It was dark in the castle, dark as hell, like a tangible blackness you could wrap around you. A thick blanket of nothing, impenetrable and dangerous.
Nasr fumbled around in the darkness for his knife and his flint, running his hands along the rough adobe walls to find the torch he could have sworn he felt a second earlier. Maybe it moved, he thought, stranger things had happened at Al Aqsa.
His hands found a metal bracket and the oily straw and hung on as if he could fall and lose himself in the darkness. Nasr’s nervous fingers dug into the folds of his ill-fitting white robe and gingerly patted around for the blade the Master had given him, the knife of receptio, an ugly thing, curved like the blades of Saladin’s men.
He quickly flinched as the razor-sharp metal sliced into his finger. He felt the warm blood trickle down his finger, the pang of pain shivering across his hand. Nasr shuddered and quickly tried to find the flint stuffed under his belt. A quick strike of stone on steel and a flash of fire danced on the straw. In a second the torch was aflame, burning brightly, and Nasr held it in front of him like a shield against the darkness, burning the flickering shadows away and making them cower like beasts or devils. A single drop of blood dripped from his hand and plopped onto the stone steps at his feet. The red mixed with the yellow sand, and Nasr watched it quickly soak in to the stone, as if the castle itself were thirsty.
All of a sudden his reverie was broken as a limp scream rang out from below the stairs, from the roots of the very castle itself. The boy froze and listened intently to the shadows. Al Aqsa was a place of secrets and darkness, a place of cloaks and many daggers, a crypt for the most cryptic of all. Despite the heat of the clammy stairwell Nasr shuddered.
With the deepest of breaths he strode forward with a fake courage. As he descended the curving stair he eyed the skulls hanging from the ceiling, bones of saints and martyrs long dead and rusted with sand. The flickering torch threw grotesque shadows over the relics, making the toothless jaws grin and leer. Eyeless sockets followed him down the stair. Skeletal arms waved their dusty rags, wishing him well.
Nasr’s feet scuffed loudly on the stairs every time he tried to make each trembling foot move forward. He sucked at the cut on his finger and tasted the salty blood on his tongue. Nasr imagined the blade sniggering and laughing from inside his cloak, a contemptuous metallic giggling under the white folds of his ill-fitting surcoat.
The young boy ignored it, and focused on the dark noises coming from downstairs, stony thuds and scrapes, a susurrus of far off laughter and deep men’s voices. Tall men, with red crosses and weathered faces standing proud, holding glittering swords and thick books at their side. Nasr dreamed of being one of these men, these Knights of the old world, the far off world he had heard so much about from the other boys, the promised lands of trees and mountains and rivers and rain. His world was full of sand and wind, of stories and fables. Nasr remembered the day the Knights had pulled him from the streets kicking and screaming. He was dragged in front of a wizened old man and left to snivel and cry. But the Master had seen something in the boy’s eyes, and had let him live with the other little street urchins living in the castle, gave him a chance to be a real man. Nasr has seen something in the Master’s eyes he had never seen anywhere else. The other boys had called it kindness. Nasr didn’t know what to make of it, but the deep yellow gold and the bright jewels dangling from the wrists and necks of the Knights had caught his eye, and so he smiled and nodded, and did everything he was told, awaiting the riches he had been promised.
The boy took a deep breath and patted the receptio knife to make sure it was still there. The laughter got louder with every step he took down the dark stairs, with each nervous shuffle of his simple shoes. The torch fluttered and spat like a desert cobra. Nasr’s heart beat like a battle drum. He wondered why he was so nervous, and then he remembered what some of the others had told him. A trial by fire they called it, the initiation into the Order.
Slowly, step by step, the young boy descended the winding stair. Soon he came to the rough wooden door at the bottom of the steps, and as if by coincidence the laughter he had heard before died very suddenly. There was a scraping and a shuffle and something very like a snarl from behind the thick door. Nasr put his shaking hands up against the thick Lebanese wood and tried to calm his pounding chest. His heart had quickened to double time.
With bated breath Nasr raised a hand to knock on the stout wood, but as he did so there was a bang and the sound of a heavy lock sliding across a rusty bolt. With a creak the door swung open and bright torchlight stung his eyes. He scrunched up his face and just stood there blinking.
‘Come boy, don’t waste our time!’ A deep booming voice from inside the room called to him, and unbidden legs pulled him forward into the hot room. Nasr blinked and tried to adjust to the blinding light. Tall men dressed in white, with black gloves and red crosses on their surcoats. Nasr looked around at the kingly smiling faces, at the men with scars and proud eyes, calm and waiting.
The Master was there, head on one side and arms spread welcoming the young boy into the round room. At least a dozen Knights stood in a circle around the old Master. Someone shut the door behind him. A score of torches hung from the walls and sparked noisily, shining with a bright white flame that burned the backs of his eyes.
The grey man walked forward, and Nasr looked on his kindly face for the hundredth time. Wisps of grey hair dangled around his ears, his bald pate shining pale in the torchlight. His pure blue eyes, like the waves of the great sea to the east, had that look in them, that familiar one of warmth and gentleness. The Master was short, bent crooked with old age and wrinkly like the shrivelled dates from the market. Nasr tried on a smile, a nervous curl of the side of his mouth. He could feel all eyes upon him, poking and prodding and silently interrogating.
‘Welcome boy,’ the Master said quietly and held out a hand heavily bejewelled with gold and silver rings. Nasr took a knee and kissed one of the bigger shinier rings with the appropriate amount of reverence. The Master smiled again. A reptilian grin. ‘You’re late,’ he said, and turned away to face the back of the room.
Nasr held up a quivering finger. ‘My lord I...’ but the Master waved his wrinkly hand.
He spun on his heel like a jester and smiled again, showing his yellow teeth. ‘Fear not my lad! Everyone always late, always,’ he said with a wink, and cast a look around his circle of tall Knights. ‘It’s the shakes!’ The old man mockingly held out trembling hands and laughed with a strange cackle Nasr wasn’t sure if he heard before. The Knights of the Order smirked and nudged each other with conspiratorial nods. The young boy knew to stay on his knees, as was customary in the presence of the Master. He bowed his head to the floor silently and waited patiently. On the floor in front of him he noticed a thick ring of beaten gold, flat as parchment, set into the stone with four stars in the centre gathered around a little square. Nasr cocked his head on one side, like an owl, to try and make sense of the symbols etched into the gold. The circle almost looked like a coiled serpent, he thought...
‘Rise,’ the Master gestured, and Nasr hurried to his feet, clasping his hands in front of him.
The old man looked the young Arab boy up and down, looking at his ill-fitting clothes and scraggy hair. The words “worthless street urchin” came to mind. A smear of red on his white surcoat suddenly caught his eye. ‘What is this?’ The Master pointed, and Nasr jumped a little. he patted his clothes, and noticed a little streak of blood from his finger on his livery. His cheeks flushed and he could hear the short curved knife by his side laughing quietly at him for dirtying his clean clothes.
The Master moved forward and grabbed Nasr’s hand, examining the tiny cut on his first finger, now dried and brown. The old man snorted and showed that unsettling smile again. ‘Starting without us, eh boy? Haha...’ his laugh was as cold as the night. The Knights sniggered again, and, moving as one body, took their places around the golden circle, closing in like a pack of wolves and standing solemnly with their black gauntlets clasped in front of them. The Master walked slowly into the centre of their circle and looked each one of them in the eye, and each one nodding knowingly back. From his spot kneeling on the floor Nasr craned his head to see behind the Knights, trying to see what the old Master was doing.
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