by Jane Johnson
No one said anything to this; there was nothing to say. The Caliph of Baghdad might have been the spiritual leader of the Ummah, the whole Muslim world, but it was hard not to be bitter in the face of such indifference.
“He’s a tough man, the sultan,” Baltasar said grudgingly. “He won’t give in.” Wearily, using Sorgan’s shoulder, he levered himself to his feet. “Come on, lad, time to go home.”
The Muslim army had thrown itself into the attack again and again each day, to no avail: the earthworks the Franj had erected had proved to be an effective barrier to their charging horses, and with each assault they had lost more men to the enemy archers. And still their machines pounded the failing city walls, ever widening the breach beside what had once been the Accursed Tower, now no more than a tumbled pile of rubble. How the garrison had managed to keep them from swarming into the city Malek could hardly imagine—or rather, and worse, he could.
The sultan sat his horse morosely, watching the ebb and flow of the battle below. Earlier in the day he had ridden out to battle himself, only to move back from the front line when the white flags were raised and the emirs came riding out of the city to the Templars’ tent to parlay once more. They had been in there a long time, but in all that while Salah ad-Din had said nothing; he had simply watched, with his lips in a tight line and his eyes burning, as if his regard could sear away the very fabric of the tent.
Malek could not understand how he was still even able to sit his horse. He had not rested in three days, had taken no refreshment except the herbal drink his exasperated doctors had all but forced down him. “They will come soon, our reinforcements,” he had said repeatedly. “Then we shall test the strength of these kings.” A great number of reinforcements had arrived the day before under the command of Taki ad-Din, but still they had been unable to breach the earthworks, and still the emirs had ridden out to meet with the enemy, without taking instruction from the sultan.
“My lord, my lord!” A pageboy, covered in dust, threw himself down, heedless of the stamping hooves around him.
“Get up, Mohammad!” The sultan swung himself down out of the saddle with the grunt of a man in pain and raised the boy to his feet. “What is so urgent that it cannot wait for my return?”
“My lord, a swimmer from Akka!”
The man was as thin as a stick and could not stop coughing. He looked as if the tides had carried him from the city like a piece of flotsam. For a while it seemed he might expire before he could deliver his message. A hacking fit brought up blood. Eventually, shivering even though wrapped in a heavy woollen blanket, he spluttered out his unwelcome news.
“The emirs have met the Franj kings, my lord. They will surrender the city this very day—”
“What? No, we will fight on,” the sultan interrupted him. “The Prince of Hama has returned, and with God’s good grace more will surely come in answer to our call to arms. Return to them at once … no, after you have rested, of course. Forgive my haste. Return and tell the emirs I will not cede the city. They must hold out a little longer. All is not yet lost.”
The swimmer’s trembling increased despite the thickness of the blanket. He could not meet the sultan’s eye as he said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “My lord, it is too late. Terms have been agreed and an accord has been signed.”
A dumbfounded silence fell. No one could bear to look directly at the sultan, but all could feel a quiet inner wrath beating off him in waves. After a long, long moment he said, “Well, we shall see about this.”
Malek and Ibrahim followed at a safe distance as he stormed about outside the war tent, sometimes with his head down, muttering, at others with his eyes raised to Heaven as if seeking divine inspiration.
Malek looked at Ibo, who shook his head. “How could they do this without their lord’s instruction?”
Malek was at a loss. “I do not know.” He could not blame anyone for surrendering after so long, after such privation, but he hated to see the sultan faced with both insurrection and defeat. He gazed unhappily towards the distant city. Out there, on the walls, there appeared to be some activity, though it was hard to make out precisely at such a distance. He frowned and squinted against the hot sun. No! It could not be …
“My lord.” Interrupting the sultan when he was thinking was never advisable, but Malek could not bear that he be made a fool. “My lord,” he said more quietly as the sultan turned to look at him, eyes as black as old blood. “They have taken down the crescent and raised the enemy’s banners over the walls of Akka.”
There, waving on the breeze that came always at this time off the gleaming sea, flew the azure, crimson and green banners of the kings of the Franj.
“Even from the Friday Mosque,” the sultan said in disbelief.
Yes, even from the slender minaret of the city’s great mosque there now flew an infidel banner, a great fluttering ribbon of blue and gold.
For a moment it looked as if Salah ad-Din might collapse. He swayed where he stood, put a hand to his face. Malek and Ibrahim readied themselves to catch him if he fell, but then he took a great breath and drew himself upright. “What is done cannot be undone and we must make the best of it.” He raised his hands to the skies. “It is written. God grant me the strength to save our people.” And he strode back into the tent with a face like thunder.
The messenger looked up with fear in his eyes. But Salah ad-Din took his seat once more and, after a few moments in which he simply took breaths in and let them out again, said calmly, “Tell me the terms the emirs have agreed to.”
The swimmer blinked rapidly. “In exchange for the lives of the inhabitants and for their property they have agreed on a sum of two hundred thousand gold bezants—”
This time it was Baha ad-Din, the qadi, who interrupted. “How much?” he cried. “That’s outrageous! Are they mad? They know full well our coffers are empty. Do they think our alchemists can conjure gold from thin air?”
“Gently, my friend, let the poor fellow continue,” the sultan said with deceptive mildness. “Two hundred thousand gold bezants, and what else?”
The messenger looked at his hands. “And the return of five hundred Christian captives, including all the nobles taken prisoner, a list of which is being compiled.” He drew a shuddering breath and then coughing racked him for several minutes while all inside the tent gazed at one another in despair. The sultan commanded that a hot drink be brought for the man, suggested exactly which spices should be added to it, and waited while it was brewed and the swimmer drank it down and was able to continue.
“One hundred of the most eminent men in the city, including the grand emir, Al-Mashtub, and the governor, Karakush, are to be held as hostages against the completion of the agreement. The kings have also demanded the return of the relic they call the True Cross, in the selfsame condition in which it was seized after the Battle of Hattin.”
Now Salah ad-Din visibly lost his composure. “But the cross was broken up! Karakush knows that full well. He has part of the wretched object in the Akka treasury. The rest was … scattered, as befits the worthless symbol it was. The caliph has a small portion, and much of the gold was stripped and melted down.” He tugged on his beard, a sure sign of perturbation. He sighed. “Well, there’s not much we can do about that. Go on,” he told the man. “Is that the end of your message?”
“My lord, all this is to be rendered to the kings of the Franj within one month—the money, the Christian captives, the cross. They will hold the lives of half the surviving inhabitants of the city, including all its fighting men, in surety.”
At this, the sultan’s face became dark with blood, and it was a long time before he mastered himself sufficiently to be able to speak. “By God, you are trying me sorely. How could they have agreed to such an accord? There has to be some way to vary these terms.”
Again he got his feet and began to pace, but this time Malek stood rooted, sweat breaking out down his back and under his arms. A rank smell rose to his nostrils an
d he recognized it for what it was: the stench of fear. Fear for his family, worse than he had ever felt before. What would happen to them if the sultan could not meet the terms? He had seen the captive Muslims burning like candles on the battlefield. Had seen bodies mutilated where they lay, the wounded dispatched even as they cried for aid. Templars had even massacred pilgrims making the Hajj. These people had no honour, no mercy. He felt burning bile rise into his mouth and black stars danced before his eyes. Turning unsteadily, he fled outside and fell to his knees on the hard-packed earth. The bile was unstoppable: it came out in a tide, wave after wave, right at the entrance to the tent, so that the sour smell of it wafted in on the breeze, overwhelming the attar in the braziers.
Men inside exclaimed in disgust. Then someone immensely strong picked him up as if he were a child and set him down some distance away from the scene of his crime.
“Here, drink this.” Ibrahim’s broad, dark face loomed above him, for once unsmiling.
Malek took the mug of water and rinsed his mouth out, spitting the residue onto the ground where the dry red clay swallowed it greedily. “My family. What are we going to do?” he asked his friend, agonized. “We cannot meet the terms. I know we cannot.”
“We will,” Ibo said grimly. “One way or another we will. We have to.”
They had assembled in the central square outside the Friday Mosque, the survivors of Akka, everyone who could walk or crawl. Such silence! The air so still! There had not been such quiet for two whole years. People stood a little straighter, held their heads a little higher, as if the burden of the noise of the incessant battering of the walls and the cries of the enemy army beyond had been lifted from them. It was a wonder to be able to walk easily rather than to scuttle in fear for your life from falling missiles or debris. You could even hear the gulls, Nathanael thought, as they planed on hot air currents high overhead.
He glanced across at Zohra, marvelling now as he always had at the lambent amber of her eyes: today they were full of sunlight, and there were roses in her cheeks; a smile twitched the corner of her lips. Last night they had lain together for the first time in two years, and even though the pain of his wound had been fierce, the pleasure had been fiercer. He could remember every sensual touch, like fingers of flame on his skin.
Forcing his mind away from the delicious wonders of the night, he looked around. Was this really the totality of all who had survived? The square was less than half full and not even tightly packed. And each of us takes up so much less space now, he thought.
People wrapped in bandages, people holding themselves up with sticks, people supported by members of their family. Children with the faces of old men; women carrying babes in their arms, looking more like grandmothers than mothers. More women than men. So many had given their lives in defence of the city.
Apart from Zohra and her family there were few he recognized. Sayedi Efraim, the herb-seller, gaunt but hale, and beside him a woman who might have been his wife or his sister. One of the Armenian women who used to sit on the doorstep with her sister all day, every day, gossiping and watching the world go by; of her sister there was no sign. Mohammed Azri, the smith, and his son, Saddiq, with a few of their workers, including Zohra’s hulking great brother Sorgan. Some of the black-robed alchemists who came and went from the citadel. There was the crabber and his daughter, Rana, and some of their neighbours from down at the port. Saïd, the doctor from the hospital, less than a third of his original girth.
Little Nima tugged suddenly at his hand and gazed up with her wide black eyes. “Who is that man?” She pointed to the dais that had hastily been erected. “And why has he got half a black sheep stuck to his face?”
Despite the gravity of the atmosphere, Nat snorted. “Hush, little monster, show some respect! That is the grand emir, Al-Mashtub.”
The Kurdish lord, his black beard bushier than ever, and the governor of the city, the eunuch Karakush, stood up there on the dais, looking uncomfortable, flanked by Templar knights, their great swords bared, their mail coifs glittering. The knights wore long white surcoats emblazoned with the red cross that all in Akka had come to know and hate the last time the Franj held the city. Enemy soldiers ringed the square—big, pale-skinned men for the most part, in a tatterdemalion collection of leather and mail. Many were looking about in wonder. For some, Nathanael thought, it would be the first time they had ever set foot in a Syrian town. All this way from wherever they called home, and for what? A shell of a city—burned out, dusty, broken, abandoned—and a handful of citizens hating them for what they had gone through and all they had lost. Who would wish to be the victor? How could anyone surveying the ruins of this place and these people not feel shame?
“People of Akka!” The voice of the grand emir, Al-Mashtub, roared out, calling them all to attention. “We have this day surrendered the city to the Christian kings, to Philip Augustus of France and Richard of England, both of whom we know as great and honourable men, worthy champions of their people, God-fearing upholders of their faith and keepers of their word. And that word is—in accordance with the ius belli, the rights of war—that the Commander of the Faithful, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, Salah ad-Din shall redeem our lives and our property from our vanquishers for an agreed sum, against the payment of which the governor and I and ninety-eight other notables of the city shall stand as hostage. Our lives are now forfeit to these kings.”
People nodded gravely. This was as one would expect: an honourable bargain made between honourable parties. But the grand emir had not finished. He held up his hands for quiet. “In addition, we have agreed …” He hesitated, came to a halt and looked to Karakush.
The eunuch now stepped forward and called hoarsely, “Good people of Akka, you know me well. I have been your governor since we took the city back from the Franj—”
A ragged cheer erupted from somewhere in the crowd. Templar eyes darted, seeking out likely troublemakers.
“I love this city as I love my own life—” the governor tried to continue.
“That must be a great deal, judging by the size of him,” someone said, and the remark was met with a ripple of laughter.
“Like my own life,” Karakush repeated earnestly. “To see it resist so bravely, to see the sacrifices you have made over these two years, each and every one of you. Mothers who have lost their sons, daughters their fathers, wives their husbands—”
“And husbands their wives!” cried one woman.
“And husbands their wives, and children their mothers,” Karakush forged on. “To see all this has torn my heart. But there had to come a day when we said enough to such sacrifice, a day when one more life lost to no avail would tip the balance, when the weight of lost souls was too heavy to be borne. This is that day.
“The kings of the Franj have struck a hard bargain, I cannot deny that. To save the lives of those of you here today, and those you have left at home too sick or too young to be present, we have had to agree to a heavy price. It is a price worth paying, and it is a price that will be redeemed, so have faith in our lord Salah ad-Din and the princes of the Ummah to see that it shall be so. Not only the lives of the one hundred will stand surety against the ransom, but one out of every two of you: a half of the remaining population of this city.”
What? The gasp was universal. What did he mean?
Nathanael turned to Zohra, saw her look of consternation, squeezed her hand. One out of every two … Nima looked up at her, frowning. One out of every two … Sara and Baltasar … Voices began to mutter; then the mutter became a rumble, and the rumble a roar.
Christian hands fell to the hilts of their swords. Karakush waved his arms, but it was the grand emir’s bellow that rose above the tide of noise.
“Hear us out. As God is my witness, the deal is done and we must accept what has been written. By the rough estimate of the tallymen there are almost six thousand souls left in the city, and so just under three thousand of you must be held as hostages. The Christian kings have demande
d that able-bodied men of less than forty years of age be kept as hostages, and that the elderly, women and children be free to leave, so long as the rest stand surety.”
People began to protest at this stricture. A woman began to wail, “Not my son! Not my beautiful Hassan!”
Nathanael felt a hand grasp his arm and turned to find Zohra gazing at him with her golden eyes blazing, but he could not tell if it was with fear or fury.
The emir held up his hand for silence and at last the crowd quieted.
“I know from looking out upon you that there are not three thousand men of fighting age left in the city, so we will need to seek volunteers from those of you who are entitled to leave. It is a great deal to ask of you, but ask it I must. Those who remain will be well treated, kept in quarters that are being prepared for this eventuality. All will be well fed and looked after, and any wounds or sickness from which they suffer shall be attended to with the skill of the best Christian and Muslim doctors available. I myself, Saïf al-Mashtub, appointed grand emir by the Commander of the Faithful himself, give you my word on this. And if that is not enough …”—he gestured to a boy, who handed him up a parcel wrapped in green silk—“I swear it on the Holy Qur’an.” Reverently, he took the book from its wrappings and held it aloft. “Place your trust in the honour of these kings and the greatness of God, and all shall be well.”
Now Karakush took up the discourse. “I would ask all of you to consider this carefully. The qadis and their scribes will take your names and details, and those who wish to volunteer as hostages should come to the steps of the Friday Mosque.”
At this, a surprising number of people surged forward.
“Well fed and cared for,” said a man standing in front of Nathanael, nudging his neighbour. “Quickly, let’s go to the qadi and pledge ourselves!” For a moment the neighbour, who looked older than the designated age, dithered, then the pair of them pushed through the throng.