The Last Crusader Kingdom

by Helena P. Schrader

  “Zoë!” Ibelin called, using his wife’s middle name, which only he used with her. “John’s here!”

  A moment later Maria Zoë Comnena emerged in the doorway from the solar. She was dressed simply in accordance with her surroundings, in a rust-colored linen gown and a white surcoat of Gaza cotton. She had wrapped her head in saffron silk veils, however, and the dazzling smile she cast John reminded him that she had been a celebrated beauty in her youth. She advanced toward him with outstretched hands, but—still every inch a queen—she did not rush or shriek with delight. John hastened to meet her, bowing over her hand as he had been taught to do from earliest childhood.

  “What brings you here? Are you alone?” she asked, delighted, but already looking beyond John, expecting Aimery and/or Eschiva.

  “He’s got bad news,” his father answered for him. “It seems Champagne ordered Aimery’s arrest for high treason.”

  “Ah, the Pisans,” the Dowager Queen replied, nodding knowingly, while John gaped and his father nodded agreement.

  “What do you mean?” John asked, looking back and forth between his parents.

  “You tell him,” Ibelin suggested to his wife, “while I go clean up and change.”

  Maria Zoë nodded, and slipped her arm through her son’s elbow to lead him back into the solar as she explained. “The Pisans have been attacking ships bound to and from Acre. Acting little better than pirates, actually. Champagne is understandably furious, but he doesn’t have sufficient naval forces to engage the Pisan corsairs, so he threatened to take action against the Pisan commune in Acre. The problem with that is that there’s no evidence—and indeed, no reason why—the Pisans of Acre should be allied with those preying on shipping bound for Acre. Your sister Isabella wrote me that Aimery tried to stand up for the Pisan commune, which infuriated Champagne. I’m sure that’s what’s behind this arrest. Your father will soon get things cleared up.” She paused to look at her son, smiling unconsciously to see him looking so mature and masculine. He might be only thirteen but, like his father, he was tall, and already handsome—at least in his mother’s eyes. “Did you ride all through the night to bring the news?”

  “Yes, I left immediately after Lord Aimery’s arrest. I didn’t even think to take food or money with me!”

  His mother laughed. “Am I being too maternal if I suggest you’re famished and need some breakfast?”

  “I am famished!” John agreed readily.

  “Then let’s not stand on ceremony, and go straight down to the kitchens,” Marie Zoë suggested, reversing direction.

  Hungry as John was, he didn’t like the thought of his Imperial Greek mother, the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, going to the kitchens. He shook his head and stopped her. “Stay here, Mama. I’ll go down and get myself something. But do you really think Papa can clear this up?”

  “I’m certain he can. We’ll return with you to Acre as soon as you’ve had a chance to eat something, your father has changed, and we can pack for a few days. Centurion can probably manage the distance again, or you can take one of the other horses. We want to get to Acre before nightfall so poor Eschiva doesn’t have to spend another night in fear for her husband.”

  Chapter Two

  The Great Negotiator

  Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem

  April 1193

  QUEEN ISABELLA I OF JERUSALEM WAS twenty years old. She had been married at eleven, divorced at eighteen, widowed at nineteen, and married a third time within days of her second husband’s assassination. She had withstood Saracen sieges at Kerak and Tyre. She had taken part in the crusader siege of Acre. She had endured the uncertainty of a husband in Saracen captivity for two years, and the trauma of a husband dying in her arms after assassins struck. For all that, she was still a lovely young woman, who had inherited her mother’s classical features and curly auburn hair. Furthermore, she bloomed with the inner beauty that came from being in love with her husband and a proud new mother, the posthumous daughter of her second husband.

  After Mass and breaking their fast together, Isabella and her husband Henri de Champagne kissed before separating. He went to meet with the chamberlain, chancellor, seneschal, and viscount of the port of Acre, while she went to the nursery to check on her daughter Marie. It wasn’t that Isabella had abdicated ruling her Kingdom to her husband. On the contrary, she took a keen interest in legal disputes, inheritances, wardships, and marriages, as well as correspondence with foreign powers. She was less interested, however, in the commercial and monetary issues discussed with the chamberlain and viscount. Besides, she was a young mother and felt an acute need to spend time with her baby.

  The nursery had served this purpose for generations and was located on the ground floor facing one of the interior courtyards, so that growing royal children had a place to run about and make noise without disturbing the business of government or attracting the attention of their subjects. It was austerely furnished (as this was an age that believed children could do with less) but spacious, and Isabella already had dreams of filling it with half a dozen children. For the present, however, the nursery was occupied by her precious little Marie, the Syrian wet nurse, and Anne, the daughter of one of her ladies, who had been in Saracen slavery and had returned in a traumatized state.

  As Isabella entered, Anne was beside the cradle, rocking it and singing a lullaby softly. Isabella smiled at her, pleased by the peaceful image, but Anne gasped at the arrival of the Queen and backed away as if she had been doing something wrong. “There’s nothing to fear, Anne,” Isabella tried to encourage the girl, but Anne dropped her chin to her chest and would not meet the Queen’s eyes as she fell into a deep curtsy. Time, Isabella told herself, time and kindness would surely heal Anne’s wounds. Then she bent over the cradle to look at her sleeping daughter.

  Marie was perfect in Isabella’s eyes. Isabella was sure she would grow up to be a great beauty, since her father had been one of the handsomest men of his age: the charmer Conrad de Montferrat. Isabella was glad that she had this last gift from the man who had taught her the joys of the bedchamber—and also glad that his child had been a girl, so her present husband Henri could sire the son who would one day rule her kingdom after her.

  She did not want to wake her daughter, who was sleeping so blissfully, but she could not resist reaching out a finger to stroke the side of her cheek. Her skin was so amazingly soft that Isabella felt compelled to bend over the cradle to kiss her little girl on the nose. This, however, woke Marie, who squirmed, frowned, and let out a whining whimper of protest. Now Isabella had an excuse to take her in her arms to “comfort” her. She reached into the cradle and picked up her daughter. Placing her in the crook of her arm, she started very gently bouncing her up and down while she cooed to her. She was so absorbed in her joy with the child that she did not notice her mother stood in the doorway.

  The Dowager Queen of Jerusalem watched her daughter in silence. It was good to see her eldest daughter so happy. It was good to see her enjoying motherhood, and even better to know she was at last happy with her husband after two marriages that had each been difficult in different ways. Humphrey de Toron had probably been a sodomite and certainly impotent, never consummating the marriage to Isabella; Conrad de Montferrat had been a good lover but overbearing and self-important, unwilling to recognize Isabella as an intelligent being. Henri de Champagne, in contrast, both adored his bride and respected her as his queen. Seeing Isabella like this was some compensation for the memories of the wreck Isabella had been during her wrenching divorce from Toron, much less the horror of watching Montferrat die in agony in her arms. Maria Zoë found it hard to break in on her daughter’s private joy, knowing that she was going to shatter it the moment she raised the topic of Aimery de Lusignan’s arrest.

  “Mama!” Isabella noticed her mother at last. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “I just arrived,” Maria Zoë lied with a smile as she swept into the nursery. “And how is my granddaughter doing toda
y?”

  “She’s as lovely as ever!” Isabella responded, willingly handing her daughter over to her mother as she offered both cheeks in greeting.

  Maria Zoë smiled down at her namesake and bounced her in her arms gently, but when little Marie decided she’d had enough and let out a loud wail, she happily handed her off to the Syrian wet nurse.

  Distracted by her mother, Isabella made no attempt to interfere with the nurse, asking instead, “What brings you to Acre? When you left after Christmas Uncle Balian” (as a child Isabella had picked up the habit of referring to her stepfather as “Uncle Balian”) “said he didn’t expect to be back until after the sowing was finished.”

  “True. We didn’t expect an emergency.”

  “Emergency? What’s happened? Have the rains caused flooding—”

  Maria Zoë was shaking her head, “No, no. Shall we sit outside in the fresh air?” She indicated the courtyard bathed in morning sunshine.

  Isabella slipped her arm through her mother’s, and together they went out into the little courtyard. The sun was pouring in and the surrounding buildings protected it from the wind. They sat down on a plaster bench built against the wall, and Isabella looked expectantly at her mother. “Tell me! What is it?”

  “Actually, you must already know,” Maria Zoë started cautiously. Her relationship with Isabella was close, but it had also been stormy at times. There had been tense periods when Isabella had been rebellious and aggressive. “Your brother John rode all night to reach us.”

  “Oh!” Isabella gasped and drew back slightly, her face flushing. “You mean Aimery’s arrest. Henri had to!” She defended her husband at once. “He can’t risk him plotting against us for another hour! He promised me he would not put him in chains or anything like that, but he had to ensure Aimery could not communicate with his brother or the Pisans!”

  Maria Zoë was relieved to hear that Isabella had at least extracted a promise of good treatment; that alone would mean a great deal to Eschiva. More important, it suggested that her daughter was not entirely indifferent to her best friend’s husband. To her daughter she asked simply, “What is this all about, Isabella? You’ve known Aimery all your life. You know he’s sacrificed the better part of his life for Jerusalem. How can you think he might have turned traitor now?”

  “He’s a Lusignan, Mama! And you know his brother has never stopped claiming the crown of Jerusalem. Guy did everything he could to prevent me obtaining what was rightfully mine. He even talked Humphrey into telling me I had no claim as long as he lived. And don’t you remember how he tried to ingratiate himself with the Dowager Queen of Sicily, hoping to marry her? He’s still looking for a new wife. If he marries again and has children, he will claim Jerusalem for them!” Isabella hardly stopped for breath as she fervently delivered this monologue.

  Maria Zoë knew her daughter’s passionate nature, and nodded before countering in a reasonable tone, “I don’t doubt a word you’re saying, Bella. Guy has been an intriguer, a seducer, and arrogantly blind to his own faults for as long as I’ve known him—which is more than a decade. But Aimery is not Guy—any more than you are Sibylla.”

  Isabella had always hated her older half-sister Sibylla, so the argument made her catch her breath and start biting her lower lip. Maria Zoë pressed her point. “I know Aimery backed Guy’s usurpation six years ago, but he has lived to regret that a thousand times over. He’s told me that himself, he’s told your stepfather, and he’s told your brother the same thing. I honestly do not think that he could be involved in any kind of plot against you or Henri, even if—as has not yet been proved—his brother is behind the Pisan pirates preying on our shipping.”

  Isabella was frowning and biting her lip in distress. “You’re probably right, Mama. I want to believe you, for Eschiva’s sake if nothing more, but arresting him was a precaution Henri had to take. If he’s innocent, then I’m sure Henri will release him.”

  Maria Zoë took a deep breath and concluded this was probably the most she could hope to gain at the moment. Pressing Isabella too hard could easily trigger an angry rejection of “interference.” It would have been easier to back off, however, if she hadn’t spent the night with Eschiva and her children. Eschiva, usually so calm and self-possessed, had broken down and cried in Maria Zoё’s arms. Eschiva had lived with Maria Zoë and Balian as a child, and the ties had never weakened. Maria Zoë loved Eschiva like one of her own daughters, and she knew how much Eschiva had suffered over the years—from Aimery’s infidelities in his youth, from his captivity after Hattin and his absence at the siege of Acre, and more recently from the uncertainties of this last military campaign under the King of England. She and Aimery had only just started to rebuild their lives—and now this.

  “That’s really the best I can promise,” Isabella spoke into Maria Zoë’s thoughts, sounding faintly defiant already.

  “I know, Bella,” Maria Zoë chose tactical retreat. “That’s all I ask.” She smiled and kissed her firstborn on the forehead and then stood. “I must get back to Eschiva. She’s understandably very distraught and frightened.”

  “You must assure her that no matter what comes to light about Aimery, she will always be a sister to me. I promise she’ll never be made to suffer, even if Aimery is found to be a traitor.”

  “Ah, but sweetheart, if anything happens to Aimery she will suffer, because she loves him—not as you love Henri, nor indeed as I love your stepfather, but as a woman who has known no other husband since she was eight years old. Aimery is her life, Bella. If you take Aimery away, Eschiva will simply die.” Maria Zoë patted her daughter’s shoulder as if comforting her—but judging by Isabella’s stricken face, her message had gone home.

  Henri de Champagne, consort of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem, sometimes still felt as if he were a schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework. He was not yet twenty-five, and he had not been raised to be a king. Furthermore, the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were unique; he could not just apply his experience from home. He was completely dependent on the (not always patient) explanation of the customs and usages of his wife’s kingdom provided by his bishops, barons, and counselors. Sometimes he wondered if everything they told him was absolutely true.

  Take the custom of “restor,” for example. Who had ever heard of such a thing? But the seneschal and chamberlain both insisted that it was the custom of the Kingdom of Jerusalem that the king was responsible for compensating knights and sergeants for horses lamed or killed in battle. This seemed a huge and unreasonable expense to Henri, who pointed out that in France a knight was responsible for supplying his own horses at his own expense.

  “You are not in France,” the Archbishop of Nazareth, his chancellor, reminded him in an unsympathetic voice.

  “Obviously,” Henri retorted, annoyed, “but this is quite unreasonable. A knight enjoys his fief and the profits thereof in exchange for owing service with horse and squire. If the king assumes the costs of the horse—”

  “Only if it has been killed or lamed in his service,” the chancellor corrected him.

  “Yes, but that’s when most horses are killed!” Henri protested. “You’re talking about over fifty horses—Ah! Just the man I need!” Henri had caught sight of the Baron of Caymont in the doorway. “My lord of Ibelin” (everyone still called him Ibelin, even though the land that went with the title was in Saracen hands), “no one knows the laws of the Kingdom better than you, and as you’re also an expert on horses, I’m sure you know this one doubly well. Tell me, is it true that the King of Jerusalem is responsible for compensating knights and sergeants for horses lost or irreparably injured in battle?”

  Ibelin smiled faintly as he came deeper into the room. He bowed his head to the Count of Champagne before answering, “It is called ‘restor,’ my lord, and it is the law of the land—”

  “But I’ve never heard anything like it,” Champagne interrupted in protest.

  “The spoils of war go to the King,” Ibelin tried to explain,
“including the countless Saracen horses we usually capture. I think you’ll find that the drain on your treasury is bearable.”

  “Ah, but don’t the Saracens ride mares?” Champagne asked, puzzled.

  “They do, but not only mares, and sergeants can be compensated with mares or geldings.”

  “Hmm.” Henri did not sound entirely convinced, but he was somewhat mollified, and stood scratching his head as he tried to come to terms with yet another curious custom. Then he started, realizing that Ibelin was supposed to be in Caymont. “What brings you to Acre, my lord? I thought you had planned to stay in Caymont until Easter?”

  “I had planned to, yes. My son John, however, rode through the night to bring me word of the Constable’s arrest.”

  “Oh!” Henri’s face clouded, and a frown of annoyance crept over his features. Ibelin could almost see him regretting that he had not ordered John’s arrest. Since it was too late for that, however, he went on the offensive instead, declaring indignantly, “The Constable’s brother Guy has been inciting the Pisans to prey upon shipping bound for Acre. They’ve seized at least three ships that we know of, and this isn’t just piracy! The Lusignan is trying to undermine my authority by proving I cannot protect my subjects, as well as denying me valuable revenue that I would otherwise have from the customs duties on the cargoes of the seized ships.”

  “That could well be,” Ibelin agreed steadily with a glance at the other men in the room, one after another. The chancellor, seneschal, chamberlain, and viscount of Acre each looked away as if ashamed. He wondered which of them had advised Champagne to arrest the Constable. The Chancellor Archbishop of Nazareth should certainly have known better, he thought, looking again to the senior churchman, but Nazareth had barely escaped Saracen capture after Hattin. The months he had endured in reputedly wild, dangerous, and terrifying circumstances until he finally reached Tripoli had left their mark on him. He was said to bear a bitter, almost ulcerous, grudge against Guy de Lusignan—which was one reason Champagne had selected him as his chancellor. The seneschal Ralph of Tiberius was the younger brother of the Prince of Galilee, and he was likewise an outspoken and bitter opponent of Lusignan. He was also very young, roughly Champagne’s own age—which, Ibelin supposed, might have been a factor in his appointment: Champagne probably did not want to be surrounded by old men. That left the chamberlain and viscount. The former was one of Champagne’s knights, a man who’d come out to Outremer with him—and was, Ibelin presumed, blindly loyal to his lord while equally ignorant of the laws of Jerusalem. The Viscount of Acre, on the other hand, was the elderly and highly respected Peter de Gibelet, a man with a long history as a juror and counselor of the law. He was well qualified to preside over the Court of the Bourgeoisie—but not the kind of man to challenge a king, even a young and inexperienced one.