IS ALL WAR UNHOLY?
When armies fight, do they always both claim that God is on their side?
Does Mother Church have to speak with a tongue of fire?
Do innocent and helpless people always get caught up in it?
My eyelids are drooping. Five times I have vomited, and my throat’s so sore. My head’s reeling.
Merlin told me once that if only I could ask the right questions…
From my room in the tower-house, I watched a boat little larger than our landing skiff skimming between us and the island that is called Ugli and looks so pretty. She had two masts, one about twenty-five feet tall and one in the stern much shorter, and she was skipping and bouncing over the waves. The very strong west wind was blowing a gale and pushing her onshore.
The helmsman swung the boat round to face me; she came racing in, and I doubled down the ninety-four steps and ran to the water to meet her.
The moment she crunched into the gravel, her two sails were like huge white birds struggling in an invisible net; her rigging whipped and cracked; at the top of the mainmast, the little windpennant whirred.
There were only seven people aboard: the helmsman and his mate, and two bearded men and three women wearing strange crimson wimples that reached below their waists, and walnut-colored skirts down to their ankles.
The older man called out to me. I couldn’t understand him.
“Greetings in God!” I said, and steadied the bow.
The man frowned.
“Do you speak English?” I asked. “Français?”
“Français. Oui, oui.”
“Moi aussi. Un peu.”
The man shook his head and spoke to his companion. “Allah go with you!” he said to me.
The same words the dying man in Coucy said, and the traders in Venice. They were Saracens.
The older man disembarked, and the younger one followed him, carrying a long box like a coffin. They left the three women to look after themselves, and they all got the bottoms of their skirts wet. They chirruped like springtime finches.
Leaving the helmsman and his mate to haul down the sails, I led the Saracens up to our tower-house, but no one was there, so I took them to Milon’s house. Milon had gone off to discuss rules of conduct with Villehardouin, but his priest, Pagan, was in the hall. So were at least a dozen knights and their squires, and Bertie was still lying in the corner on a heap of straw.
At first, the Saracens thought we were Zarans. The older man looked like thunder and his eyebrows twitched when Pagan explained who we are and how we’ve recaptured Zara, and told him we are sailing to Jerusalem.
To begin with, though, he was quite courteous and so was Pagan.
He said his name was Nasir, and he was a singing teacher.
“Like Ziryab!” I cried. “I’ve learned about him.”
Nasir stroked his black beard. He told us the young man was his disciple and was called Zangi. He told us the women were his two wives and his daughter.
“Two wives!” I exclaimed.
“The other two are at home,” Nasir replied. “Allah has spared them.”
Four wives! No Englishwoman would agree to that!
“You filthy swine!” growled one of Milon’s knights.
“What are your names?” I asked the women.
“They have names for me,” Nasir rasped. “Not for you.”
“Who do you think you are?” another knight demanded, and he stepped towards Nasir. “This is our place, not yours.”
“You hypocrites!” snapped Nasir. “What do you care about your holy places? You use your tents as churches. All you want is our wealth. Our gold and silks and spices…”
Pagan and Milon’s men looked at each other. They’ve exchanged insults with Saracens before.
“Keep your stinking thoughts to yourself!” said the first knight.
“Or I’ll cut your tongue out,” said the other.
“You’re pests!” said Nasir. “Swarms of flies without wings. You infidels! You attack people of your own faith.”
The Frenchmen started to mutter then. They grew restless.
“You’re pigs!” said Nasir. “Leprous pigs. The sons of sows!”
At this, Pagan pointed at the Saracen women. “They’ve stolen their color from night,” he jeered. “They’ve stolen their breath from old latrines.”
“You yellow-faced Christian,” Nasir snarled. “The nation of the Cross will fall.”
Pagan raised both hands. “In the name of God…,” he yelled.
Nasir stood up. He looked like one of the angry Old Testament prophets.
“In the name of Allah!” he retorted, and his voice was trembling. “We have a gift for you.”
He stepped over to Zangi, then beckoned the three women. They huddled over the coffin-box. Then there was a terrible clatter and they sprang apart, all five of them brandishing scimitars and howling.
“Allah! Hand of Allah! Allah!” they howled.
Everyone ducked and dived and scrambled. We all drew our short knives.
“Jihad!” roared the singing teacher. “The vengeance of God has come down on you!”
They killed three of us and wounded four more. They tried to cut Bertie in half, but Pagan threw himself over his body, and so they killed him instead.
But there were more of us. Milon’s knights overpowered Nasir and then Zangi, and slit their throats, and disarmed the women.
The women clutched their own throats and wailed.
I couldn’t watch anymore. Not as the men began to rip off their clothes.
I ran out.
Anywhere.
But there’s nowhere. Nowhere in this dark world to hide.
Milon’s men slung their five bodies into the salt water.
They won’t go away, though…I don’t know how to stop myself thinking.
I don’t want to talk to Lord Stephen. I want to be alone.
Wounding, killing…
When is it wrong and can it ever be right?
The boy in the mangonel. Giscard. The Zaran councillors whose heads were cut off. Rampaging Frenchmen and Venetians. That man, the one I wounded. Nasir and Zangi and the women with no names. Pagan. Milon’s men. All the knights in my seeing stone…
What am I to do when I cannot even tell who is innocent and helpless, and who is not?
Women killers!
How deeply the Saracens hate us.
All this hatred and suffering. How can one person make any difference at all?