Indeed, the path was too narrow for him to get past the other riders until they were at the foot of the hill, and then he cantered past the trotting main body of troops to fall into his place just behind his lord. Beside Oultrejourdain rode Henri d’Ibelin, who was speaking loudly enough for Humphrey to hear what he was saying.
“If we continue on this course, we’ll soon cross out of Christian territory.”
“Brilliant observation,” Oultrejourdain quipped sarcastically.
“The King signed a four-year truce with Salah ad-Din barely two years ago.” Sir Henri looked significantly over his shoulder at the roughly three hundred mounted fighting men in their wake.
“Did he? Doesn’t interest me.”
“Funny. I seem to remember you swearing an oath of allegiance to the King.”
Oultrejourdain turned and stared at the household knight. Henri d’Ibelin had been one of his most trusted and most reliable supporters up to now. He answered with deliberate slowness, “And you, if I remember correctly, swore an oath to me.”
“So I did,” Henri confirmed with a shrug, “and I will follow you to hell itself, if need be. But tell me why,” Henri challenged, looking his lord boldly in the eye.
Oultrejourdain snorted, and it sounded almost like approval to the baffled Humphrey, who would never have dared challenge Reynald de Châtillon as Sir Henri had just done. “I swore an oath to Jerusalem, and I intend to serve Jerusalem. That’s not the same thing as respecting every piece of parchment sniveling clerks cover with fancy phrases. Prince as-Salih, Nur ad-Din’s rightful heir, has died in Aleppo. On his deathbed, he named his cousin Izz ad-Din Mas’ud, the Lord of Mosul, as his successor. Now in case you don’t know, Izz ad-Din is a fighting man, unlike the unfortunate as-Salih—and if he gains control of Aleppo, he will pose a serious threat to our friend Salah ad-Din because he is a a true Seljuk prince and not a Kurdish upstart. He is also our natural ally, because with Izz ad-Din in Aleppo, certain of the Sultan’s subjects in Homs—and even Damascus—might feel less loyal to the usurping Kurd. So, what would you do if you were Salah ad-Din?”
“I’d make damn sure Izz ad-Din didn’t establish control of Aleppo,” Sir Henri replied emphatically.
Châtillon nodded slowly in answer before adding, “The only problem with that strategy is that Salah ad-Din is in Cairo at the moment.”
“Farrukh-Shah is in Damascus, and he’s up to the job of seizing Aleppo,” Sir Henri countered.
“Ah, but he won’t be able to do that if there is a Christian force threatening Eilat, will he?”
“Eilat? That’s on the Red Sea!”
“I’ve heard from very reliable sources that its defenses are in ruinous condition,” Oultrejourdain countered, grinning in the shade of his straw hat.
Henri looked over his shoulder again, this time at the camels rather than the fighting men. “We don’t have enough water to get that far!”
“We don’t have to,” Oultrejourdain answered smugly. He pointed ahead of them to what he had seen with satisfaction from the tower. “Look at the color of the sky up ahead. That’s rain. By the time we meet up with our Bedouin guides, it will be pouring, and the desert will start to turn green.”
Arabia, December 1181
Henri had not expected to enjoy campaigning in enemy territory as much as he did. All his previous experience had been defensive—or at best, chasing off raiders. This raid, however, drove deeper and deeper into the desert, which, as Châtillon had predicted, was suddenly sprouting so much grass that their horses fed themselves wherever they paused or camped for the night. They camped, they rode, they fought—always with the advantage of surprise, always against a panicked enemy. They had Bedouin guides, who were clearly enjoying themselves as much as if not more than the Franks, reveling in taking revenge upon men who looked down on them as savages.
They killed anyone who crossed their path, and took whatever they wanted from the houses and villages they overran. When they reached Eilat, they found the defenses were indeed useless, so they swept through the town spreading terror in all directions. They were too few to kill the whole population, and most people escaped into the surrounding countryside to spread the word that the Franks had come to Arabia.
But they didn’t stop. They couldn’t. They had to keep moving or risk being overwhelmed. They were just sixty knights and twice that many sergeants, three hundred men counting squires and servants. So they kept riding south, deeper into the Arabian Peninsula.
If Eilat’s defenses had been in poor repair, Tarbuk had none at all. The city just spread across the desert as if God had spilled adobe houses from a bucket. The domes of the mosques and the needles of the minarets dominated the skyline, and the streets were lined with shops catering to pilgrims traveling down from Syria to Mecca. The sudden appearance of Frankish cavalry was completely unprecedented, and the ensuing panic was so complete that most of the inhabitants just got in each other’s way as they tried to seek shelter in their houses or flee.
They were now 130 miles south of Eilat and totally dependent on their Bedouin guides to find their way from place to place—and back home. Their horses might find fodder in the short-lived blooming of the desert, but the men were only eating what they could seize and drinking where the Bedouins led them. Henri was becoming increasingly uneasy over that dependency, and he couldn’t shake the fear that they might be betrayed at any moment.
“Here all the spoils go to the Bedouin!” Oultrejourdain announced abruptly into his thoughts, and Henri smiled to himself, thinking this was how Oultrejourdain retained their loyalty. One of the sergeants was less charmed by his lord’s strategy, however, and spat in disgust. Oultrejourdain spurred into the ranks and smashed the man full in the face, breaking his jaw. “The spoils go to the Bedouin!” he repeated, more loudly than before. “You’ll get your reward later! Today all we do is kill, so we leave behind a ghost town that the Bedouins can plunder at leisure in our wake!”
And so they did.
Shortly after the sack of Tarbuk, a desperate messenger arrived on a foundering horse from Montreal with news that Farrukh-Shah had led a cavalry force into Oultrejourdain and was laying waste to the towns in the north of the barony. From Châtillon’s perspective, his mission had been accomplished: Farrukh-Shah could not be threatening Aleppo if he was in Oultrejourdain. Stephanie de Milly, the messenger reported, had ordered every fighting man left in the barony to muster at as-Salt, but the remaining men were infantry and sergeants for the most part, since Oultrejourdain had all his knights with him on the raid. Her situation was desperate, the rider told his lord.
Châtillon grunted. “Did she say that?”
“No, my lord. She thinks she can manage Farrukh-Shah by herself—but it’s not true.”
Châtillon laughed and clapped the man on the shoulder with pride. “Don’t underestimate her! She very well might—and I’d love to see the bastard’s face when he finds out he’s been bested by a woman!”
But Châtillon was satisfied that they had accomplished what they set out to do, and not a little uneasy about the trustworthiness of the Bedouins himself, so he ordered his men to turn for home.
By then the rains were letting up and the desert was turning brown again. The Bedouins were notably less keen to help. Henri was glad for every mile closer to home, and then they crested one of the endless hills—and spread out below them, following the course of a drying wadi, was the long, swaying file of a camel caravan laden with the riches of Egypt. Oultrejourdain’s eyes lit up under the ragged brim of his straw hat, and he declared, loud enough for the first several ranks to hear him: “The answer to my prayers!” Then he threw away his straw hat and screamed over his shoulder at Humphrey: “Helmet!”
Oultrejourdain’s men were as eager as their lord. They knew that their lord intended to give them this; it had no strategic value, and the Bedouins had been rewarded already. This was theirs, and it had everything to turn a man’s head: there were young horses evidently o
n their way to market, there were heavily-laden camels with (surely) spices and ivory, gold and incense—and best of all, at least a score of camels were carrying the swaying, completely enclosed tents in which the Muslims moved their women from place to place. Probably women on pilgrimage.
“How many women do they squash into those tents?” one of the younger knights asked an older colleague excitedly.
“Usually two—sometimes three, if we’re lucky,” the veteran answered.
“That’s almost half a hundred!”
“Enough to go around, if we share. No one has to sleep like a monk tonight.”
Someone in the caravan had caught sight of the wide line of Frankish cavalry on the crest of the hill. There were shouts and frantic riding to and fro on the part of the guards. But their situation was so helpless that Oultrejourdain didn’t feel compelled to hurry. In fact, he dismounted to take a piss and drink water from a skin Humphrey brought him before remounting and demanding a lance.
By the time Oultrejourdain was ready, the caravan had passed in front of them at a jog and the guards were looking over their shoulders, thanking Allah and thinking the Franks were going to respect the truce. But now, at their leisure, the Franks were ready.
“I’ll have no fighting among ourselves!” Oultrejourdain announced. “We kill the men, herd the animals and women together in the middle, and then divide them and the cargoes up. Each man will get his share of the loot: that is, 50 per cent is mine and I choose it, 20 per cent belongs to the knights, 20 per cent goes to the sergeants, and the last 10 per cent goes to the squires. Once you have your shares you can start haggling among yourselves, but not before. And you can haggle all you like, but keep it civil. If I see two men fighting over a woman or a horse or a damned piece of shit, I’ll personally kill you both! Do I make myself understood?” The older men were nodding. They knew the routine. Oultrejourdain had always been strict about dividing the spoils equally; that’s why they served him.
The horses were dancing around, stepping forward and back, so eager were the men to attack. Oultrejourdain let his gaze sweep along the line of helmeted men, and he liked what he saw. This was raw power. Armored men who had been fighting a month now. They were filthy, stinking, sleek, and hard. Not even his sop of a stepson looked like a prissy courtier anymore, he noted with approval. He was blooded, too, for Châtillon had personally seen him run his lance into the belly of a man who tried to defend his home in Tarbuk.
“I’ll let you have my woman when I’m done with her,” Oultrejourdain decided generously, punching his stepson in the arm. “It’s time you lost your virginity, or you’ll be no use to that minx the King so generously gave you.” If Oultrejourdain had had sons of his own, he would have found a way of eliminating Humphrey and ensuring that some of his own blood could claim the Crown of Jerusalem by siring sons on Isabella. But since he did not, Humphrey would have to do.
He turned back to his other men and grinned at them. “Ready?”
“Oultrejourdain!” they shouted in unison in reply, and as a wild pack they plunged exuberantly down the side of the barren hill, causing a cascade of small stones and gravel and sending a plume of dust into the air.
Humphrey didn’t know where to hide. No matter where he stumbled in the darkness, he came across men fornicating loudly and brutally. The screams of the women had given way to whimpering and begging as their resistance was broken. Now the only sounds they emitted were sobs or hoarse gasps for water or a minute of respitet between rapes. Their outrage and fear at the beginning had been hammered into pain and sheer exhaustion. Even if he had not been able to understand Arabic, he would have understood their misery from their tones and gestures alone.
But he did understand Arabic. He knew that not one of these women was a whore or a slave. They were honest wives and virgin daughters: women returning from the hajj full of a sense of purity. These women had known nothing but the perfect shelter of protective fathers and husbands. Nothing had prepared them for this night of brutal gang rape. The barbarity of it, the heartlessness of it, the unending nature of it because there was only one woman for ten men, appalled Humphrey to the marrow of his bones.
He wandered as far as he dared from the camp. He put his hands over his ears, but he could not block out the memories of what he had already heard. He tried to pray, but he was too ashamed. Without having touched one of the women, he felt as besmirched with sin as the perpetrators, simply for being one of them—and being unable to stop them.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Men should never use women like this. It wasn’t right. It offended against God and nature. Christ had been born of the Virgin Mary, and there was nothing more virtuous than perfect chastity. Yet God had also made woman to be man’s companion, to be his helpmate, and to propagate the human race, so the sacrament of marriage had been devised to join a man and woman together in God’s holy name. Within marriage, women were the precious vessel in which children were conceived and nurtured. Women were weaker than men and so in need of constant protection. That was what his grandfather had taught him, and it was what chivalry dictated: women should always be treated with courtesy and respect.
Did it matter that these women were Mohammedans? As women they had no choice in the matter. They were what their fathers made them.
Something stirred ahead of him. In horror Humphrey realized that a girl was trying to crawl away from the camp. She was completely naked, her long black hair a tangled mess filled with dust and thorns. She saw him at almost the same moment he saw her, or perhaps he had emitted a gasp. She looked up at him with huge black eyes, and his innards twisted in agony, because she was as young as Isabella.
“Kill me!” she gasped out. “Please kill me!” She was pointing to the sword he still wore at his hip.
But from the camp a man was shouting, “Hey! It’s my turn!”
“Please!” the girl pleaded more urgently, looking over her shoulder at the man staggering toward them, naked from the waist down but pouring wine or water down his throat as he came after her. “I can’t take it again! I can’t! Please kill me! If you know what mercy is, sir, kill me!”
Humphrey backed away from her in horror. He could no more kill her than he could protect her. He was utterly helpless—and ashamed of his helplessness. The man had reached the girl at last, and he grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her back toward the camp. She let out a high-pitched scream that pierced the desert night and would follow Humphrey the rest of his days—but all he could do was turn on his heels and flee deeper into the darkness.
Chapter 6
Jerusalem, April 1182
IN THE NARROW CONFINES OF THE Tower of David, where the High Court had met before the King’s illness had worsened, the Court had seemed to crowd the room. The great hall of the modern palace, however, was much larger, so the barons and bishops were widely dispersed, chattering to one another in small groups. Balian spotted his brother standing with the Count of Tripoli near one of the tall, peaked windows that overlooked the walled garden south of the palace. He joined him there.
A moment latter, the herald announced the King of Jerusalem. When Balian turned with the others to look at the dais, Baldwin was already seated on his throne, his gloved hands resting on the arms, his back straight as a lance. With horror, however, Balian saw that the discoloration of his skin had almost reached his eyes, and the skin on his chin was starting to become deformed with hideous growths. Balian’s heart quavered, and he felt his anger and bitterness toward the King falter. He was the victim of Agnes’ evil influence, Balian found himself rationalizing. If they could just speak again in private! He had failed last time, but he would beg for a second chance. Surely if Baldwin knew that Oultrejourdain and his lady were not even allowing Maria Zoë to visit her child, he would be persuaded he had made a mistake.
“My lords!” the King’s voice rang out sharply. It had started to rasp, as lepers’ voices so often did, but it was forceful enough, and the mumbling and chatte
ring ebbed away. “I have summoned the High Court to consider an embassy from the Sultan Salah ad-Din.” That got the attention of most of the men in the room, while the King paused and focused his eyes on the bald-headed Lord of Oultrejourdain. “The Sultan Salah ad-Din demands the restoration of all goods seized illegally from a caravan crossing south of Montreal, and—most important—restitution for the cold-blooded murder of thirty-two men and forty-seven women and children.”
Oultrejourdain shrugged demonstratively. “Can’t be done. My men have already consumed or gambled away most of their plunder.”
“The Sultan demands one hundred pieces of silver for each man, and fifty for each woman and child,” the King continued as if he had not been interrupted.
Oultrejourdain snorted. “Bah! He doesn’t expect to see an obol of it! He’s looking for an excuse to attack us.”
“He doesn’t have to look for an excuse to attack, since you’ve already handed him one on a silver platter!” Tripoli snapped in a voice loud enough for all to hear.
“What I did, Tripoli, was prevent Salah ad-Din from seizing Aleppo!” Oultrejourdain retorted, twisting at the waist to fling this over his shoulder contemptuously at his fellow baron.
“You could have done that without attacking and plundering the caravan!” Ramla countered hotly in support of Tripoli.
“Well, I had to give the men something, or they wouldn’t be keen to fight next time. And there is always a next time,” Châtillon reminded them.
“What is more important to you? Keeping your men happy or your King?” Edessa asked sternly—but his fat, balding figure hardly evoked respect from anyone, much less Oultrejourdain.
“Asked like that, Edessa: my men,” Oultrejourdain retorted, causing some of the men in the room to shake their heads in disapproval or disgust, but others to smile. One of the latter was Guy de Lusignan. He was clearly amused by the remark and cast Oultrejourdain an approving look. Balian looked sharply from one man to the other. That would be an unholy alliance if ever there was one, he thought. A ruthless man like Oultrejourdain would make a vain but spineless man like the younger Lusignan dance to his tune!
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