He sat down by himself a short distance from his tent. No one in his retinue dared disturb him, but Arn hesitantly approached.
“This is a difficult hour, Yussuf, I know that, but in this hard hour I ask for my freedom,” Arn said in a low voice, sitting down next to Saladin. He did not answer for a long time.
“Why do you want to leave me just now at this evil hour, on this day of sorrow that will live forever?” Saladin asked at last, trying to stop his tears.
“Because today you have defeated Richard the Lionheart, even though it was at a high price.”
“Defeated!” snorted Saladin. “I lost fifty thousand besants in gold only to see those I believed I had ransomed slaughtered before my eyes. That is truly my strangest victory.”
“It is indeed a heavy loss,” said Arn. “But the victory is that you will not lose Jerusalem to this villain. He will not go down in history as anything but the butcher of Ayyadieh and the one who abandoned the True Cross; our children and their children will remember him as a traitor without honor. He has damaged his own cause more than yours. The Frankish king had already left for home after a childish quarrel about who should live in what lodgings inside Acre. The Austrian grand duke left him for a similar reason, and the German emperor is rotting in his grave in Antiochia. You no longer have a hundred thousand enemies, but fewer than ten thousand under that mad King Richard. And he will soon have to head for home too, I heard, or his brother will seize his land. In this way you have won, Yussuf.”
“But why leave me at this difficult hour when the grief is much greater than the hope of successful revenge, Arn, my friend?”
“Because now I can no longer negotiate for you. Negotiations with that mad murderer are over. And because I want to go home to my loved ones, to my country, my language, and my people.”
“What will you do when you get there, to your country and your people?”
“The war is over for me, that much I know for certain. I hope to be able to fulfill a vow I swore long ago, a vow of love. But what I would now like to know is what was the meaning of it all? What was I doing here? What was God’s intention? I fought for twenty years and I was deservedly on the losing side, because God was punishing us for our sins.”
“You’re thinking of Heraclius, Agnes de Courtenay, Guy de Lusignan, and such people?” Saladin whispered with a hint of an ironic smile in the midst of his grief.
“Yes, precisely,” replied Arn. “For such people I fought, but what God intended by it I will never understand.”
“I do,” said Saladin, “and I will explain it to you now. But first, other matters. You are now free. You took only fifty thousand besants for my brother when he was your prisoner, even though you knew that you could have extorted twice that from me. I believe that it is God’s intent that I happen to have exactly that sum left from what I was going to pay to that butcher Richard. The money is now yours, and it is poor compensation for the sword you gave me. By the way, there is a sword waiting for you in Damascus which will probably suit you in more ways than one. I beg you now to leave me to my sorrow. Ride with God’s peace, my friend Al Ghouti, whom I will never forget.”
“Yes, but the meaning of it all? You said that you knew God’s meaning,” Arn protested, not yet willing to leave. That question preoccupied his thoughts more than the fact that Saladin had showered a fortune upon him.
“God’s meaning?” said Saladin. “As a Muslim I can tell you that it was God’s intent that you, a Templar knight, should give me the sacred Sword of Islam that would make me victorious. But as a Christian you might explain it differently. You told me why we shouldn’t do with the people of Jerusalem what Richard has just done to the people of Acre. It was advice that I took to heart. And thus it was so, as you advised me. Your words saved fifty thousand Christian lives. That was God’s meaning with your mission in Palestine, for He sees all and He hears all, and He knew what He was doing when He brought you and me together.”
Arn got up and stood there for a moment hesitant and silent. Then Saladin stood up as well. They embraced each other one last time, and Arn turned and left without another word.
His long journey home had begun, back to the land where he intended never to raise a weapon again.
About the Author
Swedish-born journalist JAN GUILLOUis the creator of the two most successful Swedish works of fiction of all time: the Hamilton series and the Crusades Trilogy. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Stockholm.
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Credits
Jacket stills photograph from ARN: The Knight Templar © 2008 by Erik Aavatsmark/AB Svensk Filmindustri
Jacket design by Jarrod Taylor
Copyright
THE TEMPLAR KNIGHT. Copyright © 1999 by Jan Guillou. English translation © 2010 by Steven T. Murray. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199257-5
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