Inspired by his example and that of the two Christians, the Arab merchants and pilgrims plucked up their courage and joined in the fray. Some used their staves while others s.n.a.t.c.hed up rocks to use as makeshift weapons. Two of them were cut down at once by the swords of the bandits, but the others fought on, spurred by a potent mix of faith and desperation.
Their determined resistance caused the raiders to waver. But before greed or fear could decide the issue, an eerie, long-drawn howl began to penetrate the ?ghting din. As the howling grew louder, rolling across the sand like the voice of a mighty djinn, both sides faltered to a standstill, recognizing a mutual danger they knew only too well.
All eyes turned toward the east, where a huge wall of yellow sand had swallowed the horizon and was rolling toward them with the speed of a racing camel. Great clouds of grit billowed and churned in its heart, while near at hand, the dust was already starting to rise before the wind.
The bandit leader gave a yell, wheeling his horse to ?ee. His remaining followers broke and ran, scurrying like rats for the shelter of the rocks. The surviving members of the caravan hurled themselves ?at among their kneeling animals and buried their heads in their desert robes. The sandstorm was upon them within a matter of seconds, blotting out the sun.
Torquil had heard Arnault"s tales of such storms, but never had he experienced one himself. The storm shrilled around them like a chorus of demons as a wall of sand and wind swept over them like a giant wave, buffeting them without mercy as they crouched in the meager shelter of two kneeling camels.
Blinding sand whipped about them in gnashing clouds, as if the desert had risen up like a plague of insects, trying to devour them with a million tiny teeth.
Coughing and choking, Torquil dragged another fold of his cloak over his mouth and nose and sucked as much air as he could through the fabric, trying not to gag. Under his kef?yeh, he could feel tears streaming down his cheeks from grit in both eyes, but blinking did little to clear them as long as the wind blew.
The storm raged about them for what seemed an eternity. Through their tearing eyes, they could see no farther than a few inches away. Just when Torquil was convinced he must suffocate, a new noise began to pierce the roaring of the storm, which slowly began to slack off.
Sustained and silvery, the sound much resembled the birdlike note of a ?ute-surely too frail to penetrate the ferocious wind, yet it resounded as clearly as if it were echoing down the aisles of an empty chapel.
Their breathing eased as the wind gradually ceased battering their backs.
Cautiously, through the tear haze, Torquil c.o.c.ked an eye above the folds of his robe and saw that the storm was, indeed, abating. He was about to lower his head again, wiping at his cheek with the back of a grimy hand, when he caught a startling glimpse of something bright, like sunlight ?ashing off polished metal.
Patches of sky reappeared. The eerie twilight dissipated as the storm moved on. The sand drifted down and settled, leaving the air clear again. The blessed silence, after the storm, was a benison to all.
A little unsteadily, Arnault heaved himself up and began shaking the grit from his garments, wiping at his cheeks, coughing to clear his lungs. Torquil followed suit. All around them the Arabs were getting to their feet, giving thanks to Allah. Hurriedly the guards and the drovers set about checking that their beasts were uninjured and their goods intact.
There was no sign of the bandits other than the dead they had left behind. It was as though a huge hand had descended from the heavens and swept the earth clean of their presence. Torquil was still puzzling over the mysterious ?ash he had seen when an exclamation from Arnault alerted him to the approach of fresh company.
A solitary ?gure was emerging from the heat-shimmer in the east. Like them, he must have been overtaken by the storm only moments before, yet he strode with the easy con?dence of a man who fears nothing that nature can send against him. He was of medium height, his lean frame enveloped by a rough-woven burnoose the color of the sand, its hood casting his face into featureless shadow. His sandal-shod feet carried him toward them with the ?rmness of a soldier on the march.
The other pilgrims eyed the approaching ?gure with suspicion, pointing and muttering uneasily. Qasim directed several of his men to be on guard. As the newcomer drew nearer, a sinewy arm emerged from the folds of the burnoose to pull back the hood, from which emerged a shaven head above a handsome, beardless face the color of old mahogany. The ?ne planes of cheekbones and jaw recalled statues Arnault had seen in Egypt, but it was the man"s dark-eyed gaze that made him stiffen and catch his breath.
"You know this man?" Torquil said under his breath, in French.
Arnault slowly nodded. "It"s the very man we came to ?nd," he whispered. "Iskander, whose summons has brought us here in quest of a miracle."
Chapter Thirty.
1310.
A BUZZ RIPPLED THROUGH THE MUSLIM RANKS AT ISKANder"s approach. Bristling with suspicion, some of the caravan guards made ready to bar his way with drawn swords, but Qasim hissed at them to stand aside. "Do you not know a holy man when you see one?" he said, making a salaam as the newcomer pa.s.sed him by with hardly a nod, his dark gaze ?xed on Arnault.
When the man had come within a few paces-he did not appear to be armed-he inclined his head, approval and faint humor in his dark eyes.
"So you have come at last," he said in Arabic, rather than the French he had spoken at Chartres. "As I knew you would."
"If you knew I would come, then you know that I had little choice," Arnault replied in the same language.
"But how did you ?nd me in the midst of this desert?"
"In the same manner I found you before," came Iskander"s cryptic answer. "You and your companion,"
he added, with a nod of his chin in Torquil"s direction. "Another man might have chosen to come alone."
"This is my brother-in-arms," Arnault said, not naming Torquil because of Qasim"s presence-and wondering if his own name was even known to Iskander. "He is here because he would not have it otherwise."
"Then you are more fortunate than many," Iskander said. "Come."
Swiftly Arnault and Torquil gathered up their meager gear, giving their donkey into the care of one of their traveling companions. They were at the point of following after Iskander when Qasim hesitantly approached them.
"The caravan must move on," he said. "This is dangerous country. We dare not wait for you."
"Nor do I ask that you should," Arnault said. "We must part now. Thank you for your protection."
"You know this holy man?" Qasim persisted.
Arnault smiled faintly. "I know him."
The caravan master"s gaze ?icked from Arnault to Torquil and back as he shook his head. "They say that Allah protects his own-and children and fools. Go, then. Whatever fate has been ordained for you, I do not believe that we shall meet again."
With a sketched salaam, he turned on his heel and strode off, bellowing orders. As Arnault and Torquil headed after Iskander, a ?urry of activity erupted as drovers and pilgrims goaded the pack animals to their feet, shouting to one another as they thumped the loose sand from their belongings and checked their baggage harness.
With the exchange of a speaking glance, the two Templars left it all behind, casting their lot with Iskander. Arnault studied him from behind as he and Torquil trudged after him. The mysterious stranger had been at the center of many a conversation between the two of them during the long months it had taken them to come to this moment.
Now that they had found him-or he had found them- Arnault wondered whether he had made the right decision. But Torquil appeared nonplussed at actually meeting Iskander. Seeing his faint smile, Arnault found some of his own earlier reservations slipping away-but Iskander himself remained an enigma, thus far, and Arnault was reluctant to press him for information just yet. Besides, he didn"t think he had the breath to talk and also keep up the pace the stranger set.
They soon lost sight of the caravan as Iskander led them into the dusty hills. The ground was stony and rough, the footing often treacherous. Their guide paused occasionally to glance back at them, a faint smile on his lips, but he did not speak, and he did not pause long enough for them ever to come abreast of him.
An hour"s march brought them to the mouth of a jagged ravine. At its far end, a dense outcropping of greenery showed intensely vivid against the arid backdrop of the surrounding terrain. As they drew nearer, another human ?gure stepped out of a ?ssure in the side of the ravine, robed like Iskander, and stood statuelike to await their arrival. He was shorter than Iskander, and slighter of build and probably somewhat older, but with the same liquid-dark eyes and ?ne skin like burnished old wood.
"My servant, Berhanu," Iskander explained as they approached, speaking French. "He shares my counsels even as he shares my labors. Though he understands your Frankish tongue, he cannot speak it.
Being mute, he communicates only in signs."
Berhanu smiled and accorded them a grave gesture of greeting, making the salaam usual for this part of the world, but then adding a little bow over palms pressed together before his breast.
Arnault returned the bow, and said, "I am Arnault de Saint Clair, and my companion is Torquil Lennox."
Iskander inclined his head, then spoke brie?y to Berhanu in a language Arnault had never heard before, to which his servant responded with nods and hand gestures too swift for the inexperienced eye to follow.
"Food and drink await us," Iskander informed the knights.
"Come. You will have many questions, which are better answered when we have taken refreshment."
A further brief walk along the ravine brought them to a set of ancient ruins surrounded by cedar trees.
Three well-fed mules and a pair of donkeys grazed placidly on the lush gra.s.s growing up between the stones. From nearby came the blessed sound of trickling water, reminding both Templars how long they had been walking, after the sandstorm. At their glance in that direction, Iskander pointed out a rivulet welling from a cleft in the wall of the ravine, which pooled in a small, rocky basin and then was channeled downhill along a shallow course of stones, eventually running dry amid the rocks.
They paused to drink from the basin. The water, Torquil discovered, was blessedly pure and cold.
Following the example of Iskander, he and Arnault washed faces and hands, only reluctantly abandoning the water for the shade of one of the crumbling walls, where Berhanu had set out bread, cheese, and dates, along with more of the fresh, cold water.
The Templars accepted the food with thanks, surveying the ruins as they started to eat. On the wall above Iskander"s head, a lingering patch of fresco work displayed a still-bright symbol of a Chi-Rho, the Greek letters superimposed one on the other in an emblem formed by the ?rst two letters of the name of Christ.
"In the days of the Roman emperors, this was home to a band of early Christians," Iskander explained, noting the direction of their gaze. "Its builders came here to escape persecution-as do you."
Torquil glanced at Arnault, wondering how much the other man could actually know of their affairs.
"Who are you?" he blurted.
"Brother Arnault will have told you my name," Iskander replied with a shrug, around a mouthful of date.
"Beyond that, I am what you see."
"What I see," Torquil replied, frowning, "is what you are not. You are not an Arab. Neither are you of Latin blood. You speak the lingua franca ?uently, but not as one who learned it from birth. So where do you come from? And what language is your mother tongue?"
"So many questions," Iskander said, with a glimmering of humor. "I was born in Gondar, in the northern province of the kingdom of Ethiopia. The native speech of my homeland is Ge"ez, and many neighboring lands speak Arabic, but those who serve the Church must learn both Greek and Latin. And of course, I have learned your Frankish speech."
Ethiopia.
Torquil registered a blink of surprise, aware of how little he knew of that far-off African kingdom, so distant from his native Scotland that its very name carried the resonance of legend. He and Arnault had spoken of it more than once, during the long months of their journey here, intrigued by the possibility that the Iskander of Chartres Cathedral might be the same Iskander mentioned by Jauffre in connection with the Ethiopian emba.s.sage of 1306. But this in no way explained why either Iskander should be interested in Templar affairs.
"This raises more questions," Arnault said tentatively, obviously thinking along lines similar to Torquil. "At Chartres, you called yourself friend and referred to me as brother. May I ask why?"
"Because that is what you are. Like you, I am a Knight of the Temple of Solomon. A Templar."
As Arnault and Torquil exchanged startled glances, Iskander drew apart the neck of his burnoose to reveal an egg-sized medallion of dark wood strung on a slender leather thong. Into its face was carved a Templar cross, and on its other side, as he turned it for them, a ?nely carved depiction of the Templar seal, with two knights riding on one horse.
Opening his hands, Iskander then showed them small cruciform tattoos at the base of each palm. His feet bore similar markings atop the instep, betokening the wounds of cruci?xion. Mouth agape, Torquil suddenly found himself quite certain that there would be a ?fth tattoo on Iskander"s side, beneath the ?owing robes. The look on Arnault"s face, when Torquil glanced at him, suggested that he probably had come to the same conclusion, and that he, too, was both taken aback and curiously intrigued by what all of this suggested.
"I see that I must explain," Iskander said, smiling at their mute astonishment. "The tale begins more than a century ago. At that time, Ethiopia was ruled by a king called Harbay, who had a younger half brother called Lalibela, though they were by different mothers. Lalibela"s mother was a prophetess; when he was only an infant, she saw a great swarm of bees hovering around his cradle without injuring him. From this sign, she knew that the child was born for greatness, and gave him the name, which means The bees recognize his sovereignty.
"When Harbay heard this prophecy, he began to fear for his throne and made several attempts to kill his younger brother. At last, prompted by G.o.d in a dream, Lalibela ?ed Ethiopia and made his way to Jerusalem, where he presented himself to the Knights of the Order of the Temple. Christianity came early to my land, of course," he offered as an aside, "though we follow the Patriarch in Alexandria. Some of our customs differ somewhat from those of the West." He brie?y displayed his palms again.
"In any case, the superiors of the Order examined Lalibela and, ?nding him worthy, agreed to receive his vows. In due course, his spiritual gifts commended him to the Matre of the time, who became the prince"s mentor and initiated him in the mystical disciplines necessary for one called to service among the inner guardians of the Light-yes, those you refer to as le Cercle."
Torquil glanced quickly at Arnault, who had stiffened at this revelation.
"This is information of the most privileged kind," Arnault said softly.
"And it is safe with me," Iskander a.s.sured them. "Remember that I, too, am a sharer of the wisdom of Solomon. We have sworn a common vow."
In the air before them he sketched a sign, which manifested brie?y as a shimmering glyph of light. Torquil caught his breath, for it was the sigil of an adept of the highest degree. Arnault raised an eyebrow but merely nodded silently, still tight-lipped as Iskander resumed his tale.
"Lalibela remained in Jerusalem for twenty-?ve years, under the tutelage of his Templar masters. At the end of that time, upon the death of King Harbay, he returned to Ethiopia to a.s.sume the throne. When he left, he took with him not only the wisdom he had gained from his masters, but also several knight-brothers who had become his disciples. Thus was inst.i.tuted the Ethiopian branch of the Templar Order, whose special charge it was to safeguard the mystical heirlooms of the Ethiopian royal line. One was the Mirror of Makeda; the other was the Ark of the Covenant."
Both men"s jaws had dropped at this declaration. Arnault was the ?rst to ?nd his tongue, and only with dif?culty.
"But-the Ark has been lost for. several thousand years. You"re saying it ended up in Ethiopia?"
"Yes. Makeda"s great-grandson had it brought there," Iskander said.
"And who is Makeda?" Torquil dared to ask.
Iskander seemed almost amused by the question. "The scriptures do not name her, but amongst your people she is known by her t.i.tle: the Queen of Sheba."
"Of course," Arnault murmured, faintly nodding.
"These revelations should come as no surprise," Iskander said. "The history of the kingdom of Ethiopia and the history of the Templars are both rooted in the same event: the raising of the First Temple by King Solomon the Great."
Arnault and Torquil watched him pour tiny cups of steaming, fragrant coffee that Berhanu brought, hanging on his every word as he continued.
"The First Temple was built to house the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark was made to house the Tablets of the Law," Iskander said, pa.s.sing a cup to each of them. "When Solomon set out to build his great temple, he sent messages throughout the known world, calling for the materials he required and offering gold and silver in return.
"Amongst those who responded to this call was an Ethiopian merchant named Tamrin, who came to Solomon offering red gold and sapphires and black wood that could not be eaten by worms. Tamrin was amazed at the splendor of Solomon"s kingdom, and the wisdom of Solomon himself. When he returned to Ethiopia, he gave such a glowing account of all he had seen that Queen Makeda resolved to go and see these marvels for herself.
"She set out with a great caravan laden with gifts and riches. When she arrived at Jerusalem, Solomon received her with great honor. Captivated by her beauty, he later sought her love. This she freely bestowed, likewise embracing the faith of Israel, which she had come to revere.
"She returned to Ethiopia carrying a royal prince in her womb," Iskander went on. "When this child, Prince Menelik, grew to manhood, he journeyed to the court of his father, who received him with delight.
But Queen Makeda grieved for her absent son. Out of pity for her tears and prayers, an Angel of the Lord came down and breathed upon her mirror. The Mirror became a window of vision that enabled her to watch over her son at a distance-and it remains a vehicle of divination to this day."
"But what of the Ark?" Arnault said impatiently.
"Yes, the Ark." Iskander smiled faintly. "It has been claimed by some that when Menelik was preparing to return home, some of his traveling companions stole the Ark and secretly made away with it. Those claims, however, are wide of the mark. Having failed to persuade Menelik to remain at his side, Solomon presented his son with the altar covering from the Ark as a parting gift-not the Ark itself. It was not until two generations later that the actual Ark came to Ethiopia-and by a different route entirely.
"When Jeroboam was king of Judah," he continued, "the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshak I declared war on the Hebrews. When the Egyptian army attacked Jerusalem, the High Priests, fearing the worst, removed the Sacred Tablets from the Ark and hid them in a secret sanctuary deep beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Sheshak demanded a great tribute in gold and silver as a price for sparing the city. To satisfy this demand, Jerusalem was stripped of all precious objects, including the Ark with its housings of gold.
Sheshak took the tribute and returned home, where the Ark was placed in his treasury as a tribute of war.
"Menelik"s grandson, also of that name, had just ascended to the throne when he learned the news. He spent three days fasting and praying before setting out for Thebes. Guided by Makeda"s Mirror, he and his companions were able to penetrate Sheshak"s tribute vaults and retrieve the Ark. As the Israelite kingdoms were still in disarray, Menelik II brought the Ark back to Ethiopia and installed it in a tabernacle in Aksum, where it remains to this day."
As he fell silent, the Templars allowed themselves to breathe at last.
"A remarkable story," Arnault said.
"It remains for you to ?nish it," said Iskander. "Or die in the attempt."
Arnault felt a chill along his spine. "How could I ?nish such a story?" he asked. "Surely you aren"t saying that we must ?nd the Ark?"
"Not the Ark, but what it contained."
"The Tablets of the Law? But you said they"re no longer in the Ark."