The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (poetry books to read txt) 📖

was a devilish trick. The Tartar heavy cavalry fell upon those who remained behind, now few in number, and slaughtered all. The light cavalry rode along the flanks of those who retreated, shooting them down till bodies in their thousands littered the road. I was one of the few who, by God's grace and by feigning death, lived."

The Tartars advanced to the Danube, he went on, burning everything, killing all the people in towns and villages. They burned Pest to the ground. On Christmas Day in the year 1241 the Danube froze hard. The Tartars crossed and destroyed Buda. They advanced into Austria. Tartar columns were sighted from the walls of Vienna. Europe lay helpless before them.

"Only the hand of God saved us. He willed that at that very moment the emperor of the Tartars in their far-off homeland should[156] die," Sire Cosmas concluded. "All the kings and generals of the Tartars had to depart from Europe, with their armies, to choose their next emperor. Those parts of Poland and Hungary they had occupied, they left a dead, silent desert.

"Since then the Tartars have made war on the Saracens, which pleases us, of course. But is the enemy of our enemy truly our friend? Permit me to doubt it, good Fathers. We are no better able to fight the Tartars now than we were after Mohi. I urge you to let the Tartars and Saracens wear themselves out fighting each other. Let us not help the Tartars with their distant wars, losing knights and men we might later need to defend Europe against those devils themselves."

Sire Cosmas's words chilled Simon. He felt himself almost persuaded that the Tartars were a menace to the world. It might be a grave error to work for an alliance with them. And yet, for the sake of his family he had accepted this mission. He could not back down now. Uneasily he rubbed his damp palms on his tunic.

There was a murmur of conversation as Sire Cosmas finished and bowed.

Fra Tomasso, scribbling notes on a parchment, looked up and asked, "Did you say that the Tartar soldiers have the faces of dogs, Sire Cosmas?"

Cosmas shook his head, looking himself somewhat sheepish, Simon thought. "We spoke of them so because their pointed fur caps made them look like dogs."

"I wondered, because Aristotle writes of men with animals' heads living in remote regions," said the stout Dominican. He made a note.

Cosmas brightened. "They do eat the flesh of living prisoners. And I hope I may not offend your chastity by telling you this, but they slice off the breasts of the women they rape and serve them as delicacies to their princes. Raw."

Simon thought of John and Philip and wondered whether they had ever done such horrible things. He wished he had learned more about the Tartars before agreeing to pursue this cause.

"To hear of such deeds is not likely to cause concupiscent movements in normal men," said Fra Tomasso dryly. "Have you seen such abominations with your own eyes?"

"No," said Cosmas, "but I heard it from many people when the Tartars were invading us."

"Thank you," said d'Aquino, making another note. He put his[157] quill down and started to heave his bulk up from his chair. Cardinal Ugolini darted past him, resting his hand momentarily on d'Aquino's shoulder, and the Dominican settled back down again.

That cardinal looks just like a fat little mouse, Simon thought. One of the Italians. And it was he who had brought this Sire Cosmas to speak against the Tartars. He might well be a key opponent of the alliance. What would it take to change his mind?

Ugolini beckoned toward the audience, and a tall blond man came forward now to stand beside him.

I have seen him before, Simon thought. Where?

"Holy Fathers," said Ugolini, "Providence sends us this man, David of Trebizond, a trader in Cathayan silks. He has traveled in recent years among the Tartars. David speaks Greek but not Latin. I will translate what he says."

Simon remembered at last where he had seen David of Trebizond. Standing on a balcony and looking pleased as the people rioted against the Tartar ambassadors. And now here to speak against the alliance.

The back of his neck tingling, Simon thought, This man is an enemy.

XIV

Ugolini spoke in a low voice to the blond man in a language Simon guessed was Greek, and David answered at some length.

"You must suppose now that I am David speaking directly to you," said Ugolini in Latin to the assembly, patting the front of his red satin robe. "I come from an old merchant family of Trebizond. Caravans from across Turkestan bring us silks from Cathay. We are Christians according to the Greek rite."

This provoked a hostile murmur from the audience.

Ugolini hesitated, then said, "I speak in my own person for a moment—I, too, am inclined to treat as suspect what a so-called[158] Catholic of the schismatic Greek Church tells me. But I have talked long with David, and I am convinced he is a virtuous man. After all, the Greeks, like us, are believers in Christ. And Trebizond is at war with Constantinople, so we can trust this man the more for that."

Again David spoke in Greek to Ugolini. Unable to understand David's words, Simon listened to his voice. It was rich and resonant. A virtuous man? A traveling mountebank, more likely. He felt a deep distrust of both David and Ugolini.

"From time to time the Saracens tried to conquer us, but with the grace of God we fought them off," said David through Ugolini. "And when we were not at war with them we traded with them, for Trebizond lives by trade. And now that the Tartars have conquered all of Persia, we trade with them."

Fra Tomasso raised a broad hand and asked, "Do you find the Tartars honest traders?"

"They would rather take what they want by looting or tribute or taxation. Eventually they think they will not have to trade. They believe the blue sky, which they worship, will permit them to conquer the whole world, and then all peoples will slave for them. Just as they use subject people, so, if you ally yourselves with them, they will use you. You will help them destroy the Moslems, and then they will turn on you."

He hates the Tartars. I can hear it in his voice, see it in the glow in his eyes. He is sincere enough about that.

A cardinal shouted out something in Latin too rapid for Simon to understand. An archbishop bellowed an answer. Two cardinals were arguing loudly in the pews on the other side of the room. Suddenly all the Church leaders seemed to be talking at once. Fra Tomasso picked up a little bell from his desk and rang it vigorously. Simon could barely hear it, and everyone ignored it.

The princes of the Church quarrel among themselves like ordinary men.

Pope Urban stood up and lifted his arms. "Silence!" he cried. His voice was shrill and louder than Fra Tomasso's bell. The argument died down.

"Have you seen the Tartar army in action, Messer David?" d'Aquino asked.

David was silent a long time before answering. His face took on a haunted look. His eyes seemed to gaze at something far away.

"I was at Baghdad a week after they took it. I came to trade with[159] the Tartars. There were no other people left in that country to trade with. The Tartar camp was many leagues away from the ruins of Baghdad. They had to move away from the city to escape the smell of the dead. I went to Baghdad because I wanted to see. I saw nothing but ashes and corpses for miles and miles. The stink of rotting flesh nearly killed me.

"I found people who had survived. Those who had not gone mad told me what had happened. The Tartars commanded the caliph to surrender. He said he would pay tribute, but he could not surrender his authority to them because he was the spiritual head of Islam."

Simon heard murmurs of derision at this, but David ignored them and, speaking through Ugolini, went on.

"Over a hundred thousand Tartars surrounded Baghdad, and their siege machines began smashing its walls with great rocks brought down from the mountains by slave caravans. Soon their standards, which are made of the horns and hides and tails of beasts, were raised over the southeastern wall from the Racecourse Gate to the Persian Tower. The city was lost. The Tartars promised to spare the remaining troops if they would surrender. The soldiers of Baghdad went out, unarmed, and the Tartars killed them all with arrows. This is the Tartars' notion of honor."

"They will do the same to us!" shouted a cardinal. The pope slapped his palm loudly on the arm of his chair, and silence settled again.

"Hulagu Khan, the commander of the Tartar army, now entered the city and made the caliph serve him a splendid dinner. After dinner the khan demanded that the caliph show him all the jewels and gold and silver and other treasures that had been gathered by the caliphs of Baghdad over the centuries. Hulagu promised to let the caliph live, together with a hundred of his women."

This brought a loud cackle from under one of the red hats in the front row.

"Only a hundred women!" a voice followed the laughter. "Poor caliph! How many was he wont to have?"

"Seeing how ugly those Saracens' women are, I would think one wife too many," another prelate called out.

Irritated, Simon wished he could silence them all. This was too serious a matter for such unseemly jokes.

The ribald jests continued, to Simon's annoyance, until Fra[160] Tomasso rang his bell. Then David, looking grimmer than ever, spoke to Ugolini, and Ugolini began to address the assembly.

"Next the Tartars commanded all the people of Baghdad to herd out onto the plain outside the city, telling them that they would be made to leave the city only while the Tartars searched it for valuables.

"When they had the people at their mercy they separated them into three groups, men, women, and children. When families are broken up, the members do not fight as hard to survive. The Tartars slaughtered them with swords and arrows. Two hundred thousand men, women, and children they killed that day, after promising them they would not be harmed."

Simon tried to imagine the butchering of those hundreds of thousands of people. He had never seen any Saracens, and so the victims in his mind's eye tended to resemble the people of Paris. He shuddered inwardly as he pictured those countless murders.

"The Tartars now entered the city whose people were all dead, and sacked and burned it. It had been such a great city that it took them seven days to reduce it to ruins."

Simon's heart turned to ice.

What if it were Paris? Could we fight any harder for Paris than the Saracens did for Baghdad?

Ex Tartari furiosi.

"They have a superstition that it is bad luck to shed the blood of royal personages. So they took the caliph and his three royal sons, who had seen their city destroyed and all their people killed, tied them in sacks, and rode their horses over them, trampling them to death."

"These deeds of the Tartars smell sweet in the nostrils of the Lord!" shouted Cardinal de Verceuil. There were cries of approval.

Without waiting for David to say more, Ugolini replied to de Verceuil. "Yes, Baghdad was the seat of a false religion. But it was also a city of philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, of colleges, hospitals, of wealth, of science, of art. And of two hundred thousand souls, as David has told us. Muslim souls, but souls nevertheless. Now it does not exist. And whoever thinks that the Tartars will do such things only to Saracen cities is a fool."

Simon hated to admit it, but Ugolini's words made perfect sense to him.

"They will do it everywhere!" cried someone in the audience.

Now David said through Ugolini, "What is more, the Tartars[161] who rule in Russia have converted to Islam. They still dream of the conquest of Europe and may return to the attack at any time. Perhaps while your armies are occupied in Egypt or Syria."

Fra Tomasso raised his quill for attention. "How would you describe the character of the Tartars, Master David? What sort of men are they?"

David answered and then looked about with his bright, compelling gaze while Ugolini translated. "I have lived among the Tartars and traveled with them. The Tartar is unmoved by his own pain or by that of his fellows. The suffering of other people merely amuses him. His word given to a foreigner means nothing to him. He thinks his own race superior to all other peoples on earth."

Fra Tomasso said, "What you have told us has been most enlightening, Master David, because