XXXVIII
A letter from Emir Daoud ibn Abdallah to El Malik Baibars al-Bunduqdari, from Orvieto, 13th day of Muharram, 663 A.H.:
O Pillar of the Faith, the gift of the ancient scroll to the Christian scholar Tomasso d'Aquino has served our purposes beyond my expectations. At the same time that I delivered the scroll to him, I arranged for the allies of the Tartars to be deceived into thinking that the priest Tomasso was already in our camp. They chose the arrogant Cardinal de Verceuil, of whom I have told you, to bring his influence to bear on the priest Tomasso. The cardinal's treatment of Tomasso so offended him that he was driven to take the side we wished of him.
This Tomasso has turned the clouds Ugolini and I stirred up into a veritable thunderstorm. The pope cannot proclaim a crusade unless he has the support of the Christian kingdoms and peoples. Otherwise, they will support him only halfheartedly or not at all. I confess I am surprised at how often the Christians of Europe choose to neglect or even refuse to do what the pope demands of them.
As we know, the Christians of today have not the zeal to make war on us that their forefathers had. Let time pass, and Hulagu Khan will lose patience and recall his ambassadors. The Christians will fight among themselves here in Europe. And, if God wills it, Islam will know peace. Such is my deepest desire.
Time, O Malik Dahir, is our ally.
Daoud stood at his writing desk, smiling at the tiny Arabic characters with which he had covered the thin square of parchment.
El Malik Dahir—the victorious king. How well Daoud remembered the day Baibars had, with his help, assumed that title.
Riding back from the victory at the Well of Goliath, the Mameluke army was camped outside Bilbeis, two days' ride northeast of El Kahira. Tomorrow Sultan Qutuz would hold audience at Bilbeis, and soon after he would ride into El Kahira in triumph, a triumph Baibars had earned for him.
Baibars was alone in his tent when Daoud answered his summons. His blue eye glittered out of deep shadows cast on his face by a small oil lamp that hung in the center of the tent. With his own hand Baibars served Daoud kaviyeh from a pot on a brazier, and the two men sat side by side, turned toward each other.
"Again he refused me," Baibars said. "I have given him every chance, Daoud."
Baibars's face was calm, but Daoud knew that the fury of a Tartar was boiling within him.
A reddish haze obscured the tent for Daoud as he fought back his own rage at the injustice to Baibars.
"He thinks I want to be governor of Aleppo merely out of ambition," Baibars said.
"The sultan is a fool," said Daoud.
The single sighted eye transfixed him. "No, not a fool. He played the game of power well enough when he made himself sultan. No one could blame him for the murders of Ai Beg and Spray of Pearls. He restored order to El Kahira. His mistake now is in not trusting me. And that is an understandable mistake." Baibars stretched his thin lips in a sudden grin.
"Understandable how?" Daoud experienced that unsettling sense he often had that the one-eyed emir was always two or three jumps ahead of him.
"It comes of too much cleverness," said Baibars. "He does not believe me when I say I want to be governor of Aleppo because it is the first city Hulagu Khan will attack. He suspects me of a hidden motive. He thinks that if he gives me Aleppo I will break with El Kahira and claim all of Syria for my own, because that is what he would do. But Hulagu Khan, seeking vengeance for the Well of Goliath, is coming from Persia with all his power. May God send to the eternal fire a commander wicked enough to divide the kingdom at such a time."
The kaviyeh Daoud held had cooled. He drained the glazed earthenware cup and put it down beside him.
"The sultan himself divides the kingdom," said Daoud, "by dishonoring you."
"It is more than dishonor. It is war. If he thinks me too dangerous to be ruler of Aleppo, it means that he thinks me too dangerous to live."
Daoud felt as if his heart had dropped into the cold, black bottom of a well. If Qutuz destroyed Baibars, he would destroy Islam and El Kahira and all of them. Daoud's whole world.
"What will you do?" said Daoud.
"I do not know what I will do," said Baibars, fixing his one eye on Daoud. "But you know that if he kills me, he will kill all close to me. What will you do?"
Daoud felt the edge of the headsman's blade on the back of his neck as he had not felt it since that day Qutuz demanded his death. The thought of being executed at Qutuz's command outraged him. It was one thing to die as a mujahid, a martyr in holy war for Islam, destined to be taken at once into paradise. But what a shameful fate, to be murdered because your own sovereign lord did not trust you.
"I am your slave, Effendi."
"Not slave, Daoud. You are as near a son to me as a Mameluke can be. Are you not the husband of my favorite daughter? I speak now with you because I must speak, and in all this camp you are the only one I can rely on absolutely."
Daoud felt tears coming to his eyes. He was embarrassed, even though he knew it was a manly thing to weep easily. For him crying was rare.
Baibars rested a large, strong hand on Daoud's arm.
"Never to know any brothers but our khushdashiya, our barracks mates, never to know any father but the emir who trained and freed us, it makes us the hardest, the finest warriors in the world. But we long for the loving families we never had."
Daoud wiped his face with the sleeve of his robe.
They sat in silence for a long time, while Daoud, stroking his thick blond beard, grappled with what Baibars was asking of him. Asking, not in words, but in the spaces between the words.
Baibars spoke. "Remember what the Tartar general, Ket Bogha, called Qutuz? The murderer of his master. The world belittles us because each sultan has climbed to the throne over the murdered body of the last sultan. Turan Shah, murdered."
He held up his left hand, his sword hand.
"I myself killed Turan Shah because he betrayed the Mamelukes. Next, Ai Beg, murdered. The Sultana Spray of Pearls, murdered. Ali, son of Ai Beg, murdered. Each murder weakens the throne itself."
"The throne is as strong as the man who holds it," said Daoud.
Baibars continued to look at his left hand, his head turned to the side in his one-eyed way. "Even so, Ai Beg did not himself kill Turan Shah and Qutuz did not himself kill Ali. If I kill Qutuz and take the throne with his blood on my hand, I am inviting every other Mameluke emir to kill me when my back is turned. The title of El Malik, the sultan, chief sovereign of Islam, will be like a ball in a game of mall, flying this way and that."
Daoud felt as if he were standing at the mouth of an enormous black cave. It was one thing to know that Qutuz was not fit to rule. It was another thing to think of striking down the sultan, the anointed of God. If Daoud entered this cave, he might never come out again. He might leave it only to fall into the flames of hell. He seemed to see stars in the depths of the cave, as if he were looking into the world beyond the world. Somewhere among those stars, God dwelt in His paradise with those He loved around Him, the Archangel Gabriel, and the Prophet, and Abraham and Jesus, and the saints and martyrs of Islam.
Is it God's will that I kill the sultan? How can I know?
He could not know. But he did know that second only to his submission to God, the most important thing in his life was devotion to his emir. As Baibars said, his khushdashiya and his emir were all a Mameluke had.
He leaned closer to Baibars.
"Whoever dishonors my lord Baibars deserves instant death at the hands of my lord's servant."
Baibars closed both eyes with a look of satisfaction.
"Have I asked you to kill—anyone?" he said.
"No, Effendi."
They sat in silence again. The desert wind hummed in the ropes of Baibars's tent, and the poles shifted and creaked.
"If someone wished to kill Qutuz," said Baibars, "he should recall that we are now very close to El Kahira. Once Qutuz rides on streets festooned with silks and carpeted with flowers, once people see him as the victor of the Well of Goliath, they will love him too much. They would never accept his being taken from them. We could not control their fury."
Daoud said, "Tomorrow, when he holds audience at the palace of the governor of Bilbeis, men from all over the district with requests for favors, with claims, with grievances, will surround him, clamoring. Anyone could easily approach him."
Baibars nodded. "Let him be struck down before the eyes of many. Let it be like a public sacrifice. I would rather see it done so than by poison or ambush." His thin lips curved in a smile. "I seem to recall that you, too, have a preference for taking vengeance in public."
"If the other emirs demand that he who killed the sultan be punished," said Daoud, "you will have to sacrifice your servant."
Baibars's face tightened. "They will not. They will accept what you and I do."
"Nevertheless, if it seems needful to secure your place on the throne, you must give the killer up. You will not have to explain that to me. And you will still be my lord. My father."
"Ah, Daoud," Baibars said. Daoud saw a wetness in both Baibars's eyes now, the sighted and the blind.
Daoud stood beside a spiral pillar near the front of the audience hall of the governor of Bilbeis. It was a small chamber, but an elegant one. The floor was of mottled green marble, and pink columns lined the approach from the front door to the massive gilded throne on its dais.
Merchants and small landholders, officials in red fezzes, Bedouin sheikhs in black robes and burnooses, crowded the hall. Each man held a petition scroll for the sultan.
Daoud carried no petition, but the sleeve of his left arm hid, strapped to his wrist, a scabbard holding a twisting dagger—a flame dagger, the weapon of the Hashishiyya.
He longed for Qutuz to come into the hall, for the dance of death he had rehearsed a thousand times in his mind, to begin.
He had prayed this morning longer and with greater fervor than he had for many years.
When would Qutuz come?
At the doorways and around the edges of the room stood warriors of the halkha, the sultan's bodyguard, their steel helmets and breastplates inlaid with gold, their tunics bright yellow. What would they do when they saw him strike at Qutuz? They were Mamelukes. They had seen Qutuz's fear at the Well of Goliath and his pretensions afterward. But it was their duty to protect him. Daoud could not guess what feelings would move them.
Here and there around the room rose the spherical white turbans of the Mameluke emirs who had been at the Well of Goliath. There was Kalawun, called al-Elfi, the Thousander, because his first master had bought him for the incredible price of a thousand gold dinars, there Bektout, beside a blue-white pillar, another Kipchaq like Baibars. Six or so others talked quietly under the pointed arch of the public entrance to the audience chamber. None of the emirs paid attention to the petitioners who streamed past them into the room.
In the corner of the room farthest from the dais, Baibars stood alone. A head taller than anyone around him, he swung his white-turbaned head from side to side so that he could survey the room with his one good eye. His glance seemed to pass over Daoud without seeing him.
A side door to the throne room from the governor's private apartments swung open, and two officers of the halkha strode through.
One of the officers drew himself up and shouted, "The Beloved of God, the Victor of the Well of Goliath, El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz!"
The buzz of conversation in the room at once stilled, and Daoud's heartbeat filled his ears.
Then a roar arose as Qutuz entered briskly, arrayed in a bejeweled green turban and a black and silver robe of honor. His chamberlain, a stout man carrying a basket, followed him.
The petitioners rushed forward, clamoring and waving their scrolls. The men of the halkha made no attempt to hold them back. A merchant in a blue robe was the first to reach Qutuz, and he hugged the sultan, weeping. He first thrust a small silk bag into Qutuz's hand, which disappeared quickly under the sultan's black robe, then pressed a scroll upon him.
Qutuz handed the scroll to his chamberlain, who put it into the basket.
The petitioners were the people of Islam, and it was their right, as it had been since the days of the Prophet, to clamor for their ruler's attention. And though they might shout and beg and even manhandle the sultan, he must endure it, because these were the richest men of the district, the men of highest rank, those on whom the sultan's power in this place depended.
Qutuz enjoyed, Daoud knew, playing father to his people. And though one might think the Sultan of El Kahira had wealth enough, he was not averse to increasing it with the gifts of gold and jewels offered him on occasions like this.
Qutuz moved slowly through the petitioners, head high, his oiled beard pointed like the prow of a majestic ship. A small, indulgent smile played about his lips. He allowed them to impede his progress to the throne. The petitioners crowded around him, some plucking at his sleeve, some falling at his feet, some pulling at the hem of his robe, even kissing it in their urgency.
Another man, this one a sheikh in desert robes, seized the sultan in an embrace, bellowing his entreaty. This time when Qutuz stopped he disappeared behind a forest of upraised arms.
The babble of voices, each one trying to outshout the other, made Daoud's head ache. Men elbowed those beside them and pushed their hands into one another's faces. Daoud even saw one man claw his way up the backs of two who stood in front of him and climb over their shoulders to get closer to Qutuz.
From his position near the front of the hall Daoud could catch only glimpses of the sultan's green turban from time to time and follow his progress by watching where the turmoil was fiercest. The melee was like one of those towering dust storms that whirl across the desert, and Qutuz was at the center.
When Daoud judged that Qutuz was halfway to the throne, he began to move.
He plunged now into that black cave where God dwelt somewhere in infinite spaces. Doubt and fear he left at the mouth of that cave. He must give all his strength and will to what he was about to do.
He charged into the storm around Qutuz. Though these magistrates and merchants were feeble compared to him, their frenzy and the mere weight of their struggling bodies formed a wall that took all his strength to break through. Each man was so intent upon his own desperate need to reach the sultan that none of them seemed to feel Daoud forcing his way past them.
Qutuz saw him coming. The dark brown eyes met Daoud's, questioning, frowning. A Mameluke emir of Daoud's rank did not usually join a crowd of petitioners. The sultan's arms and hands were full of scrolls. His chamberlain had long since been carried away from him in the crush.
"Oh, Sultan, grant my prayer!" Daoud shouted in a loud voice.
For your death.
Qutuz's jaw clenched, and his eyes widened in the beginning of fear as Daoud bore down on him.
Daoud had reached the center of the storm. Color and movement whirled about him. Shouts deafened him. He forced his mind to blot out the chaos all around and to focus totally on Qutuz. He made himself as oblivious to the shrieking men around him as they were to him.
He threw his arms around the sultan, crushing the satin of his kaftan and his armload of scrolls against his body.
When Daoud's arms came together behind Qutuz's back, his right hand reached into his left sleeve and pulled the dagger from its sheath.
Qutuz's hands pushed against Daoud's chest. So tight was Daoud's embrace that he felt the sultan take a deep breath, to cry for help. They were locked together like lovers.
Daoud stretched out his right arm, and then with all the strength in that arm drove the dagger into the sultan's back. He struck for the center of the back, between two ribs, so that the point would reach and stop Qutuz's heart.
His thrust went true. The strong, lean body jerked violently, then went limp in his arms. Qutuz was a weight against him, sliding downward. Daoud was sure he was already dead, because he did not move or cry out.
Triumph blazed up within him. He had done it. He had killed the sultan.
Daoud let go of the dagger, hilt-deep in Qutuz's back. He stepped backward quickly, pressing himself into the crowd around them. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears and his knees were quivering.
Qutuz toppled toward him as he moved back.
"The sultan falls!" a man next to him screamed.
Hands reached out to catch Qutuz as he fell. Cries of "The sultan has fainted!" "God help us!" "The sultan is hurt!" went up all around Daoud.
He continued to back away through the crowd. If attacked, he had decided, he would draw his saif and fight. If he must die, he desperately wanted to die fighting, not on the headsman's block.
He had not truly believed he could strike Qutuz down without being seen, but no one was yet pointing at him.
"Blood!" someone shrieked. "A dagger!" The shrieks and prayers were deafening.
All the men who had clustered around the fallen sultan backed away. Daoud was carried farther from the dead Qutuz by the crowd. Craning his neck over the heads around him, he could see the body lying sprawled face down on the green marble floor, a spreading bright red stain in the black and silver robes around the dagger's hilt.
The babble of voices was so confused that Daoud could no longer tell what anyone was saying. Mansur ibn Ziri, commander of the halkha, and Anis, master of the hunt, pushed their way through to Qutuz's body, while some men still clutching scrolls ran from the chamber. They must fear even being in the room where the sultan was murdered.
I have killed the sultan.
Though his whole body shook with reaction and his limbs felt weak, his heart was full of joy.
His hand on his sword hilt, Daoud surveyed the large chamber. The Mameluke emirs were looking, not at Qutuz's body, but at one another. And they kept glancing at Daoud.
They had seen Daoud throw his arms around Qutuz. They knew who had killed Qutuz. And they knew why he had done it.
Baibars still stood apart in a far corner. His good eye met Daoud's, but his face was a mask.
As the last of the local men fled the place of death, a silence fell over the room. The Mamelukes were alone with the body of their sultan. The men of the halkha, the sultan they were sworn to protect now dead, looked at the emirs. The only voices now were the murmured words of Mansur and Anis as they bent over Qutuz's body.
With an effort Mansur pulled the dagger from Qutuz's back. Anis grunted when he saw the twisting blade.
Heart hammering, Daoud tensed himself. Would Mansur turn and accuse him? He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him and took gliding steps backward until his shoulders were pressed against a pillar.
Mansur said in a voice that carried through the room, "The flame dagger. Our lord has been struck down by the Hashishiyya."
Daoud almost laughed aloud with relief. With an immense effort he held himself rigid, his fists clenched so tightly at his side they hurt. Mansur was telling everyone who knew what had happened what they were to tell everyone who did not know.
Would anyone contradict Mansur? No one did. Relief spread through him.
Carefully, almost delicately, Mansur laid the dagger on the floor beside Qutuz. He stood up, wiping his hands on his mantle.
With rapid strides the commander of the halkha crossed the chamber toward Baibars. To arrest him? What choice had Mansur made?
To bow deeply before Baibars. He made a graceful, sweeping gesture toward the vacant throne.
"My Lord, the power is yours."
Praise to God!
Baibars's single-eyed gaze paused for an instant, Daoud saw, as it fell upon each of the emirs. In the look he fixed upon each there was both question and challenge.
Some of the emirs bowed their turbaned heads slightly. Others, like Kalawun al-Elfi, simply looked back at him in silence, and that was assent enough.
Baibars raised his right hand toward the vaulted ceiling, the wide sleeve of his robe falling away from his powerful arm.
"With Your help, O God." He did not shout, but his deep voice carried through the room.
Slowly but with a terrible firmness he walked across the room. So quiet was the audience chamber that Daoud at the other end of the room could hear the scrape of Baibars's boots on the three marble steps to the throne. Baibars turned and sat on the throne, resting his hands on its arms. He leaned back a little, and his eye seemed to rest on some spot above and beyond the heads of those who watched him.
Mansur ibn Ziri turned to an officer of the halkha. "Let runners be sent to El Kahira. Let them tell the people, 'Pray for God's mercy on El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz. Pray for the long life of your Sultan Baibars.'"
Let me hail him first, thought Daoud. And if he wants to kill me for what I did, let it be now.
Trembling with exhilaration, he strode through the crowd and up the center of the room toward the throne. "Lord Sultan!" he said in a loud voice, "El Malik Dahir! Victorious King!"
He dropped to his knees and prostrated himself, striking his forehead on the hard, cold floor.
Hearing a knock at his chamber door, Daoud rolled up the slip of thin parchment and dropped it into the purse at his belt.
Sordello entered at his command, greeting and saluting him.
"I see you are one of us, Messer David."
"One of who?"
Sordello pointed to the writing desk where Daoud had been standing and the sheaf of quill pens. "One who had his letters. I write down all my songs."
Daoud had no wish to feel kinship with Sordello. The bravo had not bothered to clean the whiskers from his face for several days, and there was untidy-looking gray stubble, like fur, under his nose and on his cheeks and chin. A man should grow a beard, Daoud thought, or keep his cheeks smooth.
"What brings you to me?" Daoud asked curtly.
"The Count de Gobignon sent a message to me by way of Ana, the Bulgarian woman. Would you care to read it?"
De Gobignon's note read: "The lady Sophia, Cardinal Ugolini's niece, has represented herself to me as an honest woman who knows nothing of politics and takes sides neither for nor against the Tartar alliance. Find out if she is telling the truth. Report to me in three days' time."
Daoud felt pleased with himself. Turning Sordello into a spy for himself was yielding useful results. It was not surprising that the Frenchman was suspicious of Sophia. She was so close to the party opposing the alliance; how could he think otherwise? But now, Daoud thought happily, they had the means to put his suspicions to rest.
Daoud handed the note back to Sordello, saying, "That is short and to the point, but he does not tell you how you are to learn whether Madonna Sophia is telling him the truth or not."
"I could tell him that I have sung at dinner for the cardinal's household," said Sordello. "I could report a conversation at table which shows Madonna Sophia to be the innocent he would like to think she is."
"You keep talking about your songs and your singing," Daoud said. "Answer me truly—are you any good at those things?"
Sordello shrugged. "I could claim to be one of the finest trovatores in all Italy, but if I did, you would rightfully ask why I have to make my living as a hired man-at-arms. So I will say only that I am good enough that I wish I could spend all my time making poetry and singing."
A worthy wish, Daoud thought. Hearing his careful self-estimate, Daoud's respect for the man increased a bit.
"Then you will sing at the cardinal's table. Your suggestion is a good one. I will also arrange for you to be with Madonna Sophia at other times as well, so that you can honestly claim to know something about her."
"Very good, Messer David." Sordello turned to go, then turned back again. "Messere?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think you might send me on another trip to paradise sometime soon?" The eager light in his eyes sickened Daoud.
"Do your work well, and I will see that you are properly rewarded."
Sordello left, and Daoud brooded over his shame at what he had done to the man—turned him into something less than human, less than animal, a kind of demon with a single appetite.
After a moment he forced himself to put that out of his mind. A fighter in jihad, holy war, must do many an ugly thing, but all was for the greater glory of God.