Crusade

by Robyn Young

  “We aren’t your brothers,” shouted someone near the back. It was a Teutonic Knight. “We weren’t your brothers when you made certain King Hugh of Cyprus was removed from the throne and that your cousin d’Anjou succeeded him, an action which caused a civil war in this city. You did it for your own sake, for the sake of the Temple, without regard for anyone else. You and every grand master before you have been at the heart of every political problem in this kingdom! You’ve started wars to fill your coffers and fulfil your own agendas! Why should we listen to you now?”

  Guillaume took a step back at the wave of accord that washed through the crowd at this, their cries almost seeming to slam into him physically. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

  Will could stand it no longer. Rage exploded inside him, sending him striding to the edge of the dais. “You are fools, every one of you! I have been to Cairo. I’ve seen the fury in the eyes of the Muslims. If you do not accept these demands, I swear by God there will be war, and we will fall!” He felt a hand on his arm, drawing him back. It was Theobald Gaudin.

  “This isn’t your place, Commander,” Theobald warned, his voice lost in the rising tumult.

  “They have to listen!” Will told him, flinging a hand at the fraught crowd.

  Guillaume was stepping forward again, calling for them to heed him.

  Someone threw an apple at the dais. It missed Guillaume, but the thwack of it against the back wall of the church was enough of a signal for Theobald Gaudin. He let go of Will and drew his sword. “We need to leave, my lord,” he shouted to Guillaume. “This is out of hand.”

  “You’re a traitor to your own kind, de Beaujeu!” someone yelled.

  Now Will also drew his sword. Things had gone beyond reason. Next it might be a rock or a dagger thrown. Between them, he and Theobald hustled the grand master down from the dais. As the crowd surged toward them, unwilling to part, the rest of the Templars unsheathed their blades. This provoked a chorus of jeers and shouts.

  “The Templars are better Saracens than they are Christians!”

  “They should have crescents on their mantles, not crosses!”

  “Traitors!” A shout went up. “Traitors!”

  But the crowd parted reluctantly before the blades, and the knights forced their way out, the scornful shouts following them through the doors and into the gray, windy afternoon, where they went swiftly to their horses. The other knights began to mount, but Guillaume hung back, clutching hold of Will.

  “Is this what we have come to?” he demanded, his eyes feverish. “All those who died protecting Christendom’s dream, and now, after two hundred years, we throw it all away for the sake of one gold coin each?” He gripped Will’s shoulder hard. “Did they sacrifice themselves for this? Your father? Our brothers? Did our people drown in the blood of Jerusalem for nothing?” He hung his head, seeming barely able to hold it up. “How the knights of the First Crusade, how our founders must be turning in their graves! How God must turn from us, our greed, our vanity. Two hundred years and this is how it is to end? Not on a battlefield, with soldiers against soldiers. But with the senseless slaughter of innocents in their homes, in peacetime, by a group of ignorant, starving peasants who came here looking for a better life?” He laughed. It was a broken sound. “Is this truly how it ends?”

  Will didn’t speak. Wasn’t this how most wars ended, and started? Only the pages of history books and men who wanted to be heroes remembered the blazing banners and noble warriors who had gone before. The people faced a different reality. The songs and the stories spoke of bright helmets and swords, brothers in arms and God and glory. They didn’t speak of the silent millions who faced brutal, anonymous death. After two hundred years of slaughter on both sides, to Will it made a perverse sense if this was how it was to end.

  “Dear God, save us,” groaned Guillaume, almost dropping to his knees. Behind them, the cries of the crowd, now spilling out of the church, stung their ears. Theobald and Peter went toward the grand master.

  Will grasped Guillaume to stop him from falling. For a moment, he cursed Everard for dying, for putting him in this position and leaving him. But then he felt Guillaume’s hands clutching his own and sensed the strength in his own arms. He was the head of the Anima Templi. He was a husband and a father. “It isn’t over yet, my lord,” he said sharply, moving his head to force the grand master to meet his gaze. “It isn’t over yet.”

  44

  The Citadel, Cairo 20 OCTOBER A.D. 1290

  Kalawun pushed his way through the doors and lurched into the garden. The sunlight flared in his vision. He put a hand over his eyes as he

  headed deeper into the grounds, past spindly trunked palms and garish flowers. He followed a water channel cut through the stone walkway that led him to the center of the gardens, where a pool lay, inky in the shade, filled with slow-moving fish. Kalawun sat heavily on one of the stone benches around the pool and put his throbbing head in his hands. His skin felt dry and cold. A plug of nausea clogged up his airway, and he had to fight away an urge to vomit. The sickness used to be worse in the mornings, but now he seemed to feel it right through the day. The medicine his physician had given him wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for months.

  “My lord?” There was the sound of hurried footsteps. “My Lord Sultan?”

  Kalawun sat up, grimacing with pain, and saw Khalil appear through the trees. His son’s face was grim, and for one terrible moment, Kalawun found himself wishing that Khalil not Ali had succumbed to that fever. Ali had been fair and honorable and filled with a sense of joy in life; he might have believed in the cause. Khalil was surrounded with a cold wall of faith and duty that Kalawun had never been able to penetrate. He wondered if he should have looked for another successor when Ali died. But these were desolate thoughts. Kalawun let out a hiss of breath and squeezed his eyes shut. He loved Khalil. He still had hope that they could find a common ground.

  “What is wrong, my lord?” said Khalil, heading over. “Why did you leave the council? The men are keen to receive the order for war.” He gritted his teeth. “How dare the Franks refuse your terms! They will pay dear for this.”

  “I needed time to think, Khalil. I needed air.”

  “Time to think about what?” murmured Khalil, standing in front of him. When Kalawun didn’t answer, he gestured to the palace, stark and white behind them. “The men are waiting, my lord.” Still, Kalawun said nothing. “Father, please,” said Khalil, frustrated, “why do you not answer?”

  Kalawun met his stony gaze. “I have made my decision,” he said quietly.

  “Then let us announce it. We have much to prepare and little time.” Khalil turned toward the palace, but halted when Kalawun didn’t rise.

  Kalawun looked up at his son, wincing at the stabbing sensation between his eyes as the light hit them. “I will not declare war on the Franks.”

  Khalil said nothing for a moment, confusion turning to anger across his face. “In Allah’s name, why would you do this? The Franks have refused your terms of reparation for the atrocity at Acre. They have ignored your ultimatum. You have to attack them!”

  “Do not forget to whom you are speaking, Khalil,” responded Kalawun sharply. “I am sultan and my word is law.”

  “The court will not let you do this,” said Khalil, pacing ferociously. “They will not accept this decision. The Franks slaughtered Muslims in the hundreds, breaking the treaty. Your men will demand that we now take action!”

  “I listened to others when it came to Tripoli and I have regretted that action every day since. I will not make the same mistake again.” Kalawun rose with effort and walked around the pool. He looked to the sky, then laughed forlornly. “I miss Nasir.” He looked at his son. “Do you think that strange? He betrayed me terribly and yet I miss him. I do not think I would have killed him had he survived Tripoli. I do not think I would have been able to bring myself to do it. I have seen so many die around me. Aisha, Ishandiyar, Ali, Baybars, Nasir. Sometimes
, I wonder why I am still here. Perhaps Allah has forgotten me, Khalil?”

  Khalil wasn’t listening. He had stopped pacing and had gone still. “You will lead your people to war, Father. You will march on Acre and destroy the Franks’ last base.”

  Kalawun’s brow knotted as he turned to his son.

  “You will do it,” murmured Khalil, “because it is necessary and because it is the right thing, the only thing, to do. You will do it because your people demand it and because the Franks deserve it. And you will do it because if you do not, I will tell the men in that council chamber that you are a traitor.”

  “What?”

  “I heard you!” shouted Khalil, emotion rushing back into his voice as his father stared at him aghast. “When the Christians came here, I hid and I watched you! I heard you talking to the Templar . . . heard him speak of how you had been working together all these years, working against Baybars, against our people. Against me!” He was striding again now, his hands flying as he spoke. “I kept it secret all these weeks, knowing that your life would be in danger were I to reveal it to anyone. I kept it hidden because I wanted to give you a chance to do what is right by your people. But now I see I have no choice.” His voice cracked and almost broke. “You are giving me no choice!”

  “You are threatening me?” whispered Kalawun, jarred to his core.

  Khalil took a step toward him, then stopped. “You have been bewitched, father. How could you work with the Western invaders? With a Templar? These people murder us, defile our temples and assault our cities. They have been doing so for two hundred years. The only reason this knight wants peace with you is because he and his kind want to retain a position in the Holy Land that they can strike at us from. If we give them long enough, they will regroup and try to take what Baybars and his predecessors managed to rip from their grasp.” Khalil shook his head slowly. “Somehow, you have lost sight of this truth, Father. You have lost your way.”

  “Why can we not have peace with these people?” demanded Kalawun, going to his son and grasping his shoulders. “Why? We trade with one another, share ideas and inventions; much of what is sacred to us is also sacred to them. Why do we have to be enemies? I know this is not the Franks’ land; I know their people came to take it by force. But is it ours? I was a slave, Khalil, born hundreds of miles from here. It is any more my land than Franks’ who have been here for generations? Ourselves and the Christians have been in this war for so long we have forgotten why we are fighting it!”

  “We fight because we have to, because if we don’t the Franks will take our lands and our livelihoods. It does not matter where you came from, where any of us came from. As Sultan of Egypt and Syria you now have a duty to your people, Muslim people, to defend them from harm.” Khalil pulled away from him. “And you will do your duty.”

  Kalawun stared into his son’s unyielding gaze for a long, aching moment. Then at last, numb and defeated, he followed Khalil out of the gardens and back into the palace. His head pulsing, he stood before his court and, in a voice as faint as a breeze, declared war on the Franks. And the solid, unified cheer that erupted around the throne room following his words was a hammer to his heart.

  As soon as it was done, preparations were set in motion. The generals wanted to discuss the strategy of the campaign, but Kalawun postponed any further discussion until tomorrow. Leaving the throne room buzzing with anticipation, he retired to his quarters, avoiding his son’s gaze as he swept out. Once in his chambers, he dismissed his servants and went to his desk. Snatching up parchment and a quill, he sat down to write. Two days after he had been given notification that Acre’s rulers had refused his demands, he had received a message from Will, begging for more time to persuade the government. The grand master, he said, had written to the visitor of the order in Paris, summoning extra funds. Guillaume de Beaujeu planned to pay the sultan out of the Temple’s coffers if the government wouldn’t listen. They just needed more time. But time was one thing Kalawun could no longer give them. If you do not want to see my army on your horizon, he scribbled furiously, you will convince your government to change its mind.

  By the time he had finished writing, the pain in his head was so bad he could hardly see.

  AL-SALIHIYYA, EGYPT, 10 NOVEMBER A.D. 1290

  “How is he?”

  “Not good. I have given him drugs to ease his suffering, but there is nothing more I can do. I fear it will not be long now.”

  The voices were soft, apologetic. Kalawun heard them as if in a dream, unreal and distant. He felt cocooned by the warmth of his bed, by the opiates drifting through his system. He knew he should be concerned by the voices and by what they were saying, but he felt just a pleasant, warm detachment. The pain had receded, chased away by the drugs. It was now a point of crimson brightness in his mind. He could sense it, but he was removed from it. He felt a shift on the bed beside him. A cool hand was placed on his brow.

  “Father? Can you hear me?”

  Kalawun wanted to stay in the velvet darkness, but as well as the pain, he could sense other things, worry and purpose, crouching nearby, and these were closer, demanding his attention. His eyes slid open and pain took a step nearer. Even though his quarters were only lit by two low-burning braziers, the dull glow still hurt him. Khalil was sitting beside him on the bed, his face shadowed.

  “I’m dying.” It was more of a statement than a question, but Kalawun still felt numb as he said the words.

  Khalil looked away. “Yes.” His voice was strained.

  Kalawun lifted his hand weakly and raised it to his son’s face. His skin felt smooth. It still had youth to grace it. “Will you do something for me?”

  Khalil put his hand over his father’s. “If I can.”

  “Do not attack the Franks. Give them a chance to make amends. Show mercy.”

  Khalil tensed. “We are committed.”

  “No, there is still time. We do not have to give the order for war.”

  “You already have given it. You summoned the troops, built siege engines.” Khalil stared at him. “We are in al-Salihiyya, Father. We are about to cross the Sinai.”

  Kalawun’s gaze drifted past him, and now he saw that what he had thought were the walls of his palace quarters were in fact the cloth sides of his pavilion. And it all came back to him.

  The last three weeks had passed in a blur of activity as the generals worked ceaselessly to ready the army for war. Kalawun’s heart was not in it, and every order for provisions and armaments that he signed, every messenger he sent out, he did so unwillingly, as all the while he waited for Will to respond to his letter. But the generals were impatient, wanting to march on Acre before the winter rains set in across the Palestinian hinterland. Once they made their camp outside Acre’s walls, they could summon more troops from Aleppo and Damascus. The harvests were in; the towns well stocked. It was, they had said, a good time to leave.

  “We have to turn back,” said Kalawun, his fingers moving to tighten around his son’s. “I haven’t given them enough time. Campbell will persuade them.”

  Khalil pulled his hand from his father’s grip. “Campbell?” he demanded. “The Templar?”

  “The Franks will agree to our demands. He will persuade them.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Khalil bluntly, rising.

  “I wrote to him,” said Kalawun, struggling to sit up. “I told him that we were coming, that he needed to convince his government to concede.”

  “I know.”

  Kalawun’s brow furrowed. “What do ... ?”

  “I am not a fool, Father,” snapped Khalil, rounding on him. “I made sure to intercept any message you sent out after you had given the order. I know you only gave it because of my threat.”

  Kalawun closed his eyes.

  “I destroyed it,” continued Khalil, looking at him. “The Franks will not pay because they do not know that we are coming for them. And by the time they do, it will be too late.”

  “Why?”

 
; “Because I had to.” Khalil sat beside his father again and took his hand.

  Kalawun tried to turn away from him, but he was too weak. “When you die, Father, I want our people to remember your name with honor. I want them to know that you loved them, that you never faltered in that love and that you would always do what was right by them. I will see that your name lives on in history, that our people remember you well.”

  “It is because I loved them that I did this,” whispered Kalawun. “Can you not see that?”

  “I know you believe this,” said Khalil quietly. “But it is a delusion. Father ...” He swallowed back his emotion and made himself look upon his father’s gray, desolate face. “It does not matter what you and a handful of Christians believe. The very fact that this Templar would have to convince his own government to make reparations for the atrocity in Acre shows that his people are no more willing to engage in this foolish peace than your own are. Ideals will not safeguard us, not while our enemy remains in these lands to threaten us. Only a heavy hand and an iron sword will protect them from the Western invaders.”

  Kalawun let his head fall back onto the pillow. “Nasir was right,” he breathed. “We are all slaves. Slaves to duty, to faith, to revenge. I do not want to be a slave anymore, Khalil, a slave or a warrior.” He closed his eyes.

  Khalil was speaking again, earnestly, passionately, but Kalawun blocked out the sound.

  Behind his eyelids, he sought that softness, turning away from the sharpness of fear and disappointment and regret. He ran from them, retreating inside himself, seeking solace and comfort. Allah had not forgotten him. He could feel the moment descending on him, filling him with perfect calm.