Jerusalem

by Cecelia Holland

  On his way into the next room, where the servants were unpacking the food, Stephen glanced back, and saw how Ali bridled up at the knight’s curt orders; at once he thought, Not a servant, that one. He went on and ordered out the other slaves, and in the front room with the other Templars he knelt down and said his prayers.

  Chapter XVII

  Turanshah said, “They need a truce, so much is clear. We should get easily what we want from them. Tripoli will be a help; he always is. We must be sure to give him every favor, and watch him every moment. The priest is of no consequence, it seems to me. He is exhausted from the mere journey here, he’ll sleep through it all.”

  The Sultan nodded. After the meeting with the Franks, he had withdrawn to his private chambers, where he could rest a little. He had spent most of the day listening to people from Mosul, where there was an uprising against his authority, and from Baghdad, where the caliph was balking at his suggestions for dealing with Mosul; the matter of the Franks was only one of the several problems that beset him.

  Of all his troubles, the Franks pricked deepest. He was fifty years old, and for most of his life he had worked to free Islam from the oppression of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He imagined himself a surgeon, who would draw the poisoned barb from the body of the faith.

  Twice he had attacked them. The first time, learning that all the Franks were busy in the north, he had rushed up out of Egypt with every man he could muster. Sweeping through the country, he had been utterly certain of the victory, until, as he crossed the wadi near Ramleh, he looked up to see a little band of Christians tearing through his whole vast army as if it were a cloud of gnats. The second time, when his advance guard broke the Frankish army on the bank of the Litani River, Jerusalem had been his to seize, and yet he had not been able to close his hands upon it. This baffled him: it was as if he faced some magic spell, strongest where it seemed weak.

  “What of the Templars?” his brother Turanshah said. “Who was that you spoke to? How could you have met him at Ramleh?”

  “Not the city. He meant the battle we fought, near there, where we might very well have met, he and I, had I not been running so fast.”

  He remembered that very well, that moment at the wadi near Ramleh, and the black-and-white horseman battering through his guards. He remembered the nightmare struggle to get away, how he had fallen out of the litter, and entangled himself in the drapery, losing his turban. He had looked and felt like a fool, and he had been glad of his life, grateful to Allah for sparing his life, foolish or not.

  Now here he was again, that black devil of a knight.

  In through a side door, his nephew Ali came into the room, and bowed deeply to him, with a murmur of greeting. The Sultan sat down on a couch, watching his nephew with expectation. “Well, what have you to tell me?”

  Ali shrugged his shoulders. “The Templars are stalled and slopped, my lord.”

  From the other men, even the servants bringing in the meal, a general laugh arose; they liked this condescension. They wanted the Franks to be mere brutes. The Sultan laced his fingers together. “Give me your impression of them.”

  Ali stood gracefully in the center of the room. He was the Sultan’s favorite nephew, for his quick, subtle mind as much as for his elegance. He said, “They are as crude and rough as most of their kind. The commander is no better than the rest: he has the manner of a boor, he puts my teeth on edge. One of the other men called him Saint, which must be some kind of joke.”

  He spoke the name in Frankish. The Sultan translated it into Arabic. “Al-Wali. He does seem an unlikely friend of God.”

  “Saint,” said Turanshah sharply. “I wish I’d known that earlier. This is the Templar who has all the merchants bribed to bring him news.”

  “Is he?” The Sultan lifted his eyebrows, interested. “What is his office?”

  “I don’t know. He has no title that I’ve heard. But he’s a spy, that I am sure of.”

  Ali said, “Tripoli said he was an ordinary knight.”

  “Yes,” Turanshah said. “But Tripoli dislikes him very much, which seems odd—you would think an ordinary knight beneath Tripoli’s interest.”

  The Sultan laughed. “I fear my dear Count dislikes most of his fellow Christians.” He fingered his beard. After this, he had still more work: a meeting with the cadi of Damascus, letters to write to Mosul and Baghdad. He nodded to Ali. “Watch them all closely. Especially al- Wali. Don’t let him outside the palace compound. We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to convince them this is a healthy, bustling city they’re visiting, so let’s not jeopardize that. I’ll see Tripoli alone tomorrow, just for a few minutes, to remind him what great friends we are. As for this Templar, let’s see if we can buy him, or failing that, break him a little.”

  Turanshah grunted at him. “Why—because he made you run at Ramleh?”

  “Friends of God should prove their callings,” the Sultan said.

  “He’ll certainly try to leave the palace,” Ali said. “He’s already asked.”

  “Good,” the Sultan said. “If he does, make him suffer for it.” The Sultan touched his beard with his fingers. “Before he leaves Damascus, I want him made a fool of, whether he knows it or not.”

  In the morning the Saracens brought them fresh robes. Stephen had just gotten up and said his morning office; he was sitting in the big front room in the sun. Bear and Felx were in the next room and Rannulf had disappeared somewhere. The Saracens, Ali at their head, brought in white cotton robes, neatly folded, with sashes of black and yellow, and slippers, like women’s shoes. Under Ali’s direction the slaves laid all these things out on the table.

  Stephen’s interest keened. Through the tail of his eye he watched Ali as the tall Saracen ordered the other servants around. The underlings went away into the next room, where the food was kept, and the other goods. Ali lingered. He said, “Perhaps you would care to put on cooler clothing. The day will be extremely hot.”

  Stephen lifted his head, and met the other man’s eyes. At once his loins tightened; he saw the same quickening interest in Ali, the same reckless flicker of excitement. He made himself calm. He was not supposed to feel like this.

  He said, “We wear only what the Order gives us.” He smiled at Ali. “If you were in Jerusalem, would you wear a Templar robe?”

  Ali lowered his eyes, as if to hide his thoughts. His long brown hands were ringed in gold. “In Jerusalem we all go as pilgrims, do we not? But we are not in Jerusalem. This is Damascus, where it will be very hot today.” He waved his hand at the table. “Where you would be more comfortable dressed as we dress.”

  Stephen stood up, his blood on fire; he caught the outstretched hand. “I want to be comfortable,” he said, and leaned forward and kissed Ali’s full-lipped, passionate mouth.

  Ali pulled violently away from him. His black eyes remained fixed on Stephen’s. In a low voice, he said, “This cannot be. We are enemies, you and I.”

  Stephen said, “I don’t want that. I don’t believe it.” He reached out again, and caught Ali by the hand, and again kissed him, and this time the other man returned the kiss, and his arm went around Stephen’s waist.

  Stephen murmured, triumphant. He slid his free hand down between them, but the Damascene drew back.

  “Not here,” he said. “Can you get away?”

  “Yes. Maybe.” Stephen still held his hand, and wanted to kiss him again, but then someone called out, in the next room. He realized how close the others were.

  Ali said, “Later.” He turned, pulling his hand out of Stephen’s, and went swiftly away.

  Stephen stood where he was, still savoring the kiss. He had an erection. He turned around, looking out through the screens into the windblown green murmuring of the lemon grove, remembering where he was. He wanted Ali, but he was seeing other things, all around this, like shadows in the white glare of his lust.

  He went out through the next room to the balcony, and leaned against the rail; below him the lemon gro
ve covered the gentle downward slope. He thought of his vow, and wondered where Rannulf was.

  He shut his eyes. The scent of the lemon grove tingled in his nostrils. It wasn’t as if he were in Jerusalem. This wasn’t really anyplace; he felt as if it were noplace, a hole in the world. As if what he did here wasn’t really happening.

  Even as he thought this, he felt it all slipping away from him, all the surfaces of things, all the meanings, sliding and slipping away.

  He looked down into the lemon grove again. Now he saw Rannulf, walking through the trees. The black-haired Norman went off toward the outer wall. A few moments later, a Saracen stole furtively along the path after him.

  Here, not even Rannulf knew what was going on. Stephen wiped his hand over his face. His body sang with a half-controlled excitement. His body was real. Ali’s body was real. He turned and went back into the pleasure house.

  The palace was built in concentric rings, each circle higher and more elegant, each girdled by a wall; in the midafternoon the knights went up through a gate, and across the gardens there and through another gate, to the great hall, where they were to be the guests of the Sultan at a feast.

  This hall was as big as the refectory of the Temple, with columns of veined brown marble holding up the vaulted ceiling. The walls were painted in amazing designs of flowers and birds, and the floor was glossy polished stone. They sat at a horseshoe of tables so wide the people at the other end were out of earshot. When the four Templars went in, on the open floor in the middle of the tables, a dozen girls were dancing, dressed only in sheer silk, and not much of that.

  Bear, walking behind Rannulf, gave a yelp of outraged chastity, and Felx muttered something that was not a prayer. Rannulf got a momentary eyeful of a bouncing, pink-nippled breast and tore his gaze away. His temper jerked up short. With the other Templars he sat down behind the table, in one arm of the horseshoe, and he turned and looked up at the Sultan’s dais.

  There on the dais, among his officers, the Sultan was staring back at him.

  Neither of them looked away. Rannulf felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. A red flush colored the Sultan’s cheeks. Beside him, one of the other Saracens, the brother, had seen this crossed stare, and was looking from one to the other. On Rannulf’s left Stephen moved, suddenly, with a creak of the furniture. He had noticed it too. Rannulf swiveled his head forward again, toward the dancing girls, and aimed his gaze down at the table.

  Stephen said, “I didn’t know they jiggled like that.”

  “Shut up,” Rannulf said. The music played with his ears. He wanted to get up and leave, he wanted to move, to shake off the assaults of temptation, drill his body back into obedience, but he had to sit here and be attacked. The servants were constantly bringing more dishes, and taking away others, so that the table was a shifting pattern, different colors, different shapes of platters. The slaves moved around him, brushing up against him, leaning past him with bowls of sugared nuts, sweets smelling of cinnamon and clove, skewered meats dripping their warm juices. He ate only the bread. Even when they brought figs and dates, which he loved, he ate only the bread.

  The other men were yielding. In low voices, they exclaimed at the flavors of the food, and they were peering at the women, and bobbing back and forth with the music. Richard Bear said, “Why are they watching us so hard?”

  Felx rumbled a laugh. “Maybe they’ve never seen Templars so close. Saint, is it true the water here is poisonous?”

  Rannulf said, “I have never been to an oasis where the people weren’t half-sick all the time. Drink the wine.” He reached for his cup. The Saracens were not supposed to drink wine, but they were providing it for the Franks in endless measure. Up on the Sultan’s dais, where Tripoli sat, a burst of unrestrained laughter rose. Midway along the horseshoe of the table, the Bishop of Saint-George had fallen asleep.

  Stephen said, “What’s next, hashish and poppy-juice? I have to piss.”

  “Go,” Rannulf said.

  Stephen left. No longer hungry, Rannulf brushed his hands together; a servant brought him a napkin. The soft cloth smelled like flowers. He dropped it instantly to the table, so alive to these temptations that merely smelling flowers seemed to him to be a sin. The music ended, and the girls went off through the curtained arch at the foot of the hall.

  “My lord Count.” The black man had come out to translate for the Sultan. He had the sleek, full face and feathery voice of a eunuch. “May you enjoy your visit to Damascus, the most beautiful and ancient of all cities, from whose clay God shaped Adam. While you are here let us set before you all joys and delights, and if there should be anything you desire that we can provide, you need only speak to have it.”

  Tripoli stood up. In his own high, reedy voice, and his own Arabic, he said his answer, just as ritual. “May Allah preserve the most excellent Sultan of Damascus and Cairo!” He went on like that for a while. The black man sat close to the Sultan, unnecessary. Rannulf wondered where the eunuch had learned French.

  Felx said, “What’s wrong with him, anyway?”

  Bear turned and smirked at him, obviously pleased to know something Felx didn’t. “He’s been gelded.”

  The big Deutschlander’s wooly yellow eyebrows arched up; his lips pursed. “And that turns them black?” he said, innocently.

  Rannulf glanced over at him and laughed, and Bear, suddenly ruddy, laughed also; Felx licked his lips. He was drinking hard, and eating uninhibitedly of all the fine food. Sitting in place, he bounced. Tripoli had done with his speech, and now the black man stood up, and spoke French; around the sleeping Bishop, his servants hastily jostled him and whispered him awake.

  “To the Bishop of Saint-George, welcome to Damascus, where Saint George is buried, where Saint Paul first came face to face with his destiny, may your visit here magnify your faith and ours.”

  The Bishop groaned and struggled to his feet. He had no Arabic and had to speak French, and the black eunuch sat close by the Sultan and changed the words for him.

  When the Bishop was done, the black man turned toward the Templars.

  “To the warriors of the Temple of Jerusalem, also, let us offer the hand of greeting. Welcome to the oldest and greatest of all cities, mother of Constantinople and Cairo, Bokhara and Baghdad, where all men mingle in peace, and do the works of God.”

  Rannulf had no use for this. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m very glad to be here.”

  Caught short, the rest of the table only stared at him a moment in silence, and then among the Sultan’s company a few smiles appeared. They thought him simple. Probably they were right. The Sultan leaned forward slightly.

  “You speak the language of the Koran quite well.”

  “Not really,” Rannulf said. He stood, as he always did when a lord spoke to him; he clasped his hands behind his back. “Marketplace Arabic.”

  “Do you know the Koran?”

  “Not at all. Some phrases, nothing else.”

  “How well do you know your own Bible?”

  “Little enough. I am not a man for books.”

  “These are more than mere books, certainly—the roots of faith. Do you love your faith?”

  The Templar’s head rose. “Sultan, this talk leads nowhere. All that matters to me is the war. To you, also, I think, nothing matters except the war, and you are on one side, and I on the other—I have what you want: what’s the use of talking about anything else?”

  In a rising babble of other people’s voices, the Sultan said, smoothly, “What’s the use of talking about that?” In the thicket of his beard his teeth showed. “You came here for some reason; what is the Temple’s end in this?”

  “You hold one of my brothers prisoner, Odo de Saint-Amand, I want to see him.”

  The Sultan looked down and then up again, nodding with his eyes. “Certainly.”

  “We will support a truce, if one can be made between you and the King.”

  “I suppose I should be pleased at the reassurance, given y
our well-known treachery in such matters.”

  “We obey God,” Rannulf said. “Not pieces of paper.”

  The Count of Tripoli spoke in a loud clear voice. “This is not the place to discuss policy, my lord Sultan, my lord Templar.”

  “I beg my lord the Count’s pardon,” Rannulf said, and sat down again.

  “What was that about?” Bear asked, his eyes wide. He spoke no Arabic.

  Rannulf shrugged. “He will let me see Odo.”

  “It didn’t seem that affable,” Bear said.

  Just beyond him, Felx was leaning forward to look at Rannulf. “No. What’s going on here, Saint?”

  “Just talking,” Rannulf said. The black spokesman was up again, performing, in French, another long speech about the wonders of Damascus, where Abel and Nimrod were buried, and John the Baptist’s head, which perhaps explained the dancers.

  Rannulf cast a wide look around the hall again. The servants were pattering around with their burdens of food and drink, more than anyone could eat, as if they had so much of everything they never thought of saving it. Yet he remembered, coming here, how the hostelry had not had meat, or corn for the horses.

  He wanted to get out into the city. That seemed impossible; guards walked the outside wall, and they were following him wherever he went. He was a prisoner here. In the open space between the tables two jugglers were tossing up a whirl of oranges. By the door another man waited, his face painted like a puppet, his hands full of sticks. Stephen had not come back. Rannulf lowered his eyes and sat there with his hands on his knees, bored, waiting for the dinner to end, so that he could go do something more interesting.

  Stephen went out of the hall through a side arcade, into the darkness of a garden. The night was warm, the air still and heavy; the peppery scent of blown flowers reached his nose. He made water, and stood a moment, in the dark, not knowing what to do, and then Ali came up beside him.

  They said nothing. Silently they went off side by side, down through the overgrown garden, and into a stand of trees. Stephen’s heart hammered, feeling too large for his chest; his mouth was dry, and his palms sweating. He followed Ali through the little wood, where they came to a pond of water, hidden away inside the hedge of the trees.