Crusade

by Robyn Young

  Everard had drawn in a hiss of breath at this, but Will said nothing. Simon’s words echoed through his mind, blasting into all the dark places where he had plotted and planned Baybars’s death, all the hidden corners where he had tormented himself after the failure of the Assassination, places haunted with guilt and sorrow, bitterness and disappointment. Finally, they erupted in the deepest part of him, where for months fear had been gnawing, ever since he had learned that the Mamluks were searching for those who had contracted the Assassins, searching for him. Having heard no word from Kalawun and with the theft of the Stone taking up most of his waking thoughts, Will had tried to convince himself that nothing would come of it, that no one would find the Assassins and his guilt would never surface. Now there was nowhere left for his fears to hide. Revenge had come, sharp and sudden. And it had struck at the weakest, most vulnerable part of him.

  Will’s hand went to the St. George’s pendant around his neck. “Is the horse you readied still saddled?”

  “I ... I’m not sure. It might be.”

  “Go and fetch it,” said Will, in a flat tone.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Simon, rising to face him.

  Will met his gaze. “I don’t blame you,” he said tightly, after a moment. “You did what you had to.”

  Simon shook his head sadly as if he didn’t agree, then hastened down the steps, making for the stables.

  “What are you doing?” said Everard, clutching Will’s arm as he made to follow the groom.

  “What I have to.”

  32

  The Citadel, Damascus 17 JUNE A.D. 1277

  Kalawun was in his chambers, in talks with two officers from the Syrian regiment, when word came that the Bahri soldiers Baybars had sent to find William Campbell had returned. Having dismissed his men, he was making his way to the throne room, near to his own chambers, when he met Nasir coming the other way. The officer’s face was still pallid with exhaustion and scarred with faded bruises, but he seemed more solid than the wisp of a man he had been six days ago.

  “Amir, I was on my way to see you.”

  “What happened?” Kalawun asked, scanning the passage to make sure they were alone. “Did you find Campbell?”

  Nasir hung his head. “I did not even reach Acre, Amir. My horse was injured on the second day. I made it to one of our outposts, where I secured another, but I was too late. I saw the Bahri returning on the road and so I hid and trailed them back. I came as fast as I could to warn you.”

  “Do they have him?”

  “They have someone. I was some distance away when they passed me, but I believe it was a woman, not a man.”

  “A woman?” Kalawun frowned. “I will see for myself. Thank you, Nasir.”

  “Do not thank me. I failed in my task.”

  “You did what you could and that is all I asked. Go now and rest. You have done enough.” Kalawun moved swiftly to the throne room, where he could hear Baybars’s voice issuing from within. The sultan sounded incensed. Kalawun pushed open the doors.

  In the lofty, sun-filled chamber, Baybars was in mid-stride, face ruddy with rage. He was sweeping the marble floor in front of four weary-looking Bahri. Towering over them in his black robes edged with gold, he was as menacing as a thunderhead.

  Lining the walls of the throne room were a customary accompaniment of eunuchs, all with heads bowed, waiting only to be summoned or dismissed. Several governors, who had obviously been in council with Baybars, were seated around a table near the window looking perplexed. With them, to Kalawun’s surprise, was Baraka Khan, and hunched like a withered old vulture on the top step of the dais beside the throne was Khadir. There was one other figure in the chamber, and despite Nasir’s warning, she looked so out of place that for a moment Kalawun could only stand in the doorway and stare. As Baybars’s ferocious gaze fell on him, however, he quickly collected himself.

  “My lord, I was informed that your men had returned,” Kalawun said, closing the doors. His eyes drifted back to the woman who was caught between two of the Bahri. She was tall and slim with a blaze of copper-gold curls that hung limp and disheveled around her shoulders. Her face, stiff with shock, was stark white against the flames of her hair. She was trembling like a colt. Kalawun noticed that Baraka Khan also seemed transfixed by the woman, his narrow eyes intent.

  Baybars checked himself at Kalawun’s arrival, then flung a hand toward the woman. “They brought me his wife!”

  “His wife?”

  “Campbell’s,” snapped Baybars. His gaze swiveled belligerently to the four Bahri. “And what good will she do me?” His voice grew bitter. “He will know now that I am seeking him. He will run and I will never ...” He pointed at the soldiers. “You failed me.”

  “We beg your forgiveness, my lord,” murmured one of the Bahri, looking from Baybars to his comrades. “But we could do nothing more. We were told that Campbell would be with this woman.”

  “You should have killed her and everyone in that house and waited for him.”

  “My lord, we did not know that he would come.”

  “By Allah, she was his wife!” roared Baybars. “Of course he would come!”

  “We left a message . ..,” began one of the other soldiers.

  “As you said before,” growled Baybars. “A message?” He shook his head and laughed fiercely. “And the Christian will ride here alone? To face death for her!”

  “Yes,” came a hissed response.

  Baybars looked round as Khadir scuttled down the steps and perched, looking keenly at the woman, who shrank back from his scrutiny, but was stopped from moving by the Bahri to either side of her, gripping her arms.

  “He will come,” murmured Khadir, studying her with his head cocked to one side. “By their law, Knights of the Temple cannot marry. If he is wed, it was done in secret and he has risked much. He’ll risk more for her yet.”

  “When will he come?” asked Baybars, his voice draining of some of its ferocity.

  “Soon,” responded Khadir. He looked at Kalawun. “And then you will see to it that the infidel bleeds and suffers as he should. As they all should.” His eyes flicked back to Baybars. “As was your pledge when you ascended the throne, Master.”

  Kalawun felt a surge of concern as he saw Baybars’s expression grow taut and thoughtful with the soothsayer’s bold words. Only the other week, he would have refused to even listen to Khadir’s counsel. “My lord, if Campbell comes, you should try him, certainly, and if his guilt is proven, the necessary action must be taken. But I would caution against making any hasty decisions in your anger toward one man.”

  “This isn’t your business!” spat Khadir with naked hatred at Kalawun.

  “The sultan can make up his own mind,” said Kalawun calmly, although the animosity in his tone was undeniable.

  “Leave me.” Baybars raised his head when no one moved. “Leave me!” he shouted, stalking toward the Bahri soldiers, who stepped back from him. “And you!” He turned on the governors and his son, waiting, astonished, at the table. “Leave!”

  Khadir shrieked as Baybars whirled on him. He scurried down the dais and fled behind Baraka and the governors.

  “All of you!” Baybars yelled at the eunuchs, who hurried out, heads still bowed. “Wait!” he demanded, as the Bahri soldiers hastened to leave. “Not her.” He pointed at the woman. “She will stay. And you,” he barked, snapping his fingers at one of the eunuchs.

  “My lord,” began Kalawun, as the servants jostled through the doors. He looked at the woman quivering in the center of the room. Now that the soldiers had let go of her, she looked as if she hardly had the strength to hold herself up. But somehow she managed it, and despite her obvious terror, there was something steadfast, bold even, in her large green eyes. Kalawun, staring at her, was reminded of his daughter. “What will you do?”

  “Go, Kalawun,” said Baybars, shaking his head. “Just leave me.”

  Backing away, Kalawun reached the doorway. He took one last look a
t Baybars and the woman, then shut the doors.

  As their closing echoed through the cavernous throne room, Elwen started. But through her dread, which had assailed her ever since the door to Andreas’s house had burst open and the soldiers had entered, she felt a jolt of hope. Kalawun, the sultan had called the tall man in the blue cloak. Elwen knew that name. It was the name of Will’s ally in Egypt. She hadn’t missed the worried, almost pained way he had looked at her either. Her gaze lingered on the doors, until she sensed movement and realized Sultan Baybars was standing before her.

  Elwen turned her eyes on his huge frame, and as they traveled upward, she saw his hard, lined face and the white star gleaming in his pupil. At once, she recalled all the times she had heard people speak of this man, always in grave or frightened tones. The man they called Crossbow, the Lion of the East. And he was as imposing and terrifying in real life as she had imagined from those stories. Elwen’s hope left her, and she dropped her gaze, expecting him at any second to wrench one of the sabers he wore slung from his belt and strike her down where she stood. She didn’t want to see the end coming, and so she clenched her eyes shut and gritted her teeth.

  “Ismik eh?”

  The words filtered through her numb shock, alien at first, then suddenly familiar. He asked my name? Wonderingly, she raised her head and swallowed thickly. “Ismi Elwen, Malik,” she managed to breathe, then bowed her head again.

  Baybars’s mouth twitched as she called him king. He lifted his trailing robes and strode up the dais steps to where he sat on his throne, staring down at her. “You will translate for me,” he told the eunuch he had ordered to stay, not taking his eyes off Elwen.

  “How long have you been Campbell’s wife?”

  As he spoke in Arabic, Elwen bit her lip, failing to understand. But it was repeated in stuttering French a moment later by the eunuch and she realized why he had been made to stay. For a moment, she wondered what she should say; then she decided to keep up the pretense. Just as many Christians would wholly disapprove of her illicit relationship with Will, so too would most Muslims. “Eleven years,” she said, choosing the year Will had proposed to her and glancing at the eunuch, who dutifully repeated her words in Arabic.

  “How did he marry you, when he is a Templar?”

  This time, after the sultan’s words had been translated, Elwen didn’t look at the eunuch when she replied. “The Temple doesn’t know that we are married.”

  “He risked his knighthood for you?”

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  “He must love you.”

  Elwen didn’t reply. She thought of Garin, and the pain of regret, still so fresh, engulfed her. She couldn’t speak for the intensity of it.

  Baybars, however, didn’t need an answer. “Then I expect you know why he went to the Assassins,” he said, his voice at once harsh and commanding. “Why he wanted me dead.” He stood, looming over her on the dais steps as the eunuch spoke his words. “I want you to tell me these things. Tell me what he told you!”

  Finally, Elwen understood why she was here, why the Mamluks had come for Will and had taken her in his place. So far, the shock of it had clouded any serious search for motives for her capture. She didn’t know what to say for the best, but she had no time to falter here. Baybars wanted an answer and he wanted to be satisfied with it. “You killed his father, my Lord Sultan,” she told him, slowly, so the eunuch would be sure to understand her. “At Safed. James Campbell was one of the knights you ordered executed after the siege. That is why he went to the Assassins.”

  Baybars frowned, listening to the eunuch, then grew still. Different emotions played across his face. Cognition, anger, triumph. Then, just a profound weariness. He slumped in his throne, his callused hands wrapping around the lions’ heads, grasping them tightly as if they were posts on a quay and he a ship desperate to moor.

  He had thought all these years that the attempt on his life had been orchestrated by Frankish rulers in Acre; barons or kings who had wanted him gone to save their territories and positions. It had never entered his head that one man would have come looking for revenge out of the countless thousands he had sent to their deaths, fortress by fortress, city by city. It was vengeance that had ruled Campbell to this end, had led him to the Assassins. And Baybars knew that silvery, incessant call. He knew it well. Many times, its siren song had kept him awake at night. It had sung to him down the years, out of time and memory. Each life he took, each town, each army had been to satisfy that call, to fill the void inside him where it echoed ceaselessly. But nothing ever had.

  After Omar, that space had simply widened, opening him up to the hollow-ness of a constant appetite that was never sated no matter what he did. He always imagined that the call had begun with her, a slave girl, brutally raped then murdered before him by their master, a former Templar Knight, another life ago in Aleppo. But her violent passing had only stretched the hole already torn when the Mongols invaded his lands, causing his delivery into the hands of the slave traders, changing the course of his entire life. And now vengeance had claimed another victim. But this time, it was him. Under his orders, the Christian’s father had died and to balance those scales, Omar had been taken. All at once, Baybars understood, with absolute clarity, that he would never find retribution for that which had been taken from him. He had been looking for it in all the wrong places. “Allah help me,” he whispered, closing his eyes and gripping the lions as he felt himself swallowed by the emptiness within. “Help me.”

  The eunuch decided that he wasn’t supposed to translate this, and the chamber grew silent, the only sounds the whispering of three sets of breaths, Elwen’s fast and shallow, the eunuch’s low and strained, the sultan’s drawn out and trembling.

  Finally, Baybars opened his eyes. They were moist and distant, and he didn’t look at Elwen or the eunuch as he moved down the steps of the dais and out of the throne room.

  OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF DAMASCUS, SYRIA, 17 JUNE A.D. 1277

  Sweat trickled in persistent lines from Will’s brow as he lay flat on a ridge of sand and looked down over the city of Damascus. It was late morning and although there was a haze, the sun’s strength was not diminished. If anything it was fiercer than usual, the world sprawled listlessly beneath it. From the ridge, Will had a good vantage over the city and the surrounding land, with the main road that led west to Acre snaking from the city’s gates. On one side, Damascus was bordered by a broad river, lined with verdant orchards and gardens. In front of the eastern walls, another city, this one composed entirely of tents, covered a large open plain in a riot of color. Squinting into its midst, Will could make out siege engines, and guessed that it must be the camp of the Mamluk Army.

  He had been watching the road for almost half an hour and had seen a steady stream of people, camels and carts coming and going through the city gates. Satisfied that he would be able to enter without too much difficulty, he rose and hastened back down to the narrow track where he had left his horse. Mounting, he made his way out of the hills to join the road to the city.

  It had been a hard ride from Acre. His plain tunic, which he’d had just enough foresight to exchange his mantle for, was damp and dirty, and there were bluish-gray circles under his eyes from lack of sleep and a merciless anxiety. Back at the preceptory, Simon, his face drawn with guilt, had gathered him an unnecessarily full pack of supplies. But Will had barely eaten a thing. He knew that he should; that he needed all his strength, but the mere sight of food had made him feel sick to his stomach and it had been all he could do to chew a few strips of salted meat the evening before. Images and memories of Elwen, brighter, sweeter than they had ever been in reality, swirled through every waking thought, until he was saturated with her. Thrumming, maddening fear beat within him, constant as a heartbeat.

  Will’s eyes traveled over Damascus’s sheer walls, the tilted angles of hundreds of rooftops softened here and there by the globular domes of mosques, all marching upward, street by twisted street, to the c
rowning citadel, rising solid against the pearlescent sky, topped with banners that hung limp in the heavy air. The sight of it gave his determination a blow. Somewhere in that stone jungle was Elwen. But although he guessed the citadel to be where she would be held, he couldn’t see how on earth he could hope to find her in that giant’s castle, let alone rescue her. Would she even be alive? Was he foolish to hope? He shook his head as if to clear it. He had to hope. It was the only thing keeping him going. His plan was simple. He would find Kalawun, if the commander were here, and beg for his help.

  Passing several traders with carts of goods, two women with water jugs poised on their heads and soldiers in chain mail, Will entered the city. Once inside, he was forced to lead his horse through the busy streets. As a major trading city and stop-off point on the pilgrim route to Mecca, Damascus had a population that was as diverse as Acre’s, and as many of the Mamluks themselves were white, Will didn’t look too conspicuous. But he knew he would only be able to rely on this fact for so long. Once in the citadel itself, he would be immediately out of place in his travel-soiled clothes and in danger of being recognized. He needed a disguise.

  As he walked, Will’s eyes drifted over the people he passed: merchants, laborers, children, beggars. His gaze lingered longest on two Bahri warriors in their distinctive robes, but he stopped himself from following, knowing that he couldn’t overpower both of them. He walked for some time, going deeper into the city, becoming increasingly impatient, until at last he came to a shaded market, where he slumped against a wall. He straightened after a moment and was about to lead his horse to a busy water trough in one corner of the square when his eyes fell on a lone man coming out of a building on the western edge of the market. He was clad in a violet cloak, trimmed with black and gold braid, with a matching turban wound around his head. Will had seen such garments before. It was the uniform of the Mamluk royal messengers. The man had gone to a horse that was tethered near the mouth of a street winding off from the square and was knelt down, tightening his mount’s girth. Will headed toward him.