‘I was only looking.’
‘You can have him for a song,’ the slave merchant insisted. ‘Two dirhams.’
‘Two dirhams!’ Yusuf exclaimed. ‘Look at him. He won’t live out the week.’
‘He’s hardly injured,’ the slave merchant protested. ‘With care, he’ll live to be older than me.’
Yusuf frowned. ‘Not likely.’
‘I see you know your business, young master,’ the slave merchant said with a wink. ‘Very well, I’ll let you have him for only six fals.’
Yusuf hesitated. Turan would soon have a slave. If Yusuf could show his father that he too knew how to deal with a servant, then perhaps he would realize that Yusuf too was a man. Yusuf examined the boy. Ayub had said he was the proper age, and he looked like he would be strong enough if he survived.
‘I can see you’re interested,’ the slave merchant said.
‘But I have no money.’
The slave merchant gave Yusuf an appraising look. His eyes moved from Yusuf’s linen caftan to his belt, and then settled on Yusuf’s leather sandals. ‘Your sandals. Give them to me and the boy’s yours.’
Yusuf looked down at his feet and hesitated. Did he really want to take responsibility for this dying Frank? What would his father say? He was on the verge of saying no, when the boy sat up. His hand shot out, gripping the bars, and he stared at Yusuf with clear blue eyes. ‘ Bro?or!’ he cried out. ‘ Bro?or!’ Then he fell back again, unconscious.
‘What did he say?’ Yusuf asked.
‘I don’t speak his heathen tongue, whatever it is. It wasn’t Frankish. Not German, either. This is an odd one. Allah knows where he’s from.’
‘I’ll take him,’ Yusuf said. ‘Provided that you deliver him to my home.’
‘And where might that be?’
‘The house of Najm ad-Din.’
The slave merchant’s eyes widened, and he gave a small bow. ‘I knew you were no common man. You have a deal, young master.’ Yusuf reached down and slipped off his sandals, which he handed to the merchant.
‘Yusuf!’ It was Ayub, calling from up the street. ‘Come here! See the slave your brother has bought.’
Yusuf hurried over barefoot, a smile upon his face.
Chapter 4
JULY TO OCTOBER 1148: BAALBEK
Yusuf stood on tiptoes and peered through the open window into the room where the Frankish slave had been brought so the family doctor could inspect him. When the slave had been delivered to Ayub’s home in Damascus, Yusuf had been whipped. Ayub had not let him keep the young Frank as a personal servant, but had ordered the new slave be brought back to Baalbek. ‘No use in wasting a slave,’ he had commented. ‘If he lives, then he can work in the fields.’
The Frank lay naked and unconscious on a table. He was well muscled and tall, taller even than Turan. His arms and chest were smooth and tanned brown — where they were not caked in dried, rust-coloured blood — but his legs and the area around his genitals were impossibly pale, the skin as white as freshly shorn wool. His long hair was the colour of ripe wheat and his jaw covered in pale blond fuzz. He was not circumcised.
The Jewish doctor stood beside the table, washing the boy with a sponge. Ibn Jumay, a thin man of almost thirty, with short black hair under a skullcap, long sidelocks and a closely cropped black beard, was the personal physician for Yusuf’s family, as well as Yusuf and Turan’s tutor. He wiped the dried blood away from his patient’s right shoulder, then dipped the sponge in a basin of water and wrung it out. Next, he sponged off the blood caked around the Frank’s stomach. There was a small gash in the lower abdomen, and as the Frank breathed, a thin stream of blood bubbled up and ran down his side. Ibn Jumay sniffed at the wound and nodded, apparently pleased. Last of all, he cleaned the blood away from the Frank’s right thigh. The flesh around the wound was angry and red. Ibn Jumay poked at the spot with his finger, then bent down and sniffed. ‘Infected,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They let the arrowhead fester inside him for three days, then expect me to perform miracles.’
Ibn Jumay bent down and picked up a brown leather bag, which he placed on the table. He opened it and carefully removed several ceramic bottles, placing them beside the Frank. Next, he took out a leather bundle and unrolled it on the table before him. Dozens of tiny pockets had been cut into the inside of the roll. Some bulged with mysterious contents. Others held wicked-looking knives and strange iron instruments. Ibn Jumay rubbed his hands together, then selected a short blade, a curved needle and a set of pincers that ended in two flat, circular disks. From another pouch, he removed a ball of string.
Yusuf moved to the open doorway, where he had a better view. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.
‘You are blocking the light, Yusuf,’ Ibn Jumay said without looking up. He nodded towards the corner. ‘Sit there if you must watch. As for these, their purpose is not hard to divine. The knife is for cutting, the needle for sewing, and these-’ he held up the pincers, ‘are for extracting.’
‘Extracting what? And why do you need to sew?’
‘Be silent and watch. You shall see.’
The doctor unstopped a square, blue ceramic bottle and poured a small amount of the contents over each of the wounds. The Frank flinched.
‘What is that?’ Yusuf asked.
‘Pure alcohol.’ Ibn Jumay held out the vial.
Yusuf inhaled deeply, then coughed. ‘It burns,’ he said, his eyes watering.
‘It will purify his wounds.’ Ibn Jumay lifted the Frank’s left arm and moved it in a circle while peering into the ragged hole in the Frank’s shoulder. ‘The tendons appear to be intact. With any luck, he should have use of his arm again.’ The doctor took up the curved needle and carefully threaded it from the ball of string. He hooked the needle through the flesh on either side of the wound and pulled the thread through. He continued, expertly sewing up the wound as if he were working with a piece of cloth.
Yusuf frowned. ‘Will he not have string stuck in his shoulder?’
‘A good question, Yusuf, but this is not string. It is called catgut, although it is made from the dried intestines of a goat.’ Yusuf grimaced. ‘It will dissolve over time, leaving only a thin scar.’ Ibn Jumay finished sewing, cut the catgut and tied it off. Next, he took out a yellowish paste that smelled of rotten eggs. He rubbed it over the wound, which he then bandaged with cotton dressings. ‘That will do for the shoulder.’ He moved down the Frank’s body and again examined the gash in his side. ‘Come, Yusuf. Since you are here, you can make yourself useful. Help me flip him over.’
Together, they managed to roll the Frank on to his stomach, revealing another gash in his back. ‘He is lucky, this one,’ Ibn Jumay noted. ‘The sword went straight through, but appears to have missed his vital organs.’ The doctor doused the back wound with alcohol, then sewed it up. He and Yusuf flipped the body over again, and Ibn Jumay sewed up the gash in the Frank’s stomach, leaving a small gap at the end of the wound.
‘Why did you not sew it up all the way?’ Yusuf asked as he held the boy upright while Ibn Jumay applied the foul-smelling paste and bandaged the Frank’s torso.
‘The vile matter inside him must be given a place of exit,’ Ibn Jumay said matter-of-factly. ‘Otherwise, it will kill him.’ He frowned as he moved to the Frank’s injured leg. ‘Now for the unpleasant part.’ He removed the cork from a small red vial, carefully poured a small amount of clear liquid on to a cotton ball and dabbed gently at the wound. ‘This is an extract from the poppy plant,’ Ibn Jumay explained before Yusuf could ask. ‘It helps to ease the pain.’
‘But he is unconscious.’
‘I am a doctor. It is my duty to not cause unnecessary suffering. And even unconscious, he will feel this.’ Ibn Jumay took the tiny knife and held it over the wound in the Frank’s leg. He whispered a prayer in Hebrew, then made two short diagonal cuts across the wound, forming an x. Blood and pus welled up around the cuts. Yusuf looked away, fighting to keep down his breakfast. When he looked back, Ibn Jumay was just finishing sponging clean the wound. The doctor took up the pincers, then hesitated. He turned to Yusuf.