Robin Hood and the Caliph's Gold by Angus Donald

Author:Angus Donald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2020-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

The first thing Iqbal said was: “I did not play you false. I have kept my word and my bargain with you.”

“And so how do you explain this?” Robin said, holding up the brown scroll with its distinctive red cord. “Ricky, translate this, if you please.”

“He stole it from me – that one,” said Hassan in Arabic, pointing at me. “He took it from my robe when he fell against me, the black-souled thief.”

Robin seemed to understand the meaning if not the exact words. He ignored Hassan and looked directly at Iqbal. “This is not about my light-fingered friend, Alan, but about why you seem to have sent that unfortunate Berber captain on his merry way with another, different scroll.”

“It is not what you think,” said Iqbal.

“What do you think I think?”

“I did not betray you. I swear it.”

Robin said nothing for a long, long while. “I do not trust your oath, Captain. Tell me now, right now, do not waste any more of my precious time or I will cut out your eyes and make you eat them. I warned you about this.”

Iqbal said, “It was not meant to hurt you. It is not an action against you. I wanted to give us some time. That is all.”

“What does that mean?” I could see that Robin was losing patience. I wondered if he really would make Iqbal eat his own eyeballs.

“I gave Musa a forged scroll, a false receipt,” said Iqbal, who was babbling now, “because I wanted to throw the blame on him. He will show it to his Almohad commanders in Fez and they will know, immediately, that it is not genuine. The Almohad will then suspect that Captain Musa is complicit in stealing the gold, for if not, why did he not notice that the scroll was a false one. The duplicate is deliberately poor, for this very reason.”

“You betrayed your friend?”

“He is a goat-fucker. No friend of mine. But yes, I sacrificed him to give us more time to escape. They will torture him, trying to get him to reveal who is behind the robbery – they would have executed him anyway for his incompetence – and that will take several days. He is a hard man. But he knows nothing except that he made the exchange as usual. While he suffers under the red-hot irons in Fez, we will be sailing swiftly north for Marseilles. Inshallah, by the time the Almohads realise Musa is innocent, we shall be in the Christian County of Provence, free, clear and very, very rich. All of us. I did this only to make us safer. Trust me, my lord.”

“I do not.” But Robin seemed to be thinking. “And there is no ambush ahead?” he said. “Musa is not lurking in the darkness to retake the gold?”

“He is not. He knows nothing. He and his men are on their way back to Fez now, oblivious. I swear this. I swear by the Name of Allah, I swear by the souls of my children.

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