The Crescent and the Cross Page 18

  ‘Will it take us upriver, though?’

  ‘Some of the boards are rotten as a Moor’s soul, but most are still sound. We’ll have to be careful where we tread. The sail looks as though it’s survived well, since it’s been furled all this time, but we’ll not really know until we unfurl it.’

  ‘So will it take us upriver?’ Arnau pressed.

  ‘It will survive in the water, if that’s what you mean, Brother. There’s a bucket here, so we can bail out water if it continues to come in, probably as fast or faster than the leaks resupply it. So yes, it will float. Your big problem is getting upstream.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No oars. Just the sail, and there’s not a lot of wind today. Besides, it’s been the better part of twenty years since I helped my papa sail his boat, so I’ll be a little rusty on how to tack upstream, especially against a current as strong as this one.’

  ‘It sounds like more trouble than it’s worth,’ Calderon said, but Arnau was paying the knight little attention. His ears had instead picked up a new and worrying sound.

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘It should…’

  ‘Listen,’ snapped Arnau.

  Then they all heard it. Hooves pounding. Several horses, and not distant, like those units practicing out across the plain. These were close and getting closer every moment. They were about to be discovered. No, they had already been discovered, he was now sure. He heard shouts in Arabic, an officer ordering his riders to fan out and search the riverbank. Damn it. Had they been seen reaching here and then disappearing? And stupidly, they had been speaking in Aragonese, assuming themselves too far from the cavalry to be heard, but perhaps they had been wrong.

  Whatever the reason, the riders were clearly coming for them, and from the look on Calderon’s face, he knew it too. Arnau waved to Tristán. ‘How do we get her moving?’

  ‘She’s wedged,’ the squire replied. ‘Brute force is the answer.’

  The man leapt back over onto the bank, and the three men dumped their bags into the boat, where they sank into the unpleasant, stagnant pool. Putting their shoulders to the hull, the trio began to heave. Nothing happened. As they paused, panting, the sound of hooves and voices was coming perilously close.

  ‘She’s still caught,’ Tristán hissed, and disappeared towards the stern, where he began to wrench at an old, twisted branch that had penetrated the hull. The log came away with a groan and a crack, and Arnau had forgotten that he and Calderon were still pushing until the boat suddenly lurched and rolled a couple of feet out to the water. It had been far easier than he expected at the last.

  ‘Get in,’ bellowed Tristán, and Arnau realised with a start that the boat was already pulling out into the current. Panicking, he jumped, fingers grasping the timbers. Once again the rotten wood came away in his hands and he fell gracelessly into the boat, landing in a foot of stinking, churned-up water amid their gear. Beside him, Calderon landed with similar clumsiness, almost treading on Arnau’s head as he sputtered and coughed.

  Tristán was last to leap aboard as the leaky wreck angled out into the flow of the Guadalquivir, the two knights pulling themselves upright, staring. A small unit of Moorish cavalry suddenly burst through the undergrowth at the bank of the river, several feet higher than the boat. Orders were bellowed, and men hefted javelins.

  ‘To cover,’ Arnau shouted and dropped down into the brackish water once more.

  Javelins hurtled out across the river, though fortunately the boat had already gained some distance from the bank, for the current of the huge river was every bit as strong and fast as Calderon had intimated, and most of the thrown missiles fell short of the boat. Only one overshot, and three struck. One of those smashed into the mast, which at least appeared sturdy, for the timber held together while the javelin broke and fell away. One crashed down inside, slamming into one of their kit bags, which likely meant the ruination of some of its contents, but at least stopped it piercing the bottom of the boat. The third struck the hull a couple of feet beneath the rotten top strake. It passed with ease through the old wood, and Arnau hurried over and pushed it back out by the tip so that it fell away into the water. The small hole it had created was less than a hand-width above the waterline. Even as Arnau watched, every time the boat lurched, water slopped in through the hole. Still, water continued to wash in through the larger hole the branch had left anyway, so a lesser leak wasn’t much of a worry in the grand scheme.

  ‘Can we get upriver?’

  Tristán shook his head. ‘I seriously doubt it.’

  On the bank, the Moorish cavalry were keeping pace with them now, riding along and shouting, those at the back readying their javelins. ‘Can we steer?’ Arnau shouted back.

  ‘I tried,’ the squire called to him. ‘The rudder appears to have been a casualty of rot. I turned it in the flow and it snapped off.’

  ‘Then we may be in trouble,’ Arnau noted as the boat began to veer towards the bank once more, drawn by the unpredictable currents of the great river. ‘If we get too close to shore or, God forbid, run aground on it, those javelins will end us.’

  Tristán waved to them. ‘Untie those ropes.’

  ‘These?’ Arnau asked, pointing to a cleat with a knotted rope.

  ‘Yes.’

  Arnau, uncertain what anything did on a boat, did as he was told, while Calderon got to work on the one at the far side. The knots had been tied for so long that undoing them was a work of severe effort, but finally, with numb fingers, the knot gave. The moment the tension in the knot was loosened, the rope whizzed through his fingers, burning them, as the sail dropped from the spar and immediately filled with the paltry breeze. Something similar must have happened to Calderon, judging by a cry formed of both pain and alarm.

  ‘Now tie it off. There,’ Tristán called, pointing, as he lifted what looked like a rotten plank from the bottom of the boat.

  Arnau did as he was told again, and then looked up. They were still heading closer and closer to the bank, but the sail had doubled the speed that the current alone had given them, and they were racing ahead of the cavalry now. ‘Well done, man,’ he shouted to the squire, who grinned.

  ‘You’ve seen nothing yet, Brother.’ With that, Tristán wedged his plank against another cleat on the ship’s top strake and dropped it down into the water, angling it out. Arnau wondered what he was doing for a moment, but very gradually the boat’s course began to change. The plank was not wide enough to work like a proper rudder, but it was just broad enough that it made a slight difference, countering the current that was drawing them towards the bank. Moments later they were angling back out into the river slowly, a degree at a time.

  Arnau laughed at the furious shouting from the cavalry on the bank, who were dropping further and further back and out of missile range. A minute longer and they had turned away from the river, riding inland, and were gone.

  ‘Well that was Manus Dei at work for sure,’ Arnau breathed, gesturing to the knight of Calatrava. ‘See how the angels still watch over you, Brother Calderon? God’s plan is ineffable, but saints alive it is glorious to watch unfold.’

  Calderon simply nodded slightly, his face twisting at the revival of an inner struggle he had pushed aside with the urgency of their situation.

  They raced along in the centre of the river. The warmth of the morning was already rising, the sun nearly two hours up now. At Tristán’s urging, Arnau took the bucket and began to bail out the unpleasant water that filled the bottom of the boat. After some time, his arms tired and Calderon took a turn. Though water continued to come in periodically through the two holes in the hull, the speed with which they removed it by bucket meant that slowly the water level went down until there was just a low puddle. Calderon lifted their bags and put them on a raised bench to dry a little, while the squire continued to grunt and sweat, using brute strength and a cleat for a fulcrum to keep the makeshift rudder in the water and keep them on course.

  They remembered the form of th
e river with dismay as they rounded the last great curve of that U to see the walls of Cordoba ahead, and noted the cavalry who had broken off the pursuit waiting on the shore ahead. They had ridden across the U while the boat had gone round and now waited to catch them.

  ‘Are we in range?’ Arnau asked tensely.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ Tristán hissed, bending all his effort to moving them slightly further out. Arnau watched, tense, as they closed. Horsemen pulled back their arms and as the boat came close, cast the javelins at their officer’s order. The missiles arced out, and to Arnau’s immense relief fell uniformly short of the hull. The officer started to shout angrily, taking out his frustration on his men as the boat sailed past them once more.

  They closed on Cordoba and swept past that mill where labourers staggered around under their burdens, the great wooden wheel turning with ponderous grace. The pursuing cavalry once more raced along in their wake, but they were already being left behind simply with the boat’s speed, long before they became embroiled in the chaos of the watermill’s workforce and supply stacks. By the time the boat was racing on past Cordoba, the riders had been lost once more behind them.

  New dangers awaited, though, for here and there other boats plied the river, and Arnau and Calderon were forced to devote all their attention to any task the squire set them to, as he expertly dipped his makeshift oar this side or that, calmly and gradually angling them this way or that out of the path of other craft. As they drifted towards that heavy bridge, Arnau worried seriously that they would end their days as kindling and meat wrapped around one of the piers, and even with Tristán’s skill, they only just made it into one of the archways, the plank simply not wide enough to do more than angle them slightly one way or the other.

  Their relief as they burst from the downstream side of the bridge was short-lived. The squire immediately had them changing the sail’s angle once more as he cut the current with his plank, for the line of five mills now sat across the river, one by each bank and the other three on islands spaced evenly across the flow. With expert guidance and mere feet to spare, they raced past the central mill, close enough that the boat was sprayed with water from the turning wheel.

  Then they were past.

  The walls of Cordoba receded on their right as the city slid into the distance. Still they sailed on, drawn by the strong current, and it was only when they were several miles downstream and far out of sight of the city that Tristán finally gradually brought them closer and closer to the north bank through the combination of his plank-oar and the sail. Finally, with a jolt and a sickening lurch, they slammed into undergrowth on the bank and the boat groaned and held fast.

  Arnau was the first to leap ashore and look about. Nothing but scrubland and the occasional farm. Perfect. He gestured for the other two to follow. ‘I think that for our deliverance we must devote a lengthy prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord, as well as a second more direct one to our young sailor here.’

  Tristán snorted. ‘Save the prayers until we are away from Al-Andalus. Let’s get going. It’s a long way home.’

  12. Flight

  14 July 1212

  Arnau glanced back along the valley. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine seeing all the way back to Cordoba, a city that would live on in his memory until, God willing, he saw it again with a cross being raised over its heart. Worse now lay ahead, and he paused to take it all in.

  The journey had been slow, nerve-wracking, and fraught. Leaving the river, they had asked God’s forgiveness for the crime they must commit, and then stolen three horses from a poor farm, sneaking them away and walking them half a mile from the place before they dared mount up and ride. Barely had they made it to the relative shelter of an olive grove before they saw the farmer and his labourers rushing around, shouting angrily and searching for signs of horses. They slipped away into the grove before anyone below could spot them.

  The first sign of potential pursuit had not taken long. They had still been in sight of the great city when Calderon stopped them and gestured to a small stand of trees just off the minor road they were using. In the obfuscating shade, they had watched a pair of riders racing along another track that intersected their own less than a mile from where they stood.

  ‘They could be going anywhere,’ Arnau had said, hopefully.

  ‘They are messengers,’ Calderon had replied, ‘and they are heading neither south-west to the capital, nor north-east to where your pass is defended. They are heading to one of the lesser routes into the Sierra. They carry an urgent warning. I fear we are being watched for now.’ The three men had waited until the riders were out of sight and then set off once more.

  They had pressed north towards the Sierra Morena, watchful at all times, and had then turned east and moved through the foothills, keeping far from the main road now, and from any sign of civilization. The occasional sporadic glimpses they caught showed military units marching in the same direction, which boded poorly and, just to add to their tension, occasional messengers riding at high speed. Calderon had known of two other passes through the mountains in addition to the one they had encountered on their journey south and the one they’d seen the riders make for, one of which was still relatively close to Cordoba, and so they had made for that initially.

  Their spirits had sunk as they made their way into the mouth of the valley only to realise that the caliph’s army had closed every door to the north. The messengers had clearly been thorough. This pass was sealed with a wall of steel and blades, and there was no hope of three fugitives making their way through that maw to safety.

  Three days of travel, moving carefully through the foothills and camping in isolated spots without fires each night, had brought them to the second pass, only to discover that the same issue faced them there. Indeed, as that third day progressed, they had been forced to move ever more carefully, for the countryside thereabouts had been dotted with patrols and enemy units on the move even far from the road. That patrols might be searching the countryside close to the road suggested they were looking for something rather than being a standard military precaution, and it was hard not to fear that they were that something.

  Once they had encountered that second blocked pass and knew that the only hope was to retread their earlier steps, a new decision had been made. The foothills of the Sierra Morena were increasingly busy with Almohad soldiers, and the small party’s progress was slowing continually. Calderon had reasoned that the units moving north-east along that arterial road were gradually dispersing into garrisons or patrols along the sierra, and that the closer they came to the north and its Christian forces, the denser the enemy’s presence would become. However, south of the road was away from the war zone and therefore should be easier for them to traverse without encounters. Moreover, if anyone was looking for them, they would be concentrating on the way back to Christian lands, not further south into Al-Andalus.

  Abandoning the pass and the mountain range entirely, they had waited until dusk that day and then turned south. Approaching the great river which they now had to cross, they had watched the powerful, fortified walls of a Moorish city on a spur that sat in a loop of the river and waited. Not long after the last glow of gold sunlight slid behind the hills, the call to prayer had begun to ring out from the towers of the city. They had waited until the call began to fade to a close and then moved, making their way down the slope towards an ancient bridge that arced across the flow and into the city.

  Keeping their faces down, Tristán hidden behind turban and veil, they crossed that bridge alone, the bulk of the populace now heading to mosques or preparing for the evening prayer in whatever space they had. Reaching the city side unmolested, they had skirted the southern edge and then hurried off south, moving quickly away from the urban mass.

  Disaster had almost befallen them as they soon stumbled across an encampment of Almohad infantry, but they were still far enough inside Almohad lands that the soldiers were relatively careless and their sentries were
few and close to the camp. The three men had quietly, unobtrusively, backed away from the sight, and once they were hidden from view, turned back west again, giving the encampment a very wide berth before turning south once more.

  A mile from the city they found the main road and crossed it in the dark without bumping into anyone. They continued until they were three miles south of the road and then made camp for the night.

  Rising the next morning, groggy from days of interrupted sleep with periodic watches, the three men had turned east once more, riding parallel with the road. Once again their going was slow, though not quite as ponderous as it had been in the foothills of the sierra, avoiding enemy patrols constantly. At least to the south of the road, the terrain was relatively flat and there were few signs of life other than local hovels and farms. Still, on occasion, they could see riders racing back and forth. Were they still being sought? Arnau was torn. On the one hand, it seemed unlikely with everything that was happening in the region that the caliph’s army would place such a high emphasis on three men fleeing their lands. On the other hand, their true purpose in Cordoba was not known to the Almohads, and given that they had made off with a prized captive, they would be assumed to be spies, returning to their own lands with important intelligence, which was, however accidentally, more or less true now.

  A day and a half ago, Arnau had begun to recognise places from their journey south. One particular town, nestled in a dip between low undulating hills covered with regular, ordered lines of olive trees like some vast arboreal army, he realised lay at the mouth of the valley that led to the pass they needed. Here, seemingly half a lifetime ago, Yusuf had guided them westwards.