Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Volkmar scratched his clean-shaven chin and said slowly, “The truce agreed upon last year runs beyond the end of the century. I would suppose …”

“Do you think a truce can be observed that long?” the Mameluke persisted.

“Yes, I rather do. After all, both you and we gain real advantage from having Acre available to ships …”

“Agreed!” the Mameluke replied whole-heartedly. “You and I know that we ought to prolong the truce. Between us there’s no trouble. But we’ve been told by the Genoese … I heard it myself in Cairo from a sea captain’s lips … Your Pope is preaching a new Crusade.”

“Yes,” Volkmar said disgustedly. “Back there they don’t understand …”

“And if ten shiploads of knights eager for battle …”

The two leaders looked glumly down at the waters of Galilee, now red, now green, and a younger Mameluke broke the silence by observing, “I doubt the truce can last ten years.”

“I doubt it, too,” Volkmar concurred gloomily.

In the morning the old castle sounded as it must have in days past, for men were shouting on the battlements, and all came out to see the first camels of Muzaffar’s caravan picking their way along the mountain road. There was cheering, for his arrival meant that the garrison would have fresh food, and the gates were thrown open to admit the seventy-odd beasts and their armed attendants. True to his word Muzaffar appeared on a fine horse, from which he dismounted as if he were a young man. Moving easily across the stones in his long robes he saluted the garrison commander, then embraced Volkmar and kissed his son.

He had a dozen bits of news. He, too, had heard that a new Crusade was being preached in Europe. “Will they never learn?” he expostulated. “Seriously, this may be the last trip I’ll dare to risk. And when you see all the goods in Damascus waiting to be traded and all the things that the, Genoese ships are bringing to Acre …” He spat into the wind. “We’re all fools.”

The baldheaded Mameluke wanted the old trader to stay with them for several days, for he was like a troubadour, filled with gossip, but he refused: “I’ve got to get the camels to Acre.” Then he suggested, “But I could do this. If you’ll send a guard as far as Ma Coeur, I’ll send the camels off now and I’ll stay here overnight and we can ride to Starkenberg in the morning.”

It was agreed, and two young Mamelukes who wanted to see Ma Coeur were dispatched with the caravan while its owner relaxed on the sunny terrace, chatting about the rumors of empire. “What we can’t understand in Damascus,” the old man remarked, “is why the Pope should cry for a Crusade from Europe when he has a perfectly good one alive right here in Asia and does nothing to support it.”

“You mean the Mongols?” the Mameluke captain asked.

“Yes!” the old Arab insisted. “The other day I was talking with a Mongol trader down from Aleppo. He says the whole swarm of them are ready to become Christians if the Pope says the word, and they’d be an army of hundreds of thousands smashing at you Mamelukes from the back door while the Europeans hammer at the seaports. They’d have you caught in a trap.” He squeezed his wrinkled hands together with force.

“We used to worry about that,” the Mameluke confessed, rubbing his scar. “For years we wondered when the Mongols and the Christians would combine against us. But now we don’t worry. It can never happen.”

“Why not?” the old man asked.

“It’s difficult to explain,” the Mameluke answered. “Look how the Turks let us steal their empire. We were one man in ten thousand and slaves at that. At any point they could have stamped us out, but now we own the world. I suppose you’ve heard that Tripoli has fallen.”

“Yes,” Volkmar said with the sensation of doom settling upon him.

“Look down there,” the Mameluke said, pointing to the hillside village over which a cloud was passing while the rest of the world remained in sunlight. “We can see the shape and direction of the cloud, but the villagers can’t, because they’re in it We can also see what the Pope ought to do, but he can’t, because he’s in it.” The cloud drifted off.

“I’m really worried,” the old trader broke in. “When the recent truce was arranged I thought: I’ll be trading with Acre for the rest of my days. But with Tripoli gone, with the Christians behaving so blindly …” He rose in agitation. “I’m afraid you Mamelukes will destroy Acre within the year.”

“We may have to,” the captain agreed, and as he spoke Muzaffar saw that, undetected, young Volkmar had approached the group and was listening.

Next morning Muzaffar and the two Volkmars rode north to Kafr Birim, where a settlement of Jews returned from Spain clustered about the ruins of that once-noble synagogue, and while the boy ran about gawking at the first group of Jews he had seen, his father spoke secretly with Muzaffar: “On your trip back to Damascus would you take my son with you? Get him to Constantinople and somehow to Germany?”

“You’re so concerned?” Muzaffar whispered.

“I am.”

“Then I’ll confess what I’ve told no one else. This is my last trip, old friend.”

“You think the Mamelukes will strike so soon?”

The Arab nodded, and the company started mournfully westward across the finest hills of Galilee, but at Starkenberg they found only ruins. That fair, poetic castle, perched on its crag like a solitary eagle, had once been the beau ideal of Crusader castles, but it had been overwhelmed by the Mamelukes, and now its jagged turrets and crumbling walls seemed like the broken teeth one finds in a weathering skull. Count Volkmar rode apart from the others to study the ruins, for here as a boy he had come to meet the Germans whose companionship his father enjoyed. Here he had learned to speak German and had kissed his first girl, and the lustful knights had followed the young couple as they tried to lose themselves in the surrounding hills, asking them when they returned, “Did you? Did you?” Impregnable Starkenberg—castle that could never be subdued—how had it fallen? Sheer cliffs protected it on three sides and on the fourth the Crusaders had chopped their own cliff, down through living rock, until the castle was protected on that flank, too. The German knights had seemed so powerful and their cisterns so deep—forty feet cut into the heart of rock and splashing with sweet water—how had such defenses crumbled? For some time the count spoke with the ghosts of those he had known, and then the horsemen headed south.

There had always been a sense of excitement as one rode home from Starkenberg, for the path was mountainous and the horses kept coming to one rise after another, and at each summit the rider was certain that this time he must see Ma Coeur, but always some new hill interceded until … “It’s there!” the boy cried, and on his swift Turkish horse he dashed down the trail, throwing sparks, and through his dust the knights with longing in their eyes saw the tall round towers of Ma Coeur.

… THE TELL

John Cullinane, brooding one day as he sat on the walls of Akko, trying to reconstruct the city as it must have been during Crusader days, thought: Everyone I know studies the wrong men when they want to understand that period. They take Richard the Lion Heart to represent the Christian side and Saladin to be the noble Muslim. They contrast the two and end with nothing. But I was lucky. When I was a boy doing my first reading about the Crusades I came upon the two men whose lives sum up the whole business, and I wish Plutarch had lived long enough to compare them. I’m certain he wouldn’t have used Richard and Saladin. He’d have used my friends.