by Hight, Jack
Nothing happened. Yusuf opened his eyes to see the young knight still standing before him. Only now the boy was staring wide-eyed at his own chest, and Yusuf followed his gaze to see a sword blade protruding from the young knight’s armour. The sword disappeared, and the boy toppled to the side. In his place stood Turan.
Yusuf took the hand that Turan offered him, and his older brother pulled him to his feet. ‘Thank you, Brother,’ Yusuf said. ‘I owe you my life.’
‘Don’t forget it,’ Turan said and stepped aside. Past him, Yusuf saw a Muslim warrior in silvery chainmail, facing off against the last of the pilgrims. The warrior sidestepped a spear thrust and hacked down, finishing off the pilgrim. Then the warrior turned, and Yusuf’s eyes widened in disbelief.
‘Father! You’re alive!’
Ayub did not reply. His face was set in a grim mask as he waded over to Yusuf and slapped him hard across the face. Ayub bent down and grabbed Yusuf by the arms, pulling him close so that their faces were only inches apart. ‘By Allah, I told you to stay at the walls!’ he growled. ‘Were it not for your brother, you would be dead. Dead!’ Tears welled in Yusuf’s eyes. ‘Look at you, crying like a woman,’ Ayub said with disgust as he released Yusuf. ‘At least your brother has the makings of a warrior. You are worthless.’ Ayub turned and stormed out of the river and up the bank towards Damascus. Yusuf followed, his head hung in shame.
‘Stay together!’ John roared at the pilgrims massed behind him. He had managed to rally over three-dozen men and had arranged them in a column four wide, spears bristling on all sides. John rode at their head, leading them at a quick march towards the river. Many of the pilgrims had picked up shields from fallen Saracens, and they held the circular leather bucklers close together, forming a patchwork wall around the outside of the column. But the small shields offered only limited protection from the arrows of the Saracens, who circled the column on horseback, shooting into the mass of men. As John watched, one of the men just behind him went down with an arrow in his leg. Two pilgrims immediately picked him up and carried him to the inside of the column, while another man stepped out to take his place. A second later, that man fell dead, an arrow in his throat. At this rate, John reflected, he would be lucky to reach the main column with a dozen men. ‘Pick up the pace!’ he shouted back. ‘And keep together!’
John turned forward. Ahead, the terrain sloped down to the blood-stained waters of the river. A hundred yards downstream, he saw the group of pilgrims that he had sent off with Rabbit, hoping to get the young warrior safely off the battlefield. John frowned. At least half of the pilgrims were dead, their motionless bodies floating away on the current. Two Saracen warriors were finishing off the last of the pilgrims. Just upstream from them, Rabbit stood with his sword held high, preparing to strike a third Muslim. John watched in horror as one of the Saracen warriors approached him from behind.
‘Rabbit, look out!’ he shouted, but it was too late. The Saracen impaled Rabbit from behind. He withdrew his sword, and Rabbit slumped into the river. ‘No!’ John roared. His knuckles whitened where he gripped his sword, and his face flushed crimson. He turned to the man behind him. ‘Give me your spear!’ The man offered him the weapon, and John sheathed his sword and took it. ‘Keep in order and march fast,’ John told him. ‘If you hurry, you should be able to catch up the column.’
‘Where are you going?’
But John was already riding away, his horse kicking up plumes of sand as it galloped down the slope towards the man who had killed Rabbit. The man was walking up the riverbank towards him, flanked by the two other Saracens. He was only fifty yards off now, close enough that John could make out some of his features. He was thickly built, with dark hair, tanned skin and the first beginnings of a beard on his broad face. John raised the spear, preparing to hurl it, when four Saracen warriors rode between him and his target.
John did not slow his mount as the four warriors turned towards him and fired a volley of arrows. One of the arrows embedded in John’s shield with a thump. Another penetrated his chainmail skirt and stuck deep in his thigh. John gritted his teeth against the pain, rose in the saddle and hurled his spear. It caught the lead rider in the chest, knocking him from his saddle. John drew his sword as he thundered towards the remaining three riders, who had shouldered their bows and now rode with spears in hand. As he flashed past the first man, John swung out and caught him in the throat, killing him instantly. John cried out in pain as the spear of another warrior deflected off his shield and drove into his shoulder. Then, John was past, his shield arm hanging uselessly at his side. He dropped the shield and used his knees to turn his horse to face the remaining two warriors.
‘For Christ!’ John cried out as he raised his sword and spurred towards the men. They charged him, one on his left and the other to his right, their spears pointed at his chest. At the last second John leapt from his horse, dodging the spear of the warrior on the right and slamming into him. They both went flying, and John heard the Saracen’s neck snap as he landed hard on top of him. John rolled off him and rose, standing unsteadily on his injured leg. The final Saracen had wheeled his horse and sat fifty yards off. He spurred his mount towards John.
John raised his sword, then thought better of it. He dropped the sword and stood over the body of the dead Saracen. The final horseman was only thirty yards off now, and John knelt, his head lowered. He could hear the hooves of his enemy’s horse pounding closer and closer. The Saracen was only ten yards away when John grabbed the spear of the dead warrior, rose, and with a loud cry, let it fly. The spear struck the Saracen’s horse in the chest. The beast collapsed, and the warrior went flying, landing in a heap. John picked up his sword and limped over to finish him. He stood over the Saracen’s broken body, then paused at the sound of another set of hooves pounding towards him. He looked up to see a Christian knight with sword in hand, riding straight towards him. It was Ernaut.
‘Well met, Ernaut!’ John called out as Ernaut reined in beside him.
‘You’re a tough bugger, Saxon,’ Ernaut replied. ‘I thought the Saracens would have finished you off by now.’
‘Not yet. Help me up.’ He held his good arm out towards Ernaut.
Ernaut clasped his hand. Then, as he pulled John close, he stabbed down with his sword, impaling John through the side. ‘You have seen too much, Saxon. That will keep your mouth shut,’ Ernaut spat as he withdrew the sword. John slumped to his knees, blood seeping from his side and staining his armour red.
As John watched Ernaut gallop away, the world began to spin around him. He felt himself falling, then everything went black.
‘Your father wishes to see you.’ Yusuf opened his eyes and blinked against the bright morning sunlight. A servant was shaking his arm. ‘Dress quickly.’
Yusuf rose and pulled on a linen caftan and sandals. He hurried to the entrance hall, where he found his father and Turan. When Ayub saw him, he frowned and turned away. ‘Come,’ he told his sons. ‘I have something to show both of you: the spoils of victory and the price of defeat.’
Yusuf followed his father out of their home and to the broad square that lay behind the Umayyad mosque. The square was often the site of a produce market. Now it held a market of a different sort. Everywhere Yusuf looked, he saw Christian captives manacled and standing despondently, heads down, or huddled in wicker cages. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. The men of Damascus walked amongst them, poking and prodding, inspecting the goods.
‘It is as the poet writes,’ Ayub told his sons. ‘You must choose the point of the spears couched at you; or if you will not, chains.’ He fixed Yusuf with an intense stare. ‘Choose always the spears, my son. Better death than this.’ He turned to Turan. ‘Today, you will purchase your first slave. You fought like a man yesterday. You should have your own servant.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
‘What of me?’ Yusuf asked.
His father whirled on him. ‘Were it not for your brother, you would be in
a cage like one of them! When you are a man, like Turan, then you may have a slave.’ Yusuf felt tears welling up and looked away. Ayub grabbed his chin with one of his calloused hands, forcing Yusuf to look at him. ‘No more tears, boy. Only women cry.’
Ayub released Yusuf and turned back to Turan. Yusuf wiped his tears away and followed, trailing behind as Ayub and Turan strolled through the market. ‘That one there is strong enough,’ Ayub said, pointing to a towering Frank with long red hair. ‘But he is too old. He will never forget his home, and you will never be able to trust him.’ He walked on and then pointed out another, a muscular blond boy of perhaps sixteen, who appeared to be sleeping. ‘That one is the right age and he looks strong enough. But look more closely at the way he lays there. He is unconscious, not asleep. He has been injured, probably a wound to the gut. He will not live.’
Yusuf stopped before the low wooden cage where the Frankish boy lay on his side, flies buzzing around him. Yusuf had never seen a Frank this close before. The slaves in his father’s household were mostly black men from Africa, along with a few Turks. The Frankish boy had a thin nose and square chin. His face was pale and covered with sweat, but he shivered as he lay there. The cost of defeat, Yusuf’s father had said. This was it: to die alone, far from one’s home, far from any who might care.
‘You wish to buy the boy?’ Yusuf turned to see a short, thickly bearded man with a heavy coin purse tied to his belt. ‘I’ll make you a good deal.’
‘I was only looking.’
‘You can have him for a song,’ the slave merchant insisted. ‘Two dirhams.’
‘Two dirhams!’ Yusuf exclaimed. ‘Look at him. He won’t live out the week.’
‘He’s hardly injured,’ the slave merchant protested. ‘With care, he’ll live to be older than me.’
Yusuf frowned. ‘Not likely.’
‘I see you know your business, young master,’ the slave merchant said with a wink. ‘Very well, I’ll let you have him for only six fals.’
Yusuf hesitated. Turan would soon have a slave. If Yusuf could show his father that he too knew how to deal with a servant, then perhaps he would realize that Yusuf too was a man. Yusuf examined the boy. Ayub had said he was the proper age, and he looked like he would be strong enough if he survived.
‘I can see you’re interested,’ the slave merchant said.
‘But I have no money.’
The slave merchant gave Yusuf an appraising look. His eyes moved from Yusuf’s linen caftan to his belt, and then settled on Yusuf’s leather sandals. ‘Your sandals. Give them to me and the boy’s yours.’
Yusuf looked down at his feet and hesitated. Did he really want to take responsibility for this dying Frank? What would his father say? He was on the verge of saying no, when the boy sat up. His hand shot out, gripping the bars, and he stared at Yusuf with clear blue eyes. ‘Broðor!’ he cried out. ‘Broðor!’ Then he fell back again, unconscious.
‘What did he say?’ Yusuf asked.
‘I don’t speak his heathen tongue, whatever it is. It wasn’t Frankish. Not German, either. This is an odd one. Allah knows where he’s from.’
‘I’ll take him,’ Yusuf said. ‘Provided that you deliver him to my home.’
‘And where might that be?’
‘The house of Najm ad-Din.’
The slave merchant’s eyes widened, and he gave a small bow. ‘I knew you were no common man. You have a deal, young master.’ Yusuf reached down and slipped off his sandals, which he handed to the merchant.
‘Yusuf!’ It was Ayub, calling from up the street. ‘Come here! See the slave your brother has bought.’
Yusuf hurried over barefoot, a smile upon his face.
Chapter 4
JULY TO OCTOBER 1148: BAALBEK
Yusuf stood on tiptoes and peered through the open window into the room where the Frankish slave had been brought so the family doctor could inspect him. When the slave had been delivered to Ayub’s home in Damascus, Yusuf had been whipped. Ayub had not let him keep the young Frank as a personal servant, but had ordered the new slave be brought back to Baalbek. ‘No use in wasting a slave,’ he had commented. ‘If he lives, then he can work in the fields.’
The Frank lay naked and unconscious on a table. He was well muscled and tall, taller even than Turan. His arms and chest were smooth and tanned brown – where they were not caked in dried, rust-coloured blood – but his legs and the area around his genitals were impossibly pale, the skin as white as freshly shorn wool. His long hair was the colour of ripe wheat and his jaw covered in pale blond fuzz. He was not circumcised.
The Jewish doctor stood beside the table, washing the boy with a sponge. Ibn Jumay, a thin man of almost thirty, with short black hair under a skullcap, long sidelocks and a closely cropped black beard, was the personal physician for Yusuf’s family, as well as Yusuf and Turan’s tutor. He wiped the dried blood away from his patient’s right shoulder, then dipped the sponge in a basin of water and wrung it out. Next, he sponged off the blood caked around the Frank’s stomach. There was a small gash in the lower abdomen, and as the Frank breathed, a thin stream of blood bubbled up and ran down his side. Ibn Jumay sniffed at the wound and nodded, apparently pleased. Last of all, he cleaned the blood away from the Frank’s right thigh. The flesh around the wound was angry and red. Ibn Jumay poked at the spot with his finger, then bent down and sniffed. ‘Infected,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They let the arrowhead fester inside him for three days, then expect me to perform miracles.’
Ibn Jumay bent down and picked up a brown leather bag, which he placed on the table. He opened it and carefully removed several ceramic bottles, placing them beside the Frank. Next, he took out a leather bundle and unrolled it on the table before him. Dozens of tiny pockets had been cut into the inside of the roll. Some bulged with mysterious contents. Others held wicked-looking knives and strange iron instruments. Ibn Jumay rubbed his hands together, then selected a short blade, a curved needle and a set of pincers that ended in two flat, circular disks. From another pouch, he removed a ball of string.
Yusuf moved to the open doorway, where he had a better view. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.
‘You are blocking the light, Yusuf,’ Ibn Jumay said without looking up. He nodded towards the corner. ‘Sit there if you must watch. As for these, their purpose is not hard to divine. The knife is for cutting, the needle for sewing, and these—’ he held up the pincers, ‘are for extracting.’
‘Extracting what? And why do you need to sew?’
‘Be silent and watch. You shall see.’
The doctor unstopped a square, blue ceramic bottle and poured a small amount of the contents over each of the wounds. The Frank flinched.
‘What is that?’ Yusuf asked.
‘Pure alcohol.’ Ibn Jumay held out the vial.
Yusuf inhaled deeply, then coughed. ‘It burns,’ he said, his eyes watering.
‘It will purify his wounds.’ Ibn Jumay lifted the Frank’s left arm and moved it in a circle while peering into the ragged hole in the Frank’s shoulder. ‘The tendons appear to be intact. With any luck, he should have use of his arm again.’ The doctor took up the curved needle and carefully threaded it from the ball of string. He hooked the needle through the flesh on either side of the wound and pulled the thread through. He continued, expertly sewing up the wound as if he were working with a piece of cloth.
Yusuf frowned. ‘Will he not have string stuck in his shoulder?’
‘A good question, Yusuf, but this is not string. It is called catgut, although it is made from the dried intestines of a goat.’ Yusuf grimaced. ‘It will dissolve over time, leaving only a thin scar.’ Ibn Jumay finished sewing, cut the catgut and tied it off. Next, he took out a yellowish paste that smelled of rotten eggs. He rubbed it over the wound, which he then bandaged with cotton dressings. ‘That will do for the shoulder.’ He moved down the Frank’s body and again examined the gash in his side. ‘Come, Yusuf. Since you are here, you can make yourself useful.
Help me flip him over.’
Together, they managed to roll the Frank on to his stomach, revealing another gash in his back. ‘He is lucky, this one,’ Ibn Jumay noted. ‘The sword went straight through, but appears to have missed his vital organs.’ The doctor doused the back wound with alcohol, then sewed it up. He and Yusuf flipped the body over again, and Ibn Jumay sewed up the gash in the Frank’s stomach, leaving a small gap at the end of the wound.
‘Why did you not sew it up all the way?’ Yusuf asked as he held the boy upright while Ibn Jumay applied the foul-smelling paste and bandaged the Frank’s torso.
‘The vile matter inside him must be given a place of exit,’ Ibn Jumay said matter-of-factly. ‘Otherwise, it will kill him.’ He frowned as he moved to the Frank’s injured leg. ‘Now for the unpleasant part.’ He removed the cork from a small red vial, carefully poured a small amount of clear liquid on to a cotton ball and dabbed gently at the wound. ‘This is an extract from the poppy plant,’ Ibn Jumay explained before Yusuf could ask. ‘It helps to ease the pain.’
‘But he is unconscious.’
‘I am a doctor. It is my duty to not cause unnecessary suffering. And even unconscious, he will feel this.’ Ibn Jumay took the tiny knife and held it over the wound in the Frank’s leg. He whispered a prayer in Hebrew, then made two short diagonal cuts across the wound, forming an x. Blood and pus welled up around the cuts. Yusuf looked away, fighting to keep down his breakfast. When he looked back, Ibn Jumay was just finishing sponging clean the wound. The doctor took up the pincers, then hesitated. He turned to Yusuf.
‘Grab his leg here and here—’ He pointed with the pincers to a spot just above the knee and another at his groin. ‘And hold it still.’ Yusuf did as he was instructed. Ibn Jumay moved around the table opposite him. ‘It is important that he not move, Yusuf. Hold tight.’ With his left hand, Ibn Jumay pulled back the flesh around the wound in the Frank’s leg and then plunged the pincers into the hole. The Frank moaned and his entire body convulsed, causing his leg to jerk under Yusuf’s hands. ‘Keep him still!’ Ibn Jumay snapped. Yusuf struggled to hold the thrashing leg in place, while the doctor worked the pincers deeper into the wound. Blood flowed out, dripping on the table and splattering on Yusuf’s hands and face. ‘Got it!’ Ibn Jumay exclaimed at last and pulled out the pincers. Caught between them was a short, barbed arrowhead, dripping blood. ‘A cruel piece of work, is it not?’ the doctor said. He held the arrowhead out to Yusuf. ‘Keep it, as a reminder of the nature of war. You can let go of him now.’ The Frank had stopped thrashing and lay still. Ibn Jumay began to stitch the wound closed.