His world was a small white chamber, dazzling him with light after days in the darkness of a blindfold. Large cushions of rich, silk brocade offered ruby-and-ochre relief from the whiteness, and rest for his body. An empty pail for his needs in one corner, clean rose-scented water and a towel in another, were the only other furnishings.
Stripes of sun and shade slanted through the arched window, filtered by the vertical iron bars rooted in the stone sill. The room was well protected from invaders. Wrought in the iron were flourishes of spear and ball but the man was in no mood to appreciate the exquisite craftsmanship of his prisonand cared not whether someone could attack him from outside.
His enemies would come through the door, not through the window. Wearing black robes and swathes of black around their heads and faces, speaking soft Arabic, they would bring some kind of spicy pottage. They would untie his hands so that he could use them to stuff the mash into his mouth and they would give him a cup of water. He’d be allowed to wash his hands and face. Then they would bind him again and bow before taking leave of their ‘honoured guest’. Strange hospitality.
Escape attempts had failed so far, although it was a compliment to his perseverance and ingenuity that three anonymous attendants always stood outside the door with their curved swords. Rubbing bonds against the rough wall merely fretted his skin to bleeding, as did the shattered fragments of his water-cup after he’d kicked it against the wall. After that, they’d not left the cup with him.
Biting into the cushions and scattering their contents - feathers - advanced him no further than when he’d kicked over his chamber pot. Unless disgust in his jailers’ eyes counted as an advance. Fasting for a day while they were absent and lower mortals cleaned his mess, struck him as no advance at all but he added their obsession with cleanliness to his observations on the fine scimitar blades. The filigree patterns on the steel were no ordinary pattern welding and they teased his memory. Who knew what would be useful, or when.
His hands were tied and his balance was badly affected, but he was starting to adjust. Lying on his back and repeatedly scoring the wall under the window-sill with a big toe, he could mark the passing of nights, a dirty smudge for each, without it being noticed by the guards. The toe-marks tallied twelve already but he couldn’t guess at time lost before he started counting. Time when he also lost his clothes, his precious horse and the book entrusted to him by a wise Jew; the book he was supposed to guard with his life and deliver to Abdon Yerushalmi in the dye-works in Jerusalem; the book on which his own future depended. His ideas about that future were changing rapidly in the white chamber but it was still possible he might have one. If they meant to kill him, they would have done so. Wouldn’t they?
He crouched and straightened, exercising his calves and thighs, rotating his ankles, strengthening his riding muscles. His hands bound behind his back, he could do little for his arms but stretch them sideways or lie prone and arch hands towards feet but whatever use he could make of a cushion and a wall in keeping active, so he did.
For his restless mind, his usual release was unhampered and he shut his eyes, breathed deeply and sang. He roved through springtime and kisses, goat-girls and fatal sword-thrusts. When memory threw him lines last sung as a duet with the sweetest partner he’d ever known, he accepted the pain and let it flow into the song of morning-after, the aubade and a lovers’ farewell. Discipline for the heart as well as the mind.
Another lyric, not his own, floated into his mind; a song born in Occitania and carried into the crusade by its maker.
Lanqand li jorn son lonc en may,
M’es bels douz chans d’auzelhs de lonh,
E qand me sui partitz de lay
Remembra.m d’un amor de lonh
‘When days are long in May
I hear
the sweet-tongued birds so far away
And near
Things leave me dreaming
Only of my love so far away’
The far-away lady-love of the poet, Rudel, had been here, in the Holy Land, although he had never seen her. His fancy had been fuelled by stories of a matchless beauty, the Comtesse de Tripoli. The captive knight mouthed the plaintive Occitan.
Iratz e gauzens me.n partray
S’ieu ja la vey l’amor de lonh,
‘I would leave in joy but also pain
Should I but see my love so far away
Just once, again,’
He deliberately altered the words, thinking of his own Estela, no unseen, unknown lady.
‘I know not how nor when,
The lands between so far away,
The roads uncertain to her door -
No more!
I cannot speak! Insha’Allah!’
He sang the Arabic, ironically, instead of ‘Diau platz.’ It seemed to him that the God of the Muslims held more power over him at this moment than the God of the Christians.
He let the sounds of the street below accompany his first attempts at shaping a new lyric, clashing tin pans for a tambour and a muezzin’s call instead of the plaintive flute, to the rhythm of a rolling cart. Everything was a song if you knew how to listen.
Whatever the anonymous guards thought of such music, nothing showed in their demeanor as they entered the room, seemingly in the appointed way, at the appointed time. When they’d taken off blindfold and gag, after a head-splitting journey, the first thing he said was, ‘If you harm my horse, may God, Allah and Yahweh spit on your children’s future, and on their children’s future, to the thousandth generation.’
‘He is fed, water and stabled, honoured guest,’ was the reply, with a bow.
Then the knight tried questions. ‘Where am I?’ he asked them in Arabic, accented with Occitan. Like most Franks of his standing, he could read the language and speak it fluently, along with his Occitan mother tongue and Latin.
‘In the care of Allah,’ was the response, ‘may His Name be praised.’ The Guards’ own Arabic was odd, the words difficult to understand but the overall meaning was clear enough. Always accompanied by a deferential bow and no expression in eyes that dipped quickly to avoid his, and were all he could see in the swathes of black.
‘Who are you?’ he asked them.
‘The servants of Allah, may His will be done.’
All his questions were answered in this way, politely, a fog of nothings from which he tried to give shape to his enemy. For he was surely in the hands of the enemy, however soft-voiced. Three years had passed since the humiliating end to the second crusade and nothing was more easily explained than Moors capturing and holding a Christian knight foolish enough to venture alone across their territory. It would certainly explain the respect with which he was treated and which usually preceded lengthy negotiations over a suitable ransom, after which he would be free to continue on his way. As heir to extensive lands in Aquitaine, and until recently Commander of the Guard and troubadour to Aquitaine’s infamous Duchesse Aliénor, Lord Dragonetz los Pros was worth several coffers to those who could afford to pay. Such a sum might even attract someone rich enough to replace the chewed and tattered cushion immediately with another, larger, and even more sumptuously woven.
However, Dragonetz had not been on Moorish territory. Three days after disembarking in St Jean d’Acre, he’d been ambushed in an alleyway and knocked unconscious, and now here he was, wearing a striped linen robe instead of his armour. Perhaps he should have been more vigilant but, in a city swarming with Templars and Hospitalers, his main concern after a month at sea was to avoid questions and to stock up for the journey to Jerusalem. There was no reason to fear Moorish attack in the heart of Oltra mar Christendom and although bad blood remained from the second crusade, the war had ended two years ago. As a defeated veteran, Dragonetz was an unlikely military target for such a premeditated attack, however profitable he might be as an opportunist catch on the road.
He had to face the possibility that someone not only knew who he was but what he carried with him. From the moment when he accepted the book from the Jew in Narbonne, he also accepted the danger that came with carrying such a priceless treasure Oltra mar, overseas, to the Holy City itself. Jerusalem was under Christian rule but across disputed lands, and the journey there was perilous.
On the long sea voyage, he had time to wonder why the book was so important, to unwrap the oilskin and study the parchment pages, which were covered in the even script of the Hebraic letters. Accustomed to reading Arabic, with its curves and loops, Dragonetz could make nothing of this square alphabet, words hanging like washing from a line running across the column. Between the three columns were squiggles, obviously the annotations that Raavad told him were the most precious feature of the Codex. What else had Raavad told him?
At the time, Dragonetz had been too shocked by the death of Arnaut, his aide and friend, and the fire that ended his paper mill, to take in all he was told by the leader of Narbonne’s Jewish community. Dragonetz owed money he could not repay and was bound against his will to this strange mission of the book, bound to put thousands of miles between himself and the woman he loved, as well as between himself and his enemies. Or so he’d thought. Maybe the book had brought him new enemies, or maybe old ones were harder to shake off than he’d expected.
The book was a Jewish bible, two hundred years old and precious in itself but the annotations made it a sacred and irreplaceable treasure. Raavad called it the Keter Aram Sola, perhaps the oldest Torah in existence.
‘These,’ he’d pointed with reverence to the squiggles in the margins, ‘are the work of Aaron Ben Asher and they represent years of work and study by a brilliant mind. They tell us not only how to read the Torah but how to sing it. This Codex is the sacred guide to the Torah and must be preserved. It has been stolen, ransomed and given into my care. It has fed the learning of my people in Provence and I have great hope that something special has been born here, thanks to this book. But it is no longer safe in Narbonne, or even in Occitania. It is perhaps the only copy after the desecrations of the last decade in the Holy Land and it must go back there, all four hundred and ninety-one pages still in one piece, to somewhere that is safe. ‘Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled.’
Then Raavad had given the book and the mission to Dragonetz, along with the name of Abdon Yerushalmi and a way to contact him in Jerusalem. From the moment the book was out of his hands, and in Abdon Yerushalmi’s, Dragonetz would be free. His debt of honour paid, he could go home to Estela and to - what? His dreams of making paper were in ashes and the Church would never allow him to start again.
If not in making paper, then in what lay his destiny? He could reclaim Estela from her position in Dia with the Comtessa, and return to his father’s lands, where he would await his inheritance and play at estate management. His face screwed up wryly. He could reclaim Estela and they would tour Occitania, singing and jongling at the great courts, Aurenja, Barcelona, or head north to Champagne and its strange whining language. They could even cross the seas to learn the songs of the barbarians living in the Pais de Gallas. He sighed. If only such a future were possible! But a warrior of his experience could not lay down his sword and stay in the world. He would be challenged wherever he went and if he declared no allegiance, blood would spill to make him choose sides.
He could reclaim Estela and take her to war with him, while he fought once again for Aquitaine and Christianity, fighting with his kind against the Moors and the Jews, fighting against the very civilisation that supported his dream, fighting against all knowledge, against science, mathematics, medicine, astronomy. If another crusade erupted, he might be forced to do just that, but there must be a better choice for him. For when he was free.
Free! He laughed aloud. He couldn’t even move his hands! He just hoped that a few of the book’s curses would land surely and quickly on whoever was holding him. As he tallied another mark under the window-ledge, he tried not to think of knights held to ransom for years, their beards grown to their knees. At least he would remain beardless if he continued to accept the efficient ministrations of his guards, whose only turn of the knife against him had been to smooth his cheeks and chin, without so much as a nick. If ever he lost hope, he only had to jerk his head violently enough and a Moorish blade would end all. A blade patterned with silver swirls that ran impossibly deep into the metal.
Swirling steel and stiffened silk, he mused. And then it came to him, the one word to describe both silk and steel - damascene - and suddenly he knew where he was. When the door opened, his guess was confirmed. Accompanied by the usual guards was someone he recognised and had hoped never to see again. He was in the oldest city in the world, Damascus, a city Dragonetz had last seen from outside the walls, where he led besieging Crusader troops.
‘My Lord Dragonetz los Pros.’ If there was a hint of irony in the nickname ‘los Pros’, ‘the Brave’, it was too subtle to be sure of the mockery. A low bow in greeting and then the newcomer turned to the guards. ‘Leave us.’ The men hesitated, hands on their sword hilts. ‘I am in no danger from your guest! Go!’ And, as an afterthought, ‘Bring us tea.’
Although he too wore black robes and a scarf hood, the man who spoke was bare-faced, sun-trenched wrinkles deep in his ageing face. Dark skin and hooked nose suggested his race but not his religion. Damascus was not only the oldest city in the world but the oldest seat of the Christian Church, founded by St Paul himself. In this land where allegiances shifted like the sands it was no surprise to find a Syriac Christian giving orders to Muslim guards.
‘Yohana Bar Philipos.’ Dragonetz returned the greeting with a grimace as the instinctive movement of his hands met only rope. ‘You have me at a disadvantage.’
His eyes steady on Dragonetz, Bar Philipos unsheathed his scimitar and said, ‘Turn your back’. A shaft of sunlight caught patterns on the blade. There was no hesitation in Dragonetz as he turned his back, not because he trusted Bar Philipos but because this was the one man who had the right to kill him. If Dragonetz condemned the Archbishop of Narbonne and Toulouse for their crimes, how much more did he blame himself for the torture and death of this man’s daughter, in the crusade that shamed all those involved.
Three years ago, Bar Philipos stumbled into the Crusaders’ camp, demanding to see Aliénor’s Commander in person so he could tell Dragonetz to his face how a beautiful girl had died, never betraying her lover’s name, nor how to find him. It was not the details of torture that unmanned Dragonetz but the knowledge he hid deep in nightmares for the years that followed; he couldn’t even put a face to the girl let alone a name. She was merely a pleasing body come to him in the dark, along with her giggling friends, who’d sneaked a ladder down over the city walls to pleasure the young soldiers outside, bored with their siege. How could he know that their wild trysts could be used as a way to trap him, a way that failed because of the courage of one young girl who refused to speak. Who, according to her father, loved Dragonetz and had died for him.
So his jaw hardened and he turned his back. A breath of air and one whistling swish upwards was all it took, so sharp was the blade. There was a rush of pain as circulation returned to his wrists and Dragonetz rubbed them hard. ‘Thank you.’
‘If you give your word not to attack your long-suffering guards, and not to try to escape, I can ask that you be left unbound.’ Bar Philipos dragged two cushions from the pile and placed them as seats, gesturing to the other man to take one. The sliced rope on the floor was unravelling from its thick plaits into strands. Dragonetz picked up a section, puzzled at its fabrication.
‘Silk,’ Bar Philipos confirmed, his hand never straying too far from the steel that had cut the knot. Dragonetz’ own sword was solid, well-tempered and proven in battle often enough, but it was no match for Damascus steel. Occitan smiths had forged their versions, relying on descriptions from returned Crusaders.
Dragonetz had seen swords that were pattern welded, clumsy mixes of iron and steel, twisted in the making. He had seen pretty etchings on blades, filigree swirls of copper or silver on the surface of the steel. But no-one outside Damascus had come close to making steel like this, patterned through to the very core, like watermarked silk turned to weapon. It was hard without being brittle, durable without softness and could be sharpened to an edge that cut through flesh as if it were goat cheese. And oh, but it was beautiful. Not since he held a sheet of paper for the first time had Dragonetz felt such a longing, such a need to know how something was made but he knew better than to ask directly.
‘The craft in your sword sings of Damascus,’ he told Bar Philipos, the Arabic shaping his compliments in the manner a language has of forming thoughts in that culture.
‘It is our heritage. Damascus has passed on its skills for centuries and will continue to do so, God willing.’ Bar Philipos had switched into a language that was not quite Arabic but its sister, the same spoken by the guards.
‘Your sons are blessed.’ Dragonetz winced even as he spoke the tactless formula.
‘My sons are blessed,’ Bar Philipos agreed, then he answered the wince, ‘and I have other daughters. Although you will forgive me if I do not introduce them to you. The world has moved on in three years, Lord Dragonetz, as have I. A child who shames her family no longer has a family. A child raised in virtue, who behaves as a whore, deserves to die as a whore.’ His voice rose and broke, resuming in flat tones. ‘This is an example to others in the family and in the community. It is not something worth speaking of. She did not exist.’
Dragonetz blinked. If he had a sister who’d slipped over Ruffec’s walls at night to play the oldest game with some man, and had died for it, would his own father have spoken like this? A foolish thought. No sister of his would have been so careless of her honour. ‘You are speaking Syriac?’ Dragonetz hazarded. Bar Philipos nodded. ‘Please, continue. I need to learn.’ Until he spoke the words he had no idea that he needed to learn and he was still not sure what he needed to learn. Know your friend, perhaps, and, of course, know your enemy. He was unsure which of the two sat on the cushion opposite him but he already knew that this man would not speak of love with anything other than contempt.
‘I was asked to confirm your identity,’ Bar Philipos continued. Dragonetz frowned in concentration and the Syrian spoke more slowly. ‘Please, ask me if there are words unknown to you in my speech. It is said by the Muslims that their prophet Muhammad asked to learn Syriac and it took seventeen days. I think you will be quicker. As to my purpose here, I have permission to answer some of your questions but not others.’ He broke off to admit a guard, who carried a silver tray, on which were a bowl and two brown-glazed cups, themselves decorated in silver trace. Was everything in this city crafted in metal magic?
Bar Philipos placed the tray on the floor between them, politely indicating the cup of hot black liquid nearer to Dragonetz. A blade in the back was one thing, poison quite another. Dragonetz leaned forward and turned the tray, copying the Syrian’s gesture and offering the same cup. Bar Philipos smiled and shook his head, reaching out to the cup. ‘No, my friend, there is no difference between the cups.’
‘Good,’ said Dragonetz, beating Bar Philipos to the cup he’d chosen. ‘Then I’ll change my mind again and take the first one.’ The Syrian showed neither disappointment nor triumph as he reached across for his own cup and raised it in a toast, saying something that sounded like ‘fisehatak’, ‘to your health’.
‘Santat,’ replied Dragonetz in Occitan and took a sip, scenting an overlay of flowers and feeling a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. ‘What is it?’
‘Herbs and honey.’ Bar Philipos shrugged. ‘Some say it calms the spirits and eases repose. I have no interest in herbal lore.’ Dragonetz thought wistfully of al-Hisba, his Moorish friend, who had been as talented in medicine as in engineering. He would have sniffed out the composition of the drink, known every property of each herb in it. Al-Hisba and Estela would then have argued the merits of each situation in which the drink could be used, from childbirth to amputation. Dragonetz disciplined his rambling thoughts. Such friends were a time and an ocean away. He had other questions to pose this strange intermediary.
‘You said you ‘have permission’. Who gives permission? By whose name am I held here?’
‘That I can’t say but he is of noble birth.’
‘Why me?’
‘Your worth as a warrior is known, my Lord Dragonetz, and the situation here is precarious. Should you accept one of the offers which will surely come to you, like the last grain of salt on the scale you will tip the balance towards whomsoever you choose. It is considered safer that you enjoy your stay here while events unfold.’
‘What and who are in the balance of which you speak?’
‘Now that is something we can speak of at length when I come again but, in short, since the Crusaders failed Damascus -’ Dragonetz winced but could not contradict the statement - ‘we have held our city against our enemies through the strength of our walls, of our skills and of our trade. No-one wants to see Damascus razed and everyone wants to possess it. To the north, the Saracen force grows ever stronger under the Aleppo ruler, Nur ad-Din. To the south, the King and Queen of Jerusalem are increasingly at odds, dividing the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem between them.’ Bar Philipos flushed, stumbled over his words. ‘But we will speak more of this next time.’ He rose abruptly to leave. ‘Before I leave you unbound, do I have your word?’
‘I will not attack the guards. I swear.’
‘That is but half an oath, Dragonetz, but you cannot escape, so don’t try. It will go ill for you and worse for anyone you try to subvert to your purpose. There are no serving-wenches here to charm with a song. Nor any other wenches.’
The light retort had to be stifled, each word allowed to cut, and accepted as his due. As if reading his mind, the Syrian said, ‘Be assured, my Lord Dragonetz, you will be treated exactly as you merit.’ Bar Philipos bowed and left Dragonetz wondering whether it was only his permanently guilty conscience that made the words sound like a threat. He felt a sudden nausea and put it down to the emotions of the encounter. He would feel better if he lay down.
Closing the door behind him, Bar Philipos leaned against the wall, feeling giddy. One of the guards moved quickly to support him and warned, ‘Not here - come.’ When they were far enough away from the others, in a chamber protected by walls thick enough to hold all secrets, the guard dropped the Syrian onto some cushions and slipped off his black headgear.
‘This stifles me. It’s bad enough now but I don’t know how your people wear it in the summer.’ He shook free a mop of curly brown hair and revealed skin that was tanned and weathered brown but with paler origins. ‘How long do we have?’
‘The agitation has started but I have used the poppy before and will be lucid until sleep takes me.’
‘Did he drink it all?’
‘Yes. It was as we planned. It might not have worked if only one cup had been doctored.’
‘You can control your own intake in the future?’
‘Of course. Next time he will be more trusting and I will not need to partake of the poppy.’
‘How long before he needs it?’
‘That depends on his body and his mind, how strongly they bind to the poppy. With a small dose each day, I think we will quickly make him ours without him noticing. His quick mind will betray him because he is too interested in what I can tell him to realise what his body could tell him. The longer he stays with us, the tighter we bind him, and the more sluggish that quick mind will grow. When we let him escape, he is ours wherever he goes. We neuter him.’
‘We are being paid well to keep him out of action but safe.’
‘And we are being paid even better to kill him. This way, we satisfy both our clients. We let one know he is well and the other know that he will die whenever we choose, without a trace of our involvement. He will need to know where to find what he craves and he will do the rest himself. We will do nothing and he will die.’
‘And if it becomes more expedient that he lives?’
‘It is possible to arrange. But far more difficult.’
‘What happens now?’
‘Now, I sleep. And dream. Leave me.’