by Jean Gill
Meeting Jerusalem’s Queen played no small part in Dragonetz’ excitement, however dangerous for him such a meeting was likely to be. What had Bar Philipos said? That if Dragonetz accepted one of the offers that would be made to him, he would tip the balance. He’d already turned down Nur ad-Din. What offers would come to him in Jerusalem, where a royal mother and son were at odds? And what price would he pay for a refusal? Somehow, he had to keep his head and find the Jew who would take the book and free him from his oath and his poverty.
Dragonetz was certain that the Syrian would try to make him offer the book to the Queen, whose appreciation of fine art was every bit as developed as Nur ad-Din’s. The question for Bar Philipos would be what Damascus could gain from Mélisende, or her son, if forced to choose between Nur ad-Din and Jerusalem as ruler. Dragonetz knew enough of Bar Philipos’ game to know his own place in it, an item for sale in the market-place, to protect Damascus.
And what did he want for himself? Did he want to be the ‘world-changer’ Bar Philipos had named him? Did he want to have a thousand trained men under his command? His pulse quickened at the thought. He had been cooped up in Damascus for too long and he needed action. So Dragonetz’ mind turned as the camels paced ever onwards until the sun marked day’s end, sinking lower on the right. Ahead of him, the tight caravan was already dispersing into clusters of kneeling camels and the first tents were being erected in the shelter of rocks that loomed black in the lengthening shadows.
Once he’d eased his muscles back into walking without the feeling that a drawbridge was wedged between his legs, Dragonetz stood outside the tent he’d been allocated and kept out of the way, observing. The invisible occupants of palanquins were shielded as they emerged from their cocoons, flashing an ankle or a bracelet in the awkwardness of getting out of the tiny doorways.
Hatred flashed towards Dragonetz from one such occupant, and he didn’t need to recognise her brown eyes, all that was visible in the travelling robes, to know Yalda was among their company. No doubt she would be an asset to her father’s trading. A great asset, he thought with momentary regret for their trysts, quickly replaced with the memory of the Khatun’s warning that a woman was responsible for the release of the bull intended to kill him. He’d not doubted who that woman was. He could even understand her motives, having grown close enough to her, even if only through skin-heat, to feel the recoil when he sent her away. What he couldn’t understand, or forgive, was the consequence to the two guards. Aakif and Shunaar had died because of her petty revenge, men whose families she claimed she knew. Feeling once more the hatred in her glance, Dragonetz suddenly realised she might feel the same way; blame him for the men’s death.
As she waited, unsure which was the women’s tent, Yalda was joined by a flurry of servants, ushering another slight figure from palanquin to female company. A vicious gust of wind whipped her face free of its hood and scarves and as she flailed at the recalcitrant material, streaming in pennants, Dragonetz saw that she was light-skinned, blue-eyed and ill. Even from a distance, he could see that her skin bagged and sagged, undernourished; her grizzled hair was knotted in tangles older than today’s wind; the skin around one eye still bore the unmistakeable yellowing of deep bruising, caused by a fist if Dragonetz were any judge; and as her eyes met his, as if drawn to the quiet watcher, he flinched from their emptiness, soul-less beyond the worst despair. Then her servants were around her, covering her in seemly fashion, guiding her with the other women to the tent where they would spend the night. Dragonetz shivered. If that were a merchant’s wife, the knight hoped his only dealings with the merchant would be at the end of a lance.
‘An experience, isn’t it.’ Bar Philipos dropped to the ground beside Dragonetz and assumed the cross-legged position in which so many of his countrymen seemed most comfortable. Out of politeness, Dragonetz sat beside him, preferring to stretch out his long legs. Camel-riding had cramped him quite enough for one day. Other men joined them, in easy silence or spoken half-thoughts, as is the way of travellers breaking bread at the end of a hard day’s ride. ‘You will never see the stars brighter. In the desert, you can see your way more clearly in the skies than on the ground.’
Dragonetz searched the stars for answers but their alien brilliance told him only that he was nothing, a grain of sand, a breath of wind, here for a day only. Was Estela looking at the same stars? Did she think of him or had life brought her some distraction with desire in his eyes? The spheres would sing their song, regardless.
‘Muganni,’ he summoned and his shadow was instantly beside him, bowing and smiling. ‘Fetch my oud.’
Dragonetz stroked the familiar curves, tuned the strings and strummed a few chords, before launching into the first song that came to mind, of love far away.
Lanqand il jorn son lon en may
M’es bels douz chans d’aulhelz de lonh,
E qand me sui partitz de lay
Remembra.m d’un amor de lonh,
‘When days are long in May
I hear
the sweet-tongued birds so far away
And near
Things leave me dreaming
Only of my love so far away’
The plaintive Occitan echoed against the rocks. More and more travellers joined the group around the singer, hunkering down to listen. Even the women’s tent opened to let shadowy figures hover nearer the song. The most spell-bound was Muganni, his eyes full of desert stars as he edged closer to his master, forgetful of his proper place, mouthing the foreign words as if his life depended on them. A song is never merely the words and music created by the composer. It comes from the soul of the singer, through the place and time of the singing, to reach the soul of the listener.
Mas so q’ieu vuoill m’es tant ahis
Toz sia mauditz lo pairis
Qe.m fadet q’ieu non fos amatz!
‘But my desires can never be;
The Father wills that my love
Loves not me.’
The final words faded into the desert night, their sweet melancholy so powerful that at first the noise seemed but a continuation of the song. Then the woman’s sobbing jarred, desperately real. As if flood-gates had opened, the wailing from the women’s tent surged in uncontrolled waves, diminishing as soothing chatter from many voices drowned the sound of misery. No-one commented. No-one so much as caught anyone else’s eye, looking a question.
‘Muganni,’ Dragonetz ordered, passing his precious oud to the bright-eyed lad.
There was no false modesty as the boy re-tuned the instrument for Arab minor keys, tested it and lost himself in the old songs that had the camel-drivers and merchants alike nodding their heads, dreamy-eyed. Dragonetz closed his eyes and heard, underneath the Arab training, a soprano as angelic as he’d ever come across. Estela’s soprano was richer, womanly. Dragonetz imagined them singing together. His voice would blend with either of them but he could imagine nothing but clashes from the two sopranos together. Suddenly, inexplicably, he felt depressed. He didn’t want to listen to music any more. He reached for the feeling he’d had in the garden and found only worries churning endlessly in the pit of his stomach. As soon as he could politely do so, he retired to his bedroll, but the black humour followed him into his dreams.
‘Why do you no longer seek the Grail?’ al-Hisba demanded.
‘You presume on an old friendship,’ Dragonetz told him, controlling the urge to hit the man. He was seated on a golden throne, in a pavilion of multi-coloured silks, his dragon devices flying at the entrance and embroidered on the brocade cushions scattered on the carpets underfoot. ‘I am the King. I don’t need to seek the Grail because others do it for me. And don’t purse your lips like that, man. You go too far!’ Five of his guards had swords drawn the instant Dragonetz shouted and he allowed them that moment, weapons pointed at al-Hisba, to make their relative status clear.
Al-Hisba didn’t flinch or speak. He bowed and left. For good, Dragonetz hoped. He didn’t need sour-faced morality in
his new life. He clicked his fingers and gold platters appeared, heaped with his favourite sweetmeats and spiced pies. Another click of his fingers and girls wearing transparent scarves wove bright movements across the room. Music of any kind was of course banned; it weakened a man. And there was no room in his court for weakness.
A pretty youth in dragon livery approached him with a message. ‘Your Highness, the Queen says...’ The message was so private that the youth whispered the words in Dragonetz’ ear and his body responded instantly to the teasing double meanings. He clicked his fingers and his courtiers vanished, leaving him alone with the Queen on the piled cushions. Her silks conveniently unwrapped at his touch and her body opened easily to his, blue eyes encouraging him to further exploration, her hands following their own adventures. Everything a man could want, everything, he told an imaginary al-Hisba as he let go of all he was, lost himself in skin and need, climax on climax until his body was air. Until his body was gossamer. Until his body was wrapped tightly in gossamer, spider threads.
The Queen was shaking her head, sadly, her blue eyes bulging, her face becoming hairier, darker. ‘You are the white knight,’ she told him gently, as if teaching a particularly stupid child something even he should have known. ‘And I am the black Queen, the black widow.’
He still didn’t understand, even as her limbs multiplied, eight legs deftly tying the ends of the threads which bound him. Infinitely patient, she told him, ‘I’m going to eat you alive...’ and her face expanded into a mouth, sucking him into sticky blackness, dripping with saliva.
He was sweating and feverish when Muganni woke him, and grew worse during the day, struggling to merely stay awake as the camel carried his dead weight. The tremor in his hands worsened, and his left leg seemed possessed, suddenly kicking out, beyond his control. His head was hot and full of spiders. At the noonday break, he ordered Muganni to lash him to the saddle, ensuring that if he did lose consciousness, he would still be carried along. He had no idea whether he was asleep or awake during a journey that could have been twenty years or one day before he was helped to a bedroll at the night’s camp.
‘Drink this,’ the boy told him, with no trace of the usual grin. He drank, he slept and in the morning he was completely fine - better than that; he brimmed with health and the urge to carry out all his plans. He’d never felt as physically fit or as mentally sharp.
He smiled at Muganni. ‘Those were good herbs’.
There was no answering smile. Grim-faced, the boy told him, ‘Those were not good herbs.’
‘What do you mean?’
Muganni glanced around him, at the other men stirring in the tent, preparing for departure. ‘We need to talk, Effendi,’ he murmured, ‘in private.’
At first, Dragonetz called the boy a liar. Anything rather than believe he spoke the truth and that Dragonetz was consumed by a poison that would kill him if he stopped taking it, and kill him if he carried on. Fear in his eyes, whether for himself or his master, or both, Muganni explained that the poppy was used to help boys through the pain of castration. He would have taken it himself if Dragonetz had not bought him a different life. But some of the boys he’d known had carried on taking the poppy after the cutting was over. They’d wanted relief, from pain, from despair, from the memory of old men’s bodies forcing their own. But the poppy was dangerous, created illness and need, and this was how it was for his master now. Muganni knew the signs that the poppy was taking a man and he had seen them in Dragonetz.
‘What signs?’ Every question was torture that must be faced.
‘Your eyes go wrong. They have the away-stare. You are falling asleep sometimes, in the day. At night you shout in wild dreams. What you suffered yesterday was from going without longer than your body can manage. I made a mistake.’ The liquid brown eyes regarded Dragonetz steadily, despite the fear.
‘You’re dosing me with this poison?!’ The anger rush was easier than the other feelings Dragonetz did not want to deal with.
‘It was in the honey tea you were given. I knew the smell. I thought you ordered it, not knowing it was bad for you, so I stopped it reaching you. I’ve been giving you a little poppy only, to cut it down, to clean you, but yesterday your body said I had not given you enough. I thought you had chosen to take the poppy.’ The boy looked at him and Dragonetz could only imagine how much of the horror he felt, showed in his face. ‘You didn’t know.’ Muganni’s face reflected the horror. ‘Tell me who I should kill, Effendi. Who has done this thing?’
Yes, killing would feel good, thought Dragonetz, looking at the innocent young face offering to murder for him. Unfortunately, killing would do nothing to help Dragonetz or his plans. ‘No. They don’t know I’m aware of ...’ he gestured, still finding it difficult to say the word, ‘... this. That gives me an advantage.’ Again he asked the question Muganni had already answered. ‘What if I just stop taking it?’
‘Like yesterday but worse.’
‘But I could get past that after a time? Be free?’
‘Maybe. If you are locked up, with people around who can help you, and yet ignore your screams for help, with no-one who will listen to you promising anything - anything! - to get the poppy. Sometimes a man dies anyway.’ There was only pity and honesty in those brown eyes but the sentence they delivered could not have been more cruel.
With one of those disconcerting returns to the behaviour he’d been taught in Nur ad-Din’s camp, the boy laid his head against Dragonetz’ chest, throwing his thin arms around him, expressing his feelings in the only ways he knew. Gently, Dragonetz gave the boy a fatherly hug and disengaged. It was a long, slow process, teaching Muganni how a boy and a man should behave together. Dragonetz didn’t want to destroy the boy’s capacity to express any emotion physically and yet it was hard not to react against the imitation of a woman’s touch, with its wrongness.
‘How are you getting the poppy?’ Dragonetz suddenly realised how costly it must be and that Muganni had no means.
‘When you sent me to the Khatun, I told Salah ad-Din. He will not speak of it,’ he hastened to reassure Dragonetz, not realising the humiliation caused. ‘He took enough from the store, told me to say to you that it is a gift not a purchase, that he knows you cannot promise more than you did to the Khatun, that he hopes you live but only you can outwit your death.’
‘You have kept all this from me.’ Dragonetz was more amazed than angry.
‘Salah ad-Din said I would know the time to talk to you. And I thought the poppy was your choice not a doom upon you.’
Clear-headed, no doubt because of his recent dose! Dragonetz weighed his options and found them wanting. ‘Can you keep me functioning for two months?’
‘I think so.’ Muganni frowned. ‘But every week the poison gains hold, takes more of your essence, makes it harder for you to escape. You will need stronger doses. And in two months it will be even more dangerous to cleanse you than now.’
‘It is worth the risk.’
Muganni hesitated, looking away, then made some decision. ‘There is something else. I have hash, from the Man of the Mountain.’ Dragonetz’ ignorance must have shown in his face and the boy explained, ‘Hash is also a drug, a kind one, which can take pain and lighten the spirits, make a man feel strong before battle, enough to take on a hundred men. I think we might be able to slow the increase in poppy by using hash, if you know the signs and can dose yourself at the right times.’
‘A kind drug?’ Dragonetz’ every instinct revolted against adding yet another poison to his system. ‘The Man of the Mountain?’
‘I am Hashashin. I was taken from my people and now I belong to you but I know how to find them, where they hide in the mountains and where they hide in plain view, amongst their enemies in the cities. The Man of the Mountain is our Leader and he taught us how to use hash, for special occasions and battles. It fires men up, then it leaves them clean. That’s what I mean by a good drug.’
‘Your enemies?’ asked Dragonetz, wondering what weir
d tribe his young servant came from.
‘Those with different beliefs, who will not allow ours to exist. And those whose names we are given, to deliver their fate. We are Isma’ili.’
Dragonetz had not heard of the Hashashin but he was aware of the Isma’ili, hated by other Muslim sects, living in cast-out communities, fighting according to their own interests, even, so it was rumoured, in alliance with the Crusaders. But their usual ways of fighting were through targeting individuals, through stealth and even at night, so alien to army tactics that Dragonetz had dismissed the people as outlaws. Muganni leaned close to Dragonetz, whispered a name and a password in his ear.
‘If the time comes that you would like the man killed, who did this to you, write down these two words, with the man’s name, and give your wish to any beggar on the street. All know that such messages are for the Hashashin, that the bearer will be rewarded. Your words say that the Hashashin owe you this favour and there will be no payment asked.’
Studying the serious face, Dragonetz realised that the offer to kill for him had been no idle threat. Muganni was Hashashin. ‘You do not belong to me,’ he told the boy. ‘You are free to go to your people.’
‘And leave you to your death? Say these words to me again, in two months’ time, and I will consider what is owed.’
‘Thank you,’ Dragonetz said and then laughed sourly.
‘Effendi?’
‘St Paul,’ Dragonetz told him, knowing he wouldn’t understand. ‘It seems the two of us had our moment of revelation in exactly the same place on this road.’