The Black Rood

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Pain seared through me; my arm throbbed with a burning ache. I rolled onto my back and found myself lying next to Yordanus on a floor slick with his blood.

  The Fida’in attacker lurched toward me. I saw his hands, pale in the darkness, fumbling frantically over the old man’s unresisting body, and realized he was searching for his knife, which was hilt deep in Yordanus’ neck. We both saw the weapon at the same time and grabbed for it. I was the quicker. My fingers closed on the hilt and I jerked the blade free.

  The black-robed Arab lunged again, diving across Yordanus. I tried to roll away, but his hands found my throat and squeezed hard. I swung the knife backhanded with all my strength against the side of his head. The blade entered his temple with but little resistance. His limbs stiffened and his spine arched rigidly. He gave out a startled cry and began convulsing, his teeth chattering and gnashing as he writhed beside his victim on the floor. The spasms grew less violent, and after a moment he lay still.

  I dragged myself onto my knees beside Yordanus. The old man’s eyes gazed upward; his mouth was open slightly, as if preparing to speak, but no movement stirred his chest. He was gone.

  From somewhere farther back in the house I could hear voices. I rose and moved quickly toward the sound, and discovered it was coming from the room where Sydoni and Anna slept. The door was closed, but I could hear Padraig calming, reasonable; and Sydoni, frantic, pleading. I put my hand to the latch and, quietly as I could, lifted the wooden handle and pushed the door open.

  In the light of a single candle, I saw Sydoni on the far side of the room, bending low over Anna’s slumped body. Padraig was standing over her, his arms outstretched in an attitude of protection.

  The Fida’i was standing with his back to the door. He glanced over his shoulder as the door opened, saw me, and said something in Arabic. Then he saw the knife in my hand and turned to confront me.

  I saw the curved blade glint in the candlelight as he swung toward me and did not wait for him to see that I was wounded.

  “Now, Padraig!” I shouted, charging headlong into the Arab intruder. He threw his arms wide to free his blade, and I pulled up at the last instant as Padraig, stepping in swiftly behind, seized the intruder’s knife hand in both of his. The attacker swung on Padraig and I dived in, sliding the blade up under his ribs. Blood and hot damp air spewed from the wound.

  The Fida’i struck me with his elbow, catching me on the jaw and knocking me off balance. I staggered back. Breaking free of Padraig’s grasp, he leapt on me, knocking me to the floor, his knife blade slicing across the side of my face as I fell.

  The curved blade rose in my assailant’s hand and, helpless to prevent its descent, I shoved my knife up into his throat. The blade entered under the point of his chin, passing up into his mouth. He gave a strangled cry and tried to stab down at me, but Padraig now held his arm.

  Gagging on the blade, he tried to pull it free, but I held tight to the hilt. Blood cascaded over his teeth, spilling down his chin and over my hands. The wretch toppled backward, choking on his tongue. His fingers raked at my hands, but I held firm.

  “It is enough!” shouted Padraig. “Duncan, it is enough.”

  Still I held the blade, and gradually the struggling ceased. Only when he lay completely still did I withdraw the knife. “Now it is enough,” I said, slumping onto the floor.

  Sydoni, terrified and shaking with fright, rushed to me. “You are wounded,” she cried, her trembling fingers touching my cheek. “Your face…your arm…”

  “It is not so bad,” I told her. I raised a hand for Padraig to help me up.

  “I have seen five of them,” I said as Padraig raised me to my feet. “We must search the house. There may be more.” I looked at the crumpled body of the old woman; I did not have to ask whether she still lived. I would mourn the dead later, right now it was the living who needed my attention.

  “Where is Wazim?”

  Neither Sydoni or Padraig had seen him. “Stay here and keep the door barred,” I instructed Sydoni. She glanced down at the dead Arab and shook her head. There was no time to argue with her, so I said, “Come along then. But keep well back.”

  We proceeded through the house, but did not find any more Fida’in. Upon reaching the kitchen, Sydoni saw her father lying on the floor. With a shriek of anguish, she rushed to gather his lifeless body into her arms. Although I wanted nothing more than to comfort her at that moment, I had to make certain there were no more Fida’in about. Padraig and I continued out into the courtyard and there found Wazim standing with a spear pointed at the Arab I had kicked and left unconscious. No longer inert, he was slumped against the outer gate, glaring at the little Egyptian and fending off the jabbing thrusts of Wazim’s spear.

  “Well done, Wazim,” I called, hurrying to join him.

  At our appearance, the Arab straightened. Wazim, glad to be relieved of this dangerous duty glanced around at us, taking his eyes from his captive. The spearhead wavered and dipped as he turned. It was a fatal mistake. The Fida’i darted forward and, before I could call a warning, reached behind his back and whipped out a slender dagger. Wazim, sensing the attack, raised the spear, catching the Arab in the pit of the stomach.

  I watched in horror as the Fida’i grasped the spear and held it, then, with a great sweeping motion of his arm, drew the knife blade across Wazim’s throat. The two of them fell to the ground together, one atop the other.

  Padraig rolled the dying Arab aside, and I knelt over Wazim Kadi. I took his hand and he looked up at me and smiled. He moved his mouth, but he could not speak. “I am sorry, my friend,” I told him. “Go with God.”

  He gave out a little sigh and his life passed from him. Padraig and I knelt beside his body for a time. Like the good Célé Dé he was, Padraig stretched his hands over the body, one palm at the forehead, one at the heart; he spoke a rune for the dead, and then prayed our friend on his way:

  “The sleep of seven joys be thine, dear friend.

  With waking to the peace of paradise,

  With glad waking to eternal peace in paradise.”

  We hurried on with our search, scouring every last corner of the house, yard, and outbuildings until we were satisfied that there were no more intruders to be found. Padraig put his hand on my shoulder. “It is over.”

  “No,” I told him. “There is one more.”

  Taking up Wazim’s spear which Padraig had removed from the dead Arab, I crossed the courtyard and opened the gate to find the last of the Fida’in crouching beside the wall. He was rocking slowly back and forth, cradling his crushed arm across his body. He turned his head and looked at us as we stepped out onto the road. His eyes were half-lidded and his movements sluggish as he made to stand.

  Padraig, holding out his empty hands, slowly advanced toward the injured Fida’i. “Peace,” he said. “Salaam.”

  The Arab fumbled at his belt with his good hand and brought out a knife. Holding it at arm’s length, he uttered a low growl of warning, his speech slurred and muttering.

  “It must be the hashish,” I told Padraig, stepping quickly beside him.

  “The killing will stop,” said Padraig, extending his hand once more. “Give me your weapon.”

  At that moment, a cock crowed in the yard of a house down the road. Away in the east, night was beginning to fade. The Arab made a clumsy swing with the knife to keep us back and then leaned against the wall, his face to the rising sun.

  “Give me the knife,” said Padraig, extending his hand.

  The Fida’i looked at us, his dark eyes glazed with drugged hatred. He drew a deep breath, put his head back.

  “La ilaha illa Allah!” he shouted, and then turned the knife on himself, plunging it into his own heart. He slumped backward to the ground and rolled onto his side. A tremor passed through his body, and he gave out a groan which ended in a death rattle. And then it was finished.

  After a moment, I bent down and removed the knife. “Great of Heaven, I pray that was the last o
f them,” Padraig said quietly.

  “Amen.”

  “How did they know where to find us?”

  “Do you wonder?” I asked. I saw it so clearly in hindsight I could only marvel at my blindness to now. “They must have been watching Yordanus’ house in Famagusta. When he returned to Paphos, they followed him here.”

  “But who could have sent them to Fam—” the priest began, and then halted. “…de Bracineaux.” Padraig turned to me, his face illumined by day’s first light. “You knew this would happen.”

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head sadly. “I feared it only.”

  “Now that they know where to find us,” Padraig surmised, “there is nothing to stop them sending more Fida’in. The Templars will not rest until they have achieved their aims.”

  “We cannot stay here,” I said. Suddenly exhausted, I passed a hand over my face. My arm was throbbing, and I could feel the beat of pain in my head and all down my side.

  The cock crowed again, and then everything grew strangely quiet. I swayed on my feet and my vision blurred. I looked at Padraig and I saw his mouth move but could no longer hear him speaking to me.

  I remember very little after that. Only darkness, and a sense of tranquil motion…and then, nothing.

  FORTY-NINE

  DEAREST CAITRÍONA, MY life, my light, my hope. If not for the poisoned blades of the wicked Hashishin, I should have been home long since.

  As it is, I have been forced to endure another captivity—this time in a bare little cell within the walls of Ayios Moni. Abbot Demitrianos will forgive me for saying that while my clean, bare cell may be poorer by far than the sumptuous chamber I had within the caliph’s palace, this new confinement is eminently superior in every way. I have had nothing but the best of care since my arrival these many months ago. Indeed, I do not hesitate to say it: if not for the healing skills of the monks here, I heartily doubt whether I would be drawing breath, much less lifting pen to write to you now, my soul.

  Although I chafe at captivity once more, I endure with a high and hopeful heart, and thus resume the work which has occupied me during my long sojourn in Outremer. Kindly Brother Tomas visits me daily, bringing the list of difficulties his diligent scribes have encountered in their patient work of copying my poor scraps of ruined papyri onto fine, clean parchments. Sometimes it is a word they cannot read owing to the deterioration of the brittle and delicate papyrus; just as often, it is likely to be my ham-fisted script that has brought them to distraction.

  Thus we sit together, the gentle brother and I; he asks me to supply the meaning which has perplexed them, and I embellish the tale with remembrances refined by hindsight. My indulgent taskmaster does not like it when I try to improve upon what I have written. He insists that it must be rendered as first I set it down. This, he tells me, assures a purity of authenticity—something the fastidious brothers seem overly keen to preserve, it seems to me. But then, I am no scholar, nor ever likely to be. Still, I cannot help myself; the memories come thick and fast, so vivid and clear; the more I tell, the more I remember. My patient scribes take it all down without complaining and, like busy weavers, make a whole cloth of ragged patches. So my tale grows in the making, expanding beneath the good brothers’ diligent hands.

  Abbot Demitrianos comes to see me every day also. He tells me that for the first few weeks I was, as he puts it, not of this world. Nor was I of the next world, either, I confess, for I remember nothing save recurrent periods of light and dark—days, perhaps, except they spun like the alternating spokes of a fast turning wheel—and this along with the soft and distant murmur of comforting voices, often with the scent of fragrant smoke. They say I hovered between life and death, and the times I smelled the smoke was when I drifted close to the heavenly altar and partook of the incense of paradise.

  As to that, I cannot say I am the wiser for it. Any glories that might have been glimpsed through the veil were certainly lost on me; the all-obscuring shroud remained in place, secure from my prying eyes. Thus, the secrets of the Hereafter are safe for another season.

  Later, when I awoke from my long sleep, the first thing I saw—once the daylight had ceased causing my eyes to water—was Sydoni’s lovely face as she bathed my brow with a cooling cloth. For she, too, has been a constant visitor, rarely absent from my side for more than a few brief moments when she takes her own much-needed rest.

  The Greek monks do not usually allow women to remain behind their protecting walls beyond sunset, but the wise abbot offered a special dispensation for Sydoni. In view of the circumstances, however, it was as much a necessity as a blessing—although, I imagine they would have had a fight on their hands had they tried to send her away. She has been a perpetual source of strength and comfort to me, and I have needed both—especially in those first days after waking when, too weak to lift my head from my pallet, she fed me and nursed me. I do believe Sydoni pulled me back from death’s dark and silent gate by the sheer force of her unflagging resolve.

  Padraig, too, has been a very champion—a hero the great Celts of old would not hesitate to welcome into their exalted companionship. Padraig has been the rock of salvation for me, my soul’s true friend, my anam cara in word and unfailing deed. It is to Padraig’s quick thinking that I owe my continued existence in the land of the living.

  For, following my collapse in the road, the canny priest swiftly discerned that the severity of my wounds could not alone account for my sudden decline. He summoned Sydoni who confirmed that the Fida’in most often poison the blades of their knives so that should they fail to strike a killing blow, even the smallest cut will eventually prove fatal. He wasted not an instant, but bundled me in a robe and put me—along with the box containing the Holy Rood—in a borrowed wagon and carried me with all speed to Ayios Moni. If it was the monks who healed me with their shrewd knowledge, it was Padraig who gave them the chance.

  Poor Sydoni faced the cruel dilemma of accompanying me to the monastery, or staying behind and seeing to her father’s burial. Not that she had time to linger over the choice; Padraig needed help to get me to the monastery, and could not allow her to remain in any event. He foresaw the likelihood that another attack would be forthcoming as soon as those who instigated the first began to suspect it had failed.

  Nor did his watch care end there. Far from it. No sooner had he delivered me into the capable hands of the Greek brothers, than he hastened back to Paphos to move the ship. He sailed to Famagusta and, with the ship’s pilot and crew, and Gregior and Omer’s help, loaded the Persephone with as much of Yordanus’ treasure as he could without raising local suspicion. He then hid the ship in a tiny cove on the northwestern side of the island—a little fishing village called Latchi near the ancient Roman city of Polis—thus safe-guarding our surest and best chance of making good our escape when the time comes to do so.

  Having seen to these arrangements, he returned to the monastery to help relieve Sydoni in her long and selfless vigil at my bedside. They took it in turn to pray over me, and anoint my insensate body with holy oil and medicinal balms, which they rubbed into my half-dead flesh. Along with the Greek brothers, they worked the slow miracle of my recovery.

  Two seasons passed while I hovered between this life and the next. I awoke one fine spring day with brilliant white light streaming in through the open window of my cell. I use the word “awoke” for I know no other way to describe it. Yet, the sensation was unlike any awakening I have ever known. I opened my eyes and looked around and it was as if I had come into the world as a newborn infant, possessing neither memory nor knowledge of anything that had gone before. I raised a hand to shield my eyes, heard a gasp and turned my head toward the sound. I looked at the face of the woman clutching my hand and understood only that she was dear to me—I knew not how. Neither did I know her name, or anything about her. I loved her for the kindness in her face, and the joyful tears in her eyes.

  And then I slept again.

  This time it was a genuine sleep, deep
and restful. When I opened my eyes on the next morning, Sydoni was there beside me, praying for my healing. The moment I beheld her graceful head bent over her folded hands, her arms resting on the edge of my bed, I knew I would live and not die. Each day thereafter, I enjoyed some small improvement—drinking my broth unaided, eating my first solid food, sitting upright, and the like. Although it would be a long time yet before I could walk unaided under my own strength, that day was the beginning of my recovery.

  Though Sydoni and Padraig spent the greater portion of every day with me, I nevertheless had a great deal of time to think. As I grew stronger and could sustain the effort, I considered what had happened. At first my memories were vague, shadowy and unreal—through a glass darkly, as Padraig would say. But as I put my mind to it, more came clear, and still more, until I could at last recall the events of that terrible night.

  Alas, it would have been better to allow the memory to sleep undisturbed. The horror of that painful night will haunt me for a long time, I fear. I lost good friends, and cannot help feeling that my own stubborn will is to blame. Padraig tells me this is foolishness, that I was not the one who sent the Fida’in to kill and recover the relic. That was Commander de Bracineaux’s decision alone, and I believe in my bones that he is right.

  Yet, as I have passed the days in contemplation, I cannot swear before the Judgment Throne that this is so. As much as I believe the Templar commander bears the responsibility, I have no real proof of his guilt—only hardened suspicion. True, de Bracineaux was the only person who knew where we could be found. Did he desire the holy relic so fervently he would kill for it? It must be remembered that it was Renaud who sent me to Yordanus to begin with. I ask myself, could he so easily betray his friends to death?

  Perhaps he did not mean for anyone to be killed. But if that is the case, then why send the Fida’in? Why not come himself and demand the return of the relic?

  Then again, it may be that he did not send them. Perhaps they came on their own accord, hoping to recover the holy relic and thereby win favor with the Templars for obscure reasons of their own. Maybe that is the way of it. Again, I cannot say. And I think no one will ever know.