the blanket and then I saw why he wanted me to grant him the mercy of death. His feet and hands had been lopped off. No man on God's earth would want to live out his days like that.
'He told me that he had a son and wife at home whom he adored. He couldn't bear to return home to them, unable to do the smallest task for himself, not able to feed himself or even clean the shit from his own backside. Better his son believed that his father died a noble death on the battlefield than that he lived on as a useless mockery of a man. How could he be a father to his son, or husband to his wife like this, he asked me, with tears streaming down his face. He was humiliated to weep in front of me, and he couldn't even wipe away his own tears.
'I felt as if all the breath had been sucked out of me, for as he spoke of his home, I knew at once where I had seen his face before, or rather, a younger version of it. I told him that his son, Gerard, was here in this city. That he had been in this very house not minutes before. But he begged me not to tell Gerard he was alive.
'And then . . . and then he asked me to do all in my power to protect Ayaz and his family. He told me how he had been captured by one of the raiding parties from the city and dragged back through the tunnels into Acre itself. The city leaders had mutilated their captives and left them to die. But that night Ayaz had found Gerard's father crawling among the dead and dying prisoners. He'd smuggled him home, tended to his wounds, fed him with what little they had, and sheltered him.
'You see, like many in the city, Ayaz's own father had fought in the last Holy War, not as a Saracen, but against them, as a Christian. Ayaz's father had been taken prisoner and forced to convert to the Muslim faith in exchange for his life. He had married a local Muslim woman, and their son Ayaz, like so many others in the city, now found himself fighting against his own Christian cousins. Ayaz had tried to save the life of Gerard's father out of honour and respect for his own father who had once been a Christian.'
Elena had hardly dared breathe in case she interrupted Raffaele's tale, but now she couldn't help blurting out the question, 'Did you do what the poor man asked? Did you kill Gerard's father?'
'I couldn't do it.'
The words were spoken so softly and with so much grief that despite her anger, Elena wanted to throw her arms about him and comfort him.
'I was a coward. I couldn't kill him, not once I knew who he was. I made arrangements for him to be brought back to England ... I think ... I hoped that in time, when he had learned to live with what he now was, he might want to see his son again.
'But the more I got to know Gerard, the more I realized what the knowledge would do to him ... do to them both.
Gerard had slaughtered the man who'd saved his own father's life and, worse still, he had murdered Ayaz's only son, a helpless infant. Gerard couldn't have borne that knowledge. And if I had reunited them, then his father would also come to know what Gerard had done in his name. How could I add to the pain of either one of them? Weren't they suffering enough?'
Elena pressed her hands over her mouth to stop a scream escaping. 'That man . . . that poor man in the cage in Ma's cellar, that is Gerard's father!'
Raffaele raised his head and looked at her, his face distorted in misery. There was no need for him to say anything.
'How could you leave him like that in the cage?'
'What else could I do?' Raffaele sank his head in his hands. 'I had to keep him safe and hidden. I didn't have the money to pay for lodgings for him and someone to take care of him, not for all the years he might live. How was he to survive, by begging on the streets? Ma took him in when I didn't know where else to take him. She was grateful to me for saving the life of