Mehmed swung the stone on its chain gently, to and fro, to and fro. Then, in a hypnotic voice, he intoned, ‘Behold the stone that men call the Eye of Jerusalem. Its mystical origins are lost in the past, and it came to my family when we were young and the tally of our days was yet brief.’ He gave the deep blue stone a loving, almost yearning look. ‘It is protector and friend to its rightful owner, keeping him safe from enemies both known and unknown,’ he went on. ‘Dipped in water, it will make a febrifuge that also has the power to stem bleeding. Dipped into a drink proffered by a stranger, it will detect the presence of poison.’
There was a long pause while Mehmed continued to swing the stone and everyone else watched it. Then he said, ‘It was ever told, and the tale passed down from father to son, that the day would come when the Eye of Jerusalem, great treasure of the Mehmeds, would be given in exchange for something that we valued yet more highly. Until this day, we could not imagine what event this tale foretold.’ He sighed again. Then, abruptly shooting out his arm and holding the stone out to Geoffroi, he said, ‘Now we wonder no more. This day you saved my grandson, last male child of my line, and returned him safe to me. He is more valuable than all the sapphires and gold in the world and, in exchange for his life, I must do as long tradition orders me and give to you, sir knight, this precious jewel.’
Very slowly and cautiously, Geoffroi reached out and took the chain from Mehmed’s fingers. The stone hung heavily; he could hardly bear to look at it.
‘Take it,’ Mehmed said, ‘you are its rightful owner, and, from this day forward, it will acknowledge you as its master and protect only you.’
‘But-’
‘There is no but,’ Mehmed said gently. ‘Even if I had the courage and the foolhardiness to countermand a thousand-year-old tradition and hang on to what is now yours, it would advance me nothing, for the Eye knows a new master now and would do me nothing but harm.’ His small, dark eyes went back to the great jewel as if it drew them. Then, breaking his gaze away with an obvious effort, he picked up the leather wrapping still lying on the cushion, held it out to Geoffroi and said, ‘Put it away, sir knight. Wrap it up and hide it well.’
With one last look at the stone, Geoffroi folded it up inside the soft leather and pushed it deep inside his clothing. He could feel it, hard against his chest.
Mehmed, who seemed to be overcome, said from behind the hand he was pressing to his face, ‘That is all, sir knight. My men will take you back to your camp although, I am sorry to say, once more they must cover your head. I regret the mode of your transportation to my home and from it, but I would not have my dwelling known to the Franks.’
‘I understand.’
Before Geoffroi was quite ready — he would have liked a long last look around the extraordinary hall and its rich fabrics and furnishings — the hood was once more pulled down over his head. This time his wrists were bound in front of him, which was easier.
But, just as the two horsemen began to lead him away, Geoffroi broke free of them. Turning to where he thought Mehmed sat on his divan, he said, ‘Sir, I had no thought of reward when I went to the aid of your grandson, and I would have asked for none. He was a child, and we — I do not kill children.’ He paused, trying to think of an appropriate form of words, then said, ‘I wish you a long and happy life and, for Azamar your grandson, I wish the same, with the hope that he weds a fair wife and begets a quiver-full of sons.’ Then he made a very deep bow and finished, ‘Mehmed of Damascus, I thank you.’
From in front of him and slightly to the right came Mehmed’s voice. He said, ‘I thank you for your wishes and I extend the same sentiments also to you. It is for me to thank you, which I do with a full heart. Farewell, Geoffroi of Acquin. May Allah turn a kind face upon you.’
Then the two horsemen took Geoffroi’s arms and marched him out of the hall and back along the maze of passages to the stables.
It was only as they were cantering away through the silence of the dark night that he realised.
Mehmed’s spy network must have infiltrated right to the heart of the Frankish camp. Because he had known Geoffroi’s name all along.
With the humiliating failure of the siege of Damascus, the crusaders had, in Muslim eyes, turned themselves into incompetent, hapless fools.
With no clear purpose in Outremer, the continued presence there of what remained of King Louis’s great army seemed pointless. As the August days passed and the year proceeded into September, then October, the King acceded to pressure from his men — many of whom had already deserted — and issued orders that those who were still there should be provided with funds and allowed to return home.
King Louis himself, it was rumoured, was to remain in Jerusalem, and Queen Eleanor would stay at his side. Nobody quite knew why; Geoffroi, for one, could not bring himself to care very much.
The army was moved up to the coast, at Acre. Preparing to depart — the ship that would take him at least part of the way home, as far as Constantinople, was due to sail in the morning — Geoffroi thought back over the sixteen months that he had been away. He still wore his crusader’s cross; had he fulfilled his vow? He had seen the Holy City, Jerusalem, yes. But could he put his hand on his heart and say that he had fought for God’s cause, and thereby gained the longed-for remission of his sins?
He was not sure.
He tried to ask some of his fellow knights and, when they shrugged and said, of course! what else? he asked a priest. But the priest, also due to sail for Constantinople in the morning, clearly had other things on his mind and paid Geoffroi even less heed that the knights had done.
In the morning, sailing away from Acre in the pale dawn light, Geoffroi stood at the ship’s rail and stared at the dry, dusty land until it was nothing more than a faint smudge on the eastern horizon. Then, with a sigh, he turned his back on Outremer and began to think of home.
On the long march overland from Constantinople, Geoffroi met up with the dark-haired knight from Lombardy, who had come seeking him out. Both were affected by the pleasure of seeing a familiar face in a friendless place, and they fell into the habit of riding together. In the perils of that endless journey, it was an advantage to have a companion; conditions on the northward march were very different from how they had been when the great Christian army had ridden south. Then, they had been a vast force, unassailable, invulnerable, taking what they wanted, unmindful of the feeble protests of the weak and the unarmed.
Now, riding in small bands, it was they who were vulnerable.
Afterwards, Geoffroi could not help but wonder whether the Eye of Jerusalem had played any part in his survival. Certainly, the fact that he finally reached home largely unhurt and reasonably healthy was something of a miracle. Marking the daily tally of misfortunes — horses gone lame, falling sick, having to be slaughtered for meat; men using up their last particle of energy and collapsing by the roadside; fevers, sickness and injuries; theft, assault and even murder among the men as their supplies and their hope ran out — Geoffroi began to believe that his survival must have something supernatural about it.
He first put the Eye to the test when, in a small village on some desolate Bulgar plain, he and three of his companions were approached by a pair of ragged, foul-smelling herdsmen and offered some sort of fermented, milky drink in exchange for coin. One of the knights eagerly reached into his pouch to take out a coin, and was on the point of putting the cracked wooden cup to his lips when Geoffroi murmured, ‘Wait. Let us retreat a few paces first.’
Angrily the knight — a tall, rangy Burgundian — cried, ‘Wait? What for?’
But Geoffroi did not answer, instead walking away from the herdsmen and moving a little apart. The Burgundian followed him.