‘You wish to marry me?’
‘Yes. I would never have dared ask you before now. You are a princess. I am a recently ennobled baron of notably low effect. Our stations in life are absurdly different. But no child of mine will be born without a name. If you don’t agree to marry me, I will kidnap you against your will, like one of the Sabine women, and forcibly wed you.’
The princess laughed out loud. A broad, infectious laugh that seemed to echo from some exalted place deep within her. ‘I believe I should like to be kidnapped, Hartelius. You have your princess’s express permission so to do.’
SIXTEEN
The captain of the nef ran his hand down his beard in the way a man might caress the flanks of a horse he has acquired for well below the asking price. His eyes twinkled with the knowledge that the conversation he was about to have might prove significantly to his advantage.
He had seen the two lovebirds together – how could he not? He had heard the gossip about them from his crew and from amongst the princess’s paid attendants. And he had heard that gossip confirmed by the cabin boy, who had been surprisingly easy to persuade once the mate had threatened to accidentally smash his fingers with a belaying pin.
There were ways in which he envied Hartelius, of course. What man would not like to spend a month aboard a vessel in the Mediterranean fucking someone else’s eighteen-year-old intended bride? But the consequences were vertiginous. No woman on earth was worth what von Drachenhertz would do to Hartelius once he got hold of him.
Despite all this, the captain weighed his words with care. It wouldn’t do to spook the golden goat. Or to alienate him utterly.
‘Landing you at Tortosa is an impossibility, Commander. The harbour is restricted. And three years ago I fell foul of a merchant there – a merchant with the power to make my life a misery if I ever again ventured into his waters. No. I shall take you on to Acre as I was commissioned to do. I am sure our war leader will reward me well when I hand the princess over to him as arranged.’
‘And what if we were to take over your ship, Captain? I have thirteen knights at my command. You could not resist us. You could then claim that we forced you to comply with our wishes.’
The captain threw his head back and laughed. ‘That would be one answer. It might exonerate me. Possibly. But it probably wouldn’t. Von Drachenhertz will imagine you bribed me, and that I wanted to disguise it by affecting to be taken prisoner. No. He would hang, draw and quarter me, along with my entire crew, when he got hold of us. As he inevitably would. So it is unlikely that you and your men would be able to prevail upon us to sail this ship for you. And such a ship is no easy vessel to sail. You would likely dash yourselves on the Margat rocks if you tried to put into Tortosa. And how, pray, would you navigate? You would probably end up missing Tortosa entirely and beaching us back on Cyprus, where Guy de Lusignan’s brother, Amalric, a close ally of the margrave as you may remember, would no doubt take keen pleasure in throwing you into his deepest dungeon, and then entertaining your mistress upstairs while you rot. After all, who can tell if a once-ridden mare has been mounted twice?’
Hartelius reined in his anger. He needed this man. Needed him on his side. And to hell with his insults. ‘So what do you suggest? You are clearly a realist. I will not belittle your intelligence by implying that you do not understand the position the princess and I find ourselves in.’
The captain grinned. ‘No. I understand it very well. You are between a meltemi wind and a lee shore. It must be excruciating to be in your position. I would not want it for the world.’
‘I asked you for your suggestions. Not for your opinions.’
The captain clapped his hands lightly together and smiled. ‘My suggestion would be that you compensate me royally for the loss of my ship, and that we scupper her in a bay I know just south of Beirut, from where your horses can easily swim ashore.’
Hartelius shook his head. ‘Could you not contrive to put both them and us ashore without the necessity of sacrificing your ship and making us damnably wet in the process?’
The captain shrugged. ‘Unfortunately not. The ship must seem to founder naturally. And I must seem to be ruined. Only then will von Drachenhertz believe that I was not instrumental in depriving him of his princess’s cunny. It is a tricky time of year. The weather is changing on this coast. And I have always wanted a twin-sailed ship with a central rudder.’
Hartelius closed his eyes. He had never come nearer in his life to hacking a man to death with no warning and with no possibility of mercy. ‘How much?’
‘Five thousand gold bezants.’
‘That is grotesque.’
‘So is your tupping of von Drachenhertz’s ewe. A man must pay for his pleasures in this world. That is my final price.’
Hartelius turned his back on the captain. It was either that or skewer him to his own mast with a marlinspike. ‘I will give you your answer tomorrow. Will that suffice?’
‘Well enough. I will try to rein in my excitement in the interim.’
SEVENTEEN
‘Five thousand bezants is an outrage,’ said the princess. ‘The man is mad. One could purchase a city state for less. What does he want to buy with it? A fleet?’
Hartelius laughed. ‘Never fear, my love. He will take less. Far less.’
‘How can you know that?’
Hartelius gave a shrug. ‘Because I have decided to call his bluff. I have instructed my knights to take over his ship tonight, under cover of darkness. When we have the ship secured I shall offer him fifty gold bezants, which is ample reward for what we need him to do. Which is not to scuttle his vessel, but rather to set us ashore, dry, and with all our goods and horses intact, somewhere north of Tripoli, so that we can make for Tortosa unannounced. After that he can do whatever he wants. Go wherever he wishes. If I were him I would convert to Islam and join the Abbasids. They always need ships. At least he would keep his head that way. For if von Drachenhertz ever gets hold of him, it will end up on a spike on the Acre waterfront.’
The princess shook her head in wonder. ‘You really are a warrior knight, aren’t you? People always underestimate you, don’t they? You have such a quiet, calm exterior. But underneath it all you are a killer. I remember you running at those three banditti in the Alps. Sometimes, because you are so gentle with me, I am apt to forget the scars you carry about your person, and that I caress with my fingertips every day and every night.’
Hartelius searched the princess’s face with his eyes. Was she faltering? Was she regretting their attachment? When he realized that she was not criticizing him but complimenting him, he inclined his head. ‘War has been my profession since the age of fifteen. I pretend to nothing else. The time to be gentle is in the bedroom. Only a fool placates his enemies in the field.’
‘I am glad I am not your enemy then.’
Hartelius smiled. ‘No. Not my enemy. My only friend.’
That night Hartelius’s thirteen remaining knights took over the ship with no loss of life – not even a single injury amongst the crew. Later, Hartelius decided that the captain must have realized this was what he would do, and briefed his men not to resist. That the man’s insane request for five thousand bezants had merely represented an amused acknowledgement of their relative positions, and had never been meant to be taken seriously.
‘Fifty gold bezants are better than nothing,’ said Hartelius, when the ship was secured.
‘Indeed they are,’ said the captain. ‘And more than I had hoped for. I shall use them to have a false head made out of copper to replace the one von Drachenhertz will no doubt deprive me of the moment he sees me.’
‘If you are ever foolish enough to pass near Acre.’
‘There is that. But I comfort myself with the thought that he will be so busy pursuing you and the princess that he will have no time left to expend on me.’
The offloading went well. Thanks to the shallow draft of the nef, the ship was able to beach itself relatively close to the sh
ore. With the aid of ropes and planks and rafts and rattan mats, all thirty horses were debarked without incident, as were the princess’s accoutrements and her two marriage chests. They had been forced to leave her carriage back in Venice through lack of space, but she had been a horsewoman since the age of five, and she found no difficulty in adapting her clothing so that she could sit astride one of Hartelius’s spare mounts. She was so early on in her pregnancy that Hartelius decided that no evil could come of it.
Once on shore, he explained to the remainder of the princess’s followers something of the quandary they found themselves in. Namely, that from henceforth he would be a marked man, but that he would nonetheless allow them free choice in whether to follow him and his knights northwards, towards Nicaea, the Latin Empire and possible freedom, or to turn south towards Beirut and Acre and whatever that might entail.
All chose to turn south, bar the princess’s remaining handmaiden. Hartelius was hardly surprised at the mass exodus. No servant in their right mind would attach themselves to a patron who would very soon be the subject of a royal death warrant both in Outremer and upon the European mainland.
‘And why are you, too, not going south?’ he asked the girl. ‘And please forbear to tell me that you have made your decision out of loyalty to the princess. Because I will not believe you.’
The girl looked down at her feet.
‘Is one of my knights your lover?’
She said nothing.
‘Ah. So you fear that if the other knights find out, they will turn on him, because he has broken his vow of chastity?’
The girl nodded.
‘Then when the princess’s tent is set up, secretly point your lover out to me and I will instruct him to be her personal guard. This way you can both meet without causing suspicion. Will that be satisfactory to you? I am doing this not out of the goodness of my heart, you understand, but because the princess will have need of female help at some point in the future, and I might find it hard to recruit a suitable candidate en route to wherever we finally go.’
The girl pressed his hand to her cheek.
‘Good. That is settled then.’
Hartelius watched the nef’s crew levering their ship back off the strand. Now that the dead weight of the knights, their armour and their horses were discounted, together with the princess’s fickle followers and their accoutrements, the ship rode much higher in the water. The captain soon managed to put back to sea, thanks to the adaptability of his single lateen sail. As the nef pulled away, the man raised an ironical fist towards Hartelius from his roost near the stern, and drew one finger slowly across his throat.
Hartelius waited until the ship was out of sight. Would the captain betray them? Would he put into the next suitable port and send word to von Drachenhertz that Hartelius and the princess were heading for Tortosa? Of course he would.
Hartelius abandoned his Tortosa plan without further ado. He would head instead for the Crac de l’Ospital, a Knights Hospitaller stronghold high in the Syrian mountains behind Tripoli. The Hospitallers, he knew, were in open dispute with the Templars, but it was nonetheless likely that, as an expedient nod to the chivalrous behaviour both societies nominally adhered to, they would allow him to borrow against his Templar letters of credit just so long as he accorded them a suitable profit margin.
For Hartelius knew from bitter experience during the Third Crusade, that the quickest way to lose knights – even nominally committed ones – was to fail to feed, fund and re-equip them when they felt it was their due.
EIGHTEEN
Their first few days on the road were largely uneventful. Hartelius and the princess rode side by side, with the Templar knights spread out behind them, each man leading two laden horses, flank against flank, so that he might rid himself quickly of them in an emergency. Two free-riding knights acted as guides ahead of the column, and two fulfilled a similar function in the rear. The weather, too, seemed with them, with a late summer lingering well on into October.
‘Why do we need scouts? This is Christian territory, is it not?’ said the princess.
‘Nothing is Christian territory out here, bar our fortresses. The Turks range wherever they want, and harry our forces whenever they can.’
‘But the peace Treaty?’
Hartelius let out a snort. ‘Not worth the paper it is scribbled on. Each side will break it if and when they see fit. That is the way of things.’
The princess looked at him intently. ‘But we will be safe at the Crac de l’Ospital?’
Hartelius was only too well aware that the princess, given her condition, craved certainty, but he could not possibly provide it for her. She had abandoned everything to be with him, while he had abandoned nothing. His four children would be secured for life with their mother’s dowry, and they would be kept safe by their grandfather, Hugo von Kronach, a man who bowed to no one and acknowledged no other master than himself in his own bailiwick – not even the Holy Roman Emperor. The residue of Hartelius’s life meant nothing to him. Only the princess counted any more.
‘We will be safe for a short time, yes. But von Drachenhertz will send after us the moment he hears we have absconded. The Crac de l’Ospital is one of the first places his men will make for. So we will be in the unfortunate position of having von Drachenhertz behind us, the Turks to one side, and the Assassins ahead.’
‘What do you mean? What assassins?’
‘Oh. Nothing. They are nothing to worry about.’
‘I recognize that look, Hartelius. You are hiding something from me.’
Hartelius made a silent vow that the next time he spoke to the princess about their situation, he would keep the visor on his war helmet firmly shut. ‘The Assassins are Ismailis. Sunni haters. They live in the Jebel al-Sariya, where we are heading. In the castle of Masyaf. The word “assassin” comes from Hashshashin, which refers to the fact that the leaders of the Assassins use the drug hashish to turn their people into mindless feddayin.’
‘What are feddayin?’
‘Self-sacrificers. Prepared to martyr themselves for their chief, Rashid al-Din Sinan, the Sheikh al-Jebel, otherwise known as the Old Man of the Mountains. He may be dead now for all I know, but his followers are not. They pay us an annual tribute of two thousand bezants to leave them alone, and we are happy to do so, as their enemies are our enemies. But they are unpredictable. It is impossible to tell what would happen if we ran into them. For they have been told that if they die whilst following the orders of their Imam, they will go directly to Jannah, which is the Mohammedan version of Paradise, where doe-eyed houri maidens await them in a land of milk and honey.’
‘Hmm. You are a man, are you not? So tell me. How is it possible to convince men of the existence of such a Paradise as you describe? They can’t be such fools as all that. No woman would dream of believing such nonsense.’
Hartelius knew precisely where the princess was heading with her questioning. She took keen delight in enmeshing him in convoluted discussions relating to the differences between the sexes, for she knew full well that he still – in a carry-over from his time as a Knight Templar – found certain subjects difficult to broach. Thanks to her innate capacity for mischief, though, he was fast learning to be less dogmatic.
He manufactured a manly scowl for her benefit. ‘Far easier, in many ways, than to convince them of Heaven and Hell. The hashish drug is so powerful that men will do anything once they are under its spell. Even mindlessly kill. Our people have even used the Assassins for their own ends on occasion. Their imams regularly demonstrate their power over their followers by ordering them to jump to their death over precipices or from castle walls. The feddayin seem happy to do so, as they know what awaits them.’
‘The houris?’
Hartelius rolled his eyes. ‘Indeed. Please believe me when I tell you that houris do not defecate, menstruate or urinate; nor do they have nasal secretions. They are hairless, apart from on their heads and eyebrows, and they have large breasts whic
h are round, and swelling, and pointed, and which do not hang down or sag. Their short pregnancies last only an hour. Their gaze is modest and they are entirely chaste, apart from with the worthy recipient of their largesse. Their bones are transparent and they are eternally young. They also smell like musk.’
‘Perfection then.’
‘Yes. I am thinking of becoming an Assassin.’
‘I wish you joy of it. Although I, too, would like a pregnancy that lasted only an hour. Maybe I should become a houri?’
‘You would have to be sixty cubits tall, though.’
‘What? How high is that?’
‘Around ninety feet.’
‘Then how could you reach me to make love to me?’
Hartelius slapped the pommel of his saddle in delight. What had he done to deserve such a woman? No one else spoke to him like this. His beautiful wife, Adelaïde, had been modesty and decorousness incarnate, and he had respected that, whilst occasionally yearning for a fraction more passion in their conjugal relations.
Thanks to the Templar vows imposed on him by his late father when he was barely fifteen years old, Elfriede was only the second woman he had ever made love to. She might have been born a princess, but she spoke like a fishwife when it suited her, and behaved like a tavern wench in the privacy of their chamber. She was utter perfection.
‘That is a question I am unable to answer. Perhaps I shall not become an Assassin after all.’
The Templar Inheritance Page 9