Arnau watched the door close, the problem temporarily contained and hidden, and lurked in the shelter of the alcove for a moment. All good Moors, of which he was currently ostensibly one, were at prayer. To appear in the courtyard mid-prayer would be to draw extra unwanted attention, and so he waited and listened. The sound of several stall owners praying in their own alcoves wafted on the breeze, and so he listened and waited until he heard the prayers wind up and the others begin to move.
Emerging from his alcove as though from a prayer session of his own, he strolled to one of the stalls and purchased a small pastry and a glass of mint tea, taking them to the central table, where he sat and slowly consumed them, waiting for Yusuf. The tension increased as the minutes passed. If Yusuf had been true to his faith and devoted, then he would have paused for prayer too, which could be the undoing of them all given how they were now pressed for time. They had to somehow get Calderon out, and shortly the place would begin to fill once more, making that less and less likely.
He chewed his lip and fretted as the occupants of the basic caravanserai, which was not equipped with its own mosque, began to drift back in under the watchful eye of the ebony guard. He had finished the pastry and was nursing the last mouthful of tea when finally their friend put in an appearance, strolling through the gate as though nothing was amiss. Arnau reminded himself that as far as Yusuf was concerned, nothing was amiss. God’s blood, what a mess. He forced a blank expression onto his face and greeted Yusuf as he walked across to the table, throwing down the last mouthful of his drink.
‘I have secured us somewhere,’ Yusuf said. ‘No funduq is available, so it is not the sort of thing I was looking for, but my old friend…’
‘We have a problem,’ Arnau interrupted. ‘Come with me.’
With the Moor following, he crossed to the alcove and the door of their room, opening it cautiously, wary of what he might find on the other side after the last time he’d left the squire alone with Calderon. Thankfully the former knight of Calatrava still lay upon the bed, out cold, while Tristán sat nearby on the chair with his dagger in his hand, tapping the pommel against his palm.
Yusuf’s eyes widened and he made a gagging sound as Arnau clicked the door closed behind him and motioned him to keep his voice low. They were indoors, but anyone outside could still listen in if they had a mind to.
‘What happened?’ Yusuf whispered in Arabic. Tristán threw him a suspicious look, but Arnau waved him down.
‘As you can see, we found Calderon.’
‘So I see.’
‘It seems that far from being a prisoner of the Almohad in need of rescue, the very reason he could send such a letter and secure the services of Amal was because he has taken Allah and renounced Christ. He thinks like an Almohad himself now.’ He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. He is not blind and vicious like them, but still he has no intention of returning with us. Tristán took it upon himself to deal with it the only way he could see and walloped him on the head as he left. Now we’re in trouble, I fear. If Calderon awakes he will be furious, and now that the prayers have ended and the courtyard is filling up again, I cannot see a way to get him out of this place. And even if we do, none of the lodgings you could find would be safe to take him to and getting him out of the city seems impossible. I am at a loss.’
Yusuf nodded at each of these facts, his eyes still wide with shock. ‘It is a true problem.’ He peered at the figure on the bed. ‘Ah yes, Brother Calderon.’ He leaned back. ‘Let us look at the problem one step at a time. Getting him out of here is the prime concern. We can hardly carry him through the crowded courtyard and past the guard. The only time the courtyard will empty during the day is during the prayer times, but even then some will stay, and we cannot move through the courtyard then anyway, for we too should be at prayer. Thus we cannot move him during the day.’
‘At night?’
The Moor huffed. ‘Did you pay for this room?’
Arnau shook his head. ‘Calderon was already here. He must have paid for it.’
‘Then we can probably use it for the day. We need to stay here until dark, for certain. Once the sun sets, the call will go out for the maghrib prayer. The courtyard will clear, and that is our time. Once the majority have left, we slip out then. There is no guarantee that it will work, but it will be our best chance.’
‘We’ll have to work out how to get him past the guard,’ Arnau mused. ‘The crowds may have cleared and the streets filled with folk heading to prayer, but the guard here will still be watchful.’
‘Yes. That will still need to be worked out. Then comes our second gamble. I could not find a funduq for us. It seems that a large number of military and nobles are drifting east from the capital, as we had seen on the road, and they are filling all temporary accommodation in the city. In the end I spoke to my old friend, who still mercifully has most of my books. He has agreed to let us stay in his home for a day or two. He is a good man, and no hater of Christians. He risks a great deal by allowing us to stay with him, and I shall owe him a debt, but if we turn up with an unconscious prisoner, I am not sure how we will be received.’
Arnau winced. ‘Tristán is of the opinion we should just leave him and go.’
‘That would perhaps be the wise course of action, but would it be the right one?’
‘No. Something has been done to him. He said they made him confront his fears. He found your god in the horror. This to me does not sound like persuasion or acceptance, but that somehow he was forced into it, damaged somehow. I cannot leave him like that.’
‘Then we must get him out of the caravanserai and to my friend’s house, hope that he will still take us in, and then consider the next step. We cannot simply carry the unconscious man out of the city gate.’
‘No. Somehow I need to undo what has been done to him.’ He turned to Tristán and switched to Aragonese, keeping his voice suitably low. ‘We keep him here until dark and move him at the time of the sunset prayer to a house Yusuf knows. In the meantime, if he wakes…’ Arnau paused. He wasn’t really sure what they could do other than repeat all of this. He sighed. ‘If he wakes, hit him again before he can shout, but try not to break his skull.’
The squire nodded, still tapping his dagger hilt, eyes on Calderon. Yusuf took a steadying breath. ‘I will bring you food and drink,’ he said to Tristán, ‘and then Vallbona and I shall return to the courtyard and keep watch on things.’
Yusuf procured nourishment for the squire and brought it in for him, Tristán gratefully removing the helmet and tucking in ravenously. Leaving him to it, Arnau and the Moor found a table with a view of both the caravanserai gate and their own door, and sat there, drinking cups of mint tea sporadically. After a while, Arnau rose with a full bladder. With some trepidation he made his way across to the latrine which lay on the western edge of the caravanserai. His knowledge of their latrine etiquette was minimal, and so he had held his straining bladder for some time, watching as other men came and went. He noted with interest that they seemed to shuffle as they reached the threshold, changing their step so that their left foot entered first.
Following suit, he waited until the place seemed empty and then crossed and entered the latrine in the same manner. This was a simple affair, but with a constant supply of water running along a stone channel on one wall. With no one else present, he heaved a sigh of relief, urinated in the trough of slowly running water and quickly washed his hands in the channel, ignoring the strange lump of misshapen waxy stuff covered in fingerprints.
Returning to the table, he discovered that Yusuf had acquired a game board and pieces from somewhere. Chess, which the Moors called shatranj, was a familiar game. He had played Balthesar at it from time to time, and was grateful for a way to pass the time other than sitting in silence.
For several hours the two men played games, exchanging banal small talk, listening to the interesting, if unimportant, titbits they could glean from others in the courtyard, and waiting for time to pass. As he listened, several threads of news became common, from more than one source in the courtyard, and a particular one began to insist itself upon him as potentially useful. He made a mental note of it just as he lost his fourth game. Sometime in the mid to late afternoon, Arnau broke off and returned to their room with another pastry and drink for Tristán.
‘Have you had to hit him again?’
The squire shrugged. ‘No sign of waking yet.’
‘God above, but how hard did you hit him?’
‘Hard enough to prevent him hitting back,’ said Tristán.
Arnau returned to the courtyard and went back to chess, small talk and thinking about the solutions to their predicament. By the time the sun began to slide out of sight and Yusuf won the last game and packed away the board and pieces, Arnau had come up with the beginnings of rudimentary plans. As the light faded, they returned to the privacy of the room, where the bored squire confirmed that Calderon still had not woken from his stupor. Arnau began to worry that Tristán had done permanent damage to the man and that all their efforts were being bent to carrying nothing more than a breathing corpse from this place, but there was little they could do about it now.
In whispered tones, he explained his plan to the others, in the Aragonese tongue for clarity. Both men nodded. The best way for a man to become effectively invisible was for others not to want to see them, and that became the crux of Arnau’s plan. They waited, Tristán replacing his helmet and visor and preparing to move, and listened as the call to prayer began once more. Slowly, the noise from the courtyard ebbed and, at a nod from Arnau, Yusuf opened the door and stepped out into the evening. Arnau and Tristán followed slowly, the latter half-dragging, half-carrying the unconscious Calderon.
They paused in the alcove and listened as Yusuf, his voice muffled from the scarf he had wrapped around his lower face, crossed the empty courtyard and warned the ebony-skinned guard at the gate to follow suit in covering up. The four of them had come, the Moor advised the guard, from the southern port of Mālaqah, and their friend seemed to have brought illness with him. They needed to find a physician, so were leaving the caravanserai.
Arnau heard the startled worry in the reply from the guard, and could imagine him hurriedly wrapping a cloth around his mouth and nose and stepping back. Half a dozen voices in the courtyard that afternoon had muttered about an outbreak of some virulent fever in the south they believed to have been brought across from Africa by the newly-arrived forces of the caliph. Arnau had guessed that word of the outbreak would have spread and that people would be nervous about any sign of illness.
Taking a breath, Arnau pulled up his own scarf and took the other side of Calderon, grasping him beneath the shoulder and lifting. Between the two of them, they half-walked the unconscious man across the now-empty courtyard to where Yusuf had already untied their horses, and then followed him out of the caravanserai gate past the glaring figure of the guard, who held one hand filled with linen to his face, warding off the fever, his other hand gripping his flat-palm amulet, protecting him from ill luck.
Arnau held his breath nervously for some time until they were out in the street, and then finally almost exploded with relief. Turning into a narrow side alley, they struggled to lift Calderon onto a horse and secured him to it with the reins around his wrist. He lolled around in the saddle like a man half-asleep.
Safely out of sight of the caravanserai, Yusuf led them around the back alleys of the city. Here there was no sign of activity, for at this time of the evening the populace would uniformly be at prayer either in their own home or in the mosque.
‘Do you not need to pray?’ Arnau asked the Moor, realising he had not settled down in prayer himself since the previous evening, while they had still been safely distant from the city.
‘Allah is merciful. I shall pray twice as hard next time to catch up,’ smiled Yusuf, nervously.
Off to the right, along side streets, Arnau caught occasional glimpses of an immense and ornate structure larger than any cathedral he’d ever seen, and larger even than many castles. Tearing his gaze from it, he paid more attention to where they were going. This seemed to be the ancient part of the city, for ruins that had been incorporated into recent buildings appeared to be of the same ancient origin as those with which he was familiar in Tarragona, going back to the days of Rome.
After some twenty minutes of walking the horses through back streets, they approached what appeared to be a city gate. Arnau felt his nerves tighten and threw a worried look at Yusuf, who just gave him an encouraging nod. They closed on the gate which appeared to be considerably older than the one through which they had entered Cordoba. Indeed, the city’s houses seemed to have been built right up against these ancient walls, and the gate stood wide open and apparently unguarded. As they passed beneath the venerable arch and out into yet more city, Arnau looked back along the walls to either side and realised just how old they were. Clearly the city had long since outgrown these defences, and the district into which they now passed had a much more Moorish feel. Wider streets and more attention to aesthetics had been part of this region’s creation.
‘This is Al-Sarquiyya,’ Yusuf said. ‘You have left the ancient medina and entered the Qurṭuba of the caliphs. My home.’
The prayer had clearly ended now, for Arnau could hear the general hum of the city growing once more as life returned to its streets. With increased tension, knowing that the danger of an uncomfortable encounter was now growing by the moment, Arnau and Tristán followed Yusuf through street after street until they finally halted in front of one of the buildings that looked very much like all the others they had passed. A tall, golden-brown structure with several windows, each formed of three delicate horseshoe arches, the entrance appeared to be a single archway that led to a short corridor and then into a courtyard. Double doors secured the entrance, though one currently stood open.
Yusuf gave him a nervous look, shook himself, and stepped into the doorway, leading the horse.
‘Will he have stables?’ whispered Arnau in Arabic.
‘No. We will have to tether the animals in the courtyard and then seek out stabling nearby once we are safely settled. If we are safely settled,’ he added in a worried tone.
Arnau looked about in interest as they passed through the door and entered the courtyard. Some legend in Arabic script had been incorporated into the passageway wall. Sadly, though Arnau’s grasp of the tongue had come on in leaps and bounds over recent years with Balthesar, he was still completely baffled by the written language. The courtyard was delicate and beautiful, all arches and columns, coloured tiles and fretwork. The brick floor was slightly angled down from each side to the centre, channels crossing it in places to carry rainwater down to the small pool in the centre. A palm tree grew beside the pool, carefully manicured regularly to keep it under control, and a number of colourful plants grew in ancient pots. Yusuf tied the horses to a low balustrade at one side.
‘Farraj?’ Yusuf called, looking up and around the four sides of the courtyard as he turned slowly.
‘Is that you, Yusuf?’ called a voice from the gate behind them. ‘I have gathered your books.’
Arnau shuffled back nervously as their host appeared as if from nowhere behind them, presumably returning from the mosque, as was much of the city.
‘It is.’ The house’s owner walked into the courtyard with two young men at his heel, a slave closing the outer door, then hurrying along behind. Farraj came to a halt as he entered, his gimlet gaze piercing first Arnau, then Tristán, before falling upon the figure tied to the horse, eyes widening.
‘Yusuf?’
‘Forgive me, old friend. I have no wish to prevail upon you any further than I have thus far, but we find ourselves in something of a predicament.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘No, merely unconscious. The situation is somewhat complicated, but I suspect you would be better knowing as little about it as possible. It is my hope that we can resolve our problems and be out of your way before any of this becomes your problem.’
‘I fear it may be too late for that. Merely having Christians in my home puts my entire family at risk in these dangerous times. As for this unexpected addition… let us say I am more than a little uncomfortable.’
‘Father,’ hissed one of the two boys, ‘this is foolish. These men are criminals.’
Farraj turned to the lad. ‘These are still people of the Book, and some crimes are only such because the lawmakers are little more than criminals themselves. These men Yusuf vouches for. His word is good enough for me.’
‘They are Christians! The enemy,’ snarled the other boy.
Farraj jabbed a finger at his son. ‘When hatred rules both heart and mind, the world is beyond saving, Maymun. The Quran itself tells us that every people has appointed rites and ceremonies which they must follow. We can urge them to follow the true path, but we must not compel them, for it is the right of God alone to judge them.’
The young man nodded his acceptance of his father’s wisdom, but his eyes still carried distrust as he glared at Arnau and his friends. Farraj gestured to them. ‘I cannot give you rooms with my family, Yusuf, you understand? But with recent events I find my household diminished, and many rooms that had been occupied by trusted servants now lie empty. I trust this will suit you? I suspect it will be better for all concerned if you have a place more or less to yourself.’
Arnau cleared his throat and stepped forwards. ‘I can only apologise for the danger that my companions and I have brought to your door, and I appreciate your help. It is good to see that in these days of distrust the old ways still hold in places.’
Farraj’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your Arabic is good, northerner. I am surprised. Please ignore my sons’ rudeness. The young are ever at the mercy of their spirit, untampered by the wisdom of experience. Mayhap when this dreadful war passes once more, they will have had their fill of excitement.’
Arnau smiled his understanding but said nothing.
‘Come, Maymun,’ Farraj barked. ‘Come, Safwan.’
With a nod to Yusuf, the tall man strode across the courtyard, pausing as he once more caught sight of the horses. He spun and waved to the slave who was following on behind, pointing at the horses as he turned back to his guests. ‘Darras here will take your animals to stabling just down the road.’
Yusuf thanked his friend, and the three men disappeared into the house, the two boys casting them a last acidic look before they left. The slave coughed. ‘I will show you to rooms, masters, and bring your things before I take your horses to the stables.’
As Yusuf nodded, Tristán untied the unconscious knight from the back of the horse and he and Arnau dragged him after the slave. They entered the house through a door beside the passage through which they had entered and were shown to three rooms up a single flight of stairs, all of which looked out through those triple arched windows and down onto the street outside.
As the two northerners laid Calderon down on the bed, Yusuf watched the slave disappear to bring their gear, and then turned to them. ‘That went better than I had hoped. Farraj is a good man. He himself narrowly avoided similar accusations to the ones that plagued me.’
‘His sons mean trouble,’ Arnau replied. ‘The sooner we are gone from here the better.’
‘His sons will not disobey their father,’ Yusuf replied confidently.
‘I hope you are right. We shall need to be ready to leave at any moment. I want to get the layout of this place straight, need to know any ways in or out in case we need to leave in a hurry. We should find these stables where our horses are kept so that we know where to go, and I don’t want anyone fully unpacked. Keep your gear stowed as much as possible so that we can leave at a moment’s notice.’
He rolled his shoulders to loosen them up. ‘Yusuf, I need you to start thinking on how we depart Cordoba. There have to be ways out of the city that do not require us to march straight through a gate. With luck and the will of God we will be able to leave as we entered, and soon at that, but we must be prepared to effect an escape if everything goes wrong.’ He glanced across at Calderon and corrected himself. ‘If everything continues to go wrong.’
‘And the question of import?’ Yusuf replied. ‘What do you intend to do about Calderon?’
Arnau sagged. ‘I do not rightly know, though I have the bare bones of an idea. When I served in Constantinople there was a preceptor named Bochard. He was obsessed with a futile and dangerous quest to the detriment of all else. I think his mind had been damaged, wounded in some way by the events he lived through in Cyprus. I believe this is somehow similar, but while Bochard never truly recovered, I think – I hope the same is not true for Calderon. Bochard was broken by what he himself had wrought, and the humiliation and disastrous consequences of it, while Calderon has been broken by others. Men who are tortured for confessions reach a point where they will break and admit to any crime and such, I fear, is what has happened to Calderon. He has been brought to the point of madness and then given a crutch by those very men responsible. He now clings to that crutch as if it is his saviour. I am hoping that what has been done can be undone, for one imam did all this to him, and he twitches when he speaks of him. I think this new him is but a fragile shell containing the real Calderon who still fights to free himself. I believe he is close. All it could take is a push in the right direction.’
‘But how?’
‘It sounds cruel,’ Arnau murmured, ‘but I suspect the answer lies in repeating the process. In breaking him once again in order to mend him. He is locked in a shell, and we must break that shell to free the man inside. When I was a boy, we had a servant in the castle who fell from a horse. His leg broke and the idiot who set and splinted it did it wrong. His leg did not heal correctly, and he had great trouble walking. After much consultation, a wise man advocated re-breaking the leg. It was an unpleasant time, but it was done, and this time, the leg was tended to properly and healed straight. He went through more than a year of misery, but in the end, he could walk once more with a straight leg.’
Yusuf shuddered. ‘It sounds evil nonetheless.’
‘I know. I do not like it, but I cannot see an alternative.’
They fell silent once more as the slave suddenly reappeared, carrying their kit. ‘I will take your horses,’ the man said.
Yusuf nodded. ‘I will accompany you,’ he replied, then looked across to Arnau. ‘It will be good to learn of the stables’ location, as you said, and I might pick up a few supplies while I am out. I will be back before the evening prayer.’
Arnau smiled as the Moor left with the slave. Alone in the room with Tristán and Calderon, he slumped into a chair.
‘Somehow, Tristán, we have to repeat what they did to him. They made him confront his fears, he said. We must do the same. What his fears might be I know not.’
‘Perhaps Yusuf can help? Have you ever asked if he knew Calderon, because he seems to?’
Arnau blinked, suddenly remembering Yusuf’s reaction as he’d leaned over the bed. Ah yes, Brother Calderon. ‘That had not occurred to me. They both lived at Salvatierra, after all. They probably met several times. Even if Yusuf lived outside the walls, he would have spent months inside during the siege.’
‘Then perhaps he knows something of use, even if he does not realise it?’
As if on cue, Calderon gave a low moan. Arnau snapped round to look at him and then at Tristán. ‘Have you bound him?’
The squire nodded. ‘His wrists. Not his feet.’ At this he sprang from his seat, hurried over and looped a belt around Calderon’s ankles, pulling it tight and then knotting it. He stepped back. ‘Do we gag him?’
Arnau shook his head. ‘We need to talk to him, I think. I do hope he doesn’t immediately start shouting for help, though.’
Calderon made a murmuring noise, shuffled slightly, uncomfortably, and then fell silent once more. ‘He is not quite with us yet,’ Arnau noted, ‘but he is beginning to surface.’
‘I wonder what time it is,’ mused the squire.
‘Some time after Compline,’ Arnau sighed. ‘Today we have broken many rules and been bad Christians, missing much of the liturgy.’
Tristán snorted. ‘I cannot count how many services we have missed since leaving Rourell, but if Yusuf’s heretical god can be forgiving when he misses a prayer, then surely the true God can best him in forgiveness?’
Arnau smiled. ‘Let us hold what service we can while Yusuf is absent.’
The two knights made sure the door was shut, and Tristán retrieved his crucifix from the pack, propping it on the windowsill. Kneeling, the two men went through a somewhat muted and trimmed down version of the Compline service, keeping their voices low.
The service was swift and as the squire looked to Arnau to quote from the scriptures, the senior brother found himself glancing back towards Calderon and automatically slipping into the book of Deuteronomy.
‘The Lord smite thee with madness, and blindness, and wildness of thought; and grope thou in midday, as a blind man is wont to grope in darknesses; and address he not thy ways; in all time suffer thou false challenge, and be thou oppressed by violence, neither have thou any that shall deliver thee.’ There was a pause, and Arnau straightened. ‘Except we shall deliver him.’
The squire coughed nervously. ‘A poor choice of reading, Brother.’
‘Why?’
‘Deuteronomy. Remember how the passage continues? Verse forty-five? “And all these cursings shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and take thee, till thou perish; for thou heardest not the voice of thy Lord God, neither keptest his commandments and ceremonies, which he commanded to thee.” Somewhat reminiscent of our current lack of attention to duty, might you say?’
Arnau shivered and wasn’t quite sure why. ‘But the passage is not about those who serve the Lord, Tristán, remember? Verses forty-seven and forty-eight? “for thou servedest not thy Lord God in joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things that God sent thee. Thou shalt serve thine enemy, whom God shall send to thee, in hunger, and thirst, and in nakedness, and in poverty of all things; and he shall put an iron yoke on thy neck, till he all-break thee.”’
A thud drew their attention, and they turned together to see Calderon lying on the floor, having rolled off the bed, wide-eyed and white-faced, his mouth opening and closing.
‘Brother?’ Arnau said as he rose from his knees and hurried over.
As he closed on the stricken knight, he realised that the man’s mouth wasn’t simply moving, but he was reciting something under silent breath. Leaning close, he frowned. He could barely make out the whispering, but would be willing to wager that what he was almost hearing was Deuteronomy forty-eight, over and over again. A single tear welled in the corner of Calderon’s eye.
‘What is it, Calderon? Brother Martin? Are you remembering? Can you understand what they have done to you?’
The knight turned, his eyes coming up to meet the gaze of Arnau, his mouth opening slowly.
‘Yes, Brother?’
Martin Calderon let out a blood-curdling shriek.