Silk Road (6 page)

I don’t know if I can ever go home now. I don’t even know where my home is.

His regime as a Templar was strict. In winter his day began just before dawn; after prime he would check his horses and their harnesses, inspect his weapons and armour and those of his sergeants-at-arms. Then he would undertake his own training and that of his men: the constant practice with lance, mace, sword, dagger and shield. He would eat his first meal at noon and not sup again till the evening. He would recite a dozen paternosters each day, fourteen every hour, and eighteen for vespers. It was the life of a warrior monk.

He had thus made his pilgrimage, done his penance, almost served the five years of his pledge. The chaplain said he was forgiven all his sins. So why then did he still feel this heaviness in his heart? Soon it would be time to return to France and resume the patrimony of his father’s lands. He should be more eager for that homecoming.

He heard a footfall on the stone in the darkness and turned around. His hand went instinctively to his sword. So many assassins in this accursed city. ‘Put away your sword, Templar,’ a man said, in Latin.

He recognized the voice. The Dominican friar, William.

‘They told me I would find you here,’ he said.

‘I often find comfort in the night.’

‘And not in the chapel?’

‘There are fewer hypocrites up here.’

The friar came to stand at the battlements and looked towards the harbour, his face in silhouette. The Dominicans.
Domini canes
, as some wits would have it, ‘the bloodhounds of the Lord’. The order had been founded by the Spaniard, Guzmán, the one they now called St Dominic, during the crusade in the Languedoc. They had set themselves the task of eradicating heresy and bringing Europe under the heel of the clerics.

They had the Pope’s ear. A Dominican had held the position of Master of the Sacred Palace, personal theologian to the Pope himself, since the days of Guzmán. In 1233 Gregory IX had entrusted them with the holy work of the Inquisition.

They were all meddlers and murderers, in Josseran’s opinion. The one thing you could say about them was that they were not hypocrites like the bishops and their priests; they did not get their housemaids pregnant and they kept to their vows of poverty. But they were cruel and joyless creatures. The tortures and burnings they were responsible for in the Languedoc were simply unspeakable. All done in the name of God, of course. Josseran hated every single one of them.

‘It seems we are to be companions,’ William said.

‘It would not have been my choice.’

‘Nor mine. I have heard of the vices and treachery of Templars.’

‘I have heard the same things said of priests.’

William gave a short, barking laugh. ‘I have to know. Why were you chosen?’

‘You heard what Bérard said of me. I know how to use a sword and I ride passably well. And I am skilled in certain languages. It is a gift it pleased God for me to possess. Do you have anything besides Latin?’

‘Such as?’

‘It is hard to make any commerce in Outremer unless you speak a little Arabic.’

‘The language of the heathen.’

Josseran nodded. ‘Our Lord spoke Latin, of course, when he
strolled through Nazareth.’ William did not reply and Josseran smiled to himself. A small victory. ‘So you speak only Latin and German. A fine ambassador the Pope has chosen for the East.’

‘I speak French passably well.’

‘That should be useful in Syria.’

‘If you are to be my interpreter I expect you to serve me faithfully.’

‘I am to be your escort, not your servant.’

‘You should know that I shall tolerate no interference in my plans.’

‘Should I get in your way, you can always go on alone.’

William reached out his hand and touched the crucifix that hung on a silver chain at Josseran’s throat. Josseran knocked his hand away.

‘A pretty piece,’ William said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘That is none of your business.’

‘Is it gold?’

‘Gilded copper. The stones are garnets. It is very old.’

‘It is just that you do not appear to me to be a man of much piety. And yet you have come here to fight in Christ’s army. Why the Templars? They shelter all sorts of criminals, I hear.’

‘I may not be a man of much piety but you do not appear to be a man of much diplomacy. And yet they have sent you here as an ambassador.’

‘I hope your master knows the kind of man in whose hands he has entrusted my life.’ William turned on his heel in the darkness. Josseran scowled. Priests! But the charter of the Templars required that he guard him well and endure his arrogance all the way to Aleppo. With God’s speed the journey should take no longer than a month.

He turned back to the night and its stars, wondering where fate might bring him by the time the moon waxed full.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, at dawn, Josseran arrived at the wharf with his sergeant-at-arms, one Gérard of Poitiers, and provisions for the journey. He brought three horses. His big war horse, his destrier, he left behind but he had brought his favourite white Persian, Kismet. Gifts for the Tatar prince were locked in an iron-bound money chest; there was a damascened sword with gold quillon and motifs in Arabic script, an ebony inkstand ornamented with gold, a suit of chain mail, a mail helmet, some gauntlets of tooled red leather and a handful of rubies. He also had a quantity of golden Arab dinars and silver drachmas at his disposal, to use as he saw fit.

They boarded the two-deck galley and joined the captain on the poop deck. The morning was still and the flag with its red cross pattée hung limp at the stern rail. Their supplies were unloaded from a creaking wagon. The packhorses that would carry them were led up the gangway, followed by the servants he had brought to mind them and cook the food.

Finally William appeared, a sombre presence on a fine morning in his black-cowled robe. His face was grey.

‘I trust this morning finds you well,’ Josseran said to him.

William produced a perfumed handkerchief from his robe and put it to his nose. ‘I do not know how any man can bear the stench.’

Yes, the stench. It was true, it was intolerable. It came from below, from the Mohammedans manacled to the oars on the slave deck, their own faeces lapping around their ankles in the bilges.

‘I have found since I have been in this land that a man may grow accustomed to any vileness,’ Josseran said. He turned and murmured to Gérard, who stood beside him. ‘Even that of churchmen.’ Well, not quite. The idea of chaining men to galley benches offended him as much as it did the friar.

‘I fear my stomach will revolt,’ William said.

‘Then it behoves you to remove yourself to the side,’ Josseran said and led him to the starboard rail of the galley. A moment later they heard the friar revisiting his breakfast.

The sounds of the morning – the booming of a drum, the flat slap of the slave master’s whip, the clank of manacles – mingled with groans. The oars dipped for a moment, seawater glistening on the blades, then moved in time with the great drum as the galley sliced across the smooth waters of the harbour towards the mole.

Josseran looked back at the colonnaded piazza of the Venetian quarter, its three broad gateways open to the sea, the
fondachi
flying the Golden Lion pennants. Beside the Iron Gate, the old Genoese warehouse presented a sheer wall to the harbour. The chain was lowered and their bow cut between the breakwater under the shadow of the Tower of Flies. Their captain set their course towards Antioch. Josseran stared at the familiar barbicans of the Templar fortress on the Dread Cape. He had the uneasy feeling that he would never see them again.

Josseran and William spoke little on the sea journey north. There was a palpable air of tension among the crew until they had passed Tyre, for the Genoese and Venetians were still raiding each other’s merchantmen and no one could be sure that even a Templar galley might not be attacked. The soldiers prowled the rigging, crossbows slung over their shoulders, their faces grim.

Josseran was gratified to note that the good friar spent most of his time bent over the stern, heaving bile into the ocean. He was not accustomed to finding satisfaction in other men’s discomfort but William somehow invited it.

The Dominican arrived in Antioch stinking and foul. As they stood on the dock at St Symeon even Kismet twitched her nostrils at the smell of him.

‘You should have no trouble finding a bath house, even in Antioch,’ Josseran said to him.

William stared at him as if he had spoken a blasphemy. ‘Are you mad? You wish me to catch the vapours and die?’

‘In this climate we find such indulgences welcome, even necessary.’

‘Indulgence is all I have found among you and your kind thus far.’ He staggered on to the wharf.

Is he going to stink like that all the way to Aleppo? Josseran wondered. This is going to be a long journey.

Antioch

T
HE
B
YZANTINE WALLS
had been built by the Emperor Justinian, one spanning the river Orontes, two more winding up the precipitous heights of Mount Silpius to the citadel. In all there were four hundred towers commanding the plains around Antioch.

Prince Bohemond may have negotiated a truce with the Tatars but on first impression Antioch did not seem a city at its ease. There were soldiers everywhere, and fear was etched into the faces of the Mohammedans in the medinas. Everyone had heard what had happened at Aleppo and Baghdad.

Bohemond’s welcome was cool. He had no love for the Pope or any of his emissaries. But Josseran was a Templar and no one in Outremer wanted to offend one of
them
.

From the citadel Josseran looked back over his shoulder, at the whitewashed villas that clung to the slopes of Mount Silpius below, descending to the cramped and twisted streets of the city. Through the haze that clung to the plain he could just make out the glimmer of the sea at St Symeon.

They were escorted to Bohemond’s private audience chamber. It was sumptuously furnished, but the most remarkable thing about it was not the silk kilims on the floors or the silver ewers, but Bohemond’s personal library. The walls were lined with thousands of beautifully bound books, many of them in Arabic, learned books on such arcane matters as alchemy and physic and what Simon called
al’jibra
.

Tools of the devil, William said.

Bohemond was seated on a low divan. Before him was a table piled with fruits. There was a huge carpet of lustrous design on the floor, its centrepiece a hanging votive light, woven in crimson and gold and royal blue. A fire blazed in the hearth.

‘So I hear you are going to convert the Tatars to Christ!’ Bohemond jeered at William by way of welcome.

‘
Deus le volt
,’ William answered, using the words that had sent the first crusade to the Holy Land. ‘God wills it.’

‘Well, you know that Hülegü’s wife is Christian,’ he said.

‘I have heard these rumours.’

‘Not rumour. It is true.’

‘And this Hülegü himself?’

‘The Tatar himself is an idolater. I have treated with him personally. He has eyes like a cat and smells like a wild goat. Yet he has humbled the Saracens in their own cities, something we have failed to do in one hundred and fifty years of war. He seems to do well enough without God on his side.’ There was a sharp intake of breath as William reacted to this blasphemy. Bohemond ignored him and turned to Josseran. ‘And what of you, Templar? Are you simply escort for our friar here, or do you Templars wish to make alliance with them, as I did?’