“November 18, 1183,” the Papal Legate repeated, gesturing to the clerks to record that.
“Yes,” Humphrey confirmed.
“And how did this marriage come about?”
“As most marriages come about,” Humphrey answered, trying to curb his irritation. “My guardian, the Lord of Oultrejourdain, and Isabella’s guardian, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, betrothed us.”
“When did the betrothal take place?” the Archbishop of Mainz asked.
“Three years earlier.”
“How did the Lord of Oultrejourdain come to have guardianship of you?”
“He was my mother’s third husband.”
“And King Baldwin’s right to dispose of Isabella in marriage?” the Archbishop asked, purely for the record.
“Isabella’s father died when she was two. Her nearest male relative was King Baldwin, her paternal half-brother,” Humphrey explained.
“How old were you at the time of your betrothal?”
“Eleven—or twelve. I don’t remember the exact date. It was the summer of 1180. I was born on the Feast of John the Baptist.”
“And how old was Isabella?”
“Again, it depends on the exact date of the contract, which I do not know—but she was born on the Feast of St. Athanasius.”
“July 5,” the Bishop translated, and again indicated that the date should be recorded. “Anno Domini 1172?”
“Yes,” Humphrey confirmed.
“So she was at most eight, but possibly still seven, at the time of the betrothal.”
“Yes,” Humphrey confirmed, frowning and resisting the temptation to say, “What of it?” Some children were betrothed while still infants.
“Did Isabella come to live with you and your family after the betrothal?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Did she come willingly?”
“No, of course not,” Humphrey readily admitted. “She was taken from her mother against her will and over the strong objections of her mother. She had lived all her life with her mother, and Kerak was a strange and forbidding place. I hadn’t liked coming there after my grandfather’s death, either. Neither Isabella nor I were happy in Kerak. Oultrejourdain was a brutal and vicious lord!” Humphrey’s hatred of Oultrejourdain was so intense that he still could not speak of him with equanimity.
“And your lady mother?” the Archbishop of Canterbury asked in a shocked voice.
“You obviously never met her, my lord Bishop. My mother was a good match for Reynald de Châtillon!”
Some of the men in the audience laughed, earning a frowning rebuke from the clerics, but Humphrey felt for the first time that some of the men here were on his side. He breathed a little easier.
“In the time after the betrothal and before the alleged wedding, did you have contact with Isabella?”
“Of course! We shared a trencher at meals and spent as much time together as possible.”
“But you did not know her carnally?” the Archbishop of Mainz asked, with a curious look on his face and an ambiguous tone.
“Of course not! We were both children!” Humphrey answered indignantly, flushing.
“Who made the decision for the two of you to marry in November 1183?” the Bishop of Beauvais leaned forward to ask.
“Oultrejourdain, as far as I can tell,” Humphrey said with a shrug. He really didn’t know who had decided or why the marriage had been set for that date.
“You were by then fifteen,” the Archbishop of Pisa intoned.
“Yes,” Humphrey affirmed.
“And Isabella?”
“She was—eleven.” Humphrey stumbled a little as he spoke, because he too knew that the canonical age of consent was twelve.
“So she was under the age of consent,” the Archbishop observed dryly. “Can you tell me why, then, the marriage should be considered valid? Why you should be deemed married to a woman who could not consent?” the Archbishop pressed Humphrey.
“Because she did consent!” Humphrey met the Archbishop’s eyes. “With all her heart and all her mind! Isabella consented of her own free will! No one forced her! I swear it!”
“You lie!” The challenge came from the spectators, and everyone in the room turned to stare at the speaker. It was Henri d’Ibelin, and Humphrey’s heart sank.
Henri stepped forward and announced, “I was at Kerak, my lords. I served Oultrejourdain—as these men can all attest. I personally witnessed the cruel way in which Princess Isabella was bullied into submission. I had many opportunities to see how frightened she was, how desperately she wanted to escape. Why, she outright begged me to help her escape and bring her to my brother, the Lord of Ibelin, her stepfather. Last but not least, I was there at the wedding between Toron and the Princess Isabella. The castle was under siege from Salah ad-Din. Siege engines were pounding us. Soon the threat of starvation and disease hovered over us.” Each word was like a nail in Humphrey’s coffin, because they were all true—even if they didn’t make her an unwilling bride. “Isabella was a frightened child,” Henri insisted, “cowed and intimidated by Oultrejourdain and his cruel lady. The betrothal and marriage—all of it—was against the wishes of Isabella and her noble mother,” Henri d’Ibelin ended forcefully.
Humphrey answered hotly, conscious of how precarious his situation was: “It may have been against the wishes of her mother, but it was not against the wishes of Isabella herself! You are speaking for your brother the Lord of Ibelin!” Humphrey accused Henri with a hate-filled glare at Balian, who was (Humphrey thought) hypocritically holding his tongue. “You speak for him, not Isabella,” Toron flung at Henri d’Ibelin. “Isabella had come to love me in the three years we were together at Kerak. She consented!”
“You lie!” Henri insisted, and dramatically threw his leather gauntlet onto the floor of the tent in front of the bishops. “I’ll prove it before God with my own body!”
Humphrey stared in horror at the flung gauntlet, and then his eyes lifted to Henri d’Ibelin. Henri, even more than Balian, was a hardened fighting man. This was a man who’d helped defend a borderland against a numerically superior foe for decades. Worse, Henri d’Ibelin had been the leader of Oultrejourdain’s Red Sea raids, in which he’d led some three thousand cutthroats on an orgy of blood and rape against unarmed Arab merchantmen and pilgrims.
Unseen behind the canvas that divided the tent, Isabella sat, straining her ears. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her hands were sweating. Over the last three days, while the tribunal was being prepared and the bishops gathered, she had inclined more and more to her mother’s advice. She had increasingly come to believe she must accept her destiny as Queen. The sound of Humphrey’s beloved voice and his description of their joint childhood, however, had shattered her resolve. How could she sacrifice Humphrey for a crown? Not just for a crown, but for something as abstract as Jerusalem? It wasn’t as if the Kingdom were rich and powerful. It hardly existed at all. Should she give up the man she loved for a dream? A hope?
But the silence on the other side of the canvas wall was killing her. “Fight for me!” she pleaded silently with her husband. “Humphrey, please! Fight for me!”
Humphrey looked at his challenger, and he knew he didn’t have a chance of winning. Henri was much more skilled at arms. He was bigger and stronger. Only God could give him a victory over such a challenger, and why should God do that? When had God ever been on his side?
“My lord of Toron,” the Archbishop of Pisa spoke up in a firm but almost gentle voice. “This knight has challenged you to judicial combat to prove that Isabella of Jerusalem did indeed consent to her marriage. Do you accept the challenge?”
Isabella held her breath and pressed her hands together. “Humphrey!” she begged more intently than ever before, “if you love me—as you love—take it up. Please! God is on our side! God knows I do love you! God knows I wanted you then as now!”
But the silence from the other side of the canvas was deafening. It was all Isabella co
uld do to stifle her sobs as tears flooded down her face. She clutched at the edge of her chair in desperate misery.
The Archbishop of Pisa spoke again. “My lord of Toron, is this your last word? Do you admit that you lied when you said the Princess of Jerusalem consented to the sham marriage with you?”
Still Humphrey did not answer. He could not. They were all against him, and they had conspired to take Isabella away from him. Sir Henri was Lord Balian’s tool. He knew he had lost, but he would not—under oath—lie, either. Wearily, his face petrified with bitterness and grief, he got to his feet, turned his back on the tribunal, and walked out of the tent. He was utterly alone in the world. He had lost his only friend: Isabella.
Maria Zoë had sent Rahel to attend on Isabella. The aging waiting woman put cold packs on Isabella’s face to bring down the swelling of her eyes, and although these eyes were still bloodshot, Rahel’s expert use of powder, rouge, and eyeliner had done much to restore Isabella’s appearance. By the time she entered the tribunal chamber to face the five judges (there were no spectators now), she was composed.
Unlike Humphrey, Isabella was offered a chair, and water was brought to her as well. The Archbishop of Pisa accorded her all the deference due, if not a reigning queen, then a lady of high standing. For the sake of the record, Isabella too was asked her date of birth, the age she was at her betrothal (eight), and her age at the wedding ceremony in Kerak (eleven). From the looks that passed between the judges, it was clear to Isabella that four of the five men had already made up their minds, and that they viewed her marriage to Humphrey as invalid. The one holdout was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it was equally clear to Isabella that the irascible old man was getting on the nerves of his fellow bishops.
“So, can you tell us your feelings when you were taken from your mother’s house and sent to Kerak?” the Archbishop of Pisa asked solicitously.
“I was in shock, my lord Bishop. I had never dreamed something so terrible could happen to me. I had been a very spoiled little girl.” She smiled wanly at this description, and the churchmen smiled back, her confession winning their sympathy.
“Did you protest what was happening to you?”
“I did. I was very insolent and disobedient to the Lady of Oultrejourdain. She had to discipline me many times.”
“Did she beat you or otherwise abuse you?”
“I often had to forfeit meals, but her preferred method was to lock me in the crypt, which frightened me greatly because I believed some of the bodies there had not received Christian burial and that their souls still haunted the underground caverns.”
That surprised the clerics enough to raise eyebrows, but it was not relevant to the case, so the Archbishop resumed his questioning. “When you were told you were to wed Lord Humphrey, did you protest?”
“No, my lord Bishop.”
“Why was that?” The Archbishop of Pisa sounded surprised.
“Because by that time I had lived three years at Kerak and had learned not to defy the Lady of Oultrejourdain directly.” Isabella paused, her heart pounding from nervousness, and then added, “And because I had come to love Lord Humphrey.”
“Love him?” the Archbishop of Canterbury asked sharply, his nose for sin already sniffing for illicit sexual activities.
“Like a brother, my lord Bishop.” Isabella turned and looked the Englishman in the eye. “I trusted Lord Humphrey, because he was the only one of my future in-laws who had ever been kind to me. I knew that I would be safe with him.”
“Then you consented to the marriage!” the Archbishop of Canterbury declared triumphantly.
“I did not know that I had a choice, my lord Bishop,” Isabella told him bluntly. Her lips had firmed, her chin lifted. The slaughtered Lord of Oultrejourdain would have recognized her pride and laughed to see her defiance turned against the worthy bishops rather than himself.
“When removed from your husband’s tent early last Saturday morning, you protested vehemently, I am told,” the Archbishop of Canterbury insisted sternly. “And you told your mother that you loved your husband.” Canterbury made it sound as if he had caught her in an act of blatant perjury.
Isabella was not intimidated by the English cleric. “My lord Bishop,” she answered in a voice that was only patient on the surface, “I have for the last seven years lived as man and wife with Lord Humphrey. As I noted only moments ago, even when we were children he was always good to me. That is true to this day. Lord Humphrey has never given me cause for grief—unless you count being taken captive at Hattin and leaving me a virtual widow for two long years. I have come to love Lord Humphrey deeply, even more than I loved him as a child. Furthermore, on the morning I was removed from his tent I was taken by surprise. I had no idea what was at stake, what the cause of complaint against us was.” She paused, and the defiant set of her jaw and the flash of anger in her eyes would have made Reynald de Châtillon applaud, because he detested all clerics.
“Over the last week,” Isabella continued in a voice that was now as sharp as a sword blade, “the issues at stake have been explained to me at length and in great detail.” She paused to look from one judge to the next, meeting their eyes. “And I have had much opportunity to pray.” The bishops murmured their approval.
“Just as it is a simple biological fact that I was below the age of consent when my marriage to Lord Humphrey was celebrated in public, it is also a biological fact that I am still a virgin. Lord Humphrey is impotent, and I see now that this was God’s way of sparing me the sin of bringing a child into the world out of wedlock.”
This answer caused a stir among the bishops. They whispered among themselves in evident agitation for several minutes before the Archbishop of Caesarea turned to her for confirmation. “You are saying your marriage with Toron has never been consummated, my lady?”
Isabella took a deep breath, faced the Bishop, and declared, “Yes, that is exactly what I am saying—and you are welcome to send a doctor to verify that fact.”
The bishops started whispering among themselves again, and Isabella thought she heard the word “sodomite” fall. It made her wince, and she had to swallow down her sympathy for Humphrey. She did not really believe he liked boys, but he had not been able make her his wife, and he had not been willing to fight for her. He had simply turned his back and walked away. He had turned his back once too often.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was still blustering. “In the eyes of God, this was a marriage!”
“Without consent or consummation? Maybe you still sell girls like chattels in England,” Beauvais sneered, “but in the civilized world there is no marriage without consent—much less consummation!”
“This is all a plot by Montferrat to steal the crown!” Canterbury croaked out furiously, conscious that his new young King needed the support of the Lusignans and would be ill pleased to find Guy de Lusignan deposed in favor of a relative of his bitter rival, the French King.
“What does Montferrat have to do with this?” the Archbishop of Mainz wanted to know. “It’s a clear-cut case of canonical law.”
“You’ve all taken bribes from Montferrat!” Canterbury countered, screeching hysterically. “You’re all his creatures!”
“And you’re the toady of Richard of Poitou!” Beauvais shouted back. While Nazareth indignantly protested his innocence, and the Archbishop of Mainz tried to calm tempers, the Archbishop of Pisa had the presence of mind to tell Isabella she could go.
For the next three days the Church council deliberated on the case. The Archbishop of Canterbury stubbornly prevented the church tribunal from announcing a decision one way or another. But on the evening of the third day he took to his bed, railing against the greed and jealousy of the princes, the slothfulness of the knights, and the immorality and licentiousness of the common soldiers. He was heard to say that God must rebuke them all, for he had grown stiff and weary from being a “voice in the wilderness.” The next morning he was dead.
They were sayi
ng Masses for the English Archbishop’s soul when the remaining four members of the Church council summoned Isabella to inform her of the judgment of the tribunal: her marriage to Humphrey de Toron was invalid. She was in the eyes of God free to marry any man of her choice. Isabella thanked the churchmen with dignity and withdrew to pray.
That same evening Isabella asked the Bishop of Beauvais to allow her mother and stepfather to visit her. The Bishop was reluctant at first, but after thinking it over he agreed.
Just as the muezzins were calling the garrison of Acre to prayers for the last time that day, the loud whispering of priests warned Isabella that her mother and stepfather had arrived. A moment later a thin voice called out, “My lady of Jerusalem? The Lord and Lady of Ibelin are here to see you.”
“They are welcome,” Isabella answered, getting to her feet.
The curtain was pulled aside by the hand of an unseen servant, and Isabella was face to face with her mother and stepfather for the first time since the night she’d been dragged from Humphrey’s bed.
Her mother’s face was so strained she looked vulnerable—a look totally at odds with her usual regal composure. Even during those horrible days immediately after news reached them of the disaster at Hattin, when they had no idea whether Lord Balian was alive, the Dowager Queen had not looked this fragile and frightened.
Balian’s expression, on the other hand, was wary, even slightly hostile. He was gripping his wife’s elbow as if he were holding her up, and Isabella realized that he was here to support his wife emotionally as well as physically. He evidently feared that Isabella was going to hurt her again, and he was here to defend his wife against his stepdaughter.
Isabella’s sympathy for both of them was instantly ignited, and she ran forward to fling her arms around her mother. “Mama! Mama! Please forgive me! I didn’t mean to hurt you! I know I have, but you have to believe me, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am!” Her words came out in a flood, and Isabella could sense how her stepfather relaxed in relief.
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