The Templar Knight

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‘He pulled out a bow? A Templar knight?’ asked Yussuf in surprise, raising his slender eyebrows.

‘Yes he did, sire,’ replied Emir Moussa. ‘He is a Turcopole, as I said; sometimes he travels light and shoots from the saddle like a Turk, except his bow is bigger. Far too many of the faithful have died from his arrows. I would still dare to suggest, sire, that -’

‘No!’ Yussuf cut him off. ‘We will wait here. I want to meet him. We have a truce with the Knights Templar right now, and I want to thank him. I owe him my gratitude, and I refuse even to consider being indebted to a Templar knight!’

The two others could see it would do no good to argue any further. But they were uneasy, and all conversation ceased.

They sat there in silence for a while, leaning forward with one hand resting on the pommel of their saddles as they watched the sergeant, who was now done with the bodies and horses. He had started gathering the weapons and the cloaks that both he and his master had flung off right before the attack. After a while he picked up the severed head in one hand, and for a moment it looked as if he were wondering how to pack it up. At last he pulled the headdress off one of the bandits, wrapped it around the head, and made a parcel which he tied onto the pommel of the saddle over which the body with the missing head was slung.

Finally the sergeant was finished with all his tasks. He made sure all of the packs were fastened securely and then mounted his horse and began slowly leading his caravan of linked horses past the three Saracens.

Yussuf then greeted the sergeant politely in Frankish, with a wave of his arm. The sergeant gave him an uncertain smile in return, but they could not hear what he said.

Dusk began to fall, the sun had dropped behind the high mountains to the west, and the salt water of the sea far below no longer gleamed blue. The horses seemed to sense their masters’ impatience; they tossed their heads and snorted now and then, as if they too wanted to get moving before it grew too late.

But then they saw the white-clad Templar knight returning along the wadi. In tow behind him came two horses with two dead men draped over the saddles. He was in no hurry and rode with his head lowered, making him look as if he were lost in prayer even though he was probably just keeping an eye on the rocky, uneven ground. He did not appear to have seen the three waiting horsemen, although from his vantage point they must have been visible, silhouetted against the light part of the evening sky.

But when he reached them, he looked up and reined in his horse without saying a word.

Yussuf felt at a loss, as if he had been struck dumb because what he now saw did not coincide with what he had witnessed only a short time ago. This spawn of the Devil, who was openly called Al Ghouti, radiated peace. He had hung his helmet by a chain over his shoulder. His short fair hair and his thick, unkempt beard of the same colour framed a demon’s face with eyes that were as blue as you might expect. But here was a man who had just killed three or four other men; in the excitement Yussuf had not been able to keep track of how many, even though he usually could recall everything he saw in battle. Yussuf had seen many men after a victory, just after they had killed and won, but he had never seen anyone who looked as if he had come from a day’s work, as if he had been harvesting grain in the fields or sugarcane in the marshes, with the clear conscience that only good work can provide. His blue eyes were not the eyes of a demon.

‘We were waiting for you…we wish to thank you…’ said Yussuf in a semblance of Frankish that he hoped the other man would understand.

The man who was called Al Ghouti in the language of the faithful gazed at Yussuf steadily as his face slowly lit up with a smile, as if he were searching his memory and had found what he sought. This made Emir Moussa and Fahkr, but not Yussuf, cautiously, almost unconsciously, drop their hands to their weapons beside their saddles. The Templar knight quite clearly saw their hands, which now seemed to be moving of their own accord toward their sabres. Then he raised his glance to the three on the slope, looked Yussuf straight in the eyes, and replied in God’s own language:

‘In the name of God the Merciful, we are not enemies at this time, and I seek no strife with you. Consider these words from your own scripture, the words which the Prophet himself, may peace be with him, spoke: “Take not another man’s life - God has declared it holy - except in a righteous cause.” You and I have no righteous cause, for there is now a truce between us.’

The Templar knight smiled even wider, as if he wanted to entice them to laugh; he was fully aware of the impression he must have made on the three foes when he addressed them in the language of the Holy Koran. But Yussuf, who now realized that he had to be quick-witted and swift to take command of the situation, answered the Templar knight after only a slight hesitation.

‘The ways of God the Almighty are truly unfathomable,’ and to that the Templar knight nodded, as if these words were particularly familiar to him. ‘And only He can know why He sent an enemy to save us. But I owe you my thanks, knight of the red cross, and I will give you some of the riches that these infidels wanted. In this place where I now sit, I will leave a hundred dinars in gold, and they belong by rights to you for saving our lives.’

Yussuf now thought that he had spoken like a king, and a very generous king, as kings should be. But to his surprise and that of his brother and Emir Moussa, the Templar knight replied at first with a laugh that was completely genuine and without scorn.

‘In the name of God the Merciful, you speak to me out of both goodness and ignorance,’ said the Templar knight. ‘From you I can accept nothing. What I did here I had to do, whether you were present or not. And I own no worldly possessions and cannot accept any; that is one reason. Another reason is that the way around my vow is for you to donate the hundred dinars to the Knights Templar. But if you will permit me to say so, my unknown foe and friend, I think you would have difficulty explaining that gift to your Prophet!’

With these words, the Templar knight gathered up his reins, cast a glance back at the two horses and the two bodies he had in tow, and urged his Arabian horse on, as he raised his right hand with clenched fist toward the men in the salute of the Templar knights. He looked as if he found the situation quite amusing.

‘Wait!’ said Yussuf, so quickly that his words came faster than his thoughts. ‘Then I invite you and your sergeant instead to share our evening meal!’

The Templar knight reined in his horse and looked at Yussuf with a thoughtful expression.

‘I accept your invitation, my unknown foe and friend,’ the Templar knight replied, ‘but only on the condition that I have your word none of you intends to draw a weapon against me or my sergeant as long as we are in one another’s company.’

‘You have my word on the name of the true God and His Prophet,’ replied Yussuf quickly. ‘Do I have yours?’

‘Yes, you have my word on the name of the true God, His Son, and the Holy Virgin,’ replied the Templar knight just as quickly. ‘If you ride two fingers south of the spot where the sun went down behind the mountains, you will reach a stream. Follow it to the northwest and you will find several low trees near some water. Stay there for the night. We will be farther west, up on the slope near the same water that flows toward you. But we will not sully the water. It will soon be night and you have your hour for prayers, as do we. But afterwards, when we come in the darkness to you, we will make enough noise so you hear us, and not come quietly, like someone with evil intentions.’

The Templar knight spurred his horse, again saluted in farewell, got his little caravan moving, and rode off into the twilight without looking back.

The three faithful watched him for a long time without moving or saying a word. Their horses snorted impatiently, but Yussuf was lost in thought.

‘You are my brother, and nothing you do or say should surprise me anymore after all these years,’ said Fahkr. ‘But what you just did really surprised me. A Templar knight! And the one they call Al Ghouti at that!’

‘Fahkr, my beloved brother,’ replied Yussuf as he turned his horse with an easy movement to head in the direction described by his foe. ‘You must know your enemy; we have talked a great deal about that, haven’t we? And among your enemies, isn’t it best to learn from the one who is most monstrous of all? God has given us this golden opportunity; let us not refuse His gift.’

‘But can we trust the word of such a man?’ objected Fahkr after they had been riding for a time in silence.

‘Yes, we can, as a matter of fact,’ muttered Emir Moussa. ‘The enemy has many faces, known and unknown. But that man’s word we can trust, just as he can trust your brother’s.’

They followed their foe’s instructions and soon found the little stream with fresh cold water, where they stopped to let their horses drink. Then they continued along the stream and, exactly as the Templar knight had said, came to a level area. There the stream spread out to a small pond where low trees and bushes grew, with a sparse pasture area for the horses. They unsaddled the animals and took off the packs, hobbling the horses’ forelegs so that they would stay close to the water and not go in search of grazing land farther away, where none existed. Then the men washed themselves, as prescribed by law, before prayers.

At the first appearance of the bright crescent moon in the blue summer night sky, they said their prayers of mourning for the dead and of gratitude to God for sending them, in His unfathomable mercy, the worst of their foes to rescue them.

They talked a bit about this very subject after prayers. Yussuf then said that he thought God, in an almost humourous way, had shown His omnipotence: revealing that nothing was impossible for Him, not even sending Templar knights to rescue the very ones who in the end would conquer all Templar knights.

Yussuf tried to convince himself and everyone else of this. Year after year new warlords arrived from the Frankish lands; if they won, they soon returned home with their heavy loads.

But some Franks never went back home, and they were both the best and the worst of the lot. Best because they did not pillage for pleasure and because it was possible to reason with them, making trade contracts and peace agreements. But they were also the worst because some of them were fierce adversaries in war. The worst of them all were the two cursed devout orders of competing monks, the Templars and the Hospitallers of St John. Whoever wanted to cleanse the land of the enemy, whoever wanted to take back Al Aksa and the Temple of the Rock in God’s Holy City, would have to conquer both the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers. Nothing else was possible.

Yet they seemed impossible to conquer. They fought without fear, convinced that they would enter paradise if they died in battle. They never surrendered since their laws forbade the rescue of captured brothers from imprisonment. A captured Hospitaller knight or Templar knight was a worthless prisoner that they might just as soon release or kill. Thus they always died.

It was a rule of thumb that if fifteen of the faithful met five Templar knights out on a plain, it meant that either all or none of them would live. If the fifteen faithful attacked the five infidels, none of the faithful would escape with his life. To ensure victory of such an attack, they had to be four times as many and still be prepared to pay a very high price in casualties. With ordinary Franks this was not the case; ordinary Franks could be defeated even if there were fewer men on the side of the faithful.

While Fahkr and Emir Moussa gathered wood to make a fire, Yussuf lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring up at the sky where more and more stars were appearing. He was pondering these men who were his worst enemies. He thought about what he had seen right before sundown. The man called Al Ghouti had a horse worthy of a king, a horse that seemed to think the same thoughts as his master, that obeyed instinctively.

It was not sorcery; Yussuf was a man who ultimately rejected such explanations. The simple truth was that the man and the horse had fought and trained together for many years, in the most serious fashion, not just as a pastime to be taken up when there was nothing else to do. Among the Egyptian Mamelukes there were similar men and horses, and the Mamelukes, of course, did nothing but train until they were successful enough to obtain commissions and land, their freedom and gold granted in gratitude for many good years of service in war. This was no miracle or magic; it was man alone and not God who created these kinds of men. The only question was: What was the most crucial characteristic for attaining that goal?

Yussuf’s answer to this question was always that it was pure faith, that the one who wholeheartedly and absolutely followed the words of the Prophet, may peace be with Him, regarding the Jihad, the holy war, would become an unconquerable warrior. But the problem was that among the Mamelukes in Egypt it was impossible to find the most faithful of Muslims; usually they were Turks and more or less superstitious, believing in spirits and holy stones and giving only lip service to the pure and true faith.

In this case it was worse that even the infidels could create men like Al Ghouti. Could it be that God was demonstrating that man uses his own free will to determine his purpose in life, in this life on earth, and that only when the holy fire separates the wheat from the chaff will it be apparent who are the faithful and who are the infidels?

It was a disheartening thought. For if it was God’s intention that the faithful, if they could unite in a Jihad against the infidels, should be rewarded with victory, why then had He created enemies who were impossible to defeat, man to man? Perhaps to show that the faithful truly had to unite against the enemy? The faithful had to stop fighting among themselves because those who joined forces would be ten to a hundred times more numerous than the Franks, who would then be doomed, even if they were all Templar knights.

Yussuf again recalled the image of Al Ghouti: his stallion; his black, well-oiled, and undamaged harness; his equipment, none of which was merely for the pleasure of the eye but for the joy of the hand. Something could be learned from this. Many men had died on the battlefield because they couldn’t resist wearing their stiff, new, glittery-gold brocade over their armour, which hindered their movements at the crucial moment, and thus they died more from vanity than anything else. Everything they had seen should be remembered and learned from, otherwise how were they going to conquer the devilish enemy that now occupied God’s Holy City?

The fire had already begun to crackle. Fahkr and Emir Moussa had spread out the muslin coverlet and were starting to set out provisions and drinking vessels of water. Emir Moussa squatted down and ground up his mocha beans to prepare his black Bedouin drink. With the descending darkness a cool breeze came racing down the mountainside from Al Kahlil, the city of Abraham. But the cool air after a hot day would soon give way to cold.

The westerly direction of the wind brought Yussuf the scent of the two Franks at the same time as he heard them out in the darkness. It was the smell of slaves and battlefields; no doubt they would come unwashed to the evening meal, like the barbarians they were.

When the Templar knight stepped into the light of the fire, the faithful saw that he was carrying his white shield with the red cross before him, as no guest ever should. Emir Moussa took several hesitant steps toward his saddle where he had stacked up their weapons with the harnesses. But Yussuf quickly caught his nervous eye and quietly shook his head.

The Templar knight bowed before each of his hosts in turn, and his sergeant followed his master’s lead. Then he surprised the three faithful by lifting up his white shield with the loathsome cross and setting it as high up as he could in one of the low trees. When he then stepped forward to unfasten his sword and sit down, as Yussuf invited him to do with a gesture of his hand, the Templar knight explained that as far as he knew, there were no malicious men in the area, but you could never be certain. For that reason the shield of a Templar knight would probably have a chilling effect on their fighting spirit. He generously offered to let his shield hang there overnight and come back to get it at dawn when it would be time for all of them to move on.

When the Templar knight and his sergeant sat down near the muslin coverlet and began setting out their own bundles - dates, mutton, bread, and something unclean were visible - Yussuf could no longer hold back the laughter he had tried so hard to suppress. All the others looked up at him in surprise, since none of them had noticed anything amusing. The two Templar knights frowned, suspecting that they might be the objects of Yussuf’s merriment.

He had to explain, saying that if there was one thing in the world he had never expected to have as night-time protection, it was in truth a shield with the worst emblem of the enemy. Although on the other hand this confirmed what he had always believed, that God in His omnipotence truly was not averse to joking with His children. And at this he thought they could all laugh.

Just then the Templar knight discovered a piece of smoked meat among the items his sergeant was setting out, and he said something harsh in Frankish and pointed with his long, sharp dagger. Red-faced, the sergeant removed the meat while the Templar knight apologized, shrugging his shoulders and saying that what was impure meat for one person in this world was good meat for another.

The three faithful now understood that a piece of pork had been lying in the middle of the food, and thus the entire meal was unclean. But Yussuf quickly whispered a reminder about God’s word in those cases when a man finds himself in need, when laws are not laws in the same way as when a man is in his own house, and they all had to be content with that.

Yussuf blessed the food in the name of God the Merciful and Gracious, and the Templar knight blessed the food in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Mother of God, and none of the five men showed any disdain for the beliefs of the others.

They began offering each other food, and finally, at Yussuf’s invitation, the Templar knight accepted a piece of lamb baked in bread, slicing it in two with his grey, unadorned, extremely sharp dagger. He then handed half of it on the tip of his knife to his sergeant, who stuffed it into his mouth, hiding his distaste.

They ate in silence for a while. The faithful had placed the lamb baked in bread along with chopped green pistachios baked in spun sugar and honey on their side of the muslin coverlet. On their own side, the infidels had dried mutton, dates, and dry white bread.

‘There is something I would like to ask you, Templar knight,’ said Yussuf after a while. He spoke in a low, intent voice, the way his closest friends knew he always talked when he had been thinking for a long time and wanted to understand something important.

‘You are our host, we have accepted your invitation, and we will gladly answer your questions, but remember that our faith is the true faith, not yours,’ replied the Templar knight with an expression as if he were daring to joke about his own faith.

‘Doubtless you know what I think about that matter, Templar knight, but here is my question. You rescued us, we who are your foes. I have already acknowledged that this is true, and I have thanked you. But now I want to know why you did it.’

‘We did not rescue our foes,’ said the Templar knight thoughtfully. ‘We have been after those six bandits for a long time. We’ve been following them at a distance for a week, waiting for the right moment. Our mission was to kill them, not to rescue you. But at the same time God happened to hold a protective hand over you, and neither you nor I can explain why.’

‘But you are the real Al Ghouti himself?’ Yussuf persisted.

‘Yes, that is so,’ said the Templar knight. ‘I am the one the nonbelievers in their own language now call Al Ghouti, but my name is Arn de Gothia, and my mission was to free the world of those six unworthy men, and I completed my mission. That is the whole of it.’

‘But why should someone like you do such a thing? Aren’t you also the emir of the Knights Templar in your fortress in Gaza? A man of rank? Why should such a man take on such a lowly mission, and a dangerous one at that, setting out for these inhospitable regions just to kill bandits?’

‘Because that was how our order came into being long before I was even born,’ replied the Templar knight. ‘From the beginning, when our troops had liberated God’s Sepulchre, our people had no protection when they went on a pilgrimage down to the River Jordan and the site where Yahia, as you call him, once baptized the Lord Jesus Christ. And back then pilgrims carried all their possessions with them, instead of leaving them in safekeeping with us, as they do now. They were easy prey for bandits. Our order was created to protect them. Even today it is considered a mission of honour to offer protection to pilgrims and kill bandits. So it is not as you think, that this is a lowly mission we give to just anyone; on the contrary, it is the heart and soul of our order, a mission of honour, as I said. And God granted our prayers.’

‘You are right,’ Yussuf concluded with a sigh. ‘We should always protect pilgrims. How much easier life would be here in Palestine if we all did so. By the way, in which Frankish country is this Gothia located?’

‘Not exactly in any Frankish country,’ replied the Templar knight with an amused glint in his eye, as if all his solemnity had suddenly vanished. ‘Gothia lies far north of the land of the Franks, at the ends of the earth. But what country do you come from? You don’t speak Arabic as if you came from Mecca.’

‘I was born in Baalbek, but all three of us are Kurds,’ replied Yussuf in surprise. ‘This is my brother Fahkr, and this is my…friend Moussa. Where did you learn to speak the language of the faithful? Men like you do not usually end up in long captivity, do they?’

‘No, that is true,’ replied the Templar knight. ‘Men like me don’t end up in prison at all, and I’m sure that you know why. But I have lived in Palestine for ten years; I am not here to steal goods and then go home after half a year. Most of the men who work for the Knights Templar speak Arabic. My sergeant’s name, by the way, is Armand de Gascogne; he’s quite new here and doesn’t understand much of what we’re saying. That’s why he is so silent, not like your men, who don’t dare speak until you give them permission.’

‘Your eyes are sharp,’ murmured Yussuf, red-faced. ‘I am the eldest, you can already see grey hairs in my beard; I am the one who administers the family’s money. We are merchants on our way to an important meeting in Cairo, and…I don’t know what my brother and my friend would want to ask one of the enemy’s knights. We are all peaceful men.’

The Templar knight gave Yussuf a searching glance but said nothing for a while. He took his time eating some of the honey-drenched almonds. He paused and held up a piece of the delicacy to the firelight to examine it, concluding that these baked goods must have come from Aleppo. Then he pulled out his wine-skin and took a drink without asking permission or offering an apology, and handed the skin to his sergeant. Afterwards he leaned back comfortably and drew his big, thick white cloak around him with its terrifying red cross, looking at Yussuf as if he were assessing his opponent in a game of backgammon, not as a foe but as someone who must be evaluated.

‘My unknown friend and foe, what use do any of us have for falsehoods when we eat together in peace and both have given our word not to harm each other?’ he said at last. He spoke very easily, with no rancour in his voice. ‘You are a warrior, as I am. If God wills, we shall meet next time on the battlefield. Your clothes betray you; your horses betray you, just as your harnesses do, and your swords, which are leaning against the saddles over there. They are swords made in Damascus; none of them costs less than five hundred dinars in gold. Your peace and mine will soon be over; the truce is about to be ended, and if you don’t know this now, you will know it soon. Let us therefore enjoy this strange hour. It’s not often that a man gets to know his enemy. But let us not lie to each other.’

Yussuf was struck by an almost irresistible urge to tell the Templar knight honestly who he was. But it was true that the truce would soon be ended, although it had not yet been felt on any battlefield. And their mutual oath not to harm each other, the reason they could sit and eat together at all, was valid only for this evening.

‘You’re right, Templar knight,’ he said at last. ‘Insh’Allah, if God wills, we will someday meet on the battlefield. But I also think, as you do, that a man should get to know his enemies, and you seem to know many more of the faithful than we know of the infidels. I now give my men permission to speak to you.’

Yussuf leaned back, also drawing his cloak closer around him, and signalled to his brother and emir that they were allowed to speak. But they both hesitated, accustomed as they were to sitting an entire evening and just listening. Since none of them made any attempt to speak, the Templar knight leaned toward his sergeant and carried on a brief whispered conversation in Frankish.

‘My sergeant wonders about one thing,’ he then explained. ‘Your weapons, your horses, and your clothes alone are worth more than those unfortunate bandits could ever have dreamed of. How did it happen that you chose this perilous road west of the Dead Sea without sufficient escort?’

‘Because it is the quickest route, because an escort arouses a great deal of attention…’ replied Yussuf slowly. He did not want to embarrass himself by again saying something that wasn’t true, so he had to weigh his words. Any escort of his would certainly have attracted attention because it would have consisted of at least three thousand horsemen if it was to be considered safe.

‘And because we trusted our horses. We didn’t think a few worthless bandits or Franks would be able to catch us,’ he added swiftly.

‘Wise but not wise enough,’ the Templar knight nodded. ‘But those six bandits have been plundering these regions for almost half a year. They knew the area like the backs of their hands, they could ride faster on these stretches than any of us could. That was what made them rich. Until God punished them.’

‘I would like to know one thing,’ said Fahkr, who now spoke for the first time and had to clear his throat because he was stumbling over his own words. ‘It is said that you Templar knights who reside in Al Aksa had a minbar there, a place of prayer for the faithful. And people have also told me that you Templar knights once struck a Frank who tried to prevent one of the faithful from praying. Is this really true?’

All three of the faithful now gave their full attention to the enemy. But the Templar knight smiled and first translated the question into Frankish for the sergeant, who at once nodded and burst out laughing.

‘Yes, there is more truth to that than you know,’ said the Templar knight after thinking for a moment, or pretending to think in order to spur his listeners’ interest. ‘We do have a minbar in Templum Salomonis, as we call Al Aksa, “the most remote of prayer sites.” But that is not so unusual. In our fortress in Gaza we have a majlis every Thursday, the only day possible, and the witnesses then swear on God’s Holy Scriptures, on the Torah, or on the Koran, and in some cases on something else entirely that they regard as holy. If the three of you were Egyptian merchants as you claimed, you would also know that our order conducts a great deal of business with the Egyptians, and none of them share our beliefs. Al Aksa, if you wish to use that name, is where we Templar knights have our headquarters, and where many people come as our guests. The problem is that every September new vessels arrive from Pisa or Genoa or the southern lands of the Franks with new men filled with the spirit and the zeal, perhaps not to enter paradise at once, but to kill unbelievers or at least lay hands on them. These newcomers create great difficulties for the rest of us, and each year, shortly after September, we always have disturbances in our own quarters because the newcomers turn against people of your faith, and then of course we have to deal with them harshly.’

‘You would kill your own kind for the sake of our people?’ gasped Fahkr.

‘Of course not!’ replied the Templar knight with sudden vehemence. ‘For us it is a grave sin, just as it is in your faith, to kill any man who is a true believer. That can never come into question.’

He went on after a brief pause, his good humour restored, ‘But nothing prevents us from giving rogues like that a good thrashing if they refuse to be persuaded. I myself have had the pleasure on several occasions…’

Quickly he leaned toward his sergeant and translated. When the sergeant began nodding and laughing in agreement, a great sense of relief seemed to come over everyone, and they all joined in with hearty laughter - perhaps a bit too hearty.

A gust of air, like the last sigh of the evening wind from the mountains near Al Khalil, suddenly carried the stench of the Templar knights toward the three faithful, and they shrank back, unable to hide their feelings.

The Templar knight noticed their embarrassment and rose to his feet immediately, suggesting that they change sides and wind direction around the muslin coverlet, where Emir Moussa was now setting out small cups of mocha. The three hosts complied with his suggestion at once, without saying anything offensive.

‘We have our rules,’ explained the Templar knight apologetically as he settled into his new place. ‘You have rules about washing yourselves at all times of the day, and we have rules that forbid doing so. It is no worse than the fact that you have rules permitting hunting while we have ones forbidding it, except for lions; or that we drink wine and you do not.’

‘Wine is a different matter,’ objected Yussuf. ‘The prohibition against wine is a strict one, and it is God’s word to the Prophet, may peace be with Him. But we are not like our enemies; just consider God’s words in the seventh Sura: “Who has forbidden the beautiful things that God has granted His servants and all the good He has given them for their sustenance?”’

‘Well yes,’ said the Templar knight. ‘Your scriptures say many things. But if, for the sake of vanity, you want me to expose my modesty and make myself fair-smelling like worldly men, I might just as well ask you to stop calling me your enemy. For just listen to the words of your own scriptures, from the sixty-first Sura, words of your own Prophet, may peace be with Him: “Faithful! Be God’s disciples. Just as Jesus, the son of Mary, said to the white-clad: ‘Who will be my disciple for the sake of God?’ And they answered: ‘We will be God’s disciples!’ Among the children of Israel, some came to believe in Jesus while others rejected him. But we supported those who believed in him against their enemies, and the faithful departed with victory.” I particularly like the part about the white-clad…’

At these words Emir Moussa sprang to his feet as if he were about to reach for his sword, but halfway there he restrained himself and stopped. His face was red with anger when he stretched out his arm and pointed an accusatory finger at the Templar knight.

‘Infidel!’ he cried. ‘You speak the language of the Koran; that is one thing. But twisting God’s words with blasphemy and ridicule is another matter that you would not be allowed to survive if it weren’t for His Majes…because my friend Yussuf has given you his word!’

‘Sit down and behave yourself, Moussa!’ shouted Yussuf harshly, regaining his composure as Moussa obeyed his command. ‘What you heard were indeed the words of God, and they were from the sixty-first Sura, and they are words you ought to consider. And don’t think, by the way, that the phrase “the white-robed” refers to what our guest spoke of in jest.’

‘No, of course it does not,’ the Templar knight hurried to smooth things over. ‘It refers to those who wore white robes long before my order existed; my clothing has nothing to do with it.’

‘How do you happen to be so familiar with the Koran?’ asked Yussuf in his customary and quite calm tone of voice, as if no disruption had occurred, and his high rank had not been almost revealed.

‘It is a wise thing to study your enemy; if you like, I can help you to understand the Bible,’ replied the Templar knight, as if trying to joke his way out of the topic, seeming to regret his clumsy invasion of the faithfuls’ territory.

Yussuf was about to utter a stern reply to his lighthearted talk of entering into blasphemous studies, when he was interrupted by a long drawn-out, horrifying scream. The scream turned into something that sounded like scornful laughter, rolling down toward them and echoing off the mountainsides above. All five men froze and listened; Emir Moussa immediately began rattling off the words the faithful use to conjure up the jinni of the desert. Then the scream came again, but now it sounded as if it came from several spirits of the abyss, as if they were talking to each other, as if they had discovered the little fire below and the only people in the area.

The Templar knight leaned forward and whispered a few words in Frankish to his sergeant, who nodded at once, stood up, and buckled on his sword. He drew his black cloak tighter, bowed to his unbeliever hosts, and then, without saying a word, turned on his heel and disappeared into the darkness.

‘You must excuse this rudeness,’ said the Templar knight. ‘But the fact is that we have the scent of blood and fresh meat up in our camp, and horses that must be tended to.’

He didn’t seem to think he needed to offer any further explanation, and with a bow he stretched out his mocha cup for Emir Moussa to refill it. The emir’s hand shook slightly as he poured.

‘You send your sergeant into the darkness and he obeys without blinking?’ said Fahkr in a voice that sounded slightly hoarse.

‘Yes,’ said the Templar knight. ‘A man must obey even if he feels fear. But I don’t think that Armand does. The darkness is more of a friend for the man who wears a black cloak than the one who wears white, and Armand’s sword is sharp and his hand steady. Wild dogs, those spotted beasts with their horrid barking, are also known for their cowardice, are they not?’