Stephanie de Milly noted that this version of the battle ignored the role played by the Templars, but she had no reason to dispute with Sibylla. Let her think what she liked.
The next stalls offered shawls and veils, but Sibylla shook her head at the shopkeepers and continued up a couple of steps in the pavement. It was the steps, more than anything else, that made the market unsuitable for horses and forced even princesses to walk. At a shoe shop she paused again.
Sibylla pointed to a pair of slippers hanging out of reach on the wall of the little shop, and the shopkeeper eagerly got a long pole with a hook at the end with which to lift them down by the strap binding them. He presented them to the princess on his palms, grinning and chattering happily. They were polished leather, with designs painted on them in gold, and very pretty. Sibylla absently kicked off one of her shoes to try the new slipper, while her brain remained focused on Barry.
There was really nothing she could say against Barry. He was handsome, virile, brave, rich, educated, and—well—perfect. She knew her brother favored him as a suitor for her hand, while everyone seemed to think that the High Court would find him acceptable as her consort and future king. He certainly wasn’t domineering like Montferrat had been, or insulting like Flanders. And Burgundy might have written fine letters, but he was all words and no deeds!
No, Barry was the best of the lot—so why didn’t he excite her? Like this pair of shoes: they fit, and yet somehow they didn’t. Sibylla took the pretty slipper off and handed it back to the shopkeeper, shaking her head. The shopkeeper tried to interest her in another, similar pair, but she shook her head and kept walking.
It wasn’t even that she could complain about Barry’s lovemaking; he was a skilled lover. Maybe too skilled. She couldn’t forget that he’d been unfaithful to his first wife—and then discarded her. But what did she expect? A saint who was also a brave knight, good in bed, and a baron acceptable to the High Court?
Sibylla and Stephanie emerged from the market on the Street of Palms, very close to the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and suddenly a horse was hauled to a stop so abruptly that it skidded on the paving stones, lost its balance, and upset a stall selling fresh pomegranates and oranges. While the fruit rolled in all directions and the shop-keeper screeched in protest, the rider alighted with a swirl of cloak and a glitter of chain mail. He bowed deeply before Sibylla. “Your grace! No sooner do I emerge from the holiest of churches than I am granted the sight of an angel—or in this case, the most beautiful of mortals!” Stephanie rolled her eyes, disgusted at such blatant flattery for the rather plan Sibylla, but Sibylla beamed. The knight continued, “It can only be a sign from heaven that my sins have been forgiven! May I beg the boon of accompanying you wherever you are headed—even if it is to the gates of hell?”
Sibylla’s blood was racing and her heart was beating; she could hardly breathe. Why didn’t the Baron of Ramla make her feel like this? she asked herself before she queried the knight, “And who might you be, sir? I do not recall ever seeing you before.”
“That is a dagger to my heart, madame! For I have had eyes only for you ever since I came to Jerusalem three days ago. Surely you remember now? I’m the younger brother of your brave Constable.”
“Of course.” Now she remembered vaguely, but she hadn’t taken much note of him at the time; Ramla had been beside her whispering remarks about the young man being a “troublemaker” and a “ne’er-do-well”—banned, he had claimed, from the King of England’s realm. “Guillaume, was it?” she ventured.
“No, madame, Guy: Guy de Lusignan.”
“If he has dared debauch a princess of Jerusalem, I will see him hanged!” King Baldwin raged, springing up from his throne. His face was purple with outrage, and his mother was genuinely distressed for his health. She was convinced that stress increased the spread of the leprosy.
“Calm down, Baldwin,” she urged, making soothing motions with her hands. “There’s nothing that can be done about it now—”
“I can hang him!” Baldwin insisted, adding in fury, “He’s nothing! Nothing at all! The fourth son of a Poitevin noble who has only distinguished himself by rebelling against his feudal lord! He’s little better than an outlaw. He’s been banned from the Plantagenet’s lands. My cousin calls him traitor and murderer! And you want me to calm down? You want me to accept his sinful relationship with my sister? To bless a union that is despicable to God and an insult to Jerusalem? Never!”
Agnes de Courtenay had never seen her son so furious, and she was a wise and practical woman. She beat a tactical retreat and advised her daughter to give her brother a day or two to calm down.
Sibylla, however, couldn’t wait that long and approached him on the following afternoon. He tried to escape her. “I know what you’re here for,” he warned, backing away from her. “I don’t want to hear it. I won’t hear of it. That wastrel, that traitor, that fornicator, will not wear the crown of Jerusalem!”
“Then so be it,” Sibylla answered, dropping to her knees. “I will renounce my right to the throne. I do not want the throne of Jerusalem if it means living without Guy.”
That was not an option for Baldwin. He was starting to go blind. He needed to retire from the world and prepare to face God. He needed Sibylla to marry a fighting man to whom he could turn over the Kingdom in good conscience. He could not wait for little Isabella to grow up. So he asked instead: “What on earth do you see in Guy de Lusignan? It wasn’t a month ago that you were happy with the brave Baron de Ramla!” Baldwin was genuinely baffled.
“I can’t explain it, Baldwin. I wish I could! I wanted to love Ramla—because I know you think he would make a good king. And probably he would be a good king. I don’t question that he is a fine man—brave, wise, decisive, and pious. But I don’t—can’t—love him! Not now that I know my heart belongs to Guy. Do you want me to marry one man while being in love with another?”
“It happens all the time,” Baldwin threw back at her bluntly.
“But do you want me to suffer that fate?” she asked, her big blue eyes already brimming with tears.
Baldwin kept his face rigid and refused to answer. Sibylla’s face slowly crumpled into a visage of perfect misery, and she held up her clasped hands in a gesture of desperate pleading.
Baldwin turned his back on her, because he could not bear to see her so miserable. This was not like that terrible night when she had screamed at him, oblivious to his own pain. She had grown up since then. She had been beside him whenever he was ill. She had nearly killed herself when her horse stumbled in the dark as she rode through the night to bring the True Cross to him in Tiberias.
“I will not marry against your wishes, Baldwin,” she spoke to his back in a choked voice. “I will marry whomever you choose. But it will break my heart if you give me to anyone but Guy. It will break—” She broke down into miserable sobbing, and if Baldwin had been able to control his arms he would have put what was left of his hands over his ears. All he could do, however, was refuse to turn around until she had withdrawn from his chamber, her sobs slowly becoming fainter until he could not hear them at all.
The following day Baldwin summoned the Baron of Oultrejourdain to the Tower of David. Assuming it was a public meeting of some kind, Oultrejourdain arrived accompanied by a small entourage, but he was told to leave the others in the courtyard. He mounted the stairs to the Tower of David by himself, and found the King entirely alone. He bowed curtly. “You sent for me, your grace?”
“Yes. I did. Come closer so that I do not need to shout.”
Oultrejourdain obliged warily. He had never had a personal audience with Baldwin IV before, and he could not imagine what the cause for this unexpected summons might be. He kept combing his conscience for something he had done recently that might have been so outrageous as to arouse the royal ire. Surely it had nothing to do with the beating he’d given his worthless stepson, Humphrey de Toron, did it? How could the King have heard about that?
Oultrejourdain’s shaved head reddened at the memory. Not that he wasn’t used to ridicule and scorn from the likes of Tripoli, but he was agitated by the thought that they had wasted two years building—and then losing—the castle at Jacob’s Ford. “I remember well, your grace,” he answered simply.
“So do I,” Baldwin answered. “And I liked your ideas,” he added. “I think they make sense. We have proved too weak to defend ourselves against a determined enemy. But maybe if we attack him where he is weak, he will have less time and inclination to attack us.”
“Exactly my thinking, your grace,” Oultrejourdain agreed, at once astonished that the leper boy shared his thinking and smug to have his positive assessment of the sick King proved right. Hadn’t he warned his knights and his stupid wife that the leper might have a disintegrating body, but he still retained a proud, fierce heart and a sharp intellect?
“Tripoli made much noise about an attack on the Mecca pilgrims bringing all the Muslims together in joint outrage, but—except for Aleppo and Mosul—Salah ad-Din already rules all the Muslims of Egypt and Syria. How can his power become greater?”
“It won’t. I promise you. Rather, if we prey upon the Muslim pilgrims as they have preyed upon Christian pilgrims in the past, it will discredit him instead. If Salah ad-Din can’t protect the pilgrim routes, many of his subjects will question why he should be Sultan at all.”
Baldwin nodded. “Yes, that’s the way I see it, too. So how do we go about it?”
Although taken by surprise, Oultrejourdain immediately focused on the problem and marshaled his arguments. “We have two options: first, we try to capture Eilat on the Red Sea and hold it long enough to build ships—we’d have to import the shipwrights, of course. Or we build the ships in, say, Ascalon, then disassemble them, transport them by camel to someplace along the shore of the Red Sea—not necessarily a walled city—then reassemble and launch them.”
“The second option sounds considerably more practical to me,” Baldwin conceded. “Attacking Eilat could be difficult, which means we’d have to pull together a substantial force, and that would inevitably leave other parts of the Kingdom inadequately protected. Furthermore, all that would alert the enemy to our intentions.”
“Quite right, but the second option will require very skilled shipwrights. Italians of some sort. And they won’t come cheap.”
“I know,” Baldwin agreed. “Nor will their crews.”
“Oh, the crews won’t be a problem,” Oultrejourdain declared with a confident wave of his hand. Then he paused and added, “—provided you don’t expect the loot?”
“I’m not following you, my lord,” Baldwin admitted.
“Simple. You want to attack the pilgrim routes to Mecca for political reasons—to weaken and discredit Salah ad-Din. Am I correct?”
“Yes, we just discussed it,” Baldwin answered, slightly irritated.
“Do you care about the plunder and prisoners, the girls and slaves, our ships capture in the process of discrediting Salah ad-Din?”
“No, of course not. You mean the crews would do this for the plunder?” Baldwin sounded so astonished that Reynald de Châtillon broke into a wide grin.
“Your grace, it does you credit to sound so amazed—but, believe me, I can man a hundred ships with men I can trawl out of the ports of this Kingdom alone. Tell most sailors they can keep the booty and do what they like with the girls, and you’ll have volunteers banging your doors down.”
Baldwin still looked skeptical, but he was willing to believe Oultrejourdain, because he wanted to. “So if I were to finance the building of these ships—”
“— And their transport across the desert to Eilat,” Oultrejourdain interjected.
“You would be prepared to recruit the crews and oversee the launch of the ships on the Red Sea?”
“With pleasure, your grace!” Oultrejourdain was bursting with excitement. This was a challenge equal to his energy and vision. It was damn near as good as raiding Cyprus (he’d never really intended to hold on to it, after all), and it would give him greater experience in naval warfare—something that might prove useful in the future. By God, if they could take one or two of the cities on the Red Sea, even if only for a few weeks or months, it would flood his coffers for the next decade. Of course, he dared not be too prominent in this adventure, but Henri d’Ibelin was hungry and driven by jealousy now that both his elder brothers were barons. He would jump at the opportunity to lead this expedition.
“Because of the truce I signed with the Sultan, no one must learn that I am behind it,” Baldwin hastened to warn Châtillon. “I must be able to swear to Salah ad-Din that I had nothing to do with it.”
“Of course, your grace,” Châtillon replied. “Upon my naked head,” he said, knocking his shaved skull with his knuckles, “you can place all blame and shame. I can take it.” Châtillon grinned. “My reputation as a rogue needed a little refurbishing; I’ve been tame for too long.”
Baldwin was somewhat uncomfortable with the baron’s pride in his own misdeeds, but he needed him. “Then we are agreed? You will make what plans are necessary and secretly let me know the costs?”
“I’ll send you a friar now and again to collect alms for the abbey I want to build in Sinai.”
“Yes. Very good!” Baldwin agreed.
“St. Nicholas, I think.”
“The patron saint of seafarers.” Baldwin understood the symbolism at once, and smiled.
“And pilgrims!” Oultrejourdain added with a laugh. “For all the pilgrims to Mecca!” And he guffawed until tears were squeezed from his eyes.
Baldwin could not join in, because his heart was filled with pity; they might be the misguided pilgrims of a false prophet, but among them there would be many simple men like Ibrahim, not to mention women and children, who did not really deserve the fate Oultrejour-dain’s mercenaries would deal them. But he kept his face impassive, afraid to show his weakness to the infamous Reynald de Châtillon.
Eventually Châtillon’s laughter subsided and he asked, “Was there anything else, your grace?”
“Well, yes; there is another matter on which I would appreciate your counsel as—as an experienced military commander, a leader of men.”
Châtillon could see how uncomfortable the King was, and noticed that he had lowered his voice even further than before. He narrowed his eyes in concentration and held his breath in anticipation. He no longer expected to be chastised for some sacrilege or offense, but he could not imagine what advice the young King could want from him that he could not ask publicly.
“My illness—it makes it almost impossible for me to fulfill my—my duties as King.”
“You’ve done a damn good job of it so far, your grace,” Châtillon admitted, and the sincerity in his voice made Baldwin’s eyes shine with pride.
“I—but—you know—I had to be carried off the field by a squire—and—”
“And how many of your knights and nobles would dare ride into battle without being able to wield a sword or hold a shield? You have more courage than the rest of us put together, your grace. Myself included.”
Châtillon’s words were a balm to the bleeding wounds of the King’s pride, and Baldwin felt tears of gratitude forming. “Thank you, my lord. Thank you. But—it’s getting worse, not better. I can’t go on much longer. And my barons, the High Court, even my confessor and my mother, urge me to turn command over to the Constable or—better yet—to my heir.”
Châtillon burst out laughing. “I’d rather follow you into battle than your sister Sibylla any day!”
“Not Sibylla, but her husband.”
“Ah!” At last Châtillon sensed which way the wind was blowing. “Whether I would follow Sibylla’s husband into battle depends on who her husband is,” Châtillon admitted
, adding mentally that it was good thing Tripoli was already married.
“I was hoping for the Baron of Ramla.”
“Ramla?” Oultrejourdain weighed his head from side to side. Aside from Oultrejourdain himself, Ramla was arguably the best leader of troops in the Kingdom—certainly better than Tripoli. But that was the problem with him from Oultrejourdain’s point of view: he was already powerful, and the fact that the Greek Emperor had agreed to pay one hundred thousand bezants of his ransom suggested his younger brother’s alliance with the Dowager Queen had yielded support from the mightiest ruler in the world. If he became heir to the Kingdom through Sibylla, he’d become insufferable—and hard to stop. Oultrejourdain did not like overly powerful monarchs. They might get in his way. To Baldwin he said simply, “Ramla is too heavily indebted to the Greek Emperor. By letting Emperor Manuel pay his ransom, he’s become his client, his puppet. If you don’t want Jerusalem to become a vassal of Constantinople, you can’t let Ramla marry your sister.”
Baldwin was nineteen years old. Although wise for his age, he still had a lot to learn about intrigue. He was taken by surprise at the suggestion that Ramla might be compromised by taking money from the Greek Emperor, and did not see through Oultrejourdain’s motives for raising doubts about Ramla’s independence. It never occurred to him that one of his barons would give him anything but honest advice. He protested weakly, “But Manuel has been a staunch ally. A good friend. I’m sure he only paid the ransom out of love for his niece, my stepmother.”
“Maybe, but how old is he? Will his son be such a good friend? Or will he start calling in the debt—if not in gold, then in favors?”
“But his heir is the son of your stepdaughter, Mary of Antioch!” Baldwin protested. Oultrejourdain’s first wife had been Constance of Antioch, and her daughter by her first marriage was the current Greek Empress and mother of the Crown Prince.
“Indeed, and Mary will certainly do all in her power to make her son a friend of Jerusalem.” Oultrejourdain was scrambling to find arguments that supported his sham reasoning without revealing his real motives for opposing Ramla’s marriage to Sibylla. “But we both know how easy it is for regents to get replaced—dismissed—by other powerful factions. A woman is particularly vulnerable to such maneuvers.”
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