Defender of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  “Well, I hope, my lord, you find it equally amusing to learn that a Christian ship with 1,676 souls on board has been seized by the Sultan’s men, and all are being held captive,” continued the King, drawing the attention of his barons back to the issue at hand.

  “What? Has the Sultan taken to piracy? I didn’t think he had a navy.” Oultrejourdain sounded surprised but not contrite.

  “The ship went aground off Damietta in a storm that had blown her off course.”

  “God’s will be done,” Oultrejourdain intoned, harvesting a crop of reproaches and admonishments from the clerical members of the High Court—but everyone in the room knew that Reynald de Châtillon didn’t give a damn for the opinion of the Church.

  “So, my lord, you will not pay restitution?” King Baldwin pressed him.

  Oultrejourdain spread out his arms dramatically. “Will restitution bring back the dead? If the Sultan wanted an eye for an eye, then he’d keep the same number of prisoners as I killed—less than a tenth of those he holds—and let the rest go free. But believe me, he does not want restitution; he wants war.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Tripoli taunted again.

  “Not mine!” Oultrejourdain rejoined. “The Sultan has wanted war ever since he was strong enough to confront us.”

  “Silence!” the King called from the dais, and then waited until the muttering and side conversations had died out again. When silence had settled upon the room, he addressed the company. “You have heard the Lord of Oultrejourdain, my lords. He will not pay restitution, not even to save 1,676 Christian souls from Muslim slavery. So, will the rest of you raise the money between you?” Baldwin asked, his eyes sweeping the room for reaction.

  “Better to save the money to prepare our defenses, your grace. Whether Oultrejourdain should have done what he did nor not, the dye is now cast. There will certainly be war,” the lord of Caesarea remarked heavily, earning nods across the room.

  “My lord bishops?” Baldwin challenged the clerical members of the High Court. “What say you?”

  “Your grace,” the Bishop of Bethlehem spoke up, “if I believed Salah ad-Din would release the Christians for any sum of money, I would willingly contribute my share, but I fear that what the Lord of Oultrejourdain has said is right: Salah ad-Din wants war.”

  King Baldwin looked across the room until his eyes came to rest on Balian and his brother. He couldn’t bear to look at Balian, because of his guilty conscience; he felt guilty about taking Isabella from her mother, and even guiltier about turning his back on the man who had been his only friend in his youth. So he focused on Ramla instead. “My Lord of Ramla, you have met Salah ad-Din face to face. What say you? Will he negotiate with us, or does he want war?”

  “If we held anything of value to him—like his nephew or Eilat—he would surely negotiate, but he does not need our gold or silver. Of both he already has far more than we. For mere coin, he will not abandon his jihad.”

  The King nodded slowly. “Then, my lords, let us arm ourselves.”

  Balian and Barry rode back to the Ibelin palace together. To avoid the covered markets between the palace and the Holy Sepulcher, they took David Street past the large Hospitaller complex, riding single file to let one of the almost daily funeral corteges of paupers pass. Too many pilgrims came to the Holy Land to die, or simply underestimated the strains of the long journey and fell ill on arrival. The Knights Hospitaller maintained a hospital for the sick and dying that reputedly had two thousand beds. Every day some of those patients inevitably died and were taken by the good brothers of the Hospital for burial beyond Mount Zion.

  When the funeral cortege had passed and the brothers again rode side by side, Barry caught Balian’s arm to draw his attention. “You talked to the King alone after the High Court adjourned. What was it about?”

  Balian sighed. Although the conversation had started well, with the King asking about Daniel, in the end the exchange had only increased their breach. Balian had begged the King to use his influence to allow Isabella to come home, at least to visit, and the King answered by insisting that Barry take an oath to Guy de Lusignan as his overlord. For his brother he reduced the conversation to the issue of the oath of loyalty he owed to Jaffa.

  “I will never swear! Never!” Barry answered and spat onto the street in disgust. Although it had been two years since the wedding of Princess Sibylla to Guy de Lusignan, Barry could not get over the insult. He had married another heiress, Elizabeth of Beirut, and she was already pregnant, but his hatred for Guy seemed to be increasing rather than diminishing with time. This had nothing to do with love for Sibylla, Balian recognized; it was injured pride, not thwarted love, that so impassioned his brother with hate.

  Balian agreed that Barry had been grievously slighted and unjustly treated. He also agreed that Guy de Lusignan was not suited to be Count of Jaffa, much less King of Jerusalem. Yet what bothered him most was the degree to which his brother had become consumed by hatred. Father Vitus had taught him as a boy that a man must forgive his enemies, because “hatred is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die from it.” This was exactly what was happening to Barry. His hatred for Sibylla’s husband had no effect on the debonair and increasingly self-assured young Frenchman, but it was eating Barry up from the inside. He looked ten years older and he almost never smiled, not even for his new wife. Before he could say any more, however, Barry grabbed Balian again and exclaimed, “What’s going on?” He pointed to what appeared to be a mob besieging the Ibelin palace.

  The crowd completely blocked the street, and it was obviously agitated. The men were making angry gestures and speaking in loud, threatening voices, while the women were keening and tearing their hair as if at a funeral. The brothers’ hands went instantly to their hilts as they urged their reluctant horses forward. Barry’s eyes focused on the men, watching for the first that dared draw on him, while Balian’s searched the first-story loge to be sure none of his family were exposed. Helvis, at four, couldn’t seem to stay in one place and often got away from her nanny, while three-year-old John followed her everywhere. Fortunately, the loge was empty.

  Then they were into the crowd, wading through it as their horses shook their heads and danced in agitation. The crowd turned on them. “We want news! We demand more information! We have a right to know what has happened to our loved ones!”

  “What are you babbling about?” Barry barked irritably.

  “The massacre! We demand to speak to the messenger!”

  Barry and Balian looked at each other, more mystified than ever. Then, from the front door, a half-dozen Ramla and Ibelin knights burst forth. They pushed back the crowd long enough for the brothers to get into the courtyard of the house, the heavy wooden door thumping shut behind them and dimming the roar of the enraged mob.

  Maria Zoë was already running down the stairs from the gallery, her hair and veils streaming behind her. “Balian! Barry! Andronicus has seized control in Constantinople! He blinded my uncle Alexius and imprisoned Maria of Antioch along with her son. The mob—with his approval, if not at his instigation—ran rampant and slaughtered the entire Latin population of Constantinople. Thousands of people, including women, children, and priests.” Maria Zoë’s distress was raw, but it wasn’t about the atrocity alone. “Oh, Balian! Jerusalem has lost the protection of Constantinople! Salah ad-Din is sure to move against us at once!” It was only then that Balian truly realized how much his wife had put her faith in Greek protection rather than in the strength of Jerusalem itself. It was a chilling insight.

  As he did every week, Father Michael made his way to the Leprosarium of St. Lazarus, located just outside the northern wall of Jerusalem. He had brought a couple of live chickens in a basket and some salted fish as a gift for the kitchens. As usual, after he had handed these over to the cellarer, he asked after his brother.

  The cellarer sighed. “He’s doing penance again.”

  “What for this time?” Michael asked. He had tr
ied to warn Daniel that he was not suited to the life of a monk, but at the time Daniel had not been willing to listen to him. Indeed, Michael had concluded that the more he tried to reason with him, the more stubborn Daniel had become. So he’d given up, and Daniel had taken his vows as a brother-knight of St. Lazarus more than a year ago. The problem was that the longer Daniel lived among the Brothers of St. Lazarus, the more his rebellious nature came to the fore.

  “He complained about the food and then threw his bowl across the room at one of his brothers,” the cellarer explained.

  “I beg pardon for him,” Michael pleaded humbly and sincerely.

  “He’s getting more and more aggressive by the day,” the cellarer warned, shaking his head.

  “Then send him to me, for the King has requested his service, and it might be the best thing for everyone.”

  A few moments later, Sir (Brother) Daniel emerged. He was wearing a sullen expression, a black habit without insignia, and sandals. The robes seemed incongruous on his tall and powerful body.

  “What did they do?” he growled. “Send word to you about my transgressions so you could come and lecture me?”

  Michael sighed. All his life he had tried to be a friend to his young brother, but Daniel insisted on being resentful of his wellmeant advice. “No, Daniel,” Michael answered steadily. “I’m here at the request of Lord Balian.”

  Daniel stiffened. The happiest years of his life had been those three years as Lord Balian’s squire and household knight. He had felt he was somebody then. He had been proud and confident and buoyed up by a heroic vision of himself.

  Until God had punished him for his pride.

  “Let us go where it is quieter,” Michael urged. Some of the lepers were fighting among themselves, while women lepers were chattering and laughing loudly as they hung out the laundry.

  Daniel fell in warily beside his brother, and they walked along the outer edge of the dry moat surrounding the city until they came to the road leading north to Nablus, Nazareth, and Tiberias. Here a number of enterprising shopkeepers had set up stands selling refreshments and souvenirs, and a little beyond them was a sheep market. The pilgrim season had only just started, so the shopkeepers had a shortage of customers and they called out to the brothers as they passed, trying to interest them in their wares. It was not possible to tell by looking at Daniel that he was afflicted with leprosy, for his skin was not yet discolored, much less ulcerous or deformed.

  Michael was finding this conversation much more difficult than he expected. Lord Balian had charged him with finding out what Daniel wanted and had made him promise not to try to influence his brother one way or the other. But Michael knew that influence could be very subtle. Simply the way he approached the topic might affect Daniel’s response. “Lord Balian saw the King yesterday, and they spoke of you.”

  “The King still remembers me, then?” Daniel answered in a voice that crackled with bitterness.

  “He knows you saved his life, Daniel. He mentioned it again yesterday.” Michael paused. “Daniel,” he repeated and stopped, turning to face his brother. They were now beyond the shops and the sheep market, although the bleating of the sheep was still audible. “The King can hardly walk anymore.”

  Daniel shrugged. “It was bound to happen.” Now that he lived in the leper hospital, he had seen many men far worse off than the way he remembered the King.

  “Ibrahim is too old to carry him, and the King will not let anyone else touch him—because of what happened to you.”

  “That’s silly!” Daniel answered, raising his head. “The healthy brothers of St. Lazarus often carry the lepers on their backs, and they are not afflicted.”

  “But you were.”

  “Not from carrying him. It came from handling the bandages when my own hands were covered with broken blisters and cuts from the battle. I know that now. If only I had known it then!” he blurted out wretchedly.

  “Then you would not fear carrying the King again?”

  “What is there left to fear?”

  “How would you feel about being the King’s knight—a household knight, living in the palace, in attendance directly on the King, ready to carry him if needed?”

  Daniel stared at his brother in disbelief. He was offering him an escape, the opportunity to live among healthy people again, to set eyes on beautiful people up close and every day, to live in luxury and eat the best food that money could buy. As a leper. That was unimaginable. “You’re sure he would have me?” Daniel asked skeptically.

  “Why wouldn’t he, Daniel? You two are brothers—joined by the grace of God.”

  Le Forbelet, July 15, 1182

  The heat was insufferable. In all his thirty-three years, Ibelin had never experienced anything like it. He felt as if he were being slowly cooked in his own sweat. His underclothes, from his braies to the quilted gambeson under his hauberk, were drenched. Sweat had saturated his arming hood under his coif and now ran down across his forehead, collected on his eyebrows, and then spilled into his eyes. Sweat from his chin and throat under the closed flap of his aventail had soaked his chest until the water oozed out between the links of his chain mail onto his surcoat. One could almost envy the infantry in their linen aketons and open-faced helmets.

  But such envy would be misplaced, Ibelin reproached himself, with a look at the bodies carpeting the field in front of them. The King, commanding from a litter, had brought up the army from the springs of Sephorie, where they had mustered, to relieve the Castle of Bethsan, which Salah ad-Din was besieging. They had not realized just how large Salah ad-Din’s army was, however, until they caught sight of it. The messengers, of course, had spoken of “overwhelming” forces, but that was only to be expected. Seeing it here, spread out before them, was something else again.

  In retrospect, the siege of Bethsan had merely been bait; the Saracen army was very short on siege equipment and long on troops. This was an army of invasion, complete with a huge baggage train still safe on the east bank of the Jordan. Hundreds of camels waited there patiently, ready to move forward and start collecting loot—just as soon as the back of the Christian resistance was broken.

  But the resistance wasn’t broken yet. Salah ad-Din had been subjecting them to showers of arrows for hours now, and although most men wore more than one arrow embedded in their shields or caught in the weave of their horses’ trappers, they had not had a significant impact even on the infantry, who simply crouched behind their large shields with their heads down.

  Roughly an hour earlier, Salah ad-Din had either grown tired of waiting or overestimated the impact of his archers, and had sent the first wave of infantry against them. The Saracens had charged at them, their swords raised, screaming the greatness of Allah, and had been cut down with appalling efficiency by the small but well-disciplined band of 270 Genoese crossbowmen the King had hired and brought along.

  Salah ad-Din had sent in his cavalry next, but horses don’t like charging at fixed pikes, and the Christian footmen had planted their shields before them with their pikes bristling out between the wall of shields. Time and again the Saracen horse rushed the Christian line, only to have their mounts abruptly rear up or wheel around when they got too close—thereby colliding with the horses behind them and causing mass confusion. More than one Saracen cavalryman was trampled to death by his comrades.

  Salah ad-Din pulled his cavalry back and sent in the second wave of infantry. These were Nubians, and they ran forward fast enough and in such numbers that they overwhelmed the ability of the Genoese to stop them. As they clashed with the Christian infantry, the first hand-to-hand fighting of the day began. One on one, the infantry of West and East were well matched. Footmen on neither side wore metal armor, and the sturdy linen aketons of the Christians, like the leather of their opponents, could withstand a great deal of slashing and hacking. Eventually, however, the numbers began to tell, and the Christian front line was hacked to pieces and overrun. The Saracens began stepping over or on the bodi
es of the Christian dead to reach the second rank.

  At that point King Baldwin ordered his knights to drive off the enemy. The Constable conveyed the order along the line. “Just drive the enemy foot soldiers off! Don’t pursue! Just drive them off and return to your positions.”

  The shouted orders to the infantry to let the knights through was enough to break the momentum of the Saracen infantry. The moment they saw the Frankish knights go into motion, they broke and ran, fully conscious that they could not survive a direct encounter with a charging knight. Either that, Ibelin reflected, or they had orders to break and run in a deliberate attempt to lure the Frankish knights out from behind the protection of the infantry.

  Responding to the frantic bellows from the horns calling the retreat, Ibelin galloped back through the Frankish lines, his knights around him, and then swung Centurion to face the enemy again from behind the safety of the infantry. When he looked again at Salah ad-Din’s army through the slit in his visor, he registered that it was surging forward. He looked left and right, counting men in the red-and-gold surcoats of Ibelin and beyond them the men in the blue and gold of Nablus. His eyes met those of Sir Bartholomew doing a like survey. They exchanged a nod of satisfaction. All his knights were still with them.

  A handful of other knights, however, had either not heard or refused to heed the call to retreat. Within minutes they were overwhelmed and overrun, man and horse both, by the onslaught of Saracen cavalry, followed closely by Saracen foot soldiers running in the dust of their cavalry, ready to kill anything the cavalry left alive.The dust was thick in the air and rising slowly but steadily toward the heavens, turning the sky a murky yellow. It also restricted vision like a heavy fog. The infantry was coughing in it, and someone was calling for water. Yet even as Ibelin registered the oppressive heat and the dryness of his throat, he also sensed the enemy approaching in an unrelenting mass.