With dusk rapidly approaching, Ibelin grimly faced the fact that he was losing hope of being able to complete this voyage. If only there were some friendly port to run to! Someplace they could have sheltered and waited out the storm. But there were no ports, and the coast itself was too straight to offer even a bay or a cove in which to shelter offshore. Being no seaman himself, Ibelin relied completely on the advice given him by Haakon Magnussen, and the Norseman had told him they could not hope to weather the storm on sea anchors. “Nothing but a slow death,” he’d shouted above the wind hours ago.
But how much longer could they keep on trying?
Georgios, looking like death warmed over, was trying to make his way along the deck to his lord. As Balian watched, the squire slipped on the wet planking, and he was sent sliding into the gunnel by the lurching of the ship as it plunged down the back of the next wave. Water pouring over the bow added insult to injury by all but drowning Georgios in a frothing, seething whirlpool as he struggled to pull himself back onto his feet. Ibelin was too busy watching his squire to see the next wave until someone shouted.
Glancing right, he caught his breath and clutched the railing with both hands, too terrified to even pray, much less look away. It loomed up over their starboard bow. The ship started to lift on it, but the wave was stronger and faster. It broke, smothering the prow of the ship. The weight of the water hitting the deck sent a shudder through the timbers right down to the keel. The bow went down. Water washed completely over it and the deck tilted dangerously.
Ibelin was certain they were sinking. With horror he registered he had not confessed since leaving Tyre, and he found himself frantically begging God for forgiveness, even as the froth on the bows started to pour to either side. Agonizingly slowly (or so it seemed), the deck re-emerged out of the depths. Still winded by panic, Ibelin turned to find Magnussen.
The Norse captain was standing beside his helmsman, his expression unreadable, but his eyes narrowed against the wind and flying spray. Then, as if sensing Ibelin’s gaze, he turned his hawk-like face in his direction and shook his head once.
Ibelin tried to cross to him, but lost his footing on the violently pitching deck and fell hard. Without anything to clasp or haul himself up with, he could not regain his feet, and had no choice but to crawl the remaining six feet to Magnussen. With one arm looped around the stern railing, the Norseman reached out a hand to help him stand up again. “How much more can we take?” Ibelin asked.
Magnussen shrugged. “The Storm Bird” (that was his ship) “can ride it out, but I’m not so sure about the Santa Anna.” With a thumb he indicated the Genoese galley off their port quarter.
Now that Ibelin’s attention had been drawn to the Santa Anna, he realized she appeared half-sunk already. Water was so deep on the main deck that the oarsmen were knee deep in it, and it sloshed from side to side as the galley wallowed in the waves. Ibelin felt as if he were watching dead men, because he could see no hope of the ship making shore safely. That was what the Santa Anna was attempting to do. She had fallen off the southerly course the rest of them were holding and had turned her bow to the southeast instead. This was a course that avoided turning broadside to the waves, but would eventually take her onto the shore.
All those men were on his conscience, Ibelin told himself. He had brought them out here, and he had not given the order to put about in time to save them. If he, too, were to meet his Maker in the next hours or days, it would be with their deaths on his hands. He had led men to their death before, of course, when he took his knights, Turcopoles, and men-at-arms to fight—on the Litani, at Le Forbelet, at Hattin. But that was different. Those men had been called up in defense of the realm. They had been fighting for their families, their way of life, their God, their very survival. And now?
Of course the men at Acre needed the supplies, but did they need them so desperately that men should die bringing them? All because that idiot Lusignan had taken it into his head to lay siege to a city he needn’t have lost in the first place? There shouldn’t be a siege of Acre. If all the men and beasts that had already been lost in the mad siege of Acre had instead been collected at Tyre, they could have retaken Sidon and probably Beirut as well, Ibelin calculated. Thousands, maybe as many as ten thousand men, had already died in the siege of Acre. For what? For Lusignan’s pride!
Shouting broke into his thoughts and Ibelin looked up sharply. Magnussen had turned around, following the outstretched hand of his forward lookout, who was pointing aft.
“Oh, my God!” Balian gasped. As he watched in helpless horror, one of the busses slowly rolled over onto her side, exposing her broad bottom and keel. She didn’t fully capsize, but lay on her beam ends, her sails full of seawater, while the waves broke on her belly. Screams came faintly across the water.
“If we put about, could we rescue anyone?” Ibelin asked Magnussen.
“Maybe.”
“Run up the signal to disperse and sail independently,” Ibelin ordered.
That produced a nod of apparent approval before Magnussen called out the order, and one of his men started to make his way along the deck to the mainmast to hoist the signal flag.
“Do you want me to attempt a rescue?” Magnussen asked next.
“I want you to, yes, but I’m not ordering you to.”
Magnussen smiled faintly at that. “You couldn’t order me, my lord.” Their eyes met, and Magnussen added, “But we’ll give it a try.” Then he lifted his voice and started giving orders in Norse.
Two days later they limped back into Tyre. They’d lost two ships with nearly all hands, and all the ships that made Tyre were damaged more or less severely, including Magnussen’s Storm Bird. Ibelin himself was nursing numerous bruises, and his skin was chapping on his neck and wrists from never being dry. He had not been out of his clothes since they left port six days earlier, and salt completely coated his face and had turned his hair stiff and white. He had never in his life been so glad to see Tyre, yet he dreaded Montferrat’s reaction. He had lost nearly one hundred men, two ships, and tons of grain for nothing; the army at Acre had not been resupplied as Montferrat had personally guaranteed.
He was relieved, therefore, that Monferrat had not come down to harbor to meet him. Any recriminations would be made in private. His wife and eldest children, however, had come to meet him, escorted by most of his knights.
Helvis broke into a bright smile and started waving excitedly as soon as she saw her father. John said something to her sternly, but she just stuck out her tongue at him before jumping down and running to Balian’s arms. “I knew you were safe!” she declared loudly. “I knew God wouldn’t let anything happen to you!”
“Helvis! That’s blasphemy!” Balian told her sternly.
Helvis just smiled at him knowingly, smugly confident that she knew God’s will, and slipped her arms around his waist. He melted at once and placed an arm over her shoulders.
Meanwhile John had reached his father, too, and said more solemnly, “When the storm struck, Sir Galvin and I kept a vigil on the south tower.”
“Well done, John,” Balian praised him. He could not get over how mature John was. So many fathers had trouble with their heirs—youths who were spend-thrift or irresponsible, lazy or dull. John was none of that. He acted much more responsibly than most eleven-year-olds, Balian thought proudly. But mixed with his pride was sorrow, because he knew that most eleven-year-olds had not lost their inheritance and faced two sieges.
Finally, he could turn to Maria Zoë. She just stood there, the expression on her face one of relief mixed with lingering anxiety. He reached out, caught her hand, and took it to his lips. “My lady,” was all he said in public.
Magnussen watched from the deck of his ship. It would be wrong, he told himself, to call his emotions jealousy, for he did not begrudge Ibelin his happiness, but he did sometimes wonder why some men were granted so much domestic joy and others so little. It was one thing to say that the Lord determined each man’s
place and there had to be both rich and poor, farmers and lords, priests and fighting men. But within those roles, why did some men enjoy so much more love?
The crowds on the quay were starting to disperse, as Ibelin and his entourage started in the direction of his residence. Magnussen’s crew was efficiently making the Storm Bird secure, putting a harbor stow in the sail, coiling the ends of the running rigging, and fastening the covers over the hatches. There was a lot of work to be done to repair the damage to the starboard rail, to replace lost oars and their shattered tender. They needed to pump out the bilges and measure the rate she was taking on water, then search for damage to the hull. They had to clean and scrub and get her ship-shape again. But not now, not tonight. Tonight every man-jack of them, except the watch, of course, needed shore leave.
Magnussen turned to his mate, Eric Andersen. “Have you set the watch?”
“I’m taking the first watch myself, Haakon. Go ashore.”
Part of him thought he ought to refuse, thought he ought to be the responsible captain, but today he felt a burning need to get drunk. So drunk he had neither memories nor dreams anymore. “I owe you one,” he remarked to his mate, and then swung himself over the side of his ship and onto the quay with a single, easy leap.
His mood was such that he shied away from the dockside taverns, where he could expect to encounter most of his crewmen. Today, tonight, he wanted anonymity. He wanted to be among strangers, men who did not know his past, men who did not even know his reputation. He moved deeper into the town, consciously ducking into the side alleys, avoiding the main thoroughfares, the wider streets with the more respectable establishments behind proud façades of stone. The mud and wattle buildings crushed behind and between the stone buildings were better harbors on a night like this.
He put his nose into one or two such places, but they were too empty as yet. It was early for drinking oneself to oblivion. Annoyed, he looked around, not knowing what he was looking for, and spotted a pack of youths careening around the corner and starting toward him. They were excited, shouting to one another, laughing even as they ran, but in a sinister way. The leader of the pack was clutching something to his belly, and Magnussen was pretty damned sure that whatever it was, it wasn’t his.
On an impulse, he stuck out his leg to try to trip up the little thief, but the youth was agile. He managed to half-leap, half-shy away from the foot, and shouting crude insults, he kept going with his friends in his wake. One of the boys, trailing the others, was carrying a pair of crutches. Not that he needed them. He was fleet on his feet. He held the crutches over his head like a trophy.
“Little piss-pots!” Magnussen thought to himself. “They’ve robbed a cripple!” For a second he was torn between the impulse to chase after them, and the instinct to go to the assistance of the victim. Although there were a half-dozen youths, he didn’t doubt his ability to take them all on. But he also judged that if he did, blood would flow, and—thieves or not—they were young to die. So he hurried instead to the corner and looked in the direction from which the pack of thieves had come.
Collapsed in the gutter, sobbing, was a little bundle of misery. Magnussen started forward briskly, and halfway there recognized the crippled son of Godwin Olafsen. He covered the remaining distance in half a second. “Sven! Sven! What are you doing in this part of town? What happened? Blessed Mother Mary!” The boy’s face was bruised, his nose streaming blood, and the palms of his hands were torn open. Magnussen guessed that the thieves had knocked or yanked his crutches away, tumbling him onto the rough cobbles. Once he was down, they’d probably kicked him a couple of times in the gut and face, and when he was “softened up” they’d robbed him.
“They—they took—everything,” Sven wailed, confirming Magnussen’s suspicions.
“What did you have with you?” Magnussen asked, wondering about chasing after the thieves after all, though by now they could have disappeared into some cellar.
“Everything!” Sven insisted, sobbing for breath and crying.
“Come, let me get you back home—”
“NO!” Sven screamed.
Magnussen stared at him uncomprehending.
“I’m not going back! Never! I hate them!”
This made no sense at all to Magnussen. He would have given—well, not his health, but just about anything else to have had parents like Sven’s. His own father would have been more likely to leave a crippled son for the wolves than look after him the way Godwin had. Christian charity was only skin deep in men like Magnus Haakonssen, Haakon’s father. Magnussen was in no mood to discuss things in the street, however. It was getting dark and the gutter was foul with waste and sewage.
“I’ll take you to the orphanage, then,” he announced simply. Then he bent and heaved the cripple into his arms. Sven was no longer all skin and bones, but he was still no great burden for the Norse captain.
At the orphanage, Sven was taken in hand by Sister Patricia, who insisted on Sven stripping off his stinking clothes and washing himself at a trough. She sent the clothes for washing and gave him a simple kaftan to wear before taking him to get some hot stew from the kitchens.
Magnussen was preparing to leave when Sister Adela intercepted him. “Captain! I’m so glad you found Sven. Godwin and Mariam have been frantically looking for him for two days now.”
“Why?”
“He ran away.”
“So I gathered, but why? What child could want for better parents?”
Sister Adela smiled faintly. “He got in a fight with Mariam and started calling her very unkind things. His father threatened to take a cane to him—as he richly deserved, given what he’d said. He screamed at his father that his mother had been right to hate him. It was an ugly scene.”
Magnussen stared at her. He’d had fights like that with his father, too. His father didn’t just threaten to hide him. “Did Olafsen hit him?”
“Yes, he did, and that night he ran away.”
Magnussen shrugged. “He’ll get over it.”
“No, he won’t. You see, Mariam’s pregnant again, and this time she’s sure all will go well. Sven’s afraid that if she has a child of her own, she’ll not care for him anymore. That’s what’s behind this.”
It sounded understandable to Magnussen. “Can you take him in, then?”
“Master Magnussen, I have enough trouble feeding the children that need me without taking on boys whose parents are perfectly willing and able to look after them. He can stay the night, of course, but I want you to talk to him. He idealizes you—almost as much he does the Baron of Ibelin. You must try to convince him he cannot run away from his destiny. Convince him he must be brave.”
“I really just want to get drunk.”
Sister Adela smiled so brilliantly that Magnussen fell instantly in love with her. “I know you do,” she told him as he stared at her, dazed, “but you are going to discover that it is much more fun helping Sven, and with him Godwin and Mariam. Furthermore, I guarantee you it won’t give you a hangover, either.”
Tyre, April 20, 1191
The French fleet dwarfed everything Eschiva had ever seen before. They could not all fit in the harbor, so they lay at anchor offshore. From here they looked like an untidy orchard of masts stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. Eschiva and Isabella stood on the rooftop of the archiepiscopal palace, where they’d come to get a better view of the French fleet than was possible from the windows. The sight was overwhelming. There had to be tens of thousands of troops and thousands of horses aboard those ships. For the first time since Hattin, Eschiva started to seriously hope that Salah ad-Din might be defeated and driven out of her homeland.
Isabella stood beside her, the wind fluttering the ends of her veils, and she was biting her lower lip nervously in a gesture Eschiva had known (and admonished) since childhood. “Bella, stop biting your lower lip. It makes you look very common,” Eschiva advised in her elder-sister voice.
Usually that annoyed Isabe
lla, but today she only cast Eschiva an imploring look. “But I’m so nervous, Eschiva! Conrad says we have nothing to worry about. King Philip is his nephew and apparently they met several times, but look at that!” She pointed to the French fleet riding at anchor, with hundreds of brilliant pennants fluttering from the mastheads and tiny men walking the decks. “The King of France commands all that!” she continued. “All that and more, because he has castles and cities, men and knights and nobles, at home in France as well. And all we have is this one city.”
Eschiva thought it did Isabella credit that she was acutely aware of how little, indeed insignificant, her “kingdom” was. Eschiva also recognized, however, that at the moment Isabella needed encouragement. Isabella had learned courage in adversity from her childhood imprisonment at Kerak, from her husband’s captivity, and most recently from the necessity of leaving Humphrey for Montferrat. She was determined and brave when she set her heart on something, but she had not learned confidence. So Eschiva answered firmly: “Isabella, it’s not about what you possess, it’s about what you represent. You represent Jerusalem.”
Isabella turned to look her oldest, best, and arguably only friend in the eye. “You think I can do that? Think what it means!”
Eschiva hesitated, conscious of just how great the burden was, but then she nodded solemnly. “Jerusalem is the birthplace of Christianity, and as such it is the homeland of all Christians. You are the guardian of the hearth of Christendom.”
“Me?” Isabella found herself saying, torn between awe and a sense of unreality. “I’m nineteen years old. Surely the guardian of the hearth of Christendom ought to be a venerable old crone.”
Eschiva had to laugh at that, relieved that despite her nervousness Isabella had not lost her sense of humor. Indeed, ever since her marriage to Montferrat, the moody teenager had been replaced by a young woman full of joie de vivre. That came, Eschiva knew, from being well loved, and she respected Montferrat for that—no matter how much she disliked him personally. In answer to Isabella, Eschiva quipped, “Bella, believe me, men always prefer a pretty young woman over a venerable old crone!”
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