The Templar Knight
The Crusades Trilogy
Jan Guillou
Translated by Steven T. Murray
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ Jacula Prudentum, 1651, no. 170
In the name of God, most benevolent, ever-merciful.
‘God is great in His glory, Who took His votary in the night to a wide and open land from the Sacred Mosque to the most distant Mosque whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him Our sign; Verily He is all-hearing and all-seeing.’
The Holy Koran, Sura 17, Verse 1
Table of Contents
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
Al Ghouti - Arn de Gothia
Arman de Gascogne, his sergeant
Arnoldo de Torroja, Master of Jerusalem
Odo de Saint Armand, Grand Master
Siegfried de Turenne
Harald Øysteinsson
Grand Master Roger des Moulins
CHRISTIANS
Count Raymond III de Tripoli
Reynald de Châtillon
Gérard de Ridefort
King Baldwin IV
Baldwin d’Ibelin, later Baldwin V
Guy de Lusignan, later King Guy
Agnes de Courtenay
Father Louis
Heraclius
MUSLIMS
Yussuf ibn Ayyub Salah al-Din - Saladin
Fahkr - his brother
al Afdal, Saladin’s son
Ibrahim ibn Anaza
INHABITANTS OF GUDHEM MONASTERY
Abbess Rikissa
Cecilia Algotsdotter (Rosa), betrothed of Arn
Cecilia Ulvsdotter (Blanca), betrothed of Knut Eriksson
Sister Leonore
Ulvhilde Emundsdotter
Fru Helena Stensdotter
FOLKUNG CLAN
Birger Brosa, Arn’s uncle
Magnus; Arn and Cecilia’s son
Eskil Magnusson, Arn’s brother
King Knut Eriksson
Philippe Auguste, King of France
Richard the Lionheart, King of England
Babarossa, Emperor of Germany
During Muharram, the holy month of mourning, which occurred when the summer was at its hottest in the year 575 after Hijra, called Anno Domini 1177 by the infidels, God sent His most remarkable deliverance to those of His faithful He loved best.
Yussuf and his brother Fahkr were riding for their lives and right behind, shielding them from the enemies’ arrows, came the Emir, Moussa. Their pursuers, who were six in number, were steadily gaining on them, and Yussuf cursed his arrogance, which had made him believe that something like this would never happen since he and his companions possessed the swiftest of horses. But the landscape here in the valley of death and drought due west of the Dead Sea was just as inhospitably arid as it was rocky. This made it dangerous to ride too fast, although their pursuers seemed completely unhampered by this. But if one of them happened to take a spill, it would be no less fateful than if any of the men being chased should fall.
Yussuf suddenly decided to cut across to the west and head up toward the mountains, where he hoped to find cover. Before long the three pursued horsemen were following a wadi, a dry riverbed, up a steep slope. But the wadi began to narrow and deepen so that they were soon riding in a long ravine, as if God had caught them in flight and was now steering them in a specific direction. Now there was only one road, and it led upward, growing steeper and steeper, making it harder and harder to keep up their speed. And their pursuers were coming steadily closer; they would soon be within shooting range. The men being chased had already fastened their round iron-clad shields to their backs.
Yussuf was not in the habit of praying for his life. But now, as he was forced to decrease his speed more and more among all the treacherous boulders at the bottom of the wadi, a verse came to him from God’s Word, which he breathlessly rattled off with parched lips:
He who has created life and