“As close to one as we can get in the circumstances,” Ibelin assured him.
Montferrat appeared to think about challenging that, but then thought otherwise. “Do I have your support, my lord of Ibelin?” he asked instead.
“I haven’t decided yet. I need more time to think,” Ibelin told him honestly, with a significant glance at Maria Zoë.
His gesture reminded Montferrat of her immense influence in this delicate matter, for who better than a mother might be trusted to influence a gullible young woman? Montferrat turned to Maria Zoë and leaned forward, exerting all of his charm. “And you, Madame? Do you support my suit?”
Maria Zoё, like Balian, had not yet decided what was best for either her former kingdom or her eldest daughter. Montferrat’s arguments, however, could not be dismissed lightly, and she personally preferred the “fresh blood” that Montferrat represented over any of the local lords, including Antioch. Montferrat’s ties to the Holy Roman Empire and to France were indeed invaluable. Maria Zoë calculated that England was likely to side with Lusignan in any case, since Guy’s brothers were vassals of the English King. King Richard, particularly since he was young and new to his crown, would most likely feel bound by these feudal ties to support them.
“I want the crown of Jerusalem, Madame. I don’t deny it,” Montferrat continued earnestly in his deep, melodic voice. “But I also want to make your daughter a cherished and beloved wife, something Toron has never done. And I want to make her a mother, something Toron’s not inclined to do, either.”
Maria Zoë recoiled at these words and tossed a frown to Balian. How could Montferrat possibly know about Isabella’s disappointment in her marriage bed?
“I’m a man of the world, Madame,” Montferrat continued in a voice so low Maria Zoë was not sure even Balian could hear. “I recognize a sodomite when I see one, and that is what your son-in-law is. A man who prefers boys to women.”
Maria Zoë shuddered at the thought. She had been raised to view sodomy as one of the most heinous sins imaginable—far ahead of fornication or even adultery. She did not like to think of someone as kind as Humphrey favoring such unnatural pleasures, nor facing eternal damnation because of it. And yet . . . Such proclivities might explain his behavior. She looked to Balian for help.
“We understand your suit, my lord,” Ibelin announced neutrally. “We will put it to the members of the High Court here in Tyre and let you know the outcome of our deliberations.”
“I hope you mean to do that soon, my lord. We have no time to waste.”
“Indeed,” Ibelin agreed. “No time to lose at all.”
Tyre, late October 1190
It was a measure of Ibelin’s increased status that no one objected to him summoning a session of the High Court; on the contrary, they hastened to comply with his summons. The barons and bishops took over the church of St. Helena, and their knights guarded the entrances and the streets around. In addition to Ibelin himself, representing not just Ibelin but his brother’s baronies of Ramla and Mirabel and his wife’s dower of Nablus, the secular lords present were the Prince of Galilee and the barons of Haifa, Sidon, Scandelion, Caesarea, Sebaste, and Hebron. Conspicuously absent were Toron and Oultrejourdain (both baronies held in personal union by Humphrey), Tripoli, now held by Bohemond of Antioch, Caymont, which was vacant, and Beirut and Nazareth, whose lords had remained at the siege of Acre after the other barons left.
It was the lords of the Church, however, that had the greater role to play if Isabella was to be freed of Toron and allowed to remarry. With the Patriarch dead, the senior churchman of the Kingdom was the Archbishop of Tyre, but he was still in the West. The Archbishops of Caesarea and Nazareth were at the siege. The slaughtered Bishop of Acre had not yet been replaced, and this left the Bishops of Lydda, Bethlehem, Hebron, Sebaste, and Sidon to represent the heads of the Latin Church in Jerusalem. That was five of the nine bishops, but the absence of all three archbishops meant they did not represent a majority of the ecclesiastical lords on the High Court—unless the Archdeacon of Tyre’s claim to represent his Archbishop was accepted.
After the Bishop of Bethlehem had led them in prayers, begging the Almighty’s grace and blessings on their deliberations and decisions, Ibelin opened the proceedings by reminding his peers of the death of their Queen and her daughters. He then asked if there was agreement on who her heir was. Isabella was named at once, but Lydda noted that Guy had been anointed King and would therefore have the right to reign until he died, arguing that Isabella was the heir apparent, not the Queen.
This view was immediately challenged by the secular lords, who unanimously rejected Guy. “He should never have been King in the first place!” Haifa insisted, backed forcefully by Tripoli’s stepson William of Tiberias, now nominally Prince of Galilee. The fact that Guy had been crowned without the approval of the High Court was brought up next, followed by the reminder that Sibylla had lied to most of the bishops in the room about her intention to set Guy aside and take another consort. All these painful past defeats ignited new indignation. When Hattin was mentioned, immediately followed by descriptions of Lusignan’s equally terrible leadership in the siege of Acre, the mood became so hostile to Lusignan that the Bishop of Sebaste felt compelled to remind the assembled lords that they were here to discuss the succession, not indulge in diatribes against Lusignan.
“The point, my lord Bishop,” Ibelin noted into the ensuing pause, “is that the secular lords are not prepared to acknowledge Guy de Lusignan as King of Jerusalem. He ruled by right of his wife only, and she is dead. Her half-sister Isabella, the daughter of King Amalric, is the rightful Queen of Jerusalem.”
This time no one contradicted him, but the Bishop of Hebron pointed out, “In that case, Humphrey of Toron is by right of his wife the next King.”
This provoked a roar of indignant contradiction and protest, particularly from those who had been imprisoned with him, including Haifa, Hebron, and Galilee. As Ibelin had predicted, the barons were just as unanimous in rejecting Humphrey as they had been in rejecting Guy. The notion of taking oaths of fealty to Humphrey was compared to lunacy, heresy, and treason. But the bishops were troubled by the fact that Humphrey had been recognized as Isabella’s husband for eight years. Marriage was a sacred vow, they reminded the assembled lords, and it was for life. Much as they sympathized with the reluctance of the barons to bind themselves to a man unlikely to lead them well, the laws of the Church were sacred—and explicit: a man could not set aside his wife, nor a woman her husband, for any reason whatsoever—not infidelity, nor infertility, nor even heresy and sorcery. “Unless you can demonstrate that Isabella was not rightfully married to the Lord of Toron in the eyes of the Church, her marriage cannot be dissolved,” The Bishop of Hebron declared solemnly.
This statement was greeted with sullen silence. The men in the room knew this was Church law, and they resented it bitterly; it stood in the way of their desperate need to find a competent man capable of leading the Kingdom in its hour of need.
“Isn’t consent a condition of marriage?” Ibelin spoke into the silence.
“Of course,” the bishops agreed almost in unison.
“What is the age of consent for women?” Ibelin asked next.
“Twelve,” came the answer from several voices at the same time. By now, however, half the barons were sitting up straighter in the choir seats they had taken; their frustration was already giving way to anticipation.
“Isabella was eleven when she was wed to Toron,” Ibelin reminded them.
Suddenly everyone seemed to be speaking at once, going back into their memories aloud, calculating Isabella’s age on their fingers. Her marriage had been infamous because it took place at the Castle of Kerak in the middle of a siege by Salah ad-Din. The feudal army that would normally have gone to the relief of Kerak had refused to march until Baldwin IV removed Guy de Lusignan as regent. Guy was dismissed, but the march was further delayed by Baldwin IV’s decision to crown his nephew c
o-monarch to ensure no future interregnum. Most of the men in the room had been in the army that eventually marched to the relief of Kerak, arriving almost a month after the wedding had been celebrated in the besieged castle. They knew the date: November 1183. Isabella, however, had not been born to King Amalric until 1172. She could not yet have turned twelve.
The mood among the barons turned jubilant, but the bishops responded with chagrin. Such a marriage should not have been allowed at all. The Bishop of Lydda turned on Ibelin. “So why did you let this fraudulent marriage take place? Why did you stage this mockery of a holy sacrament?” he asked indignantly.
“Because,” Ibelin answered steadily, his eyes fixed on the bishop but his voice pitched for the entire room, “I was not there.” He paused to let this sink in, and then reminded them, “I was in Jerusalem—with most of the rest of you. Isabella, on the other hand, was being held prisoner in Kerak—as she had been for three years. Her mother and I had nothing to say about this marriage. Furthermore, her marriage to Toron, who had turned fifteen, was her only chance to escape the clutches of Reynald de Châtillon!”
Châtillon’s reputation was dark enough for this answer to subdue even the bishops. Châtillon had once tortured the Patriarch of Antioch into giving him money—money he used to finance a raid on the peaceful Christian island of Cyprus. Châtillon was a man of violent tempers, insatiable greed, and infamous brutality. No one doubted that he could impose his will on a child.
The matter of Isabella’s non-marriage to Toron settled in their minds, the High Court turned its attention to who would be the most suitable candidate for Isabella’s next husband. Ibelin brought forward the new Count of Tripoli, the heir to Antioch, and Montferrat, and then sat back to listen to the debate. Within a half-hour it was clear that Montferrat’s unquestioned capabilities as a fighting man and commander gave him the edge over his younger rivals. No one had anything negative to say about the sons of the Prince of Antioch—but Montferrat was here, he was proven, and he had put in his bid. Perhaps most damaging of all, it would take time to send to Antioch or Tripoli and inquire if the young men in question were willing to marry Isabella of Jerusalem. A positive answer was by no means assured, because with Isabella came responsibility for her occupied and beggared country. A bird in the hand . . .
Chapter 11
Siege camp at Acre, early November 1190
ISABELLA WRIGGLED DEEPER UNDER THE COVERS and snuggled closer to her husband. The winter storms might not have struck yet, but the nights were getting damp and chilly. Humphrey lay with his back to her, but he did not protest when she slipped her arm around his chest. They were both wearing nightshirts, of course, but Humphrey’s had become bunched around his waist in the course of the night, and Isabella could slip her hand under the edge and stroke his naked side. She was seeking the distinctive but familiar feel of scar tissue.
The horror of that day when Sirs Bartholomew and Galvin had brought Humphrey to her half-dead would never be completely blotted out, but the months of nursing him back to health had done much to restore their relationship. Humphrey had been so helpless and so thankful for her care. He had apologized a thousand times for bringing her here and he had urged her to go home, saying his squire could care for him. But whenever he slept, he had clung to her, and sometimes when passing through that twilight zone between rest and wakefulness he had kissed her passionately.
Isabella was sure that it was just a matter of time before he overcame whatever demon was making him impotent. A year in a siege camp had overwhelmed any last vestiges of sexual innocence. She now knew more about sex than she, as a princess, really needed or wanted to know. It had become clear to her that Humphrey’s failure to make love to her had less to do with a lack of desire than a lack of ability. Since he was otherwise a healthy young man, however, his sexual incapacity (Isabella thought) could only be the work of demons. She had convinced herself that prayer would eventually defeat them.
Meanwhile, however, the siege continued. The killing and dying, the stench, the flies, and the boredom. Most recently the fever had terrorized them, and Isabella had begged Humphrey to quit the siege. His answer had been that she could go, but he would not abandon his King. Then Sibylla had died and she had been needed to help wash and wrap the corpse, while Humphrey was one of the men who comforted a stunned and grief-stricken King Guy. Isabella didn’t like Guy, but she could not deny that he had been shattered by the loss of both his daughters and his wife within forty-eight hours. That crisis, too, had brought Humphrey and Isabella closer together—only for them to fall out more hotly than ever over her claim to the throne.
Tonight Isabella wanted reconciliation, and the fact that Humphrey was holding her hand against his chest encouraged her. She risked leaning forward to kiss him on the shoulder. When he did not react, Isabella reasoned that he might not have felt her lips through his nightshirt. She tried nuzzling his shoulder with her nose, and was annoyed by men talking loudly outside. This was no time for that, she thought irritably. It was still dark.
The voices sounded angry. Probably some squabble over a whore, she told herself, resigned to such things after a year in the camp. Suddenly the immature voice of Humphrey’s squire pierced her consciousness. “But my lord’s asleep!” he protested.
“Not alone, I warrant,” came a gruff answer that elicited laughter.
Isabella didn’t like the sound of that. She lifted her head to listen more intently.
“No, he is with his lady,” the squire answered manfully, although Isabella could hear fear in his voice. Who on earth could be threatening the boy, here in the middle of the night in the the Frankish camp? And why?
“Queen Isabella, you mean,” another voice—pinched, nasal, and clerical in tone—corrected the squire.
Isabella was astonished to hear herself referred to in that way. She had laid claim to the title shortly after Sibylla’s funeral, and it was because Humphrey had batted the notion away like a tiresome fly that they had quarreled. Humphrey insisted that Guy had been anointed and that he’d paid him homage. He told Isabella she should “stop hankering after a crown that will only cause you grief,” adding: “You should have grown out of those girlhood fantasies.”
It had been these last words that lacerated Isabella, and she had withdrawn from Humphrey—indignant, resentful, and hurt. However, no one in the camp at Acre had so much as whispered that she should be queen, leading her to reluctantly conclude that Humphrey was right.
Meanwhile, beyond the curtain of the tent, Humphrey’s squire was reacting in bafflement. “Queen? But—”
“Get out of our way, boy,” a new voice cut off the frightened squire. Although the voice was calm, it was sharp and foreign. It was also so threatening that it made Isabella’s heart race. She sat bolt upright in bed grabbed her husband’s shoulder to shake him away. “Humphrey!”
He groaned and stirred, but before he came to himself, men tore aside the curtains that enclosed their bed and loomed over them. They were all strangers, big, burly men (or so it seemed in her terror), and wearing armor. Their helmets glistened in the light of torches, held by men behind them, but their faces were lost in shadow.
“My lady Queen?” The pinched voice of the foreigner who had spoken before issued from one of the men standing over the bed. He was dressed just like the others, in a chain-mail hauberk and a nasal helmet, so what he said next confused Isabella more than ever. “I am the Bishop of Beauvais, and I am here to remove you from this tent and this bed.”
“Why? What is going on? Humphrey, wake up!” Isabella shook Humphrey more vigorously than before. He groaned in inarticulate answer.
“The validity of your marriage has been cast in doubt and must be decided before an ecclesiastical court. Until a decision is reached, you must refrain from all contact with this man—”
“What? What?” Humphrey was at last coming to consciousness, but already it was too late. The armored Bishop flung back the covers, took hold of Isabella’s upper
arm, and started pulling her from the bed.
“No! Stop!” Isabella resisted. “Humphrey!”
“What’s going on?” Humphrey croaked out in a sleep-heavy voice as he sat up, frowning.
By now, however, a second man had hold of Isabella around the waist and was physically dragging her off the bed. Isabella was horrified and stunned to feel the arm of this strange man around her near-naked body. She was wearing nothing but her nightshift. She flushed with shame and went rigid with mortification as his hand accidentally brushed against her breasts.
“My lady! Here!” A young man who had been hanging back stepped forward and, tearing his cloak off his back, covered her with it. Although he too was a stranger, the gesture was both chivalrous and protective and Isabella was grateful to him. The cloak he offered, furthermore, was thick and so voluminous that it offered sufficient cover to restore her modesty. In taking the cloak, however, she had been separated from Humphrey, and the martial Bishop of Beauvais was hustling her out of the tent, while other men hemmed in a protesting Humphrey.
At the tent entrance were more men. Isabella quailed and tried to stop. The Bishop closed his vise-like grip on her arm and pulled her forward impatiently.
“No!” Isabella raised her voice. “I demand to know where you are taking me!”
“You have nothing to fear,” the young man who had provided the cloak assured her, coming up on her other side. His mere presence was calming and comforting. “I swear on my honor, my lady,” he continued earnestly, “no harm will come to you.” Although—or perhaps because—he was very young, Isabella believed him. He was not particularly tall, and certainly not as heavy-set as most of the other men around her, but he was attractive, and something about him seemed inherently trustworthy. Furthermore, outside the tent the sky was graying and she could now see he was dressed in very expensive armor, the kind only French noblemen wore, with gold links forming patterns in the mail. “I am Henri, Count of Champagne, my lady,” he introduced himself as he met her eyes. “You can trust my word.”
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