The Elixir of Death Read online

  'You must be chilled through after that long ride,' he said solicitously. 'I'll pour you a cup of wine and soon Mary will bring hot stew.'

  He fussed over her for a few minutes as she silently warmed herself before the fire. Then he brought his own goblet to sit on the other monk's chair, wondering desperately how to find something to say that would not spark controversy. But as had Nesta the evening before, Matilda saved him the trouble.

  'Are you living back here now?' she demanded, her gimlet eyes boring into his.

  'I am indeed, wife! You need not fear any further assault now - those men are all dead.'

  She turned to stare at the flames in the hearth.

  'I am glad you are back, John: she murmured tonelessly. 'The house was not the same without you here to cause me trouble.'

  HISTORICAL POSTSCRIPT

  The three assassins in this work of fiction are loosely based upon historical reality, which still has unfortunate relevance today. In the highly complex history of Islam, a major division occurred upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632. The majority group, the Sunnis, declared that his successor was a caliph chosen by Muhammad's followers, but the remainder (the Shi'a or Shi'ites) claimed that shortly before his death he had appointed his nephew Ali, the husband of his daughter Fatima, as his spiritual and temporal heir. Later, other schisms about the succession occurred and the Shi'a split repeatedly, one sect being the Isma'ili, whose leader is still the present Aga Khan.

  The Isma'ili had radical and esoteric views of their religion, and in the eleventh century the Nizari sub-sect under Hasan ibn Al Sabbah broke away, originally to kill leading Sunnis in Egypt, in order to restore the Fatimid Shi'a dynasty in Cairo. Hasan was viewed by the rest of Islam as a heretic, and around 1090 removed his sect to Alamut, a remote mountain stronghold in Persia, where he became known as 'The Old Man of the Mountains', though this is a mistranslation of Sheik al Jabal, meaning 'Chief of the Mountain'.

  The Nizaris became known as the hashishin, because of the claim that they used hashish (cannabis) to excite themselves into a state of murderous ecstasy. The modern name 'assassin' is derived from this unlikely allegation. In fact cannabis does not have this effect, but they may well have used other psychedelic drugs.

  Assassination became a potent political weapon, and for many years the hashishin imposed a reign of terror all over the Near East, where many leading Sunnis were knifed or poisoned by Nizari killers, who invariably died themselves during the attacks.

  In the twelfth century, another Nizari, Rashid el-din Sinan, moved to a different mountain fastness in the Lebanon (then part of Syria) and became another 'Old Man of the Mountains'. From there he conducted a war of assassination against both Sunnis and the Christians of Outremer. A number of attempts were made on the life of Saladin (a Sunni Kurd), and he is said to have slept up a wooden tower for safety. They murdered numerous Crusaders and leading members of the Christian kingdoms, including, in 1152, Count Raymond II of Tripoli.

  In 1192, two hashishin dressed as monks fatally knifed Count Conrad of Montferrat, the man who had been chosen as the next King of Jerusalem (an empty gesture, as the Holy City had already been taken by Saladin), in a street in Tyre. They were caught and killed, but before dying, one was alleged to have confessed that the assassination was ordered by King Richard the Lionheart, who preferred another candidate, Guy of Lusignan, to reign over Jerusalem.

  The French king Philip, who had by now fallen out with Richard and had abandoned the Crusade and returned to France, took the opportunity to announce that he was also a target of the hashishin. He claimed that Richard had sent four of them to France to assassinate him, and henceforth he went about in armour and with a heavy bodyguard. However, King Leopold of Austria received a letter purportedly written by the Old Man of the Mountains, declaring that King Richard was not implicated, but this was declared a forgery by the Lionheart's enemies.

  In 1194, Count Henry of Champagne visited Alamut and described how the assassins were trained - a story that was repeated by Marco Polo over a century later, though he visited the fortress several years after it was destroyed by the Mongols. These accounts told how young men were drugged with hashish and taken to a beautiful garden, with tinkling fountains, superb food and the seductive company of lovely maidens. They were later promised that if they carried out the murderous tasks set by the leader, they would inevitably be killed, but go straight to eternal life in a similar paradise. The Old Man was said to demonstrate their blind. obedience 'by making a sign to these young men, who would instantly leap off a high cliff with a glad cry, to be dashed on the rocks far below' .

  There is a huge literature on the Assassins, with some remarkable claims, such as that in 1175 the Nizaris offered to become Christian, so that they could ally with the Frankish forces against the Sunnis. It has also been claimed that there was some clandestine connection between the Assassins and the Knights Templar. Though Alamut was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century and the Nizaris dispersed, they survived in various forms and some still exist in India as the Khoja sect.

  The Assassins have been the subject of many books, both fact and fiction, probably the most recent to feature them being Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

  For an excellent, detailed account of the Assassins by A. C. Campbell, see the following website:

  www.accampbell.uklinux.net/assassins