CHAPTER 12The dungeon of al Mamun was a squat brick square, with a flat clay roof and tiny slit windows, erected at a little distance from the main building of his establishment, between the wharf and the barracks that housed his common soldiery. In its stinking, superheated confines now lay a score of Crusaders, captured a month before while on detached patrol duty from Richard’s forces; twenty-seven Bedouins, the remains of Godwin’s army; fourteen assorted Saracens, in jail for one offense or another against Mufaddal; El Sareuk and Godwin himself.
There was barely enough floor space for each man of the sixty-three to stand upright, or to sit, if he didn’t mind jostling his neighbors. Godwin was standing by a window looking out at the dock from which the dark plague ship, a tall obscene
