The blask rood

THIRTY-EIGHT

I expected them to come for me in the morning, and they did. I did not expect them to send Sahak, yet it was his face I saw when, at the sound of the bolt being drawn and the iron bar raised, I stood and the door opened. 'Fall on your knees and praise God, my friend,' he proclaimed, and I could see it gave him great pleasure to do so. He had never called me his friend before, and I wondered what lay behind his cheerful greeting. 'It is a very miracle. You have been reprieved.'

Before I could ask how this had come about, he said, 'Hurry. You are to come at once. They want to see you.'

'Why?' I asked, already moving through the open door. Two guards were with him, but neither appeared interested in the proceedings.

'Much has happened in the last two days. There is to be a great celebration.'

We started down the corridor, and I was half-way up the steps to the guardroom when I remembered-'My letter!'

'Leave it,' Sahak told me. 'There is no time. They are waiting.'

'Let them wait.'

'Yu'allah!' Sahak sighed.

I ran back to the cell and snatched up the folded parchment, stuffing it in my siarc as I rejoined the scribe waiting at the foot of the steps. 'Now tell me, Sahak, who is waiting for me? Is it my friends? Has Padraig come to pay the ransom?'

'Alas, no,' Sahak admitted; he had not thought of that. 'It is that the Caliph of Cairo has sent his personal emissary to Damascus,' he explained meaningfully. 'The man has arrived; he is here in the palace at this very moment.'

'This emissary-he is the one who wants to see me?'

'In a manner of speaking. You are going to Cairo, my friend. Is that not wonderful news? Everything has been arranged. Praise God.'

Any jubilation I might have felt at a stay of execution was swallowed by a new sense of hopelessness. 'If I go to Cairo,' I suggested, 'my friends will never find me.'

'If they look for you in Damascus, they will find you in a traitor's grave,' he countered. 'Is that what you want?'

In truth, rescue was not uppermost in my mind; I was more concerned about becoming separated from the Holy Rood. Even so, there was not much I could do about that; my execution would have effectively separated me from the prize as surely as a sojourn in Cairo, and far more conclusively. Rather than berating Sahak, I decided to be grateful.

We followed the guards up the stone steps and through the empty guardroom, out the open door and across the inner palace yard. Perhaps it was Sahak's excitement making me imagine things, but I did sense a ferment in the air-as that which marks a change in season. Yet, the sun rising above the bulging white domes of the palace was the same, the air hot and dry as ever.

'I thought of this myself,' the scribe declared proudly. 'It troubled me that you should die for helping my people, and I prayed that God would send a way to save you. And then the emissary arrived.' He smiled as if the rest was perfectly obvious.

I thanked him for his skilful intervention on my behalf, and said, 'But I still do not understand why the Caliph of Cairo's emissary should be interested in helping me.'

'Strictly speaking, he does not know he is helping you. He thinks he is merely receiving a gift for his master. But God works in mysterious ways, no?'

'Yes, and so do you, Sahak.'

By the time we reached the Pavillion of Roses where Atabeg Buri was entertaining his two important guests at an early-morning meal following their prayers, I had extracted from Sahak the gist of what had happened, and knew why I had been summoned. The rest took longer to obtain, yet, by dint of perseverance, I gradually unravelled the tangled tale of the stormy relations between the two most powerful caliphates in all the East.

I should pause here and relate the details of my audience with the atabeg and his illustrious visitors; it was, however, of little account at all. They merely wanted to see that I was still alive and hale enough to make the journey to Cairo – along with the rest of the booty to be delivered as gifts to the caliph. You see, Gait, Arabs of all stripes are forever giving gifts to one another. They do it all the time, for any number of reasons: the wealthy do it to belittle their rivals, strengthen ties between noble houses, or win the fealty of those beneath them; the poor do it to curry favour with those above, to secure preferment in business, to demonstrate honour and obedience.

As part of the spoils of war which Ghazi had given to win patronage from Buri, I was brought forwards to bow and scrape before the enthroned Muslim lords, delivered into the hands of a servant of the envoy, and then led away again. I never saw Sahak, al-Mutarshid, Buri, Ghazi, or any of my fellow prisoners again, nor did I ever learn the name of my new master, the envoy. I became once more a commodity of exchange, a vessel of value to be bartered for favour – in this case, the favour of the Caliph of Cairo.

As I say, over the next days, as my depth of understanding grew, so too did the realization of the awful significance of the events Bohemond had set in motion when he decided to attack the Armenians. I watched my new masters closely and observed them in their dealings, and so gained invaluable insight into the complicated affairs of the Arab race-insight which would serve me well in the days to come. I kept my eyes and ears open, and pieced together any scraps of information that came my way, meditating long over them. This is what I learned:

Ghazi's defeat of Bohemond's army greatly relieved and encouraged the Muhammedans; in a single battle the amir had reduced the Christian might in the region and restored Muslim hopes that the hated Franj might yet be pushed out. Antioch was now vulnerable to siege and capture. The Templars could not protect the city by themselves alone; without a swift and abundant supply of fresh troops, the end was a foregone conclusion. For the first time in many, many years the Turks could entertain notions of recapturing that great city. Once Antioch was under Seljuq rule, Jerusalem could not fail to follow.

Shrewd amir that he was, Ghazi was not slow to recognize the rich potential of his victory. That day when he halted the executions on the battlefield, he was already calculating the cost of his next venture: the siege of Antioch.

Aware that he must strike quickly and decisively, Ghazi rushed to Damascus where he knew the Caliph of Baghdad had lately arrived. On the way, he gathered the support for his scheme from those who would help supply the army he hoped to raise. A siege is a lengthy and expensive business, and Ghazi required the aid of more powerful men to mount and supply a force large enough to capture that great city. He also needed the consent of his betters-not only their approval of his military plan, but their sanction of his larger aims as well. Again, the wily amir showed his acuity, for knowing he did not possess the necessary authority, he sought a bargain that would allow him to rule the city once it had been captured.

To this end, he lavished gifts upon his liege lords and vassals alike, demonstrating that he had the discernment and largesse of spirit to rule wisely and well. As I was learning, gift giving among the Arabs is a meticulous arrangement of balances as perilous as it is precise, for each and every gift carries with it an obligation which binds the recipient to the giver in many and various ways. Ghazi gave gifts to his overlords so they would grant him the authority to proceed with his plans of conquest. Caliph al-Mutarshid, commanding the highest power, was given the greatest gifts.

The fortuitous appearance of the Egyptian envoy added another element to the intricate symmetry of powers and obligations which Eastern potentates glory in manipulating. As it happened, the celebration Sahak mentioned was to mark the proposal of a peace treaty between Baghdad and Cairo. It was not until much later that I learned how the two powerful caliphates had been at each other's throats for many years-owing to differences over religious observance, mostly. The fall of Jerusalem had awakened them to the danger of a house divided; the Caliph of Cairo, a more far-thinking ruler than most, had, I would eventually discover, offered his extensive fleet for the use of a combined Arab army united against the common enemy. Together Cairo and Baghdad might drive out the invading foreigners.

This offer had been spurned by the arrogant and pride-bound Baghdad caliphate, which considered itself superior to Cairo in every way. Still, as the years passed and the crusaders established themselves as a continual threat and ever-present thorn in the side of the Arabs, Baghdad began to soften to the idea of uniting against the crusaders. With the fall of Antioch imminent, and the prospect of recapturing Jerusalem a genuine possibility for the first time in many years, the young Caliph al-Mutarshid decided it was time to make peace with Cairo. Towards that end, the Egyptian emissary, who was merely making a routine visit to Damascus, had been summoned and lavished with gifts by way of a peace offering.

The Arabs have long enjoyed a fantastically elaborate game played between two people on a wooden board with dozens of small carved pieces. I once observed this game, and though I failed to grasp any but the most rudimentary principles, it did seem to capture the essence of the intricate convolutions of the Eastern mind. For although the board is marked with fixed squares of alternating colour, red and white, each piece moves entirely at will-but only within certain tightly circumscribed limitations peculiar to its rank. And for each move there is a countermove, each power balanced by an equal and opposite power. A game of infinite possibility, it is nevertheless played out according to rules as immutable as the mountains and invariable as a sunrise.

I had become like one of the lesser pieces in this strange game, and when the emissary departed Damascus two days later, I went with him – and all the rest of the plunder amassed by Ghazi as well, to be given to the Egyptian caliph as tokens of reconciliation between the powerful rulers of Baghdad and Cairo. So, following a five-day march overland from Damascus to the port of Sidon on the coast, I was put aboard one of the sturdy ships of the Egyptian caliph's substantial fleet, and we sailed for Cairo, arriving five days later at Damietta on the wide, spreading, many-fingered delta of the river Nile.

We left the ship at the harbour of Damietta, a foul stink-hole of a town, and proceeded by sailing barge up the wide, muddy river to Cairo. I stood at the low rail and watched the graceful river boats with their single, fin-shaped sails and long steering oars, gliding slowly on the brown water. We passed tiny settlements built on the banks of the river with long, fields of green cultivated grain stretching in wide, generous bands behind. One after another, we passed them, so many that they seemed after awhile to merge into a single, endless strip of villages all the way to Cairo.

I stood on the deck of the barge and watched life along the river unfold like a vast, seamless tapestry unrolled before me to reveal the age-old images of the river realm: three boys riding a donkey piled high with palm branches; a girl with a willow switch in her hand, herding grey geese along the path; two women washing clothes at the riverside; men casting fishing nets from small, bobbing boats; a youth carrying a row of dried fish on a pole over his shoulder; a laughing bevy of girls with water jars on their heads, their mantles knotted around their slender hips; a farmer gathering rushes with a curved scythe, and another leading an ox-drawn cart mounded with yellow melons; naked brown children wading in the cool shallows.

From the moment we entered the river channel, all that had gone before seemed to fade away into the warm, heavy air of the valley lowland. The looming tribulations of the last days dwindled away to piddling insignificance in the face of an immense and all-pervading tranquillity. No mere human event could disturb the prodigious peace of that land; the great tempests of war and ruin that wreak such havoc among men are but fleeting squalls that arise and disappear, swallowed in a serenity as old as the earth. I stood on the deck of the barge, and felt myself being drawn down and down into the limitless depths of the most profound cakn I had ever known-as if the timeless sky with its bright spray of stars wheeling through its eternal round proclaimed: this, too, shall pass.

From the beginning, I was treated well by those charged with my captivity. Perhaps they were not told the circumstances of my imprisonment. Then again, as my little jailer, Wazim Kadi, told me when I was brought to the caliph's palace, 'The Seljuqs are barbarians. Everyone knows this. They are coarse ruffians from out of Rhum where they live like wandering beasts.'

Of all the many contending races in the turbulent East, the Saracens consider themselves the most civil and refined, with a duty to impart their singular virtues and qualities to those less enlightened than themselves. It may be that when they learned I had been a captive of the Seljuqs, the courtly and cultured Saracens took it upon themselves to demonstrate their courtesy.

Nevertheless, it was with no little trepidation that I disembarked on the wooden quay which serves the impossible sprawl that is al-Qahirah, as the Arabs call it – the Victorious, for it overwhelms all would-be conquerors, and vanquishes all with its inexhaustible wealth of seductions.

I looked out from the quay at the dizzying tumult, masses of bodies which seemed to ebb and flow like a mottled flood, shimmering with sweat in the midday swelter, and I quailed before the sight. My reprieve, as Sahak called it, merely exchanged one captivity for another. I did not know what manner of reception awaited me with the Saracens; I did not know whether I should be set free, or executed before the day was finished.

The Black Rood, still bound in the rug in which I had wrapped it, went with me. In this only was I content; the holy relic was my strength and my consolation as we made our way up from the river with a train of bearers and handlers hired from the quayside to carry the caliph's treasure. Passing through one squalid settlement after another, we made our slow way towards the massive iron gates that guard the inner city. The poor and wretched of the East have heard that the streets of Cairo are paved with bricks of gold, and the city cannot hold them all; so, they build their hovels between the banks of the Nile and the high city walls, and every spring the floods come and wash these pitiful dwellings away. Many are drowned and their corpses are eaten by crocodiles-ravenous dragon-like river monsters that bedevil the lower marshes of the river.

Another variety of fierce and loathsome creature infests the stinking waste heaps outside the walls, and throng the gates of Cairo, preying on the unwary: beggars. At first I was moved with Christian pity and charity at the appalling sight of them. God have mercy, there were so many- blind and dumb, halt and lame, leprous, maimed, deaf, starving, naked, and sick. My soul quailed before their misery. But the hostile and belligerent bearing of these unfortunates quickly drove out all compassion. Like jackals they prowl the crowds looking for victims, hobbling pathetically or dragging their wizened and mangled bodies along the streets, bleating out their pitiful, and practised, wails of woe.' Although I was a prisoner and had nothing at all to give, that did not stop them from descending upon me, grabbing and snatching at my clothes with their withered hands, mewling and bawling their pitiful cries. God forgive me, I soon learned to ignore them and, like the guards, moved quickly through the shabby ranks, pushing aside any who were stubborn enough to stand in the way, turning a deaf ear to their shrieks, and hurrying on.

Anxiety over my impending fate did not survive beyond a few hundred paces inside the gates. For the city was not only larger, noisier, and more crowded than any I had ever seen, it was also more fabulous in every way. Instantly, my sun-dazed senses were overwhelmed and submerged beneath the dizzying inundation of sight and sound-and smell – for the slops and refuse of the street-dwellers are allowed to stew in the sun and infuse the air with noxious and pestilential odours.

While the smells steal the breath away, the sounds buffet and batter: the beggars with their insistent cries, the street merchants with their shrill demands, dogs barking, children screeching, the press of the populace, talking, shouting, calling to one another-a thousand voices clamouring at once. The resulting welter of confusion is dizzying as it is deafening.

And the sights! Gait, in the space of a few dozen paces beyond Cairo's gates you will see more extraordinary things than most people see in their entire lives. Wherever the eye happened to light, some new and startling view presented itself. I saw men and women of wealth swathed head to foot in the most startling robes -the colour of which changed with every movement through all the shifting, radiant hues of the rainbow. I saw copper-domed mosqs covered with gleaming Persian tiles so that they looked as if they had been spun of peacock-coloured glass.

And the people, Gait, were the most unusual to walk under God's wide heaven. The colours of their skin ranged from black as dark as midnight shadow, through browns of every hue from the deep rich tones of walnuts, baked earth, and old leather to the fair pallor of fine parchment. Their shapes and sizes were no less various. I saw men as tall and gaunt and black as ebony pillars, and others small as half-grown children. The fairest of all were the Egyptians themselves. Fine featured, with high noble brows, straight white teeth, and rich black hair that glistens in the sun, they stand erect and move with unhurried grace, gazing upon the world with quiet amusement in their dark, almond-shaped eyes. They say they are descended from gods of old, and you only have to look at them to believe it. A more handsome race you cannot imagine.

To move about the city is to confront wonders on every side. There is more colour, more noise, more everything to be found on the streets of Cairo than anywhere else under the sun. Hanging from upper windows I saw gilded cages with birds as big as ravens, but more brightly-coloured than kings, long-tailed and hook-beaked, with feathers scarlet and green, jade blue, white, and yellow. I have no idea what they were or whence they came, but they screeched like the bhean sidhe to burst the ear. There were dogs unlike any I have seen before or since: lean and slender, narrow beasts with long, thin faces, hollow haunches and muscled shoulders, almost as big as wolf hounds, but sleek and fine-footed for running in the sand.

Also, though it was a while before I noticed them, cats. Once I began to see them, however, I was astonished at the numbers. There were very multitudes of the creatures, and they were everywhere. Not a shadow in the city, but you did not see the glint of a yellow eye looking back; not a tree, not a market stall, not a doorway, nor window, nor ledge, nor wall, nor rooftop where a cat did not sit, or walk, or stretch itself.

The crooked streets swarmed with every variety of merchant and seller known-some working from stalls, others carrying their wares stacked on their heads, or dangling from their arms-and every last one shouting to make himself heard above the din. Here a candlemaker walked with hundreds of candles attached by their wicks to a long pole; there a butcher shouted for custom with rings of sausage looped round his outstretched arms; next to him, a carpenter balanced four chairs on his back; and over here, an ironmonger jangled examples of the various chains he could make-and more: goldsmiths, gem dealers, slave merchants, and every kind of food vendor ever known.

Any space on the street, large or small, became a veritable marketplace for vendors to tout for business. I saw carts heaped high with hairy coconuts, others with mounds of sweet black dates, and still others with persimmons, or pears, lemons, almonds, or green bitter quinces.

People thronged these impromptu markets, or bazaars as they are called, eagerly bargaining with the merchants so that the din was a stupendous uproar. Through the tumult scampered lithe, brown children, darting around the legs of their elders, contributing to the havoc with shrill squeals and shouts. Barefoot ragged youths darted quickly here and there and, more than once as I witnessed with my own eyes, relieved unwary passersby of the burden of any unattended purses or belongings.

Our procession snaked through the throngs, passing one exotic quarter after another-including one filled with tiny houses-the only quiet corner of the entire city, I think, and I soon learned why: the stench arising from this place gave me to know that at very least a great calamity had befallen those who lived there. The powerful odour of death hung like an unseen cloud above the silent streets. Yet, save for a few black-robed men ambling idly around the deserted streets, there was no one about.

'Ah, the city of the dead,' Wazim told me when I asked him. 'Many Egyptians still hold to the old ways, believing they must feed and house their ancestors in the afterlife.'

The caliph's men paid no heed at all to the commotion around them, but passed through it with heads high, looking neither right nor left, as if the riotous tumult was so far beneath them as to be invisible. Because of the crush of people and the narrowness of the streets, it took the better part of the morning to reach our destination: a palace of stone that looked as if it might have been hewn in a single piece from the heart of a mountain.

In the dazzling heat of a midday sun, the pale ochre-coloured stone blazed like faded gold. Flags of red and blue waved fitfully on tall standards as we passed up the long ramp towards the gates which were made of pierced and gilded iron. Four tall black men with spears and the skins of lions on their shoulders guarded the entrance. At the envoy's approach, the gatemen opened the gleaming doors without a word; the baggage train entered the palace precinct, and I passed into my opulent prison.