Brethren, p.62
Brethren, page 62
KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN: Order founded in the late eleventh century that takes its name from the hospital of St. John the Baptist in Jerusalem, where it had its first headquarters. Also known as the Hospitallers, their initial brief was the care of Christian pilgrims, but after the First Crusade their objectives changed dramatically. They retained their hospitals, but their primary preoccupation became the building and the defense of their castles in the Holy Land, recruitment of knights and the acquisition of land and property. They enjoyed similar power and status as the Templars and the Orders were often rivals. After the end of the Crusades, the Knights of St. John moved their headquarters to Rhodes, then later to Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta.
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR: Order of knights formed early in the twelfth century after the First Crusade. Established by Hugues de Payns, who traveled to Jerusalem with eight fellow French knights, the Order was named after the Temple of Solomon where they had their first headquarters. The Templars, who were formally recognized in 1128 at the Council of Troyes, followed both a religious rule and a strict military code. Their initial raison d’être was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, however, they far exceeded this early brief in their military and mercantile endeavors both in the Middle East and throughout Europe, where they rose to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations of their day. There were three separate classes within the Order: sergeants, priests and knights, but only knights, who took the three monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, were permitted to wear the distinctive white habits that bore a splayed red cross.
LEONARDIE: an unknown disease which had symptoms similar to those of scurvy, including severe lethargy, the peeling or wasting of the skin and hair loss. Richard the Lionheart is said to have suffered from it.
MADRASAH: a religious school dedicated to the study of Islamic law.
MAMLUKS: from the Arabic, meaning “slave,” the name was given to the royal bodyguard, mainly of Turkish descent, bought and raised by the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt into a standing army of devout Muslim warriors. Known in their day as “the Templars of Islam,” the Mamluks achieved ascendancy in 1250 when they assassinated Sultan Turanshah, a nephew of Saladin, and took control of Egypt. Under Baybars, the Mamluk Empire grew to encompass Egypt and Syria, and they were ultimately responsible for removing Frankish influence in the Middle East. After the end of the Crusades in 1291, the Mamluks’ reign continued until they were overthrown by the Ottoman Turks in 1517.
MARITIME REPUBLICS: Italian mercantile city-states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa.
MARSHAL: in the Templar hierarchy, the chief military official.
MONGOLS: nomadic tribespeople who lived around the steppes of eastern Asia until the late twelfth century when they were united under Genghis Khan, who established his capital at Karakorum and set out on a series of massive conquests. When Genghis Khan died, his empire extended across Asia, Persia, southern Russia and China. The Mongols’ first great defeat came at the hands of Baybars and Kutuz at Ayn Jalut in 1260, and their empire began a gradual decline in the fourteenth century.
OUTREMER: French word meaning “overseas,” referring to the Holy Land.
PALFREY: a light horse used for normal riding.
PARLEY: a discussion to debate points of a dispute, most commonly the terms of a truce.
PRECEPTORY: Latin name for the administrative houses of military Orders, which would have been like manors, with domestic quarters, workshops and usually a chapel.
QUINTAIN: a precision training device used for jousting practice, consisting of a wooden frame mounted on a pole, which the knight would strike at with his lance, or a ring hung from a cord, which the knight had to snare on the lance’s tip.
RICHARD the LIONHEART: (1157–99) son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard ruled as king of England from 1189 to his death in 1199, but spent very little time in the kingdom. Along with Frederick Barbarossa and Philip II of France, he led the Third Crusade to recapture Jerusalem, which had fallen to Saladin.
RULE, THE: the Rule of the Temple was drawn up in 1129, with the aid of St. Bernard de Clairvaux, at the Council of Troyes, where the Temple was formally recognized. It was written as part religious rule, part military code and set out how members of the Order should live and conduct themselves during their daily lives and during combat. The Rule was added to over the years and by the thirteenth century there were over six hundred clauses, some more serious than others, the breaching of which would mean expulsion for the offender.
SADEEK: Arabic, meaning “friend” (male).
SALADIN: (1138–93) of Kurdish origin, he became sultan of Egypt and Syria in 1173, after winning several power struggles. Saladin led his army against the Crusaders at Hattin and dealt the Franks a devastating blow. He reclaimed most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem created by the Christians during the First Crusade, leading to the launch of the Third Crusade, which saw him pitted against Richard the Lionheart. Saladin was a hero throughout the Islamic East, but was also admired, and feared, by the Crusaders for his courage and gallantry.
SARACEN: in the medieval period, a term used by Europeans for all Arabs and Muslims.
SENESCHAL: the steward or chief official of an estate. In the Temple’s hierarchy, the Seneschal held one of the highest positions.
SIEGE ENGINE: any machine used to attack fortifications during sieges.
SHI’AH & SUNNI MUSLIMS: two branches of Islam formed in the schism that arose after the death of Muhammad over the question of who should be his successor. The Sunnis, forming the majority, believed that no one could truly succeed Muhammad and appointed a caliph as leader of the Muslim community. Sunnis revere the first four caliphs appointed after Muhammad’s death, whose example they follow as the custom (sunna) that all Muslims should follow. Shi’ahs hold as their figure of authority the imam, whom they consider heir of the Prophet, descended from the bloodline of Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, the fourth caliph, and the only one they revere, rejecting the first three caliphs and the traditions of Sunni belief.
SURCOAT: a long linen or silk sleeveless garment, usually worn over mail or armor.
TAKE the CROSS: to go on Crusade, a term derived from the cloth crosses that were handed out to those who pledged to become Crusaders.
TEUTONIC KNIGHTS: military Order of knights, similar to the Templars and the Hospitallers, originating in Germany. The Teutonics were founded in 1198 and during their time in the Holy Land were responsible for guarding the area northeast of Acre. By the mid-thirteenth century they had conquered Prussia, which later became their base.
USCIERE: horse-carrier ship usually comprising two decks, one of which was capable of carrying up to one hundred horses, the other of which was used for siege engines and wagons.
VAMBRACES: armor worn to protect the forearms.
VELLUM: parchment used for writing, most commonly taken from the skin of a calf.
VISITOR: a post within the Temple’s hierarchy created in the thirteenth century. The Visitor, who was second only to the Grand Master, was the overlord of all the Temple’s possessions in the West.
Dutton will publish Crusade in August 2007
Read on for the first chapter of
CRUSADE
1
The Venetian Quarter, Acre,
The Kingdom of Jerusalem
28 SEPTEMBER A.D. 1274
The swords arced, then swung in and slammed together. Steel met steel with harsh ringing clangs, again and again. Each blow was fiercer than the last, the brutal concussion almost wrenching the weapons from the hands of the wielders. The sun baked the courtyard’s dusty red stones and beat down on the heads of the two men who stamped and lunged, back and forth.
The smaller of the two was sweating profusely, his white hair plastered to his head, lips curled back in fierce concentration. His shirt was drenched and stuck to his back. Neither he nor his opponent wore armor. He was initiating more of the attacks, stepping forward after several whip-quick parries to thrust a lethal jab at the other man’s chest. But the strokes were becoming desperate. It was as if each one had been designed to be the last—precise, powerful—and he hadn’t expected to have to force another. He couldn’t keep up such a barrage. He was exhausted, and his tall, athletic opponent kept blocking, with imperturbable ease, each and every blow. And the more frustrated and frantic the small man became, the more his opponent grinned. It was the kind of grin a shark might flash when opening its razor-lined jaws for the killing bite. It was a little strained—more bared, gritted teeth than smile—but Angelo Vitturi was clearly enjoying himself.
After several more thrusts, however, which he snapped aside with savage, blocking cuts of his sword, Angelo grew bored. It was hot, and he could feel a blister forming on the ridge of his palm where his skin had rubbed against the leather grip of the slender, narrow-edged blade, the pommel of which was a chunk of translucent rock crystal. As the small man lunged in again, Angelo sidestepped him, grabbed hold of his wrist and turned his hand viciously aside, bringing the edge of his own blade up to the man’s throat. The man let out a yelp, part in frustration, part at the pain in his wrist.
Angelo’s face, wet with perspiration and set with boyish, scornful pleasure, hardened with contempt. “Get out.” Dropping the man’s wrist, he lowered his blade and leaned it against a low wall that ringed a square of grass.
The white-haired man stood there agape, sweat dripping from his nose as Angelo strode over to a servant, standing rigid as the statues that decorated the palazzo’s courtyard. The servant handed Angelo a goblet of watered-down wine from the silver tray he carried. Angelo drained it, then turned to the gaping man. “I told you to leave.”
The man seemed to collect himself. “My money, sir?”
“Money?”
“For my tuition, sir,” said the man, unable to meet Angelo’s unwavering, black-eyed stare.
Angelo laughed. “And what would I be paying for? What new skills have you taught me today? What has this lesson given me that is worth a single sequin?” He arched an eyebrow. “The amusement perhaps?” He set the goblet on the servant’s tray. “Leave, before I decide to finish the duel. You’ll lose more than your wages if I do.” Turning his back on the instructor, he picked up a black velvet cloak trimmed with sable that was draped over the wall and shrugged it on.
The sword instructor, utterly defeated, snatched up his own coat and headed across the courtyard, his face a mottled red.
Angelo was fastening a belt of silver rings around his waist when a girl appeared through one of the doors that led into the grand building behind him. Like the other household slaves, she wore a filmy white gown, girdled at the waist with stiff gold braid. A coif covered her hair. She saw Angelo and headed over, eyes downcast, expression carefully blank.
“My lord ask me tell you his guests arrive.” Her words were hard to understand, clipped and strained with the still unfamiliar language she forced her tongue around. “He asks you join them, sir.”
With a forceful stab that made the girl start, Angelo sheathed his sword in the scabbard that hung from the belt. Without acknowledging her, he walked toward the palazzo, the girl flinching from him as he passed.
At twenty-eight, Angelo was the eldest son of Venerio Vitturi and heir to the family business, established prior to the Third Crusade by his great-grandfather, Vittorio. Angelo was a regular sight in Acre’s slave market, where he sold off any surplus his father had acquired, before helping to ship the bulk back to Venice. When the business was in its heyday, at a time when the Venetians controlled trade around the Black Sea, the Vitturi family had dominated the slave markets on the borders of the Mongol Empire. They supplied the prettiest girls to Western nobles in Outremer and Venice, and the strongest boys to the Mamluk Army in Egypt. But then Genoa, the second of the three great Italian merchant states, wrested control of the Black Sea trade and forced Venice out. The Vitturis were one of only a few Venetian families who still trafficked in humans, and they now had to rely on trade coming north from the Red Sea for their supply.
The girls Angelo’s father kept for the household were always the best of the crop. Aged between eleven and sixteen, they were mostly petite Mongolians, with oval eyes and glossy black hair, and Circassians whose youthful faces already showed signs of the handsome, strong-boned lines characteristic of their race. Venerio’s family had grown rapidly over the past ten years, and Angelo resented every darkly pretty sibling that was presented to the household, none of whom looked anything like his plump mother. Though the girls who bore his father’s accidental offspring remained slaves, their own children were brought up as free citizens, baptized and educated. Angelo could understand his father being unable to resist the temptations of such young, exotic flesh; he himself had sampled it and had found it pleasing. But he couldn’t comprehend how Venerio could raise the products of these low women in the same way he did his own. Things, Angelo had long ago decided, would change when he ran the business. If, that was, he still had a business to inherit. The way the last year had gone, it was looking increasingly uncertain. But he refused to fully consider that possibility. And if all went according to plan today, he wouldn’t have to.
Angelo walked down a wide passage decorated with blue and white mosaics. As he pushed open a set of dark wood doors, four men looked up from where they were seated around a large octagonal table positioned centrally in the spacious, airy reception room.
Angelo regarded the men as he approached the table. There was the armorer, Renaud de Tours, a balding man of middle years, who had clad King Louis IX and his elite French knights during both of the sovereign’s ill-fated Crusades. Beside Renaud, hands clasped tightly on the table, was Michael Pisani, a dark, slender Pisan specializing in the exportation of Damascene swords, some of the strongest blades in the known world, who also supplied nobles of the West for war. He was much feared by his competitors, whom he had been known to force out of deals, using mercenaries to intimidate his rivals into capitulating, leaving him to secure the contracts. The third man, sunburned and sandy-haired, was Conradt von Bremen, whose home city was affiliated to the Hanseatic League, the powerful confederation of German cities that ruled the Baltic Sea. Conradt’s business, favored by a lucrative contract with the Teutonic Knights, was the breeding and shipping of warhorses. The German’s flat blue eyes and lazy smile concealed a potentially more sinister nature, for it was rumored he had ordered the murders of two of his own brothers to seize control of the family business, although this was perhaps malicious gossip put about by his competitors to discredit him. No one knew for sure. The bulky, sweating man trussed up in a heavy, brocaded coat despite his obvious warmth was Guido Soranzo, an affluent Genoese ship-builder. Angelo knew them all, most merchants in Acre did, for they were four of the most successful Western traders in the Holy Land, his father excluded.
As Angelo sat, a fifth man came into view from an adjacent room, followed by three slave girls in white, who trailed him like the wispy tail of a comet. They carried silver trays on which were jugs of rose-colored wine, goblets and pewter dishes laden with black grapes, purple figs and almonds dusted white with sugar. “My son,” said Venerio in greeting as he spotted Angelo. His voice was deep and gritty. Though a solidly built man, he moved with a gracefulness acquired from years of instruction with the sword. Knighted by the doge of Venice, and a former governor of the republic, Venerio was a fourth-generation noble with all the schooling and military training that went with the title. “How was your lesson?” he asked, as the girls fanned out around him, waiting until he sat before placing the platters and jugs on the table.
“I need a new instructor.”
“Already? That is the second you have been through in as many days. Perhaps you no longer require training.”
“Not from the dregs I have fought this week.”
“Still,” said Venerio, smiling a cool, expansive welcome at the silent men around the table, “these are matters for another time. We have rather more grave concerns to discuss today.”
Angelo smiled to himself as he took in the merchants’ expressions. Behind those carefully composed exteriors he detected confusion, impatience and, from Guido Soranzo at least, barely concealed anger. None of them knew why they had been invited here. But they were about to find out.
Wiping his brow with a crumpled silk cloth that he snatched from the sleeve of his brocaded coat, Guido was the first to speak. “And what are these grave concerns?” He fixed Venerio with a truculent stare. “Why have you called us here, Vitturi?”
“First, let us drink,” replied Venerio, slipping with ease into the Genoese dialect. Two slave girls came forward at a snap of his fingers and began to pour the wine.
Guido, however, wasn’t ready to dance to his host’s tune. Not bothering to do Venerio the courtesy of speaking the Venetian tongue, he continued in his native Genoese. “I have no desire to drink your wine until I know why I have been summoned.” He extended a meaty hand to the luxurious chamber. “Did you bring me here to gloat?”
“Nothing quite so petty I assure you.”
Guido erupted at Venerio’s calm. “You sit in a palace of my kinsmen like a barbarian who wears the adornments of his victims as trophies!”
“Venice did not start the battle that resulted in Genoa’s expulsion from Acre, Guido.”
“The monastery of St. Sabas was rightfully ours! We were protecting our property!”
