Envoy of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

  “After Hattin we evacuated the Hospital at Nablus for Jerusalem, and I was there throughout the siege. When it ended, the Hospital was charged with leading one of the three columns of refugees, the one to Jaffa. At Jaffa, transport to the ‘nearest Christian land’ had been promised by the Sultan, but we insisted on transport to a Latin kingdom, unsure what our fate might be if we landed in Cyprus or Constantinople under the new Emperor.”

  Aimery had heard reference during the last two weeks to the defense of Jerusalem by his wife’s uncle, the Baron of Ibelin. Most people spoke of it with awe, despite the ultimate failure to hold Jerusalem for Christ. He asked cautiously now, “The loss of Jerusalem is a terrible blow. It must have been hard for you to witness the surrender.”

  “Hard?” Sister Adela looked at Aimery as if he were half mad. “I have never been so conscious of the living God in all my life! They had already breached the wall, you know. They were throwing assault after assault through that breach, and thousands remained outside just waiting their turn. We were out of Greek fire, too. We had fought for a week—women, children and priests alongside what men were there—and we could not fight anymore. But slavery, at least for us women, is truly a fate worse than death. I was trying to decide if I should kill my sisters to save them from that, taking the sin upon my own head, when people started shouting that the Baron of Ibelin had talked the Sultan into sparing us all. Despite the fact the walls were breached! Despite the fact that his banners had briefly waved over the northeast tower!

  “That, my lord Constable, could only have been the Grace of God. Who else could have inspired the Lord of Ibelin with words to soften the Sultan’s heathen heart? Who else could have inspired a man of such renown on the battlefield to put the welfare of the poor ahead of his honor as a knight? It was a miracle—or as close to one as these old eyes are likely to see.” She pointed with her two index fingers to her eyes before adding, “What followed was less pretty, of course. People scrambled to find the ransom payments by any means, including theft, blackmail, extortion, and prostitution. And some rich men—including prelates of the Church—preferred their own wealth to the freedom of the poor. But there were also acts of great charity and generosity,” she added more mildly.

  Aimery nodded, wondering what Eschiva had experienced. The nun’s tale reminded him that he was not the only one to have suffered this past year. Eschiva, too, must have gone through hell. She would have been frightened for herself and their children as well as for him. She would have witnessed that short but brutal siege—and then this unsavory scramble to escape slavery. He suddenly realized he didn’t even know what the ransom payment had been, much less where Eschiva would have found the means to pay it for herself and their children.

  “Sister,” he turned to the Hospitaller nun tensely, “have you any news of my wife, Eschiva? I’ve had no word from her since Hattin. Is she safe?” In all that time in prison, when he had clung to images of Eschiva, it had never occurred to him that she might have suffered some misfortune in the catastrophe that had enveloped them.

  “She accompanied the Dowager Queen and Princess Isabella when they left Jerusalem before the siege,” Sister Adela reassured him. “And I believe,” she added, gently touching Aimery’s arm, “that’s her with the Queen and my lord of Ibelin now.” Adela pointed to the quay, which was now only yards away as the ship glided alongside.

  Aimery’s heart stopped. He had imagined this moment a thousand times or more—yet it was so different than he had pictured it. In his imagination there had always just been the two of them. They had both been on foot, and they had come together to embrace in relief and gratitude. Instead, here he was on the raised deck of a ship, surrounded by strangers, and she was ten feet below him on a crowded quay, a worried look on her face as she futilely searched the passengers crowded in the waist of the ship.

  Aimery raised an arm and waved, but the lump in his throat prevented him from getting out a single sound. She was—there was no word for it. He was not objective enough to see if she was aged, thinner or fatter, or anything at all. All he registered was that she was truly here. Alive. Well. His.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered to an understanding Sister Adela, as he grabbed the railing of the ladder to drop down from the poop to the waist in a single leap. There he had to fight his way through the other passengers pressing together to cross the gangway. He unabashedly ordered people out of his way, until at last he could haul himself onto the gangway and cross it with long, hurried strides. As he jumped down onto the quay, she ran towards him, her veils streaming out behind her.

  “Aimery! Aimery!” The next instant he had her in his arms and was clinging to her as if his life depended on it. As perhaps it did. “Aimery!” she gasped again, her head on his chest, and he bent to kiss her on the lips, with a mental apology for disdaining his brother for doing the same thing only a fortnight ago.

  Behind Eschiva, Isabella collapsed into her stepfather’s arms as she realized that Humphrey wasn’t on the ship.

  Chapter 8

  Tyre, May 1189

  THE NEWS THAT KERAK HAD FALLEN reached Tyre via the garrison, remnants of whom washed up in the taverns there after receiving a safe-conduct from the Sultan. They had withstood the siege for nearly two years. Their supplies had been getting low, and then somehow the water had become contaminated. They had started dying like flies then, and when the Lady of Oultrejourdain herself succumbed to the disease, the backbone of the resistance was broken. Isolated by the siege, the garrison had not heard about the great crusade now gathering. Without hope of relief, resistance seemed pointless. When the most senior of the surviving sergeants put it to the vote, not one man had advocated holding out any longer—as long as they were granted their lives and freedom. The offer had been made to the emir commanding the Sultan’s siege force and had been accepted. They had to leave their weapons behind, but had been allowed to take any other belongings they could carry, along with their women and children.

  Squires from the Ibelin household brought the news of Kerak’s surrender to their lord, and Balian broke the news to Isabella. She jumped up, her cheeks flushed with excitement, and then stopped. “And Humphrey? What about Humphrey?”

  “There was no mention of Humphrey, Bella. He was not at Kerak, so he was not included in the surrender.”

  “But Salah ad-Din always offered to release him in exchange for Kerak,” the teenager protested hotly. “From the start, that was always his demand!”

  “I know, but Humphrey did not deliver Kerak to him,” Balian reminded her carefully. “The garrison did.”

  “But what’s the point of keeping him a prisoner any longer? He doesn’t have anything else of value!” Isabella remonstrated.

  “Montreal,” her stepfather countered softly, referring to the other stronghold of Oultrejourdain that still held out.

  “Salah ad-Din can’t expect Humphrey to surrender that as well!” Isabella objected, but she sounded foolish even to herself and at once fell silent, crestfallen.

  Her mother slipped an arm around her waist and drew her closer, kissing her temple. “With Stephanie de Milly dead, there’s no reason the garrison at Montreal will hold out much longer, either,” she suggested softly. “I’m sure Humphrey will soon be released.” As she spoke she looked to her husband. “Surely you could send word to the Sultan inquiring after the Lord of Toron?”

  “I can’t see what good it would do. He was trying to assassinate me eighteen months ago,” Ibelin retorted.

  “We don’t know it was the Sultan,” Maria Zoё countered. “It might have been his brother, or just one of his emirs who had a grudge against you. Besides, no one is asking you to go personally. We can send Sir Bartholomew or Ernoul.”

  Balian shrugged and admitted, “I could try, I suppose.” He did not sound particularly willing, much less eager.

  “Please do,” Maria Zoë answered pointedly, stroking Isabella’s arm. She understood her husband’s contempt for Toron—yet it was ha
rd to watch her daughter, who should have been a blooming seventeen-year-old, becoming more and more morose and depressed.

  Isabella hadn’t chosen Humphrey. She’d been taken forcibly from her mother and stepfather at the age of eight, sent to live in the bleak quasi-prison of Kerak, and denied the right to even visit her mother for three years. Then at the age of eleven, before the age of consent, she had been married to Humphrey de Toron, a youth four years her senior. Humphrey had been chosen for her by Maria Zoë’s bitterest enemy and rival: King Amalric’s first wife, Agnes de Courtenay. Isabella’s marriage to Toron had been intended to ensure that Isabella remained under the control of people who would prevent her being used to depose Agnes’ children, Baldwin and Sibylla.

  What no one had reckoned with was that the children, Humphrey and Isabella, would fall in love with one another. Isolated in the brutal atmosphere of Kerak, where the Lord of Oultrejourdain terrorized his own men and Humphrey at least as much as he preyed on Bedouin and attacked the Sultan’s convoys, they had turned to one another for comfort. They had become best friends long before they were old enough to consummate a marriage. Indeed, Isabella had confided to Maria Zoë, their marriage had still not been consummated when Humphrey left for Hattin. Humphrey’s affection for Isabella was so manifest, however, that Maria Zoë felt confident that her son-in-law’s restraint was motivated by respect for his bride’s tender age.

  To her husband she suggested gently, “Isabella has a right to know what Salah ad-Din intends to do with her husband now that he has Kerak. There must be some way you can request news of him.”

  Balian capitulated. “I’ll ride out to the border and make contact with one of the Sultan’s patrols.”

  Humphrey was appalled to realize he had not recognized where he was until he saw the silhouette of Toron Castle in the distance. He’d taken a fond leave of Imad ad-Din ten days earlier. He’d then been escorted to Damascus, where he’d had a brief, unsatisfying interview with Salah ad-Din. The Sultan had seemed distracted and disinterested, bluntly telling Humphrey he was no longer of any value as a prisoner because both Kerak and Montreal had surrendered.

  In Damascus, Humphrey had been turned over to a troop of Mamlukes commanded by a red-headed young man who called himself Khalid al-Hamar, Khalid the Red. They took Humphrey across the upper Jordan at Jacob’s Ford. The ruins of the castle King Baldwin had tried to build here a decade earlier reminded Humphrey of a butcher’s yard. Like the bones of dismembered beasts, the masonry lay tossed about the valley floor in disorderly heaps, bleaching in the summer sun. Around these disjointed ruins, the dry weeds of summer waved and whispered in the dusty breeze. The only sounds were the screeching of the crickets and the rustling of the grass, while the only living creatures inhabiting the ruins were snakes and scorpions. Overhead, however, vultures circled, as if they still hoped to find food in the shallow pits where a thousand defenders had been dumped without proper burial.

  Humphrey had shuddered in the heat, and then had sweated through the night because they camped among the ruins of the accursed castle. It was said the Templar commander of the unfinished castle had flung himself into the flames of the breached walls, and Humphrey was certain that his damned soul lurked here still, a ghostly testimony to the Christians’ humiliation. Each time he heard a footfall or the rustling of a snake in the grass, his imagination conjured up the image of the Templar—his skin burned black but his robes still a pristine white, with a cross of blood upon his breast.

  The next day, at some indefinable point, they had crossed into Humphrey’s hereditary lordship of Toron. Yet although he had spent the happiest years of his life here, a carefree boy in his grandfather’s care, he did not recognize it. Nothing looked familiar now that it was abandoned and uncultivated. Not until he saw his grandfather’s castle perched on the side of the mountain slope, far off to their left, did he know for sure where he was.

  Khalid al-Hamar pressed on, leaving him lost in miserable memories of his last visit here. That had been after his marriage to Isabella, and five years after his grandfather’s death. During the five years of his minority, Toron had been controlled by his mother’s third husband, Reynald de Châtillon, the Lord of Oultrejourdain. Humphrey had hated Châtillon from the moment they met. The man was the antithesis of his grandfather—brutal, unscrupulous, cold-blooded, and self-serving. He had no morals and no pity. He’d tried to bludgeon courage and skill at arms into Humphrey while plundering his inheritance. He had stripped Humphrey’s castle, too, leaving him nothing but the bare bones.

  In a castle stripped of furnishings and surrounded by gardens trampled to bare earth, he and Isabella had frozen through one winter, but by spring Humphrey had been glad to surrender the barony of Toron in exchange for a money fief and a comfortable house in Jerusalem. Isabella had been far from happy with his decision, however. She’d said a money fief was for men of base birth, and had indignantly reminded him she was a princess. It had been their first serious fight, Humphrey remembered morosely.

  The memory of that clash cast a shadow over Humphrey, and he took no notice of where they were riding. He hardly even noticed the increased alertness of his escort when they drew near the unofficial border between Saracen-controlled territory and the land held tenuously by the Franks from Tyre. Because there were no fortresses or even fortified manors along the improvised border, Frankish control of the countryside could last only as long as the Sultan was engaged elsewhere. Patrols of Franks and Saracens constantly probed each other’s strength. Yet the very fact that Frankish forces could come this far ensured that the area closer to Tyre was partially protected and could be cultivated.

  As the afternoon wore on, Khalid appeared to become increasingly unsure of himself. He led down one track and then another. Twice he halted and examined a map. The day seemed to be slipping away from them, and Humphrey was starting to feel nervous. Then a shout of alarm drew everyone’s attention to a puff of dust in the distance. After staring at it, Humphrey made out a dark, moving shape at the head of the dust cloud.

  “Riders,” Khalid announced, and drew up. The others halted behind him, squinting into the bright but low afternoon sunlight. At last Khalid was satisfied and declared “Ibn Barzan,” gesturing for them to move forward again.

  Not until this moment did Humphrey realize his captors had arranged to release him directly into the hands of his wife’s stepfather. That did not give him much time to prepare. His thoughts were in turmoil as they picked up an easy canter and the figures in the distance took on an increasingly definable shape.

  Ibelin was riding at the head of a small troop. His squire held his cleft banner aloft, a red cross pattée on a marigold field; the banner snaked and writhed in the wind. Ibelin himself was fully armored. The chain mail molded to his arms and legs glimmered in the sun; his torso was covered by a surcoat made of a light material that billowed out from his back and fluttered away from his legs in the wind created by cantering. He wore an open-faced helmet with nose guard rather than visor. The stallion he was riding was a powerful chestnut with energy to spare, although dark with sweat in the summer heat.

  Humphrey felt himself getting nervous at the mere sight of the Baron of Ibelin. Damn him! He looked so supremely self-confident. So proud and unbroken. Free.

  And why shouldn’t he? He hadn’t surrendered at Hattin. He had led his knights right through the lines of the enemy. He had delivered them—and thousands of infantry who followed in the wake of that breakout—from that field of blood, death, and shame.

  Humphrey remembered how Ibelin had shouted at the Constable, pointing to something. The Constable had shook his head, but laid a hand on Ibelin’s arm in a gesture of affection or condolence, before nodding and gesturing for him to go.

  Ibelin had gathered his knights around him, and the squires had pressed in close behind them, drawing their swords. With a shout, Ibelin had couched his lance and put his spurs to his aging grey destrier. The old stallion had sprung forward with amazing e
nergy after two days without water, and the little troop of heavy Frankish cavalry had crashed into the mass of Saracen light cavalry, hemming them in from all sides. Like a lethal wedge, Ibelin had pierced the wall of Saracens and driven deeper and deeper into that mass of murderous enemies. Then the Saracens had surged into his flank, and abruptly Ibelin had changed direction. In a split second, Ibelin and his men were galloping east rather than north. As they thundered down on the Saracen foot soldiers, the latter parted in sheer terror. If they didn’t, they died, trampled under the Frankish horses. Meanwhile, the Frankish infantry that had been cowering on the southern hill rushed down the slope to follow Ibelin’s charge. Humphrey remembered watching in awe as Ibelin disappeared over the edge of the cliff facing the Sea of Galilee, and the infantry followed after him like lava pouring over the edge of a volcano.

  Humphrey remembered that, and remembered feeling amazement and envy, without once thinking about following. Why not? Why hadn’t he joined the squires of Ibelin, Ramla, and Nablus? Why hadn’t they all followed?

  Too soon, the gap torn by Ibelin and his knights was filled again with hordes of enemy. The flow of human lava stopped. Those, like Humphrey, who had not dared to ride with that last charge found themselves trapped on an ever-shrinking island in the sea of Saracens. They were surrounded by the corpses of men and horses, while beyond them on the hill, the Saracens hacked the Bishop of Acre in two and flung down the True Cross. It landed in dirt that had been turned to mud by the blood of the martyrs defending it.

  That image terrorized Humphrey’s dreams at night. Although what followed had in many ways been worse. . . .

  There was no more time for memories, however. Ibelin reined his horse to a walk, and Khalid al-Hamar did the same. Signaling their men to stay where they were, the leaders on both sides advanced to meet in the space between them. They bowed their heads to one another and conversed in Arabic. Then Khalid gestured with rotary motions of his arm for Humphrey to come forward.