The Templar Inheritance (11 page)

TWENTY-TWO

The hawk swung free from the Amir’s arm, her jesses trailing. She swept high into the desert air, soaring on the spirals of warm air burgeoning beneath her, her wings working tirelessly. The Amir, Hartelius and the Amir’s falconer watched her as if there was nothing more important in this world than the progress of a bird.

When the hawk reached an altitude of five hundred feet, she hovered for a moment to take stock of her surroundings. It was then that she saw the crane.

The falconer looked at his master and grinned. ‘She has seen him, Afandi.’

The Amir nodded. ‘But he has seen her too. Look. He is veering off his course.’

‘Nevertheless. She will catch him, Afandi.’

‘No. He is too big for her.’

‘Not so, Afandi. She will take him from above, then tear him with her claws. He will have no chance.’

‘What do you think, Hartelius?’

Hartelius shook his head. ‘I think we are about to receive a visit from the princess.’

All three men turned in the direction Hartelius was indicating. Five of the Amir’s Saracens were already riding hard to cut the princess off and escort her safely towards the hawking party.

‘Is your princess a hunter then, Hartelius?’

‘All women are hunters, Amir. Look at your hawk. She is a female, is she not? And larger than the male of her species?’

They laughed, and returned their attention to the hawk.

The hawk was stooping towards the crane. The crane seemed absurdly lumbering compared to the extraordinarily mobile hawk, which twisted and turned through the air, constantly varying her direction, until she was thirty feet above her quarry, and ready to strike.

Gradually, by increments, the crane had been descending all the time the hawk had been tailing him. Now he threw out his wings, just a few seconds before the hawk was due to strike him, and dropped like a stone towards the ground.

The hawk hesitated, twisting in the air and turning a full circle – even flying for a moment on her back.

The crane struck the earth, its limbs taking the full force of its descent, its wings stretching out to steady itself.

The hawk, too, landed, and stood a few feet away from the crane, studying it, her head cocked to one side. The difference in their relative sizes was now clearly apparent.

The Amir clapped his hands. He struck his falconer lightly on the arm with his riding crop. ‘The crane has outwitted your hawk. See. In the air, she is his master. On the ground, he fears no enemies such as her.’

The falconer shook his head. ‘But he dare not fly again, Afandi. He is locked onto the ground. If he attempts to take off she will kill him. He has no way of defending himself.’

The princess pulled her horse up near to the Amir’s. She was wearing neither veil nor headdress. Von Szellen, who was accompanying her, shrugged his shoulders at Hartelius, as if to say, ‘What could I do? She is a princess.’

‘So,’ said the princess. ‘A stalemate, it seems.’

The Amir bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘It would seem so, Princess. At first glance, at least. Do you enjoy hawking?’

The princess threw back her head and laughed. ‘I have been contained within the walls of a convent since the age of ten, Amir, and forced to attend only to matters that the mother superior felt were suitable for my limited female mind. Prayer and humility, in other words, alongside chastity, constancy and forbearance. My father, Frederick Barbarossa, took me hawking with him once when I was six years old, and I loved every moment of it. I have never had the opportunity again. When I saw you on the skyline during my early-morning ride, I decided I would invite myself to your hawking party. Please forgive my intrusion.’

The Amir inclined his head. ‘It is no intrusion. I am delighted always to show off my hawks. And you are my honoured guest. No doors are closed to you.’

‘You are very kind.’ The princess allowed Hartelius to help her from the saddle. ‘May I ask what occurs next?’

The Amir gave a half bow. ‘The crane has won by default. My falconer will lure the hawk back to his glove, and we will strike off in search of further prey. My hawk must taste blood this morning or I fear that she will leave us and look elsewhere for her entertainment.’

‘Is this what usually happens?’

‘No. My hawk would normally kill the crane with ease. That is the way of things. But this crane was exceptional. He out-thought the hawk. One would have expected him to use his wings. He used his brains instead. He chose the battleground. Turned the thing to his own advantage.’

‘Shall I kill the crane, Afandi?’ said the falconer, his crossbow at the ready.

The Amir glanced first at the princess, then at Hartelius. He seemed deep in thought. ‘I think not,’ he said at last. ‘No. Such a bird, clearly beloved of Allah, must be allowed to live. Must he not, Hartelius?’

‘Yes, Amir. The exception must always prove the rule.’

The Amir smiled, content that Hartelius had understood the significance of his action. ‘Just as in the case of our princess. From henceforth she must accompany us whenever she wills. I had heard that the women of the West are unlike those of the East. Now I have proof of this for myself.’ He locked gazes with Hartelius. ‘I believe I am only now, thanks to the actions of this wily crane, beginning to understand quite what forces have brought us all together in this place.’

TWENTY-THREE

Barely an hour passed before the Amir’s hawk killed a desert hare. The Amir allowed her to taste the liver and pick at the lights. When he was satisfied that she had bloodied herself and eaten her fill, he sent her back with his falconer to roost with her companions. It was then that they saw the scout riding towards them. His red banner was unfurled.

‘There is danger ahead.’

‘Is that the significance of the red banner, Amir?’

‘Yes. If the way was clear it would be blue. The colour of the sea and not of blood. This is why I sent him out.’

They watched the scout approach.

‘It is von Drachenhertz, isn’t it?’ said Hartelius.

‘I believe so,’ said the Amir. ‘I should have expected this. But I did not allow for the days the Khamsin held us up. This has given von Drachenhertz the necessary time to put his arrangements in place. The man bribes half the country to inform him of what is going on. Even those who hate
him serve him. That is the way of the world.’

Hartelius stood beside the princess while the Amir spoke to his scout.

‘Von Drachenhertz is here?’ said the princess. ‘He has come for me?’

‘Yes. I am afraid so.’

‘And will the Amir not give me up? He could negotiate much that was to his advantage if he did so.’

‘He will not give you up. No.’

‘You are sure of this?’

‘Yes.’

The princess nodded. ‘Then there will be a fight.’

Hartelius glanced across at her, but she had turned her face away from him and was watching the Amir.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There will be a fight. Von Drachenhertz is barring the Amir from returning to the Chouf. Such a thing is unacceptable even in peacetime. The country through which we are passing belongs to no one. It is the mutually accepted no-man’s-land separating Saracen from Frank. If von Drachenhertz pitches his camp on the plain leading to the pass, it is an insult to the Amir. An insult no Saracen can afford to ignore without losing face.’

‘And your Templars? Men like von Szellen over there? They will not fight alongside the Saracens, surely? They will not turn on their own people?’

‘Von Drachenhertz is nobody’s people but his own. He will kill us all simply for his own amusement. My Templars know that. There is no law but his out here.’

‘Are his people more numerous than ours?’

‘The Amir’s party consists of one hundred and fifty men. They are tired from the trail. They are armed for skirmishing, not for pitched battles. When they left the Chouf they did so on the understanding that they were a patrol and not an army. Von Drachenhertz’s men are fresh. They will be armed to the teeth. He will have offered each man a bounty for my head, and an even greater one for your capture. He set out with the sole intention of finding us and of overwhelming us when he did. He has only this one aim. So yes. He will have more men.’

The Amir beckoned Hartelius to approach. The princess, without being asked, rode alongside him. All four, accompanied by von Szellen and their five Saracen escorts, cantered to the crest of the nearby hill.

The Amir pointed at the plain below them. ‘He knows we are here. Look. They have spread themselves like honey. There is no way past them.’

‘Can we not retreat?’

‘The Assassins are behind us. Von Drachenhertz will have paid them well. The truth is that we are hemmed in both from the back and from the front. Below us is only the sea. And above us are the mountains. If we could fly into the air like my hawk we would be safe.’

‘Then hand us over and be done with it. You have no need to be involved in this. The fault is mine and mine alone.’

‘You are my guests. A host does not hand his guests over to the executioner.’

As they watched, a detachment of soldiers broke away from the Frankish lines and started towards them up the valley.

The Amir leaned in towards his scout. The two men spoke in undertones.

The Amir straightened up. He pulled back the sleeve of his
besht
and pointed towards the approaching party with his riding crop. ‘See? The man in silver armour at the front? With the plumed helm? My scout tells me that this is von Drachenhertz himself. He must be very confident indeed of his position to approach our lines with so few men.’

‘You will parley with him?’

‘Of course. I am looking forward to seeing the monster for myself.’

‘I will come too,’ said Hartelius.

‘And I,’ said the princess. ‘I want him to see what he cannot have.’

The Amir threw back his head and laughed, showing all his teeth. ‘Come then, both of you. We will ride with my escort to meet him below the skyline. I do not want him to see the paucity of our numbers when compared to his own. That would be to allow the monster too much.”

TWENTY-FOUR

At first it seemed to everyone present as if the Margrave Adalfuns von Drachenhertz did not intend to remove his helmet. The Amir regarded him quizzically – it would have represented an even more studied insult than the man’s placing of his troops across the mouth of the one serviceable pass back towards the Chouf.

But even the margrave, it appeared, drew the line at alienating his audience before he had had a chance to influence their way of thinking. He wrenched off his helmet and tossed it to one of his subordinates. Every move he made indicated domination. He had the face of an angry lion and the demeanour of an autarch. His hair hung down in sweaty strands, and there were dark patches beneath his eyes, as if his rage at being defied had been preventing him from sleeping.

‘Princess,’ he said, with an unctuous inclination of his torso. ‘What a joy it is to meet my future bride at last. May I assume that you have been kidnapped, and that the Baron
von Hartelius, together with his Saracen subordinates, has come here to negotiate the details of your release?’

‘I have not been kidnapped,’ said the princess. She took a step closer to Hartelius, as if unconsciously to emphasize her point. ‘Your spies will have told you that much.’

The margrave straightened up from his false bow. ‘Then you are guilty of treason. The king made me a formal promise. I expect that promise to be kept.’

The princess drew herself up too, her face pallid. ‘The promise was made in my brother’s name, not mine.’

The margrave sent his gauntlets flying after his helmet. ‘They are one and the same thing. You owe a duty both to the king, your brother, and to the king, your sovereign. By whatever name you choose to call them.’

‘I owe a duty only to myself.’

Von Drachenhertz shrugged. His mouth twitched as if he were about to laugh. He rubbed his hands down his cuisses to dry them. ‘Be that as it may. The end result is the same. It will take months for your brother to send me another wife. And I want one now. So I have decided to forgive your dalliances with this Bavarian upstart and marry you as arranged.’

The princess gave a physical start. ‘My dowry and my name are what you want. Not me. We both know that.’

‘Amongst other things.’

‘The Holy Spear and the Copper Scroll, you mean?’

There was an almost palpable silence following her words. Von Drachenhertz broke the silence with a grunt. He followed it up with a triumphant grin.

‘No. I was thinking, of course, of what little I might be able to salvage of your virginity. And musing, too, on what von Hartelius’s guts would look like wrapped around my lance – with his rod and testicles riding on top as a pennant.’ Von Drachenhertz extended his grin for a second, and then switched expression, so that his forehead creased in a spirit of fake enquiry. ‘But what you have just said intrigues me. How do you happen to know of the Copper Scroll? The king, your brother, led me to believe that only he and I knew of its presence amongst your accoutrements.’

Hartelius felt sick. The princess had spent more than half her life in a convent. She was unused to the cut and thrust of male power play. The shattering significance of detail. He was tempted to draw his sword and have at von Drachenhertz without further ado – but by doing this he would simply be heaping insult upon injury onto his host, whose good name would be the one to suffer. An acknowledged parley was sacrosanct. Even a slug like von Drachenhertz would think twice before violating it. ‘The Copper Scroll has been stolen from the Templars. It is not the property of the king, and never was. It is not for him, or you, to decide on its fate.’

Von Drachenhertz, like many fundamentally immoral men, was clearly relishing his brief sojourn on the moral high ground. ‘Everything belongs to the king. Even you belong to the king, Hartelius. And now you belong to me. The only way either you or the princess could know of the Copper Scroll would be from the breaking of the Royal Seal. And such a thing is punishable by death. But as you are already a
dead man, the actual details of what triggers your execution are unimportant.’

The Amir raised one hand. ‘This is all beside the point. Both the baron and the princess are my honoured guests. They therefore benefit from my protection, and that of my men.’

Von Drachenhertz started back in mock surprise. ‘What men are you talking about, Amir? Not the one hundred and fifty Khamsin-emptied wrecks that await the onslaught of my army? The ones whimpering over the crest of that hillock you have so carefully avoided me broaching? You are joking, surely? You have seen the quality of my host. I have heard reports of the quality of yours. The result is foreordained. Unless, of course, you have a vast force riding to your rescue that I know nothing about?’ Von Drachenhertz paused, as if he was genuinely expecting a reply. ‘Look. I will tell you what I will do. Give me Hartelius and the princess and I will afford you and your men free passage through to the Chouf. That is a fair bargain, is it not? I cannot now offer you a ransom, because the princess has made it clear to me that she has not been kidnapped. The payment of a ransom would therefore be both insulting and inappropriate. And I am the first person not to wish to insult such a great eminence as yourself. Such a thing would be tantamount to blasphemy, would it not?’

‘There is only one blasphemy,’ said the Amir, his eyes never leaving von Drachenhertz’s face, ‘and that is the one that you perpetrate during your forcible conversions of my people.’

‘There is only one true faith,’ replied von Drachenhertz, ‘and that is ours. Those of your people we deign to convert are blessed. I am surprised you don’t appreciate that.’

Hartelius stepped between the two men. ‘Would you agree to single combat, Margrave? To settle our differences that way?’

Von Drachenhertz roared with laughter. ‘And give up the pleasure of killing you slowly? Of monitoring the incremental damage to your nerve endings hour by hour, day by day, and week by week? I have the best torturer in the seven kingdoms, Hartelius. He needs someone new to practise on. Not the dross I am feeding him at present. And I have a perfect audience in the princess. I will tie her to a whore-stool and feed her your tallow like soup. Only then will I marry her. I like my women suitably tamed.’

If von Szellen had not wrapped his arms round Hartelius’s shoulders and borne his commander to the ground, the story would have ended there. The Amir’s Saracens drew their scimitars and formed a wall round their master and the princess. Von Drachenhertz’s men did not even bother to draw their swords. The parley had gone exactly as expected. Strength was speaking to weakness. And weakness needed to assert itself. All present understood the dynamic. It was what informed their lives.

‘You have until dawn tomorrow, Amir. I have no desire to fight you. Now is neither the time nor the place. Give up these traitors and you and your men walk free. If you do not give them up I will slaughter you. Then I will hang you and your men upside down on crosses all the way along the shoreline as a warning to your people not to meddle in affairs that do not concern them.’