Kingdom (7 page)

‘If we do not return by evening prayers,’ Yusuf told them, ‘lay siege.’

Qaraqush nodded. ‘I will not leave a stone standing.’

Yusuf spurred after Shirkuh and Shawar. As they approached the city gate, a small man in an elegant caftan of blue silk embroidered with gold came out to meet them. As he came closer, Yusuf saw that his back was crooked and hunched. His narrow face, though, was pleasant enough, with a dark beard that reached past his chest. In his hands he held a cushion upon which sat a human head.

The man stopped just short of them and bowed. ‘Salaam, Shawar. I come on behalf of the Caliph to invite you to his palace. And, I bring a gift.’

‘What is this?’ Shirkuh demanded, gesturing to the head. It was grotesque: the face bruised and swollen, the eyes and tongue removed.

Shawar took the head and gazed at it for a moment. ‘It is the head of the traitor, Dhirgam.’ He looked to the man who had brought the grisly gift. ‘What happened to him, Al-Fadil?’

‘The people of Cairo turned on him. They tore him to pieces.’

‘Such a pity,’ Shawar murmured. ‘I would have liked to kill him myself.’ He tossed the head aside. ‘Come. The Caliph awaits.’

Shawar spurred through the gate, and Yusuf and Shirkuh followed, accompanied by two-dozen mamluks from Shirkuh’s private guard. A silent crowd lined the wide street. ‘My people!’ Shawar seemed oblivious to their lack of enthusiasm. They rode on into a broad square situated between the two halves of the palace – a dizzying collection of colonnaded porticos, domes and towers of white stone. ‘The east palace is occupied by
courtiers
,’ Shawar explained. ‘The Caliph lives on the west side.’

Shawar led them that way. They dismounted and climbed the broad stairs to the portico. ‘Your men should wait here,’ Shawar told them. Shirkuh hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Shawar led him and Yusuf inside into a high-ceilinged reception hall lined with guards. Yusuf and Shirkuh followed Shawar across the hall and through a series of luxurious rooms. The walls were hung with brightly coloured silks decorated with swirling patterns woven in gold and studded with jewels. The floors were covered in thick carpets of soft goat hair, which swallowed the sound of their footsteps. Finally, they reached the audience chamber, which was divided in the middle by a curtain of golden cloth.

‘Your swords,’ Shawar told them. ‘It is customary to lay them before the Caliph.’

Shirkuh drew his sword and laid it on the ground before him. Yusuf did the same.

‘Now kneel,’ Shawar said, ‘and bow three times.’

Yusuf and Shirkuh did as they were told. Shawar joined them, prostrating himself before the golden curtain. It rose to reveal the boy-caliph, sitting cross-legged on a gilt throne. Not one inch of the caliph’s flesh was visible. He wore a white silk caftan, the hem and collar of which were heavy with jewels. A veil hid his face, and gloves of red silk covered his hands. On his feet were jewelled slippers. A dozen mamluk warriors stood along the wall behind the throne, and richly dressed courtiers lined the walls to the left and right.

Shawar addressed him. ‘Successor of the messenger of God, God’s deputy, defender of the faithful, I have returned to serve you.’

‘Welcome back to Cairo, Shawar,’ Al-Adid said in an adolescent warble. ‘You have been missed.’

‘Not as much as I have missed serving you, Caliph.’

‘Then you may serve me again. I am in need of a new vizier.’

‘It would be my honour, Caliph.’

‘Then it is done. Rise.’

Shawar rose, and Yusuf and Shirkuh did likewise. Al-Adid gestured to one of his attendants, who stepped forward holding a red silk cushion on which lay a magnificent, gold-bladed sword with an ivory hilt encrusted with jewels. Its sheath, which lay beside it, was of gold and also covered in precious stones. ‘The sword of the vizier,’ the caliph said. ‘It is yours.’

The courtier belted the sword about Shawar’s waist. ‘Shukran, great Caliph,’ the vizier said and bowed.

Al-Adid waved away his thanks and turned to Shirkuh and Yusuf. ‘Who are these men, Shawar?’

‘Emirs from Syria. They came at the behest of Nur ad-Din to help me dispose of the traitor Dhirgam.’

‘Then they have my thanks.’

Shawar cleared his throat. ‘Nur ad-Din has been promised a third of our annual revenue as tribute.’

‘Very well,’ the caliph said in a tired voice. He seemed bored by these details. ‘Is there anything else?’

Shirkuh stepped forward. ‘My lord instructs me to thank you for welcoming us to Cairo. So long as I am in Egypt, I will serve you as I would serve him. To better protect you from any reprisals from Dhirgam’s men, I would like to station a garrison inside the city.’

The caliph shifted on his throne. ‘This is my city,’ he said sharply. ‘I will not turn it over to foreign troops.’

‘But Shawar agreed—’

Shirkuh stopped short as Shawar shot him a warning glance. ‘These are of course only suggestions, Caliph,’ the vizier said in a soothing tone. ‘Shirkuh is a reasonable man. He will understand that it is not possible to garrison his troops within the city.’ He turned to Shirkuh and spoke in a low voice, so the caliph would not hear. ‘We must not anger the caliph. If he speaks against you, I will have a riot on my hands.’

‘I can put down a riot,’ Shirkuh grumbled.

‘Yes. But swords close markets, and dead men pay no taxes. The treasury is low, and Dhirgam will have emptied it further to pay his troops. If you want the tribute that is owed to Nur ad-Din, then your army must leave the city. They need not go far. They can stay in Giza, just across the Nile.’

Shirkuh looked as if he had just taken a sip of sour wine, but finally he nodded. ‘I will move my army to Giza. But I will leave a garrison of one hundred men to take charge of the city gates.’

‘Agreed.’ Shawar flashed his most winning smile. ‘Now come, friends. You will be guests at the Caliph’s table. Let us celebrate the alliance between our two great kingdoms.’

Chapter 3

APRIL 1164: JERUSALEM

J
ohn sat with his eyes closed, submerged to his chin in the steaming waters of the bath house. A low murmur of voices surrounded him, echoing off the domed ceiling. Most spoke in French, but John also heard German, Provençal, Latin and Catalan. He ignored the sound and let his mind drift. This was his morning ritual, before he went to the church to learn to chant and lead Mass from the prayer book, and then to the palace to work for William or tutor prince Baldwin. It was a time when he could be at peace and forget that he was a man without a country, as cut off from his childhood home of England as he was from his friends in Aleppo. He belonged nowhere, and perhaps that is why he felt at home in Jerusalem. It was a city of immigrants – pilgrims from Europe and native Christians from all over Syria. A city where it was easy to leave one’s past behind and fashion a new life.

John rose from the warm waters and headed for the next room, where he was scrubbed down by an attendant before being doused in cold water. He slipped into his caftan in the changing room and stepped out of the bath house into the paved courtyard of the Hospitaller complex. All around him rose tall buildings – churches, hospitals built to house sick pilgrims and barracks for the knights who served the order. The air, which would be as hot as a furnace by midday, was comfortably warm. John glanced at the sun, whose deep red rim
was
just rising above the tall buildings that lined the eastern side of the courtyard. There was time for a short walk and a little breakfast.

His nose wrinkled as he walked out of the complex and into a dusty street. Across the way stood the pool of the patriarch, which took up most of a city block. In the winter it was full, but now it was mostly stinking mud and refuse. In the centre of the muck, a pool of water glittered under the morning sun. A system of buckets and pulleys had been built to draw the water up to a raised channel, which crossed the street to provide water for the bath house. A beggar slept against the wall in the tiny patch of shelter underneath the channel. He stirred at the sound of John’s footsteps.

‘Money for a poor pilgrim far from home,’ he begged in a high, plaintive whine. He had a bulbous, red nose and sunken cheeks covered with white stubble. ‘Money to return to my wife and children. They need me.’

It was a story John had heard again and again from beggars all over the city. Sometimes it was even true. Plenty of men exhausted their funds during the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem and were unable to return. Plenty more had no wish to go back. Some were running away from a crime or an unwanted family. Others preferred the easy customs of the East. And others still fell in love with drink, gambling, women, or all three. From the look of him, John guessed that any money this old man got would go to drink. He tossed him a copper anyway.

He walked south and turned left on to David Street. It angled steeply uphill, and John mounted a series of steps as he passed the shops built into the southern wall of the Hospitaller complex. ‘Sacred oil, my good sir?’ one of the merchants called to John in French, mistaking him for a pilgrim. He held out a lead flask decorated with images of the saints on one side, and the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem on the other. ‘It will bring you luck. No? A reliquary pendant, perhaps? It contains a splinter of the true cross! Or perhaps a pilgrim’s badge to commemorate your
visit
to the Holy City?’ John kept walking, and the merchant turned his attention to another passer-by.

Past the shops, John reached the square where David Street intersected with Zion Street and paused. To his left, moneychangers sat before their scales, framed by imposing armed men. A few pilgrims were changing their ducats, livres, siliquae, perperi and obols for the bezants and deniers of the Kingdom. Opposite the moneychangers, labourers loitered on the southern edge of the square, hoping to be hired for some menial task. Ahead, the dome of the Templum Domini rose above the city, its gold-clad surface glinting in the morning light. The sight of it always made John smile. The priests told pilgrims that it was the Lord’s Temple from the days of Christ, but Father William had confided to John that this new temple had been built by the Saracens a half-millennium ago.

John’s musings were interrupted by a rumble from his hungry stomach. He walked north into the Street of Herbs, a narrow lane covered over with vaulted stonework and lined with shops selling spices and fresh fruits. The pilgrims who had spent the night asleep on the stone benches between the shops were just rising. Native Christian servants hurried from shop to shop, purchasing food for their masters’ households. Robed priests and knights in armour stood out amongst them. John shouldered his way through the crowd to the stall of an olive-skinned native Christian who was busy placing out baskets of figs, apples and mangos.

‘As-salaamu ‘alaykum, Tiv,’ he greeted him in Arabic.

The merchant smiled, showing yellowing teeth. ‘Wa ‘alaykum as-salaam, John. What can I do for you?’

‘These mangos look good.’

‘The best in all Jerusalem. Only two fals.’

John handed over the copper coins and plucked a mango from one of the baskets. He took a bite of the golden, pulpy fruit and grunted in satisfaction as the juice ran down his chin. He gestured to the overflowing baskets. ‘Expecting a crowd, Tiv?’

‘In four days it will be the feast of liberation, celebrating the capture of Jerusalem by the Frankish dogs.’ Tiv spat to the side as he placed another basket of fruit on the table. ‘The festivities, may God piss on them, always bring a crowd.’

‘May you profit from them.’ John moved on, eating his mango as he walked. He left the covered street and strolled through an open square filled with clucking chickens and feathers floating on the morning breeze. The powerful smell of fish filled his nose as he entered the fish market, which sat in the shade of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. John was pushing his way through the crowd when he spotted a dark-haired woman at a stall just ahead of him. From behind, with her long hair hanging to her waist and her petite, voluptuous figure, she looked just like Zimat. She was dressed in a close-fitting white caftan and niqab, a veil which covered all her face but for her eyes. John caught a glimpse of her hands as she passed money to the merchant; they were the golden colour of the sands north of Damascus, just like Zimat’s. John felt his pulse quicken. Then the woman turned and their eyes met. It was not Zimat. The woman lowered her gaze and walked away.

John cursed himself for a fool as he continued on his way. Of course it had not been Zimat. No Saracens were allowed in the city. And why would she come? She did not even know he was alive. He wondered where she was now, if she had married again, but shook the thoughts from his mind. It did not matter. He would be made a priest that very morning.

A trickle of sweat ran down John’s back as he knelt on the stone floor of the sanctuary of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and listened to the patriarch pray. The church was hot due to the dense crowd that had come to hear Sunday Mass, and the priestly garments that John wore offered no relief. His alb, a loose white tunic of linen, was belted at his waist with a cord of red silk. Over it was his chasuble, a sleeveless, suffocating garment of heavily embroidered white silk. A rectangle of linen
covered
his head and fell to his shoulders on either side. Over his left shoulder hung a stole of red silk with white crosses embroidered at the ends. The priest’s maniple, a band of red silk embroidered with gold, was tied to his left forearm. It seemed strange, sacrilegious even, to wear the priestly vestments. Yet in only a few moments he would be a priest. More than that, he would be a canon of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred place in all Christendom, built on the site where Jesus had been buried and risen again.

Each canon received a monthly stipend, and in return they were to live in the dormitory, eat in common and pray the canonical hours: Matins, which took place some three hours before dawn; Lauds shortly before sunrise; Prime in the early morning hours; Terce, Sext, and None over the course of the day; Vespers at sunset; and Compline just before bed. John would live at the church, but William had told him that he would have a vicar to take his place at prayers. Most of the canons did. John would thus be free to continue his work at the palace. There were only two rules that he absolutely had to obey: he must attend the services during Advent and Lent; and he must not be absent from the church for more than three months at a time without dispensation from the patriarch.