‘Offence?’ She took me by surprise.
‘But you believe that God approves of men and women finding joy in one another, you said so. And why would He make us like you, with the same feelings, if He saves all His gifts for Moslems?’
‘Incha-Allah – as God wills. As He kneads us from clay, He sees our weakness.’ She smiled. But something in the sadness of her smile made me afraid. ‘Nothing is but as God wills,’ she said. ‘And all return to earth when is appointed.’
There are moments when you would stop time if you could do it. When I recall Khadija talking of incha-Allah with her hand upon my sleeve, I see three versions of myself – the Garon of the moment, gripping her and feeling fear. Another Garon staring past her to a future that will hold the memory forever in his mind.
And now a third – this Garon of the present high above the earth, groping through his memory to view the scene, and feel the fear, and live it all again.
We left her house before it was quite light. She closed the door, but might as well have left it open. For there were men already waiting in the alley to search the house as soon as we were out of it.
Who lives there now, I wonder, in Khadija’s house. Who tends her garden?
In the road up from the harbour, the King’s soldiers – a platoon of red-crossed Limousins as welcome as a plague of ship-rats – were emptying the houses of their owners.
‘You there! What the friggin’ hell d’ye think ye’re doing?’ a bearded sergeant bawled at us from the shattered entrance of a shop across the way.
‘Orders are for prisoners to carry their own bundles to the gate.’
‘If you’re you addressing me, I’ll thank you to mend your language,’ I shouted back at him. ‘These people are our hostages in durance and entitled to respect. Or are you about to tell me you know better?’
‘You a knight. Sir?’
‘Yes I am, with Bishop Salisbury’s Company.’
‘Then carry on Sir, if ye will Sir.’
The man moved backwards knuckling his forehead, motioning for us to pass – and no doubt swearing after us as soon as we were out of earshot.
I held Khadija in the circle of my sword-arm. The child Alia was half-asleep still with her cheek pressed to John’s shoulder as he bore her up the stepway.
A crowd of women with their children was already forming in the ruined area between the covered market and the Maledicta Gate, streaming in from all parts of the town. Everyone was pushing, shouting, gabbling in French or Arabic. Some were weeping. Far too many seemed intent on treading on my broken toes.
A row of horse-drawn carts piled high with baggage of all kinds were lined along the roadside where the rubble had been cleared. As we approached, Khadija was required to show another squad of self-important orderlies, what she was carrying beneath her cloak.
They left her with her beads and chains, and handed back the water skin and bundle of supplies. But, in spite of all that I could say, they took the cloth bag from her and tossed it to the driver of the nearest cart.
‘Qif!
No please, I keep,’ she begged him. ‘Satufqad ma’al… So many more – it will be lost!’ She even reached to take it back. But the driver was already stowing it beneath the pile.
‘I’ll put it ’ere, my love, d’ye see, up ’ere behind the nag? I’ll warrant that ye won’t miss Jack, when ye come back to look.’
He pointed to a star-shaped scar on the pony’s narrow rump. ‘There ’en’t another with a bloomin’ daisy cut into ’is arse, ye may be sure o’ that.’
It was an act of courtesy amid so much confusion. Or so I thought.
We stayed with them as long as we were able, beside a buttress of the wall that served to shelter them to some extent from the press of the crowd.
But in the end it was Khadija who bade us leave them for our unit – and when she did, put back her cloak just as she’d done the day we met. And this time, in sight of anyone who cared to look, she offered her soft lips for me to kiss.
‘Fi Ri’ayatillahi wa Hifdhih
–
May Allah in His mercy keep thee. All things come from Him, muhibb, and must return. We borrow time from life is all, only Allah is eternal.’
That may not be exactly what she said. I was confused, upset, and felt her fear.
‘I’m sure we’ll pass you on the way to the exchange at Hadyah,’ I said huskily. ‘Look out for us, and when you see us wave your hand.’
I can’t, I can’t go on with this……
CHAPTER FIVE
Tel al-Ayadiyeh: Tuesday, 20th August 1191
NEMESIS
On the third Tuesday of the month, King Richard rides out from Acre mounted on the splendid Arabian horse he’s had shipped over from the Isle of Cyprus; a paragon of polished copper, its trappings sewn with blue silk tassels and small silver bells. Arched of neck and bright of eye, iron of tendon, fleet of foot – the stallion’s name describes a burnished pelt to match the King’s own tawny colouring.
The Cid rode
Babiéca
into legend; King Richard has
Fauvel
.
They’ve made a special banner for the King’s ride through the camp to where the Moslem hostages have been assembled in the lime pits near the hill of al-Ayadiyeh. It is of silk, stitched into a rectangle of twice the normal length, fixed to a pole of twice the normal height, and carried on a cart drawn by a pair of Syrian ponies. For Richard needs the Sultan Salahuddin, high on his hill above the camp, to observe the royal leopardés – and know that the King of England has come in person to see the hostage situation resolved.
Behind his standard ride the sovereign’s escort, with two companies of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John. (Nursing monks devoted to the care of Christian pilgrims, who pray to gentle Jesus seven times a day and kill without compunction). Behind them march an infantry battalion – and, following the hostage transports, a rear-guard of mounted knights.
King Richard evidently leads the best part of an army.
But why so large a force? And why have the other Christian leaders remained in camp, along with Hubert Walter and the bishops? Why?
The Sultan Salahuddin Abu ’I-Muzaffar Yusuf, God’s Shadow on the Earth, has also asked himself why such a body of armed soldiers has been mobilised for the negotiation and exchange.
From where he stands close to the summit of al-Ayadiyeh, he watches the long snake of the approaching army wind through the Christian tent encampment on the plain. And when at last he finds its tail and can begin to estimate the creature’s size, he calls for a pigeon to be flown to al-Kharruba.
‘Send to al-Malik al-Adil,’ he commands. ‘Write that the al-Firinjah are come in strength to oversee the change. Accord to my brother his title of
Sayfuddin.
Tell him that
‘Righteousness of Faith’
hath need of
‘Sword of Faith’
, with all the
askars and turcomans he can muster.’
The message is inscribed.
The pigeon flies.
The sun is in the Sultan’s eyes. He calls for a battani observation tube to shield them from its dazzling light, and holds it up to trap the image of King Richard, captive as a cricket in a cage. The next image framed in its round window is of the lion banner on its buttressed cart – next after that, the lines of heavy horse, the polished points of soldiers’ spears. And then…
The Sultan stares intently, removes the instrument to squint with both eyes through the glare.
‘They’re bringing out the women and the children in the wagons they use for carrying their dead.’ (He graciously describes the scene to those behind.)
‘Praise be to God. The al-Firinjah intend to treat our people with respect.’
I’ve had a rest to set my thoughts in order. The Bérgé says that I must face it. He thinks I can, and I’ve agreed to try…
So be calm. Do it, Garon. Take a breath – deep breath…
DO IT NOW!
From my mare’s back I could see the outline of the final tumbrel, the cart that bore Khadija and Alia, though the rising dust. And I was grateful –GRATEFUL! – to imagine that King Richard in his mercy was sparing them a long march in the summer heat.
I so much wanted to protect them. Should have managed to protect them.
It is with God, I thought – fool that I was!
When John and I rejoined our unit, we found that horses were in short supply. Few of the mounts shipped over from Provence had managed to survive the winter famine. The coursers they’d brought in from Cyprus had all been allocated to high-ranking riders. To leave the rest of us with nothing but the drooping culls – the worn-out relics of warhorses that the military orders were prepared to sell.
I would have left them where they were to march with John and save the price of something useless in a combat. But my injured foot still pained me over distance. So, for five silver shillings, I bought a scabby, cow-hocked mare that looked strong enough at least to bear my weight in armour. Then joined Pierpoint, Waleys, Stopham and the rest – riding five abreast behind the transports, in link-hauberks but without our helms.
By then it was already well past noon.
We had been told the hostages would be brought out in tumbrels; our task to close about them and defend the rear in the case of an attack. And when they passed our lines to take their place in the long column – eight wagons, laden to the stades with human cargo – I finally caught sight of them in the last vehicle that passed. I saw them, see them, crouching at the tailboard, Khadija and Alia – the little girl pressed in between her mother and the rail.
I shout her name. Khadija hears, looks up. But not the child. I said for her to wave. She simply stares, her mouth compressed, with something in her eyes as they meet mine which I don’t understand.
She moves. It seems as if she’s praying. Then I see what I missed when all the others passed.
Why did they have to bind their hands?
The Sultan of Egypt, Syria and Yemen, the man whose honorific title,
Salahuddin
, translates as ‘
Righteousness of Faith’,
believes his faith in Allah’s mercy to be justified when, from the summit of Tel al-Ayadiyeh, he sees his hostages marched out of their confinement in the terraced quarries.
The faint sound of a voice is audible – someone shouting. Soldiers move amongst the prisoners as they come to an untidy halt. Some are detached and marshalled to one side.
‘Goats from sheep.’ The Sultan smiles. ‘He means to place a higher ransom on the heads of our qua’ids and emirs.’
The Christian soldiers have been working in the shadow of a row of lime kilns, to rope off an enclosure to contain the rest – two, possibly as many as three thousand adult men. The hostages are driven into the corral amongst the broken rocks and boulders. Hands bound. Robes, turbans uniformly coated in grey dust. From the Sultan’s viewpoint high above, they look like sheep at market penned in blazing sun, standing quietly waiting for their sale to be agreed.
Meanwhile, the female prisoners and the children are alighting from the wagons – jumping down or lifted by the soldiers.
The time for the exchange is fast approaching.
Oh God, if I could only lose my memory, halt time, or else jump clear from that day into this. Oh God, oh God, oh God! I’m sweating, panting – beseeching her God, my God, anyone’s idea of God, to intervene and save them!
But I must look the devil in the face and enter hell. I must remember how it feels to be among the damned!
They held us back until the tumbrels were unloaded. By then the infantry were ranged on all sides of the roped arena, armed with arbalests and pikes and spitting dust.
We were not close enough to see more of the Moslems than their crowding heads. No chance for me to find Khadija or Alia. But we could hear some of the women calling for their menfolk – the high voices of the children. The sound of babies crying…
The Sultan calculates that it will take Richard al-Malik’s emissary a quarter hour at most to canter up the hill with his fresh terms. Please God, al-Adil and the light horse will have left already from al-Kharruba, where fourteen hundred Christian hostages and twenty caskets of gold bezants await the pleasure of the king.
The Righteousness of Faith
lifts the battani tube to his right eye and carefully positions it. Looking down.
From his position on the plain the King looks up; and when he’s made sure his adversary’s tents are where they ought to be along the ridge, King Richard turns to the seething multitude in the enclosure.
He’s sworn that in all judgements he will grant justice and true mercy in emulation of Almighty God the Merciful and Clement. As King he is the fount of justice. The great sword
Curtana
, representing Mercy, was borne before him at his coronation. At Westminster before his crowning he swore to Baldwin to abjure rapacity and all iniquities to all degrees. But Archbishop Baldwin’s dead and buried, can’t remind him of it.
In the rock-strewn enclosure Richard sees Moslem mothers with bound wrists clutch babies awkwardly against their breasts. He watches men trussed up like capons with their hands behind their backs, bend forward as they move – sees children who might otherwise run freely, press closely to their parents, seeking reassurance. The round, frightened eyes of a small child its best defence against most adult enemies.