Beloved Pilgrim
Page 31
"Your Grace?"
"Pleathe hold me," Ida pleaded.
Elisabeth stretched out alongside her. She took the woman in her arms and gently moved her head so its left side rested on her shoulder. Ida was silent, what little strength she had she used to hold her knight close. Elisabeth remembered that when she had first seen this woman, this lovely woman, she had told Albrecht she wanted to die in her arms. The woman who was now dying in hers.
She could feel the life in that once beautiful body become weaker and weaker. At last Ida shuddered and was still. The most beautiful woman in Europe, the Dowager Margravina of Austria, was dead. And Elisabeth knew she would soon be dead herself, and Ida's son, the Margrave Leopold, would never know what had happened to his mother.
She sat and wept, though there were no tears. She had so little moisture in her body she could make none. As the sun went down, she tried her best to lay out Ida's body, to cover it suitably with the curtains from the litter, and to scrape a trench to lay her in. She knew the animals would get at the body if she did not cover it with stones. She only had the strength to drag a few over. She knelt and prayed for the repose of the Margravina's soul. Then she pulled herself to her feet, and now, with no burden but her thirst, exhaustion and heatstroke, she set out again on her journey. The half moon showed her the way.
She had no idea how much time had passed, how far she had walked, when she fell and moved no more.
She felt herself tumbled from side to side. It felt as if she lay in a cart rumbling painfully up a road. A wineskin spout touched her lips and she drank the water, cool, clear, fresh water that spilled onto her lips. A cool hand stroked her forehead. "Maliha," she tried to say, but her throat was closed and her lips too parched.
"Hush, my love. You are saved. You will be all right." Maliha exchanged glances with someone else in the cart.
Elisabeth craned her neck to see who it was. The movement made her head reel, and she almost passed out. A familiar voice said humorously, "It's Hans. Your friends came and I told them where you had gone. We found the bodies and guessed what you had done, from the drag marks of the poles. No wind down in that defile, you see. The eunuch sent men to follow you, since the cart could not. They found you lying face down on a hillside. They thought your were dead, but obviously you were not. This one has been taking care of you."
She knew he meant Maliha. She looked up into Maliha's wonderful eyes, so full of love. She tried to form the words, "I love you."
"I love you too," Maliha said. "Now let's get home to Tacetin and Albrecht. We will have our whole lives to talk."
The corners of Elisabeth's dust-dry lips lifted as far as they could. She closed her eyes, felt the woman's breasts against her cheek.
Maliha murmured, "Rest, my beloved pilgrim."
Elisabeth sighed and slept.
The End
Author’s Notes
The fact that anyone can put together a true account of the devastating Crusade of 1101 is remarkable. Besides Anna Komnena’s sparse references in her Alexiad, quoted in the final chapter of this novel, only two more or less contemporary records of the expedition exist. One, by Ekkhardt of Aura, was written by a man who arrived in Constantinople with other pilgrims and then set sail for Syria before any news had come from the pilgrims led, or misled, by Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse. The second was a narrative written ten years after these events by Albert of Aachen (Aix). Sir Stephen Runciman* based his scholarly account on these and similar works, and even there I found some poor reasoning, specifically that the conditions he describes, going for days with no water in the summer heat would, according to an expert, have killed the entire pilgrim force.
It is with that smugly in mind that I assert that this novel is fiction, not a historical text, and should be taken as fiction. In writing Beloved Pilgrim I stuck as much as possible to what is known of the time and the events but focused, as is my wont, on creating a jolly good yarn as much as an accurate representation of people, places, and deeds. What you read here is truly a fictionalized account with liberties taken as literary necessity required. You might call it improving on what are already uncertain facts.
Every author makes decisions about certain aspects of a novel. I made two that I think deserve explanation.
Names
When writing about historical figures I chose to use the Anglicized versions of their names, such as Stephen, Odo, William, Hugh, and so forth. I did this because they are what readers are accustomed to, and besides, just translating them to the modern forms of their native lands’ language would be no more authentic.
“Crusade”
According to sources I located, the terms “crusade” and “crusader” were not used as early as the First Crusade and the Crusade of 1101. Nevertheless I used these terms occasionally as much to provide some variety from “pilgrim” and “pilgrim knight”.
Place names are a mix of the contemporary and modern names. Ancyra, for instance, is better known now as Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
Could a woman wield a sword and fight alongside trained knights on destriers? Of course she could. There are numerous instances of women warriors throughout time, and specifically during the Middle Ages and even in the Crusades. We hear about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who went to the Crusade but never seriously expected to fight, except perhaps with her woebegone husband, King Louis of France. That’s not the sort of woman I am talking about here. There were female combatants in the Crusades. Though Christian sources fail to mention them, Muslim sources are not so chary, mentioning both their own and Christian fighters who were women. As a fellow author quipped, “Joan of Arc didn’t go to war wielding an embroidery needle!”
Could a woman pass for a man amid all those other men? Just look at the women who fought in the American Civil war, such as Albert D. J. Cashier. She managed to fight and live alongside other Union Soldiers and was simply accounted “shy”.
What happened to the historical figures who were part of the Crusade of 1101? Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse, was the first one back to Constantinople. The reception he got depends on the chronicler, but what happened next is not in dispute. He set sail for Syria where he was arrested by Bohemond’s nephew Tancred for his desertion of his followers at Merzifon. Bohemond himself stayed imprisoned for quite sometime while the Emir of Nixtar and others haggled over his ransom. Constable Conrad, Count Stephen of Blois and Count Stephen of Burgundy returned to fighting on behalf of the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin. The two Stephens were killed in battle and Conrad, who had impressed the Muslims, was spared but sent into captivity in Egypt.
A note about the Margravina Ida: She really did go to the Crusade of 1101. For years the story about her ran that she was captured and made part of a harem, becoming the mother of the Turkish hero, Zengi. This is impossible, since Zengi was born before she arrived at Constantinople. She most likely fell from her litter and was crushed by horses’ hooves during the ambush. Themo, her Archbishop, did not, as Elisabeth feared, desert Ida but rather was captured and martyred.
You can find out about all the historical figures in “Whatever Happened To…?” in the Appendices.
The main characters in the novel are purely imaginary, but let me add one more historical figure. The woman the Norman mercenary Ranulf tells Elisabeth about, Rachel, is a factual person, a woman who killed her four children and then herself during the massacre of the Jews in Mainz in 1196, really lived and died. The only part of her story that is fictional is her friendship with Ranulf.
What happened to Sigismund of Winterkirche? There were many mysteries that came out of the Crusades, such as the disappearance of the Margravina Ida, so Elisabeth and Albrecht may never know… or they might. Only a sequel would lay that mystery to rest.
The Legacy of the Crusade of 1101
Thanks to their inoculation by the threat of the leaders of the first. Second and third waves of pilgrims during the Crusade of 1101, Kilij Arslan and the Seljuk Turks had develo
ped plenty of antibodies to fight off later infections, that is allies, troops, and experience to fight off any future Crusaders. As a result the path between the ever-dwindling Byzantine Empire and Jerusalem was not only no longer clear, it was impossible to follow, being protected by the awesome Seljuk and allied armies. As a result no new Crusade would be attempted until the 1140s. With the exception of possession of Jerusalem and a few other cities, the result of the Crusade of 1101 was the loss of all that the First Crusade gained. Alexios I had already begun to lose power in Constantinople, and the failures by the 1101 leaders meant he would never regain it.
As Crusades scholar, Sir Stephen Runciman asserts in a volume of his History of the Crusades*:
The road across the peninsula remained unsafe for Christian armies, Frankish or Byzantine. When the Byzantines wished later to intervene in Syria, they had to operate at the end of communication lines that were long and very vulnerable; while Frankish immigrants from the west were afraid to travel overland through Constantinople, except in vast armies. They could only come by sea; and few of them could afford the fare. And instead of the thousands of useful colonists that the year should have brought to Syria and Palestine, only a small number of quarrelsome leaders who had lost their armies and their reputations on the way penetrated through to the Frankish states, where there was already a sufficiency of quarrelsome leaders.
Runciman goes on to point out that the blockage of land routes resulted in the rise of the Italian merchant cities, like Milan and Venice, helping to launch the new economy in Southern Europe.
Find an alphabetical list of characters, relevant maps, and information on what became of the historical figures in this novel at www.shieldwallbooks.com. The author would love to hear from readers. Just drop me a note at hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com .
Nan Hawthorne
Bothell, Washington State
* A History of the Crusades: Volume 1, The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge University Press 1951) (Folio Society edition 1994); A History of the Crusades: Volume 2, The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East (Cambridge University Press 1952) (Folio Society edition 1994); A History of the Crusades: Volume 3, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge University Press 1954) (Folio Society edition 1994)