The Source

by James A. Michener

  When the work was completed Gunter found comfort in the brooding power of the mound, but Volkmar, hobbling one day to the olive grove so that he might see the turrets soaring aloft like insolent challenges to the countryside, became depressed and reasoned with himself: We’ve used the farmers for two years and have built only a prison. We’ve buried ourselves in a tomb of stone. Cut ourselves off from the people who will have to support us if we’re to live. And he saw the castle and the walled town not as a haven of security but as a monstrous error that would confine and crush the Crusade, and on his crutches he limped back to remonstrate with Gunter, who was even then causing fresh towers to be erected along the northern wall which overlooked the wadi. “The castle’s finished,” Volkmar said, “so there’s nothing to do about it. And you’ve walled in the town, so that’s done too. But what plans do you now have for bringing the countryside into the heart of your structure?”

  Gunter looked at his former brother-in-law as if the cripple were mad. “Countryside?” he laughed. “We take refuge behind these walls and we let the countryside do what it will. This is a cruel land and will always be. Down that road from Damascus the countryside will come against us some day. Or invaders will come at us along this road from the sea. Or up through the olive grove from Egypt. The countryside? Let it try to get at us!” And in a frenzy he acted like an enemy trying to scale the great walls of Makor, and he clawed at the rocks with his fingernails, but he and Luke had set the stones so cunningly one upon the other that his fingers could find no purchase and his hands slid from the wall.

  “To hell with the countryside!” he shouted. “When they’re swarming down here my men will be up there pouring oil on them. We’ll crush the countryside if it tries to attack this wall.” And he stood back to admire the faultless rocks, but Volkmar was still held captive by the sensation that these were the walls of a mighty prison into which the Crusaders had willfully built themselves.

  When the defenses were completed, the finest south of Antioch, Gunter should have relaxed but he could not, for one nagging fact kept him awake at night, and this he could not dispel. The fundamental weakness we haven’t solved, he reflected continuously. We’ve no water. Of course, he had done all possible to minimize this fault, causing deep cisterns to be dug and lining them with rock and plaster until they were watertight, then directing every roof to carry a channel which threw its rainfall into these deep reservoirs, but that fatal year could come when drought and siege would be allies, forcing surrender from within. One day Gunter spoke of this to Luke, who now supervised all operations, and the Christian convert said, “Sir Gunter, when I was hiding in the cave … from you …” The two friends nodded. “I had the feeling that I might be in a shaft leading to a well.”

  Gunter’s breath caught. If there were a secure supply of water … within the castle. “Where is this cave?”

  “It was filled in when we paved the floor,” Luke explained, pointing to a room in the castle living quarters.

  Gunter was about to strike his lieutenant, but stayed his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I could not visualize this final plan,” Luke said.

  “Get me twenty of your best men,” Gunter commanded, and that day he began ripping up the paving stones which had been laid in place only a few weeks before. His miners went down for ten feet, then fifteen, then twenty, and Luke became uneasy; but at last they came to squared-off rocks that had not been placed in position by accident but according to design: they had reached the wall of the ancient shaft built by Hoopoe more than two thousand years before. As soon as Gunter edged his way down to this rock work, and saw for himself its excellence, he recognized what his men had found, but in order to make sure, he had them dig their way around all four sides of the long-vanished shaft, and when it was exposed he saw evidence of the concentric stairways and knew that if he dug straight down through the accumulated rubble he must find water.

  All available men were put to the job of cleaning out the abandoned shaft, and when they had excavated it for more than a hundred feet straight down, with Gunter impatient but never wavering in his conviction that water was at hand, they came to the solid rock bottom and found nothing. The disappointment embittered Gunter and he descended into the shaft, hammering on the massive rocky base with his bare hands, bellowing, “Where in God’s name is the water?” but finding only dust.

  He came out of the barren hole and brooded for some days about the ill chance that had led him on this fruitless chase, and it so happened that these were days of drought, when there should have been rain but wasn’t, and he became frantic with apprehensive visions of the future when such a drought would coincide with an Arab attack and he would stand helpless and dying of thirst inside the walls. He raved at Volkmar, “How could a well dry up when it once flowed?” And he made his brother-in-law descend the steps on his crutches to where the shaft began, so that Volkmar could see for himself that Gunter’s original idea had not been crazy, and it was a chance remark that Volkmar happened to make that solved the mystery. Looking at the grooved stairs that lined the shaft he said, “They were worn down by thousands upon thousands of bare feet.”

  “What’s that?” Gunter cried in the darkness.

  “Look. Where the feet of women wore down the stones.”

  The idea fascinated Gunter, and for more than a week he was haunted by the vision of an endless chain of barefooted women descending to the bottom of the shaft, bearing water jugs … “Where would so many have stood?” he asked himself, and then one night he screamed, “They weren’t going down the shaft at all. They were going to something!”

  In a frenzy he had himself let down to the solid rock of the bottom, where he watched in his imagination as the monotonous line of women filed past him, heading somewhere. He scratched at the walls, trying in vain to ascertain where they had gone, but he found no clue. He signaled to the men aloft to haul him out, and he walked the streets of Makor, followed by the barefooted ghosts. Once he stopped sharp and turned on them. “Where did you go?” he railed—at Kerith the devout Jewess who had gone down those steps to admire her husband’s work, at Gomer who in those depths had spoken directly to God—“Where did you vanish to?” he screamed at the phantoms, but they waited silently behind him.

  He then did what perplexed men had done in Makor throughout the millennia: he climbed to the top of the half-built wall and surveyed the setting of Makor itself. In the west he could see the fires of Acre and beyond it the moon-glistening sea of grandeur; to the south were the olive trees and the unseen swamps; and to the north, where the hills came down like invading ranks, only to be halted by the deep wadi … He stopped. He wondered if that wadi had anything to do with the water. “Why did they dig the shaft so deep?” he asked, but the facts before him were not yet clear, and in despair he knelt upon the walls and prayed, “Almighty God, where have You hidden the water?” He became angry as he called the words and beat the cold stones with his hands. In the end he shouted defiantly, “God! God! Where did you hide the water? I need it now!” And because God does not necessarily prefer soft men who chant in basilicas, moonlight shone in the wadi and Gunter leaped to his feet like a man whose bed has caught fire, and he shouted, “They dug so deep because the water’s out there!”

  In the pre-dawn he rushed back to the shaft and summoned Luke, bawling at him, “I know where the water is!” And he took five good diggers down with him and tried to calculate where north lay, and by luck he came close, and in that direction he caused his men to dig. All day they worked, with him goading them at their elbows, and fresh teams were brought down, with men hauling baskets of rubble aloft; and after night had fallen a Greek workman plunged his shovel through a soft layer of dust and struck nothing. Like a madman Gunter dashed at the hole and with a small taper looked ahead, and saw the long-vanished David Tunnel dug by Hoopoe and his Moabite slave. Disregarding the possibility of accident or surprise he dashed along the tunnel, silent for so many centuries, until he
saw the walls of the far end looming up to halt him, and at their base he found the ancient well.

  When he returned to the castle that night he was in no way exultant, for although he knew that now his castle and his town were secure against even the strongest enemy, his descent into darkness and his close brush with God reminded him of how transient life was and forced him to consider the future. When Luke came to congratulate him he found not a roistering German knight but a man much humbled, who said softly, “It’s time I found a wife.”

  That night Luke waited till Count Volkmar, who insisted upon remaining in his original quarters, had gone to bed, and then the bailiff called softly to his daughter Taleb, asking her to talk with him, and looking down at the floor he said to her, “Sir Gunter speaks of taking a wife.” Silence … “Today I examined my Lord Volkmar’s leg. It will never heal.” Silence … “He cannot live long.”

  “Each morning he has a fever,” Taleb reported.

  Luke felt it necessary to speak with great bluntness. “I’ve been wondering about Sir Gunter. Have you not thought it strange that he sleeps with so many women … he has a harem … Egyptians and that whore from Acre. But I’ve never heard that any of his women became pregnant.”

  The two Christians looked at each other for some moments, after which Luke continued, “I’ve come to the conclusion that Sir Gunter couldn’t have sons … even if he wanted them.”

  Taleb placed her folded hands on the table before her father and said, “You must not forget that young Volkmar is your grandson … as well as my son.” Silence … “What is it that you are proposing?”

  Luke swallowed. “For the next two or three weeks Gunter will remain preoccupied with cleaning out his well. But when that is done he shall have to turn to other matters.” Silence … “If I were you, I would place myself so that when he turns you are plainly visible.” From the bedroom Volkmar called for his wife; he was having trouble with his leg and wanted her to fetch his crutch.

  In the next days Taleb bint Raya, the twenty-two-year-old Christian convert, found numerous occasions to inspect the water system and the new castle. When a caravan of merchants came in from Damascus and Gunter decided to christen his great dining hall, which in succeeding centuries pilgrims to the Holy Land would characterize as the most beautiful room in the east, Taleb volunteered to serve as hostess, and she sat between the two German knights as the boar and venison were served along with the spiced wines, the dates, the honey and the exotic vegetables. At the height of the feast Gunter cried out to the Damascenes, “You men travel a lot. I’ve been thinking of getting married. Tell me, are those Armenian princesses from Edessa as pretty as they say?”

  A merchant replied, “Your Baldwin married one, and when I saw them in Edessa she seemed a fine lady.”

  “They are Christians,” Volkmar observed.

  “I’m thinking of sending to the King of France,” Gunter said. “For one of his sisters.”

  “The King of France?” Volkmar repeated. “Do you think he would reply?”

  “I believe he would,” Gunter replied. “For one day I shall be king of this area.” Then he looked directly at Taleb and added quietly, “But I think I shall allow the King of France to worry about his sisters. I may not go so far afield.”

  Volkmar could not avoid seeing this glance, nor its implication, but on that night he elected to say nothing; thereafter he stayed away from the new castle, remaining in his old quarters from which he sought to govern the district; but gradually he found that his prerogatives were being removed. Luke, as leader of the accommodating Family of Ur, quickly deserted his old employer and transferred his allegiance to the castle, where he installed the political machinery which actually governed the region. One morning Volkmar summoned Luke to the basilica, as a neutral meeting place, to ask him directly what was happening, but Luke explained that with so many peasants reporting from the outlying villages it was easier for him to meet them in the castle. “They expect it,” he added.

  “But the taxes will still be paid over to me?” Volkmar asked.

  “Of course! Of course!” Luke assured him.

  Volkmar limped home intending to ask Taleb to explain truthfully what was going on, but this he could not do, for when he entered the house he found his wife wrestling with Gunter, and her dress was mostly torn away, so that her body was exposed to the waist—and it was not at all clear whether she had been resisting or not. It was a dreadful moment, after which Gunter stood behind Taleb with his arms encircling her, his hands grasping her breasts while she fell easily back toward his protection.

  “You’re an old man,” Gunter cried impatiently. “Your leg never mended and you’ve got to die soon. When you do I’ll take your wife, and we’ll have children of our own. I’ll send your bastard back to Germany, and if he doesn’t want to go I’ll strangle him.” And with these words Gunter kissed the half-naked woman on the neck.

  Volkmar had only his crutch, but he lunged at Gunter and there was a scuffle during which the old man fell to the ground, while Gunter, still holding Taleb by the breasts, kicked at him contemptuously, causing the leg stump to break into fresh bleeding.

  When the lovers were gone Volkmar called for his servants, asking them to fetch Luke the doctor, but that man, having heard what had occurred, could not be found, so the bleeding continued. Of this bleak day Wenzel wrote in his chronicle of the German knights:

  I carried my Lord Volkmar to his bed, for he was much wasted from his early days, and he said, pressing his hands against his white beard, “I feel new pains and I shall not live long,” but he lasted through that night and in the morning called for his son, who came to him but did not understand how gravely ill his father was. His wife Taleb, whom I myself had baptized, would not approach his room but made merry in the castle with Sir Gunter, for whom she had even then a notable affection, and I did not wish to remind her of her duty. In the evening I said to Volkmar, “Poor sir, you never did get to Jerusalem,” but he replied what I knew to be the truth, “You are wrong, Priest, for on the morning I set out from Gretz I was in Jerusalem.” He ordered me to pray for his good wife Matwilda and asked, “How could she have had such a brother?” and then he prayed with me for his daughter Fulda, sharing with me a secret I had never before known. “I am convinced that she is locked up somewhere east of Damascus,” and I realized then why he had always been the first to greet the caravans that came from that city, hoping that he might discover some news of her. “Pray for my daughter, Wenzel. Pray for her.”

  At twilight Count Volkmar’s fever increased, and he could hear revelry in the castle. He asked again for his son, but Wenzel had to report that Luke had stolen the child and was keeping him hidden in the castle. To this sad news Volkmar said nothing, and it seemed certain that he must soon die, but at midnight he was still alive.

  LEVEL

  IV

  The Fires of Ma Coeur

  Seal of the town of Ma Coeur. Obverse: “VKMR VIII GRET S M CUR COND DOV REAVME DACR” (Volkmar VIII of Gretz, Sire of Ma Coeur, Count of the Kingdom of Acre). Reverse: “CE EST LE CHAST DE MA COVER DE JESUS” (This is the castle of Ma Coeur de Jesus). Issued at Ma Coeur, June 11, 1271, upon the investiture of Volkmar VIII. Cast in bronze at St. Jean d’Acre by German-speaking artisans unfamiliar with the French used officially in the kingdom of Acre. Deposited at Makor April 2, 1291 C.E.

  Cross section of Tell Makor from main gate on left to postern gate on right as it appeared in 1291 C.E. when rubble had accumulated to a height of 67 feet. From left to right the structures of Ma Coeur are: tower of the main gate, minaret of the mosque, Crusader tower added to the Byzantine basilica of Father Eusebius, castle moat, main gate of the castle of Count Volkmar, principal castle building, north wall of the castle. The water system dug by Jabaal the Hoopoe in 966-963 B.C.E. is shown as reopened by Gunter of Cologne in 1105 C.E. The cave occupied by the Family of Ur in 9834 B.C.E. is shown, as is the monolith to El which this same family erected in 9831 B.C.E. and whic
h now stands buried under the altar of the basilica.

  In the spring of 1289, when the spiritual fire that had sustained the Crusades had died away to an ember, when Jerusalem was lost forever to the infidel, when the lovely chain of seaports reaching southward from Antioch had fallen permanently into enemy hands, and when a sense of doom hung over the land like a searing cloud of sand particles blown in by the khamsin, the walled city of St. Jean d’Acre still remained as the Crusader capital and the eighth Count Volkmar of Gretz still defended the castle of Ma Coeur as a bulwark of the faith, trusting that some miracle would permit him to retain it for another generation.

  Then, on April 26, 1289, a miracle caused his prayers to be answered. The Mamelukes, a handful of slaves imported from Asia to serve the Turks, had somehow gained control of the vast Muslim empire and unexpectedly volunteered to extend their truce with Acre for the traditional period of ten years, ten months and ten days; and when this reassuring news sped across the Holy Land, caravans started moving once more between the Mameluke stronghold of Damascus and Acre. French and Italian newcomers, struggling ashore at the latter seaport after tedious voyages in dangerous ships, were frequently astonished to find that among the first persons to greet them upon landing at Acre were beturbaned merchants from Damascus, trying to earn an honest bezant by sharp trading with the Christians. It was difficult for these new arrivals to understand when the resident Crusaders explained: “Of course, it’s your duty to kill infidels, but not these infidels, because with them we conduct a very good trade from which everyone makes a profit.”