Imad ad-Din noted with satisfaction that this new Christian slave shrank back at his approach, cowering on the side of the path to make way for him. Even better, she kept her head down and turned away from him, and he nodded with approval. It was good to see these Christian whores learning their proper place and adopting modest behavior.
He caught his breath, and increased his pace to all but run to his study. The words were coming! He settled himself with unusual haste before his writing table and took a clean sheet of papyrus. Dipping his quill in the ink, he began to write:
How many well-guarded women were profaned, how many queens were ruled, and nubile girls married, and noble women given away, and miserly women forced to yield themselves, and women who had been kept hidden stripped of their modesty, and serious women made ridiculous, and women kept in private now set in public, and free women occupied, and precious ones used for hard work, and pretty things put to the test, and virgins dishonored and proud women deflowered, and lovely women’s red lips kissed, and dark women prostrated, and untamed ones tamed, and happy ones made to weep! How many noblemen took them as concubines, how many ardent men blazed for one of them, and celibates were satisfied by them, and thirsty men sated by them, and turbulent men able to give vent to their passion. How many lovely women were the exclusive property of one man, how many great ladies were sold at low prices, and close ones set at a distance, and lofty ones abased, and savage ones captured, and those accustomed to thrones dragged down!*
Imad ad-Din sat back with a sigh of satisfaction, and thanked Allah for the inspiration. It was perfect! Not only did it describe so well what had happened to the Christian women condemned to slavery after their towns, cities, and castles fell to the forces of the Sultan, it described the justice of Allah in humiliating these arrogant and unnatural females. Christian women, until they were captured and taught better, did not know their proper place and went about with no sense of shame. These women, who once dared to look men in the eye and talk to men who were not their kinsfolk, deserved every humiliation they suffered at the hands of Believers. Imad ad-Din was certain that nothing offended Allah quite so much these brazen women, for while polytheist men were merely foolish to allow women so much power, the women themselves were satanic, seeking to end the civilizing influence of reason which Allah’s messenger, may Allah’s blessings be infinitely with him, had brought to all believers.
In the garden, Beatrice had collapsed and rolled herself into a ball of misery, sobbing helplessly. She begged God earnestly to take her to Him. She could not take any more. It was that simple: she could not take any more. Scrubbing tiles on a garden path was not really so terrible, of course, but it was one humiliation too many.
She had survived the rapes, refusing to remember how many men it had actually been, clinging to the need to protect her children. But then they had taken her children away—simply sold them to utter strangers and dragged them, screaming and crying, from her arms. When she tried to follow, they had surrounded her, pushed her to the ground, and then from three sides they had kicked her with hatred as they spat and cursed her: “Polytheist filth! Pig-eating whore! Barbarian bitch!” The slave trader had been forced to intervene to stop them from “damaging his property” further.
After that she had been too bruised and numb to care what happened to her. The trader had sold her off for a pittance, complaining bitterly about how the market was flooded with “stinking, icon-worshiping filth,” and how an honest slaver couldn’t make a decent living anymore. She had been taken down a dark alley and shoved through a door into a room full of other women. They had gaped and pointed, ridiculing what was left of the gown she’d been wearing on the day of her enslavement. They had cackled and giggled and held their noses to show her what they thought of her. Eventually a man had come and scolded them, making them take her to a chamber where she could wash herself. After that he had given her sandals and a rough cotton gown to wear. Then they had taken a pair of scissors to her hair and had shorn her. No scarves or veils were allowed her, because she was no longer a “decent” woman—she had known too many men, none of whom were her husband. She was just a slave.
Her face and neck were now burned from exposure to the sun, her knees bruised not from praying but from cleaning floors, and her hands blistered and cut from laundry and other work. But that might have been bearable if there had been any human left in the whole world who knew her name or cared how she felt.
The touch of a hand on her shoulder made her rear up in terror. They were sure to beat her for not doing her work—or rape her again, if it was a man.
It was a man, but it was a old, bent, and wrinkled man, and he was making calming gestures with his hand and soothing sounds. “Hush, hush,” he said to her gently. “Crying will not make it better.”
“Nothing will make it better!” Beatrice lashed out in agony, before she registered that he had spoken French. She gasped and held her breath. “You speak French?” she asked the gardener, hardly daring to believe it. It seemed like forever since she had heard her own tongue.
“Yes,” he answered in French. “I was born long, long ago in the peaceful village of Moustiers-Ste.-Marie in gentle Provence.”
Beatrice swallowed down her tears and gazed at the old gardener. “How did you come to be here?”
“Much the way you did, child,” he answered gently. “I joined the Benedictines at the age of twelve and was ordained at seventeen. I came out to Outremer at the age of twenty-two in the company of six of my brothers. Only I had the misfortune to go to County of Edessa, and within two years Nur ad-Din had defeated our nobles and knights. When they overran our abbey, the abbot and many of my brothers were crucified for not converting to Islam.”
“And you?” Beatrice asked, horrified. “You converted?”
The old man smiled wearily. “I pretended to, but God knows that when I pray I pray to Christ, and although I have learned the incantations and chants of our tormenters, in my heart I say the Mass morning and night.”
Beatrice stared at him, not knowing what to think.
“You have it easier,” he told her softly, “because they do not expect women to convert at all. They prefer women not to, in fact. As long as you are a Christian they can treat you like filth, but if you converted, some of the more enlightened imams would argue they ought to show you more respect.”
“Father.” Beatrice bestowed the title on her comforter because she desperately needed to believe he was still a priest and so a lifeline to her faith. “They have taken away my children.” As she spoke, the pain overwhelmed her, and tears started flooding down her sunburned face. “All three of them! Even the baby, Joscelyn. He’s only six! Six! What can they do with a six-year-old? Why couldn’t they let us stay together—” she broke down entirely. The old monk took her into his arms and held her until the storm of misery had subsided a little.
Then, as she lay shaking but no longer wailing in his arms, he told her, “Perhaps he is the lucky one. If he is comely and well made, they will raise him a good Muslim, and maybe he will one day be a Mamluke—proud and fierce. How old are the other children?”
“Amalric is ten and Bart is eleven,” she gasped out, trying to wipe some of the tears from her face with her dirty hands.
The priest/gardener nodded knowingly but said nothing. Anything could happen to boys that age. They might end up in some tradesman’s shop, fed barely enough to survive, chased from one chore to the next, and subjected to beatings from dawn to dusk. Or they might land in the home of some rich man who would take particular pleasure in having blond boys (he assumed the boys were blond because Beatrice was very fair) serving them at dinner, washing their feet, and fanning away the flies and heat. Or if they were very unlucky, the boys might be castrated and sent to guard a rich man’s harem or land in one of the sordid, sunless dens in the deepest bowels of the souks where men who preferred boys took their sinful pleasure.
“Will I ever see them again?” Beatrice asked the pries
t through tear-filled eyes.
The priest shook his head. “It is unlikely, child. I overheard the master saying that Jerusalem has fallen, and tens of thousands of new slaves will soon join us. Here, let me wash your face,” he offered. Beatrice’s hands were so grimy that she had only managed to smear dirt across her face with her own efforts. The priest/gardener dipped his hands in her bucket of water, rubbed them clean, and then gently smoothed them over her face. As he did so he spoke softly to her. “I will not make you false promises or awaken false hopes, child. In this life we are slaves, and we are condemned to suffer. I know I shall never escape—and who could ever rescue us, now that Jerusalem is lost? We must not imagine our lives will improve, but I have found over the decades that there are moments when Christ smiles at me—through an oleander bush,” he pointed to one along the side of the garden, “or out of the eyes of a saucy pigeon.” Again he gestured toward an audacious bird approaching them along the path with curious yet nervous jerks of its head.
“What is your name, Father? And where can I find you?”
“It would bring great joy to my old heart, child, to be called again by my name in Christ: Father Francis. And you?”
“Beatrice d’Auber. My father, Sir Bartholomew, held a knight’s fee from the Baron of Ibelin. Bart—Bart would have inherited—”
Father Francis shook his head and stroked her shoulder. “Don’t think about it, child. It will do you no good. That world is gone forever.”
* This is a verbatim quote from Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani’s al-Fath al-Qussi fi-l-Fath al-Qudsi, paragraphs 47-69, translated from the Arabic by Francesco Gabrieli.
Chapter 3
Jerusalem-Tyre Road, November 12, 1187
THE COLUMN WAS ALMOST FIFTEEN THOUSAND strong: mostly women, children, and elderly, but with a stiffening of roughly three hundred youth and middle-aged men capable of bearing arms. They were predominantly Franks, but the column included nearly four thousand Armenians and about three thousand Syrian Christians as well. They had, until yesterday, made up about a fourth of the population of Jerusalem, and today represented one-third of those souls who had raised a ransom of ten dinars per man, five dinars per woman, and two dinars per child in order to escape slavery. Some fifteen thousand of their fellows had not been so lucky and were now on their way to the slave markets of Syria, while two other columns of ransomed Christians were wending their way towards Jaffa in the west and Ascalon in the south respectively.
The pace was slow. The terms of surrender stated that anyone who could pay his or her ransom could leave the city with all their movable goods and chattels, so the column was made up of wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, and pack animals as well as people. They lumbered along at the pace of the slowest, while the armed escort provided by the Baron of Ibelin and his remaining knights rode up and down along the sides of the column like sheep dogs, trying to keep people and beasts moving.
Godwin Olafsen had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and the crippled boy on his back. The boy was his son Sven, who had lost the use of his legs in an accident in Oslo ten years ago. Godwin had sold his shop and come with his wife to Jerusalem in search of a cure. On arrival they had followed the Via Dolorosa on their knees in prayer, but Sven was still a cripple. They had no money to return to Oslo, so Godwin had taken work as a journeyman, although he was a master. Slowly he had established himself, but just months after he had finally become his own master again, the defeat of the Christian army at Hattin had destroyed his fortunes a second time.
“You can set the boy down here!” a woman’s voice called out cheerfully. Godwin looked around bewildered to see who had spoken. Although Godwin was a strong man, he was lagging a bit and had fallen to the side of the column. As he looked toward the voice, he saw a fat woman in widow’s weeds seated on the driver’s seat of a large wagon pulled by two powerful horses. She was patting the empty seat beside her. “You can join me, too, if you like,” she offered.
Godwin did not have to think twice. He jogged over to the wagon, and then turned his back to it so that Sven could sit on the side for a moment. The boy had strong arms, and with the help of the fat widow, he was quickly pulled up beside her on the driving seat. Godwin followed him lithely. “Thank you, good widow! You are the second miracle in a single day. I pray the good Lord will shower His mercies upon you as he has on me this day!”
“Well, well,” the widow answered with a dubious smile. “I never thought to hear the day we were driven from Jerusalem called a day of miracles, but I’m happy to help. I’m Mariam, by the way. Most people know me as Mariam the Pastry Lady—though that sells my other sweets short. I’ll bet your boy here could do with a spot of marzipan.” As she spoke, she smiled at Sven and saw his eyes widen.
Godwin could hear his wife’s voice scolding in his head, “The boy needs a solid meal, not sweets!” But his wife was not here, and he nodded to Mariam. “He would be very indebted to you if you could spare such a luxury.”
“Well, then, take the reins for a moment, and I’ll see what I can dig out of the back here.” She handed the reins over to Godwin and twisted around to dig in the basket nestled just behind the driving seat. This was clearly her provisions for the day, and when she turned around again she had the whole basket on her ample lap. “I don’t know why, but I have the feeling you could do with a bit more than marzipan—or at least your Dad could.” She addressed herself to the still wide-eyed Sven.
“My good widow—please. We have no means to pay you. We were on our way into slavery because we could not pay the ransom, until the good Baron d’Ibelin intervened. There’s no way we can repay—”
Mariam waved Godwin’s protest aside. “You look like a strong man to me, and I’m sure you can make yourself useful with the team and—more important—guarding this wagon when we set up camp. That’s all I ask—oh, and your name.”
“Sven!” the boy spoke up for the first time. “Sven Godwinsen. My Dad’s the best armorer in all Jerusalem,” he declared with fierce pride. “He made the Baron of Ibelin’s sword!”
“Godwin Olafsen,” his father introduced himself more modestly.
“Ah, yes, I think I’ve heard of you,” the widow decided, frowning slightly as she tried to remember. “Didn’t you take over the armory behind St. Mary Magdalene? The one that used to belong to Ibn Adam?”
“Yes, exactly. He made me his heir and we moved in four years ago. I took over the shop and my wife looked after him in his old age.”
“Where is your wife? And didn’t you have daughters?” The widow looked around, confused.
“I scraped together the money for their ransom, but there wasn’t enough left for us,” Godwin explained.
“Good heavens! Here, have some of this!” She handed him the basket and took the reins back. “There’s a half chicken in there and a loaf of bread, and at the very bottom there is some marzipan, as I promised.”
Godwin could not resist her invitation a moment longer. Sven and he had not eaten since breakfast, and that had been scanty. He readily found the chicken and brought it out. Between them, he and Sven pulled it apart and ate the moist flesh from the bones. The bread followed, and then the marzipan. The look on Sven’s face as he bit into the marzipan was so expressive of delight that Mariam laughed out loud. “Well, I can see how to make this young man happy!” she declared with obvious satisfaction.
“Forgive us,” Godwin begged as he wiped his fingers on his hose. “That was the best meal we’ve had in a long time.”
“I can see that,” Mariam quipped, with a smile that assured them she was pleased rather than offended.
“And yourself? You’re traveling alone?” Godwin asked. Now that the growling in his stomach was stilled, the ache in his back was easing, and the surprise was fading, he looked at his benefactor more closely. She was fat and wearing widow’s weeds, but she was not an old woman by any means. She also spoke French with a heavy accent and wore her wimple like the Syrian women did, ending on the top of her hea
d and trailing down her back.
“Femme sole, as you say in French,” she confirmed matter-of-factly.
“You husband died at Hattin?” Godwin ventured, although the woman hardly seemed overcome by grief, as one would have expected had her husband died so recently.
Mariam laughed in answer. “Hattin? If he’d lived to fight at Hattin, he would have been eighty-two! No, he died more than a decade ago. God rest his soul.”
“And children?”
“All dead and buried; two died in the womb, to be precise, and the other two within days. I’m not what you call a good breeder.”
That surprised Godwin, as she looked the picture of health in her hefty way.
“I wasn’t always like this,” Mariam read his thoughts. “When I was married, I was just a wraith of a girl, all skin and bones and not an ounce up here,” she continued, patting her fleshy breasts with an easy familiarity that made Godwin feel awkward. He looked away, embarrassed, but a moment later caught himself sneaking a look at them again. They were quite phenomenal, actually. He cut off the inevitable thought about how exciting it would be to see them naked, and distracted himself by asking Sven if he needed a drink of water.
Sven shook his head. “It would wash away the taste of the marzipan,” he explained, and the adults laughed.
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