Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (54 page)

Garin pushed his hand away. “You went through with it?”

Will set the bowl down and sucked the gravy from his fingers. “I met him today, yes.”

Garin studied him. “Well, you have certainly become a friend to danger.”

“I thought you agreed with my plan?”

“You know I do. I always have. But if Grand Master Bérard discovers what you’ve done in the name of the Order?” Garin shook his head. “Let’s just say I’d expect to see a lot more of you. Not to mention what Everard and the Anima Templi would do if they found out.”

“I’ve tried doing things their way,” responded Will hotly. “I’ve done everything Everard has asked of me: formed alliances with knights in other Orders; curried favor at the High Court; introduced myself to influential Jewish scholars; enticed Muslim informants. On the surface, I agree, the Brethren have made some important advances in the last few years. The Hospitaller Grand Master has even started talking to Grand Master Bérard during formal occasions. But I feel like I’m getting nowhere. The nobles are too wrapped up in their schemes and internal politics to see beyond their own walls. How many more strongholds will we relinquish to Baybars? The Anima Templi will never achieve its aims if there is no Holy Land left to us. Why doesn’t Everard understand that?”

“Have you tried asking him?”

“I ask all the time what he plans to do and how he imagines we will survive this war long enough to achieve any kind of peace. But he won’t speak his mind. He still keeps things from me. I know he has an important contact high up in the Mamluks, a contact my own
father
made! But he will not tell me who.” Will shook his head, frustrated. “He’s left me no choice!”

“Are you trying to justify what you have done to me, or to yourself?” murmured Garin.

Will glanced at the knight. The plan, which he had formulated almost eighteen months ago, had taken a long time to execute while he quietly made contacts and slowly siphoned money from the Anima Templi’s secret coffers. He had wrestled with his conscience more than once in that time. “I’ve made my decision,” he told Garin finally. “In my heart, I believe this is the only way. I didn’t want to come here and get involved in this war, but I am involved and the only thing I can do now is what I feel is right.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you are doing the right thing. I’ve always said the Anima Templi’s aim was hopeless. Since the day you first told me of it.”

“When it’s done things will change, I’m certain of it. The nobles will have more enthusiasm for the fight and Prince Edward might be able to rally them. Then,” Will added quietly, “we can start taking back our lands and holdings.”

For months now, he had been having a dream where he met his father’s spirit in Safed’s abandoned halls. Will would go in to bury him, but the decapitated bodies were so decomposed that James never knew which was his.

The dream haunted him.

But soon it would be over. Soon, he could bury his father and maybe then there would be a chance for peace.

“I’ve got to go,” said Will, rising. “I’ll come back tomorrow with a poultice for those sores.”

“Don’t trust anyone else to help you change things, Will. Don’t trust Edward, or the nobles. Trust only yourself.”

Will nodded. He banged on the door and a few moments later the guard let him out. Will stepped from the tower into the blinding afternoon.

It was there that Everard caught him.

Will was surprised to see the old priest, who rarely left his room, hobbling across the yard. He went to raise his hand, then stopped as he saw the expression on Everard’s face. Will almost took a step back at the violence in the priest’s eyes.

Everard didn’t break his ungainly stride, but stumbled forward to grab Will by the mantle with his withered hands. “You fool!” he seethed, his spittle striking Will’s face. “What have you done, you damned
fool
?”

Will took hold of Everard’s wrists and tried to prize him off. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t give me that! One of the Seneschal’s guards saw you in the tavern!”

“You had me followed?”

“I’ve been watching you for weeks,” spat Everard. “You’ve been very busy, haven’t you, with your secret meetings and plans. I know all about it!”

“How?” murmured Will, giving up trying to fend the priest off.

“I had it forced out of that Pisan merchant you went to see. He told me who you were meeting with. You can go back and tell them whatever deal you made is off.”

“No.”

Everard’s bloodshot eyes blazed.
“No?”

“It’s too late, unless you caught him.” When Everard didn’t answer, Will knew that they hadn’t. “He’ll have left the city by now.”

“Then you can get on a damn horse and go after him!”

“No,” repeated Will, pulling roughly from Everard’s grasp. “Even if I knew where to look I wouldn’t go. We’ve done it your way for three years, Everard. It hasn’t worked. Baybars isn’t interested in peace. We’ve sent almost a dozen men to treat with him. How many returned?”

Everard’s lips were pressed in a flat line. His scar was red, livid. “We must keep trying.”

“It’s too late for that.” Will went to turn away.

“They won’t do it,” said Everard, grabbing him by the shoulder. “They work with him, you fool! He pays them levies. Why would they bite their master’s hand?”

“Not all of them trust him. Baybars has started to move his own lieutenants into positions of power in their Order. They fear he will try to take it over.”

Everard’s breathing was fast and shallow. “Where in God’s name did you get the money for this contract?” When Will didn’t answer, Everard’s mouth dropped open. “From my coffers, was it?” he demanded incredulously. “Oh, you
serpent
!”

“You wanted my help, Everard. You wanted me to speak my mind and make my own decisions. Well, you’ve got it. Your way didn’t work. We’ll do it my way now.”

“D
oesn’t she look radiant, my lord?” murmured Kalawun. He smiled as his daughter scooped up a sleek, almond-eyed cat that had wandered in through the throne room’s open doors. The air was hot and still and attendants were kept busy trying to cool the assembly of governors, commanders and courtiers with iced sherbets. Slaves worked the large fans that were suspended from the ceiling, hauling on ropes to rotate the blades.

“Fit for a sultan,” agreed Baybars, watching his daughter-in-law weave through the crowds, conveying the cat to the banqueting table where the servants were clearing away the remains of the feast. Women cooed over the pretty child as she placed some leftover kid meat on a silver dish and fed it to her charge. Baybars’s wife, Fatima, was among them, holding a squalling infant in her arms—his second heir—Nizam having borne him no further children.

Baraka Khan was lounging at the side of the chamber with some of his friends. In the past three years, the boy had shot up and his face already revealed a trace of the man he would become. He hadn’t shown any interest whatsoever in his bride-to-be, but Baybars knew there would be plenty of time for that. The betrothal feast was just for show. The marriage that was to come would yield the real fruits of this union.

Moving through the dancers who were twirling to the musicians’ skillful plucking and tapping of zithers, drums and qanuns, Omar ascended the dais and bowed to Baybars. “The performers are here, my lord. Do you wish them to be brought in?”

“Yes. But stay, Omar,” Baybars called, as the officer went to leave. “Sit with me.”

Omar smiled. “It would be a pleasure, my lord.”

Baybars beckoned to a servant. “Have the entertainers shown in and a space cleared. And bring me some kumiz.”

As the servant hastened off, Kalawun turned to Baybars. “I’ll make sure that our bride and groom are seated together for the performance.”

When Kalawun left, Baybars motioned Omar to the cushions placed on the dais’s top step—the place reserved for the highest governors. As Omar sat, taking a handful of figs from one of the dishes that had been set on a low board, Baybars chuckled. “Be careful, my friend. Soon you won’t fit into your uniform. I fear we have all spent too much time eating and not enough fighting.”

“You deserve to indulge yourself,” Omar told him. “Take this opportunity to rest. The Franks can cause us little trouble now and we have the Mongols under control.”

“I will rest in time.”

Omar, looking up at Baybars, noticed an expression of pain cross the sultan’s face. From this angle, the lines on his brow and cheeks were more pronounced. The relentless fury with which he had attacked the Franks and forced them back toward the sea was a fire, consuming him from within just as it burned them. Baybars could never truly take pleasure from anything he did while his aims remained unfulfilled: inflaming, tormenting him. But, if that was so, then what, Omar wondered, was the point of it all?

“They’re here,” said Baybars, leaning forward to take the kumiz the servant brought him.

Two men had entered the throne room, pulling a handcart that was covered in a black velvet cloth embroidered with silver stars and moons. The dancers ceased their spinning and the crowd was ushered to the sides of the chamber, directed to cushions by the servants. Baraka and his young bride-to-be were seated on the couch, facing a section of whitewashed wall near the dais, ready for the performance. The doors to the garden were closed and embroidered drapes were drawn across windows, turning day to night. A servant leapt back as a tattered, hissing figure scuttled out from beneath one of the drapes. People fell back in fear as the soothsayer scurried, wild-eyed, up the dais to crouch, panting, at Baybars’s feet. The ancient soothsayer had the tiny cloth doll the sultan had given to him in Antioch clasped in his fist.

Omar inched away, but Baybars placed his hand upon Khadir’s sunburned, liver-spotted head. “Did he disturb your dreams?”

“Dreams disturbed,” snapped Khadir. He trembled suddenly and offered Baybars the doll.

Baybars smiled and laid the doll on his knee.

Omar frowned. He wished Baybars wouldn’t encourage the old man, who seemed to have become even more erratic since Antioch.

“My Lord Sultan.”

Baybars looked down as one of the men, who had entered with the handcart, greeted him, dropping to one knee before the dais. He had brown skin, black eyes and a shock of scarlet hair, dyed—like his beard and mustache—with henna.

“We are honored to entertain you and your guests on this joyous occasion, my lord.” The man swept his hand toward his companion, a slender youth who, like himself, was dressed in a patchwork cloak made out of silks of many shades of blue: azure, indigo, turquoise, aquamarine. These garments shimmered with every movement they made, like water rippling with invisible currents.

“You may begin,” said Baybars, motioning to the space that had been cleared before the young couple. Baraka was already looking bored and was sitting as far away from Kalawun’s daughter as possible on the narrow couch.

The man rose gracefully and returned to his companion who had taken a lantern from the handcart. The air was blue with incense that hung in shifting layers in the arrows of light shooting through the drapes. As the last attendants hurried to the sides of the chamber to melt into the shadows, the man with scarlet hair faced the silent audience. “We present to you a story of love and betrayal.” He motioned to his comrade who set the lantern on top of the handcart, where it bathed the whitewashed wall. “Performed by shadows.”

There was a flurry of applause. The two shadow-puppeteers were renowned for their displays.

“Once in Arabia,” began the scarlet-haired man, “there lived a woman of such radiant beauty that the moon herself would pale each evening when she went down to the river to bathe.”

Kalawun’s daughter laughed and clapped as the slender man played his hands across the lantern and his fingers became the shadow of a woman skipping across the wall. The courtiers mirrored their princess’s approval as the story continued and the puppeteer’s hands became women that loved, men that battled and beasts that snarled.

Baybars began to feel restless. The performers weren’t as enthralling as he had expected them to be; the shapes on the wall not as convincing to a forty-eight-year-old warrior as they might be to a nine-year-old child. Khadir was hunched at his feet, watching the two men through hooded eyes. Every now and then the soothsayer would start when the scarlet-haired man’s voice rose, then settle when it fell back to a whisper.

The scarlet-haired puppeteer took a straw and a pot from the handcart. He approached the dais. “At last,” he murmured into the hush, “the radiant beauty came to a palace, drawn by the song of the old woman whose voice lingered on the wind like the scent of flowers.” He dipped the straw into the pot, set it to his lips and blew a stream of bubbles. Crouching, he placed the pot and straw on the marble steps as one of the bubbles floated up to land on Omar’s hand. Smiling, Omar held it out to Baybars. It burst. A high-pitched shriek blasted the silence. Baybars sat up sharply. The sound was coming from Khadir, who had shrunk back against Baybars’s legs, his milky eyes fixed on the puppeteer who was now standing. His shimmering cloak slipped from his shoulders like liquid and in his hand was a gold-handled dagger, its hilt inlaid with a gleaming red ruby.
“Hashishim!”
Khadir was screaming.
“Hashishim!”

The scarlet-haired Assassin lunged up the marble steps and threw himself at Baybars. The sultan didn’t stand a chance. Even as he was rising, the Assassin was upon him, bringing up the weapon to strike. Omar flung himself forward. The Assassin let out a fierce cry as the blade punched into Omar’s chest, sending the officer crashing into Baybars’s lap. Screams sounded around the chamber. Seeing that his comrade had failed, the slender puppeteer had drawn a dagger and was running for the throne, but Kalawun, who had rushed to protect Baraka, cut him down.

“Capture them!” roared Baybars, clutching Omar, who was gasping for breath. “I want to know who sent them!”

The remaining Assassin, weaponless, had fallen back from the throne, but he stood calm and still as several Bahri warriors came toward him. There was a shriek from behind the throne. The soothsayer leapt up and sprang at the Assassin, his own blade drawn.

“No!” shouted Baybars, grappling with Omar as he began to slip to the floor, the dagger sticking out of his chest.

Khadir didn’t heed his cry. The exiled Assassin fell on the man, who went down under his frenzied attack shouting a prayer. As the Bahri warriors tried to pull the soothsayer away, Baybars let Omar sink gently onto the cushions. “Hold on,” he said, stroking Omar’s pale cheek.
“Physicians!”
he roared at the crowd, sending servants scurrying.

Omar licked his dry lips and looked up at Baybars, his brown eyes narrowed with pain. He smiled faintly. “You look tired, sadeek.” He raised his hand to Baybars’s face. It fell back before he could touch it.

Baybars gave a harsh cry as Omar slumped against him and went still. He curled over the body, clasping the officer’s face. “Not for me, Omar,” he whispered. “Not this for me.” He sat up after a moment and shook Omar by the shoulders. “Get up! I command you!”

But the power of a sultan was really just an illusion when all was said and done.

The physicians arrived, but came no closer, seeing that they were too late. There was only one thing left to do. Baybars bent down and put his mouth to Omar’s ear. Into it, he breathed words.

“Ashadu an la ilaha illa-llah. Wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul-Ullah.”

There is no God but God. Muhammad is His Prophet.