Aimery started, then shook his head. “He was just trying to get alms from you.”
“No, he wasn’t. He doesn’t know who I am. He thinks I’m a Greek servant named Janis.”
“Ah, is that what you do in your spare time? Lurk around taverns in disguise?”
“I don’t lurk!” John protested. “And I told you, I was at the lion show, not in a tavern. Besides, all that matters is whether it’s true or not. Did my cousin burn down mills with innocent people—women and girls—still inside?”
Aimery took a deep breath. “That’s what people are saying. I don’t know for sure—but if you must know, I think it’s probable. Your cousin was one of the leaders of the Red Sea raids, remember?”
“Then they have every reason to hate us, don’t they?” John countered angrily. “It’s not just about taxes and revenues, is it? It’s about making boys orphans—and beggars.”
“I’m sorry if I’m the first to tell you this, but life isn’t pretty and it isn’t fair!” Aimery snapped back. It was bad enough that his brother was an idiot, without his squire rubbing his nose in it!
“You think I don’t know that, my lord?” John shot back, his jaw set stubbornly, and the boy’s stance reminded Aimery so sharply of his father-in-law, he almost laughed. Meanwhile, John was continuing, “I’ve lost my inheritance, too, remember?” But even as he protested, he was reminded that while he’d lost his wealth, he hadn’t lost his parents or siblings, and at once his stance of defiance crumbled.
He felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder, and Lord Aimery spoke more gently now. “Don’t blame yourself, John. There is nothing you can do.”
John didn’t like that answer. He wanted to do something. He frowned and looked down in frustration and shame.
“John, I know it’s hard being separated from your brother and cousins. You need to spend more time with boys your own age. Why don’t you try to befriend the Camville boy? He was asking about you only this morning. I’m sure he needs a friend, too, and you’re both from the same class, the same church.”
“Can you hold Barry’s front paws while I remove the burrs from his belly?” John asked Dick de Camville. It was worded as a request, but it was really an offer of friendship, and Dick jumped at it. He loved John’s big, furry dog and wished he was allowed to have a dog of his own.
“W-w-where did you get B-b-barry?” he asked the other squire, as he took Barry’s paws in his hands and held him upright while John took a comb to his belly to vigorously remove a collection of burrs.
“He was a stray,” John answered without looking up or stopping in his task. “Or, well, he belonged to a leper, who died. I adopted him.”
“And your f-f-father let you?” Dick asked in wonder.
“I’d already left home and was with Lord Aimery. My father wouldn’t have minded, though. The problem was always my mother. She said our house in Tyre was too small for dogs—but then she let my little sister Meg have one!” John added in disgust.
“Is it true your mother is a Greek princess?” Dick’s stutter was subsiding as he became more comfortable with John.
“Yes,” John confirmed without looking up from his task.
“And you speak Greek?”
“Yes, pretty well now.”
“Do—do you think you could help me?”
“How?” John asked without looking up; Barry had started to fuss and squirm, and he had to concentrate on his task.
“My lord wants to consult an apothecary—a Greek apothecary. He says the Italian apothecaries are all quacks.”
That got John’s attention and he looked up at Dick, fully conscious of how significant this was.
Misinterpreting his stare, Dick shrugged. Barry yapped in protest, so Dick let go of his paws and patted him on the back of his head to calm him. As if talking to the dog, he added, “I think he’s afraid the communes will find out he’s sick if he goes to an Italian apothecary.”
“Yes, I imagine he does,” John admitted. “What’s the problem?”
Dick shrugged and stammered out, “I d-d-don’t know.” His stammer betrayed that he was lying, but John decided not to push for an answer. They were only just becoming friends, after all.
“You want me to find a Greek apothecary and bring him to Lord Guy?” John asked instead.
“Yes, but only after d-d-dark and in secret! No one must f-f-find out. Not even L-l-lord Aimery.”
“You can’t ask me to keep secrets from Lord Aimery,” John protested.
“Then f-f-forget I said anything!” Dick retorted hotly, his face flushed. He stopped petting Barry and turned to leave.
“Wait! Stop!” John understood their budding friendship was on the line.
Dick stopped and looked back over his shoulder, waiting.
“I promise to keep it a secret.”
“You’ll do it, then?” Dick asked.
John nodded again.
Andreas Katzouroubis was a cautious man. He had survived the many vicissitudes of recent years largely by minding his own business, which was healing the sick. So long as the island had been part of the Eastern Roman Empire, he had done his duty in the large municipal hospital in Nicosia. In accordance with the custom throughout the Empire, he had tended patients there every other month for nominal payment, and had earned his living in the other six months by tending private patients. That system broke down, however, when the despot Isaac Comnenus took it into his head that the Head Doctor was poisoning him and had the man tortured to death. After that, no one wanted the job of “Head Doctor,” and soon no one was being paid. So they stopped going to work in the hospital and withdrew to private practice, treating penniless patients on a charitable basis at their own discretion.
Financially this had not proven such a bad development, but Andreas Katzouroubis had not joined the medical profession for the sake of income alone. For one thing, he was genuinely interested in healing the sick, or at least easing their suffering—but the driving passion behind his choice of profession had really been fascination with the human body and how it worked. He loved the study of medicine more than the practice of it, and to this end he had studied both in Constantinople and in Alexandria. He had also spent one year as a “guest physician” in the famous Al-’Adudi Hospital in Baghdad, and another at the renowned Hospitaller establishment in Jerusalem. Andreas Katzouroubis was a man of the world as well as a highly respected pharmacist.
The request from a Greek-speaking squire to come attend on the hated Latin despot Guy de Lusignan did not fill him with particular enthusiasm. He saw no particular reason why he should either heal or help this man who had unleashed so much misery on his beloved homeland. Nor did he believe the man could be suffering from an ailment that would interest him intellectually. The pay might, admittedly, be good—or it might be death, as in the case of the Head Doctor. Dealing with despots was always a dubious proposition.
On the other hand, it was usually not wise to refuse a summons from a despot, either. It was, in short, a situation of “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Not being by nature a man with fragile nerves, however, Katzouroubis simply raised his eyebrows, told the squire to wait, and then took his time collecting his bag of utensils—the urine jar, lancets, string for the tourniquet, clean gauze bandages, ointments, and small bottles filled with various liquids and powders used in common remedies. His bag packed, Katzouroubis took a cloak from the wall and flung it over his robes, leaving his distinguishing cap visible. At last he nodded to the squire that he was ready.
Outside it was misting more than raining. Although there was no noticeable precipitation, the air was thick with moisture and the cobbles had a wet sheen. The apothecary’s cloak soon glistened with tiny droplets. They moved silently through the darkened streets like two shadows until they came to the royal palace. Here the squire led past a sentry, who evidently recognized him and his authority to bring a stranger inside. They ascended by a back stairway and followed a service corridor until the squ
ire stopped before a closed door and gave a distinctive knock. He was answered almost at once by the opening of the door from the inside. The squire nodded for the apothecary to enter, murmuring, “This is where I leave you, sir apothecary. Lord Guy’s squire will look after you from here.”
A youth on the other side of the door took over, gesturing for him to follow. Katzouroubis soon found himself deposited in an elegantly appointed chamber with mosaic floors and marble facings on the wall. There were soft Egyptian carpets on the floor, an abundance of silk cushions on the benches and chairs, and dozens of glass oil lamps flickering around the room. It took him a moment to even find the patient.
Up to now, Katzouroubis had seen the Latin Lord of Cyprus only from a distance when he rode through the city. He had always been in armor and mounted. He had looked impressive. Now Guy de Lusignan was wearing a long, loose kaftan, belted with a richly embroidered cord. He wore sandals on his naked feet. He looked smaller, frailer, and older than he had looked mounted and in armor.
“You are the apothecary?” the Lusignan asked in a sharp voice.
Katzouroubis bowed deeply. “I am a physician and, yes, an apothecary as well. At your service, my lord.”
“Ah, you speak French.” The Lusignan sounded relieved.
“I spent sixteen months with the Brothers of St. John at Jerusalem, my lord.”
“Good, good. I need your help,” Guy confessed.
“Shall we sit?” Katzouroubis countered, gesturing toward a bench softened with cushions whose gold threads caught the light of the lamps.
Guy nodded absently, pulling his kaftan straight at the back as he sat down and folding the extra material over his knees like an old matron.
“So, what symptoms do you have?” Katzouroubis asked in his calm, professional voice.
“Blood in my urine,” Guy admitted in a tight, frightened voice. “And pain in my lower guts.”
“Hmm. I will need a urine sample,” the doctor told him, turning to open his bag and remove his urine flask. “As for the pain, does it hurt to urinate?”
“Yes, very much.”
“A burning? Or stinging?”
“Yes, as if my urine were liquid fire.”
“And you need to urinate frequently?”
“It feels like it, but there’s nothing there half the time. Just the pain.”
“How long have you been impotent, my lord?”
“What makes you think I am?” Guy shot back defensively.
Katzouroubis’ eyebrows shot up and he looked at the Frank skeptically.
Guy flung up his hands, grabbed the urine flask from the doctor’s hand, and stormed in the direction of the garderobe.
Katzouroubis looked around the room while he waited. The second squire had discreetly disappeared. The only other occupant of the room was a tiger cat who lay on a cushion looking at him with large, half-closed amber eyes.
Guy returned and thrust the flask at him. Even in the poor light, the apothecary could see that the fluid inside (not much, but enough) was murky and brownish. Not healthy at all.
Katzouroubis jammed a cork stopper firmly down the throat of the flask to seal it, and placed it upright in a leather loop sewn inside his bag that would keep it upright. “I will need to examine it in my laboratory,” he told the patient. “Meanwhile, do you wish to share any other symptoms with me?”
“The pain keeps me awake at nights,” Guy told him, asking himself if it was really the pain or the loneliness and hopelessness of his situation.
“You need to drink more water and less wine,” Katzouroubis advised at once.
“I urinate all the time as it is!” Guy protested.
“You feel the need to urinate, you told me, often with meager results. The discomfort would be less if you had water—plenty of water—to pass.”
Guy grunted ambiguously.
“You should also drink the juice of crushed pomegranates morning and night. Five or more pomegranates, to be precise. The harvest is just starting, so you should have no trouble with that.”
“Will it ease the pain?” Guy asked, and Katzouroubis heard an echo of desperation in his voice.
“No,” the doctor admitted honestly before adding, “but I can give you something else for the pain, if you like.”
“Can you give it to me now? Tonight?”
Katzouroubis hesitated, but then nodded, and looked through his bag for the opium.
Chapter Six
Interlude in a Precarious
Peace
Caymont, Kingdom of Jerusalem
December 1193
FROM THE “LISTS” ERECTED JUST OUTSIDE the manor came the sound of excited young men shouting and cheering. It was a familiar and comforting sound to Maria Zoë. At thirty-nine, she still thoroughly enjoyed watching skilled knights face off against one another in a joust or melee. Far more important, however, was the fact that so many young men training in the skills of knighthood gave her hope for the future. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had very nearly been lost by Guy de Lusignan on the Horns of Hattin. It had, with the help of large armies of Westerners, clawed back important territories along the coast under the able leadership of Richard of England. However, the heartland of the Kingdom—Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and her own dower lands of Nablus—were still occupied by the Saracens. If they were ever to win those holy (and economically vital) places back, they needed a new generation of knights eager and ready to fight for the Holy Land.
Here on the plain of Caymont, a dozen youths were engaged in the rough- and-tumble training so essential to later battlefield competence. They were being schooled by her husband and his knights, who maintained their own skills not only in mock combat against one another and out hunting, but by playing target to the squires—and more often than not, defeating them left-handed.
Drawn by an explosion of excited shouting, Maria Zoë knelt in the window seat and opened the small casement set in the thick, milky glass so she could get a look at what was causing all the shouting. In the middle of the lists her husband sat on his youngest destrier, a black stallion called Ras Dawit, and he was blindfolded. In the four corners, younger men sat their horses, and as she watched, one put spurs to his horse and launched himself at his lord, blunted lance lowered. Based on the sound alone, Balian nudged his horse around on his fore hand and lifted his shield in time to parry the blow from the blunted lance. As the lance slid off the shield and the rider galloped past, the bystanders cheered the blindfolded baron.
At once another youth launched himself from a different corner, and again Balian deftly swung his attentive horse to face the threat. Maria Zoë, an excellent horsewoman, could see Ras Dawit’s ears twitching and swiveling. He was responding as much to the threat as to his rider’s legs, and she smiled as she realized that this was part of the trick: a horse trained to face any man attacking his rider.
It was likewise obvious to the horsewoman Maria Zoë that the youth attacking now wasn’t riding very well. He was bouncing too far out of the saddle, and when he collided with her immobile husband, he tumbled backwards into the sand—to the hoots and laughter of the youths collected around the lists.
Maria Zoë sucked in her breath in sympathy and glanced over her shoulder at her waiting woman, Beatrice, who had come to join her at the window. It was Beatrice’s eldest son who had just been so publicly disgraced.
Beatrice grimaced and shook her head. “He’ll never make up the lost years,” she commented realistically. Beatrice’s father, Sir Bartholomew, had held a knight’s fief from Ibelin for half a century. Despite his sixty-some years, he had been with his lord at Hattin, but in the aftermath of that defeat, Beatrice and all three of her sons had been taken captive by the Saracens. They had been slaves for five years before the Treaty of Ramla freed them. As a result, from the age of eleven to sixteen, her eldest son Bart had sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of a hovel knotting cotton to a frame, the slave of a carpet maker, instead of learning the skills of knighthood.
Before Maria Zoë could comment, she and Beatrice were distracted by the next attack. This came from Beatrice’s second son, Amalric. He had been sold to a smith rather than a carpet maker and had returned from captivity not only big and strong, but burning with hatred. He launched himself at his blindfolded lord with the fury of a man who pictured himself in combat with his worst enemy—or maybe just with the determination of a youth who wished to wipe away his brother’s humiliation. His attack was strong enough to make Ras Dawit whinny as the horses collided. When Balian leaned forward to knock him back, Amalric grabbed the edge of his shield and tried to twist his opponent off his horse. Balian responded by spurring his horse forward, and Ras Dawit flung himself into the other horse with enough force to stagger him. Meanwhile, Balian wrenched his shield loose and used it to bludgeon the unfortunate Amalric, who (as the hooting and shouting indicated) was soundly outmatched.
“It must be reassuring to see how well your lord husband fights,” Beatrice noted behind Maria Zoë as her second son also hit the dust.
Maria Zoë nodded. “It is—and I don’t doubt your father taught him much of it. He was the drillmaster for the squires when Balian was a youth.”
Beatrice nodded and looked away quickly, because she still had not come to terms with her father’s death. He had lived to see her and the boys return from captivity, but he had died this past autumn. He had found peace at last, she told herself, and he had certainly earned the rest of heaven, but she missed him desperately. He was the only one who fully understood the pain she felt over her youngest son, Joscelyn. Jos had been only six when he was captured, and he had returned a Mamluke and a Muslim. To this day he insisted he would not worship “idols,” called the rest of them “polytheists,” and swore he would return to “his master” (al-Adil) as soon as he reached maturity at fifteen.
She felt a hand on her arm and looked over at the Dowager Queen. The expression in Maria Zoë’s eyes suggested that she did understand. “It is hard to bury a child,” she said softly, “but far harder to watch a child willfully destroy himself.”
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