Envoy of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  “No, of course not—no more than it is your fault that we are prisoners, that the Kingdom of Jerusalem is lost, that thousands of Christian corpses lie rotting on the field of Hattin unshriven, that—”

  “Stop it! We’ve been through all that a thousand times. You insist on blaming me, and I know I am not to blame! Gerard de Ridefort gave me bad advice—”

  “You didn’t have to take it!”

  “What’s done is done. I’m here about something else.”

  Aimery considered his brother with a sense of hopelessness. Guy might be able to wash himself clean of all guilt for the catastrophe that had befallen them, but Aimery could not. He was honest enough to know he, too, bore his share of guilt—if only for encouraging Guy to come to Outremer, and more especially for enabling him to become King against the wishes of the High Court.

  Guy meanwhile was studying his elder brother, and he was not pleased by what he saw. Aimery was letting himself go, Guy noted with disapproval and a sense of superiority. He was haggard, growing a beard, and he smelled unwashed. But Guy still needed his advice. So Guy dropped his voice and took his brother by the elbow to move with him to the back of the vault with the words, “We need to talk.”

  Aimery did not resist; his will was lamed. He could not forget, as Guy apparently did, that their father had spent five years in a Saracen prison and died there. Aimery, furthermore, had been a prisoner of the Saracens once before. Shortly after first coming to Outremer, he had fallen into Saracen hands and been locked away in a worse place than this. At the time, he’d been unable to imagine how his brothers still in France would learn of his capture, much less how his eldest brother might be persuaded to pay his ransom. When he learned King Amalric had paid his ransom, he’d been overwhelmed with gratitude. He still prayed for the dead King’s soul, but the memory of that previous rescue only increased his current state of depression. While his oldest brother was as far away as ever, the King of Jerusalem was right here beside him—and there was no Kingdom left from which to raise the ransom.

  “Sibylla’s pregnant,” Guy whispered into the dank, stagnant air of the dungeon.

  Aimery stared apparently blankly at his brother before remarking resentfully, “Congratulations.” Guy’s wife had surrendered herself voluntarily to the enemy so she could be with her husband, thereby giving Salah ad-Din control of the woman through whom Guy derived his claim to the throne. The way Aimery saw it, it had been political idiocy, but it had given Guy the pleasures of sex.

  “Aimery! I thought at least you’d understand,” Guy hissed. “What if it’s a son? What if Salah ad-Din seizes the boy and raises him a Muslim?”

  Aimery raised his eyebrows. The idea was far-fetched—or was it? “Well, then, send your wife away before the Sultan finds out about her condition. She came here voluntarily; she should be allowed to go again at will. She could feign illness or some such thing.”

  “Do you really think the Sultan might let her go?” Guy asked dubiously.

  Aimery shrugged. He didn’t really care. Even if Guy and Sibylla had a son, he had no kingdom to inherit anyway—or not a Christian one. He might just as well be Muslim, and then he might be made emir of Jerusalem one day. To his brother he said, “There’s no harm in asking.”

  “Sibylla might not want to go,” Guy admitted, thinking out loud. “She loves me so well, she can’t bear being parted.”

  Aimery wanted to vomit. Guy was so proud of his wife’s loyalty and devotion, when it was actually the cause of catastrophic misfortune. If she’d been willing to divorce Guy as she promised before her coronation, the Kingdom might have had a competent leader, one who would have led them to victory rather than defeat. To his brother he remarked, “Well, then, you’ll have to remind her of her duty of obedience. She did vow at your wedding to obey you, remember.”

  “You’re jealous of her love for me,” Guy concluded condescendingly. “Eschiva could have come with Sibylla, but she chose to go to Tyre with the Dowager Queen and Isabella instead.”

  “Eschiva put the welfare of our children above our personal affection,” Aimery replied with as much dignity as he could muster. If he hadn’t been so despondent, his brother’s gloating would have made him angry.

  “Of course,” Guy agreed in a placating tone. “Of course.”

  “Let us hope your wife will show the same concern for her offspring, now that she is pregnant at last,” Aimery replied pointedly.

  “Of course. I’ll go talk to her. And the Sultan? How do I ask him about this?”

  “Why don’t you have young Toron write a letter for you? Unlike the rest of us, he can write, not just speak, Arabic.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” Guy agreed, and without further ado he turned and hurried back toward the exit, determined to carry out his plans at once.

  Aimery sank back onto his pallet. It was filled with old straw and lumpy. He lay down on his back and stared up at the stone blocks of the ceiling. He had no idea if it was day or night, but probably day or his brother wouldn’t have been walking around, he reasoned. He was no longer sure exactly how many days he’d been here, although he scratched the wall beside his pallet each time they were fed on the assumption they were fed daily. There were now sixty-seven scratches on the wall. His last imprisonment had lasted exactly ninety-six days and he had nearly gone mad in that space of time. Reynald de Châtillon, on the other hand, had survived fifteen years in a dungeon.

  Aimery shook himself. He had to want to survive—even if it were for fifteen years in this darkness. He had to find ways to survive. He had a son and two lovely daughters, and no matter what Guy said about her, Eschiva was a good and faithful wife. Furthermore, Eschiva was more intelligent than Sibylla, and she knew she could do more for him by staying free and raising his ransom than by sharing his captivity. Eschiva had made the right choice to stay with the Dowager Queen and Princess Isabella. They were the very best hope Aimery had of freedom. As long as Eschiva was in the company of these powerful women, she was in a position to petition his brothers in France. Even more promising, Isabella’s first cousin was King Henry II of England. If anyone could ransom the men captured at Hattin, it was King Henry. He was immensely wealthy, and he had already pledged to come on pilgrimage before the disaster at Hattin. He would surely come now to regain the Holy Land, and he would want men around him who knew the country. Who better than the former Constable of the Kingdom?

  Aimery knew he was grasping at straws, but he had to or he would go mad.

  “Ah, so you are the famous Lord Humphrey de Toron!” the elderly Saracen exclaimed with a smile and a gracious gesture, indicating that the prisoner should sit opposite him on a waiting cushion on the floor. He was obviously not a fighting man and wore neither arms nor armor. Nor was he a wealthy merchant clothed in the bright colors and elaborate styles of the souks and bazaars. Instead, he was dressed in the simple, striped kaftan of a humble man—except that the cotton was crisply clean and exceptionally fine, and he had several gold rings on his fingers.

  Humphrey bowed over his hands in thanks and sank warily down on the cushion, acutely conscious of how badly he smelled. He had not been given an opportunity to wash since his capture at Hattin. The dried blood had eventually just worn off, but the accumulated dirt and the stench of his own body only got worse. “I apologize,” he said, bowing his head again, “for my sorry and unwashed state. It is not my habit to go about smelling worse than a stable and as dirty as a peasant.”

  The man opposite smiled in sympathy. “Be assured, I do not think you ill-mannered. Rather, I will do all in my power to see you are given the opportunity to wash and obtain a change of clothes. Let me introduce myself: I am Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani. I had the great honor to serve the illustrious Sultan Nur ad-Din, may Allah show him mercy, as his secretary, and, undeserving as I am, the brave Salah ad-Din, may God’s blessing upon him a thousand-fold, has, in his infinite wisdom, seen fit to allow me to continue in the same humble position, for which I thank Al
lah five times a day.”

  Humphrey bowed his head and crossed his hands on his chest as he assured the secretary, “I am deeply honored to find myself in such exalted company, and am even more ashamed of my unsavory condition.”

  Imad ad-Din dismissed his concerns with a wave of his hand and a smile. “That will all be put right. But first, please partake of a little refreshment.” He indicated a beautifully displayed spread of delicacies, from goat’s cheese in honey to figs encrusted with pistachios. There was minced meat wrapped in grape leaves, rice with parsley and pine nuts, and more. Even before Humphrey could protest, his host clapped his hands, and a boy scurried forward to offer Humphrey a bowl of water in which to wash his hands. A second boy handed Humphrey a linen cloth on which to dry them, and a third offered him a tray on which a broad silver goblet containing iced sherbet, smelling of lemon and decorated with a sprig of mint, was offered.

  Humphrey gratefully washed his hands, but did not partake of the sherbet until he had bowed to his host and exclaimed, “I am overwhelmed by your generosity and hospitality, and wish to understand why I have been honored by such undeserved kindness and attention, Excellency.”

  “Ah.” Imad ad-Din smiled, and his leathery face crinkled along the deep lines cut in it by decades in the sun. “It is because, my dear Humphrey—if I may call you that?” Humphrey bowed his head in agreement, “It is because I was the man who read your recent missive to his magnificence Sultan Salah ad-Din, may Allah grant him long life, and I was delighted by your sophisticated and elegant style. Such a refined command of Arabic is a rarity even among educated men of my own people. But to find a master of Arabic in a faranj was so astonishing that I said to myself at once, I must meet this unusual man! When my lord and master, my Allah grant him long life, asked me to return to Aleppo on other matters, I took the opportunity to inquire after you. You can imagine my astonishment when I learned you were neither a scholar nor a man of my own generation, but hardly more than a cub and a man of the sword.”

  Humphrey was deeply moved by the elderly scribe’s praise, and he bowed his head again. “You flatter me, Excellency. I have studied your literature diligently and have endeavored to imitate it to the best of my humble abilities, but I am only a novice. I am flattered that my efforts—poor as they undoubtedly were—were not too rude or ill-formed for the Sultan’s ear.”

  “Not at all, not at all—though, of course, there were slight errors that I automatically corrected when reading aloud. Nothing that you could not master with more opportunity to study. It would give me great pleasure to be an instrument for helping you develop your gift for the language of the Prophet, may Allah’s blessings be upon him. I hope you will accept my offer?”

  Humphrey stopped in the act taking a spoonful of the sherbet. “Your Excellency—I—I don’t know what you mean. I am your prisoner, as you see.”

  “Young man,” the elderly scholar opened with a smile, “your condition is no reflection on your personal virtue or your intelligence; it therefore need cause you no shame. You are a prisoner because it was your misfortune to be born and raised a worshiper of icons at a time when Allah in his righteousness has given the Faithful a great leader who, in accordance with His will, has triumphed over his enemies. Do not be downhearted on account of that. We can still be friends. Come, tell me more about yourself.” Imad ad-Din gestured for Humphrey to eat and drink as he spoke.

  “My grandfather,” Humphrey began cautiously, “was Constable of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He once had the exceptional honor of meeting the Caliph of Cairo to conclude a treaty with him.”

  Imad ad-Din nodded and exclaimed softly, “Ah, now I know where I had heard your name. He too was a great scholar, I believe, no?”

  “Yes,” Humphrey agreed readily. “He was a master of many languages and a scholar of both history and poetry. My father died when I was very young, and I was raised for ten years by my grandfather. He had a large library with many books of Arab poetry that he used to teach me the language.”

  “How lovely!” Imad ad-Din exclaimed with genuine enthusiasm. “What could be a more perfect way to learn Arabic?—other than reading the Koran, of course.”

  Humphrey shook his head, confused. He was only nineteen years old and he was feeling disoriented. The trauma of Hattin, followed by the brutal execution of the captured Templars and Hospitallers, sat deep. Spending more than three months in the dank darkness of a dungeon had done little to heal the scars of that horror. It did not help that Humphrey was younger than most of the other captives, and routinely ignored because he did not enjoy the respect of his fellow barons. They scorned him because he had given up his barony for a money fief and because he wasn’t a very competent fighting man, either. It was, he supposed, a wonder that he had survived Hattin at all.

  Imad ad-Din was more than three times his young guest’s age, and it was not difficult for him to see how fragile Humphrey’s nerves were. The secretary sympathized. This young man was no brutal barbarian, like most faranj. He was sensitive and intelligent and educated. Imad ad-Din was finding it easy to like him, which made it all the easier to do his master’s bidding of befriending him and milking him for information as well as ensuring that he, the husband of the Princess Isabella, was turned into a friend of the Sultan—if not of Islam itself.

  Imad ad-Din let the subject of the Koran slide for now and pressed Humphrey to continue with his autobiography. “Your grandfather was a great man, but he was from Toron. My master, however, told me he would free you in exchange for the surrender of al-Karak. What is your connection to Arnat al-Karak?” Imad ad-Din knew the answer already, of course, but he did not want Humphrey to know how much he knew. He thought a display of too much knowledge might make the young Frank suspicious of his motives.

  “He was my mother’s third husband. I was forced to live with him after my grandfather’s death. He was a horrible, brutal man! A dishonest and dishonorable man! He deserved his fate!” Humphrey spoke with conviction that was all the greater for his emotions having been pent up for so long. He had hated Reynald de Châtillon almost from the moment they had met. His years under Châtillon’s tutelage, serving as a squire, had been sheer hell. Châtillon had taunted, tormented, insulted, and physically abused Humphrey, all in the name of “making a man of him.” His mother had stood by cheering her husband on, and everyone else had looked the other way—either from fear of their lord or because they were made of the same cruel cloth!

  Humphrey had never before dared say what he felt or thought about Châtillon to anyone but Isabella. The thought of Isabella, however, brought tears to his eyes. He tried to cover his raw, exposed emotions by reaching for one of the figs.

  The perceptive Imad ad-Din could see his young guest’s distress. The Sultan was wise, he thought. This was a vulnerable youth, a youth whose ties to his fellow Infidels were weak and frayed already. It would be child’s play to make him an instrument of their own design. For now he remarked only, “It pleases me to hear you are not an admirer of Arnat al-Karak. He was Islam’s most hated enemy.”

  “Christendom’s, too!” Humphrey declared passionately. “He attacked Christian Cyprus and he tortured the Patriarch of Antioch. He was a barbarian through and through, true to no faith!” Humphrey felt much better for having said that.

  Imad ad-Din nodded, adding with calculated flattery, “You are wise beyond your years, young man.”

  Humphrey looked down in pleased embarrassment. At last he was with someone civilized enough to understand him!

  Imad ad-Din often paced about his garden when he experienced “writer’s block.” He was currently engaged in composing an account of Salah ad-Din’s greatest victory, his conquest of the Holy City of Jerusalem, which he wanted to present to the Sultan’s sons. This was to be a masterpiece. More than a mere chronicle, it was to be a work of such literary eloquence that centuries from now, even those who knew the story well would read his work for the pleasure that the words gave. It was a work of prose, to be
sure, but it was to have its own melody, and the use of cadence and alliteration would elevate it above the common clacking of ordinary scribes to a work of art.

  Only at the moment, the words weren’t coming.

  Imad ad-Din paused to consider one of the hibiscus bushes. It appeared to have some kind of lice. Annoyed, he frowned and called sharply to his gardener. The slave, who was clipping grass beyond the fountain, hurried to throw himself at his master’s feet. He was a old man, bent permanently from digging, weeding, and clipping in the garden.

  “What is this?” Imad ad-Din demanded sharply, his elegant fingers grasping one of the blooms by the stalk and pointing the face toward his slave.

  “Yes, Master,” the slave agreed. “I have sent for beetles that will eat the lice, but they haven’t come yet.”

  Imad ad-Din was not fool enough to believe every lie an old slave told him. “If there are still lice in the hibiscus a week from now, it will go ill with you,” he warned, and dropped the subject.

  Continuing his aimless stroll, he came upon a slave woman scrubbing the tiles of the paved walkway. She had a bucket of water, a scrub brush, and several rags to do the work. Her skirts were soiled and damp from kneeling on the wet tiles, and sweat had soaked the sides of her gown so often that the cloth under her arms was badly stained. Sweat also dripped from a face bright red from the exertion and the unaccustomed exposure to the Syrian sun. Imad ad-Din remembered being told she had been a “great lady” among the Christians, a woman used to commanding a large household.

  As an admirer of the great Islamic theologian Imam Ghazali, especially his excellent work The Revivication of Religious Science, Imad ad-Din disapproved vehemently of women being allowed such power. As Ghazali had made clear in his brilliant analysis of the Koran, the most precious gift that Allah had given man was reason, and the purpose of that reason was to enable man to pursue knowledge and truth through study, especially study of the Koran. Women, lacking reason and being purely sexual by their nature, were a threat to man pursuing his destiny. Indeed, women’s ability to distract men was a satanic power that could only be defeated throught the strict control and segregation of women. The best was to make them as invisible as possible—until after a day of intellectual or martial activity, a man paused to take pleasure with the woman of his choice, be she wife or concubine. A woman in a position of authority was, therefore, an abomination, something typical of primitive and polytheist societies that remained enslaved and degraded by their fascination with females.