“Probably not,” Balian conceded grimly.
Zoë stopped stroking him and laid her hand on his arm in a gesture of sympathy. With alarm she realized that he was tense rather than limp with languid pleasure as he should have been now that the danger was past. At dinner he had joked about it. He should have been in the mood for coddling and feminine flattery. But he was not.
She studied his beloved face, darkened now with an unfamiliar growth of beard, and she saw beyond the cut on his cheek to the dark circles under his eyes and the chapped lips. More important: he did not meet her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, certain that she was not going to like the answer.
“At dinner we made light of it,” he answered, and Zoë thought he meant the battle. Lusignan and he had certainly made it sound like a lark, a great adventure, a close-run race but a Christian victory. They had guffawed together about how ridiculous the Templars had looked—“fleeing like a bunch of geese with outstretched necks,” Lusignan had claimed—and they had laughed so hard that Zoë had known it could only have been from pent-up tension and relief. “You mean how close the King came to capture?” she ventured.
“That, too,” Balian admitted. “And Daniel earned his knighting, by all that’s holy—though I’m not sure he’s really ready for it. But . . .” He sighed. “What I meant was that I didn’t want to upset Eschiva. She’s got enough to adjust to just now.”
Zoë nodded, glancing over her shoulder to the window that looked toward the keep. She could not see from her current position whether the light was still burning in the bedchamber there, but Lusignan had been eager to take his bride to bed. Now all she could do was pray. She looked back at Balian wordlessly.
“There’s only one reason Lusignan came with me—although I daresay he’s not regretting it,” he added, with a glance in the same direction as Zoë the moment before. “But he had no recollection of Eschiva as a person. He only came to secure control of Ramla and Mirabel—and to keep my greedy hands off them.”
“What do you mean? Is your brother dead?”
“Not yet, but there’s precious little I can do to save him.” Balian bent and splashed water into his face and then rubbed it vigorously with his wet hands, as if he could wash away his guilty conscience.
“Let me,” Zoë urged. She squeezed water into a sponge and then rubbed it against the bar of olive-oil soap until it was well lathered. Then she started gently but firmly rubbing the sponge in circles under Balian’s ears, down his neck, and across his shoulders, filling the sponge with more soap as needed. When she finished with his back, she gently pushed him against the padded rear of the tub and started to work on his chest and arms.
Very gradually he relaxed enough to confess. “The Sultan has set a ransom I cannot pay, Zoë. A ransom I could never pay, even if I plundered Eschiva’s inheritance, as well as everything my father gave his life to win.”
“How much?” Zoë asked practically.
“It’s not a ransom, it’s a death sentence. The Sultan is punishing me for bargaining so hard about those three worthless youths!” Balian burst out, the wine and the exhaustion and his nakedness combining to rob him of his self-control and exposing his raw feeling.
“How much?” Zoë repeated.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do. Tell me.”
“Two hundred thousand bezants.”
Even after his prelude, the sum took Maria Zoë by surprise. She had thought Balian was being melodramatic to prepare her for bad news. Now she realized that he had been deadly serious: it was a ransom Ibelin, Ramla, and Mirabel could not pay. A ransom they would not be able to pay even with help from her dower lands of Nablus.
“Lusignan thinks the Sultan may be negotiated down.”
“I should think so!” Maria Zoë answered indignantly. “He must know we cannot pay such a sum. Ibelin can’t raise a tenth of that after what he did to it! Ramla and Mirabel—maybe fifty thousand, Nablus another fifty thousand. Do you think the King . . .” She fell silent, but her hands continued absently to rub the sponge in gentle circles.
Balian slid down and dunked his head under water. He reemerged, brushing his wet hair back from his face, and shook his head. “If the King offers, I’m not too proud to accept, but I cannot ask him.”
“Um. I was thinking of something—someone—else. Princess Sibylla.”
“Sibylla?”
“He’s been courting her, hasn’t he? I mean, I know she’s agreed to marry Burgundy when he finally gets here, but she’s been dallying with Barry in the meantime—and no doubt the Sultan knows that.”
“How could the Sultan know something like that?”
“Don’t be naive. Oriental rulers always have a network of spies. Didn’t you once tell me King Baldwin was served only by Muslim slaves? How much do you think it would take to persuade one of them to send little messages back to the great Defender of the Faith? Besides, regardless of how he knows, it explains everything.”
“Forgive my Frankish simplicity, but I’m not following you.”
“Salah ad-Din believes he holds in his hands the next King of Jerusalem—and he’s asking a king’s ransom. You’re quite right that he doesn’t expect Ibelin, or Ramla and Mirabel, to raise two hundred thousand bezants, but not because he wishes to see your brother dead. He simply wants to see the Kingdom of Jerusalem poorer—maybe even divided and internally weakened—by raising such a huge sum for a man who is not yet crowned nor anointed. Alternatively, he may even hope to expose Sibylla’s relationship with Barry and thereby discourage Burgundy from honoring his promises.”
Balian looked at his wife with a kind of wonder. It was now almost completely dark and it was hard to see more than contours and shadows in the corners of the room, but light from the moon caught on Zoë’s oval face, and she had never looked more beautiful to Balian. She had cleaned more than the dirt from his body; she had taken the sense of guilt from his conscience.
She smiled at him and added in an almost playful tone, “And if Sibylla won’t pay, we’ll send your brother to my great-uncle. He’d like the idea of the future King of Jerusalem being deeply in his debt.”
“Until he finds out Barry won’t be the next King of Jerusalem, Burgundy will be.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Balian pressed his wife, looking at her hard. “The King has already agreed to his terms and sent his ambassadors bearing gifts. He’ll come as soon as he can.”
“For a man who has been offered a kingdom, he seems rather slow to seize it.”
“He must settle his affairs in Burgundy first.”
“Of course,” Maria Zoë agreed lightly, for it made little difference to her if Balian saw things her way in this matter or not. “I am probably wrong—but so long as Salah ad-Din and my great-uncle think as I do, we can exploit the situation to your brother’s advantage.”
“That’s a pretty daunting trio to dare question,” Balian noted wryly, before reaching up a dripping arm to pull her to him. The sudden motion caused water to slosh over the edge of the tub. Zoë let out a stifled cry of surprise before their lips touched in the darkness. Then, framing Balian’s face in her hands, she kissed him passionately.
Yet even as he lifted her up to carry her to the bed, she had space in her mind to pray that Eschiva, too, would enjoy this night.
Chapter 3
Jerusalem, Ash Wednesday 1180
BARRY WAS LOOKING REMARKABLY GOOD FOR a man just released from Saracen captivity. Clearly he had not been confined to a dungeon, for his skin was coppery brown and his hair a lustrous, bright blond. Nor had he been on short rations, for he was as broad-shouldered and vigorous as ever when he jumped down from his stallion and took the steps of the Ibelin residence in Jerusalem two at a time before his brother could come down to greet him.
They all but collided on the landing of the courtyard gallery, and Barry exuberantly flung his arms around Balian. “G
ood to see you at last, little brother!”
“And you!” Balian answered, overwhelmed by relief that no last-minute hitch had prevented Barry’s release.
The ransom, after all, was still not paid in full, but Salah ad-Din had agreed to let Ramla return to raise the remainder of his ransom himself, in exchange for a down payment of fifty thousand bezants and the return of his nephew Farrukh-Shah. The latter was still in Christian hands because Odo de St. Amand—with admirable steadfastness—had refused the agreed exchange. Templars, he insisted, could not be ransomed, not for flesh any more than gold.
Salah ad-Din, however, considered the Baron of Ramla worth more than his nephew and insisted that, even after the return of Farrukh-Shah and the payment of fifty thousand bezants, Ramla still owed him one hundred thousand bezants. Ramla had agreed—confident that Sibylla would help pay some of the sum and that the rest could be raised in Constantinople with his sister-in-law’s help.
As he caught sight of that sister-in-law now, waiting at the entrance to the main reception room for the brothers to complete their greetings, Ramla left his brother to sweep her a low, courtly bow. “Madame, what a pleasure to see you again as well.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “To set eyes on a woman’s face is as exhilarating as a whole pitcher of wine—especially a face like yours. That was truly the worst of it,” he added over his shoulder to his brother, “not seeing women even from a distance! Seriously. The accommodation was better than many a place I’ve slept while on campaign—at least it was dry and reasonably clean. The food was actually quite decent, once you got used to so much rice. But not seeing a woman—not even when we were allowed to walk around Damascus—was hell! Nothing but these walking shrouds that hid everything of interest! Still, we were so starved of feminine company that we turned and stared after the billowing sheets, trying to imagine something lovely underneath.”
Balian nodded understanding but urged, “Come inside.”
Barry shook his head, and instead strode back to the gallery railing to shout down to his squire: “Bring up my saddlebags!” Turning back to his brother and sister-in-law, he announced, “I didn’t come entirely empty-handed. Wait till you see what I’ve brought you!”
“You are the only gift we need, Barry, and to see you looking so well is a huge relief. I did not trust what you wrote in your letters, knowing every word was written in the presence of your jailers. You would not have dared complain.”
As they spoke, they entered a long chamber that opened on the far side to a loge overlooking the Street of Spain. The floor was paved with marble tiles in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern and the walls were faced with polychrome marble tiles up to about three feet, both remnants from the building’s past. Hugh d’Ibelin had bought this palace at about the time King Amalric set Agnes de Courtenay aside. At the time, Hugh had been enjoying the revenues of Ramla and Mirabel as well as Ibelin, but Balian still suspected King Amalric had helped finance the purchase in gratitude to Hugh for taking Agnes de Courtenay back. In any case, it was one of the more prominent residences in Jerusalem, occupying the wide northeast corner of the oblique intersection of the Street of Spain and Jehoshaphat Street. It had clearly been the residence of a prominent man during the Fatimid occupation of Jerusalem, and the mosaics on the ground floor dated to the Byzantine period, suggesting that it had been a wealthy man’s residence even before the Muslim conquest. Its proximity to Pontius Pilate’s palace, furthermore, led some churchmen to hypothesize that it stood on the ruins of a Roman residence.
Because the room opened on to the gallery on the inside and the loge on the outside, the doors and windows admitted fresh air already cooled by the shade, and no direct sunlight even in the hottest summer heat. Today, however, had seen intermittent showers, and it was the warmth of the fireplace that drew Barry inwards. He sighed audibly as he flung off his still-damp cloak and dropped himself into an armed chair before the slow fire.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to be here!” he exclaimed, looking around the familiar room, which was furnished sparsely in the Frankish manner. “The Sultan killed all the Templars except St. Amand,” Barry told his brother and sister-in-law as they settled themselves in chairs on either side of him. “Just executed them whether they were wounded or not, without a second thought. He snapped his fingers and their heads were off. He put St. Amand in chains in a dungeon as well, so you can imagine how nervous the rest of us felt. However, the Sultan ordered all the secular knights housed in a vaulted stone chamber of the citadel that was above ground. We were allowed out into the courtyard every day for an hour or two of exercise, and were given chess sets as well, and—”
His squire appeared hesitantly in the doorway with the saddlebags, and Barry gestured for him to come. “This is Stephan. You don’t know him, since he served one of my Mirabel knights who was killed. Since I lost both my squires, Salah ad-Din allowed me to buy his freedom along with my own. Stephan, my brother Balian, Baron d’Ibelin, and his wife Maria Comnena, Dowager Queen of Jerusalem.”
The youngster bowed his head politely to the exalted personages, and kept his eyes down. He looked very thin, pale, and fragile to Balian, who surmised the captured squires had not enjoyed quite the same level of hospitality as the captive lords.
Balian addressed his brother’s squire. “Stephan, if you find your way to the kitchens, you can eat your fill. Then ask for Dawit and he’ll show you around the house.” Turning back to his brother, he added, “I’ve prepared our old room for you.”
“Fine,” Barry agreed, bending over to open his saddlebags and remove some objects. “This is what I brought for Eschiva,” he remarked, setting the still-wrapped package on the floor beside the chair and digging deeper as he asked, “Is she in Jerusalem?”
“Yes, she and Lusignan said they would stop by later today in anticipation of your arrival. Or should I send a messenger to her now?”
“No, no, later’s fine. Here!” Barry stood and walked over to hand his brother a magnificent curved dagger of Damascene production. It had an elaborately carved ivory handle and a bronze-reinforced hilt. Balian was taken aback by it. “Was this a gift from the Sultan?” he asked, thinking such a magnificent weapon must have belonged to a man of great wealth. He drew the blade to test the edge on his thumb and confirm that the cutting edge was as fine as its dressing suggested.
“No, no,” Barry waved the thought aside. “After the fifty thousand bezants were delivered to the Sultan and he had word Farrukh-Shah had crossed into Muslim territory, he returned my armor, but not my arms. However, he allowed me access to the city of Damascus—with an escort, of course. I borrowed five hundred bezants back from him so that I would not return like a beggar. Here! This is for you, beloved sister-in-law.” He brought Maria Zoë a blue silk scarf that shimmered with gold and was edged with gold embroidery.
Maria Zoë caught her breath at its beauty, but she cast Balian a frown of disapproval. Didn’t Barry realize just how difficult it had been to raise those fifty thousand bezants? His tenants had been pressured repeatedly and intensely, but with the drought now going into its third year, many people had literally nothing to spare. Furthermore, so many of Barry’s knights and squires had been taken captive with him that most families were hard pressed to pay the ransom of their own relatives, much less contribute to the ransom of their lord. Maria Zoë had donated the bulk of the fifty thousand bezants from her lands of Nablus, and she had done it willingly to prevent greater hardship on Ibelin, Ramla, and Mirabel, but she found it incongruous that Barry was spending money lavishly.
“And here is what I brought for Sibylla!” Barry announced proudly, unveiling a beautiful box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which he opened to reveal a ring set with rubies in a circle around a sapphire. Maria Zoë gratified Barry by gasping, and he beamed with pleasure, thinking it was a gasp of envy. In fact, Maria Zoë was shocked: Sibylla had no need of more jewels—certainly not at a time when many laborers on Barry’s lands were on the brink of starv
ation. She and Balian had spent hours talking about what they could do to help, torn between the need to contribute to Barry’s outrageous ransom and their pity for people in desperate straits through no fault of their own. Again she glanced at Balian, but he shook his head at her. Instead, in a blatant ploy to change the topic of conversation, he remarked, “What’s all that noise outside?”
Balian left his chair to step on to the loge and go to the corner, where he could see down both the Street of Spain and Jehoshaphat Street. This was a busy corner at any time, but on Ash Wednesday the crowds were always particularly thick. Furthermore, Easter fell late this year after a mild, dry winter, so the first of the pilgrim ships were already disgorging their passengers at all the coastal ports. From the coast, pilgrims hired hacks or mules if they could afford them, or trudged on foot along the roads that converged on Jerusalem. Most carried tall walking sticks and wore rough-woven capes with crosses sewn on their shoulders. Some came in little family groups, but many pilgrims formed companies along the way and traveled together with others who shared their tongue, so the continuous flow of people broke into clumps of French, Spanish, German etc. speakers.
Today was no different, except that so many pilgrims were squeezed into the narrow streets that it was almost impossible for anyone to move in either direction. Several pilgrims were carrying wooden crosses as they tried to push their way to the Chapel of the Condemnation to begin retracing Christ’s steps from condemnation to crucifixion. Almost everyone in the crowd had drawn crosses on their brow with ashes, and a few men and women were flagellating themselves in an excess of penance that Balian had seen too often to take seriously. There were also a score of Benedictine novices singing their way up Jehoshaphat Street, and a madman screaming “Repent!”
Defender of Jerusalem Page 8