by Jane Johnson
When he opened his eyes again, it was to see a figure emerging from the water, a slender silhouette against the sun-bright sea. Messengers from Akka often came in at this point, having braved the waters of the outer harbour and the open sea beyond the Tower of Flies, where the Christian vessels patrolled. But this was neither Saif nor Mahmoud, both big men with beards and long black locks. As the figure came closer, picking its way between the rocks, he realized with a start that it was his little brother Aisa, and at that moment Aisa saw him and his face broke into an enormous beaming smile.
Malek dismounted in haste and they embraced. Malek came away damp.
“I’m an official messenger now!” Aisa crowed. He thrust his chest out so that his ribs showed. “I’ve got a message to deliver to Salah ad-Din from Karakush.”
Aisa was thinner than he had been when Malek had last seen him, almost a year ago. He was taller too now, more man than boy. Something about that change in him, the time apart and all that had filled it, made his chest tighten.
“Here,” he said, throwing his cloak around his brother’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to the sultan so you can deliver your message.” He leapt up into the saddle and swung Aisa up behind him and the lad chattered out all his news: how he had come to be a messenger; how Kamal had disappeared, no one knew where; how Sorgan and his father were managing to breed the pigeons, and he was teaching Sorgan his letters; how they kept a pair of goats in the rear courtyard, and had learned to grind flour out of date pits—really, the news was endless.
But as they rode back through the lines Aisa went quiet. The sight of all the fighting men, their tents and banners and equipment, the trenches and churned ground where there had been orchards and farms, took his words away.
At last they reached the summit of Tell Ayyadieh and the sultan’s war tent. Malek dismounted and helped Aisa down off the big chestnut mare. The boy was shaking. Cold from the sea? A reaction to the long swim? More likely it was the sight of the enemy, so very many of them. Then he wondered if it was simply nerves at the idea of speaking to the sultan.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said to Aisa. “The sultan isn’t a fearsome man, except to his enemies. Greet him humbly, and when he asks you to rise, deliver your message and look him in the eye as you do so. If he asks you your name, tell him without hesitation. And cherish the moment, for you’ll remember it the rest of your life.” Gently, he brushed a strand of hair out of Aisa’s eyes, straightened the cloak and pushed him towards the guards at the door, who checked him for weapons and then let him through.
Aisa managed to prostrate himself with a certain grace, and when the sultan bade him stand he looked the commander in the eye. Aisa delivered the message from the waterproof pouch he wore wrapped about his waist, and Salah ad-Din unrolled the furl of paper and bent his head over it. Then he rolled the message up again and placed it on the table and returned his gaze to Aisa.
“This is the first time you have come as a messenger,” Salah ad-Din observed.
Aisa nodded.
“And what is your name, lad?”
“Aisa Najib,” Aisa replied without a beat.
“Are you by chance related to Malek, my burning coal, and to Baltasar, who was injured at Ramla?”
Aisa flushed with pride and admitted as much. Malek, watching as unobtrusively as he could from the flap of the tent door, was proud of his brother, too.
The sultan smiled. “Then I am indeed well served by your family. Go now and take food and rest. Return after third prayer and I will have a message for you to take back to Karakush.” He paused. “Though it will not be one he much likes.”
Aisa bowed and left. Malek ruffled his hair and took him to the field kitchen to eat some mutton, flatbread and dried fruit. After his initial excitement, Aisa went quiet again.
“Why so downcast, little brother?”
And now it all poured out: Aisa’s suspicions about their mother’s death; the odd way Baba was behaving, forgetting things, and raging one minute and then carrying on as if nothing had happened the next; how he would sometimes look right through you as if you were a stranger, then cry for you not to leave his side, not ever. Malek listened, feeling himself go colder by the minute.
That afternoon Malek was back on duty at the door of the sultan’s tent. The debate was heated: half the war council was present, and as usual there was discord. The content of the message Aisa had carried was clear: that the city was hard-pressed and Karakush feared the garrison would not be able to hold out against a full-scale assault. Some of Salah ad-Din’s commanders were arguing for storming the Franj army and somehow destroying the towers; others for diverting the enemy away from Akka to defend themselves.
At last the sultan held up his hands. “In silence there is greater eloquence.” Everyone quieted. Salah ad-Din gestured to his page to fetch a bowl of rose-scented water and a clean cloth. He washed and dried his hands, then reverently took his Holy Qur’an upon his lap. Opening it at random, he quoted aloud from Surah 67:5: “And we have (from of old), adorned the lowest heaven with lamps, and we have made them missiles to drive away the devils and for them we have prepared the doom of torment in the most intense blazing fire.”
For several long moments he bowed his head in private prayer. Then he called for Malek, who came at a run.
“Go fetch the boy from Damascus, the coppersmith’s son.”
21
The “boy” from Damascus was hard to find. Malek finally tracked him down to an area on the other side of the encampment that smelled like the opening to Hell. Fires burned under bubbling cauldrons, and a young man in a leather apron and gauntlets stood over one of these, watching intently as the liquid inside changed colour. When Malek explained that the sultan had requested his presence, his widely spaced black eyes regarded Malek with anguish.
“Can it wait for twenty minutes? I’m at a critical point in the experiment.”
“I think not.”
It was with great reluctance that he was persuaded to go with Malek, but once he had removed his protective gear and turned his back on his experiment it was as if he had stripped away his alchemist persona and become just an ordinary person. He was a year older than Malek and also, he ascertained as they made their way back across the encampment, a distant cousin on Baltasar’s side of the family. It seemed at first a ridiculous coincidence, but by the time they had the sultan’s pavilion within sight they’d worked out that the closest they were related was at six removes. “And pretty much everyone is related to everyone else at that rate.” The Damascene laughed.
The sultan greeted the lad cordially and introduced him to the gathered war council. “This is Ahmad al-Rammah. He came to us a week ago, claiming to have discovered a new, more combustible form of naft.” He turned to Ahmad. “Would you be so good as to tell my generals something of the work you are engaged in?”
Ahmad nodded to the gathering. “Salaam aleikum, good sirs. I’ve been adapting the traditional formula for naft, Greek fire. As you’ve no doubt seen, it’s not as effective as it could be, especially against larger targets. The old recipes are well guarded by the alchemical fraternity, but I’m confident I can give you a substance that will burn more explosively, and many times hotter, than the sort you’re using at the moment.”
“So you’re an alchemist, are you?” Keukburi, an emir from east of the Euphrates, said scornfully. “We have another name for alchemists where I’m from.” He paused, turned to the others. “Charlatans.”
“I don’t consider myself an alchemist, sir. I’m a brass-worker by trade, son to a coppersmith. But it’s not my metalworking skills that have brought me here. My uncle recently returned to Damascus from the far east with some … remarkable information.”
“A spy, is he? A thief?”
Salah ad-Din turned to his emir. “Let the young man tell his tale, Blue Wolf.”
Ahmad looked around the pavilion. “I believe the naft we have made will burn the enemy’s war machines. It’ll go righ
t through a leather mantlet, the hides they use to protect their towers, soaked in piss—beg pardon, sirs—well, piss and vinegar act as no defence against it. It’s also more viscous, so it will stick to the target better.”
“Doesn’t that make it more difficult to propel?” This from Al-Adil, brother to the sultan.
Ahmad was unperturbed. “I believe I’ve also developed a delivery system that will overcome the difficulty of propelling the thicker liquid while maintaining its explosive properties.”
“Sounds dangerous!” Taki ad-Din laughed.
Ahmad smiled. “It must be handled carefully, that is true.”
This provoked further discussion, until the sultan held up his hand and said quietly, “A contingent of men will accompany Ahmad al-Rammah into Akka before dawn, with all he requires for the making and propelling of his Greek fire. And, Malek, you will go with him, and take your brother, the messenger, back with you. It will afford you the chance to see your family.”
Malek nodded dumbly and gave thanks, but in his heart he pondered the sultan’s words. Did he mean a chance to see his family … for the last time?
Aisa peppered his older brother with questions about the stories that had reached them behind the walls over the months of the siege. “We heard one of the Franj got an arrow in his arse when taking a shit outside the trenches!” he recounted gleefully. “Is it true?”
“I really don’t know,” Malek said, in a flat tone meant to discourage further discussion. It didn’t work on Aisa.
“And they have shipped hundreds of women in from across the sea to … ah … for the soldiers.”
This was true: Malek had even heard of soldiers from their own side sneaking over the lines into the brothels on the outskirts of the Franj camp, coming back with lurid tales of women with pearly skin and long red hair who were just as happy to couple with a Muslim as with a Christian, as long as their coin was true. And it seemed there was no prohibition amongst the Franj about the use of such women.
“I know nothing about that,” he said. It wasn’t entirely true. In Jerusalem he had visited one of the city brothels and there bought himself an hour with a woman whose hair shone like beaten gold, whose eyes were like the sea on a clear day, speckled with yellow and green. He thought of her too often for comfort. But according to Aisa, there were men of Akka slipping out of the city to avail themselves of the Franj whores’ services—as if there weren’t enough brothels behind the city’s own walls. It seemed when you came down to it men were men first of all, Muslim and Christian second. For a brief, unsettling moment he wondered why they were at war at all.
Before dawn the next day they assembled: a battalion of light cavalry, three great carts to bear the Damascene’s equipment and chemicals, and a contingent of mounted archers and foot soldiers, selected for their fleetness and courage by Taki ad-Din himself. Malek found Ahmad fussing over the loading of three ironbound barrels. “It’s delicate stuff,” he kept reminding the men who were loading it. He appeared very nervous, Malek thought, pale around the eyes, with the lairy, concentrated look of a man who had not slept. “The barrels must not be roughly handled.”
Malek laughed. “Tell the Franj that!”
It was still dark as they made their way down out of the hills. The embers of the enemy’s campfires still glowed: scarlet dots in the gloom. He caught a pungent whiff of the Christians’ latrines as they passed the edge of their camp. A horse nickered and was answered by another on the picket lines; the sound seemed piercing in the quiet air. Malek saw Asfar’s ears prick up and felt her tense. Was she in season? He’d have to pay attention to that when he got back to camp. Dealing with a mare in foal would be a problem; he’d have to tether her well away from the stallions. Had the Franj sentries been alerted by the horses’ calls? Asfar’s tension transmitted itself to him and he felt his back prickle as they passed close to the enemy lines, imagining the sudden flight of arrows, invisible against the pre-dawn sky. But there were no cries, and still the sun did not crest the hills behind them to light their progress.
They were within sight of the north gate by the time the cry went up from the Christian lines, and at once all attempts at stealth were abandoned. Taki ad-Din gave the command and they sped downhill towards the city walls. The carts lurched across the uneven ground, and Ahmad got paler by the moment as he sat on the last of these, his arms around the barrel. Malek had seen what a small amount of his “Greek fire” could do. If an entire barrel were to erupt …
Malek set his heels to his mount’s flanks, told Aisa to hold tight and lie low and urged Asfar on. Arrows pursued them as the Franj bowmen came spilling from their billets, but they had not yet got their range. The quarrels fell mercifully short, and by the time the crossbowmen had reloaded they were long past.
Christian foot soldiers scaled the embankment and came storming out at them, but Taki ad-Din and his cavalry doubled back and rode them down. Scimitars rose and fell as the first rays of sun came over the Toron range, gleaming redly on their blades. A man in a dirty surcoat came at him with an axe and he wheeled the mare aside, avoiding the blow. Behind him there was a cry, but whether it was the man with the axe or another he could not tell, for now the walls loomed over them.
“Open the gate!”
The garrison watch was more vigilant than the enemy: the gates were thrown open and in they swept beneath the tall arch, into a city that had been at siege for the best part of a year. Behind them, the gates thudded shut and the great iron bars clanged into place, just as the muezzin’s call to prayer shivered through the air.
In Artillery Square, Taki ad-Din clapped Malek on the shoulder and dismissed him. “Take your brother home. Your family will be worried to death about him. I’ll take Ahmad al-Rammah to Karakush and we’ll see what his Greek fire can do. After all this effort it had better not be a damp squib!”
Malek stabled Asfar and paid a lad to feed and water her and take care of his equipment—only then would he leave to seek his home. He was looking forward to seeing his family again after this long gap, despite all that had happened. His sister, so sweet and pretty; Sorgan, with his big, slow smile. Even his father … But his spirits were soon dampened. Even as Aisa chattered inconsequentially about friends and games and how they’d had competitions diving for shells, he stared about in dismay at the familiar streets. Near the outskirts of the city, houses had been abandoned, their walls gone to rubble; some were burned out. Weeds grew in the once pretty gardens. The fountains had been turned off to conserve precious water. No children played outside; those he saw kept close to their mothers’ skirts. The women walked quickly past with their heads down, intent on their errands, where before they would have greeted him and smiled at his uniform. The little market close to their home was closed, and there was no sign of the Armenian sisters who used to sit on their doorstep, gossiping. He wondered where they were now, if they had moved in with relatives, if they were still alive. But there was the Widow Eptisam, at her window, her teeth protruding more than ever out of a face gone worn and thin.
“Alhemdulillah!” she cried when she saw them. “God keep you both safe!”
He almost passed Brahim, the baker’s son, without recognizing him, he had lost so much weight. “Tahar, his father, died during the winter,” Aisa told Malek after they’d salaamed one another and walked on.
“Is Brahim the baker now?”
Aisa shook his head, laughed. “He tried, but he was hopeless at it. Jamilla and Zohra make all our bread now.”
Truly, the world had changed shape if his sister had turned to baking.
Aisa chattered on and on: Jamilla this and Jamilla that—he was clearly very fond of their cousin. And how there had been gifts of honey and peppers from the Jewish doctor’s family. How Fatima, the grim-faced imam’s daughter, kept calling on the house and snooping around corners, no doubt hoping to catch a sight of something untoward, but she never would … He fell silent.
“Why not?”
Aisa looked un
comfortable. “Zohra’s …”
“Zohra’s what?”
But Aisa had become uncharacteristically uncommunicative. They arrived at the door to the family house in unaccustomed silence.
As soon as he set foot inside, Malek could feel some spark of life had gone out of the house. He noticed that dust had fetched up in the corners by the stairs; there were grease marks on the door and a stale smell in the corridor that made his nose wrinkle. But someone was singing in the kitchen, and when he opened the door it was to find sunlight pouring in and their cousin Jamilla thumping bread dough on the table with her good arm.
As he entered, she stopped and stared at him as if he were a djinn. Her mouth fell open and she went red in the cheeks. Then she saw Aisa behind him. “Oh, Aisa, Aisa! What a relief.”
“You were singing,” he said accusingly, though his eyes shone with the mischief of teasing her.
“I didn’t mean to.” She was even more flustered now. Her eyes darted back to Malek, sweeping over his cuirass and the sword at his side, down to his riding boots with the dagger strapped inside, back up to his face and quickly away again.
At that moment Zohra stepped into the room. She looked older, and a lot like their mother … or rather, how he remembered his mother from when he was a child. His eyes pricked.
“Malek?” she said. Then she saw who was with him: “Aisa! We thought we’d lost you. I’ve been watching the sea all night!” She wrapped him in her arms until he fought free. “Allah be praised! You’d better run up and see Baba at once. Sorgan’s with him.”