“You speak well, Kerbouchard. Did you learn that on those bleak northern moors?”
We were walking slowly through the shadows, away from the crowd, away from the music. There was a dim, unlighted court ahead of us, and through the open gate to that court I could see the lights of the house.
Two chinar trees leaned their great trunks close above the path, and there were rose bushes beside them. Valaba started to go ahead of me when I heard a sound, a faint chink of metal as a blade brushes against twigs!
Catching Valaba’s arm, I whirled her to one side, and my dagger came from its sheath as men closed around me.
My life was saved because I did not hesitate or step back as expected. It was ever my way to go toward an enemy, and I went now.
He stepped from behind a bush and held a sword in his hand.
23
He held his point low. When he saw me moving toward him, his blade came up, but he moved too slowly, and I was already past the point. Before he could step back, I had put my dagger into his belly. ‘
Turning sharply around, I faced three men with drawn swords.
Valaba screamed, and one of them turned toward her, another swore at him. Outside the garden there were running feet, and the three men moved to kill me.
These were hired assassins, and neither honor nor glory lay in a victory over them, nor could I defeat them in any way except by surviving.
Valaba was at the gate, but they would not dare harm such as she. She was safe enough. Feinting a lunge that brought them up short, blades up, I spun around quickly, put my blade between my teeth, jumped, and grasped the top of the wall. With a quick motion I swung my legs over the wall and dropped on the far side. Behind me I heard Haroun and his guards surrounding the garden, but there was nothing further to be gained here. I left the garden and, by a roundabout route, hastened to my quarters.
On the bed lay a message with but a single word in Persian. Come.
Safia was waiting, but if she noticed my handsome clothing, she gave no indication. Gesturing to some clothing on a bench, she said, “Change into that. You must disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“You must not return to your quarters. Whatever you have there will be packaged and sent to the library.” She indicated a small pile of gold coins. “Take that. You must go to a place I will designate, and remain there until I call you.”
“The time is near?”
“You were attacked tonight, were you not?”
“You knew?”
“They were not enemies of yours, but of mine.”
When I dressed I resembled one of the many footloose mercenary soldiers ready to sell their services to any cause. Beside the armor was a sword. As I picked it up, my blood surged with excitement. What a blade! The balance was beautiful, the feel of it—I ached for combat.
The room was small with one door and a window that opened upon a wall that ran for some distance between a double row of trees, shaded and crossed by their branches, creating a leafy tunnel, concealed from both sides. The wall ended at an aqueduct near a street.
Safia’s planning astonished me. The section where I now waited was shabby, inhabited by mercenary soldiers, camp followers. The street near the aqueduct was where our horses were stabled and waiting. Not far from it was a small postern gate.
Days passed, but there was an ample supply of food; an olla suspended from a ceiling beam contained water. There were books, also.
I made but one friend. Khatib was a sly man with quick hands and a quicker brain. No longer young, there was little he did not know of the ways of the beggar or the trickster. Squatting on his heels by the doorstep, he regaled me with news from the streets, as well as about our neighbors.
He had a face of old leather, and an odd way of peering from the corners of his eyes as if to gauge the effect of his comments. He seemed to like me, and I liked him, but I dared trust no one.
My identity was that of a Frankish soldier and former pirate, something I was qualified to carry off, for aside from my brief experience, I had countless tales from my father and his crew.
From Khatib I learned tricks of the hand and juggling, for he had once traveled with a company of tumblers and jugglers, some of whom were thieves. My reading was done only at night and behind closed doors. To be able to read marked a man, and there is always gossip.
It was at this time that I read The Ring of the Dove, by a young Spaniard of Moorish extraction who devoted his time to an exploration of amorous play and its accompanying phenomena. It struck me as an intriguing area for study.
Khatib was another sort of book, one I never tired of reading. Within that cunning, fertile, amoral mind lay all the devious tricks and devices men have learned over thousands of years, or so it seemed. He also possessed qualities of dignity and loyalty that would have been a lesson to any Christian or Moslem.
With Khatib I often went to a room in an ancient ruin where tumblers and jugglers gathered to practice their arts or to acquire new tricks. Ever athletic and handling my body with ease, I took part in their training, to learn their somersaults, flips, and cartwheels. Some of these I had learned as a boy from others of my age, but now I became an adept.
Nearby was the Street of the Booksellers where over one hundred dealers gathered along one street. They had been established there since the time of the Abbasids. Al-Ya’qubi states that in his time, about 891 in the Christian calendar, these shops were already here. Many of the keepers of the shops were letter writers for pay, authors of books, and literati of various sorts. The shops not only were where books were sold but were centers of intellectual discussion.
Several times I bought copies of ancient manuscripts, smuggling them to my room under my robes. One of these was from the private collection of the great Egyptian physician Imhotep, and it concerned treatments for diseases of the eyes, the skin, and the extremities.
Around the bookshops I never tired of loitering, listening to discussions, examining Egyptian papyruses, Chinese paper, scrolls, or parchment. Córdoba manufactured its own paper and had its own printers.
Chinese prisoners had, in 751, introduced into the far-off city of Samarkand, the art of making paper from rags or linen, flax or hemp. A paper mill was established in Baghdad in 794, and paper replaced parchment in all government offices. By the tenth century paper was readily available in the Moslem world, and with the advent of paper, books became plentiful.
Idling along the streets of the bazaar, I talked with the weavers and their masters, fascinated by their skills. By their feeding, the peculiar worms who spin the silk a variety of shades had been created. White cocoons came from white mulberry leaves, but if the worms were fed the dwarf mulberry, the cocoons were of yellow, and fawn cocoons came when the worms were fed from the castor bean plant. These secrets were known to few outside the trade, and not to all who worked with silk. The Arabs, who were master weavers, experimented with many kinds of leaves, and it was whispered to me that one had devised a silk that would poison the wearer because the leaves fed to the worms were poisonous to humans but not to them.
This silk was extremely rare, and robes or drawers were sold only to a few secret customers. Robes were rarely made of this material, as it was most effective when in contact with the skin. Often the buyers were women of the harem who wished to do away with some rival, or the sons of kings, eager for power.
Drawers, shirts, or turbans were the garments most often made of this material where the poison was made more effective by the body’s heat. The wearer would die, often in a fit of madness, but with no indication of poisoning. One Arab was reported to be feeding his worms a special formula made from leaves of the Indian trumpet vine so the worms would produce a scarlet silk. This was, however, only a rumor.
Fine dyes were available, the best red coming from an insect associated with oak trees, an insect called kennes by the Arabs.
Restlessness sat heavily upon me, yet I could not be long absent from my quarters, for when Safia needed me, it would be suddenly and desperately. She had provided food, shelter, and clothing when needed, and more than that, if anyone could discover where my father now was, it would be she. That she was in mortal danger, I knew.