Châtillon again grunted approval and nodded vigorously, throwing back his own wine and gesturing impatiently to Humphrey for a refill.
“Most of the captives had their heads cut off in one public square or another, but two of the Franks—one presumes, the men identified as the leaders—were taken to Mecca itself, and there, at the place where the Muslim pilgrims usually offer animal sacrifices, they slaughtered these two poor Christians—like human sacrifices to Allah.” From the Armenian’s tone of voice, it was clear that he was torn between fascination and horror. “They say the crowd went wild with religious fervor as they watched the Franks bleed to death.”
Isabella, sitting with her mother-in-law’s ladies and the household knights at one of the lower tables, had not been able to hear everything the guest said, but this part of his tale came to her with frightening clarity. She gasped and put down her knife in distress. The man leading the expedition had been Sir Henri, Uncle Balian’s younger brother.
Later, after the meal was over, Isabella went in search of Humphrey. She found him on one of the wooden benches before the armory in the ward, where he was diligently oiling Oultrejourdain’s sword and scabbard. The rag in his hand was filthy, as were his hands, and he sat hunched over his work. He had grown a lot in the last year and was now a fraction taller than Oultrejourdain himself, but because he hadn’t filled out at the same time, the effect was not beneficial; he looked skinnier and more awkward than ever.
“Humphrey! Did you hear what that man said at dinner?” Isabella pounced on him, making him start.
“Isabella! What are you doing down here?” Humphrey looked around at his surroundings uncomfortably. Here by the armory the men-at-arms loitered, drank, and gambled. It was no place for Isabella.
“I needed to talk to you alone,” she answered simply. She had no fear of any of the men here; unlike Humphrey, she had not seen what they could do to women in their power.
“We’re not alone!” Humphrey protested, nodding to the men lounging about and casting curious and amused glances at the noble children.
“Better than talking to you in the presence of your mother and stepfather,” Isabella retorted. “Did you hear what that Armenian said? That the leaders of the Red Sea raid were slaughtered like animals in Mecca.” Isabella stressed “like animals,” because the slaughter of animals was something she had witnessed and so could visualize—unlike battles, which in her mind remained shrouded in clouds of chivalry and heroism.
“Well, they deserved it!” Humphrey snapped back, remembering what he had witnessed on the raid of Tarbuk.
“How can you say that?” Isabella protested in outrage. “They were Christians!”
“Yes, and some Christians are barbarians,” Humphrey told her, tight-lipped, his eyes on the sword he was polishing. He could not forget that girl in the desert, and it made him hot with shame to think of her while Isabella was standing so near, soft and blooming—and no less vulnerable.
“But it was Henri d’Ibelin!” Isabella could not understand Humphrey. “Sir Henri isn’t a barbarian! He’s Uncle Balian’s brother! He’s a good man and a fine knight!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Isabella!” Humphrey snapped, remembering that Sir Henri had taken his share of the “spoils” just like the baser men. “Now go back to your Latin lessons and lute playing! You have no business being down here!”
Humphrey had never spoken to her like this before, and Isabella was both hurt and offended. She put her hands on her hips and drew a deep breath to give her (future) husband a piece of her mind. Humphrey forestalled her. “Isabella! If you don’t do what I say, I’ll tell my mother about Dawit!”
“Humphrey!” Isabella gasped, flabbergasted. “You wouldn’t!” Nothing in the world meant more to her than the bimonthly visits of the faithful Ethiopian. He brought her not only letters from her mother and pomegranates or other sweets from her stepfather, he brought her all the gossip from home. Through Dawit she felt connected to her real self and the real world; Kerak was not “real” to her, it was an aberration.
Humphrey knew he did not have the heart to betray her, but he wanted her to obey him, and so he set his face and repeated, “Go back to your lessons now, or I will tell her!”
Isabella spun on her heels furiously and ran away. Humphrey let out a long breath and resumed his task. He knew Isabella would be angry with him for days after this, but eventually they would make up. They always did, because they needed each other.
Kerak, April 1183
The lookout on the southeast tower signaled approaching riders, and Oultrejourdain mounted the spiral steps to the roof to take a look for himself. The news that Oultrejourdain was behind the “pirate” raid in the Red Sea had spread far and wide by now. Châtillon had reliable reports from his Bedouin friends that Salah ad-Din had vowed personal revenge—while, as planned, King Baldwin had washed his hands of the whole affair and declared his innocence. Châtillon and Châtillon alone was to be held responsible for the highly successful sortie into the Red Sea, and he suspected he was about to pay the price.
From the tower he could make out a large body of armed men moving purposefully at a steady but not neck-breaking pace, sending up a plume of dust. It was impossible, however, to distinguish the heraldry on their banners against the glare of the sun, or to make out if their shields were round or triangular or if the riders wore turbans or helmets. After squinting into the sun for a few minutes, Oultrejourdain gave up the vigil and returned to the ward, with orders for the lookouts to shout down a report when they could see more.
Then he strode through the barbican to the outer ward and started kicking men-at-arms awake. “Riders approaching out of the desert! Puke up the rest of last night’s wine and arm yourselves!”
Châtillon had repeated his advice about last night’s wine at least a dozen times before shouting drew him back into the main ward. Here a man leaned over the parapet of the tower and shouted down, “Franks!”
Châtillon snorted. That wasn’t much better, since he didn’t know who these visitors might be, and he distrusted everyone. After all, except for the King, his peers assumed he had acted on his own and for his own gain. While the bishops blustered about excommunication, men like Tripoli and Hebron had been quick to condemn him for breaking the truce with Salah ad-Din and “imperiling” them all. The asses! As if they weren’t imperiled already!
Still, he couldn’t be openly hostile to his fellow Franks, so he had to be all the more wary. Saracens he could meet with arrows, insults, and defiance; his fellow Franks had be treated with apparent courtesy, even if they were trying to stab him in the back.
He frowned and looked around at the roughly triangular ward of his castle, as if looking for lurking assassins. The southern tip of the ward was blocked by the chapel, while against the wider north wall stood the bakery, brewery, smithy, and other workshops. The stables were to the west and storerooms lined the east flank. The storerooms were not as full as he would have liked when facing the prospect of a siege, and he was loath to share what stores he had with a large host of visitors, but the laws of hospitality in the desert were immutable.
“Ibelin!” A shout came down from the lookout.
Just what he needed! “How many men?”
“Upwards of a hundred, my lord.”
Cursing under his breath, he turned away and collided with his wife. “The bastard’s here to interfere with Isabella again!” Stephanie de Milly exclaimed. “You’ve got to deny him access.”
“Deny access to a baron of Jerusalem with a hundred mounted men? You’re out of your mind, woman!” On previous visits Ibelin had come with his wife and only a small domestic escort; that made it obvious his business was private. A baron traveling with a hundred mounted fighting men was not on private business, and Oultrejourdain had no intention of provoking a clash over Isabella. Indeed, he very much doubted this had anything to do with Isabella at all.
“I don’t know where Isabella is
right now,” his wife complained. “The minx has slipped her snares again, and I can’t guarantee Ibelin won’t run into her someplace if you let him in.”
“In case it’s escaped your notice, we’re on a hostile frontier, and I may desperately need Ibelin and his hundred fighting men to save my own hide in the near future! I’m not going to insult him just because you’ve met your match in Isabella of Jerusalem!”
“What do you expect me to do? Chain her in the dungeon?” Stephanie screamed at her husband. Her frustration at her inability to break Isabella’s resistance was a sore spot, compounded by her husband’s repeated warnings not to do anything to the girl that would incur the King’s wrath. She felt her hands were tied and all her efforts undermined by the men around her.
“Just stop worrying about what that chit of a girl might do or say, and see to your duties as chatelaine! We have a hundred guests for dinner!”
Oultrejourdain was in the ward to greet Ibelin as he drew up, his men flooding in and spreading out behind him. “Welcome to Kerak, my lord. What a pleasant surprise.” Although there was no obvious sarcasm in his voice, Ibelin still smiled cynically in return before continuing the charade in an equally sarcastic voice. “We regret any inconvenience, my lord. We had intelligence that Salah ad-Din is again raising his army, and the King requested I conduct a reconnaissance in force to try to ascertain his goal. Now that we are satisfied he is marshaling his forces to attack Aleppo rather than Jerusalem, we are returning to Nablus.” As he spoke, he swung himself down from his stallion.
The story was plausible enough, although decidedly vague. Oultrejourdain didn’t entirely believe it, but it offered no basis for a direct challenge. He let it stand.
“But, of course,” Ibelin continued, now that he was standing face to face with Châtillon in the center of the cobbled ward as his men dismounted around them, “the real reason I’m here is to find out about my brother.”
“Your brother?” Châtillon was taken completely by surprise.
“Yes, my brother. You do remember my brother Henri, I presume?”
Châtillon was unsettled by two things: first, that Ibelin was taking an interest in his younger brother, something he had not noted before, and second, that Ibelin apparently knew Henri had been involved in the Red Sea raids. He reacted defensively. “Stupid question! Of course I remember Henri—I’m just surprised that you do!”
“Blood, my lord, is thicker than water. Henri may be your knight, but he is still my brother. I have a longing to speak to him.” Ibelin was staring Oultrejourdain straight in the eye, watching for Châtillon’s reaction.
Châtillon’s conscience was too guilty to meet Ibelin’s gaze. Instead, he shrugged and glanced around the ward as if looking for someone. “No idea where he is at the moment. He comes and goes as he pleases.”
For the moment, the ruse seemed to work. Ibelin let the topic drop, thanked Châtillon for his hospitality, and turned to see that his men took their horses into the stables in an orderly fashion, but Châtillon suspected the topic was far from closed.
Isabella had heard the lookouts announce her stepfather and had slipped into the stables to hide herself there. No sooner did Balian enter leading his horse than she jumped up from her hiding place among the bales of straw and ran to him. “Uncle Balian! Uncle Balian! Have you come to take me home?”
At ten and a half Isabella was too big to be swept up and carried in his arms, so Balian bent to hug her and hold her fast for a moment. “I wish I could, sweetheart. You know that. There is nothing your mother wants more than to have you come home. I’ll have to tell you about the confrontation she had with the Queen Mother because of you.” He laughed at the memory, but Isabella had heard the subjunctive in his answer. He wished he could, but he couldn’t. She gazed at him with wide, trusting hazel eyes. “Why can’t you take me home, Uncle Balian?”
“Because the King has ordered you to stay here, precious. I am his subject and so subject to his will.”
Isabella refused to be satisfied with this facile answer. She knew she was here on the King’s orders, but they didn’t make sense to her. “But why does he want me to stay here?” She had asked Dawit the same question more than once, but accepted that he was just a servant and could not answer. She expected an answer from her stepfather. Balian was supposed to have all the answers.
“He wants you to grow up with your future husband so you will love him more,” replied Balian, trying to give her an explanation that was not frightening.
“But Humphrey hates it here, too!” Isabella pointed out, suddenly filled with hope. “If it’s just about me being with Humphrey, then we can both come with you!”
Balian was shaking his head.
“Why not?” Isabella demanded to know.
“Because Humphrey is still subject to his guardian’s—Oultrejourdain’s—will until he is fifteen.”
“But he’ll turn fifteen in two months!” Isabella protested.
“Will he, now?” Balian looked at his stepdaughter sharply. That was very valuable and welcome information that had long been lacking. Since Maria Zoë’s confrontation with Agnes de Courtenay, she and Balian had decided their best hope for Isabella was to convince the King to install Humphrey in his lordship the day he came of age. Their hope was that the King remembered his own minority sharply enough to sympathize with a young man’s desire to be free of tutors and guardians. However, they had not known Humphrey’s actual date of birth and so the date he would come of age.
“Yes, on St. John’s!” Isabella told her stepfather. Birthdays were important to ten-year-olds.
“Good. That’s not so long to wait, then, is it?” Balian asked Isabella with a hopeful smile.
“You mean we can leave then? After Humphrey comes of age?”
“Yes. That’s the promise your mother and I are going to get from the King.”
“But you haven’t got it yet,” Isabella noted perceptively.
“No,” Balian admitted, wishing for once that she wasn’t quite so bright. “But we will do everything we can to extract it from him.” This was much easier said than done, Balian knew, but it was all he had to offer. He tried to distract Isabella. “Look! I’ve brought you a whole parcel of gifts from your mother.” He indicated the saddlebag behind his saddle, which had already been removed by Gabriel and hung over the stall door.
Isabella glanced at it, but her disappointment was too great to be really interested in things. “Uncle Balian, it’s not just about me and Humphrey being together, is it?”
Balian took a deep breath. “No, it’s not.”
“What is it, then?”
“Well,” he took another breath, “some people fear that you could be used to challenge the succession of Princess Sibylla. The King is very sick, as you know, and when he dies he wants his sister Sibylla to succeed him, but he and his mother and Sibylla herself fear that some men in this Kingdom might try to have you crowned instead.”
“Oh.” Isabella appeared not to have thought of this, and Balian could almost hear her brain working as her eyes narrowed under a furrowed brow.
“I’m sorry, Isabella,” Balian said softly and sincerely—for while Isabella was just a threat to Agnes de Courtenay and a tool to Raymond de Tripoli, she was a little girl to him.
“It’s all right,” she told him, taking a deep breath and standing up straighter. “I’m glad you told me the truth. Now I can understand better.” What Isabella understood was that she might be Queen one day, and fear of that was what made her jailers keep her so closely under control. She at once determined she was going to be cleverer than they. She reached out and took Balian’s warm hand in hers and smiled up at him. “You can tell Mama not to worry about me. Humphrey loves me very much, so if you can get the King to recognize him as Lord of Toron in his own right, then he’ll take me away from here and we’ll be free. Then we can visit you at Ibelin or Nablus, and you can come to Toron. Just as soon as Humphrey is recognized as an adult.” Balian underst
ood that Isabella had found something concrete and measurable to look forward to, and it was now up to him to ensure that the King really did set Humphrey free at his majority.
At dinner Balian studiously showed no interest in Isabella at all. Instead he raised the issue of his brother again. Since the entire household was clearly gathered, after pointedly surveying the lower tables where the knights and the men-at-arms were seated, Balian asked Oultrejourdain where Henri was. Châtillon, meanwhile, had had time to consider his options and had decided on candor. “Your brother volunteered to take command of the mercenaries I sent to the Red Sea.”
“Volunteered?” Balian asked back. “What did you promise him?”
“The Lady Eloise of Amman. She’s not much to look at, but she’s the heiress of a fief that owes me fourteen knights—more than Ibelin.”
Yes, Balian thought to himself, nodding. That was significant. For while he commanded upwards of a hundred knights, most of those knights owed service to Nablus. He only commanded them because Nablus was his wife’s dower portion during her lifetime. He would lose them at her death—which, of course, might occur at any moment. What he held in his own right was a fief worth ten knights. It would mean a lot to Henri to be able to say he had a larger barony than Balian, even if it still did not equal that of Barry.
“And what have you heard from my brother lately?”
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