Crusade

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Jerusalem. Saladin’s given the doctor leave to go home.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ismail dropped another grape into his mouth and offered the bunch to Salim. ‘We’ll all be on our way to Jerusalem tomorrow or the next day, I suppose, following the demon Richard. I’ll see you there, inshallah, little brother.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose so.’ Salim felt deflated by Ismail’s matter-of-fact tone. The break-up of the camp, which had become strangely like home in the past two years, seemed like a huge upheaval to him, but it was clear that to Ismail, used as he was to the life of a soldier, it was nothing out of the ordinary. He turned to go.

  ‘Don’t forget, Salim, I promised to teach you to play polo!’ Ismail called after him. ‘Ma’a salama, little brother. Goodbye. Allah go with you!’

  Dr Musa was fretting with impatience by the time they were ready at last to leave. He had been held up by a group of disconsolate patients, who had heard that he was about to go and had crowded round with requests for last-minute advice and supplies of medicine. Tewfik, the groom, a muscular, silent man, led up two small, stocky horses just as Salim was cording up the last bundle of the doctor’s possessions from his now empty tent. Suweida, who had grown fat and lazy after months of inactivity, was shaking her long black ears irritably at the feel of the heavy chest strapped to her back.

  Adil had given Salim his final blessing. Ali, unusually quiet, had actually hugged him. Zahra had burst into tears and his mother, between heavy sighs, was delivering incoherent instructions regarding diet, clothing and manners to which Salim was paying no attention.

  Salim mounted the smaller horse with relief. Goodbyes were always awful. He felt a tightness in his throat as he looked down at his family.

  ‘I hope it goes well in Damascus,’ he said awkwardly.

  The horse under him skittered nervously at an unexpected clatter from a nearby tent. Salim, barely noticing, controlled it with a firm tug on the reins.

  ‘Where did you learn to ride a horse like that?’ Ali asked.

  The admiration in his voice steadied Salim.

  ‘A Mamluk taught me. I’ve been riding one of their horses. He’s going to teach me polo.’

  The flash of respect in Ali’s eyes warmed Salim as the little procession set off, the horses picking their way delicately through the chaos of the disintegrating camp.

  It was odd to be riding boldly down the hillside to the overgrown path at the bottom, which ran just above the huge mound of earth the Crusaders had thrown up. To have gone that way only a few days ago would have invited instant death from a hail of Frankish arrows. Salim couldn’t help feeling a chill as he passed under the huge bank. There had always been armoured guards posted along the top of it before, and from behind it had come the shouts and curses of the Crusaders, and the clatter of pots and weapons. Today there was silence. The only sign of life was a pair of crows tussling over a shred of gristle.

  And then, suddenly, a head appeared over the top of the bank, and someone was scrambling down it and running towards the horses, followed by a huge yellow dog. It was a boy, whose tunic was decorated with Crusader crosses on the front and the back. Before he had taken ten steps, Tewfik had unslung the bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow to the string. He was pulling it back, ready to fire, when Salim shouted, ‘No! Stop! I know him!’

  ‘Who is it? What is this?’ the doctor called out testily.

  ‘It’s the Frankish baron’s son, the squire Adam, who helped me rescue my family,’ Salim called back.

  He slid off his horse. Tewfik had reluctantly lowered his bow, but was ready to raise it again at any moment. Salim limped forward, warily eyeing the dog.

  ‘Faithful! Get back here!’ Adam called out.

  Faithful’s hackles were raised and there was a growl in his throat, but he dropped back obediently to Adam’s heels.

  ‘Please,’ Adam said to Salim, ‘I’ve been waiting here since yesterday. I’ve been watching for you. You’re the only person who can help me.’

  The memory of the pikes and swords slashing down on the helpless prisoners of Acre surged into Salim’s mind. He glared at Adam, hot with anger.

  ‘I not help you. Go away. Franks murderers.’

  He turned back, ready to mount his horse again.

  ‘Please!’ Adam said again. ‘Listen to me! I didn’t know they were going to kill the prisoners. I – I was sick when I saw it. And I helped you and your family.’

  Dr Musa, impatient to get on, called out, ‘Hurry up, Salim. What does the boy want?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care, either,’ Salim said furiously.

  ‘Ask him what he wants! Quickly!’

  ‘What you wanting?’ Salim asked Adam unwillingly.

  ‘The little girl, Tibby, you remember her?’ Adam said, licking his dry lips. He’d had nothing to eat or drink since he’d run to the embankment to take up his watching position the day before, and his throat was cracking with thirst. ‘Her ma, Jenny, she was killed when the siege tower burned. I’m in charge of Tibby now. She’s disappeared! Sold to slavers, Dr John says. He thinks they’ve taken her to Jerusalem.’

  ‘Dr John? What’s he saying about Dr John’? interrupted Dr Musa, who had recognized the name in the incomprehensible stream of Frankish.

  ‘A child’s been stolen and sold to slavers. He wants to get her back. Dr John says they’ll have gone to Jerusalem,’ Salim said grudgingly.

  ‘A child? What child? How old is she?’

  ‘I don’t know, sidi Musa. A baby. Her mother was killed. She was this boy’s sister.’

  Adam stepped forwards, sensing that the doctor might be more sympathetic than Salim. He put a hand on the neck of the doctor’s horse and looked up at him.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ the doctor asked Salim.

  ‘Min fadlak,’ Salim translated unwillingly. ‘He says please.’ ‘So this boy,’ Dr Musa said, with careful disbelief, ‘wants me to take him, a Frank, to Jerusalem, to find some unidentified slavers and get a strange child back?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Salim shrugged. ‘I’ll tell him to go away, sidi Musa. He’s crazy, and anyway, it might be a trick. Look what the Franks did to our prisoners. You can’t trust any of them.’

  ‘Oh Lord, why do you send such trials to torment a poor old man?’ cried the doctor. ‘Open your bag, Salim, quickly. Fetch out a decent Damascus tunic and a skullcap. At least his hair’s dark. He could pass for a Kurd if he doesn’t open his mouth. Tell him to keep it shut if we meet anyone on the road. He’s to pretend to be deaf and dumb, do you hear? Deaf and dumb!’

  ‘What about the dog?’ Salim was scowling at Faithful. ‘He’s vicious.’

  ‘Good to have a dog,’ Tewfik said unexpectedly. ‘Warns off attackers. There’s plenty robbers between here and Jerusalem.’

  ‘So the dog stays!’ Dr Musa raised his hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. ‘Ask him, Salim, does he have any other livestock about his person? Scorpions in his pockets? Snakes wrapped round his waist? No? Then tell him to change his clothes at once, and for heaven’s sake let’s go on.’

  Adam had spent the last twenty-four hours in a fever of impatience and anxiety. He’d realized at once that his only hope of recovering Tibby was to ask for help from the boy Salim. The first great difficulty would be to find him. Since the massacre of the Saracen prisoners, there could be no more civilized contact between the two armies. The Saracens would want to take revenge on any Crusaders they met.

  He’d decided to return to the old site of the Fortis camp, up near the boundary of the former Crusader camp, deserted since the army had moved inside the city of Acre itself. He would hide out there, hoping that Salim would appear at the vantage point where Adam had sometimes seen him during the siege. He hoped too that Faithful would find him there, at the place he’d known so well.

  He’d slipped away from Acre without telling Sir Ivo what he
intended to do. He’d have been flatly forbidden from undertaking anything so risky and impossible, he knew.

  He’d found a good look-out place on the embankment and had lain there all the previous afternoon, straining his eyes as darkness fell to try and pick out the boy’s shape or the sound of his voice among the turbulent comings and goings in the Saracen camp. He only allowed his eyes to shut when the moon had risen to its full height and everything was quiet for the night. Just before dawn, he’d felt a wet nose push against his face.

  ‘Faithful!’ he said, sitting up to hug him.

  The dog’s return comforted him. Whatever happened next, he wouldn’t be quite alone.

  The Saracen’s dawn call to prayer woke him and he raised his head with a start, afraid that he’d missed his chance of seeing the boy already.

  This is stupid, he kept telling himself. There’s thousands of Saracens up there. It’s like looking for a grain of barley in a sack of wheat.

  The rising sun was in his eyes, and by nine o’clock it was already uncomfortably hot.

  But I did see the boy up there often, he thought stubbornly. He might come again today. He must!

  He didn’t want to think about what he’d do if and when he found Salim. There wasn’t much chance, he knew, that he’d agree to help him. And even if he did, Adam had no idea where or how far away Jerusalem was, or how he might get there. He’d think about all that only when – if – he found the boy.

  It was so difficult staring into the rising sun all the time that Adam nearly missed Salim. He’d been watching a pair of lizards chasing each other across the beaten-down earth. He looked up just in time before the doctor’s little procession disappeared round an angle of the earthwork, recognizing them only by the medicine chest and the familiar rump of the old black mule.

  He felt almost dizzy with relief when they’d let him approach, and astonished when he’d understood that they were actually on their way to Jerusalem themselves and would allow him to go with them. He put on the strange tunic and skullcap they’d given him, and from that moment on everything felt unreal, as if he’d entered a dream. He’d done what he had to do. Now things were out of his control.

  Unanswerable questions nagged at him. What if Tibby hadn’t been sold to the slavers after all, but was still with Jacques? What if the slavers had taken her somewhere else, and not to Jerusalem? And how could he be sure that he could trust the boy and the doctor? They had every reason to hate him, after all.

  Somehow, none of that mattered now. The strange dream wrapped him round. He felt as if unseen feet were guiding his and that all he had to do was follow.

  The Blessed Virgin herself must be with me, he thought, with a shiver half of fear, half of joy.

  Two hours later the doctor pulled his horse up under the shade of a large old fig tree to rest during the greatest heat of the day. Light-headed with hunger and thirst, Adam felt his exalted state had intensified, and the landscape all around, shimmering in the heat, seemed to him filled with dancing spirits, willing him on his way. The spreading branches of the fig tree hung over a cistern of clear cool water, and it was only when Adam had sunk down on his knees and drunk from his cupped hands that the mists began to clear from his mind.

  Faithful had been padding along quietly beside him. He lapped greedily at the water then flopped down a little way away, the rumble of a quiet growl emerging whenever Salim, the doctor or Tewfik threatened to come too close.

  ‘Here, Faithful,’ Adam commanded, clicking his fingers. ‘Friends.’

  He led the dog to Salim first. Salim backed away, alarmed.

  ‘Don’t let him see you’re scared,’ said Adam. ‘He’s got to get to know you. Let him sniff your hand.’

  Nervously, Salim stretched out his fingers.

  ‘Friend,’ Adam said sternly again.

  Faithful’s tail began to wag. He gave Salim’s hand a lick and whined. Salim dared to pat him quickly on the head, then went to the cistern and carefully washed his hand while Adam introduced Faithful to Tewfik and the doctor.

  ‘Now lie down,’ he said, pointing to the place Faithful had chosen before. ‘Stay.’

  Faithful obeyed. Salim, who had passed the last two hours feeding his resentment of Adam with angry memories of the murders at Acre, couldn’t help a smile of grudging respect.

  ‘That’s a well-trained dog,’ the doctor remarked. ‘Unclean animals, dogs, but they have their uses. Now, Salim. Unpack the provisions. When we’ve eaten we’ll ask this young man how he intends to proceed.’

  The food, which Adam accepted gratefully, was strange to him. The bread wasn’t bad, though it was flatter and more chewy than the bread he was used to, and the cheese was all right, though it was rather salty. But the round black oily things with hard stones in them were disgustingly bitter. Only politeness stopped him spitting them out.

  ‘Olive,’ Salim said, noticing his face. ‘Frank doesn’t like olive, but olive very good.’

  ‘Now get him to tell us,’ Dr Musa commanded Salim, ‘all about this child. Why is he looking for her? Who is she? How does he propose to rescue her?’

  Haltingly, Adam began to explain, as Salim translated sentence by sentence. Even to his own ears, his story sounded thin and foolish. He talked more than he intended about Jennet, and how he’d known her all his life, and treated her as his sister, and how she’d died when the siege tower had caught fire.

  ‘You don’t have brothers or sisters of your own?’ Salim asked, interested in spite of himself.

  Adam shook his head.

  ‘No – well, yes. There’s Lord Robert and his sisters, I suppose. But they’re not my real family. They don’t want anything to do with me.’

  ‘What about your uncles and aunts?’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  ‘He hasn’t got any relatives,’ Salim told the doctor wonderingly. He couldn’t imagine what that could be like. Everyone he knew had families, endless, complicated networks of people who belonged together.

  ‘Then this little girl,’ the doctor said at last, scaring Adam with the ferocity of his expression as his huge brows came together in a frown of concentration, ‘is the only person in the world he counts as his relative?’

  Salim translated the question. Adam thought for a moment. He supposed it was true.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘So what are we going to do with him?’ exploded Dr Musa, lifting his hands in despair. ‘The boy clearly has no money. He can’t buy the child back. Steal her, then? Risky. Slavers are not known for their kindness of heart or their gentleness.’

  ‘And we don’t even know if they’re heading for Jerusalem,’ Salim chipped in.

  Tewfik, who had been sitting politely a little way away, coughed to attract attention.

  ‘It’s likely that they have,’ he said, in his deep, guttural voice. ‘There’s a big market for slaves in Jerusalem. Prices are good there.’

  Adam looked anxiously from one face to another, trying to gauge their mood. The talk in Arabic went on for what seemed like a long time, as the whole topic was thoroughly thrashed out. At last, Salim turned back to him.

  ‘We can take you to Jerusalem with us. Four days’ journey from here, or five maybe. All the time, you keep mouth shut, pretend to be boy from Acre, like me. The doctor, he will ask in the city about slave market. Then if we find her, to get her back is your job.’

  ‘Four or five days?’ Adam was surprised that Jerusalem was so far. ‘But what if they get there faster and sell her straight away?’

  Salim couldn’t help feeling sympathetic to Adam’s obvious anxiety. In spite of himself, this strange quest was intriguing him.

  ‘Maybe they arrive quicker than us, but slave market not every day. They keep her some times before they sell.’

  By the end of the second day, Adam felt as if he’d been travelling with the doctor for weeks. At first he’d been too preoccupied with his dogged intention to save Tibby, and his sense of desperate urgency, to look at
the landscape around him. At night, when he closed his eyes to sleep, he’d seen only the pale stony path he’d been staring at all day, and had little more than a hazy impression of the rocky, dry, steep hillside along which the doctor’s little procession wound at such an infuriatingly slow pace. He did stare at the occasional camels that passed, and shuddered once at a huge snake sunning itself on a rock, but he was soon used to the endless terraces of olive trees, and he took the passing peasants on their donkeys for granted after the first couple of encounters, when his heart had beaten fast with the fear of being discovered.

  It had never been hard for him to stay silent. He’d always found it much harder to talk. Salim had taught him to reply Alaykum a-salaam if anyone greeted him with the words Salaam alaykum, and he’d learned to mumble the strange sound quite convincingly. Even at night, when they stopped in a small inn or trading post, no one took much notice of him, and Salim was always beside him to deflect unwelcome interest.

  Salim and the doctor intrigued him more and more. He’d quickly discovered that behind the doctor’s facade of severity was a heart of the softest kindness. The Crusaders’ first impulse, he knew, had been to kill any Jews they could find, in revenge, so they claimed, for the killing of Christ. He’d never really thought about it. But now that he knew the doctor – a man of such skill and compassion, who was so comically rumpled and untidy, and yet who commanded such respect from everyone they passed along the way – he was filled with shame.

  The path they were travelling on was usually so narrow that they had to go in single file, the doctor and Salim riding ahead, and Tewfik and Adam following with Suweida. Sometimes, though, on the broader floor of a valley, the path widened out, and when it did, Adam would run up to walk alongside Salim’s horse. He worried less about Tibby when he could talk to someone. It helped the time to pass more quickly.

  ‘The doctor’s a Jew, isn’t he?’ Adam asked diffidently on the third morning of the journey.

  ‘Yes.’ Salim ducked to avoid a branch overhanging the path. The question didn’t seem to interest him.

  ‘But you – you’re a – a Muslim,’ Adam persisted. Salim looked down at him, surprised that he needed to ask. ‘You don’t mind then, working for a Jew?’