“Tell me, Druid”—Andronicus spoke lightly—“is it true that you can see the future? The ancient ones, it is said, could do so. Are you one of these?”
“We were trained in the method, and there is a method. It is one I have never attempted.”
He was silent for several minutes, watching the others. Bardas sat across the room, looking his hatred.
“Are you not curious?”
“Who is not? But I would rather try to mold my destiny, to shape it with these”—I lifted my hands—“for we believe a man’s destiny may be many things, although a way is prescribed, a man may change. It is interesting that so few do change.”
“Could you read my destiny, Druid?”
Phillip was conversing with two men, not far from Bardas. Bardas said something aloud that I could not hear, but Phillip flushed.
“Bardas,” I said, “is a fool. He is now trying to start trouble with my friend.”
Andronicus shrugged. “Bardas is my friend.”
“And Phillip is mine.”
He looked at me, his eyes utterly cold. “Is it important to be the friend of Kerbouchard? Or of Andronicus?”
“To Kerbouchard,” I replied coolly, “it is more important to be the friend of Kerbouchard.”
His manner changed. “If there is trouble, you will not interfere. That is my order.”
Rising, I stood over him. “You must excuse me then; Phillip and I are leaving.”
He made no answer, and catching Phillip’s eye, I indicated the door with an inclination of my head. With an expression of genuine relief he started to join me. As he did so, Bardas leaped to his feet, his face flushed with anger.
“Go, then, you bitch whelp, I—”
He sprang after us and was within reach. I backhanded him across the mouth, splitting his lips and showering him with blood. Knocked to a sitting position, he put his hand to his mouth and stared at the blood.
Andronicus had risen. He gestured to several soldiers. “Take him!” he ordered. “And throw him into the street!” He indicated Phillip. “And that one also!”
With a manner of utter disdain he started to turn away.
Suddenly, sword in hand and facing the soldiers, prepared to die rather than be thrown out, something happened to me that had never happened before.
Before me was a vision, so stark and horrible that I was shocked. In my terrible rage, this had come. Was it truly prevision? Or a wish born of anger?
My expression stopped the soldiers, even Andronicus paused. “What is it? What has happened?”
“You asked for your future. I have seen it.”
He came to me, his eyes hot and eager. “What is it? What did you see? Tell me!”
“You wish to know? It is something I would offer no man of my own volition.”
“Tell me.”
“I saw a body with your face, a living body being torn by the mob. Some were beating or stabbing you with sticks; some pushed dung into your nostrils and mouth; some thrust spits between your ribs, and a woman dumped boiling water in your face. Still living, you were hung head down from a beam between two poles in the Hippodrome, and then a spectator ran a sword into your mouth and upward into your body!”
“Was I emperor at the time?”
“Yes,” I replied, “you were emperor.”
“Then it was worth it,” he said, and walked away from me.
47
HOW STILL THE night! How pure the gold of the crescent moon above the dark waters of the Golden Horn! How bright were the distant stars!
Around me were lapping waters in the dark, shadowed hulls of the boats, the mutter of sleeping men.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred, only the water, only the soft wind blowing in from over Asia. Empty eyes where distant windows had been bright, staring, lidless eyes open to the night, and I, alone, wrapped in the folds of a dark cloak, waiting.
Constantinople slept; the Byzantine Empire slept beside its beautiful waters, secure, strong, playing one barbarian folk against another, moving them like pieces on a chessboard, watching with bored amusement from heavy-lidded eyes.
Tonight was to be my last in Constantinople. As in so many other places, I had been but a passerby. Arriving a beggar, I left a friend of the emperor, the enemy of his cousin.
Gold lined the belt about my waist. Gold was in the pockets of my sash; gold was concealed elsewhere about me. My horses were aboard my hired boat, my few possessions there also. Only an hour separated me from my leave-taking.
Before me and across the Black Sea lay Trebizond. Beyond lay the mountains that fringe the Caspian Sea on the south and east, and high in those remote Elburz Mountains were the Valley of the Assassins and the fortress of Alamut.
The night was cool. Lances of light lay on the dark water; the boats tugged at their hawsers. Under my dark cloak I felt for the handle of my sword. As I left the house of Andronicus Comnenus, something had been tucked into my hand.
Turning quickly, I had seen nothing but bland, watchful eyes, no one familiar, no one who might have given whatever it was to me.
Our sedan chair had awaited, but I took Phillip by the shoulder, and we fled down a dark street, swiftly skirting the Hippodrome. Neither of us was a fool, and we had made a deadly enemy of Bardas. When we finally slowed to a walk in the Street of the Spices, I warned him, “You had best leave town with me. They will kill you now.”
“Where would I go? This city is my home, my life. I know no other place.”
“If you prefer the view from Eyoub.” I shrugged. Eyoub was the cemetery overlooking the Golden Horn. “Look,” I told him, “they will be searching for us together. I shall go the way I’ve planned, but do you go to Castle Saône. Tell the Comtesse de Malcrais and Lucca that I sent you.”
“Perhaps…yes, I must. I was trained in weapons and the fighting of wars but have done none of it. I was also taught the administration of estates.”
A Levantine, for a price, had taken my horses aboard. At midnight we would sail. In the room at the house of Phillip I glanced at the note slipped into my hand at the house of Andronicus.
Go not to Alamut! It means your death.
S.
It was written in the flowing hand of Safia, in the Persian tongue.
Go not to Alamut…had I a choice? Was it not my destiny to go to Alamut? What had these years meant to me but a preparation for Alamut?
A warning from Safia, who knew me well, indicated how desperately she feared what awaited me there. Safia did not fear lightly, nor did I. Hence, whatever was there to be feared was something worth fearing.
Shadows detached themselves from shadows; shadows moved toward me, and there was a vague shine of mail. If one must die, what better place than on the wharves of the Golden Horn in the light of a golden moon?
My blade was a finger of steel, lifting…
“No, Kerbouchard, we have come to see you safely away.”
Odric stepped from the darkness, a dozen men behind him. “The Emperor ordered it, although we ourselves planned to come.”
Men of the Varangian Guard, men of the north country. Odric’s father, too, had been a corsair.
“You are a bold man, so our Emperor loves you. He bade me say that if you come this way again, there is a place for you at his side.”
“Had he heard of tonight?”
“Of course. All Byzantines have spies, and every Byzantine is himself a spy. Everyone intrigues against everyone else. It is the sport of Byzantium; it is their game.”
Aboard the boat Odric faced the Levantine shipmaster. “Do you know me?”
“I have seen you,” the Levantine said sullenly.
“Deliver this man safely to Trebizond, or cut your own throat and sink your vessel. If he arrives not safely, we shall hunt you down and feed you, in small pieces, to t
he dogs. Do you understand?”
* * *
—
TONIGHT I WAS clad in a coat of mail covered by a tunic of light woolen cloth with embroidery at the edges. On my legs were hose covered by soft boots, and I wore a semicircular cloak clasped in front with a fibula. My cloak was of black, my tunic and hose were of maroon.
Our boat slipped quietly from the wharf and down the Horn to the stronger waters of the Bosphorus. The breeze was fresh and cool upon my face. Moving astern, I paused beside the Levantine. “It has a good feel,” I said. “I was born to a ship’s deck.”
“You?” He was astonished. “I thought you some young wastrel of a nobleman.”
“Lastly, I was a merchant trader.” Pointing off toward the mouth of the Dnieper, I said, “We were wiped out by the Petchenegs.”
“I heard of it…a bad business.”
My horses were stabled amidships, and I went to stand with them and feed them bits of vegetables. Ayesha nuzzled my side, and the stallion nipped at my sleeve in a friendly way. Finally, I went forward and lying down with my cloak about me, I slept.
In the gray dawn I awakened. The sea was picking up. Spray blew against my face, and I liked the taste of it on my lips, bringing back memories of the far Atlantic coast and my home.
The Levantine came forward. “There is danger from the Turks,” he said. “We are going further to sea.”
The Byzantine Empire held Greece and as far north as the Danube, west to the Adriatic, and, under Manuel I, the coast of the Adriatic including Dalmatia. On the mainland of Asia they held the coast to a short distance below Antioch and for some distance inland. The Black Sea coast as far as Trebizond was theirs, and so also were portions of the Crimea.
Inland, Anatolia was held by the Seljuk Turkish Empire with their capital at Iconium. These Turks were a fierce group of nomadic tribes from Central Asia who migrated south and fought their way into their possessions.
The citadel of Trebizond stood on a tableland between two deep ravines that, when heavy rains fell, emptied their floods into the sea. In the foreground as we approached we could see wharves, warehouses, and resorts for seamen, shops selling supplies to ships and fishing craft. At the foot of the tableland as well as atop it were the walled homes of wealthy merchants, their walls a riot of vines.
Beyond the walls of the citadel were the towers of Byzantine churches. It was late afternoon when we landed in a driving rain. I had changed to a birrus, a capelike cloak of deep red, heavier stuff, and worn for wintry or rainy weather. It possessed a hood that slipped over my helmet.
When we came ashore a ramp was run out, and I led my horses down. Several dockside loafers paused to watch, and I was uneasy, for they were magnificent animals and likely to cause comment.
The shores even on such a dismal day were crowded with heaps of merchandise, camels loading and unloading, and throngs of merchants. Mounting Ayesha and leading my other horses, I chose a narrow street leading inland. Glancing back, I saw a man standing alone in the street, watching me go.
There would be spies, and thieves, everywhere.
Aside from my sword and dagger I carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. Riding east, I passed several camel caravans bound west for Trebizond. At midnight I rode off the trail and camped in a wadi among some willows.
There was grass for my horses, a small area screened by a hill and the willows. Gathering fuel, I roasted mutton and ate, enjoying the stillness.
It was near this place where Xenophon’s Ten Thousand, retreating after the death of Cyrus, ate of the wild honey that drove them mad. All who ate the honey had attacks of vomiting and diarrhea and were unable to stand upright. Some who ate but little seemed drunk; others were temporarily insane, and a few died. The honey was made, I learned from an Armenian, from the azalea, and contains a narcotic.
Drawing from my pack fresh clothing, discarding the Byzantine costume except for the coat of mail and the cloak, I donned a burdah or undercloak bound with a sash, then put on the aba or long outercloak. Under the sash was concealed my old leather belt, my only possession from home other than my Damascus dagger. Then I resumed the turban of the scholar, adding the taylasan, a scarf thrown over the turban with one end drawn under the chin and dropped over the left shoulder.
The taylasan was worn by judges and theologians, offering a measure of security from questioning or attack, and suited the identity I was adopting, that of ibn-Ibrahim, a physician and scholar. It was no haphazard selection, for the one way in which I might open the gates to Alamut was as a scholar. Yet once inside those gates I would be surrounded by fanatics, ready to tear me to bits at my slightest mistake.
Hunched over my small fire, I felt the cold hand of despair. What sort of fool was I even to hope that I might accomplish the miracle of entering Alamut?
Again and again I reviewed all I knew and found no help. My only hope lay in the remote possibility of an invitation from Rashid-Ad-din Sinan himself, a man noted for his intuitive gifts and said to be interested in alchemy.
Of this I knew nothing but bazaar gossip, and I must stop in Tabriz and establish myself as ibn-Ibrahim in that city. There the spies of the Old Man could observe me at their leisure.
Once I got within the gates of Alamut, if I was so fortunate, every second would be one of danger.
Aziza in the castle of Prince Ahmed, Suzanne in Castle Saône, Valaba in the salons of Córdoba, did they think of me now and then? Yet who recalls the wanderer who appears but for a fleeting day or two and then is gone? My passing was that of a shadow in a garden, and who would remember? Or why should they? Would it be always so for me? Was I but a passerby?
If one returns and stands again upon the same ground, is it he who stands there or a stranger?
Armorica would still be Armorica; the sands of Brignogan would still be the sands of Brignogan, but Kerbouchard would be…what?
The memory of the great oar in my hands, the stench of the filth beneath me, the arms of Aziza, the books of the great library of Córdoba, the bite of a sword through bone…or that rain-swept cliff in Spain. How much of me remained there, in those places, and how much had brought me here, perhaps to my death?
How much of me lay on the blood-soaked turf where died the Hansgraf with his White Company of traders? How much of me in that muddy clearing where I had been knocked down, humbled, beaten, helpless to resist?
Was it anything more than luck that my bones did not lie back there to be picked over by wolves and vultures? A stick fell into the fire, sparks flew up.
Would I ever find a place where I belonged? Or was I destined to drift across the world like a disturbed spirit? Would I find that someone I sought? Someone more important to me than anyone or anything else?
Hah! Was I a child to dream so? I was lucky to be alive, and if I freed my father and escaped alive, I must be even luckier. And what of the walking drum?
Would I hear its beat again? And if I did, would I pick up my pack and follow?
And the Hansgraf? Where he was did he hear it? That drum marched us across Europe and into Asia and right to the very gates of death.
48
WHO SHALL DENY the excitement of entering a strange city for the first time? Or going ashore in a strange port?
And the beauty of Tabriz? To north, south, and east were reddish, orange-shaded hills, brilliant in contrast to the lush green of orchard and garden. Tabriz was a jewel of a city, watered by streams flowing down from the mountains.
To this city had I come, I, Mathurin Kerbouchard, now known as ibn-Ibrahim, physician, scholar, pilgrim to the holy places of Islam.
More than ten miles around were the walls of Tabriz, entered by ten gates, and outside the walls lay seven districts, each named for the stream that watered it.
My pace slowed, for I was a scholar and must proceed with dignity as befitted my position. What happened her
e might open the gates of Alamut.
Yet as I drew closer, it was my stallion and mares that drew attention, for no Arab lived who did not know the great breeds. The horses did not fit my role as scholar but did much to establish me as a man of wealth and importance. Wars had been fought over such mares as these, and I had three, and a stallion.
Glancing neither to the right nor left, I rode into the streets and through the great bazaar of Ghazan, one of the finest on earth. Wherever I looked were throngs of colorfully dressed people, and each trade was situated in a different corner of the bazaar. Reaching the bazaar of the jewelers, I found such a splendid collection of gems that I paused to gaze, and not only at the gems but also at the beautiful slave girls who displayed them.
Each girl had been chosen for her beauty and the symmetry of her body, and these slaves posed, turning this way and that to display their costly bangles.
Nearby was another bazaar where only perfumes were sold. Spikenard, patchouli, myrrh, frankincense, ambergris, musk, rose, and jasmine—there was no counting the fragrances. There was a street of booksellers, another for leather goods, and several streets crowded with weavers of rugs, which reminded me that I must find a prayer rug.
Riding on, I came to a hospice near the Baghdad gate. Travelers who stopped were served bread, meat, rice cooked with butter, and sweetmeats.
Everywhere were horses, camels, bullocks, and goats as well as both veiled and unveiled women. Turkish women did not veil. Frankish traders were there, whom I quickly avoided, fearing to be recognized. There were Armenians, Levantines, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, Slavs, Turks, Arabs, and Persians. There were big blond men whom I recognized as Pathans, and even merchants from Hind and Cathay, for Tabriz was truly a crossroads.
It was much changed from the time that the Hudud-al-Alam was compiled. The note on Tabriz in that geography said simply Tabriz, a small borough, pleasant and prosperous, within a wall constructed by ‘Ala-ibn-Ahmad. That, of course, had been written in 982, nearly two hundred years before my arrival.
The Walking Drum (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 37