by Tom Harper
A shadow fell across Bilal’s back, though he could not see it. The first guard had risen out of the gloom at the edge of the chamber, and if my assault had left him unable to move freely, he still had a sword in his hands and vicious purpose in his arms. I shouted a warning and sprang forward. Bilal turned. The guard heard me too, but that did not matter: he was committed to his attack and too wounded to change course. I struck him and ploughed him to the ground, desperately trying to pin down his sword arm. I could not reach. He reversed his grip and thumped the pommel into my shoulder, loosening my hold. Wet blood streamed over his face where I had broken his nose, but he seemed impervious to the pain as he tried to throw me off. He had almost dislodged me: in a second, I would be on the floor, and he would be over me. I could not expect any help from Bilal, for I could dimly hear him struggling with the other guard behind me.
My tumbling charge had taken us near the pile of rubble at the end of the room. In desperation, I let go with my right arm and flung it out, scrabbling on the ground for a loose stone. One was too heavy, another little more than a pebble. Meanwhile, my one-handed grasp was not enough to hold the Turk. He heaved up and rolled me over, just as my free hand closed around a fist-sized stone. I barely felt the weight; I lifted it, and swung it against the side of the guard’s head with every ounce of strength I could muster. It struck him on the temple and I felt his skull shudder; I struck him again, and this time the stone came away stained with blood. Perhaps the sight should have sickened me, but instead it gave a deeper, savage power to my blows as I struck him again and again, until at last he went limp and fell away.
I stood, trembling, and let the stone drop to the floor – suddenly, it felt like the foulest object imaginable. I looked around. Bilal was standing, wiping his sword on a crumpled object by his feet, the unmoving body of the second guard. The boy, no longer in danger, had crawled away and was struggling into his tunic. Bilal stroked his head and murmured a few gentle words, then turned to me.
‘I followed them when I saw them come after the boy,’ he said. ‘I did not know you were in here too.’
‘I heard the boy’s cry and came to look.’
Bilal crossed to my side and stared down at the guard, though I could hardly bear to look at the matted stew of hair, blood and bone I had pounded out of his skull.
‘Is he dead?’ I asked.
Bilal gave no answer. Instead, he turned his back on me and knelt beside the wounded guard. He lifted the man’s bloody head and cradled it on his knee, staring down into the slack face. He shook his head, then reached across and stroked his hand gently across the man’s neck. It was only as he suddenly leapt back, and as blood and air began bubbling out of a broad cut he had left, that I saw the gleam of a small knife in Bilal’s hand.
‘You – you killed him.’
‘Only to finish what you had begun.’ Bilal removed his cloak and his outer tunic, folded them, and placed them in one of the stone niches in the wall.
‘But what he did is a crime – surely, even here? Better that he should have been punished in public.’
Bilal glanced at me with contempt. ‘Do you think we are barbarians? Of course it is a crime. But it is more . . . complicated.’ He turned away and crouched by the fallen masonry. ‘Help me.’
The air in that deep chamber had become a heady potion of smoke and oil, blood and dust. Together, Bilal and I pulled away some of the stones, laid the two corpses by the foot of the wall, and heaped the rubble back over them. There was not nearly enough to hide them.
‘If they are found, it will look as if they were killed in a rock fall,’ said Bilal.
‘It must have been sharp rocks, to stab one and slit the other’s throat.’
Bilal grunted. ‘The desert is full of scavengers. In two days, all trace of their wounds will have vanished with their flesh.’
‘And their companions, the rest of the guards? What will you tell them?’
‘That the two men deserted.’
Slowly, my wits began to return. ‘But they were criminals. They would have raped the boy and murdered me – and you, when you found us. Why should we have to hide them?’
Bilal was hastily pulling on his tunic. ‘Do you remember Fustat? The ruined city you saw from the boat?’
‘You said it was destroyed in a civil war.’
Bilal wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and clasped it at the neck. ‘That was a war between the black legions and the Turkish legions in the caliph’s army. It raged for years and desolated the country. Eventually the vizier, al-Afdal’s father, stopped it by bringing in his Armenian troops who hated Turks and Africans equally. But the wounds are not forgotten. That is why no one must know that a black man has killed two Turkish guards.’
He spun around and advanced on me. ‘I know it is probably to your emperor’s benefit if we tear ourselves apart, but you must swear not to tell what has happened here. If you had not followed them . . .’
‘Then the boy would have been raped in secret, and no one would have known or cared. Is that what you would have preferred?’
Bilal had come very close to me, blocking the light of the fading lamp. Once again, he looked as he had first appeared in that chamber, a featureless void in the shape of a man. I shivered. Then he smiled, his white teeth breaking the darkness, and touched my arm.
‘I am glad you did what you did.’
‘And I am sorry for what came of it. I will keep it a secret, you have my word.’
‘Then we should leave this evil place.’
Dusk was falling by the time we arrived at the palace. A damask haze hung over the low water, while the sky flushed pink over the western desert. Even so, the royal wharf thrived with activity. A fleet of long ships, easily large enough to navigate the sea, had arrived – so many of them that they had to moor three abreast. Their sailors were still coiling ropes and furling sails, while on shore a great throng of soldiers milled about. There was no sign of the litters that had carried us to and from the palace, and little chance that they could have forged a way through the crowd in any event.
‘We will have to walk,’ said Bilal. ‘It is not far.’
We could not even dock, but had to tie up alongside one of the outermost ships and clamber from deck to deck until at last we reached the wharf. Instantly, we were plunged into the bustle and jostle of soldiers, bewildering after the emptiness of the desert. A babble of voices filled the air – and it seemed to me that the language they spoke was not Arabic but something else, something I had heard before among Pakrad’s men in the monastery at Ravendan. Our guards made a tight circle around us, while Bilal approached one of the soldiers and questioned him. The man answered so volubly that Bilal had to wave him to be quiet, indicating Nikephoros and me with a cautionary glance. The soldier giggled and put a calloused finger to his lips, then wheeled away to join the throng of his fellow soldiers.
‘What was that?’
I suspected I was not supposed to know, and that Bilal would either ignore me or pretend not to have heard. Instead, after a moment’s pause to frown in thought, he looked me in the eye.
‘It is the vizier, al-Afdal, He has returned.’
ιβ
The following evening we had our first glimpse of the man who held sway over the caliph. We were invited to a banquet – to celebrate his latest triumph, said the courtier who brought the summons, though when I asked where the victory had been won he retreated from the room. Meanwhile, I had other concerns: I had not seen Bilal since we returned to the palace, and I feared lest he had suffered some punishment or revenge for what had happened in the pyramid. I tried to ask our guards, but they spoke no Greek and could not answer.
The sun was setting when we left our apartments, though we could not see it for the high walls that surrounded the courtyard. I had spent most of the day beside the window, watching the comings and goings and looking in vain for Bilal. Even if I had not known that the vizier had returned, I would have recognised that something
had changed, for there was a new sense of urgency and activity in the palace. Now it had subsided, and the loudest sounds in the courtyard were the muted splashing of the fountains and the slap of our footsteps.
The quiet receded as we climbed a broad flight of stairs. I could hear a babble of voices, and the fragile melodies of flutes and a lyre in the background. The noise grew as we came out onto an open balcony: it was surrounded on three sides by wooden screens in the shape of foliage, while the fourth side offered an unbroken view across the river and the plain beyond, all the way to the high peaks of the pyramids several miles distant. I shivered to see them, and turned away to take the cup of sherbet a slave was presenting to me. I was half a pace behind Nikephoros, as befitted my station, and could ignore the functionary who was busy greeting him in a flurry of solicitudes and bows. The dying sun washed Nikephoros’ face; with his head held proud and stiff, he looked like some haughty, golden statue. I could not see his eyes, but the tight curve at the edge of his mouth suggested he was in his element, basking in the mastic of protocol and courtesy.
It was a scheme where I had little part to play, save to stand behind Nikephoros and make him seem taller by lengthening his shadow. Ignoring the functionaries, I skimmed my gaze across the terrace, searching for the vizier. There must have been well over a hundred courtiers in attendance, some with faces as dark as Bilal’s, others as fair as Sigurd, all dressed in long robes trimmed with gold and embroidered with the sharp-edged letters of their scripture. I could not see the vizier – but at the balcony’s edge I saw four men clustered together, watching the gathering with wary concentration. They stood a little apart from the main assembly, sipping nervously from their silver cups, lumpen and awkward amid the fluid ease of the other guests. They were Franks.
I slipped away from behind Nikephoros and made my way towards them. I lost sight of them in the bustle; by the time I emerged, they had noticed my approach. They turned to face me, squaring their shoulders and watching me cautiously as if I posed some unknown danger.
‘You’re far from home.’ I spoke in the bastardised Frankish that had become the Army of God’s common tongue. At the sound of it, nervous glances flashed between the Franks.
‘Further than you.’ It was the nearest Frank who answered, a strongly built man with russet-brown hair and a face that, while smooth-skinned, appeared neither youthful nor handsome. Perhaps it was because of his eyes, which seemed somehow too large for his face; they drilled into me with such fierce and unhidden suspicion that I was almost embarrassed to look at them.
‘Further than me,’ I agreed. ‘I am Demetrios Askiates, from Constantinople.’
‘A Greek – but you have marched with the Army of God?’
‘All the way to Antioch.’
The intensity in his eyes seemed to focus still sharper. ‘You came from Antioch? What is the news there? We heard that God had given us a great victory over the Turks, but that was months ago. What has happened since?’
‘Little except plague and delay.’ I spoke shortly; Antioch reminded me of too many things I could not bear to think of. ‘But why are you at the caliph’s palace? How long have you been here?’
‘Almost six months.’ He laughed bitterly as he saw my shock. ‘You will soon discover that the Fatimids do not hurry their guests. We were sent here by the princes to make an alliance against the Turks, but so far . . .’ He held open his empty palms. ‘Nothing. We have been feasted and entertained, we have marvelled at the caliph’s new city and the pagan marvels of the ancients . . . Have you seen the pyramids?’
He pointed back over my shoulder, though I did not look. ‘I have seen them. Have you met with the vizier, al-Afdal?’
‘Many times. He speaks constantly, sees everything and says nothing. He is the arch-deceiver.’
It seemed a dangerous thing to say at the vizier’s own gathering, and I glanced around nervously. To my alarm, I saw a Fatimid courtier striding towards us, with Nikephoros close behind him. Although the two men could hardly have been more different, the disapproving scowls on their faces were almost identical.
‘Demetrios.’ Nikephoros twitched his head to order me back to my allotted orbit behind him. ‘The chamberlain was about to present us – but it seems you could not wait.’
I swallowed my pride and stepped back into Nikephoros’ shadow, shaking my head in wonder. Yesterday I had shattered a man’s head with a rock; today I was rebuked for anticipating an introduction. As for Nikephoros, he might stand in front of a burning house and his only concern would be to ensure that the inhabitants escaped in order of rank.
The Fatimid chamberlain had begun to make the appropriate introductions – flattering Nikephoros by presenting him first. Then he turned to the Franks.
‘Achard of Tournai.’ He bowed to the man I had spoken with earlier. ‘He has been our guest some months now.’ He introduced the other three, though I promptly forgot their names. None of them even pretended enthusiasm at meeting us.
‘Why does the Greek king need his own envoys here?’ Achard’s staring eyes were trained full on Nikephoros, who stiffened as I translated for him.
‘The Greek emperor sends his envoys where he chooses. Perhaps together we can succeed where alone we may have failed.’
‘When you have been here six months you can judge who has failed,’ Achard muttered in Frankish. I did not translate it.
‘All that matters is that we reach Jerusalem and that we take it from the Turks.’
‘On that we can all agree,’ said the Fatimid chamber- lain piously. There was something knowing in his eyes, an amusement that I could not understand, though perhaps it was just the studied artifice of a courtier.
Before I could ponder it further, a train of slaves with long tapers appeared at the head of the stairs, and the crowd began to drift down to the banquet.
I did see the mysterious and all-powerful al-Afdal that evening, though only from the distant corner of the banqueting hall where I ate. I suppose, having heard his reputation, I had expected a lean-faced schemer with a predatory hunch and hawkish eyes; instead, he seemed a jovial figure who filled out his robes, lounged easily on his seat and laughed often. He speaks constantly and says nothing, I remembered with a cold chill. The hope I had felt the day before, that al-Afdal’s arrival would hasten my return to Sigurd and Anna, had all but died when I heard Achard’s story. Though I could not deny a small spark of optimism when I learned, next morning, that al-Afdal would receive our embassy.
‘This time, you will do well to keep your eyes lowered, your mouth shut, and your feet planted one pace behind and to the left of my own,’ said Nikephoros, as a slave combed and oiled his hair. ‘The caliph’s palace is not a fairground – you cannot wander about it entertaining yourself as you please.’
I said nothing, but sullenly rinsed my hands in a bowl of rosewater. Nikephoros sighed.
‘I know you have followed paths where aggression is prized. But now you are in a different world, where humility and obedience are the chief virtues.’
‘I didn’t know I had joined a monastery again,’ I said sulkily.
Nikephoros gave a short laugh. ‘You saw how long those clumsy Franks have waited here. Do you want to waste as many months fretting away your life?’
I shook my head.
‘The Franks were fools to send their embassy when they did, when their army was mired in a fruitless siege and faced every prospect of destruction. Of course al-Afdal would not accept their alliance in those circumstances. Now that the Franks have proved their worth at Antioch, our proposal is more compelling.’
‘Do we speak for the Army of God?’
‘We speak for the emperor, and the Franks are his tool. Though it would be easier if their own emissaries were not here.’
‘Strange that we have not seen them before.’
Nikephoros snorted. ‘Do you think it was a coincidence that we met them last night? Al-Afdal permitted it because it suits his purposes. There was no chance in
that meeting. Now that we are aware of each other’s presence, al-Afdal will seek to divide us, and profit by our suspicions. That is why we must finish our business as quickly as possible – if al-Afdal allows it.’
Footsteps in the hall outside announced the arrival of our escort to the audience. Bilal’s face appeared around the door; he gave me a sad, private frown, then bowed to Nikephoros, who was straightening the hem of his sleeves and did not notice.
‘The vizier al-Afdal begs you to attend him at his home.’
Whatever schemes he might entertain, al-Afdal had no need of the petty delays that the caliph had inflicted on us before our first audience. The litter-bearers carried us through bustling, unseen streets and set us down in a small courtyard hung with silk awnings to keep off the sun. Four fountains rose in the corners, and ran through green-tiled channels to a shallow pool in its centre. On the far side of the pool, reclining on cushions on a low marble dais, sat al-Afdal, and although he sat in the shade, the golden threads in his ivory robe still caught the sun like ripples on water. The sight was so unexpected and peaceful – a man enjoying the comforts of his garden on a hot day – that for a moment I completely forgot his power. Then I saw Nikephoros stoop to one knee in front of me, and hastily followed suit. Nikephoros did not offer the full proskynesis, I saw – that was reserved for true kings – but he held his bow several beats longer than was necessary.
Slaves brought honeyed wine and almond cakes, and al-Afdal’s chamberlain motioned us to sit. Al-Afdal did not say a word, but smiled kindly at us as he waited for the attendants to finish. I took the opportunity to study him: as I had seen the night before, he had the rounded figure of a man who enjoyed his pleasures unabashedly – though he would still sit easily enough on a warhorse, I guessed. His black beard was streaked with grey; the creases at the corners of his eyes gave him a benign, avuncular air, but the eyes themselves were as dark and impenetrable as onyx. When he lifted the cup at his side, I saw a fresh scar livid on the back of his hand, and I wondered again about the victory he had celebrated the night before.
