Humphrey’s mouth was dry, his palms wet. He was so close he could see Ibelin’s face, his dark, penetrating eyes on either side of his nose guard. Ibelin was an exceptionally tall man and he rode a tall horse, which only made Humphrey feel even smaller and more ashamed.
Ibelin did not smile as they came abreast of one another. He nodded his head in greeting with a formal “my lord of Toron,” and then without further comment swung his horse around on his haunches in an unthinking display of horsemanship. He guided his horse off the road and rode to the rear of his troop as his knights turned their own horses around to follow him, their order now reversed. Then, without a word, Ibelin picked up a canter again. Humphrey, on his aging Arab packhorse (that was all they’d been willing to give away with him), had a hard time keeping up with Ibelin.
They rode like that for at least a half-hour, or so it seemed to Humphrey. Ibelin made no effort to converse with him, although he did moderate his pace when he realized Humphrey’s nag could not keep up with his own stallion. Finally, however, they came to a small stream banked by still-green grass and wildflowers. Here Ibelin drew up, and then dropped his reins on his horse’s neck to let his stallion wade into the desultory, muddy waters and drink. Humphrey and the others followed his example.
Ibelin shoved his helmet up by the nosepiece and bowed his head to wipe sweat off his face on the inside of his surcoat. Then he hung his helmet on the pommel of his saddle and reached up to untie his aventail. With the flap hanging down, he shoved the chain-mail coif and arming cap off his head, revealing his sweat-soaked dark hair. Ibelin’s squire squeezed his horse forward to offer his lord a water skin.
Humphrey started. The youth was familiar, but it took him a moment to remember where he’d seen him before. Finally he recalled that this young man had been nothing but a groom in the Ibelin stable in Nablus.
Ibelin saw his surprised look and remarked dryly, “Ernoul’s shoulder and collarbone were broken at Hattin, so he can no longer serve me in the field. Gabriel gave his life at Jerusalem—as did Dawit and Daniel.” He paused and then remarked in what almost passed for a friendly tone, “We can’t make Tyre tonight, so we’ll spend the night at an abandoned sugar mill a little up the road.”
The well-watered coastal plain southeast of Tyre had been one of the centers of sugar-cane production before Hattin, and stone refineries still dotted the countryside. No doubt Salah ad-Din and his emirs had no interest in destroying something of no military value to their enemies but of potential economic value to themselves—whenever they finally set about organizing this conquered territory for their own benefit. The sugar cane itself, however, had died of thirst when the mill-powered irrigation stopped. Starved of water when the people fled with their mules, the cane had grown and then toppled over to lie like a huge mat across the countryside, slowly parching in the Palestinian sun. The irrigation ditches had gradually dried up and the water reservoirs were little more than stinking, mosquito-breeding ponds, at best a third of their original volume.
The dried cane made good firewood, however, and the squires were sent out to gather up bundles of it, while two of the knights took crossbows and went in search of dinner. Small game and wild chickens were abundant throughout this abandoned landscape, Humphrey was told.
Ibelin untacked his horse himself and hobbled him. Taking his saddlebags, he led Humphrey into the vaulted hall of the derelict sugar factory. Although someone had removed any jars containing molasses, a number of empty jars remained, surrounded by broken shards of pottery; apparently, someone searching for sugar had systematically broken all the sugar molds. The well, however, was still (or again) functioning, and Ibelin went there first, pumped water over his hands, and splashed it on his dusty face. Then he filled a bucket with water, which he brought to his horse. Humphrey awkwardly followed his example, although the silence was increasingly taxing his nerves.
Returning inside the stone structure, Humphrey noticed now that straw had been heaped up in the corners, and under the bronze vats originally used for boiling the crushed cane there was evidence of recent fires. There were even brass oil lamps on shelves around the old millstone. This had been converted into a table, where Ibelin set out the bread, cheese, and sausage that he’d been carrying in his saddlebag.
At last, Ibelin sat down on a bench on the wall of the mill and gestured for Humphrey to sit beside him. Cautiously, Humphrey did. Ibelin took a wineskin from his saddlebag and offered it to Humphrey. “It’s not very good,” he warned as Humphrey took it tentatively. “One could call it the bitter harvest of Hattin, but at least we had a harvest last fall. And the sugar mill closest to Tyre is operational again as well. We’re still dependent on imports from Cyprus for wheat, oats, and barley, but we’re self-sufficient in vegetables and fruits, and we produced surplus olive oil this spring.”
Humphrey sipped at the wine, wondering why the Baron of Ibelin was talking like a farmer when there were so many more important topics they ought to have been discussing—starting with Isabella.
“Hattin has changed everything,” Ibelin seemed to answer him. “We are no longer a kingdom, but an outpost. A vulnerable outpost. Our very survival is predicated on the defenders having enough to eat and clean water to drink. And no man is what he was before. Everyone must prove his worth in the world as it is now—after Hattin.”
“What are you trying to say?” Humphrey bristled defensively.
Ibelin shrugged, either to diffuse Humphrey’s anger or to take the edge off his words. “The Constable reports you were given favored treatment.”
“Did he tell you I’d converted to Islam, too?” Humphrey sneered.
“Did you?”
“No, of course not! But it’s the kind of slander the others spread about me. They’re all hypocrites! They would have welcomed a bath and a change of clothes just as much as I did. They all would have accepted ‘special treatment,’ if only it had been offered them.” Humphrey upended the wineskin and drank in gulps to drown his anger.
“Undoubtedly,” Ibelin answered steadily, only sipping at his own wine. “But they didn’t make Guy de Lusignan King, did they? They didn’t put the Kingdom in the hands of an arrogant and incompetent fool. They, with me, tried to prevent the catastrophe that put you all in Saracen hands in the first place.”
“Are you blaming me for Hattin?” Humphrey asked, flabbergasted. He was acutely aware that he had not played a particularly heroic role in the disastrous battle, but he hadn’t ever felt to blame for it, either. King Guy had been in command; all the decisions had been his—including the failure to reinforce either Tripoli or Ibelin when they broke out of the encirclement.
Ibelin shrugged. “If you hadn’t betrayed your wife to go crawling on your belly to Guy and Sibylla, the High Court of Jerusalem might have stopped Guy from becoming King at all. We could certainly have ensured he never commanded the feudal army of Jerusalem. Instead, you would have been crowned King, and you would have commanded us. Would you have ignored the counsel of your barons and led your army away from the springs of Sephorie?”
Humphrey stared at Ibelin in shock. Of course he wouldn’t have done anything so foolish! He would never have dared to defy the collective wisdom of men older and more experienced than himself. But no sooner had the thought formed than Humphrey’s blood ran cold—because he had.
When word reached the High Court that Sibylla had had herself crowned Queen of Jerusalem without the consent of the High Court, and had furthermore crowned Guy as her consort against the wishes of her supporters, the High Court had voted to crown Isabella in Bethlehem as a legitimate rival. Humphrey had been horrified by the thought that they would use his wife as a counterweight to Sibylla and that he, as her husband, would be part of their plan. Humphrey had seen only the risk of civil war in a kingdom with two crowned and anointed queens (and their respective consorts). He had believed he was saving the Kingdom from disaster by robbing the High Court of their weapon: himself. He’d slunk away in the dark of nigh
t to go to Jerusalem and he’d paid homage to Sibylla and Guy. In so doing, he had foiled the plot to crown Isabella queen and had ensured Guy was recognized as king. He had never regretted that, because not once had he made a connection between his refusal to challenge Sibylla and Guy’s coronation in 1186 and the defeat at Hattin. Now that his wife’s stepfather had made the connection, however, Humphrey found the thought chilling.
Before he could recover from this new revelation, Ibelin put another question to him. “So tell me: if you did not convert to Islam, why were you treated differently from the other prisoners?”
Humphrey was relieved to have the conversation diverted away from his responsibility for Hattin, and answered readily, indeed with a trace of pride. “Because I write fluent Arabic. I wrote the letter to Salah ad-Din requesting Sibylla’s release, and the Sultan’s secretary was impressed with my command of Arabic. He wanted to meet me, saw the condition I was in, and took pity on me. That was all.” Humphrey helped himself to more wine.
“Really?” Ibelin asked with obvious disbelief. When Humphrey didn’t answer, he continued, “If that had happened once, I might have believed you, but Aimery says you met with Imad ad-Din roughly once a fortnight. What were all those subsequent meetings about?”
Humphrey was flushed—whether from the unaccustomed wine, from shame, or from anger was unclear—but his lips had a stubborn set. “We just talked,” he told Ibelin obstinately.
“About what?”
“Philosophy, religion, literature, all kinds of things!” Humphrey gestured as if to brush flies away as he remembered talking about his fellow barons. “It’s not as if I didn’t learn things of importance, too!” he defended himself.
“Like what?” Ibelin pressed him.
“That the Sultan dotes on his eldest son al-Afdal, for example, but many of the emirs find al-Afdal arrogant and shallow. And many of the Sultan’s men are tired of jihad and want to have time with their families. And there have been rebellions against Salah ad-Din in northern Syria.”
Not uninteresting, Ibelin noted, but he wasn’t prepared to admit that to this youth who deserved so much blame yet refused to even understand his failures. “And what did Imad ad-Din learn from you?”
“That I hated Reynald de Châtillon!” Humphrey burst out. Then before Ibelin could pose another question, he lashed out, “You don’t know what it was like!”
“You forget my brother Hugh spent years in a Saracen prison, and Barry was held for a half-year, and Aimery was with you; he’s told me a great deal.“
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Humphrey insisted passionately, the now unfamiliar wine clearly speaking. “I’m talking about the slow slaughter of 250 Templars and Hospitallers! Before our very eyes! And I’m talking about slave markets glutted with Christian women. Why, Imad ad-Din even offered me the services of one of his slaves! He thought to overcome my resistance by assuring me she was Christian! All it did was add to my revulsion!” Humphrey spat this out so furiously that Ibelin was taken aback, and a silence fell between them.
At last Ibelin asked, “Did you get her name?”
“Of course not! What good would it have done? I’m sure she would not want anyone who had known her before to see what she has become. Besides, I refused the services offered, so I neither saw nor spoke to her.”
“I doubt Imad ad-Din understood such admirable restraint.”
“No, he didn’t. No one does. You don’t, either, do you?”
“You think I would have raped a Christian woman simply because she had been degraded and humiliated by the Saracens?” Ibelin asked sharply, his cheeks flushed from his effort to restrain his own fury.
Humphrey saw he had gone too far, and hastened to retreat. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just meant—I just meant—you don’t understand!” he ended helplessly. That was the whole problem: Humphrey did not think anyone understood him. Except Isabella. The thought of her made his throat constrict, and he felt tears in his eyes. He swallowed hard. “Is—is Isabella well?” he asked.
“Isabella is the only reason I’m here,” Ibelin answered honestly, his hostility to Toron simmering just below the surface. “She has been inconsolable since your capture, and as soon as word came of the surrender of Kerak, she insisted I seek your release.”
Humphrey looked up at Ibelin with a sudden light of hope in his eyes. “Then she has not forgotten me?”
Ibelin remembered fleetingly that Christmas dinner with Conrad de Montferrat and other meetings since. Conrad was clearly attracted to Isabella, and he was a very charming man when he wanted to be. But Isabella was far too loyal and innocent to have been diverted by Montferrat. To Humphrey he answered firmly, “Not for a moment.”
The answer sent a wave of relief through Humphrey so powerful that tears flooded his eyes. The return of the squires with the kindling, however, distracted Ibelin’s attention, and soon afterward one of the knights returned with a hare. Ibelin rose to help prepare their dinner, and the time for intimate conversation was past. The conversation had not been to either of their liking anyway, and they made no effort to repeat it.
Tyre, June 1189
The group of men were gathered in the solar of the Ibelin residence, standing closely around the small mosaic-topped table on which Ibelin had spread out a map. The map was not very high quality—“sketch” might have been a better word for it—but it was a means of jostling the memory of the men collected in the room. Besides Balian d’Ibelin, they were Reginald de Sidon, Aimery de Lusignan, and Humphrey de Toron. Conrad de Montferrat was also present, but he had no knowledge of the terrain between Tyre and Sidon anyway, so he was more an observer than a participant in the discussion.
“The distance from here to Sidon is almost exactly forty miles,” Reginald declared, stretching his hand over the map, his thumb on Tyre and the tip of his little finger on Sidon. He had recovered remarkably well from his ordeal, Ibelin thought. No scars had been left on his wrists, and those on the soles of his feet were well hidden. His hair was still thin and almost completely gray, but he had recovered his proud bearing. In the tiltyard he could still take on most of the younger knights with at least a fifty-fifty chance of staying in the saddle—and that was good enough for a man of sixty, he’d assured Ibelin. A joust with Ibelin himself he consistently declined, with a smile and the assurance that he didn’t need to eat any more sand.
“More important,” Aimery took up the conversation, “we control the territory all the way to the Litani, and no Saracen has dared set foot across the river since I’ve been here.”
“But we’ve often seen their patrols beyond it, and once or twice they’ve let their horses drink from the far bank,” Ibelin reminded them.
“Patrols, yes,” Sidon declared, straightening up, “but nothing to indicate they’re in a position to occupy everything from the Litani to Sidon. As Aimery points out, the distance that might be contested is at most thirty miles, not forty. Furthermore, Salah ad-Din gave me Sidon.”
For the last three weeks, Reginald had been trying to convince the others that they should try to retake Sidon and so extend Frankish controlled territory. There were good reasons for doing so. As Ibelin had outlined to Toron on his return from captivity, Tyre was not self-sufficient in food, and it could not be unless they controlled more farmland. It made sense to expand along the coast, where the land was most fertile. Expanding to the north had the advantage of reducing the distance to Tripoli, the next Frankish state. Furthermore, Sidon was a good port, once the home of important shipyards, and the local inhabitants had been renowned shipwrights for centuries. Regaining control of those and reopening the shipyards would enable the Franks to gain control of the sea, more important than ever since Antioch, Tripoli, and Tyre were currently separated from one another by the enemy on land. Reginald de Sidon, of course, had the added interest of regaining his own lordship.
At the mention of Salah ad-Din’s promise, Ibelin looked annoyed. “You told me from the start
you didn’t take that seriously.”
“Yes and no,” Sidon prevaricated. “I think it was an empty gesture—but if we don’t call his bluff, we can’t expose his duplicity. He can always claim he would have kept his word, that all I had to do was go to Sidon.”
“Whatever Salah ad-Din said or meant, we have to assume we’re moving into hostile territory,” Aimery countered. “The question is: do we have enough knights, Turcopoles, and men-at-arms to take control of the coast from the Litani to Sidon? What is the status of Sarepta? Do we know if anyone is living there now? The state of the defenses? And what of Sidon itself? Is it correct that the walls were razed and it is no longer defensible?”
They all nodded. Ships passing from Tripoli to Tyre and back had been able to report that Sidon’s walls had been dismantled and the castle itself scandalized—the ramparts leveled, the gates torn out, and fire set to the storerooms so that great smoke stains pointed upwards from the windows. The shipyards, on the other hand, appeared to be intact, only abandoned. Sailors further reported that the city was inhabited by what they guessed were a few hundred people, mostly native Syrian fishermen and their families.
Sidon explained, “Sarepta surrendered without a fight and the citizens fled to Sidon. The town was plundered and the walls slighted. Sidon’s defenses were more thoroughly dismantled, but that is good from our point of view,” he argued, “since it means the Sultan isn’t going to hold it against us. Once we reach Sidon, we can reconstruct the defenses—if not around the whole city, then at least around the inner harbor area.”
“I don’t doubt that. The issue is, can we establish control of the road from here to there?” Aimery returned to his earlier point.
“Well, if we can rebuild the fortifications at Sarepta and leave a garrison there as well, we should be able to establish control over the road,” Sidon argued. “We have enough fighting men here at Tyre capable of garrisoning both cities. The orchards around Sarepta are plentiful and valuable in themselves, while the fishing harbor is also useful. I think once we’ve taken control, we’ll find plenty of volunteers to hold it.”
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