by Robyn Young
When he had finished, Elwen’s face was grave with concern. “You’re going to Cairo?” she murmured. “Alone?”
“I leave tonight. These people need to be stopped. They cannot be allowed to do this. It will be the end of everything if they do.”
Elwen was shocked to feel a sudden hope for this. If the Mamluks came for Acre, the Christians wouldn’t stand a chance. They would all be forced to return to the West and then the knights, Will, would have nothing left to fight for. It would be over. All of it. But she pushed the foolish hope aside, knowing that it wouldn’t be like that. The Christians wouldn’t just give Acre up; they would fight tooth and nail to the death for it. They would die by the thousands. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.
Will drew her into his arms. She tensed for a second, resisting, then softened in his embrace. Raising her head, her lips found his and they kissed, lightly at first, then more ardently. As she opened her mouth over his, their tongues moving together, Elwen pushed back his cowl with her hands until she reached the nape of his neck, where his black hair was curled and damp from the heat. When she grabbed at him, her nails scraping skin, she heard a strained, almost animal noise come from deep within his throat. Lifting her up, Will pushed her against the alley wall. His black cloak fell from his shoulders to pool like a puddle around his feet as she wrapped her legs about his waist, her skirts slipping up. She held on tight.
“Do you love me?” she whispered fiercely.
He dragged off her coif to release her hair. “Yes.”
As the bells of San Marco began to toll the hour, they made desperate love in the alleyway, where rats scurried in the rubbish heaps and shadows closed around them like a veil.
THE CITADEL, CAIRO, 26 MAY A.D. 1276
“Where is she? Where?”
Kalawun pushed past the guards who had escorted him into the harem palace and sprinted down the passage, sending servants scuttling out of his way. Seeing a knot of people clustered outside a chamber, the door of which was open, he barged through. Baybars’s wives, Nizam and Fatima, were by a bed with one of the palace physicians. Nizam turned as he came forward. Her expression was as hard as ever. “Amir,” she began.
Kalawun took no notice, but rushed to the bed, where a body was lying. He looked down upon his daughter’s face and shock twisted freezing hands around his heart. Aisha’s brown eyes were wide and staring. Her skin was waxy in the light of the oil lanterns, cast with a bluish tinge. His gaze traveled the length of her, taking in the stiffness in her limbs, the hands locked in clawed fists. Then he returned to her contorted face, her open mouth, the tongue protruding, purple and swollen. His first thought, which followed the initial shock with an odd detachment, was that she had been strangled. But there were no marks on her neck. He reached for her, then drew back with a jolt as his fingertips brushed her skin. She was cold.
“Did you say the Shahada?” he whispered, not looking round.
“We only found her a short while ago,” replied Nizam.
The physician took a step forward. “I would estimate, Amir Kalawun, that she has been dead for some time, perhaps as long as four hours. I’m afraid it would appear that your daughter choked on her food.”
Kalawun paid him no heed, but leaned forward and breathed words into his daughter’s ear. “Ashadu an la ilaha illa-llah. Wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul-Ullah.”
“Where is my son?” Nizam demanded of someone behind him. “Have the servants not found him yet? Baraka should be here.”
Beyond the voices of Nizam and the other women, Kalawun could hear shrieking, but his mind was now collapsing in on itself, folding down in anguish, and he neither knew nor cared where it was coming from as he gathered his daughter’s lifeless body into his arms. His cries felt as though they were being wrenched from him, each one containing the rawest grief and the purest loss, painful in the extreme as they were torn from his throat. Tears blinded him as he rocked with her. The shrieking continued. Dimly, he heard Nizam’s sharp voice.
“Remove it!” she was shouting. “Get that thing out of here!”
Through his streaming eyes, Kalawun saw a tiny brown shape hunched on the chamber’s window ledge. The monkey’s whole body was quivering, its amber eyes wide and terror-stricken. It was screaming. A eunuch approached and tried to reach up, but the monkey leapt backward and jumped onto the window grille, where it clung wretchedly. As Kalawun’s gaze moved away, he caught sight of a platter of food and a goblet on a tray near the head of the bed. It looked like it had been pushed hastily aside, the goblet lying on a half-eaten pile of dry, yellow rice. The eunuch was still trying to capture the monkey. Something brushed through Kalawun’s mind, a pale ghost of a thought. It formed into a specter, rising dark before him. Abruptly, he let Aisha down on the bed and stood. “Who brought her the food?” His voice was weak and at first didn’t carry above the monkey’s cries and Nizam’s harsh orders. “Who?” he demanded when no one answered. He turned to them as they fell silent. “Who brought her this?”
“One of the palace servants,” replied Nizam, “before salat. She had asked to be left alone. One of the girls came in to clear the tray and found her on the floor.”
“She retired early to her bed,” added Fatima, unable to meet Kalawun’s intense gaze, “saying that she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Before she ate the food or after?”
Nizam frowned. “I do not understand what you—”
“Tell me!” raged Kalawun, making her start and step back a pace. “Did she say she was unwell before or after she had eaten?”
“Before,” said Fatima.
Kalawun faltered, but he shook his head. “Find me the eunuch who brought her the food. I want to question him.” He turned to the physician. “You will check it for poison.”
“Poison?” began the physician.
“It cannot be,” said Nizam firmly, recovering her poise. “When I came in, I found that vermin eating the food.” She gestured at the monkey, which the eunuch had given up attempting to grab. “It would be dead by now if the food was poisoned.”
“What about the drink?” Kalawun stooped and snatched up the empty goblet, he sniffed inside, then passed it to the physician. “I want this checked. Now!”
“Amir, with all due respect, without the presence of any liquid, no tests can be accurately performed.”
But Kalawun was already pushing his way out of the room. The nervous women thronging the doorway fell fearfully back. His face was murderous as he made his way out of the harem and across the courtyard into the main palace buildings. His suspicion had become certainty, and his grief now towered like a vast wall of water behind a dam of rage. He walked swiftly, running when he reached the stairs, heading down into the lower levels. Kalawun found Khadir curled on a filthy blanket in his den, snoring. He woke the soothsayer with a kick. “Get up!”
Khadir leapt to his feet. He hissed, then yelled as Kalawun slammed him against the wall.
“What did you do to her? Tell me!”
Khadir screeched, his white eyes huge with fear, thin arms flailing, struggling vainly to push against Kalawun’s muscular form. Outside in the passage, a servant, hearing the commotion, looked inside the storeroom. Seeing Kalawun attacking the soothsayer, he rushed off. Kalawun’s eyes alighted on the timber shelf, lined with strange objects and jars of colored powders. Pushing Khadir roughly to the floor, he dropped down and began grabbing at jars, pulling off their cloth coverings. Khadir wailed in protest as Kalawun held each to his nose, before throwing them aside, sending golden and rust-colored dust across the floor and blankets. Glass shattered as, one by one, he discarded cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger. He then swiped at the other objects lining the shelves, sweeping them all off, the fragile skulls breaking, glass beads cascading. As Khadir fell on him, Kalawun threw him off and pinned him down on the blankets, his hands wrapping around the old man’s scrawny neck.
Kalawun didn’t hear the shouts in the passage outside, or the runn
ing footsteps; he only heard Khadir’s choking, rasping noises as he tried futilely to breathe. Hands gripped his arms. He felt himself being hauled backward. “No!” he shouted, his hands still squeezing Khadir’s neck. The soothsayer’s face was purple and his eyes were bulging. Kalawun felt a muscular arm lock around his own neck, tightening his airway, stopping up breath. Instinctively, he let go of Khadir, who flopped back on the blankets, gasping desperately. Grabbing at the arm around his neck, Kalawun just managed to turn his head enough to see that it was Baybars who had hold of him.
“Enough, Kalawun,” said the sultan.
“He killed her,” panted Kalawun, his eyes alight. “My daughter’s dead and he killed her!”
“I came to the harem palace moments after you left,” said Baybars. “Nizam told me your daughter choked on her food.”
Kalawun shook his head. “It was him. I found Baraka out and made your son admit who helped him. I uncovered this traitor. Khadir was an Assassin, Baybars. He knows how to use poisons. It was him.”
Khadir was rolling around on the floor, choking and retching.
“And he will be punished for his part in that plan,” said Baybars firmly, “but not for something he did not do.”
“I want the food checked. Every last scrap of it. I want it checked.”
“And it will be. But even if poison is found, and I do not believe it will be, it would be more likely to have come from within the harem. Aisha was the first wife of my son, the bride of the heir to the kingdom. Women, in my experience, can be as hungry for power as men and sometimes more ruthless in the pursuit of it. It would not be the first murder within those walls.” Kalawun was starting to shake, high keening sounds building in the back of his throat. Baybars put his other arm around the trembling commander and held him. “I am sorry, my friend,” he murmured. “Truly I am. We have both lost a daughter today. The kingdom will mourn her.”
At those last words, the dam inside Kalawun broke and his grief engulfed him in a rushing, tumbling torrent. Khadir crawled limply to the wall, where he hunched, bitterly savoring every one of the commander’s wrenching sobs.
Baraka Khan walked unsteadily into the night, dazedly passing the harem guards. The wind had picked up and blew hot and dusty around him, drying the sweat on his face. An image of Aisha lying stiff on the bed jumped into his mind: her pallid, twisted face and her tongue poking hideously from between her teeth. Baraka paused by one of the palm trees that bordered the courtyard, pressing his hand against the solid, rough bark. He retched, doubled over and vomited. His eyes watered as he retched again. Then, slowly, he straightened and walked on. Now he was purged, he felt better.
20
The Street of St. Anne, Acre 27 MAY A.D. 1276
“ Well, find me someone who does know where he is. I’ll not give you money for nothing.” Garin gritted his teeth as the young servant scuttled across the street and back through the preceptory’s gates.
He leaned against the wall of the shop behind him and tried to rein in his anger. It was more than two hours past the time that Will had promised to meet him in the tavern. Now King Hugh had signed the document promising to let Edward use Cyprus as a base for a holy war and to deliver a substantial sum of money—half now and half when Edward had spoken to the pope had been his condition—Garin was almost ready to return to England. He just needed to collect the gold from Everard, and then his business here would finally be done.
He looked up as the small door in the preceptory’s massive gates opened again and tutted irritably as he saw a familiar, barrel-chested figure striding across the road toward him. There was no sign of the servant.
Simon’s broad face was set with anger. “What do you want?”
With massive effort, Garin managed to force a smile. “Simon.”
“Save the horseshit. I’m not here to make conversation with you. Leave the servants alone. They’re not yours to command and they aren’t allowed to accept bribes. That boy would’ve been beaten if you’d paid him and he’d been found out.”
“I’m sorry,” said Garin contritely, “I forgot. Well, maybe you can help. Will was supposed to meet me this afternoon, but he hasn’t, and as he was well aware of the importance of our engagement, I can only assume something very serious must have delayed him. Perhaps you could tell me where I might find him?”
Simon stepped closer to Garin. “Will might have forgotten what you did to him back in Paris, but I haven’t. You’re a dog and if I had my way you’d have been put down years ago. There’s no good in you, and all your pretty smiles won’t fool me otherwise. I see through you. Whatever you want with Will, you’ll not get it. I’ll make certain of it.”
Garin’s smile faded. “I think that’s up to Will, don’t you?” he murmured. “You’re not his nursemaid, Tanner, nor his commander. You’re a lowborn stable hand. You should leave the big decisions to men of rank and keep to what you know best. Shit and straw.”
“I’ll keep to mine if you keep to yours. And at the last look that was ale and whores.” Turning, Simon headed back across the street.
“You’re not the only one in the Temple,” called Garin, stalking after him. “I’ll pay a dozen servants if I have to. I’m not leaving until I see Will.”
“You’ll have a long wait then,” retorted Simon, glancing back before he reached the gates. “Commander Campbell is away on business. And will be for weeks, months maybe.” He paused before opening the door. “Whatever it is you were after, you can forget it. Will’s gone. Go back to England. You’re not wanted here.” With that, Simon entered the preceptory and shut the gate.
Garin stood in the street, trembling with rage. As he turned to move off, a young woman clutching a basket filled with fruit got in his way and he pushed her roughly aside. She stumbled with a cry, dropping her basket, sending the fruit spilling. A man shouted at Garin and jogged over to help her, but Garin was already walking away. He kept going for several minutes, before swerving abruptly into a narrow pathway between two bakers’ shops. With a harsh cry, he slammed his fist into the wall. The skin across his knuckles tore and pain shot through him, but he punched it again, a second time, almost relishing the agony. He put his palms flat against the wall and rested his head on it. After a few moments, he pushed himself upright. If Simon wouldn’t speak to him, there was one other who might.
THE TEMPLE, ACRE, 27 MAY A.D. 1276
“Enter,” called Everard tiredly at a rap at the door. He set down his quill on his chronicle. His memory wasn’t what it used to be, and he had come to fear that if he didn’t write things down he would forget them. He wouldn’t have the others questioning his judgment. He had made enough mistakes.
The seneschal strode in. “What have you done, Everard?”
Everard looked up with a frown.
“Brother Thomas has just told me everything.” The seneschal’s brow was knotted. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I should have been part of this.”
“You weren’t here, my friend,” replied Everard matter-of-factly. “I had to make the decision. There was no time to lose.”
“So you sent Campbell to Cairo on his own? Into the lion’s den, where God only knows what trouble he’ll get into? Are you forgetting, Everard, that he betrayed us once before? I never would have sanctioned such a move had I been here.”
“Campbell has dealt with Kalawun in the past. The two met face-to-face when he delivered the peace treaty to Baybars. De Beaujeu has been informed that he is securing a valuable treatise in Syria that will greatly benefit the Temple, so his absence will not arouse suspicions. If not for him, Brother, we wouldn’t know that any of this was happening.”
“From what Brother Thomas told me, Campbell might not have informed us at all if not for the fact that he couldn’t decipher the message and needed you to do it for him.”
“But he did tell us,” replied Everard wearily, “and now we know. We must put our differences aside. This overshadows all else. Nothing can matter except that we stop it.
”
The seneschal said nothing for a moment, then pulled up a stool and sat. “Sclavo is dead,” he said gruffly. “It happened shortly after he was brought in.”
“What? Why did none of us hear of this?”
“There was little to report. All the attention had shifted to Soranzo by that point and no one cared about some petty criminal.”
“How did he die?”
“It isn’t known. He collapsed after breaking his fast one morning. The physician said his heart had given out.”
“Poisoned?” asked Everard quickly.
“At the time, I did not think it suspicious, but from what Brother Thomas has told me it would seem that maybe there was a reason for his death. Maybe someone did not want him talking. Why did you wish to speak with him anyway?”
“He dealt with Soranzo, who knew the grand master was involved in the proposed theft of the Black Stone. It is possible he knew more about the plot itself. I had hoped to interrogate him.”
“I think we should concentrate on the grand master,” responded the seneschal after a pause. “He is obviously at the center of this.”
“We do not know for certain that de Beaujeu knows of the plan, Brother. The message from Kaysan doesn’t seem to be addressing him.”
“Soranzo told Campbell that the grand master would burn because of the Stone; de Beaujeu gave Campbell the scroll and told him to meet this Kaysan, and this scroll apparently speaks of Western knights who will enter Mecca with these Shias and steal it. I would, in truth, be very surprised if he didn’t know anything of it.”
“I agree, but we must have more facts before we can proceed.”
“What about this man, Angelo Vitturi? Could he have been involved? It was unorthodox that the grand master should send a merchant to interrogate Soranzo. Perhaps we should look into him, his business here in the city, his connections with de Beaujeu?”
“Not yet. Not until we know more. If he is involved, then I do not wish to alert him to the fact that we know anything. For the moment, we would appear to have time on our side. From what the scroll says, the theft will not occur until during the month of Muharram, which would put it sometime during April next year.” He clasped his hands on the table. “I am convinced that will give us enough chance to act.”