The Crescent and the Cross Read online

  When they had prepared to move, still in the darkness of early morning, Arnau had felt groggy. He’d taken the middle watch and suffered for it, just two snatches of brief sleep being split by his watch, but given Calderon’s recent state of mind and Tristán’s relative inexperience, Arnau had elected to take the worse stint of the three.

  Then, while it was still dark, they had begun to move. The timing was specific, and Calderon had allowed them less than an hour to prepare. Firstly, they had moved through those same back alleys, looking for items of washing hanging out to dry. Though few folk left it hanging overnight, the sultry July air maintained perfect drying weather even at night, and the Moors were more fastidious with the cleanliness of their clothes than Christians, as Arnau had often noted, even the poor. And it was the poor they were looking for, after all.

  It had taken almost half an hour for them to locate the few garments they needed, and then they had found a secluded alley in which to change. By the time they emerged, they should have been indistinguishable from the ordinary folk of the city. As long as no one pulled back Tristán’s veil or asked him a question, anyway. They had stuffed all their gear into the kit bags and then moved on, heading for Calderon’s next port of call.

  In the days of the emir Abd al-Rahman the Third, some two and a half centuries ago, Cordoba had been the centre of the Moorish world, and had been supplied with great buildings, including an aqueduct and, in case of years of poor harvest, a profusion of grain stores. After all, in a place with four thousand markets and five thousand mills, grain had been a commodity that had moved through the city with the speed and volume of the water in the river that drove those mills. Of course, Cordoba had waned since those days, but it remained a city primarily of grain and flour.

  The grain stores were each cavernous affairs, silos constructed underground for its preservative effects. Each had a doorway above ground and a small structure over the top, the door locked to prevent unauthorised access. It mattered not. For what Calderon had planned, they did not need to access the place.

  This particular silo sat in a small square opposite a fountain and close to a hammam, one of the many public bathhouses in the city, but at this time of the morning, the square remained deserted. The three men strode from their alley, keeping their gazes locked carefully on their destination, for men looking around for trouble would draw attention as suspicious. Across the square, they disappeared into the side alley next to the grain store’s door, and as soon as they were out of sight of the square, they began to search the ground. It did not take long to confirm what Calderon had expected to find. The workers who dealt with the grain would occasionally abandon used grain sacks in the alleyway behind the store. They were not good sacks, for they were the ones with tears or with weaknesses or loose ties, but it mattered not to the three fugitives. They did not need them for grain.

  Selecting the three best examples, they hurried on away from that area and into the maze of alleys again, moving swiftly until they were deep within the city once more. There, they unpacked their recognisable travel kit bags. Tristán’s sword just fit in his grain sack – unsheathed, at least – and he stuffed all his spare kit around it, bulking it out so that the bag bulged as if full of grain. Arnau was quite impressed at the effect, and somewhat dismayed to discover that his own sword was several inches too long for the same trick. He tried it anyway, but however he struggled and depending upon the way he packed it, either the pommel or the point stuck out from the sack’s open end too much to get away with. He packed the rest of his gear in the bag, including his misericorde dagger, and nodded in satisfaction at how much his remaining worldly goods now resembled a sack of grain.

  He was trying to find the best way to hide his sword beneath his robes when Calderon shook his head. ‘You cannot. You and I will have to leave our swords. They are too obvious under scrutiny, and you cannot carry a heavy sack with a blade like that hidden about your person. If you have ever seen peasants carrying grain sacks, they are invariably bent double beneath the weight and a man bent like that cannot secrete a sword.’

  Arnau started to argue, but the problem was that the man was right. If they hoped to sneak out of the city, they could not endanger their disguise simply because he did not want to part with his sword. After all, if it came down to fighting their way out of Cordoba then they were dead men anyway. By the time Calderon’s hour was nearly up, they were back in a very familiar place peering out of an alleyway at a tower beside a postern gate in the city walls.

  ‘I hope this works. You’re sure about your facts?’

  Calderon nodded. ‘I have seen the place often enough. Just do nothing to make yourself stand out.’

  His timing was impeccable. They had waited but ten minutes in that alleyway before the first group moved past just as the dawn light began to insist itself upon them. Half a dozen drab peasants and slaves following a pompous-looking low official, each bearing a heavy grain sack over his shoulder. They approached the postern gate, where the official exchanged a few short words with the guards, who promptly opened the gate and ushered them through. Arnau watched the small group leave the city with a growing sense of anticipation. It looked simple enough.

  He was ready to move when the next group appeared in the street, but Calderon held up a hand to restrain him. ‘Let the guards get bored and complacent. This will go on for almost two hours yet as crews bring grain from stores all over Al-Sarquiyya.’

  They watched more of the small groups of grunting, miserable-looking wretches carrying the grain sacks, and Arnau noted that some groups were larger than others, carrying more grain. More than half an hour passed, the light growing constantly as four more groups passed, and Arnau could feel his skin prickle with tension at each passing minute. Calderon seemed confident in his plan, but every moment they waited brought better light and busier streets, and for Arnau’s money they would have been better moving out while it was still dark enough to help cover any flaws in their disguise. Calderon was still unstable, Arnau was sure. Was he thinking straight enough to be trusted with this?

  Finally Calderon nudged him, making him jump, and pointed up the street. Two crews of labourers had emerged onto the street at the same time, the officials leading each group conversing with one another and paying little attention to the peasants that followed them.

  They braced themselves. As the two yammering officials passed them, the three men shouldered their burdens and paused, then neatly stepped out of the alley as the last men passed and fell in at the end of the line. They stumped along at the centre of the road, and raised hardly a glance from the other labourers, whom would each assume that these men belonged to the other crew.

  The Templar was beginning to sweat uncontrollably, his clothes clinging to his skin. It would be easy to attribute it to the rising morning heat of Al-Andalus, or to the heavy grain sack on his back, or even to both, but he knew how much of it was sheer nerves. Racing into the peril of battle with a sword in the hand required a certain stoic bravery, and he had that quality. Sneaking around like this required an entirely different type of nerve, as he’d learned on Mayûrqa, and he struggled with that.

  He tried not to breathe heavily, nor to appear tense, as they closed on the postern gate. They had to look dejected and uninteresting, just like the others. He wished there was some way to control the fear-sweat and settled for keeping his face down and as out of sight as possible, which worked well with his bent posture and ostensible caste as a peasant. As the officials leading the two groups reached the gate, which now remained open, though under guard, the entire group slowed and jostled into a more singular line. Arnau and his friends used the reorganisation to position themselves together but with four people behind them. It was likely that the guards would at least glance at the back of the mob as they returned to guarding the gate, and so it would be better if that rearguard did not consist of the three fugitives.

  Someone behind Arnau whispered something that he couldn’t quite hear and a
s he listened, there came no answer. The hiss came again and fingers tugged at the back of his tunic. Arnau felt fear explode inside him. What was the peasant doing? He was the only one in the whole column talking, and he was talking to Arnau, for the love of Holy Christ! The hiss came a third time, and Arnau, sweating and beginning to tremble, dared not turn, but the fact was that the peasant had such a thick accent from some distant southern region that even with a good grasp of Arabic, Arnau had no idea what he was saying. One of the guards had started looking towards the back of the queue, presumably drawn by the hissing. Arnau’s mind raced. Was it a question? A warning? A joke? He dared not laugh in case it was wrong, and he couldn’t answer a question he couldn’t understand, but staying silent was just prompting the man behind to tug on his clothes and repeat himself. Panic rising, he kept his head down and settled for slightly turning his head and issuing a non-committal grunt. It seemed to have the desired effect, as the man stopped his whispering and left him alone. Relief came in a surge, but he quickly squashed it down, for they were far from out of danger yet.

  If Arnau had thought entering the city through that heavy gate in the western wall had been nerve-wracking, then this was an entirely new experience. Upon their arrival they had risked discovery, but at least no one in the city had been expecting them. Now, they had killed three of the city’s guards, had been identified to the authorities by Farraj’s sons, and had evaded at least three search parties. Arnau had rarely felt anywhere near this tense.

  The queue moved forwards with agonizing slowness, filtering into single file to exit the small gate, and every slightest noise or movement from the man behind sent fresh waves of fear through Arnau that he might suddenly draw attention to them again. As they approached the guards, Arnau made sure to keep his face down and struggle along just like the others. The guards were paying the workers no attention, chatting among themselves, and Arnau had passed into the shadow of the gate when he heard a shout from an official-sounding voice. His pulse began to race and he panicked, his gaze slipping round. What had that damned peasant done now?

  One of the men at the rear had trodden on a guard’s foot as he filtered into the line, and the guard was now bellowing at him, pounding the peasant’s shoulder with a fist as he passed. Arnau snapped his gaze forwards again, relief flooding through him. What he’d feared was a disaster in the offing had turned out instead to be a godsend, for now all the guards’ attention was on the peasant, who had dropped his sack, spilling the grain out on the ground as he cried out and begged for mercy under a rain of blows. The rest of the line, wanting to be far from the scene, pushed on through the gate, and Arnau joined Calderon and Tristán once more in the open ground before the walls.

  As the gathering of labourers milled about uncertainly, the two officials leading the groups pushed back past them, cursing and grumbling, hurrying to resolve whatever issue was occurring. Arnau looked around. He could see the city’s riverside walls marching off in a curve to his right, and downstream, a huge, ancient bridge spanning the river, some half-mile distant. Small mills nestled along the riverbank all the way, and a line of impressive, large water mills stood across the river beyond that bridge like graceful stone sentinels. To his left, the river bent away south, the walls marching inland and turning north little more than two hundred paces away.

  A heavy, squat mill sat directly in front of them, an extra channel separated from the river running beneath a great timber wheel which turned with the inevitability of time. Men bustled about the mill and all across the banks nearby, and the entire area was a confused mass of men, sacks and dust. Hoping their departure wouldn’t be noted by their companions, who were more intent on what was happening in the gate, Arnau, Tristán and Calderon began to walk quietly and unobtrusively away from the group. As long as they were gone before the officials got back, they should be fine.

  Heaving in breaths and willing the gathered workers not to pay attention to them, Arnau and his friends walked away from the river, following a low line of scrub bushes that ran parallel with the city walls. No one seemed inclined to stop them, and they began to breathe a little easier as they moved further and further from view at the mill and the postern gate.

  Finally, they reached a point where the scrub bushes ended, a lone ash tree marking the end, and as the three men gathered under its shade, Tristán looked north along with the others and, with a single word, expressed their mutual feelings.

  ‘Ballocks.’

  The plain that lay beyond the great city’s eastern wall was fraught with men and horses. A gathering of tents sat close to the large gate they could see, and cavalry units raced around the countryside, practicing. They had stumbled upon a temporary military encampment.

  ‘There’s no way we’ll get across there,’ the squire said, somewhat unnecessarily.

  ‘I didn’t see them as we arrived yesterday,’ Arnau spat.

  ‘But we circled around to the north, as Yusuf led us to the western gate. We were far enough away not to have seen all this. Do you think they’ll move on? It looks temporary, and they’re probably heading for the pass like the other units we’ve seen.’

  Arnau shook his head. ‘They’ll move on, for certain, but it might not be for days. We can’t afford to wait for them.’

  ‘Can we skirt round them?’

  Arnau shrugged and looked back at Calderon. ‘Clearly walking back along the walls is out, and we can’t go north through that lot. What do you say?’

  The knight drummed his fingers on his hip. ‘The river curves away to the south, but it comes back up a little close to those cavalry for my liking. You can see it from here, visible as a treeline beyond them. We can follow the river, and I don’t think we have any other option, really, but we will likely be within sight of them at some point unless we can stay low at the bank.’

  ‘Better than trying to walk through the middle of them,’ Arnau said. ‘Come on.’

  Angling south-west, they made for the north bank of the great river which here formed a massive U bulging to the south. They were some distance now from all the activity at the mill, but still they were careful to be as unobtrusive as possible. They followed the great curved river for almost an hour, constantly turning, slowly heading first west, and then north. More than two miles, Arnau reckoned, but never far enough to lose sight of the powerful walls of Cordoba or the tell-tale clouds of dust raised by numerous horses exercising.

  After a while Arnau had raised the possibility of swimming the river, though he had to admit he didn’t much like the idea. Calderon had squashed the notion instantly. ‘She might look peaceful, but the Wadi Al-Kabir is a slayer of men. Even at her narrowest here she is one hundred paces across. She is the deepest and fastest river in Al-Andalus and pulls men along to their death. No, we will not swim the river.’

  And so they had begun once more to close on the cavalry training close to that temporary camp as they rounded the U and came north once more. Arnau felt the tension beginning to rise again. They had, against all his expectations, managed to get out of Cordoba, and he felt comfortable that once they were off in the countryside they could at least wend their way back to the Sierra Morena without too much difficulty. He had not counted on being trapped close to the city, though. Would they be able to bare-face their way past the enemy? Surely the Moorish horsemen would not take any interest in three peasants carrying sacks along the riverbank?

  ‘Do you see what I see?’ Calderon breathed.

  Arnau squinted along the river and it took him a moment, but see it he did. A boat. His heart began to beat faster again. ‘Is it serviceable?’

  Tristán gestured at it. ‘The sail looks in reasonable condition, though when you get it up it could be full of holes, I suppose.’

  ‘Whatever, it’s low down and deserted. We can get to it without attracting too much attention, and it certainly beats strolling through the middle of enemy cavalry training.’

  The three men began to descend the riverbank, trying to keep o
ut of sight of the wheeling cavalry units racing across the dusty plain nearby, and Arnau felt his convictions began to falter a little as they neared the boat.

  It was a Moorish construction, though not dissimilar to the vessels used by many Christian fishermen along the coast. Small enough that three men could readily crew it, it could be propelled by either oar or triangular lateen sail. This particular vessel, however, had very much seen better days. As they closed and Arnau ran an inexpert eye across it, he formed the very definite opinion that it had been run aground and deliberately abandoned.

  ‘I fear it has been holed.’

  Calderon nodded as they descended towards it. ‘I agree.’ There was a foot of brackish water sitting in the bottom of the small vessel, which did not fill Arnau with confidence. ‘But,’ Calderon continued, ‘if you compare the water level outside the boat to that inside, they are different. It may have let in water, but if it was badly holed there would be four feet of water inside, and not one.’

  Arnau looked unconvinced. They reached the boat and the Templar reached out and gripped the edge, ready to climb in. The timber came away rotten in his hand. ‘This thing is useless.’

  ‘Too useless to sail in?’ Calderon asked.

  Arnau frowned, unsure whether it was said sarcastically, or rhetorically. ‘Why, do you think it will work?’

  Calderon shrugged. ‘I have no idea. I do not know one end of a boat from the other. I thought you did?’

  Arnau shook his head. ‘Never sailed a boat in my life.’

  ‘But you’re from the Catalan coast.’

  ‘I was born near the Pyrenees but I’ve never climbed a mountain either.’

  The two men stared at each other.

  ‘I, on the other hand,’ Tristán snapped, ‘was brought up in a fishing village near San Sebastiano. Get out of the way, Brother.’

  Arnau stepped aside as the squire vaulted over the edge, landing in the water in the boat with a splash. He began to look around. After a few minutes he looked up. ‘It’s been holed. A branch went through the hull, by the looks of it, but it’s a small hole and reasonably high up. That’s why it hasn’t filled.’