The Land Beyond the Sea

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Bohemond rose abruptly to his feet. “We cannot stand idly by whilst Armageddon looms, Cousin. Sybilla must be wed to a man who is a battle-seasoned commander and it must be done as soon as possible.”

  “You mean a Poulain? That makes sense. But Baldwin is bound and determined to forge a marital alliance with a western lord, one with ties to the kings of France or England.”

  “And what is more important, Baldwin’s wishes or the survival of his kingdom? It is well and good to seek a highborn husband for Sybilla. But that is a luxury we can no longer afford. It must be one of us, for time is as much our enemy now as Baldwin’s leprosy.”

  “I agree with you, Bohemond, about the need for urgency. But whom do you have in mind? There are few candidates who’d be acceptable to Baldwin and the High Court. Whilst my wife’s son is of noble birth, Hugues is just eighteen and lacks the battlefield experience we so desperately need. So does the late constable’s grandson, Humphrey de Toron, and he is even younger than Hugues. Even if Humphrey were suitable, I’d never agree to have Reynald de Chatillon’s stepson become a king in waiting. That man is a lunatic.”

  By now, Raymond was on his feet, striding back and forth. “There is only one man who meets your criteria—Baudouin d’Ibelin. Men would right willingly follow him into battle and he is known to us all, not a stranger who is ignorant of our ways. But the de Courtenays would never accept him as Sybilla’s husband. Nor would Baldwin. If he wanted Baudouin to wed his sister, he would have arranged the marriage after Sybilla ended her year of mourning. He prefers a prince and an alliance in the west.”

  “That is why Baldwin and the de Courtenays cannot be allowed to choose Sybilla’s next husband. We must make the choice for them.”

  “When you say ‘we,’ do you mean the High Court? Or you and I?”

  “I think the High Court will be willing to accept d’Ibelin as their next king.”

  It did not escape either Raymond or Eschiva that Bohemond had not really answered the question. After a heavy silence, Raymond said warily, “And how do we convince Baldwin to accept the marriage? What exactly do you have in mind, Cousin? Forcing him to abdicate?”

  “I do not believe it will come to that. Once Sybilla has a husband capable of governing and defending the realm, it is likely that Baldwin will want to give up his kingship. It has brought him little joy and much sorrow. I think he would welcome the chance to put that burden aside and live out his remaining days in peace and privacy. But we can be sure that the de Courtenays and their allies will balk, so I think it wise that we both bring enough men we can trust with us when we go to Jerusalem to meet with Baldwin.”

  Enough men we can trust. In other words, an army. Raymond gained some time to think while pouring more wine. “And what of Baudouin d’Ibelin? I think we can safely say that he’d be more than willing to marry Sybilla. But what if he remains Saladin’s prisoner?”

  Bohemond’s smile was complacent, almost smug. “Ah, you have not heard, then? Baudouin and Saladin have come to terms. Once he provides hostages, Baudouin will be set free to raise his ransom.”

  After another fraught silence, Raymond said that he must think upon all that Bohemond had related, and the other man seemed content to accept that, for he went willingly when the steward was summoned to find lodgings within the palace for him and his knights. He departed with the cheerful observation that no one would think it unusual if they arrived in Jerusalem as Easter drew nigh. What could be more natural than wanting to worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during this most sacred of seasons for Christians?

  Once they were alone in the solar, neither Raymond nor Eschiva spoke, for what was there to say? Bohemond was right. Now that the Duke of Burgundy was not going to be the kingdom’s savior, what else could they do?

  * * *

  Balian was awaiting word from Saladin, at which time he would journey to Damascus and escort his brother home. He did not expect that to happen for another fortnight, though, and so he was very surprised when Baudouin arrived in Nablus at dusk on Palm Sunday. For a time, all was joyful chaos. After the brothers embraced, Baudouin kissed Maria and Isabella next, with an exaggerated gallantry that made them both laugh. Scooping up his young son then, he explained that once his hostages had reached Damascus, there was no reason to delay his release. And since his captive knights were being freed with him, he had no need of an escort.

  His arrival had interrupted their supper and the meal was going cold by the time they trooped into the great hall. Baudouin seemed in high spirits, bantering with Balian, bragging that he’d learned some choice Arabic curses, delighting Isabella and Thomasin with a comic tale of a chameleon he’d befriended during his confinement. Even they did not believe him when he claimed he’d taught the lizard more tricks than Isabella’s dog, but they shrieked with laughter when he confided that he’d named the chameleon Balian.

  Had a stranger witnessed the boisterous scene, he might have concluded that the man at the center of attention must have been an honored guest of the sultan, not a prisoner. Balian knew better. He noticed that although Baudouin was talking nonstop, he was saying very little, and there was a brittle edge to his laughter. So Balian asked no questions, listened and smiled and kept the wine flowing. Once the meal was finally over, he brought his brother up to date on happenings in the kingdom during his absence. Highborn French lords had come and gone, he related, and Bishop Joscius and Archbishop Eraclius had returned from their sojourn in the west. Archbishop William was still in Constantinople, negotiating with the emperor on Baldwin’s behalf. The French king had suffered a seizure and was not likely to recover, resulting in unrest throughout his realm, but they still expected the Duke of Burgundy to sail for Outremer sometime that spring. Baudouin grimaced at that, making a dubious jest about the duke’s ship going down in a squall. He was among friends here, though, who were willing to overlook his reluctance to see Sybilla wed to another man.

  Balian had been judicious in what he’d chosen to share, feeling that Baudouin need not be confronted with bad news immediately upon his return. So he did not tell his brother that the odious Gerard de Ridefort had managed to gain the post of marshal, proving Fortune could favor the unworthy as well as the deserving, or that Baldwin’s health continued to deteriorate.

  After Isabella and Thomasin had been ushered off to bed and pallets were being set up in the aisles of the great hall for Baudouin’s knights, Balian rose, saying he had a surprise for his brother. Baudouin had retained a childlike love of surprises and the fact that he did not bombard Balian with guesses offered further proof that his jovial mood was camouflage. But once he’d been led abovestairs to a small room below Balian and Maria’s bedchamber, there was genuine joy in his exclamation as he saw the cradle.

  “Good for you, Little Brother!” Slapping Balian on the back, he almost awakened the baby with his elated shout when Balian revealed that Maria had given him a son, named John after her father.

  The wet nurse had discreetly disappeared, giving them a rare moment of privacy. For a time, the two men stood by the cradle, gazing at the sleeping infant, swaddled in linen and cocooned in innocence, mercifully unaware that he’d been born in a land under siege, at a time when the future of their kingdom had rarely seemed so precarious. Baudouin leaned over to stroke the baby’s wispy dark hair before crossing the chamber to the window seat. “I am glad for you, lad,” he said, suddenly sounding very tired. “Thank God you listened to me when I told you to go and claim your queen. You should make heeding me a habit from now on.”

  Balian joined him in the window seat, his eyes intently searching his brother’s face, for he thought he’d glimpsed a gap when Baudouin had smiled. “You lost a tooth?”

  Baudouin studied him in silence for a moment. “I did not ‘lose’ it,” he said grimly. “It was taken from me, as was this one.” Pulling his lip back to reveal a second empty space where a tooth had once been. “I balk
ed at the ransom Saladin demanded, knowing it would have been my ruination and mayhap yours, too.”

  Balian was not surprised that Baudouin had been so loath to pay the ransom, for he’d been staggered by the size of it—two hundred thousand dinars and the release of a thousand Muslim prisoners, including ‘Īsā al-Hakkari, who’d been captured at Montgisard. Balian had not expected the sultan to resort to torture, though, and some of his rising anger was directed at himself for being so trusting. “What happened?” he asked, even though he did not really want to know.

  “Saladin was angry when I continued to refuse his extortion. He finally lost patience and told his amir jandar—the officer responsible for carrying out such orders—to convince me that it was in my best interests to pay the ransom. That accursed swine decided to see what I valued more, my money or my teeth.” Baudouin slumped back against the wall. “I did my best,” he said softly, sounding almost apologetic, “but after they pulled the second tooth, I gave in. I do not think I’d ever experienced pain like that, not even when I was hit by a crossbow and they had to cut the bolt out. . . .”

  Balian had too vivid an imagination for his own good and he felt as if his brother’s pain had become his own. Reaching over, he grasped the other man’s arm, hoping the gesture would convey what he could not put into words. He knew Baudouin would be embarrassed if he tried to express what he was feeling at that moment.

  “I am sorry, lad,” Baudouin said after a long silence. “Even if I sell every acre I own, every horse and sheep and camel on my demesnes, I cannot raise a sum so vast. It is likely to impoverish us both and it still will not be enough. And it is not just our family that will suffer. What of the liegemen who pledged their freedom for me? Hostages are treated better than prisoners of war, yet if I cannot pay . . .”

  “There is another way, Baudouin. Maria thinks that her great-uncle can be persuaded to pay the greater part of your ransom.” Balian had entertained a few misgivings about Maria’s offer, for Baudouin’s pride could assert itself at the most inopportune moments. He saw now that he need not have worried; Baudouin looked like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a rope.

  “God bless her!” Leaping to his feet, Baudouin pulled Balian up, too, and into an exuberant embrace. The hug was punctuated by a wail. Torn from sleep, John was making his unhappiness known—to all within hearing range. Both Balian and Baudouin were at a loss, for although they had six children between them, neither man had much experience in soothing screaming babies. When rocking the cradle did not placate John, Balian picked him up; that did not work, either. But the baby’s shrieking had been heard by Dame Rohese, his wet nurse. Balian gratefully surrendered John to her as she hastened into the chamber.

  Eventually, calm returned to the nursery. Announcing that he must find Maria and declare himself her paladin forever and aye, Baudouin headed toward the door. His spirits had soared now that he knew he was not facing penury and he began to laugh. “I am feeling like one of Dame Fortune’s favorites of a sudden. Mayhap she will even see to it that the Duke of Burgundy has a change of heart and leaves Sybilla at the altar, a jilted bride in need of a groom.”

  * * *

  Anselm had rarely felt so helpless. He’d come to love the young king, awed by his rare courage and unflagging sense of duty, and he ached to see Baldwin so heartsick. There was nothing he could do, though. He could not even express his sympathy, for that would not be seemly. Watching as Baldwin limped around the bedchamber, picking up and discarding items at random, he knew that Baldwin was delaying going to bed, dreading the nightmares that had returned with a vengeance. They’d come back after Humphrey de Toron’s death, but they’d never been as bad as this, turning Holy Week into a sleepless ordeal from dusk to dawn, for Baldwin began to fear them as soon as daylight began to wane.

  Anselm had been with the king two days ago when the letter from the Archbishop of Tyre had arrived. He remembered how pleased Baldwin had been when he saw William’s familiar wax seal and, then, the moment when Baldwin learned that the Duke of Burgundy would not be marrying Sybilla, for he’d gone bone white, gasping, “Jesu, no!” There had been so much anguish in that cry that the mere memory was enough to bring tears to Anselm’s eyes. More than anyone else, he understood how much Baldwin had been relying upon the duke’s arrival. He’d joked once or twice that it would be like getting a reprieve on the steps of the gallows, humor so dark that Anselm had surreptitiously made the sign of the cross. And now the noose was back around Baldwin’s neck, so tight he could scarcely breathe.

  Anselm tensed when Baldwin stumbled, his shambling leper’s gait so unsteady that he was always in danger of falling. This time he kept his balance and hobbled toward the closest chair. “My fever has come back,” he said, and Anselm hurried to add an herbal potion to Baldwin’s night wine. He’d suspected that Baldwin was ailing again, for his appetite was off and he was coughing more than usual. Anselm knew that most people shared the usual misconceptions about leprosy—that it was highly contagious, that it was either punishment for carnal sins or God’s blessing in disguise, that it was always fatal. His years with the leper knights had taught Anselm that it was no more infectious than other maladies and it was not lethal. Lepers died from the ailments that followed in leprosy’s wake—pleurisy, consumption, the bloody flux, lung and hectic and quartan fever, the red plague. People of all ages and classes were stricken by these contagions, but it seemed to Anselm that they preyed upon lepers more than the healthy. He’d once asked Baldwin’s doctor why this was so, getting no satisfactory response, and he’d eventually concluded that mayhap it was God’s mercy, ending a leper’s suffering so he could be rewarded in Paradise.

  “What are you thinking, Anselm? You’ve the oddest look on your face.”

  Anselm was startled to see Baldwin regarding him with a quizzical smile. “Nothing of importance, sire,” he said hastily, holding out the cup of medicated wine. Baldwin made a face, but he dutifully took a few swallows. Their fingers brushed as he handed the cup back, and Anselm was pleased that Baldwin did not recoil as he’d once done. Whenever he watched the king struggle to avoid putting others at risk, Anselm always felt a dart of sadness, thinking his young lord must be starved for the touch of a hand on his, for the daily human contacts that others took for granted.

  It was Anselm’s awareness of that need which changed his opinion of the king’s mother. He’d heard nothing but evil of her prior to entering Baldwin’s service, and he’d soon decided that she’d earned her notoriety; she was sharp-tongued, suspicious, and arrogant . . . save with her son. With him, she seemed to have infinite patience, boundless reservoirs of maternal love. A Templar had once told Anselm that soldiers often cried out for their mothers as they lay dying. He’d been skeptical, for his own mother had chased after him and his brothers with a broom and doled out praise with a miser’s stinginess. After viewing Baldwin and his mother together, he was no longer so dubious.

  When the door opened suddenly and he saw the king’s mother standing there, Anselm drew a sharp breath, for it was almost as if he’d conjured her up from his own thoughts. She was no figment of his imagination, though. Brushing past Anselm as if he were invisible, she hastened across the chamber toward her son. “Thank God you are still awake, Baldwin!”

  “What is wrong, Mother?” Baldwin added “Uncle?” for Joscelin had entered the chamber after Agnes. While he did not like them bursting in like this, he did not object, for they both were visibly shaken.

  “We must talk with you in private, Baldwin.” Glancing over her shoulder, Agnes said curtly, “You are dismissed, Anselm.”

  “No, he is not.”

  Agnes had learned not to argue with Baldwin whenever she heard that steeliness in his voice. Instead, she swung around on Anselm, who was so startled that he took a backward step. “Swear on the surety of your soul,” she hissed, “that you will never repeat to a living soul what you hear tonight.”

&n
bsp; “I . . . I do, madame,” he stammered, torn between wanting to be of help to Baldwin and wanting to be out of range of those icy blue eyes.

  Baldwin sat upright, squaring his shoulders as he braced for yet more calamitous news. The commotion had awakened his dog, who’d been napping under his bed. Scrambling out, Cairo began to bark loudly until Baldwin silenced him. His mother was usually annoyed by the dog’s barking; that she did not even look his way now was not a good sign. “Pour wine for us, Anselm,” he said, sensing they were going to need it. “What has happened?”

  “Do you know a man named Sir Gervase Vernier?” When Baldwin shook his head, Agnes seemed to straighten her own shoulders, lifting her chin. “He is one of the Count of Tripoli’s household knights and stands high in Raymond’s favor. He is also my spy and has been for years.”

  Agnes could not keep defiant color from staining her cheeks, for she knew Baldwin did not approve of her personal spy network. But he did not comment upon that now, instead saying tersely, “Go on.”

  “Raymond and the Prince of Antioch are on their way to Jerusalem. Gervase avoided accompanying them by feigning illness. As soon as they were gone, he saddled his best mount and took another route. A lone rider can always outrace an army and he reached Jerusalem tonight, coming straight to me. After this, he cannot return to Raymond’s service, but that is how urgent his message was.”

  “An army? Or an escort? Which is it, Mother?”

  “An army, Baldwin.”