‘Do not turn your back on Nur ad-Din-’ Ayub was pleading now. ‘He will not forgive it.’ He met his son’s eyes. ‘Nor will I.’
It took all Yusuf’s will to speak without his voice breaking. ‘Do what you think right, Father. I shall do the same.’
‘Very well.’ Ayub kissed Yusuf once on each cheek and then walked away.
Yusuf stood at the window of his bedroom and looked south, beyond the city to where men were working on the new wall by torchlight. He frowned as he thought back to his last conversation with his father. It had been a week ago, but it was never far from his mind. It nagged at him, like a sore tooth. ‘He does not love me,’ he murmured.
‘What?’ Shamsa called sleepily from bed. ‘Who does not love you?’
‘My father. He never has.’
She rose and came to stand beside him. ‘Come to bed, my love.’
‘Later.’
She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I have seen Ayub with you. He is proud of you. But he has had a hard life. Affection does not come easily to such a man.’
‘He said he would kill me if Nur ad-Din commanded it. Does that sound like love, Shamsa?’
‘He only says such things because he is frustrated. You are his son, Yusuf, but also his lord. It is not easy for him.’
Yusuf shook his head. ‘He meant what he said.’
Shamsa examined his face for a moment. She nodded. ‘You may be right. Your father sees dishonour as a fate worse than death. He would do anything to save you from it.’
They stared out at the low, scudding clouds, lit silver by a crescent moon. ‘Come, habibi,’ Shamsa said at last. ‘Let us to bed.’ She took his arm and was leading him across the room when loud shouting and the unmistakable ring of steel upon steel came from just outside the bedroom. An axe slammed into the door, splintering the wood near the lock. Shamsa paled. ‘Assassins!’
Yusuf retrieved his sword from where it hung beside the bed and drew the blade. He took Shamsa by the arm and led her to his private audience chamber. He had just placed his hand on the far door when it shook as someone tried to force his way in. Yusuf backed away. Shamsa hurried to shut and lock the door through which they had entered. A moment later someone slammed into it from the other side.
‘The window!’ Yusuf shouted.
It looked out over a flat rooftop that ran along one side of an interior courtyard. Shamsa crawled out first. Yusuf followed, feeling for the thin ledge below the window with his bare feet. He had just lowered Shamsa to the roof below when one of the doors burst open behind him. He tossed his sword down and jumped, rolling as he landed. Above, men dressed in black and wearing masks were crawling out of the window. One of them jumped, and Yusuf impaled the man as he landed. He turned to Shamsa. ‘Go and bring the guards.’
She shook her head. ‘I will stand by you.’
Yusuf shoved her towards the far side of the roof. ‘Go! Now!’
He turned to see two men on the ledge above. They jumped at the same time, and Yusuf was forced to back away. Behind them, more men were climbing out of the window. Yusuf lunged forward, thrusting his blade at the man on his right. The man parried while the other man swung for Yusuf’s head. Yusuf dropped to a crouch to avoid the blade and then kicked out, sweeping the man’s legs from beneath him. Yusuf knocked aside an attack from his other assailant and swung his sword back, catching the man in the throat. Then he ran. After a dozen yards the roof ended, a gap some ten feet wide separating it from the roof on the far side. Yusuf accelerated and jumped, just clearing the gap. He glanced back as he ran and saw three of the masked men take the jump. Two made it but one missed, cursing loudly as he fell. More men were gathering on the roof behind them.
Yusuf veered left and jumped down into the courtyard. He rolled and then sprang to his feet. He raced past a rose bush, which tore at his silk robe, and through a door into a long hallway, the marble floor cold under his bare feet. Where were the guards? This hall should have been patrolled. He glanced back to see his pursuers enter the hall behind him. Yusuf raced to the far end of the hallway and pushed open a heavy door. In the entrance hall two-dozen mamluks were headed his way with Shamsa and Selim at their head.
‘Alhamdulillah!’ Shamsa cried as she rushed forward and embraced him.
The first of the masked men burst into the room. When he saw the mamluks, he turned and ran. A dozen of Yusuf’s men gave chase. Yusuf looked to his brother. ‘Send men to block every exit from the palace. Take them alive if you can.’
‘No, no! Please! Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Have mercy!’ The assassin squirmed as Al-Mashtub slowly turned one of the screws of the steel vice that encircled his head. The head crusher was a truly terrible instrument. It had two clamps, one putting pressure on the forehead and back of the skull, the other squeezing the victim’s head just above his ears. Al-Mashtub continued turning the screw, putting unbearable pressure on the sides of the man’s skull. ‘Please! Please!’ the assassin moaned. ‘Make it stop!’
Yusuf forced himself to watch. It was late, only an hour after the assassins’ failed attempt. He was tired and sickened from watching men suffer, but he wanted to know who had hired them. He wanted to know, and yet he feared the truth.
The tortured assassin was now screaming incoherently, one long wail of agony. Then he passed out and the room fell silent. Yusuf turned to another assassin who had been tied to a chair and forced to watch his friend suffer. The man’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Let us try again,’ Yusuf said. ‘Who gave you access to the palace? Who told you where my chambers are?’
The man’s lips curled into a sneer. ‘I will tell you nothing, Sunni dog.’
The man was brave, but Yusuf knew that even brave men could be made to talk if one applied the correct combination of fear, pain and hope that it all might end. The man had called Yusuf a Sunni dog. He would start there.
‘You sought to kill me because I am a Sunni, because I have converted the mosques of Cairo,’ Yusuf suggested. The man did not speak. ‘No, it is something else. You are loyal to the Fatimids, perhaps? You resent their imprisonment. I could have had them killed, you know. I showed them mercy. I will show you mercy as well, if you tell me what I want to know.’ The man shook his head. ‘Very well.’ Yusuf nodded to Al-Mashtub.
The giant mamluk unscrewed the vice from the first victim’s head and pulled it off. It had cracked the sides of the man’s skull, and purplish-black blood had pooled under the skin around his temples and below his ears. Al-Mashtub brought the head crusher towards the second assassin, who began to squirm in his chair, thrashing his head from side to side. A mamluk stepped behind the man and put a leather strap around his neck. He pulled up and back so that the strap dug into the flesh under the man’s chin, holding his head motionless. Al-Mashtub pressed the vice down over his head.
‘No!’ the man cried. ‘Wait!’
Al-Mashtub tightened one of the screws, just enough so that the man could feel the cold metal pressing against the sides of his head.
‘Please! Stop!’ The man’s eyes were jerking wildly from side to side. ‘It was Najm ad-Din! He is the one who showed us into the palace!’
Yusuf felt as if he had been punched in the gut. He closed his eyes and gripped the back of the chair, waiting until his breathing returned to normal. He leaned close to the assassin’s face. ‘If you speak false, you shall suffer such pain that you will wish to die, but I will not let you.’
‘I do not lie,’ the man said. ‘It was your father. I swear it.’
‘I want details.’
‘On his way to Cairo from Damascus, Najm ad-Din stopped in Yemen. There are many loyal to the Fatimids there, men who fled Egypt when the Caliph died. He recruited us, brought us to an apartment in Cairo and told us to wait. Then we did not see him for months. We thought he had changed his plans until last week when he came to us. He told us how to enter the palace and where to find you. He said that if we killed you, he would place one of the Fatimids back on the throne.’