The Fools’ Crusade

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘But when I was around twenty years of age, war came down from the north, out of the desert. The army of our king came past the zãwiya of my master, and I was forced to go with them, so my father’s fears were realised. So I left my home twice, for my master had become like a father. I did not wish to be a soldier. The master had passed his teachings on to me, and I had wanted nothing more in my life than to serve him until he died, and then carry his words to my own students, should I be worthy enough to bring any to me. But as you have guessed, there was a battle and I was captured. To tell it quickly, I was taken, with many other prisoners, across the Great Desert to the land of the al-Muwahhidun, and by the time we had got there I was almost the last man left alive. They sold me as a slave, and then I knew what it was to work as a beast works, hauling stones and building houses for others to live or worship in. All along the coast of Africa I worked, until I finished up in Alexandria, heaving timbers in a shipyard. And that was where Jean de Sol, or should I say, Michel de Montalhac found me. He needed a strong man to … Have you heard this tale, Patch? There was a saint’s tomb in the Sinai, with a stone lid as big as a dead hippopotamus. There would not be time to set up pulleys or a block and tackle, but one strong fellow might do the trick. My master wanted to hire me out, but Jean bought me there and then and freed me in front of that dog of a man. And after I had opened the tomb and watched these strange Frankish fellows take out a wizened old corpse, which they treated as if it were a block of gold, Jean asked me if I wanted to come with them, and do you know? I thought that men who freed slaves and opened tombs might be able to teach me something I had not learned from my master, and so I said yes. And Captain Jean, who did nothing by accident, put me to work finding paths across pathless water. It was perhaps the one task in the whole world that I had been taught to do.’

  Nizam had not aged, as far as I could tell. His great frame was still wound with firm muscle, and his face was unlined, though now he wore a short beard, and some grey was showing in it. He wore a tight knitted cap of white cotton and a robe of plain white linen, belted with a sash of black. His feet were bare and dusty.

  ‘And you, Patch. A crusader? Stranger work by far than mine. What would Michel de Montalhac have said?’

  ‘So you know he is dead.’

  ‘I do. I have many friends amongst the merchants. News spreads as fast as money, you know.’

  ‘The worthy Abu Musa Zayd … My wife wrote to me about him. It seems I owe my life twice over: to a man I have never met and to one I never thought to see again.’

  ‘And what about God?’ Nizam laughed. It was a deep and easy laugh, and it made me feel better than any medicine I had got from the good doctor back in Mansourah. ‘You have sidestepped my question, though, brother.’

  ‘Ach. As to that, I have never been a crusader. I do not want to imagine what the captain would have said if I really had taken the vow, but I was thinking of my dear master when I neglected to swear any such oath. No, I am here for quite another reason, though I still don’t quite understand it.’

  And I told him everything that had happened to me, starting with the death of Isaac. Words came pouring out, as if a dam had burst somewhere inside me. I had not bared my soul to anyone since I had left Iselda, and Nizam seemed to draw my story from me as the farmers out in the fields drew out the water that nourished their crops. I told him about Frederick von Hohenstaufen, Cardinal John of Toledo and of the Earl of Cornwall’s impossible demand. And of course I told him of my wedding, which led me back through the thickets of time to Montségur, for I had to tell him who Iselda was, and how she came into my life after returning to the captain’s. He was not much interested in the fighting for Damietta and afterwards, though he drew out of me more, perhaps, than I would have told him about the miseries that followed the battle at Mansourah.

  When I was done the light was fading outside, and a veiled woman had come in and lit the lanterns and candles.

  ‘I should send word to Ibn al-Nafis,’ I said. ‘Unless … The doctor was not part of …’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Nizam. ‘And I have already sent word. But you haven’t wondered who it was that wanted you dead?’

  I realised that, very strangely, I had forgotten all about the men who had tried to kill me. Then, of course, it all came back, and my body began reminding me of what it had suffered.

  ‘Who, then?’ I asked, wincing.

  ‘Mercenaries. Sicilian Moors – Christians, mind. You were very lucky, my brother. If they had decided to slit your throat inside the palace … Well, your throat would indeed have been slit.’

  ‘So you knew it was going to happen?’

  ‘Yes. My young friends have been watching the palace for some days now, since the last attempt.’

  ‘But there has only been one!’

  ‘Ah. You have been far, far luckier than you know, Patch. Your doctor is the finest in all the lands of Egypt. He found poison in your evening meal last week.’

  ‘Why? No. It’s not hard to guess. Why should I be loved? I came with a mob of thieves and villains. There must be many who would like to be revenged upon a Frank.’

  ‘No doubt. But these men were Christians from abroad. There was a reason for that.’

  ‘Wait. Were they sent by Cardinal John of Toledo?’

  ‘No. The men who attacked you were killed, but Aytmish found the poisoner two days ago. That was how we knew there would be an attempt today. Now this man was made to talk – he was a mercenary, after all.’

  ‘Was?’ I asked. Nizam nodded grimly.

  ‘His band had been hired in Sicily. They were all men who used to work at a Templar commanderie in the south-west of the island.’

  ‘The emperor drove the Templars out of Sicily,’ I said. ‘They hate him with a passion …’ I stopped. ‘Sicily. I know what this is about.’

  ‘Do you? How nice,’ chuckled Nizam.

  ‘It’s my singular honour to have the pope out for my blood,’ I explained. ‘He thinks I lent Louis all the money for this pathetic crusade. The pope has a boiling hatred of Frederick, which no doubt you know. Louis, on the other hand, is the emperor’s cousin and is so fair and honest that he has refused to back Pope Innocent against Frederick. So Innocent decided that it were best if Louis went overseas, so that he could attack the empire without any pious claptrap from Louis, who’s been making sure that none of his other royal cousins give Innocent any help.’

  ‘All well and good,’ said Nizam. ‘The Christians still love one another like a great big family, I see.’

  ‘Oho, yes. Never fear. Now then, Innocent thought that, seeing I was lending money hand over fist to Louis, a most Christian king, I would have no objection to financing his war against Frederick.’

  ‘Isn’t that what the Templars are for?’ Nizam put in. ‘Bankers for Christ?’

  ‘Certainly. The Templars, of course, hate the Banco di Corvo Marino, as we are almost as successful as they are. I expect someone dripped some poisoned words into Innocent’s ear. After all, wouldn’t it be better to have all the Banco’s money, rather than a few little loans? So they came after Iselda.’ I told Nizam what Iselda had written to me. The bank was no more, and we were wanted by the Inquisition. ‘Now the Temple has some reason not to hate me any more,’ I went on, and told how I had helped to bring the Grand Master out of Mansourah.

  ‘That won’t endear you to the Mamluks,’ said Nizam, frowning. ‘I would hide that from Aytmish, if I were you.’

  ‘Never fear. So I doubt that the order came from any Templars in Egypt,’ I finished. ‘I think John of Toledo has used the Templars’ greed as he’s used the Inquisition. Because now that Iselda is here with the bank’s money, and the king is a prisoner … So there is suddenly a lot of coin at the potential beck and call of Louis. There’s treasure here already, of course, with the Templars. But, am I mad? Because it seems to me that if the Templars are close to the pope and loathe Frederick, when the time comes to ransom Louis and the army, and the pope
wants Louis to stay safely overseas …’

  ‘The Templars will have been told not to open their money chests,’ said Nizam. ‘No, I don’t think you are mad. Caught up in a ridiculous and quite meaningless world, perhaps, but not mad. Though as you chose that world …’ He chuckled again.

  ‘Exactly, dear friend,’ I said. ‘Quite mad, in that case. So if the Templars won’t pay out, we plainly will, being Louis’s preferred bankers. And they tried to kill me so that no ransom would come from me. Little understanding, plainly, that Iselda has full power to do whatever she wishes. With me out of the way, Iselda is the Banco di Corvo Marino. But as they are blinded by the shortcomings of their pious little minds, none of them would ever believe that a woman could hold such power. Even if I’d died, they would have failed.’

  ‘And so your death would have been unnecessary,’ Nizam pointed out.

  ‘Not very consoling,’ I agreed. ‘But as to my life, I don’t understand how I came to be sitting here with you. How I didn’t get my head cut off, and why the good doctor Ibn al-Nafis lavished all his expert care on me.’

  ‘It is true,’ Nizam agreed. ‘Everything has been done for you.’

  ‘But why? I should be a prisoner.’

  ‘Sheikh abd’ al-Azeem is not some rustic fortune-teller,’ said another voice. ‘He is a sayyid.’ The young Mamluk was standing in the doorway. Nizam smiled indulgently at him and he bowed and sat down. ‘He will not tell you this himself, but the sheikh’s power is very great. I am of the Bahrid Regiment, and many of us, and our emirs, are followers of this man. The leader of our regiment is called Baybars al-Bunduqdari, and he is more powerful than the queen herself. The sheikh asked that you be treated as one of our own, and that we have done.’

  ‘Then my thanks are doubled, for I am your enemy, and you have shown me great mercy and honour.’

  ‘As God tells us to do,’ said the young Mamluk.

  ‘Sir Petroc – dear me, I cannot believe you are a knight, my brother – is not any Frankish barbarian, dear Aytmish,’ said Nizam, winking at me. It felt decidedly odd to be winked at by a man I had just been told was a saint, but then again, what about this day was not odd? ‘I have travelled almost to the edge of the world with him and I believe, in his soul, he is as much a Sufi as you or I.’

  The look on Aytmish’s face told me he found that doubtful, but he saw that Nizam was serious, and gave me a cautious smile. ‘Really,’ he said, neutrally.

  The woman returned with a tray of food, and a boy carried in a small brazier of glowing charcoals, which he set down in the centre of the floor. Nizam handed a flat bread to me, and as he leaned forward the glow from the brazier caught his face. Suddenly I was brought back to the stony ledge below the walls of Montségur and to Gilles de Peyroux after he had become a Cathar perfecti.

  ‘Nizam, when you spoke of looking inside yourself … Gilles did the same. He told me once that it was as if someone had opened him up like a lantern and lit a fire within. “Now I’m nothing but light,” he said.’

  ‘The Good Christians believe the world is a prison made by the devil,’ said Nizam, pouring water from a long-spouted pitcher. ‘And that men carry an ember of God’s light within them. Is that not so?’ I nodded. ‘Gilles found his way to God, and I rejoice. But what a shame that he saw the devil in everything!’ He gave a great laugh and attacked a grilled pigeon’s leg.

  ‘He called the world a prison. God knows there was enough reason to agree with him – then and now. But I’ve never been able to let go of the world. Perhaps that’s been my undoing.’

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ roared Nizam. ‘My dear brother, do not let go of the world! We are here for such a short time! Let me tell you something. When I went out to the desert and looked within myself, what do you think I found?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Peace?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Everything!’ He slapped his knees and leaned back, gazing into the shadows between the lanterns. The young Mamluk Aytmish was gazing at him intently, adoringly. ‘I found the world inside myself, the whole world, and myself in the world. No difference! The bread, the lantern, its light … you, Aytmish, the wind in the trees, all of it the same, all of it God Himself! You do not need to find God, Patch. Just stop trying quite so hard to ignore him!’

  And so passed a strange and lovely evening that is half-dissolved in my memory but still flutters there, bidding me remember. I stayed the next day, and the next, until a week had passed, and I was feeling stronger, in body and in mind. Aytmish and other Mamluks would come every day from Mansourah, bringing news and for me, potions and enquiries from Ibn al-Nafis. That first morning I asked Nizam if we could send for Iselda, but he gave me a cryptic look and told me she was busy, and that I would learn everything when I saw her, which would be soon enough. So I spent the days with my friend, exchanging stories of the infidel world to the north for as much of his wisdom as he thought I could hold, which no doubt was not all that much. Then, one morning, Aytmish arrived in the clearing with a company of Mamluks dressed, like him, in dazzling finery. They wore armour of steel chased with silver and gold, with turbans of bright silk and robes of black and white, and they carried pennants and green flags on which were written words from their holy book.

  I was sitting in my usual place, beneath an old fig tree whose knobbled trunk fitted my back nicely. It was a good place to think, and that was all I wanted to do when I was not talking with Nizam. Perhaps I was trying to find God inside myself. I did not succeed, at least I do not think so, but I did find a great stillness, and that seemed good enough to me then. Aytmish came over to where I sat. We had become friends of a sort, at least to the point where we could tell each other stories of war. He was a serious young man and I found myself hoping, more than once, that Nizam would help him to grow a little lighter, but perhaps it was duty that laid heavily on him. Today, though, he seemed to have a new energy in him. Something has changed, I thought, as he bowed and held out a package to me. It was clothing folded and tied with cords, and when I had untied the knots I found I was holding a new surcoat of fine red cloth, upon which crouched the image of a black hound.

  ‘I hope it will serve,’ said Aytmish. ‘Yours was burned after it was cut from you. Your armour could not be found, but I searched out a good mail suit from the spoils, and I think it will fit.’

  ‘Thank you! But why, my friend? I have grown quite used to plain linen.’

  ‘You are going to see your good wife. And your king,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘We are riding to Damietta, which is being surrendered. The master is coming too.’

  There was, indeed, a suit of chain mail, little used by the feel of it, and no doubt found among the baggage of one of the Frankish nobles. Who had worn this, and had he survived? This and other misgivings ran through my head as I put it on, and drew the surcoat over it. It was strange, standing in that peaceful clearing, wearing the gear of an invader. But when Nizam came outside and saw me, he roared with laughter.

  ‘Sir knight, sir knight! Oh, I see the Black Dog of Balecester there … A terrifying figure, for sure! My brother, I saw you brought aboard the Cormaran, no more than a boy with a knife in his shoulder. And now, a knight of England.’

  ‘I don’t think I have ever really been a knight, brother,’ I told him. ‘Now less than ever.’

  ‘Still, here is a blade. It is not yours, but it is the best I could find.’ Aytmish gestured, and one of his men held out an expensive-looking sword. ‘This is yours, though, I believe,’ he added, handing me a knife, and I saw to my amazement that it was Thorn. ‘The men who captured you took it, but when they heard you sing the master’s words they gave it back. The good physician has kept it for you.’

  ‘My great thanks!’ I said, taking the smooth stone handle, the colour of a winter sea.

  ‘Yes, that was the knife,’ said Nizam, peering over Aytmish’s head. ‘It was sticking out of you just here.’ And he laid his finger gently on the place, just under my collarbone.

  ‘W
ill we never be done with knives and all the rest of it?’ I said, feeling grief settle over me. ‘I will not go to battle again – I will take an oath on it.’

  ‘Ah, but without knives, how will we peel our oranges?’ said Nizam, holding one out to me.

  We mounted beside the quiet pool and rode out of the clearing. Of all the places I have left behind, knowing I would never see them again in life, that was the most painful. Nizam must have understood, for he fell into step beside me.

  ‘It is here,’ he said, reaching over and patting my chest. ‘Do not worry. Some things are not taken from us. My master’s zãwiya has been with me every instant of my life, even when we sailed across the Sea of Darkness. Do you know, Patch, we were sitting under the date palm there, as I sang you those songs on the way to Greenland? You just did not realise it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I discovered the cause of the change in Aytmish the Mamluk as we came near to Damietta. We had ridden to the Ashmoun Canal, joining it near where the Frankish camp had been. Even now the stink from our ruin – shit and rubbish, corpses of men and of horses – rose up like something tangible. It seemed to flutter across my face like filthy, necrotic drapery, and until we had gone a good way downstream to where the canal flowed into the Nile I had to fight back the dismal memories that threatened to overpower me. There were many boats moving down the river, a fleet sailing from Mansourah. Some were Frankish galleys full of pale, stunned crusaders, others were Saracen vessels, this crew stern-faced, that one rejoicing.

  ‘Is the sultan going to Damietta?’ I asked Aytmish.