Pillars of Light (30 page)

The Franj inside and out shouted in their many and various languages for the mercy of their god, but it seemed he was not listening. The top of the first tower, burned through, tilted suddenly and then tumbled backwards, trailing banners of flame, spilling dead and burning men left and right. The second tower took the brunt of the falling timbers, and soon it, too, was alight.

All along the walls of Akka the men who had been defending the city with increasing desperation raised their voices in triumph as below them the enemy fled in terror or were roasted alive.

“Come away,” Nathanael said to Sorgan, fearing the sight of such horrible death would upset him even more, but the simple man was gripping the wall with both hands, leaning out towards the blaze, his expression rapacious, yet rapt: with all the innocence and savagery of an avenging angel. He would not be moved.

“See!” he said, his eyes never leaving the hellish scene. “See how the djinn is killing the giants. He is destroying them!”

Nat could not bear to watch the staggering figures down below, their armour gone, their swords melted, their skin crisped black, their heads still afire with an uncanny violet flame, as if their departing souls had taken on visible form. The man from Damascus primed his monstrous cauldron again; the bellows-men worked it up to pressure and applied the levers, which sent more gouts of death shooting out. Behind him, the Greek fire caught the third tower, and all along the walls the cry went up: “God is great!”

Nat saw someone catch the man at the brazier by the shoulders and whirl him around in an impromptu dance. “You have saved Akka, my boy! You’re a hero!”

The young man’s grin was as wide as the sky. “I knew it would work.”

The caliph’s artificers stood in a disgruntled huddle, muttering in their secret language, casting dark glances at the parvenu.

Now the city’s archers sent down a barrage of arrows on the unfortunate survivors. There was no return fire: the Franj, so shocked at the disaster that had befallen their towers, had even abandoned their incessant bombardment. The mangonels were being towed out of range before they, too, were engulfed. Between the arrows of the Akka bowmen and the Damascene’s Greek fire, it was a massacre. And Nat had no work of his own to tend to: there was not a single casualty to the defenders on the wall.

Nathanael and Sorgan walked together in silence along the winding street known as Martyrs Avenue that led to his favourite tea house. From time to time the young doctor cast a glance at his companion, only to find that same expression of unholy glee on his face. Nat found it deeply unnerving.

Inside the tea house was the usual assortment of loafers and greybeards. Word of the Greek fire had not yet spread to this usually reliable bastion of gossip. Hamsa Nasri was fetched from his house to share the celebration; he brought with him old Driss, hobbling painfully from an infected toe. When he saw Nathanael and Sorgan he grinned, the huge old scar running down his face making his expression even more alarming. “Burned the bastards, have we? That’ll teach ’em, building their infernal engines. Akka’s walls will never fall to such infidel tricks!”

Younes the barber had lost his crocheted white skullcap. Now his bald patch was clearly on display. He looked older. “Who’s your friend?” he winked at Nat. “Given up on the girl with the lion eyes, have you?”

Nat gave him what he hoped was a warning glare. “This is Sorgan,” he said stiffly, but Younes was not to be so easily diverted.

“Next best thing, eh? Good size, too.” He grinned at Sorgan, and the big man, knowing no better, grinned back, spilling pastry crumbs.

Nat got to his feet. “Come on, Sorgan,” he said.

But Sorgan was hard to shift once he got settled, and Younes was pressing more of the little honeycakes on him. Nat remembered the stories of the dancing boy he kept.

“Come along, Sorgan,” he said more firmly now. “We must get you home.”

Sorgan stuffed the cakes into his mouth. His tongue laboriously gathered in the honey that had smeared his face; then he licked his fingers one by one, and then the palms of his hands. For fear he would start on the table, Nathanael hauled him upright and turned him towards the door. “I am sure your sister will be preparing your dinner, and if we don’t hurry Malek will eat your share.” That, at last, got the big man moving.

As they neared the Najib house, Nathanael was filled with trepidation. Would Zohra answer the door? They reached the door just as it was thrown open and out came Baltasar with a tall man in a white cotton robe. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing pale scars beneath the curling, dark hair of his forearms. His hair was slick from the hammam. His gaze swept over Nathanael—from the skullcap, to Sorgan’s grip on his arm, back to the skullcap—then locked onto Nat’s eyes. His expression was not exactly unfriendly, but watchful and curious.

“Malek!” Sorgan cried happily.

Behind Zohra’s eldest brother came two other men, also dressed in their Friday best. They were tall and handsome, well built and prosperous-looking. He did not like the look of them at all.

“I’ve brought Sorgan home,” Nat said quietly.

Baltasar was in a mellow mood: clearly, he had forgotten the traumatic day on which he had last seen Nathanael, or, as became increasingly clear, he did not recognize the young Jewish doctor at all. Reaching out, he engulfed both of them in an embrace. “We’re going to the mosque to give thanks for our good fortune.”

Nathanael smiled uncertainly. “It really is marvellous about the Greek fire,” he said.

Baltasar frowned. “Greek fire?”

“The destruction of the Franj siege towers.”

The old man appeared uncomprehending, then said, beaming, “My lovely daughter Zohra has this very day been married to her cousin Tariq.”

M
alek returned to the Muslim camp in a much calmer state of mind. It was good to see some family matters settled and his sister safely married. Tariq would move into the Najib house, so that meant his father and Sorgan and Aisa would be better looked after: Tariq’s work at the citadel brought him in a good wage and access to provisions. It might not be fair that his cousin profited from his safe administrative job when others in the city were suffering, but Malek’s first care was for the welfare of his own family.

The destruction of the Franj siege towers had added an air of frantic optimism to the wedding celebrations. People said the siege would soon be over, that the marriage represented a better future, that the couple would be blessed with children who would grow up in safer times, with the wicked foreigners expelled from the region and Akka restored to its proper place in the caliphate. Malek found himself carried along by the hectic mood, as long as he did not look too long at his sister’s face. Zohra seemed to drift through the whole ceremony, the feast and the dancing, as if she were absent from her body. She did not wail or fight or cry. She just seemed to … go away.

The memory of her vacant eyes returned to him on his dawn ride back to camp, tempting him to doubt. But he was determined to believe in the best possible future. His optimism, however, was not to last. The resumption of his duties for the sultan coincided with the return of Baha ad-Din from his expedition to Baghdad and a summoning of the sultan’s inner council to his war tent. Gathered there with Salah ad-Din and his qadi were the sultan’s secretary, Imad al-Din, and his nephew, Taki ad-Din.

Malek watched Salah ad-Din break the seal of the letter Baha ad-Din had brought back from the caliph, unroll the missive and scan the contents. The sultan said nothing, but his knuckles whitened as he tried to master his temper.

“Twenty thousand dinars?” he said at last, his voice deceptively quiet. “The caliph offers me a loan—a loan, mind you—to be taken from any merchants in the region and charged against the Baghdad treasury.” He angled the scroll towards his scribe. “I spend twenty thousand a day conducting this siege! A day! They gave me a million towards the siege of Damietta—gave, not loaned. By the ninety-nine names of God, what is he thinking to offer such an insult? The Redbeard’s German army approaches our northern borders and he offers me twenty thousand dinars!” He threw the scroll aside, where Imad al-Din picked it up and gazed at it earnestly, as if close scrutiny might reveal some previously concealed zeros.

The German army. At the door of the war tent, Malek’s heart dropped like a stone. Amid the glee of their recent successes, he had forgotten about Barbarossa and his advancing horde.

The sultan sat back amongst his cushions, massaged his forehead. At last he turned to Baha ad-Din. “Send orders to have Latakia and Beirut dismantled.”

“Dismantled, sire?”

“Razed to the ground. It is the only way. We cannot afford to let such strategic cities fall into enemy hands.”

The look that passed between the qadi of the army and Taki ad-Din was eloquent. “My lord,” Taki said, going down on one knee before his uncle. “Let me take the men of Hama and ride north to intercept Barbarossa’s horde. We will cut them down like summer corn before they ever set foot upon our lands.”

The sultan gave him a wintry smile. “You are brave beyond courage, nephew. But I think even the flower of Hama cannot survive the trampling of a Christian army two hundred thousand strong. No—” he held up a hand to forestall Taki’s retort. “I must think upon this longer. Akka remains the key, so I cannot spare you from the siege. The city is the anvil and we the hammer, and the enemy is the sword we must beat into horseshoes.”

The war had to be fought on two fronts. It was decided that Taki ad-Din’s son would take the troops of Aleppo to intercept the German force, rallying the faithful to his banner as he went. By the time they reached the northern borders it was hoped that their numbers would have swelled sufficiently to make a stand against the enemy horde and hold them at bay long enough for reinforcements to arrive from other parts of the caliphate.

Malek watched them ride out with their apricot banners fluttering and their spears glinting in the hot light and almost wished he were going with them. Anything was better than staying in camp, mired in dread.

Fighting resumed at Akka, as if the Christians had gained heart from seeing the departure of the Aleppans. It was a fierce, bloody affair. At night, bodies were piled high among the Franj trenches, the stench of decomposition rising even to the sultan’s camp. So horrible was the smell that Malek set incense burners outside the pavilion as well as within, but nothing could be done about the clouds of black flies that rose, angry and buzzing, from the corpses whenever they were disturbed. Soldiers returning from the front line complained that sometimes you
could hardly see an enemy coming at you for the black blizzard of insects.

The fighting lasted for a week, then ceased, a storm that blew itself out. For a month after that there was nothing to be done but rest and bury the dead.

Then one day a Christian woman came into the Muslim camp, weeping and claiming that raiders had carried off her child. No one believed her: what would anyone want with a squalling infant? As it was, the presence of women in the Franj camp was a matter of considerable discussion. Malek and his friend Ibrahim, the Nubian, now promoted from the mamluk ranks to the burning coals, had talked about women late into the night while they stood their watch. Ibrahim boasted of having three wives: “A big one, a small one and one in between—and many, many babies!” How this was possible when Ibo, as he called himself, was constantly away at war Malek did not know. He thought it best not to ask.

“But how do they manage, your family, without you there to fend for them?”

Ibo looked surprised. “They are women, they look after themselves. Women are amazing. Stronger, I think, than men!”

Malek was nonplussed. Then he grinned. “Do not tease me with your strange African humour. You’ll be telling me next that your big wife is as tall as you and can lift an ox!”

Ibrahim’s grin lit up the darkness. “She is not tall, my big wife, but broad.” He stretched his hands apart. “Her hips are as wide as the desert and her mind is as deep as the sea. You do not understand the strength of such a woman, my friend, until you have been crushed between her thighs or tried to best her in an argument. Never argue with women, Malek, for they are always right and they always win. They are as twisty as snakes, with the memory of elephants and the sting of a scorpion. Dangerous creatures, my friend, very dangerous. I swear, if there were armies of women they
would sweep the world beneath their skirts and we would all be their slaves.”

Malek shook his head, amused. “But they cannot fight like men, with arms and armour. So maybe that is just as well.”

Ibo shrugged. “Where I come from, some wield a spear as well as any man. It is not the strength of the arm that counts,” he tapped his head, “but the strength of the will. And women have immense strength of will. It comes from bearing children, I believe. They say the pain of that is worse than any wound, and yet they do it again and again.”

None of this fitted with how Malek saw the world, but he reasoned that women in Africa were probably different.