The Walking Drum Page 7

  It lay in the open with no concealment nearby, but if a man within were to open the gates, it would prove a close and desperate place in which to fight.

  Hassan, the tall boy of our own group, would fight well, of that I was sure. John of Seville, although no longer a young man, looked in good condition, and I could not doubt his resolution. As we entered the wooden gates wind whipped at our clothing, and a few spattering drops of rain began to fall. It would be a dark night.

  We stripped the saddles from our mounts. The air in the stables was close but smelled of fresh hay. The camels seemed well fed and strong, and I commented on this to Hassan.

  He gave them a contemptuous glance. "Jamal!" he said, shrugging. "Fit only to carry burdens. You should see our riding camels, the batiniyah or Umanitjah of my country!" He told me of famous racing camels known to travel a hundred miles a day, often for several days in succession.

  A big, dark soldier came in, and indicating an empty stall, he said, "Leave it. An important man comes." He studied me with a slight frown, as if he found something familiar in my face. He hesitated as if to say something further, then changed his mind and walked away.

  Inside the inn, John of Seville was seated cross-legged on the floor. Before him was a haunch of lamb from which he was shredding meat. He indicated I was to join him. The lamb was young, freshly roasted, and excellent. There was rice and a jug of wine.

  Hassan joined us, full of talk of camels and the desert, pleased that I was interested, and eager to tell of the desert camel and its ways. Knowing that someday this might be important, I listened with all my attention.

  John of Seville had little to say, but he did comment that one of the mailed soldiers had come to inquire about our prisoner and wished the prisoner turned over to him. Now this soldier came to us again. It was not the soldier to whom I had spoken in the stable, but his interest was in me. "You joined the party outside Cadiz?"

  With my dagger I cut a thin slice of the lamb. "I travel to Córdoba to study."

  "You can read?"

  Putting my tongue in my cheek, I said, "I would learn better to read the Koran."

  "You are a believer?" he asked doubtfully.

  " 'Those who believed,' " I quoted from the Koran, " 'left their homes and strove for the cause of Allah—those are believers in truth.' "

  Impressed, the soldier went away. John poured wine from the jug, and I detected the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Have you heard," he asked gently, "about the Devil quoting Scripture for his own ends?"

  "The Devil survives," I replied.

  "Is survival, then, the first thing? Is there not something else?"

  "Honor first, then victory, but if a man is to learn, first he must live."

  "You would be wise," he agreed, "to go to Córdoba or to Toledo. The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever."

  Of course. Had not my small knowledge of navigation freed me from chains? Had not my knowledge of Arabic taken me to Malaga, and thence to Cadiz? It had done more. Already, because of the little I had learned, my life was richer, my appreciation of all things greater. Yes, I would go to Córdoba. Was not my father dead? Had not his ship been sunk?

  As for Aziza, I knew not where she might be found, nor how to help her. Many forces were at work of which I understood nothing, and a blunder might do harm. Christian warred against Christian here, and Moslem against Moslem, Arab against Berber. Aziza might have been carried off by her friends, and my inquiries might lead to her discovery by her enemies.

  One of the mail-clad soldiers seated himself near us, another lay down near the merchant. It seemed unreasonable for men traveling together to scatter out, to sleep away from each other. The men from the caravan were already asleep.

  When I had finished eating I went to the yard to bathe my hands and face. The wind blew stronger, and the sky was a sea of wind-tossed clouds. Lightning played weird shadow games over the far hills, and the trees bent before the angry wind. It was a night for evil to be abroad.

  Often I walked the moors among the standing stones, the ancient stones of my people. What, I wondered, would John of Seville think if he knew that within my skull there reposed the sacred knowledge of the Druids?

  Ages ago they had laid down their rules for clear thinking, for argument and discussion, the lore of the sea, sky, and stars, for many secret things also that savored of magic to the uninitiated.

  Yet nothing in my native land compared with these cities of Spain. Paris, I had been told, was scarcely better than the filthiest of villages with refuse thrown into the street, carcasses of animals left decaying where they had fallen, and hogs belonging to the monks of St. Anthony wandering through the fashionable quarters of the city. Mud was so deep at times that women had to be carried through the streets on the backs of porters. Glass was almost unknown; windows were covered with oiled paper. Again I thought of the ancient beliefs of my people. In Christianity I found much good, but judging by its effect upon the lands in which they were supreme, the Moslem religion seemed the most successful. Yet it might not always be so.

  What was I to believe? I was a man of nature. The feel of a good sword in my hand, a horse between my knees, or of a ship's steering oar—in these I could believe. These answered to something within me.

  The swing of a gull's wing across the sky, the lift of a far blue-shrouded shore, the warmth of the sun, the cold of a winter night, the salty taste of brine or sweat, the warm, wonderful feeling of a woman in the arms. In these I believed. There was no doubt that Mohammed was a wise man. Did he not marry a widow owning many camels? Such a man is worth listening to.

  Returning to the inn, I took my robes and lay in a corner near the wall and not far from John of Seville. Under cover of my robes I drew my scimitar. Hassan was seeming to nod, but Hassan was a Bedouin from the desert and would be ready.

  The long room where we were had but one entrance, that from the court. Our position would enable our blades to present a formidable wall of defense, yet something about the room disturbed me.

  A soldier lay near me, seeming asleep. Watching, I detected a subtle, too careful movement of his hand. It was not the fumbling movement of a sleeping man but the slow, careful movement of a man trying not to be noticed.

  My heart began to beat slowly, heavily. Suppose, just suppose, the soldiers were not what they seemed? Reaching out, I tugged the robe of John of Seville. His eyes opened and met mine, but he moved never a muscle.

  Shaping the words with my lips, I said, "The soldiers are thieves."

  There was instant comprehension. His head moved but slightly, his eyes rapidly taking in the positions of the soldiers. One was within backstabbing reach of Hassan; another lay near the giant Negro who guarded the fat merchant. Each soldier was so placed as to kill a strong fighting man on signal.

  My eyes fell to the knuckles of the nearest soldier. A flicker of firelight revealed his grip upon his sword. The time was now. Lying in the deepest shadows, I was beyond the eyes of any of them. With a catlike movement I came to my feet, sword in hand. My left gathered the robe with which I had been covered. At that instant I heard, from the courtyard, a sound that was of neither the wind nor the rain.

  A step took me from the shadows. My blade touched Hassan lightly. He looked up, and my point indicated the soldier near the Negro.

  A foot scuffed on the cobbles outside, and the soldier started to rise. Flicking the robe at him, I let go, and it enveloped him in its folds. Stepping forward, I stamped down hard on his knuckles.

  As I attacked the soldier nearest Hassan, he drew back his sword and threw it like a javelin at the soldier nearest the Negro. As that soldier had started to rise, the sword caught him across the bridge of the nose, drenching him in blood. Hassan followed his sword, retrieving it.

  John was on his feet, and as the soldier nearest the door reached to unbar it, John hurled a stool. Missing the soldier,
it rebounded with force, and the soldier leaped back to avoid it. John struck upward to his kidney with a dagger.

  Instantly, the inn was a place of madness. The fat man who rode with John of Seville proved better than expected, and seeing us fighting the soldiers, he threw himself on the one remaining.

  A weight of bodies crashed against the door the attackers expected to find unbarred, but the Negro waited there with a heavy woodsman's ax.

  Around us there was a sudden silence. The man I enveloped in my robe was taken. Of the four soldiers John of Seville had slain one, his fat assistant another, and Hassan disabled a third. As suddenly as it had begun the fighting was over.

  Outside, men were battering at the door. Moving a bench, I placed it across and just inside the door, leaving room for it to swing wide. "If we leave them outside, they will steal our horses and ride away," I explained. "Lift the bar!"

  The door slammed open, and men charged into the room, two of them sprawling over the bench, a third tripping over the legs of the fallen men. A fourth died from the ax, Hassan accounted for a fifth. Leaping through the door, I rushed for the stables.

  At the inn our men were disposing of the brigands, but within the stable all seemed still, then came a rustle of movement.

  A man stood with his back to the wall at the end of the stable. He had been saddling the horse of John of Seville. As John had ridden a mule, his horse had been led throughout the day and was in fine shape. A splendid sorrel it was, with fine limbs and every evidence of speed and staying power.

  The brigand held a sword, but his face was in shadow. My point lifted, ready for a thrust. Within the inn, lights were lit, and the rays fell through the stable window and across my opponent's face. It was the man who had robbed and enslaved me. It was Walther.

  And I knew that I could kill him.

  Mine was the stronger arm, the better blade. He had robbed me, sneered at me, insulted me.

  "You!" he said. "I should have slit your belly that first day! I should have killed you rather than make you pilot. I knew it then."

  "You can try to kill me now."

  "You are too lucky. I shall not fight you."

  "Coward!"

  He shrugged, watching me from under heavy brows.

  "Who is not a coward sometimes? You will let me go. You robbed me of my ship—"

  "How did you get that ship?"

  "—and you sold me as a slave." He leered at me. "I escaped before I could be chained. As for you, you have done enough."

  Angrily, I glared at him. He was a treacherous, cowardly man. Had he stood in my place, he would have killed me, but it was not in me to simply run him through.

  "Get out! But drop your sword before you come near me, or I shall dirty my blade in your fat belly!"

  The sword fell, then he darted past me into the courtyard. Somebody shouted from the inn, then I heard a rattle of retreating hoofbeats.

  A sentimental fool ... such an act would kill me someday ... one's enemies are better dead. Or was that true? Did not a man's enemies make a sharper, more decisive man of him?

  Remembering the scoundrel he was, I should have cut him down, then quartered him to be sure of his death, but with him at the point of my sword I no longer hated him. He was beneath contempt.

  Hassan was at the door. "Did someone escape?"

  "A thief, a coward and a thief who will suffer more alive than in dying."

  9

  DAWN DAPPLED THE tawny hills with alternating sunshine and shadow. One by one the travelers emerged from the inn, gathered their belongings, and departed. The little world of the inn where we who until the night before had been strangers, who shared battle and blood together, now shattered like fragile glass. Again we would be strangers to recall only at intervals the events of this night.

  Today, I rode beside John of Seville who believed himself in my debt for the warning given. As we rode, he explained much that was to prove important in the months to come, much that was to bear upon my own future.

  We in Brittany knew too little of the world outside—our news coming only from passing travelers or men who returned from the sea, occasionally from a merchant caravan traveling the remnants of the old Roman roads to the great markets and fairs in the towns. As he talked, our world of ship, shore, and fishing began to seem small indeed, for he spoke of kings, castles, and Crusades, of ideas and the men who pursued them.

  My father had returned from the sea with tales of swift attacks and bloody retreats, of faraway shores and strange beliefs, of silks, ivory and pearl, of battles and sudden death. These stories colored my youth, and I longed for such adventures myself.

  Little did I know of kings and courts, or the means by which men became kings. Well I knew that Henry II was wedded to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and that Henry claimed our land for fief as he claimed much of the land of the Franks.

  Of Louis VII, so-called Louis the Young, I knew little, but of Manuel Comnenus, ruler of the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire of the East, I knew nothing at all. Nor did I know this land through which we rode, but as we traveled John explained much that had set the stage for the situation that presently existed.

  In 1130 Abd-al-Mumin had become leader of the rising power of the Almohads or Unitarians, and ten years later had begun a career of conquest, defeating the Almoravids in 1144. A year later his armies invaded Spain, and in the five years that followed he reduced all Spain to his control.

  Torn by strife, Spain had existed under a variety of rulers, then came a handsome youth of twenty-one, Abd-al-Rahman III, and in a few short years he defeated his enemies both Christian and Moslem and welded Moorish Spain into one empire, building Córdoba into the greatest center of intellectual activity in the western world.

  Tolerant to all creeds, especially Christians and Jews, known as People of the Book because they, too, followed the Old Testament, Abd-al-Rahman welcomed scholars from everywhere.

  Moslem fleets commanded the Mediterranean; Moslem armies were victorious in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia. Moslem rulers controlled lands from far south of the Indus to past Samarkand, from the Atlantic coasts of Africa to the deepest reaches of the Sahara.

  Later, when al-Hakam became caliph in Córdoba, there came to power both a scholar and a lover of books. More inclined to a life of study than to rule, he resigned many of his powers to a prime minister, a slave named Giafar-al-Asklabi.

  From all corners of the world al-Hakam gathered books by the greatest of scholars. His agents ransacked the libraries and book marts of Baghdad, Samarkand, Damascus, Tashkent, Bokhara, Cairo, Constantinople, and Alexandria for books. Those which could not be bought were copied. He had been known to pay a thousand pieces of gold for a single manuscript.

  At Seville, Toledo, and Córdoba he gathered scholars to translate these books into Arabic and Latin. The books of Rome and Carthage ... John assured me Carthage had the greatest libraries of the ancient world and vast collections of records from her commercial colonies established in many lands.

  Al-Hakam passed on, but the library remained. There were, John assured me, seventy public libraries in Córdoba to say nothing of the great libraries in private homes. The love of learning was of first importance, the poet and scholar ranked with the general and the statesman. Nor were these latter respected unless they, too, were poets and scholars.

  Yet Abd-al-Mumin was a savage warrior who suspected all books but the Koran. "He destroyed the Idol of Cadiz," John said. "You may have seen the ruins in the harbor."

  No man knew the origin of the huge figure. Built upon a series of columns one hundred and eighty feet high, the platform had been surmounted by a gigantic figure of a man, done in bronze. The right arm of the figure stretched toward the Straits of Gibraltar, and held a key. The entire statue was plated with gold and could be seen at a great distance by all ships approaching Cadiz from the open Atlantic.

  Of unknown antiquity, the Idol of Cadiz, as it was known to the Arabs, may have been of Phoenician origin. It was s
aid that Cadiz was founded by them in 1100 B.C. But what of the ancient Iberians who preceded them? Despite the hatred of orthodox Moslems for all idols—the Koran forbade representation of the human figure—the huge statue had survived nearly five hundred years of Moslem control. The Romans and the Goths had left it untouched, even though it was believed to be of solid gold, and the Vikings had tended to avoid the city fearful of the power of the colossal image. Then, in 1145 it was destroyed by Abd-al-Mumin. It was discovered the idol was of bronze, and not gold.

  "Who could have built it?" I wondered.

  "No man knows," John assured me, "only that it was very ancient. Some have said the Phoenicians built it, but they came for commerce and had no reason to expend enormous sums in a town like any other coastal village.

  "Others believe it was built by the ancient Iberians who are said to have had a great civilization and fine literature.

  "The figure held a key ... to what? Its hand stretched out toward the empty sea ... toward what? Someday divers may go down and find some clue near the base of the figure. Until then we shall not know."

  My thoughts, I knew, would be forever haunted by the mystery of the colossal figure, an image of what? Reaching out toward what mystery? Who built it? When? Why? What lock awaited that gigantic key?

  "Are there records," I asked, "of wars and battles? I wish to find knowledge of my father's death—if he is dead."

  "Recorded? I doubt it. He was a corsair, and there have been many such. Many die whose valor is forever unknown."

  The next day, traveling alone, I crossed the ancient stone bridge over the Guadalquivir, a bridge built by Romans. On the right stood the Great Mosque, one of the holiest places in the Moslem world. "See it," John advised, "it is an amazing sight."

  The bazaars and streets teemed with people of every race and color. Strange sights met my eyes; strange scents tingled my nostrils; strange women walked veiled or unveiled along the busy streets, women with undulating hips and dark, expressive eyes.