made travelling, always a dangerous business for merchants, much safer. The other great advantage the Templars enjoyed was an exemption from all taxes, by order of the Pope. It was often claimed that the Templars, despite their individual vows of poverty, now possessed wealth beyond the wildest dreams of kings and emperors.
‘And Saladin hasn’t gone away,’ Sir Richard continued. ‘He might have lost Acre, but he’s still out there in the hills with more than twenty thousand men. He’s waiting for us to leave the city, then he’ll swoop and we’ll have a proper battle, a proper bloody battle, by God. And we need to be ready for that — so when I’m not nurse- maiding merchants, I’m training the new men to fight.’
‘When will we leave here?’ I asked. I was anxious to see Jerusalem, the Holy City, and pray for the forgiveness of my sins at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred site of Jesus’s tomb.
‘That depends on our royal masters: King Richard is keen to press on south to Jerusalem but Philip is talking openly of going home to France; he claims he is not well, that this damned heat is killing him. The good news is that he and Richard have managed to decide between them who is the rightful King of Jerusalem: they have decreed that it is Guy de Lusignan, but — and this is a nice compromise, Alan — he’s only to be king for his lifetime, after his death Conrad of Montferrat or his heirs will succeed him. At least they’ve managed to agree that without more quarrelling.’
At that moment, I saw Nicholas de Scras approaching our table with William in tow. ‘I found this young fellow wandering around the hospital, looking for you,’ said Sir Nicholas with a smile. He seated himself on a bench at the table and helped himself to a piece of fish.
‘Sir, the Earl of Locksley has returned and asks that you to attend him, if your health permits, at your earliest convenience,’ said William. The presence of these two imposing knights had made my servant adopt a more formal manner than usual. I pushed myself to my feet, stuffed a last crust in my mouth and made to leave.
‘Do not exert yourself too much, Alan,’ said Sir Nicholas. ‘The brother-physicians at the hospital say that they are very pleased with your recovery, but you are to take as much rest as possible, d’you hear me?’ I nodded, waved farewell and hurried away to attend my errant lord.
Chapter Fifteen
Robin had commandeered a large building near the main harbour of Acre, in the north of the city, which had formerly belonged to a rich Saracen merchant. It was a splendid house, practically a palace, three storeys high and built of smooth white sandstone, with big cool rooms, large amounts of stabling and a large warehouse attached, in which about half of the men were encamped. The rest of our boys were scattered about the town, finding cheap lodging wherever they could. The merchant who had once owned this magnificent house was now one of the nearly three thousand ragged and almost-starving Muslim prisoners who were locked in the vast cellars deep below Acre. King Richard was holding them hostage for the agreed ransom from Saladin, two hundred thousand gold pieces, and most miraculously, a genuine piece of the True Cross, the actual cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, which the Saracen warlord had captured after the disastrous battle of Hattin four years earlier.
‘I want you to play for us tomorrow night at a party I’m giving,’ said Robin when I found him. He was in a luxurious room filled with tall elegant pillars and flapping muslin drapes, which seemed to collect the sea breezes and cool even the hottest day. It was richly appointed with polished cedar-wood furniture, the floor covered with thick carpets and strewn with plump cushions. I almost did not recognise my master when I first saw him: Robin was dressed like a Saracen, in a long loose robe made of some light material, a curved dagger at his waist, his skin seemed to have been darkened with some kind of dye, his head was wrapped in a golden turban, his feet shod with silken slippers. I stared at him but managed to mumble something like: ‘Of course, sir, it would be a pleasure…’ before I ran out of politeness.
‘Why on earth are you dressed in that ridiculous fashion?’ I finally burst out. I could not hold back my curiosity any longer. ‘And where have you been this past week?’
Robin laughed, and turned a full circle so that I could admire his Oriental finery. He appeared to be totally relaxed, happy and — something else. He had the indefinable air of a man who has just pulled off a great coup. ‘I thought you might be amused: in these clothes I am the mysterious and powerful merchant prince Rabin al-Hud, wealthy beyond measure, who wishes to enter the frankincense trade, buying the Food of the Gods to sell to the infidels. And I have just paid a delightful visit to some business acquaintances of Reuben’s in Gaza. We sailed back from there yesterday.’
‘Gaza?’ I said. He laughed again. I was mystified, but at least I could now understand the fancy get-up: as a Christian, there was no way he would be able to mingle with people in Gaza, far to the south, which was in Saracen hands. As I helped Robin to change out of his outlandish rig and into good Christian clothes — green woollen hose, a black tunic and a capacious green hood — he told me what he had been doing in Gaza, and what he planned to do to permanently solve his money troubles.
‘Frankincense is a valuable commodity, as I’m sure you know. It is burnt at every Mass in every major church in Christendom; so, as you can imagine, we use a lot of it. It is just the dried sap of some scrubby little trees that grow in a place called Al-Yaman, in the far south of the Arabian peninsula, which happens to be Reuben’s homeland. Now, the value of the incense increases the further it gets from its homeland. In Al-Yaman, you can buy a pound of frankincense for a few pennies; in England or France, it is worth more than its weight in gold.’ He stopped speaking while I pulled the black tunic over his head, and then he said: ‘Jesus, Alan, these clothes are so hot!’ and made me bring him a cup of watered wine, before continuing with his lecture.
‘For many hundreds of years, since before the birth of Christ himself, frankincense has been transported by camel train along the western coast of the Arabian peninsula, hundreds of dangerous miles through mountain and desert, arid plain and high pass, and for each step the camel takes the frankincense on its back becomes more valuable. Of course, taxes must be paid to the people whose land the camel train passes through, and there are the costs of hiring men to guard the train, and food and water, and supplies for everyone.
‘When the Romans came to Egypt, more than a thousand years ago, they hunted down and killed almost all the pirates in the Red Sea. Suddenly it became worthwhile, cheaper, safer, to transport the incense by water. And that is how it is done to this day. The ships’ valuable cargoes are loaded at Adan, carried up the coast in galleys or felluccas and are off-loaded in the Gulf of Aqaba. But they still need camel trains to take the frankincense across the Sinai Desert and up to Gaza. In his youth, Reuben used to work this route, as a guard on the camel trains. He knows the business backwards: the people involved, the routes, the timings of the joumeys…’ Robin stopped himself, and a look of uncertainty crossed his face as if he might have said too much. Then he shrugged, and continued. ‘From great warehouses in Gaza, the frankincense was sold to Christian merchants, who transported it across the sea to Italy, to be distributed to churches all over Christendom. Are you following me?’ I inclined my head.
‘All that changed when we lost Jerusalem four years ago,’ Robin went on. ‘After that, the camel trains couldn’t stop in Gaza, as they had before; the buyers were gone. They could no longer meet their Christian merchant friends there and transact their business, as any Christian who showed his nose there would be imprisoned and quite possibly executed by the Saracens. The frankincense trains now have to come further north; more than a hundred, rocky, dry, bandit-infested miles north. Here, to Acre.’
I was slightly bemused by this lesson, and I must have looked puzzled, for Robin said, rather crossly: ‘Don’t you understand? Reuben and I went to Gaza to meet these frankincense traders. And we made them an offer. An offer they will find difficult to refuse. We offered to buy their entire frankincense stock and save them the expense and risk of having to camel-train it north through bandit-infested desert.’ It was the second time he had used that particular phrase. ‘It was Reuben’s scheme, and I think it’s quite inspired. It’s a good deal for them, and for us. Everybody is happy.’
‘What about these Christian merchants in Acre?’ I said. ‘Won’t they be angry that their frankincense is being bought by another merchant? That they are, in fact, being cut out of this trade altogether?’
‘I think it is written somewhere,’ said Robin, with just a little too much self-satisfaction, ‘that each soul must expect a little disappointment in this life, and he should try to profit by the experience,’ and with that, the matter
