A Dirge for Prester John

“I could not get you into Mosul,” the green knight said, “even if you could manage the river. If I could get into Mosul I’d be there now, and eating pomegranates in the muslin-sellers markets! But there is a monastery, on this side, St. Elijah’s. The Nestorian see keeps it, and pilgrims come for Mar Elia in November, when the oranges are small and green on the trees.”

And John wept with joy, as in his books they say men of old did. “Surely God has led me here, to find a Nestorian hold in the wide desert. Take me, Salah ad-Din, give me over to my brothers and I will call us bonded, call us brethren, never one to harm the other.”

Anglitora flexed her wide wing. “We do not especially wish to be given over to Nestorians, Father. We came to fight. We came to deliver a city. Not to nap in a monastery.”

“Daughter, I need to rest,” John said desperately, as desperate to get to those monks as a man to a lover. “I am so tired of being a stranger.”

Salah ad-Din cleared his lovely throat. “I will be happy to do it, John, but if we are brothers, I would ask my brother a favor. Sieges are long and costly; they merely put off the inevitable. If your winged countrymen wish to deliver a city, they could deliver Mosul to me.”

“But the river,” protested Anglitora.

“Oh, I don’t need you to actually fly over the walls. Just show yourselves, in sight of the Hamdanids, and they will surrender immediately, I promise. Who would not, in the face of so many gryphons and, well, I am not certain what to call the other flying folk among you. But we have nothing like them here, and strategy sometimes consists of showing one’s hand rather than closing it into a fist.”

“I would rather fight,” my winged girl said.

“I have no doubt, though I cannot imagine what country has bred women like these, who go naked and hunger for battle. Surely when John says his is a Christian throne, he exaggerates.”

“I would fight you,” Anglitora whispered.

“What have I done to you, maid?” The green knight laughed.

“Nothing, but you would fight bravely, I am certain of it.”

“Of course I would.”

“Then whichever of us prevailed, our children would grow up strong and whole and beautiful, and that is reason enough for war!” Her feathers fluffed and shivered slightly, turning a pale orange at the edges.

I was such a child.

“I fear I do not understand,” said Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyubi, the knight in silver and green.

“Oh,” I said, and I smiled, but not because I thought the crane-maid silly. “It is because of the cranes. And the pygmies.”

“Is that not what we came for?” Anglitora, the crane-knight cried. “To mate with John’s world as it came to mate with us when he took a blemmye to wife? To take the knights of Yerushalayim to our beds and keep their eggs warm through autumn?”

I am so grateful no one laughed. Save Salah ad-Din, but he was foreign and I liked to watch him laughing. He looked so handsome when he laughed.

“I don’t think we are here to do very much at all,” John said. “If we are at Nineveh we are terribly far from the holy land, we cannot cross the Euphrates—and that is the river’s name, if you must know it, it is the Euphrates and it hates us—and just over the hill is Salah ad-Din’s army, which will neither understand you nor countenance your ugliness. It is a whole army of men like me when I first arrived, and they will hate you. The best we can hope for is the monastery of St. Elijah, where at least I can explain to Christian brothers all that has happened, and rest, God on High, rest at last.”

Salah ad-Din cocked his head to one side. “Why would we hate djinni, or think them ugly? Allah made them of the pure fire, and gave them free will no less than men. Surely some djinni go over to the side of wickedness, but so do some men. I see among you some figured like angels, others like chimera, and others beyond my ability to name them. But nothing Allah has not prepared me to see, nothing I have not read of in the holy books. Djinni came to Mohammed of old, why should I be terrified when they come to me?”

We did not know the word he used for us. Nor did John.

“And all your soldiers, they would feel the same? They would look on my wife and think her lovely, ask after her history, her interests and ambitions, ask her to dine with their wives and carry their children on her shoulders?”

Salah ad-Din blushed. It was a very pretty thing. I do not think I have ever seen John blush.

“Not all, no. I admit it. Though a Christian army would behave no better. Some could think of them as angels and Nephilim and Ophanim, and some could only see monsters. Men are men, everywhere.”

“Not everywhere,” said I.

And as if to put an end to the debate, more ranks of wizards came, the sun setting behind them, with their whispering and their horrified looks. Though it is possible their horror was more directed at Salah ad-Din than at us, we could not tell.

John spoke to the wizards. I have come home, I have come home, my name is John and I wrote to Constantinople, have you been there, have you seen the Emperor, did he get my letter? My heart is glad to see Christian men, will you not give us sanctuary? And to him they marveled, and asked if he was Prester John, the famous priest-king, and had he come to smite down the enemies of Christ.

Of course he had. I wanted to answer for him. Of course that is why we came. To hurt and maim—

and mate—