The Last Emir

by The Last Emir (retail) (epub)

  ‘Here. This where stone from.’

  The two locals gestured around them, and then threaded their way back past Arnau and Balthesar until they reached the edge of their compressed undergrowth, where they stopped, turned, and began to watch the two travelling monks with interest. Arnau felt rather odd under their scrutinising gaze, but Balthesar was ignoring them and had already begun to search, using hands and feet to comb the greenery, bending almost double.

  Arnau, not entirely sure what he was looking for, joined in. He kept finding lumps of stone, though whether or not they were parts of an ancient sanctuary or just some random lump like all the others in these mountains, he simply could not tell. He could hear excitable noises from Balthesar as he searched, but no distinct indication of discovery.

  He was about to give up entirely when his foot tripped over a stone and, as he glanced down in irritation, he noticed something odd jutting from the ground, jammed between half-submerged rocks. Crouching down with a creased brow, he peered closer at it. Misshapen and covered in muck, it was hard to tell what it was, but there was a hint of the human form about it. His frown deepened and he felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck. He couldn’t see what it was made of or make out its true shape. It would be very hard to tell unless it was removed from where it was half buried between rocks and then cleaned, but for a heart-stopping moment, Arnau thought it might just be a statue of the Virgin herself. It definitely wasn’t remains, or a casket containing them, but it could be something important. Something connected.

  He rose to his feet, ready to call to Balthesar and point it out, but as he did the old knight leaped up excitedly and called him over. With a last, fascinated look at the buried object, Arnau hurried over to Balthesar.

  The older knight had cleared a small area of long grass and weeds. What he had uncovered was a corner of a wall, or at least the lowest courses of it. It was, at best, unimpressive, but Balthesar seemed to be treating it as though he’d had a visitation from the saint himself.

  ‘A wall,’ Arnau commented.

  ‘Two walls, complete with a corner.’

  The young sergeant frowned. ‘It could be anything. Could be something only fifty years old. Could be an old animal shed or something.’

  ‘Use your eyes, Vallbona. This is the sanctuary, for sure. Father Lucas was here, I know it.’

  Arnau chewed his lip sceptically. ‘It’s just a corner of stones. How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Evidence. Not faith this time, Vallbona, but logic once again. See the stones? These are shaped and worked in a very old manner. You can see each and every chisel mark, just like that lintel in the old man’s house. That stone came from here. It is the same work. This was the sanctuary of Saint Stephen. And looking at the rough workmanship, I believe the occupant, which can only have been Father Lucas, built it with his own hands over some time, or at least began to build it.’

  Arnau tried not to get too excited. It all still seemed just a little far-fetched, but he remembered that buried lump that might just have been a statue of the Virgin, although more likely a piece of old refuse. He felt his pulse quicken. If was a lot to assume, but even though it seemed fanciful, it was still most definitely possible. This could have been a hermitage built by the fleeing priest with his precious cargo. But if so, why did he stop here instead of going on to the fortress of Alaró, and what happened after he stopped?

  He voiced those two very questions as he crouched and peered at the shaped stones.

  Balthesar tapped the side of his nose. ‘I think I know. See here?’ He showed him where one stretch of wall ended in a distinct squared-off shape. ‘This was for a door. There is no stone beneath it, but this can only be the opening for the door. And yet the doorway has only one side. Where is the other?’

  ‘Probably in the old man’s fireplace,’ Arnau suggested.

  Balthesar nodded and crouched. ‘There is that possibility, I admit, but I do not think so. If you look at this other wall, you can see where our friend over there’s ancestor, and the other villagers, took apart the stones to add to their own houses. They took very basic ones to use, and yet left the shaped door frame. If they left this side, why would they take the other?’

  ‘Because they only needed one?’

  Balthesar cast an exasperated look at him. ‘Prosaic and possible, but your explanation gives us nothing to go on. If this is simply a ruin plundered for local houses and I am wrong, then our trail of breadcrumbs ends here. If so, Father Lucas probably grew old and died in this place, and the fate of the arm of Saint Stephen will forever remain a mystery.’

  Arnau’s eyes narrowed. ‘So what is your theory then, Brother?’

  ‘I think that side of the door is not there because it was never built. I think the hermitage is incomplete. I think our friend Father Lucas created an altar for the relic, the focus of which is now that lintel back in the village, and I think he was interrupted before the hermitage could be finished.’

  ‘Interrupted?’ frowned Arnau. ‘By who?’

  Balthesar shrugged. ‘The most likely explanation is that he stopped here, and soon afterwards the invaders found him. You see,’ he said, straightening, ‘following their initial conquest of the islands, the Moors will have taken some time to fully subjugate the place. I know of old tales that fortresses like Alaró, and a similar place once called the sanctuary, held out against the invaders for months. Years, even. But as the Moors subjugated the Christian populace, they likely dismantled churches and sanctuaries, or converted the better ones to mosques as they did elsewhere. I have seen the results of their handiwork in the ruins of ancient basilicas elsewhere on the island.’

  He pointed down at the stones below him. ‘This is an unfinished hermitage because while Father Lucas was building it – perhaps thinking that this remote location was the safest place, or perhaps upon hearing something of the fate of Alaró – the Moors came for him. Whether they were actively hunting the man who had fled Mahón with a relic, or whether perhaps they were simple marauding invaders who stumbled across him, the result I think would be the same.’

  ‘And that would be?’

  ‘He was likely killed out of hand, his unfinished hermitage abandoned, and anything of value taken away. We heard back in Mahón that the relic was kept in a silver case. Likely, being a reliquary, it would be an ornate one. And Father Lucas having built an altar for it, it would be easy enough for the invaders to find. I am in no doubt that the Moors came here, dealt with the priest and took away the arm of Saint Stephen.’

  Arnau stepped back and folded his arms. ‘If I accept your idea – and I have to admit, though it sounds a little implausible to me, there is no reason to deny that it could have happened – then where did the Moors take the relic afterwards? Soldiers like precious metals, Balthesar. They’re often base creatures. They could have taken it themselves, tipped the bone out onto the ground and melted down the box to pay for their next whore.’

  Balthesar snorted. ‘While that is possible, I do not believe it to be so. Remember that the invaders were new to these lands and full of the faith that drove them to conquer. They were pious zealots, even the general soldiery, and this was a Christian reliquary. I think it would have been too important for them to see it as mere silver. Whether it was something to be respected or something to be reviled, I do not think it would be simply destroyed or cast aside. No, it will have been taken from here and probably to a superior, who would have passed it on to his own master, and so forth until it eventually reached the hands of the ruler, who by that time would have made his court in Madina Mayūrqa. Whether immediately or by a circuitous route, I now believe the relic will have gone to Madina.’

  Arnau tried to remember the map he’d studied. ‘Madina is at the other end of the island, yes? On the south-west coast?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And it’s the capital of the island?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘So you’re saying that our next crumb on this increas
ingly vague trail is in the island’s capital city.’

  Balthesar smiled, took two steps forward and gave Arnau a slap on the back. ‘Quite right. Madina Mayūrqa is where the relic will have gone, and therefore it is where we shall follow. We are going into the viper’s nest, Vallbona. Into the emir’s city.’

  Arnau closed his eyes and breathed deeply, keeping his calm. The very idea seemed insane, and yet Balthesar’s logic, while the evidence was interpretable in more than one way, lacked holes. It was a leap of faith, and a leap potentially into the fire, but the old knight had been vindicated time and again. If a leap of faith was required then perhaps it was time Arnau exhibited that very faith Balthesar kept urging him to have. He sighed and straightened.

  ‘All right, how far is Madina?’

  ‘Via these roads?’ Balthesar replied. ‘Four or five days.’

  ‘Very well,’ Arnau said, ‘but I cannot go on as I am without even a smattering of Arabic, and I’m sick of playing the mute. I’ve learned a few small things from listening to you, but I need to know more. I need to know the basics before we go into Madina, because that cannot be a place to wander blindly.’

  Balthesar nodded. ‘Agreed. I shall teach you all I can in the time we have. It will make the miles pass easier.’

  As the old man smiled and turned away, heading over to the two locals to tell them what he had found, Arnau stood and stretched. Into the very home of the emir, the heart of Moorish power on the island. A dangerous proposition, he was sure, made more so by the locals’ assertion that attitudes seemed to be changing.

  Ah well. Madina Mayūrqa awaited.

  Chapter Seven

  Tuesday, 8 June 1199

  7.30 a.m.

  Madina Mayūrqa was impressive. The road that had led the two travellers down from the mountains, then through lower hills, and finally into flat, cultivated lands full of villages reached the capital city at a powerful gate in the high walls. The ramparts stretched from here both to the east and the south, tall, pointed battlements atop them, while the gate itself consisted of a high pointed arch within another even higher one, the stonework decorative and picked out in designs in two colours, all flanked by massive, heavy towers. Artistic in design, but also very, very strong.

  Arnau’s first thought was that the Almohad caliphate would be utterly insane to even attempt to take Madina Mayūrqa from its emir. Beside the gate, the river flowed into the city, thundering through low arches too small and close to the water’s surface to allow access for a boat. There were two men on guard at the gate in elaborate uniforms with very fine mail and decorative helmets, their pikes tall and gleaming.

  The two travellers had been on the road for two hours since they had broken camp on a small hill overlooking the plain and the distant city, and now the heat of the day was beginning to assert itself. They had dismounted as they closed on the walls and walked the horses. The road was not theirs alone, and Arnau had settled sensibly, if unhappily, into the role of mute once more. Balthesar had assured him there would be Christians in Madina, and they were permitted to live and worship there, but the visitors could still draw interest and probably suspicion, so they would be best served, in the old knight’s opinion, by continuing to masquerade as poor Moorish nobodies until they were surer of the situation. Thus with all the other people and traffic on the road heading in and out of the city, silence would be the order of the day.

  For the last few hundred yards to the gate, with the river rushing alongside them, they moved at snail’s pace as the guards funnelled the mass of people in through the archway, occasionally pulling someone aside and checking them over or asking questions. The majority, though, were just herded through as speedily as possible.

  Arnau ran mentally through the various phrases he had learned from the old knight in the past few days. He had practised them over and over again until they sank in, or at least until he hoped they had. Arabic was, he realised, a very difficult language to study, for it shared almost nothing in common with his own, and was utterly alien even in its sounds, while the writing would clearly forever remain a mystery. Still he had picked up some basics, and Balthesar was shrewd in selecting what he believed would be the most important phrases for Arnau to know.

  Finally, in the wake of a merchant who smelled of spices and sweat and some farm animal’s manure, they reached the gate. Balthesar touched his forehead and greeted the guards with the traditional phrase, which Arnau now knew to mean ‘Peace be with you,’ and the guards replied in kind, giving the old man and the shabby youth with him only the briefest of glances before waving them through. As they passed beneath that high dark arch, Arnau breathed out slowly. He’d not realised he’d been holding his breath until he felt the freedom to exhale.

  Inside, Madina Mayūrqa was not what he’d expected at all. He’d anticipated passing through the gates into winding narrow streets and a packed urban mass. What actually greeted his eyes was something wholly different. The river continued on within the city walls, carving its path into the centre, but to either side of it lay open cultivated fields and orchards, all well irrigated with channels that led off from the main river. It was something of a gardener’s paradise. He could see small areas of housing and structures in places here and there among the gardens and fields, like independent villages within the massive loop of the city walls.

  The road they took forked inside the gate, one path crossing the river on a wide bridge, the other marching off to the left, where he could see that it entered a more built-up region and turned, making for the south where the main heart of the city lay on the hill at the very centre of the fortifications. He was twitching to ask Balthesar about the place, but remained safely silent instead, watching everything, taking everything in. It was a fabulous bit of civic planning in military terms. If Madina was besieged, it could hold out more or less forever. The river supplied ample water, and there was clearly farmed land inside the walls to feed a multitude.

  After a short distance, they reached a crossroads where the urban area truly began, a small outlying bathhouse sitting directly opposite a mosque, both flanked by crowded housing. To the left a lesser gate in the walls lurked some distance away, a cemetery beside it, but Balthesar took them right, away from the walls. Close to the corner the older knight motioned for Arnau to pass over the reins of his horse, and when the young sergeant did so the old man delivered the mounts into a place that had both the smell and sounds of a stable, and returned without them, shouldering his pack and passing the other to Arnau. Now without their horses in tow, they walked on.

  Though the two men were now taking the direct route into the city’s centre, the bulk of the inbound traffic had instead gone straight ahead at the crossroads, to where a large market was in full swing. Leaving the majority of the visiting traffic, Arnau and Balthesar continued along the street, which climbed a gradual incline, the river occasionally visible through side roads off to the right. They passed another mosque, this one larger and more impressive, and continued to climb. Finally, they seemed to reach the densely populated built-up centre of the city, the streets becoming something of a tangle, and then, to Arnau’s surprise, they emerged into another area of open gardens hundreds of yards across, with another mosque slap-bang in the centre. On the far side was a huge market square that was currently unoccupied by stalls and yet still seemed to swarm with people. Arnau peered about, fascinated. Far away to the left, along a long, wide street, he could see a huge, powerful gatehouse, marking the entrance to some separate fortress or compound. Ahead the urban mass closed in once more, the slope rising to the cliff above the sea.

  Balthesar led them to the right and Arnau followed dutifully, still silent. He was busy paying attention to the side streets when voices suddenly attracted his attention. His head snapped round in surprise to see an important-looking man in rich red and white clothes, accompanied by a small group of the emir’s soldiers and a number of clerks and servants, apparently giving an audience to several Jews. As he liste
ned and observed, he definitely heard Hebrew, and now noticed the traditional beards and pointed hats among the plaintiffs. Another group who looked like ordinary non-Jewish citizens were also arguing with the official in Arabic. One of the lackeys was continually translating the words of the Jews to his master and sporadically the well-dressed man would give an answer, or a judgement, or whatever it was.

  Arnau tore his eyes from the scene as they rounded another corner and instead settled them on the sight at the end of the next road. He could see another battlemented wall, though this one was considerably more decorative and elegant than the city walls or those of the other fortress he had seen earlier. As they closed on this place, Arnau’s gaze eating it all up, they emerged into another wide space of well-tended gardens that pleased the eye. Off to the right he noted that the street descended the hill rather steeply and he could see the glittering water of the river over there, the city extending beyond it on the other bank.

  But it was the place in front of them that really drew the eye. The fortified walls were high but spoke of beauty and style as much as defence. He could see the roofs of buildings behind them, and they too were clearly of a far superior quality to the bulk of the city on this side of the wall. A small, almost unobtrusive gate pierced that wall on the left-hand side, and beside the great complex there stood a mosque of a style and size that surpassed any such building Arnau had ever seen.

  Balthesar was gesturing now, pointing to someplace in a line of shops facing the great walled compound on the far side of the gardens. Arnau followed him stoically, and was relieved and pleased as they crossed to the buildings that the indicated place appeared to be some kind of inn, with tables both inside in the shade and outside in the sun. As they neared the place, Balthesar selected one of the tables in the searing hot sun, and dropped his pack next to the table. He pointed at the seat and then walked off inside.