A Blood Red Horse (20 page)

“Was your father Muhyi ad-Din?” he asked as he stood in the doorway of one of the huts. “The learned scholar?”

“Yes,” said Kamil. “Did you know him?”

Sinan nodded. “He was a fine man,” he said softly. “Now sleep.”

To his surprise Kamil fell asleep almost at once. The reference to his father had filled him with relief and confidence. For the first night in many months, he slept without dreaming.

A few hours later he was awakened by a man bearing hot spiced tea. He drank it, then straightened his clothes and went out. Hosanna was already saddled and waiting for him. Sinan was holding the horse's rein and stroking him. Though he tried to pretend it was something to do with just waking up, the sight made Kamil shiver. There was something about the way the Old Man was touching Hosanna that made him feel uneasy.

“It has been good that we met,” Sinan said, handing the reins to Kamil. “When we are ready, you will get a message telling you what to do. Remember, it is for Allah that we act, not for ourselves. The crusaders have defiled our land long enough. Men like your father deserve more than you killing one small boy and Saladin making a truce. He would expect great things of you, and your chance to perform great things will come soon. Meanwhile, keep close to the sultan and try to guide him along the right paths.”

Kamil nodded. He dismissed his feeling of foreboding. Instead, he was filled with gratitude. This was the leader he had been looking for. He thanked the Old Man for his hospitality.
Sinan accepted his thanks and patted him on the arm. “Now,” he said, “the guide will take you back. Take care on your journey. We will meet again.”

Kamil swung himself onto Hosanna and smiled. “Until then,” he said softly, and chided Hosanna for his impatience as he followed the guide out onto the ledge once more.

After his return to Saladin's camp, it did not take long for the call to come. While he was waiting, Kamil was especially attentive to Saladin. He did not let his hostility to the idea of a truce completely vanish lest the sultan suspect something was up, but he was polite and smiled at the sultan when their eyes met. Saladin noted aloud that the boy's temper had improved since his visit to Jerusalem. Kamil seemed to be offering constructive suggestions instead of harsh criticism. He said as much to Baha ad-Din in Kamil's hearing.

“Young boys do grow up,” was Baha ad-Din's only response, but he, too, was pleased by Kamil's behavior. Riding out with him was a pleasure again. “Perhaps the imam at Jerusalem and the horse between them have made him see sense.” The sultan seemed to nod, and all three shared breakfast.

Abdul Raq now spoke to Kamil only occasionally and never asked about the meeting with the Old Man. When they did meet, Kamil told him briefly what the sultan was thinking, but did not hang around for pleasantries. Two weeks after his visit to the mountains, however, Raq found Kamil in the red horse's tent. The sky was dark,
but the rain was holding off. The red horse kept his distance as Raq slithered through the tent flap, but Kamil chose not to notice.

Raq smiled. “Well,” he said, “I am here both to admire your horse and to tell you that the time has come. Are you ready?”

Kamil nodded, his heart thumping. He stood up and gave Hosanna an apple.

Raq watched, but his expression never changed. “The sultan is to be assassinated,” he said.

Kamil gasped.

“Don't worry,” Raq said. “You are not to perform the deed yourself. You are simply to provide the opportunity. You are to ask the sultan if he would like to try your horse and if you can go out together the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. Suggest that it might be nice if it would just be the two of you, since you have something to say to him in private. You will indicate that you wish to apologize for your previous opposition to his plans. The assassins will find an opportunity.”

“Is that all?”

Raq looked at the boy curiously. “Not quite. The assassins will be waiting behind the rocks about two miles from this camp. You and the sultan will swap horses, and you will encourage the sultan to gallop round the rocks to test the red horse's speed. There will be an ambush.” Raq paused. “In order that you are not suspected of treachery, the red horse will also be killed. Everybody knows how fond you are of the animal and will never imagine you could be party to anything that would involve his death.”

Kamil stood absolutely still. What little color there was left in his face drained away. Raq got up. “Do you understand?” he asked.

Kamil swallowed. “This order comes from the Old Man?”

“Directly,” said Raq. “He said that this challenge would be a true test of your faith in Allah and of your respect for your father.”

“Yes,” whispered Kamil. “Yes, I see.”

“We will not speak again until it is over,” said Raq, and he slunk off.

Kamil left the red horse's tent. He could not look at him. In his mind Kamil replayed his meeting with Sinan over and over again. He could hear him talking, explaining why such sacrifices were the only way and why they should be seen as a true test of Kamil's love for Allah. Kamil steeled himself. He must do as he had promised. But his heart felt like lead. He got a groom to feed and brush Hosanna, saying that he did not feel well.

The next day Kamil approached the sultan as if in a dream, extolled the virtues of his horse, and asked if they could ride out together, “Just like in the old days.”

“Come and try my red horse,” he said, trying to keep in his mind's eye the vision of his father lying in his own blood while the knight with the mark like a teardrop shouted in victory. “He truly is a wonder. You would enjoy him. And I have something I would like to discuss with you.”

Saladin smiled. “It will be a great pleasure, Kamil,” he said, and agreed to meet the boy early the following morning.

It was Saladin himself who told his bodyguards to remain in the camp. “I shall be safe with Kamil,” he told them as the winter sun tried its best to give out some heat.
“And the crusading knights are some distance away. It is good to go out alone sometimes.”

Kamil could scarcely believe that the plan was going without a hitch. He should have rejoiced, but he could hardly breathe.

The guards were not happy. But they nodded as Saladin and Kamil mounted their horses and rode off. Hosanna, bright gold in the morning light, his mane and tail like spun silk, strode out well. After half a mile or so, the two men swapped horses. Kamil tried to smile as he handed Hosanna over. Oh! But the horse was so beautiful!

Hosanna carried the sultan with ease and executed the maneuvers asked of him with spirit and joy. He even reared on command and made Saladin laugh.

Finally, unable to bear the tension a moment longer, Kamil urged the sultan to gallop round the rocks.

“You have not tried him at full speed,” he cried, his voice hard and loud. Saladin nodded, then paused. If he was alarmed by Kamil's white face, he did not show it.

“I have never asked you,” he said, still in a conversational tone, “what this horse's real name is.” For a moment Kamil thought wildly that he would tell Saladin the whole tale. But he could not. When he opened his mouth, however, what came out was almost as unexpected.

“The horse?” he cried. “Oh, the horse is called Hosanna.” Hosanna, hearing his name for the first time in almost five months, turned his head and looked directly up at Kamil's face.

At that moment Kamil knew he could not do what was asked of him. But it was too late. Saladin was already urging Hosanna into that peculiar floating gallop that was special only to him. Kamil was paralyzed with horror.
Then just as Saladin neared the rocks, he found his voice and his spurs. Digging the steel hard into the sultan's horse, Kamil shouted and raised his whip above his head in an effort to make it go faster. But his voice mocked him in the wind. Hosanna was too far away. Now Saladin was almost at the rocks. Soon he had disappeared. Kamil was crazy with horror. “No! No!” he howled.

Then he was at the rocks himself, turning behind them. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. Standing on the ground, apparently uninjured, was Saladin. Hosanna, unharmed, was beside him. Baha ad-Din was there, too, leaning down. At his feet, dead, lay Abdul Raq and one of Saladin's most trusted servants. Both bore the mark of Baha ad-Din's dagger in their hearts. Saladin said nothing. Kamil, stunned, uncomprehending, and breathing heavily, dropped off his horse.

“I am ready to die, too,” were the only words he could think to say as he knelt in the sand.

Saladin looked at him. “Kamil,” he said gently, “do you think the one true Allah could ever demand what the Old Man demanded?”

Kamil, sobbing now, shook his head.

“I had you followed the day you went up the mountain,” the sultan went on. “I did not tell Baha ad-Din until yesterday, because I wanted to see what you would do. But let's not speak of that just now.” And sitting Kamil down, Saladin took from his horse's saddlebags his own, much-thumbed copy of the Koran. He opened it and showed Kamil how, although the great book speaks of blood and revenge, it is also full of passages relating to righteous conduct, truth, and beauty, things combined in the horse Kamil had been ready to sacrifice in the name of hate.

“Sacrifices must be made in the name of honor and
love,” he said. “Only then is the sacrificial gift worthy of the giver.” Kamil was quieter now. “One day,” the sultan said, “one day, Kamil, I will demand something of you and see if you have understood what I have just told you.”

Then Saladin got up, handed Hosanna over, took his own horse, and rode back to his camp.

Since Hosanna had been taken by Kamil negotiations between Richard and Saladin had been endless and unproductive. The winter rains made everybody bad-tempered, and the morale of the Christians sank as the mud rose. On leaving the orchards of Jaffa at the end of November, while Kamil was enjoying himself on Hosanna, the Christians were trying to reach Jerusalem. After it boiled all summer, now the rain never seemed to let up. Violent hailstorms tested the horses to extremes. At first, the knights and even the humbler soldiers refused to be downcast as they struggled on. At least they were on the last leg to the Holy City. However, soon the misery of traveling when every step was a struggle wore down even the most optimistic crusaders.

William hardly noticed the weather. In the two months since the loss of Hosanna, his body had easily recovered from the three days without water, but the absence of his horse was a daily grief to him. Every time emissaries came from Saladin's camp, he looked in vain for Kamil. Sometimes he saw a flash of red in a Muslim raiding party, but the horse was never Hosanna. Often he felt he had remained sane only because Gavin's injuries were so grave that the surgeon had had to amputate his brother's sword
arm just below the shoulder, and William must be on hand to help him. Kamil's blow had done irreparable damage in itself, and Gavin's arm had filled with poison. Luckily, he had been too delirious to understand fully what was going on, but the pain he felt as the surgeon, his apron splattered with blood and pus, took his saw had been real enough. William had been there to ply his brother with drink and hold him down. Amid Gavin's cries, his own had been drowned out.

After the operation William and Hal had looked after the sick man between them. When Richard called for them to move on from Jaffa, Gavin was propped up in a wagon while William, now riding Dargent, made sure the driver chose the smoothest route. He was determined that his brother should not die. He could not bear to lose everything: his father, his brother, and both their beloved horses. When Gavin looked feverish, William comforted himself by consulting the surgeon, who told him that he could find no evidence of poison in the wound and that, with careful nursing, it would heal. William did not hesitate to steal things from the stores to try and make nutritious meals. He even took to slipping some of the ointment that Brother Andrew had given to Ellie into Gavin's soup and stirring until it melted. Progress was good at first, but when Gavin fully realized what had happened to him, he seemed to suffer a mental collapse. A knight minus his sword arm was useless. A knight who had seen his squire and groom drown and his father die was an abomination. He could not get past these thoughts.

As he sat in the wagon Gavin brooded about why God had allowed terrible things to happen.
I am being punished for my sins
, he thought to himself.
But what has Will ever done, except good?
He was haunted by the loss
of Hosanna and the effect it was having on his brother. William's face looked so empty and desperate. At night, although William and Hal did their best to make him comfortable, Gavin could not rest for wondering whether if he had behaved differently, things might have turned out better. As it was, he must live with the knowledge that the rest of his life was tainted.

At the beginning of December, when they climbed into the hills and were almost within sight of the Holy City, the wheels of the wagons became completely bogged down. As the soldiers dug and swore, Richard told the knights to pitch their tents. They would make camp and have a meeting. William, as he always did, asked Gavin to come and listen, but Gavin shook his head. What good was he to the king now? William flung on his cloak and went on his own. He stood at the back as the king confided to his knights the true extent of his fears about the geographical position of Jerusalem and the difficulties that would arise, not so much from conquering it, but from keeping it, even assuming they could get there at all in this weather.

“It is impossible to continue,” said Richard. “I have told Saladin that both we and the Saracens are bleeding to death, that the country is utterly ruined, and that enough goods and lives have been sacrificed on both sides.”