“No! I’ll buy the donkey from you!”
“You?” the man scoffed, but he also let his arm drop so he wasn’t threatening her, clearly interested in any way to turn a profit out of this catastrophe.
The only thing of value Beth had on her was a gift from Eschiva, a belt with little silver weights at the ends. She unbound this and shoved it in the mule driver’s face.
The man snatched the belt from her with his filthy hands and narrowed his eyes as he inspected the silver balls. Although they were hardly worth a fortune, the donkey was finished anyway, so he closed his fist over them, then bent to remove the heavy panniers from the donkey. With an audible grunt, he hefted these over his own shoulders. He muttered something about “stupid females” as he turned away, and the crowd dispersed, leaving Beth in the street with the dying donkey.
The donkey looked at her with its big brown eyes, which still did not understand what was happening. Beth put her hand on its neck and felt the fluttering pulse under its sweat-damp hide. Now that she was squatting down beside the poor beast, she could see that she was bleeding from a half-dozen cuts opened by the cane. Her haunches were covered with scars of earlier cuts as well. Her knees were bleeding, and her bony rib cage was heaving up and down. The donkey was dying, and there was nothing Beth could do for it. She didn’t even have a way of getting it out of the street.
Then she felt someone beside her. A shadow fell over her, and a moment later another hand joined hers on the donkey’s neck. It too stroked the neck in a gesture of comfort and sympathy, and it was a black hand. Beth gasped and drew back, instantly terrified. But as she looked up, her eyes met a familiar face. “Dawit!” she exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”
“We just arrived from Nablus on our way to Ibelin, and my lady went to the citadel to see the Lady Eschiva. We were still at the gatehouse when I heard you cry out. I thought I recognized your voice.”
Beth looked beyond Dawit and saw a party of horsemen milling about in front of the gate to the citadel. There were a least a dozen Turcopoles with their round shields and reed lances, and two knights in chain mail and longswords wearing the Nablus arms. The Ibelin marshal (Dawit’s father) and other familiar servants were also in the train. At the center, on a magnificent black mare, was the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem. To protect herself from the sun, Queen Maria Zoë wore loose white robes and veils that covered her face and hands no less than the best Muslim women—only her robes and veils were white instead of black, and edged with the gold crosses of Jerusalem.
Beth felt a surge of relief go through her. “Eschiva is so near her time and so frightened!” she admitted in a rush to Dawit. “The Queen will stay with her, won’t she?”
Before Dawit could answer, Maria Zoë turned her horse, and the crowd parted before her as she rode toward Beth. She threw back her veils to reveal her face as she drew up beside them. “Beth! What are you doing out here? Where’s Eschiva?”
“She’s at the palace, my lady. Princess Sibylla sent for her.” Beth stopped there, too intimidated by the Dowager Queen to say what she had just said to Dawit.
“I see; then we’ll settle into the Ibelin residence first and—”
Beth’s intake of breath was enough to stop her. Maria Zoë looked more closely at Beth. “What is it, Beth?”
“Madame, please go to her. She’s in the gardens with the Queen Mother and Princess Sibylla. She’s very frightened, madame.”
The Queen’s face was unreadable, although she was obviously far from pleased. Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed, but she nodded and turned to order her escort, except for the two knights, back to the Ibelin residence. Then she and her two knights rode through the main gate of the palace into the inner courtyard, to a flurry of shouts and a trumpet blast in honor of the Dowager Queen.
As the others clattered away, leaving only Dawit, the Ethiopian spoke softly to Beth. “I will take the donkey to our stables and see if I can nurse her back to health.”
“Oh, Dawit! Would you?” Beth asked, tears stinging her eyes in gratitude. “Could you?”
“Of course, Beth. I will see what I can do for her.” He bent and gently lifted the exhausted donkey into his own arms. He staggered a little as he laid her across the saddle of his horse. The donkey was too broken to resist or even bray in protest at this unusual treatment. Then he took the reins and started across the city on foot to the Ibelin residence.
Beth was left alone in the streets, where more than one person was giving her curious glances. She’d caused a commotion by interceding for a mere donkey, then had talked to a queen without apparent awe. She was dressed like a Frank, but dark like a native. She was neither fish nor fowl. She took a deep breath and proceeded to the northern service entrance to fulfill her task of bringing sherbet to her mistress.
A page rushed ahead of the Dowager Queen to announce her, but she was too close on his heels for the Queen Mother or Princess Sibylla to do anything more than look up in astonishment. After all, she had lived in this palace seven years and she knew exactly where she was going, even if she had avoided it since the disastrous Easter court two years ago when Sibylla had married Guy de Lusignan. Certainly she had not set eyes on Agnes de Courtenay since the Queen Mother had connived to steal Isabella away from her.
Maria Zoë had no doubt whatever who had instigated the theft of her child. She knew that the King was not really the originator of the idea, and she was convinced that neither the King nor even Balian, good man that he was, fully understood what was at stake. They both saw in Isabella a potential contender for the throne of Jerusalem who needed to be “controlled” —but Maria Zoë recognized that to Agnes de Courtenay, Isabella was a threat to her children. While Maria Zoë was certain that Baldwin meant his half-sister no harm, she remained convinced that Agnes was plotting Isabella’s death behind her son’s back.
Maria Zoë had made no less than five trips to Kerak in the last two years, but on the last two occasions she had been told that Isabella was “away”—allegedly on pilgrimage in one case and at Montreal on the other. Maria Zoë believed none of it. If it hadn’t been for Dawit’s regular reports on Isabella’s physical health and fierce determination to survive her imprisonment, she would have been frantic enough to take desperate measures. What measures, she didn’t know, but she knew she was capable of doing things no one expected of her.
One of them was walking straight up to the King’s mother and sister and holding out her hand for them to kiss her coronation ring. It was a gesture so haughty that all the ladies in the garden gasped. Maria Zoë knew at some level that such gestures did not make her popular, but she was in no mood to seek the approval of others. This was the ring of Jerusalem that had been placed on her finger at her coronation. She was an anointed queen—something neither Agnes de Courtenay nor Sibylla could claim. Agnes was a baroness, Sibylla Countess of Jaffa; Maria Zoë outranked them both.
Flushing with fury, Agnes just stared at her, while Sibylla threatened, “I will tell my brother about this.”
“Please do!” the Dowager Queen answered, turning to look at her coldly. “King Baldwin understands the significance of being an anointed monarch. He will not be pleased by your insult to his Crown.”
Agnes choked on something she wanted to say, and Sibylla leapt up and ran away from this woman, who always made her feel so inade quate, worthless, and small.
That suited Maria Zoë. She was now face to face with her hated rival. “So, madame, whose child are you planning to steal today?” Maria Zoë asked. Agnes turned even redder, but still could not seem to find her tongue. “If it is my niece’s unborn child,” Maria Zoë continued with only the barest glance in Eschiva’s direction, “think again. Aimery de Lusignan is not as susceptible to your poisonous whispers as your poor, pious son. Oh, but then you must know that—since you knew Aimery so very well.”
“How dare you?” Agnes de Courtenay had found her tongue at last and jumped to her feet in outrage, her fists clenched.
“How dare I what, madame? Draw attention to your morals? But they are common knowledge.” Maria Zoë made a gesture of innocence that included all the other ladies, who gawked at them in shock. Then she added in a voice as hard as steel, for all that it was barely more than a whisper: “Everyone knows you have as much virtue as a bitch in heat.”
Agnes tried to slap Maria Zoë across her face, but Maria Zoë was faster. She caught the Queen Mother’s arm before she could strike and held it, her fingers digging into her Agnes’ wrist until she whimpered in pain. “Let me go!”
Maria Zoë dropped Agnes’ arm, and they stared at one another. “Don’t think you have won,” Maria Zoë warned. “Isabella may be a child, but she has friends far more powerful than you and your vultures.”
“You can’t mean my ineffectual brother-in-law,” Agnes sneered.
“No, of course not,” Maria Zoë answered, refusing to be provoked. “We both know my husband is too honorable for the games you play.” Maria Zoë was bluffing about having powerful friends. Her greatuncle was dead, her relatives murdered or chased into exile, but she could see the fear that suddenly shot through Agnes’ eyes, and that was satisfying enough for the moment.
The fear, however, made Agnes bluster, “You are not welcome here. I order you to leave at once.”
“I’ll leave when I want to,” Maria Zoë countered. “And don’t think your son’s guards will lay a hand on me! They know the difference between an anointed queen and a king’s whore—”
“Get out of here!” It was Sibylla who shrieked this, coming back to defend her mother at last.
“With pleasure,” Maria Zoë answered. “I do not like the company of sluts—or fools.” The latter remark was directed at Sibylla.
“Baldwin will hear of this!” Sibylla shrieked, louder than ever.
“I wonder whose side he’ll take?” Maria Zoë answered evenly. It was not so much that she seriously believed Baldwin would approve of her calling his mother a whore—much less a bitch in heat—but she was, in fact, so furious with him for letting his mother steal her child that she wanted to hurt him. And perhaps, just perhaps, if he learned what she had done, he would be shocked into understanding just how deeply she had been hurt and how dangerous a mother animal in fear for her young was. Maybe, just maybe, he’d begin to see that his mother was not his best adviser, and that engendering the hatred of those who had loved and served him best was stupid—and could be very dangerous as well.
With this thought she turned to a pale, wide-eyed Eschiva and ordered, “Come with me, child. You’ll be far more comfortable at the Ibelin residence, and I’ll be with you until your time has come and you are safely delivered of the child in your womb.”
Beth had fled the birth chamber. She loved Eschiva far too well to be indifferent to her screams, and she was superfluous anyway, now that the Queen Mother and her ladies were in attendance. She sought instead the stillness of the stables and the donkey she had rescued. Dawit had put her in a stall filled with straw, and when Beth first found her she thought she had died, for she was lying on her side with her legs stretched out and her eyes closed. But at Beth’s cry of distress, the gentle eyes opened and the donkey pulled her legs under herself, as if she wanted to get up. Her strength abandoned her at that point, however, and she dropped her head back on the straw with a sigh. Beth ran to the feed room and scooped out a handful of oats, then ran back to offer it to her donkey. As she reached the stall door, however, Dawit emerged out of the shadows and gently shook his head. “Give her hay, not oats. She is not used to oats.”
Beth returned the oats and when she came back to the stall, Dawit handed her a flake of hay and held the stall door open for her. She stepped inside and knelt down beside the donkey, who raised her head in alarm. Beth held out the hay, and the donkey’s nostrils flared as she sniffed sharply before she at last risked taking a little bite. Once she started eating, however, she became quite greedy, and together Beth and Dawit fed her three flakes of hay, before she lay down her head again with a contented sigh.
“Will she live?” Beth asked Dawit anxiously.
“After the way she just ate, I think so,” he answered, with a smile fixed on the now sleeping donkey.
“How can I ever thank you for helping her?” Beth asked.
Dawit shook his head. “I wanted to help as much as you. I think if I were a rich man, I would start a hospital for all the wounded and abused horses and donkeys in the world.”
“Is it true you turned down knighthood because you did not want to see horses suffering on the battlefield?” Beth blurted out—she had heard this story from Rahel the evening before, but could hardly believe it.
Dawit nodded slowly. “I am not ashamed of that, and I do not regret it. God gives each of us different gifts, and He expects each of us to serve Him in our own way. There is not only one path to honor—or to heaven.”
Beth sat back in the straw and clutched her knees in the circle of her arms. She felt warm and safe here in the stables, with the little donkey breathing deeply beside her and Dawit speaking in his soft melodic voice. It was inexplicable to her that of all the men she had met since the night of her shame, she trusted this young black man most—even though it had been black men who had ravished her and killed the girl she had once been.
“Dawit?” she asked timidly. “Do you believe that applies to women as well as men?”
“Of course it does,” he answered firmly.
“Even for girls like me?” she asked, holding her breath and not daring to look at him.
“Why wouldn’t it?” he answered steadily. “God must love you very much to have brought you from the errors of Islam to a good Christian household like this.”
Beth thought about that a moment, her chin resting on her knees and her eyes on the little donkey. She knew in her heart that she would have preferred not to be raped by four men, even if the price had been never to find Christ. “So you think some women are never meant to marry? That it is good enough for some of us to be only half a woman?”
She could hear Dawit shifting uneasily behind her, and the stall door creaked as he leaned on it. She had almost despaired of an answer when he said softly, “If I did not know you must despise me for what the Nubians did to you, I would be honored to make you my wife.”
Beth caught her breath and held it, afraid to shatter the enchantment. Then she looked up over her shoulder at Dawit. “Truly?”
Before Dawit could answer, shouting broke in on them. Mathewos was calling for his son. “Dawit! Quick! Tack up Lulu! A messenger must go at once to the Constable at Tyre! He is the father of a fine son!”
Chapter 8
Kerak, March 1183
THE ARMENIAN MERCHANT AT THE HIGH table was worldly as well as wealthy. He knew the customs of the Franks no less than those of his own people, the Greeks and the Turks, so he gallantly shared his trencher with the Lady of Oultrejourdain, and cut her meat for her as he regaled her and her husband with the latest news.
“So Salah ad-Din has been forced to give up his siege of Mosul?” Reynald de Châtillon pressed his informant.
“Yes, Mosul remained beyond his reach,” the Armenian agreed, nodding as he gnawed on some duck bones. “But he’s still extended his power. Both Amida and Mardin now acknowledge him as sultan. On the other hand”—the Armenian was clearly the kind of man used to seeing all sides of an issue, and matching his narrative to the taste of those he was seeking to please at any one point in time—“On the other hand,” he repeated, “his reputation as the defender of Islam was decidedly tarnished by the Christian pirate ships that got loose in the Red Sea. They are said to have captured over two score merchant ships, burning most and turning the oared vessels into auxiliaries of their own fleet. They sacked Aden and even sent raiding parties inland to capture unarmed caravans on their way to the port. But that could have been put down to brigandry had they not then landed between Medina and Mecca. Panic ensued in both cities, and many Muslims were
convinced these raiders intended to desecrate the tomb of their prophet at Mecca itself.”
Reynald de Châtillon raised his eyebrows at that and grunted in apparent skepticism.
His guest reached for the bowl filled with wheat rolls and helped himself liberally before continuing. “Of course, Salah ad-Din’s brother in Cairo wasn’t idle. He managed to drag a fleet of warships overland from Alexandria to the Red Sea. His admiral, I believe it was Husam al-Din, tracked down the Frankish ships at al-Haura and penned them into the harbor. When the pirates realized they were completely outnumbered and there was no way to break out by sea, they abandoned their ships—and indeed their captives and plunder—and fled inland. It took the Egyptians five days to finally track them down in a narrow ravine and kill most of them.”
Châtillon grunted and nodded again, apparently satisfied.
“But the Egyptians took over a hundred and fifty of the Franks captive,” the Armenian noted, signaling to the squire behind his chair to refill his goblet. Humphrey jumped forward to comply, his ears red with embarrassment and pent-up anger as he glanced at his stepfather.
Châtillon was frowning. “Captive? What kind of fools were they?” Châtillon was willing to take the overall credit (or blame, depending on how you looked at it) for the expedition, but he didn’t trust mercenaries not to say too much—especially when being tortured.
“You can say that again!” the Armenian agreed, as he set his cup down and dabbed his lips on the back of his sleeve. “Islam may prohibit the murder of captives who voluntarily surrender, but Salah ad-Din had no scruples about having these Franks executed anyway. He probably argued that they had forfeited their right to mercy by threatening Mecca, but his real motive would have been that they had learned too much about sailing the Red Sea. Most important, of course, he needed to allay accusations about being more concerned with his own power than with the safety of pilgrims to Mecca. After all, all this havoc had been wrought while he was fighting fellow Muslims, all of whom have a better claim to rule than he does. By sending two of the captives to each of the important market towns of the Arabian peninsula and having them publicly executed, he hoped to divert attention from his own greed.”
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