Holy War

by Hight, Jack

  ‘You have chosen wisely,’ he told the emir, then raised his voice. ‘There shall be a feast today to celebrate my return to Aleppo after so many years. You are all invited.’ Yusuf strode past them and entered the place, Saqr, Ubadah and his sons at his heels.

  Ubadah was scowling. ‘The taxes, Uncle – we could have used that money in our campaign against Mosul.’

  Yusuf looked to his three sons. ‘Al-Afdal, tell Imad ad-Din why I did it.’

  The boy’s forehead creased in concentration. ‘It was the righteous thing to do,’ he said at last. His brother Al-Aziz nodded in agreement.

  ‘It was righteous, yes, but that is not why I did it. Az-Zahir? Can you enlighten your brothers?’

  ‘It was necessary,’ the skinny boy said quietly. ‘By removing taxes, you will win the people to your side. The emirs who still oppose you will find they have no support.’

  Yusuf nodded in satisfaction. ‘You are wise beyond your years, my son. When I leave Aleppo, you shall have the rule of it.’

  Yusuf took a bite of roast lamb spiced with coriander and closed his eyes to savour the rich taste. The tender lamb melted in his mouth. He made a mental note to find the cook responsible for the dish and to take him when he left Aleppo. Despite the delicious food, though, his celebratory feast was a sombre affair. Yusuf had taken careful note of the dozen emirs of Aleppo who had not come. It was an act of rebellion. They were no doubt fleeing for Mosul even now. Their lands would be forfeit, and their lives, if Yusuf captured them. Salamat and the other Aleppan emirs knew as much. They had lost their city and now their friends, and that had cast a cloud over the feast.

  Yusuf turned to Salamat, who had been given the seat of honour to his right. If he could win this man’s loyalty, then Yusuf was sure the other emirs would fall in line. ‘The last time I dined in this hall, it was in the presence of Nur ad-Din. He gave me my first lands: Tell Bashir.’

  ‘I know it, Malik.’

  ‘Nur ad-Din was a great man. He united Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul against the Franks, but he died before he could strike the finishing blow. I will complete his work. Once Mosul has joined me, I will turn on Jerusalem. When that day comes, I hope you will ride with me.’

  The other conversations had ceased and all eyes were on Salamat. He nodded. ‘I have always dreamed of seeing the Noble City.’

  ‘And you shall, inshallah.’ Yusuf noticed that Imad ad-Din had entered the hall with a letter in his hand. His secretary would not disturb him were it not important. ‘Excuse me,’ Yusuf told Salamat. ‘I will return shortly.’

  He joined Imad ad-Din in a side room off the hall. ‘A letter from your brother Selim,’ the secretary told him. ‘The Lord of Kerak, the one called the Wolf, has raided the Hijaz.’

  Reynald. He was an old enemy. Yusuf knew him to be an oath-breaker and unspeakably cruel, but to raid the Hijaz – the stretch along the east coast of the Red Sea that included the holy cities of Mecca and Medina – was brazen, even by Reynald’s standards.

  Yusuf took the letter and scanned the contents. Reynald’s men had built boats that they disassembled and carried across the desert to the Red Sea, where they reassembled them. They had burned the ports that served Medina and sacked the Nubian port of Ajidib, across the sea from Mecca. Yusuf flipped another page. Selim had sent a fleet to deal with them. They had met the Frankish ships off Al-Hawra and destroyed them. The captives had been sent to Cairo. Reynald had escaped and returned to Kerak.

  Yusuf crumpled the paper in his fist. His authority rested on his claim to defend Islam against the infidels. That was his justification for unifying Syria, for moving against Aleppo and Mosul. He could not let Reynald’s raid go unpunished; to do so would make him look weak in the eyes of the Caliph and his people. ‘Send word to my brother in Cairo that the captured Franks are to be beheaded. Send four of them to Mecca to be killed at the Place of Sacrifice during the next hajj. Their deaths will be a lesson to the Franks and a message to the faithful that I will protect our holy sites. As for the Wolf, it is time he be brought to bay. Mosul can wait. As soon as Aleppo is secure, we march for the Kingdom.’

  Chapter 4

  September 1183: Jerusalem

  ‘Come, Reynald. Let us finish this.’ John dropped into a crouch and raised his imaginary sword. He skipped back a few steps and his back came up against the wall of the cell. John brought his sword up to parry, then spun away from another blow. He knocked aside a thrust and sprang forward to counter, lunging at the shadows on the wall before giving ground. He parried a dozen imagined blows. He could almost see Reynald grinning fiercely as he hacked down again and again. John’s back pressed up against the wall, and he lashed out before again spinning away. He slipped on some straw and stumbled, but it was only a feint. He sidestepped a clumsy blow and finished Reynald with a slashing blow to the neck. In his mind’s eye, he watched Reynald grasp his throat, the red blood welling up between his thick fingers. Then he fell to the ground, dead.

  John’s chest was heaving. He wiped the sweat from his brow and sank down on his straw mattress. He was weaker than he would have liked. He got up again and began to pace his cell. Five paces. Turn. Five paces. Turn. Five paces. Turn. He did the circuit one hundred times after both his morning and evening meal. He would add another session in the afternoon, and another session of practice swordplay. If he was ever freed from this dungeon, he would be ready to make his enemies pay.

  He had been in prison for something like eight months. It was hard to be exact when there was no sunlight, and the torches in the hallway outside his cell burned night and day. Only the food, which came twice a day, let him know when one day ended and the next began. Sometimes, though, he lost track of which meal was breakfast and which supper. After William’s visit, the food had improved, but it was always the same: a thick slice of black bread and a cup of thin vegetable broth. On good days, there would be a small piece of onion or carrot in the broth. Between meals, when not exercising, John thought of those who had put him in his cell – of Heraclius, Guy and Sibylla. He thought of Baldwin, of Yusuf, of his son Ubadah and of Zimat. He thought again of Reynald and rubbed the scar on his forearm.

  John finished pacing and lay down. He could hear the distant drip of water. Until recently, he would have also heard the Weeper, as John had dubbed the man in the cell across from him. He had cried quietly for hours on end. Sometimes, he had sobbed loudly and banged on his door. Until the day the gaoler came to his cell. John had not thought it possible for anyone to scream so loud. After that, John had not heard from the Weeper again. One-Eye was gone, too. He had not lasted long after the gaoler put his eye out.

  Scratchy occupied the cell to John’s left. Each night – or what he thought was night – John heard a faint scratching sound coming from his cell. He had thought the man might be trying to communicate. He had found a small pebble and scratched on the wall of his own cell. The sound from Scratchy had ceased at once and not returned until the following night. John had not tried again. If the man was trying to tunnel out through the thick walls, then he was mad, and John would not waste his time on a madman. It was hard enough keeping himself sane.

  John called his neighbour to the right le Père. Every time food was brought, the man asked after the health of his son. Other than that, he made no sound. John kept his silence, too. He had asked after Baldwin for the first few weeks, but had received nothing more than sullen grunts and the occasional cuff to the head.

  John heard the creak of rusty hinges as the door to the dungeon swung open. It was too early to be supper. It must be a visitor, or a new prisoner. John went to the grille in his cell door. He heard voices. He could not make out what they were saying, but one of them sounded like a woman. A visitor, then. John peered through the metal grate. Any change in the monotony of his days was welcome. He heard footsteps approaching along the hall. When he saw the gaoler, he stepped back. John knew better than to peer through the grate at him. That was how One-Eye had lost his eye. The gaoler had
put a dagger in it.

  The footsteps stopped before John’s cell. He heard the gaoler fumble with his keys, and a moment later the door creaked open. The gaoler stepped aside to reveal Agnes. She was dressed in robes of buttery silk and had a fur around her neck. She winced when she saw John.

  ‘Leave us,’ she told the gaoler.

  ‘Wha—’ John croaked, his voice rusty after weeks of disuse. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I am freeing you. Come with me.’

  John did not move. ‘Why now? It has been months.’

  ‘The regent Guy forbid me to come. He had me watched. I dared not even visit so long as he was in the city.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘La Sephorie. He has called on the barons to join him there. Reynald attacked the ports of Medina and Mecca, breaking the treaty with Saladin. The Saracens are invading, John. The Kingdom is going to war.’

  ‘I understand. You made Reynald a great lord, and now that he has damned us all, you have come to ask for my sword.’ John went and sat on his mattress. ‘You will not have it.’

  Agnes stepped into the cell. ‘I have made mistakes, John. I will not deny it. But now I am trying to set things right.’

  ‘You are wasting your breath, Agnes. I will not fight for Guy.’

  ‘I am not asking you to. I want you to fight for Baldwin.’

  John’s head jerked up. ‘He lives?’

  ‘I will take you to him.’ As Agnes was leaving the cell, she paused and looked back. John still had not moved. ‘You can stay here if you wish, John, but I will not come again.’

  This time, John followed. Agnes led him out of the dungeon and up a pair of staircases. The second opened into a hallway filled with sunshine spilling in through arched windows. John blinked in the bright light. He went to stand at a window, closed his eyes and let the sunshine spill over him.

  ‘John,’ Agnes called. ‘Are you coming?’

  She led him up another, broader staircase to her private quarters. A table had been set with food: roast lamb in a thick gravy, fresh bread and wine. John’s mouth began to water.

  ‘Eat,’ Agnes told him.

  ‘The King—’

  ‘Eat first.’ Agnes’s tone brooked no debate.

  Food had never tasted so good. Agnes watched him from beside a door on the far side of the room. She wrinkled her nose. ‘You look horrible, John. And you smell like a latrine.’

  ‘They do not offer baths in the dungeons.’

  ‘No. I suppose not.’

  John finished the roast and sopped up the last of the gravy with the bread. He drained the cup of wine and stood, a little unsteadily. The alcohol had gone straight to his head. ‘Take me to Baldwin.’

  Agnes produced a key and unlocked the door she stood next to. John followed her into a waiting room, where a guard stood. Agnes nodded to him, and the guard pulled another door open. She gestured for John to go first. The room he entered was dim. Heavy curtains had been hung over the windows. On the far side of the room, he made out a large bed. He crossed the room. Baldwin lay beneath thick covers. The king’s face was skeletal, his cheeks sunken and his skin impossibly pale. His breathing was shallow.

  ‘He has been this way for months,’ Agnes said. ‘It is all the doctors can do to keep him fed. He wakes sometimes, but he speaks no sense and soon relapses.’ She crossed the room and took a cloth from a bowl of water at the bedside. She carefully wrung the cloth so that water dripped into the king’s mouth. ‘Heraclius has helped Sibylla draw up a letter of abdication. They will sign it for him, and then Sibylla will make her husband Guy king.’ She met John’s eyes. ‘We must stop them.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that? Guy and Heraclius are your creatures.’

  Her mouth tightened. ‘Baldwin is my son, John. I had no part in these plots. With my brother’s help, I have taken control of the citadel and placed Sibylla in my custody. I can prevent the letter of abdication from being signed, but only until Guy returns. That is why I need you.’

  ‘And what would you have me do? I have been stripped of my position in the church. I am nothing.’

  ‘No longer. The abbot of Mount Sion has died. I have arranged for you to replace him.’

  ‘Under whose authority?’

  ‘The King’s.’ She took a scroll from the sleeve of her robe and handed it to John. He unrolled it and squinted to read in the darkness. It requested that John be made abbot of the abbey of Our Lady of Mount Sion in return for a gift of five thousand gold bezants. At the bottom, it bore Baldwin’s seal. ‘I, too, can forge documents,’ Agnes said. ‘The monastery has one hundred and fifty sergeants at its command. Take them to La Sephorie.’

  John shook his head. ‘I have no wish to return to my cell. Guy will have me cast in irons the moment he sees me.’

  ‘I think not. When you arrive, seek out Raymond, the Count of Tripoli. He will support you. And you will have your men. Guy needs every sword he can get, even yours. He will grant you your freedom, if only so long as Saladin’s men threaten the

  Kingdom.’

  ‘So I go to La Sephorie. What then?’

  ‘You must see to it that Guy does not return.’

  John met her emerald green eyes. They had no warmth in them. ‘I am not you, Agnes. I am no murderer.’

  ‘I am not asking, John. You can help me, or you can return to your cell.’

  ‘I thought you knew me better than that.’ John headed for the door.

  ‘I know you love my son! I have kept Baldwin safe until now, but once Guy is king, I will not be able to protect him. How long do you think he will live then?’

  John paused in the doorway and looked to Baldwin. He had known the young man since he was a child. He had tutored him and taught him to fight. The king was more of a son to him than Ubadah. ‘This Guy, does he truly deserve to die?’

  ‘Does Baldwin?’

  ‘Very well; I will do it.’

  October 1183: La Sephorie

  John rode hunched forward in the saddle. His exercises in prison had not prepared him for the weight of his mail hauberk or for days spent on horseback. He felt as if a dagger had been plunged into the small of his back. He would have liked to call a halt, but La Sephorie was not far off .

  He and his men had left Mount Sion three days ago. The abbey was located just outside the wall of Jerusalem, and when John first arrived after meeting with Agnes, the brothers had received him with indignation. A stranger, straight from the palace dungeons, would not rule over them; it was an outrage! In the end, the gold had won them over. John had been elected abbot the next day. His first act had been to call the sergeants who owed service to the abbey. They had set out the next morning, riding up the west bank of the Jordan. The previous night they had reached Beisan. Both the fortress and the town huddled at its base had been sacked and burned. He and his men had passed an anxious night amongst the blackened stones of the castle. Today, John rode with his hand on his mace.

  A breeze stirred his hair, and John’s nose wrinkled. He could smell the stench of unwashed men, horses and full latrines. The camp was close. He spurred ahead, leaving behind the sergeants, who marched on foot. He rode to the top of a low hill, and there was the camp. Dozens of large barracks tents and hundreds of smaller ones sat on a broad plain amidst fields of golden wheat and groves of olive and pomegranate trees. At the centre of the camp, two dozen homes of stone and mud were huddled at the base of a hill topped by a squat square keep with one tower. Above the keep flew the flag of Jerusalem, and beside it, Guy’s flag – two silver crosses on fields of azure, quartered with red lions rampant on silver and blue. John scanned the camp until he spotted Raymond’s standard flying over his tent. He turned and signalled for the captain of his men to join him.

  John had first met Aestan years ago, shortly after the Englishman had arrived in the Holy Land to seek his fortune as a soldier. Aestan’s dark hair had now gone white, and his once fair skin was tanned and wrinkled like worn leather. But his green
eyes still twinkled when he laughed, and he was still well muscled and flat-bellied. John had been delighted to find him serving amongst the sergeants of Mount Sion.

  ‘Domne,’ Aestan greeted John, using the Saxon for lord.

  ‘I must speak to Raymond. Find a place for the men to camp. Keep well away from Reynald’s men.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me. I served under the bastard before the Saracens captured him.’

  John dismounted and handed the reins to Aestan. ‘See to my horse.’

  Guards had been posted at the edge of the camp, but they were chatting as they leaned on their spears and hardly spared John a glance. He wove between tents, passing sergeants in boiled leather and knights in mail, blond Franks and Syrian Christians with the same olive skin and dark hair as the Saracens. He reached Raymond’s tent, which was topped by a flag bearing the outline of a gold cross on a field of scarlet. Two men in mail stood guard at the tent flap.

  ‘I must speak with your lord,’ John told them.

  ‘Raymond is at council in the keep.’ The guard nodded towards the hill, which began only a dozen paces away.

  ‘My thanks.’

  John examined the keep as he climbed the hill. The walls were uneven, incorporating stones in a variety of shapes and sizes, some decorated with inscriptions in Latin or carvings of animals. They had no doubt been taken from the ancient Roman town that had once stood on the site. On the upper floor there were a few windows, each too narrow for a man to crawl through. The single tower stood at the north-west corner of the keep. A privy extended from the tower, a tall pile of shit buzzing with flies on the ground beneath.

  The door to the keep was guarded by a dozen men. Their captain, a handsome man with only one hand, stepped forward to confront John. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To the council meeting.’

  The captain’s eyebrows rose. ‘You a lord?’

  John could understand the man’s doubts. He was thin and ghostly pale – no man’s idea of a great lord. He gestured to the gold cross with split ends that adorned his surcoat. ‘I am the Abbot of Mount Sion. I bring one hundred and fifty men.’