Alexandria

Medieval 6: K and Y 9 The Journey Begins, part 2 of 2

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Kirstie

Kirstie leaned over the rail when they went by Stadr in the narrow place. She shouted, “We’re going hag hunting.”

The captain had the decency to yell back, “Lykke til,” which was good luck.

When they reached Solvi at the end of the fjord, Kirstie repeated her performance. The men there just laughed and waved.

After they reached the North Sea, Captain Olaf turned the ship to the southwest and did not start right away for the English shore. Kirstie asked, and Wilam showed her the goods still in the hold. They were neatly divided into three equal parts, and that took them to three stops which turned into four stops on the Norwegian shore.

“We did contact a number of villages along the way to find you, you know,” Wilam explained. “At least three of those expressed interest in possible trade.”

“Good thing Yrsa and I speak Norse like a native, and without Brant’s Danish accent.”

Wilam nodded, but he was not sure if Captain Olaf would let her get near the bargaining.

They stopped at Husastadir just over the border into the province called Raumsdalr. The people there gave them good directions to Trondelag when they were coming two years earlier in search of Strindlos. They seemed nice enough, and they bargained in good faith. Captain Olaf got plenty of the furs and grain he wanted, and the people seemed happy with their ironworks.

“It is a good day when both sides get what they want,” Captain Olaf said. “We may come back here again.”

They made a wide swing out to sea to avoid some place and came back into Borgund, a town on a small island off the coast of Norway in South Moeri. The people there were not so nice. They encouraged Captain Olaf when he passed through, but now they wanted the goods for practically nothing. Kirstie could not help herself. She stepped into the middle of it since the local men came aboard the ship to bargain.

“You should deal more honestly with these men if you ever hope to see them again. You know full well the value of these goods.”

The big man looked at her with all the disdain some men have for any woman who steps into his business. “And you are?”

“Lady Kristina from Strindlos in the Trondelag.”

“The witch from Lindisfarne.” One man tried to whisper.

“You killed Captain Ulf Hakenson?” the big man asked.

Kirstie said simply and calmly, “He was on the wrong side.”

One of the elders stepped in front of the big man. “We might double our offer if you come again. We can use more of the same if you have more. The quality of your goods speak for themselves.”

Captain Olaf took the offer. “For a reasonable payment we can certainly bring more, say, in two years’ time? We already have contracts for next spring and summer unless I can manage a second ship.”

“Two years is better than never,” Brant added.

The elder looked at his people, but no one objected. “We will look for you in two years,” he said and did his best to smile. They, in fact, got one and a half the original offer, not double, but Captain Olaf knew better than to complain. Instead, when they sailed off, he said, “Maybe two years.”

The next stop was in the village of Birdla, another settlement on an island just off the coast in Firdafylki—Firdir province. The people there were nice, but poor. They said the weather had not cooperated in the last year, so their crops were slim. Also, the winter was long, so they were not able to hunt much on the mainland. Captain Olaf felt sorry for them, but Kirstie assured him. “The fish are plentiful, even in the winter. They are hardly starving.” The captain nodded and said they might try again in another year.

The last stop was Dinganes, the village at the entrance to the Sogn fjord. Captain Olaf had hoped they did not have to stop there. When they came there before, they had heard that Sogn was a great fjord that went inland for miles. The people in Nordaland said Strindlos might be located there if it was on a great fjord. They sailed up the fjord a short distance and came to Heyangr where the village elders confiscated a portion of their goods for what they called a safe passage fee, though at the same time they confessed that Strindlos was not anywhere on the fjord. They left there and headed back to sea only to be stopped by the people of Dinganes. Those people were not surprised by the way the elders in Heyangr acted. They did not trade for much or have much to trade with, but they were the first to suggest Trondelag was in North Moeri and surely Strindlos would be there.

It turned out Dinganes had enough to buy the last bit of trade the ship carried, so it worked out. They even said they would be interested in more if they should come their way again. They said what they could not take, the town of Gulaping would certainly take. Gulaping was located just south of Dinganes on the same peninsula. It was where the Althing met.

Captain Olaf nodded, smiled, and waved as they headed back out to sea. Then he asked what an Althing was.

“A gathering of the village chiefs and representatives from the whole province,” Kirstie said. “They gather now and then to settle property disputes, village boundaries, hunting and fishing rights and act as a high court for the province. It is really a better way of settling disputes than yelling and fighting.”

“Peace is better than war,” Yrsa said, and Kirstie lifted up her son so he could wave good-bye.

Yasmina

“Lady,” Aisha got Yasmina’s attention. “Aren’t you afraid if we go back to Alexandria, they will find you? People know you were there before being taken to the Fatimid court. You are familiar with the place. And now that you have escaped from the Fatimids, they might expect you to go there, or Fustat, or Petra where you have been before in case you made plans only did not have time or the opportunity to carry them out.”

Yasmina looked at her companion. “Al-Rahim mentioned the same thing, but he said something about a dog returning to its vomit, for which I thanked him. Lovely picture. But I figure we don’t have any choice. We can’t go west through the heart of Berber and Fatimid territory. To what end? So we end up in the hands of the Caliph of Cordoba? That does not sound like a winning strategy. Then we can’t go south into true Africa. We would no doubt be taken as slaves for one tribe or another. Then, east is Egypt and the Qarmatians that we ran away from in the first place.”

“Yes, but Alexandria?”

“We have contacts there through al-Din. We have access to ships through him. If we can help him settle his affairs positively, we can take a ship into the Mediterranean. Then all the Isma’ili fanatics on both sides, east and west, and whoever else may be seeking us will have no way of knowing where we have gone. Then we can truly have a fresh start.”

Aisha rode in silence for a minute while she considered their position. Finally, she said, “Good luck with that.”

Yasmina nodded. “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley.”

Medieval 5: K and Y 18 Unexpected Meetings, part 4 of 4

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Yasmina

When they entered the gates of Alexandria, Yasmina looked around at all the people bustling about on their errands and commented. “This city is alive, industrious. Not like the lazy places and villages we have visited.”

“It is full of Greeks and Turks. There are plenty of Christians and some Jews mingled in,” Aisha agreed, and pointed to several things, including a church.

“Very cosmopolitan,” Yasmina named it as they came to the market area and she got to look at many faces. Aisha continued to point out various things and people, but Yasmina zeroed in on one face in particular.

“Hold up,” al-Rahim said as they had to wait for a handful of armed men who crossed the street in front of them. Yasmina hardly noticed. Her eyes focused on the old man, and after a moment, it struck her.

“You there, Jinn,” Yasmina pointed at the old man and the old man looked startled. Yasmina stopped moving so Aisha stopped. The guards stopped, and only al-Rahim out front rode another twenty feet before he noticed and came back. “Yes, you. What are you doing here?”

“Who? Me?” The old man asked and pointed to himself. His eyes went wide with either shock or surprise, and he looked around to see people who paused to watch.

“Lady,” Aisha looked and sounded offended. “We do not traffic with such creatures.”

“Ah,” the old man seemed to understand something. “A spirit of light.”

“You do not belong here,” Yasmina said. “How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

The old man looked around at the people who were becoming curious about this exchange. “I can explain, only please, not here. I will take you to my master’s house and make all matters clear. Come.” He turned and waved for them to follow. “Come, come.”

Yasmina walked her horse after the man, so the others fell in behind her, but al-Rahim had to say something. “Princess?”

“It will be all right, I think,” Yasmina said. “But I may have to do something terrible if I don’t get a good answer.”

After a short way, they came to a gate and entered into the courtyard of a home which appeared to be a palace of sorts. Servants came to collect the horses, and al-Rahim only had to threaten them a little to take good care of their steeds and things. “And if anything is missing, you will be missing your heads,” he said. In that time and place that was only a little threat.

The old man Jinn took them inside to a large room with many cushions and tables set for guests, and he spoke. “I will just go and see about refreshments.”

“You will stay here,” Yasmina said sharply. “I don’t want you out of sight before I get an explanation.” She sat and the others sat with her except al-Rahim who fingered his knife.

“Very well,” the old man did not argue. He clapped for servants and gave instructions before he sat to face his guests. “How is it that you, a mere mortal should see through my disguise?” he asked.

Yasmina was not distracted. “What are you doing here? I know in the past Solomon the Great attached many of your kind to rings and lamps, whatever came to hand, and many jugs and jars where you were sealed in with his great seal. I also know, in the last days of the gods your kind were sent over to the other side, to the land of fire and sand, and a great veil was placed against your return. I also know that no Jinn has the power to pierce that veil and return to this world. It takes a great power on this side to bring one of you back to this Earth. So how did you get here and what are you doing here?”

The old man widened his eyes again in shock or surprise. “Who are you to be so wise, to know the ways of the Jinn?”

Aisha, who frowned in the Jinn’s presence, spoke plainly. “She is the Kairos, the Traveler in Time, the Watcher over History.”

The old man fell to his face and prostrated himself. “Al-Khidr,” he called her.

Yasmina gave Aisha a dirty look and spoke, trying to put kindness in her voice. “Sit up. Tell me your story. Make it a good one, but be honest, hard as that may be for you.”

The old man sat up slowly as he began. “You know, the Jinn do not live forever. We may live thousands of years, but we are not immortal. Neither are we gods, though we may appear that way to some because of the power we possess. I was one who was neither good nor bad. I was selfish and full of pride, and I used my skills to my advantage over the mortal world. It was Solomon himself who turned my pride against me and trapped me in a lamp.” He held out his hands and the lamp appeared in his palms. He set it gently on the table between them.

“Did you not go to the other side?” Al-Rahim asked as he finally took a seat.

“I did,” he said. “And for two thousand years, trapped in the lamp, and I contemplated all I had done in my days. I… I reformed and vowed if I had a chance to live again on the Earth, I would do good for others what I would have them do for me. Sadly, I was reaching my final days and began to despair. It was the god Abraxas two hundred years ago who reached out to the land of the Jinn and rescued me. I believe he wanted a Jinn he could easily control, like me being tied to the lamp. I do not know what wicked plans he had, but when I would not cooperate, he threw me away.”

“Did you wonder what he wanted?” Yasmina asked.

The old Jinn shook his head. “But being discarded, my despair grew a hundred-fold. Here I was in the land of the living, but I remained trapped in the lamp and saw no way to escape. I was found and used to bring light to a home, a small consolation, but then one day, a young beggar boy stole me from my place. He cleaned me up to sell, and in rubbing me, he set me free. I accepted him as my master, and I have served faithfully ever since. I have accepted young al-Din as like a son to me, and he is in love.”

“Wait,” Aisha said, while Yasmina put her face in the palm of her hand for thinking about it. “This is not the home of a beggar boy.”

“My master wanted to be rich,” the old Jinn said. “His father slaved for al-Zaatar, who ruled this place. He was not treated well, which is why the young son had to beg in the streets. It was a simple thing to convince the old man al-Zaatar to make his faithful servant the elder al-Din his heir since the man had no children. Al-Zaatar died within the year. The next year, the elder al-Din passed away and the young man inherited it all, though he was but sixteen years. He is presently eighteen and at one of his properties, but he should be returning shortly, and you can meet him.”

“Tough luck having his father die like that, right after gaining all this,” Harun said, and al-Asad agreed.

The old Jinn ran his fingers through his beard and looked at the table. “So I have come to understand. Human mortals live such short lives as it is. I thought a few years before his time would not matter, but I see now that they hold on to life for as long as they can, maybe because it is so short.”

“So, is he happy now?” Aisha asked.

The old Jinn shook his head. “But there is hope,” he said. “He has fallen in love with the Lady Badroul, though he has only seen her a few times. I believe the young lady also loves him from afar, but she is just fourteen, so it will be a few years before she is old enough to marry. She is also the daughter of the Governor of Alexandria and the Sharif of all this land. That might be a problem, but not a difficult one.”

Yasmina finally removed the palm from her face. “So, she is Badroulbadour, daughter of the Sultan of Egypt, and you are the genie of the lamp, and you serve Ala al-Din, or as some say, Aladdin. Is this not so?”

The old Jinn shrugged. “I do not know some of those words, but I suppose that is about it.”

“How can I be so lucky?” Yasmina said with a great amount of sarcasm, and everyone looked at her, wondering what else she might know.

The old Jinn lifted a hand to regain their attention. “Love is the most mysterious thing in the universe. It is so simple and so complex. But there is one thing standing in the way of the young lovers. Suffar is a great man who has gained the ear of the governor. He has become the chief advisor… “

“Vizir,” Yasmina corrected. “But I thought he was Jafar.”

The old Jinn nodded. “He has his eyes on Badroul for his own son, though the boy is presently only fifteen. He needs a few years as does she. So, that is the complication, not the least because Suffar is a wicked and powerful sorcerer.”

“Of course, he is,” Yasmina said and threw her hands up.

The younger al-Din proved to be as good and kind a young man as Yasmina expected. They stayed with him for three days before they moved to the governor’s palace. Yasmina, though only seventeen, found the eighteen-year-old Ala al-Din rather childish about some things. She found his Roman friend, however, enchanting. Unfortunately, the twenty-one-year-old was a Christian, but Yasmina thought, well, no one is perfect. She was surprised how easily the name Francesco d’Amalfi fit on her tongue.

************************

MONDAY

Kirstie and Yrsa discover the real target of the Vikings is the monastery at Lindisfarne. Somehow, they have to get Father McAndrews and warn the people there. Until Monday, Happy Reading.

*

Medieval 5: K and Y 17 Surprises, part 4 of 4

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Yasmina

Yasmina made peace with her horse. He was a good puppy, as she sometimes called him. She named him Sulayman and felt like she was getting the hang of this riding business. The merchant caravan crawled along, slow as a turtle. They carried linens from the Nile, soap from Alexandria, and finely crafted items from Fustat and they headed toward Damascus. The first night camp was on the Giza Plateau under the moon shade of the pyramids.

“The sphinx looks covered in sand,” Yasmina said. She made al-Rahim and Aisha ride with her to look at it. A servant of Mubarak, a Christian Egyptian named Zayd who knew the area well led the way. “I’ll be anxious to see Jerusalem when we get there a month from now,” Yasmina added.

She felt disappointed on seeing the sphinx. The temple was almost completely filled in and buried, and the lion was completely covered so only the head stuck up above the sand.

“The temple of Horus is only visible from the few columns that stick out from the sand,” Zayd explained. “The face on the statue is said to be the face of Horus… What?” he asked because Yasmina kept vigorously shaking her head.

“It is older than that,” Yasmina said before her mouth opened up. “The sphinx is a lion, it was originally a full lion at rest with front and back feet, and a lion face and it got carved hundreds of thousands, maybe two hundred thousand years ago or more. It was carved by the Gott-Druk under the eye of the giants who ruled all this land in the three hundred thousand years before the extinction event… You don’t need to know all that.”

“Sekhmet was the lion goddess of the ancient people,” Zayd said.

Yasmina shook her head again. “She came later. My older-younger sister Sakmet or Sekhmet or Mehit in some places was born maybe four or five thousand years ago, so relatively recently.” She waved off any questions “Anyway, after the extinction event, God removed all the ash and dust, so we had the sun again. He let there be light. He stabilized the rotation of the Earth and separated the waters from the waters and all that. Genesis, you know. That was what, fifteen thousand years ago? Fourteen? Sixteen? I don’t know. I was not around then.”

“Your sister?” Zayd had to ask. “How could you have been alive? I’ve heard the Earth was created just five thousand years ago. Of course, I’ve also heard nine thousand years ago…” She waved off his questions again.

Yasmina took a breath. “Anyway, the powers in nature, the titans decided human beings needed more direct guidance, in a sense. The gods, so-called, began to be born around the time of the flood. You know, the ones who showed Allah-God in all things so no man would have an excuse. Well, Osiris got born in there somewhere and eventually, maybe some five thousand years ago, the Ra, the king of the gods of Egypt gave the Nile to Osiris. That was when the pyramids got built.”

“Wait,” Zayd interrupted. He was having a hard time grasping all this. “There are many pyramids around the land. It is said the ancient people tried and failed but learned how to build these perfect pyramids. They were the last built.”

“Oh, the Egyptians tried and failed with many,” Yasmina agreed. “But they were just trying to replicate the wonders of Giza. To be honest, there are many pyramids around the world, and some are bigger than these here. The giants built pyramids when they ruled the earth over those two or three hundred thousand years. The people who built these pyramids on Giza got the idea from the giants and made the pyramid design an integral part of their own culture. But you don’t need to know all that. I can tell you that the sphinx, the “Place of the Lion” was a landmark place for meeting between different people groups. As civilization began to develop along the Nile, eventually the people removed the lion face and re-carved it into the face of Osiris. The temple to Osiris was built here earlier, like when Osiris received the gift of the Nile…”

“Lady?” Aisha pointed and wanted to ask about Osiris’ nose.

Yasmina looked but she started winding down. “Of course, Osiris got killed at bout that same time. Horus took over, but they could not really re-carve the sphinx again. Horus wore glasses for reading. Anyway, the temple got mostly abandoned. Ptah used it from time to time. Memphis was not far away. I suppose Sekhmet came here often enough, not because of the lion, though. Ptah was her father.”

“Your sister?” Zayd asked.

Yasmina nodded. “Different father,” she said, and saw al-Rahim waiting patiently with his arms folded. Yasmina looked down.

“Are we finished?” Al-Rahim asked. Yasmina nodded without lifting her eyes. “Because I believe our friend Zayd brought us here to tell us something.”

It took Zayd a few moments to focus his mind back on the real world. “Indeed. I meant to warn you. My master, Mubarak took money from the governor to take you to a safe place, but he has no intention of fulfilling that contract. We are headed toward Palestine, but before we get there, he plans to sell you to the Qarmatians, thus making twice the money for the same prize. He will tell the governor he brought you safely to your destination, but they were attacked and the Qarmatians came and took you by force. He might even lie and say he tried to get you back, but the Qarmatians were too strong and fast, so he could not catch you.”

“Doesn’t anyone tell the truth anymore?” Aisha asked quietly.

“Evidently not,” Yasmina said, and they mounted to ride back to the camp.

Before dawn, when Zayd and his men were on watch, al-Rahim led them away from the caravan. The instructions were simple enough. Head due west until they came across a road in the wilderness. That would be the road through the western delta and would take them eventually to Alexandria. Al-Rahim said that would work. He had a letter addressed to the Sharif, the governor of Alexandria.