Defender of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  “But we were not fast enough. They were upon us before we were mounted. My uncle was just putting his foot in the left stirrup when he was pierced from behind. He had not had time to don his armor, because he had been seeing to the safety of the Queen. He was run through by a lance.”

  Maria Zoë caught her breath. “From behind?”

  “Yes. He was skewered on the lance, and as the horse fled in terror, he fell at my feet with the tip sticking out of his belly, punctured from the inside. He looked at me with an expression of surprise, horror, and pain, and I flung myself at the man who had killed him, with all the fury of youth shaken out of innocence in a single moment.

  “Later I was told that I laid about, killing several men, before I too was stabbed in the thigh from behind, brought to my knees, and overpowered. But for all my wild fighting, I had failed to avenge my uncle’s murderer. The youth who had aimed the deadly lance evaded my sword with a triumphant smile as he spurred away, leaving his henchmen to finish me off.” He paused. “It was Guy de Lusignan, madame.”

  Maria Zoë sat up straighter in her chair. “No! That can’t be!” She did not want to believe that the man who might be King of Jerusalem was a murderer, devoid of all chivalry.

  “He was a youth—and later, when I was dragged, wounded and a hostage, to the Lusignan castle, I heard his elder brother berating him for his stupidity. ‘You were supposed to bring the Queen to me a captive,’ Hugh de Lusignan shouted. ‘You weren’t given leave to kill prizes worth much more alive than dead!’ Hugh backhanded Guy for his foolishness, and scoffed at him for bringing back a ‘penniless bachelor knight of no value’—meaning me—when he could have held a peer of the realm for ransom.

  “Perhaps it was these words that made Guy despise me, for he did not accord me the slightest courtesy, not even attention to my wounds. I would surely have bled to death or died of wound fever had not one of the ladies of the house taken pity on me and sent me hot water and bandages to clean and dress the wound.”

  Maria Zoë was still in shock. “Guy de Lusignan stabbed an English earl in the back when he was not wearing armor?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “And no one brought him to justice?” Maria Zoë was thinking that in her homeland, he would have been publicly tortured and executed for such an outrage.

  “It is a complicated story, madame, but the loyalty of the Lusignans was too important to King Henry; to end their rebellion he had to make concessions. It was more profitable for him to agree not to take action against the juvenile Guy de Lusignan than to make financial or territorial concessions. Henry excused Guy’s action as an excess of juvenile zeal. Although Queen Eleanor was indignant at first, she eventually saw the sense of it. He was not brought to justice, but he remained persona non grata in the Queen’s court. His elder brothers might cross the threshold, but not Guy.

  “For me, however, the incident was not about forgiving the murder of one vassal to secure the loyalty of another; it was about the murder of my kinsman, my patron, and my lord. I have not forgiven Guy, and had he ever crossed my path in a tournament, much less war, I doubt he would have lived—but Guy avoided me adroitly, even dropping out of tournaments or switching sides at the last moment to avoid giving me a chance for revenge.”

  “Would that you had served justice upon him, monsieur!” Maria Zoë exclaimed with feeling. “He is a curse upon this Kingdom—he mocks and defies King Baldwin, completely overestimates his abilities, and will take advice from no one.”

  “Yes, that is Guy,” Marshal agreed, nodding slowly. Maria Zoë shuddered in the heat, as if the ghost of Salisbury had just walked through the room.

  The horse trader led the bay stallion out of his box and into the stableyard, to trot him up and down for the Latin knight that Ibelin’s marshal had brought. This stallion was no longer young, but then, nor was the knight—and like the knight, the stallion had a number of battle scars.

  “His last owner was a young knight who felt he needed a prettier horse to impress the ladies,” the horse trader explained in heavily accented French, “but there’s nothing wrong with him.”

  Sir William walked around the horse, critically looking at his hooves, hocks, and knees, measuring the width of his chest with his eyes, and noting that the horse’s elbows stood well out from his sides. He glanced at the Ibelin marshal, whom the Dowager Queen had sent along to help him find two suitable mounts.

  The Ethiopian not only knew horses very well, as Sir William had rapidly discerned, he also knew all the horse traders in Nablus. He judged this man the most honest. Nevertheless, Mathewos went forward and pulled up the stallion’s lips to check his teeth and then ran his hand along his back, pinching along the spine, watching for a reaction. The stallion twitched his ears in irritation and stamped his foot, but he gave no indication of pain. The Ethiopian nodded and looked back at Marshal questioningly.

  “How old is he?” Sir William asked.

  “Twelve,” the horse trader answered.

  John d’Ibelin, who had begged to come along with Mathewos and Sir William, had already lost interest in the old warhorse. He wandered over to the corral for ponies, looking for one he liked; he longed for one of his own, even if his mother said he was too young. The horse trader was located on the southeastern edge of Nablus, where he had sufficient room for paddocks to hold his sometimes substantial herds. John looked at the ponies for a while, but then his eyes wandered to the countryside beyond and saw something funny. Frowning, he raised his voice to attract the attention of the adults, “What’s that?”

  Sir William was interrogating the trader, so it was Mathewos who turned to see what John was asking about.

  John pointed across the paddock to the valley beyond.

  Mathewos followed the boy’s finger, aimed at the Samaritan village about five miles away. A thin column of smoke appeared to be rising from it. “A fire,” he started to answer, and then his heart missed a beat and his pulse started racing, even as John irritably answered, “No! Not that, over there! Aren’t those camels?”

  “Holy Christ!” Mathewos gasped, and he grabbed John up into his arms and ran to their horses. “Saracens!” he called to Sir William as he ran past.

  Mathewos had only one thought at that moment: to get Lord John back to the citadel and warn the Dowager Queen. Sir William and the horse trader, on the other hand, turned in the opposite direction to see what had frightened the Ibelin marshal. Sir William shaded his eyes against the sun and squinted. Out upon the plain southeast of them, there was movement. A column of riders and camels was advancing up the valley. The head of the column was already into the next village, and there was now a second plume of smoke rising into the still air of the September morning.

  “Holy Cross!” the horse trader muttered under his breath, his eyes bulging in his pock-marked face.

  “I’ll buy the horse!” Sir William decided instantly, and he shoved a handful of gold pieces at the horse trader, took the lead of the stallion, and flung himself into the saddle of his borrowed horse to start galloping after Mathewos, who was already clattering up the road into the city.

  “The alarm!” Sir William shouted to Mathewos as he caught up with him. “How do you raise the alarm?”

  “We ring the church bells.”

  “Good. Take this stallion with you and have him tacked up with my gear as soon as you get back!” He turned the lead over to Mathewos and turned up the street, heading for the closest church.

  Within minutes the bells were clanging throughout the city, and people ran out into the streets to see what was going on. Maria Zoë heard the bells long before Mathewos came clattering into the ward of the citadel with John on the saddle in front of him to announce: “Saracens! They’re burning the villages southeast of us!”

  Maria Zoë was conscious of the terror that gripped her chest. Nablus had no walls, and even the citadel had only a dry ditch about four feet wide and walls hardly more than six feet wide and twenty high. This was no Kerak,
rearing up on a mountain ridge with a massive fosse to protect it. It had no natural defenses, only its walls and towers, none of which would withstand mining or siege engines for more than a day or two.

  “Rahel! Take the children to the keep at once!” she ordered, grabbing her linen veils and starting down the exterior stairs into the ward as she wound them around her head and neck. In her mind she was damning her steward. They were about to endure a siege with half their weapons rusted and the sugar full of beetles.

  “Dawit! My horse!”

  “Madame, have you heard? The—”

  “Yes! I know! I need to reach Sir Constantine as quickly as possible.”

  Dawit ran back into the stables. Sir Walter was taking the steps from the garrison tower two at a time. “Madame! You can’t go out—” “Damn it!” Maria Zoë answered. “I have to go out there! This city isn’t defensible! We have to get the townspeople into the citadel, and I need your help. Tell my knights to mount up!”

  Around her the twoscore men-at-arms and sergeants of the garrison were running to their positions on the walls and towers. Men were pulling on their aketons as they ran, or buckling their swords and kettle helmets. A sergeant opened the door to the armory and started forming a line to pass crossbows up to the men on the battlements. A boy was still yanking the bell of the citadel chapel with all his might.

  Sir Walter had reached Maria Zoë’s side. “Madame, let us round up the townspeople. Take yourself to the keep!”

  “No!”

  Dawit brought out her black mare, and Maria Zoë swung herself up into the saddle. “You can catch me up at Sir Constantine’s.”

  Walter grabbed her reins. “Madame, your husband will kill me if anything happens to you. Wait for me to mount.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me yet. Join me at Sir Constantine’s.” She put her heels to her mare, and Sir Walter jumped out of the way.

  Panic had gripped the streets of Nablus. Men were shouting, women screaming, children howling, and dogs barking. People were running in all directions or throwing things out of their windows, apparently intent on flight with their valuables. Halfway to the constable’s substantial residence, Maria Zoë ran into him coming the other way. “Madame! What are you doing out here in the streets? Haven’t you heard—”

  “I’m hardly deaf, sir! We need to get everyone into the citadel! Everyone! We must convince people to abandon their possessions and see to their lives!”

  The Greek constable smiled cynically at that, but inspired by Maria Zoë’s determination, he agreed, “We can try. Send one of your Latin knights to the brothers!” He pointed to the Premonstratensian monastery, which sat a little above the city on the slopes of the hill to the west. “Have them round up the Latin settlers. Meanwhile, I’ll go to the Syrian quarter and do what I can to persuade them to make haste to the citadel. I leave you to persuade the Greeks, madame. If you can convince the Greek clergy to join you, you might just succeed.”

  Sir Walter, with five of her knights and William Marshal, clattered up and surged around her. Maria Zoë pointed them to the Premonstratensian monastery, but Sir William insisted on staying with her. He was fully armed and carrying a lance.

  “We hardly need that yet,” she told him. “The Saracens are at least five miles away, and they’ve stopped to sack the villages.”

  “Some of them have, madame, but if they are like any other men I’ve met, they know towns offer far greater riches than peasant villages.”

  “That is what I am counting on,” she flung back at him. They both had to shout above the noise around them.

  He frowned at her, uncomprehending.

  “If we leave them all our riches, maybe they won’t bother attacking the citadel to take our lives as well!” she explained in a shout, then spurred away, leaving Sir William riding hard to catch up with her.

  The Greek quarter of the town was one of the oldest, and the streets here were narrow and roughly cobbled. The two- to three-story flat-roofed houses, built around interior courtyards, pressed in close. Many apparently confused people clogged the streets, while others hung out of their windows asking what was going on. Maria Zoë rode into the midst of the chaos, pointing and calling out: “Get to the citadel! Waste no time! Get to the citadel!” She was speaking Greek, and Sir William, who had no knowledge of the language, found himself frustrated by his inability to add his deeper, louder voice to hers. Her voice was too high and frail to make itself heard very far in this mess. It seemed that most people, particularly the women, were just pointing excitedly, saying, Vasilissa! Vasilissa einai!” or “Vasilissa Maria!” Fortunately, however, several male voices picked up her message, and her words began to be repeated first by one, then a half-dozen, and finally a score of voices.

  To Sir William’s amazement, the people milling in the streets started to turn toward the citadel. More and more people began grabbing up their children and shouting to one another, apparently saying “Come!” or “Hurry!” But here and there, others still seemed intent on hitching up a cart or collecting their valuables. Sir William shouted at them in French and pointed toward the citadel. Language no longer mattered. The situation by now was clear enough, but he was glad to see a burly youth in ragged, dirty clothes start to reinforce his message. The young man was on foot and he moved among the crowd, firmly turning and, as needed, pushing people in the right direction. As Maria Zoë and Sir William advanced deeper into the Greek quarter, he kept up with them, pleading, urging, and pushing people to go.

  The population in the street was gradually thinning and so was the clang of bells, as church after church was abandoned. But then they came around a corner and found their way blocked by dozens of men and women on crutches or pushing themselves on handcarts; these were the inhabitants of the large Hospitaller infirmary and their caretakers.

  “They’ll never make it to the citadel in time!” Sir William warned in alarm. In his mind he calculated the distance from the village he had seen the Saracens entering more than an hour ago. He did not think the Saracen vanguard could be far away, and his concern for Maria Zoë was rising by the second.

  Maria Zoë looked for Sister Adela but could not find her. She was probably seeing to the children, but that reminded her of the leprosarium. Pointing in the opposite direction from the citadel, she called to Sir William, “There’s a leper colony just two hundred yards away. They’ll be safe there.” She turned back and called to the Hospitaller sergeant who appeared to be in charge. “Take them to the leprosarium! Hide them inside!”

  A roar of protest erupted from the cripples. Maria Zoë tried to calm them, arguing, “You will be safe there! The Muslims fear leprosy.”

  “I’d rather be killed than catch leprosy!” someone shouted.

  “There is little risk of catching it just from entering the leprosarium,” Maria Zoë reasoned, but the patients of the Hospital were not listening. Instead, they were trying to go in the opposite direction, and the sergeants that should have stopped them seemed confused.

  Fortunately, at that moment Sister Adela emerged from the Hospital, followed by her sisters with the women patients. “The Queen is right,” Sister Adela called out. “There’s no time to get to the citadel. Go to the leprosarium! Hurry!” She ordered the sisters around her, pointing. Then, raising her voice, she ordered, “Sergeant, get the men to the leprosarium immediately. There is no time to lose!”

  There was still some grumbling, but now that someone in authority had made a decision for them, the Hospitaller sergeants and lay brothers started physically pulling and pushing the halt and the lame in the direction of the leprosarium, while the sisters hustled the women and children.

  The bells on the citadel started ringing dramatically faster, screaming in alarm, just as Sir Walter and two other knights clattered into the narrow street from the other end, all but trampling the lame who were still limping forward. “My lady! They’re on the outskirts of Nablus! You must return to the citadel!”

  “Not
until one of you takes that boy behind him!” Maria Zoë answered hysterically, pointing to the youth who had been helping them persuade the people to go to the citadel and was now guiding the sick and lame toward the leprosarium.

  Sir William shouted, “I’ve got him, madame! Go!” He drew up and reached out his arm to the youth. Without hesitation, the boy placed a foot on Sir William’s and flung his other leg over the horse’s croup to land behind Sir William’s saddle.

  They were riding at far too fast a pace. The horses’ hooves slipped on the pavement and more than once they stumbled, dangerously close to pitching their riders onto the cobbles. The houses sped by, but the citadel seemed no nearer. Sir William started regretting taking the boy onto his saddle. Without him, he would have been free to turn toward the approaching Saracens. If he could put himself between the leading Saracens and the Queen, he could stop one or two. The mere sight of their leaders being killed would give the others pause. Sir William had seen it happen dozens of times.

  At last they turned into a wider thoroughfare that led straight toward the narrow drawbridge and gate of the citadel. The Queen and the knights around her started drawing away, their horses unencumbered by the weight of two and the footing under their hooves finally firmer. There were other stragglers, however, running on foot from various quarters. One man, carrying his old mother in his arms, was clearly at the end of his strength. A woman was struggling with a babe in arms and two toddlers on her skirts. A man was leading his blind father.

  Sir William drew up and told his passenger, “Run for it! I’ll hold the Saracens.”

  “Alone?” the youth asked, incredulous.

  “Long enough for you and the others to get inside! Go!”

  The youth jumped down and ran, sweeping one of the toddlers up into his arms as he caught up with the mother. His example inspired a dozen men-at-arms to dash out from the gatehouse and start helping with the stragglers, too.