Yusuf turned to Saqr. ‘Fetch the Caliph.’ When Al-Adid emerged from the palace, Yusuf strode down the steps to where horses had been brought. They rode to the Bab Al-Zuwayla, and Yusuf dismounted and led Al-Adid up the stairs to the walkway above the gate. The Nubian barracks lay a quarter of a mile to the south-west. They consisted of a low wall surrounding dozens of homes, which stood amongst a few large dormitories. All of it was burning. A wind rushed at Yusuf as the fire sucked in air to feed the roaring flames.
A few hundred Nubians were fleeing south along the Nile. The rest were hurrying through the gate into the barracks, braving the terrible heat in order to save their families. Yusuf’s men closed off the gates behind them. Selim had positioned a hundred men at each gate, and more mamluks surrounded the walls, ready to strike down any who scaled them. The Nubian warriors took their wives and children from their homes, only to find themselves trapped.
Yusuf felt ill, but he did not turn away. He was the ruler of Egypt now. He must show no weakness. He looked to the caliph, who had removed his veil and was retching over the side of the wall. It was the first time Yusuf had seen Al-Adid’s face. He was ghostly pale, a sparse beard covering fleshy cheeks.
‘Al-Khlata said you had an agreement, Caliph,’ Yusuf said. ‘Tell me true: did you have anything to do with this uprising?’
Al-Adid’s eyes grew wide with fear. ‘No,’ he said, wiping traces of vomit from his mouth with the back of a gloved hand. He drew himself up, trying to recover his dignity. ‘How dare you accuse me!’
‘You were not contacted by Al-Khlata?’
‘I told you I had nothing to do with this sordid business.’
‘You swear it?’ Yusuf gripped the caliph’s arm and turned him towards the fire. ‘Look at that. Look, damn you! This is the price of treachery. The blood of those women and children is not on my head. It is on the heads of those who betrayed me.’
The caliph looked away from the fire. ‘Let me go.’ His voice was small, childlike and pleading.
Yusuf released him. ‘Take him back to the palace.’
A mamluk led the caliph away, and a moment later Qaraqush joined Yusuf atop the gate. Together, they watched the barracks burn. Men and women were fleeing over the walls. They were cut down by waiting mamluks as soon as their feet hit the ground. Yusuf gripped the rough stone battlements as he listened to the terrified cries of women and children. Finally, he could bear it no longer. ‘That is enough. Qaraqush, tell Selim to allow the remaining Nubians to flee through the southern gate.’
‘But-’
‘Do you want the blood of those children on your head?’
‘No, sayyid.’
‘Then go, and ride fast.’ Qaraqush hurried from the wall and then galloped out of the gate. Yusuf looked back to the fire and whispered: ‘Allah forgive me.’
Yusuf stood at the window of his bedroom and looked out over the roofs of the city. Night had fallen, but the barracks still smouldered, turning the sky to the south red. Shamsa approached and placed a hand on his shoulder. She was naked but she walked with no shame, as if unaware that he could see her shapely legs and her small, firm breasts. They had been married that evening. Selim and Faridah had been the only witnesses. Yusuf had expected Faridah to be upset, but she seemed pleased that Yusuf had finally taken a wife. After the marriage contract had been signed, Yusuf had taken Shamsa back to his bedroom and made love to her with an urgency that surprised him. He had sought to lose himself in her, to drive the images of earlier that day from his mind.
‘Come back to bed,’ Shamsa told him. Yusuf did not move. ‘Are you well, Malik?’
‘I am your husband. You may call me Yusuf.’
She stood beside him, her head against his shoulder, and together they watched the glowing sky to the south. ‘You did the right thing,’ she said at last.
‘Did I?’
‘The Nubians will never rise against you again, and the Franks are returning to Jerusalem.’
‘But the people will hate me.’
‘They will forgive you. The wants of the common people are simple: low taxes, justice, security. Give them that, and they will love you. I know. I was one of them once.’
Yusuf glanced at her in surprise. He had supposed she had been raised in the home of an emir, surrounded by tutors and servants. ‘Tell me.’
‘My parents were farmers near Alexandria. They were killed five years ago, during the Frankish siege of the city. I had only just become a woman. I was to be married, but after the Franks-’ She broke off, and when she continued her voice was harder. ‘Afterwards I was not wanted for marriage.
‘I came to Cairo. An attractive young woman can make her living here easily enough. I won the heart of one of my-admirers. He was a mamluk, and he offered to marry me, despite my past. We were engaged only a short while before he introduced me to his commander. The commander wanted me for his own, but he did not have me long before Al-Khlata took note of me. I became his lover.’
Yusuf frowned. ‘You speak of it without shame.’
‘I did not choose my fate. Men can lose their honour and win it back in battle. A disgraced woman cannot. She must make her own way. I was nothing, and now I am a queen. What do I have to be ashamed of?’
‘You are no queen, Shamsa. I am not a king.’
‘You will be.’
Yusuf shook his head. ‘I am a Kurd and a Sunni, and hence doubly despised. Besides, viziers in Egypt do not last long, and the security and prosperity you spoke of take time.’
‘You can buy time. Look at that.’ She pointed across the room to an ornate table of dark wood. The top was inlaid with ivory in the shape of storks, horses and crocodiles. The sides were lined with gleaming gold. Yusuf had hardly noticed it before. ‘It is worth one hundred, perhaps two hundred dinars. The palace has hundreds as fine, if not finer. Give them to the people. Let each man in Cairo carry away as much as he is able.’
‘And what will I be left with?’
‘Your life. Every man who takes something from the palace will have a stake in your rule. What better way to ensure their loyalty?’
Yusuf looked at her more closely. ‘I begin to think that Allah sent you to me for a reason, Shamsa.’
‘It was not Allah. I came to you on my own. You have greatness in you, yet you are noble, too. Al-Khlata would not have lost a moment of sleep over the fate of the Nubians. You are different.’ She kissed him on the cheek and then took him by the hand and pulled him away from the window. ‘Now come. Let us to bed.’
Chapter 12
JUNE 1171: JERUSALEM
The loud crack of wooden sword blades knocking together sounded in the courtyard of Agnes’s home. John parried the thrust of young Baldwin, stepped inside the prince’s guard, and pressed the edge of his practice sword against his opponent’s neck.
‘You are dead, my lord.’
‘But you fought well,’ Agnes called from where she watched under a canopy.
Baldwin scowled. In the two years since the debacle at Damietta, he had grown like a desert flower after the rain. He was ten now, and was tall and ungainly. He wore only breeches, and as he struggled to catch his breath, his ribs were visible under his pale skin. He showed no signs of his sickness, other than a half-dozen scars on his hands and forearms. His leprosy was slowly robbing him of feeling in his hands, and it made him prone to accidents. It also made handling a sword difficult, but Baldwin was determined to become a warrior. He and John practised several times a week. They had been meeting in Agnes’s home for the past two months, ever since Amalric and William left for Constantinople. The Emperor Manuel had been furious after he sent his fleet to Damietta, only for Amalric to withdraw when the Nubian uprising failed. Amalric needed his support more than ever now the Saracens held Egypt and Syria.
‘Again,’ Baldwin said.
John wiped sweat from his brow. They had been training for nearly an hour, and at almost forty years of age John found the exercise was not as easy as it once had been, particularly in the morning when his old injuries ached. He rolled his stiff shoulders. ‘Perhaps you should rest, my lord.’