The call outside had ended, and there was an odd silence. For a moment Arnau frowned, then realised that the majority of those in the courtyard would have made for the nearest mosque. Would Yusuf have done so? Perhaps he had simply paused to pray where he was as many did when they were not at liberty to attend a mosque. Arnau sighed. He would return to the table in the courtyard and eat and drink with Tristán until Yusuf returned.
Grumbling, he rose and turned, heading for the door. Pulling it open, he blinked in the intrusive light. As his sight resolved, his eyes widened. Outside the door, they were in a slight alcove formed by a small mercantile booth on one side and a horse stall on the other. In the partial seclusion of that alcove, the tableau that greeted him bludgeoned his senses. Calderon lay in a heap on the ground, Tristán crouched over him, holding his dagger reversed in his hand, the pommel gleaming with blood.
‘What have you done?’ breathed Arnau quietly.
‘What we came to do,’ the squire hissed back in Aragonese, but in quiet tones. ‘We came to find Calderon. You asked him to come with us. He refused.’
‘So you hit him?’
Tristán scowled at him. ‘Brother, he is one of them now. He was never going to come willingly.’
‘So you thought we’d kidnap him?’ Arnau snapped, his voice worryingly high.
‘If you want him to come home, we’re going to have to take him by force. If not, then the poor bastard should be put out of his – and our – misery now, before we have to face him on the battlefield.’
Arnau simply stared. God’s bones, but he should have left the squire in Toledo. He stared at the heap on the floor. What in the name of all the saints was he going to do now? A panic-inducing thought struck him, and he leaned out of the alcove into the courtyard. The threescore people who had occupied the place had mercifully gone at the call to prayer, only five figures remaining, four in their own alcoves maintaining their stalls while they knelt on small rugs, facing the east, and prayed. The only man paying any attention was the ebony-skinned man with a large curved sword standing near the exit, watching over the caravanserai during this time of prayer, but though his gaze played over the courtyard, he was paying no specific attention to this direction. At least Tristán had been swift enough and quiet enough to overcome Calderon in the privacy of the alcove without being seen or heard.
Arnau glared at him. ‘We’re going to have to get him out of here somehow, but not until Yusuf returns and we know where to go. God’s blood, what a mess. Take him into the room, lay him out on the bed, and wait there until I come in. I’m going to stay here and keep an eye out for our friend.’
With his continued sour look, the squire pushed the room’s door open and dragged the limp form of Calderon inside, shutting it behind him. Arnau stood in the privacy of the alcove and scratched his head. What in the name of God was he going to do? If Calderon awoke, he would be furious and would almost certainly cry out for the Almohad guards, so he clearly had to be kept subdued now. And he couldn’t stay here. But they could hardly take him to local lodgings either. Lord, but even getting him out of the city would be troublesome. What an utter disaster.
He was on the very verge of simply leaving the former knight in the room, grabbing Tristán and Yusuf and racing north to safety, but something stopped him. Calderon was not himself, no matter how much he might protest. The knights of Calatrava Arnau had met in Toledo had said that Calderon was a ‘true warrior of God… to the point of madness, even. More zealous than any Almohad.’ Somehow that had been turned on him, flipped like the coin of the man’s own analogy. If that could be done, then surely somehow it could be undone.
He would find a way to return Calderon’s wits and save him, from the Almohads and from himself.
Another memory drifted uncomfortably into his mind. Ramon, on that last afternoon in Rourell.
‘I live in hope that one day he will decide not to throw himself into peril with just clean underwear and a stupid grin.’
Damn it.
8. Best Laid Plans
1 July 1212, Cordoba
Arnau watched the door close, the problem temporarily contained and hidden, and lurked in the shelter of the alcove for a moment. All good Moors, of which he was currently ostensibly one, were at prayer. To appear in the courtyard mid-prayer would be to draw extra unwanted attention, and so he waited and listened. The sound of several stall owners praying in their own alcoves wafted on the breeze, and so he listened and waited until he heard the prayers wind up and the others begin to move.
Emerging from his alcove as though from a prayer session of his own, he strolled to one of the stalls and purchased a small pastry and a glass of mint tea, taking them to the central table, where he sat and slowly consumed them, waiting for Yusuf. The tension increased as the minutes passed. If Yusuf had been true to his faith and devoted, then he would have paused for prayer too, which could be the undoing of them all given how they were now pressed for time. They had to somehow get Calderon out, and shortly the place would begin to fill once more, making that less and less likely.
He chewed his lip and fretted as the occupants of the basic caravanserai, which was not equipped with its own mosque, began to drift back in under the watchful eye of the ebony guard. He had finished the pastry and was nursing the last mouthful of tea when finally their friend put in an appearance, strolling through the gate as though nothing was amiss. Arnau reminded himself that as far as Yusuf was concerned, nothing was amiss. God’s blood, what a mess. He forced a blank expression onto his face and greeted Yusuf as he walked across to the table, throwing down the last mouthful of his drink.
‘I have secured us somewhere,’ Yusuf said. ‘No funduq is available, so it is not the sort of thing I was looking for, but my old friend…’
‘We have a problem,’ Arnau interrupted. ‘Come with me.’
With the Moor following, he crossed to the alcove and the door of their room, opening it cautiously, wary of what he might find on the other side after the last time he’d left the squire alone with Calderon. Thankfully the former knight of Calatrava still lay upon the bed, out cold, while Tristán sat nearby on the chair with his dagger in his hand, tapping the pommel against his palm.
Yusuf’s eyes widened and he made a gagging sound as Arnau clicked the door closed behind him and motioned him to keep his voice low. They were indoors, but anyone outside could still listen in if they had a mind to.
‘What happened?’ Yusuf whispered in Arabic. Tristán threw him a suspicious look, but Arnau waved him down.
‘As you can see, we found Calderon.’
‘So I see.’
‘It seems that far from being a prisoner of the Almohad in need of rescue, the very reason he could send such a letter and secure the services of Amal was because he has taken Allah and renounced Christ. He thinks like an Almohad himself now.’ He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. He is not blind and vicious like them, but still he has no intention of returning with us. Tristán took it upon himself to deal with it the only way he could see and walloped him on the head as he left. Now we’re in trouble, I fear. If Calderon awakes he will be furious, and now that the prayers have ended and the courtyard is filling up again, I cannot see a way to get him out of this place. And even if we do, none of the lodgings you could find would be safe to take him to and getting him out of the city seems impossible. I am at a loss.’
Yusuf nodded at each of these facts, his eyes still wide with shock. ‘It is a true problem.’ He peered at the figure on the bed. ‘Ah yes, Brother Calderon.’ He leaned back. ‘Let us look at the problem one step at a time. Getting him out of here is the prime concern. We can hardly carry him through the crowded courtyard and past the guard. The only time the courtyard will empty during the day is during the prayer times, but even then some will stay, and we cannot move through the courtyard then anyway, for we too should be at prayer. Thus we cannot move him during the day.’
‘At night?’
The Moor huffed.
‘Did you pay for this room?’
Arnau shook his head. ‘Calderon was already here. He must have paid for it.’
‘Then we can probably use it for the day. We need to stay here until dark, for certain. Once the sun sets, the call will go out for the maghrib prayer. The courtyard will clear, and that is our time. Once the majority have left, we slip out then. There is no guarantee that it will work, but it will be our best chance.’
‘We’ll have to work out how to get him past the guard,’ Arnau mused. ‘The crowds may have cleared and the streets filled with folk heading to prayer, but the guard here will still be watchful.’
‘Yes. That will still need to be worked out. Then comes our second gamble. I could not find a funduq for us. It seems that a large number of military and nobles are drifting east from the capital, as we had seen on the road, and they are filling all temporary accommodation in the city. In the end I spoke to my old friend, who still mercifully has most of my books. He has agreed to let us stay in his home for a day or two. He is a good man, and no hater of Christians. He risks a great deal by allowing us to stay with him, and I shall owe him a debt, but if we turn up with an unconscious prisoner, I am not sure how we will be received.’
Arnau winced. ‘Tristán is of the opinion we should just leave him and go.’
‘That would perhaps be the wise course of action, but would it be the right one?’
‘No. Something has been done to him. He said they made him confront his fears. He found your god in the horror. This to me does not sound like persuasion or acceptance, but that somehow he was forced into it, damaged somehow. I cannot leave him like that.’
‘Then we must get him out of the caravanserai and to my friend’s house, hope that he will still take us in, and then consider the next step. We cannot simply carry the unconscious man out of the city gate.’
‘No. Somehow I need to undo what has been done to him.’ He turned to Tristán and switched to Aragonese, keeping his voice suitably low. ‘We keep him here until dark and move him at the time of the sunset prayer to a house Yusuf knows. In the meantime, if he wakes…’ Arnau paused. He wasn’t really sure what they could do other than repeat all of this. He sighed. ‘If he wakes, hit him again before he can shout, but try not to break his skull.’
The squire nodded, still tapping his dagger hilt, eyes on Calderon. Yusuf took a steadying breath. ‘I will bring you food and drink,’ he said to Tristán, ‘and then Vallbona and I shall return to the courtyard and keep watch on things.’
Yusuf procured nourishment for the squire and brought it in for him, Tristán gratefully removing the helmet and tucking in ravenously. Leaving him to it, Arnau and the Moor found a table with a view of both the caravanserai gate and their own door, and sat there, drinking cups of mint tea sporadically. After a while, Arnau rose with a full bladder. With some trepidation he made his way across to the latrine which lay on the western edge of the caravanserai. His knowledge of their latrine etiquette was minimal, and so he had held his straining bladder for some time, watching as other men came and went. He noted with interest that they seemed to shuffle as they reached the threshold, changing their step so that their left foot entered first.
Following suit, he waited until the place seemed empty and then crossed and entered the latrine in the same manner. This was a simple affair, but with a constant supply of water running along a stone channel on one wall. With no one else present, he heaved a sigh of relief, urinated in the trough of slowly running water and quickly washed his hands in the channel, ignoring the strange lump of misshapen waxy stuff covered in fingerprints.
Returning to the table, he discovered that Yusuf had acquired a game board and pieces from somewhere. Chess, which the Moors called shatranj, was a familiar game. He had played Balthesar at it from time to time, and was grateful for a way to pass the time other than sitting in silence.
For several hours the two men played games, exchanging banal small talk, listening to the interesting, if unimportant, titbits they could glean from others in the courtyard, and waiting for time to pass. As he listened, several threads of news became common, from more than one source in the courtyard, and a particular one began to insist itself upon him as potentially useful. He made a mental note of it just as he lost his fourth game. Sometime in the mid to late afternoon, Arnau broke off and returned to their room with another pastry and drink for Tristán.
‘Have you had to hit him again?’
The squire shrugged. ‘No sign of waking yet.’
‘God above, but how hard did you hit him?’
‘Hard enough to prevent him hitting back,’ said Tristán.
Arnau returned to the courtyard and went back to chess, small talk and thinking about the solutions to their predicament. By the time the sun began to slide out of sight and Yusuf won the last game and packed away the board and pieces, Arnau had come up with the beginnings of rudimentary plans. As the light faded, they returned to the privacy of the room, where the bored squire confirmed that Calderon still had not woken from his stupor. Arnau began to worry that Tristán had done permanent damage to the man and that all their efforts were being bent to carrying nothing more than a breathing corpse from this place, but there was little they could do about it now.
In whispered tones, he explained his plan to the others, in the Aragonese tongue for clarity. Both men nodded. The best way for a man to become effectively invisible was for others not to want to see them, and that became the crux of Arnau’s plan. They waited, Tristán replacing his helmet and visor and preparing to move, and listened as the call to prayer began once more. Slowly, the noise from the courtyard ebbed and, at a nod from Arnau, Yusuf opened the door and stepped out into the evening. Arnau and Tristán followed slowly, the latter half-dragging, half-carrying the unconscious Calderon.
They paused in the alcove and listened as Yusuf, his voice muffled from the scarf he had wrapped around his lower face, crossed the empty courtyard and warned the ebony-skinned guard at the gate to follow suit in covering up. The four of them had come, the Moor advised the guard, from the southern port of Mālaqah, and their friend seemed to have brought illness with him. They needed to find a physician, so were leaving the caravanserai.
Arnau heard the startled worry in the reply from the guard, and could imagine him hurriedly wrapping a cloth around his mouth and nose and stepping back. Half a dozen voices in the courtyard that afternoon had muttered about an outbreak of some virulent fever in the south they believed to have been brought across from Africa by the newly-arrived forces of the caliph. Arnau had guessed that word of the outbreak would have spread and that people would be nervous about any sign of illness.
Taking a breath, Arnau pulled up his own scarf and took the other side of Calderon, grasping him beneath the shoulder and lifting. Between the two of them, they half-walked the unconscious man across the now-empty courtyard to where Yusuf had already untied their horses, and then followed him out of the caravanserai gate past the glaring figure of the guard, who held one hand filled with linen to his face, warding off the fever, his other hand gripping his flat-palm amulet, protecting him from ill luck.
Arnau held his breath nervously for some time until they were out in the street, and then finally almost exploded with relief. Turning into a narrow side alley, they struggled to lift Calderon onto a horse and secured him to it with the reins around his wrist. He lolled around in the saddle like a man half-asleep.
Safely out of sight of the caravanserai, Yusuf led them around the back alleys of the city. Here there was no sign of activity, for at this time of the evening the populace would uniformly be at prayer either in their own home or in the mosque.
‘Do you not need to pray?’ Arnau asked the Moor, realising he had not settled down in prayer himself since the previous evening, while they had still been safely distant from the city.
‘Allah is merciful. I shall pray twice as hard next time to catch up,’ smiled Yusuf, nervously.
Off to the right,
along side streets, Arnau caught occasional glimpses of an immense and ornate structure larger than any cathedral he’d ever seen, and larger even than many castles. Tearing his gaze from it, he paid more attention to where they were going. This seemed to be the ancient part of the city, for ruins that had been incorporated into recent buildings appeared to be of the same ancient origin as those with which he was familiar in Tarragona, going back to the days of Rome.
After some twenty minutes of walking the horses through back streets, they approached what appeared to be a city gate. Arnau felt his nerves tighten and threw a worried look at Yusuf, who just gave him an encouraging nod. They closed on the gate which appeared to be considerably older than the one through which they had entered Cordoba. Indeed, the city’s houses seemed to have been built right up against these ancient walls, and the gate stood wide open and apparently unguarded. As they passed beneath the venerable arch and out into yet more city, Arnau looked back along the walls to either side and realised just how old they were. Clearly the city had long since outgrown these defences, and the district into which they now passed had a much more Moorish feel. Wider streets and more attention to aesthetics had been part of this region’s creation.
‘This is Al-Sarquiyya,’ Yusuf said. ‘You have left the ancient medina and entered the Qurṭuba of the caliphs. My home.’
The prayer had clearly ended now, for Arnau could hear the general hum of the city growing once more as life returned to its streets. With increased tension, knowing that the danger of an uncomfortable encounter was now growing by the moment, Arnau and Tristán followed Yusuf through street after street until they finally halted in front of one of the buildings that looked very much like all the others they had passed. A tall, golden-brown structure with several windows, each formed of three delicate horseshoe arches, the entrance appeared to be a single archway that led to a short corridor and then into a courtyard. Double doors secured the entrance, though one currently stood open.
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