“I soon discovered, however, that far from being a monster intent on finding fault with me, the Emperor was concerned about instilling in me an understanding of what he expected of me. Among other things, he showed me a beautifully illustrated Life of St. Helena that included exquisite pictures of her finding the True Cross and directing the construction of the Church of the Nativity. My great-uncle warned me, however, that everything St. Helena had built had been destroyed when the Persians took Jerusalem. Emperor Herakleion had rebuilt the church, he explained, but later the Muslims had set that church on fire. The native Christians, he said, repaired it as best they could, only to have Kalif el-Hakim raze it to the ground. My great-uncle stressed that it had taken a great deal of Imperial gold and influence to convince el-Hakim’s successors to let Constantinople finance the reconstruction of even a modest church on the site of the Resurrection. When Westerners came, he explained, they had built a big new church. He didn’t call it beautiful, because it was not at all to his taste. He told me he expected me to restore to the sacred sites of St. Helena some of the glory that had been destroyed.” She paused to see her husband’s reaction.
He nodded, which she interpreted to mean she should continue talking. “Yet just as the Emperor was about to dismiss me, he seemed to have second thoughts. With a whimsical smile on his face he reminded me that Christ had not chosen to be born amidst the splendor of Athens or Rome, the greatest cities of his age. He chose a provincial backwater.” She paused again, this time to lend her words greater weight. “Then he said to me: ‘I always wondered why, until I stumbled upon an account of ancient Sparta. It explained that the Spartans disdained building an acropolis to equal that of Athens—because they built their monuments of flesh. Then it struck me: so, too, did Christ. To the extent that we follow in His footsteps, we are monuments to Him more magnificent than the most spectacular cathedral.”
Maria Zoë paused again and glanced at her husband. He was still sitting with his head tipped back, resting on the padded rim of the bathtub, but his eyes were cracked open, and he was gazing at her.
“I think of that sometimes—”
A furious banging at the door made Maria Zoë gasp and Balian sit upright so fast that water splashed over the edge of the tub.
“My lord! My lord!” an agitated, unfamiliar male voice called through the wooden door. “Come quick to King Richard. Salah ad-Din has laid siege to Jaffa!”
They were all looking dazed. Ibelin’s hair was wet. Aimery was half shaved. Henri was still flushed. Only King Richard seemed unflustered. “He must have been waiting for me to leave Jaffa,” King Richard speculated. “In any case, according to the ship’s captain who brought the news, the Sultan has numerous siege engines and sappers and a very large army. He said he’d counted a hundred emir’s tents and put the attacking army at twenty thousand horsemen alone, with God knows how many infantry. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but we have to assume the worst, and we must respond at once.”
The men he had summoned—Champagne, Ibelin, Aimery de Lusignan, and the Earl of Leiscester—nodded grimly. They understood perfectly what was going on. The Sultan was putting them back on the defensive and demonstrating just how fragile their apparent victories had been. If Salah ad-Din took Jaffa, he would isolate the Frankish garrison at Ascalon, make another attempt on Jerusalem futile, and put all their gains at risk again. It was a lunge at the Frankish jugular.
“Just how many men are still in Jaffa?” Leiscester wanted to know.
“About three thousand, but half of them are the sick and wounded at the Hospitaller infirmary there,” Richard answered.
“And who is in command?”
Before Richard could answer, the door opened with a loud bang and the Duke of Burgundy strode in, accompanied by the Bishop of Beauvais.
“Ah, there you are, my lords. Have you heard the news?”
“That Salah ad-Din is besieging Jaffa?” the French duke answered. Unlike the rest of them, Burgundy looked unruffled, dignified, and immaculately groomed. “Yes, we’ve heard it.”
“When can you and the rest of the French be ready to march?” King Richard asked back.
“March where?”
“To the relief of Jaffa!” King Richard retorted, his resolve not to lose his temper with this continuous thorn in his side already cracking.
“My lord King, if you think you can ever again command me and my men after your shameful and cowardly refusal to assault Jerusalem—”
“God damn you, Burgundy! I wasn’t even on the council that voted to withdraw! None of my vassals were! It was five Frenchmen who agreed with the others—”
“They were bullied and intimidated by the Templars and Hospitallers,” Burgundy retorted coldly. “I refuse to take responsibility for your cowardice, and I refuse to—”
King Richard’s face was so expressive that Ibelin and Champagne both jumped between him and the Duke of Burgundy before he could strangle the French duke. Champagne held his uncle back, while Ibelin told Burgundy and Beauvais to get out if they valued their lives. Burgundy had seen the same murderous fury in the Plantagenet’s eyes, and he fled. Meanwhile Richard was screaming insults at the top of his voice, and Henri was struggling to keep him from following Burgundy; Henri was dragged halfway across the room in the process.
“We don’t need the French!” Ibelin shouted, breaking through the stream of oaths from the English King. “The Templars, Hospitallers, and men of Jerusalem are enough!”
Richard stopped screaming and struggling, nodded to Henri that he could let go of him, and turned around. “Can you muster tonight?”
Ibelin took a deep breath. “I’m sure the Templars and Hospitallers can be counted on to muster tonight. I will need a little more time to pull together the contingents of my fellow barons.”
Richard nodded. “I will go by ship. It will take at least four days to take an army overland, and I’ve been told the winds are favorable at the moment. A half-dozen ships of my fleet can be made ready to depart tonight. I will take only Pisan and Genoese archers and my household knights, as my principal purpose is to assure the garrison that help is on the way.” And stiffen morale, of course, since the men at Jaffa were largely Richard’s men, Poitevins and Normans.
“Let me come with you!” Henri begged, his face flushed with a different ardor from that only the hour before.
“No. Your place is at the head of your troops, Henri,” King Richard told his nephew. But turning to Aimery de Lusignan, he added, “As Constable of Jerusalem, Lusignan, you’re welcome to join me if you want.”
Aimery jumped at the chance. “I will, my lord King.”
“Good. Then make ready at once.”
Road south of Caesarea, July 30-31, 1192
In the course of the next day, Champagne and Ibelin pulled together a force of nearly six hundred knights, slightly more than that number of sergeants, and almost three thousand infantry. It was composed of Hospitaller and Templar contingents as well as the men in the service of Champagne, Ibelin, Galilee with his younger brother Ralph, Caesarea, Haifa, Hebron, and Bethsan. With Haakon Magnussen’s Storm Bird keeping pace with them by sea, they took the road south, reaching Haifa at the end of the next day. The third night they spent in Caesarea, which was slowly and hesitantly coming back to life. Where once nearly ten thousand people had lived, several hundred now housed, mostly occupying buildings near the harbor where, presumably, they could flee in the fishing boats clustered along the inner quay. Significantly, they had repaired the Roman aqueduct, and the gardens were again being cultivated, while some of the shops had also reopened.
On the following day, however, shortly after leaving the city, Champagne and Ibelin noticed large bodies of Saracen horse hovering to the east. As they marched south, it was evident that they were being shadowed by a force at least three times as strong as their own. Ibelin found it hard to imagine that Salah ad-Din could field this large an army in addition to the one described at Jaffa. He suspected,
therefore, that the Sultan, anticipating a relief effort, had split his forces. This seemed particularly likely since the Saracens shadowing them were entirely horsemen. Once Jaffa was invested, the job of assaulting the city lay largely with the engineers, sappers, and infantry, so the Sultan’s cavalry there was superfluous. By guarding the road instead, they prevented the Franks from mounting a relief effort.
The Sultan’s troops had chosen their position with care and acumen. South of Caesarea the shore road advanced between sand dunes to the west and swamps to the east. This meant that the Frankish army was forced to march in a comparatively narrow column, and the farther south they penetrated, the more their flanks became exposed to the enemy.
At first they adopted the same formation used a year earlier and kept pressing forward, but when they reached the stream crossing known locally as the Locus Magnus, they found the bridge had been destroyed and the enemy was drawn up on the opposite bank. Since the bed of the river was a treacherous mixture of rolled stones and mud, they could not employ their most effective tactic, a charge of heavy cavalry, because they could not risk galloping through it. They would have to advance at a walk and then try to gain momentum on the far side. That meant riding uphill against a barrage of murderous fire. The prospects of success were not particularly good, but Ibelin strongly suspected King Richard would have attempted it anyway.
Champagne, however, had been King only three months. He was loath to risk what amounted to the entire fighting force of his kingdom in a single action. Battle was always risky, the stakes immensely high. Champagne shied from risking a second Hattin. They faced off against the Saracens, drawn up in battle formation on the north bank of the little river, but they did not attempt a breakthrough. Instead they slept in position.
Waking from a shallow sleep with the graying of the dawn, Ibelin rapidly registered that the enemy had not moved, either. As was to be expected, they were still blocking the road south. Champagne called another war council.
“My lord,” Garnier de Nablus, the Master of the Hospital, opened, “Salah ad-Din achieves his objective merely by sitting in place. To prevent us from relieving Jaffa, he doesn’t need to attack us. If we fail to break through, he has won. We must advance.”
The Prince of Galilee, William of Tiberius, backed the Hospitaller emphatically, but Robert de Sablé, the Templar Master, pointed out all the advantages the enemy had and the risk that they would founder in the stream, horses twisting or breaking their legs on the uneven ground, while murderous arrows rained down on them. “It’s madness to attack here.”
“Are you willing to sacrifice Jaffa?” Nablus countered.
“Are you so sure you can break through?” Champagne asked him anxiously, his face a picture of uncertainty.
“My lord, we are always in God’s hands,” the Hospitaller answered stoically.
Champagne shook his head decisively. “We cannot risk the entire army of Jerusalem. It is better to lose Jaffa.”
That raised many eyebrows, and Caesarea pointed out, “King Richard is depending upon our relief. He has only a tiny force with him. Are you prepared to abandon him?”
“Of course not! I’ll sail to Jaffa with as many men as possible aboard the Storm Bird and bring the word to King Richard of what has happened here. You can send a rider to Acre for more galleys to bring the rest of you.”
“And abandon all the horses?” Galilee asked, shocked. Nablus noted that Champagne himself would also be unable to take any horses, adding, “You’ll reinforce King Richard by at most a hundred men. That won’t be decisive at Jaffa.”
“But I’ll be able to warn him that we won’t be relieving him as soon as he expects.”
“If we don’t break through, we won’t be relieving him at all!” Nablus snapped back, casting a frown at Ibelin for keeping his own counsel.
Ibelin surprised them all by announcing, “My lord of Champagne is right. He, with as many reinforcements as possible, should take ship for Jaffa at once. The rest of us can remain here until more galleys arrive. If nothing else, by staying here we pin down what must be close to half of Salah ad-Din’s army. If they are here facing us, they cannot be attacking Jaffa.”
Except for Champagne himself, no one seemed at all pleased by Ibelin’s suggestion, but with shaking heads and grumblings they accepted it. In feverish haste, Champagne selected his companions—all his own knights and some archers—and headed back up the road for Caesarea.
Ibelin wished him Godspeed and watched him ride away. After the dust had settled, he summoned the others again and announced, “What I suggest we do is withdraw to Caesarea. Then, by cover of darkness, we exit from the postern into the moat and ride along the beach below the coast until we’ve passed the Saracen positions.”
“Can we do that?” Sablé asked. He was the only one not native to Outremer, and he had no idea what the coast looked like from the water’s edge.
“If the tide isn’t against us,” Caesarea answered, glancing over his shoulder toward the Mediterranean. “Otherwise the archers will be wading through water up to their thighs.”
“Better wet than dead,” Haifa noted succinctly.
The others nodded.
“It would help if some of your Templars manned the walls of Caesarea, my lord,” Ibelin addressed Sablé, “to give the impression we are still there in force.”
Sablé nodded agreement. “Of course.”
Ibelin looked at the others. “Are we agreed, then?” he asked.
Nablus nodded. “It’s a good plan—why didn’t you raise it earlier?”
Ibelin smiled faintly. “Champagne is our King, and we have sworn to obey him. I couldn’t risk him saying no.”
“But why would he?”
“Because he was in a hurry to get to Jaffa and join his uncle. This will cost us another day at least—and, if the sea gets up, even more.”
Chapter 21
Coast of the Levant, July 30, 1192
RICHARD’S SMALL FLOTILLA HAD BEEN BECALMED off Mount Carmel. They tried rowing the galleys, but the currents were against them, and they could make so little progress that even Richard recognized they were exhausting the crews to no good purpose. He ordered the crews to stand down, while he prowled the decks and did everything but try to row or blow wind into the sails himself. He fumed, cursed, prayed, pleaded, and then fell asleep on deck exhausted, just as the first light air lifted the pennants on the masthead.
Aimery spread a blanket over the snoring King and went to the rail to watch the water slip past the hull as they gradually gained steerage before a very light, but (thankfully) northerly, wind. It was a strange twist of fate, he thought, that he was here and his brothers were on Cyprus. He had fallen in love with Cyprus at first sight, while Guy still growled that it was an insult for the “King” of Jerusalem, and Geoffrey muttered about “ungrateful Griffons and idiot Orthodox.” Aimery would have gladly gone to Cyprus to try to restore order, but Guy did not want him. “A lot of help you did me in Jerusalem—always criticizing, nagging, and complaining! I don’t need that kind of ‘help’ anymore. I’d rather have the good Henri d’Ibelin with me,” he continued, indicating the knight who had so consistently praised and flattered him over the last five years. Henri had smiled at Aimery like the cat who swallowed the canary. “We’ll take Cyprus without you!”
Aimery felt himself getting worked up again. Over the last five years, he had come to hate Guy. He hated him for Hattin, for letting the rest of them rot in a dungeon while he lived in luxury, for the stupidity of starting the siege at Acre rather than taking Sidon and Beirut (which King Richard had wanted to do next, had Salah ad-Din’s threat to Jaffa not distracted him). He hated Guy for bringing his stupid royal wife to a notoriously unhygienic siege camp. He hated Guy for trotting around like a spaniel in Richard’s shadow. He hated him. Period.
And with time even the complacent, insensitive, self-confident Guy had come to feel that hate and then return it—which had been unimportant as long as Guy wa
s nothing but the nominal King of Jerusalem. But Cyprus! Aimery’s heart screamed in frustration. What wouldn’t he give for just a small piece of Cyprus! A modest fief he could call his own. A manor on the fertile plain, nestled below the mountains . . .
At some point during the night Aimery sank onto the deck and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rhythmic hissing of the waves under the hull.
Jaffa, August 1, 1192
A shout from the masthead roused King Richard and Aimery at the same time. Richard leapt up, his wits already collected, while Aimery staggered to his feet still dazed. The sailor in the crow’s-nest was pointing, and his voice wafted down to them. “Jaffa’s burning!”
The King strode to the forward rail, trailed by every other man on deck, and they all strained their eyes to see what the sailor had seen from forty feet overhead. They held their breaths as the ship raced forward with a good quartering northwest wind. Aimery spared a glance for the rest of the fleet, noting that they were still six ships in tight formation. Men were lining the landward rail of all the other ships as well.
“There it is!” someone shouted, and Aimery looked back toward the shore. A ragged smudge, which might in other circumstances have been only a low cloud, was visible on the horizon. With each passing heartbeat it grew darker, and rose higher.
“Arm!” King Richard ordered, and men scattered to obey.
By the time Aimery returned to the foredeck, the skyline of Jaffa had separated itself from the horizon and was dark against the glare of the morning sun. Smoke was clearly rising from a variety of points across the city, and soon they could make out the tall Saracen siege engines that clustered around it like vicious dogs closing for the kill. Against the morning sun it was difficult to make out the colors on the banners snaking over the walls, but their shape alone betrayed them as Saracen. Jaffa had fallen.
Envoy of Jerusalem Page 58