King and Emperor thatc-3 Page 9

  “And us with them,” said one of the Spanish barons, a scarred veteran.

  “But certainly!” cried Bruno, “and me too! Why, it's all I come for!” He winked roguishly. “One decision we all have to make, though. My lads wear their mail, after all, they have to do this twice a week. But those of us who just have a chance now and then, why, we may think it better to go in light-armed. I only wear padded leather myself, it gives me a little more speed, and the Arabs wear no armor either. To tell the truth, I find it more like rat-catching than fighting a battle. But that is because we have found the trick of burning the rats out.”

  He beamed cheerfully at his secretarius, now supervising the winching up of the bucket-arm of his trebuchet, preparatory to filling it with its launch-weight once more.

  “And do you take the Holy Lance into battle?” asked one of the Spaniards, greatly daring.

  The Emperor nodded, the gold circlet welded to his plain steel helmet flashing in the sun. “It never leaves me. But I carry it in my shield-hand, and never strike a blow with it. What has once drunk the Holy Blood of our Savior cannot be polluted with the blood of some miscreant unbeliever. I defend it more than I do my own life.”

  The Spaniards stood silent. This assault, they knew perfectly well, was being staged as a demonstration to them as well as an extermination of the brigands. The Emperor meant to show them the futility of anything other than perfect alliance and obedience. Yet they relished it. For generations their ancestors had fought a losing struggle against the tide of Islam, seemingly forgotten by the Christians at their back. If now a strong king came with armies at his call, they were ready to show the way and share the profits. The relic in his hand was only one further proof of his power, yet a strong one. Finally one of the barons spoke, won over and ready to show his loyalty.

  “All of us will follow the Lance,” he said, in the mutilated Latin of the hill-folk. Murmurs of agreement came from his fellows. “It is in my mind that the holder of the Lance deserves to hold the other great relic of our Savior.”

  Bruno looked at him sharply, suspiciously. “What is that?”

  The Spaniard smiled. “It is known to few. But in these hills, it is said, rests the third relic, besides Holy Cross and Holy Lance, known to have touched our Savior.” He paused, pleased with the effect of his words.

  “And that is?”

  “The Holy Grail.” In the border dialect the words came out as santo graale.

  “And where and what is that?” Bruno asked very quietly.

  “I cannot say. But somewhere in these hills, they say it is hidden. Has been hidden since the time of the long-haired kings.”

  The other barons looked at each other doubtfully, unsure of the wisdom of mentioning the old dynasty wiped out by the grandfather of Charlemagne. But Bruno cared nothing for the legitimacy or otherwise of the dynasty he had himself wiped out, his attention focused solely on what the baron was saying.

  “Then who holds it, do we know that?”

  “The heretics,” the baron replied. “In these hills, they are everywhere. Not worshipers of Mohammed or Allah, worshipers, it is said, of the devil. The Grail fell into their hands many years ago, so men say, though no-one knows what such a thing may be. We do not know who the heretics are, they could be among us now. They preach, it is said, strange doctrine.”

  The machine behind them crashed again, a rock soared slowly into the air, fell ruinously upon the doorway behind which plumes of black smoke were rising. A hoarse cheer rose from the ranks of the Lanzenorden as they pressed forward to the breach. Their Emperor pulled his longsword free, turned to lead them, Holy Lance held with shield-grip in one brawny fist.

  “Tell me more later,” he shouted over the rising war-cries. “At dinner. Once the rats are dead.”

  Chapter Six

  The Caliph of Cordova, Abd er-Rahman, was troubled in his heart. He sat cross-legged on his favorite carpet in the smallest and most private courtyard of his palace, and allowed his mind to sort carefully through its troubles. Water ran continually from the fountain at his side, soothing his thoughts. In a hundred pots placed seemingly at random around the enclosed court, flowers bloomed. An awning defended him from the direct rays of the sun, already hot in the short Andalusia spring. All around, the word was passed in whispers, and servants fell silent, took their work elsewhere. On bare feet his bodyguards padded gently back into the shaded colonnades, watching but remaining unseen. A mustarib slave-girl of his harem, urgently summoned by his major-domo, began very gently to pluck out a faint tune on her zither, so low as to be almost inaudible, alert for the faintest sign of displeasure. None came, as the Caliph sank deeper and deeper into introspection.

  The news from his traders was bad, he reflected. There was no question but that the Christians had seized every island that could conceivably be used as the base for a fleet: Malta, Sicily, Mallorca, Menorca, the other Balearics, even Formentera, all gone, and behind them—though this was none of his concern—the Greek islands of Crete and Cyprus. His traders reported that all ship movements even along the African shore were now subject to harassment from Christian raiders. It was strange that they had come so quickly, he mused.

  There was a reason, though the Caliph did not know it. For all its size, the Mediterranean is in some ways more like a lake than an open sea. Because of its prevailing winds and the insistent current that pours in from the Atlantic to replace the constant evaporation of the almost land-locked sea, it is far easier in the Mediterranean to sail west to east than east to west; easier too to sail north to south than south to north. The first factor was to the Caliph's advantage, the second to that of his Christian foes. Once the block of the Arab fleets and bases in the north had been removed, the way was easy and open for every Christian village on the Mediterranean islands that could fit out a ship to send it south and try to reclaim their long losses from the traders of Egypt and Tunis, of Spain and Morocco.

  No, thought the Caliph. The interruption of trade vexes me, but it is not the source of my trouble. Spain lacks for nothing. If trade is cut down, some men will become poor, others rich in their place as they supply what we used to buy from the Egyptians. As for the loss of fleets and men, that angers me, but it can be avenged. That is not what perturbs my soul.

  The news from the Franks then? The Caliph had no personal feeling for the brigand strongholds that the new Emperor of the Franks was burning out. They paid him no taxes, contained none of his relatives. Many of them were men who had fled from his justice. Yet there was something there to irritate him, it was true. He could not forget the words of the prophet Muhammad: “O believers, fight against the unbelievers who are nearest to you.” Could it be that he, Abd er-Rahman, had neglected his spiritual duty? Had not moved aggressively enough against the unbelievers on his northern border? Had not come to help of those of Islam who obeyed the Prophet? Abd er-Rahman knew why he had left the northern mountains alone: thin profits, heavy losses, and the removal of what was after all a screen between himself and the Franks the other side of the mountains. Christians, heretics, Jews, all mixed together, easier to tax than to rule, he had thought. Yet maybe he had done wrong.

  No, the Caliph reflected again, this news angered him, and made him think of changing his policy in the future, but there was no danger in it. Leon and Navarre, Galicia and Roussillon and the other tiny kingdoms, they would fall whenever he put out his hand to them. Next year maybe. He must think deeper.

  Could it be the reports passed to him by his Cadi, the mayor and chief justice of the city? There was indeed something in them that disturbed him deeply. For twenty years Cordova had been vexed by one foolish young man, or young woman, after another from the Christian minority. They thrust themselves forward. They abused the Prophet in the marketplace, they came to the Cadi and declared that they had been followers of the Prophet and had now turned to the true God, they tried every trick they could to earn death beneath the executioner's sword. Then their friends revered them as saints
and sold their bones—if the Cadi did not order and supervise total cremation—as holy relics. The Caliph had read the holy books of the Christians and was well aware of the parallel with their account of the death of the prophet Yeshua: how the Rumi Pilate had done his best not to condemn the man before him, but in the end had been provoked into ordering his death. A sorrow for the world that he had not been firmer. And they were at it again, so the Cadi reported, stirring up their Moslem fellow-citizens to fury and creating riots in the city.

  Yet even that was not the heart of the matter, the Caliph thought. His predecessor had seen the cure for that problem. The Christians were quick enough to embrace death for the glory of martyrdom. They were slower to endure public humiliation. The way to deal with them was what Pilate himself had suggested: strip them and flog them in public, using the bastinado. Then send them contemptuously home. It appeased the Moslem mob, it created neither relics nor martyrs. Some took their beatings well, some badly. Few returned for more. The key was not to react to the provocation. A real believer in Islam who became a Christian: such a one must die. Those who merely declared their conversion to gain death, they should be ignored.

  But there was the heart of the matter, the Caliph realized. He shifted uncomfortably on his carpet, and the tinkling of the zither instantly ceased. He settled back again and, very tentatively, the music began once more.

  The core of Islam was the shahada, the profession of faith. He or she who once made it before witnesses was then for ever and irrevocably a Moslem. All that was necessary was to say the words: I testify, that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. La illaha il Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah, muttered the Caliph to himself for perhaps the hundred thousandth time. That witness was ordained by the Prophet himself. It could not be taken back.

  Yet the Prophet, praised be his name, thought the Caliph to himself, had never had to deal with Christians hurling themselves to martyrdom! If he had, maybe he would have made the witness harder! The Caliph caught himself. There indeed was the heart of his trouble. He was on the point of criticizing the Prophet, of accepting change in Islam. He was becoming an unbeliever in his heart.

  He raised a finger, made the gesture of one who unwinds a scroll. Bare minutes later the keeper of his library, the katib Ishaq, stood silently in front of him. The Caliph nodded to a cushion, to indicate that the katib should sit down, crooked a finger for sherbet and dates to be brought.

  “Tell me,” he said after a pause, “tell me of the Mu'tazilites.”

  Ishaq glanced at his master and employer warily, a chill at his heart. What suspicion prompted this question? How much did the Caliph want information, how much did he want reassurance? Information, he guessed. But unwise to neglect the appropriate disclaimers.

  “The Mu'tazilites,” he began, “were fostered by the unworthy followers of Abdullah, enemies of your house. Even in Baghdad, though, seat of the impure ones, they have now fallen into disgrace and been scattered.”

  A slight narrowing of the eyes told Ishaq to proceed more quickly to the information. “The seat of their belief,” he went on, “was that faith should be subordinate, as the Greeks would have it, to reason. And the reason for their disgrace was that they argued that the teachings of the Koran were not eternal, but might be subject to change. Only Allah is eternal, they declared. Therefore the Koran is not.”

  Ishaq hesitated, unsure whether he dared press on. He himself, like so many of the learned of Cordova, sympathized heart and soul with those who offered free inquiry, a breaking of the chains of hadith, tradition. They had learned not to betray their sympathies. Yet he might venture to show the dilemma, as the wise thinkers of the Greeks, the falasifah, might put it.

  “The Caliph will see that the Mu'tazilites provoke a hard choice,” he continued. “For if we agree with them, we agree that the law of the shari'a, the clear path, may be altered. And then where is our clear path? But if we do not agree with them, we must believe that the Koran was there even before it was declared to the Prophet himself. And if we believe that, we take honor from the Prophet for finding it out and declaring it.”

  “What is your view, Ishaq? Speak freely. If I do not like what you say, I will not hear it nor ask you again.”

  The librarian drew a deep breath, sympathizing with that famous vizier of the Caliph Haroun, who said that every time he left the presence, he felt his own head to see if it were still on his shoulders. “I think the Mu'tazilites may have had some kernel of wisdom. The Prophet was a man, who lived and died as one. Some part of what he said was human, some part sent by God. It may be that the parts declared by his own human wisdom are subject to change, as are all the works of man.”

  “But we do not know which is which,” summed up the Caliph. “And so the seed of doubt is sown.”

  Ishaq cast his eyes down, hearing the iron clang of finality, so often followed by the note of death. He had come to the end of toleration once again.

  Outside the quiet courtyard there came a patter of feet, breaking the thin current of the slave-girl's song. The Caliph lifted his eyes, aware that he would not be disturbed save for something he had already indicated. The messenger who stood at the edge of the colonnade came forward, breathing deeply to show his diligence and the speed with which he had raced to his master. He bowed deeply.

  “The deputation sent to the land of the majus has returned,” he announced. “And not alone! They have come with the king of the majus and a fleet of strange ships.”

  “Where?”

  “They have reached the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and are rowing up it in some of their ships, the smallest ones. They row swiftly, almost as swiftly as our horses. They will be here in Cordova in two days' time, in the morning.”

  The Caliph nodded, flicked fingers to his vizier to have the messenger rewarded, murmured orders to have guest-quarters prepared.

  “A king,” he said finally. “A king of the barbarians. It means nothing, but let us take particular care to impress him. Find out what his tastes are: girls, boys, horses, gold, mechanical toys. There is always something the children of the north desire.”

  “I want a good display,” said Shef to his chief advisers. He was crouching awkwardly on the bottom boards of one of Brand's five longships. The seven catapult-mounting two-masters had proved, to the surprise of the Arabs, too deep-keeled to pass far up the river, and had been left behind with full crews and guards. Shef had gone on up river with just the five boats and as many men as could be conveniently fitted into them: just under two hundred all told. He had mixed his crews as well. Twenty men in each ship were Norsemen from their regular crews. The rest had been transferred to the catapult-ships, and replaced by a similar number of crossbowmen, all of them English. The English were taking their turn at rowing, amid much amusement. Nevertheless both sides were well aware of the extra protection the others gave them.

  “How do we do that?” asked Brand. Like the others, he had been secretly shocked by the wealth and luxury visible all around them, and even more by the enormous numbers of people. From what they had been told, the city of Cordova alone contained as many people as the whole of Norway. All the way along the river they could see the roofs of mansions, water-wheels turning, villages and towns stretching out across the plains one after the other as far as the eye could see. “We can dress up, but it'll take more than a silk tunic to impress these people.”

  “Right. We don't try to look rich. They'll always beat us at that. We try to look strange. And frightening. I think we can do that. And it's not just look, right? It's sound…”

  The quayside loungers drew back, muttering, as the Wayman fleet docked and began to unload its men. Shef's orders had been thoroughly digested, and his crews were playing their parts. First the Vikings poured off their boats, every man glittering in freshly-polished and sanded mail. Not a man was under six feet tall, spears bristled from behind the bright-painted shields, long-handled axes rested on shoulders. They had changed their seamen's
goatskin shoes for heavy marching boots, studded with iron. They stamped heavily while Brand and his skippers roared orders in gale-force voices. Slowly they drew into a long line, four deep.

  Another order, and the crossbowmen followed them: less impressive men physically, but more used to moving in unison. They ran to their places and also formed up, each one with his strange instrument sloped over his left shoulder. Shef saw them make their ranks, and then himself walked over the gangplank with careful ceremony. He too wore mail, a gold circlet on his head, as much gold as he could carry glinting from arm-rings and necklet. Brand followed him, with Thorvin and the two other Viking Way-priests who had joined the expedition, Skaldfinn the interpreter, priest of Heimdall, and Hagbarth the seaman, priest of Njörth. The four formed a rank at the head of the procession, immediately behind Shef himself, who walked alone. Behind them, and sheltered as much as possible by the bulk of Brand and Thorvin, walked Hund and his protégée Svandis. Under fierce orders from Shef, she had pulled a veil across her face, and was darting sharp looks from behind it.

  Shef looked at the messenger who had been sent down to meet them, and gestured to him to lead on. As the man, puzzled and unsure at the odd behavior of the ferengis, began to walk away, continually glancing back, Shef gave a final wave. Cwicca, his most loyal companion and life-saver, stepped forward with three of his companions, crossbows slung across their backs. All four blew firmly into the bags of their bagpipes, reached full pressure, and began to march forward, blowing lustily in unison. The loungers fell back even further as the uncanny noise hit them.

  The pipers marched forward behind the guide. Shef and his companions followed them, then the heavy-armed Vikings, their mail clashing, their boots stamping. Then came the crossbowmen, all stepping forward in time, a skill they had practiced on the new, level, hard stone roads of England. Every twenty paces the right-hand man of the front file raised his spear and the hundred Vikings behind him shouted together their approach-to-battle cry, which Shef had first heard rolling towards him from the army of Ivar the Boneless a decade before.