The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  As soon as our prisoner’s eyes fluttered open, John spoke to him in what I assumed was Turkish, a fluid, lovely language full of ‘olou’ and ‘argai’ and ‘ay’.

  It took two cups of water and some time, but our prisoner began to talk, at first single words, and then whole sentences.

  ‘He think we invade, thousand men,’ John said. ‘I not tell him.’

  Slowly, John discovered as much as the hermit already knew – that they were Turks from the north, and that they were testing to see if the Mamluks would react. And gathering some loot. And, of course, visiting Jerusalem, the third most holy city in Islam.

  I laughed bitterly. ‘Looting, murdering, and visiting their holy sites.’

  The hermit just looked at me.

  In the morning, having slept well and eaten, I reached into my purse to pay the holy man. He shook his head.

  ‘I feed any traveller who finds me,’ he said. ‘If they climb this high, why then, Deus vult, God wills it so.’

  My hand closed on the lump of lapis I had purchased in Jaffa. I withdrew it, and my host’s eyes widened like a child presented with a toy. ‘Likewise,’ I said. ‘I found this in a market, and bought it with no idea in my head but a love of the colour. God wills it so.’

  The old man accepted my gift right willingly, and when I asked his blessing, he gave it to all three of us.

  Our Turk was looking better. He was a handsome man, much given to sneers, and with the richest, blackest beard I think I’ve ever seen. As we rode away, he said something aside to John. John nodded and looked at me.

  ‘He says, a true holy one’s blessings are good whatever his faith.’ The Turk nodded and rubbed his head. His wrists were bound.

  John nodded back where the hermit was kneeling, already grinding my lapis for his colour pots. ‘I think so too,’ he added.

  I smiled at the prisoner. ‘Tell him I agree,’ I said.

  Daylight made navigation much easier, and the hills seemed smaller and less fearsome, although the maze of little valleys was confusing enough. But the rising sun gave us east, and the hermit had given some directions with his blessings – very clear directions, may I add. So we crested two ridges, passed a tall standing stone, and had a glimpse of what had to be the earthly Jerusalem on the high ridge to the east and south. Then we descended a short gully, and emerged from a narrow defile to find horse tracks, which we followed. It was almost impossible to pick out a single horse, the tracks were so dense.

  We followed them down a valley beneath a village with walls on a height, and I began to think that Jerusalem should become visible again soon. Twice we saw people in the distance, on foot, and both times they vanished. The sun began to climb in the sky, and our Turk made a comment to John. John frowned and looked at me.

  ‘He asks, what is our intention with him?’

  I shrugged and offered him a drink from my canteen. ‘I’ll exchange him for one of ours,’ I said. ‘Or just let him go back to his uncle.’

  John said something, and the Turk laughed. And gave a great shout.

  I drew my sword, and John had his bow up. But we were a little late, as there were thirty Turks around us in a few seconds, galloping out of the rocks, or so it seemed. They had arrows on their bows, and they closed very quickly indeed.

  There is a moment in these situations where you can die. Or kill, and then die. I had my sword at the Turk’s head, and his reins in my hand. John dismounted at the first sign of ambush and was behind his horse, an arrow on his bow.

  Our Turk spoke up.

  ‘He say, “My brothers might try to kill you with arrows, just to show they can”, and he say too, “And maybe not care if they hit me, bastards.”’ John sounded almost completely calm. ‘So he say.’

  They were in behind me already; they could shoot me in the back with little danger to the Turk, although really, my good brigantine might give me time to kill the prisoner. But on balance, there were thirty or forty of them and two of us, and no force on earth was going to save us.

  I sheathed my sword. I did it with a little flourish, without looking, to show I was not afraid. Well, of course I was afraid. But I got my blade put away, and my Turk began to talk to his friends even as John followed my lead and dropped his bow back in the quiver.

  After some jostling, our Turk separated from us and rode away into the throng, and was embraced by a big, heavyset man with wide-set, intelligent eyes and a henna-dyed beard in bright scarlet. His kaftan was as red as his beard, and his sword hilt was gold. His horse was a milk-white Arab with a pretty head and a good size – a magnificent horse. They exchanged a few words, and meanwhile one of the Turks tried to take my horse’s bridle.

  I was not sure we were prisoners. My attacker had different views, and wanted my horse. He grabbed for the reins, and when I pulled them away from him, he slashed at me with his riding whip. Of course, I had steel arms and gauntlets, so I took his lash on my left forearm and dragged him off his saddle in one move.

  Some men laughed, and other men scowled.

  The man with the scarlet beard pressed forward and all of them fell back. He was feared, and obeyed.

  ‘Oi, Frank!’ he called. His turban was silk, and he had a stone in it that was worth my harness.

  I gave him my best mounted bow.

  John remounted by my side and said something that was long, and I suspect, elaborate – a ritual greeting.

  Uthman Bey – it must be he – nodded. ‘A Frank with courtesy! Now Allah be praised, a miracle has come to us in the Holy Land.’

  Despite his fair words, he ordered us to dismount. We did, and stood by our horses.

  He rode in close, and spoke to John.

  ‘I leave you your lives, as I am no ghazi, and you spared my worthless nephew. I might kill you for Salim, who you killed – but your Franks have taken others of my men, and I hope we can arrange an exchange. If you give me your word, I will leave you your weapons, but you will ride with us to Ramalie.’

  I didn’t see much choice. It rankled to be taken so easily, but taken I was.

  He left us our weapons, but as he pointed out to John, we were riding his horses. John didn’t argue that one of the horses was John’s own, and in a moment we were riding away north on the dusty road, and the Turks were all around us. Their laughter was painful, but not nearly as painful as being dead, and as John said when we started our weary ride to the north, he was an apostate and they might have killed him even if they had taken me for ransom. We had, by our own standards, nothing to complain about.

  We rode for a few miles, always north. I had never been in the Holy Land, but I knew Ramalie – a Christian town much used by pilgrims landing at Acre or Tyre and coming to Jerusalem.

  Uthman Bey’s band was larger than I had thought; there were at least a hundred of them, and perhaps more; he had a cloud of scouts out to the south and to the west, and a dozen more men made dust ahead of us. They were all superb horsemen, a pleasure to watch. None of them troubled me, but when they caught a pedlar, they pulled him out of his hiding place, stripped his pack and looted it, and then killed him and left his corpse by the road. I could not tell if the man was Moslem or Christian.

  Uthman saw my distaste and he shrugged. Through John, he said, ‘I am a raider. I show the peasants that their Mamluk lords cannot protect them. Maybe later I will come back with an army and they will know that I can protect them.’ He smiled, and that smile held much of the evil of the world.

  Of course, this is war as we practised it in France – the chevauchée. To hear it said, just this way, by a paynim bandit, as if it was a matter of high policy and not a matter of greed and evil, was like a slap in the face. Because, of course, I have been such a raider. God’s judgement on my sins, but I have led such raids.

  ‘Ask him if he has ever seen this work. Have peasants and farmers ever come over to his banner for these
reasons?’ I tried to look mild.

  Uthman laughed. ‘It always works,’ he said. ‘Farmers are all cowards. They do whatever will keep their worthless hides on their carcasses.’ He shrugged. ‘Why do you wear your stirrups so long? It looks silly. You should learn to ride like a man.’

  ‘So you kill their sons, and they love you for it?’ I asked. This trick of not giving way to anger had all sorts of benefits. It makes you much harder to move in argument, for example.

  He frowned. He made an angry comment and John raised an eyebrow. Then his face closed; Kipchaks do not give anything away in conversation. Their faces are as well-disciplined as their cavalry.

  ‘He says, “Why care? Why care what a peasant thinks?” He says, “Kill their sons, take their daughters, spend their gold. That’s why God made peasants and farmers and merchants.” He asks me if you are – weak. Or some priest.’ John’s lips twitched. I think he found the idea of my being a priest funny, even when we were plainly captives of a dangerous man.

  I nodded. ‘Tell him that long stirrups and a high-backed saddle make a man much more dangerous on horseback than a woman’s saddle like he rides.’

  John reined in his horse.

  ‘He can kill us,’ John said.

  Well, he had a point there, and so much for reining in my temper. I nodded.

  ‘He asks what you say, and I said you spoke of God.’ John raised an eyebrow, and rode away, so that he could not translate any more.

  I rode with Uthman Bey. I was happy that he didn’t kill any more innocents; I’m not sure I’d have survived the experience. Although I was aware that I had his dead man’s – Salim’s – coins in my purse. And his javelins with my own under my knee. I too killed and robbed.

  Ramalie is another mixed village. There’s a Christian hostel, and a dozen Islamic inns and caravanserai, and a big walled pen for herds and caravans. Uthman sent a force into the town to scout, and when we rode in, the streets were completely empty, save for a Greek patriarch who waited, unattended, with the Moslem priest, or imam, as they call them.

  John was back with me by then, and he translated. ‘Uthman Bey says I am of great value, because I can talk like a Frank and like a Hellene, too. He asks me to join him.’ He smiled and said something in his own tongue.

  ‘John, you have always done well by me,’ I said stiffly. ‘You do what you must. This is a spot, and no mistake.’

  John looked at me, considering. ‘Among Tartars, it is permitted to lie and deceive to defeat an enemy. How does Christ feel?’

  That made me writhe. I was still thinking of the hermit’s words. We were in the land where Christ walked. But …

  ‘We deceive enemies all the time,’ I said. That was truth, whatever the Saviour intended.

  John nodded.

  He rode forward with Uthman Bey and spoke to the Greek priest. They spoke back and forth for a while, and the priest relaxed. The imam seemed, if anything, the more terrified of the two men. But eventually he knelt in the dust and touched his head to the ground in front of the Turk’s horse.

  Then I was taken to the Christian hostel. When I dismounted, I saw that they took my horse away, and two Turks remained. And no John.

  The hostel was run by the same Franciscan Order that had sent Father Angelo to threaten us with excommunication. Nearby was an Orthodox Greek hostel.

  There followed a tiresome repetition of the scene in Jaffa. My two Turks stared open-mouthed as the Franciscan lay brothers refused to house me and ordered me out of their inn.

  I could tell from their angry sputterings that they didn’t understand the complexities of the situation – or that we’d defeated the Mamluks, or even that my two guards were Turks, not Mamluks.

  There was nothing to be done. I had no Turkish, but with gestures, I convinced my guards to take me to the Greeks.

  Orthodox, or Greek. Of course the Greeks have their own rite, and are schismatics. Let it be said that they say it is we who are schismatics, and that they read the Gospels in the language in which they were written: Greek. At any rate, they were good to me, and their priest came and spoke to me in slow Greek, and I understood almost nothing, but I began to learn it then. I mean, I had heard some phrases from Colophernes; that’s Syr Giannis; and Syr Giorgios Angelus, and I learned simple things from the priest – ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and ‘perhaps’, and ‘I am good’, and phrases like that.

  A whole day passed. I had wine and bread, but no company. I practised with my sword in the courtyard, mostly to feel alive; several of my captors watched me. I borrowed a javelin and threw it for a while; I made a target by stuffing an old linen sack with straw, and then my Turks joined me. I learned a fair amount about throwing a javelin that day, although the Turks throw with a little wrist flick because they think of it as a cavalry weapon to be used very close. I tried some longer throws, and I was just negotiating a trip outside the hostel’s yard with my captor, in sign language, when a dozen Turks rode into the yard. They had four captive knights, and a sort of horse-mounted palanquin balanced on two horses.

  The knights were tied, hand and foot. They wore maille, but had been stripped of their weapons. And they were not Franks – I could tell looking at them. They had the same silky black hair as my captors, and they spoke a language I had never heard: Armenian.

  One of them spoke up as they entered the hostel yard.

  One of the Turks struck him with his whip.

  It was the same boy who’d tried to lash me the day before. I had a javelin in my hand, and I was close. I stepped in so I was at his side, passed my javelin into the keyhole of his arm and shoulder, and pulled him from the saddle.

  Perhaps not my best considered action. In a moment, they were all on me – two men with whips, and my two guards. But no one’s heart was in killing me – well, perhaps my young foe from the day before, but not the rest of them. I got a lash across the face that hurt like ice and fire, and then stopped, even though my right hand was on my baselard. Which was wise. I had a spear tip at my throat. And two men holding me.

  A great deal was said in Turkish. The man I’d pulled from the saddle spat and punched me in the face.

  Then one of my guards shoved him. He said something angry.

  Uthman Bey arrived in the yard with another dozen of his best armed warriors, including John. He growled orders in all direction, fingered his red beard, and frowned.

  ‘Oi, Frank? Where is thy courtesy?’ he asked via John.

  I was lying on my back with a broken nose, a flood of blood over my chest, and a whip lash across my face. No one else was moving.

  One of my guards passed me a cotton towel. Cotton is a marvellous cloth, and I may say more of it; I had certainly seen it in Venice, but in the Holy Land the stuff was everywhere. I got the towel up to my face and stopped the flow of blood. I coughed once, to clear my throat, and then pulled on my nose as hard as I could and the pain blinded me, and I felt the bones grate against each other, and then the pain eased. And the flow of blood eased as well. I had set my own broken nose before, but never with an audience.

  ‘This man is a coward,’ I said. ‘He likes to strike prisoners.’ I pointed at my assailant. Then I bowed. ‘For my part, however, I apologise for disturbing the peace.’

  John translated rapidly, in Turkish. My assailant spat in the dust.

  Uthman Bey looked annoyed. He spoke in Turkish, and the man – the knight – who’d been struck answered in the same tongue. The two looked like … old enemies. Both smiled thinly when they spoke.

  Uthman came up to me, leaned down from his horse and took my chin in his right hand, the way you might examine a slave or a pretty girl. He spoke angrily. My guards both murmured – obviously apologising.

  ‘He says, “You idiots”,’ John put in. ‘He says, “Now you look like all the men of Allah have beaten you, and your Christian brothers will never agree to a trade
.”’

  I had to breathe through my mouth, and it was very uncomfortable.

  ‘He orders all of you kept together. He makes point – tells me to tell you that you may still keep your weapons. Says he wishes this not happening.’ John gave me a little wave, and a slight twitch of the eyebrow.

  And turned when Uthman turned his horse.

  I’d like to say my trust in my Kipchak groom never wavered, but seeing him at Uthman’s right hand, it was obvious that the Turks valued his skills. And he had been a convert to Islam once before – spoke their language fluently.

  I thought of every coarse word I’d used to him, and every time I’d sent him to curry my horse.

  And other things. Like the fact that Emile was in Jerusalem, and I was a prisoner, or nearly so. Mayhap to die.

  I am probably lucky I could not see my face. Certes, my nose swelled up like a peach, and the cut from the whip swelled too, and burned.

  But the Armenians were solicitous, and three of them spoke French. And they were so low with being captured that I felt I was needed to rally them.

  They were travelling with a woman, a sort of princess from Cilicia, on pilgrimage. They had a dozen followers who had been killed. And they were not prisoners for exchange. They had no idea what fate awaited them.

  I learned this as soon as Uthman Bey rode out of the yard and left us with just my two guards. Both of them made a great show of lounging against the stalls in the shade of the stable block, leaving us some privacy. The man who had been whipped – and who had spoken to Uthman as a peer – nodded to me. In good French, he said, ‘Thanks for your – intent.’

  I put a cautious finger to my nose. ‘I was a fool,’ I said.

  The man shrugged. ‘Nonetheless, you took all their attention. I need to get my sister under cover, before the Turks see her and get … ideas.’

  His sister was not dark-haired at all, and even in a double veil of fine linen, I could see that her hair was red-gold and she was terrified, almost sick with it.