Pillars of Light

by Jane Johnson

  “We must complete the roster by midday tomorrow,” the governor continued, “so you will have tonight to discuss the matter with your families. But before you go, please form orderly lines and give your names, ages and addresses to the qadis.”

  Orderly lines were not a normal part of life in Akka, where no one had ever willingly queued for anything. Already there was anger and incomprehension; before long, there was hubbub and chaos.

  That night the occupants of the Najib house cooked up a strange casserole of everything they could scrape together. Nathanael bartered some honey for a quantity of couscous from Fatima, the imam’s daughter, and Zohra made bread from flour bartered for a salve. Despite the gravity of the situation, the atmosphere was curiously festive. For the first time in ages there were six gathered around the table in the guest salon. Not the same six as there used to be, Zohra thought, struck suddenly by their losses. No Ummi, no Aisa, and who knew whether Kamal was alive or dead?

  Malek at least was well, that much she had ascertained from the swimmer who had carried the surrender terms to the sultan. He had also reported that Malek had broken down in tears of relief to hear that his sister still lived. “It would kill me to lose her, or any more of my family,” he had told the man. And he had also sent a personal message to Zohra in the code that he had devised for the pigeon missives, which Aisa had taught her. “Get out,” it read. “Leave the city as soon as you are able and bring Baba and Sorgan with you.” She had said nothing to anyone else, not even Nathanael, about this. Its implications distressed her too much.

  The meal finished, talk soon turned to the decisions they had to make.

  “I will stay as a hostage,” Baltasar declared. “I am too old to leave the city now, too old and too tired.”

  “No, Baba, you must take Sorgan. He cannot look after himself.”

  “I can! I am a smith now. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. Mohammed Azri feeds me and Saddiq helps me with fire!”

  Zohra placed a hand on his arm. “I know, Sorgan, I know. You’ve worked so hard. But there may not be much use for smiths any more now that the city has been surrendered to the Franj.”

  Sorgan glowered. “The Franj. I hate the Franj! I’d like to put them all in the fire and hammer them to bits!” His fists flexed.

  Zohra sighed. “You see, we can’t leave him here. He’ll be in danger.”

  Her brother folded his arms obstinately. “I want to go with the smiths. I don’t want to be part of this family if you won’t let me.” There was no use arguing with him.

  “They are sure to keep the Azris as hostages,” Nat said quietly. “They want to keep all the able-bodied men where they can control them. They’re the ones the Franj want.”

  “As slaves!” cried Baltasar.

  “More likely to prevent them taking up arms against our enemy,” said Sara quietly, clutching the stump of her arm. She did not believe in deferring to the views of men, especially if they were wrong. “Of course they would. But we cannot let our enemies dictate who stays and who goes.”

  “Everyone will go eventually, won’t they?” Zohra said, seeking reassurance. “When the ransom is paid?”

  Nathanael said nothing, remembering Jerusalem. He turned to his mother. “You and Baltasar should leave with Zohra and Nima,” he said gently. “No one can make you stay.”

  “Nima?” said Baltasar. He looked up with sudden expectant hope, but then his eyes filled slowly with tears. “Oh, yes …” There were moments when he looked up when someone entered the room as if he thought his wife were still alive and was just coming back from the souq. Seeing the expression on his face when he remembered the truth broke Zohra’s heart each time.

  Her father rolled his thin shoulders. “I will stay,” he announced. “Akka is my home.”

  Zohra felt a familiar frustration rise. “But, Baba, you can leave—”

  He rounded on her. “I may not be under forty, but I am as able-bodied as the next man.” He looked as if he might hit anyone who contradicted him.

  Sara placed her hand over his and squeezed it gently. “I am not leaving either. What would I do with just one arm out there in the world? No. I will go with Baltasar and Sorgan to the quarters they are preparing, where there is good food and treatment for all our ills.”

  “Cousin Jamilla does very well with just one arm,” Zohra said, just as Nathanael said, “I am a doctor! You know you won’t get better care elsewhere.”

  Sara smiled at both of them, and in that smile Nat saw a benediction. She knew all, and accepted all—even blessed them for it. “Nathaniel, you must leave. Anyone can see you are not able-bodied right now. The governor will surely sign your papers. You must take Nima and Zohra and leave as soon as they let you go. I’ll hear no more arguments.”

  “Good, then,” said Baltasar. “That’s decided. Now, what do we have for dessert?”

  All over the city the same discussions were taking place.

  The next morning Nat went with Baltasar and Sorgan to their usual tea house: there were rumours of real tea being served, and Baltasar was determined to carry on as if nothing else of importance had happened.

  The place was full: neither a cushion nor a stool to be had. But as soon as people saw Baltasar a seat was given up to him; even in the hardest times, the oldest and frailest must be respected. Younes shifted on his cushion to make room for Nathanael, who bent with some pain and took the offered space. Sorgan stood sniffing the air as if scenting something he had not smelled in a very long time.

  “Look, Sorgan,” Hamsa Nasri said, waving his hand with a flourish as if announcing a magic trick, “proper bread!”

  Sorgan gazed at the reed basket on the table, his eyes round with amazement. Younes tore a flat, round loaf in half and quickly handed it up to him before he could make off with the entire basket.

  “I’m staying,” he mumbled a few seconds later, his mouth stuffed full of bread.

  “I want to stay,” Younes said morosely. “But Iskander, he wants to go. He says he’ll wear women’s robes and a veil if he has to. No one’s likely to stop him—he’s prettier than most women.” He gave a mirthless smile. “He’s had enough of Akka, he says. I think that means he’s had enough of me.”

  The old veteran, Driss, leaned across the table and patted his hand. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean that. Iskander loves you, it’s plain to anyone. You should go with him. You’re both young enough to start your lives somewhere new.”

  Younes gave a rueful smile. “Hardly!” He brushed a hand over his bald head. What had remained of his hair had fallen out in the past weeks as if it no longer had the strength to hold on.

  “Well, younger than me.”

  “Everyone’s younger than you!”

  They laughed.

  “We old folk must stick together,” Baltasar said grimly. “The young ones should try to get out if they can.”

  “I shall stay,” Driss said. “I can’t leave Habiba here on her own.”

  They all knew what he meant. They had buried his wife beside Driss’s two daughters and grandson. It had been a harsh summer.

  “There’s nothing away from Akka for me,” said Baltasar.

  “But you’ve family in Damascus!” said Driss.

  Baltasar shrugged. “I haven’t seen them in years. Besides, who wants an old wolf like me moving in with them? I’ll just make the children cry.”

  It was clear, Nat thought, that he said this to make Driss feel better, and he experienced a surge of proud sorrow that set a hard lump in his throat. “I will stay, too,” he said, mastering himself. “I’ll be classed as able-bodied soon enough, and people here need doctors.”

  Baltasar Najib gave him a hard look. “Driss and I have seen too much of the world to have any illusions left, lad. We’ve got no lives ahead of us—we’ve lived well and made families, and it’s your turn to do that now. You get out while you can, and take my daughter with you. You promise me now: you’ll take Zohra and the child and you’ll leave wi
th them.”

  Nat stared back at him unhappily. “I don’t think my conscience can let me.”

  “Shit on your conscience, boy!” Baltasar roared, and the tea house went quiet. Even Sorgan stopped chewing.

  Driss put a hand Baltasar’s arm. “Hush now, old friend, you’re upsetting poor Sorgan here. Here, son, have some olives with that bread.” He pushed a little bowl of gleaming fresh olives in the big man’s direction.

  Sorgan stared at the bowl as if it were full of eyeballs. “I hate olives,” he said firmly. “I want cake.”

  Younes laughed. “Steady on, son. You’ll be asking for roast lamb next!”

  Sorgan went very still. “I remember the taste of lamb. My mouth remembers.” Spittle gleamed on his lip. He looked around with sudden intent. “I don’t smell lamb. Where is it?”

  “You’ll have mutton soon enough,” Baltasar told him, and when Sorgan started to wail like a child they all tried to calm him down with whatever tidbits they could find.

  In the chaos, Hamsa Nasri leaned across the table and said quietly to Nat, “You have to leave, you know. You’ve got to get out. Take this chance to save your own life, and Baltasar’s daughter, too. It’s the best you can do for this city: survive, and keep it going elsewhere. Keep the memory of how it was, raise your children to remember.”

  Nathanael stared at him. His wound started to throb painfully. “What do you mean? You don’t trust the Franj to honour the terms?”

  The grocer looked grim. “I don’t trust anyone, son. I’m a grocer and the son of a grocer. You’ve seen the sign in my shop. I give no credit.”

  32

  “John …”

  For a second time my eyelids parted to let in the tiniest sliver of light. I did not want to be woken from my dream. Something hugely significant was taking place in it, something I could not quite comprehend. Elements of it tumbled through my head, just as I had been tumbled by the waves. I closed my eyes tight and quested after the trailing threads of the dream. But it was gone now, and anyway it had made no sense.

  “John!” More forceful now, a voice I recalled from long ago, from another world: one lost and barred to me now.

  A hand shook my shoulder, not ungently.

  “John, come back from wherever you are. Come to me. Open your eyes.”

  That voice. I knew it better than my own. Obediently I opened my eyes. Light flooded in. I blinked and blinked, pinned by the merciless illumination. Then a blissful shadow gave me respite. When my eyes adjusted my heart turned over.

  Half-moon eyes. That fine, straight nose. For a long moment I simply lay there and looked at him, and for a long time he lay there without a word and looked at me. Nose to nose, dark and pale, like opposing chess pieces, or a statue and its shadow.

  Then a hand touched my brow, cupped my cheek.

  “John.”

  The way he said my name this time, it made something shiver deep inside me. The word was full of … what? A tone I had never heard from him or any other. Tenderness. Yes, that was the word for it.

  I tried to frame his name, and remembered I had never known it.

  Then an arm went around my back and the world tilted and shifted until I was sitting upright, the sun in my eyes, feeling like a straw-filled poppet.

  “Here, drink this.”

  I had thought I would never wish to drink water again, I had shipped so much of it. This was not salty but as sweet as wine. I gulped it greedily.

  “Slow down, you’ll be sick.”

  I sipped. I looked around. I was on a beach. The sun was spangling the sea. I was alive! How could that be possible?

  I remembered hugging the relic, going down, down through the dark waters with its mighty weight dragging me towards the seabed, getting colder all the time, my ribs getting crushed more tightly with every second of my descent. After that … well, I had no memories, just a crazed jumble of images churning around my head.

  “It’s a miracle,” I croaked—my idea of a joke, which I knew would make him laugh.

  But he didn’t. He just nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, John, a miracle. Truly.”

  He looked away from me for a moment and his face changed. I had always found the Moor unreadable, even at the best of times, and now he seemed more himself than he ever had before, as enigmatic as a shadow.

  “I can’t believe you found me,” I managed to whisper. “Am I really alive? Perhaps I’m between worlds now. God knows, I deserve to wander in Purgatory a long time for all I have done …”

  He frowned at that. “You are not in Purgatory, John. You are in the world. Now look, there are soldiers coming down from the camp, so we must get you on your feet, and I shall speak for you. Can you do that? Can you rise, with my help?”

  I could. For about three seconds. Then I was down in the shingle again as if I had no backbone. From there, I asked, “Quickfinger and Hammer?” Now it was all coming back to me.

  The Moor shook his head. “I’m sorry, John, I’ve seen no one else alive. Put your arm around my shoulder. Let’s try again. There. There we are. Steady, now.”

  The soldiers reached us then, their footsteps crunching on the pebbles: thin, dark leathery-looking men in pointed steel caps, with curved swords at their sides. Seeing them gave me a start. What was I stupidly expecting—that they would be “our” soldiers, not the enemy? For a moment a chill ran through me. Surely they would kill me on the spot. But they didn’t seem very interested in slaughtering me. Rather, they engaged in a lengthy conversation with the Moor, in which I caught only a word here and there.

  “Come, John,” the Moor said at last. “I’ll take you back to camp. The sultan will be glad to see you.” He paused. “We need as many Franj captives as we can get,” he explained. “Don’t we, lads? For ransom.”

  I goggled at him in hurt disbelief. Had I been rescued so miraculously, found so miraculously, only to be sold back to the king I had failed?

  “I do not think he will pay much for me, if anything,” I managed to get out.

  The Moor turned his face to me, his expression as blank as a cat’s. “It’s a numbers game, John. Trust me.”

  I will not pretend it was not daunting, that journey up from the shore to the Muslim camp. I had thought myself a dead man, destined for the pits of Hell, but now here I was, surprisingly ascending, through the midst of a thousands of enemy soldiers, who turned to regard me more with curiosity than hostility. I was in the midst of our foe! Never had I felt so exposed. And yet, at the same time, with the Moor’s arm around me and his charged, wiry strength bearing me up, filling me with his strange, engulfing confidence, it was like walking in a dream through flameless fire or silent monstrosities, a dream in which you know you can take no harm.

  As my initial terrors lifted, I began to take in my surroundings. Everywhere I looked returned some marvel or surprise. The greatest surprise of all was the general cleanliness of this vast encampment. Where ours was all churned earth, or mud, depending on the season, and stank of piss and shit and rot, up here on the tawny hillsides order largely prevailed. We passed well-dug and well-watered latrines, picketed horses, camp-kitchens from which smells emanated that made my nose twitch. Myriad tents of many hues and patterned designs, pennants fluttering beside them, and everywhere the symbol of the crescent moon, where there were a thousand different devices in the Christian camp. An area where a dozen men, stripped to their breeches, washed and beat clothing in a channelled stream—no sign of a woman anywhere—and above this, where the diverted stream flowed into a neatly tiled area, men performed ablutions, their sleeves rolled high, washing their hands and forearms, their faces and necks, with utmost care.

  The Moor saw how I stared at this sight and chuckled to himself.

  As we made our way little farther up the slope there came a great, lowing note, followed by a tumble of others that shimmered on the hot air, the chant taken up by other voices on other hills, until there seemed a single great song of summoning, and I noticed that a tide of men
was moving in the same direction. While I was puzzling over this, the soldiers in front of us dropped to their knees, facing inland, knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.

  The Moor stood where he was and merely cast his gaze skywards. He raised his hands to his face, closed his eyes and brushed his palms from his forehead, over his lips and down to his heart. Then he opened his eyes and looked right at me, and I felt as if my heart stopped. In that moment I knew he had just thanked God that I was alive.

  On the summit of the hill a great pavilion was pitched, apricot banners flying all around it and guards stationed outside the door, big men made taller by their spiked helmets. I thought, That must be the tent of our chief enemy, the pagan king, Saladin, and with brief, hallucinatory clarity remembered Hammer capering across the stage with three rag-babies threaded on his lance. Then shame came over me as I recalled the Moor’s expression when I had asked my idiot question.

  Even though I knew with the rational part of me that the sultan was no cannibal, and probably no other sort of monster either, it was to my great relief that we turned aside before we reached the great pavilion, to another, smaller tent pitched a little distance away. The Moor said something to the soldiers and they debated for a moment, then he ducked inside and disappeared from view. A short while later he came out again and beckoned me inside.

  “The qadi of the army, Baha ad-Din,” he said to me, indicating a short, stout man with a carefully trimmed beard and bright, watchful eyes.

  I bowed as politely as I could manage, for my legs were trembling with the effort of the long uphill walk, and the man shot a number of questions at the Moor, who answered them shortly. I watched as the scribe took a quill in hand, opened a small flask, dipped the quill, knocked it on the rim and then wrote something on a piece of fine-looking vellum, his hand moving swiftly, and oddly, from right to left.

  “I’ve told him your name, your age and place of birth,” the Moor said quietly.

  I stared at him. “Even I don’t know my age.”

  “I guessed. Does it matter? I also told him you’re an acclaimed creator of illusion.”