Crusade by Unknown Read Free Book Online

your sight.” Kalawun smiled at Nasir. “If I had known such a gift would have preoccupied her so, I would have given one to her years ago.”
    Aisha ignored the comment. “I still cannot think what to name him.”
    “I thought you had called him Fakir?”
    Aisha rolled her eyes. “That was last week. I don’t like that name anymore. I told you that.”
    Kalawun touched his daughter’s cheek. “I think now is not the time to concern yourself with this. It has been a long day and you must prepare yourself for the night to come.” His smile faded as she shrugged away from him, obviously discomforted.
    Kalawun felt a wrench in his gut at the thought that he had put his daughter’s happiness in the balance to secure his position with Baraka. She felt like a sacrifice. He supposed most fathers giving away their daughters into marriage must feel something like this, but the thought didn’t comfort him. He had bought her the monkey to alleviate his guilt. It had worked for a few days as he watched her delight over the creature. But after what he had witnessed with the slave, he felt troubled again. “You are a woman now, Aisha,” he told her, trying to sound firm. “You must be modest in your worldly appearance and obey and support your husband. You cannot run wild around the palace halls anymore or play with the servants or wade in the fish pool. Not as a woman. Not as a wife. Do you understand?”
    “Yes, Father,” murmured Aisha.
    “Go now, await your husband.”
    The part of Kalawun that wasn’t bound by duty or custom, the part of him that was all father, was secretly glad to see that none of the defiant sparkle had left her eyes as she moved off.
    Kalawun heard doors opening and turned to see four gold-cloaked warriors of the Bahri regiment, the Royal Guard, entering the hall. Behind, standing several inches taller than the soldiers, came Baybars Bundukdari, the Crossbow, sultan of Egypt and Syria, with whose sword the Ayyubid dynasty had ended in blood and the reign of the Mamluks had begun. He wore a heavy, fur-lined cloak of gold silk, embroidered with inscriptions from the Koran. Black bands of cloth on his upper arms displayed his rank and title. His tanned face was stony and his eyes, with the star-shaped defect in his left pupil that turned a simple gaze into a piercing glare, were as blue and fathomless as the Nile. At Baybars’s side were three military governors, including Mahmud and a fifth man dressed in the violet cloak of a royal messenger, one of the men who worked the posting houses through which information was relayed by horse across the empire. The messenger’s cloak was dust-stained, his face weary. It looked as if he had been on the road for some time. Baybars said something to him and he bowed and moved off. The sultan’s eyes swept the crowd and came to rest on Kalawun. He beckoned sharply. Leaving Nasir with a nod, Kalawun followed as Baybars left the hall.
    Together, the governors and their sultan headed up to the quieter second story of the palace, leaving the music and crowds behind. Here, the Bahris pushed open a set of ivory-paneled doors, which led out onto a wide balcony. The guards remained by the doors whilst Baybars and the governors moved out into the sunlight. It was a cool day with a strong breeze that plucked at their cloaks. The afternoon sky was a wide, flat blue without a trace of haze, and in the far distance, southwest of the city, they could see the Great Pyramids rising from the desert. The citadel, built by Saladin, was situated at the highest part of the city, just below the Muqattam Hills, and the view from the balcony was spectacular.
    Below them sprawled Cairo, whose name, al-Qahira , meant the conqueror. Minarets spiraled into the sky over the domes of mosques and palaces adorned with glass and mother-of-pearl that glittered in the sun. Woven in between these majestic edifices was a tight jumble of houses and shops that formed a complex warren of narrow