Pillars of Light (22 page)

But then he remembered what he had done, and how he could never go back.

Now the scary guard was standing in front of him, prodding him forward. “Prostrate yourself to the Grand Headmaster of the Order and speak your name!”

Trembling, Kamal threw himself to the ground; touching his forehead to the cold stone floor, he pushed his name out through chattering teeth and waited for judgment to come upon him.

But no sword kissed his neck, and the sky did not fall. Instead, the old man who sat on his throne like some ancient, bearded prophet bade him rise.

“Come here, boy. Look me in the eye and tell me why you have come to Masyaf.”

And Kamal, recalling with difficulty the words Bashar had drilled into him all this long, long way said, “Sidi ad-Din Sinan, I have come to offer myself as one of the
fida’i
, to be among the foundation of the faithful, to serve you and the Order in whatever fashion I may be of use, even to the death.”

The old man smiled, but the fire that burned in his dark eyes had a cold, cold flame. “To the death, you say? Are you sure you know what you offer?”

Bashar had not prepared him for this. Kamal swallowed but no saliva went down, his throat was so dry. Unable to get the words out, he nodded dumbly.

Grand Headmaster Sinan—known to the outside world as the Old Man of the Mountains—leaned forward, fixing Kamal with his glittering black eyes. “I don’t believe you do.”

He made a tiny gesture with his right hand and a man stepped
forward. He was clothed in a plain white robe and headcloth to denote his rank among the faithful, but his feet were bare, the soles offering a glimpse of tender pink in contrast to the polished wood-brown of the sunburned upper. He moved like a young man, but as he came close Kamal stared up into his face and was surprised to find grizzled streaks in his beard, even though his face was smooth and unlined, his expression one of perfect serenity.

“Walk into the flames,” Sinan commanded, indicating the fire that burned in the central hearth. He spoke so nonchalantly it was as if he were suggesting the man merely fetch him a drink of water.

Without a beat of hesitation, the adherent turned and walked purposefully towards the fire. Kamal watched as the man’s leading foot planted itself firmly amongst the glowing embers.

Beside him, Bashar let out a yelp, as high and feeble as the sound the feral dog had made when Kamal put out its eye.

Coals grated and spat, but the man stood where he was, still and silent. The fire took hold around his ankles, making the air shimmer above its new fuel, but still the man’s expression remained serene, unchanged. The air was filled with an acrid stench, then with the smell of roasting meat. Something in Kamal’s mind found this second aroma hard to make sense of; for a second his stomach remembered that it was empty. It rumbled, and saliva flooded his dry mouth, and then he was reminded of what had caused the smell, and Kamal felt something in him give way. There was a sudden warm, liquid sensation at his groin, and looking down at the dark stain spreading across his breeches, he realised he had wet himself. Shame gripped him: the blood rose in his face, and he was thinking he might further disgrace himself by vomiting, when there was a loud thud and he saw the adherent lying face down on the floor. The fire had burned his feet away from under him, leaving nothing to balance on but the bones.

Grand Headmaster Sinan clicked his fingers and a group of white-garbed men stepped forward and dragged the body away.
The Old Man transferred his impassive gaze to Bashar, who looked sick and sallow, then to Kamal. In those cold black eyes Kamal knew he had taken note of the tangible marks of his fear.

“That’s what I expect of my
hashshashin
: that they act upon my orders without question or delay, knowing that their fate is written, and that they are as nothing before the will of God and will receive their reward for their obedience in Heaven. So must you be, if you are to be accepted as one of the faithful. So I ask you again, do you know what it is you offer? Are you ready to be one of my
fida’i
?”

They will kill me where I stand if I say no
, Kamal thought.
And yet I must die horribly at some day in the future if I agree
. The realization was piercing, awful.

He was without hope, without home, without a future, and his only clothes were soaked in his own piss. Everything was already lost. He croaked out a single sound.

Na’am
.

I am ready.

“Y
ou’re so lucky, Zohra.” Jamilla rested her withered arm on the edge of the olivewood mixing bowl and regarded her cousin with glowing eyes.

Zohra did not look up.
Lucky. Yes, that’s me. My mother’s dead, my father’s mad, my little brother’s a murderer, my house is a shambles, my heart is wrecked and it’s all my own fault. So very, very lucky …

She had made the foolish error of mentioning Nathanael to her cousin in a moment of weakness a few weeks earlier, before Ummi’s death. Not by name, of course. Nor had she referred to him as Jewish, or called him “the doctor’s son.” All she had said was that there was someone, a man, who had shown her some kindness and brought little treats from time to time. As soon as she had uttered these hints about him, she had regretted it deeply, even though she knew Jamilla would keep her secret. But her heart had been bursting with the need to talk to someone about the extraordinary emotion that gripped her. She had stolen from Nat’s room a small volume by the poet Ibn Hazm and learned one of the poems by heart, whispering it into the dark air before she slept:

Even in the midst of her misery, she felt the rhythm of the words inside her.

With only one good hand, Jamilla still manipulated her dough expertly, and she watched with a small smile Zohra’s frowning, fumbling efforts. “I wouldn’t mind the attentions of a handsome young man.” She chuckled.

Now that Nathanael was no longer in Zohra’s life, it would have been a relief to confide in her cousin, but the situation had become so tragic it was impossible to talk about.

“You’re welcome to him,” she said. “Perhaps you should bake him one of your special loaves.” She thumped her ball of dough with a vicious fist, sending a cloud of flour into the air.

Jamilla had set her heart on Malek, and whenever he was home from combat or training she would make him one of her “special” loaves containing a love charm from the sorcerer’s market. But Malek showed interest in nothing but his duty to preserve the sultan and fight for Islam. And now that he was, for all practical purposes, head of the family, no one was likely to be arranging a betrothal for him.

It was hard for a daughter with a withered arm in a city overflowing with marriageable girls to attract the attentions of a suitor. Years of war, even before this latest siege, had winnowed the young men: those left had their pick. Jamilla was not marrying anyone soon, let alone Malek. Reminding herself of Jamilla’s situation tempered Zohra’s irritation.

“Your loaves are always a lot nicer than mine,” she said. “I don’t know why, but they are.” It was a tiny kindness, the only gift she could offer.

“You don’t knock the air out of your dough properly. Look …”

After ten minutes of strenuous kneading and instruction, both Zohra’s arms ached, but at least the subject had been changed.

They walked down the street to the communal bread oven carrying their cloth-wrapped dough overhead. The line at the oven was longer than usual and included a number of women Zohra didn’t recognize. But Jamilla tapped one on the shoulder and they went into an awkward embrace, dipping to kiss each other’s cheeks without dropping their bowls of dough.

“What are you doing here, Leila? Are you visiting your relatives?”

The other woman had pale olive skin and lustrous dark eyes that reminded Zohra of Nathanael’s striking gaze. A keen jolt of warmth dizzied her: she did not realize she was being addressed until she suddenly became aware that her cousin and her acquaintance were staring at her.

“Was anyone hurt?” Zohra asked, snatching at the threads of the exchange.

Leila shook her head. “They said it was a lucky strike, a freak accident. It’s the first time one of the Franj machines has managed to send rocks right over the wall, but now they have the range … Well, we decided it was better to be safe than sorry. My sister’s house isn’t large, but it’s closer to the market and farther from the wall. We’ll move in with them when my husband comes back from his watch.”

Zohra stared at her.

“Didn’t you hear? The poor dear baker, two women and one of their children dead, one little girl fighting for her life, less than an hour ago. If it wasn’t for the Jewish doctor’s lad—”

Zohra’s chest tightened. “Nathanael?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “The son of the doctor from the Street of Tailors,” she confirmed with tight lips. “He was returning
from seeing a sick woman over near the henna market and some rubble struck him—”

“Was he badly hurt?” Zohra was beyond caution.

Both women were looking at her oddly. Why was she more concerned by a small wound to a Jew than by the deaths of many good Muslims?

“I don’t know how he is.” Leila turned her shoulder towards Zohra, physically blocking her from the conversation. The line shuffled forward as another batch of dough was taken by the baker, put onto his long shovel and placed on the hot stones inside the big clay oven.

Zohra was seized by a fierce impatience. She must go to Nat, right now, and hang the consequences. But of course she couldn’t. She closed her eyes, overcome by the memory of the things they used to do together in the long, hot afternoons—his silken touch, the ridges of muscle bordering the line of black hair that led … Her knees felt weak.

“Are you all right, cousin?”

She opened her eyes and they were at the front of the line. Jamilla was reaching up, trying to take the tray of dough from her.

“Here, here, I can do it.” Zohra handed the tray to the baker, a small, dark man with a dirty turban and a large moustache. He took the cloth off and handed it back to her. Annoyingly, some of the dough had stuck to it, leaving little craters.

“Never mind,” Jamilla said. “At least you’ll be able to tell yours from the others when we come back for them.”

Well of course I will
, Zohra thought bitterly.
Like everything else I try to do, it turns out ruined
.

Back home, Nathanael gritted his teeth as he soaked the last buried scrap of his sleeve, pulled it out of the wound and pressed hard to
stem the fresh flow of blood. It would need stitches. He had managed to bandage and succour the other victims, hardly even noticing his own pain. The sight of the little boy with his head caved in had driven him into a different part of himself, one in which a cut on his own arm no longer existed. Now, though, examining the damage, he started to shake. Delayed shock—he had seen it before in others. It was as if once his body registered the damage through his eyes, the pain began to make itself known, throbbing and localized, then radiating in nauseating waves into the rest of his body.

You are lucky to be alive
, he told himself, and tried to believe it.

He sewed up the wound, the needle biting through living flesh and the fine gut drawing and pulling like a thread of fire. The arm felt heavy and dead now, a lump of useless flesh. He knew he had crushed some nerves. Were they irreparably damaged, or just bruised? How he had managed to go about his work, tending to the other victims of the strike, he did not know. It was amazing how the body staved off shock when it had to. He had saved the life of one of the injured women, stemming the gush of blood from her head and making sure her breathing was steady. He had swiftly bound the wounds of three others, and had tended to the little girl who even now lay pale and unresponsive in the little salon off the courtyard. The others had been beyond help. The first boulder had crushed the oven, the baker and one of the women in a single impact; the second had carried the two women it struck several yards, causing such terrible injuries it was clear they would not survive. The other casualties, including the unfortunate boy, had, like himself, been struck by flying detritus from the smashed clay oven.

He went to check on the girl. No one knew her name, or the name of her dead mother, and no one had taken responsibility for her. They all had too many mouths to feed and troubles enough of their own. One by one, the onlookers and survivors had sidled away. Amidst the wailing of the baker’s wife and those who had come out
of their houses to gaze at the carnage, the little girl had lain peacefully with her hair spread out on the muddy ground and the rain pattering steadily onto her closed eyelids, as if the skies wept for her. Nathanael, checking for signs of life though he expected none, had touched her neck and been surprised to find a pulse. “She’s alive!” he’d called out. “Will someone help me with her?”