‘I thought so. I thought they were your relatives.’
For the first time, Adam smiled at him, and Salim was surprised by how different he looked. He smiled back, with an answering glow of friendliness.
The little procession was halted suddenly by a couple of soldiers who stood in front of them, blocking the way. Salim’s nervousness returned. What if he was being led into a trap? What if he was to be taken prisoner, and some huge ransom demanded before he would be let go?
Sir Ivo and Dr John were trying to talk to the soldiers, but it was clear that they had no language in common. The soldiers brushed their efforts aside. They were pointing at Suweida, holding up their fingers to show numbers, and pulling coins out of their leather pouches. Their meaning was quite clear. They wanted to buy the mule.
Salim pulled Suweida’s reins closer and put a hand on her stiff, bristly mane. How could he ever face the doctor again if he returned from this adventure without the beloved mule?
Other strangers were joining the two soldiers now. They were running hungry, sunken eyes over Suweida, and a couple even came right up and prodded her rump, as if assessing how much meat covered her bones.
‘Please, Dr John!’ Salim called out anxiously, ‘They can’t buy Suweida. She’s not for sale!’
The doctor turned and glared at him. Salim dropped his head and looked at the ground. He wanted to kick himself. How could he have been such a fool, shouting out in Arabic like that? What better way could he have chosen to draw disaster down on his head?
Sir Ivo had pulled out the precious document and was showing it to a man who had just appeared, and who seemed to have some authority. This person barked a command, and the crowd reluctantly withdrew, though as Salim clicked his tongue to make Suweida walk on he felt greedy eyes boring into his back.
The walls of Acre were approaching all the time, seeming to grow above the huge camp with every step they took. Salim, knowing he was being absurd, kept looking up at the ramparts, almost expecting Ali’s brush of black hair to appear between the crenellations. The sight of the city shocked him. It looked completely unfamiliar. The walls were festooned with bulging sacks, mattresses and bundles of cloth let down from above on ropes, and in the unprotected gaps between, wherever the Crusader missiles had found their mark, the stonework looked battered and crumbling. The elegant battlements, which used to stand out so crisp and white against the blue sky, were damaged and broken, like a mouth with ugly gaps and jagged, broken teeth.
They were almost at the border of the camp now, and it was possible to look along the edge of it, set back as it was from the walls out of range of the garrison’s archers. Salim gasped at the sight of a row of huge, slender wooden siege towers, as high as the ramparts, ready on their wheeled bases to be pushed forwards to the walls. He had looked down on them often enough from above, but had had no idea how frighteningly tall they were. He shivered as he thought of how it would be when the great push for the city came. The barbarians would swarm up to the top of the towers, the drawbridges at the top would swing down on to the battlements and the Crusaders, screaming their hideous battle cries, would rush across the gap, swords flailing. He could almost see Ali bravely facing them, trying his best to fend them off, with nothing but a blunt old spear in his hands.
Adam, who hadn’t been this near the walls of Acre for many weeks, was looking sideways at the siege towers too. He was imagining how he would feel when the moment came to climb the rickety wooden ladders to the top, and what it would be like to run across the narrow bridge, over the sickening gap, right into the swords and arrows of the enemy.
I’m a Martel, he thought, tightening his lips. Adam Fitz Guy. I’ll have to show that I’m up to it.
He was surprised by how different the camp was down here near the city walls. Up in the English section the danger was from Saladin and his vast armies, but though the sentries had to be vigilant all the time, the threat wasn’t constant. Here, though, the danger was from the embattled city itself. Scorch marks on the ground showed where fireballs had landed. There were workshop areas, where planks and tools lay around huge wooden constructions – battering rams, mangonels and catapults. One of these was already in operation, its long arm swinging round with ever increasing speed until it released a hail of pebbles which flew in a deadly shower over the city walls. Shouts and jeers from inside answered it, and something foul was thrown back, to land with a splatter in the ditch below.
Adam, used to the stench of the Fortis camp, nevertheless almost retched at the foulness of the air here. To the stink of latrines was added the terrible, all-pervasive, cloying smell of the dead, whose bodies lay unburied below the walls, black with clouds of flies. Sir Ivo and the doctor were holding up their hands to cover their noses and mouths, and the Saracen boy, Salim, looked pale and sweaty, as if he was about to be sick.
They were now standing on the very front line of Crusader tents. Ahead of them was the littered, empty ground of the fighting zone. To walk straight out into it was to invite instant death from the archers on the ramparts above.
What happens now? Salim thought, looking at the huge city gates ahead. They had been closed for so long that sand had drifted up against them, and clumps of grass and even young bushes were sprouting from the once beaten-down earth of the road leading into the city.
A yell from behind made them all turn round. A huge man, his fair face battered by the sun and wind to a coarse redness, his straw-like hair hanging long and lank to his shoulders, was shouting at them. Above the din of the camp, the hammering of workmen in a battering-ram shed, the creaking of wheels, shouts, yells and raucous singing, it was impossible to make out any words. Adam saw Sir Ivo and Dr John exchange shrugs.
‘Flemish, I think,’ Dr John said. ‘Let’s hope the fellow speaks something we can understand.’
The Fleming marched up to them aggressively and stood staring down at them, his vast forearms locked across his chest. Sir Ivo nodded at him politely and offered him the document. The Fleming brushed it aside with the back of his hand and talked at them loudly, as if he could make them understand simply by raising his voice. He seemed so threatening that the English men-at-arms moved closer to Sir Ivo and massed themselves round him, laying their hands meaningfully on their sword hilts.
The impasse might have continued if Dr John hadn’t caught sight of a priest hurrying past behind the aggressive Fleming.
‘Pater!’ he called out in Latin. ‘Adiuve nos! Help us!’
The priest turned, shading his eyes against the sun to see who was calling him, and came forward.
‘Quis es? Quod vis?’ he answered. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
The men-at-arms, looking to Sir Ivo for guidance, obeyed his curt nod and relaxed as the priest and the doctor conferred in Latin. At last the priest spoke to the Flemish captain, who listened respectfully, eyes cast down. Then he nodded, and without looking at the English contingent raised one huge hand and shouted an order. Heads turned towards him. Tools were laid down. A drum beat rolled out. A boy was sent scampering across to the nearest catapult. Its huge arm, already rising into the air, slowed, then drifted back down till it was pointing once more at the ground.
Cautious heads appeared on the ramparts above.
‘Now?’ Sir Ivo said.
Dr John raised his brows at the priest, who looked at the Fleming. The man nodded.
‘Good.’ Sir Ivo lifted his lance. The white flag took the breeze and fluttered out to its full extent. ‘I go forward first,’ Sir Ivo ordered, ‘with the boy and my squire. Doctor, this is no task for civilians. Please don’t come any further.’ He raised his voice to address the men-at-arms. ‘Stay here, boys. Look relaxed, but be ready in case there’s a rush from inside when the gate opens. If there is, form up and attack, but only at my signal. Peter Doggett, I’m putting you in charge. Keep an eye on the mule.’
Salim was so nervous that he had barely understood a word of this, but a nudge from Sir Ivo propelled him forwa
rd. There was a strange quietness as he stepped out into the open ground, followed by Sir Ivo and Adam. A voice floated across from on top of the city wall ahead.
‘Halt! Who are you? What do you want?’
Salim cleared his throat.
‘I’m Salim Ibn Adil, the merchant’s son!’ he shouted as loudly as he could. ‘I have a safe conduct here for my family!’
It was clear that he hadn’t been heard.
‘Don’t move!’ the voice shouted again. ‘Don’t come any closer! Identify yourself!’
‘Salim! Salim Ibn Adil!’ Salim yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Ali’s brother!’
Daringly, he took a few steps further forwards, hoping that his limp would be seen and recognized.
‘Adil’s lame son?’ the man called back at last. ‘Wallahi! You can approach on your own. Tell the two Franks to stay where they are.’
The distance to the city gate was no more than two hundred metres, but it seemed like a mile to Salim. His back tingled at the thought of the hostile army of Crusaders that must be watching him from behind, and his chest crawled at the knowledge that the suspicious men ahead might panic and fell him with a sudden arrow.
At last he stood so near the huge city gates that he could have counted the nicks in the wood cut by Crusader axes on their first assault. Voices were calling down to him again.
‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’
‘I’ve come for my family!’ he shouted back. ‘I’ve got a safe conduct for them. Please, quickly, open the gate and let me come in and fetch them.’
‘It’s a trap! You’re acting under duress! They want to spy on us!’
‘No, no! I swear it! The Sultan gave permission himself. Let me in before someone shoots me!’
‘If we open the gate they’ll storm in.’
‘Look at them! There are only a few armed men behind me, and they’re just an escort. Please, I beg you, let me in. It’s my family’s only chance.’
The heads disappeared for a moment, then a new voice called out, ‘Have you brought any food with you?’
‘No. They wouldn’t let me. I was searched.’ Salim’s voice was growing hoarse.
It’s hopeless. They’ll never believe me. It’s all going wrong, he thought.
There was another long pause, then a deeper, more commanding voice shouted, ‘Wait by the postern gate. Be ready to come inside quickly, as soon as it opens.’
Salim did as he was told. The postern was a small door set into the huge double doors, which could open independently, allowing only one person through at a time. He put his ear against the crack, listening for approaching footsteps. It seemed as if an hour had passed, but it was only a few minutes before he heard the patter of many pairs of sandals on the other side, and then a scrabbling sound as the heavy bolts, rusted into their sockets from long disuse, grated back. Then, just as the door swung open, Sir Ivo’s voice shouted across the empty ground behind him: ‘Boy! You have one hour, do you understand? One hour. After that, we’ll have to leave, and anyone coming out of the city will be attacked.’
One hour? Salim repeated desperately to himself. Only one hour?
Stepping through the gate into the narrow street beyond was like passing into another world. The rough stone paving slabs underfoot, the overhanging upper storeys, the curved doorknockers, the carved stone lintels were all achingly familiar, but the strange emptiness, the rubble in the streets, the bars across the upper windows and the heavy shutters over the lower ones made the place so eerie that it was if the city had become a ghost of itself – as if it was the setting for a strange, unsettling dream.
There was no time, though, to look around.
Captain Qaraqush, the commander of the city’s garrison, was hurrying towards him, pushing through the small crowd that had already gathered.
‘What’s all this about? Is it a trick? What are you doing here?’
‘No, no. No trick, sir. Please, listen,’ began Salim, his words falling over themselves in his haste. ‘I’ve got a safe conduct, look here, for my family.’ He pulled the document out of his belt and showed it to the captain. ‘It’s in return for a favour the Sultan did for a Frankish lord. He sent his own doctor, Dr Musa, to him. The doctor asked for Adil’s family to be released in return.’
‘Give me that.’ Captain Qaraqush took the document and began to turn it round and over in his hands with agonizing deliberation. He scratched his beard and frowned, unable to decipher the strange foreign writing.
Salim watched in an agony of impatience.
‘Sir, I have only an hour. Please let me go to them.’
‘What’s this thing here?’
The captain was peering at a scarlet wax seal which hung from the bottom of the document.
‘It was to show the Franks, so they’d let us through.’ Salim was hopping from his good leg to his bad. ‘Sir, please . . .’
The captain seemed to suddenly make up his mind.
‘Go on then. At least it’ll mean fewer mouths to feed. You’d better hurry.’
Salim was about to run off into the maze of streets when he remembered Ali.
‘My brother, Ali. Is he still here? The safe conduct’s for him too.’
Qaraqush’s brows snapped together.
‘Ali Ibn Adil is a serving soldier. He may not desert his post. Every man’s needed here, or didn’t you know?’
‘Can I see him, sir? Just for a minute?’
‘I don’t know where he is. Go on and fetch your parents now, quickly.’
The distance from the main gate of Acre to Adil’s house had never seemed so far. Salim ran as fast as he could, dodging over fallen beams and piles of rubble, while a growing crowd of thin, hollow-eyed people gathered behind him. News of this astonishing visitation from the world outside had spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted to ask for news.
‘The Sultan, when’s he coming?’ voices from all sides asked. ‘When’s he going to relieve the city?’
‘Doesn’t he know we’re starving in here?’
‘Tell him we’re desperate! My daughter’s dying!’
‘When’s he going to break the sea blockade?’
‘We can’t hang on much longer. Make sure and tell him.’
It seemed an age before he arrived at the familiar door in the bare stone wall. He tried to open it, but the bolt was drawn on the inside. He pounded on it with his fists.
‘Mama! Baba! Open up quickly! It’s me, Salim!’
There was no sound from within. He screwed his eyes shut with anxiety.
They’re not there. They’re at someone’s else’s house. I’ll never find them in time. Or they’re sick. They’ve died already. I’ve come too late.
At last he heard the quavering voice of an old man call out, ‘Who is it? What do you want?’
‘Is Adil there? Open up, quickly! It’s me. His son. Salim.’
The door swung open. Salim stepped inside and closed it behind him, shutting out the curious onlookers.
He stared with dismay at the old man who had opened the door. Could this stranger, this shrunken old man, with his sparse grey beard, hollow cheeks and dull eyes, be his father?
‘Baba?’ he said at last. ‘Is it you?’
The eyes filled with tears.
‘Salim! You’re so big! I was afraid you were dead!’
His father’s trembling arms were around him. Salim struggled free.
‘Baba, listen. You must listen! I’ve come to get you out, you and Mama and Zahra. Quick. There’s no time! We’ve got to leave at once. Did you hear me, Baba? Did you hear what I said?’
His father’s eyes were worryingly vacant.
‘Leave?’ he said vaguely. ‘Go where? How can we leave? Your mother—’
‘Mama! Where is she?’
Salim couldn’t bear to look at his father any longer. The person of authority, of action, of discipline and certainty had gone, and in his place was this defeated, famished, lost old man.
Salim
hobbled across the courtyard at his fastest pace.
‘Mama! Quick! Mama!’
His mother was lying on a mat inside the kitchen door, her white muslin coif pulled over her face. It looked almost like a shroud, and for a sickening moment Salim thought he’d come too late. Then she stirred, pulled the cloth away and looked up at him.
‘Salim! Habibi!’ Joy sharpened the eyes in her skeletal face. ‘What’s happened? How did you get here? Tell me! The infidels have been defeated! Saladin’s taken the city! We’re saved!’
‘No, Mama. You’ve got to listen to me.’ He knelt beside her and took her face between his palms as he used to do when he was very small and wanted her whole attention. ‘There’s no time. I’ve got a safe conduct for you and Baba and Zahra. I can get you out of Acre. But we have to go now. At once. Get up, Mama. Come with me. We’ve got to hurry. Please, Mama. Get up.’
To his intense relief she had understood. She struggled to her feet, staggered and put her hand against the wall to steady herself.
‘Are you all right? You’re not sick?’ he said, noticing how her clothes hung off her body.
‘I’m all right. It’s only weakness. There’s been no food for so long. Where’s your father?’
‘In the courtyard. I can’t make him understand. Tell him, Mama. Make him come. If we don’t go at once, this minute, our chance is lost.’
She set her shoulders back.
‘Zahra’s in the other room,’ she said, with a shadow of her old decisiveness. ‘Go and wake her up.’ She was looking vaguely towards the chest in the corner of the room.
‘Mama, there’s no time for packing!’
‘Packing!’ she almost laughed. ‘You think we have anything left to pack? Everything, every scrap of cloth, every dish, gone to buy food. Where’s Ali?’
He’d been dreading this question.
‘I don’t think – Mama, the garrison commander said – I don’t think that Ali can come with us.’
Her burst of energy left her.
‘You want us to leave Ali behind? In Acre?’
‘I don’t want to, Mama! It can’t be helped! Think of Zahra! Think of Baba!’
She shook her head from side to side and closed her eyes.
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