Pillars of Light (52 page)

Such a paragon
, I thought. “No doubt he saved you for the prisoner exchange,” I said sourly.

“I … no …” She looked puzzled. “No one’s said anything about ransom or exchange or anything.” She laughed. “I don’t think King Richard’s going to be paying to get a woman back!”

“Shhh … be careful.”

“They dressed my wound, John—you think they don’t know?” She grabbed my hand. “But John, how are you here? It’s like magic—first the Moor, now you. Next it’ll be Quicksilver and Will!”

I looked away from her shining eyes. “I don’t think so.” I steeled myself to tell her what had happened to them, but she was already chattering on.

“And I met the sultan! He comes to see me every day, despite everything else he has to do, can you imagine? He brings me fruit, to help me get better. They bring him fruit every day from Damascus, wherever that is. Imagine that! Fruit, from his own fruit basket.” She grabbed my hand. “They’ve been so nice to me, John, courtly, like I’m some sort of princess. No one’s ever treated me like that before. And Malek …” She looked down at the roses, and when she looked up again her eyes were full of some kind of wonder. “Well, he’s been lovely.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “John, I don’t want to go back. You won’t make me, will you?”

I stared at her. “You want to stay with the enemy?”

“They’re not
my
enemy,” she said, snorting out her derision.

“But they’re Muslims,” I persisted, something bitter in me finding voice, something … disappointed. “They’re foreign, they have foreign ways, speak a foreign language—”

She reeled off an unintelligible stream of gibberish that made the Moor laugh. He corrected her and she repeated back what he said, twice, until she’d got the strange sounds right. When she looked back at me it was with defiance and a sort of pride. “See? I’m learning. It won’t take long. Everyone’s helping.”

“I bet they are.” Jealousy made me sharp. “What about our plans? We were going to find some land, raise animals, remember?”

Her face fell. “I didn’t mean to be disloyal, not to you. You’re my friend. We are still friends, aren’t we?” She sounded just like me with the Moor, I thought.

I shook my head. “Sorry. It’s just … well, a lot to think about, a lot to take in. I’m glad you’re alive and well, Ezra. I really am.”

“You can call me Rosamund now. Malek does. The Moor says it’s Latin, and means ‘rose of the world’ or some such nonsense,” she said, colouring. “Hence the …” Her fingers brushed the flower petals.

I must have looked miserable or embarrassed, for the Moor stepped in now and, businesslike, applied himself to examining her dressing. “Go sit in the sun outside, John,” he told me, and, glad to be dismissed, I pushed my way through the tent flap and stood blinking in the bright light, I had been transported to another world, one in which none of the old rules applied.

Why was I so disturbed that Ezra—Rosamund—should choose to stay here, among these foreigners? Had I not myself been distraught at the idea of being sent away when the Moor had mentioned the prisoner exchange? Would I not willingly have traded any chance of returning to England, for staying here—anywhere—with him?

But she’s a woman
, a small voice inside me prompted.
That’s different
.

It was different. And yet maybe it was different in ways that mattered even less. What awaited Ez—Rosamund back in England? Returned to the army with her true identity revealed, she’d surely be reduced to a camp-whore; in England, she’d end up on the streets, doing the same thing. I didn’t know what awaited her here. Perhaps the respect with which she had been treated by the young soldier who had saved her, and by the sultan himself, would prevail. Perhaps she could make a better life here than she could back home. Or perhaps not. I did not know. But I couldn’t help thinking about the hatred on the faces of the people of Akka, what had happened to Will and to Ned, catapulted, screaming, over the walls …

And the beaten, burned Jews of London …

And the captured Muslims set alight like candles on the battlefield …

There is a savagery in all of us
, I thought, then caught myself thinking it. Savage. My own name, or at least the one I had been given. Yes, a savage in all of us. But perhaps there were acts of grace that might redeem us.

Later that night, when they brought me the drawing things the Moor had ordered, I was filled with determination to conjure the image of the relic. I forced my mind back to that first glimpse of it in the storeroom in the citadel cellars: the gleam of the gold, the glint of the gems. The strange charge I had felt from the Nail of Treves.

I reached up to touch my charm. It was not there.

You’d think that now I was reunited with my friend, his parting gift would no longer carry the significance for me that it had. But the loss of it struck me like a fist.

And now I could not remember what the fragment of the Cross had looked like at all. Gold encased, yes, with the old wood showing
through almost black at one end. But the details? The ornamentation? Gone like smoke. Would it matter? Surely an old piece of wood dressed up in any cover of gold would do the trick. Memories were flawed and chancy things, as even the Moor had said, two people’s accounts of the same object or event rarely matching. But all it took was one doubt. All those people …

Back to the storeroom I led my unwilling mind.
Look in the chest: remember pulling out the cross, the True Cross, or rather the thing masquerading as it, remember the dancing light of the sconce playing across the gold, flickering in the gems …

It was no good. I could not retrieve the memory. Had I looked at the relic at any other time? No, after it was bundled away inside my cloak it had stayed wrapped, right up till the moment the ocean swallowed me, fire all around, the air choked with the screams of burning men. God’s teeth, what was I going to do?

It’s a funny thing, the mind. Reach after something, chase it like a dog chases a rat, and it will guard its secrets. It’s only when you give up that it teases you with a glimpse of the thing you were searching for. And sometimes a glimpse is enough.

The strange thing is that it wasn’t a glimpse of the cross in the storeroom that came to me then. No, the quality of the light was different—brighter, sharper. The detail was still there, though: a ruby at the centre of a ring of bosses in the gold, etched lines connecting it to the next precious setting, and the next. Pearls here, emeralds there: a gaudy, tawdry thing. I almost smiled at the apparent fakeness of such opulence. If I closed my eyes, I could feel the stones, rough and hard beneath my fingertips …

I began to draw.

Zohra chose two of her father’s best robes and tunics, a warm cloak, a sleeping blanket, and his favourite soft leather slippers, old and
battered but perfectly moulded over the years to the shape of his feet, for him to take into the hostage quarters.

He took one look at the slippers and threw them down. “I can’t be seen in these! Bring me the yellow ones.”

“But, Baba, you always say they hurt your feet, the yellow ones.”

“Never! I’ve never said that. Can’t wear filthy old things like that in front of the Franj. They’re fit only for the fire now. Like their owner.”

“Don’t say such things!” She took the old brown
qundara
back upstairs and came back with the stiff yellow ones, feeling unaccountably sorrowful.

When it came time to say goodbye, Baltasar let her hug him, standing unresponsive for several moments before suddenly seeming to remember who she was and what was happening, and then he almost crushed her in his embrace. When they came apart she saw his eyes were wet.

“Oh, Baba!” she wailed.

At last Sara stepped between them. “I’ll look after him,” she said. “You look after my son for me. You must make him go. Promise me.” She leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Tell him whatever it takes to make him leave the city with you, do you understand me?” The look she gave Zohra was powerfully communicative, and Zohra nodded, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Sara brushed them away with the thumb of her one remaining hand. “I know you will, and I bless you for it.” She stepped back and spoke more loudly. “Pack that wound with honey-salve night and day, won’t you?”

Nima clung to Baltasar’s legs and cried when Zohra pulled her away. She had grown fond of the old bear of a man in the short time they had been together, perhaps because he was the only one who ever had time for her babbling; perhaps because he became, while he was with her, like a grandfather she had lost. Zohra took her
upstairs and brought out all the old wooden toys she and the boys had shared as children and left her playing happily while she gathered clothes and a wide-toothed comb for Sorgan, and wrapped carefully in a white cloth a small cake she had made for him with flour and eggs and honey bought from the new supplies coming into the city. Something he would find later when he opened up his things. Something that might make him think of her …

But when she tried to give him the bundle down in the hallway Sorgan refused to take it, not wanting Mohammed Azri to see him being treated like a child.

“Sorgan, look at me.”

“Want to go now.” He pulled away from her.

“I know you do. But, Sorgan, I’m leaving the city. I may not see you … for a while.”

“All right.” For a moment he looked thoughtful. “Will you have lamb to eat tonight?”

Abruptly, Zohra’s eyes swam with tears.

Sorgan was alarmed. “Don’t cry! I am sure you will have lamb too.” Without warning, he seized her in a fierce embrace, and that unexpected gesture caused her tears to spill. Muffled against his shoulder, she gasped out, “You are my brother and I love you, do you understand? Wherever you are, wherever I am, that will never change. Will you remember that?”

Embarrassed, he pulled away from her. “I have to go now. Mohammed is waiting for me.”

Silently, Zohra tailed him to the door and handed her bundle to the smith, who took it from her with a wry smile. “I will see you again soon,
insh’allah
,” Mohammed Azri told her.

“Insh’allah.”

Zohra watched them go down the street, merging with the others who had chosen to go as hostages, until they turned the corner and disappeared from view. She had never felt so bereft in
her life. To go back into a house that was empty of all its normal inhabitants felt bleak.

That night, she could not settle, could not sleep. She crept about, feeling uncomfortable and out of sorts, then packed away the things that had been left out and set the house to rights so that it was in order for when they returned. If they ever would …

It was important not to think about that. Instead, she rehearsed the words she would say to Nathanael when he came back from the qadi’s office as she went from room to room, neatening drapes and closing drawers. All the sleeping-blankets she folded and stored away, rolled up the rugs to keep the dust off them, shut the kitchen things into the larder. The pigeon loft she swept and cleaned, locked the door to the terrace.

She stood at the threshold of the room at the top of the house that her parents had shared for so long, remembering. It was here she had first seen the twins, tiny creatures curled at Nima’s breast, fast asleep, as pink and hairless as baby mice. She must have been, what? Less than three? Amazing how the mind retained such images with such clarity: she could recall how the light had slanted through the shutters, falling in lozenges on the coloured blanket over the bed. The room had seemed huge to her then; it looked so small now. Small and empty.

Then she went to check on the child in her mother’s old sickroom. Little Nima, engaged in some secret game of her own in which she talked to each object in a peremptory, chiding voice, had scattered the toys about with cheerful abandon. Zohra retrieved a rag-ball that had crept half under the low table and caught a flash of yellow as she did so. Bending down, she pulled out the yellow silk cushion she had used to prop her mother up when feeding her. She stared at it for a long moment, then hugged it with a groan. She had never been able to bring herself to throw it away: to do so was somehow to admit that Kamal had hastened her death with it.

“Oh, Ummi. I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the empty air.

Nima stared at her. “Who are you talking to?”

“No one, sweetheart. No one at all.”

When, some while later, she caught out of the corner of her eye a movement at the threshold of the room, she cried out, but it was Nathanael, returned from the qadi’s office. He looked morose, but forced a smile when Nima solemnly offered him the little wooden camel she had been playing with.

“Your hand is dirty!” she chided him as he reached to take it. She snatched the camel back and cradled it to her chest.

Nat gave a small snort of laughter. “That’s not dirt, little bird. It’s ink.” He held his palm up. In the middle of it was stamped a large black cross.

Zohra’s heart began to beat wildly. “What’s that?” She hardly dared ask.

“I have official permission to leave the city.”

“There’s someone asking for you, Malek.”

His head came sharply up out of the doze. Such a sweet dream had been interrupted, he hardly wanted to be disturbed. “Who? Who is it?”

“Malek, oh, Malek!”

One moment he had been daydreaming about a woman’s embrace, the next minute it was happening in life. The woman in the dream had been small but sturdy; the one in his arms felt like a bag of bones. Disoriented, he held her away from him, in doubt as to which world he was in: the dream or the real.

“
Alhemdulillah!
A thousand thanks are due! Thank God you are safe!”

“Cousin Jamilla,” he managed at last. When he’d heard that all those not being kept as hostages in the city had been told to leave,
on account of there not being enough food to feed them, he had thought Zohra would come to him here. “Thank merciful God you are alive,” he said, trying to sound sincere when all he truly felt was disappointment and the edge of a fear he did not wish to dwell on. Surely Zohra had not opted to stay as a hostage? With Tariq working at the citadel it suddenly seemed all too possible.