars, who had at first refused to see him at all, then eventually told him to halt any search for the woman and her rescuer. That it no longer mattered.

  Kalawun dropped the cloth into the pail and stood, wincing as his muscles stretched. His arm was throbbing, and beads of fresh blood had welled up between the neat stitches the physician had made. He was beyond the point of exhaustion, his body moving almost of its own will, as if his mind were already asleep and his body had forgotten to do the same. He walked in a daze to the shrouded corpse and was dragging it along the wet floor toward his bedchamber, when there was a knock at his door. Shock went through him, firing his deadened senses. Kalawun hauled Khadir the rest of the way into his bedchamber before opening the door a crack.

  In the passage, one of Baybars’s eunuchs was waiting. He bowed. “Amir Kalawun. The sultan requests your presence in the throne room.”

  Kalawun cleared his throat. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The eunuch waited outside, leaving Kalawun to hurriedly change his soiled cloak and wash Khadir’s blood off his hands. When he wa
s done, he followed the eunuch warily to the throne room. Had the soothsayer been missed already?

  The sultan was standing in front of the windows, bathed in the moon’s fainted red light. The throne room was surprisingly empty, the servants suddenly noticeable by their absence. The mess had been cleaned away, and only the splinters around the door bolt revealed any sign of the violence that had taken place.

  Baybars looked around as Kalawun entered. “Amir. I need you to do something for me.”

  “My lord?”

  “I want you to call a meeting with my chief of staff. Do it quietly. I do not want anyone else to hear of this yet.”

  “Hear of what, my lord?”

  The sultan moved from the window and climbed the dais. He took a gem-encrusted goblet of kumiz from the table by his throne.

  Kalawun glanced around the shadowy chamber as Baybars’s drank pensively. “It is dark in here, my lord. Shall I have the servants light some lanterns?”

  “No,” said Baybars, sitting. “I want to watch the eclipse.” He smiled dryly. “I would have thought Khadir would be here to witness it. Or at least to tell me I do not have enough guards. Have you seen him?”

  “No,” said Kalawun, a little too quickly.

  Baybars didn’t seem to notice. He took several more sips of the fermented mare’s milk. “Things have changed, Kalawun. And I feel better for it. I know, now, what I must do. Too long have I surrounded myself with men who fear, rather than respect, me. I would prefer to have a few loyal advisors than many who secretly despise me.”

  “Your men do not despise you,” countered Kalawun.

  Baybars held up his hand. “Their dissatisfaction is plain. I dealt with Mahmud, but I didn’t realize how far the infection had spread. It is time to cut out the rest of the corruption.” He paused. “Starting with my son.”