A Blood Red Horse (9 page)

The boy flushed with pleasure. “Your Majesty, the great Sultan Saladin,” he said, “is like a father to me. I do for you only what I would do for my own father, whose goodness Allah is now rewarding in heaven.”

“Always a good answer, too,” said the older man, and Kamil was momentarily confused, not knowing if this was a compliment or a rebuke.

After prayers Kamil helped Saladin to remount and, as the dust and noise began to rise once again, took his customary place by the sultan's side, his horse's nose at the sultan's knee, his hand on his sword, ready to defend his master should the need arise.

On the whole, Saladin was pleased with Kamil's punctilious observance of duty. In the five years since the boy, an orphan, had been brought to his notice by Baha ad-Din, a councillor whose advice Saladin particularly valued, Kamil had proven himself an asset to the sultan's court. Under instruction from both Saladin and Baha ad-Din, Kamil assiduously studied the Koran, paying scrupulous attention to the Hadith, the sayings attributed to the
Prophet Mohammed to which Saladin attached particular importance. But it was not only the boy's piety that was noteworthy. Just months before this march to Jerusalem, in the heat of the momentous battle at Hattin, during which the Christians had been routed, Kamil had proven himself a valuable soldier, too. Fearlessly plunging into the thick of the enemy, recklessly pulling out of his silk tunic the arrows that threatened to overcome him, it was young Kamil who had cut his way through to the golden tent that housed the great Christian icon, part of the wooden cross on which their God was supposed to have been crucified. That had been the deciding factor of the battle. Once the cross, being the supreme object of their faith, had been seized, the Christians cast themselves down in despair. Even the cries of King Guy of Jerusalem, as he liked to style himself, and all the Christian princes could not rally them. A Saracen victory had been assured.

Kamil, like a young lion with its prey, had dragged the cross through the ranks of the dead and dying, glorifying Allah's name in a victory salute. He had brought it to Saladin and prostrated himself. Certainly, that day the boy had earned his place at the sultan's right hand and justified the time spent on his education.

It was only afterward that Saladin allowed a small worry to creep into his mind. Had Kamil shown too much bloodlust to be pleasing to Allah? In the aftermath of the battle, when the Christian nobility had been brought to Saladin for disposal as he saw fit, Kamil had protested as Saladin offered King Guy iced water. When Saladin had himself risen to behead Prince Arnak of Karak, Kamil seemed disappointed not to be asked to do the job instead. Kamil had also argued against sparing the life of the Countess of
Tiberias and her children on the grounds that they did not deserve to live. Even the wholesale slaughter of the knights most hated by Saladin and his armies, those grand men who called themselves Templars and Hospitallers, had not seemed to appease the boy. Saladin was happy to shed blood if the time and cause were right, but he was also mindful that strength and mercy went together.

When Saladin had reminded Kamil of this and repeated the words of the Koran that backed up his belief, Kamil had been silent, and not with the silence of agreement—he remained dissatisfied. Indeed, the fact that King Guy was to go to prison rather than be beheaded seemed to inflame him further.

Now the sultan glanced at Kamil as he rode along, proud and upright, as fine a figure of Saracen youth as could be found in the East. Maybe he was worrying unnecessarily. The memory of Kamil's real father—cut down in front of his son's nine-year-old eyes by a Christian raiding party while, unarmed, he tried to protect his wife and child—would still be strong. With Allah's help, that memory must, in time, become less sharp, and Kamil would mellow.

Meanwhile, Saladin needed to decide how best to take Jerusalem. The eternal city must be delivered into Saracen hands, and the great al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, from whence Muhammad had risen into heaven, restored to the one true faith. As the walls of Jerusalem became visible on the horizon Saladin put thoughts of Kamil out of his mind and, calling Baha ad-Din, began to plan the assault.

Jerusalem was strongly defended, and the Christians inside it were determined to hold out against their enemies. For five days Saladin rode round looking for a weak point.
Eventually, moving the whole army to the north, he ordered the reconstruction of the siege engines and as soon as they were ready commanded that the battering of the defenses should begin. For days and nights the Saracens hurled at and over the walls anything that came to hand—from great stones and burning bushes to snakes, dead animals, and “Greek fire,” a deadly mixture of sulphur, naphtha, and quicklime that could not be quenched with water.

Finally, the Christians—trapped without hope of reinforcements, worn down, and increasingly fearful of the sappers busy undermining the walls—sent out messengers outlining terms of surrender. But Saladin, although he wished to save his own men from unnecessary death, could not accept them. When the Christians had taken Jerusalem nearly a hundred years earlier, they had indulged in an orgy of slaughter, killing Muslims of every age and sex. If Saladin allowed the Christians to surrender and simply walk out of Jerusalem untouched, he would face a mutiny. The prevailing mood in his army was that blood must be shed for blood.

Saladin searched for a compromise. The cycle of bloodshed troubled him. Eventually he declared that if the Christians would not set fire to the city and also pay a ransom for every man, woman, and child, they could leave unharmed. Kamil was disgusted. Nevertheless, the sultan prevailed, and by morning all was set. Over the course of the next day, the Christians began to file out through the gates and trudge slowly over the hills, down through the valley and onto the plain, heading westward for the sea.

Kamil was furious. He did not join in the great rejoicing when the Saracens at last gained access and dislodged the Christian cross from the great cupola of the
Dome of the Rock. He was not there to hear Saladin order the cleansing of the holy places and the redecoration of the al-Aqsa mosque with gold and precious stones. Instead, from outside the city walls he watched the sorry procession of Christians march into the hills. Then in the evening, dressed only in an unremarkable cotton tunic, Kamil slipped onto his horse. He rode slowly and quietly as he followed the stragglers. They never noticed him behind them.

As he rode, Kamil felt no pity, even for the struggling women. Five years before, he had had a real family. His father, who had been born a few miles to the north of Saladin's own birthplace of Tikrit in Mesopotamia, had been an emir and a true follower of the Koran. He had married Kamil's mother while in Saladin's service in Egypt and brought her home to where he farmed productive land by the Tigris river. Wheat and barley, grapes, figs, and melons grew in abundance, and as a child, Kamil had run about barefoot with his cousins, spoiled by what seemed to him multitudes of smiling aunts and uncles. The Christians had been a thorn in the side of the Muslims ever since Kamil could remember, and his father was often away on military business for the sultan. But the boy had felt no personal threat. In those days he could not hate Christians—not in the same way that he hated spiders, for instance—for he had never seen one. Moreover, when his father left to fight them, he had his mother to himself, and as a treat, when lessons were over, she would pile food onto his dish and let him sit on her lap while she told him stories.

All that changed the winter of his ninth birthday. His father had come home and told his mother to pack up some things. Saladin wanted his trusted emirs constantly by his
side so that they could debate finer theological points long into the night. In the spring, so Kamil's father said, they were all to travel to Saladin's camp in Syria. It was time, too, so his uncles and aunts told him, for Kamil to meet the man he would serve as an adult. Kamil quite agreed. Since he was so young, his mother was coming, too. What could be better?

Kamil had been so excited that he had been allowed to ride instead of going in the covered wagon with all their possessions and his mother. His father put him in charge of the six horses he was taking as a present for the sultan. Three were mares with foals, and their antics suited Kamil's mood. He could still remember what color they were.

The journey had been delightful. They crossed into Syria and were just thirty miles short of their final destination. The place at which they stopped had remained vivid in Kamil's mind's eye. It had been very much in the open, sheltered only by a few trees, but the foals had been tired, and Kamil, too. His father very reluctantly made a fire. Looking back, Kamil supposed he had hoped to reach the safety of Saladin's camp before sleeping.

It all seemed to happen very quickly. As his father was packing up the next morning a group of Christian knights had approached, their eyes on the horses. They had been smiling at first. One, who had some Arabic, offered Kamil a ride. Kamil had smiled back, despite being alarmed by the large, tear-shaped birthmark running down the side of the knight's face. His father gestured for Kamil to come to his side. The knight was affronted. He stopped smiling and instead demanded that Kamil's father hand over the six spare horses. Kamil's father refused, and angry words were exchanged. Then one of the Muslim horseboys spat. It was
all the excuse the knights needed. They drew their swords, and before Kamil could move, they charged. One cut his father down, his unarmed father, his peace-loving father; a man only trying to hold on to what was his. His blood poured into the dust as he fell enfolding Kamil in his arms in a desperate effort to save his son.

By the time the men had finished, only Kamil and his mother were left alive. She had been in the wagon and had hidden under some bolts of cloth. When the shouting died away, she emerged and a terrible sight greeted her. Her husband was lying face down, her son trapped underneath him. Both were motionless. The horse-boys had been run through a dozen times. All the animals were gone. She began to scream, and it was only then that Kamil moved. He pulled himself out and crawled toward her. When his mother eventually looked up, she saw her son covered in his father's blood, holding out his arms.

Kamil remembered all these things. The memories stabbed at him. The wailings of the Christian mothers reminded him of how his own mother had rocked him until both of them could wail no more. When he saw the women carrying pathetic-looking bundles, he saw his own mother gathering what she could out of the wagon before they began to walk. The women limping reminded him how, still far from their farm, Kamil's mother had succumbed to fever and, despite Kamil's prayers, died, leaving Kamil alone. He had never made it back home. Picked up by a caravan of traders, he had asked them to take him back into Syria and to Saladin. They had obliged, and when Kamil told his story to the sultan, he had been embraced and given a home at the sultan's side. He had been in Saladin's household ever since, and had, as part of his education, been taught Norman French, the
Christians' language. The boy was quick, and Saladin thought he might make a good spy.

But now, as the sultan took Jerusalem and achieved his heart's desire, Kamil was intent on his own business. In the years since his father's death, he had never stopped looking for the knight with the tear-shaped mark, and now riding among these refugee Christians, he felt certain he would find him. As darkness fell, many of the women simply collapsed onto the ground, dazed with the loss of the Holy City. Others, mindful of the evening chill, busied themselves trying to construct makeshift tents.

Kamil let his horse loose and moved about with ease among the desolate people, his dagger hidden in the folds of his clothes. His presence went unremarked, and dogs that barked at him were told to be quiet. Patiently, he worked his way around the groups.

In the end, he found what he was looking for quite easily. By the light of the moon, the knight was kneeling down with his wife and son to pray. Kamil, who had waited for this moment and rehearsed it a million times, felt his breath leave his body. His hands trembled, and a black roar filled his head. At last. There he was, the man who had deprived Kamil of his family, kneeling to pray with his own. The boy gazed with fascinated horror at the Christian mirror image of what might have been himself. He, too, could now be praying with his mother and father. Instead, he prayed with a sultan who did not approve of revenge.

The knight and his lady knelt side by side, with their son behind them. They had moved slightly apart from the rest of their group and were almost hidden from public view by blankets they had draped over two stunted trees. They would be easy pickings. But now that the moment
had come, Kamil found himself unable to move fast. He wanted to stare and stare at his father's murderer. In his dreams this was not the feeling he had. In his dreams he simply imagined different ways of killing him. Yet faced with the man in the flesh, killing him did not seem enough. It seemed too easy. Kamil wanted to grab the knight by the throat and tell him how his mother had suffered, tell him what it was like to wake sweating every night, imagining that he was drowning in his father's blood and suffocating under his father's mangled body. He wanted to make him suffer.

The family bent their heads and intoned the Our Father. Soon they would be finished. Kamil rubbed his thumb on the sharp edge of his dagger, hoping that the pain would bring him to his senses. He must act quickly or the moment would be lost. The feel of his own blood dripping onto his fingers steadied him as he looked at the father. Yet, in the end, something made him slip forward and cut the boy's throat instead. It was done so quickly and deftly that the victim made no sound. Then Kamil was gone.

As he found his horse, leaped on, and galloped away, his breathing was shallow, almost a gasp, and his mind was filled with confusion. Never had he thought that he could meet his father's killer and leave him alive. Nor had he imagined that the knight might have a son. Now that the knight was no longer in front of him, Kamil could not work out why he had acted as he did. Certainly, the father would suffer, for his son's murder would be an appalling mystery, and that, surely, would haunt him all the days of his life. But to leave the knight alive? Kamil pulled his horse up short. Maybe killing the son had been a mistake. He dropped his reins and put his hands over his face, raking his fingers down over his cheeks. What would his own
father have said about his son's evening's work? Kamil did not know. He tried to pray. He tried to think. But he could do neither. In the end, he drove his heels into his horse's side and, tears streaming down his face, threw his dagger into a ditch.