Defender of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  Balian shook his head. “If I go, I will go on foot.”

  “You don’t want to go?” Sir Mathewos was surprised.

  Balian shook his head. For Sir Mathewos he added, “My presence might be disruptive. I will give thanks in the chapel here.”

  Sir Mathewos saw through him. He cocked his head slightly. “You think we are celebrating too soon?”

  “It is never too soon, or too late, to thank the Lord. I am thankful for this respite. We all needed it.”

  “But you think Salah ad-Din will be back,” Mathewos finished for him.

  Balian only sighed in answer.

  The bells of the Holy Sepulcher started chiming, and from across the city the other churches answered, until the whole city was deafened by the triumphant sound of pealing bells. Balian stood with his hands on the railing, and reminded himself he had thought just this morning never to hear such a joyous sound again. It was beautiful.

  Then he went inside and gave orders for a feast. He told the cook to take the very best things they had left in his cellars and to make a meal for the entire household. He told them to spare neither flesh nor sugar, spices nor wine. Then he went out to inspect the walls.

  The sentries left on duty were, understandably, not very alert. Some were drinking. From the walls, furthermore, Balian could clearly hear rowdy singing coming from some of the taverns down near Tanner’s and Mount Zion Gates, as well as more pious singing from the Patriarch’s quarter and the Armenian cathedral.

  He found Sir Roger at the Citadel. Apparently he shared Balian’s assessment of the Saracen and was prowling around trying to ensure a minimum of preparedness—or was he just trying to keep his grief at bay?

  “What do you think Salah ad-Din will do next?” Sir Roger asked his lord before Balian could get a word out—as if forestalling condolences for the loss of his son. “He’s not going to just give up! He can’t afford to leave us here, and he didn’t even try to negotiate with us.”

  “I think he will redeploy his forces opposite the Postern of St. Mary Magdalene,” Ibelin answered truthfully.

  “Why there?” Sir Roger asked.

  “Because that is where Godfrey de Bouillon forced a breach eighty-eight years ago.”

  Sir Roger grunted as he registered how much sense this made, but then asked, “Why didn’t he attack there in the first place?”

  “Because he didn’t want to risk harming the Dome of the Rock with his siege engines. From his previous position he only had the Holy Sepulcher in range, and it suited him fine to risk setting that alight or bashing it down altogether. If he deploys siege engines north of St. Mary Magdalene, or on the Mount of Olives, it will be almost impossible not to cause damage to the Dome of the Rock.”

  Sir Roger looked at his lord, amazed. “How do you know all that? How can you be so sure Salah ad-Din won’t risk damaging the Temple of God just because it was once a mosque?”

  Ibelin paused as he thought about this, and then realized the truth. “He told me so. He said the reason he offered the residents of Jerusalem freedom in exchange for surrender was that he did not want to risk damage to either the Dome of the Rock or the Temple of Solomon, which was also formerly a mosque.”

  “In that case, maybe he’ll try to attack from the southwest,” Sir Roger suggested hopefully. There was a steep hill to the southwest, offering natural advantages to the defenders.

  “Maybe,” Ibelin agreed, but they both knew he was still convinced the assault would come from the north. Balian hesitated. He couldn’t just walk away, ignoring Daniel’s sacrifice. “Roger.” He dropped the “sir” intentionally.

  Roger seemed to wince; he’d heard the change in Ibelin’s voice.

  “I—I don’t know how to express my condolences. What Daniel did—what the lepers did—”

  Roger had been repressing grief with work for almost twenty-four hours. Now it welled up from his chest with such force it took him by surprise. It overpowered him, making him speechless.

  Balian had no choice but to continue. “Daniel was—you must be very proud of him.”

  Roger nodded, and then croaked out, “He was the best of them!”

  At a loss for words, Balian embraced Roger. The older man dropped his head to cover his face and stood biting his lip to keep from crying. They stood like that for several seconds, and then Sir Roger got hold of himself and stepped back out of the embrace. He still avoided Balian’s eyes, but he admitted, “I tried to find his body when we returned from our sortie. I wanted to give him a proper burial. To let Michael say a Mass over him. But I couldn’t find any of the lepers. I think they burned them.”

  “No, I think Daniel was the one to get inside the siege tower and set it on fire. I think he and the others burned themselves—and in so doing, they have evaded the fires of hell. I think they are with King Baldwin and Christ, restored to health, strength, and beauty.”

  Roger nodded, because if he opened his mouth he would sob. Balian turned away quickly to let Daniel’s father cry in privacy.

  Gradually the city quieted down. Most people had been strained to the limits of their endurance, and rapidly fell into an exhausted sleep after the first euphoria had worn off. Although the hospital was still crowded, the fact that there had been no new wounded all day long gave the sisters and brothers a respite as well. The dead were removed, and they even managed to do a little cleaning up while sleeping in shifts. Sister Adela took to her bed and was out cold for twelve hours.

  Sir Galeran, his leg wound freshly bandaged, and the other new knights bedded down again in the great hall of the palace, feeling like the heroes of a chanson de geste. Sir Constantine, having slept earlier, replaced Sir Roger on the wall. Beth nestled deep and content in Dawit’s arms, while Gabriel and Tsion made love in the loft over their heads.

  Balian withdrew to his bedchamber. Someone, probably the loyal and discreet Georgios, had thought to lay a fire for him, so he pulled up the great armchair and tossed two of Maria Zoë’s silk cushions into it. He poured himself wine from a silver pitcher into one of the glass goblets with the crosses of Jerusalem enameled on them that Maria Zoë cherished but had been unable to take with her. He sank down onto the chair and stretched his legs toward the fire. The folds of his long surcoat fell to the floor.

  If only Maria Zoë were here, he thought. It would have been so good to talk to her, to share his doubts and misgivings and hear her common sense rebuttals. It would have lightened his burden just to be able to talk about it. It would have been heaven to hold her in his arms, to breathe in her always sweet-smelling flesh and hair—much less lose himself in her embrace.

  He looked down into his goblet, holding the pale yellow wine from Ibelin that he loved so well. They had opened the last cask of it for the feast tonight, and when he finished this last pitcher he would never taste it again. He’d been all but weaned on this wine, he thought. It was as much a part of him as the blooming pomegranate orchards—which he would also never see again.

  Abruptly he was seized by fury. For ten weeks he had been too busy surviving—and helping others survive—to think about everything he’d lost. He had been too numbed by the sheer magnitude of the collective disaster to feel the personal loss he had endured. Suddenly it was all so vivid: he was about to die for nothing because his death would bring no one any good. Without Ibelin he was nothing. Without Ibelin he had nothing to bequeath his sons.

  In a sudden rage he flung the empty goblet into the fireplace. The shattered fragments burst in all directions, cutting the back of his hand and dousing a corner of the fire. He burst into hysterical laughter. He was baron of nothing in a kingdom that no longer existed.

  Jerusalem, September 26-28, 1187

  Salah ad-Din’s army returned on September 26. It now curled around the northeast corner of the city, and the Sultan’s large, handsomely embroidered tent crowned the Mount of Olives directly opposite the Dome of the Rock. The Christian defenders could only watch helplessly as the Saracens felled the olive
trees under which, it was said, Christ had once slept. Far worse, the Sultan’s army had been reinforced; it now contained at least one trebuchet and more than a score of mangonels.

  While the mangonels and trebuchet remained directed at the Patriarch’s quarter rather than the Syrian quarter in the northeast, no less than ten siege towers were concentrated around the north-east corner. By September 27 it was obvious why: Salah ah-Din had brought battalions of engineers to undermine the walls of Jerusalem. The engineers advanced under the cover of shields and a furious arrow barrage to the dry ditch. There they nestled down under substantial wooden roofs, supported by the edge of the ditch, to dig under the foundations of the wall.

  The defenders could see timber being brought up and rock being transported back. Unless they could stop the digging, it was just a matter of time before the foundations were carted away and the wall collapsed. But Salah ad-Din was taking no chances of a new sortie. Not only were there infantry guards around the miners, a body of cavalry was also kept constantly mounted and within sight. The Christians could mark the end of each watch when one troop of cavalry was replaced by another. The troop on duty was always alert and ready—and just out of range of the Christian archers.

  Meanwhile the bombardment of the city continued to take its toll of casualties, and the city’s water supplies were being drained at an exceptional rate by the constant need to put out fires. After the false sense of redemption that had overtaken the city on September 25, the sense of futility was all the more intense now. Morale began to crack.

  The number of women reporting to the field kitchens fell off sharply, to the point where several of the kitchens had to be abandoned. Even fewer women were prepared to risk going up on the walls to bring water to the archers, and men started to drop due to heat stroke and dehydration. The boys, so eager just a few days before to help carry arrows up to the ramparts, had disappeared into the dark back alleys of the city whence they’d come, and those that remained were at the end of their juvenile strength.

  Likewise, fewer and fewer volunteers came to help wind cotton around the arrows, and all the lepers were dead. Beth found herself working with just three others. The work had always been hot, dirty, and exhausting; now she found herself full of resentment towards those who didn’t help—like Tsion, who stayed safe inside the Ibelin palace playing with little Menelik.

  Beth’s anger was only a weak defense against her growing sense of desperation. They had done everything they could! They had fought so gallantly. The lepers had sacrificed themselves, becoming human torches to destroy the siege towers. The Baron of Ibelin had led his knights, including Dawit, on a daring sortie. Her father-in-law never seemed to sleep at all. They had done their best and more. Why didn’t God help them? Why were the Saracens stronger than ever? Why? Why? Why? she asked, near to tears as she dipped another arrow in the boiling tar.

  Father Michael had become numb. He literally did not hear the confessions any more, although he absolved everyone. His mind was elsewhere, trying to grasp the will of God. Just because we pray “Thy will be done” doesn’t mean we mean it, he thought to himself. Or was that what he meant? What he meant was surely that just because things happened didn’t mean they were God’s will? The Antichrist was powerful, too. And people who denied the divinity of Christ never prayed to Him, and so could not be guided by Him. And they were surrounded by men who denied the divinity of Christ; so all those men were not doing God’s will, but they were systematically destroying Jerusalem and the Christians trapped inside. But if God wanted, then surely he could come to the aid of His people? But maybe too many of His people were terrible sinners, even if Father Michael was giving them absolution. Was it really God’s will that he give absolution to terrible sinners just because they happened to be defending Jerusalem? But that wasn’t why he was giving them absolution. He was giving the absolution because they repented. Wasn’t he?

  Sister Adela was numb, too, at least with respect to the wounded. Her worries were shifting to her sisters. With each passing hour she was becoming more and more convinced that the city was going to fall. She had not left the Hospital compound since the start of the siege, and she had consequently lost a sense of how many healthy fighting men were still left. From her perspective, the fighting capacity of the city was draining away—in the blood they flushed out of the yard every morning, and the endless cortege of corpses that moved steadily between the Hospital and the bowels of the Temple. With each dead man, the moment when the enemy would flood into the city to claim the victor’s spoils drew nearer.

  Sister Adela had no illusions about her fate and that of her sisters. Nuns, unlike noblewomen, would be part of the spoils. Even Christian soldiers had been known to violate nuns, usually in blood lust or when besotted with drink—but such actions were condemned by secular and sacred authorities, and the perpetrators were usually punished. Muslim soldiers, on the other hand, would not be acting in violation of law and tradition, but with the full approbation of their leaders. Nuns were viewed as whores by the Saracens because they were married to three men at the same time: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  When the city fell, she and all the sisters of the Hospital would be brutally raped, probably multiple times by a variety of men, and then sold into a slavery that would entail perpetual rape for the rest of their lives. That was the reality they were facing. Did any of them want to live under those circumstances? Knowing that there was no hope of rescue?

  Sister Adela knew she did not want to live like that. She knew she would rather die. But to turn a weapon on herself would be a terrible sin—and worse, a sin from which she could not repent. To ask one of her brothers to kill her and the other nuns was to ask him to commit a sin, albeit one for which he could receive absolution. The sortie of the lepers kept running through her mind. They had not taken their own lives; they had simply taken actions that led to certain death. Wasn’t there something similar that she and the sisters of the Hospital could do? An act of heroism that fell short of taking their own lives, and yet ensured that they would be dead before the first Saracen soldier could brutally batter his way through their fragile maidenheads to leave them bleeding in their own tears of shame?

  Godwin Olafsen had not allowed his forge to go out for over a week. Sir Mathewos had told him from the start that his job was not on the walls, not fighting with his grandfather’s great ax, but keeping the weapons of the others serviceable. And there had been so much work to be done! In a city with twelve thousand fighting men struggling day and night, there were always swords, axes, daggers, shields, helmets, and hauberks in desperate need of repair.

  The young Armenian soldier who pounded on the door, dragging Godwin from an exhausted sleep, was desperate. The head of his ax had become loose when he used it to hack away at the bridge of one of the siege towers that had dropped on to the wall. Now it wobbled uselessly. The terror of the nearly successful assault made just before dusk was audible in his voice, and detectable in the stench he gave off as well. Godwin guessed the young man hadn’t been out of his clothes since the start of the siege and that he’d lost control of his bowels at some point.

  Godwin nodded and let him into the forge, telling him to sit on the bench by the door while he stoked the fire. “When was the last time you had something to eat?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “I don’t remember,” the soldier mumbled.

  “If you work these bellows, I’ll go fetch you something,” Godwin offered.

  The soldier numbly took over the bellows while Godwin went into the kitchen and rummaged around until he found an old loaf of bread and a bit of hard cheese. He put these on a wooden cutting board and brought them back out to the soldier. He then took the ax and examined it. Nodding, he put it down, and went back to the bellows.

  The door from the kitchen banged open, and Sven stood in it on his crutches. He was wearing nothing but his nightshirt.

  “Sven!” his father called. “Go back to bed! I can manage.”<
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  “No,” Sven answered stubbornly and swung himself over to his stool, where he sank down, dropping the crutches. The Armenian soldier gaped in amazement as the little boy took over the bellows and his father set to work on repairing the ax.

  It didn’t take more than a half-hour, but by then the Armenian soldier had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly with his head against the wall. Godwin smiled and hesitated to wake him, but then he realized he’d sleep more comfortably in his own bed. He shook him by the shoulder and handed him the ax.

  The Armenian came out of his deep sleep disoriented and still half-dreaming. Seeing a man leaning over him with an ax, he mistook Godwin for the enemy. He reared up with a roar, lunged for the ax, lost his footing, and fell headlong onto the floor with a groan. Then he realized where he was and apologized profusely as he pulled himself onto all fours and then to his feet, dusting himself off. “Sorry, sir! Sorry! I was dreaming!”

  “No harm done,” Godwin answered with a weary smile as he handed him the ax.

  “Thank you! Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

  Godwin shook his head. “Go with God, young man. What good is money to me now?”

  The Armenian thanked him again and departed, but no sooner was he out the door than Godwin faced a more dangerous being: his wife. Standing with her hands on her hips she mocked him, “What good is money to me now?” adding: “First you give the most valuable sword you’ve ever made—a sword that cost you half a fortune to forge—to a baron—a baron who could have paid for it tenfold! And now you’re doing work for every Tom, Dick, and Harry for free!” As she spoke, she was working herself into a frenzy. “Where are we supposed to get coin to put bread on the table, if you give away your labor for free? Don’t you care about me and your little girls?” In her hysteria she kept raising her voice until her cries were loud enough to wake the dead. “You bastard! You bastard! I wish I could kill you!” she screamed and then fled, slamming the door behind her.