by Simon Acland
As Hasan made the secret sign that caused his guards to open his chamber’s door, I felt like a fine general who has won his greatest victory. But I could not relish my adversary’s expression of defeat, for Hasan had turned away to gaze once more out of the window at the mountains.
The steady march of the guards through the labyrinthine corridors filled me with frustration. I boiled to see my lover; I wanted to see her face fill with surprise and delight. And indeed when I re-entered our love chamber, surprise was in her sad blue eyes, mixed with alarm, as if she feared what Hasan might have said to me. The door safely closed, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me gently. The room was lit red by the setting sun.
“I did not expect to see you again,” she said, gentle tears rolling down her cheeks.
I kissed her greedily back and she pulled away, turning her back sadly to me to look out at the garden, bloodstained by the last dying rays.
“Tell me what the old man said. What do you have to do?”
Eagerly I told her how I would go to Antioch, win the book, and return to collect her to be my bride. Proudly I told how I had stood up to the old man and forced him to grant us one last night together. As she turned to meet my gaze, I saw deep sorrow in her eyes mixed with wisdom that far outdid all the knowledge sought by Hasan-i Sabbah. How right I was to choose love when it came joined with wisdom too. She gently took my hand and led me back to the bed. We sat like friends and helped each other slowly out of our clothes, savouring the time it took to bare our flesh. Her long blond hair hung down, covering up her breasts. I reached to move it away and by accident brushed a nipple with my hand. She jumped and giggled softly, escaping back beneath the covers.
“You are not safe from me there,” I laughed, and stalked round the bed, my cock showing her that my words were true. She circled it in her small neat hand and pulled me towards her. “I do not want to be safe from you,” she breathed into my ear, guiding me inside. “Love me slowly now.” For as long as I could, I obeyed her wish, moving slowly and gently above her, watching her expressions change. On her face I saw passion rising to match my own. She gasped, closed her eyes and bit her lips, pushing up her chin, showing the sinews of her straining neck. I pressed down tightly on her, my arms around her back, and thrust hard until I heard her cry and then let myself gush out.
Through that long night we writhed and twisted like Tiresias’ mating snakes, so closely entwined that a watcher could have hardly told male from female. So we remained, when sated we lay still, and slept a dreamless sleep.
A hammering on the door woke us and broke us apart. A pale dawn now chilled the room. The garments I had worn on my arrival were brought and brusquely I was ordered to rise. One last kiss, one last gentle stroke, and I stood up from the bed to pull on my undergarments and boots. With a heavy heart, I lifted the weighty mail coat, the leather beneath moulded by sweat to my shape and still smelling of sour fear and exertion. I placed it over my head and stood there in the grim aspect of war. Now truly a man, truly a soldier and a knight, I kissed Blanche a gentle goodbye, careful lest she bruise her tender skin on my rough metal carapace. I swore to return as fast as I could. I swore to be faithful and true. She swore that she would not lose hope, that she would wait patiently for my return. Then she turned her face to her pillow to hide her tears. I set my own face hard to show no sign of weak emotion to Hasan’s men, cast my cloak round my shoulders, gathered up my helm, and left the room.
Outside, they brought me my horse. I was glad to see that he had been well fed and cared for, and enjoyed his whinny of welcome. Mohammed waited there, mounted already, with two companions. Spare horses carried weapons and provisions. As I left Alamut, and my beloved, I saw something white fluttering like a captive dove at one of the narrow windows. I thought perhaps that it was Blanche waving goodbye.
SAINT LAZARUS’ COLLEGE
The Oxford Detective’s pleasure at being offered a drink was diluted by his annoyance at not being asked to stay for dinner. They really were a snooty lot. Still, at least he had got through his interviews, and begun the difficult process of sorting truth from falsehood. None of them had satisfactory alibis; after all the vehicle had been parked for most of the day in the multistorey car park. Anyone could have got at it; the CCTV cameras had been broken again. It would not really be reasonable to expect them to account for their whereabouts during that whole period. Indeed, if one of them had been able to, that would have aroused his suspicions more than anything.
He looked around the room at his suspects over the rim of his glass. He could not understand what the motive had been. Several of them were pretty poisonous about the writer chappie, but in his experience these profs always were bitter and twisted. They didn’t really have anything proper to do all day except squabble with each other. He’d have said that the little fellow with the narrow shoulders, the thick glasses and awful greasy hair had something to hide. But after his subtle interrogation it was clear that that one had no idea whatsoever about the workings of the automobile. There was no way he could have cut the hydraulic brake lines, and then somehow disabled the sensors, especially on a complicated machine like that Maserati. He’d learnt from the Master about the termination of his appointment – now that could be a motive, but surely only for bumping off the top man.
Ah well. It was much more likely to be the ex-wife. Chercher la femme, as they said. Or maybe some other woman – none of these literary types could keep their trousers on for long. Even so, it might be a good idea just to check through the records to see if any of them had ever worked in a garage. Unlikely, but you never knew. Leave no stone unturned…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOODED HORDES
Some things you lose and never find. But when you lose something precious and do find it again, you take more than double care not to lose it a second time. I had torn myself away from Blanche, but I was utterly resolved and determined to return. Nothing would stand in my way. Nothing was more important. Nothing.
When I first came to Alamut, the castle had towered above a cold, bare, barren valley. Now the change wrought by the seasons matched the change wrought in me. We rode down through fertile fields of green, watered lush from deep dug wells. My escort followed byways which were familiar to them but little known to others, and for the weeks of our journey we saw no-one on our way. I felt regret as distance stretched thin the invisible, unbreakable bond that tied me to Alamut, but at least I was riding with stern purpose. I told myself that this mission was not for Hasan but for Blanche. The object of my quest was not to bring Hasan what he wanted, but, by doing so, to deliver Blanche from her captivity. I was newly confident in my power and my strength, riding for my lady. Gone was all my adolescent diffidence, all my youthful insecurity. I regretted but did not rescind the angry words about my God that my passion had torn from me in that conversation with Hasan. I tried to pray for forgiveness and understanding, and to be granted success. Somehow though, my expectations of the power of prayer were weaker than they once had been.
Mohammed had greeted me with warmth. Shyly, he had stammered a couple of words of greeting in Latin. I understood that he bore me good will for the favour of saving and sparing his life. I looked at him with renewed interest. There was no doubt that he was his father’s son, but slighter and more graceful than the Old Man of the Mountains. If Hasan was an eagle, Mohammed was a hawk, proud and beaky. I returned his greeting as best I could in his own language and we smiled at each other. Here was a fellow of my own age. I realised how little opportunity I had had for such friendships. I determined to cross the divide of language and culture, and pointed to him.
“Mohammed,” I pronounced, “Mohammed-i Sabbah,” and pointed back at myself. “Hugh, Hugh de Verdon.”
“Mohammed-i Hasan-i Sabbah, Mohammed the son of Hasan the son of Sabbah,” he corrected me.
We both laughed. He pulled his horse’s head round and trotted out under the gate. I kicked my mount and followed. We rode hard thro
ugh the morning, stopping briefly at midday to water the horses and change mounts. Mohammed and his two colleagues knelt down, touched their foreheads to the ground, and prayed.
“Mohammed Saracenus infidele est. Miles fidele Christi sum. Mohammed is a heathen Saracen. I am a faithful soldier of Christ,” I said with a grin, as he handed me a piece of flatbread after he had got back to his feet. He grinned back and nodded in the Persian manner which made me laugh because what he meant as a denial was to me a gesture of agreement. I stopped laughing as I remembered the terror I had felt at our first meeting, when I thought that his nod was condemning me to death.
In his halting Latin he said, “Miles fidele Dei veri sum. Hugo infidele Christianus est. I am a soldier of the true God. Hugh is an infidel Christian.”
Then he repeated the sentences in his own language. I spoke his words back to him, causing him to roar with laughter in his turn, for now it was as if I agreed with him. After that we rode side by side, pointing out features of the landscape to each other in Latin and Persian, and repeating the words, laughing loudly at each other’s mistakes. We halted again at twilight to camp and to eat a meagre meal. Our two companions were mostly silent, listening to our double-tongued banter, suspicious of the Franj and a little in awe of their master’s son.
That evening our broken conversation taught me that our journey would last six or eight weeks, that Mohammed was his father’s only surviving son, that his mother was dead, and that we did indeed share the age of twenty. This information he first proffered in Latin, but then he gave it in Persian which I carefully repeated. I found that this language came to me with the same facility as Greek back in the abbey, and as each day went by more and more of our conversation took place in Mohammed’s native tongue.
The next morning Mohammed woke me just before sunrise. He offered me his water bottle and told me that I should wash my face.
“No, no,” he said as I made to dry off the water that I had splashed over it. “The sun must dry it.” He turned towards the East, and I followed his example. The horizon broke as the bright edge of the sun cut through it, driving away the darkness and bringing our surroundings back to life. As the rays warmed my face I felt the water drying.
“You see, the sun needs water too.” Mohammed smiled. “If you offer him a few drops from your face in the morning, he will be kinder to you in the cruel hour of noon.” Then he faced south, fell to his knees and prayed with his comrades.
Our haste allowed no time to stop and hunt – my escort only halted to rest the horses and to pray – so most days we supped on a poor meal of hard bread and dried meat. Normally my companions – for increasingly I thought of them thus – did not bother to light a fire. Nights were mostly warm and gathering fuel would have required an earlier halt, or perhaps they feared attracting attention to themselves even in that wilderness. But occasionally we would happen across game, normally small deer, on our path or close by, and then they would take the opportunity to supplement our poor diet. I could not join in the chase, because I was allowed no weapons, mine being carried on one of the spare horses led by the Nizaris. I think that Mohammed might have trusted me but the other two were still watchful, and one always stayed to guard me. One evening when they had been lucky, Mohammed gave the order to stop before the sun had sunk.
“We are making good time,” he said with the smile that I now found infectious, “I think we can indulge ourselves a little.”
So they lit a fire and spitted the deer. Soon I saw my hunger reflected in their eager expressions as the smell of roasting meat sharpened our appetites. Sated, more comfortable than usual, Mohammed and I lay back. From habit I murmured words of thanks.
“To Jesus Christ, my most Holy Lord and Saviour, I give thanks for this meal.”
“You know that in my religion, your Jesus is a prophet too, a wise and holy man,” mused Mohammed.
“Yes, so your father told me,” I replied.
“We just do not believe that he is the Son of God. For if he were why did his father allow his suffering and death?”
“Your father also said that to me. But he exposes you to danger, and the risk of death. How is that different?”
Mohammed shifted with discomfort. “My father is powerful, yes, but he is not God. There is no god save Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet, a holy man indeed, but not his son.”
I looked into the fire in silence for a few moments.
“So what were these prophecies made by your holy namesake, then?”
Mohammed moved again, looking into the fire and choosing his words with care. “To Mohammed was given the honour of recording the very words of God. He wrote them down in our holy book, in our Koran. They tell us what to believe, and how to lead our lives.” He looked at me, the fire now lighting the profile of his beaky face. “My father told me once that you have not one holy book, written by one prophet, but many. That the story of your Jesus’ life is told by many writers who do not even agree with each other. Can that be true?”
Now it was my turn to shift uneasily. “There are four Gospels, yes, it is true, but they are all the word of God. In places, perhaps, they are not quite the same…” My voice faltered as I remembered the disquiet that I had felt in my studies at Cluny for this very reason, and as I struggled for the Persian words to explain these complexities.
Mohammed pressed home his advantage. “So tell me why there are just four Gospels? Is this book that my father sends you to fetch not a gospel too? Why is that not part of your holy book? If they tell you different things, how do you decide what is right and what is wrong? How do you decide how to lead your life?”
“We have ten commandments, given by God to Moses.”
“To Moses?” Mohammed looked surprised. “Yes, we know him too. But he was an Israelite, a Jew – why were the most important commands for Christians given to him?”
“Our First Commandment is like your words before – ‘I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ But our second is different – unlike you we are told not to worship idols or graven images.” I remembered Pope Urban’s stirring speech at Clermont, and his castigation of Moslem idolatry.
Mohammed looked shocked. “No, no, you are wrong. It says in our book that ‘Thy Lord hath decreed that ye worship none but Him’? We are strictly instructed to ‘avoid filthy rites associated with idols’.”
Now it was my turn to look surprised. I tried to frame a response but again struggled for the Persian words.
“And what of war?” Mohammed continued. “We are told that we can fight only in self-defence, that we can only kill transgressors. You are here, attacking my people’s lands in the name of religion. Your rules must permit violence and aggression.”
I felt the same discomfort given me by Hasan on this point. Worse, my old abbot’s voice rang through my head, expressing his concern about the morality of our Crusade. Hesitantly, I began to render Augustine’s argument into Mohammed’s language.
“Our Sixth Commandment is ‘Thou shalt not kill’, yes. And Jesus tells us to love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Mohammed interrupted with a grin. “So you love me then? I am your neighbour now, yet I am a Moslem, one of your unbelievers.”
I felt angry, frustrated that I could not express my views as clearly as I would like, but also fearful that if I had expressed them they might have sounded weak and flimsy.
“But you fight amongst yourselves. You kill your Moslem brethren. In the Christian world only evil men do that. I know from Blanche that your men slaughtered her first captors. Why was that?”
Now the grin faded from Mohammed’s face and it was his turn to look uneasy. “We are Nizaris. We are the true Moslems. We follow the Prophet’s proper heir and believe that the true Imam will return from the dead to lead us. Your Blanche was captured by Seljuks. They are Sunnis. To us they are heretics.” Seeing the scepticism on my face he shrugged. “I cannot explain. It is what I was taught. It is what I was told to believe.”
It took me a long time to fall asleep that night. I lay wondering whether my Christian God and Mohammed’s Allah could be the same, and then, fearful of retribution, I banished the thought from my mind. Eventually I fell into a troubled sleep.
After six weeks of hard riding we forded the great River Euphrates. In front, wheeling squadrons of vultures warned of death and destruction. In another hour or so we came upon the path of a great army. The feet of thousands of men and beasts had trampled out a broad track. Here and there by the way lay the carcasses of animals which had dropped from exhaustion or illness. This was the bait which had brought the vultures circling down. A quick consultation took place between the three da’is, after which Mohammed turned to me.
“This must be the path of Emir Kerbogha, Atabeg of Mosul, who marches to raise the siege of Antioch. We will leave you here, for your way is now clearly marked. And Kerbogha, Sunni servant of the Caliph of Baghdad, is no friend of ours.”
Mohammed showed no response to my triumphant smile at this practical admission of the Moslem schisms we had discussed.
“You must overtake his army, for once the hosts meet, you will be unable to rejoin your Christian friends. May Allah be with you and protect you on your way.”
We looked at each other with affection and respect across our religious divide. Mohammed did me the honour of placing his fingers to his brow and bowing his head. I returned this salute in the same style, pulled my mount’s head towards the southwest, and kicked my spurs. Mohammed called after me, “And remember to complete fast and faithfully the task my father has set you, if you would see your Lady Blanche again. We will always be watching.”
I knew that overtaking the army’s sorry trail would be no light task. Even changing my crossed Crusader cloak for the Moslem overgarment in my pack would not enable me to ride straight past without challenge. There were sure to be many careful scouts posted in the rear and at the sides. Nevertheless, I determined to approach the Turkish host as closely as possible, for any information that I could gather would be valuable to the Crusader cause. I was uncertain of the reception I would get if I reached Antioch. Godfrey might be long since dead from his bear wound, leaving me with no patron in the Christian camp. Perhaps Godfrey’s alliance with Bohemond would provide me shelter under the Norman’s wing. But Tancred might be suspicious of my actions at Mamistra, and might poison uncle Bohemond’s ear. Most of all, though, I feared Baldwin, who would be hungry to sate his antipathy towards his former captive. He might even suspect my hand in his friend Bagrat’s death. I felt very alone in that wilderness, and daunted by even the first step of my task. Then I angrily reminded myself of my objective. I would rescue Blanche or die in the attempt. Good information of the enemy’s size and order could win me a warmer welcome in Antioch and maybe provide some protection against the malice of my enemies. So that information I would get. I studied the trail of debris. From the state of the carcasses along the way, I estimated that the body of the slow moving army had passed by three days before. Riding hard, travelling light as I was, I hoped to catch them up within a day. I thought then to circle around them, with luck finding a path through the rough hilly country to one side of the valley road. Once beyond the army, I could ride in open speed to carry news to the Crusader troops around Antioch, or God willing, by now safely inside the city walls.