For all that, the Baron of Ibelin was not broken. He bowed formally to the Sultan, but when he righted himself he stood straight and yet at ease, his exceptional height giving him a certain sovereignty.
“So we meet again,” the Sultan opened, gesturing for Ibelin to sit where Farrukh-Shah had sat only moments earlier. Ibelin dutifully folded up his legs to sit cross-legged on the floor opposite the Sultan. The latter clapped his hands and iced water was brought to Ibelin, who took it with a faint smile that suggested he had somehow heard the story about the ice water offered Guy de Lusignan—but not Reynald de Châtillon—after the Battle of Hattin.
The Sultan considered his guest with his head tilted slightly to one side. “It pleases me to have you as my guest,” he remarked, adding, “I had hoped it would be sooner.”
Ibelin smiled faintly. “I cannot honestly say I am sorry to disappoint you.”
Salah ad-Din threw back his head and laughed before conceding, “Well said. Tell me one thing, though. When you charged, did you truly intend to kill me?”
“If I could have reached you with my sword, absolutely—even if it cost me my life, as it surely would have.”
“Why?”
“Because then your army would have collapsed in confusion—at least long enough for more of my compatriots to escape. Furthermore, the succession squabbles would have kept your empire preoccupied with itself long enough for us to recover. At least there was a chance of that happening. It was well worth the risk.”
“Um,” the Sultan answered noncommittally before pointing out, “the death of Guy de Lusignan, on the other hand, would have been more to your advantage than mine.”
Ibelin could not deny it, but he hesitated to confirm it, so he held his tongue. After waiting a few seconds for an answer, Salah ad-Din moved on. “You asked for this audience. What can I do for you?”
“I have heard rumors that you have requested the surrender of Jerusalem.”
Salah ad-Din raised his eyebrows. “Does that surprise you?”
“No,” Ibelin admitted. “The rumors say that you offered very generous terms.”
“And does that surprise you?” Salah ad-Din asked again, evidently amused.
“No,” Ibelin admitted a second time.
“I do not want to see the holy sites damaged,” the Sultan explained voluntarily. “Trebuchets and mangonels are far from accurate weapons. Even if I tried to avoid it, damage might occur to the Dome of the Rock or the Al-Aqsa mosque.”
“Indeed,” Ibelin concurred.
“Unfortunately,” Salah ad-Din continued, frowning, the annoyance in his voice too intense to be concealed, “these fools who claimed to represent Jerusalem, a collection of tradesmen and churchmen,” the Sultan dismissed them in disgust, “could not see reason! They would not think of surrender, although they have no chance of defending the city against my army. Fools and fanatics!” he spat out furiously.
“Fanatics are always dangerous,” Ibelin agreed cautiously.
Salah ad-Din looked over at him with sudden interest. “Do you think you could bring them to reason?” he asked hopefully, suddenly seeing a chance to use Ibn Barzan to get what he wanted: the intact surrender of Jerusalem.
“What exactly did they say to your offer of safe-conduct out of the city?” Ibelin asked back.
“They said they would never surrender the city where Christ had shed his blood for them! They said if they did, they would be damned for eternity. Or some such nonsense.” He dismissed the argument contemptuously.
Ibelin smiled wanly and, shaking his head, told the Sultan, “In that case—no, I will not be able to change their minds.”
“Why not?” the Sultan asked, annoyed. He was very angry about the refusal of the Franks to surrender Jerusalem, and he liked the idea of Ibn Barzan delivering it to him.
“If that was their answer,” Ibelin explained simply, “then they were not bargaining with you. They are preparing for martyrdom.”
“Martyrdom!” Salah ad-Din scoffed. His tone of voice was colored by his utter conviction that beyond death, no Christian could ever find anything but hell. Ibelin said nothing and waited for the Sultan to calm down. Salah ad-Din narrowed his eyes. “I have vowed to kill them all—just as you Franks killed all the inhabitants a hundred years ago.”
“We didn’t kill all the inhabitants,” Ibelin countered. “The Count of Toulouse saved many, and others survived as well—after the initial blood lust had slacked.” They stared at one another, neither willing to back down on this point. Finally Ibelin continued, “I do not think you will besmirch your name by insisting on the slaughter of women, children, and old people—after an example has been made, of course.”
“We will see.” Salah ad-Din was not willing to let any hint of possible mercy get into the enemy camp—at least not yet. “Why are you here, my lord? I do not think it was just to pass the time of day with me.” Salah ad-Din smiled courteously, but he clearly wanted Ibelin to come to the point.
“I wish permission—a safe-conduct—to travel to Jerusalem and bring my wife and family out—before you lay siege to it.”
“Ah.” Salah ad-Din considered his adversary. He honestly could not understand him. This man was undoubtedly intelligent and courageous, and at no previous time had he been as powerful as now. He was virtually King of Jerusalem. The Count of Tripoli had scuttled back to Tripoli, by all accounts a broken man. Edessa had taken his treasure and run to safety in Antioch. Sidon had sent word secretly that the great victories of the Sultan’s armies had convinced him that God favored Islam. He admitted that Christianity was “obsolete” and asked for instruction in the words of the Prophet. This Conrad de Montferrat was of good family, but the Sultan’s spies suggested he had fled Constantinople in fear for his life after some mysterious fallingout with the Emperor; he had neither followers nor titles here in Palestine. Ibn Barzan was the only man with any credibility, standing and authority in the entire Kingdom. And here he was, asking a favor of his enemy so he could secure his wife? Ridiculous. Wives were replaceable commodities and largely interchangeable. One was very much like another—at least, good, obedient wives were.
Then he remembered something. “You are married to the Dowager Queen, are you not?”
“Yes.”
Salah ad-Din thought about that. The Dowager Queen was a Byzantine princess, and he was anxious to remain on good terms with the Emperor in Constantinople. The Greeks, like the Arabs and Kurds, often killed their own brothers, uncles, and cousins in their power struggles, but they did not take kindly to other people killing their kinsmen. Letting a princess of Constantinople come to harm would not be politic, particularly if it was so easy to prevent. “All right,” he decided. “I will give you a safe-conduct to go to Jerusalem and remove your wife and family, under the following conditions: that you go unarmed and with no armed men in your train, and that you remain only a single night.”
“I accept those terms, your grace, and give you my word before Christ the Savior that I will uphold them.” Ibelin answered so rapidly and fervently that the Sultan sensed he had not expected to be successful. He was anxious to accept these terms before the Sultan changed his mind.
Salah ad-Din smiled and rose to his feet. “Go with my nephew, who will provide you with more substantial refreshment, while I have a scribe prepare the safe-conduct. I will also send a troop of my bodyguard to bring you within sight of Jerusalem and await you there.”
Ibelin bowed his head and smiled wryly. The escort would be very valuable getting him through the territory between Tyre and Jerusalem, as without them he might be dead long before someone bothered to read the safe-conduct. At the same time, the escort was also a way of reminding him that he moved at the Sultan’s pleasure—and that any violation of the terms of the agreement would be reported or punished immediately.
But that didn’t worry Balian. He had no intention of breaking the agreement.
Chapter 20
Jerusalem, July 24, 1187
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br /> JOHN HAD ESCAPED THE TEDIUM OF the classroom, the prattle of his siblings, and the droning of Father Angelus for the kitchens. It wasn’t that he was hungry—but it was in the kitchens that he learned the most about what was really going on. His mother and aunts, his tutors, and even the servants all wanted to “protect” him by not telling him what was happening. They treated him like a baby and kept telling him “everything will be all right,” when obviously it wasn’t!
Nablus, Ibelin, Ramla, and Mirabel had all fallen. Everything he had ever known as home was overrun by the enemy. Salah ad-Din’s forces controlled the countryside all around Jerusalem, and there were no knights left in the city. John understood perfectly that that meant there was no way they could defend themselves. He and his siblings, his mother, his aunts and tutors and servants—they were all trapped within the city, with no hope of relief.
What was more, John knew what happened to women and children when a city was sacked. They were rounded up and sold as slaves. The women would be violated and ravished—like Beth had been—and the children would be made to work, just like the kitchen boys turning the spit before the fire or the boys that scrubbed out the latrines. John shuddered—and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He tried to picture himself defending his sisters and little brother. He imagined saying, “My father is Balian d’Ibelin! And—” And what? They would laugh at him, because his father could not rescue him. His father could not even buy his freedom, because his father had nothing. With the loss of Ibelin, Ramla, Mirabel, and Nablus, they had lost all their land and income. Of course his mother and Master Shoreham had managed to bring most of their movable treasure here, but when Jerusalem fell that would all be seized as plunder by the Saracens.
“Master John!” It was the stern voice of Father Michael. John jumped and then looked over his shoulder with an expression of guilt mixed with rebelliousness on his face. “You’re supposed to be at your lessons, young man!” Father Michael admonished.
“What’s the point of learning Greek when the only language I’m going to need in the future is Arabic?” John flung furiously at Father Michael, his pent-up terror erupting in defiance.
Father Michael was taken aback for a second, but then reproached himself. John wasn’t a fool, and an eight-year-old could reason. The tutor went down on his heels to be at John’s eye level and looked him squarely in the face. “It is your Greek blood that might just save you. Your mother’s cousin is Emperor of the Greeks.” He was stretching the point somewhat—the Emperor Isaac II Angelus was only distantly related to Maria Zoë, but for John’s sake he was willing to exaggerate at little. He continued, “And he has made a truce with Salah ad-Din.”
John just stared at him, his lips a grim, defiant line.
Father Michael laid a hand on his shoulder and spoke in a gentler voice. “John, what good does it do to get in people’s way here?” They were very much underfoot at the moment, for dinner was over and the serving boys were trying to clean up and put things away. Several women were soaking rags in warm, sudsy water to wipe down the tables, while other servants were preparing to sweep out the hall. The cooks were busy sorting out the leftovers into things for reuse (such as the wine), alms for the poor, and bones for the dogs. Just outside the kitchen door, the usual crowd of beggars was waiting in the street for alms. They seemed louder than usual, even more aggressive.
Someone was shouting, “Ibelin! Ibelin!”—as if that would get them more food or fed faster, Father Michael noted with irritation.
Then the noise spilled out of the street into the kitchen itself when one of the scullery servants started squawking in a high-pitched voice: “A rider with the banner of Ibelin is approaching St. Stephen’s Gate.”
“A rider?”
“It must be a ruse!”
“There’s nothing but Saracens north of us!”
“It’s the Ibelin banner! Clear as day!”
“How many riders?”
“Just two.”
“That’s madness! If Ibelin were coming to our relief, he’d bring his whole three thousand men.”
“I tell you,” the scullion insisted. “They’ve seen it!”
John ducked down and darted for the door while the others were distracted. He dodged past the cook and the excited scullion and was outside before Michael could stop him.
In the street the crowd was more agitated than the scullion. Everyone was talking at once. “I told you he’d come!” someone kept repeating. Other people were asking more skeptically how he could have gotten through the enemy alone, and while holding his banner upright on a lance. Others were sure it was a trick. “If we open the gates to this rider, they’ll flood in!”
“How? He’s alone, with just one squire.”
A rider forced his way through the crowd, calling for them to make way. “I have a message for the Dowager Queen!” the man kept shouting. But they blocked his way, surrounding his horse and demanding his news.
“The Baron of Ibelin is approaching! Let me in!”
The crowd erupted into even more agitated discussion, but they let the rider continue to the main entrance, where he jumped down and disappeared inside. John was too far away to follow. Instead, he was trapped with the rest of the crowd, and from farther up the street the shouting had grown much louder. More: the shouting had turned to cheering. They were still shouting “Ibelin!” but it had become a chant. “Ib-lin! Ib-lin! Ib-lin!”
More people poured out of the houses and shops lining the street and crowded the balconies and the rooftops, trying to see what was going on. The cheers were coming nearer, growing louder. Everyone seemed to be shouting and waving, and John couldn’t see for all the people ahead of him. He pushed and squeezed, stamping on people’s feet and clawing his way forward, until he fought his way clear to the front. He looked up the street and could just make out two mounted men, the second of whom held upright a lance with the banner of Ibelin, but John had eyes only for the lead rider: it was his father!
John understood at once. His father had come to rescue them!
John wanted to run to him, but the crowds stood in his way. He shouted his father’s name and jumped up and down, but he was just one small child in a city awash with refugees and desperate residents. They all stood between him and his father: beggars and shopkeepers, refugees and priests, rich merchants and nuns who didn’t normally rub shoulders with the poor.
His father, meanwhile, was so completely surrounded by people that he was unable to advance another step. Scores of hands held his bridle so that the faithful Centurion fretted and tried to shake them off, while people clung to his father’s stirrups and Centurion’s trapper as well.
John could not hear what they were saying, but he understood their gestures. They did not understand that his father had come only to rescue his wife and children. They saw in the lord of Ibelin a nobleman, an experienced battle commander, the only lord to have fought his way out of the encirclement of Hattin with honor—not a father and husband. They saw him as the savior of Jerusalem itself.
That made John angry and frightened—because if his father stayed to defend Jerusalem, then he, his mother, his sisters, and his little brother would not be able to escape. His father had to say “no” to the others! He had to ignore them, and instead sweep John up onto his saddle and ride with him out of the city to safety.
John shouted and jumped up and down, trying to make himself seen and heard, until tears of frustration ran down his face. But it did no good.
Countless glass lanterns burned at the Patriarch’s palace, and the massive candles marked to measure the hours were burning, too. The gold halos around the Virgin Mary’s and saints’ heads on the wall murals caught the light and seemed to glow in the semi-darkness. When the candlelight wavered in the night air, the life-sized figured appeared to move, as if the saints and the Mother of God were taking part in the council. From outside came the restless murmurs of a crowd that would not disperse.
“I will a
bsolve you of your oath!” declared Heraclius with a dramatic gesture. Light from the candles and lamps glinted off the rings on his fingers. “What is an oath to a Saracen anyway?” he asked rhetorically. “Worthless! Meaningless! You owe it to Christ to remain here and take command!”
“Amen!” echoed the representatives of the guilds and merchant companies, crossing themselves emphatically.
The only one in the room who appeared to have the slightest sympathy for Ibelin’s situation was the Grand Hospitaller. The Hospitaller priest met Balian’s eyes with a look of great sorrow and shook his head to say he could not help him.
“There are more than sixty thousand people in this city, my lord!” the Pisan representative pointed out. “You cannot just abandon us!”
“Salah ad-Din offered you generous terms,” Ibelin reminded him.
The men around the table looked baffled, and Heraclius answered for them: “You can’t be serious! How can we surrender Jerusalem? This is the holiest site in Christendom! You know what happened when the Muslims controlled it. They razed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They slaughtered all the monks and priests in the city!” As he spoke, the Greek, Armenian, and Syrian Orthodox bishops nodded their heads solemnly.
“And what does Queen Sibylla say?” Ibelin asked, his eyes sweeping the room in a gesture to draw attention to her absence.
“She says she will not interfere. She will respect whatever decision we make,” Heraclius answered. “She has asked to be allowed to join her husband.”
Ibelin knew this already from Maria Zoë, so it did not surprise him, but he could not repress a snort of contempt—mostly for Heraclius’ sake.
“You should welcome the Queen’s attitude, my lord,” Heraclius countered. “She has abdicated her role to you—and so do I. I hereby publicly and irrevocably recognize you as the sole and supreme commander for the defense of Jerusalem.”
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