Bloodstone

Prologue

Prologue

By the ruins of Itálica, Seville, 29 Jumada ’l-Thani 763 (25 April 1362) He knew he was going to die. Here. Now. The Christian, his killer, was behind him.

He rode on, staring into the shimmering emptiness ahead, counting out his life in heartbeats. The only sounds in the rising morning heat were the creak of harness leathers and the hoof-falls, muffled in dust, of his mount. If it could be called that: a donkey, for a Sultan! He smiled his last smile. At least this cloak of scarlet was a fitting funeral pall for him, for Muhammad son of Isma’il, Sultan of Granada, Commander of the Muslims.

His killer, the young king, called him ‘El Bermejo’– the Red One. Red cloak, red hair, red beard. And in the pouch about his neck was something redder than the rest, redder than the blood that would soon be shed. He felt it, cold and insistent, knocking at his breast.

A question came: who would wash him, pray over him, bury him?

No one. He’d be hacked up, hung up, a warning.

A lark cried falling far and high through the sky above the plain. Then, at last, it came, the hard dry drum of hooves. He turned to face it.

Death hit him in the breastbone at the point of King Pedro’s lance.

There was no pain. Just everything splintering, and the spring sky somersaulting.

Pedro’s face in the blue, ice-blue eyes smiling down. ‘So, No one wins but Allah, eh, Bermejo? Isn’t that the family motto?’ The young king laughed and kicked him in the head.

‘So . . . much . . . ’ he heard a voice say, ‘for Christian . . .chivalry.’ The voice was his own. There was still no pain, but he knew he was going.

‘Oh, and I’ll have this, too,’ Pedro said, still smiling, reaching down to rip the bloody pouch from his neck. ‘Payment. For screwing me up with Aragón.’

He saw Pedro take the stone out of the dripping pouch and turn it round and round against the blue: distillation of crimson, redder than anything in creation. He opened his mouth to tell him it was cursed. He wanted to die with Pedro’s fear in his eyes, not Pedro’s smile. But the words wouldn’t come.

It didn’t matter. Pedro would find out about the Ruby in time. Just as he himself had, and those before him.

Then everything went red and he knew no more, not even when they came and finished him off.