Pagan's Crusade

This book is not fantasy or alternative history. It is set firmly in Jerusalem nearly a hundred years after the First Crusade at a time when the Latin Kingdom covered most of what is now Israel, Jordan and Lebanon and was coming under intense pressure from Saladin; and the historical detail is surprisingly accurate: a Syrian Jacobite is sweeping out the stables, we are told - exactly right; or (another example) never divide your troops to chase a lone Bedouin - there is no such thing as a lone Bedouin; or the fact that many pilgrims believed that only infidels could drown in the Jordan - which was a serious mistake ... This is quite unlike any other story about the Crusaders and the Templar Knights that I have ever read.

What you expect is something more like The Book of Saladin, which is set in exactly the same period and, more or less simply, tells the story of its hero, Saladin. In Pagan' Tomb, by contrast, it is hard to say who is the hero.There are two contenders: the first is the Present Tense narrator, a street-wise local youth called Pagan Kidrouk.

'Name?' he says.

'Pagan.'

'Pagan what?'

'Pagan Kidrouk.'

'Pagan Kidrouk, sir.'

(Hell in a handcart.)

'Pagan Kidrouk, sir.'

Scratch, scratch. He writes very slowly.

'Age?'

'Sixteen, sir.'

'Born in?'

'Bethlehem.'

Rockhead looks up. The brain peeps out from behind the brawn.

'Don't worry, sir. It didn't happen in a stable.'

Clunk. Another jest falls flat on the ground.

The second is the knight to whom Pagan is appointed as squire. Times are hard for the Templars. As the sergeant says, Pagan "wouldn't have got as far as that door if the Order wasn't desperate." But they are, and Pagan's knight turns out to be Lord Roland, "son of Saint George. He looks like something off a stained glass window. Tall as a tree, golden hair, wide shoulders, long nose, eyes as blue as the Virgin's mantle. He's wearing a white robe (spotless, of course) and a knife at his belt. If he's as good as he looks, I'm in trouble. [...] Saint George takes a good long look. You can't tell what he's thinking - if he is thinking."

The book continues in this vein. You believe in Pagan. Of course you do. This is how street-kids think and speak everywhere from Calcutta to Rio de Janeiro, and how they must have thought and spoken throughout history. Jerusalem, before and during the siege and its eventual capitulation, would have been no exception.

If you like your HF short, sharp and snappy, then this book is for you. By the end of it you feel you know what life in the Latin Kingdom must really have been like.

MBG