Authors: Unknown
“I wish I could take your praise, Everard. It’s not exactly often that you offer it. But I cannot.”
“Why?”
Will slipped a hand inside the collar of his white mantle and lifted free a long silver chain. Dangling beside the St. George pendant was a delicate gold ring. “I’m still ruled by passion.”
Everard smiled and shook his head. “No, William. You
have
passion. And that is very different to being ruled by it.” He shifted in the blanket, coughed a little, then settled. “How is she?”
“You don’t have to ask. I know you don’t approve.”
“Nonsense,” retorted Everard abruptly. “She sent me pomegranates.”
Will laughed despite himself. Returning from Damascus to find Everard ill, he had kept an almost ceaseless vigil at the priest’s bedside, leaving the preceptory only once, to marry Elwen. Andreas had arranged it in secret for them. It had been a brief, simple ceremony, just the two of them and a priest. Afterward, Will had returned to Everard. Since then, he and Elwen had communicated in messages, passed through Simon, and along with her words, Elwen had sent a basket of fruit for Everard. “She is fine. Better than.”
“And she is eating again? She will need to keep up her strength.”
Will leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands, grinning in amused disbelief.
“What?” demanded Everard.
“I just never imagined that I would one day be sitting with you discussing the eating habits of my wife and our unborn child.”
“Well, in my experience, William,” said Everard with a long, wheezy breath, “nothing in life is ever quite what you expect.” He closed his eyes again. They remained closed this time, and soon his breaths leveled out, growing slower and fainter, until Will was sitting poised on his stool, straining to hear the next one.
An hour later, Will was drifting into sleep, his chin resting in his cupped hand, when Everard’s eyes lids flickered and his desiccated lips cracked apart. “I think Rabbi Elias still has that book I lent him. Would you ask him for it the next time you see him?”
Will stirred. “Of course,” he said groggily.
Everard’s papery brow furrowed questioningly. “I wonder if Hasan will know.”
“Know what?” Will was awake now. “Everard? Know what?”
But although Everard’s mouth hung open, as if to say something else, there were no more words. Will touched the side of his neck and felt the last faint flutters of the vein. Then nothing. Slowly, Will drew his hand away and sat back, staring at Everard’s lifeless form. He was fragile, almost childlike, under the folds of the blanket. Will knew he should get a priest and the infirmarer. But instead he rose and walked over to the window. For a moment, he hesitated to draw back the drapes. Then he pulled them apart, flooding the solar with golden light. When he turned back to Everard, he saw that the old man was bathed in it, his transparent skin seeming to glow from within.
That evening, after Everard’s body had been dressed for burial and prayers said for him at Vespers, Will was called to the seneschal. He had been numb since the death, numb and dazed. But as he climbed the stairs to the seneschal’s chambers, alertness returned to awaken his mind. For years, he had known this day would come, but even though it had always been certain, he was still filled with an ominous sense of trepidation. Now that Everard had gone, another would have to be chosen as head of the Anima Templi. Will had no doubt in his mind of who that other would be, and although he tried to convince himself otherwise, he felt he also knew what this meeting would be about. It was time, he told himself, to face his final punishment for the attempted murder of Baybars and his betrayal of the Brethren.
The seneschal glared at him over the top of a sheet of paper as he entered. Lit from behind by the evening sunlight, he seemed larger than usual, a hulking silhouette of a man, his iron-dark hair cropped close to his square, brutish head. “Sit down,” he said, not bothering with a formal title or greeting.
Will steeled himself, then crossed determinedly to the stool set in front of the table, where he sat, wryly aware of how much lower the seat was than the seneschal’s own chair. He felt like a naughty schoolboy in front of a master, which, he supposed, was just what the seneschal intended. He sighed quietly to himself, wondering why, when so much had passed, the seneschal could not forgive him. He had risked his life to safeguard the Black Stone, had brought the grand master back from the brink of corruption and had stopped a war. What else could he possibly do to make amends in the eyes of this man?
The seneschal said nothing, but continued reading the sheet of paper he had been studying. The silence dragged on, the seconds turning into minutes. Will fidgeted on his stool. Finally, he could bear it no longer. He stood. “Sir, I should like to spend the evening mourning our master and offering prayers for him in chapel, rather than sitting here waiting for you to expel me. So please have done with it so that we can both go about our business.”
The seneschal’s eyes snapped up. “
Sit
down!” he bellowed, slamming the paper on the table in front of him.
“Sir, I ...”
“You are not being expelled.”
The seneschal had spoken quietly. Will wasn’t sure he had heard him. “Sir?”
“Sit, Campbell,” repeated the seneschal gruffly. He paused for a long moment as Will sank onto the stool; then, with a rapid exhalation, he spoke. “When you were in Arabia, Brother Everard called a meeting of the Brethren. He knew that he didn’t have long left in this world. He wanted to be there himself to arrange his replacement. The Brethren voted on his recommendation. They agreed with his choice.”
“And?” said Will, shaking his head in confusion.
“And they chose you,” said the seneschal roughly.
“What ... ?”
“They chose you,” repeated the seneschal. “To be the head of the Anima Templi.”
Will felt something nervous and shivery bubble up through him. He realized it was laughter, and he had to fight it back. It turned into a cough. “The Brethren voted for me?”
“Not all of us,” said the seneschal sourly.
Will placed his hands on his thighs, elbows out, and rocked back on the stool. “Why didn’t he tell me?” he murmured.
The seneschal gave a shrug. “Everard was never one for displays of emotion or gratitude. I expect he was too embarrassed to tell you. As well he should have been,” he added beneath his breath.
Will caught the words, but refrained from saying anything. He watched as the seneschal leaned down behind the table and brought out a large, well-worn book, the edges of the pages, sandwiched between the leather-bound boards, frayed with handling. Will recognized it as Everard’s chronicle.
The seneschal passed it over. “He wanted you to have this. He thought you might continue it. Personally, I think you should destroy it. We had a difficult enough time when the Book of the Grail went missing. We cannot afford any such blunders again. But that is my opinion. You’re the head now. It is up to you to do with as you wish.”
“I’ll look through it, then decide.”
The seneschal nodded. It was as much of a sign of reconciliation that he would get right now, Will realized. He nodded in return and headed for the door. Tomorrow, he could think about what this meant, about what would happen next. For now, he wanted to be alone. After shutting the door, he paused before descending the stairs, hugging the large book to his chest. A pungent, animal smell rose from the yellowed sheaves of parchment, which Everard, ever the traditionalist, still favored over paper. Had still favored over paper, Will corrected himself.
Had.
And that’s when the grief finally came.
THE CITADEL, DAMASCUS, 10 JULY A.D. 1277
Baraka Khan sat on the throne, his eyes fixed contemptuously on the gathering of men below him, as the Mamluk chief of staff droned through a lengthy legal speech.
Kalawun was struck by how small the prince seemed in comparison to the colossus of a man who had occupied that seat only three weeks earlier, smaller in presence as well as size, dwarfed by the ornate gold throne and by the distinguished men around him. Kalawun’s fists clenched. Baybars was barely cold in the ground and already his place had been taken. Kalawun might not have agreed with the sultan’s policies, but on many levels, despite his flaws, Baybars had been someone he respected. He had tried to make the sultan’s son into a better man than Baybars had been, but the sullen, malicious youth didn’t even come close. All those years had been wasted, the sacrifices he had made, greater than he could have imagined.
Three days after Baybars’s death, a cloth doll had been found, bloated and sodden, caught in reeds in the river outside Damascus. The fisherman who found it had been going to throw it back when he saw a jagged cut sewn into its stomach, which had been partially open. Intrigued, he had prised the doll apart and had found a tiny glass phial. Fearing sorcery or foul play, he had taken it to a local guard, who, not knowing what to do with it, had passed it to the Mamluks. The doll had been recognized, two days later, as belonging to Khadir, who had been pronounced missing. The physician, who had tried in vain to save Baybars, had suspected poison, but unable to collect enough of the kumiz the sultan had been drinking to study, he hadn’t been able to say for sure. The phial inside the doll was opened and the few drops of liquid inside tested and confirmed as showing properties of hemlock, the symptoms of which correlated with those Baybars had exhibited on death. Khadir’s mysterious disappearance and the emergence of the poison and the doll seemed to leave no doubt in the minds of the Mamluk court. Baybars had been murdered by his soothsayer.
Kalawun alone believed, beyond almost any shadow of doubt, that this wasn’t so. Each time he saw Baraka, he was reminded of the expression on his face and the dead voice he had spoken in whilst he watched his father die in agony. For him, it was Baraka who had placed the poison in the sultan’s drink on the night of the eclipse, when Khadir was already lying cold in his chambers. He was plagued too by other thoughts, more terrible than this: thoughts of his daughter and her demise, so similar, it seemed, to Baybars’s death. Khadir had admitted his part in that, but he had also told Kalawun that he had been planning to poison him. The commander guessed that Khadir’s plan had been thwarted by Baraka, who must have taken the poison. But how would the youth have known to look inside the doll, unless he had seen it before?
Kalawun had tried, as carefully and calmly as he could, to confront Baraka and attempt to draw the truth out of him. But the prince was unwilling to talk and Kalawun worried about pushing him. No one else knew that Baybars wanted Salamish to take his place, and so, as had been proclaimed, Baraka ascended the throne, inheriting control of the Eastern world, from Alexandria to Aleppo. Without a royal decree, signed by Baybars, Kalawun was powerless to stop it. The only comfort he had received was the declaration by the chief of staff that as Baraka was too young to rule, he and the empire would be guided by a regent until he turned eighteen. As Baybars’s closest lieutenant and Baraka’s father-in-law, Kalawun was the natural selection for the title. But this was cold comfort when faced with the grim possibility that the sour-faced youth, now occupying the throne, may have killed both Baybars and Aisha.
Kalawun felt someone beside him and looked down to see Khalil. He forced a smile and pushed back his young son’s hair, which fell obstinately back into the boy’s eyes. He was only thirteen but starting to shoot up rapidly in height. Kalawun guessed that he would be taller than him when fully grown.
“Ali wants to know when we get to eat, Father,” Khalil murmured in his serious tone.
“Does he now?” asked Kalawun, keeping his voice low and looking over at his eldest son, who was watching the chief of staff drone on, with a bored, slightly amused expression on his face, arms crossed idly. “Go and tell your brother to bide his patience. And to speak for himself next time.” When his son didn’t move, he frowned. “Was there something else?”
Khalil fidgeted uncomfortably and shot a look at his brother. “Ali told me he saw Khadir.”
“What?” said Kalawun, shock tightening the skin at the back of his neck.
“He said Khadir’s ghost is here. He’s watching us all through the walls like he used to, haunting us.”
Kalawun let out a quick breath, then put his arm around his son’s shoulders and gave him a rough squeeze. “Your brother was teasing you. Khadir is long gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. Now go.” He gave a small smile, this time not forced, as he watched Khalil return to his brother and thump him on the arm.
Ali glanced over at Kalawun and grinned, then returned to his regard of the chief of staff with an obviously feigned expression of interest on his face. Whilst Ali couldn’t have been more unlike his sober young brother in looks and temperament, he was the spitting image of Aisha, a slightly older, male version, that grin of his a comfort and a challenge. Kalawun thought, momentarily, how good a leader he would make one day: commander of a regiment or perhaps governor of a city. Then, as his eyes moved back to the scowling, baleful youth on the throne, he was filled with clarity and an enormous sense of defiance, purer, lighter than his anger and fears. He wasn’t helpless. On the contrary, as regent he had more power than he’d ever had before. All he had to do was find an opportunity, and seize it. The dynasty of the Mamluks had been born in insurrection. Baybars himself had killed two sultans before securing the throne.
Never had such thoughts of rebellion entered Kalawun’s head. He had been content in his position all this time under Baybars. But now, staring up at the throne as that gold circlet was placed upon Baraka’s head, he knew what he had to do.
On the other side of the throne room, Nasir saw a smile raise the corner of Kalawun’s mouth and wondered what it meant.
He had spent years studying that face, getting to know its expressions as one might a landscape and its changing, yet familiar seasons. Usually he could tell, just by looking, what the commander was thinking. But the smile seemed odd and out of place to him, knowing, as he did, what was currently on Kalawun’s mind. Two days ago, the commander had confided in him his private belief that Baraka had killed Baybars. Nasir had been surprised by the suggestion, but had fairly readily accepted the fact that it could well be true. After all, he knew how easy it was to deceive people. He had been deceiving everyone around him, including earnest,
principled
Kalawun for years.