The Lion of Cairo (10 page)

So intent was he on running down the fleeing Arab that Assad missed the sound of footsteps in his wake. He missed the sudden stench of rotting garlic, and the peculiar whistle made by a stave of knotty acacia streaking through the air. The stave, however, did not miss. It smashed into the back of Assad’s skull with terrible force. The blow drove Assad to his knees in the dust of the alley; explosions of light flared before his eyes and his vision swam. Blindly, he lashed out behind him with his naked
salawar,
felt it cleave flesh. A man screamed and fell back.

Yet, Assad’s reprieve was short-lived. Off balance, gripped by sudden nausea, he struggled to regain his footing. He shook his head to clear it, wincing at the slivers of pain that threaded through his skull. The Assassin glanced up as a darker shadow crossed his path. He had the impression of an eye socket, scarred and empty, even as the crack of a cudgel sent him sprawling into a deeper night.

11

“The Nazarenes are at Bilbeis!”

In a towering rage, the vizier of Egypt paced the rug-strewn floor of the sitting room—the antechamber of the Caliph’s apartments where his chief eunuch held sway. Silken tapestries hung between scalloped niches; a scattering of couches provided intimate spaces for conversation and for plotting. From one such couch—of lustrous ebony with cushions of red and gold brocade—Mustapha’s eyes slid continually to the archway, expecting at any moment for Jalal’s tirade to rouse the Prince of the Faithful. “What? That’s impossible.”

“I thought much the same, but at Bilbeis they are!” The vizier stabbed an accusatory finger at the old eunuch, who flinched as though struck. “Where were your spies, you old fool? How often have you boasted that nothing goes on along the length and breadth of the Nile that escapes your notice? Then you must be blind and deaf! By Allah, a Nazarene army crosses our borders and we know nothing of it until they send messengers! Messengers!”

“Please, Excellency, lower your voice! I beg of you!”

“Lower my voice? Yes, I would hate to wake our lord and master from his much-needed slumber! May God fill his grave with fire! I ask this for the last time: where were our spies?”

“Our spies.” Mustapha spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “Our spies were where we left them … in the fields or in the markets. Therein rests our folly. Our spies did not fail us, Excellency. We failed them by not plying them as we should, by not offering bounties on information or sending out trusted men to harvest their knowledge. Indeed, so focused are we on what goes on behind these walls that we have forgotten there’s a much wider world beyond—a world that would not weep if our beloved Egypt came to an abrupt and bloody end.”

Jalal stopped pacing. Spoken aloud, the words of condemnation served as a damper to his anger. The blame was his.
He
had miscalculated.
He
had ignored the distant threats of Damascus and Jerusalem as he pursued the mantle of Sultan with single-minded intensity. And he had very nearly been outfoxed.

“Rather than assigning fault,” Mustapha was saying, “we should be concentrating on how best to extricate ourselves from this predicament.”

“Extricate? No. We should treat this predicament for what it is.” Jalal’s eyes narrowed in thought. “A
shatranj
match.”

The eunuch frowned. “Excellency, this is no game—”

“A
shatranj
match it is, my old darling,” the vizier said, his tone brooking no dissent. “Between Shirkuh and myself, and that wily Kurd is an acknowledged master. A master sets his pieces for his opening gambit, his
tabiya,
prior to going on the offensive, but which
tabiya
is he playing, eh? The Sword? The Slave’s Banner? The Wing?”

“We cannot know for certain until all his pieces are in place.”

“True, but we can divine his plan from previous actions. Twice has Shirkuh come against us in as many years, and twice has that dog of a Kurd followed the same path—he skirts to the east of Nazarene lands, slips past the Frankish garrison at al-Karak, and then rides southwest from the tip of the Dead Sea. By Allah, his cursed horsemen outstrip the wind! Once across Sinai, he’ll make for Atfih on the east bank of the Nile.” Jalal grew more animated as he spoke; his pacing resumed. “At Atfih, Shirkuh will allow his army a day or two of rest. The men of that town will greet him as they always have, as a brother. He will loot their granaries, their markets; his soldiers will take what they want. All the while, that fool Dirgham will make wild promises to the local grandees to ‘free’ them from my tyranny and claim he will restore the Caliph to his rightful place.”

“How will you counter, Excellency?” Mustapha asked.

“Give them no place to rest,” Jalal said. He turned sharply. “Bar the gates of Atfih. Deny Shirkuh its granaries and markets. Deny Dirgham his easy audience.” The vizier smiled, thin and predatory. “And, to slay a second bird with the same arrow, I’ll relegate this task to the White Slaves of the River, to the
mamelukes
. If they fail, it will save me from having to oversee their destruction; if they succeed, they will feel obliged toward me for having chosen them for such a grand task.”

Mustapha nodded. “And if they switch their allegiance to Shirkuh and join his army?”

“Then their wives and children will pay for their perfidy,” Jalal said, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. He had no compunction about lining the road between Cairo and Atfih with the crucified bodies of the
mamelukes
’ loved ones—after first handing them over to the Sudanese for sport; he would make sure they knew it, as well. “Tomorrow is Friday. I’ll convene a council in the afternoon to brief the amirs of the army. Summon the commander of the Turkish regiment, that heathen Gokbori. It is to him we will give this task. We—”

Mustapha bolted to his feet, motioning the vizier to silence. A brusque nod of the old eunuch’s head revealed the reason: Jalal turned to see the Prince of the Faithful stagger through the arch leading from the heart of his apartments. Mustapha prostrated himself; the vizier salaamed.

The Fatimid Caliph Rashid al-Hasan li-Din Allah was still a young man, not yet twenty-five, but his features bore the stamp of premature age, the veneer of dissolution. Beneath loose trousers and an open robe of white silk, the Caliph had the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a swordsman. His frame, though, displayed a gauntness that bordered upon emaciation. Knobs of bone, gristle, and sinew protruded from his jaundiced skin. Threads of gray wove through his wiry goatee, through his unkempt hair; bloodshot eyes stared out from hollow sockets. “I heard voices, Jalal,” he said, his own voice thick with sleep and opium. “What goes?”

“A thousand apologies, master,” the vizier said smoothly. “We were debating the merits of a land dispute at Atfih, and my zeal must have gotten the better of me. The hour is late. Come; let me see you back to bed.”

Rashid shrugged off his solicitous hand. “No. I am glad you came, Jalal. I would put a question to you.”

“Ask anything of me, master, and I will answer to the best of my abilities.”

“Who rules Cairo?”

The vizier blinked. “Pardon, master?”

“You heard me. Who rules here? Am I not Cairo’s lord and master? Am I not the Prince of the Faithful and the True Successor of the Prophet?” Rashid’s face was feverish, glazed with sweat; he swayed and caught the carved arch for support.

“Indeed you are, master.” Jalal bowed again, more to hide the sneer that came unbidden to his lips than from any sense of respect. “You are all this and much more. You are the Light of Islam and the Lion of the Faith. You—”

“Then why do my own eunuchs refuse to heed my commands? Why do I not recognize those men who guard me?”

“Your eunuchs are like grandmothers, Most Excellent One.” The vizier shot a perturbed look at Mustapha as the old eunuch drew back to a sideboard. There, he set about preparing a fresh draught of
khamr;
taking a crystal vial from the sleeve of his robe, he upended its contents into a silver cup. Jalal cleared his throat. “And you do not recognize your guards because I frequently rotate them, to keep plots from hatching out among the army factions. Though charged with your defense, the soldiers who guard you also constitute your greatest enemy, master. Have you forgotten the Circassian?”

“Aye, Othman!” Rashid said, striking the stonework with a white-knuckled fist for emphasis. “I thought he was my friend!”

“A friend is not one who desires your doom, master. Othman wanted you dead. He was there to put a dagger in your heart, and it is only by the grace of Allah that he told his plans to the whore he was with the night before, and she to one of my men.” Indeed, the vizier had spoken that lie so often he almost believed it himself. Othman, chosen to be Rashid al-Hasan’s companion and bodyguard because they were near the same age, had proven too headstrong, too inquisitive; in all, he was a terrible influence on the man the vizier planned to supplant. Yet, replacing the Circassian had only served to inflame his wayward sense of honor. When Othman gained entry to the palace the morning of his death, he was on a mission to visit ruin upon the vizier. Fortunately, the fool had blabbed his plan to his mistress the night before. And the Circassian’s mistress was in Jalal’s employ.
A close call, that.
“I swear before God he was no friend of yours, master.”

The vizier’s words had a pronounced effect on the Caliph. The young man sagged heavily against the wall, his balled fists relaxing, losing their white-knuckle rigidity. Jalal feigned pity as he offered the Caliph his arm to lean on; gratefully, Rashid accepted.

“How could I have been so wrong about him?”

“You see the best in all men, Most Excellent One,” Jalal said. “Unfortunately, the soldiers of Cairo are dogs, petty men who scheme and connive behind your back—men like Othman, who would kill you simply to further their own ambitions. May Allah most high scourge them for their insolence!”

“He haunts my dreams. I see Othman’s face in the shadows, Jalal. He tries to speak, to reveal some terrible secret that has driven him from the grave, but he has no words. Only blood spills past his lips. What does it mean?”

“I cannot say, master,” Jalal said. Arm in arm, they shuffled down the corridor to the Caliph’s apartments. Mustapha followed, bringing with him the cup of drug-laced
khamr.

Rashid al-Hasan dwelled in sterile splendor, in rooms as cold and as opulent as the tombs of his predecessors. Amid the silks and silver, the heavy gold and jeweled damasks, stood tastefully arranged islands of furniture: armoires of fine cedar beside divans of polished teak, chests of gilded sycamore sitting atop tables inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Glass and crystal twinkled in the yellow lamplight.

Only in the Caliph’s bedchamber was there the slightest hint of the young man’s personality—a riot of potted ferns lent the room the aspect of a garden; lamps sporting panes of gold-tinted glass gave forth a glow that emulated pale sunlight. Rather than tapestries, frescoes depicting a Nile hunt decorated the walls, while the floor was an elaborate mosaic: hundreds of small carved beetles taken from the ruins across the river were set among colorful tiles and semiprecious stones. Beside the Caliph’s lion-footed bed, sheer linen panels rustling in a faint breeze, sat a small table; on it, a Qur’an with a gold-stitched leather cover rested beside a tall water pipe of brass and silver, its patina dulled from use. Latticed doors standing ajar opened on a small fountain court, high walled and private; jets of water burbled in the marble basin of a lily pond.

Jalal helped the Caliph to the edge of the bed and motioned Mustapha forward. “Drink this, Most Excellent One. It will help you sleep.”

Rashid took the cup, tossed back its contents, and grimaced at the sting of raw date wine. He settled back into bed with a weary sigh. “Find me an interpreter of dreams, Jalal,” he said. “An astrologer, a wise man, a Sufi—I care not, so long as he knows what he is about. I leave the details to you, as always, my good vizier.”

Jalal took the empty cup from the Caliph’s hand and suppressed a smile of triumph. “Master, I—”

Rashid waved him away, his eyes already closing. “Just … Just see it done, Jalal.”

The vizier inclined his head. “As you wish, O Prince of the Faithful.” He and Mustapha left together, retracing their steps to the antechamber. Jalal remained dangerously quiet.

12

The wait was interminable.

Parysatis stood on the tips of her toes until her calves ached; she turned her head this way and that, peering through the tiny slit in an effort to see more of the spacious antechamber.
He has guards and body servants,
said the voice of Doubt in the back of her mind,
and they will be near at hand. What if he calls for them? What if the vizier lingers? What if the eunuch never leaves the Caliph’s side?
A thousand scenarios played out in her mind as she waited in that dark passage, and all of them ended in her death. Cold sweat rolled down Parysatis’s ribs.

Nevertheless, as much as she feared for her own safety, she feared for Rashid al-Hasan’s more, especially after all she’d overheard this night.
He’s at their mercy!
What’s more, the memory of his gaunt face brought tears to her eyes.
What have they done to him?
The Caliph was sick, weak in body and confused in mind, likely from the cruel diet of poppy juice and hashish his eunuchs foisted upon him at the vizier’s urging. Were they trying to kill him, or simply control him?
Does it matter?
For her father’s sake, who had loved the Fatimid Caliph with zealous fervor, Parysatis decided in that moment that she would do all she could to loose the vizier’s hold on him, to strike off his shackles. It occurred to her, too, that if she succeeded, might Rashid al-Hasan not then set her apart from his other concubines?
Might freedom be her reward?
She dared not dwell too long upon it.

Parysatis stiffened at the sound of footsteps. Jalal and his eunuch, Mustapha, came into view. The look on the vizier’s face nearly sent Parysatis fleeing from the passage. His eyes were fiery slits; deep lines furrowed his brow. He glanced back the way they had come. “How long before the fever takes hold?”