‘Nafis? My dear sir, I have heard of you!’ I said, amazed.
‘In Venice?’ he said, sceptically. He had me by the arm again, this time guiding me back to the bed. I sat, dutifully, and he perched on the edge beside me, hands in his lap. Everything about this man was gentle but very controlled.
‘A colleague, a very dear friend of mine – peace be on his soul – was a physician from al-Andalus. He wrote to you, several years ago. Something to do with blood and the brain. His name was Isaac of Toledo.’
Ibn al-Nafis made a face. Then he brightened. ‘Apoplexy!’ he said. ‘I do remember. The matter was blood clotting within the brain. A colleague had died, and this worthy Isaac, who if I remember had studied at al-Qarawiyyin, like the great Musa ibn Maymun, peace be upon his memory … and this Isaac had …’
‘Yes, he investigated,’ I said. Istvan, the Cormaran’s sergeant-at-arms, had been carried off by a stroke while I had been besieged in Montségur, and Isaac had been so distressed – as Istvan had seemed to be in good health – that he had blamed himself and set out to find what had killed his old comrade. I was glad I had not been around for that, though I had seen worse things, and Istvan would not have cared, not being what most people generally called a Christian.
‘He found something that contradicted Galen, and wrote to me about that,’ the doctor went on. ‘I was happy to confirm his discovery. He seemed a most meticulous person. But he is dead?’
I nodded. ‘Before his time,’ I murmured.
‘Only God knows the time of our death,’ said the doctor, gravely. ‘But you are not a physician, Messer Petrus? You called him colleague.’
It was my turn to laugh. ‘No, indeed I am not a physician! I am a banker, and I can barely manage that – and lately a soldier, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Ibn al-Nafis stood. ‘Now, if you would lie down, I will examine you.’ He clicked his fingers and a man who must have been standing out in the hallway came softly in carrying an ebony box inlaid with eye-befuddling mother of pearl traceries. He bowed silently and left. The doctor opened the box, revealing nestled rows of bottles and tiny drawers, from which he extracted a long silver rod with a pointed end. ‘If you would just open your mouth,’ he said, ‘this won’t hurt.’
It did hurt, of course, but not as much as the scorbutus, and after he was done he probed and palpated every inch of my body with his firm but gentle fingers, lingering particularly on my neck and belly. I understood a little of what he was about: Isaac had done similar things to the Cormaran’s crew when we had been ill or hurt, and I had always regarded him as being as different from those men who called themselves doctors or surgeons as a goldsmith is to a tanner. Because this man reminded me of Isaac I found myself trusting him, even when he found some slumbering cache of pain and awakened it, briefly, before moving on. He painted my nastier scabs with some dark, sharp-smelling unguent, dabbed something else on my scalp that stung wickedly, and gave me a vial full of an amber-coloured syrup to drink. It was bitter, like dandelion juice mixed with liquorice, and the taste haunted my mouth, but I swallowed it politely.
When he was done, he washed his hands carefully in the basin. ‘You are recovering quickly,’ he said. ‘The scorbutus is fading, and the bowels have regained their function. There was some infection when you were brought to me, but it has been driven out. Having said that, you were fortunate, Messer Petrus. A man can only live so long without food and water, and the scorbutus would have killed you in another day or two.’
‘What do you say about my teeth?’ I asked.
‘You’ll keep the ones you have left. The gums are strong again.’
‘That is a relief. However, sir, you must forgive my vanity, but though I am in my thirty-third year, I look like a man of eighty.’
‘Do not worry. You will see the years fall away,’ he said. ‘Eat. Drink – especially drink. Sleep. You are in good hands.’
‘It is very generous of … I mean, I’m waiting to be ransomed, and I doubt I am your most important prisoner.’
‘My dear Messer Petrus.’ Ibn al-Nafis came and sat beside me again, and patted my hand where it lay on the sheet. ‘You have been ransomed already. You are not a prisoner, you are a guest. Now I recommend a little more sleep, and then luncheon.’
I began to ask for more of an explanation, but he merely smiled owlishly and padded out of the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. No key turned in the lock. I lay back and studied the coffered ceiling. Not a prisoner? How long had I been here? And who had paid my ransom? Disturbing thoughts, but the pure scent of clean linen, the lazy chatter of the birds from the courtyard and the good doctor’s draught kept them from digging their claws too deeply into my mind. I let my breathing deepen. A moment later, it seemed, I opened my eyes again and there was Ibn al-Nafis’s assistant with a tray of food and a slim copper jug. He pulled a small eight-sided table over, set down the tray, bowed silently and left me.
The food was excellent, though there was no wine – but why would there be wine, in a Mussulman palace? I had decided that this must be a palace, for it was not a castle and it seemed too big for a merchant’s house, or even that of a nobleman. Even though I could see nothing by way of a flag or a standard, I knew I had to be in the governor’s palace in Mansourah. So the walls from which I had been shot at were now sheltering me. I wondered how many other captured Franks were here. Had the prisoners all been ransomed, then? How exactly had that happened? I guessed that King Louis must be a prisoner, along with many others, but although I spent that afternoon sitting by the window, leaning on the warm stone and staring down into the courtyard, I saw no Franks, only Saracens.
Leaning out for a better view, the golden stag came free of my robe and swung, glinting, below me. As it turned slowly I remembered the hands that had found it and put it back. The man had been about to kill me, and something had stopped him. But I could bring back nothing else of that day: from the moment that Father Matthieu had been killed, everything was a vague, grey darkness. I stretched painfully and went to lie down. Soon I was asleep. Whatever the good doctor was giving me to drink, it brought deep sleep and no dreams, and that alone was a miracle.
Time went by. The brown birds sang and played about in the trees. The sun rose and set, and at every sunrise I found the fact that I was still alive a little less confusing. Then came the day that Ibn al-Nafis brought me a letter along with my morning physic. He placed it on the window sill and left the room without inspecting me with his usual thoroughness. When his footsteps had faded in the hallway I snatched it up. I recognised the seal at once, and there, in careful, clear letters, my name. It was from Iselda, and the date upon it was no more than three days old. She was alive.
Chapter Twenty-One
My dearest,
What joy! To hear that you lived, when all of the king’s great army has come to such a sorry defeat! If I were to climb to the top of Damietta’s minaret and jump off, I believe I would float down like a feather, my heart has become so light.
Yes, I am in Damietta. I got here the week after Shrove Tuesday, about the time that the Mussulmen blockaded the river. I sent letters to you, but they came back. So you never heard the end of my tale. It is a good one, and as I hear you need to rest, let this entertain you as you get strong enough to come back to me.
I thought to find you in Damietta. But the first thing I learned was that the army had left not very long after Father Matthieu had visited me, and that you were somewhere upstream. Everybody – the Franks, that is – seemed sure that Louis must have taken Cairo by then, and that it was just a matter of time before word reached us. But as you know too, too well, very soon after that the river was blockaded and the few messengers who won through told us that the king was about to surrender.
You will want to know many things, my love, but as you are safe and I do not have to worry about you – for once – let me sit here for a while and amuse myself by putting down some things that happened in Damietta. In Paler
mo I bought a strong French cog, for I did not like the idea of a fragile little galley loaded with gold bobbing around off the mouths of the Nile, and this ship looked the same as any other in the king’s fleet. Dimitri hired the most villainous and yet trustworthy men he could find to guard it.
You had written to me of Ya’qub bin Yazdad, and when I first went ashore I sought him out. You are right: he is a fine old man, and … well, I shall not tell you which of his trinkets he chose to show me. He took me to the house where you lodged and made sure I was settled there.
Now, everyone left behind in Damietta is bored to the point of death, and so news of my arrival spread all over the town, and the next day I was summoned to the palace to meet Queen Marguerite. Vile man, you have never spoken of her in your letters. She is clever, witty and strong. When I first saw her she was huge with the child the king had left her to bear alone, and even so she was running the affairs of Damietta as though it were a little kingdom and she a female Charlemagne. As you must have noticed, she is also the only Frankish woman of rank in the city, and indeed, apart from her handmaidens and the small mob of camp followers outside the walls, almost the only Frankish woman of any kind. That was why my arrival had caused such a hubbub.
She received me in her inner chambers, and I was surprised to find her served by two young ladies and three very ancient knights, who plainly being too old to march off into the swamps of Egypt, had become male handmaidens. She put me to the question, very charmingly, and I expected her to be disappointed to find I was of ordinary birth. If she was, she was too nice, or too starved for the company of her own sex, to show it. And then she discovered that I was born in Toulouse. Ah, then our friendship was sealed – for so it is, even though I am sensible enough that such a friendship could not exist outside this odd and troubled circumstance – and we fell to discussing the southern lands with, dare I say it, quite some hunger. I told her that I had sung at her father’s court, and then she made me sing her all the songs she loves, which are many, for she is no northern dullard with beery mud in her veins. Really, for shame, Petroc! It is no secret that the king neglects his wife, but for him to leave that noble creature and go off fighting – and to get himself captured into the bargain! Forsooth, men are fools, and if you were here, I would tell you so to your face. For make no mistake, it was Queen Marguerite who prevented ultimate disaster falling upon the wretched army. She has kept the garrison fed as well as the townsfolk, and delivered a living son into the bargain.
Meanwhile, you are free, my love. A Saracen paid your ransom. And now I will tell you how that came to pass. You must remember how, when you won the battle on the seashore that brought you the surrender of Damietta, the Mussulmen inhabitants of the city fled along with the garrison? Well, not quite all. Ya’qub told me of at least three merchants who had remained behind to watch over their possessions. One of these, a man by the name of Abu Musa Zayd al-Ghallabi, had remained in his own home close to the bazaar. He is a member of some odd sect of the Mussulman faith that teaches the notion that the gods of all faiths are one god – I would need to sit under a palm tree for ten years listening to Abu Musa Zayd explain it before I really understood, so I won’t waste ink here. Anyway, his belief means that he is friends with Christian and Jew alike, and indeed the faiths get on without very much difficulty in any case, so he was able to live unmolested when you crusaders arrived. He has a wife, two daughters and a young son, and they did not leave the house and hid themselves away in the inner rooms.
Ya’qub learned over time that I was not bound up with the strictures of any particular faith, and when I told him I was sorry I could not meet any Mussulmen, he persuaded Abu Musa Zayd to visit his house while I was there. I found him a charming, cultivated and warm-hearted man, very learned on many subjects. He is a trader and had even conducted some business with our company through a third party, his speciality being cinnamon and pepper from that very Kodungallur we talked about that day before you left for Lyon – do you remember? That long pepper in our storeroom might have come from Abu Musa Zayd. We became friends, and he was good enough to invite me to his home, where I was honoured to meet his family.
It is the custom for hosts to entertain their guests with song, and when Abu Musa Zayd’s wife and his eldest daughter had sung for me, I thought it polite to return the favour, and so I gave them that song you taught me, dear one – the song you learned from the helmsman of the Cormaran. It is a little grim, about fire. Now, strange to relate, he knew the very song! Indeed he pressed me to tell him how it came to be in my possession, and I told him from you, and that you had heard it from one Nizam, who sailed with my father. He must have been from Cairo! said Abu Musa Zayd, and I said I did not know. We said no more about it, and indeed I gave it no more thought until a few days after your attack on Mansourah. We were not besieged, but we were cut off from the world outside and bad weather had kept us from being supplied by sea. There was no hunger, but sickness had taken hold; and for a time we feared for Queen Marguerite’s little son, whose midwife was an ancient knight! Jean Tristram, she called him, after her sadness at being abandoned by the king. Now, as soon as her child was born and she had taken a few days’ rest, the queen rose like a veritable Amazon and began to rule once more. But the soldiery was restless and dispirited by the news that trickled down the river, and trouble sometimes broke out in the town. There was not enough coin to buy food for either the soldiery or the townspeople – or rather, there was, but the queen, being in possession of a quick mind, foresaw that in the event of a defeat, the money in the royal treasure ship would be needed for ransom and defence. So I proposed a loan to her, for which she was exceedingly grateful, for it enabled her to maintain her rule, and won her the love of all, Franks and Egyptians alike.
Even so, soldiers began to terrorise the merchants in the bazaar, and there were some fights and murders. Then one day Ya’qub came looking for me. Someone had told a Frankish crossbowman that there was a Mussulman living among them, and had named Abu Musa Zayd. A mob of soldiers, sodden with wine, had gone to his house and laid siege to it, imagining a trove of riches inside, and wanting to be revenged upon the person of a Saracen. We hurried there, and found the mob trying to batter down the door and piling dry faggots and timber around the walls, ready to set fire to the house.
I went that instant to the queen, and told her what was happening. At first she was not greatly concerned. But I shamelessly told her that Abu Musa Zayd was a friend to Christians and an important trading partner of the Banco di Corvo Marino, and that if harm befell him it could endanger my ability to loan more money to Her Majesty.
As you have taught me, few can resist an appeal to both heart and purse; and indeed Queen Marguerite straight away ordered the royal guards to go to the merchant’s house and drive away the mob. I went with them, to the queen’s dismay, and after the brutes had been driven off, one with a cracked head, and the flames put out, I went inside and found my friend with his family in the little courtyard at the centre of the house, preparing for death. I told them to flee Damietta as soon as they could, and sent word to Dimitri aboard our ship, asking him to send a boat up the river with some good fighting men, who should come to the merchant’s house and take him and his family out of the city. It was done, and by the day’s end I was standing on the shore with Abu Musa Zayd and his family, ready to see them taken to where they could find safe passage to Cairo. After his wife and children had gone aboard, the good merchant kissed my hand. First he warned me, saying that he had heard very recently from spies beyond the walls that the Frankish army was doomed and soon that doom would fall also on Damietta. Then he implored me to tell him anything he could do to repay the debt he owed me for his family’s life.
I asked him that my dearest wish was that you, my husband, should be safe. I described you, and told him that you might also be known by the little stag of gold you wore, that was unlike any other in the world. And then, which surprised me very greatly, and which is the part of this ta
le I have been keeping from you out of loving spite, he told me that the song I had sung had brought him many hours of wondering, for it had been written by a great man. Well, I said, a great man’s songs have longer life, and travel further, than those of humble creatures like myself. But no, he said, and then he told me that the sect to which he belonged – he calls himself Sufi – has as its leader one Sheikh abd’ al-Azeem al-Ansari, and the song you taught me was one of many written by him. This Sufi sheikh had many disciples among the Mamluks. If, God willing, he reached Cairo in safety, he would tell his fellow Sufis to seek you out and bring you to safety.
And so it came to pass! But first came the terrible day when the few boats full of wounded, dying and dead men drifted down the Nile, bringing word of the king’s surrender. It was a horrid blow for Queen Marguerite, but she did not falter, and began to rally the city’s defences. She went every day to see to the sick and wounded and I went with her, trying to find any news of you. One poor fellow, almost black with the scorbutus and with gangrene in his arm – his name was Guibert de Sougé – had seen you on the shore as he sailed away, waiting with the king’s escort. He died next day. Most of those with any kind of wound or sickness died soon after they got here. And then we heard from the Saracen envoys who rode up to the walls that the king was taken, and all his knights with him, those that had not been sent to the hell reserved for infidels, and that was most of them. Then there were days of torment for me, my love, and I went aboard our ship and made ready to cast off if I heard that you had perished. But instead, one morning just at sunrise, a small fishing vessel came alongside as if to sell its catch, but instead a Saracen man asked for me by name. He brought word from Abu Musa Zayd, who had come safely to Cairo, and had discovered that you were alive. You had fallen into the hands of a band of Mamluks who followed Sheikh abd’ al-Azeem, and the good merchant had caused you to be brought to the house of his cousin, who, it seems, is the governor of Mansourah. And so I am writing to you, dearest man, foolish man – lucky man! – to assure you that you are free, that your ransom was paid by the worthy Abu Musa Zayd, and that we will, very soon, be together again. The doctor whose care you are under says you are mending, and that as soon as you have the strength, you may ride to Damietta.
The Fools’ Crusade Page 27