There was a strong war brewing now among the infidels. Raymond of Antioch and Joscelin of fallen Edessa were at odds again. Joscelin had in mind to take Edessa back. Raymond called him a ramping fool with a pitiful nothing of an army, and left him to it. He, who might conceivably have been persuaded to wait until he had more men and better strategy, was pricked to move regardless.
To everyone’s astonishment, including perhaps his own, he won the city; but not the citadel, which was the city’s strong heart. Without the citadel he had won nothing. The garrison there would easily, once the infidels came with their armies, crush him between them. He could not help but know this, but he did nothing of any use, sat confused in the city where he had once been lord, and waited for someone to show him what to do.
Inevitably the infidel came, in the form of the lord Nur al-Din from Aleppo with his hordes of Turks and Saracens. Then Joscelin remembered his wits, or what passed therefor. Though trapped between army and citadel, he slipped away by night with his men and with Christians of the city, striking for the river.
There in the morning the infidels caught them. The messenger who came to Jerusalem was wounded, but not badly. He told his tale as all such tales are told, with stark precision. Joscelin defeated, wounded but alive. Joscelin’s ally, the lord of Marash and Kaisun, dead in the fight. “We were standing fast,” the messenger said, “till Lord Joscelin took it into his head to break out and fall on the infidel. Not that I’d presume to judge a nobleman, your majesties, my lords and ladies,” he said to the assembly of the court, “but he could have been wiser.”
Joscelin had escaped to Samosata. The Christians of that country who had followed him, abandoned in his flight, were slain to the last man. Their children, their women were taken slaves. Edessa was emptied, that ancient Christian city; emptied and laid waste.
And still no Crusade came to the kingdom’s aid. It was begun: the pope had preached it in France, and kings had taken the cross; but it would be months before they wended their way eastward. Wars so great were never either easy or swift of accomplishment – least of all among the Franks, who did not stand perpetually in battle order as did the men of Outremer.
In the wake of Edessa’s second and final fall, God’s goodwill seemed to take leave of the kingdom, and with it a great deal of its common sense. The devil of the infidels seemed to have claimed mastery over the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
It began simply enough, if anything to do with the infidel was simple. Jerusalem was then allied with Damascus in one of the complex weavings of the east, in which enemy might share cause with enemy against a common adversary. In the spring of the third year after Edessa’s first fall and the year after its second, one of the lords who served the lord of Damascus appeared in Jerusalem. His name was Altuntash, and he governed Bosra and Salkhad.
He rode in in state, a man of lordly height and girth on one of the slender little horses of this country, with an escort of Turks and Saracens under the banners of Islam. Arslan could read some of what they said: verses from the Koran, warlike and holy.
Altuntash was an apostate, an Armenian who had forsaken the Lord Christ for the infidels’ Allah, but because he came as an ally he was welcomed with studied courtesy. He stood up in front of the High Court, in the hall of their assembly, and addressed them through an interpreter though Arslan had heard him speak perfectly intelligible Frankish.
“Majesties,” he said, bowing with florid grace to the queen and the king. “My lords. My ladies. Knights and barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. I bring you alliance, if you will have it.”
“We are already your allies,” said Manasses the Constable from his place at the queen’s right hand. “Are you not a vassal of the lord of Damascus?”
“My lord,” said Altuntash with another, less florid bow, “I was. I am no longer. I have divided myself from that allegiance. I come to lay it in your king’s hands, if he will take it. I bring Bosra and Salkhad under your rule.”
“And what,” inquired Manasses, “would you ask in return?”
“Only, my lord,” Altuntash said, “that you make me lord of the Hauran in which Bosra and Salkhad are.”
The Court stirred at that, not with surprise unless they were utter fools, but in interest and the beginning of debate. The Hauran was a Christian country, if not of the Latin rite. It might therefore be a proper conquest for the Crusade.
“From there,” someone said among the ranks of the barons, “we have Damascus within our reach.”
“Damascus is our ally,” someone else reminded him.
“Today it is,” said the first man. “Tomorrow… who knows?”
The debate ran back and forth. On the one hand the old alliance, the oaths sworn to stand on the side of Damascus in the infidels’ wars; or at the least, not to interfere between Damascus and its enemies. In return Jerusalem gained Damascus’ assurance that the might of Syria would not fall on the kingdom, and Syria’s protection against the rest of Islam. This new alliance, on the other hand, would shatter the bond with Damascus but gain lands and power that Jerusalem had not held before. It would be a thorn in the infidels’ side – a Christian realm in the heart of Islam. That thought endeared itself greatly to the younger and hotter-headed of the barons.
The older and the more sensible walked warily round promises of princedoms. “How do we know he can give it to us? What will it cost us to hold it? Damascus’ alliance costs us nothing and gains us a measure of safety.”
“Until a new sultan supplants the old, and all alliances are made void.”
“But they might not be. This man Altuntash – what do we know of him? Unur in Damascus we do know, all his loyalties and his treacheries.”
And on it went, through the day and into the night, with the queen sitting silent while the Court ran on. The king, rather to the barons’ surprise, did not like Altuntash at all, and would not speak for him.
When it was very late, when the barons growled like dogs with hunger and exhaustion, the queen spoke at last. “I believe that we should do this.”
Those who had spoken against it broke out in a roar of protest. Her son led them, his voice higher than some, clearer to hear. “We can’t do that! We’ll break faith with Damascus.”
“We break faith,” she said, “to wrest a Christian country from the hands of the infidel.” She rose, set down the scepter that she had held in her lap through all this long day and evening. “In the morning, my lord Manasses, you will summon the levies.”
He bowed. If he would have spoken, she gave him no time. She had swept out, and a tide of people after her, seeking food and rest.
* * *
Baldwin wanted to pursue her and no doubt shout at her, but Bertrand stood in his way. “Not now,” he said.
“Then when?” Baldwin demanded hotly.
“In the morning,” said Bertrand, cool to the king’s heat. “Come now. You should eat, sleep.”
Baldwin set his jaw as if he would resist, but after a moment he surrendered.
When he was asleep in his own bed, or feigning it, Arslan went out of the king’s bedchamber into the anteroom where the squires were most of them asleep already, and past that to the outermost room, the one in which he preferred to sleep. It was cold in winter but it was quiet, and no one else seemed inclined to spread his pallet there.
Bertrand was sitting in it now, eyes closed, hands folded over his middle, to all appearances asleep.
Appearances could deceive. “My lord,” Arslan said, not loudly but not softly either.
Bertrand opened an eye. “That was quick enough,” he said. “He’s asleep?”
Arslan shrugged. “He seems to be.”
“Good enough,” Bertrand said. He closed the eye, sighed, opened them both. No sleep clouded them. “In the morning I want you to keep him busy. Keep him away from the queen.”
“You don’t want him to dissuade her?”
“I don’t want him to convince her that she should do this mad thing.”
“I know he will,” Bertrand said. “He’s just of the age to object to his mother’s rule. And she’s not giving it up.”
“She should,” said Arslan. “She should have done it when he turned fifteen. But she never said a word. Nor did anyone else.”
“Not even Baldwin.” Bertrand stretched more comfortably in the big carved chair, crossing his ankles and studying the toes of his fine crimson shoes. He was still in his court dress, odd to one who had grown familiar with him in dusty armor and wayworn riding-gear. “No, no one said anything. She’s a strong woman, is Melisende, and she knows – she believes she knows – precisely how to rule this kingdom. If she were a man, with the blood and right she carries, would anyone even be suggesting that she should abdicate in favor of an untried boy?”
“She’s not a man,” Arslan said.
“Alas for her high heart,” Bertrand agreed, “she is not. But do you see? If Baldwin starts shouting at her, she’ll be all the more determined to do as she pleases and not as he would like her to do.”
“Is that,” Arslan asked slowly, “why she chose Altuntash to begin with? Because Baldwin wanted to stay with Damascus?”
Bertrand shook his head, but slowly. “No, I don’t think so. I think she sees greater advantage in possessing the Hauran than in appeasing Damascus.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not the queen,” Bertrand said.
Arslan nodded. “I don’t either. It’s too much risk for too little certain reward.”
“And there is the matter of broken faith.”
“That never comes to much unless we want it to,” Arslan said, which won him a slightly startled glance. He bared his teeth at it. “I’m not a child. I know how kingdoms are ruled and how wars are fought. Loyalty is a thing to be set aside for expedience’s sake, and oaths and promises are valid only as long as they’re convenient. With Damascus… Altuntash holds out a tempting prize, but something in me dislikes the feel of it.”
“It’s not the prize,” Bertrand said. “It’s what we might have to do to hold it. We’re weak against the full force of Islam – at least till the Crusade finds its rambling way here. We can’t risk a defeat now on the heels of Edessa’s twofold fall. The next city to fall might well be Jerusalem.”
“The queen will argue that a strong Damascus could turn from ally into enemy in an eyeblink: if someone other than Unur takes power there, he might refuse to honor Unur’s pacts. Why not take the lands were offered, and use them to strike at Damascus before Damascus strikes at us?”
“And yet if we do that, Damascus might strike before we can be ready; and that will be very ill indeed.”
“Round and round it goes,” Arslan said, swallowing a yawn. “We heard it all today, and we’ll hear it tomorrow, I’m sure, and for days thereafter. Is there something else I can do for you, my lord?”
Bertrand looked ready to fall asleep himself, but roused with the hint of a start. “No. No, I’m dallying, I should be home long since. Keep Baldwin quiet and keep him apart from the queen, if you can at all. Now’s not the time for him to challenge her. He has friends, but not enough. She’s stronger than he is, and she will win, no matter how hard he may fight.”
“Are you,” Arslan asked carefully, “taking the king’s side in this?”
“No,” said Bertrand. “I’m doing my duty as his tutor.”
That could well be true. Arslan stood for a while after Bertrand had gone, thinking about it, wondering why he was so set against the queen’s decision. It made as much sense as the other, when he stopped to think – and yet his heart insisted that it was wrong.
It was probably as simple as a sharp dislike of Altuntash. A man who had forsaken the Lord Christ to turn to Muhammad, who had then forsaken his sworn lord in Damascus to turn to Jerusalem, must be a slippery ally at best, and perhaps not a great judge of causes.
Arslan sighed. He was tired to the bone, but he had no desire to sleep. After he had spread his bed and undressed and lain down, he lay a long while awake. The world was turning, he could feel it. Dame Fortune’s wheel was poised with Jerusalem at the top of it, ready to stand or to fall.
Whichever way the wheel turned, he rode with it. His faith was not so very strong, perhaps, but he was loyal; and he was his king’s man.
Forty-One
Baldwin did not want the course that his mother had decided on, but when it came time to march to the war that she had forced upon him, it was he and not she who led the armies of Jerusalem. Led them indeed more truly than heretofore: not only riding at their head with his crowned helm under the glittering splendor of the True Cross, but speaking in the councils of war, and what was more, being heard.
The queen stayed at home in Jerusalem, holding the reins of the kingdom while he and the barons rode to enlarge it, or perhaps to defend it if Damascus proved too great a gobbet to swallow. She bade farewell to her son with no evidence of apprehension, no apparent fear that he would be captured or killed. “Fight well,” she said. “Bring honor to the kingdom.”
He bowed, looking bold and manly in the new armor that had been made for his broadened shoulders and his newly noble height. Arslan supposed he felt, inside, as small as he had ever been, and too excited to be afraid – as Arslan did himself.
There was a new edge to Arslan’s excitement, a sharpness like a memory of a bolt piercing his side. The wound was healed, with a scar that pulled if he moved too suddenly, and in odd moments a ghost of pain. He did not talk about that, nor complain when his armor, less new than Baldwin’s and beginning to strain at the shoulders, began to catch and rub. He padded it after the first day, and it subsided to a nuisance.
Royal war moved much more slowly than raids across the border. The army wound its stately way out of Jerusalem through hills going brown with summer’s coming. At the Jordan they slowed amid the hordes of pilgrims, crossing in battle array while men and women in the rags of sanctity bathed and wept and prayed on the banks and in the turgid water. Many of the pilgrims called out to them, begging for a blessing; or in their eagerness to touch and kiss the cross of Crusade that marked each man’s shoulder, got in the way of the footsoldiers. One even sprang onto the crupper of a destrier, clawing at the knight who rode it, setting that fine blooded warhorse to bucking and squealing.
The horse shed its unwanted passenger and nearly its rider as well, turned on the fallen man and trampled him as it had been trained to do. His screaming followed the army for a while after, and no one else was mad enough to try what he had tried.
They forded the river and turned north through Galilee. At Lake Tiberias they camped by the walled city and the beautiful waters, the last that they would see under the sky until they came to Damascus. If they came to Damascus.
And when they had left there, with many looks back; when they had passed the chain of fortresses that guarded the Franks’ lands against the infidel; then indeed they were gone out of Christendom and into the House of Islam.
Here was the proving ground of prophets, the desert in which God spoke clear to those with ears to hear: the fasting, the thirst-wracked, the mad. Allah was born in desert as deadly as this, in the dry land without respite of green.
There was no water here. No living thing. Locusts had come in their hordes, a plague out of old Egypt, but no Moses was here to soften the blow for God’s chosen. They ate what they brought with them, drank what their mules and laden oxen could carry. They advanced no faster than the beasts could, slowed immeasurably as the infidels began to gather.
They came like vultures to the feast. They circled and struck, flocked and squabbled, gave the army not one hour’s peace, not by day, not by night. The farther the army went, the thicker the enemy grew, as if every raider and reiver and soldier of the Faith had gathered to this one place against this army of Jerusalem.
At last they could barely move for the massing of the enemy. Each step was fought for, ever
y inch of that bitter ground.
Baldwin had never known such terror before, never suffered such privation. The last war that he had led had been a triumph, not a man lost, as if the blessing of God had been upon him.
Now God’s hand seemed taken away. Yet Baldwin was not crushed down. The darker the way, the brighter he seemed to burn. His people had always loved him; he was like his mother, a golden creature, with a gift for winning hearts. On this march that was like nothing that even the older knights had known, that broke down stronger men than he had seemed to be and left them weeping and imploring God’s mercy, he rode straight and tall in front of them.
“This is the forge,” Bertrand said to Arslan as they rode side by side in a rare lull in the storm of infidels. Masses of them blackened the horizon, but none rode just now against the army. Franks were making what progress they could, moving as quickly as wounds and thirst would let them.
“This is the forge,” Bertrand said again, “that tempers the steel in the core of a man.”
“I think he must be solid steel,” Arslan said of Baldwin, not with envy, not really. A king had to be stronger than an ordinary man. He had to hold the kingdom on his shoulders, its loyalty and its strength of will. Arslan was glad that Baldwin was proving himself so well. One never knew till the steel was hammered and heated, whether it would emerge the stronger, or crack and fail.
Just then Baldwin paused, so that father and son found themselves riding up on either side of him. “Give the order to camp,” Baldwin said. “Tell the army to pretend that there’s not an enemy to be seen. Trust in God to defend us, and in our own courage. We’ll not be shattered by these hordes of Allah.”
His voice was pitched to carry. The men who were nearest sent up a ragged cheer. It ran down the line, and the king’s words just ahead of it, while he sat his big white horse in his bright armor, head up, unbowed, as a king should be.
No one ventured to gainsay him. It was getting on for evening, the sun sinking over the barren hills. Water there was none. What they carried, they reserved for the horses. Some, Arslan among them, had been sparing of their waterskins; had gone thirsty when others drank deep, and reaped the reward now, in a sip of warm and leather-reeking water before they set to work pitching camp in the waste.
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