‘I’m his project.’
‘You are my project.’
I lean forward.
‘Are you a spook?’
‘No. Although the more I deny it, the more you will think I am. The not-so-glamorous truth is that I know quite a lot, but in an academic way. I couldn’t kill you with a rolled-up newspaper, for instance.’
‘In an academic way, do you think it’s going to be all right?’
‘My contact says it’s pretty well standard. He doesn’t rush into making wild statements. So I would say yes, it is going to be fine. But it may take some time.’
‘How long?’
‘A few days to a few weeks. It depends on all sorts of factors: rivalry, jealousy, ransom payments and the Egyptian Government and the Army’s involvement. If they want to get involved it could be slow. What we don’t want is for the Egyptian people to try to free Noor by force. But my contact thinks, as I said, that it’s all pretty standard. Is her family rich?’
‘I don’t know.’
She wants to talk about Ed. She is keen to know more about his past, particularly about his ex-wife. But, I tell Lettie, I hardly knew her and lost touch with Ed himself some years ago, although occasionally I would meet up with him for lunch in the City at Sweetings. It was the sort of traditional restaurant he liked, with its hard-bitten, inexpertly and cheaply blonded waitresses. Their hair was as stiff as candyfloss, a budget version of Lettie’s. All this was played against the bull-calf bellows of City boys that turned into a sort of male chorus as they grew steadily louder. Ed was in his banking pomp then.
I wonder why Lettie is so keen to know the details. She may be looking for areas of weakness she can exploit. She is disappointed that I can’t give her the low-down. The skinny. We chat inconsequentially about Oxford. After a few minutes, she looks at her watch.
‘OK, Rich, I have to go now. See you soon, and keep in touch if anything happens.’
‘Thanks so much.’
When she has gone I sit by the fire. I wonder what her real reason for excluding Ed was. Could it be that she was following the rulebook?
The soft, unhurried country-smoke curls almost imperceptibly upwards. The scent is calming, narcotic. I am aware that Ed will be waiting for me, ready to go to the pub, but I order a beer to establish my right to sit here. I have never been completely at ease in restaurants or hotels.
Lettie didn’t want me to tell Ed we had met, and I didn’t tell her about Mr Macdonald’s call. I don’t want to be recruited into anyone else’s version of what has happened. I am also wary of the role that is assigned to me: the dutiful fiancé whose destiny is marriage. It seems to me a trivialisation of our relationship. And I wonder if it was a coincidence that Mr Macdonald and Lettie should have given me the same information on the same day. I had feared Noor might be dead; now that I know that she is alive, I want, in my traitor’s heart, to get out of this. Marriage is never the end of a story, as in many nineteenth-century novels.
When Noor asked if I would marry her, I saw it as a gesture of love. I was in the state Haneen called
sous le charme
, infatuated. But the more I think about it, the less I want to be the bridegroom in a Toronto wedding, the idyll no doubt reported in the papers and on television.
Also, who knows what Noor has suffered? Her flaming hair and her belief in every woman’s entitlement may have been seen by her captors as a deliberate provocation. I know where this leads, and I don’t want to follow. Those awful few moments when she called, choking, begging me to help, and the sudden breaking-off of the call have entered my dreams, so that four or five times a night I try to answer her desperation. Ed heard me when I was shouting, uttering last night; he brought me a cup of tea.
It is one thing to lie in bed with Noor in scented Jerusalem, the reed flutes and the hand drums floating erratically in on the night air. But it’s another imagining married life with Noor. In the past few nights I have thought about what Haneen said and what Mr Macdonald said, and I have wondered what exactly Noor was doing in Cairo. I don’t trust Mr Macdonald or Lettie. And now Haneen won’t speak to me, and I have no idea of her reasons. But it all seems to suggest that I didn’t know much about Noor.
I even wonder if our engagement was some kind of cover.
10
After he had
been in the Holy Land for eighteen months, Richard turned his thoughts to the Holy City and the Holy Cross. On his mind, too, was the knowledge that John, his brother, and Philip, King of France, were collaborating to take his lands in Normandy and Aquitaine. Messages sometimes took months to reach him; he was constantly anxious for news. So the Cross became for him a symbol, perhaps a synecdoche. If he could get it back from Saladin with a guarantee of free access to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims, he would be able to claim that he had achieved the aims of his Crusade. And Richard longed to meet Saladin. He perhaps thought his famous ginger charm could work on him.
Months before, Richard had tried to set up a new Kingdom of Palestine, ruled by his sister Joan and al-Adil, Saladin’s brother: she would marry al-Adil, Richard would give the coastal towns as a dowry and the new kingdom would remain part of Saladin’s domains. Richard would have bought time; it was a stopgap plan so that he could return to the Holy Land after securing his Angevin empire. He would, he said, leave for home if this was agreed. For a few years at least Richard could then have claimed that his family were joint rulers of Palestine, and that Joan’s husband was going to convert to Christianity. What would it matter if al-Adil signed a few documents and had a little chat with the Primate of Jerusalem, in the way that some of my friends have been to see the local vicar and listened to an endless homily, just to secure the beautiful old church in the village for their beloved’s big day?
Baha ad-Dinibn Shaddad wrote that Saladin went along with it, but he said it was all a trick or a game by Richard. Joan, when she was eventually informed of her proposed new job, said that she would be damned if she would marry an infidel. Richard was running out of time. He urgently wanted a face-to-face meeting with Saladin, but Saladin refused: agreement must come first before kings could meet. Baha ad-Dinibn Shaddad records Saladin’s meeting with Richard’s envoy:
The King says: your friendship and affection are dear to me. I told you that I would give these parts of Palestine to your brother, and I want you to be the judge between us in the division of land. But we must have a foothold in Jerusalem. I want you to make a division that will not bring down on you, brother, the wrath of the Muslims or on me the wrath of the Franks.
Richard marched towards Jerusalem to speed up negotiations. Saladin had turned down his request for a face-to-face meeting, yet Richard needed Saladin. When he was ill, it is recorded that he sent to Saladin for fruits and snow, which Saladin supplied generously. Each was intrigued by the other. But time was on Saladin’s side: he knew that Richard had to go home and scorned his threat to stay another winter.
When negotiations broke down on the 6th of January, Richard advanced from Latrun towards Jerusalem, probably to concentrate Saladin’s mind, because he had no real prospect of holding Jerusalem even if he could capture it. The advance stalled amidst disagreement and Richard decided to secure instead the strategic castle of Ascalon, which dominated the road to Cairo. He also wanted to make sure that the Kingdom of Jerusalem would be left in the hands of a strong military leader, and King Guy de Lusignan was not that man; he was still dogged by his defeat at Hattin. Various barons and councils voted for Conrad of Montferrat; his coronation was quickly arranged, and Richard gave Guy de Lusignan Cyprus as compensation, but a few days later Conrad was killed by the Assassins, professional killers, on the orders of their leader, who was known as the Old Man of the Mountains. It was clearly a contract killing.
Muslims thought it was done on Richard’s orders because Conrad had been dealing separately with Saladin. But why would Richard have killed him after setting him up as King of Jerusalem? Nobody has suggested a plausible answer. Still, the French supporters of Conrad quickly spread the rumour that Richard had murdered Conrad, and this rumour found its way all around Europe. Henry of Champagne, Richard’s nephew, then became King, and he married Conrad’s twenty-one-year-old widow, Isabella. All this took just a few days.
But more bad news arrived for Richard: Philip of France was also spreading rumours about him, and at the same time planning to take his empire, with the help of Richard’s brother John. With great misgiving, Richard agreed to stay on and to take Jerusalem. The Frankish armies, now united without Conrad, moved forwards. During a reconnaissance Richard caught sight of Jerusalem. It was as close as he was ever to get. It is said that he wept and held his shield over his eyes, begging God to forgive him for not being able to deliver the Holy City. The weather had turned, and it was clear to Richard that he was in no position to take Jerusalem, so for the second time he withdrew. Morale was somewhat restored by the appearance of a holy man who produced a piece of the True Cross which he had fortuitously hidden near by.
Richard moved to Ascalon, destroyed some months before by Saladin, to oversee the rebuilding of the castle and the city. But Richard’s armies were disturbed and discontent and he restarted negotiations for an orderly exit after four months. It was agreed that Henry of Champagne would control the coast, and pilgrims would be allowed to visit Jerusalem. But there was a catch: Richard had to tear down Ascalon which he had spent so much time and money rebuilding. The negotiations broke down again. Saladin then ordered a surprise attack on Jaffa. The inhabitants agreed to a surrender and the Muslims rushed in to plunder the town. They raised their standards, but the citadel was still holding out.
Richard set off from Acre in a fleet of galleys. His red galley, flying a banner adorned with two lions couchant, was the first to make land the next morning. Richard took off his leg armour and jumped into the sea and, followed by all his men, charged the enemy.
Within a few hours Richard had relieved Jaffa. It was an astonishing victory and he was in jocular form: to Saladin’s emissary, Richard said, ‘This Sultan is mighty, and there is none mightier than him in the Land of Islam. Why then did he run away as soon as I appeared? By God, I was not even properly armed for a fight. Look, I am wearing my sea boots.’
But Richard was soon asking Saladin’s emissary to speak to Saladin urgently:
Greet the Sultan from me and beseech him, in God’s name, to grant me the peace I ask. This state of things must be stopped. My own country beyond the sea is being ruined. There is no advantage either to you or to me in allowing the present condition of things to continue.
He added that he would return to his own country immediately if a truce were agreed, without having to spend another winter here.
Saladin called his bluff:
The King will have to stay the winter anyway, since if he goes everything he has conquered will fall into our hands . . . How much easier it is for me to stay here winter and summer in the heart of my own country, surrounded by my household and my children. The soldiers who serve in winter will be replaced by others who serve in summer. And, above all, I know that in acting thus I am doing God’s will . . .
But Richard would not give up Ascalon. Again Saladin tried a surprise attack, this time on Richard’s camp outside Jaffa. Richard had warning just in time; he placed his knights in battle array. For nine hours they fought. One chronicler claimed that Richard and six knights were more than equal to three thousand Saracens. Whatever the truth, Richard and his knights, Count Henry of Champagne, Robert, Earl of Leicester, Hugh de Neville, William de l’Étang, Raoul de Mauléon, Bartholomew de Mortemer, Gerard de Furnival, Roger de Saci and the knight who carried Richard’s lion banner, Henry Le Tyois, secured their place in legend.
The chronicler, Ambroise, who travelled with Richard, wrote:
The brave king of the English isle
Went with the galleys by the sea.
They were all armed so splendidly,
No panoplies could be more fair.
One saw the Earl of Leicester there,
Likewise Andrew de Chauvigny,
And also Roger de Saci
And Jordan des Homez. This last
Knight died before the year was passed.
And also Ralph de Mauléon,
Who has a lion broidered on
His banner. Ancon du Fai.
Many a Saracen smote he—
As well as those of Preaux, who
Were of the royal retinue,
And many another known to fame
Of whom I have not learned the name.
Richard de Templo wrote that Richard’s right hand:
brandished his sword with rapid strokes, slicing through the charging enemy, cutting them in two as he met them, first on this side, then on that.
Ambroise added:
You never saw anyone like him. He will always be at the front. Always at the place of greatest need, like a tried and tested knight. They (the Saracens) call him Malik Richard.