[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
cobblestones and slaughtering the innocent until the streets are running with blood, oh it was horrible. The
streets were knee-deep with bodies.
Haj Harun shuddered. Then his expression changed and he raised his head defiantly.
They were the ones who first made me wear my yellow cloak. I remember it now.
Why?
To set me apart. To try to humiliate me as a Jew.
Joe looked puzzled.
Are you telling me you're a Jew on top of everything else?
Haj Harun waved his hand vaguely.
When you've been around Jerusalem as long as I have, before people were divided into names like that,
you're whatever the enemy wants to call you. But I absolutely refused to be humiliated. Instead I wore
my yellow cloak with dignity. I've always worn it with dignity. But all the same, Prester John, the noises in
my head are getting worse.
No, hold on. Close your eyes and they'll go away.
Noises, whispered Haj Harun and leapt to his feet. He sounded a tremendous blast on his ram's horn.
The faces in the hall turned up toward the ledge in astonishment. Haj Harun waved his ram's horn in the
air and shouted across the chamber.
Walter the Penniless. I see you skulking down there, you and all the other scheming Franks planning a
new conquest of Jerusalem. But it's not going to happen so give it up, I say, don't persist in your
wickedness. This city is eternal and can never be conquered by you or anyone else, when will you ever
learn that? So take your armed hordes away and never besiege us and starve us and kill us again. We
won't be conquered. We simply refuse to be conquered.
Haj Harun sounded a second powerful blast on his ram's horn.
Hear me down there. If you absolutely refuse to withdraw I hereby challenge the bravest among you to
individual combat. Step forward, he who dares. Tancred? Bohemond? Peter the Hermit? Raise your
sword, any one of you, I'm ready.
Haj Harun sounded a third and final blast on the ram's horn. Joe reached out and tried to stop him, but
before he could Haj Harun's spindly legs went churning out into space. His faded yellow cloak flared as
he sailed out over the edge of the ledge and plummeted down toward the crowd of stunned faces below.
There was a heavy thud and a terrible cracking of bones.
Joe looked down, horrified. Haj Harun lay crumpled on the stone floor, feebly holding his ram's horn in
the air. There was a shiny new dent in the top of his rusty helmet.
The Masons began to yell at each other in confusion. Flags and pennants and peaked hats surged
forward as they pressed around the extraordinary apparition on the floor. One of them nudged Haj
Harun with his foot and the old man twitched, letting out a low moan. He seemed to be trying to get the
ram's horn to his lips for another blast, but he obviously didn't have the strength to move.
Alive, thought Joe. There's that at least.
All at once he realized they were both still wearing the handkerchief masks they had put on in the cognac
cellar.
Oh help, thought Joe, two bloody bandits in the underworld, that's what they'll be thinking we are. Hired
subterranean thugs and vicious cutthroats come to disrupt their silly revels and spy on their foolish games.
We're for it now and what would the baking priest be likely to advise at a time like this? Anything, that's
the job. Anything, as long as it's fast.
Joe jumped to his feet and raised a clenched fist.
Hold it right there, he shouted, just hold it, you Freemasonry rabble. This is the Irish Republican Army
you're looking at and this uniform is IRA combat issue for special underground warfare in Jerusalem.
We've had this quarry mined with heavy explosives for months waiting for you to turn up and reveal your
fiendish anti-Jesuit plots, and now that we've heard them all we're taking our information aboveground
and going straight to the pope, and dead is the fanatic who tries to stop us. Stand fast or I'll tell the old
man down there to sound a fourth blast on his ram's horn, which is the signal for the apocalypse as sure
as St John ever wrote the Word. One more blast from his horn and the bombs will blow and you'll all be
on your way back to Solomon all right, the world well rid of your black anti-Catholic hearts. Freeze for
your lives.
Joe leapt lightly to the floor and whirled in a circle, glaring at the stupefied Masons. Then he knelt and
gathered up the miserable Haj Harun who had been crawling helplessly in circles, his helmet jammed
down on his nose, so that he couldn't see, tears streaming down his face from the rain of rust in his eyes.
We won, whispered Joe in his ear.
We did?
Yes. Not one of them dared accept your challenge. Not Bohemond, not Tancred, not even that scheming
scoundrel Walter the Penniless. Paralyzed with fear they were and they're going home without raising a
sword. You did it. Jerusalem's saved.
Thank God, murmured Haj Harun as Joe lifted the old man's frail body gently up on his back and
staggered away through the masses of pennants and flags and peaked hats, the flickering torches, to limp
out the entrance under the northwestern wall of the Old City where the hot July sun was just sinking
below the rooftops of the new.
PART TWO
-5-
Munk Szondi
You eat pure garlic?
Yes.
How much?
A large bulb before each meal and two more afterward.
Some slovenly Mediterranean habit you've picked up,I suppose?
The man with the tri-level watch and the samurai bow hadn't originally acquired his vast knowledge of
Levantine commodities through travel, but rather from the unique library of letters that made up the
archives of the House of Szondi.
The ancestor who had written those letters, Johann Luigi Szondi, had been born in Basle in 1784, the son
of a German-Swiss perfectionist who manufactured very small watches. The smaller the watch the more
it pleased his father, and in fact his father's watches were often so small their faces couldn't be read. For
that reason few were sold and most ended up strung along the walls of their house like so many tiny
beads, ticking inaudibly and keeping precise time uselessly.
But fortunately Johann Luigi's mother was an Italian-Swiss cook who had an unsurpassed talent for
baking bread. No better bread could be found in Basle, so while Johann Luigi's father busied himself
reducing time to next to nothing, his mother walked around town selling huge loaves of hot bread so the
family could live.
Both parents died at the end of the century and it was immediately apparent that Johann Luigi was no
ordinary Swiss. To support himself he chopped firewood while beginning his studies in chemistry and
medicine and languages. He studied Arabic at Cambridge for a year and decided to make a walking tour
of the Levant, a precocious and sprightly young man with light blue eyes, still only eighteen years old.
With his great natural charm, Johann Luigi had no difficulty begging lodgings along the way. In Albania he
chanced to knock at the gate of the castle belonging to the head of the powerful Wallenstein clan, where
he was duly invited to spend the night. The master of the castle, who bore the Christian name
Skanderbeg and was the most recent in a long line of Skanderbegs, was away fighting in some war, as it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
cobblestones and slaughtering the innocent until the streets are running with blood, oh it was horrible. The
streets were knee-deep with bodies.
Haj Harun shuddered. Then his expression changed and he raised his head defiantly.
They were the ones who first made me wear my yellow cloak. I remember it now.
Why?
To set me apart. To try to humiliate me as a Jew.
Joe looked puzzled.
Are you telling me you're a Jew on top of everything else?
Haj Harun waved his hand vaguely.
When you've been around Jerusalem as long as I have, before people were divided into names like that,
you're whatever the enemy wants to call you. But I absolutely refused to be humiliated. Instead I wore
my yellow cloak with dignity. I've always worn it with dignity. But all the same, Prester John, the noises in
my head are getting worse.
No, hold on. Close your eyes and they'll go away.
Noises, whispered Haj Harun and leapt to his feet. He sounded a tremendous blast on his ram's horn.
The faces in the hall turned up toward the ledge in astonishment. Haj Harun waved his ram's horn in the
air and shouted across the chamber.
Walter the Penniless. I see you skulking down there, you and all the other scheming Franks planning a
new conquest of Jerusalem. But it's not going to happen so give it up, I say, don't persist in your
wickedness. This city is eternal and can never be conquered by you or anyone else, when will you ever
learn that? So take your armed hordes away and never besiege us and starve us and kill us again. We
won't be conquered. We simply refuse to be conquered.
Haj Harun sounded a second powerful blast on his ram's horn.
Hear me down there. If you absolutely refuse to withdraw I hereby challenge the bravest among you to
individual combat. Step forward, he who dares. Tancred? Bohemond? Peter the Hermit? Raise your
sword, any one of you, I'm ready.
Haj Harun sounded a third and final blast on the ram's horn. Joe reached out and tried to stop him, but
before he could Haj Harun's spindly legs went churning out into space. His faded yellow cloak flared as
he sailed out over the edge of the ledge and plummeted down toward the crowd of stunned faces below.
There was a heavy thud and a terrible cracking of bones.
Joe looked down, horrified. Haj Harun lay crumpled on the stone floor, feebly holding his ram's horn in
the air. There was a shiny new dent in the top of his rusty helmet.
The Masons began to yell at each other in confusion. Flags and pennants and peaked hats surged
forward as they pressed around the extraordinary apparition on the floor. One of them nudged Haj
Harun with his foot and the old man twitched, letting out a low moan. He seemed to be trying to get the
ram's horn to his lips for another blast, but he obviously didn't have the strength to move.
Alive, thought Joe. There's that at least.
All at once he realized they were both still wearing the handkerchief masks they had put on in the cognac
cellar.
Oh help, thought Joe, two bloody bandits in the underworld, that's what they'll be thinking we are. Hired
subterranean thugs and vicious cutthroats come to disrupt their silly revels and spy on their foolish games.
We're for it now and what would the baking priest be likely to advise at a time like this? Anything, that's
the job. Anything, as long as it's fast.
Joe jumped to his feet and raised a clenched fist.
Hold it right there, he shouted, just hold it, you Freemasonry rabble. This is the Irish Republican Army
you're looking at and this uniform is IRA combat issue for special underground warfare in Jerusalem.
We've had this quarry mined with heavy explosives for months waiting for you to turn up and reveal your
fiendish anti-Jesuit plots, and now that we've heard them all we're taking our information aboveground
and going straight to the pope, and dead is the fanatic who tries to stop us. Stand fast or I'll tell the old
man down there to sound a fourth blast on his ram's horn, which is the signal for the apocalypse as sure
as St John ever wrote the Word. One more blast from his horn and the bombs will blow and you'll all be
on your way back to Solomon all right, the world well rid of your black anti-Catholic hearts. Freeze for
your lives.
Joe leapt lightly to the floor and whirled in a circle, glaring at the stupefied Masons. Then he knelt and
gathered up the miserable Haj Harun who had been crawling helplessly in circles, his helmet jammed
down on his nose, so that he couldn't see, tears streaming down his face from the rain of rust in his eyes.
We won, whispered Joe in his ear.
We did?
Yes. Not one of them dared accept your challenge. Not Bohemond, not Tancred, not even that scheming
scoundrel Walter the Penniless. Paralyzed with fear they were and they're going home without raising a
sword. You did it. Jerusalem's saved.
Thank God, murmured Haj Harun as Joe lifted the old man's frail body gently up on his back and
staggered away through the masses of pennants and flags and peaked hats, the flickering torches, to limp
out the entrance under the northwestern wall of the Old City where the hot July sun was just sinking
below the rooftops of the new.
PART TWO
-5-
Munk Szondi
You eat pure garlic?
Yes.
How much?
A large bulb before each meal and two more afterward.
Some slovenly Mediterranean habit you've picked up,I suppose?
The man with the tri-level watch and the samurai bow hadn't originally acquired his vast knowledge of
Levantine commodities through travel, but rather from the unique library of letters that made up the
archives of the House of Szondi.
The ancestor who had written those letters, Johann Luigi Szondi, had been born in Basle in 1784, the son
of a German-Swiss perfectionist who manufactured very small watches. The smaller the watch the more
it pleased his father, and in fact his father's watches were often so small their faces couldn't be read. For
that reason few were sold and most ended up strung along the walls of their house like so many tiny
beads, ticking inaudibly and keeping precise time uselessly.
But fortunately Johann Luigi's mother was an Italian-Swiss cook who had an unsurpassed talent for
baking bread. No better bread could be found in Basle, so while Johann Luigi's father busied himself
reducing time to next to nothing, his mother walked around town selling huge loaves of hot bread so the
family could live.
Both parents died at the end of the century and it was immediately apparent that Johann Luigi was no
ordinary Swiss. To support himself he chopped firewood while beginning his studies in chemistry and
medicine and languages. He studied Arabic at Cambridge for a year and decided to make a walking tour
of the Levant, a precocious and sprightly young man with light blue eyes, still only eighteen years old.
With his great natural charm, Johann Luigi had no difficulty begging lodgings along the way. In Albania he
chanced to knock at the gate of the castle belonging to the head of the powerful Wallenstein clan, where
he was duly invited to spend the night. The master of the castle, who bore the Christian name
Skanderbeg and was the most recent in a long line of Skanderbegs, was away fighting in some war, as it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]