The Road to Damietta

  "Speak," said the sultan. "My counselors will listen and tell me what they think. Then I will tell you what we both think. A fair bargain?"

  "It is fair," Francis replied. "And if we cannot give you good arguments to show you that what we are saying is true—that is, that your own law is false—then have us decapitated."

  The sultan slid his dark gaze over me from head to foot and winked both eyes, one after the other. "The young lady is far too pretty to decapitate," he observed. "Instead, if you lose I'll add her to my chambers, which are poorly provisioned at this hour since thirty-two of my most beautiful women were lost in last year's plague."

  He was having fun with me, I felt, but Francis was deadly serious. Therefore, when I translated the sultan's remarks, I cautioned him.

  "Francis Bernardone," I said, "you're a fool. The sultan was born a Moslem. He will always be a Moslem. Nothing you can say will ever change him. Any more than he'll change you. And if there's an argument, who's to be the judge? Friend Francis, you're in danger. Please be content to explain to him the meaning of Christ's Passion and the Resurrection. If you must, you might add something about the inferno. But in God's name, do not threaten the sultan or madden him. You're in Egypt, not in Assisi."

  Francis would not listen. He repeated the challenge in a bolder tone. I had to make his words sound more polite when I translated them.

  The sultan took up the challenge. He called the priests and doctors to his side, more than a dozen of them, and they agreed at once on a decision. The sultan looked grave as he announced it, speaking slowly as though each word was painful to him.

  "My advisers," he said, "remind me that I am the hope of the divine law and it is my duty to maintain it. Therefore they command me, in the name of God and of Mohammed, who gave us the law, to have you beheaded immediately. We will not hear what you wish to say. And if again someone comes burning to preach or to speak against the law, the law commands that his head also be cut off. So, therefore, we order, in the name of God, that your heads be cut off. The law commands it."

  Francis heard the sultan's words in silence, his lips moving prayerfully. Brother Illuminato, starkly pale beneath his coating of dust, likewise prayed. Struck dumb, I could think of nothing to say. The executioner took a deep breath and elevated his chest.

  Malik-al-Kamil's eyes were closed upon a thought. I wondered if he was recalling his great ancestor Saladin, whose sayings I had read. Possibly he was thinking of the time Saladin had asked a Jew, a scholar known for his wisdom, which of the three laws he held to be true, the Jewish or the Moslem or the Christian. The scholar had answered with the parable about three rings that were so very much alike that no one could tell true from false.

  The sultan was silent for a time. He glanced upward at the swaying silk of the pavilion and then at Francis, who was still praying.

  "My counselors have commanded me to have your head cut off, and at once," he said, "because the law commands it. But I shall nevertheless ignore this order and not slay you, for the reason that this would be poor recompense for your having come here at great risk of your life to save my soul."

  Francis stopped praying when he heard this. He thanked the sultan breathlessly. I didn't hear all of his words but quickly made some up.

  "Francis Bernardone embraces you as a brother," I said, "in the name of God who rules over us all."

  I went on with my speech but was interrupted when Francis addressed the sultan again, this time more politely and in words that astounded me.

  "I have heard that you are the incarnation of evil," he said. "The Devil himself, the sultan of an empire of Satanic imps. It makes me happy, therefore, to find these things to be false."

  Francis was touched by the sultans show of humanity, but this was not enough. In the spirit of love, fearing for the sultan's soul, he now made him an offer, so wildly dangerous that I was tempted to conceal it.

  Reluctantly, against my better judgment, I said, "The humble messenger of God, Francis Bernardone, wishes to challenge you to a trial. You will have a large fire built on the riverbank and you will join hands with him and together the two of you will walk through the flames, over a carpet of burning coals."

  The sultan winced at the thought and drew his slippered feet from view. He was an intelligent man, famed, I had heard, for his learning.

  "I have a lively distaste for flames and burning coals," he said with a smile. "I inherited it from my father, who inherited it from his father. It goes far back into ancient times, this distaste. To Yusuf-al-Farasi, founder of the dynasty. It was Yusuf who undertook this trial to win the hand of Princess Zariti, the beautiful pearl of Egypt. All he got from it, I am sorry to relate, were blisters, for the princess wedded the servant who built the fire, with whom she was secretly in love."

  There was, alas, still more for me to say. Fearfully, I said it. "If Francis Bernardone comes forth from the fire unscathed, you and your people will happily accept the power of Christ, the wisdom of God. Amen."

  The sultan glanced at his huddled counselors, who had grown restless. "Happily we will accept God, because we already accept Him. But this matter of Christ..."

  Francis took a deep breath, like a diver who is about to plunge into the water. He began to trace a circle with his joyful steps. I had seen all this before, but now he was possessed. A soul was within his grasp. The soul belonged to the man who could bring the war to an end with but a single word.

  "This Christ matter needs thought," Malik-al-Kamil continued.

  "Now, at this moment, is the time for thought," Francis said. "Death stalks our midst. God alone knows who will be taken. How tragic if the father of millions is to be killed before he embraces Christ! By this simple embrace he protects his people and saves his immortal soul."

  The sultan parted his beard. Was he having doubts about the man dancing around before him, making whistling sounds, leaving toe marks on his fine Sihouk rugs? He examined the ring on his thumb; he cast his eyes on the executioner, who was muttering sounds of frustration.

  "Ahmed," he said, "will you kindly keep disappointment to yourself ? You're much too ambitious. In the past few days you've already dispatched a dozen."

  "Only nine," Ahmed said in a thin voice. He was a thick-lipped, oily little man, hairy as an ape. "Not counting the two women, sire."

  The sultan turned his attention to Francis. "You say that you have come to save my soul. How, kindly tell me, is this to be accomplished?"

  "By acts of poverty, of love, and of chastity," Francis said.

  "Poverty. What does poverty mean? Does it mean that I must give up my riches, my lands, my palaces, my libraries, my concubines, my slaves, everything, and become a shoeless monk, begging for my food and a place to lay my head?"

  "That would be perfect poverty," Francis said.

  The sultan blinked. "And perfect love. This sounds like the opium dream of an addled poet. Tell me about perfect love. How doe$ this come about?"

  "Simply. By loving your enemies."

  "Huh!" was the sultan's reply, which I didn't translate. His minions, including the executioner, laughed.

  "By loving your enemies," Francis said again.

  "Impossible," the sultan said. "And you leave out the love of women. Why?"

  Francis looked uncomfortable. He glanced at me but didn't answer.

  "What you suggest by your silence," said the sultan, "is that I should never touch a woman. You wish to make me a eunuch. What nonsense! Tell me, poet, what would happen to the world if everyone took your advice? But don't bother to tell me. I will tell you. The world would come to an end, smash, and at once, during the lives of those now living."

  Francis, to my great delight, still looked uncomfortable.

  Three servants were swinging palm fans above the sultan's head, creating disturbing sounds; he ordered them to stop.

  "And tell me also, poet of the lively eyes and twinkling feet, how your poverty and love and chastity are rewarded. You must have a heaven of some
sort, hidden away somewhere in the clouds."

  Francis was upset by this, but he said quietly, "Paradise is peopled by bands of angels and loving spirits."

  "Who neither eat nor drink nor cohabit?" inquired the sultan. "How deadly!To dwell upon this heaven of yours makes my stomach turn over and over. Ours is far more inviting. Dates and olives and pomegranates, mountains of them. Rivers of milk and lakes of honey."

  Francis's eyes brightened for a moment at the sound of food.

  "Also, poet, do not forget the lovely, sloe-eyed women, aglow with precious oils and ointments, who inhabit our heaven. Who in no way are like those who, my spies report, are to be seen on the river not far below the walls of Damietta—a shipload of licentious creatures, unveiled, mocking, arrogant, impudent, bold of buttock, with eyes circled in black and hair tinted the gray of ashes."

  I translated this long speech as best I could. Francis gaped, hummed a wordless tune, then stopped and faced the sultan.

  "Why do you wish to repeat your life?" he asked. "From what you have said, your heaven is only an echo of the life you have now. Our heaven does not repeat the things we do here on earth. It is another world, a world of the spirit, nearer to God."

  "I have spent many hours trying to get near to God, but He escapes me."

  "If you have tried, then He has not escaped you."

  The sultan frowned. "Enough of God," he said. "Tell me about this Christ of yours. From what I've heard, He's different from our Mohammed. Not so elegant and commanding. A ragged beggar, in fact."

  "Yes. He wore a robe of a thousand patches. Every poor man He met gave Him a patch for His robe."

  "And He was not so happy as our Mohammed. Indeed, a somewhat somber, black-visaged one, it seems."

  "Remember that He carried upon His shoulders man's sufferings and humiliations."

  "Who put them there?"

  "God, His Father, put them there."

  "Why on His shoulders?"

  "To test His Son and to test us."

  The sultan pushed back his green and purple turban. "My head grows dizzy," he said. "You wear a ragged robe, I see, and have bare feet. Is this the way your Christ went about?"

  "Yes."

  "In poverty, preaching poverty and, I am told, love, endless love for friend and enemy, for birds of the field, and for beasts of the forest. Tell me about this endless love, please, and about the need for poverty."

  "They're both beyond us. Perhaps they are goals we pursue and cannot reach, were never meant to reach, this side of heaven. Yet we try. And in the trying we shed, as serpents shed their skin, some measure of greed and lust and selfishness."

  Whispers ran through the restless ranks of the high priest and counselors. The cymbals and lutes and trumpets that had been quiet started up again and became a din that beat against the silken walls of the pavilion. Smiling, the sultan clapped his hands and whistled. He did everything except rise from his throne and dance.

  Suddenly his smile faded. He arranged his flowered robe and gathered his followers. Without uttering another word to Francis or looking at him, he took his leave. Yet as I watched his stride down the aisle, I had the strong impression that in some way mysterious to me the two men had become friends.

  32

  Francis and Brother Illuminato were hustled away by guards and I was taken to a large silken tent a short distance from the pavilion, inhabited as far as I could tell by the sultan's numerous wives.

  Within the tent, springing up like white mushrooms, was a series of smaller tents separated from each other by plants whose blooms were fashioned of wax and trees laden with waxen fruit. Rivulets wound in and out through these small gardens, gliding over golden sand, tumbling over miniature falls made of precious stones. Turtles studded with jewels basked on rocks and silver fish swam among turquoise lily pads.

  The tent I was taken to was round and stuffed with pillows of all colors. Fine rugs covered the floor. Furnishings were few. Statues or paintings, I knew from my reading, were forbidden by the Koran, the Moslem bible, and Moslems were warned that when they died and appeared before Allah, if they had furnished their homes with images of any kind, they must at that instant either bring them to life before the judgment seat or be banished to hell forever.

  I sank into the bed. It was cool and soft; I felt as if I was floating on scented foam. Through an opening in the roof I could see the first star of evening and a rising moon, the same star and the same moon that I had so often seen from my balcony at home.

  A desperate calm settled upon me. I remembered that the sultan had smiled when told he might be Satan himself. He was amused rather than offended when Francis challenged him to a trial by fire. He seemed to admire Francis for having the courage to walk into the enemy's camp, boldly and uninvited. From all I had observed, he liked the barefooted pilgrim who danced like a clown and sang as he talked—liked him even as a friend.

  But how long would this budding friendship last? An hour, a day? The sultan, I had heard, was moody, given to laughter and sudden fits of anger. Patient Francis thought of him as an infidel soul fluttering like one of the little birds he often talked to, ready to light upon his outstretched hand. What if the bird decided not to light and fluttered away to sit scheming in his great pavilion, turned into a hawk?

  I fell asleep from exhaustion and awakened to the sound of lutes and the sultan's voice saying, "Night, not day, is a time for dreams, my pretty young Christian." Behind him were servants who laid down a velvet rug for me to step upon, who carried lamps smelling of musk to light the way.

  He led me a short distance down a maze of paths to an enormous black barge, draped with flags and guarded by a phalanx of warriors armed with scimitars, and then to his quarters, which took up most of the bow.

  Half of the quarters was decorated with palm trees in pots and shoals of black pillows. The other half was filled haphazardly with bound and unbound books, stacks of yellowing manuscripts, and two large brass lamps that gave off but a feeble glow.

  Once seated, almost hidden in the billowing mound of pillows, I was passed a salver of confections. The sultan ate most of them, picking out the nuts and slices of citron and leaving the rest.

  "I like this Bernardone," he said. "He's the first Christian among the many I have seen who reminds me at all of Christ. He even tempts me to compare Christ with Mohammed. The two men are much alike. Bernardone in his sackcloth and bare feet must be the first Christian since Christ. And from what I have seen of the Christians here in Egypt, he may well be the last, for they seem bent upon destroying the laws they profess so loudly, destroying themselves as well."

  He was silent for a while. In the glimmering dark his eyes rested upon me.

  "How long have you known this man?" he said.

  "Since I was nine."

  "Are you one of his acolytes or whatever they are called?"

  "No."

  "But you go about with him. You're with him?"

  "I am now."

  "You must like this man to follow him around."

  "I do."

  "Is it possible that you're in love with him?"

  There was no need of an answer and apparently he didn't expect one, for he said at once, "Has he ever shown the least love for you? Not Christian love, mind you—he seems to love everyone, even us infidels—but the love of a man for a woman?"

  I have never been sure about what happened to me next. It could have been the hour—the royal barge, the Libelcio, floating romantically on the lake; the sea wind, smelling of faraway places; the sound of cymbals in the distance; the misty stars crowding the night. It could have been that I was overwrought after my long frustrations. Or a spell mysteriously cast by a man who had the gift of divination.

  "Truthfully," I said, "never has there been a sign during the time I've known him. Nothing, though I have loved him with all my heart."

  "And you love him now?"

  "Now and forever."

  "Knowing, as you must, that he's a man sworn only to
God?"

  "Yes."

  "This could be his power over you. There are some who enjoy devoting their lives to the impossible, who prefer to fail at the impossible than to succeed at the possible. You may be one of these prideful people."

  Prideful? How many times had the word been leveled at me! A hundred times? Since the day I was old enough to totter around in my mothers shoes, admiring myself in every one of the twenty-one mirrors in our room of mirrors.

  "Francis will tire of his burden," I said. "It's heavy."

  "He'll break holy vows for you? Do you really believe this?"

  "Yes—fervently."

  "If he doesn't, what then? You're very young. Are you prepared to spend your life wandering after him in silent adoration?"

  "He'll tire of the burden."

  "When? There were no signs of it today that I could see."

  "You don't know him."

  "Perhaps not, but I shall before many days have passed."

  There was a disturbing note in his voice, the tone of a man who was used to giving commands and having them obeyed.

  "Where is Francis now?" I said. "Is he safe?"

  "Safe unless he decides not to be. He's an agile young man. Adventurous. Imagine walking through a fire to prove something."

  A servant came to announce that his guests had arrived. Taking his time, the sultan rose, searched through a pile of manuscripts, and came out with a thin volume bound in golden boards.

  "Secrets of the Egyptian Dance," he said, handing it to me with a bow. "A present to you from Malik-al-Kamil."

  I spread the book on the rug and turned the sheets. There was much to read, sheet after sheet of illuminations, painted in garish colors.

  "You'll find it of interest," he said. "We have a poor supply of oil for our lamps because of the siege, so you may wish to read by daylight."

  "It's a wonderful gift, sir. I'll take it with me and read it when I get back to Damietta."

  I met his gaze. He showed his dazzling teeth in a gentle, fatherly smile. For some reason a chill raced through me.